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 Q: It's good to hear your voice
buddy. Now to get started I understand that this album was recorded with the very same line up as last year's "Fine Art of Murder" which might I add was also responsible for the classic
"Retribution" release back in 92. So I take it with Brett and Rob being back in the band things are going 110%.
A: Yeah, definitely man. It's fucking cool to have this killer line up, man. Everything is working out really good and everyone gets along good and stuff and it's cool,
ya know (laughs).. It's nice to be back with my buddies.
Q: Man, that's great to hear. I understand though that even with the classic "Retribution" line up you still ran into
some trouble trying to put "Fine Art of Murder" together. I mean wasn't there some last minute changes that kind of put the band under pressure? I know when I spoke with
drummer Dave Culross, he told me that he only had like 3 days just to lay down his drum tracks.
A: Yeah, he did. Well, the last album umm.. yeah, it was the same line up as the new one but I wrote a bunch of the songs and Dave had no idea he was even going to be back
in the band. We wrote the album with a different drummer and it just wasn't cutting the mustard, man. So we had to call Dave (laughs).. and luckily for us Dave came down and
bailed us out and after he heard the finished album he wanted to get back into fucking music so it was just perfect timing I guess.
Q: Well, what happened with the original drummer? Was it a lack of professionalism or..
A: (Interjecting as if to correct me) Oh no, no. It was just that his playing wasn't up to par, man. It wasn't up to what we are normally used to. I mean it was fast and everything
but it just wasn't solid, man. It didn't sound solid enough for us to leave it the way it was and we couldn't leave it that way so luckily for us, like I said Dave really fuckin'
helped us out. And for someone to learn thirteen songs and record them in three days.. I mean I'm sure if he had a little bit more time to work on the song with us and
rehearse them, man then they probably would have been a little bit more intense but for the most part he did a great job.
 Q: Yeah, this time around though I have
to say his playing on "Envenomed" is definitely topnotch. You can hear a lot of his trademark fills he was known for during his stint with Suffocation. There's even a lot more dynamics to the album overall.
A: Well, like I said things were a lot more prepared this time, you know what I mean? We all knew how to play the songs (laughs).. so it was good for us to
be familiar with the material. You know, it's a good writing team. I mean everybody did a lot on this, ya know. Our bass player Gordon wrote some stuff and me and Rob wrote songs together. We
hadn't written songs together in awhile. It's good having Brett too because Brett's voice is what gives us our originality. I mean he's the original singer from day one,
man. Me and him formed the band so we work good together. We know what to expect from each other so it's cool, man. It's like the old days again.
Q: Right but I understand that things weren't always so up to par as they appear now. In fact, there seemed to be a black cloud forming over the band right around the time
you started recording your third album, "Stillborn." Now what lead you from being on top of your game one minute to the bottom of the heap the next? Rather what were the impending circumstances at the time?
A: Well, at the time we did "Stillborn" man, the band was not stable, ya know. Jason our bass player didn't even know the songs and I ended up playing the bass tracks.
And Brett was just really having a lot of problems with himself and even our drummer man, wasn't even playing up to par. So the album was really, really rough and it was
like after that album things still didn't even get any better and we even attempted a European tour man and it just wasn't happenin.' We weren't as good as we used to be
and it was very fucking frustrating for me man. So what we did was instead of disbanding we had just let loose a few people and kept the line up as a four piece with Jason
singing. It was definitely strange for some people because of the drastic vocal style change but as far as music wise ya know, I don't have nothin' to say bad about the albums
at all because we all did put a lot into those albums too. But I guess it's because like I said before, Brett's voice gives us that distinct sound man. You know we probably
gained a lot of new fans in that area during that time and we probably lost a lot of fans too but I don't know, I mean all in all after everything and all the bullshit, and all the line
up changes, and all the drummers, it's just cool to somehow see it all come back to this again. It's really cool, man. I mean I know it's been rough and it has been an ugly
ride but somehow we fucking managed to keep it together (laughs).
Q: Well in your 10 year plus history, did you at anytime come to the realization that things might have ended prematurely?
“Malevolent Creation, Army Navy Store Tour ‘01”
A: Oh yeah, quite a few times (laughs). I mean you get very frustrated and shit and a lot of times I would just say,
"Fuck it!" but if I didn't do anything and try to put the band back together nothing would have happened and I just hate to see something we had worked so hard for early on
in the beginning to get where we had gotten only to start falling apart like that. Everybody changed, I mean you can't be 17, 18 years old all your life. Things happen and people
change and the band kind of crumbled away to the waist. I mean I wanted to throw in the towel a few times but I'm glad I didn't man. I'm glad that we're still fuckin' all friends and fuckin' jamming together.
Q: I'm also glad as well but I have to ask, how the hell did you manage to talk Brett into coming back all these years? I mean didn't the both of you originally leave off on
extremely bad terms?
A: Well, it was like he never quit. We fired him because he just had some problems and couldn't commit 100% to the band at this time and we just didn't feel that it was going
to work with him not putting 100% percent in, man. I mean "Stillborn" was a really rough thing and I don't know, he had a lot of personal problems that he needed to
straighten out. It was like he never even wanted to be out of the band and we never wanted him to be out of the band either. I've known Brett just about my whole life and
me and him have been best friends forever. So for me it was really rough to do something like that but we wanted to keep the band going and maybe hopefully someday
again this would happen (laughs). So after we cut our ties with Jason, that was one time I said, "Fuck the rest of this band! I can't keep dealing with this kind of bullshit and
these fucked up people," and Rob was like, "Man, fuck that! I just quit Cannibal Corpse and rejoined your band. Let's call Brett and get the fuckin' “Retribution” line up
going man and start killin' people."
