Suffocation - Frank Mullen Part 1
Posted on October 31, 2007 at 5:02 pm by admin
Way Too Loud: There are some songs that are a staple in your live set, and I’ve heard it’s tough to get certain songs out there because the new members have to learn them, so have you been getting some songs in the set that you haven’t done before?
Frank Mullen: yes we did. There’s at least three new songs on this tour right now, that we haven’t played in years.
WTL: What songs are they?
Frank: “Seeds Of The Suffering”, “Brood Of Hatred”, and then a song off the new album, “Misconceived” we have added into the set as well.
WTL: I wondering what your current involvement is with Roadrunner. Do they just distribute your old albums, and that’s it? Do you get anything out of that, at all?
Frank: They still put the old albums out in the stores and everything, and we get royalty checks every now and then, from Roadrunner and stuff like that, but as far as anything new capacity wise, there’s not much. There’s talk of possibly doing a greatest hits CD that they want to put together, but for the most part, that’s the only ties we have with Roadrunner.
WTL: The thing I was thinking about, is that you never have any of your old stuff at your live show at your much. There’s some new fans that want to get a hold of your old stuff. Is it hard for you to get your hands on that?
Frank: Yeah, it’s hard. Roadrunner doesn’t give us anything the way Relapse does, so it’s hard for us to be able to order it and get it from them and all that. It’s not easy for us to do it that way. I don’t know, maybe something might happen later on in the future, especially if we do that greatest hits thing, then maybe it might be more accessible for us to be able to get that stuff, but right now, we just can’t.
WTL: One thing I’ve always wondered, since you announced every song before you play it, do you always go by setlist, or is it every improvised? Or do you rotate every night?
Frank: It depends. This time around we’re doing a setlist, and we’re trying to stick to that. We’ve improvised things before, we’ve added things and taken things out. This time around we want to do a structured setlist, and that way one person doesn’t ask to play this tonight, and at the last minute I’m changing songs, and it throws everything off.
WTL: For a lot of people, “Souls To Deny” was the album that got them started on Suffocation, like it was for me and a couple of friends there. The last time I saw you play, you didn’t play anything from that album.
Frank: It’s hard, because there’s just so many songs, and it’s like which ones do you pick? Which ones do you put into a setlist? If you’re not doing a headlining set, it becomes even harder, because you want to put in the good songs and stuff. This time around we’re going to put in a few songs off of “Souls To Deny”. It becomes complicated to throw a good set together, because you want to throw in everything, and when you do, you’re already at twenty songs, and you know people would go nuts for it, but there’s no way I can play twenty!
WTL: Some people really beat up on that album, and that’s one of my favorites. Do you think people beat up on that one unfairly? I keep hearing about the production, and I don’t think it should be an issue because regular people aren’t sound engineers.
Frank: I think what happened with that album, we got back together, and there was pressure to get something out. The fans were asking, and then when we signed to Relapse, they said they needed something to push and get us out there. I think we might’ve rushed things recording-wise. Not necessarily the songs, because I think all the songs are good songs. The recording could’ve taken a little bit more time. We rushed it just a little bit too much.
WTL: Standard touring and album cycles suggest that we could be expecting a new album next year.
Frank: That’s what we’re looking at. We’re going to do this tour, and there’s probably going to be a European tour, and then there might be some other dates with South America, and things like that, then it’ll be crunch time, putting a new album together.
WTL: I don’t know what you’ve been talking about with a new album, but my personal wish would be to see you do it before the summer. I’m just thinking of something like Sounds Of The Underground…
Frank: We’re just going to see how it goes, writing wise and stuff. I’m not going to put anything together and put it out if I don’t think it’s good, or if the rest of the band doesn’t feel right about it. We’ve got a few things that we’re working on right now, but it’s definitely not like a full albums worth of material yet.
WTL: Why didn’t you get your live album released on a label? You just released it through the Relapse webstore.
Frank: We were thinking about what to do with it, and we were like, “You know what? We could just do this ourselves.” Bring it with us, and sell it at the shows, and then that way you don’t need to involve a label. Eventually later on, maybe it might get licenced to a different label or something like that. We’re done with Relapse now, so I didn’t want another piece on Relapse that they have exclusive. Basically right now we bring it on the road and sell it on the road. And through the website and stuff like that.
WTL: The term “brutal” death metal seems to have been officially accepted by a lot of people, and a lot of people agree on what it means, it’s even on Wikipedia, so there’s a definition. People have suggested you’re the first. Are you familiar with the term?
Frank: No, I’m not familiar with the term “brutal” death metal, but we’re considered the first?
WTL: Some people do, but there’s always the arguably the first, as always.
Frank: That’s pretty sick you know, if we’re up there in a sub-category of death metal.
WTL: I keep reading about the connection to hardcore, and I’m wondering if that’s ever been an influence on you.
Frank: Oh yeah, yeah! I mean, growing up in New York, the thing about New York, is that you can listen to anything. It wasn’t necessarily if you listen to hardcore, that’s it, that’s who you are, and if you listen to metal, that was it. Growing up, I listened to everything. I listened to thrash metal, speed metal, death metal, hardcore, and a lot of that stuff was an influences. We tend to have the heavy breakdowns from the hardcore influences, and things we listened to over the years, like the real heavy, in-your-face drop-downs, and then the technical and melodic stuff was old-school thrash. You’ve got your influences from Destruction, Kreator and stuff like that. There’s definably a hardcore influence.
