Garza Podcast - 196 - GENE HOGLAN: The Human Drum Machine Behind Death, Dark Angel & More

Episode Date: September 1, 2025

Garza sits down in-person with Gene Hoglan. Drummer & songwriter for Dark Angel. Also best known as the former drummer of Death, Testament, Fear Factory & many more. New Dark Angel album OUT SEPTEMBER 5th! https://instagram.com/therealgenehoglanSPONSORS:Sweetwater - https://imp.i114863.net/rnrmVBDistroKid - https://distrokid.com/vip/garza 30% OFF!00:00 - Moving From Texas to California04:29 - LA Thrash Metal Scene07:47 - Learning Drums & Visualization15:47 - Good Drummers19:19 - First Time Playing Drums21:22 - Peter Criss // Charlie Watts 24:42 - Joining the 1st “Dark Angel”27:06 - Tom Araya30:51 - High School Days w/ Metallica36:51 - LA Metal Scene38:42 - Joining Dark Angel41:28 - First Tour w/ Slayer45:28 - Mental Clarity & Focus51:49 - Leaving Dark Angel & Joining Death53:51 - Writing Lyrics & Music58:42 - Individual Thought Patterns1:05:58 - Sean Reinert1:09:38 - Chuck Schuldiner1:11:27 - Innovative Drumming1:15:16 - Death: Symbolic Writing Process1:20:06 - Drinking/Smoking Back in the Day1:21:57 - Recording Symbolic1:23:40 - Back Injury1:26:42 - Impact of Death & Chuck Schuldiner1:30:30 - Being True to Yourself & Taking Risks1:36:20 - Extinction Level Event1:45:12 - Believing Your Vision1:47:02 - Music Business // Contracts1:54:22 - Life is Peachy, Korn & Ross Robinson2:01:07 - Leaving Death2:04:58 - Devin Townsend2:07:07 - Grunge & Music Trend Cycles2:15:22 - Favorite Thrash Bands2:19:37 - Gene’s Contribution on Slayer Album2:21:51 - Fear Factory2:26:20 - Advice for Drummers2:35:24 - Double Strokes2:39:51 - Death to All/Dark Angel Tours & New Album

Gene Holglen Gene Holglin All right, cool Chris Garza Dude, we're fucking here, dude We are absolutely We're nowhere else but here That's true

That darn too Gene Hoagland It is an honor To sit here And chat with you man Greetings Chris He honors mine Thank you for having me

Yeah Also to officially meet Right You know It's crazy How many people We cross paths In person

But never like You know Never like handshake and right so our paths have now officially crossed so heck yeah so uh right now you're currently in san Diego yep well currently i'm in san die man oh yeah but indeed uh i live in san diego i grew up here in california you know for the most part it was born in dallas grew up in in the los angeles area long beach essentially yeah you moved to california when you were four right you were that's right okay uh what what did you move um it was you know i couldn't take texas

anymore. I had to, you know, had to hit your ride out to California just to get out of Texas. I was leaving too many criminal activities behind when I was four. No, I was just my, my dad got a better gig out in California. Okay. So he started working for the aerospace industry. Okay. And so, actually, yeah, my dad was a, one of the first things he did in the aerospace industry was he helped design parts of the space shuttle. Really? Yeah. And so he was working for Rockwell at the time, and then he went to go work with Northrop after that. And so it was just, you know, California was a better place than El Paso, Texas. But I've still got a lot of family in El Paso.

So that's kind of a, you know, that was a home when I was when I was a kid. So there you go. So did you go from Dallas to El Paso again? Indeed. Okay. And so, yeah, just it went back to El Paso tons for Christmases and Thanksgiving and stuff. But I've been a California person for ever since, you know, 72 or so. Seventies. What's that?

Seventies. Yeah, yeah. So I've lived all over the planet, though, you know. True. So I've had places all over the place. So there you go. Now I'm in San Diego. Yeah.

And, okay, so you go to Los Angeles area. Like, I kept seeing Downey. Right. Well, actually, that is, I suppose, that's kind of. where Dark Angel got their start. Okay, so that's why I keep seeing Downey and then, and then you mentioned you actually used to live here. That's right.

Yeah, for a brief moment, I spent about a year here in Santa Ana. Wow. Then we moved back to Long Beach after that, and this was all when I was a kid. Kid, child. Absolutely. You did a lot of moving around.

Yeah, sure did. And then once we got to Long Beach, we tended to stay there. and my folks stayed in Long Beach, and that's when I started bouncing all over the planet. You know, I've been on the, I've been on tour essentially since I was about 16. You started touring when you were 16, huh?

Right. Yeah, you were doing lights for Slayer, correct? That's right, yeah. Okay. 16 years old? Yep. If I can imagine that, because if we were looking for, like, crew or someone to take on tour with,

you're like, you're 16, nah. Right. But back now, I'm sure it's like, whoever wants to go. Well, John Araya, Tom's younger brother, he was 15 at the time. He was 15? Yeah, and Tom himself was like 23. Carrie and the other guys, you know, Dave was 18.

Carrie and Jeff were about 19. So Tom was the oldest guy and he was the only guy in his 20s. So I remember Tom telling me a few years ago. He was like, yeah, I had to come over to your place and talk to your parents. What did the parents say? Talk to my parents. He's like, well, you were a minor, you know, I had to get their, you know, permission. That's a tough sell.

Right. Oh, they were like, oh, take him. Oh, really? Oh, wow. Got this kid out of here. He's playing drums. We're playing a rush song. Right.

Yeah. Gosh. Get rid of this kid. So that was pretty cool. So, yeah, those guys had spent, you know, they had spent some time at my pad from time to time. So my folks knew Tom and they'd been to a couple of the shows and things like that. So, yeah, essentially, you've seen the, uh, the, um, the, um,

like the thrash scene like start you know because you were like you were one of like the 30 people at like the slayer show indeed yes that is true yeah that was i am absolutely you know o g thrash metal of 1982 83 kind of thing you know going to all the shows and you know there there was no scene you know there's no scene like even you know even metallica stopped playing you know la pretty early and so there was really a time when there was there was there was Dark Angel before I was in Dark Angel and there was Slayer and you know before Slayer was a thrash band they were kind of a cover band do they did great covers you know cover band to a large degree I don't know that doing maiden songs and deep purple songs like I remember seeing Slay I saw like maybe in a backyard

party or a high school or a VFW hall or somewhere when they were they kind of looked yeah it was even before they're they're kind of hot. That era. I remember that shirt. Hot thrash? Is that a genre name? Well, that was, that picture was definitely taken in 84 because Carrie's got the, he's got the wristbands on. He's got the, that was his first one that he made. I remember when he made that.

He made it. I was wondering, I was literally about to ask Eugene, where do you buy that thing? Right, he made it. He made all his old stuff. So that was, yeah, I remember carrying that in when he first made it. I was there at the first show where he had meant that was in January of 80. for and they were playing the Roxy and I just remember like passing by his his van or whatever he was pulling his gear out he had this big old honk and thing I was like hey let me grab that for

you I was like this thing's really heavy you know like a lot of weight on on that stuff so how do you play with that freaking thing how do you play with that exactly so so yeah there you go so I was I was real young working for them and and you know they were just there there was no scene At the time, you know, there was Slayer, there was Dark Angel, there was a couple of, you know, the harder-edge metal bands, fans, like Venom or something. Well, indeed, yeah, obviously from over from England, but in the L.A. scene, you had bands like, like, uh, like Aetoir and Bloodlust and Savage Grace and bands like that that that weren't quite thrash, but they were heavier than the, you know, rock, you know, Van Halen,

Motley Crew kind of thing. But there was no scene. That's why I've always thought. it was really, I've always found it to be really adorable when somebody would write to me and say, yeah, you know, there's no scene in my town. You got to go two towns over for us to be able to play the club in that town or there's no bands to play with over here. We got to travel 35 miles away because they got a better scene over there. I had no scene. Yeah, I was like, we created the scene, you know, so there you go there. So from nothing, nothing to. Right. Yeah, I mean, but those, you know, those 30 hardcores, they were into it, you know? Like Slayer had a great crowd, Dark Angel had a great crowd.

And like I said, that was way before I was playing for Dark Angels. So Dark Angel and Slayer did a whole ton of shows. I used to see both bands play together. Interesting. Yeah, man. So, Gene, for, for you, you started playing air drums when you were eight years old. Right. And then that would progress to you being nine.

And that's how you found, like, Ted Nugent, Rush. Right. You said an artist called Angel. Am I? Okay. I never heard of this artist before. My angel did he say Angel? Yeah.

Okay. What kind of artist is that? Well, they were, oh God, I remember that show. Remember that one? That's fucking true. Slayer had played with Venom the night before with Exodus at the Hollywood Palladium. But, well, Angel was a band that were, they were signed to the same label as Kiss, and they were sort of the anti-kiss.

They had, they were the exact opposite. But they were a great rock slash kind of metal. There you go, man. And that's, okay, so if you're the opposite case, you're obviously not going to wear face paint, correct? Right. And so that picture that we are looking at there that we were looking at was from, that is from their hell of a band era.

That album came out in 1976. And for those fans of, like, say, a deep purple or, you know, they would fit totally well with all the classic. classic rock. Okay. But they were, for me, they really leaned on the side of metal. You know, they were, they were pretty aggressive. I mean, don't let that real pretty boy image kind of fool you. That, that picture there on the right was from a, uh, and I'm called on earth as it is in heaven. Yeah, that was from that era, which that was their third record. The hair. Right. I kind of love the hair. Oh, actually, that is from a little bit later than that, because I can tell that they got a new

basis in that photo. But yeah, they all had the hair. Or you're in. Gene. I am such a rock and roll historian. Yeah. Okay. You know, you remember the hairstiles? You remember their hairstyles and bass players in or out? You know, fair enough, yeah. I'm just such a rock fan growing up, you know, just rock fan of everything, you know, music fans. So, you know, I'm pretty well versed and even the doo-wop era of rock and roll and, you know, just you name it. If it's rock-based, I'm really, really into it from all those early eras. Absolutely. And then, so you're a drumming away, and then you finally get a drum kit when you were 13 years old, right? That's right, yeah. Okay. And you would set up your, you would set up your air drum kit like you had in your head with the actual kit. Yeah, I did.

I never heard about that ever. Right. That's crazy. Well, that's, you know, and that kind of leads to how I am an open-handed player. And so that really is just, it, the reason I am an open-handed player is just, it's, it's, how my record player was situated in my bedroom when I was playing air drums or pounding on the bed along with it. That's awesome. Oh man, that's great. Oh, my actual kit. Is it? That's cool. That's pretty much my setup now. Yeah, absolutely. So is this in your air drumming head? This is tiny compared to my

air drumming kit. Okay. My air drum kit was huge, man. It was bigger than Neil Peart. You know. Oh, shit. But, you know, because I would sit on the side of my bed and, like, say, if you're sitting on the side of the bed, I would sit on, like, say, this same side of the bed. And if you, if you were to, if this, like, pad was not here, you would probably notice, well, let's see if this works here. No, it doesn't remove. But the top corner is going to be a little higher pitched than as you go to the middle of the bed. So as you're going, as you're going boom, bo, babo, bo, bab, bo, bab. The top corner would be a little bit higher pitch.

it's tighter, it's the corner. So since my record player was right there, and I would sit right here on my bed, and I would just kind of pound on my bed, this was before I started turning it into the air drumming kit, but that's how I started playing with this boopo-bo-bo-bo-bo-bo-bo-bo-bap. I just like going bo-bo-bap, so that's why I'm doing that. So there you go, I'm just doing that. And so if my record player had been placed on the other side of my bed, I would be the standard, typical, right-handed drummer now, but since it was on that side, I'd change the record, you know, and then I'd come back and just pound on my bed,

and then I would start, you know, and I was like, well, shoot, Pat. You know, I'm watching all the rock shows of the day, all the, you know, midnight specials and Don Cers, and for anybody, you know, probably, Don Cursner. Google those shows. A midnight special. Yeah, there you go.

That's awesome. Yeah, he had to show the Don Kirchner rock concert or whatever on every Saturday night sort of thing. And this guy actually, he created the monkeys. Remember the monkeys? The band, yes. Monkey, yeah, he was part of the. Yeah, there you go. Don Kirshner's rock concert.

There you go. 1974 to 1975 in case you're just listening. Right. All of that. And so we used to stay up really late. on Saturday nights and watched that. And so I was just soaking in all sorts of rock. You can see, you know, yeah, everybody was on this show.

The night before on Friday nights was the Midnight Special. And so that was another rock show where you'd see the live concerts from all these bands. And so I was just absorbing everything. And I was learning how I would watch the guys playing drums. And then I would just, you know, kind of emulate that. And that's when I started getting my, you know, my air drum kit together. And so that's where I, I guess it's called visualization.

Like I was never familiar with that term growing up at all. He visualized it. I would, yeah. I mean, you, boom, you know, there's a snare. You tap your foot along with, like, I would listen to Rush songs or whoever, you know, Pat Travers, whoever it was, kiss, cheap trick, aerosmith, Ted Nugent, all. those guys and I would that they had a great drummer David Robinson from the cars um you know I would just I would listen and I was kind of giving myself a a drum lesson every every song I would listen to

because I would just pick up what the drum you know what the kick drums doing I hear the high hat when they do a fill you know I know what the I can I can imagine what the fill you know that kind of thing it's like okay well you know I was just constantly giving myself a a drum lesson And when it came time to sit on a kit for the very first time, it was, you know, it's like, I already had all this. It's, you know, now you're just actually hitting things, you know, you've always had, you've had all this practice, you know, air practice. And then when you're sitting on a drum kit, it's not that much different from practicing on a big huge air drum, you know. That's a very cost effective approach. How right?

Yeah. I tell people that all the time. When there's, anyone can do that. Anyone can do that. I tell guys that all the time. Guys come to me and say, man, I'd love to pick up the drums,

but. Too expensive. Yeah, they're too expensive. Or, you know, I got kids. I'm putting kids through college or, you know,

whatever there's, whatever their reasonings for it not to happen. I'm like, you don't even need sticks. You don't even, you have a pair of sticks right here. And also like, there you go.

You can, you know, just, you can air drum. Everybody has rhythm. Everybody can do this. And don't just thrash around like a goof, you know, if you want, you know, I don't know, any song by any, an ACDC song, you know, just bonk, gack, don't, you know, just practice like that. And you can, there you go.

You are playing drums before you even think you could. So there you go. That's a great approach, Gene. Even like a, you being a drummer, do you think like the ACDC beat is actually extremely difficult? Because as a listener, it sounds easy, but I know this has to be hard. to hit the groove right. Well, that was the thing. You know, totally when I was a, when I, when I was a kid, I used to think that, you know,

that guy's terrible. What a terrible drummer that guy is. Neil Pierce is awesome. Tommy Alders is awesome. Those guys can play. But as I got a little bit older, it was like, yeah, no, there's actually a lot to what he's doing, you know, and especially to be able to just lock in with a groove like that. and it took me seeing probably the for those about to rock like concert video that they did.

It was just just the video for the song. I could tell that the drummer was really pounding. Yeah, this here somewhere. That's not quite this one. But, you know, just their promo video for the song, I was like, wow, the drummer is really hitting hard. So that is what he's doing. He's keeping a simple beat. but he's really pounding.

