Bible of the Devil
Mark Hoffmann (vocals, guitars)
Nathan Perry (guitars, vocals)
Greg Spalding (drums)
Darren Amaya (bass)
John: Wow. Brutality, Majesty, Eternity is a hell of an album. How long did it take you to bang that slab of metal out?
Greg: Nine months. It was like giving birth to a child that was conceived by a rape.
Mark: We had a lot of bad luck along the way with this record that caused things to take longer than we had planned. Everything from label and financial issues, to the reel-to-reel breaking unexpectedly and often during our sessions at the studio, to my vocals chords being ravaged by some sort of non-specific vaginitis impeded the progress. It was kind of an ordeal, really.
John: And was the Dead Teenager reissue of Tight Empire a one shot only deal, or were you not satisfied with how they handled the release? And what does Scarey Records offer that other labels did not?
Greg: Yeah, Dead Teenager was just a one shot deal. Despite the impressive bands on the label, we never really got the help we needed. It was a real bummer since we had toured so much on that record. However, the interest for it is still pretty high and we will be re-releasing it on Buzzville Records out of Belgium in April 2006. Scarey Records on the other hand, offered us a timely release with this album and that’s basically why we went with the label. We had talked with other labels, but most of them didn’t give a fuck about what we were doing and the ones who did said they couldn’t release it until next year or even later than that. It seemed pretty gay to wait for a year or two for a label to release our record when they might fold at any moment.
Mark: Plus, Carlo and Marco at Scarey offered tour support in Europe, and it was also a big goal of ours to get the band over there.
John: Last time you spoke with us, you were going over all your plans for 2005 - SXSW showcases, Emissions, east and west coast tours, a European jaunt, and so on. How did all the various tours go? And were there any favorites overall?
Greg: We did all that shit and more. My favorites were the short Slough Feg/Bible of the Devil tour in July and the European adventure covering six countries in eighteen days. That was some serious bodily abuse.
Nathan: Naturally, Europe was a high point for all of us. The west coast is usually fun. With pretty much all U.S. tours, you can say there are the best of times, there are the worst of times.
Mark: Ah, yes, Europe. It’s amazing how one’s attitude about touring improves when one is given a shitload of free food, booze, and hospitality while on tour, instead of dining on the daily shit sandwich one gets most of the time touring the States.
Darren: The strip clubs on the west coast are the best (especially in Portland), so that’s a good reason to tour out there. Europe was definitely my favorite tour. Totally brutal. I think it was our best tour to date. The crazy people you meet in the States got nothing on those kind European dirtbags. Over there they even feed you breakfast the morning after the show and offer you another beer. And it was also the ONLY one I`ve done where I came back with money to pay my rent.
John: What about the split with Velcro Lewis and His 100 Proof Band and the splits with Filthy Jim and Slough Feg? Did those happen and I not know about it?
Greg: Right now the only one of those that is happening for sure is the Bible of the Devil/Slough Feg split 7-inch to come out on Hellride Music in April 2006. I’d still like to get around to those other two though. Both Velcro and the Proof and Filthy Jim are great bands. I’d love to see those come out.
Mark: Well, we are in the age of the iPod. I’m glad at least the Slough Feg split is happening. Let’s just say that it’s one thing to conceive of plans to release cool shit like those others, but it’s quite another to have a label with distro want to release it when they know 7-inchers don’t sell that well. Not even in porn.
John: Ok, on to the album. How would you characterize the differences between BME and Tight Empire?
Mark: I’d say that on Tight Empire we split the difference between dirgy garage-style rock and metal a bit more, as opposed to placing a bigger emphasis on the pure metal end of the spectrum with BME.
Greg: The main difference was that it just took longer to make BME. We still pushed the same concepts and tried to stretch our abilities a little further, but the financial woes, sickness, and the epic nature of these songs made this album a bitch to finish. It definitely represents us well at this point in our rock lives though.
Nathan: Tight Empire was more of a transitional album for the band, whereas BME represents us getting into our sound and getting better at it. Hopefully you will be able to sense a progression.
Darren: it was my first full length with the band, but I cut my teeth in BOTD supporting Tight Empire when it came out. There was an adjustment period with the current lineup with writing, heavy drinking and touring over the past couple of years that resulted in BME. I really love Tight Empire but BME is obviously a step forward in a lot of ways.
John: BME is separated by the three instrumentals named after the album. Is there some sort of meaning behind this, i.e., is the album somewhat of a concept, or is it just one of those things that just kinda happened?
Nathan: We had the album title first, and we knew "Guns" was going to be the opener and that had an intro. We knew the last song would have the outro, too, so we came up with one more to tie things together. Also we hoped it would prompt discussions much like the one we`re having now.
John: What the hell is up with those goofy Casio sounding keys on “Majesty” anyway?
Nathan: That`s a Moog, you rube. God, what`s up with this guy? Actually,
I just wanted it to sound like the theme to "Airwolf."
Darren: I think it stems from Nate`s lost days as an 80`s synthpop star. You should see him play keytar.
John: You based a song on the book, Guns, Germs, and Steel. Was it particularly difficult distilling a 496-page book on how mankind developed and flourished throughout history into a six-minute song?
Mark: For sure! That’s no easy feat, my friend. That book provided a lot of good lyrical inspirado for me. The whole image of civilizations subjugating one another via superior weaponry and disease strikes me as extremely metal. So is the title of the book itself. I’ve thought about sending an album to Jared Diamond (the author), but we can’t afford the legal fees if he wants to sue!
