Turning Up The Heat: Ringworm Vocalist ‘Human Furnace’ Talks New Album & More

By Andrew Bansal

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Hailing from Cleveland, Ohio, Ringworm have been somewhat of an institution in pioneering and carrying the metal-meets-hardcore style of heavy music through the 25-plus years since their late ’80s/early ’90s inception. In terms of popularity, the quintet has steadily gained momentum, and in turn created music at an increasingly faster rate. They’ve clearly seen a shift from their early-years hardcore demographic to a decidedly more metal-oriented fan-following in recent times, and with their sixth full-length studio album ‘Snake Church’, released via Relapse Records on July 29th 2016, they’re all set to expand their metal outreach even further. A few days before the release date, Metal Assault spoke to vocalist Human Furnace to talk about the album and lots more. Enjoy the conversation below.

‘Snake Church’ is coming out very soon and it’s your eighth full-length album. Album after album, you’ve been trucking along over the years, and now you’re at the eighth one. Does that even come to your mind? Do you realize that it’s been that many?

Yeah, it’s kind of strange when I look back over how long we’ve actually been doing it. It is strange but also kind of cool at the same time.

With this many number of albums under your belt, whenever you put out a new one it’s going to be pitted against your own past work. When you sit down to work on a new album, is it important for you to distance yourself from your own past in a way, and let it come naturally?

I don’t think we’ve ever had a problem with things coming naturally to us, because we don’t try to pit album per album against each other. We’ve become so streamlined in the way we do things as far as how we operate with recording and songwriting that it’s almost automatic. We look at it as just doing another record, so we write songs for it and that’s pretty much it. We seldom make an extreme effort to do something different from record to record. It just kind of happens organically. It usually goes song by song, like, OK, let’s play something a little slower for this one, or work out a song with a particular tempo to it. So, we don’t really change our style too much from record to record, but at the same time each record has its own identity, and I think that just comes from the fact that we don’t try too hard.

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It’s interesting that this one came to you quicker than the other ones. It’s only been two years since the last one, and I think past albums took a little bit longer, at least on paper between releases. Was this one easier in that sense?

Yeah, and I think there’s an aspect of a ticking clock to it too. Playing this kind of music, we will reach a certain point in time when I can’t physically perform the way that I want to and need to, to do this type of stuff. So, it is kind of like a fire up our asses to be more productive. We’ve been doing this for 25 years, and our last couple of records have reached a larger audience, so we want to drive that point home. With most audiences, their attention span is so short, you almost have to be a little bit more productive if you want to stay “in the public eye”, you know. You don’t want to lose your window of opportunity. So, I guess that might have something to do with how quickly we turned out a new album after ‘Hammer Of The Witch’.

As you said, each of your albums has its identity. What would you say about ‘Snake Church’ in that regard at this point, in comparison to the other albums?

Well, I think that’s something on a couple of different levels. It’s going to take time to figure out what it is, and it’s going to be up to the listener to stack it up on our other works and see how it falls into place with the other albums. But on a personal level, sometimes albums don’t really sink in with me, so may be a year or two down the line I can go back and look at it with a different set of eyes after it’s been out for a while and we’ve been able to play some of the material live quite a bit. So, it takes a bit of time to kind of grow into its identity, and it’s not solely for me to judge, but also for the listeners and the audience as well.

Over the years, lyrically you’ve written stuff that’s been a really good fit with this kind of music, such as topics on personal battles, rebellion and things like that. What does this new album offer lyrically?

If you look at all of our albums, from the first demo to this new album, the main topic has been the human condition, really. Love, betrayal, depression, religious overtone, all types of stuff, and it’s all basically the same thing. I don’t like singing on subjects I’m not knowledgable about. I certainly know how I feel about and view things in society and in my own life, so that never really changes. That’s what I sing about and that’s what I’ve always sang about. So, this record is the same thing. Even with me being a lot older now, I still have the same type of issues and problems that most everybody has. You just have to deal with them in different ways because you’re older. So, that moulds and shapes the way I approach a record lyrically, but overall, what is it that I really sing about? Love, girls and suicide!

Right! But with the style of music that you play, this blend of metal and hardcore, I think it had its movement back when you were starting out, and you guys even started it before it became big. Now, it’s not really as prominent, even though there are still some bands doing it. Does that make it easier for you, or more challenging? How does that affect you?