So there's that to that. And of course, the basic tenets of drumming are, you know, you've got to keep the meter. You've got to keep the rhythm. You've got to keep the meter really solid. And Phil Rudd is a master of that. So that's why he was, he is a really good drummer. And I understand his approach.

I didn't get it when I, you know, when you're a kid, you know, you just want, you want flash and thrash. Of course. There you go. So there is something to that hitting like a 4-4, just one-two beat is actually, there's something to hitting that simple. Indeed. That's why you have guys like Sib Hushcheon from Boston. You know, like that guy is just so tight and so salt.

Like here, you're like, there, he's pounding his drums. I know he's just playing really easy beat, but he's actually hitting pretty darn hard. Not just happened. So, but guys like Sib Hushian. or simpler drummers, you know, that just had, you know, natural meter and just like nothing flashy or psychotically insane, but it was just real solid and real good. And so, you know, I can appreciate a drummer like that. I grew into appreciating drummers like that more as I got a little bit older. It happens. You hit older, you're like, oh, that's actually pretty sick.

Yeah. Yeah, totally. Yeah, it sucks, dude. Sometimes, yeah, just the age will give you a perspective. Right. Sweet water. When the band needs anything for a tour or winning something here for the podcast, Sweetwater is where we go. You're the number one online retailer for pro audio and music instruments. So if you need any music gear fast, click the link in the description below so they know you came from this podcast.

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Pretty much. Yeah, like my, I remember the first time I ever, you know, sat on a drum kid. I just happened to be with my cousin. We were, I was visiting El Paso.

And my cousin Ken was, he was six years older than me. So he was, I was 13. So he was, I was probably 12. Yeah, I was 12 at the time.

So he was like, I don't know, 18. Yeah. He had his teenage rock man with his, his buddies and they all seemed like adults to me you know like when you're 12 an 18 year old oh yeah that's an adult you know and so he's hanging out with all these other you know grown men and we went to one of his rehearsals one day just we stopped in there for some reason and

i think he i forgot what we were doing but he picks up his guitar and i just sat behind the kit and we just started jamming and i already been playing air drums for you know four or five years at that point. And, you know, my cousin, I remember the very first song we played was Man on the Silver Mountain by, by Deep, by Rainbow. And, you know, he, after a couple of songs, we're playing some grand funk, playing some of this, some Ted Nugent, whatever. And he's like, dude, when did, when did you start playing drums? Like, you're not bad at this. And I kept my air drumming, you know, a secret, you know, Like, I'm in my room.

My parents have no idea what I'm doing. I mean, I can run up to no good in there, but really I'm just, you know, I'm... Is he beating up his pillow? Right. That poor pillow. Yeah, what how does he do? It sounds like, sounds rhythmic. Ooh, weird.

But now, so, you know, my cousin was pretty surprised. He's like, dude, you're, you're not bad. So that just gave me some inspiration to just like, okay, well, this is really fun. And so, you know, I was into all the classic rock, all the, you know, Alex Van Halen. I mean, he's a very. underrated, very iconic drummer to us drummers, you know, and, you know, just all, all guys like that, you know, even, even Peter Chris, you know, he was always kind of bagged on back in the day, but, I mean, he, there was a lot about his style that brought me out, you know.

Is he one of those drummers, too, where, like, people just talk shit on, but then as, as time progresses, it's like, oh, wait, he's actually sick. Is he, like, kind of, is he in that same category? I'm not sure if he ever got to the category of, like, Wow, he's sick, but I mean, he deserves praise. I mean, he brought a lot of, like, his, there's sort of a kind of augmented shuffle to the song, Detroit Rock City. Everybody knows Detroit Rock City.

But there's a part in the middle of it where he's kind of playing sort of a shuffly beat. And that was my first introduction, really, to what, to a shuffle. What is a shuffle, to be honest? and he's got and he's got he's got that right before there's a lead he's got that right before there's a lead all that part

he's playing this this cool beat which I realized as I got older it's like well that's to a degree that is a shuffle beat and there's a lot of great shuffles like you might be familiar with Fool in the Rain by

Led Zeppelin. Do do, dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun do that oh okay oh baby yeah from that album there

and is that is it? Yeah, that's a great shuffle. You got it. That's sick, dude. That's an example of a shuffle beat and that's, you know, there's a lot of taste involved in that beat.

And so for a guy like Peter Chris who had something, you know, it wasn't quite that, but I was like, wow, that's, that is sort of a shuffle-esque sort of thing that he's doing. Interesting. You know, ghost notes on the snare and just little pickup notes and things like that that just bring out a little bit of taste. I thought Peter Chris was really good for that. He was just a good solid, light-hitting rock, drummer, you know, he, for me on, on his songs, he had, he had better meter than, like, say, Charlie Watts or somebody, you know, from, from the Rolling Stones who, a lot of people have

argued it's the greatest rock and roll drummer in history, but I, I, I never really found that about Charlie Watts, because I always found that Charlie Watts had some meter issues, and that's, that's kind of the one thing that, what was, as far as, like, timing or what? Right, yeah, like, if, and maybe it was. issues, it's a very polite way to say. Right. He's sloppy. Meeter was, meter was not his friend.

But, like, say, if you were to listen to, like, say, just the intro to a song like, brown sugar, for instance, it starts off really mellow and very, like, laid back. Maybe they told Charlie, hey, lean into it towards the end, but if you were to, like, just start brown sugar and then just, fast forward to the very end,

like, the tempos are just totally different. And so, there you go. Well, Gene, you're like your timeline, even as you were early, team really seems to have not ended since you got like a drum set. Oh, right? It seems like you just got the drum set and now you're literally here. Records later, records later, man. So just by coincidence, just by coincidence, like it's a weird coincidence, you actually got asked to join a band called Dark Angel, not the Dark Angel now. Right.

You got asked to join a separate band that, yeah, you went to high school. with, correct? That is right. Okay. Yeah, man. It's so weird. Well, well, uh, research. Man, how do you, it's, it's what, that's such a weird coincidence. And there's no, none whatsoever. None whatsoever. It was in, and you, and you, and then, uh, by also weird, you said, you, you will join, but you got to change the name because they like, man name sucks, correct? Yeah. Oh, wow. Yeah, I just didn't think, you know, dark as a very heavy name, you know, and they were like, well, you know, that's kind of, that's our philosophy on life. And, you know, these are 15 year old kids. Oh, Which are full off, you know, we're bikers and all I kind of.

Yeah. In high school? Yeah. Oh, wow. And so, you know, what they wanted to be in all that. Sure, sure. So that fits in with our lifestyle. I was like, oh, hey, okay, you got it.

You know, that's fine. Yeah, a completely unrelated Dark Angel, two years before I ever joined the Dark Angel we all know now, so. Two years separate. Yeah. How old are you when they asked you? I was 15 then. 15.

And then when I joined Dark Angel, I had, I was just turned 17. And so I had just come off the road with Slayer, for instance. So Slayer fires you and you go home really. Right. Right. To a degree, yeah, sort of. Yeah. We kind of, I was a terrible tech.

So I don't blame them for not taking me back out. Of course. They came home for a few days. And then the next run, they didn't ask me to join them. I'm like, I don't blame you guys. I was horrible. You know, so. That's the whole.

go, we're not even going to tell him. He's just going to figure it out. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah, that's pretty hardcore. So. Well, it's not like they could hit up your cell phone. Right. Yeah.

Yeah. It's like, I don't give you one call on the landline. Yeah, God told me. He didn't pick up. Well, you know, that was one thing about the, oh, I got the Dark Angel thread going now. Yeah. That's, we got our threads. Tour starts next week, so.

Nice. Everybody's all excited about everything. So, great. But, you know, that was one thing that, like, When Tom Araya gave me his number, I mean, he was very, very generous with his time to me because I would call Tom every single day. Like I knew what time he got off work. Just to shoot the shit about nothing. You know, I'm a 15-year-old kid.

And I loved Slayer, you know, those guys were, I dug him as a band and we became pals and all that sort of stuff. But I'd call Tom all the time. And he'd always take my call. You know, he could have been like, I'm tired of talking to this kid, you know. just getting home off work. He's calling me the second I get home from work. Oh, wow. So, but that was, he was, he was very generous with his time, and I always appreciated that.

Totally. That's awesome. I never heard anyone say anything bad about him. I know, right? Tom, yeah. You can't, you know, what an amazing man he was. He was my favorite rock star, absolutely, you know. Really?

Absolutely. Yeah. And this was before he was a rock star, you know? Like, this is just when, he was just a cool guy, that's all, you know? and he was he was he helped me a lot when i was a kid he helped a lot with a lot of my just help put me on a nice path of of trains of thought you know like how to value oneself i remember really i was having a i was having a birthday come up and i was just like i i don't care you know my friends want to throw me this party and you know my birthday is like day after tomorrow whatever

and i i don't care about it he's like wait a minute that's your birthday that Christmas is not important you know Thanksgiving is not important you're the day of your birth that should be the biggest holiday that anybody celebrates and I'm a 15 year old kid I'm about to turn 16 that's going over my head but I'm like wait a minute I that makes a lot of sense I get that you know so to celebrate oneself and he's not that much older than I am he's only six seven years older than I am so So, you know, having that sort of... So he's like 21, and he's telling, like, a 15-year-old kid this. Pretty much.

I didn't have that mindset into my 30s. Right. Incredible. Absolutely. So, you know, he was... He was his next-level thinker, especially to me when I was 15. So thank you, Tom, Orion. Very cool.

I wonder what he saw on you. Good question. I don't even know what I saw in myself, but he, you know, that's a good question i've never thought of that so interesting so i've always wondered like uh because because as you you like you'll do jean you'll do like a deep dive on on people then you figure out oh they're connected to this person and this person and then they're they're hanging out and talking but i'm always like how did that other person know right what what what that person had before they even had it right it's so it's like a i don't you can't even put worse of that

it's it's like a it's like a subconscious oh this person has it they're probably going to do something I don't know that that could be some form of intangible you know an intangible process of thought that that we don't even you know especially when you're 15 or you're 21 like how do you even know where you're going I mean Tom's life was coming up in front of him you know mine hadn't even started yet and I was pretty darn busy at that time. So, you know, you could just, you never know what it's going to, what's right around the corner for you. Absolutely.

But you, you know, if you keep yourself constant, your legs churning forward, good things are going to happen for everybody, I suppose, you know. Keep going forward. Indeed. Keep, it keeps stepping forward. Right. Okay. So I was, uh, this is one area about your life where I was a little bit gray. Okay.

Because it's, it's the two dark angels that got me confused. So one of the Dark Angels was going to school, went to high school with the Metallica guys, correct? That's this Dark Angel. Okay, got it. Okay, cool. I don't want to assume because sometimes I assume stuff in it and then I'm wrong. No, you've done some great research so far, Chris. All right, all right, cool.

So you really were like, you really saw it come from this? From absolutely nothing. Yeah, like I was just telling Jose Mangan that I was, you know, It's a very long convoluted story that I will try to shorten, but... No, please. Tell it. I'm honored to hear it. Well, we were talking about, you know, when I was on the row with Metallica back in 2010, Metallica would take their opening acts out to dinner after their show. I've only heard rumors.

Right. And so we were in, in Monarch. Moscow and I was with Fear Factory at the time. We had Gojira also at the table. It was just the Lars didn't make it, but everybody else did. So we were all talking about like the what was your first instrument and what was your first record and what was it? And so I had asked James. I was like, hey, James, do you remember your first Iron Maiden shirt?

And he was like, no, man, I don't think I ever rocked. I don't think I ever had a maiden shirt. And I was like, oh. Well, you did. And let me tell you. And so I proceeded to tell him that at this backyard party on July 4th, 1981, I was 13 at the time. That would have made it in 17.

I see this guy wearing an Iron Maiden shirt that was like, this was like, this was 81. So nobody knew who made him. Maiden was. It was the first album cover, a white print on a black shirt, and I went up to this guy, and I was like, oh my God, you have this maiden shirt, but I've never even met anybody who even knows who Iron Man. I knew two people that knew. Oh, wow, only two? That's crazy. And I'm like, where did you get that shirt? My God, like, where'd you get it? He's like, I made it. I made it at school. I was like, oh, man, well, can you make me one? Made it at school.

And he's like, no. And I was like, fish in my pocket. I'd like, I one dollar. I got five bucks. Like, and at that time, even concert shirts were maybe five bucks. So, you know, that's a lot of money then. Right. I was like, you're five bucks.

You know, can you make me one? He's like, no. So I went and found my sister at the party and got five bucks from her. I came back from him with ten bucks. Here's ten bucks. Will you please? I've never met anybody. Nobody will ever have an iron mane shirt.

Nobody will ever know who these guys are because they're so heavy. nobody's I'm never this is my only chance to ever get an iron maiden shirt are you kidding me and he's like no fuck off I would just like yeah I'd see that guy at clubs you know I'd already seen him around the clubs and stuff and I'd see him at the at all the Orange County and

you know L.A. clubs and you know I was like and screw that guy and so a number of months later in March of 80 two, I guess it was. I went to go see Saxon at the whiskey.

And as me and my, my buddies are walking in the door, the opening band is going on. And I was like, hey, wait a minute. That's a motherfucker that wouldn't make me the Iron Maiden shirt. Fuck you. You know? I was like, screw you. And turns out, that was Metallica.

and when I was telling James that, he was like, that was our second show, you know? And I just remember, I remember the music. I remember them being a kind of a cover band, you know? Like, they did a lot of covers. I was like, these guys are actually doing covers that nobody else is kind of doing, you know? So it seems like a trend since there's no scene.

You got these guys in Slayer doing mostly covers. Right. Yeah, hey, that's, there it is, you know. So, yeah. What is it? That's it. Yeah, and I remember... 1982, life at the whiskey.

Right. Dave, Damon and James just riffing if you're just listening. And I remember Dave doing the talking. You know, I don't think James did much speaking that night. Wow. Yeah, that was really fun. So there you go. That's the second show ever, huh?

Right. And they look like adults to me, but look at it. They look like children. Yeah, now that looks like they're literally like children. Right. Crazy. Yeah. man. So, like the Dark Angel guys, I probably tell you stories about him, going to, like, high school.

Well, I think, I just, I do remember, um, Jim Durkin pulling out his high school yearbook. And there was, you know, there was the three guys from Dark Angel. There was Jim and Rob Yon are bassist and, and, and, and the, the original vocalist. And then, um, and then I think the, the seniors page or maybe the juniors page. Yeah, there you go. That, that was the show. Wow. And what high school did the guys go to? That was Downey High. Downey High.

Okay. Mm-hmm. And so, yeah, that was, and the next night was, I remember going to the next night as well. And that was, or maybe it was the same night. Oh, no, it was the next night. It was Rat. Rat and Saxon. Oh, shit.

Yeah, Downey High School. And I didn't go to Downey. I went to Milliken, but. Yeah, how far? So at this point, you're still in Long Beach. Right. Okay. How far is Long Beach from Downey?

