Before their headlining show at the Webster Underground on February 20, 2010, we had the chance to talk with Skeletonwitch about their nonstop touring, their new album “Breathing the Fire,” and living the heavy metal lifestyle. (The only bandmember we didn’t get to speak with was Nate Garnette, one of the band’s two guitarists.)

• MPJ – How long have you been touring in support of “Breathing the Fire”?
• SCOTT – (Hedrick, guitars) – Well, it came out in October, so we’ve been touring as much as we can since it came out. We had some time off, but we did three months of touring consecutively. We did a tour with Black Dahlia Murder and Children of Bodom that was a month long. And then the very next day, when that tour ended, Black Dahlia Murder headlined and we did a support tour for about month. Then we had a week off, and then we went to Europe for a month. So we did all three of those things, then we had a short break after that. The album’s only been out for four months, but we’re really touring as much as possible!
• EVAN – (Linger, bass) – Yeah, we did all of that stuff, and we had a little break before starting this tour, and we’ll have a little break before we go on tour with Cannibal Corpse. Hopefully when the ice thaws, we can hit the highway and tour a ton more when it’s nice out! Sometimes the winter gets in the way, depending on where you go; I don’t know if you want to drive up to Quebec City, where it’s negative fifty degrees outside! It’s like a skating rink when you’re driving
• MPJ – Has the recent crazy winter weather affected your tour at all?
• SCOTT – No, actually, but we thought it would. We left really early, and we had several weeks of snow in Ohio, but it never got warm enough to melt any where we live in Athens. There was probably twenty-six inches of snow, over two feet, even in Columbus, where we left from. Boston got hammered, and our first show was in Boston! But we left the worst of it; it was worse back home than wherever we went to. So far it’s been some slow going, but we haven’t missed a show or flipped the van yet!
• DERRICK – (Nau, drums) – Don’t say “yet!”
• SCOTT – (laughs) We’re going south though, now.
• MPJ – They got hit with worse weather than we did up here
• SCOTT – (pauses) Aw, fuck.
• DERRICK – The “Southern Shiver,” dude! I saw it on the news!
• SCOTT – Is that what they’re calling it?
• MPJ – That, and “Snowpocalypse.”
• SCOTT – Great. I love it when they put titles on shit like that.
• EVAN – I’m actually going to commandeer that for the name of this tour! “Southern Shiver,” that’s what it’s called from here on out.
• MPJ – Even though you’ve only been on tour directly supporting the new album for a few months, has anything really crazy happened?
• SCOTT – We haven’t had anything in the way of hazards or casualties.
• EVAN – We had some wild times in Europe! But nothing terrible has happened.
• SCOTT – Yeah, nothing too crazy. Chance, has anything crazy happened since we’ve been touring for “Breathing the Fire”? Just crazy shit?
• CHANCE – (Garnette, vocals) – Nothing I want to get anybody in trouble for! So, no, we’ve been fucking churchboys for this whole tour! (everyone laughs) We decided not to party, and to “pro out.” Yeah, that’s what we did. (laughs)
• SCOTT – Yeah, we’re just going to “pro out.” Nate (Garnette, guitars) did say in another interview that he just likes to curl up with a good book at night. The guy asked us about hookers in Europe, and we’re like, “We don’t know anything about that!” I just said “I just go to sleep, I don’t know what anybody else does, or parties, or whatever,” and Nate said “Yep, I just curl up with a good book!”
• CHANCE – I think his “good book” is called…
• SCOTT – A case of beer?
• CHANCE – A thirty-pack of whatever’s free.
• SCOTT – Erasing his memory!
• CHANCE – Texting his life away!
• SCOTT – Yeah, getting hammered and texting people. “Why’d I do that? I can’t believe I said that to her! Oh, fuck!” Yeah, I’ve done the same.
• CHANCE – Dude, who hasn’t?
• MPJ – What inspired the new album?
• SCOTT – That’s kind of a tough question. There wasn’t a certain source of “This is what the album is!” or “We are just five dudes who are so fucking pissed off at the world that we had to throw this shit together!” It wasn’t anything like that; we’re just huge heavy metal fans.
• CHANCE – “If we didn’t write this album, we’d probably kill someone!”
• SCOTT – “Or ourselves!” (laughs) It wasn’t like that. We just love music and love metal! We grew up with it, and it’s always been a big part of our lives. We just love doing it! I guess it’s just love of metal and love of being on tour. It’s just kind of what we do!
