You guys are touring with Kittie and Blackguard here in North America. How different has this tour been for you guys so far, considering that the lineup is a bit unusual?I actually think this is the least unusual lineup we’ve ever toured with. I think it is the most appropriate lineup, actually and I think it reflects on how the crowd enjoys every single band. I mean, musically, I think we all fit really, really well together. It’s been really great. It’s been better than what we expected.
I heard from Paul (lead singer of Blackguard) that Portland was the highlight so far. Do you agree?
No. I mean, Portland was a crazy show for them. It was a good show for us. But, something happened between our set and their set and the crowd went absolutely crazy. So, for sure I understand why he said Portland.
Portland was good but I think for us the highlight would have to be… honestly… I don’t know. The shows have been consistently good. I can’t even decide.
Do you see a lot of The Agonist fans at the concerts or are most of the fans Kittie fans?
Honestly, every night I kind of wished there was more time between our set and Blackguard’s set because there is a line at our merch table. There is not enough time to go through everybody before they start [Blackguard]. There are definitely a lot of The Agonist fans out there but there are also some people there are like: “Hey, I came here to see Kittie but I really dug your set so, I’m going to buy your album now”, and that’s really awesome too. So, it’s a good mixture of both.
You will be releasing a new album called Prisoners this year. Can you tell us a little bit about this album?
Yeah! Honestly the album’s title, the art work, the photos, the lyrics, the sound… all of it really fits well together and it’s really aggressive, just in a pure sense of the word. It’s not like we were just trying to make heavy music. It’s just that it was actually really hard to get the album done; it was a really intense experience. That is where the aggressiveness came from rather than just being like: “oh yeah, we are a metal band, we are going to be aggressive”. It was actually real anger (laughs). So, I think it’s different… for sure.
You said that it was hard to get the album done. Why was it difficult?
Between the last album and this one, I think our musical preferences diverged a lot. Simon [McKay – drums] and Danny [Marino – guitars], musically speaking, they prefer a lot more ambient, spacey, progressive music. And I stick to sort of straight forward punk rock, fast, hard, quick type of song. So, when you have a person that likes The Casualties and one person that likes Opeth, and you try to blend them together, it kind of creates problems.
We did the best that we could. It took me a really long time between working a full time day job, going to the studio and touring, to get it done. So, by the time I was finished with the last song I was like: “Thank God it’s done”.
You guys have done many tours in the US for the past years. Are there any plans to start touring more in other territories?
Yeah. We would love to. We are already planning for South America because we do have a good fan base there. And we are looking at Asia and Europe also. We are talking to different agents just to see what’s out there that we could potentially tour with. We toured Europe once so far and it was amazi
ng. We really want to tour it again.Many of your lyrics are based on animal rights and the world nowadays. Are you guys continuing to use the same lyrical themes for this new album?
Yeah, I mean, you know, being in a band and writing the lyrics, was always important to me because I do have… opinions (I guess you could call it [that]). I have concerns about a lot of things that are going on locally and globally.
That’s actually why for example on this tour, there was one day that I missed [the concert]. It was because I went to go speak at an animal rights conference. To me that’s really important. That’s almost, if not more, important than the music to me: the lyrics, the message and the cause.
So, I followed that same sort of technique of writing about something very important. But then again, I think that actually with this album, I went a little bit more, I guess you could call it, artistic in a way. I didn’t confine myself in following different types of poetry or different structures, I just went for it.
Animal rights is kind of an unusual topic in metal. Are fans opening up to this subject?
Humm… I definitely don’t fit into the scene very well. I think that there is a good number of people that do have open minds or some people that do actually discover us because of the lyrics and they are not metalheads, but then they like it because of the lyrics. So, I think we are sort of slowly forging our own fan base of people, who are very open minded and like metal music as well.
A few days ago I went to a black metal concert and some of the bands used animal’s blood as part of their act. What do you think about that and also, would you ever tour with a band that uses animal “props”?
It’s funny because I know exactly who you are talking about because they are two days ahead of us on tour and we are playing in a lot of the same venues [they played].