Nathan: We made the cliff note version for the metalhead on the go who don`t got time to read nothin`.
John: Whose idea was it to do that song? And in general, how does the songwriting break down?
Mark: I was actually being constructive for once and reading the book in the van, instead of just staring into space and drinking beer, and that’s when inspiration struck.
Nathan: We don`t have a set way of writing songs anymore. Our methods keep changing. It used to be that Mark and Greg would create the guts of the songs by jamming. Then they`d show the whole band what they came up with and we`d help arrange them, and then Mark would create the lyrics and melodies. Then with Brutality I started bringing song ideas in and taking a bigger hand in the process. Now Greg suggests melodies and lyrics, Darren has riffs, I have melodies, and so on. We`ve just gotten comfortable with switching roles and doing whatever works. It shows on this record and it will show more on the next.
John: And how do you think “Guns, Germs, and Steel” compares to other education-through-metal songs like Iron Maiden’s “Alexander the Great” or Manowar’s “All Men Play on Ten”?
Mark: Sure, you can go ahead and throw it comfortably into that pantheon. Metal can always use more edu-tainment instead of just lyrics about common everyday death, hate, and violence.
Nathan: I doubt this song is going to spur some sort of literacy craze among the kids or anything. But it is kind of nice to be a rock and roll book-mobile every so often.
John: “Cocaine Years, Cocaine Tears” - what’s the story behind this song?
Nathan: It`s about cocaine. Man, you don`t understand shit, do you?
Mark: That one ended up being so catchy that the chorus kind of wrote itself. We were hanging around at the practice space one night and discussing how so many of the greats have at least one song about cocaine: Sabbath, Motorhead, Steely Dan, Clapton (just kidding, fuck that guy), and that we should have one too.
Greg: Something about those late night heart palpitations that slow you down the next day cause you to question your mortality.
John: Say a group of angry feminists storm the Bible of the Devil compound, protesting the song “Sea of Rape,” claiming you’re fostering hatred against women and should rename the song “Pond of Shared Emotions.” How do you handle this?
Mark: Well, it ain’t the most P.C. song title I guess, but there have been much more egregious examples of un-P.C. behavior in metal’s past! I seem to remember a certain Sebastian Bach sporting a t-shirt many years ago that read, “AIDS kills fags dead” or some shit like that. And look at him now, he’s kickin’ it WB-style on Gilmore Girls! If there’s any sort of controversy, hopefully we can parlay it into that sort of success.
Nathan: If said feminists would shut up and let me explain... Jeezus.
The “Sea of Rape” is a metaphor for the Bible of the Devil experience. What with the possibilities of shady promoters, asshole soundmen, cops, local bands who play first then leave, van malfunctions, the IRS, and inadequate amounts of drink tickets, there are a million ways for us to get raped on the road. So since it is grown men being victimized instead of women, maybe they`ll actually not think the song is so bad.
Greg: If some chick protests that song to my face. It’ll give me a chance to present that seminar on rape that I’ve always wanted to do.
John: And do they offer cruises on the “Sea of Rape”?
Nathan: Yep. Hope you don`t mind Somolian pirate attacks.
Greg: We’re working on it. Should be pretty cheap if you charter a boat in New Orleans.
John: What are the tour plans for the new album?
Greg: Well, we just did the big European tour so now we are just gonna do some shows here and there in the Midwest until next spring when we tour to the west coast again. By then, we should have another new record ready to come out of the gates on Cruz Del Sur Records. We’ll also be out your way again for sure sometime next year, Arzgarth. We can get hammered and talk some shit.
John: What do you think is the biggest hurdle getting your shit hot molten metal to the masses? Is it a lack of matching jumpsuits to wear on stage and/or tightly choreographed moves? Or is it something else?
Mark: Honestly, if the goal were just to appeal to the masses, there’s no way we’d be playing this style of music. We’d get some turntables, some Line 6 gear, a hot chick to play bass (sorry Darren), write some lyrics about “nookie” or “bringing our own bomb”, and start lying about our ages Mooney Suzuki-style if that were the case. We’re doing all we can for now… c’mon, Nate and I play matching flying Vs. What more do these fickle fuckers want?
Greg: It’s tough when you are playing stuff most people don’t want to hear. I guess we don’t get stoned enough to play the gay shit everyone wants to hear. I don’t know what it is. Maybe one of us will have to die an interesting death to get noticed.
Darren: You can`t force people to like cool shit, unfortunately. We haven`t tried the jumpsuit thing but we all tend to wear the same band shirts and sometimes we end up looking pretty gay that way. I would say that the biggest hurdle is that for some reason Wal-Mart won`t carry records with the word RAPE on them. What`s wrong with those guys? Doesn`t anyone remember laughter?
Nathan: Mark’s on to something. I think we should get a hot chick to play bass for us instead of that ugly bitch Darren. Then people would start to pay attention.
John: Give the good people of StonerRock.com some inspiration. These are tough times.
Greg: Come to the massive metal-fest I’m putting together next year on Saturday, June 10th, 2006 at Double Door in Chicago featuring Bible of the Devil, Manilla Road, Slough Feg, Twisted Tower Dire, Brocas Helm, and others to be announced. Working title is the “Alehorn of Power” fest. I know it’s not as close as Emissions is for you, Arzgarth, but don’t be a pussy and come anyway.
Nathan: And just remember: no matter how dark things look, cheer up. Eventually China will crush and enslave us all.
www.bibleofthedevil.com