It's not, it's not, it's not, it's like right there. It's all part of the same scene. And, you know, Slayer was from Southgate, which is right next to Downey. And there's Norwalk as well. So Long Beach, Norwalk, Southgate, Downey, Huntington Park, all that kind of area are all right in a little clumped-up little area there. They're not too far from each other. So I remember Jim Durkin and Carrie King. You used to live around the corner, you know, from each other kind of thing.

so and that was in south gate area kind of thing so yeah it's it's weird when you think about that particular genre like you really don't associate it with southern california ever indeed it's weird huh i always do you know but i have that kind of perspective i do not see it as a san francisco you know as a bay area creation at all whatsoever you know so uh the bay area always had like really heavy bands and I remember Exodus was not quite the Exodus that they had evolved

into by the bonded by blood era. They were a little more on the very metallic side but a little bit on the more melodic side just slightly and by the time they were starting to write the bonded by blood era

material that's when they were starting to get really really heavy. And Slayer was going up there doing shows with them and all those shows at Ruthies and things like that. At Ruthies. Look at that. Classic, classic right there.

That's amazing. One of the all-time classics. So how did, just so, just so people listening and watching could understand your story, Gene. How did you, so how did you really join Dark Angel? In,

in summer of 1984, they had they were getting rid of their drummer jack schwartz they had just recorded their first album and all of a sudden jack was out and then they ended up absorbing lee roush from megadeth who had done all the first megadeth shows and jim jim durkin had spent a very brief portion of time in megadeth and so i'm sure it was like hey you know You got me from Megadeth, and then you got Lee, so Lee was their drummer for a moment. And then, for some reason, they got Jack back for a minute.

And then in December of 84, December 10th, 1984, was my first rehearsal with Dark Angel. That's when I joined. And so it was at the, no, obviously the end of 1984. Yeah, there's Jack Schwartz, all right. And, you know, my first gig was two, three weeks later it was on you know new year's eve 1984 with high racks at the uh at the uh at radio city yeah so that's why our our tour which is starting very very very shortly from now uh you know

we have dark angels going on the road with high racks and we played many many shows back in the back in the old days together 84 85 doing a ton of shows together so that's pretty good and so that's how i ended up joining like i remember you know jim jim told me because i was doing like i would do sound checks for dave on the on the slayer run i just go and play his drums and you know we would jam tunes and things like that just so dave could the drummer never gets to hear his own band oh yeah yeah you never do if you're a guitarist you got your wireless you could walk out there and kind of check it out see how it sounds or even the vocalist with a wireless mic that's true but um yeah the so you know, Dave was always like, yeah, sure, man, play my drums.

And I want to go out of here. Exactly. So that's how he was able to do that. So, um, wow. And Jim had called Carrie to say, hey, man, you've been doing some jamming with Gene. You know, we're, we're about that we're looking at Gene to play drums, you know, what do you think? Yeah.

And, and Carrie was like, you know, good drummer, whiny kid. Oh, good. I had no, man, I tell you. Drummers are whining, dude. Well, that was the thing. It's like my first tour was Slayer's first tour, the haunting the West Coast tour. It's a very brief, brief West Coast run. And my only exposure to any form of touring was reading all my favorite rock stars in Circus magazine and Cream magazine and Hit Parader magazine when I was growing up.

and to a person when they would ask them, hey, what's touring life all about? They're like, it's really hard. You miss your home. You miss your families. You miss this. It's really hard. And so when I hit the road,

I'm sitting there going, this is so hard. You know, God, I can't wait for this. Hey, there you go. That's really fun. Oh, wow. Yeah, that was, was that,

it's just a van you also traveled in? You're right, yeah. That was, there was known as the Death Puk fan. Oh, there it is. The Death Puck. Huke van in the back. And there's, that is in the back, obscured by, by Kerry King.

That is Doug Goodman. And you might have crossed paths with Doug Goodman at some point. Doug is a tour manager that has tour managed everybody from Green Day to smashing pumpkins. He went on to, oh, wow. Major, major things here. And then. So he has kept at it.

He sure did. And this picture was taken at the Metallica fan club in Rose. Roseburg, Oregon. The photo was taken by K.J. Doughton, who ran the Metallica fan club. And we stayed there overnight. You know, we gave us all place to crash

sort of thing. So there you go. That was pretty fun. Okay, so you, so you joined the band and then and then, and then, and then, and then what happens from there? Well, and this is, I'm sorry, you've said, 84. 84.

Okay. This is December of 84. And they were just in the, the process of releasing We Have Arrived. That came out pretty quick because I had written some lyrics for We Have Arrived, but I did not play drums on it. So that album came out and we did

a little bit of touring and stuff, just playing all the spot shows that you can, going up to the Bay Area or going out to Phoenix or Vegas or San Diego or, you know, we're just doing tons of shows and playing with a lot of the younger, you know, the first era of thrash bands, you know, We did tons of shows with Slayer, tons of shows with Megadeth, tons of shows with

possessed and death danger would come down. We played shows with corrosion of conformity and Hirax and just a ton of bands, Avatore, Agent Steel. These are all bands from that sort of era. But, you know, they've all gone to do something, you know, have some kind of impact. So that's where, you know, the L.A. scene, OG thrash metal is from L.A. you know, absolutely. That's great to hear you talk about it

because I really haven't heard anyone talk about it. Fair enough, sure. It's cool. It's always like the Bay Area. Absolutely, and that's, you know, and it was understandable why Metallica moved up to the Bay Area

because at that point when Metallica was, you know, trying to make a name for themselves, L.A. didn't want to hear about it. You know, WOSP was the heavy band in L.A. Yeah. As you might be familiar, Wasp's the first album, it's a good album, but it's not real savage or anything.

It's on the heavier side of radio rock kind of things. So that's where, you know, the Bay Area, oh, the audience was just a much, much more open to the heavier side of things. You know, you had bands like from Seattle, like Metal Church, who had also moved down to the Bay Area because, you know, Bay Area had a much more open scene for the heavier side of metal.

So it was a natural, natural, move from Metallica to go to a place where it's like, hey, we could play gigs regularly and not get, you know, laughed at or ignored kind of thing. So there you go. Did you always have a memory like this?

No one really says dates and years like that. You know, maybe that is from, boy, that's late era. God, there's John Marshall from up in the top corner. He was, he came along pretty late. He's very, very tall. And he, also sat in for James Hetfield when James

Hetfield broke his arm or burned himself Oh, was it burned? Yeah, that was their guitar tech who Oh yeah. And you know, that's where I never drank, I never did drugs. Really? When I was growing up, yeah, not when I was growing up.

So that's where I think I just always remember this and I always knew when I, you know, from I was, when I was 11 on, you know, especially like by the time I was 13, I was very entrenched in this life, you know, like I was very intent on doing exactly what we're doing here. Oh, wow. I knew when I was 11.

And then by, like I said, by the time I was 13, it was like, oh, yeah, it's on. I'm going to be, I'm going to be a rock metal drummer. I'm going to be touring the world and playing all over the place and doing all this stuff. So you better remember these kind of dates and important little historical things because somebody's going to ask you about these. someday. And so this is all things like that visualization or manifestation, whatever sort of, you know,

woo-woo kind of words you might want to use. These are all things. I guess I've been practicing my entire life. So I'm, I've, I've always seen my path, you know, I've just, it was very clear to me, you know, it's clear. Growing up, yeah, like I, this is my passion. Music is my passion. So, you know, you better get good at it if you want to, you know, like have a life. And by getting good at it, meaning getting good at the lifestyle, getting good at the business aspect of things, you know, like that would be one thing that when I was, you know, when I was 13 and started going to all the clubs in L.A., you know, it was 1981. one and I was going to see all the bands and hanging out with all the bands that became the big radio rock bands you know all the the LA hair metal scene yeah I was seeing all those guys in the clubs going to the parties with those guys afterwards I wasn't doing I wasn't drinking

or anything but we would go to the party and hang out and I would just I was like such an observer I was just a sponge to everything like you'd go see whatever band at the at the whiskey or whatever or the Woodstock down in Orange County, you'd go to their house party afterwards, and sometimes it's a Wednesday night, Thursday night, whatever. But you would see, like, say it's a four-piece band or whatever. You'd see three of the guys keeping it together. But then there was always that one guy in the band

that would just be, you know, like drinking and just being, making a complete idiot out of himself. And I was like, I don't want to be that guy. But also, I have a feeling that guy is not going to last very long. in this. Wow. And sure enough, a month or so later, it's like, oh, he just got too crazy, kicked him out, got a new guy, they signed a big old record contract, that band becomes huge without that guy who was acting a fool. And I was just always of sponge absorbing that. So it's like, learn how to, you know, kind of comport yourself, how to learn how to act when you're in social situations, you know,

because I was as socially awkward as anybody else was. I was a, sure. I was a weird kid, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, you're still there. You still wanted to be there. Exactly. And so it's like just try to learn all you can, you know, if you're going to, if you're going to make a real go with this industry, you better know how best to do it, you know. So, you know, doing drugs and drinking and all that stuff. I was a young sober guy, you know, a very focused sober dude during all the Dark Angel era and things like that. So, oh, explains a lot. Right. So. So even though you were reading articles in like, case like like the the boss you didn't you didn't let that

influence you at all like all the the partying and thing yeah yeah now that wasn't that just wasn't my scene you know and that was something that it was when I was growing up you know my my dad Jerry was very very cool

and my folks you know my folks kind of saw that wait we got a pretty sharp kid here and he tends to make some pretty good choices. So if he's going to go out like I my sister and myself, neither of us did drugs or drank or anything like that. So they both knew that we were pretty responsible in that regard. So if we are going to go out to out to the, the Roxy on a Thursday night, they knew that I was going to and go out to party with the band afterward at their place.

It's a hard sell. I'm going to come home. I'm going to get to school and I'm still going to get decent grades. They were always like, as long as you just, just don't screw it up. Don't screw it up, dude. And we'll give you free reign because, you know, I was a latchkey kid. A lot of kids from the 70s were. I raised myself in a lot of regards. You know, my folks both worked. So they weren't around a lot. And so they were kind of seeing that, you know, this guy, we're not getting calls from the cops at, you know, like your son just got picked up for vaguely. you know, whatever. I wasn't on that end of the spectrum.

So I got a lot of, you know, I got a lot of free reign. Like as long as you just, you know, we'll give you your freedom as long as you earn it. And so I just constantly earned the freedom. So I kept that rolling. So that's where I was able to have a life unlike, you know, any other 13, 14, 15 year olds, you know.

So there you go. It's awesome, man. It's cool that you had that focus. Explain it explains a lot. You just started naming off dates. I'm like, what the hell is going on? Right. It's awesome.

So at what point did, how did the gig with death come up? Well, in, wow, that's pretty ironic. Our tour starts out September 5th, and it was September 5th. We're sorry to be a date guy. Oh, dude, please. September 5th, 1992 was. the day that we were rehearsing and my vocalist Ron Ron Reinhart he came to rehearsal he looked really glum looked really sad and we're like what's going on bro and

he mentioned he you know laid it on and said he had to quit quit not only the band but quit the music industry he wasn't quitting the band he was just like all the all this music industry is just getting to me you know it happens man that happens so you know it was it was kind of like a sort of a situation. Well, you know, it took us a long time to discover Ron when we lost the original vocalists. We went through a couple of permutations of vocalists. And do we now, you know, it took us 10 months to find Ron to begin with. Oh, really? And that was when, you know, thrash metal was, it was still underground, but it was a lot more open to find a thrash metal vocalist when

we first got Ron than it was here in 92 when death metal. metal was the style for everybody. Nobody wanted to kind of sing thrash anymore. They just wanted to go straight death metal by then. So I was like, well, do we want to go death metal? We never quite have done that. You know, so do I want to, do we want to, you know, spend a lot of months trying to find a new vocalist or tell you what? I went to the rest of the guys in the band and I said, hey, guys, you know what, I think I'm going to step aside myself.

if you guys want to carry on with Dark Angel, by all means, like please do. Like if you want to find a drummer that's going to write the material, write the lyrics, do all the, you know, press, you know, do all the day-to-day. Yeah, because at this point, you were doing most of the stuff. You were writing riffs. You were writing the lyrics.

You were even playing guitar on some, on some, most of the stuff. That's right. On a lot of the songs, yeah. And, you know, writing, you know, the majority of the music. Hey, did you? I'm sorry, Jane. Did you get that from Neil? from Neil

from a rush did he write music I found this out recently like he writes a lot of the music like lyrics too I know the lyrics but I never knew the music I had no idea I always knew the lyrics and I don't think

I know he wrote lyrics I'm like he wrote those lyrics oh yeah I always knew that the only reason I wrote lyrics for Dark Angel was I remember going to Jim and the other vocalist and just I was in the band for like three months

months or so. And I was like, hey, this song Burning a Sodom, you know, it's a song that was on Darkness of Sands. I was like, we play the song. I love this song. I'm really stoked on it. What are the lyrics? But the lyrics kind of suck. Well, no, I would just like, and they just kind of looked at each other like, and they just kind of looked at the ground started chuckling. Oh, wow. And I'm like, wait, what? And what are you guys laughing? And they're like, there aren't any lyrics. Oh, wow. He was just up there. Oh my goodness. You know, doing the kind of,

the Don, Donald, I mean, the John Tarty from obituary sort of approach before John Tarty, just there were no lyrics for it. And they said, well, hey, Ben, we know that you wrote lyrics in your other band. You know, I was in a band called War God before, you know, in, in, upon joining Dark Angel. And they're like, we know you write lyrics for War God. So you want to write, want to write the lyrics to that song? I was like, yeah, sure. I was still in high school, so I just remember having, like, every Friday in my creative writing class was the poetry assignment.

You know, every Friday you got to turn in a book. So I'd write lyrics for Dark Angel. And then I would turn, you know, here's the song guys. And I would just turn in these lyrics to the poetry assignment every Friday or whatever. And, you know, my teacher was, he got it. He was cool with it. You know, so, oh, that's amazing. That's a hossopo.

there. That is really, really fun. Oh, wow. Yeah, so, yeah,

they're like, hey, so write some lyrics for us. So that's really how I started writing lyrics for Dark Angel,

you know, just because they knew I could and they knew I had. So that's where it started coming. And I was a young man with a vocabulary.

So, you know, I just, I put that vocabulary towards, towards the early lyrics. So, so,

sorry to go off on tangent. No, please. No, this is, this is a place to do it. So you, so you choose, so you chose to step aside. Because, uh, would they, were they, like, trying to force you to do, like, some death metal stuff or, what? Well, the band wasn't, but it just seemed like every vocalist, you know,

death metal, by this era of 1992, you know, everybody was, was kind of going towards death metal. You were having the grind core and the, you know, all the band, you know, from morbid angel to death to obituary deicide, you know, cannibal was putting out stuff. And you had napalm death coming out with all their, you know, their Barney era grind. And understandably, the music was leaning towards that. And so it was just going to be a real challenge to try to find a vocalist. So that's where I was like, guys, let me, you know, please carry on. but I think I'm going to just kind of see what else I could do

because I, you know, I always knew when I was, even when I was playing in Dark Angel, I was like this, I highly doubt this is going to be my only band. Oh, really? You knew that then. Yeah, totally. You know, it's like, you're going to, it's inevitable, you know, like bands come and go and, you know, you've had so many lineup changes already, you know,

like in my eight years in Dark Angel, there was quite a number of lineup changes. I was a lineup change. So, you know, I'm just like, okay, if this isn't your final, final band, that's, you know, there's no reason to be sad about it. But, you know, who knows where your future is going to lead you. So that's where I had just kind of, um, decided to kind of take a step away and see what I could start doing. And I was in the process.

