By Andrew Bansal
Knoxville TN’s six-piece extreme metal force Whitechapel released their fifth studio album ‘Our Endless War’ via Metal Blade Records earlier this year and embarked on a North American co-headline spring/early summer tour with DevilDriver, along with support from Revocation, Carnifex, Rivers Of Nihil and Fit For An Autopsy. The new album sees Whitechapel progress further into breaking out of sub-genre boxes and becoming more and more wholesome as a metal band, and it was even more evident upon experiencing the live renditions of these new tunes when put together with older material in the set. Whitechapel and the rest of the touring party visited the House Of Blues Sunset Strip two weeks ago, and before the show I sat down with guitarist Zach Householder for what turned out to be a pleasant conversation. Read it below.
Zach, how are you doing today?
Pretty good, man! Enjoying the Hollywood, California weather. It’s nice (laughs)
Yeah, it’s actually 30 degrees cooler than what it was last week over here.
Right, I heard it was burning up here a few days ago and I saw some of my friends posting online about how hot and awful it was here, so we got lucky on the weather!
So, before I ask you about this tour or anything else, I wanted to bring up a tour you did recently, with GWAR. That turned out to be Dave Brockie’s last tour before he died and you guys were main support. I think you will be kind of remembered for that as well, down the road. It must have come as more of a shock when you heard about it, because you were on tour with that guy.
Absolutely, because GWAR were legends even when I was growing up as a kid. If you watched Beavis & Butthead as a kid, you knew who GWAR were. From those days, I just knew all about GWAR and it was cool to actually tour with legends for a change, and it was a thrill for me, to be hanging out with Dave on tour. He’d come on the bus and just shoot the shit with us for a while. We’d have some drinks, and the guy’s mind was going a 100 miles a minute all the time. He was just super-smart, super-creative, and then he was just gone. It was very surreal, and I feel like I didn’t know him long enough. That’s the bad part. It’s hard to even describe it. You get to meet somebody, barely get to know them and then they’re just gone.
I guess it just proves that life is short, and for music fans it’s never a good idea to skip a band’s show because who knows what might happen? They may not even come back next time.
That’s true, and not to mention, musicians sometimes live a pretty crazy, wild life and it’s hard on your body. It’s going to take its toll at some point. So yeah, if there’s a band that you like, always take the opportunity to go see them because you never know what’s going to happen with them. They might break up, god forbid someone might pass away or get injured. It becomes a lot more of a factor and you start thinking about it the more you tour. It’s hard to see if from a fans’ perspective because they’re not out doing it. But I definitely wouldn’t pass up seeing a band if I wanted to see them because you start thinking about stuff like that.
Exactly, man. Talking of touring, you guys do tour a lot. It must be challenging to keep it interesting for fans to come and see you every time you play.
That, and we always get pigeonholed into genres or whatever, and that’s just how it works. But we change up every album so much that we give a little different taste and a different style of Whitechapel, and it gives fans something to come out and enjoy. If they like it on CD, it still gives them something different live, not to mention that we have an energetic show, so we’re not trying to sit there and just be boring the whole time. The bad part is, to make it a more interesting show it costs a lot of money, for production, to get crew, lights and these bigger bands using pyro and stuff like that. So it’s hard to find that fine line between making it a good production and obviously having the energy for the shows, and then having the music and material. It’s all got to come together. So we try to change it up all the time for the fans that come out and see us every time.
As you said, you do get pigeonholed into the deathcore genre, which is unfortunate, but I feel that the genre has mostly morphed into other forms over the years. Would you say that about the latest Whitechapel record as well? It’s more of just extreme music as opposed to any particular genre, right?
Yeah, the deathcore term is something I kind of started hearing when I joined Whitechapel, right after the first album ‘The Somatic Defilement’ came out, years ago. I wondered what that term was, and it turned out that it’s a sub-genre of a sub-genre so I never paid much attention to it anyway but we always got pigeonholed into it. I think, it’s like you said, bands keep going from the deathcore thing and morphing into other stuff. With us, it’s just a metal album, and I don’t know what else to say about it. We still have our roots, we still have our ‘deathcore’ sound if you want to say it, but deathcore is such a constricting thing to put on a band. If you follow the rules of deathcore, it’s so boring, man. I don’t want to do that. None of us want to do that. So we just try to keep doing what we’re good at but try to go outside the box every album. But yeah, this new album is definitely not straight-up deathcore by any means (laughs).
The other thing that Whitechapel gets attention for, whether it be positive or negative, is the use of three guitarists. Do you think the band has been able to utilize it better over the years? Obviously this kind of music is not really made for three guitars, so it’s something that you have on your own.
