MELVINS - Interview with Roger " King Buzzo " Osborne by Christine Leonard

Sledding with the Melvins

Grunge's Godfathers finally crack the Billboard Top 200

"Grunge is the ring around my bathtub." ~King Buzzo

The problem with achieving fame and fortune overnight is that it comes with a certain set of expectations that often leaves the artists in question scrambling to top their earlier success. Luckily, this has never been a problem for the much-overlooked hardcore musical act known as The Melvins — until now. Launched last month, the band’s latest album, The Bride Screamed Murder, defied the odds and startled the band by claiming the inglorious last spot on the Billboard 200 pop chart.

“It charted on the Billboard charts at 200, but the amount of records sold wasn’t that many — like 3,000, which we joke is about the number we used to give away and send out for reviews,” says Melvins frontman Roger “King Buzzo” Osborne with a chuckle. “It just means that bad things are on the way and you’d better watch out for other plagues, too, because the end of the world must be nigh. But we’ll be OK — we’re like cockroaches and Tupperware.”

The Melvins have certainly absorbed and digested the slings and arrows of an outrageous 25-plus-year career in the music industry, but King Buzzo is anything but jaded, especially when it comes to finding new and interesting material to conquer. Mining its collective experience for new ways to express its groundbreaking metal-meets-punk-meets-hard-rock sound, the band dug deep to carve this 20th studio outing into something out of the ordinary.

“If you watch The Who documentary The Kids Are Alright, there’s a version of ‘My Generation’ that’s not too much different than ours — and that was our inspiration to do it,” Buzzo says of the new album’s standout tribute. “We thought it was odd that they’d do a cover of their own song and do such a different version of it, you know? We were playing that live a couple of years ago on tour and we’d get our two drummers Dale and Coady to sing the song; we thought that’d be something interesting that we hadn’t done before. It came out good, so we decided to use it as the centrepiece of the new album and pretty much came up with the other songs around that.”

Geared up and ready to face another sweltering summer festival season, the Brillo-tressed Buzzo and company are eager to bring their slothcore goodness to Calgary audiences at Sled Island. Slated to take to the Olympic Plaza stage with a roster of sonic giants including Dinosaur Jr., The Bronx, NoMeansNo and Hot Water Music, The Melvins relish the opportunity to kick out the jams and upend the honey bucket.

“That’s it! That’s the cowboy’s outfit!” says King Buzzo; instantly drawing the parallel between The Melvins’ album Nude with Boots and Sled Island’s unofficial Cowtown-on-the-lowdown dress code.

“We haven’t been up to Calgary for a while, so we’re looking forward to it. It’s at the Saddledome right? Our booking agent said we were playing the Saddledome and that it was some kind of rodeo. I hope so, ’cuz we’ve worked out a special set just for the occasion; including ‘Okie From Muskogee’ and ‘Bob Durkee’s a Dick.’”

~Christine Leonard
Originally published in FFWD Magazine July 1, 2010

GOGOL BORDELLO - Interview with Eugene Hutz by Christine Leonard-Cripps

Full-Tilt Punk Rock Polka Party

Gypsy punks Gogol Bordello get their kicks at Brazilian Carnival

Thriving on the infinite variety of cultures found in their home state of New York, the ragtag group of gypsies who make up the multi-ethnic punk rock sensation Gogol Bordello bring a black market of musical influences to stage with every explosive performance. The band, famous for their dynamic musical arrangements and bizarre theatrical performances, formed in 1999 under the direction of lead singer Eugene Hutz, who had lived the life of a refugee in Poland, Hungary, Austria and Italy after being evacuated from the Ukraine in 1986 following the Chernobyl disaster. Settling in the U.S. in 1993, Hutz joined forces with a group of like-minded musicians largely of eastern European descent. Their collaboration would result in a folk-punk experiment that’s taken the world by storm.

“Big crowds, small crowds it makes no difference to us,” says Hutz, who recently performed a Tom Waits tribute with Primus bass player Les Claypool and Metallica guitarist Kirk Hammett at the Bonnaroo music festival. “We purposefully make a point of playing smaller gigs just so we can bring back that atom-smasher mentality to the big stage. We believe in transforming negatives to positives by getting people to voluntarily take part in the creative process and switch their masks. Some critics keep comparing us to a circus act, just because we wear costumes and have an accordion, which is complete bullshit! We have nothing to do with fucking circuses; everything we do is in a minor key. If anything, what we do is more like a Brazilian carnival.”

In fact, Hutz has been pursuing a newfound love of all things Brazilian. He recently travelled to that country, where he spent some quality time with his friend, composer-musician Manu Chao. While abroad, Hutz discovered a variety of indigenous Brazilian instruments, which he eagerly purchased for his ever-growing orchestra back in New York. Next to hanging out with Sepultra’s Max Cavelera, Hutz reports that the highlight of his South American spree came when Manu Chao introduced him to his favourite band, Mundo Livre.

