Soilent Green - Brian Patton and Ben Falgoust
Posted on May 19, 2008 at 4:44 pm by admin
Soilent Green is a favourite around here due to their unique style that’s hard to describe unless you’ve heard it personally. I’ve also spoke to Ben Falgoust before, and he’s a really cool guy, so it was great to sit down and talk to the guys in Soilent Green.
Way Too Loud: You’re getting on tours with Dethklok, Chimaira and Death Angel. How does it feel with bands like that?
Brian Patton: We’ve got a lot of new stuff right now. We got a new booking agent, we got new management, and they’re working good for us. They’re getting us good gigs! We’re really excited to get on those tours, so we’re looking forward to them. New label too, and it’s working out good.
WTL: I know a lot of bands, like death metal bands for instance want to get opening spots on big tours.
Ben Falgoust: It’s a hard system man, it really is. Sometimes it depends on who your agent is, who your management is. It’s very political in that way. Sometimes you’ll see a tour and you’ll say “Wow! I wonder how that got put together.” It was some kind of political scheme basically within the industry that sorted it out.
We’re kind of lucky at this point, and we’ve made some right decisions recently, so that’s what benefitted us. Also, when you have a new album come out, it’s more predominant that you’ll get a better tour because the people booking the tour know that a band has a new record coming out, and that a lable will be pushing and promoting them, so that’ll help push the tour as well.
WTL: What is it about the NOLA scene where everyone sounds like they’re from New Orleans, yet everyone has their own unique voice?
Brian: the New Orleans scene, in my eyes, is created by a small handful of musicians that sit around and jam together who all like to do something that’s different. Us in particular, we’ve been around for 20 years, kind of in the same boat as Eyehategod and Crowbar, we’re the oldest bands that have been around forever and ever, and I don’t know, it’s hard to describe. We just do our thing in New Orleans, and we’ve always disconnected ourselves from what’s going on outside, and just got together and had fun playing music. If we’re sitting ion a room with nothing better to do, we just play, and comes out, comes out. If something good comes out, we try to let it grow, and sometimes it grows more than others.
As far as the sound itself, the New Orleans sound is based around the slower groove, the “sound of New Orleans”, what’s been known more or less. Bands like say us, Goatwhore and a lot of newer-school bands try to bring back that old thrash New Orleans scene that was forgotten about Graveyard Rodeo, Shellshock, and bands like that. I guess we’re one of the last thrash bands from that scene, so it’s kind of nice to still be around.
As far as being able to describe how we come up with our sound, it’s impossible. It’s just a natural process.
WTL: Everyone always argues about what’s I Soilent Green, so I’d like to throw a few things by you. One could claim they hear country in what you’re playing.
Brian: Of course! Yeah! We love every style of music. If it’s good, it’s good. If we like it, we try to incorporate that into metal, so there’s country in there, there’s soul in there, there’s r&b in there’s blues riffs, just brought to the extreme. And sometimes, like on this record, we actually did a country/bluegrass thing, and whenever we can slip little things like that in there, we like it, because we love all styles of music. There is country in there, to answer that one!
WTL: How about Celtic Frost?
Brian: What about Celtic Frost? They’re one of the best metal bands ever created! Of course! I mean, yeah! Throw on Celtic Frost, Venom, Possessed! That’s what we were listening to back when it was coming out! I’m 38 years old, and this man right here <Ben> is a year beneath me, and I was there the day “To Mega Therion” came out, and I went out and bought that thing. There’s a whole slew of bands that we take influence from, but we definitely take a small bit from them. To us, it’s the slower, simple guitar riffs that they did, and many other bands around that genre did as well. We take from from. And Hellhammer!
WTL: Grindcore?
Brian: Yes! Extreme Noise Terror. Man, when we first heard blast beats, it was an amazing thing. The first Napalm Death, all the old Earache stuff. S.O.B., and the Japanese versions of it. If you’re asking from me personally, I’m more of a fan of the “real” grindcore bands as opposed to the triggered blast beat stuff that’s coming out nowadays. I like more organic tones, like Drop Dead carried on for awhile. Just stick some people in a room, and it sounds like a whirlwind.
WTL: Death metal?