• CHANCE – The title of “Breathing the Fire,” I came up with that. That’s breathing the fire of heavy metal, and breathing that lifestyle, and living it to its fullest extent, and not half-assing it. I’m a metal dude! I’m going to be fucking heavy metal tomorrow, the next day, the next day, next Sunday, at a funeral, at a wedding… (everyone laughs) That’s who the fuck I am! Lyrically, [the new album] is a bit meaner. I had a couple of reasons to be kind of mad. But we didn’t sit down and pow-wow before and think, “What do we need to do for this next one?” We just did the Skeletonwitch thing, and we just wrote our songs and stayed true. If we didn’t like it, we wouldn’t put it out. Like I said, being heavy metal and getting that point across. I hate it when people say “heavy metal act,” because it’s not a fucking act! It’s actually who we really are.
• SCOTT – Yeah, absolutely.
• CHANCE – It was just putting who we are into the music. No big brainstorm. I didn’t consult the cards!
• SCOTT – “Oh, fuck, the King of Cups!” (laughs)
• CHANCE – “Guess I gotta write about the government!”
• SCOTT – “This one’s about George W…”
• MPJ – Skeletonwitch has been credited as part of the “thrash revival.” Do you agree with that assessment?
• SCOTT – It’s something I disagree with, actually.
• MPJ – Really?
• SCOTT – Yeah, definitely. There’s so many good bands that are called “thrash revival.” We’re very thrash-influenced; we love thrash metal, and it’s a basis of what we do, but I think that there’s so many thrash bands that already exist. They defined and extended the boundaries of the genre of thrash, and a lot of the bands that get lumped into the thrash revival almost just seem like they’re trying to redo what was already done. In other words, it’s like, “Holy shit, that’s awesome, that could’ve been a D.R.I. album, or a Vio-lence album! It’s sounds just like them!”
• MPJ – So instead of a band standing on their own merits, people just think they sound like someone else.
• SCOTT – Yeah, sometimes. To an extent, for sure. We’re heavily thrash-influenced, but it’s already been done so well, and I like to think that we add a lot more elements in that just pure straight ’80s thrash. We’re not trying to relive the ’80s and be one of those bands during that time; we’re trying to be ourselves, doing what we do now. Meaning there are a lot of black metal elements and death metal elements, and even Viking metal and New Wave of British Heavy Metal elements in our music that are not prevalent in most of those other bands. You’ll hear some Iron Maiden harmonies and stuff like that, but I think fundamentally that there’s stuff that we do that bands that are pure thrash revival aren’t doing. Vocally, with Chance, the death metal vocals and stuff like that. Or the black metal stylings and blastbeats. You won’t find that on a pure thrash record. It’s cool that they credit us with being part of something that’s going on, and there’s a lot of good bands involved, but sometimes I think that a reviewer will read some shit and be like, “Oh, it’s another thrash revival band,” and just breeze through the record real fast, and think it sounds like thrash or whatever. They don’t pay attention to it.
• EVAN – We discussed doing a couple of different covers before, but we were like, “eh.” Why would you cover a Slayer song? There’s no way you’re going to do it better than they did it. Just do your own thing.
• SCOTT – It’s funny. I was talking with somebody I did an interview with the other day, and they said “I was reading a bunch of reviews of your record before I called you for this interview, and it’s funny what people say, because there are people that are thrash purists that are like, ‘What the fuck is all this other shit? I thought this was a thrash revival band!’ And there’s other people that listen to it and somehow think it is just straight thrash revival.” So we’re hearing both things from people. One journalist says, “Thrash revival’s gotta be like this,” and the other says, “Thrash revival, my ass! These guys are bringing in all of these other elements!” We’re just doing what we do!
• EVAN – I think you covered it.
• SCOTT – Yeah, probably more than I needed to. (laughs) Transcribe that!
• MPJ – What influences your songwriting?
• SCOTT – Chance writes all of the lyrics and comes up with the song titles, so that’s all him. Nate’s the foundation; he’s the main songwriter. He’s the cook, and we all throw in ingredients. The parts that I come up with could be from anything. Sometimes, you could be having a shitty day and then you pick up our guitar and, “Oh, fuck yeah! I wrote this cool riff!” But there’s not anything concrete or specific that made me write this part of the song.
• EVAN – Maybe just a desire to keep doing this, and keep getting better. That’s a tough question!
• SCOTT – The easiest way to say it, for me, is that we were all younger and listened to heavy metal and heard certain bands for the first time like Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer, and Pantera. When I first started hearing black metal, and started listening to things like Mercyful Fate – which was a huge, huge influence on me, personally – I first heard “The Oath” and when that first riff comes in, it’s so fucking awesome that I just got chills and thought, “This is the best thing ever!” I loved it so much, and when I’m coming up with riffs and stuff, I’m hoping that for some other person, maybe we can recreate that moment where they’ll hear one of our songs, or maybe just a riff or lead or something and be like, “Fuck! I’ve never heard anything like that!” It gives that them that feeling that I had when I first heard certain things. That inspires me; I hope that someone else digs this stuff as much as I do.
