Latest / HEAVY Music Interviews / Sonic Destruction With KELLY SHAEFER From TILL THE DIRT
Transcript
- 0:22Hey, Uh, this is Kelly Shaffer from Until the Dirt and the album
- 0:26is Outside the Spiral, out August twenty fifth on Nuclear Blast. You everful,
- 0:30Kelly, Thanks for joining us today. Rather, how are you very
- 0:35well and yourself doing great? I'm down sweating out in Florida. It's about
- 0:40one hundred degrees every every single day. It's it's brutally hot. For the
- 0:45climate and the and the fun. It's always been good for metal, you
- 0:50know, he is always notoriously good for metal. As you say about,
- 0:56you're not far off for unleashing your your latest slab of metal in the well
- 1:00the new album Outside the Spiral, which is also the debut and from the
- 1:03freshly assembled outfit to the debt mate, So are you any more nervous or
- 1:07anxious with this one? Like saying it's the start of a new chapter?
- 1:12Yeah, I mean I think I'm anxious more than nervous. I think I've
- 1:17been around for long enough now to you know, to uh. But but
- 1:21even as long as I've been around, I still feel that that you know,
- 1:23that anxiousness, that excitement that uh, you know, it's even it's
- 1:27been thirteen years since I've done a new record. So twenty ten I did
- 1:33tupid over with Atheist. So, you know, just being back in the
- 1:36in this cycle of things, and you know, I feel very fortunate and
- 1:38lucky to have tripped upon this, you know, this prolific period of songwriting
- 1:45that happened, you know, because I definitely never intended on having a new
- 1:48band or new music at all. It just just kind of naturally came out
- 1:52of thin air. And uh so here I am right back in the uh
- 1:56you know, in an album cycle again. And it's hyah. It's fun,
- 1:57it's exciting, and it's different. And but I mean, I think,
- 2:01you know, it's a lot like sending your kids to school, you
- 2:04know, like you hope all the other kids like the you know this kid
- 2:07and uh and you hope the teacher's nice to them, and you know what
- 2:09I mean. And you know, so there's those uh, nervous feelings,
- 2:14you know. But I'm super proud of it and and I can't wait for
- 2:17people to hear it. You know, I've been sitting on it for two
- 2:20and a half years. Wow, that's tell us a bit more about it
- 2:23from a musical point of view than what you've gone forward with it. Well,
- 2:28I mean, you know, it's it's it's fusing all of the things
- 2:30that I've loved about I've had choose sort of I've had dual careers. I've
- 2:34had a you know, a career with Neurotica and career with The Atheist,
- 2:38and both bands, you know, did well in their own and there you
- 2:40know, in terms of you know, making a mark in their own right.
- 2:44And when Neurotica was much more of a was singing, there was a
- 2:46lot of harmony vocals. It was it was heavy rock, slash metal with
- 2:52atheists obviously crazy technical metal. So I never had an outlet like this where
- 2:55I was able to combine the two and and really kind of pay homage to
- 3:00all of my nineties grunge influences, my my stoner rock, desert rock,
- 3:06Caius Hermano, fucking you know, all the Atomic bitch Wax, you know,
- 3:09all that kind of stuff that I really really love, Black Sabbath and
- 3:13seventies sort of thick, groovy shit along with blast beats and and chaotic screams
- 3:19and the harmony vocals. So it's it's a it's a plethora of shit that
- 3:23really just came out of, you know, isolation from COVID and and frustration
- 3:30and anger and in the unknowingness, and so it came from a really natural
- 3:36place where art should come from there, you know, should come from a
- 3:38place of you know, not just happiness, you know, I mean some
- 3:43of the best art in the world comes from altered minds and and uh,
- 3:46disarray and and confusion, you know. And uh so that's kind of where
- 3:52it came from. And you know, initially it wrote like twenty five songs
- 3:57in six weeks and you know, to try to for everything I could while
- 4:00I was feeling the way that I felt during that time period. Because I
- 4:03don't think we'll ever be able to recreate how that felt for anybody in the
- 4:08world. It's something we all shared, you know, for a couple of
- 4:11years with COVID, and uh, it was really bad here in America.