With no backup plan. You had no safety net. No. Oh, no. There's never. never been a safety net. It's like there's music and that's it, you know, so I, I'd reach out to Borrevoy, Kurgen, you know, from Blabbermouth, of course. And Borvoi was always a great, you know, always had his finger on the pulse of what's happening. So I'd reach out to Boravoy and said,

hey, you know, I'm putting it together a new project and, you know, can you help me find a vocalist? He's like, yeah. So he started sending me all these, all these cassettes of a, you know, I gave him sort of the general gist of the kind of vocalist I was sort of kind of looking for. And I guess probably a Pete Steele early typo, you know, slow, deep and hard typo negative sort of approach. Pete Steele's carnivore approach was probably, you know, I was like, I love that guy's vocals, so somebody like that.

And not too long afterwards, he's like, hey, you know, hey, dick. Yeah. I was talking with, with, Chuck and um you know chuck had mentioned that he was looking for a drummer and at that time there was you know the the kind of the there was a little bit of i guess animosity in the press lingering over from 1989 yeah between chuck and you know between death and dark angel and it was a bunch of things that should have never been brought out in the press but it was and so there was a little bit of

lingering, you know, that sort of thing as far as I knew. And I was like, well, he was like, I was talking to Chuck. He's looking for a drummer. You got brought up and how about you give Chuck a call, you know, see, you know, do you guys just talk and see what's up? And I was like, interesting. Wow. Okay. Well, sure. Let's, uh, I called up Chuck later that day. And it was like, you know, because the last thing we had said to each other was a bunch of, you know, F, use. Yeah. This conversation was like, you know, we picked up the last cool conversation that we had ever had before, like talking metal, talking music, talking, you know, all, all cool stuff, talking instruments and bands and that sort of thing. And so we had decided very quickly to

see what we could do about, you know, just working together on what was going to eventually become the individual thought patterns record. And so Chuck had agreed to send me, you know, a riff tape. You know, he's like, I got, you know, I got a tape of some rifts, you know, send it out to you. I started referring to that tape as the adorable riff tape because it was, it was adorable how he put it together. Like, even in 19, this was in late 1992, you know, October, November, 1992, everybody had a four-track. or maybe an eight track, you know, whether it's a Fostex, a TASCAM, a, you know, a Roland, some, you know, everybody had a little four-track machine. Yeah.

Chuck had two ghetto blasters and, you know, boom boxes. Oh, yeah, yeah. Two boom boxes. And, you know, he would, you haven't set up across from each other, he would press record on that one, play guitar into that one. And then he would press play on that one and then play, play like the secondary guitar parts over into this other, you know, boom box. and I just thought that was adorable. You know, most people had the rudimentary four-track machines together, but he was going caveman old school on it.

Creative. So that's how, you could hear the little, you know, the stop button, you know, getting pressed and then the start button getting pressed and the stop button getting pressed and all that kind of stuff.

He sent that over there over to me, but it had enough, there was enough cohesion to it that I was able to just ride a bunch of drum parts in my head. take them out to Florida pretty soon afterwards and we started working on on individual thought patterns in earnest and it came together pretty quick we had about three weeks to work on it and so there you go was that uh recorded at morrisound it was nice yeah with with uh that one was with uh that one was with scott burns and so my first time working with scott burns and and you know

Scott's a great guy. And so that was, I was, I was in there pretty quick, you know, because we had, we put the album together pretty quickly. And it, it, I had, I tracked the drums and, and, you know, I got out of there pretty quick. So they had to, you know, record the rest of it after I split. So there you go. Like, hey, there you go.

That's pretty fun. Oh, Scott. God, what a youngster back then. Oh, yeah. And, um, that. That was, we had Andy LaRock playing guitar on that, Andy LaRocke from King Diamond. And as a matter of fact, I had never met Andy until 2013. You know, people had asked me, hey, man, you did that great, you know, great death record back in 93 together.

What's Andy LaRoc like? I was like, I've never met the man, you know. And so finally, you know, 20 years after recording the record, I finally met Andy. Oh, really? Yeah, I never. That was crazy. Because he, you know, I did my drums. I was out of there.

He came in way afterwards, just to lay some leads down. So it's not like we were working together or anything like that. You know, the album came together with Chuck and myself. We even brought in Steve to Georgia, relatively late into the project because Steve had done the human album. But then Scott started working with a man named Scott Carrino. I mean, Chuck started working with Scott Carino. And then all of a sudden, Scott wasn't working in the band.

And then Stevie-D was coming back in. which was great because I loved Stevie D. So that's when Stevie D and I became, you know, real, real brothers during that recording. So we got to become a real, real kick-ass rhythm section together. And Steve was saying that, you know, Steve had supplied me with a, well, it wasn't quite yet, but Steve was telling me that he was kind of brought in so late

that I had tracked the drums. they brought in Steve, they gave Steve my drum tracks, like, go home with these, you know, and just write your stuff. So Steve got to write directly to the drum tracks that I already laid down. So that's why his,

his bass playing is next level on that. And he's like, well, I, you know, I got to play exactly to what you were doing and you already had what you had established. So I was able to really go off on that. So that was, you know, a real, a nice musical, you know, point he got to make, you know, because the baselines on that album are fantastic, totally.

I remember reading a review of, uh, Invee Malmstein reviewed, like, one of the songs on there. Oh my goodness. And he was like, this, this song is shit. Yeah, like, this bass playing's terrible, you know, I was like, why are you kidding me? He said that? Yeah. We were all laughing about it. That was pretty fun. It's kind of a stick, though, right? It's just to talk shit on everything. Right. Yeah, I guess so. Just fucking rip. I heard you talk a lot about the human record, Gene, and how important that drummer was.

Absolutely. What exactly was it? Well, Sean Reiner, rest his soul, was, you know, his approach to human was, it was such a breath of fresh air at the time. Like, we were, you know, all of us were into Prague, and a lot of us were into jazz fusion, and we all loved Rush, and we all loved Watchtower from Austin, Texas.

And Watchtower is this legendary band that they were the first. They are Ground Zero OG of melding hardcore Prague with metal. I know that. Okay. Yeah, they are the, there you go. Those outfits are sick.

No, right. Yeah. The singer is serious. He's such a metalhead, man. Jason McMaster, man. He's a legend. That's a name, Jason McMaster? Yeah.

Oh, man, fuck everybody. That's a cool name. Oh, right. Yeah. I mean, he went on that, like, he sings for, you know, he just sang for except. He just sang for Armored Saint. He was also in the band Dangerous Toys after that. But Jason's like total, total metal guy.

And, you know, they are flat out the first. like melding tech with, no, sorry, with, you know, Metallica, motorhead sort of, you know, approach. And so we were all huge fans of Watchtower. And, you know, Sean's drumming just, for me, elevated the concepts of death metal. Because death metal up into that point, you know, there were a lot of badass drummers doing badass things, but they were all within the same sort of realm of of what you know whole lot of fast double base you know maybe some blast beats here and there you know some some grinding sort of here and there you know it was all pretty metallic and then sean came in and let his let his influences show and that was a real um you know it opened up a lot

of avenues for okay a lot especially for me coming into the next recording where I was a huge huge al-Diola fan at that time and also a huge Steve Gadd fan, drummer of al-Di-Miola. So for me to have human, you know, following up on the on the heels of human, where I could let a lot of the Steve Gad influences show or Neil Peart or whoever, where I didn't have to be the standard typical sort of death metal approach of a drummer. Oh, wow. That's where, you know, Sean had laid the template. it and so chuck was already used to a drummer kind of going a little bit kooky as as chuck

would refer to it you know going nuts going sick um you know chuck was always very open to it he was such an easy guy to work with in that regard in terms of um he he never put restrictions on on the drumming he sure as heck didn't with sean and sean's drumming you know on human is beautifully next level for for its approach and so that was having having that template already laid made the drumming for for individual thought patterns really open up and be very musical and very try to be as creative as I could yeah what what a template man I was always curious because uh you know you know people you know most of us just never met him so like i was always wondering like you know what man what was Chuck like because people just keep as keep seeing his

name and people keep talking about death and him, I was always, and only, you got to a little bit actually write important records that are just staples now. Excellent. Well, that's pretty cool. You know, that, Chuck was, you know, from a musical standpoint, you know, Chuck, we all had the same sort of influences. We all love the, you know,

all the early metal, all the underground metal, and Chuck was a metal head, you know, through and through. So we all liked the same sort of classic rock kind of stuff. We were all Kiss fans and, you know, we all dug, you know, the aerosmith and Ted Nugent and Cheap Trick and all the, all the things that we all dug, all the maidens and priests and Sabbaths and, you know, Rainbow and Dio and all these guys, you know, we were all into it. So it was, it was really easy to working with Chuck. That looks like that's around the individual thought patterns era, perhaps, you know, it's one that we did together. And, yeah,

so he was really easy to work with. He wasn't, you know, he was. You know, he was. would people always wondered what was chuck a tyrant to work with? Musically, not at all. You know, he was really open. And I would always stop from time to time and say, hey, man, all these, you know, crazy drums I'm laying down. Are you cool with these? Like, yeah, man, I can play all my rips over what you're doing. I'm, I'm working well with what you're giving me.

And it's all fine. So go sick, go nuts. He used to like to say that. And you do you, you know, there's a reason. We are working together. So, you know, just, just, you keep doing you and this is, this is working out good for me. So that was, that was pretty cool. Totally.

Yeah, I heard that, that was, that was your first time really, like, becoming a drummer. Indeed. Yeah, kind of. Like, as far as I, I felt, you know, like, I guess when it was coming to Dark Angel, I was kind of treating the drums as a secondary. instrument, you know, because I was doing most of the guitar writing. And at that time, I wasn't focusing on the fact that, like, one thing I tried to do with individual thought patterns was I was trying to come up with beats. Nobody had ever heard before. I tried that with individual and later was symbolic. And then I started realizing it's like, well, actually, you were,

you were also trying to do that with Dark Angel at the time as well, which, like, for instance, This is something that even Sean Reiner had pointed out to me years and years later. He's like, when I heard Darkness Descends and I heard all the bass drum patterns that you were writing, I had never heard patterns before from a drummer. And you were the first person. As far as I know, like I did a deep dive on this. I can't find anybody doing patterns the way that you did with these. And I was like, I wasn't even thinking about that really at the time.

It's a six stamp. It moved right. And one thing I did try to do was the patterns that I could write on my feet, I would emulate those on the guitar riffs. So putting together the, I guess, the machine gun, you know, dittlidly lint, dillilint, dillilin, dillilin, dillilin, dillin, dillin, dillin, dillin, you know, I was putting that sort of approach together because I was like, I've never heard anybody, never heard anybody try this before,

where you're doing these weirdo double base patterns with a weirdo riff emulating it. Because back in those days, usually the double bass would emulate the riff if the riff was going, daget, dougat, doug, doug, daget, ddegadal, daedle, daedle, ddda-dell ddell ddell ddegg, dagg, d'a-deggdegg, you know, that's the only thing

that the double base would emulate was just a pretty straight rhythmic pattern. And so, you know, I would be on my toilet in my apartment, writing these, you know, I had a good wood floor on. on my toilet. I've read these patterns on my toilet. And I was like, I'd jump right off. I'd go grab the guitar and I would write the, you know, the chunky guitar riff over the top of that.

I'm like, I've never heard anybody do this before. Maybe this could be Dark Angel's little, hey, here's our style. You know, here's something that we're going to try to bring to the table because I'd never heard anybody doing that before. And that's rad. I've had so many folks come up to me and saying, you guys were the first guys I ever heard trying to do that, you know? and that's where we got our little approach of trying that, you know,

from. I was like, there you go, you know. You're always trying to leave something behind, you know, musically. And so that was like one of Dark Angels little approaches that we were able to help, you know, bring about, I suppose, and then leave that behind. And now it's pretty much a metallic staple, you know, having guitar chunks going with double bases. Everywhere. Yeah, it's everywhere now.

But at that time, it was like, nobody's doing this. Let us try this. So, there you go. It's like, I don't hear it. I'm going to do it. And so that's where I was able to utilize a lot of those pattern type things

with the individual thought patterns record, you know, just trying to, Chuck would write a riff that Bidli-liddle-doodoo-doo-d-d-lid-doo-d-d-lid-lid-doo. And I was like, oh, we'll just write a drum pattern. Bidli-litt-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-litt-dun, you know. do a double-based pattern that just follows that instead of just... What an inspiring time.

Oh, right. Yeah, that's dope. What are your first thoughts and memories, Gene, of symbolic? Because, again, like, you were there. I wasn't there. Right. You know, how was it, what memories do you have? Of symbolic?

Yes. Um, we had a lot more time to put that one together because individual thought patterns was, you know, the clock, the deadline clock was ticking for Chuck. Fucking three weeks. You're like, oh, shit. Yeah, turn in and release. He's like, I didn't expect to be this far without having a release ready to go. I've got the songs written, but I don't have musicians.

So we were able to get that thing together pretty darn quick. And with symbolic, we had a lot more time to flesh out the songs. And so I spent a lot of time out in Florida, you know, living, living with Chuck. Oh, wow. every morning we'd rehearse you know i mean every day we'd rehearse you know get up have some breakfast and then get right to the oh wow right to the garage wake up have breakfast boom we're fucking jamming in his garage yeah absolutely so that's we got a lot of time to work out a lot of stuff and by this time i remember scott burns had bought us a a four track for the individual thought

patterns uh rehearsal sessions and we put that to use and now chuck was getting a little more into the actual recording side of things. So he had a, he bought an eight track. So, and back in those days, um, you couldn't really get a good drum sound, you know, we didn't have great mics or anything, you know, so you couldn't really get a real good drum sound on home recordings, um, you know, obviously not like today with the pro tools and the sound replacements and the drum programming and all that kind of stuff. That didn't really exist at the time. So what we would do is like each day we would work on whatever amount of whatever song we're working on. We'd get that to a point.

And we'd get at the point where we'd have the entire song done. We'd work on it for a little while. We had a lot of time to work on this. So when we finally had all of our parts together, I had an Alisus HR 16 drum machine, which is this big old giant, you know, about, you'll probably see it here in a couple seconds. I love, I love Jerry's work here, man.

You're amazing. Oh, look at that. It's that big gray thing right there. Yeah, that big old giant gray jobbers right there. There you go. Oh, that thing's ugly. But that thing was beautiful. And that thing was, at the time, it was so next level.

And I got really, really good at programming one. Oh, really? Oh, yeah. I was amazing at that thing. I could turn that thing into a human-sounding, you know, feel. It's like a typewriter. This thing had, it had, um, it had, it, was the first drum machine that didn't sound like an electronic drum kick with the

bing, beam, boom, boom kind of things. This thing actually had sort of real tones inside it. And so, but I would, at the end of the day,

I would, all the drum patterns that I would write, I was pretty good at being able to write them on that thing. So, you know, I got pretty proficient at that thing. So I know that on the re-release of symbol, There are three or four demo tracks that we put down that we did on that drum machine.

So there is an example. Oh, shit. Yeah, there is an example of that drum machine being used in a number of the songs like the title track. Subrog is one of them, but it says symbolic acts. Yes. Okay. That was Chuck's original title. Okay.

And so I was the one that told them, what if you just dropped the word acts? from that. You know, like, symbolic. Yeah, that's pretty cool. I like that. Yeah, so there you go. And then I did the exact same approach with Testament like two years later when they had,

what was it? They wanted to call their album demonic refusal. And I was like, what if you just dropped the refusal and just made it demonic? They're like, hey, great. Excellent. I was like, I'm really good with my editing skills have created a couple of album titles for you there. So, yeah, that was the same thing. Oh, we're going to call our album demonic refusal.