Ben: It’s a little bit in there. There’s so much shit with Soilent Green. You could go through one track and pick out so many different elements, like everything put into a blender, and boom! There it is!
Brian: When I’m writing riffs, I try to incorporate everything from my childhood, from my past influences and my new influences. Lately I’ve been influenced by everything but death metal or grindcore. The stuff I listen too as far as that’s concerned is the stuff I grew up listening to.
Lately, I’ve been digressing and going through the history of music, like the old 30’s and 40’s blues guys, and the jazz guys and the old be-bop bands, and a lot of world music, trying to expand and understand that there’s some really whacked-out music that’s extremely talented besides metal, and you can actually bring that element into metal, and that’s what we try to do somewhat. I also have a very short attention span, therefore I kind of go with that moment, flesh it out, do the riff a couple of times, go on to the next point and keep it rolling, that way it’s fun for me to play, because if I had to play the same riff over and over, it’d bore the hell out of me.
WTL: What is it that you do on the road to keep yourselves entertained? (Both Ben and Brian start laughing)
Ben: Movies, PSP.
Brian: There’s a term called “tour delirium”, where you just make up complete babble bullshit that makes absolutely no sense, and to you it’s the funniest thing in the world, but when it happens around other people, they look at you like you’re crazy! Me personally, I pass the time by smoking cigarettes and drinking beer.
Ben: Stopping at every Wal-Mart and every mall across the US. I just finished up “God of War: Chain of Olympus”. I’m addicted to it. Any kind of movie. We’ll even watch something stupid.
Brian: Especially me and, we’re movie nerds! We’re the Siskel and Ebert of the band. We like everything.
Ben: Not just movies, but shows, like cartoons from Adult Swim, or some kind of episode series.
Brian: “Hatchet”! That’s an amazing movie.
Ben: “Black Sheep”! You’ve got to watch the stupid ones though! We like the intelligent ones the most, that make you think beyond, but then you’ve got so have some of the dumbest, totally ridiculous things too. People will ask why the fuck we’re watching something, like “Snakes on a Plane”. (Laughs) I knew “Snakes on a Plane” was going to be totally retarded, just like that more “Eight-Legged Freaks”. Sometimes we regress ourselves down intellectually to dole around some remark of an idea.
Brian: “Family guy” too!
Ben: Those are the things that help you pass time. Other than that, you’re either driving or sleeping. Or that <points to the window> that’s your TV, watching tress fly by at 65 or 85 miles and hour. Or a sign.
Brian: Or looking at your own feet in the window.
WTL: Most of the time your driving, it’s country side, isn’t it?
Brian: The only time we go through a lot of cities is when you go out east. But most of the time we can put on Pink Floyd, crank it up, and just enjoy the countryside for awhile. It’s actually kind of nice sometimes.
WTL: Have you been reading anything recently?
Brian: Yeah, I just finished “Hell Angels” by Hunter S. Thompson, he talks about the Hells Angels culture. I try to read a lot, but I don’t have a lot of time to finish the stuff that I started, but I’m huge fans of tons of authors. Wikowski , Buroughs. I’m a big horr fiction fan. Rex Miller, who a lot of people don’t really know about, wrote a book called “Slob” back in the 80’s which I read about every year.
WTL: Do you read much Ben?
Ben: I Don’t read much man. I like pictures. I get a lot of ideas from pictures, so I look at pictures of things. I guess it’s kind of childish. I’ll look through some magazines on the road and shit.
Brian: Maybe some Dr. Suess? (Laughs) We big comic nerds too. We got John Van Fleet doing the cover for [“Inevitable Collapse in the Presence of Conviction”], who’s an extremely huge comic icon, so it’s an honor to work with him.
Ben: Yeah, we’ve had 2 comic guys do our artwork Mil Sinkovich [Note: the name is most likely spelled wrong] do “A Deleted Symphony For the Beaten Down”.
WTL: What comics have those guys done before?