- 4:14I mean, just between the politics of it and the the you know,
- 4:17the virus itself. You know, I lost a lot of friends and from
- 4:21the virus and from the feelings about the virus. So I created a lot
- 4:27of tension, which is good for music, you know, it's good for
- 4:30art. You know, talk is cheap, you know, I can be
- 4:33like, oh, it's this it's that, you know. But but I
- 4:35I you know, if you know anything about me and my career with the
- 4:38Atheists, you know that I never I'm always a bit left of center.
- 4:42And and so this is something that I really feel like is uh, you
- 4:47know, has the capabilities of moving the needle a little bit. It's it's
- 4:50doing it's you know, there's things happening on this record that have never happened,
- 4:54you know, blending of styles and and and sort of a blending of
- 4:58genres that that you know, hasn't really been tapped into for better for worse,
- 5:01you know. But I feel like there's a there's a group, a
- 5:04constituency of young extreme metal fans that haven't really had the proper introductions to really
- 5:11good nineties music, you know, because there was a lot of good ship
- 5:15there. There was a lot of stuff on the surface that it's easy for
- 5:17a young twenty year old to go fuck the nineties. Fuck Pearl Jam,
- 5:20you know, yeah, okay, fuck Pearl Jam, but don't fuck Alice
- 5:24some Chains, you know, don't fuck old sound Guard. You know what
- 5:27you're missing out if you're not listening to bad motor Finger and you know what
- 5:30I mean, you're twenty years old and you've never listened to Bad motor Finger.
- 5:31You're fucking your life is way lower than mine. You know, you
- 5:35need that in your life, you know, like that that is those are
- 5:39vitamins that every metal heads body needs, you know. And so uh so
- 5:43I was just really combined those you know, the love of that that,
- 5:46you know, that sort of grindy feeling, that groovy feeling with extreme speed
- 5:53and anger and and that's still the dirt man. Yeah. Now, I
- 5:59hope I paste all this together right from the person release. I had otherwise
- 6:01ex questions. Kenna sound a big stupid but I got the impression that we
- 6:04went three periods of self doubt about the new music reality in the writing stage.
- 6:09Is that right? Well, I wouldn't call it self doubt. I
- 6:12was just confused. I didn't really I knew it wasn't atheist material, and
- 6:15because it was tuned, I wrote everything on guitar tuned down to B and
- 6:20typically atheist is always in the key of E four forty, So I knew
- 6:25it wasn't going to be atheist materialville and I and I knew once I put
- 6:27vocals on a couple of songs that it was also not atheist because of the
- 6:31clean vocals, and I'm using there's probably four or five different voices on this
- 6:35album that I was able to tap into that I would never be able to
- 6:40tap into in any other project that I've ever been a part of. So
- 6:43that was an exciting part of it, but not a self doubt. But
- 6:47I definitely wanted to send it around to people that would be honest with me
- 6:50and tell me whether it was shit or not, you know. And so
- 6:54I sent it to like Geene Hoglan and Steve to Georgio and and Jeff Loomis
- 6:57guides that ended up playing you know on the record in the early stages of
- 7:01it, and uh it got a lot of really great feedback from those guys
- 7:04in inspiration. Then obviously inevitably Scott Burns came out of retirement to help me,
- 7:10to help me produce the record and finished the you know, the final
- 7:13product of it, and so guys like that are just brutally honest and and
- 7:16I really it's in this industry it's hard to get that kind of honesty,
- 7:20and uh so I was really looking for it, and so so it wasn't
- 7:25really a self doubt. I was excited about it. But you know,
- 7:27I've been excited about music before that everybody hated So I was like, fucking,
- 7:30you know, maybe I'm just pissing up a tree. I don't know,
- 7:33you know, so I so that's kind of how it happened. Then
- 7:36they were early stages, and I was inspired by their encouragement and uh yeah,
- 7:42And it really happened in a real short period of times, sixty eight
