THE SECOND COMING

 DEICIDE has returned with a pummeling new album titled THE STENCH OF REDEMPTION. I spoke with Glen following the cancellation of a short tour that was plagued with problems involving promoters.

GLEN BENTON: Have you heard the new record yet?

METAL HELL: Yeah.

GB: What do you think?

MH: It’s got some sick guitar solos. Ralph & Jack have brought some fresh ideas for sure.

GB: Yeah, it makes for a good record man. Since the dumb and dumber brothers got out of here it’s been great.

MH: How does it feel to return with a different line-up for the first time?

GB: I’d have to say it’s like a Christmas tree that’s finally got lights on it. It’s like a cake that finally gets frosting. To me it sounds more like a finished product.

MH: Had you known Jack & Ralph for a while?

GB: Oh yeah, I’ve known those guys for ages. There was no auditioning. Jack came out over & learned the set in a weekend & Jack’s like Ralph needs a job & I’m like tell him to bring his ass over, so that was how that happened.

MH: Besides being good musically what else is important?

GB: Just to be able to do your job and not have too many hang-ups where it gets in our way of doing business. I don’t give a shit what you believe in as long as you show up & play guitar, that’s all I give a fuck about. I’m me & I’m not gonna lump everybody into me so I want people to be individuals & to speak for themselves and be professional. After dealing with amateur bullshit for so many years I just wanna be professional & get rid of the stigmatism that those 2 assholes brought upon this band.

MH: Do you think the band getting along better affected the outcome of Stench?

GB: Oh yeah, when we get together it’s a comedy show. We all laugh, we all have a good time, it’s great & it’s stress free, it’s not like walking on pins & needles trying to do your job, it’s great, I fuckin’ love it. That’s why I’m still doing it now, cause now it’s fun again.

MH: Did the writing process change at all?

GB: No, Steve writes the music & I write the lyrics. That’s how it’s always been. With Jack & Ralph, the next day they show up they’ve got leads written, or (they write ‘em) right on the spot. There wasn’t any of this record the record & then it takes 6 weeks to write some shitty leads. That’s what we’ve always needed. Like Steve says (it was) having to dummy down to meet their standards of playing and we don’t have to do that no more.

MH: When did it become apparent that there had to be line-up changes?

GB: They walked out on their own. They left because the publishing deal changed in the band & everybody got paid for what they wrote so because they don’t write that much their checks weren’t that big so right then & there they dropped out of the band. That had a lot to do with it, so they walked. Nobody fired nobody- they quit.

 

MH: Did having new guitar players inspire you to try any new bass stuff?

GB: It inspired me to improve my sound through getting an endorsement through Ibanez. I’m using Ibanez basses, which sound amazing, & we’ve got a full endorsement from Madison amps. It makes me a better player to be with people that ain’t making me feel all stressed out. I used to play B.C. Rich for all of those years and those things make you a shitty guitar player cause they’re so bulky & neck heavy so now I’m into playing (bass) guitars that I can play on and improve as a musician.

MH: Are these stock Ibanez models?

GB: No they’re all the high- end ones man. I’ve got a 500 & I’ve got a 1000 coming in next week, they’re painting it flat metal black for me, so it’s all good high end shit. It’s got the binga woods & stuff like that. I used a 1500, the binga Ibanez bass in the studio on the new album so it gives you a nice low-end e.q. sound to it. With the guitar playing on the album there’s not much room to be doing any Jaco Pastorious riffs on there & Steve and I went into the studio in one day & I knew half the songs but basically he’d show me a part & I would play the part, so I learned all of the songs and recorded them all in one day.

MH: Do you usually follow the guitar riffs?

GB: On this record we did a lot of stuff where I’m just doing my own thing. It’s different for me & it’s easier for me to do vocals to cause it’s simplistic for me & to be able to sing & play at the same time, the simpler it is the better it is & the easier it is to learn those songs. There’s a lot of stuff where I’m following Steve & Jack & Ralph are going off on their own things.

MH: Cause live it’s like you gotta play without thinking when you’re singing.

GB: Right, so there’s a lot of riffs in there where I’m not following anybody except myself so those are the parts Steve had to go over with me cause there’s some confusing shit sometimes cause I’m used to playing following the guitars, there’s a few things that we did differently this time but it was good, it worked out.

MH: In the studio do you prefer to go for first takes or do you like to do vocals over & over?

GB: I have to cause I’m doing the double-triple tracking on the shit so I go over it & if something sounds like it’s winded or if the pronunciation doesn’t sound right I’ll re-do those riffs but for the most part it’s one-take kind of shit where I go at it with a low vocal first, then I’ll come over it and do the Darth Sideous voice & then I’ll throw a high scream on top of that.

MH: How did that start? You were one of the first to do that style of vocals.