I was like, oh, wow. I just, you know, why not just use the symbolic approach? Just make it more simple. It's, uh, you're a good, like, outside, like, perspective of the loganin and stuff. Right. Yeah. I'm a decent, uh, I'm a decent, uh, you know, third wheel in that regard, you know, come in and help kind of, I can look at your idea and go, hey, why don't you try this? Hey, that's pretty good idea.

I'm, I'm not too shabby at that either. Mm. And during this whole time, you're, you're, you're still. not drinking you're still not at that time let me see yeah i had started um and you know chuck was a was a connoisseur of uh of the herb so he was really into that and i wasn't quite super into that so you know at the end of the days i you know have like no cocktail at the end of the day or whatever and chuck would fire it up for himself and i became a pot smoker for a while in the death era you know totally yeah um but you know i did these days i haven't touched pot in a number of years haven't drunk

and you got a decade and half and on the rats i i quit smoking all that i'm i'm pretty much a teetotaler now like not not by design it just kind of happened that way but full circle yeah right yeah god full circle that's that's what that's what my life my wife laura says she's like you know you're the you're the same kid that you were in dark angel when you started you know and like that makes sense yeah right when when did you get married oh that's that That would be like 2011, especially, yeah, 2002, 2008, you know, but okay. We became, we became a couple in late 2008, and I was married from day one in that regard, you know, totally. You knew?

Oh, absolutely. Yeah, totally. Like, you just know. My, my, my metal, my metal chick writes better riffs than I ever will, you know, plays guitar better than I ever will, you know, that kind of thing. So that's, that's pretty badass having, you know, you're. Your wife being a badass musician, I'm really, really fortunate. She's, you know, a walking aphrodisiac for me. So that's, I'm, I've got the best of all worlds in that regard.

But there you go. It's beautiful, man. Thank you. That's cool. You know, and, you know, just, but to step back to that symbolic era, when we, when we track that album, when we released the album, like, I remember tracking, I remember, I couldn't. I couldn't walk.

I couldn't walk while recording symbolic, like the actual recording. I threw my back out the day before the recording. No. Yeah, I couldn't walk. I couldn't even like sit comfortably. Oh, no. What a nightmare. The only thing I could do was play the drums.

And so when I was done tracking whatever song, you know, I'd finish the song, Chuck and my tech at the time, Steve Good. They would kind of pick me up and lift me on and help carry me to the couch and I'd be sitting in this like just totally crazy angle because I couldn't. And I was like, is this take good? Is this good? Okay, let's get back out there and do next song. You know, I was only like 27 at the time. Oh, I remember it was my 28th birthday is when we started recording symbolic.

I remember that. So that's good luck. All right. And I couldn't, like I said, I just, I couldn't walk, but I could play drums. So that was that was one thing I remember from from the recording session. It was like you, I said you just sit in one area and then it felt all right. Right.

And anytime I'd ever thrown my back out since then, that's one thing I do know that I can do. You know, I've tossed it out on tour where I can't walk. I can't, I can't move, but I can play the shows. So there you go. You know, it takes me an hour to walk to the stage. But once I get there, I can do my thing. But that's, I haven't had that happen in a long time.

But, you know, that was, that was really strange recording a record when you couldn't even move, you know. Yeah. How did you throw out your back? I learned later, it was just, just stress, you know, because I had gone to a back expert up in Seattle. They did the MRIs and the cat scans and the, you know, x-rays and all that sorts. Because I was like, oh, I could, I know I have a slipped disc. I've got a herniated disc. I've got something serious going on.

And the doctor, you could tell he had had to have this. conversation many times where he was like, what sort of stress do you have going on in your life? Do you have some stress going on? I'm like, well, as a matter of fact, I do. He's like, well, you know, long story short, you figure out whatever your stress is, you get a little solution to whatever this thing that is stressing you at. Is it financial? Is it this? Really? Yeah, yeah, it's all that. And he was like, well, you figure out your solution because I was in transition. from from death to whatever the next thing was going to be and I was stressed out about a lot of stuff and once I figured out whatever my next plan was going to be my he's like once you do figure it out

your your your back problems are going to disappear and he was 100% correct you know I had gone you know like I said this was in Seattle um I I went I was staying with my my my folks up there at the time. I went to their place, lying in their bed and bedroom, and I'm in my bedroom at their place or whatever. I figured out my issues. And sure enough, the next day my back problems were gone. So that's where it's like now I realize anytime I ever do throw out my back or I got some sort of thing going on. It's like, it's just stress. You know, sure, life is stressful. You get. Sure. And that's one thing I have always tried to be very cognizant of is that my life is very, very easy. I've got no problems in life,

you know, like I have a very cakey, easy life no matter what, you know, we play music for a living. We play gigs. I play for a living. I don't work. None of this is like really work. So, especially in, you know, in relation to like some guy who's out there grinding and out working for his family, you know, like putting in, you know, doing roofing or, you know, being a car mechanic or something, you know, somebody's manual labor where they got to grind it out for a living for their to put food on their tables. I have a very easy life in comparison to that. So I have always got to keep that in mind that, you know, no matter how tough you think this is, Gene, you do not have this tough. So always remember that. And I do. So that's how I'm able to really manage anything

like that. So had I known that around the around the debt there, I wouldn't have had the problems of not being over the walk while tracking the record. But, you know, we got that thing done. And when we released it, you know, if symbolic is a classic record now, it was not at all received that way in any way, shape, or form. Really? No, it was hated. Are you serious? hated, hated. Absolutely.

I didn't know that. One hundred percent hate it. The only people who didn't hate it were some of the journalists who reviewed it. But like the fans hated it. Like everybody hated it because they were like, what the hell did you do to my favorite band? You know, like, where's scream bloody gore? Where's leprosy? Where's spiritual healing? Like this is musical. shit. What is it? You know, melodic, what is this? The world wasn't ready. They weren't used to it. You know, they were used to hearing their death metal really, really brutal and not melodic. And so that is one thing that I will give death, Chuck, whoever was involved in it. Like, it's one thing if you're, if you're involved in a musical genre that is accepted and you come in and you play a popular style of music and you do it well, that's one thing. Chuck, although he did not invent death metal, death was a very important band

in the overall creation of death metal. So, you know, brutal death metal, Chuck and death were a part of its, you know, infancy. Then when it came to technical metal, you know, there were a couple other bands like Watchtower and that sort of thing. Cynic was kind of doing their thing a little bit in the demo era sort of thing.

Watchtower, maybe Musuga to some slight degree, maybe by 91, 90 when they were tracking human. You know, human came out and, you know, there was atheists doing some technical stuff. Other bands that were doing, you know, Mekong Delta, you know, on the more technical side of metal. But death had a real stamp on the technical metal side. That's two genres that they had an important part of being a part of. and then along comes the melodic death metal,

mellow death, melodic death metal or whatever. Chuck had a, death had a real part with the individual thought patterns and the symbolic releases. Both of those albums had an impact on the melodic side of death metal. There wasn't a lot of melodic death metal going on at the time. There was sort of, carcass was just starting to lean

towards that with the heartwork record, you know, leaning away from this just straight black, lasting grind and, you know, and their, maybe it was whatever their EP was directly before that, they were starting to kind of lean towards the more melodic side, letting their classic rock influences show. But there you go. Those are three genres that death had, had, you know, like I said, it's one thing. If you join a genre that was, that is established and yeah, you do some cool things in your band gets popular doing it. that's one thing, but to help be the,

the creators of three different genres, there's something to be said for that. So way to go, Chuck, way to go death, absolutely. It's so mind-blowing that it was, was known now to be like one of the most influential. It was needed. Did not appear to be that way at all? Did you think, oh, shit, like, oh, man, do we,

do we fuck up? Well, I, I, I, No, I just, I, I liked the record. I liked what we did on it. And so that's one thing. I've never been able to get too, too caught up in what, what others think of whatever your creativity is,

whatever your musical approaches. I had already, I already been hated with Dark Angel, you know, like when there was no thrash metal scene, and when I'm in high school, and I'm playing in my high school band, Dark Angel, the dark angel this one now you know because i was in i was a twelfth grader when i was in dark angel and

motley crew and quiet riot and rat and all those hair metal bands were you know all that rock stuff all all the quote unquote rockers at my school they hated dark angel they hated so they were like you your music is just noise that metallic band you guys are just noisy garbage all that that stuff. It's a punk rock garbage. None of your bands will ever, these bands that you like, they'll never go anywhere. And I'm like, just, just wait and just watch. And, you know, so I'd already been hated, you know, like they called, they called Dark Angel Slayer clones when we were releasing Darkness to Santa or whatever. They called me a Dave Lombardo clone. Oh my goodness. All that kind of stuff. And I got that. So I'm like, I'm already used to being hated. It's okay. The only, and that's

I realized very young, the only way you could be truly loved is if you are truly hated, because when I was growing up and I was hanging out with a band called Dante Fox, and they became Great White. And those guys were my pals. You know, they were all older than I was, but they would, you know, come to my house and all that sort of stuff. Back when Great White was just another rock band this is pre that era they were getting played on the radio this was pre that era this was all

before that this is their blues era but when they were a metal band they were you know you would ask people hey what do you think of Motley Crew? I love Motley Crew or I hate Motley Crew What do you think of Quiet Riot? I love

Quiet Riot I hate Quiet Riot What do you think of Great White? they're okay they're okay you know and so it was just that's when I started realizing it's like yeah because they weren't they were just okay

they were a good band they weren't polarizing you know they became the blues rock band and became huge after that but I realized that if you are not polarizing then people don't have a lot to you know to

you're just going to be you know yeah they're okay you know what do you think of the band autograph you know they're okay you know nothing nothing exciting nothing terrible about they're just they're fine never really did anything so there you go that's when i realized really young that if you're it's okay to be hated it's okay you know it's okay to be loved it's okay to be hated you know and as long as i'm doing what what makes me feel me makes me feel the best then i'm i that's the only thing i

can do you know that and that's one thing that chuck always felt you know chuck was never afraid to you know so many people were hating on chuck so many people were hating on death and all that and chuck did not care you know he wrote music for chuck and so i'm like you you and i are both very there you go that might not that is a different oh no that is like look at don costa there my word don costa from he joined wasp and then he was in ozie for a minute and then Tony Richard, that guy was the first drummer for Wasp. You'll recognize him from the Wasp era.

He was their drummer for the first few records, but that is some old ass, Dante Fox era. That's from 1980, that one. Now, I started seeing them in 81, so. 81? Oh, my goodness. Yeah, I was 13 at the time, so there you go. But, you know, and being true to yourself, you know, you've got to write what you feel.

You can't write for the fans. You guys went through that. You guys put out a record that sometimes, you know, some of the fans were kind of like scratching their heads going, what were you guys thinking? But you felt strongly about it. You wanted to do that. And you stood behind it. You guys stand behind it. Absolutely.

They call it all staying on business these days. Taking that risk is always important, you know. Like it's okay. You know, it's okay to jump off the ledge. It's okay to be hated. And that's, you know, Chuck felt that. I've always felt that. So, you know, that's why when it comes.

to like this latest release with Dark Angel, you know, if people love it, killer, great. If people don't like it, killer, great. It's not going to affect me one Iota. It will not change my approach to writing at all, you know, so the only thing we ever ask is, the only thing I would ask is just take, check it out, you know, just listen to it before you make any decision on it. You know, That's, that's all you can ask with, with anybody, really. Just give it a listen, you know, give it, you know, 10 minutes. If you don't like it after 10 minutes, then okay, you know, there you go. Yeah.

People got to listen to the record, man. But I found that when you take a risk, it pays off. You don't know when you get, you don't, you don't know when the payoff is. That makes sense. Like the risk will pay off, but you don't know when it could be a year, it could be instant. It could be 10 years. Who knows. Right.

Yeah. I totally get that. Yeah. what you learn is like, okay, you have another arsenal in your toolbox. Absolutely. You know. So this comes out on Monday. When are you guys dropping the new record?

September 5th is the worldwide digital release anyway. And I know we've got the hard copies coming. Okay, cool. So we're really excited for that. Nice. You know, I'm really excited about this new record. You know, it's been. 34 years since our last album. And, you know, just, we have a couple of records that, you know,

a couple that have had an impact on some folks like Darkness Ascends. My first album, the band's second album, that's had its influence and impact on, on extreme metal. And we have another I'm called Time Does Not Heal, which has had its also impact on elements of metal. And a lot of people were asking me when I announced it, hey, we're going to start, you know, we're writing, we're going to have a new album at at some point. You know, that immediately got the questions of, well, what's it going to sound like? It's going to sound like darkness of sins. Is it going to sound like time does not heal? and, you know, I just thought, you know, boy, we haven't even written anything other than just a number of rifts and maybe half a song so far kind of thing.

But, you know, what approach do I want to take with this? And I just thought, well, probably the best approach to take with the writing is, what if Dark Angel just never stopped putting out records for 34 years? What would it be like? You know, what? Where would we, where would we be? at now if we just didn't, didn't worry about trying to sound like one album, trying to sound like another album, you know, take the energies from both albums. I don't want to repeat. Dark Angels never repeated an album, so why would I do that now? So really about the only thing that we can do is what would we write here in 2025? What kind of music should we be putting out in 2025? Dark Angel music? Definitely. Um, is it a copy of anything we've ever done? No, but does it sound like Dark Angel? Absolutely. You know, none of our albums have ever sounded alike. You know, I'm not sure how familiar anybody is with, you know, deep dives on any Dark Angel record, but no two albums have ever sounded alike. So this one doesn't sound like anybody like any other Dark Angel record. So, and in that regard, then, then cool, you know, we're, we're staying true to our own vision in terms of, you know, trying to evolve.

from album to album and it took 34 years from albums for the last evolution to this but you know i i i'm really excited about the record i'm super stoked with it i'm i'm i'm very proud of every single song on here so great any single song is is you know you could check it out and go damn killer you know good representation awesome man yeah you've lived a hell of a live gene yeah you've always seemed to put always had your own vision always uh just played what you wanted to play it's cool thank you very It's cool, man. How do you feel about the artwork now? I love the artwork.

I love it. I'm a huge fan of it. Okay. My management has been telling me that people have been crabbing about the artwork because there's AI involved. There's AI elements involved, but three years ago I got together with my artist Kane Gillis and said, create something awesome. I don't care how you do it.

Take whatever approaches you like. And so are there AI elements? Yes, there are. But he also has done a ton of painting to each artwork. And that's one thing that I'm stoked about is that on our, like our deluxe editions, we have artwork that is for each panel of each song. We have its own dedicated artwork. Oh, nice.

And so somebody who's telling me really recently that they're like, you bands just don't do that you know where you got you know it's like you've got some cool artwork that you know just kind of slittered throughout your record but each panel has its own like living artwork to itself and so there you go I love our artwork because it's just like

it looks kick ass to me and I know how much work Kane put involved and you know Kane said there was over oh god what was 20,000 man hours or 2,000 hours that he's put into this where he did a lot of CGI painting to things there's photography elements involved in all of this. And there was a ton of work.

I believe that from what I've heard from my management is that people want to say that like maybe we were too cheap to hire an artist, that's incorrect. That, you know, I'm not sure necessarily how AI works for people, but all I know is this was not a simple or easy process. This was not like you type in a little sentence and then, out comes this beautiful piece of artwork. Yeah. Nothing.