- 7:45weeks total for twenty five songs. And then that little burst was over,
- 7:49and then it was just a matter of trying to figure out, well,
- 7:51is this a band or is it a solo record? Is it you know,
- 7:55what is it? And then it just felt better to bring in musicians
- 7:59to play because I played guitar on the record as well, for the first
- 8:01time since ninety three, and I played guitar on a record, so I
- 8:05wanted to bring another other artist to play, you know, play what I've
- 8:09written, but to play it and you know, with their tones and their
- 8:13sounds. And so I ended up just getting lucky and having a wealth of
- 8:18talent to be able to play on the record, to play and you know,
- 8:22my vision. So it was it was nice. So I mean,
- 8:24if you're a songwriter yourself. Then you know that it's sometimes hard to write
- 8:26with a lot of people because you have to please everybody, and it's it's
- 8:30super hard to you kind of have to make concessions along the way because you
- 8:35know, three of the three of the four other guys you play with might
- 8:37have great riffs, but that fourth guy might have a bunch of stinkers,
- 8:41and you know, and and he doesn't want to be left out of the
- 8:43writing process, so you kind of got to, you know, concede,
- 8:46like, all right, man, we'll do that riff, but let's let's
- 8:50do it like this. You know, this process for me was like I
- 8:52didn't have to ask anybody. You know, I can ask my three year
- 8:54old little boy, what do you think, buddy? You know, and
- 8:58perfect, you know. So that's how I went then, and I just
- 9:03I found that liberating and fun and a process that I had never been a
- 9:07part of it before. So it was nice. Now you mentioned that in
- 9:11the process, what you knew that it was gone away from the ips sort
- 9:15of the sound. But when we knew that was happening, did you put
- 9:18any like any imitations or any any benchmarks or stopping points on yourself or did
- 9:24you just let the creative period go. No. I honestly, it happened
- 9:28so fast that I didn't have time to really second guess it or plan on
- 9:33what was going to happen with it, or you know, a lot of
- 9:35the cool stuff happened after the songs were sort of demoed and written, and
- 9:39so I was able to I don't know, just it really happened so fast,
- 9:46and it was just really short period of time where I just bursted full
- 9:48of all these songs and then I knew really what to do with them.
- 9:52And so it was other people that really kind of helped me shape it into
- 9:56till the Dirt and then you know, inevitably putting the band together with uh
- 10:00you know, Dylan Marks, Jerry with Tunsky, Yoav reallys Fine Gold and
- 10:03and Ian Way. Uh. So, I you know, having having a
- 10:09you know a great group of guys who go out and play this stuff,
- 10:11it's gonna be it's gonna be a lot of fun, you know. So
- 10:13it's just you know, not a lot of opportunities at this stage of my
- 10:16career where you get to kind of start over, you know, I mean,
- 10:18it makes something that's relevant and new and modern and uh, and that's
- 10:20what it is. It's definitely not an old guy record, you know,
- 10:24it's uh, you know it's and it's not an atheist record in anyway,
- 10:28So atheist fans out there, I mean, you know this is this is
- 10:33a different animal altogether. So but you know it's it's ferocious and fast and
- 10:39brutal, but it's it's it touches on some moments that really haven't been heard
- 10:43and I don't think in modern metals. So better for better for worse,
- 10:48we'll see what happens. You know. Oh, now, we brought this
- 10:50up before and you sort of brushed ryverr like it wasn't really that big a
- 10:54deal mate, But you actually had Scott Burns coming out of over Chime it
- 10:58all selfie probably sakes to produce the album. That's a pretty big deal,
- 11:01right, Like what sort of a what effect did that have on the on
- 11:05the finished result? Oh man, I mean listen, Scott Burns to me
- 11:09is like I can't tell you how important he is to the to what we
- 11:13all know and love today is classic death metal, you know what I mean?
