Despised Icon – Alex Erian
Posted on December 06, 2007 at 12:13 pm by admin
This interview marks my 5th time seeing Despised Icon, and seeing them only 2 weeks later in Detroit marks 6. They’re starting to become good friends, and Alex is always cool to me, so it was great to catch up with them in Toronto on tour with The Locust (a band who I really wanted to see). For those of you who like Despised Icon, I also suggest reading my first interview with Alex, as he had a lot to say, and he also revealed some of the realities bands have to face. It’s a great interview for those of you who want to play in a real band that tours! You can read that old interview at this location.
Way Too Loud: Are there any plans for you’re split with Bodies In The Gears Of The Apparatus split, like a re-release?
Alex Erian: Apparently that split is the second best selling split ever from Relapse, after the Converge/Agorphobic Nosebleed split. That would explain why you can’t find them in stores anywhere, because they had them re-pressed, but they’re really low on stock, so the ones they have they just keep for online sales. We’re actually out of that CD as well. We’ll be playing in Philadelphia, so I’m going to pick up a few over there. I think there’s been 5000 of those made, and for a split CD, that’s pretty substantial.
Right now actually, we’re looking for a label that would release our first album [“Consumed By your Poison”] on vinyl and add those split songs as a bonus, because “The Healing Process” and “The Ills Of Modern Man” have been licensed out to various labels on vinyl. Even though we’re not that typical grindcore, 7″ band, me as a collector, I think it’s something cool to have. “The Ills Of Modern Man” is on a gatefold vinyl, all of which are in different colours, limited to 500 copies. I just thought it would be something interesting. The ones we have left right now are transparent with yellow splatter on them, it looks sick! They’re all hand-numbered. We want to make something as special as possible. It’s not really about making money, since they cost so much to make, it’s mostly for fun, you know?
WTL: Since your new guitarist, Al Glassman is from Boston, is that a close enough location that he can live there, but still practice?
Alex: This year, we’ve been home for weeks at a time. Once the European tour is done around January/February, that’ll mean that we’ve done 8 tours in 1 year. That’s about 225 to 250 shows in a year, which for us is quite a lot. We’re not home often, so we don’t require him to be there all the time to jam with us between tours. The two weeks before we leave on tour, we usually jam on Tuesday and Thursdays, so he’ll come up and jam with us on Tuesday, jam by himself on Wednesday, jam with us again on Thursday, and then go back to Boston, and he’ll stay with someone in the band, or family that he has in West Island. It works out well, because a friend of his is filling in on bass, he’s from Massachusetts as well, so for the first time he’s not even travelling by himself.
We’ve also got a fill-in drummer on this tour, Pat from Martyr. We’ve done a lot of touring, and our drummer and bass player owe a lot of money back home for various student bills, rent, car payments, dentists. I think it might be over $30 000… [Sebastien Piché bass] and [Alex Pelletier drums] are missing out on this tour and the next one, so we have Max [I’m guessing his last name is Lavelle] filling in on bass, and Pat [Hamelin] on drums. Our original members will jump back in with us on tour next year in Europe.
It’s all a question of being really devoted to this band, but not everybody is the same, not everybody has the same reality, and we don’t want to go through a million lineup changes, so we figured we be really understanding of everybody elses needs, obligations and debts and whatnot. We want to keep them in the long run, and we don’t want to pressure them into quitting, because they’re friends above all. We’re really comfortable with that lineup, and we were had some apprehension before this tour started because we haven’t dealt with any fill-ins for quite some time. We have had friends fill in for us for various tours in the past. We were afraid at first, because Max and Pat had 1 audition and 2 jams, and then we left for a 2 month tour. It took a lot of guts and a lot of preparation on their part, and we’re all really satisfied in how everything is coming along.
WTL: I’ve heard that Al had a slight bit of a problem since you would speak French around him all the time.
Alex: We’ve got a fill-in member from Boston as well, and our merch guy is from New York, so we’re 4 french dudes touring with 3 Americans, and we mostly speak English. It’s quite a different reality for us, because if you picture us 2 years ago, us being strictly Quebecious Frenchies, and that whole dynamic has changed. It was a challenge at first to get used to speaking English around each other just out of respect, because we’re used to speaking French to each other, so we’ll talk to each other in English wether they’re concerned about it or not. All 3 dudes are picking up French slowly, especially Al because he’s in the band.
WTL: How did you get hooked up on this tour? Did someone from The Locust want you on?
Alex: I think because the guy booking this tour lives in Montreal, and he’s booked us several sold-out shows back home, so he figured we’d be a safe bet for this tour.
WTL: Are you making a lot of new fans on this tour?
Alex: There’s 4 bands on this tour, 3 of which are more grindy, experimental, more spazztic type of music, and we’re more metalcore/death metal, or whatever. I think the package is more diverse because of those 2 extremes, so we’re definitely playing in front of people who don’t know us, or who normally wouldn’t have seen us. That’s great! We’ve done traditional death metal tours as well, which we don’t %100 fit on either, but it’s all about spreading out and widening your horizons. There’s kids that come out to see us every night that aren’t familiar with the rest of the bands, so I think everybody is benefiting.