GB: It all started on the first album when we went in the studio. Actually it started for me when I used to do a lot of 8-tracking & shit like that in the house. I used to fuck around with it & double & triple it on my voice cause I liked to harmonize. I’ve always liked the harmonization thing, groups that harmonize. But for metal what can you do? So you harmonize with yourself & it gives it a real harmonization instead of having that fake harmonizer sound that sounds mechanical. It gives it a realness, then when I play live I can either switch to the highs or I can keep going through it low or whatever. It opens up for me whatever I want to do live with it. I’ll finish up a line with a high scream or finish out a verse screaming it out or do the Sideous voice.

MH: How do you think the Buffalo scene compared to the Florida metal scene?

GB: I’m from Niagara Falls outside of Buffalo, as far as the metal scene up there, I moved out of that area years ago. I’ve been in Florida since I was pretty much a kid. I’m 39 & I’ve lived here for 34 years or whatever so I really wasn’t up there in that area when there was a scene, I was in Florida during that time.

I lived here when I was a young kid & then I moved back up there & then I moved back down here when I was 17 so the scene was starting when I got here. There was Nasty Savage & Savatage & bands like that, that started out in the area & I used to go to their shows.

MH: Were those bands an inspiration?

GB: Well it definitely gave me something to look forward to, to see that if bands like that could make it, then anybody could.

MH: Was it important to stand apart from all those bands at the time?

GB: Oh, of course, cause what we were doing with the vocals that I was doing, was a little bit beyond everybody’s shit. A lot of people, I remember when we started out people were like the music’s great but the singer is horrible & they couldn’t comprehend that death metal vocal & look at me now, but I was one of those people that first started it with that sound.

MH: How did the idea come about for the old promo shots with the bands faces covered in blood?

GB: I came up with that just off the whim of my head. I had some raw latex rubber & we just rubbered up the faces and put blood on ‘em. It was just a whim. It was something we did one night (when we were) drinking.

MH: How important do you think it is to have catchy elements, like “Sacrificial Suicide” & stuff like that?

GB: You gotta have that. When I listened to metal when I was a kid that’s what I dug was the catchiness of it & the catchy riffs & all that shit, the cool titles, the hooks.

You’ve gotta have hooks. I can’t listen to some of the metal cause my interpretation of metal is different than others & to me to listen to stuff that’s going ‘bababara-

Rarabupupupu-rarruru’, I get sick of listening to that shit. To me there’s no texture, it’s just a blastbeat & a vocal, there’s no depth or integrity, there’s no hooks. You’ve gotta have the hooks man. When you listen to the hooks of ‘Lunatic’ or ‘Children Of The Underworld’ or ‘Kill The Christians’ or ‘When Satan Rules This World’, ‘Once Upon The Cross’, if you don’t have the hook to me it’s just noise.

MH: There’s nothing better than sick lyrics you can understand.

GB: With my vocals, this is how I sound. When I started doing this shit I was like 17-18 & when I sang that’s just how I sounded & then I was like there’s a market for this shit? Well let’s throw it a little lower (laughs). So that’s how that all came about. Then the high screaming stuff just came with time.

MH: Do you think there are any new bands that have that recognizable quality?

GB: No personality. Nobody sticks out anymore, nobody stands out. You’ve got all this whine metal where the singer sounds like they’re whining, like Creed. They sound like they’re whining about something & then you’ve got the rap-metal & that’s not my bag. My bag is keeping I brutal and evil and it’ll always be that way for me.

 

MH: Do you hear a difference in how the old songs are played live now?

GB: Yeah, they’re played better & the leads are better. They’re playing the leads right. Those guys got to a point where they couldn’t even play the leads. They would just skip over the leads. They were good for about 35 minutes on stage & then they’re begging to fuckin’ get off stage. Now we’re doing over an hour (long) set & we don’t cancel shows, so it’s all-good now man.

MH: How did the new video turn out?

GB: It’s “Homage For Satan”, you can watch it on Youtube.com.  They’re probably gonna release on Headbanger’s Ball. We’re gonna give ‘em something to fuckin’ talk about. It’s gonna be good. I’m sure it’ll get banned. This has got a priest getting pummeled with a bible and possessed and falling on the ground and spitting up bile so it’s pretty brutal. Go check it out at Youtube.com. Just punch in “Homage For Satan”, it’s there. I downloaded it the other day, that’s how I viewed it just to do my editing for it. It’s good stuff. It’s like a mini-movie.

MH: What else is going on?

GB: We’re gonna record another video I think here real soon, probably “Desecration.” We’re thinking about doing it for “Desecration” & we’re working on getting an agent that can adequately book a tour for us. We’ve got a lot of shit planned, Japan, & we’ll go over to Australia. We’re gonna do a Euro tour with Vader & just trying to stay busy. Everything’s looking good, right now we’re just kicking back from the shit we’ve been through lately with that whole Texas fiasco.

MH: That looked pretty crazy.

GB: It was, I’m just glad to be home man.

 

 * Interview by Joe Degraffenreid /Metal Hell 2006