WTL: You seem to have gotten a big audience from the hardcore crowd. Has it always been that way for a long time? Like almost since day one?
Frank: Yeah, pretty much. I mean with us, it was just that, growing up the way we were, you played shows locally, and there’s a mix of metal kids and hardcore kids, you know? We’ve always been accepted through both, I think it’s because they know, and hey can listen to it, and hear that we incorporate both aspects of meta l and heavy music together. Pretty much yeah. I always remember it being that way.
WTL: There’s a been a significant rise in popularity in horror movies, and I’ve been noticing that people are starting to see the connection between horror movies and death metal, a lot of death metal bands have had that in the early days, Cannibal Corpse especially. Do you think the larger interest in horror movies has helped at all? I mean, if you’re going to write a song about a horror movie, what’s it going to sound like?
Frank: Horror movies are always going to be horror movies. Horror movies are going to go to whatever level it’s going to get to. As far as heavy music and death metal, there’s probably some correlation between the two, like when you put something heavy on, and then there’s violence, and brutal killings going on, it’s kind of like death metal fits that. If that’s something that’s going on in a scene, and you want to add that to a movie, then it could definitely get the point across. But I don’t know if one or the other has to do with anything like one being more popular than the other, because they’re two [different] things.
WTL: I know a lot of metal fans were also horror movie fans, and they sort of took that into metal.
Frank: And then you know, Rob Zombies out there, he’s directing movies now, so there’s definitely going to be a crossover there.
WTL: With the lyrics on your last album, I could really see a connection to the war in Iraq, although the opinions in the lyrics and the statements you guys have given aren’t quite standard cut and paste statements. I know different members rite the lyrics, and th opinions expressed seem different from one another.
Frank: Terrance wrote some stuff on this new album lyrics wise, and me and Terrance wrote a song lyrics wise, so as far as the question your asking, with the war in Iraq and stuff, those weren’t lyrics that I wrote, so I can’t give you exactly what it’s trying to say.
Me personally, what’s going on and everything, I think it’s crazy, and I think we need to bring troops home, and just be done with it. I think it was just a waste, almost, of time and lives because it hasn’t accomplished anything. When you have two sets of people over there that live in one country, it’s never going to happen, so what are we trying to accomplish over there? To me it’s like we’re over there, and going at it, and losing a lot of innocent lives, and for what? I think we should end it, and bring our troops home and let them establish what they want to establish over there.
WTL: So the other guys in the band might have something different to say about that?
Frank: Yeah, you know? Everybody’s got their opinions on what goes on and how they see it. But yeah, they may have different opinions.
WTL: I know Terrance said something that got in a magazine, and the bands opinions on the situation aren’t simply cut and paste. It’s pretty cool that your band can express different things.
Frank: That’s the way it always should be. That’s the one great thing about living in the united States, freedom of speech, and you have the right to your own opinions. You might not necessarily agree with them.
WTL: Something I’ve always loved about your albums is that you don’t have a lot of songs, and they’re usually longer than usual, and I find it helps to get to know specific songs a lot better. Was there maybe a Metallica influence, or maybe another band influenced your songs like that?
Frank: Not really. For us, I’d rather have quality on an album that quantity. I don’t need to pump out 14 or 15 songs on an album. When we put it together, if it feels good, and if it feels right to us, and that’s the way it’s always been. When we put it together, it feels right, there’s just enough, it feels good, I don’t want to add any more to it, and I don’t want anything less. I don’t think it’s been like another band started it, that was just our thinking. You could throw together 15 or 16 songs together, but 5 of them might be crap, so I’d rather put out 10 songs on an album, and all 10 of them being sick songs.
WTL: From the appearance of things, real metal has benefited from metalcore. Do you think you’ve benefited from metalcore?
Frank: Yeah, I think so. Metal itself crosses a giant span from one side to the next. It’s metalcore, it’s hardcore, it’s thrash, it’s speed, it’s heavy metal, there’s just so many, and I think they all interconnect in one way or another. Whether your playing this, and there’s a little taste of that. Some of the metalcore bands have gotten their influences from death metal bands, or some of the hardcore bands, who are saying “Yeah, we took some of the stuff from metal”, so it bounces around on the whole entire plane of metal, so you, I think it definitely [helps].
WTL: You’ve got some new fans showing up to your shows, and some of your other fans don’t like that. How do you feel about this new crowd coming to see you?
Frank: I look at it this way - We play the music we play. It’s going to be brutal, it’s going to be in-your-face, and I don’t care how you dress, I don’t care what you do in life. If you enjoy what we’re doing, then by all means, you’re a fan! I don’t give a crap about any of that other stuff. You could come to our show in a business suit, but if you enjoy the must, that’s the most important thing right there. Nothing else should matter. We’ve done some tours and open doors to people that might not have necessarily seen it, and to me, that’s cool. They can look at it, and respect it, and say “Hey! I’ve never even heard of these guys before, but man, that was a brutal show right there, and that was crazy! I’m going to go out there and buy albums now, and I’m a fan now.” and to me that’s cool. The more fans the better. If on the weekends you listen to country, and during the week you listen to metal, then you’re a Suffocation fan.
Expect part 2 of this interview soon!
The Official Suffocation Website
Suffocation at MySpace
Suffocation at Relapse
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November 5th, 2007 at 3:05 pm
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