We definitely need to work up the crowd. They’re not into moshing so much. They’re more into just paying attention to what goes on, and I’m more into getting kids to do stupid stuff. It’s cool though.
WTL: How do you feel about some more mainstream fans getting into you, getting your albums and coming to sure?
Alex: We’ve been on all sorts of tours. We toured with Hatebreed, which I can say is a bit more mainstream, because they have a bit of an appeal to the Pantera crowd which is more popular in the world of metal, but here we are doing a tour with more artistic and more eclectic bands, bands that are more underground. We’re playing in front of less kids than we would with Hatebreed for instance, but we don’t see that as being a step down because Hatebreed have a whole other different crowd than The Locust, and we’ve also toured with Morbid Angel, Behemoth, Deicide, Suffocation and Decapitated, and they have a way different crowd. I think the last time you saw us it was with The Red Chord, Through The Eyes Of The Dead and All Shall Perish, and we’ve also toured with The Black Dahlia Murder and Unearth, and they have their own specific crowds. So here we are, and instead of sticking to one of those, we’re branching off with bands even like Ed Gein or See You Next Tuesday. We try to be all over the place. When we decide to go on a tour and make it happen, it doesn’t have to be the biggest thing we could jump on. It challenges us, and motivates us on different levels as far as being musicians, or being wise and spreading the word among different crowds.
WTL: There’s been a lot of safe tours lately with bands that sound very similar to one another, or bands that attract similar fans. How do you feel about that? It seems that there’s so many bands that sound alike that they don’t have to try to reach new people. Obviously this tour is incredibly different for you guys.
Alex: Yeah! I don’t consider this tour safe for us, because every other band on this tour is completely different from where we’re coming from. We have toured with bands that are considered to come from the same scene as us, for instance the recent tour with The Red Chord, Through The Eyes Of The Dead, All Shall Perish. We came back from touring with Job For A Cowboy, A Life Once Lost and The Faceless, after that was Winds Of Plague and Suicide Silence, all of which are bands that appeal to the same crowd that we do. So if you consider that safe touring, we’ve done a lot of that. We like playing in front of different crowds and different circuits, and we play in front of our own crowd as well obviously. We try to do tours here and there that are out of our league, but the next one coming up is with The Acacia Strain, Ful Blown Chaos, The Tony Danza Tapdance Extravaganza with all sorts of cool regional bands opening up, and that’s something that we feel right at home with. I think it’s cool though to play with bands that don’t sound anything like you, because I watch the shows most of the time, and I don’t like watching the same thing over and over again!
WTL: You were telling me before that you got in trouble for wearing a Blue Jays hat in a promo pic.
Alex: (Laughs) Yeah! Actually we were in Edmonton a few days ago and went to the West Edmonton Mall, and I bought this old-school Blue Jays hat, which is sick, and another one that you can’t find anywhere, so I’m pretty happy about that. Yesterday when we were in Hamilton, somebody told me there was this New Era store right next to the venue, and since I got 2 Blue Jays hats, I had to get a Montreal Canadians hat to even things out. I got that today, so I’m pretty stoked! All my bandmates make fun of me for buying all this shit, but for the past 3 years I’ve been so broke, because back then, working and touring would just go strictly %100 into paying the bills and buying food, and I’d be left with nothing else. It’s fucking shitty living like that for 3 years, but there’s people who live like that for their whole lives… But it’s not like I’m this big consumer or anything. Now that I’m actually making money with this band, and doing somewhat decent I can spoil myself once in awhile! Don’t get me wrong! I’m not like super into fashion or anything like that!
WTL: I did hear about your hat collection from Éric Jarrin [guitars].
Alex: I must have like close to 25 hats. I strictly do Blue Jays, [Montreal] Expos, Montreal Canadians, and because of my friends and my bandmates I can do Boston as well. I can’t do New York or L.A. or all that fancy shit! There has to be a nationalism thing going on!
WTL: Is the only way I can get an Expos hat to go to Montreal? Keven from Ion Dissonance told me that’s the only way.
Alex: Actually, I saw an Expos hat here with the old florescent logo, which I haven’t even seen back home, and the Montreal Canadians hats I got from New Era aren’t even available back home. But there’s a lot of Montreal Expos hats that you can’t find anywhere else in the world, just in a few select stores that I know of back home that make them expressly for us Montrealers!
WTL: Does that put me out of the loop unless I go to Montreal myself?
Alex: Yeah, pretty much! But it works the other way around too. I can’t get hats with the old-school Blue Jays style logo back home.
WTL: Is there anyone you’ like to tour with -
Alex: Beneath The Massacre! Will be playing Europe with them next year from January to February. We’ve only played a few shows here and there, and those dudes are my friends from back home in Montreal, so it’s cool to finally be touring with them because I’ve known them from the very start. I saw their first show.
WTL: Did you help get them hooked up with any art?
Alex: The thing is, with all my friends, to be honest, I’m going to sound like a douchebag, but we’re used to finding artists that will do merch for us, and then all my friends, instead of finding their own guy, they sk us “Who did you guys go through!”, and then they end up doing their merch strictly with that dude, and then all their merch ends up looking the same as ours. Now I’m a bit more secretive about it. I look like an idiot right now.