It’s a style that we helped usher in, I guess early on with our demo, and with the first record we won accolades for mixing hardcore music with thrash metal. We just keep the same formula. Looking back as long as we can, if you look at the bell curve of popularity, things go up and down, but we just kind of stayed the course because we don’t know any better. This is what we do and we don’t feel the need to change our style to fit with what’s popular and what’s not. So, we are all on board together and we do what we do. People can either follow us, or not. So, it’s not really a challenge and we don’t find it to be any type of obstacle as far as the popularity of the style of music we do. The way we look at it, it’s pretty authentic, probably about as authentic as you can get, and it’s honest. We make music that we like, and that’s never really going to change.

That’s cool, but in terms of touring, I think these days whenever you guys tour, you definitely stand out as one of the more aggressive bands of the lineup, if not the most aggressive. Has that also changed over the years, where now you’re touring more with different kinds of bands than you were before?

Oh yeah, I think that’s been a huge difference. Earlier on, when we were touring on our second and third records, we would more often than not go out with traditional hardcore bands, and as much as we came up in that scene and we owe a lot to that scene, I’ve always felt that we’ve been more of a metal band, just by our attack, our approach and everything about it. So, we’ve always been grouped into the hardcore category where I don’t necessarily think that we quite fit in. I’ve often said that we’re too metal for hardcore and too hardcore for metal. That may be true, but as times change, in the style of music that we do, the metal aspects are becoming more prominent even in hardcore music. I think that’s led to our benefit. Recently in the past few years, and specially since getting signed to Relapse Records, we’ve been exposed to a whole different, metal-oriented audience, and for them, this is something new. It’s metal but it also has some elements of hardcore to it. The metal audience would be way more appreciative of the metal aspects in our music than the hardcore scene does. 60-70 per cent of our material is thrash metal oriented, and then we have breakdowns here and there. The hardcore crowd just stands and looks at you for the whole song and just waits for the breakdowns, and then decide it’s OK to move around. Whereas when we play for metal kids, they really appreciate the thrashiness of it and the head-banging element. Over recent years, we’ve been touring with straight-up metal bands and it’s right in our wheelhouse. We enjoy that style. We have a lot in common with it but we also stick out as well.

Also, of late, as you mentioned, you’ve been reaching a bigger audiences with your albums and with your shows as well. In your earlier years, you were probably playing smaller shows and I’m sure things got insane with the crowd going nuts and all that. How do you adjust that to a bigger stage and a bigger room and bring that same intensity?

The answer to that is fairly simple, we don’t. Yes, we have been playing in front of larger crowds but we also play shows that are really shitty. Sometimes we play a show and there’s hardly anybody there. That still happens, and it happens to a lot of bands. The way we’ve always approached it, we play this with the same intensity and the same energy in front of 15 people as we would in front of 1500. So, I think the answer is to not change your approach at all. People pay their money to attend the show and you have to deliver for them. You don’t half-ass it if there’s only 10-15 people. You go all in and that’s how you have to do it every time you play. That’s the way I approach it. There’s no difference. If you see a lot of our live reviews, you’ll probably read that we played in front of nobody and it was one of the best shows they ever saw. That’s just because that’s how we feel about it. We play the same way every time.

You’ve been working as a tattoo artist over the years. Are you still doing that for the band or otherwise?

Oh yeah, tattooing is my bread and butter. It’s my livelihood, and it’s the only thing I’ve been doing longer than I’ve done Ringworm. I’ve been tattooing professionally for 20-plus years and I own a couple of tattoo studios in Cleveland. One of them has been going on for 20 years now. So that’s how I make my money, tattooing and doing artwork. Ringworm is very time-consuming when it’s time to go on a tour and it’s very difficult to juggle the two, but tattooing is something I’ll be able to do for quite a while longer, hopefully, whereas Ringworm is something special. The band is definitely an expensive hobby because it’s really hard to make a living off of playing music. Even bands that you would think are massively popular, they struggle as well. It’s a really tough way to make a living. The one good thing about Ringworm is that we keep it honest and straightforward because we don’t do it for a living. We don’t have to bend what we want to do in order to survive or be more popular or to make money to pay our rent. We all have lives and jobs outside of the band, so the band can stay pure and we can still do what we want and not have to cater to what’s popular, to make a living off of it. If you don’t, and you can make money without changing what you want to do with your band, then you’re very fortunate. But most bands kind of have to change with the time in order to survive. We don’t do that.

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