- 11:18Like he is, you know, he's the he's the for lack of
- 11:22a better of comparison the Bob Rock of of that, you know. I
- 11:26mean, he's just really such an important None of the old records would have
- 11:31gotten made from you know, morbid obituary, atheist, cnic, Pestlings,
- 11:33all the bands that he worked to death, none of those records getting made
- 11:37without his undying dedication to come in and early, staying late. None of
- 11:41us had budgets that were of any substance at all. So really those records
- 11:46Gott made purely out of his love and appreciation and respect for what we were
- 11:50doing, because he was really he loved the Tampa scene, because every single
- 11:54band in the Tampa scene was different, you know. I mean, if
- 11:56you look back on Tampa Bay death metal and all the ends that came out
- 12:00of there, you know, everybody had success. Everybody's stuck around pretty good,
- 12:03but everybody's different. You know, atheist is atheist, O, bitch
- 12:05waries a bitch wory more. But it's more with decide is d side.
- 12:09I mean, it really is pretty interesting when you look back on it,
- 12:11and it doesn't typically happen. Typically you get one band and then a whole
- 12:13bunch of bands of sound like that, you know, And so he was
- 12:16always seeking that, you know, trying to find something new and different that
- 12:20he could work on to sort of ride off into the sunset with his career.
- 12:24And uh so when I sent him the demos for this, you know,
- 12:28his words were, you know, listen this this shit is really really
- 12:31good, and you know, let's work on it together. And he,
- 12:35you know, he really, I mean, you know, he bought me
- 12:37a left handed bass so I could continue, so I could play bait on
- 12:39the tracks. He sent me bottles of the eggameisters. So because he was
- 12:43asking, He's like, how are you writing these songs? And I was
- 12:45like, I'm I'm stuck at home like everybody, and I'm I've never drank
- 12:48at home in my life, you know, I've never. I've always been
- 12:52a social drinker or I go out to a bar and drink or if I'm
- 12:54gonna show, but never at home ever, ever, And so now I'm
- 12:58drinking at home and so I check my doorstep and there's a big bottle of
- 13:01the egg and myister air. And that's literally how I wrote this music,
- 13:03though, I mean, and that's why another reason why it sounds very different.
- 13:07You know, I've told the stories through this press junk and then I'm
- 13:11doing for this record, and I hate to keep telling the same story,
- 13:13but I mean it really is important because you know, art is is depicted
- 13:18by your surroundings and your condition, you know. I mean, so all
- 13:22the atheist material I wrote was all pot related. You know, we smoked
- 13:26a lot of pot and play and so that's a different headspace when you drink,
- 13:31you know, when you do shots of eggameister, uh, you know,
- 13:33in your in your three shots of viagra, and you have a lot
- 13:35of courage when you drink alcohol that you don't typically have when you're when you're
- 13:41not drinking. And that courage translated musically to till the dirt where I just
- 13:46did things. I didn't give a shit whether I was supposed to do that
- 13:48or not, or whether anybody's gonna care or anybody's gonna hate it. Like,
- 13:52you know, you feel a lot more brave when you're drinking. And
- 13:54uh, and I you know, I know it sounds cheap and you know,
- 14:00not a great influence on young musicians, but that's the real shit.
- 14:03I mean, that's that's that's how this all came together. So this is
- 14:05the this is the you know, not drunk, but just you know,
- 14:09a couple of drinks, you know, a couple of a couple of shots,
- 14:13and and you really kind of come up with different things. You try
- 14:16different things vocally, you try different things with your arrangements that you wouldn't normally
- 14:20do if you were just in your nine to five mode, you know,
- 14:22in your daytime, like you know me and you were, Dad's like dad
- 14:26mode. Dad mode is a whole different mode. I can't write songs in
- 14:30Dad mode, you know. I have to get in I have to get
- 14:33it into Kelly mode, you know. And uh, and so this particular
- 14:35mode, didn't you know, it was a whole different headspace. And so
- 14:39I would wake up the next day after writing a song, like each one
- 14:43of these songs were written basically in one night, and uh, and the
- 14:46vocals that you hear on the album are, with the exception of a couple
- 14:50of changes, are all vocals that I did that night after I wrote that
- 14:54song. So they were like literally two or three hours old. And I
- 14:58really wanted to capture that spontan, his combustion of of you know, this
- 15:01is how it is. It's flawed, it's it's it's not pretty and pristine,
- 15:07it's uh, it's it's nasty. It's like it's like a punk rock
- 15:11what I'm doing shit in a digital age, you know. And uh and
- 15:15and I'm happy that it came out that way. I'm happy that it didn't
- 15:16happen in a big, fancy studio. I'm happy that, uh, you
- 15:20know, that didn't come together with a you know, a team of people.
