Interview with John Gallagher of Dying Fetus by Mike Meier from Walls of Fire

Dying Fetus is back with a vengeance. Many considered the band dead and buried when everybody except John Gallagher quit, but the new album “Stop at Nothing” proves it’s far from over. However, John seemed like it was over for him at least for the day when he called me 15 minutes late after an apparent interview marathon. The poor guy was clearly tired and at some point asked me to write the answers for him because he simply didn’t know what to say anymore. Well, I didn’t have to go that far. It actually turned out to be an interesting and entertaining little chat after all.

Let’s start with a standard question. Compared to your older albums, how would you describe the new one?
I’d say it’s a bit more technical and more dynamic than the last one, and a little less political. Each song has its own theme. It’s a little more brutal I guess you’d say, too. And I like the guitar sound, I think it’s a little crunchier.
Because of the lineup changes you’ve had (more or less the whole band except John quit simultaneously), did you feel any kind of pressure with this album that you had to prove you can still do it without the other guys?
Yeah. Of course, when the guys left, there was a lot of negativity towards me and skepticism, you know, “Can he do it?” - “This is gonna be a disaster!”, I’ve heard things as bold as “Fuck John Gallagher, he sucks.” I’ve heard it all, but then I’ve also heard people say “Hey man, this was the guy writing this shit in the past, why can’t he do it in the future?” So yeah, there was some pressure, but all it did was make me try harder. I put my heart and soul 110% into this album and into the riffs. Every riff, I tried to make it good. No filler bullshit. I could have quit, but I decided to carry on and wanted to release the best material I could. So I just did the best I could and dealt with the pressure.
Given the response so far, do you think you’ve convinced people that you still have it in you?
I feel like I did. You know, it always takes the help of others. I didn’t do it all my self, I don’t want to take credit for everything. I got some good quality musicians, guys that I’ve known for a long time. Eric (Sayenga - drums) used to play in the band before, Sean (Beasley - bass) and Vince (Matthews - vocals) grew up with us. Back in the day, their band Sadistic Torment played with Dying Fetus, they got us our first show back in 92. And Jason (Netherton - former singer) and Vince had the same style back then. Vince was actually an inspiration for Jason.
Funny you should say that, I definitely noticed they have similar voices, but I kind of assumed it was Vince trying to sound like Jason. So it was the other way around then?
I guess they just came up at the same time. Same age, same scene, you know. When Jason left, I knew where to go. I was looking for that specific sound. I hate it when bands change and get a whole different style of vocals and it’s just like, man, that’s not what I’m used to, that just doesn’t sound good. Dying Fetus had a formula that worked and I just wanted to continue on using that formula. I didn’t want to change and pull a Gorefest or some fucked-up shit.
But then why did you pick “Vengeance Unleashed” as the first mp3 you put online? In my opinion, that’s the one song on the new album that sounds the least like what you’re used to from Dying Fetus.
That’s true. “Vengeance Unleashed” was for a split 7" with Deepred. That was the first thing we recorded with the new lineup. We decided to put it on the site to let people know what we were doing and got a lot of good feedback. Some people didn’t like it, of course, but you can’t please everyone. But I agree - there’s some different sounds in that song.
There’s just not a lot of that typical groove-oriented stuff in it, so it didn’t sound much like Dying Fetus to me, really.
You know, at least in my opinion, the stuff I’ve written has always been a little different, I’m not trying to write the same song 80 times. It just happened to work that way where that song had some different elements in it, and I can see where some people might have been alarmed and thinking “oh no, they’re gonna change completely.” If you listen to “Stop at Nothing”, there’s a lot of different stuff, old and new, it’s just a good blend, I think.
You’ve probably been asked this a million times, but I’m gonna have to ask you again - what’s your version of why everybody quit?
It was during a tour we were doing with Vader, I think, in the US. Jason pulled me aside and said he wanted to quit, continue on with his schooling. Touring was going to interfere with his schooling, so he left. And the other two guys, we had some personal problems and started fighting. We were not getting along at all. And if you can’t get along, you’re not going to achieve anything. If you’re gonna fight and stuff, the music you play is gonna reflect that. So I felt it was best to let them go, and that’s basically what happened. Not any huge fuckin’ dramatic story, that’s it. They left, and they’re doing their own thing. Jason formed Misey Index, I think because he started realizing well damn, I still like music, I still want to do this. If you’ve been doing this so long you can’t just give it up. That’s my perception of it all. I’m still friends with Jason, we hang out and we have fun. We’ve been friends for 15 years, even before Dying Fetus, we were in bands together, so there’s no bad blood.
That’s actually the next thing I was going to ask you. What’s the relationship with the other guys these days?