Brian: Shit, everything man! Stuff from Marvel to Dark Horse to DC. You name it, they’ve done it man. For the most part they’ve become strictly cover artists, because they’ve established themselves for so many years. Sincovich started off way back in the day with “The New Mutants”, and he’s done stuff for “X-Men”, “Wolverine”, “Batman”. John Van Fleet did all the covers for the “Star Wars” novels that you see in all the truck stops. Believe it or not, you can actually get these guys pretty easy because they’re into being able to flex their muscles a little bit instead of just drawing Batgirl for the 3rd time, they can actually dom something they want to do, and they’re exited about it.
Ben: Van Fleet and Sincovich had never done CD covers before. There’s so many of them out there, but none of these bands ever think of taping into that.
Brian: They’re also used to deadlines to put out quality work, and John Van Fleet put that out in a week or two. It went into painting, and it came out amazing.
WTL: Who would you like to tour with who’s both feasible, but not obvious?
Brian: I’ll let him answer that because I have no idea what’s going in the music industry nowadays, but I’ll say this, me personally, I’ll tour with anybody.
Ben: Soilent Green is the kind of band that’s able to tour with a lot of different extreme metal bands, because when you say “extreme metal”, there’s so many variants. I think the way Soilent Greens style is, and the way it can morph. The obvious ones would be Slayer. Actually, the Dethklok thing is really cool. That wouldn’t be something you would think of us touring with ever. It’s like “What the fuck?” that’s a cartoon band! Like he said though, we’d go out with anybody. There’s so many choices and options, like Lamb Of God, Slipknot.
Brian: I want to tour with Jimi Hendrix! (Laughs)
Bren: Bring him back to life!
Ben: Even the idea of Soilent Green going out with Tool is possible seeing all the kinds of bands that Tool has brought with them on the road. They brought Fantomas on the road, they brought Meshuggah, so the possibility there is open. In general, we want to be out as much as we can. Not only that, but we’re on a new label, and we want to make good on this whole operation. We have a solid release, a solid label, solid things going on, and we want to keep that momentum going.
WTL: Have you ever lied about your band name?
Brian: Naw, this bands not that bad. It’s not like cock-in-the-ass (Laughs). You can say Soilent Green, and a lot of people connect it.
WTL: So a lot of people connect it to the movie really easy?
Ben: It hasn’t been that big of a question actually. We don’t get asked very often why we choose Soilent Green, or the meaning behind the name. Most people talk about the Charlton Heston movie.
Brian: I’ve actually been asked in a couple of interviews about how I felt about Charlton Hestons death because of the relation to the movie. Names are a funny thing.
WTL: Ben, does Goatwhore have the cleanest van ever?
Brian: It’s the same van right here!
Ben: It gets cleaned every time I go home.
Brian: We’re clean man!
Ben: We have a trash can right here! We keep clean man, we do!
Brian: I’ve been in some vans that smell like feet and ass!
Ben: What did the Skeletonwitch van smell like?
WTL: Beer and liquor!
Ben: We’ve had beer in here, but we empty it. We don’t leave trash or a half-eaten doughnut on the seat.
Brian: I’ve seen some sick shit!
Ben: This one band got bananas, and for some reason they got left under the seat until the point where it got turned into liquid mush. It smelled so fucking bad.
Brian: We’ve all lived the dirty shitty life, and there’s a way around it, simple things like a garbage can, scrub your head in the sink in the morning at the truck stop.
Ben: Handi-wipes to wipe down.
Brian: There’s tons of ways of getting around the funk. You’ve got to have respect for the person sitting next to, because the last thing you want is to take your shoe off and gas the person next to you! (Laughs)
Ben: Or gas in general! But say if you’ve got an 8 hour drive. You’re probably going to stop 2 times for gas. There’s trash cans at the gas station, and you can easily dispose of everything. There’s so many bands where they can open their van, and it looks like a scene from “Fast Times at Ridgemont High”, and everything falls out fo the fucking vehicle, but it doesn’t have to be like that.
WTL: When I take a look around, there’ a lot of stuff.
Brian: Yeah! We’re going out for 3 months man. It’s a long time so we’re packed to the gills at this moment.
Ben: We’ve got stuff under the seats like snow chains. Everybody has their jacket if it gets colder, and sleeping bags, pillows, blankets, assorted little things. We’re pretty prepared. The only thing I was looking for today was a drill bit!
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