 |
| Junkpile Jimmy |
You may not recall now, but this gentlemen sent me a copy of his insanely crazy record that's all kinds of insane. We're talking Rimmer on a date insane.
Something happened though, between the original transmission of this interview to my fingers receiving the answers.
Here's how you know it's a time warp...when I asked the last question, the St. Louis Blues were the worst hockey team in the NHL....and not a team (as of this writing) riding an ELEVEN GAME WINNING STREAK!
So, onto the insane death metal that's clearly nuts.
Glacially Musical: Thank you for taking some time for me today.
Junkpile Jimmy: No prob, it's an honor!
GM: Let's start off easy and let's all be chill and peaceful. With that being said, what is wrong with you? It appears you're insane.
JJ: I am indeed... Homicidally.
GM: In my review, I accused you of mindjacking 19 year old me due my attempted slide guitar with my DOD Death Metal Pedal...If that's not where this came from, can you tell us the story?
JJ: Pretty cool that you experimented along those lines -- I would've liked to have heard what you came up with! I have a feeling you're not alone...
Slide guitar has always been a "side trip" for guitar players -- something to fuck around with for a while before eventually returning to "real" guitar.
Mix that mindset with a metalhead pedal chain, and some interesting sounds are bound to ooze out.
I just pretty much got lost on the side trip, and have never returned to normal guitar. So far it's been a solitary journey, as I've been unable to find any other slide players who unequivocally worship distortion and DEATH as I do...
GM: Your usage of the slide is different than anybody else I've ever heard. That makes me wonder who are your influences?
JJ: A few layers...
1st layer: The "Ur-influence" -- a few obscure 7" singles that came out of the 90's garage-punk scene: Doo Rag "Trudge", Johnny Hash "Summer of Cum" and The Revelators "Serve the Man."
These were all unusual in that they were 100% slide guitar, yet were NOT blues, at least in any conventional sense.
2nd layer: Heaviness -- death, black, thrash, doom, sludge, etc. It took years for my metal tastes to meld with layer 1, producing the mutation that is SLIDE GUITAR METAL.
3rd layer: Lead guitar -- after layers 1 & 2 merged, the quest was ON to develop a lead style that hybridized slide guitar sounds with already-established lead guitar techniques.
Many sources of inspiration here: Iommi, Hendrix, Mantas, Link Wray, Ted Falconi (Flipper), Elmore James, Trey Azagthoth, Seiji (Guitar Wolf), Agata (Melt Banana), Tipton & Downing, King & Hanneman, Speedy West & Jimmy Bryant, Matt Pike, Dave Chandler (St. Vitus), Johnny Thunders, Greg Ginn, Jerry Fogle (Cirith Ungol), Dimebag, Scott Henderson, John McLaughlin, Vinnie Vincent, Ritchie Blackmore + too many more to list.
I don't pretend to the greatness of many of these guitar heroes... I'm just trying to come up with my own thing.
GM: From my perspective, Wants You Dead is still very much a death metal album, but it's got more a groove and a swing to it.
When you grabbed the beer bottle and stepped on your dirt pedals, what were you hoping to achieve?
JJ: JMac, drummer extraordinaire on the album, was coming from a jazz & prog metal background, while I was coming from an punk & underground metal mentality. 70's-80's metal & hard rock was where we met in the middle.
No CD, tape player, or iPod in my truck back then, so we spent a lot of time cruising around listening to radio stations that played shit like Dio, Scorpions, Guns n' Roses, Deep Purple, Rainbow, ACDC, Ozzy, Heart, Motley Crue, ZZTop etc... you know the playlist.
We wanted to ROCK and I think it shows.
Whenever any lame songs came on we'd switch to stations playing hip-hop, cumbia, reggae or world music (on local college radio). The sum of all this is the groove-DNA of Wants You Dead.
Incidentally (speaking of beer bottles), we were indeed drunk during the recording of "Shed Blood Total War," but for the rest of the sessions we were wired on RC Cola!
GM: Let's talk vocals. Death metal is one of my favorite kinds of music, but it can get monotonous due to most death metal growlers only having one growl. Your record runs the gamut.
How did you go about choosing each style of delivery?
JJ: The spirit of the song dictated the vocal flavors... I've always liked multifaceted vocalists like Sakevi (GISM) and Attila (Tormentor/Mayhem).
I also wanted to channel the dual vocalist style of powerviolence bands like Man is the Bastard and Spazz. (Slaughter "Strappado" has a similar thing going on...)
Also was inspired by the layered/varied vocals of Sarcofago, Deicide, Revenge and...... Skinny Puppy.
GM: Wants You Dead is rather different from Ruins I & IV. Did you have any reservations releasing this lost album?
JJ: No reservations... When it was shelved in 2005, Wants You Dead was essentially "done" (despite lacking key overdubs), and I felt JMac and I had been victorious in creating our own unique strain of heaviness.
Ruins I & IV took shape a couple years later and was a determined effort NOT to directly build on WYD.
Instead the goal was to explore new sounds, hopefully sprouting a new weird branch on the slide metal evolutionary tree.
GM: Do you think the change up affects the brand you're creating?
JJ: Not at all. With two contrasting releases, a process of triangulation is now enabled... In other words, all future recordings will build on knowledge gained from WYD and Ruins, plus incorporate new ideas.
From my perspective, there is a heavy slide riff language out there that has barely been invented/explored... I'm working on it...
GM: What are the five most important albums of all time?
JJ: I have to cheat and split this question into metal / non-metal, due to a personal observation: The modern world is unlivable without metal, yet no man can (or should) live on metal alone.
Metal: (1) Celtic Frost - Morbid Tales / Emperor's Return (2) Metallica - Kill 'em All (3) Bathory - S/T (4) Saint Vitus - Hallow's Victim (5) Sepultura - Morbid Visions
Non-metal: (1) Dock Boggs - Country Blues: Complete Early Recordings (2) Fred McDowell - You Gotta Move (3) Link Wray - Mr. Guitar: Complete Swan Sessions (4) Captain Beefheart - Safe As Milk (5) Manu Chao - Clandestino
GM: Where do you think the St. Louis Blues are going to finish this season?
JJ: Half the team annihilated in nuclear/biological attacks, the other half conscripted into nocturnal deathsquads, the arena fortified and encircled by barbed wire...
Destruction & havoc across America, which has collapsed into an utterly batshit sectarian Civil War II. The drone aircraft of overseas powers circle above like buzzards, hungry to strip meat from the putrefying corpse of our nation...
(Note that I am NOT rooting for this to happen -- I love America -- but it sure is fun to think about!!)
No comments:
Post a Comment