- 15:24It was just this really honest, organic explosion of ideas. And so
- 15:30excited that I can leave that behind, you know. I mean, as
- 15:31you get older, you start worrying about the things that you're leaving behind really,
- 15:35you know, musically, And I think I'm really super proud of this
- 15:39one, you know. And I hope that my little six year old when
- 15:41he grows up, well, you know, we'll check this record out and
- 15:43be like, yeah, I was fucking there. You know, the really
- 15:48like decayed that you write them all off, the short or any of them.
- 15:52You wake up the next day without you yager and juice honesty, and
- 15:56you sort of read it and when maybe I should change that, Oh yeah,
- 16:00well those songs didn't make the album, alright, So that's what Well,
- 16:06that's where Scott Burns really played a big role as well. You know
- 16:08he he you know, he didn't mix this record. Ryan Vincent mixed this
- 16:11record at Apollo Audio, Alt and Missouri, and he's a great guy and
- 16:18did a good job. Scott really just played the producer on this on on
- 16:22this album. The true role of a producer is somebody who doesn't necessarily sit
- 16:26at the at the console. He kind of Rick Rubin did it. You
- 16:29know, he just offered his Dali Lama fucking metal ears, you know,
- 16:34and uh and just you know what, would you know, give me advice
- 16:38on which you know, if you know, there's a couple of songs I
- 16:41wrote where he called me the next day and said, that's not until the
- 16:44dirt, buddy, that's that that doesn't sound like any of the other songs
- 16:47you sent me. And I would be like fin you know. And and
- 16:49even if I felt that way, you know, even if I felt they
- 16:52were I knew he was going to be right. And he's just always right.
- 16:56He has a really great sense of what's good and it's not. And
- 17:00that was invaluable to me. And uh, you know, so I just
- 17:04felt like if I could make him happy, I'm on the right track,
- 17:07you know. And and and make myself happy too, you know what I
- 17:11mean. You know, there's some of the songs that didn't make the record
- 17:15didn't make the record because there's only so many songs you can put on a
- 17:19record. But that definitely did happen. On a couple of mornings, I
- 17:22woke up and said, I don't know. I mean, I I can't
- 17:26tell you how many hours of music I've written right now. I mean,
- 17:29I don't know. As soon as I got a recording capability at my house,
- 17:33like and that was a great thing about COVID, is it, you
- 17:36know, kind of pushed that on me something I don't think every would have
- 17:38happened in any other way. And a friend gifted me at daw with,
- 17:44you know, the ability to be able to record at home, and uh,
- 17:47I started using the STL Guitar STL Tone Hub has the has these all
- 17:53these different producer packs where there the best metal producers around me and all of
- 17:57their guitar sounds, so you get like fifty sounds per producer. And my
- 18:00friend Mark Lewis turned me onto his pack and that was inspiring to me because
- 18:06I mean, do you play at all? Do you play guitar? Not
- 18:08at all? So to play guitar. I mean, like, you know,
- 18:11to get to be able to tap into a hundred different amp combinations,
- 18:15a mace up boogie and orange, a Marshal, a sixties Marshal, a
- 18:19seventies marshal, you know, you got to have tens of thousands of dollars.