Well, I think we know how to utilize it, not only with the writing process but even live. It’s not three guitarists up there just doing a shred-fest the whole time. We use it to layer the music live, to where if you have one guitarist doing a lead, one has to drop out, but it doesn’t always have to be that way. Or if you have two guitarists doing a rhythm harmony, you have the third one doing the lead. There are so many possibilities. Even writing, all three of us write all the time and it’s just more heads in a circle that are writing for a better product. I think that really makes a big difference. Like you said, it’s not a genre that’s really meant for three guitarists, but we make it work. It didn’t always seem like it was going to work and at times there was a lot of bickering, but we just fell into it and made it work.
Right, it’s interesting that all three guitarists write. I was honestly not aware of that. How does that work? As you said, it might lead to conflicts somewhere.
Well, we’re so used to it now, having just done our fifth album. We know how each of us work and we know how to work together. It’s just so much more productive to work together. Me and Alex, we both have our own studios and we write all the time. We’re constantly recording our own demos and emailing it to each other throughout the year, and when it comes time to write for an album, we’ll sit down and have a pile of material that we’ll start sifting through, and then go on and build skeletons from there. Sometimes someone is really adamant about a riff but the whole band votes that it’s not going to work, and that’s how it goes. From the previous album onwards, we realized that it’s so much easier to work together. The self-titled album and this new one were a cumulative result of how that started working for us. So yeah, all three guitarists always wrote. It’s not just one person, never has been.
Coming to this tour, it’s earlier in the year as opposed to a Mayhem Fest or Summer Slaughter-type tour. How’s everything going for you guys? You’re co-headlining with DevilDriver.
So far we’ve done three shows on this tour, and all the shows have been nuts! I think with DevilDriver fans and Whitechapel fans it’s a good demographic because they both just like metal and not to mention, the support lineup is solid as hell. Every band on this tour is a solid metal band. The shows have been nothing but amazing so far and I hope it continues to be that way. The crowd’s been insane every night. So yeah, it’s been a killer tour so far.
Your tour mates on this lineup Revocation are now also your label mates, which is cool too because they’re such a great band.
Long time ago, we did the Job For A Cowboy tour and Revocation was on it. Instantly, we started to become friends with them. They’re super-great guys and not to mention they’re all amazing musicians! So it’s cool to have them on the same label now too. They’re a fantastic band and I feel like they’re at home in Metal Blade.
And lastly, I attended the Scion Rock Fest here a couple of days ago and wanted to talk to you about festivals. I felt that despite such a massive lineup, people were really interested in only a couple of bands they already knew about. Do you think that’s the main thing with US crowds? They’re just not really ready for a big festival like that. What’s the purpose of putting on so many bands when people are not even going to check them out?
Well, there’s always a chance that they’ll hear a certain band they’ve never heard before and may be like it. There’s always a chance for those bands to get a little recognition and make fans. I get all that, I really do, but the thing with a festival like that is, you’ve got to really concentrate on your lineup as opposed to just getting a bunch of random bands on there. We did the Scion Rock Fest when they held it in Memphis TN, and it was fun and all but Memphis was a terrible place to have it and it was pretty awful (laughs). But it’s a cool idea, and it’s like Warped Tour. There’s so many bands and I get the idea of just putting bands out there and giving them some recognition. It’s really cool that Scion even does that shit and it’s amazing. I think you’re right, the problem with people attending such shows is they’re just not ready for such a huge lineup, but we’re kind of jaded because we’re fans of metal, we’re around it all the time and we’re fans of music, but when you’re a fan who’s just not really in the industry, it’s all still magical to you, so going to a festival like that might still be an amazing to somebody that’s never done something like that before. So it’s a two-way street.
Related: Review + Photos – DevilDriver & Whitechapel Co-headline Heavy Lineup At House Of Blues Sunset Strip
Whitechapel links:
WhitechapelBand.com
facebook.com/WhitechapelMetal
twitter.com/WhitechapelBand
instagram.com/WhitechapelBand
Remaining tour dates:
6/03: Milwaukee, WI @ The Rave
6/04: Joliet, IL @ Mojoes
6/05: Kokomo, IN @ CenterStage Bar and Grill
6/07: Knoxville, TN @ The International
6/08: Cincinnati, OH @ Bogarts
6/10: Toronto, ON @ The Opera House
6/11: Pittsburgh, PA @ Altar Bar
6/12: New York, NY @ Stage 48
6/13: Philadelphia, PA @ Theater of the Living Arts
6/14: Baltimore, MD @ Baltimore Sound Stage
6/15: Charlotte, NC @ Tremont Music Hall
6/16: Atlanta, GA @ The Masquerade
6/17: Orlando, FL @ Firestone Live
6/18: Ft. Lauderdale, FL @ Revolution
6/20: Houston, TX @ Scout Bar
6/21: Corpus Christi, TX @ House of Rock
6/22: Dallas, TX @ Gas Monkey Bar ‘N Grill (Outside)
6/23: Austin, TX @ Mohwak