 Q: I think Malevolent Creation was
always destined to sound "violent." 95's "Eternal" seemed to lack that edge. I mean it was a pretty good album for what it's worth but Jason's vocals didn't fit the music, in my opinion. His
vocals were very dry and sort of had more of a "hardcore" edge to them. Brett however tends to go for the throat with his predator instinct, ya know like an animal.
Thus I think the title "Envenomed" alone pretty much sums it all up.
A: Yeah, I agree with you man, on everything you just said. You couldn't have said it better (laughs).
Q: Well now that you've managed to recruit Brett as well as Rob back into the band, I'd imagine the writing and recording of this album went a hell of a lot smoother. I
mean since you were all very close friends to begin with I would assume that part of "Envenomed's" solid continuity stems from the deep acquaintance you share with both of
them. However how does this working relationship differ to the one you had with them almost ten years ago, that is during the writing and recording of "Retribution"?
A: Okay, starting off with "Retribution," that album was the fastest album we ever recorded. That whole album was recorded and mixed and mastered in 7 days. I think we
actually recorded the whole album in 4 days and then it took 2 days to mix it and one day to master it. So in terms of recording it went fast because we didn't have a
lot of money back then. We spend it all on buying albums so we had to work fast but we had a good time doing that album. We were so rehearsed and prepared for the album.
I mean we were pretty much just drinking beer and fucking smoking pot during the recording of the album with our friends hanging out in the studio partying with us. We were
in a million dollar studio so we just fuckin' lived it up and did the album just like we rehearsed it everyday. Though for the new album, all of us don't live in the same area so we
booked studio time right here in the Ft. Lauderdale area and we were able to go in at anytime we wanted. We booked the studio open for 5 or 6 weeks and we took our
time man. We didn't rush ourselves. We just went in there and basically did what we always do, ya know just sit back, drink some beer and smoke some weed and record the
album (laughs). So these two albums were really similar because they were really relaxed albums man. I mean we were really comfortable.
Q: So then with all the partying that you devote most of your time to when the hell do you find the time to sit down and put some thought into the actual song writing? I mean
correct me if I'm wrong but in order to have a full album's worth of decent material don't you have to at least sit down and like come up with 20 or so riffs and kind of piece them altogether?
 A: Uhh I don't know.. a lot of stuff
usually happens at my house or something. Me and Rob might be fartin' around with a couple of riffs that we might have wrote together and as soon as we get into the warehouse we start rehearsin'. As soon as we get a
drum beat goin' we could usually write songs real fast. That whole album was probably written in like 6, 7 weeks, "Envenomed" man. We just busted it out. We all had a bunch of ideas, got together and
jammed out. It comes naturally for us man. We all kind of knew what we wanted to do. We wanted to fucking make this album really fuckin' heavy man. We wanted to keep our sound pretty much the same
but just maybe a little bit more intense.
Q: Well then considering that a lot of the material you come up with is mostly improvised or so it seems, how do you manage not to recycle the same riffs over and over. I
mean when a musician sits down to write music my understanding is that he'll usually think about what has already been done and what hasn't already been done. However in your case do you sometimes find yourself
regurgitating riffs that perhaps you might have written maybe 4 or 5 years ago?
A: No, man. I mean I pretty much wrote all the songs so I'll kind of recognize something that sounds similar. I record a lot of my guitar playing and stuff and so I sift
through my own riffs. You know, I just sit there and listen to all my riffs until something catches my ear and so I'll try to create something out of that. I'll start a song out of that, ya know. That's about it.
Q: Remarkably there's a distinct Black Metal influence on one or two of the songs.
A: No, no not really. I know what song you're talking about. You're talking about the third track called "Killzone."
 Q: Yes! that's the one.
A: Okay. Well the way that I wrote the beginning, ya know the first part of the riff sounded nothing like that until Rob threw over this crazy harmony riff over
the whole fucking rhythm section and it did give it that real fuckin' Black Metal-ish vibe but I just think it's a little bit more clearer. Yeah, we definitely noticed it and felt that maybe it stemmed from a
Black Metal influence but we went with it because we just thought it sounded fucking great.
Q: So then in this case would you say that you tend to draw in influences outside of Death Metal in general? Of course there's also Hateplow your grindcore side project
but aside from that did you ever find yourself going further beyond that?
A: Well towards this record definitely, man. There's a definite Dark Angel vibe going on in there. There's a lot of speed metal thrash influences from back in the day. Those
are what we grew up listening to man. Dark Angel, Destruction and shit like that when we were little punks (laughs). I'm sure you could still detect those influences in
our music because we can. I mean we don't steal their riffs but you can feel that kind of vibe that's in the music. It's really up-tempo aggressive fucking music man.
 Q: Yeah, you can hear a lot of
that especially in the solos and speaking of which it's remarkable how many more of them you incorporated into your music this time around. I mean it seemed like you kind of held back on the last one, "The
Fine Art of Murder." Secondly I found it to be unusually experimental for a Death Metal album. You even went as far as to include a song that was entirely acoustic which so happened to be your first.
A: Yeah, we kind of wished we would have done more solos actually. That's usually the last thing we do because me and Rob just usually do them on the spot. We just go
for it but we were actually running out of time towards the end and we were wondering if we should have done anymore solos. We were getting burnt out from trying to
come up with some fresh ideas and we should have threw some more on there but then for the next album I was pretty sure me and Rob were really gonna try and do a lot
of guitar oriented stuff together and get some really twisted fucking sounds.
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