Like it wasn't that simple at all. And so that's why, you know, I don't tell other people how to run their, their biz. I don't tell people how to, you know, especially if I don't know how it works. I can't, I can't tell the guy that puts a roof on or does HVAC or, you know, it puts in heating systems or plumbing systems. I can't tell that guy how to do his job because I don't know anything about it. So I can't tell him, you know, I don't, I won't profess to know anything about it.

And, you know, if there are some people that don't like something we do, hey, there's my shirt. I'm wearing that shirt right here. Kick out. Look at that. This is my first time seeing any of this, man. That's how bad ass. Yeah, I don't see a lot of this stuff.

I don't pay attention to social media, though. I don't, I know. Not at all. Better off that way. That is what I am told. That's what everybody to a person says. Like, you're way better off, not, not being involved. I'm I mean, I'm fascinated with those who have the time to devote to it.

Way to go. If you got time to take a picture of your, you know, meatloaf that you just made or whatever and put it online or whatever. I'm out there living the life. I don't necessarily, you know, have the time to document it, you know. I know I should have probably filmed something like earlier. I was with, I should be filming this. I should be taking pictures here.

I'd be showing this and all that kind of stuff. I don't. You know, my management says, hey, get content. And I'm like, yeah, sure, no problem. And, you know, once every two or three weeks, I'll take a picture of, you know, here's, here's me and one of my buddies. You know, hear me and Paul from, you know, Carrie King. You know, there's Paul Bostap.

Here's a picture. Yeah. That kind of that. I don't do it enough. But, you know, if somebody wants, feel free to attack me all you want, attack Dark Angel all you want. It, you know, truly love. I love, truly hated.

I'm okay with either. It doesn't affect me. So, people, you know, hey, the argument could be made is these are the same people that, you know, they stole my livelihood. 25 years ago when they started streaming and stealing music and making, you know, music be for free. You know, I mean, I wasn't out there complaining when it's like, hey, wait, we, we, albums cost, you know. A lot, thousands and thousands. of thousands of dollars tens of thousands six figures to make records even at this small yeah and nobody seems to care about that so why am i going to i mean i'm just i'm just understanding

how it is i would listen to somebody who wants to you know virtue signal on what i should be doing and that's why i i love our i love our artwork and i love it like i said i told kane come up with it, however you need to come up with it, and he took three years to do it of hard work. So if anybody wants to tell me anything otherwise, feel free. Is that going to affect any of my future decision? I don't believe so, you know, my management and I might butt heads on certain things when it comes to that sort of thing. But I have my vision and I love everything about like, look at that artwork. That's some kick-ass T-shirts.

It makes for killer shirts. So I'm excited. Yeah, it's kind of hard to, because you're just doing what you've always done, and that's what originally makes people a fan of you. And then when you keep doing the thing that you always done, people say, well, I don't like that. It's like, well, you were a fan of this.

I'm just doing the same thing. You're a fan of me because I'm just me. Right. And so what is this? No one really knows where it starts and where it ends. with that in mind it's okay for me it all starts and ends right here and so whatever i feel strongly about and whatever i don't feel strongly about that is going only this is going to affect what goes into the music the artwork the the songs the shows the the everything the whole approach it all comes

from here for me. And I've, since, since I did have a start unlike anybody else that I know. Yeah. You know, I've got a vision and I've had a vision that I have had, I'm 57 years old now. So I've had this vision for 44 years. And wow. It's never stopped. It will never alter.

It will always be this vision. The only people I will listen to are my close-knit, my guys in the band, the management to a large degree. A lot of times we'll butt heads on things. We will go and go and go. And it's like I just watch, watch my vision. I have the vision.

It's okay. And sometimes my management will be like, shut up. We're doing it this way. I'm like, okay. I'm willing to work in that regard. So, you know, that's, that's where it goes. And we're all cockroaches.

We're all going to survive. All of us musicians, we all know how to work our way, you know. It's true. 25 years ago, you took our livelihood away. I'm to the point where, you know, 25 years ago, what was I? I was 30 years old, 32 years old. I'm like, ooh, we're starting to sell some records here with whatever band I'm in where I'm going to be like, oh, I get to make a little bit of.

money on this. That's going to be nice because I never, you know, shoot, you make money however you can. It's like, nope, that's gone in an instant, you know, the Napster, the streaming, the, all that took that. I didn't complain. I didn't say anything. I'm like, okay, well, I'll figure out a way to work it around this way, you know. And as you know, being in a band, people are just like, well, go out and sell merch then. It's like, well, you do understand that, you know, merch is pretty expensive to create. You know, it's not like, how come you guys sell your merch for this much money? It's like, because we are kind of forced to, you know, like with to try to cover costs and recoup and things like that, you know.

That's why, you know, that's one thing that since I've had to become a, a band owner, you know, for so many years, I was, I was, I was, I was, just a drummer in a band, you know, like whatever band I was playing with, I'm just, I'm just a, a guy in a band. So now that I am looking over contracts and things like that. And 25 years ago, I was in interviews. I was talking about, hey, every club that you play, they take 20 to 30 percent of your merch.

And that is wrong. You know, that. So if you're a club and you're going to take 20 percent of my, band's merch, I want 20% of your bar. I've been saying that for years and years in. So just four or five years ago, you know, Live Nation has come across with like we're going to rescind that 20% as you might know. You know, you play some venues that don't take that percentage of merch.

These days, boy, I will tell any one of my friends or my colleagues in any band, read your gig contracts. get to know your gig contracts. I never saw a gig contract ever and I've been in this industry forever until just a few years ago. I call it the left side of the page. Take a look at your gig contracts.

Like just every person in a band that's out there playing and making money or getting paid money, take a look at your gig contracts and see how much money you do not make. Like there is so much that, like take a look at the left side of the contract you know like it is mind-boggling how much money every band loses like for if you are charged like if you're a 50 dollar concert ticket as a band

you are making this much of it but there is somebody making a whole lot of money off that and it's all there in the contract how little money the band is making but how much money the promoter is making all these mystery charges that happen. Like I say, they're all there in the contract. Mystery charges, ASCAP charges, BMI charges. You could play a show in Dallas, Texas, and the BMI ASCAP charges, publishing charges, $2,500.

You can go an hour and a half south, go to San Antonio, and those BMI ASCAP charges are $50. You know, like I can understand if some, What the heck is a BMI ASCAP charge in the first place? But, you know, I could see if it's a, if it's a statewide thing or it's like, okay, it's going to charge $2,500 in Houston, it's going to charge $2,500 in Austin, it's going to charge $2,500 in Dallas. They're just random, you know, and that's where I, you know, our band's getting soaked in other ways that they have no idea about. absolutely absolutely so now i'm to the point now it's like take my 20% take take it give me all that stuff

on the left side of the contract all those crazy ass mystery charges you know you're gonna charge us a thousand dollar fee to put up the barrier in front of the the club i'm in front of the stage that you pull the barrier out of the corner for wait you're there's a typical nonsensical charge, you know, that kind of thing. I'm sure there'll be club owners and promoters and all that stuff that will take me to task for it. But that's all I'm saying, man, all of my friends in the industry, you're going to be like, yeah, keep my 20%.

Keep it. It's okay. Take it. Give me all that multiple thousands of dollars on the left side of the contract, you know? Yeah. So there you go. That's one thing I've learned. I used to be a drummer.

Now I'm going to be this business owner and business person and all these elements that I never expected to be involved in that are very eye-opening, you know, very. And I only have my eyes open because I happen to, you know, how often do band members get to see the actual gig contracts? Yeah, you have to ask for it. Yeah, you can't have to pull teeth. Right.

Actually, can I see it? Yeah. Yeah. It's not something that somebody's go, oh, by the way, Chris, here, this is what, tonight's contract, you know, nobody's ever going to tell you that. I just happen to see them because I'm, I'm the owner, you know, I have, I have to see these things. And, you know, it is nuts.

So, yeah, keep your 20%, give me the rest. Then we're talking. Yeah. Yeah, it's good that, that you've been doing that. I didn't, I'm, I'm 39 now. I don't read my first contract until I was 35. So, right. I'm only, I guess you could say, I've, I've only been.

this for like four years. Indeed. Technically, I'm a whole other person now. And so it took years to get out of that. Oh, I'm just a, I'm just at this person. Right. Because you're like, you just want to do this, but to order to do this, you just become this other, I'm a other person now.

Then you understand, you know, you did not expect this. It's been, it's been tough. I learned, yeah, 20% is a way different than 30% and 5% here, 2% there. If all those little percentages add up, Mm-hmm. That's a lot of money. Absolutely. And that's...

I'm under the hardware. And that is one reason why I have a... You know, I'm not very inclined to listen to somebody who has no idea what you have to go through, what I have to go through. Sure. I want to comment on what they think is reality. You don't know reality. You don't understand. So that's why I can't really, you know, I can't tell you how to coach your football team.

Tell me how to coach mine You know You fucking suck dude Right So Gene I heard a story And this is either going to be a great story Or a cabam But so

I was looking at I was looking at the timeline I was trying to line up the stories Someone told me I heard that I want to say mid-noughties You were practicing drums In Garden Grove

You were I think wearing You were practicing in boots and weights on your ankles. I still do, yeah. Okay, cool. And so did you have a spot in Garden Grove? Is that Garden? Yeah, it was Stanton.

No, not Stanton, but yeah, yeah, right, right over there. Because it was D.C. Spark Studio, backstage studio, yeah. That might, that might have been it, because Corn was writing, life is peachy. Right. And they, and they, them and I guess Ross Robinson is actually where I got the story from. He mentioned that they would see you practicing. at a time where double bass wasn't exactly popular in that specific time. And then they said how much they respected you for still putting in that work,

even though it wasn't exactly like the thing to do. Very nice. At that moment. Is that true? Indeed it is. Yeah, they were doing life as peachy there. And, you know, Ross and I, we played many, many shows together back in the day. He was in a band called Day.

De Taunt. De Taunt. And then after De Taunt, he was in this great band called Catalepsy. There has since been another catalepsy. But I just what, I searched out Ross's catalepsy on on every YouTube, every sort of everything I could. I finally found it on Spotify. And so there was a great three song demo that he had done.

Obituary Fear. A number of other. Yeah, three other songs. Two other songs. Anyway, great, great band. I just, there it is. Look at that. Oh, sick.

I had the evil within an offering an obituary fear. Yep, what a great demo. I had that exact same one. Ross had given it to me back in the day. What a great band that was. Very great vocalists, great riffs, killer stuff. But yeah, I remember they were there at the time. And I remember they all had matching vehicles.

Oh, really? Like matching, whatever, Mercedes. Benz's or BMWs or they're like 5, 5, right, right? You know, it's just a little, you know, industrial complex and a nothing complex. And yeah, so

yeah, they were there rehearsing. I remember Ross had talked up a little bit about the thing and I I have since my Lara's mother, my mother-in-law, mama chicken she is a fan

of Ross Robinson's mother. Oh yeah, Byron Katie. Byron Katie. Yes. And she had read somewhere that, you know, Byron Katie has a son, a rock and roll producer. And she's like, I'm not familiar. Let me look on this.

And she happened to look on YouTube and saw the, saw that YouTube episode where Ross is showing the picture that he had. what you might call it. He had, if you Google Ross Robinson's junk, oh yeah, yeah, yeah. And he had a painting commissioned. I had no idea about that.

Oh, yeah, yeah, I forgot. Yeah, it's all this, yeah, that if you just. Yeah, there's like a massive pain of you. It is insane, yeah. And now I would, I, I know it's a few minutes into it. I'm like it got, you'll see it. You won't miss it. Oh, no, it's fucking massive.

I forgot about that, Gene. Me too. I wasn't even thinking about it. It's a big fucking painting, dude. That's pretty crazy. Was that, is that it? Yeah, there it is. Oh, there it is.

Yeah, there it is. Gene, I forgot about that painting, dude. You know, what's kind of funny is, your guy, Mark, and Dan came up to me a few months ago. Of course he told me. Wow. And they were like, is this true?

You know, like, Ross was telling us this. I was like, I, I had no idea. Like, this got sent to me like just a couple of years ago.

A couple years ago? Yeah. I don't, I have no idea how old this is. I never knew any of this. But I do remember, you know, corn being there.

And Ross was telling me one time. He was like, yeah, we were listening to you when you had, because that's where, that's pretty fun. I haven't changed.

But still got the, look and say yeah god that's really fun there you go same dude only with headphones now i've had this looks and i could show you pictures of me when i was 14 i looked this exactly fuck yeah dude but that's you man that's pretty amazing yeah and mama chicken was just like did you know about this i'm like i've no idea you know but i've known ross forever man ross is great and uh you know i loved catalepsy they were really good but he was saying that yeah we would he was telling me about this sort of era and that's when Devin and I were in that same studio for just a couple of days.

We were rehearsing the strapping album, City. Oh. You know, that was a pretty brutal record, you know, pretty amazing album. And so, you know, Ross was saying that we would stand outside your door and just listen to you, you know, you're just roaring through this double bass and Devin's in there just, you know, ripping on guitar and screaming along and all. this sort of stuff and and David Townsend. Yeah. Okay. And so that was pretty darn fun. So, um, we weren't there very long. You know, Devin and I were only there for, you know, a day here and there kind of thing. We didn't rehearse the city very often. But I remember there was a

truckload of shoes brought in for corn. Like, like, like just where that office. It was a tiny little office. I know it was a tiny little, little studio and stuff. And, and, um, got sent a few. And, Shoes. That's dope. Right. They were just, they were just like just stacks and stacks of whatever. Adidas, I would imagine, you know. They got a lot of shoes sent to them there.

That was really fun. But, yeah, there you go. So I was trying to look at like the timeline because they're writing that. It's probably early 96, late. Okay. So I was like, okay, so. March of 96. Okay.

So I'm thinking, okay, Gene. already did symbolic. Is he out of the banner rating already going into the next thing? Yes. Okay. And actually that was right around the time when, you know, it wasn't that far before that when I had gone to that doctor and he had said, hey, you figure out what you need to do about your stress levels.

Oh, wow. And that's because I was in between death and hadn't had strapping yet. So, oh, shit. I was just trying to figure out what am I going to do? do in this little downtime and that's when I decided to um to you know start giving drum lessons you know just to bring in some income kind of thing and that was my that was my stress it's like okay you're not on tour you're not with a band you're not you have no direct um uh you know direct anything on the books at the moment so you know stressing a little bit about oh yeah finances so

and that's when i was like that's when i put together the okay go down to you know backstage studios over there in Orange County and just do some, hey, that's really fun, too. Look at you there. Wow. That's a 17-year-old gene right there. That's me as the executioner there. Oh, wow.

That's pretty fun. Yeah, Savage Grace. That was another band that I did lights for. They played a million shows with Slayer back in the day. And Savage Grace. Right. Okay. I remember they had asked me to join.

They went over and played like one of the early Ard Shock festivals, which was the early dynamo festivals, which is that's one of the godfather festivals, European festivals, went away for a lot of years, has recently come back, and I remember they went over and played. That was in 85,

and Metallica was debuting a new track from the next record, disposable heroes. They were playing that on tour eight months before Master of Puppets was out. I remember getting a bunch of tapes from that. Yeah, I just, I remember Savage Grace going over there playing a lot of shows with Metallica over there.

