By Andrew Bansal
When it comes to discovering young metal bands with great potential and honing them into establishing successful careers, Los Angeles-based record label Prosthetic Records is doing as good a job as anyone else out there and with a solid selection of incredible talent, Prosthetic is providing quite a service to fans and followers of the heavy metal genre everywhere. Holy Grail, Skeletonwitch, Scale The Summit and Ramming Speed are only a few examples of the pedigree that currently occupies the label’s roster, which continues to grow with killer new signings such as Exmortus, Felix Martin, Niacin, and of course, the one and only Marty Friedman. A few days ago, co-owner E.J. Johantgen spoke to Metal Assault for an interview. Check out the conversation below.
EJ, it’s good to have you on Metal Assault. You guys at Prosthetic are keeping pretty busy these days with new signings, releases and tours.
Yeah! We’re getting ready for a pretty amazing spring and early summer. I get to live my dream and work with Marty Friedman. That’s one of the things I’m most excited about right now, but we have new releases from Trap Them and Castle and a whole bunch of cool stuff that’s going to be announced really soon.
That’s great to hear. I was going to ask you about Marty Friedman. How did that signing actually happen?
I guess purely by accident. We are huge fans here. He’s been really concentrating on the Japanese and Asian market and releasing records there. Stuff’s kind of just been licensed, so it’s just sort of been thrown out with very little marketing behind it. So we got a hold of some titles, we licensed them and put them out there and we got to know Marty. He approached us about putting out a record that would be … more so for the world outside of Japan, that would be the best way to say it, I guess. We jumped at the chance and here we are! I think he made a phenomenal record and people already are really excited about it. Looking forward to it and can’t wait to hear everyone’s reaction! It’s coming out in late May.
Aside from Marty Friedman, you’ve been signing some newer talent as well. You signed Exmortus recently. How do you go about finding these new bands?
We see and hear people talking, we just pay attention online, and BandCamp is great. There’s tons of bands on there that we check out all the time. I think in the case of Exmortus I heard the band kicking around. Their manager told us that they were looking for a deal and we jumped at it. The record’s phenomenal and so far the response has been incredible.
I talk to many local, unsigned bands through going to shows and stuff like that, and a lot of them are obviously trying to get signed. How would you want an unsigned band to approach you? Do you look at submissions at all?
Well, in most cases the bands we sign are the ones who are active and out there working. Exmortus just work, and work, and work. We also want to work as hard as the bands do. If as a band you’re not out there working and honing your craft, showing everyone how great you are, it’s very tough for us to discover you.
The thing I like about Prosthetic is, you have a good set of bands but it’s not too many bands, which can get hard to handle and some labels are guilty of that. Is that a deliberate effort on your part to keep it a limited set?
It’s not conscious, but we try not to bite off more than we can chew. Sometimes you hear a band you simply have to get involved with and you can’t control that. Ultimately I want to sign the bands that I like, first musically of course, and if they’re cool people that makes it better. You find a place for everybody.
There’s a lot of extreme metal bands on your label but there’s a good variety as well, with the likes of Niacin, Holy Grail, and Marty Friedman now, artists and bands that are not exactly extreme metal. Is it also important to keep a variety and have a label which represents all facets of metal?
I do get conscious in that I don’t want to sit here and mine a particular scene and go, “Hey, we have to sign 40 death metal bands or 40 tech death bands.” I just try to sign what I like and try to make them the biggest and best at what they do. I think that we’ve led the way in a lot of styles, like progressive instrumental music. When no one cared, we had Animals As Leaders and we still have Scale The Summit, arguably two of the biggest bands in that world. I don’t need to go and sign another 10, 20 or 30 similar bands but I have approached some who I felt were fantastic. I just couldn’t stay away.
Looking at the past roster of Prosthetic, you’d had bands like Lamb Of God, Gojira and Kylesa who have grown a lot since that time. How does the label look back on that? It must be some kind of a proud achievement to have such bands graduate.
There’s nothing more fun than trying to develop a band, turning them into something and giving them a career. I think Skeletonwitch are on their way to having a career and that’s really fulfilling. Otherwise what’s really the point, you know?
But when bands move on and sign to different or bigger labels, is it a bittersweet feeling in some ways?
Well, we sign bands for a certain number of records and when their time is up, it’s sort of up to them in terms of what they want to do. Some of them get bigger and go on to sell more records. Gojira may have sold more after they moved on, but I don’t think they sold that many more records than we did. So in terms of that, it is what it is. Animals As Leaders were with us for two albums. We’ve extended deals with a bunch of other artists. There’s lots of European bands that just go on from label to label. It’s just kind of the way it rolls. In the end, if they want to move on, they can!
The biggest challenge for the music industry today is probably the lack of album sales. As a label, how do you deal with that and how do you go about trying to sell physical formats and making them more attractive for people to buy?
Look, physical format will be dead soon. There will always be room I think for vinyl and may be a small limited edition of physical product, but that’s the reality. I tend to go digital or buy vinyl myself and if I do get CDs it goes into the iPod anyway. So you just adjust, like with anything else. Television is moving to streaming, so it’s on a more on-demand basis. I’m sure that cuts into the money they can make via commercials. Movies fought streaming but now it’s a way of life and it’s going to become more and more a part of life. People are busy and they want things on demand. So those are the parallels and it is what it is, you know.
You’re right. Looking ahead, what’s your aim and is there anything you would like to change at Prosthetic Records?
Just try to continue to find cool bands, bands that want to work and try to make their careers. So, more of the same! We’ll keep doing our best and bring good music for people to discover.
Visit Prosthetic Records on the web:
ProstheticRecords.com
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