- 18:23Well, now you know, you have the capability of sitting at home
- 18:26on your laptop and just literally clicking and these perfect sounds have been created by
- 18:30the producers that you know that recorded them will pot me, Mark Lewis,
- 18:36everybody, Howard Benson. And that's the great thing about being being older in
- 18:41a modern age. You know, I'm able to tap into all those sounds,
- 18:45and those particular sounds guitar wise, were inspiring to me. They sound
- 18:48better than any amp I've ever had, you know, because they were masterfully
- 18:52done in a studio and all I gotta do is click on it, and
- 18:55my guitar sounds like that, you know what I mean, Like it is
- 18:57amazing. So that was a big deal. That was also a uh and
- 19:03something that really fed the idea process. You know, the sound of the
- 19:07drums that I could write the sound of my guitar is the fact that I
- 19:11could do a complete song with you know, multi track guitars and have a
- 19:15really listenable product at the end of the night. It was mind blowing to
- 19:18me. And it was almost like an addiction, you know, I mean,
- 19:22because I was just like, oh, man, sit down and set
- 19:26up. You know, anything can happen. I don't know what kind of
- 19:27song I'm gonna write, you know what I mean. That excitement was was
- 19:30feed me like a junkie, you know it was. And that was a
- 19:33really cool experience. And the only thing that allowed me to not feel guilty
- 19:37about it was the fact that there's nothing else that I could have done was
- 19:41COVID. I couldn't go anywhere. I couldn't drive anywhere, couldn't be with
- 19:45band practice, I couldn't do anything like that. So so it all lent
- 19:49itself to that, you know, that isolation and put me in a room
- 19:55by myself, and I figured, and this is what came about. Yeah,
- 19:57we want to do what you often, Mike, you go to it
- 20:00crazy eventually, but it worked this time. Well, I'm glad I wrote
- 20:07a bunch of songs, you know, so I have another album right behind
- 20:08this one, you know what I mean, With the same from the same
- 20:11vibe, you know. So at minimum I'll be able to put out two
- 20:15solid records of stuff that feels like this, you know, before we let
- 20:21you go. I've started a new thing up with Heavy. Now I'm creating
- 20:23three different Spotify lists from artists that we speak to you, so using your
- 20:27own songs. That could be atheist or it can be from Chill the Dirt.
- 20:30But I want to give me a song for okay. The categories are
- 20:33a song to get you up and ready to party, the next one is
- 20:37a song to save your marriage, and the third one is to potentially end
- 20:41your marriage. Oh shit, god, that's hard, man. I'm terrible
- 20:47with song titles too. Let's see a song to endless marriage. Oh my
- 20:56god, I shit, I don't even know why I would I man,
- 21:02that's really hard, buddy. Or no, definitely it could potentially. What
- 21:07was the first one? What was the first one? Getting ready to party?
- 21:11Give me a party, opening practice of the child, the direct start
- 21:15in roll, let's go, it's a ripper, it gets gets a party
- 21:19started right away. And the second one was that someone to save your marriage,
- 21:27Let's save my marriage. Grace from Jeff Buckley. They gotta be your
- 21:32songs, mate, Oh my songs. Oh Jesus uh. A song called
- 21:42easy Speak that I wrote with Neurotica. It was it was a it was
- 21:45a on the first Neurotica album. Yeah. And then and then the next
- 21:49question to end my marriage, not not necessarily yours, you know, but
- 21:53one marriage in general. Shit, I don't know. I just don't write
- 21:59songs like that lyrically. So I I got you, shit got it.
- 22:07There's no like sexual content, hardly at all in any as songs. There
- 22:12is an erotica song called up in the Hay, which is about you know,
- 22:15it was about somebody who had cheated on their their partner, like a
- 22:18lot of times, and like serial cheating, and so I would say that
- 22:22up in the Hay from Neurotica. That's on the It's on on the Blue
- 22:26album. I'm sorry to put you on the spotlight. Sorry, atheist is
- 22:32so particularly different. I can't think on the spile like that. I can't.
- 22:36I'm sorry, but you did well, my friends. Thanks very much
- 22:38for your sorry, Kelly. The album Outside the Spiral is out August fifth,
- 22:45and I promise I'll listen to it before it comes out, mate,
- 22:47But in the meantime, you take care and I'd be seeing out in the
- 22:49try one day. Thank you, my friends. You know all night I'll
- 23:11stand for he say casting starry, rosy hours storry or why shout say child?
- 23:29Sleep myselfselfs I ride well where you say it, so it sleep till
- 23:49the rubble full? Sorry rod, Why my friends see less? That's no
- 24:17way, no way, you say, and so it sleeps now The rather,
- 24:33I know for as time way way, and we always says listens sleeps
- 25:49the rather rose a star. Well let's see, you know, he hes
- 26:19me. I'll stand for her because sorry roving owers sing over with her as
- 26:41sorry our ass