 |
 |
 |
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
 |
Gene Hoglan |
 |
 |
|
 |
 |
MH: With Dark Angel you had a lot of writing credits for a drummer. How did it work out that you wrote so much with that band? GH: For instance Charlie Benante from Anthrax, he did a lot of the songwriting for ‘em & I wasn’t aware of that at the time, but somebody had to write the songs. After my guitarist Jim Durkin left the band I had to take over as the main songwriter. Jim & I were already writing quite a bit together & then when Jim left it was like you gotta write the majority of the shit now. It would be me in the back of the bus writing the next record as we’re traveling down the road. While the other band gets to drink & party & carouse with women, I never did that, I was just a very focused guy. I didn’t drink, didn’t do drugs. I spent my weekends at home writing. I’d jam during the week and on the weekends when everybody would be off partying & going to barbeques & having fun, I’d stay in all weekend & write the next record and keep writing lyrics all the time and all that. Somebody had to do it, that’s basically why I started doing it. MH: Were you trying to push the envolope lyrically with stuff like “The Promise Of Agony” & “The Death Of Innocence”? Those weren’t typical metal lyrics. GH: Sure, I really looked around at all heavy metal at the time & just thought (that) lyrically it’s a vast wasteland & people like to sing about ‘I’m gonna kill the next victim with my rusty knife & jump into the pit and slam around’, & that was hackneyed and boring to me. Write about things you know about, write about things that will push an envelope and will make people stand up and take notice & go wait a minute, there’s a brain going on here. Okay listen to the music, it’s visceral & from the gut but the lyrics were quite cerebral for the time and I always liked that. I will stand apart god dammit, no matter what I do. That was one way of allowing Dark Angel & myself to stand apart from all the other boneheads writing bullshit lyrics. Nuclear Assault have good lyrics, Excel had great lyrics, Trouble had great lyrics, then you get past that & there’s lots of people singing about the same old stuff and that’s not for me. MH: With Death, it seemed like Human & Individual Thought Patterns broke new ground. Do you think Chuck was consciously going more progressive? GH: Not at all, Chuck’s riffs were always simple. I didn’t play on Human, I played on Individual Thought Patterns and Symbolic, but the guy who did play on Human, Sean Rhyner, he was a huge influence on my playing in the fact that he opened the door for Death to be more than just a death metal band. He took that band in a brand new direction then when I came in after him it was like it doesn’t have to be straight thrash metal, you can allow some groove in, you can allow some taste & I was super-duper into fusion & progressive rock. You just don’t have to play hauling double bass & quarter notes on the snare. You can allow your Steve Gad influence to come through & play some Ben Bay beats & Shawn was a big influence on that. Chuck’s riffs were always pretty simple, the riffs are not technical at all. There’s not a lot of technical time changes but it allowed the drums to become a lead instrument with the music, to propel it along in a way that if you were just playing along with the riff that could get a little stale, but if you start playing right off the riff & start playing some wacky stuff underneath a very solid traditional heavy metal riff, that’s where the drums can absolutely play things that makes or breaks an entire sound for a band. Let alone the band itself. MH: What’s your opinion on the current metal scene? It seems like there’s more metal bands than ever. GH: And to me there’s noting wrong with that. Let everybody have a chance at getting their ya-yas out. There’s room for everybody, absolutely, I’ve always felt that & at least today’s metal, a lot of people complain about it & people just like to complain. I don’t have anything against any of those new metalcore bands that have (a thing where), the image is important & wearing the straightened hair and the black eyeliner & the white leather belts or whatever it is, it’s like fuck those guys are just trying to have fun. Those guy are just trying to make music, why should I go your music sucks? Cause for the most part it doesn’t suck. A lot of that shit gets pretty heavy. For me the original & all time metalcore band before it was ever even close to being called metal core, was Crumbsuckers, that was the first hardcore band that was letting their Iron Maiden influences show & shredding on guitars & writing music that was far beyond hardcore. For me, that’s the ultimate. None of these new bands can even touch The Crumbsuckers, but you gotta give ‘em credit for trying. They’re just trying to do their thing & having fun with their music so I don’t hate that shit. MH: But most of it’s missing the attitude & personality. GH: Absolutely, granted a lot of these bands sound alike, but you could say the exact same thing about death metal in 1992, you gotta listen to the guitar tone to tell the bands apart because all the singers sound exactly alike. When people get old they like to bitch about how we had it better, ’my music was way better than your music you stupid punk kids & the punk kids are like ‘fuck, your music is old man music’, Slayer can be old man music to people these days for all I know. A lot of these young dudes are like I didn’t grow up on Slayer, I grew up on Sepultura, I grew up on Deicide or whatever. A lot of the metalcore kids are like I didn’t even listen to heavy