Interview with Skinless by Mike from Walls of Fire

"From Sacrifice to Survival", the third album by NY deathers Skinless, raised more than a few eyebrows. Where some of us (including me) consider the album a musical quantum leap for a band that was previously more or less an excellent live act but only moderately interesting on CD, some old fans are less than pleased with the band's more technical musical direction. Unsurprisingly, singer Sherwood doesn't quite seem to know what all the fuss is about.

How's the response to the new album been so far?
Really good. I was actually happy to finally get a bad review today. I was so happy because they've all been so good, and it was very refreshing to see some fucking haters out there.
Well, then you're probably gonna love this - I've been hearing some pretty mixed responses from people who liked your older albums. But I take it you haven't heard a lot of that kind of thing so far?
Not a lot. I've heard a lot of good things, but people are gonna have their own opinions and that's all part of the game. I'm not gonna fault anybody for their own opinion.
But you do realize it sounds pretty different from what you used to sound like?
You know, to be honest, I don't think it's incredibly different. I think people kinda blow it out of proportion. I think it's a little bit faster. People say it's a technical record, but I don't believe it's a technical record at all. I think there are a lot more technical records out there. I would say it might be a bit more technical and I think it's a little bit better put together than our previous records, but that's all a matter of people's opinions.
So you weren't worried about your old fans when you recorded it?
I think bands would be cheating themselves if they worried about exactly what everybody's gonna think because everybody's gonna have their own opinion at the end of the day. And I think, really, it's important for bands to progress and I think in the end people will respect a band more for being honest and for doing what they feel, rather than try to contrive a record for the sake of pleasing everybody.
So what were your goals when you were putting the new songs together? Did you set out to achieve anything in particular?
Actually, we did. I personally wrote down a checklist. I said, I wanna do this, this, this and this. One of the things was I wanted to have a faster record. Not an entirely faster record, but a record with more speed elements in it. I think we definitely achieved that. And we just wanted to add some more dimensions to the music. That was the main goal, to just kinda push it a little bit more and not worry about what people were gonna think and just do it.
Were you influenced by Hardcore at all? I'm definitely hearing some Hardcore influences in the guitar riffs there.
That's another thing that's really strange to me. Noah (Carpenter, guitar - Mike) is one of the most Metal guys ever. He doesn't own one Hardcore CD. I mean, the dude doesn't even like Hardcore. I on the other hand listen to Hardcore, but I wouldn't say that I'm particularly influenced by it. I'd say the only thing hardcore about Skinless is hardcore drinking and hardcore pornography.
But obviously, you're saying that because I'm not the first person that points this out to you.
Well... I don't even know what the fuck Hardcore is. I don't really understand when... one interviewer says "Oh, you know, you have a Hardcore sound like the Hardcore bands Soilent Green and Dillinger Escape Plan." And I'm saying to myself, those are not fucking Hardcore bands. To me, a real Hardcore band would be Agnostic Front or Gorilla Biscuits. To me, that's a Hardcore band. And Dillinger Escape Plan is about the farthest thing from Hardcore that I could imagine.
Another thing I noticed about the album is you always had this kind of comical slant to your stuff in the lyrics and sometimes in the music. That seems to have completely disappeared.
You know, over the past couple of years we've just done a lot of touring and a lot of growing as a band and as people. And "Progression Towards Evil" and "Foreshadowing Our Demise" are very similar records. Most of the songs could be interchangeable, they could almost be on the same record. I think there was growth in between "Progression" and "Foreshadowing" just because the band tightened up and we did a lot of shows in between those albums. But we did three or four times as many shows in between "Foreshadowing" and... um... whatever the fuck our new record's called. A band just grows, things change, and especially if you're playing so much, you get tighter and move on.
Is John (Longstreth, formerly Origin) your permanent drummer now?
Yeah. When he first moved up here, it was gonna be a temporary move, or actually, it was kinda open ended at that point. But since he has left Origin and we have a year's worth of touring lined up right now, so it's just gonna be full speed ahead and he's now our permanent drummer.
Final question about the new album, we already talked about the comedy thing, but what can you tell me about the lyrics? I'm having a hard time figuring out what some of them are about.
Yeah, a lot of them are pretty abstract. Some of the lyrics come from stuff I've written down in my journals or whatever and lyrics have been written at all points throughout the recording and even before we even thought about writing this record. I agree, some of them are abstract and pretty open to interpretation. I don't really know what makes lyrics lyrics, I just write down whatever I feel like doing and that's that, you know.
Why did you go on tour in Europe just before the album came out?
In my opinion, there's no time that you "should" tour. I look at it as pre-promotion for the record. It was a short tour, it wasn't like a lengthy comprehensive tour of Europe. And I look at it as kinda getting the word out before the record comes out. That way, we can go back and do a bigger tour later.
Why the long break in between records, anyway? It's been a pretty long time since "Foreshadowing Our Demise."
I think it's been about two years. But we did a lot of touring. We've done the United States like four or five times in between the two records, Europe twice, Japan... twice, actually, because we leave for Japan pretty soon, so we've just done a lot of touring, and it's tough to find time to write. I think it's almost impossible to write on the road. When you're in a van, it's just impossible to write music.
So how do you write songs then?
It's pretty different most of the time. The bass player and I actually contributed a lot more to this record than we have in the past. There's one song where I wrote the beginning part, then showed it to everybody else and we kinda took it from there and everybody put their input in. With another song, Joe (Keyser, bass - spacehamster) wrote most of the shell of it, and we kinda jammed it out and made it what it was. Noah Carpenter writes a lot of the music, and he comes to practice with parts of songs finished and sometimes whole songs finished. But they're always open for change.
Since you just mentioned Japan - actually I've been hearing from a lot of Death Metal bands lately that they're touring in Japan. How's the scene over there?
Amazing. It's incredible The fans are great. I'm told by Japanese friends that the local scene isn't that good. There are a lot of bands, but not a lot of places for them to play and not a lot of support from Japanese fans for Japanese bands, which I find really surprising because when American or European bands are touring there, they do really well. And the fans are very... I mean VERY supportive. So I find it kinda strange that they have a hard time with their local scene.
That's pretty much all I've got, so... any last words, anyone you wanna say fuck you to?
Let's see... you know, I don't really have any enemies in Europe yet. No, I just wanna say thanks a lot for the interview, and check out our web site.
http://www.myspace.com/skinless
http://www.relapse.com/