• EVAN – Yeah, you want to write something that you’d want to listen to. Something badass that sets the mood.
• MPJ – When we came in here to do this interview, you guys were listening to trance, which is about as far away from metal as you can get. (everyone laughs) Is there any other music you’d consider to be a guilty pleasure?
• SCOTT – I don’t really feel guilty about any of it. The trance thing was just kind of a fluke today, but when you get destroyed by heavy metal all of the time, it’s good to listen to some other stuff. You don’t want to just listen to fucking 300 BPM blastbeat death metal all day then go and play a show. We had a huge phase where we listened to a shitload of Dolly Parton! (everyone laughs) I think we need to bust that out again on this trip. Nate does all of the driving, and lately we’ve been listening to a shitload of the ’60s channel on Sirius [satellite radio], listening to ’60s pop music and shit! Whatever! And Type O Negative! People are like, “Oh my God, you guys like that shit?!”
• CHANCE – Yeah, we fucking do! We’ve been getting into Ted Nugent even more than ever, lately, too! For some reason, it just really struck a chord, and you see everyone bobbing their head and going, “Man, I guess we all like Ted Nugent! Who knew?”
• SCOTT – Oh yeah. A long time ago, even when I was fourteen or fifteen, I got a Ted Nugent boxset. I used to love that shit. Though it’s got some shit you don’t want to hear. (everyone laughs) It’s got way too much!
• MPJ – It seems like you’ve been touring nonstop. Do you write new music as you tour, or do you wait until you get back?
• SCOTT – We actually don’t write on the road at all. Only when we’re at home, and we don’t all sit down and write together. Like I said, Nate is the main songwriter and we do it separately, emailing riffs. We finally got a digital eight-track [recorder] and we’ll just go back and forth with stuff. We don’t actually all sit down together and jam out, we write independently and “tape trade” with each other and learn the parts and come back with ideas. We meet, go our separate ways, then meet, and do it like that. On the road, we don’t like to have a jam session during sound check! It’s a little more calculated than that.
• MPJ – Are you guys going to get John Dyer Baizley to do any more Skeletonwitch art?
• SCOTT – Maybe! I don’t know. His art’s amazing, and I really, really love it, and he did a great job. He’s become so busy with [his band] Baroness, and his art alone, and he just had a kid, and just bought a house, so he’s super-busy. So, given his time constraints and that he did a lot of art for us already, maybe we’ll keep going somewhere else and not hassle him. But never say never, because his art’s really, really good! He did a couple of t-shirts, and he did the covers for the “Worship the Witch” EP and “Beyond the Permafrost.” Maybe we’ll go back to him, I don’t know! We don’t have anyone picked out for the next record.
• MPJ – Who did the cover art for “Breathing the Fire”?
• SCOTT – Andrei Bouzikov. He did the [cover of] the last Municipal Waste record, and he’s done a bunch of underground stuff.
• EVAN – He’s done [covers for] Cannabis Corpse, and he’s done a bunch of old punk flyers. Amebix did a big tour, and he did all of the show flyers. He definitely has a punk background. He’s an awesome artist, I’d recommend him to anyone! If we didn’t like one little thing about it, we’d tell him, and we’d get an email three hours later with another file in it with our changes!
• SCOTT – He works really fast. Some people are like, “Here’s what I did,” and we ask, “Can we change a few things?” And they say, “No, this is my art, and I’m done. This is what I do, this is my vision.” We can’t fuck with it. [Andrei] is a total workhorse! He’ll be like, “What do you want? I’ll change it!” We’d be dictating very specifically; “Could you move this guy over here, and put this here, and put that there?” He says, “Sure.” Two days later, you’d have the drawing!
• EVAN – “Not enough skulls! Too many skulls! Not enough skulls!” (laughs)
• SCOTT – It was like doing sound check. “Can I get some more snare? A little more? Oh, thats too much! Can I get less? Now a little more?” That’s what we did with Andrei. “More skulls! Can you adjust this? Now take this back!”
• MPJ – Any last words for your fans?
• SCOTT – Yeah…thank you! Thanks for supporting us, whatever way you did! Buying the record, coming out to a show, hanging out with us, drinking a beer…
• EVAN – This tour’s been great so far. It’s awesome that so all those people came out, and I’m always really floored when I see the amount of people that come out. Like you said, thanks! Thanks for supporting us!
• SCOTT – Thanks for letting us do this, and helping us do this! It doesn’t go unnoticed, and it doesn’t go unappreciated! We’re lucky that we get to do this shit, so we don’t take it for granted. Thanks everybody, for that!
• MPJ – And thank you, guys, for taking the time to talk to us!