West coast metal veterans Metal Church release their 12th full length studio album Damned If You Do via Nuclear Blast Records on December 7, 2018 (Rat Pak Records/America & King Records/Japan). The latest release is the follow-up to their highly successful 2016 album “XI”, which saw the return of legendary frontman Mike Howe. We speak to Mike about the new album plus we discuss singing and cassettes!
Oliver: How are you doing today, Mike?
Mike: I am fantastic, thank you very much, Oliver.
Oliver: That’s good to hear. I’ve had a good listen to the new album and I think it’s pretty awesome! When you guys were writing it, were you going for any particular theme?
Mike: No, the way we go about writing is Kurdt Vanderhoof, the riff master himself, goes into his studio and holes up and starts writing structures of songs and putting them down. Then he sends them to me when he gets a handful of them and I listen and get excited over certain ones and say ,“Oh this one’s ok”. Then, when he has a certain amount done, I head up to his studio in his house, he throws a microphone up and sits behind the console and asks me which one I want to start on. We start on [a song] and I get up and get inspired and start screaming out. Whatever inspires us and sounds good is what we go with. Sometimes lyrics come out and we keep going and sometimes funny, stupid lyrics come out but they’re in a melody that we like, we keep those until we replace them later. We have a lot of fun doing that. It’s all about how we feel about the song and whether we both agree whether it rocks us or not. Basically that.
Oliver: Yeah cause I was looking at some of these songs and they’ve got some great themes here. I was curious about one song in particular, “Monkey Finger”, I was wondering how that came about.
Mike: Haha! Good for you, first question we’ve been asked about that! That’s one of those songs where, when we’re writing it, that Monkey Finger word came out during the chorus, yelling out or whatever. We were like that is so silly and funny and we just used it as a working title but [as time] went on we’re like it’s kind of cool! [Laughs]. So we kept it cause it was just right. It’s about people being judgemental and judging other people with their “monkey fingers”, you know. We’re not too serious about our music, we like to have a little bit of a twist of humour in there, so we kept it and really like it.
Oliver: Oh definitely, it’s always good to have a bit of humour in there isn’t it. I’ve got a question about Stet Howland as this is the first album that he’s joined you guys for the band. What’s it like working with him?
Mike: It’s great! He’s a great drummer and he has a great attitude and, I don’t know if you know, he joined our band in the second year of our touring for XI, cause Jeff Plate decided he needed to move on and do other things, which was perfectly amicable and he’s a good friend of ours and a great drummer, we really appreciate what he did for us. And then Stet stepped in. He was a friend of Steve Unger our bass player who played in a band previous to this with a band called Where Angels Suffer. So [Steve] called him up and he was available, he came up and played with us and we thought he’s an excellent drummer. So then he played the second year of our touring. At the end of that cycle he started feeling bad. He went and got himself checked out and found out he had cancer, you know, Hodgkin’s Lymphoma cancer. He went in to treatment and it was very scary but in the end he came out cancer free and we are all grateful for that. I think that inspired him to play like a man possessed on our album. I think you can hear it in the very proud and happy Stet and his performance with us.
Oliver: It’s awesome to hear that he’s clear now. It’s interesting, cause you yourself have been back in the band for a couple of years, so how’s it been being back in the fold?
Mike: It feels great! I mean I had trepidations about doing it. Kurdt and I had long conversations back in 2014, early 2015, discussed the pluses and minuses and the way we could deal with the music business and separation, here we live and family life and all that, that would be different. We got through those hurdles and made an album that we’re really proud of and carried on and went into the touring cycle with that. We just feel that we’re the luckiest guys on Earth that we can still keep doing this in our fifties like we’re reborn and having a second chance at it. We’re just thankful and so grateful for being here still and able to do this.
Oliver: That’s awesome. Speaking of the touring cycle I was wondering if there are any touring plans for Australia?
Mike: We’ve been in negotiations and, well I guess I wouldn’t say negotiations, but we’ve been in the back and forth with fans and people like you, amazing Australian people, about coming to Australia. But it’s unfortunately about affordability to come all that way. We’d love to come and play there, there’s no doubt, so we’re waiting for the right offers and the right person that might be able to commit to helping us make that come true. Unfortunately we can’t afford to pay to come there and we don’t want any promoter to lose money, so it’s a fine line. We’re working on that and hopefully that will work out some day and we can make it there.
Oliver: Oh cool, I mean I’ll be there when you do come. Quick question about the new album again. I noticed that it also comes on cassette. I was curious what the decision behind that was.
Mike: Basically our record company guy, who’s an awesome guy and works super hard for our band said there’s people out there that actually want to collect cassettes so we should put out some cassettes. Not too many, but enough to maybe entice people to buy them. I think it’s a great idea. There seems to be a resurgence in that, so we’re trying to please everybody!
Oliver: Cool! What’s your personal record collection like? Do you have a wide variety of media like cassette’s, CDs, records?
Mike: Yes, exactly, I have all media of music. I have two boys who try to make me be more modern [laughs], step up to the plate and be a more modern dad. But yeah, I really enjoy albums. But across all formats of music and across all genres of music in general because I’m a fan of *music*. Not just our kind of music, heavy metal, which I love, but any kind of music. I think that there’s great music in every genre if you really look deep. I think it’s all interconnected.
Oliver: It certainly is. When you’re singing, do you have a particular warmup routine you like to go through?
Mike: I like to [warm up]. I have vocal exercises, humming and scales and that which warm me up. Mostly it’s about staying connected with my mechanism, which is my diaphragm and my whole “instrument”, which is my body. Keeping in touch with my breath, my diaphragm and all that. I keep in shape with mindfulness to make sure that I keep those connected with my actual singing and throat so I don’t hurt myself. I think it’s important for a singer, especially my style, to not get over-excited and lose their technique, rise up into their throat and hurt themselves. An interesting thing is to sit in a chair and meditate and do a little chanting and humming to stay centred before I walk out on stage and scream my head off.
Oliver: Oh ok, so do you like your mindfulness techniques?
Mike: Yes I do! And I do yoga so that helps a lot with breathing and mindfulness. Yes, I think it’s all interconnected. To stay centred and to stay focused, but also to project yourself, so I try to keep all those things and pay attention to all those things. To make myself carry on is a very difficult thing if you scream at the top of your lungs like heavy metal singers do on stage and jump around and not hurt yourself. You really need to, as you say, keep mindful of your energy and where you’re at so you don’t get too excited and lose your technique and hurt yourself.
Oliver: Yeah cause I’ve been doing a bit of vocals myself and that’s something I’ve tried to do, stop myself get overexcited.
Mike: Exactly!
Oliver: As a performer, do you have any influences on your style?
Mike: Well my very first and early age influences were Rob Halford of Judas Priest and Bon Scott of AD/DC. When I was fifteen, sixteen years old I was in a cover band in Detroit, Michigan, where I grew up. Basically the majority of the songs we did in our cover band was Judas Priest and AC/DC, filling it in with Blackbird or Saxon and things like that. But Rob Halford and Bon Scott were my two heroes in my formative years. I really aspired to have Rob’s range and Bon Scott’s attitude and try to mix those two together.
Oliver: They certainly do have the attitude. Thank you very much for the chat, it’s been great!
Mike: It’s been great for me also Oliver and I appreciate what you do. I hope to see you soon down under.
Damned If You Do is available everywhere including iTunes
