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Vehemence: you need a producer who knows what he's doing

As soon as our house metal god Brian McManus arrived home from work, he found himself hastily scratching up questions to ask guitarist John Chavez from Vehemence. Getting no more than two-days' notice of the interview, and being hellishly busy with work, the band, and let's face it, drinking too much, it turned out surprisingly well, touching on such subjects as their recent tour with Decapitated, studio hassles, and gory artwork. And he even offered a free CD to anyone interested! Read on to find out more . . .

Tekst: Brian McManus

Publicatiedatum: 11 november 2002

You're gonna hate me for asking, but in the seemingly mandatory ritual of any interview, could you give us a blurb on how Vehemence started up, and pin off the main bits and pieces of its existence?
"Nathan Gearhart started the band back in 1995 as a high school project with Scott Weigand (now ex-guitarist), deciding they wanted to create an atmospheric death metal band, in the vein of Cathedral. After it was established, they recruited Bjorn Dannov, who was a guitarist with influences such as Gorefest and Carcass. The other members ended up joining after a party Nathan, Bjorn, and Scott attended with Bjorn. Their attendance resulted in a meeting with Andy Schroeder [drums] and Mark Kozuback [bass/screams], who were in a punk band called Mistaken Identity. Mistaken Identity had a very death vs. punk feel with a lot of double bass, and contained Mark's screaming form of vocals. Shortly after, Andy and Mark quit Mistaken Identity and became full-time Vehemence members.
"As time went on, they created demo after demo, until finally releasing one in 1998. Their first show was opening for Suffocation on their Despise the Sun tour. Since that time, they recruited Jason Keesecker during the recording of The Thoughts From Which I Hide, which was in November 1999, and released in August 2000. Scott Weigand left the band around December 1999 after the recording. I was in a Meshuggah/Cynic-influenced band called Brides Of Christ at the time. I used to hang out with the guys in Vehemence a lot. I liked their unique style, and [they] practiced in the same facility as us. What happened was, when I heard the news, I said I would join to see what I could do for this band. Ever since then, I became very hard-working towards it: creating websites, promotions, management ,and that kind of stuff.
"We promoted The Thoughts From Which I Hide through Internet and worldwide metal distributors. We also had a connection to Metal Blade through Mark's father, who gave C.E.O. Brian Slagel a copy of The Thoughts Of Which I Hide self-release CD. He liked it and wanted to see if we were hard working as a band. So, to show we were serious, we established our own 15-date West Coast tour with three other bands. But when the time came, the other three other bands dropped off the tour, and we ended up headlining the whole tour. Nonetheless, it turned out successful, and so we landed a contract and waited six months to sign it due to lawyer negotiations. We did a pre-promotion demo for God Was Created in October 2001 at Pipeline Studios with Aaron Carry. One song off of that, called 'Fantasy From Pain,' landed on the Uncorrupted Steel compilation, which helped us land even more recognition.
"Shortly after that, in January 2002, when the contract was signed and done, we went to Saltmine studios in Mesa Arizona [artists Megadeth, Soulfly] to record basic tracking. We took the project to a suburb of San Francisco to get it mixed by Juan Urteaga and his assistant Mike Blanchard at Trident Studios [artists Cattle Decapitation, Beyond The Embrace, Skinlab]. And Juan, being in a death metal band [Vile] helped a lot, because he knows what a good death metal album should sound like. And that's where we stand today: fresh off our second tour."

Speaking of that tour [with Incantation, Impaled, Decapitated, Dead To Fall], was there a good reaction from most crowds? Good turnouts? Decent merch sales?
"Well, it was booked about a month in advance . . . not a good thing! I can safely say that about 300 was the high turnout for some shows, like in San Francisco or New York. We sold a lot of merchandise; so did the other bands. Decapitated seemed to have sold the most on the tour. Some days we were surprised to have sold more merch than the bigger bands, like Incantation, Impaled, and Decapitated, whom we figured would have sold the most the whole tour. It was a very cool tour for us. We made a lot of new friends."

Touring with Decapitated, was there any awkwardness, or difficulties with them being a foreign band from Poland? Was the language barrier difficult to overcome?
"We got along with them right off the bat when we met, but for the first five days on the tour, we were all kind of distant to each other. But I guess that's the way it is on every tour that a band goes on. All these bands, and all these different kinds of people you have to get to know. But like I said, it took a few days, but we ended up bonding with Decapitated, and learning some of their words and teaching them some of our slangs. We all learned to work with each other. We learned to get familiar with each other's language, as they would have different words for screwdrivers and wire cutters — 'Do you have the string scissors?' Martin [bass] would ask — and things like that. We just ended up blending the languages together, along with charades."

