By Andrew Bansal
Based out of New Haven, Connecticut, Hatebreed have been known for their hardcore punk-influenced heavy metal, being one of the very first bands to introduce this style to American audiences, and have translated their songs excellently on stage over their nearly 20-year career with some high-octane live performances around the world. Now, they are ready to release their sixth studio album ‘The Divinity Of Purpose’, on January 25th 2013 in Europe via Nuclear Blast Records and on January 29th 2013 in North America via Razor & Tie. After hearing the entire album a few times, I can say with certainty that fans won’t be disappointed with this one. A few weeks ago, I had a chat with drummer Matt Byrne to discuss the making of the album and the upcoming US tour, among other things. Enjoy the conversation below, and check out Hatebreed on their official website, facebook and twitter.
Recently, you guys did a US tour with Lamb Of God. From what I’ve heard, it was a pretty major tour because they went through a lot of stuff with their singer. So a lot of people would have been waiting to see them, and that must have helped you guys as well.
Yeah, we did three weeks with them in the US, and with all the issues with Randy, I think the band is collectively touring and playing now as if every show is going to be their last show. I think that’s the attitude, and there’s a lot of energy in them. It’s always great to go out with them. We’ve toured with them several times throughout the years and they’ve become great friends. We kind of came up with each other throughout the last ten years, through the music world. We established ourselves as bands together, so we’re great friends and it’s always great to hang out with them. We always have a good time touring with them and it feels like family. The shows are always great. They’re a great band, they’re great players and it’s always a lot of fun to watch them live. They put on a great show. So yeah, that was the last tour we did in 2012. We finished that in the beginning of November, and then did two shows right after Christmas, one here in Connecticut and the other in Poughkeepsie, New York. That wrapped up the year for us.
Right, I heard that the Lamb Of God tour went only through the US and not Canada, because Randy was not allowed to play in Canada or something like that. Is that correct?
Yeah, they didn’t want to Canada because he might have faced issues getting into the country because there’s charges pending and all that stuff. We only did three weeks with them, but I think they were out for a total of six or seven weeks. After our three-week run, the band Hellyeah took our place on the tour. It was through all the major US cities.
So, is Hatebreed going to make up for that and do Canada dates any time soon? Judging from the response I saw from people on various social networks, a lot of them in Canada were disappointed.
I think Hatebreed has never neglected Canada. We try to get there whenever we’re up in that part of the US. We always try to cross the border and play Montreal, Toronto or Vancouver, and in the past I think two or three times we’ve done a tour called ‘Core Across Canada’ where we go from the West Coast of Canada all the way to the East Coast and just go across the entire country. We play major cities and we even play the smaller markets in Central Canada. So as a touring band, we’ve never neglected Canada. Sometimes it’s a little harder to get up there every tour that we do, because of the way the routing is or the amount of time we have on the tour. But if we can get up to Canada and play, you know we will! As we tour on the new album when it comes out, I’m sure we’ll be up there plenty.
Talking of the new album, what can people expect from this one in terms of the music? I think Jamey Jasta described it in four words, saying “All Pit, No Shit”.
Yeah, that’s it. That sums it up great (laughs). But yeah, I think fans can expect a Hatebreed record, and that’s what we do. We’re not trying to make a rap-rock record, there’s not a lot of singing or seven-minute long songs or anything like that. I think it’s the standard Hatebreed formula of songwriting. There’s a lot of fast parts, there’s a lot of breakdowns, it’s all high-energy, it’s aggressive, and we have shorter songs. I think the average is like 3 minutes, whereas in some of the past records where we tried to put a little more ‘metal’ into our music, the song structure might have gotten a little more complicated and in turn that extended the songs. The new record itself as a whole has a little bit of every Hatebreed record as far as musical influence goes, but I think we really went back to the roots of Hatebreed with short, simple, catchy songs that are just fast with some really heavy breakdowns.
That sounds great! These days I think touring has become so essential for bands to make money. Does that make it harder to find time to do albums?
As everybody knows, Hatebreed is a touring band. I mean, we tour a lot. We tour more than most bands do. We’re on the road for the better part of the year, so that doesn’t really leave a lot of time to record or get songs together. When we do set the time aside to start an album, I think a lot of the ideas are already there from Jamey and Chris. They write the guitar riffs and the lyrics, and then everyone else comes in and puts their stamp on it. I do all the drum parts, and everybody puts their inputs into the overall band sound to make it what it is. So, I think the process starts on the road because, you know, we tour so much that we don’t have a choice. So a lot of the ideas come out on the road, and then when we do actually set the time to get into the studio and hash out other ideas, we put the songs together and finally get into another studio to record everything. The whole process comes together kind of quickly, and we’ve been working with each other for so long now that I think the chemistry is there where we feed off of each other and we know how the whole process is going to go amongst us. So it moves pretty quickly.
That’s cool, man. How would you analyze your own drum parts over the past albums you’ve done with the band? Has it changed at all from album to album?
Overall, the core is there. It’s pretty standard, with a lot of punk beats, a lot of hardcore beats, the old D-beat, and the drum parts for the breakdowns are all stripped down, real caveman style. Over the years, I’ve been able to add a little bit of flash here and there. I do what I do, and I’m not trying to take away from what the song is trying to achieve, just so I could shine as a drummer for two seconds. So I don’t want to overplay anything. I play with the part’s need, and I’m able to come up with some creative fills and transitional segways from part to part that kind of throws a little bit of flash in there. Otherwise it’s just heavy, hardcore punk drumming.