You know, Kevin... he doesn’t play in Misery Index anymore. I met him in Atlanta, he’s cool. I haven’t really talked to Sparky, he’s probably the one that won’t really talk to me. But I have no problem with any of them. Whatever. Shit happens. It’s life, you know.
So now that you have the new lineup together, how did the songwriting process work this time? It must have been different, right?
To be honest with you, it hasn’t really changed much at all. In the past I would sit at home and write riffs, formulate the drums in my head, figure out the vocal patterns and just record them on a four-track, then go to the drummer, play him the riffs, give him the tape, tell him what beats should go where. So whether I’m working with Eric or Kevin, that didn’t really change. Then I would grunt out the vocal patterns, record that and give the tape to Jason or now to Mike and he would use the phonetics to... you know, write lyrics to the grunts or whatever. Things haven’t changed much as far as that goes. I’ve written the music in the past and I’m still doing it, it’s just the people that I’m working with that have changed really.
Let’s talk about the lyrics. I don’t know how much you can say about them since you don’t write them, but at least on the last few albums, you’ve always had political lyrics. There’s a lot of people that say Metal shouldn’t be political. What are your thoughts on that?
I see it both ways. People who don’t want to hear politics in Metal - I can understand that. They don’t want to get preached to when they’re trying to enjoy their music. They’d rather leave that to watching the news. But on the other side of things, some people want to have intelligent concepts and something to think about. What can I say, you can’t please everyone. If you sing about gore all the time, people are gonna complain that you’re one-dimensional and that’s been done a million times, if you branch out and sing about politics, there’s gonna be a percentage of people that are not gonna like that. But the main thing is you gotta do what you want to do. That’s what the song “Stop at Nothing” is about. It’s about not conforming to peer pressure and doing what you want, not following the norm. Just living your life the way you think you should and fuck everyone else.
What are the touring plans?
We’re gonna be in Europe in September in Hate Eternal, Deeds of Flesh and Severe Torture. In June, it looks like we’re going to be playing the Fury Fest in France, that’s a HC/Crossover festival. At some point, we want to go back to Japan. We went to Japan last year, and that was killer for us.
Since you just mentioned that, do you play with HC bands back home? I could kind of imagine that would work.
Yeah, we’ve done tours with All Out War, the Hoods, Diecast... it was good. The All Out War tour was very successful. Hardcore goes well with Dying Fetus, it seems to work out for us. It’s great because a lot of Death Metal bands aren’t able to do that, cross over into different scenes. So that’s great for us because we have more people at the shows.
That’s the good thing about having mosh parts in your songs, huh?
Yeah, I think that’s what brings the HC people into it. But it’s not just written for HC people. The mosh rhythms, I learned that from Death Metal! Suffocation, Baphomet, Broken Hope, that’s what I grew up on. When I heard that stuff, like Suffocation’s “Liege of Inveracity”, I thought wow, that’s crazy, that’s got great dynamics, it builds up, breaks down... that inspired me to play mosh rhythms in Dying Fetus. I get asked that question a lot, “yeah, you must really be into Hardcore”, but it’s not really like that. I was inspired by the Death Metal bands that used to do that style. Internal Bleeding, Pyrexia, all that good old shit. A lot of that is lost nowadays, that’s why I think we stand out sometimes. Death Metal bands are playing 100 miles an hour all the time, and it gets monotonous. We’re kinda different from a lot of modern Death Metal bands. At least that’s the way I see it.
Yeah, the mosh groove is kind of a lost art in Death Metal these days...
Have you heard Baphomet? They had an album called “The Dead Shall Inherit” back in 91. That kicked ass, dude. We actually covered one of their songs on “Grotesque Impalement”. It’s called “Streaks of Blood”.
Actually that reminds me of something I nearly forgot to ask you - what’s up with that glam song on “Grotesque Impalement”?
Well, that’s just trying to have a sense of humor, obviously. It’s a song I wrote years ago. Jason and I always had a sense of humor with Death Metal. If you look at a couple of our old band pictures, we’re just acting stupid there. We could always see the humor in Death Metal. I always think it’s funny how some people try to be so mean and so hard and they think they’re such a badass just because they wear black and frown all the time. It’s a joke to all the Black Metallers out there that think they’re so tough. A lot of people thought it was hilarious. To me it’s just about having a sense of humor and not thinking you’re so cool and great because you play Heavy Metal. You know what I mean?
Absolutely. I know I laughed. I just assumed it was probably a Motley Crue cover or something.
I wrote that song. I can write country songs, glam songs, you name it. That’s what I want to do after this, probably. Just be a songwriter, and sell music to other bands. That’s where I might go for the future.
http://www.dyingfetus.com/
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