Is Metal Blade been a good label for you so far? Have they been putting out some good promotion? Are they pushing your CD as much as you are expecting them to?
"We work together with Metal Blade to make all that happen, instead of letting Metal Blade take all the responsibility. But they've been doing a good job on getting us on various compilations, like BWBK. They got us coverage in Metal Maniacs, Pit Magazine, Digital Metal . . . you know, all the basic American-based media and a lot of European coverage. They've definitely gotten our music out to the right sources. We just have to make sure that we keep reminding them to keep focused on our band, and not let us slide behind their bigger bands, like the Crown or Engine or Manowar."

Were there many offers to sign with other labels before signing with Metal Blade?
"We got an offer from a Portugal Label, who carries Malevolence and Lux Occulta [featuring members Vogg (guitar) and Martin (bass), of Decapitated]. The guys from Decapitated say that they're a good label to be on, but it was simply a matter of thinking that we're not going to get a full U.S. tour every year from them like the opportunities we get from Metal Blade Records."

How long are you going to be on Metal Blade for?
"We will be around for a while enough to see us get to our success goal at the five-year mark. We've got seven new songs already, and we've barely even released our last album two months ago, so we are very quick song composers."

Have you guys ever gotten much negative feedback for having keyboards in your music, or are people usually cool with it?
"Well, it usually depends on how you use them. I know some people don't like the Children of Bodom style of keyboards, because it's maybe a bit too happy. We use a lot more of the low-end, dark sound of the keyboard, plus have it low in the mix — similar to what God Dethroned or Arch Enemy does. We are trying to use our keyboardist, Jason Keesecker, a bit more on the next album, like five songs with keys and five without. And on the last tour, we made sure to have at least two songs per set with keys; that way he wouldn't be coming along the tour to play just one song per night. We just like to have Jason, because he adds a very atmospheric feel to the band."

How long did you record for, and were there any problems you faced along the way?
"We recorded from January until April 2002. And I guess the only weird thing we encountered would be that we thought that we'd record and mix at Saltmine. They had assured us that they were going do such a great job. But that was a mistake, because the budget was at a set price, and we ended up wasting half the budget on a mix by the house guys that we didn't even like. We really suggest that any band find a producer for sure, because in our situation we had six people in the room during mixing, and it was just a case of too many chefs in the kitchen. So, you need a producer who knows what he is doing, and can get everything done really good, really quick. Plus, any ideas that may pop into your head, well . . . he's been there and done that. Metal Blade has their hands on producers like Devin Townsend, so it'd be really good to get a high-key guy like him for our next album."

Your artwork was done by Evil Dave. Did you give him a basic idea of what you wanted for the art, or did he come up with most of it by himself?
"We didn't really tell him exactly what to do. But for some things, like the front cover, an alien mutant Jesus is depicted since no one knows what his father looks like. Evil Dave got the idea from reading all the lyrics of GWC. Underneath the CD is a drawing called The Lords Work, which was an Ed Gein inspiration . . . in fact, they even say that line in the movie. Makes me think we should have used a sample from that movie. But anyway, some hardcore horror fans will recognize the movie scene right away, and this CD will probably be very intriguing to horror fans, because they'd know exactly where the inspirations come from. Nathan reads a lot of horror books and watches a ton of horror movies, and that's where he gets a lot of ideas for the lyrics."

Is there anything we should be expecting from Vehemence anytime soon?
"Expect maybe an EP of our older songs, and soon after our second full length, which should be about the same length as God Was Created. But it will likely have a lot more shorter songs. We don't write as many long songs anymore, which will help us with radio play."

Thanks a lot for the interview! Anything I haven't touched on that you'd like to say?
"Be sure to visit our website [link below]. You can contacts us at vehemence@brutaldeath.net. If you are interested in Vehemence, you can email us your full name, address, and we will send you a free God Was Created pre-production demo, which contains three songs ('Fantasy From Pain,' 'The Last Fantasy Of Christ,' and 'She Never Noticed Me'). We'll send out a copy of the CD and a personalized letter. We do this just to keep tally of all the people interested in Vehemence. It helps a lot when we're on tour and pulling through a town and we can contact people and let them know we'll be in town and check in with our fans. A lot of bands, even if they have those mailing lists at their merch table, don't really contact their fans all that much, if at all. We try our best to stay in close contact. Finally, check out Evil Dave's site. We were happy with the artwork he did for us, and he's 100% worth supporting. http://evildave.brutaldeath.net"

http://www.kindamuzik.net/interview/vehemence/vehemence-you-need-a-producer-who-knows-what-he-s-doing/2041/
Meer Vehemence op KindaMuzik: http://www.kindamuzik.net/artiest/vehemence