So today I had the huge honor of
getting to interview Valient Himself of Valient Thorr, a true metal
lord who is currently on tour in support of the bands new record
Our
Own Masters which will be
released in a few days! (June 18
th)
In the interview we talk about the ideas behind the album, the bands
top secret new video (we get some secrets!) and the groups future!
Be
sure to find Valient Thorr on Facebook
HERE!
Find
Valient Himself
TOO!
Enjoy!
Our Own Masters
comes out in less than a week! How are you feeling about the record?
I feel really good about it, I feel really excited about it! We
worked so hard on it and it's all ready to go and everything. Yet
there's more hurdles to jump through, trying to get the promotion and
distribution done right. After you do all of your part, we could make
the best record in the world, but if it's not out there for people to
have it would be like it didn't exist. Story of a whole. That's what
I'm frustrated about right now, we're having some issue with that.
It's finished and ready to go but its like how many are pressed is it
where it needs to be, is it ready to go? But we're fucking super
psyched about it. We've been on tour the past two days and it was the
first time we ever played the songs live. To reference the new record
there's a lot of nervous energy going on. Its wild!
So the songs
have gone down well live? How has the general buzz kind of been?
We've been playing it live and people have been excited. They sound
different than they do in the studio and different than from the
rehearsal space, we're still feeling them out. We did 8 the first
night and 6 the next night and the reception so far has been good but
we're only two shows in.
How do you feel
the general buzz from the press has been?
There's been more buzz about this record than any other one we've had
so far, maybe just because of the different teams we've had in Europe
and in the US. I have no idea if its reaching more people or what. I
don't even know how that stuff works. I've done like 4 times the
interviews for this record than I normally do if that's any telltale
sign.
What helps to make this record unique and different from the
previous ones?
Well each part of this record was written by the band as a whole
rather than a separate member writing a part and putting all of those
parts together. I think we really considered each part of it. There
were multiple parts written for each song riff wise, chorus wise and
lyric wise. The arrangement too we really got into, we started that
on the last record thinking about arrangement. This time we thought
about the meanings of things. This time we really let everybody put a
whole lot of input if this riff wasn't working we tried another,
trying to find the best part. On the last record there were like 24
demos and on this record there were 85! And they were all completely
different. We're talking about 15 songs and they're all completely
different, each was done like 5-6 different ways.
So was it hard
to determine what should become the final product? How did you pick
and choose among the demos?
It was a combination of all the demos. It was tough, its harder to do
it this way. You want your part in and other people want there part
in and you really have to decide what the best part is. Eventually
you start to go, “Maybe that part is best” in the beginning its
frustrating but it gets easier as it goes along. In the end you have
a much more cohesive record, its not just one guy standing up there
playing the parts that he believes in, its the whole band behind
something they all believe in.
So how did you
come up with the lyrics for this album?
Well like I said, every person contributed. In the past I wrote maybe
the first three records worth and took a couple of lines from the
others on the fourth and fifth. But here there's a verse here a
chorus there, everybody contributed and their stuff got in.
So you'd say
that the greatest challenge on this record was making it all cohesive
or was there another moment of great adversity?
That was probably it. Working out something we were all loving. We
were all dealing with stuff we have never dealt with before. There's
all sorts of stuff going on like births, deaths, marriages, family
type shit. You have to take hold of it and do what you can. When life
happens you have to make it congeal all together.
So did those
life things impact the record?
They all impacted the record because we couldn't make them go away. I
like to call them invisible obstacles because everybody's jumping
these hurdles that you don't see. You don't know whats going on with
every person. The way you treat people can help or hinder them in the
stuff they're dealing with every day and so that's why I try to be
positive otherwise I could make lives harder than they are. The
longer life goes on and the more possibilities you have and the more
things unravel and we've never dealt with some of these things so
that's what a good portion of these songs are about.
Do you have a
favorite song off this record?
I don't know. Usually when I have a favorite record from some other
band I'll listen to the whole thing through and at some point or
another almost every song on the record will be my favorite on the
record. Take for example Frank Blacks Teenager of the Year, I
think there's 21 songs on that record and at one point or another 15
or 16 of them have been my favorite on that record. I have no idea
about my favorite song on this record though. I like the speed of
Crowdpleaser but it's so hard to perform live, I like the feel of No
Strings Attached its like nothing we've ever done before. I get
chills when I'm listening to it in the car. We all live in different
cities now so when I was driving to rehearse and I was like, this
doesn't even sound like us, but we did it! At first I didn't like
Torn Apart as much. It was supposed to start off as a kind of
Animals type song and it eventually became what one of my buddies
called a solo Ozzy type song and its become one of my favorite songs
to play live right now because it sounds fully realized. All the
parts are there and we're about to have a video come out for in about
a week, I'm not exactly sure when. But that song is probably the most
realized on the record.
