The Red Chord Interview

Interview
Guy Kozowyk
The Red Chord

Lineup:
Guy Kozowyk – vocals
Mike McKenzie (a.k.a. Gunface) - guitars
Kevin Rampelberg - guitars
Gregory Weeks - bass
Brad Fickeisen - drums

5/21/05
Interviewer: Karma E. Omowale

Transcriber: Sharita Lumpkin

The Red Chord Promo

"We're a band, it's what we're doing and it takes up too much of our time to be a hobby, it's not really a mental preparation thing, it's our job."

Boston’s The Red Chord have been some busy fellows prior to their Sounds of the Underground run the band’s freshly off a four-way tour with A Life Once Lost and If Hope Dies and a week before that they were touring with Bury Your Dead. Having played to audiences' world wide, this band has performed a staggering grand total of 500 shows since their inception about five years ago. Join in conversation with The Red Chord's powerful frontman, Guy Kozowyk as he allows us into his personal realm and by his own admission, its something rarely witnessed by a select few. He discusses a plethora of topics, the chilling concept behind the band's fresh May 17^th release entitled Clients, his label BlackMarket Activities, etc.

Karma: How was the name The Red Chord chosen? I read that it was taken from a German play. What was the name of it? ["It was from a German play. This schizophrenic guy slits his lovers throat and while standing over her returns to his normal personality and said "My love...what is that red chord across your neck?"]

Guy: It was by a composer named Berg, the play was called Wozzeck [Spells name out]. It's actually kind of like an opera, but the reference in the play refers to red...what is that red c-o-r-d across your throat and it's like a reference to a slit throat. I didn't like the way that c-o-r-d looked, so somebody wouldn’t lie, we ended up changing it to c-h-o-r-d, so it truly makes the reference completely in arbitrary.

Guy: It's been totally straight, always crazy; we've played the last three years or so; definitely always a good time.

Karma: You Boston boys are ripping the scene up! You've toured with Bury Your Dead, Lamb Of God, and GWAR so far… I am sure you must have some interesting tour tales.

Guy: Understand, the first tour we did with A Life Once Lost, I managed to break my hand the second day. I got into a fight, we had to skip New York and then the tour last year I got real screwed up onstage and I think my leg was broken, I think it was like the first day of tour for both of those [instances]. I didn't have health insurance for either occasion.

Guy: I just kind of wrapped it up with an ace bandage and you know ace bandages fix everything.

Guy: Well, I've learned my lesson about rough housing on tour. We all keep a low profile and it should just be...all our guys are pretty mellow for the most part. Every once in a while I'll have like my days, but my days are over. [Laughs]

Karma: As far as the Sounds Of The Underground tour, is it going to take you a while to gear up for it?

Guy: No, we're pretty much on tour till then. As far as the Sounds tour goes, we’re only on the first ten days or so. Essentially, it's like another day at the office for us. For all intensive purposes, this band has played like 460 shows, probably closer to 500 in the history of the band. 460 shows since our last CD came out, and we're on the road till the end of this month, then go home for ten days, then on a UK tour, then home for two days, then SOTU, go home for two weeks. Do a tour with Between The Buried and Me, From A Second Story Window, and Premonitions Of War, go home for like a week or two, go with Every Time I Die and High On Fire, go home for a week, then go to Europe with Bury Your Dead, that's pretty much what we do, you know what I mean.

As far as gearing up, it takes more time to order the actual merch and stuff or you know, what you're gonna sell on the road. It takes more preparation as far as like, you know arguing with your phone company to make sure you have enough minutes to do interviews, stuff like that [laughs] than it does necessarily to gear up for the actual shows. It's not like you mentally prepare yourself, you're gonna get up on stage and you're essentially delivering the same performance every single night. Obviously fluctuating night to night circumstantially but, to go up and deliver the same intensity and just deliver a really amazing show every night.

It doesn't matter if last night, I think like it was like just shy of a hundred people in Rockford or if you're playing to like two or three thousand people at the New England Metalfest or if you're playing to twenty kids in a basement somewhere or if you're playing to five hundred kids in Southern California. The whole things is, we're a band, it's what we're doing and it takes up too much of our time to be a hobby, it's not really a mental preparation thing, it's our job. Its like we get up on stage and do what we do but we prepare like we do for any tour with relatively not much for breaks. It's almost like, I have to prepare to be home more than I have to be on the road.

Karma: That's pretty deep and speaking of touring, how in the hell do you keep the stamina to keep doing it?

Guy: Well, this tour was the extreme thing we've ever done. By the end, it will be 58 shows in sixty days. I just started getting sick yesterday.