There was one venue that we played in Portland that the entire back area reeked, there were flies everywhere, there was blood on the ground, it was disgusting. I understand that that’s part of their stage show and they collect “road kill” and throw them in their trailer and put them on spikes on stage or whatever they do. Honestly I think it’s disgusting, unsanitary and I think it’s disrespectful to the venue, the audience, to the other bands that have to play there and to the animals that you are using as “props”. So, if they are doing it because they want to do some sort of statement… fine but, I think you could make the same statement just using fake blood and different kind of imagery. I’m not going to tell them how to run their band but my favorite black metal bands don’t do that.
We’ve been offered to tour with bands that do that before and I actually turned them down - not completely because of that but partially because of that… I don’t want to put myself in a situation where I’m going to have to get in a serious conflict with someone. And, in that kind of situation, I would.
I’ve seen different art pieces in galleries too; where they use animal corpses to sort of make statements, or the famous flesh dress that Lady Gaga wore. Like I said, you know what? If you want to make a statement that’s fine but, knowing the reality of touring (that it’s hard for people to get a shower, that you are pretty much dirty all the time, that you live in a van or in a bus, that you have to load your gear every day) … it’s not cool to be bringing in rotting corpses and like… decaying flesh into that
picture you know?I feel really bad for the other bands that are on tour with them and the people at the venues who have to clean up after them because, it is not really what you signed up for when you work at a venue… you don’t think you are going to be cleaning up after (pretty much) a butcher shop, so…
How it is for you to tour all over the world and eat vegan? Is it difficult?
Honestly it is not hard at all. I usually stock a cooler so I’ll stop at a grocery store and just buy salad, bread, fruits, vegetables… canned things like beans, chili, pasta… I have like a hot pot to make food on the road and I fill the cooler with ice so it’s kind of like a fridge.
But, actually during this tour I haven’t stocked the cooler yet because I’ve been finding food really easily every day. Like, even just driving today I saw a sign on the side of the highway that said “vegan food available here”.
Have you ever thought about organizing or participating in an animal rights festival/ concert?
Yeah, we used to do this type of stuff quite a bit. We used to sell shirts made of organic cotton, sweatshop free factories and that kind of stuff, and we would donate whatever the profits were to organizations. One of them was “A Song For Africa” (which was building schools and fighting AIDS in Africa).
For animal rights, we played little local charity shows. I thought about trying to put together something really, really strong… Actually my most recent idea (that kind of got inspired from what I did in Chicago last week) it is to try to synk up touring with public speaking. I used to do public speaking competitively, I really, really I love it and I think that it is a great way to get the message our there. Especially if you are able to hit schools where there are a lot of young people who maybe don’t know about it. So, I’m going to see if I can work something with that.
As for fundraisers, I would love to do them but the issue is that there is so little profit to be made in metal that (laughs) I don’t know how much that would help. But, I’m definitely big on raising awareness because I do think that although donating like, 500 dollars to the humane society would be really great; getting 2 or 3 people to maybe go vegetarian or vegan, it’s worth a million times more even… Just because of the ripple effect that that would cause by them no longer supporting factory farming and that kind of stuff. So, I try to spread awareness as much as possible and I do that on my Facebook page too.
Talking about the band in general now: How would you like people to see The Agonist?
That’s a good question. I guess I want them to see us just as we see ourselves, I guess, which is just musicians on road, doing it the real way. We really put a lot of time and effort in writing each song and recording each song. We don’t take any shortcuts … We really, really slave to make everything work. On stage we put our heart and soul into it. So, I hope people will see us that way.
More and more we’ve been labeled “metal for the mind” and I think it is a really cool label because it’s metal… I’m not telling you it is death, or technical, or progressive, or symphonic, or whatever. It’s just metal and it makes you think. So, I think we are going to just stick with that label for now.
Any messages to SOM reader?
Yeah. Pick up your new album, Prisoners, on June 5th in North America or June 4th in Europe and… I hope you’ll like it.
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Interview done by Deesse_de_la_nuit
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