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In-person interview with John Boecklin of DevilDriver

By Aniruddh "Andrew" Bansal

August 14th 2010, San Manuel Amphitheatre, San Bernardino CA

Andrew: You're playing the Ozzfest kick-off today. How does it feel?
John: It's good, it's not too hot. It's our first time on the main stage, which is pretty exciting. I think we go on at 5.45,which is about two hours from now. It is cool to be with some of the older bands Halford, Motley Crue and Ozzy, who we've never really played with. Although we've played with Priest, I don't think we've ever played with Motley Crue. So it's going to be an exciting moment.

Andrew: Last time I saw DevilDriver was on the headline tour you did earlier this year. Since then what have you been up to, in terms of festival gigs and otherwise?
John: After that tour with Suffocation, we took a couple of weeks off, finished up writing and recorded an album in Texas with Martin Lewis for the fifth DevilDriver LP and it's all done. It's getting mixed right now. We don't have a name for it or anything. Then we went over to do summer festivals and did that for about five weeks. We came back, took a couple of weeks off and now we're doing this. We're just trying to keep the continuity of work flowing, so it's kind of like, the cycle for 'Pray For Villains' is going to bleed right into the new album so no real time off.

Andrew: Talking of that new album, how did the recording process go? How long did it take as compared to the recordings for the previous albums?
John: Relatively all records have taken about the same time except for may be the first one. The first one took a while. But yeah, this time took five or six weeks I think, may be even four. Dez does his vocals separately, so I think it was like four weeks of the music and two weeks for vocals. He has to scream for like two hours a day, so why push it. Vocals take a little bit longer sometimes.

Andrew: In terms of the writing, when did you actually start writing for this album as a band, and do you write your own parts?
John: We started writing right after Pray For Villains was mixed and wasn't even out. Not like it was a chore and something we had decided to go, it was just that we were bored and so we did this. And yes, we write all our own music and everyone in the band writes. We just felt natural and I liked the way it all ended up, trying to squeeze in that six-week period and doing an album. It's in the can and it feels good.

Andrew: You said you started writing even before Pray For Villains was out. So, was some material carried over to this one, something you couldn't fit on that album?
John: No, I don't think there's one riff. There was some stuff that didn't make Pray For Villains, but not one riff on this new album is a leftover. A lot of people were like, 'Why so quick? Hope we're not just getting a bunch of B-sides from Pray For Villains, the songs that weren't good enough'. That's just not the case. This album is really in my opinion way better than Villains in hindsight. Looking back on Pray For Villains, a lot of people thought that it wasn't that heavy. I thought it was at the time, but now when I listen back to it, I'm like 'Umm .. really?' It's not as heavy as we thought it was going to be. This new one is much heavier than Pray For Villains. Not like tempo wise or anything, there's really no catchy, real melodic stuff on it. The European style of metal is not very prevalent on this one. The soloing is, but just not the very melodic stuff. We kind of did away with that on this one, and I like it. It's just a really dirty mean record.

Andrew: That's good to know, specially the fact that it's not B-side stuff.
John: Yeah, it's all new stuff. B-side stuff is really painful to pick up and try to rework. We learnt that a long time ago. It sucked then and sucks now.

Andrew: On that headline tour, you played with extreme metal bands like Suffocation and Goatwhore. Were you able to win any people from their group of fans?
John: I doubt it. I don't really know though. It's hard to tell those things. But, you know, take a band like Suffocation that has been around for 25 years. Their fans are their fans. Some of them are going to walk out after they've played, whatever. Some of them won't and would be curious to see if we actually do anything up there. I don't really care.

Andrew: Yeah, you were headlining so it was mostly your fans anyway.
John: Yeah, mostly our crowd and Suffocation came out with us to try and get our fans into them. They felt they were getting a little boxed in. How many death metal tours can you do? I mean, you can do it for the rest of your life, yeah of course. But if you want to try new things then why not. I think it worked. Our fans are into Suffocation and I think the majority of their fans stayed and checked us out. May be they didn't like it, may be they did but it worked. The tour was a success.