Guy: Yeah, that's when my voice started acting up on me a little bit. So, my throat's real sore and I got a fever going on so it definitely messed me up. It hasn't affected the way I sound yet necessarily

Guy: Yeah, but it's definitely wearing on me. As far as how you do it every day, after the first week of shows, the worse ends. After you break the week or two mark, it's like I can sleep anywhere, I can do anything, it doesn't matter, and I don't feel the bumps and the bruises or whatever. It kind of reminds me of Fight Club with the tour essentially being like the Fight Club training or some shit. Where its like, your first week of headbangin' on stage and running around, it's like the first two, three, four, shows murders you.

The first time when you go stay at someone’s house and they got hardwoods floors and all you got is a pillow and a sleeping bag. You wake up and your back's broken. A week into it you don't feel anything, I could sleep on broken glass right now and it wouldn't matter. When I lay down, I lay down, I'm out, it doesn't matter where I am or what happens on stage, every night I end up getting pummeled during our set while the kids are jumping up. I gotten hit in the face like four times on tour with guitars, I've gotten my lip all split open with...I dunno how it happened. I think someone in the crowd nailed me; I think one of my teeth is cracked.

Guy: Mike hit me in the mouth like five times and nailed me right in the teeth. So, at this point, it doesn't matter, I don't feel it when it happens, it hurts a little the next day but, it all blends in with the other bumps and bruises. It's just kind of like what happens as a result of touring. Oh yeah plus, I broke my thumb. [Laughs]

Guy: [Laughs] It’s not just me, everyone else [has] got something going on like their shins are bothering them or their knees are giving out or their backs are killing them or stuff real weird. Bottom line is, you get a week or two in. As long as you…the stupidest thing a band can do on tour is go home for two or three days right in the middle of it because it makes you a wimp, it makes you not ever want to get into the van again. Most of the time, me personally, if I have the opportunity to sleep in a bed, on tour I don’t take it because there’s no use in remembering what a bed feels like [Laughs] when you’ll go back to sleeping in a van or sleeping on floors and suffering.

Karma: So, what was your main motivation behind the creation of it? [Due to be released on May 17^th]

Guy: I guess, it's not so much what I do for work as much as my situation for the environment of my work. I work in a pharmacy but it's like this old school pharmacy that has a restaurant, sells liquor, and just a general-purpose store in every quality. I'm across the street from a train station. I'm two blocks away from this assisted mental living facility where basically from 5 a.m. to 11 p.m. Aside from say check in times when the patients have to go into get their medication, they're basically allowed to roam the streets of the greater Boston area and just do whatever as long as they pick up their medication and stuff at like 11 or 12 again at dinner time. Also, I'm a couple of blocks away from a high school and a halfway house for recovering drug addicts, and criminals, stuff like that.

Guy: Yeah, pretty much everyday, whether I’m driving or on the train, I’m like talking to different people and seeing different things. I write down little experiences that I would have and people that I'd meet with. I've definitely heard this more recently and I had to realize like how many people are really into it but the whole idea of just being a people observer. I've kind of coined the term "conversationalist" as far as like I'd take the most fucked up person that you could ever find and just sit there and rack their brain whether they want to talk to me or not. I'll rile them up and get them going. I'll write down half of what they say, they probably don't even realize I'm writing down what they say. I'll just pick their brain. In many cases, I've sat down with people that we're severely, severely mentally disturbed, schizophrenic, or severely afflicted with alcoholism or some sort of weird compulsive disorder or people that were hopeless gamblers or they had some sort of mental, physical disorder or social affliction. I would turn these people into superheroes, super villains, like larger than life Godzilla versus Mothra type scenarios.

Guy: Sometimes it would be more elaborate, it would require more imagination than whatever they are sometimes, or the story was a little bit more serious. Something’s were closer to reality and other things were further from reality.

Every track on the CD is about a different client in the respect that everybody is a client in some way. Everybody goes through life thinking that they're normal, either that or they're pondering that they're the most abnormal person in the world because they're mentally fucked and they have depression issues or something. [Chuckles] Like, part of it is the idea of everyone in the world are gamblers, it's like gamblers were down on each other. It goes, the gambler that goes and blows a $1000 bucks a day on the horse races, thinks that they're above the gamblers that blows $500 a day on scratch tickets, think they’re above Kino players, think that they're above whatever. None of them...gamblers will look at each other and say, "Wow, that guy is a fuckin joke, can you believe what he's doing, he's blowing his kids college fund" while he's gambling his own kids college fund. A lot of times kids are schizophrenic like that, where they'll sit there and be talking to themselves and they'll look at another schizophrenic talking to themselves. They'd be like "Can you believe that weirdo, can you believe that?"

Guy: Most people can't comprehend their flaws. Everybody knows somebody that totally falls in love with every one of their significant others and totally comes out of it crushed. And they can't figure it out every time, time and time again why they end up all heart broken. But when it comes to somebody else they're like, "I can't believe that they'd do that, I can't believe that you'd go back to him".

Guy: The chances are of me being somebody else’s client as not being able to perceive the outside prospective of myself, I probably have little compulsive quirks and traits just like anyone else that makes it so that I don't realize all the abnormalities about myself. You probably don't realize the abnormalities about you...