So that video...
Can you give us a hint as to what it will be about or is that top
secret?
It's supposed to be top secret but its coming out in a week so I'll
tell you. So It's like if you took Office Space and Apocalypse and
put them together into the Wizard of Oz formula. It's pretty wild,
you'll just have to watch the whole thing. That will make sense once
you see the video.
Can you tell me
what's going on in the cover art?
Like I said we had different things we had never dealt with before
and Lucien the drummers father passed away last year and he was a big
supporter of the band since the beginning and he painted that in
1975. And Lucien had it hanging in his living room while growing up.
So one of his business partners down in Florida had it and we asked
if we could use it and he was like 'Sure, ok!' We did it as a tribute
to Lucien's father. It also had a lot of the themes we were writing
about like going through hell and coming out the other side and using
that as an analogy for the possibility of the end of the world and
its 2013 and classical literature like Paradise Lost and Dantes
Inferno shit like that. There was so much that united the whole
record together like family and themes and inspiration and this
painting was a big part of the record. And it looks like a record
from 1975 because the art was done in 1975! It makes sense to us.
Speaking personally a lot of my favorite stuff is from the 70s too so
there's that.
In a couple
places there were nods to older bands like The Who and Garage punk
bands was that intentional?
I don't think any of that was completely intentional. We never go and
say 'Oh lets make a song like Suicidal Tendencies' we don't do that.
You can tell though when you're like oh that sounds like Black Flag!
For me the song No Strings Attached doesn't sound like Thin Lizzy but
it has that Thin Lizzy vibe for me. So those kind of things happen
but they're definitely unintentional. But again I think we have such
diverse influences, in the past you might have had two or three of
those in one song. And on this record we tried to make the songs
different. The record is more diverse than any of the other ones, the
songs are diverse but we try to keep the parts to one song to keep it
grounded in its space. Thats what we do with No Strings Attached and
Crowdpleaser, one is like a Thin Lizzy type song and the other is
like a fast Motorhead jam. We just start writing and that just comes
out then after we look back and say, 'Oh that's were that probably
came from'.
You've commented
before that this is your most diverse record thus far, was that a
goal going in or did that just happen?
It just happened. We just start writing. We probably tried to make it
more cohesive than diverse. We all have such different influences
that if we try to appease each other and make it the most cohesive
record there's going to be a lot of different stuff in there because
we all like to speak up.
So now I'm just
wondering, how do you plan on developing Valient Thorr's sound in the
future?
I have no idea! I know that we still have some ideas that we're
working on for some new songs. Each time it gets to the point where
it feels like its just has to get down it turns out different. It's
all about where you are I don't know about were we'll be when we put
it down in the future, that will factor into it.
So it's
basically you're personal experiences that shape the music?
Exactly! We try to stay relevant and there's a lot of current events
embedded in each action and a lot of it depends on where we're at.
For example the two albums we recorded before this we did in Seattle
and it's like a beautiful place and we have lots of friends so
there's lots of distractions and I feel like that's tied into the
albums. I feel like with this record we did in Athens Georgia and we
didn't know anybody and I didn't have any money to have any fun so
there weren't any distractions and we were really focused on the
record the whole time. It wasn't like 'He's doing guitar so I can
fuck off and watch movies all day' We were in their together the
whole time critiquing and trying to figure out ways to make it the
best it could be. That's a big part of it and if it goes forward that
way it'll keep getting better and better.
What other
exciting stuff do you have planned for this year?
We have the record coming out and tour in the US then three days
later a tour in Europe then three weeks later a tour on the West
Coast then another European tour after that. Then we want to go into
territories we have never been in before like Russia, Mexico, South
America, Japan... There's so many spots we haven't been too before.
Once everything that needs taking care of is taken care of we're
going to try to expand a little bit, go to new places and see if we
can get influences from there.
So what do you
love so much about music?
I don't think I can get around life without music. Every job I've
ever had I've always been able to listen to music. Every time you're
in a weird mood you can alter your mood by listening to music. You
don't need drugs. I'm not advocating not to use drugs, I'm just
saying for me personally if I'm down I use music. Maybe it's like
women buying shoes or something like that but I'm always excited
about discovering new music from different places and different
times. I like the history of it too and connecting the dots with it.
I nerd out about that like how other people nerd out about the Civil
War.
Any last words
of wisdom?
I don't know man, just don't piss into the wind!