Andrew: You already talked about the musical direction on this new album. So you definitely think it's heavier than the previous one?
John: Yeah, there's a lot less melody and I think on Pray For Villains we brought in some really melodic stuff and Dez kind of wanted to go with that on some of the vocal tone screams and stuff. It was fun, it was cool and now we said, 'Fuck that'.

Andrew: You've been with Roadrunner since your debut itself. How much do you know about the story behind how they discovered you and signed you?
John: Dez was in that band Coal Chamber that's on Roadrunner. So Dez had already established a relationship with that label. A lot of times, they have things called 'first right of refusal' where if you are in a band that's on a label, if you're going to start another project you legally have to present it to them first to give them the option to pick it up. So that was it, they made a good offer and we didn't really continue to look elsewhere.

Andrew: It's good to know how it works. That's why I asked.
John: Yeah, so that's how it worked. Dez already had their numbers in his pocket, but they did have to come out and watch the band play, watch us rehearse and check out the songs, just to make sure that we didn't suck (laughs). But they liked the demo so they flew out to California to watch us rehearse and said, 'Ok, you look like a real band. Let's do it!'

Andrew: You've got Andy Sneap for the mixing of this new album, a process yet to be completed. You must be happy with that. He is a legend in this business.
John: Yes! He mixed one of our albums. It came out pretty top notch. He's not done mixing for the new album. He's still in the middle of it and I'm not worried about it (laughs). He is a legend of course. Since I was a kid listening to metal, he's always had his hands in something I liked.

Andrew: On this Ozzfest you're doing a 45-minute set. What kind of set are you looking at? Is it going to be mostly from Pray For Villains?
John: No, not much off of Pray For Villains, just two songs. In 45 minutes I think we're doing 10 songs and I think we'll try and even it out as much as possible. Personally, I'm really not a big fan of any band when you go and see them play fucking seven songs off their new album, even if I like it. I like it when bands kind of disperse it up and play as much off of everything.

Andrew: What do you think of some of the other bands on this bill, specially the 2nd stage?
John: I'm not familiar with some of them. We just did some warm up shows with Skeletonwitch. I liked from what I saw and heard of them. I'm a fan of Zakk Wylde in general. I'm a man-fan of him for sure (laughs). Kingdom Of Sorrow [not on the San Bernardino date] is cool, it's like a thrashier Hatebreed and I like it. We've done some touring with Kataklysm. I like their music. From where they started to where they are now, I like the direction in which they've taken their music. I think they're getting progressively better and better for my taste.

Andrew: You have a tour coming up next month with Kittie. What are you expecting from those dates?
John: Kittie is a name that goes way back, so I know they do business. The name came up, they were interested and so were we, so we're just kind of trying to make a tour out of having just these six shows for Ozzfest. Instead of coming out and doing just six shows, not really getting your feet wet, we decided to make five weeks out of it (laughs). It was really hard to find bands, with Mayhem and all of the packages going out these days. But it's cool because we've ended up with a band we normally wouldn't be with, and we'll see how it goes!

Andrew: I've spoken to your band mates Jeff and Jon in the past about influences. What about you? Who are you most influenced by? I believe Metallica's 'And Justice For All' holds a special place for you.
John: Yeah, that stuff got me into playing drums for sure. But in general, I have a much broader range like Michael Jackson, Billy Joel, stuff that I was really into before the heavy music, and I'm still very fond of that. But then for drumming, Fear Factory really changed the game for me. In my time and age it was Vinnie Paul, Lombardo and all the typical dudes you would list down. Personally, I'm not really a drummer freak. I don't know every single drummer that started in 1920 and who's good at what. I kind of get lost in drum talk when people start it.

Andrew: Not a drum geek then?
John: No! There you go, enough said. Not really a drum geek. It shows. I've got terrible technique (laughs). I don't care and I'm just having fun.

Andrew: It's good that you're saying that about yourself. Not too many people do that.
John: Yeah, I think I'm good at drums and I think I hold my own, but I'm not really out there to prove anything to anybody. I'm shitty at a lot of shit, but so is everybody. They just don't say it.

Check out DevilDriver's official website.

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