You were talking about the fact that the band went back to the roots with this new album, and those were the influences you took for the album. But between albums do you often pick up newer influences through listening to music you never heard before or touring with certain bands?
Oh, sure. That happens all the time. That’s how you progress, that’s how you move forward. You pick up influences from different areas. Newer music you’re hearing, or even referencing back to older music that you might have been into back in the day and you just haven’t listened to in a while. Me personally, I like a lot of funk music. Funk drumming is kind of hard to inject into a Hatebreed song (laughs), but from what I picked up from listening to funk or jazz music, I’ve definitely learnt playing ‘in the pocket’, playing with a strong back beat. I think that shines through in what I do for Hatebreed. There’s a really heavy groove to every song.
Do you think drumming in extreme forms of heavy music has become a little robotic? It’s hard to find drummers with expression.
Yeah, I agree with you on that. Technology has a big role in making everything the same. The production value of a lot of albums is the same. It’s the same drum tone, the same guitar tone, everything is played so clean, and there’s no human error at all. There’s no feel. It’s robotic, it’s mechanical. I think a lot of metal bands are kind of in that rut nowadays. A lot of metalcore bands, specially. Not to say that they can’t play their instruments or they suck. I’m not saying that at all. I just think the recording value, the records in general have a lot of the same things. That comes from technology, in the way records are made these days. I mean, you can play two notes, assemble the rest in your computer and just put it to tape. Well, not to tape. That term is gone! Now everything is digital. Everything’s in a computer. You don’t even have to play your instruments if you don’t want to. There’s bands out there that write the drum tracks in the computer, record their guitars over it and never need to go back and have a real drummer play it. They just keep the computer tracks and that makes everything sound real stiff, and too clean. I like the human error, I like the human push and pull of a groove which you get with the band. That’s the feel of a band, the personality, and not so much being on a metronome. I like music with feel to it, and not things that are mechanical and robotic. I don’t care how heavy it is, I don’t care how technical it is. It’s just not appealing to me.
Exactly! In terms of the kind of music you just mentioned, with error and with feel, can you tell me briefly what such bands you’re into?
Well, I was a heavy metal fan first and foremost. I got into hardcore later, so in my generation I came up on the Bay Area thrash scene, Metallica, Megadeth, Exodus, Slayer, bands like that. That’s what I listened to when I was younger, and that’s what I learned to play on drums. Those are my influences, the faster thrash with a lot of fills. I still find myself going back and listening to that stuff even now. It’s just my favorite stuff. That’s where I come from. Hardcore came later for me, bands like Agnostic Front, Cro-Mags, Sick Of It All, and I think I got turned onto that through my heavy metal friends who went like, ‘If you like that, you’ve gotta check this out!’
Would you say that it’s probably more important for drummers as compared to the other instrument players to have that ‘feel’? Because otherwise people stop noticing drums, as it’s a rhythm instrument. If there’s no human element, it’s taken for granted, I guess.
Yeah I think so. One of the things with drummers nowadays is, everyone’s just chasing speed. Everyone wants to do 375 beats per minute with their feet or with one hand. That’s cool, I mean it’s a true test of human endurance. But after you go that fast, what else can you do? What else have you got? Speed is not the only thing to have in your arsenal. I’m not the fastest guy but I’m more concerned with having a beat-pocket, being able to play a real solid groove, and try to mix that with some complicated stuff, some tasty fills, just some different linear stuff. That’s the kind of stuff that appeals to me. I don’t like to listen to or play everything that’s so fast and so clean that it sounds robotic. As I said, I like the human push and pull of a drummer. I like when a guy is grooving with the beat. He’s moving on his drum stool. It’s almost like he’s dancing with the drums. I don’t want to watch a drummer sitting straight as if he’s got a stick up his ass, he’s not moving at all, and he’s going really fast with just his wrists or ankles. I mean, yeah it’s impressive to a certain extent, but it’s not what I want as a total package in a drummer.
Finally, the album comes out soon, so after that what is the band planning? I believe the US tour dates are already announced ,at the time of doing this interview.
Yeah, we’re starting a US tour a little over three weeks long, with Shadows Fall, Dying Fetus and The Contortionist. It’s a great package, and I think every band is a different genre. Shadows Fall is metal, Dying Fetus is death metal, Contortionist is a mix of all of that, and then it’s us with crossover hardcore metal. As a fan I like to go to shows like that because every band is different and you’re not seeing the same band five times in a row. That would be a boring show. Touring wise, for the same reasons I like to be on tour with bands that bring something different to the table. So that beings January 26th, and our album will come out while we’re on that tour. Once the record is out, it’s standard fare for a working band. There’s going to be a lot of touring in support of it.
I’m sure the US tour will go well for you guys, and I think you’ll have a great show even here in India. Your friends Lamb Of God played a show recently and a lot of people came to see them.
Wow! Yeah, I think we’ve talked about going to India but timing wise it just hasn’t worked out yet with the other dates we’ve been doing. But I know that’s one of our goals. It’s on our wish list. We want to go to India and play for all of our fans there.
The thing is, you can’t really have a one-off show. There have to be other shows around in neighboring countries or something. That’s the problem most bands face, I think. They cannot afford to come here for just one show!
Yeah, it is pretty far. It’s undiscovered territory for a lot of bands. Only a handful of them have ever been to India.
I hope you make it as well. Well anyway, it was great talk to you. All the best with the album and all of the touring activities.
It was great talking to you too. Thanks for the interview!
Related: ‘The Divinity Of Purpose’ Album Review