WTL: Elliot said that the guys in Ion Dissonance are the same way.
Alex: I can say whatever I want because both those bands are my best friends, but dudes, fuck off! (Laughs) Dudes, stop using our artists! All we end up doing is dumping them and finding a new guy, because half of the Montreal scene goes through the same dude. I’m talking from experience! The last time we played Montreal they said “Who does your new merch? It’s sick!”, and I’m just like “Sorry dudes. I’m not telling you.” Fucking Elliot went behind my back, I don’t know how, but he found the dude, and he’s doing merch for them… I’m not allowed to be bummed out! (Laughs) Fuck dude! There’s a thousand guys that do merch! Why do you have to piss on our territory? Whatever… I’m a douchebag…
WTL: Is there anyone you’d like to tour with that’s both feasible but not obvious?
Alex: The booking we go through is called the Kenmore agency [note: I may need to check the spelling on the booking agency] and they have bands like Converge. Converge would actually be fun. I can’t say that I’m a huge Converge fan, I respect them immensely. The agency also book Between The Buried And Me and Animosity, both of which are bands that I love and that I really hope that I’ll have the opportunity to tour with in 2008. There’s a lot of scene politics involved with the touring thing. It’s not just a matter of you being with a label, it’s you having an agent or a manager that scratched some dudes back that did this and that favour for this guy, and in exchange they’ll say “Ok, but this time you’ve got to put my band on your tour.” It kind of gets annoying because we’re still doing somewhat of a DIY thing, managing everything by ourselves. We do truly have help from our label and the agency with certain elements of managing the band, but most of it is still done by myself and Éric, so it’s very time consuming, but us managing things ourselves means that we have better control over what goes on. We obviously make a bit more money out of it, because obviously managers will take a %15 share off of everything you make, and we’re already 6 in a band, where other bands are just 4 or 5, so we have an extra mouth to feed and pay off, plus the merch dude and the sound guy. At the end of the day, we might make decent money, but it’s nothing compared to somebody who has a real job, and might make something like $30 000 a year.
I’m bad with interviews, so I just talk over and over again!
Back to your original question though, we haven’t done a straight-up death metal tour in quite some time, so a Cannibal Corpse, Dying Fetus tour or something, because we’ve toured with all of our other favourite death metal bands, like literally!
WTL: If you ever hear of anything from Poison The Well, the asked me to name someone , and I had to think of a band who’s both Canadian with artistic credibility, so I named you guys.
Alex: “The Opposite Of December” is really an inspirational record when it came out over 5 years ago! That’s a band I don’t hear as much about these days. In Montreal they used to be one of the biggest bands. I saw them tour with Hatebreed a few years back, and they got a better response than Hatebreed. There was a time where they would play Montreal every 4 months or so. We’d probably get a lot of shit from more of our metal based fans “They have clean vocals! You guys are selling out and shit!” but sometimes I sort of enjoy that sort of idiot reasoning. I mean, dude, I rap with some of my friends.
WTL: Yeah, I saw that! The Crimson Syndicate with Gabriel McCaughry!
Alex: And Shawn from Plasma Rifle on drums, and another friend of mine, Kevin. We’ve recording 3 new tracks that we’re going to post online.
WTL: Some of your metal fans are going to hate you for that!
Alex: Awesome! Hate us! (Laughs) I just don’t give a fuck anymore! It’s just music! I keep saying that over and over again. I used to get so bummed out every time I would disappoint a fan or something, but I can’t please everybody.
WTL: So fans will be disappointed that you like another band?
Alex: Yeah! Straight up! Some of our fans wrote comments on our myspace page saying that wouldn’t come out to see us on this tour, saying “I love you guy, but you’re touring with bands I hate, so I’m going to go to the show. I’ll check you guys next time.” how they can actually hate, instead of just disliking?
WTL: Have you ever made something up about what your band name means?
Alex: Yeah! All the time! I really liked the way the word icon sounded for some weird reason, and I really like the band Born Dead Icons, another band from Montreal, and I really liked Suffocation’s “Despise The Sun”, and I always thought Despised sounded cool. In 2002, a friend of mine was booking Disgorge and Deeds Of Flesh, Severe Torture and Disavowed, which ended up being our first show, and we had no band name yet, so I came up with that. And unfortunately, that would justify why we’re named Despised Icon. Is that an oxymoron in English? I just like the idea of it, it felt strong.
WTL: I talked to Job For A Cowboy a few days ago, and they say hi, and he also said that Mario drinks a lot…
Alex: He does! (Laughs)
WTL: Has he ever gotten in trouble for that?
Alex: Oh yeah! All the time! Jonny and Steve, Marios real name, they were very good drinking buddies, because we’ve done 3 tours with them in a year. So Jonny screws up just as much! (Laughs)
WTL: Are you going to let any stories go this time?
Alex: And piss people off and stuff? Well, this tour has been pretty much drama free. I wish I could invent something right now!
The Official Despised Icon Website
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Despised Icon at Century Media
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