metal, metal to me was Motley Crue & check me out I play in Avenged Sevenfold now and we’re kind of European sounding. There’s room for everybody. Everybody can rock and have a good time. I don’t bitch about the current state of metal because at least it is very accessible. The music is accessible to a point but not like it was back in the cock rock days. That was horrible music and that was called heavy metal. Motley Crue, I’m sorry you fuckin’ suck. Poison sucked & all that other shit, Britny Fox & Cinderella & bullshit like that, that was all fake music to me, that was plastic, that was the Britney Spears of the era & music these days, if you hear of a tiny band from Poland that you read about in Metal Maniacs, back in the day it took a whole lotta tape trading to track down that band. Nowadays you just punch up their Myspace page & you’re ready to rock, if you are that tiny band from Poland somebody from Los Angeles could listen to your music today, when you download it. Somebody could grab it and find it & write you an email saying hey I like your music. Back in the day obviously technology was not like it was now so things were a little bit rougher back then and you really had to be into it. These days MTV has ruined so many imaginations. Most people are force fed music & most people are not real music fans anyway. Most people are like,’I listen to what’s on the radio, I listen to what MTV plays on their metal show & that’s my only exposure to heavy metal & I like what is shown to me’. Most people don’t delve deep into a scene or a style, they’re like ‘okay I’m content to listen to the rock radio and ‘they play that Disturbed song, that’s heavy metal, I like that’. MH: Did you always realize metal was no good for making money or did you come to terms with that later? GH: No, I knew from the start, I remember when we put out Darkness Decends & the album did really well, but on a thrash metal real well basis & my dad was all proud, he was like ‘I’m gonna reture from my son’s musical super stardom’ & I’m like, dad, let me tell you something, this is underground thrash metal, I’m not gonna be buying you a house anytime soon, I’ll be lucky if I get to pay rent at my own house through this kind of music. I always think if I had just played with Warrant for one year then I would probably be set for life. I would know how to invest my money & make it work, but I chose a very underground style of music. It’s one thing to be able to survive in the music industry for 22 years, but to survive playing underground thrash metal? Holy fuck! I lead a pretty Spartan life though. I’m not very ostentatious & I don’t have to have the brand new car. Hell, I just bought a TV this year for the first time. It was $200 & I bought it used off Jed, my guitarist. MH: Did you picture yourself playing metal all these years later even back then? GH: Absolutely, when I was 11 years old I announced to my parents, I’m gonna be a rock & roll dude. I’m gonna be in a band, I’m gonna play drums, I don’t know where I’m gonna play but this is what I’m gonna do with my life & my folks are like holy Jesus are you sure about that? I could’ve become a pro baseball player as well because there’s 2 things I can do well & the other one is play baseball & my dad was like are you sure you don’t wanna play baseball ‘till you’re 30 and then retire & then you can do your little band thing, I was like no, you can’t be a long haired freak in baseball. This was before there was ever a Dennis Rodman or any freakazoids, no sports guys had tattoos or peircings or dread locks or long hair like they do now. You had to be pretty straight laced to be in sports & I was like fuck that. Rock & roll is definitely my calling, so when I was 11 I said I’m gonna be in a band, I’m gonna play music for my life & that’s what I’m gonna do and I’m very fortunate. Who gets to really follow their dream as an 11 year old? I’m 38 now & I’ve gotten to live my dream & there’s ups & downs & roller coasters to every bit of it but I’ve got to live my dream. When I was 16 all I wanted to do was play in a thrash metal band & I got to do that for a living, so that’s pretty cool. MH: What else is planned for the future? GL: The Ozzfest, that’s gonna be happening & we’ll see where we fit in, into the whole scheme of things after Ozzfest. The Ozzfest can make a band or it can do nothing for a band. There’s a lotta bands that have played Ozzfest that you never hear of after Ozzfest and we could very well be one of those bands, we don’t know. We have not so much low expectations but more like no expectations. We don’t know what to think. I’ve said this before but Strapping you will either love or hate at the Ozzfest but I know you won’t ignore us. We will be heard & there you go, we’ll see what happens. The new album is called The New Black and it comes out on July 11th and hopefully people will check it out. If you like it cool, if you don’t like it fuckin’ cool-go fuck yourself, either way. MH: That’s gonna be interesting with Ozzy doing the show on the 2nd stage. GL: Yeah, he’s doing like three of ‘em and that makes me wonder. It’s like wait a minute, does that mean one of us gets bumped? Fuck that, I’ll fight Ozzy to play on that fuckin’ second stage. You don’t need to play on the 2nd stage you old fucker. Go play on your stage. We’re at the little kids table, you go eat with the grown ups you know. |
|
|
 |
|
|
 |
| Disclaimer:
All photos and material contained in this site are sole property
of MetalHellOnline. Any copy or distribution of said material is
strictly prohibited, unless otherwise agreed upon in writing.
MetalHellOnline are registered Trademarks.
~MetalHellOnline~ |