“I’m already planning my next trip to Brazil,” Hutz reports. “I’m ready for another full-on collaborative vacation. Winter is usually the time when I like to go into the studio to record, and I’ve already written the next album based on the material I worked on in Brazil. That is not to say this will be a bossa nova or samba album. I believe in influences, not flavours. There will be no flavours. It’s more about studying the connections and the textures of being in a place. It is like a documentary taken firsthand and turned into music. My journeys become part of my experience. The universe is expanding and so is me, baby!”

Pushing the envelope and venturing into new artistic realms comes naturally to the intrepid vocalist, who has been tapped by none other than Madonna to star in her directorial debut, Filth and Wisdom. The singer’s charisma makes him a natural choice for movies (there’s already been a film character loosely based on him — the Russian rocker Eugene in 2006’s Wristcutters: A Love Story). Combined with his band’s cathartic sense of humour and an energetic cast of players who deliver a dizzying barrage of musical styles and sensibilities, Gogol Bordello is a folk-punk juggernaut of epic proportions.

Christine Leonard
Originally published October 9, 2008 in Fast Forward Magazine

FEAR FACTORY - Interview with Burton Bell by Christine Leonard-Cripps

Don’t fear the reaper

Fear Factory remanufactures death metal

Churning out alt-metal thrash for over a decade-and-a-half, Fear Factory has earned legendary status among the myriad of industrial bands that emerged in the early ’90s. Founding member and vocalist Burton C. Bell was fresh from his days with Hate Face when he crossed paths with percussionist Raymond Herrera in Los Angeles. The two formed the band’s earliest incarnation under the name Ulceration. They quickly joined the lineup of a compilation entitled L.A. Death Metal and soon thereafter found themselves signed to Roadrunner Records.

Inspired to broaden their horizons the newly formed (and appropriately renamed) Fear Factory began experimenting with remixing techniques and adding new instruments, producers and players to their roster on a regular basis. By 1998 they had released an impressive array of albums including Soul of a New Machine, Fear is the Mind Killer, Demanufacture, Remanufacture (Cloning Technology), and Obsolete, and had established themselves as a force to be reckoned with.

Pioneering a new industrial genre and taking the hardcore scene by storm, Fear Factory continued to push the envelope with a unique esthetic that layers techno-oriented augmentation on top of classic hardcore metal. Dabbling with elaborate remixes of everything from Gary Newman’s "Cars," U2’s "I Will Follow" and Nirvana’s "School," Fear Factory have proven that they are comfortable enough in their own skins to step outside the box and create musical arrangements that appeal to their senses on all levels.

"When people ask what our influences are, I just tell them to look at the songs we’ve covered over the years," explains Bell of the band’s eclectic musical tastes. "It doesn’t matter what genre a piece comes from, we just have fun with it while trying to keep it recognizable. Our music is directed towards people who like everything from hardcore to industrial to new wave to pop."

This past fall Roadrunner Records released a Best of Fear Factory CD that has rekindled interest in the band’s oeuvre and recruited new adherents across the metal scene. By tying together such diverse elements into one intellectually stimulating and physically exhilarating package, Burton and Herrera have seemingly struck upon an inexhaustible well of musical inspiration that has proven to be a veritable fountain of youth. Backed by guitarist Christian Olde Wolbers and Strapping Young Lad bassist Byron Stroud, the group is eager to reconnect with its fanbase and re-establish their presence on the world stage.

"It’s almost overwhelming playing in front of an audience again. We’re revisiting material we haven’t dragged out in 10 years, but people seem to be pretty happy with the results. We usually focus on picking our heavier material, including a couple of tunes we haven’t performed live since 1994. It’s a real trip back to the rack, so to speak," says Bell.

"With our more recent albums like Digimortal, Archetype, and our latest release Transgression, I think one can perceive how our sound has subtly evolved on its own over time – there was certainly nothing deliberate about it."

Accustomed to touring with massive, million dollar productions such as Ozzfest and the inaugural Gigantour, Bell confirms that he is very much looking forward to engaging audiences on a more intimate basis. Hitting the highways with the Machines of War tour along with fellow headbangers Decapitated, Hypocrisy and Suffocation, Fear Factory is more than ready to assume its rightful place as the headlining act in the company of highly capable and compatible peers.

"I think that there are up-and-coming bands out there who represent our genre, but industrial music is not really getting much notice these days," says Bell of the current state of things. "Bands like Ministry and KMFDM are still around, but they’re on the backburner. Young bands that have evolved from the Swans, Einsturzende, Skinny Puppy and Nine Inch Nails are so hard to search out, they’re pretty much invisible and nobody has really made a dent in the scene.

"Basically, I’d have to say that industrial music hasn’t moved forward yet. I think someone needs to step up and take it all the way back to what it was originally about – rhythm and discordant cacophony."


by Christine Leonard

Originally published in FFWD Magazine December, 2006