Yeah. Kind of thing. And they asked me to join and they were like, it was kind of like a spinal tap moment. They're like, you just, you don't think this thrash metal thing is going to go very far. So I think you got a better shot at playing with us because they were just, they were not quite trash. They were kind of a speed metal iron maiden kind of thing. So anyway, Savage Grace. Pretty fun.

That's awesome. I have stories about everything. Oh, fuck, yeah. So did you, okay. So were you working on? this record when when corn was doing peachy yes i'll say okay i'm gonna i'm gonna jam this did you uh do you happen to listen all to what they were doing in there no no not not at all you weren't you weren't curious no i thought you'd be like what the fuck they're doing in there sounds like shit

well you know the one thing that that was was um the owner of the studio rob glonia i remember his name. Dude, your memory, my goodness, dude, this keeps going. Well, I remember it was in the middle of all their rehearsals and he took me into their room and he just, he just opened his room and he's like, look at this. They, they turn that room into an absolute pigsty. Pigsty, like garbage and rotting fruit and fast food carcasses just laying away. He's like, they, they. These motherfuckers are fucking slabs. Look at this fucking shit.

They're leaving. I'm going to have to charge these guys $1,000 for clean-up fee. I'm like, well, sure they'll pay it. You know, I don't see any problem with that. But yeah, that was, that's what I remember about them being there. And I just remember, like, the fact that Devin had already done that Steve By record that he did, which was whatever album Devin did with Steve By, dang it. Sex and Religion, I think it was. Killer record had a great video.

Great video for, I remember the song was down deep into the pain. Great video. Devin looked amazing in it. And I remember reading very recently after that how Corn was very influenced by Steve By. Oh, yeah. When it came to the seven strings. And I was like, I bet you they had no idea that that was, you know, that kid playing guitars, they were listening.

I remember when Ross would tell me, yeah, we stood outside your door and we listened to you guys ripping it up. And that was the only band I was playing with with, just Devin. And, you know, I was like, I bet you they had no idea that that was the guy from Steve By, you know, because it was just some, I don't even think they knew it was Devin at the time. Oh, Devin was a pretty unknown kid at the time. He had done that Steve By record. And that was about it. A fucking haircut. Right.

Look at that haircut. Right. If you're listening, I'm sorry, I can't describe Devin's haircut. It's fucking unbelievable. Right. Pre-skullet. A skullet? Like a dreadlocked skullet?

Well, that's what he evolved into. Like, if you look at Devin's skullet, yeah. And he had the dreadlock skullet there going. And I remember he would refer to his head as, my head looks like an ostrich egg wearing a hula skirt. And you'll see some picture of the dev back in the skullet era of the alien era. Oh, I had the alien era. That's like the Devon.

Yeah, you'll see the skullet. There's a skullet right there. I had a boy. Right there. Get it, dude. Fucking get it, dude. How long were you in strapping? God dang, that was a dozen years, essentially.

Yeah, that's a while, huh? And, you know, there was a period where there wasn't quite a strapping, but there was definitely a lot of Devin Townsend stuff. So, you know, Devin and I had done a lot of work together, absolutely, you know. Gene, you mentioned a, uh, a lot of work together. Actually, it might be this era. You mentioned that there is metal had a lot of lean years. Indeed. And you and you kept putting out records.

Like it just like it didn't matter if it was like trendy or not or like the or went through it go low. You just like you throughout the lean years are just going to keep putting out records. Indeed. Absolutely. When when, when, what year is that actually? When you were like, oh, this is like. Fuck.

Well, for. For me, like, it just, it just never went away, you know, like a lot of people kind of, I remember when, when, you know, grunge got big. And I remember, like, hearing Nirvana's bleach in, I remember getting in advance of that in 1989, I think it was when that album came out. And I had the advance cassette of that. I was like, there is so much thrash metal involved in this. Listen to a song like negative creep. That is a thrash metal song. And there is so much like riffage that just reminds me of thrash riffage with a little bit of the garage.

I mean, there was no grunge. It was called garage rock back in those days kind of thing. And there's a bit of that, you know, DIY garage sort of mentality. They're not playing overloaded, distorted guitars. I'll tell you really interesting, really fun story. That is my friend Jason Everman who is on right there. Really? Yeah.

And what you see that circle that is on his? guitar on his telly there yeah that circle there I was like he's a good friend of Byron from Strapping and I see Jason as much as I can he's an he's an awesome awesome dude he did the Joe Rogan show a few years ago he's a fascinating individual Jason Everman he went from that he went from Nirvana to SoundGarden but that I was asking hey what's that sticker on your guitar he's like well that's actually not a sticker that is an an inlay of Venom's at War with Satan album. Oh.

So Venom is represented on Nirvana. Oh, wow. It's an inlay of that. He turned it into a, like that thing right there. That, that CD right there. Oh, wow. That is what is on that. Jason is OG thrash metal.

And if you look right down there, that is King Diamond, right where the arrow is? Yeah. Somebody pointed out that that is a sideways picture of King Diamond right down there. If you see the actual photograph of this, I never saw that. But, yeah, so that's pretty damp. Yeah, Jason went from Nirvana to Soundgarten. He then played in Soundgarden for a number of months.

There's a lot of photos of him with Soundgarten. Oh, there it is. Look at there. Oh, you found it. Come on, blow it up. That duct tape job is fucking gnarly. Oh, wow. That's what he was saying.

It was. There you go. What an eye. Oh, there you go, King Diamond, right there. There it is. There is. Somebody pointed in arrows or somebody else pointed that up. What a, wow.

How cool is that? Man. But that was full thrash metal to me. And I could be mistaken, but I thought Byron had mentioned, Byron from Strapping, who was Pals with Kurt Cobain? I remember Kurt stayed at his house a few times. And I remember Byron's mom saying, I didn't like that Kurt kid very much. But I think Byron was telling me

who turned him onto darkness of sins from Dark Angel, I think. Oh, wow. So I was like, okay, I always thought that there was so much thrash metal involved in so much grunge, you know? And that's where I felt. And so when people were asking me,

did grunge kill metal? Did grudge kill thrash metal? I was like, oh, you know, if anything, death metal killed thrash metal because, I mean, Oh, interesting. Thrash metal was always the heaviest thing around when thrash metal was doing thrash metal. And then all of a sudden came, you know, death metal, a little level up in the extremities.

Get that with the blast beat, grind core, a lot of stuff like that. And so that's where I, you know, I was like, God, grunge didn't, grunge was influenced by thrash metal, you know. I remember, I remember meeting Lane Staley once. Terry Date introduced me to Lane Staley once. at one of those concrete foundations forms, it was this convention that would go on every year in Los Angeles. And Lane's sale was when Terry was like, Jean's in Dark Angel,

I'm doing their record right now. And he's like, Dark, is God, I love you guys, man, I saw your show at the underground up in Seattle. And,

you know, I love your vocalist. And I was like, ironic, you know, you and my vocalists sound very similar together, you know, so that was,

that was pretty neat. So we were definitely getting a nod from the grunge guys for thrash metal. But, you know, I mean, grunge was, grunge came along and there was nothing wrong with it. I mean, Soundgarden was my favorite band in 1988, 89. Was it? They were amazing. Yeah, they're like, they're FOPP, and then they put an ultra mega okay in late 88. What an amazing album that is.

And, you know, the next one, louder than love, that was a great record. Allison Chains' face lift, that was a great record as well. And, you know, I became pals with Kim Thiel back in, you know, he came to our Seattle show, you know, and we became pals then. And I'd go to all the Soundgarden shows. They were playing tiny clubs in Los Angeles, like Jezebel's, you know, around the corner from here, you know, like right up the 22. what, pee bodies or wherever it was, Jacobs, just trying to, Joshua's parlor, you know,

like tiny, tiny little venues. And, you know, I've been pals ever since. And, you know, when there was those lean years, lean years, I guess, it was always really easy to see that this was all cyclical. It's all going to return. If something goes away for a while, it's going to come back at some point.

So I remember when I stepped away from Dark Angel. I was like, oh, hey guys, we're going to reunite in, you know, 10 years. And we're going to come back and we're going to play shows bigger than ever. And everyone was like, sure, Gene. But sure enough, you know, took us 20 years. And I don't know whole other fucking decade. Right.

Yeah, but it happened though. Absolutely. So there you go. And that was, you know, it's really easy. If something goes, look it now. I hear that new metal is making some kind of, Resurgent. Now, yeah, that's great.

There you go. And it's, it's real easy to see, you know. There's, there's, there's no, no Stradamus. I used to be a really good Nostradamus when it would come to bands. I would tell people, check out this Nirvana band, check out Soundgarden, check out Allison Chains and all these bands. Check out this typo negative man. They're going to be killer. I didn't expect typo negative to change their sound and do what they did.

And they became even more massive than. Oh, wow. I thought they were going to ever because I was a huge fan of slow, deep, and hard. which is nothing like their swans influenced later material, the October rust and whatever the black number one. Yeah, sort of big, big Gothic era that they had. Bloody kisses, that one. You know, that sort of thing, you know, I'm such a fan of music that, you know,

it didn't take a real Nostradamus to say, hey, what's big, 20 years ago is going to become big again. You know, that seems to be the way things go. And that's, that's fair. Thrash metal has had its resurgence, you know, now most of the, most of the folks you see at the shows, all the folks that you see in the pit are all the young little 20 year old dudes with have the battle jackets. And, you know, my dad turned me on to you guys kind of thing, you know? So we're grateful for all of it. So there you go.

Yeah, that's cool. You having the perspective of hindsight, Gene, what, do you have like a, um, you have like a, um, you have a, your own version of like a like best thrash bands like you know like a top you know I don't know favorite one like a top five or something I know I I know I might have some kind of contrarian viewpoint to to others but I mean I thrash aggressive thrash metal is my favorite style of metal you know it's my favorite kind of of metal and you know however a lot of my favorite thrash fans like an all-time classic thrash album for me is artillery's terror squad that's a beautiful perfect thrash metal album i feel it came out and you know tragic cover

and everything but what i think that's a rat and i think they're on a subway and i think it's some cops and maybe it's a surgery guy and who knows what's happening with that cover but boy let me tell you, the music is the antithesis to that cover because the music is full quality, kick-ass, riffy thrash metal. It's awesome. The vocals are great. The singers named Fleming Ronsdorf, and he's a great vocalist. You know, he doesn't sound like anybody else. And there was another band from Chicago called Cyclone Temple. And in 1991, they put out an album called I Hate, Therefore I Am. that is an all-time classic that is such a band tat like there it is boom boy that is some guitar rhythm savagery rhythm guitar savagery on that one uh played by by a by a man named gregg fulton

who is six foot eight and he is a giant human being and um and he was in a band called snow white they've been on a few compilation records and they had a they had a career going but that is a great record that got great vocals on it. I believe the vocalist there is the guy sitting there at the bottom. His name is Brian Trock. I believe his name Trotch or Truck. And oh, there you go. It's Brian. I've never known how to spell his name. I just assume was Trach. T-R-O-C-H. produced by a guy named Tom Suarez from like the Connecticut era. And that guy was a great producer. He had a great ear and He just had really killer sounding tones. Wargasms, Y, play around, also produced by him.

Great production. And another classic, classic, it's not quite thrash, but it is just an absolute classic album, is Chromag's Alpha Omega. Okay. That is just like the vocals on that, Harley Flanagan, my word God, he just did the greatest vocal job.

Yeah, that's the photo from the record there. beautiful. Like, I know they give John Joseph a lot of, uh, credit for the vocals on there, but I don't think that's John Joseph singing on that. It's definitely Harley. Harley has one of the most, one of the most amazing soulful thrash metal voices, just like the vocals on this album are amazing. The rifts on this. It is such a riff-tastic album. Like for a guitar player, man, like you, like, the riffs are just insane. Like, great guitar playing. on there. And great drumming from Dave DeSenzo. You know, he's now a teacher. The drummer on the left there, he's now a teacher over at Berkeley. And so, you know, the drumming is great on it.

Great, great production on this album. You know, so there's so many classics. And of course, you know, you got all the, all the, the standard classics from everybody, you know, like all the, you know, like when it comes to, like when it comes to a Slayer record, for instance, my, my favorite is haunting the chapel because that was like a large elevation like from you know show no mercy and it's a pretty common you know story now that i i made my vinyl debut on on show no mercy on the opening track evil has no boundaries yeah is it true you're holding down the carpet no i was holding on this one i was holding down dave's drums because there was no carpet oh okay that there was no It was.

Yeah. There's no carpet. I was like, I was saying, what, holding carpet or holding nor carpet? Okay. Yeah. And it was just like, you know, Dave was out there tracking, you know, he was, he was about to start tracking. And, um, and he, you know, one minute into playing the first song was, was, you know, which I think was chemical warfare. Um, you know, he was, you hear him yelling from the other room saying, hey, kid,

somebody, you know, my drums are walking. Can somebody come in and, you know, just hold my drums down. And sure, like six heads turn and look at me. Oh, you know, like, hey, you're the drummer here. You know, you go do this. And so I've told this story many times where I'm down on my hands and knees and I got my hand, my arms going between, you know, Mike stands and symbol stands and Tom stands. And I'm holding

on to his drums. And the intro to show no mercy is, the intro to chemical warfare is, you know, the tom's right here, bled-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d. And that, you know, that tom... Actually, his tom color was about the color of that ceiling up there,

that little purple color. And I'm looking through his tombs. He had clear drumheads that were kind of purple. And, you know, I just see that stick right there. And I'm just like, oh, my God, Dave. if, please get this done in like one or two takes because I'm gonna die you know if I have to listen to like you know if I'm gonna have to be here for like you know 15 takes or something I'm gonna die this is gonna

kill me and you know nailed it in one take and then did one quick safety take after that and uh but that's how I always remember the song chemical warfare from slayer that's how what I always see in my head just Dave Tom my Dave stick really lit that that that you know oh my goodness right about my So I've got a neat perspective on that song that, you know, nobody else has kind of thing. So that's pretty fun. That's rad. I'm a big fan of Fear Factory. I was curious how how that time was for, for you.

Because I heard, like, the first two weeks were kind of, like, a struggle trying, trying to jam those songs. For me, yeah, because I hadn't played drums in, like, eight months before that, because I was working on this record that was keeping me in the studio for a long time. I was like, oh, man, if it's genome, I wonder what the gig had before that. Because, yeah, I think, like you mentioned that, he didn't have the double bass chops. No, not at all, no. And, you know, because I had spent a lot of months on the guitar playing side of things with an album that I was working on called Lifeer from the band,

Meldrum and that had taken up all of my time because I was playing a lot of guitar and bass on that. Laura Christine and myself, we were doing all the guitar and all the bass on that record because our guitarist, Michelle Meldrum, who was the guitarist in War God, you know, you might recognize her name from the War God era, but Michelle had passed away. And so Laura and I took it upon our to complete the record. And so while we were recording and mixing and doing all that stuff and living up in Vancouver and I wasn't, I wasn't concentrating on gigs at the time when I did, and it's pretty well known. I mean, I pretty much announced that, you know, when Byron from Strapping Young Lad, who was also

playing in Fear Factory, Byron had approached me and said, look, we're struggling to get it together with Raymond, Raymond Herrera. It looks like Raymond isn't going to be involved in this. You know, can maybe you, you know, can you do this?

