Interview with John Chavez of Vehemence
Email interview by Robin Steeley
Crave: What’s the response been like to “Helping the World to See?”
John: The response to our new album worldwide has been great! There was more publicity with this album than our previous albums which brought forth more interviews, reviews, and ad’s and magazines. Wes Benscoter’s artwork really helped us out as well and received very good feedback!
Crave: What do you think is the biggest difference between the new record and “God Was Created?”
John: We choose to write an album about some of the problematic issues the world has faced in the past decade. The issues include songs about the terminally ill and their death process, terrorism, a one sided Christian extremist television network, drugs, a true crime story, an ode to all soldiers, depression, family dysfunction, political issues, and the catholic pedophile church issues. After seeing all that has happened in the past decade we made lyrics in relation to the news and the changes in this world. We have had our cryptic messages in our lyrics in the past and this time we are taking the content a bit further that will make everyone understand. God Was Created was a fictitious conceptual horror story and had mixed reactions between reviewers because of its complexity for our first label debut. The Thoughts From Which I Hide was more of a blood and guts type album with anti-religious passages. The music on our new album is much more energetic and shows that we have advanced ourselves in song writing and skill levels. This album was definitely a step up in production and product.
Crave: With the Death Metal world churning out so many bands with similar sounds
has it been hard to focus on the classic Vehemence sound?
John: Well we always write for ourselves and we stick to the Vehemence formula that we have. We make sure to make music that we want to listen to and have a good time playing. We advance our musicianship skills with each album we release.
Crave: What’s it been like being on Metal Blade’s Roster with so many great bands?
John: It is great to be on the roster, Metal Blade has some of the most innovative bands in metal. We eventually get to tour with the bands that are on the label and become friends with them. Metal Blade makes sure the band is well taken cared for in distribution and coming into and out of the business with the knowledge to take the band even further.
Crave: Can you tell me about writing the song “Trinity Broadcasting”?
John: The Trinity Broadcasting Network is available on regular television nationwide. It is a one sided Christian extremist television network that stages shows like having the parallelized come out in a wheel chair getting touched by a preacher and suddenly standing up and walking out of their wheelchair. Other celebrities appear on this channel telling people to donate to the television show for them to present good quality Christian TV for millions. I would rather see a television channel present different types of religions, but you can obviously see what the channel is doing when you see the hosts sit in a fancy chapel in gold chairs and weight lifters ripping up phone books for money.
Crave: How did you get that trippy guitar sound in the beginning of “You Don’t have
to be Afraid Anymore”
John: The guitars were harmonized and an Ebow was used. An Ebow is a guitar sustainer which is hand held that has different polarities of magnetic force
you can switch up to get different harmonic sustained tones.
Crave: What’s your favorite city or venue to play?
John: We enjoy playing in our own home town as well as Houston, Florida, Spokane, Seattle, Eugene, and The House of Blues in Hollywood was the most professional venue we have played at. The Palace in Los Angeles was the biggest stage we have played on. We haven’t played much in Portland, last time we were there we were on tour with Testament and played at the Roseland. I am sure we will be back there many times, and we hope to see everyone in Oregon come out to bang their heads.
Crave: What was the first album you ever owned?
John: The first album I ever owned was Guns N Roses Use Your Illusion 2. That basically improved my vocabulary at a very early age. Then I bought some Metallica cd’s. I heard a lot of the music on the radio and music channels called The Box and Much Music on TV and never went out to actually buy music for the longest time. Greatest purchases as a young man were The Tea Party-The Splendor Soils and Cannibal Corpse - Butchered at Birth.
Crave: What CD have you been listening to lately?
John: Well I have been listening to Gojira a popular death metal band from France. Other bands like IllDisposed, Symbyosis, Mutant, Theory in Practice, Without Grief, Defaced Creation, and Infernal Method.
Crave: What is the writing process like, does the music come first or the lyrics?
John: The music is composed first between Bjorn Dannov and me. We use the computer to drum machine for the songs and layer all the guitars as we would in a studio. We then show the band the song and the lyrics get added later on but without vocals being recorded unless it is a real demo studio session. We used to just record the guitar tracks on a boom box and show the band, and never demo anything but making demo’s helps us get prepared for the studio. We use Fruity Loops for the drums with our self cut D-Drum samples, and Cool Edit Pro for the guitars.
Crave: If you were headlining a tour and could pick any band, past or present to
play what would the line up be?
John: It would be awesome to tour with Carcass and Gorefest. Those two bands made aggressive music that can out live time. Slayer and Iron Maiden would be the two bands that would be awesome to tour with as well. We have toured with a lot of amazing bands in the past but most of them are the same age as us and we don’t really put them on a pedestal. The bands that have been older than 10 years are most of the bands we look up to and have paid their dues in the music business. Some bands we have toured with already are Incantation, Decapitated, Nuclear Assault, Prong, Deicide, Amon Amarth, Vio-lence, Behemoth, Exhumed, and many more.
Crave: What’s in the future for Vehemence?
John: We will be touring a lot more in the U.S.A/CANADA. We have a show in Mexico, and many upcoming tours to fulfill. We have generated some interest from Europe and we will be going there in the Spring of 2005. Thanks for this interview and we hope to play in your city very soon! Anyone can visit our website at www.vehemence.com and email the band at vehemence@vehemence.com