And, you know, Byron's my brother. And so as a, as a favor to Byron, I was like, sure, you know, because I wasn't,

that, that wasn't quite my, my interest at the time was, was to play with, with Fear Factory. Um, but for Byron, I'd do anything.

So it's like, yeah, okay, well, let me get it together. I remember having all this focus that was outside of hauling double bass, at the time I was also doing a little, quick little project with a band called

Pitch Black Forecast from Cleveland, which also features Jay Man from Mushroomhead, if you're familiar with those guys. But there wasn't a lot of savage double bass. Yeah, that came along a little bit later, but we had, working on that project, as well as the Melton project,

it just kept me from doing heavy-duty double base. So I remember the first couple of weeks were just kind of a struggle. And I remember Dino was just giving me nonstop, you know, like, dude, what's up to you? You know, like, what's up? I'm like, give me a moment. I'll get this.

You know, don't worry. I'll get it. But just if you're expecting miracles right at this moment coming out of the blue, call Raymond, you know, but we got it together. And then by the time we tracked the record, yeah, I got all my chops together, but, you know, we rehearsed it for a number of months and got the,

you know, got it together. And I think, um, mechanized, you know, I thought that was a real good return to form for, for Fear Factory, you know, I think that was a, you know, it was pretty, I think it was a savage record. It's been a long time since I've heard it, but I think it was, you know, it was no slouch in the Fear Factory catalog I would,

I would venture to say, you know. A lot of people have come up to me over the years and just said, hey, God, that's my favorite Fear Factory record. So I want to jam in today. That's sick. Yeah, man, there you go. I remember I had a band called Mechanism. And they were, and that's some of my most craziest drumming I've ever done.

Really? but I remember Bert or Dino or somebody said, hey, yeah, we like that band mechanism. And then all of a sudden the album's called Mechanize. So there you go. Adda boy. Way to go. Hey, Gene, just because it's you.

What's, you have like, what would you tell a drummer? Like, what's like a, what's like advice where you would give to, like, a drummer? As far as, like, playing. Okay. okay, because I would tell any musician, seriously, and you would know this, learn how to read contract.

If this is something you wish to do, learn how to read contracts, get to know that side of the biz. But when it comes to playing, like, as anybody would say, you know, following your own vision, like I come from a background of people telling me, you can't do it. this way. You can't do that. Like playing open-handed. When I was in high school, when I was in junior high and high school, people telling me you're wrong

for doing this. You have to play this. I'm like, why? That's not comfortable. Yeah. Shut up, you know, kind of thing. Don't tell me what to do. And so that's where, um, you know, I, I always felt like

I'm, I, even at a young age, I felt confident. in the fact that it's like, look, I might not know everything, but I do know me and I know what works for me and I know that I'm going to approach everything in ways that work for me. Like, believe me, playing with leg weights

is not the average drummer's approach to things, but I'm like, well, hell, playing with leg weights is going to, you know, it's like training for any kind of aerobic athletic sport. Yeah. You train really tough, and then the actual, you know, the actual game itself is really easy. Like Ron from Dark Angel and he was discussing recently, you know, how Mike Tyson would train, you know, for any sort of boxing match. You know, he would run for 10 miles a day or whatever it was every single day and get his cardio so up that by the time he's, fighting the fight, you know, that's the easy part, you know, the actual fight itself, because

you've done all this training leading up to it. So I utilize all sorts of athletic background. Like I had a baseball background growing up or it got to the point where it's like, you know, I, while I was making all my choices of like, I'm going to do this rock and roll thing for a living, I also had the, you know, the very likely probability that I could have become a pro baseball player. And so a lot of those, you know, baseball approaches I put towards drums. Like, you know, like when, when a batter's in the on deck circle and they're swinging the bat that has the donut on it. Yeah. You know, you swing that batter on. The donut is a, is a, you know, a pound weight. Yeah, there you go. There's an example of one. And you can, right. Swinging that bat around in the,

In the batters, in the on deck circle, there's a classic don't. Yeah, there you go. There's the donuts. The orange things right there. That's the classic donut there. And when you pop that donut off, your bath's a lot lighter. And so, like for me to play with leg weights, I'm sure there's a million shots of me all over the internet with me playing with leg weights on. If I'm playing drums with leg weights on, when I pop those leg weights off, it's the same sort of concept as the batter's donut.

So try to apply that kind of athletic approach. And yeah, there you go. There's some leg weights right there. So there you go. Boy, that looks like, where is that from? Oh, good question. Looks like from probably one of my DVDs, I would imagine. Yeah, maybe.

And so there you go. That's apply that. And another thing I will use, you know, I still have those beater balls. Those are, those beater balls are from my very first. Those are my first Camco pedals. I forget how old. this is, but those pedals I used for 20 years and they were... 20 years.

Yeah, I used the pedals for 20, at least 20, at least 20, 25 years, I think. And then I switched over to the Pearl Red Line series. And so I think this might be, I don't even know what I'm playing. What? Where am I doing this? I have no idea what this is for. So, oh, I can tell, that's Ash Pearson's kit. Okay, well, that is, maybe this is for drummio or something.

Shoot, I don't know. But anyway, so you got the leg weights, and I also use, what I've done now is I'll tape three drumsticks together, and I use those as warm-up sticks. So three of those, those actual sticks there. Three of them. Yeah, I'll tape three of those together, and those are my warm-up sticks. And so I'll just, you know, do a lot of warming up for them. Same concept as the batters donut.

You know, you toss those aside. use other sticks and you can fly yeah you're just your sticks are really light so flying blast beat yeah so that's what i try to that's the approach i try to to use with all that and um you know so yeah there you go that's that's just some big sticks that i'm using right there but um and so i would i would suggest to any young drummer is don't listen to anybody other than yourself like if somebody tries to tell you no or you can't or you know not to sound you know just just trite but you know question authority you know like just because somebody else tells you to do something that you know you're doing this wrong i don't think there's any sort of wrong

approaches. So, yeah, there you go. There's not a lot that, there's no approach where you, you, if you're not, if you can follow your own, what makes you feel good,

what makes you feel right, what makes you feel like, yes, I, I can see my gains, you know, from, from this approach that I'm taking that maybe nobody else does.

Follow that, you know, you can't, go wrong with that. If you're following what your, what your instincts are telling you, I, there's so much of this stuff that's merely instinct, you know, I, I didn't learn from a book. I didn't, I've never taken a drum lesson. I've never done, I am so self-taught, but I've been taught by the masters, by all the, all the records I listened to growing up, all the Neil Peart's and Tommy Aldrich's and Cozy Pals and everybody, Terry Bozios. You know, I'm learning from all these guys. was, you know, getting, getting lessons on, on a song by song basis from everybody.

That's how I was able to learn. So utilize everything you can to learn drums. Like, you know, turn signals are great click track when you're sitting at a left turn and you're waiting to turn, you know, like you turn your turn signal on and that makes a nice click track. And some of the older cars, they would do a shuffle beat, you know, like the, the, the, the, the, signal we tap the dot do that

dot do that do that dot do that dot dot dot dot dot you go into a quick shuffle yeah right you know tap on your thing you know I use everything that I can to to become some kind of

you know just I utilize all approaches you know and you know there's if it feels right you know go with it you know so there's having the approach

music is such an infinite thing that, God, how can people put like some box around something, you know? Even I know, I realize in the music that I tend to play a lot of it is, you know, there's, there's a box involved. I think it's a rather large box, but, you know, they're, the musical infinity that any individual's approach can have at, you know, the sky's the limit, you know, utilize that when you're learning your instrument, you know, like you're an amazing, talented guitarist, as is everybody in your band. Like, everybody's a talented musician.

So, you know, I'm sure you've never felt like, you know, there's a ceiling to what you're allowed to do. No, never. Right, you know. And so that's why there are no ceilings for anything. So just go into all aspects of your musical expression with the fact that there are no ceilings. And how many folks are watching this right now that?

might come up with an approach somewhere down the road that is like becomes canon to us all. You never know. You never know. Right. Yeah. How do you feel about the, I'm what the column double strokes? Mm-hmm. Or like, like, do you remember first hearing those?

I'm like, what, like, what the fuck is that? Well, I, I, I, I, I remember doing some. And I, like, when I was, I don't. don't know, maybe 14. I had somebody, I remember it was a friend of my sisters. My sister was five years older than me. So it was somebody that maybe she was in, she knew that was a little bit older than me. And they were going to give me my very first drum lesson. And I remember on our way out to the garage, I stopped by the, you know, the kitchen was right next to the garage. I remember just as I was about to open up the door to the garage,

our oven was right there, and I did some double strokes, but letty, ledle, ledle, led, you know, some double strokes on the, you know, just did some of those, just really, really, that's a double stroke. Yeah. One two, one, one, two, one, two, you know, just did those really quick.

And the guy, the, the guy that was supposed to give me my lesson was just like, what the hell is that? I'm just like, what, I have no idea. He's like, those are doubles. I can't do those. I'm like, it doesn't sound like it's, it sounds like a pretty basic little, I wasn't even doing anything.

I'm just like, you know, I'm just waiting to, you know, I just that really fast. And it's like, I can't do those. So I don't think I can even teach you anything. And I'm like, okay, well, there goes that lesson out the door. And so I just never took a lesson after that. Oh, sure.

I've given myself plenty of them, you know? Like I'm, I'm constantly, getting lessons. You know, I've even learned how to, like even with the, with the drum, hey, my, my socks met your carpet.

Oh, shit. That's pretty fun. Oh, God, what was I thinking with those socks? Where'd you get those socks? God, probably, Walmart, maybe, who know? Oh, my goodness. What the hell am I doing?

Oh, you can tell, that's a, that's going to be a, that's going to be kind of a shuffle there to some degree. What's this? I have no idea. What fucking beat was that? I have no idea. You're just fooling around, man.

You were just, you were out in a, you, you were somewhere else. Right, yeah, man. That's pretty fun. You were channeling something, dude. Wow. Yeah, I'm not even sure what I'm doing here. What? Double slap technique.

Oh, from drumming. Oh, shoot, man, I barely remember doing this. Yeah, there's Ash. That's my drum son right there. Ash Pearson from Revocation and, Three inches of blood. Oh yeah, shut up. Yeah, man.

He's, I've known as since he was a, since he was a teenager. And I refer to him as my drum son. Oh, hell yeah. Because he's, yeah, he's, he's becoming a legend himself, you know. So that's really cool. And so, yeah, he's been involved

with tons of my stuff that I've done over the years, all the strapping era stuff. Nice. You know, this is back when he's working with Dromeo. And he's playing with revocation now, if you're familiar with them there. Yeah, yeah. You know, ball crushing band,

one of my all-time favorites. That's pretty cool. Hell yeah. But yeah, this, if you have an open mind, that's the most thing I can, you know, don't, that's the most thing I could tell any young drummer is like, use all your influences, listen to everything. Like it's okay if you want to yeah,

bring in a jazz influence or a pop influence or a, uh, if you hear something on your, uh, car turn signal that you could use as an influence. You know, there's, the sky is a limit. So always, always keep a very open mind towards everything. And feel free to use every sort of approach that you can because that's the only way that our, our instrument grows, you know, like all the approaches that are, you know, guys 100 years ago are not using the approaches that we use today. And that's because somebody said, nobody says I can't do this, so I'm going to do this, you know, kind of thing.

So there you go. You can do anything. And that's really what it comes down to. that's beautiful jean um is there uh is there anything that i i might of uh have missed is there anything that that you want out there about dark angel or about or about you well let me see well i guess i suppose i mean like dark angel by the time like this what's this gets aired this coming monday well this monday dark angel we have a brand new record called extinction level event obviously coming out and all I ask is people just check it out, give it a listen.

Thank you for all the, all the stuff that you're showing up on here on it. And one thing that we are also doing, I've noticed a couple of times on the, on the old Okerino there that they're, that you guys are showing our upcoming tour. Yes. The, the extinction level event tour, uh, with sacred rike and hyracks and violence and midnight and boy. Starts of San Diego. Interceptor. And so, yeah, look at.

there boy what a great kickass uh tour this is going to be god we're super excited for it and um you know like like i've said many many times it's like if you just want a really fun kick ass night a badass metal come on out to this you're you're gonna you're gonna dig it and do not be the person that gets the phone call the next day said where were you my god what a great night you know And Dark Angel is bringing a very, very relentless set. That's what we do. We're pretty savage live. So we're going to be playing a ton of new songs off the new record.

So, you know, we just recently completed our darkness descends in its entirety run, which is pretty darn amazing. That's a pretty intense record. And so that was, you know, we've done that. And so now we're ready to move forward with the next chapter. and we're really excited for it. So come on out. Get loud, get crazy. You know, bring your kids.

You know, chances are you are anyway. So that's pretty good. It's a longer run, too. That's way over a month. Yeah, it's about six and a half weeks. Something like it. It's pretty hardy. But yeah, look at all them dates.

Oh, my God, it just doesn't stop now, does it? Who right at this thing? All right. Yeah, there you go. But, yeah, it's going to be. Five weeks. It's long as that longer than five a week. Yeah, it's like six.

Yeah, I think it's pushing six. Something like that. You don't give a fuck. You don't give a shit, dude. Right? And I come back directly from this and start the death to all run directly after. I know. I was looking at a date.

Wait, are these, am I looking at a different year? Yeah, no. And these are just right, directly right after each other. Holy crap. One of the death dates. Those start in early, early November. Yeah, one. So you had like,

see you had like two to three weeks off, huh? About that. Yeah, maybe two weeks off, I think. Maybe. Um, yeah, I'm not quite sure.

Uh, the, the death dates, fortunately, those do start in San Diego as well. Oh, wow. So that's helpful.

That's helpful for the routing. For me anyway, you know, because we can rehearse at our, at Laura and my studio, bring the guys in, do some rehearsing. And that always,

that's always helpful. Yeah. So, uh, yeah, that starts pretty immediately afterwards. and that's going to be with gore guts and our good pals,

Gorguts. So there you go. It's going to be pretty darn awesome. Great. Yeah, so we got the Dark Angel dates and then the death to all dates. Absolutely. And you record out this Friday. That's right. Maybe we could play

because I literally, literally, right when you walked in, I just literally just saw Emo saying if you can play a little bit of it. Okay, bad ass. I'll try to play like, we we could play exactly eight seconds yes let's do this this is crank it where so if you were to pick us

a eight section panger jean where where should we start from okay well let me see I guess you only have what is available on YouTube I would say yes I would get yeah just just anywhere

after the first after the first eight seconds of this song because it start off with the... Alright, this works. Yeah, yeah, crank it. Why does it riff? Sick, dude. There you go.

Well, thank you, Chris. Cool. So this Monday, so new record, tour starts the same freaking day. Right. And you'll be out for, uh, fuck. Forever. Over two months.

I was on like that. You're fucking crazy, dude. Still, still doing it, still not slowing down. That also inspires me, Gene. Huh, excellent. Well, like I say, it's a very, you know, relatively speaking, it's an easy life, you know, like, we get to play music for a living. We get to go on tour for a living. That's that, like, that is such a dream life to have that we just need to, you know, acknowledge that and just accept it.

It's like, hey, we're in a very fortunate position. So, you know, I count my blessings on a daily basis, absolutely. Well, Jane, I'm hanging out with you, man. Honor is mine, Chris. Thank you very much, I appreciate it, man. I appreciate you. All right, one, that's it. Later.