Guy: Well, you probably perceive yourself a little different than what somebody else perceives you as

Guy: …and not necessarily flaws. You're going to perceive, like, the quirks of yourself, differently.

Guy: There's people that think it's weird that I finished college, I'm doing this band, I run my own company, but I've never been able to hold my pencils right.

Guy: I hold my pen very awkward, never learned it. You can get a five year old that can hold his pencil correctly and I have this weird ass callous on my second finger from holding my pencil like a monkey would. [I have] this weird compulsive trait and people can't watch me write because they're like, "Oh look at that!" [Said with disgust]. There's things like I'm a real private person so a lot of times people think I'm being extremely sketchy because I don't want to talk around people even if it's about like, going to the store, I bought some milk, I really can't talk about this now, I'm in front of people. It's weird.

Karma: With your life being as public as it is, I can understand your need to maintain some form of anonymity.

Guy: Like in high school and stuff. I get onstage and scream my brains out in front of hundreds or thousands of people at different points of time and say things that, whatever, I probably wouldn't necessarily say in private or vice versa. Then I'll have conversations and not be able to function around people. So it's just one of those weird quirks that I've just picked up over the years, just kind of recently realizing it but that's just kind of where I am. Almost with every relationship I've ever had, it's interesting cause I say like I'm sleeping with somebody or whatever that I'm like yeah, I gotta call you back in a few. Why, no, it's my girlfriend and I'm next to one person and my dad is asleep on the floor, I can't talk right now. Very very strange.

Karma: Oh wow, ok. Well I guess that would answer my next question about who's the "Client"?

Guy: Like I said, every client is an individual with a different story. I guess if you want to get specifically there's Black Sarah, DMN, a certain special ugly character, there's blue-eyed cretin, there's a character behind the office residence. You know it all depends on lyrically what you're interested in or whoever it is because every one of them I would write these… I'm a writer before I'm a vocalist. I would write these stories long before we had songs and they'd be five or six pages long. They'd wind up being condensed into, depending on the atmosphere and stuff, a three minute song with the lyrics being extremely vague and not vague on purpose or anything it's because there's three minutes to work with and five pages of lyrics.

Karma: So, have you every thought about turning these lyrics into short stories, a book, or something?

Guy: I've been working on a book for a year now. It's a pain in the ass being on the road so much.

Guy: For someone that's on the road all the time, it's weird cause I get carsick. I can drive but I can't be in the backseat of the van unless I'm lying down trying to sleep. Otherwise, I can’t read and I can’t write anything. It’s really a terrible process for me because it really beats me up in the respect that a lot of my life is on the road. I can talk on the phone while I’m in motion, but I can’t write or read or else I’ll totally get nauseous.

Guy: Yeah, I used to puke on car trips with my family, when I was younger; it was weird. It was only when I wasn’t driving, sitting in the passenger seat or the back seats forget it, it’s over. Yeah I have to be driving. I think it goes back to some mental euphoria where I have to be in charge of absolutely everything.

Guy: It was really great. I heard that he’s really hard on bands, definitely does great work but a lot of people say, "He’s really hard to work with". "Well, I’m here to work with him and he’s an asshole." "Well, why is he an asshole?" "I dunno you’ve got to see for yourself." I think there are bands out there that will never work with him again. Got in the studio and I realized why he’s an asshole, but I thank him for being an asshole because he beat on us so bad, where we walked into the studio and weren’t necessarily looking for a producer. We had eleven songs written, we had the eleven songs demoed in the order that we wanted them for the CD. Producers typically will act like an extra member of the band who’s gonna come tell you and you’re gonna pay them extra, for their input and advice on how to make your songs sound the best. What he really did as a producer was beating on us to get the best performance out of us. It was like, I went through the CD and this is actually an interesting story. It was flattering because Zeuss told me; I was among the three best vocalists stamina wise people that he’s ever worked with.

Guy: The other two being, Byron from God Forbid and Jamey [Jasta] from Hatebreed. Vocally, stamina wise, he was really surprised that I would go through all the songs in two takes. One, I’d blast through one take and one I’d blast through another take; start to finish. It would all be in the course of whatever. He was like, “Wow, that sounds really powerful, I can’t believe how consistent you are.” So I was like, “Oh ok, that’s cool". It all goes over a course of like, we started one evening for like an hour, came back. Did it for like a couple of hours another day. Basically it was all fun stuff and then he said, “I wanna try something, I want you to go through, and I don’t think it will sound much better because you nailed it so much the first time, but I want you to go through and do the CD line for line. I want you to sing five seconds of it, and go back, sing another five seconds of it, then three seconds of it, and go through everything on the CD and see if it sounds better."

So I did that, ended up going through the whole [thing] basically like that. He had me going back and singing nonstop for seven and a half or eight hours straight. It was a big step up from where like the first CD; we took four days to record. I did my all my vocals in basically one take. Did one track, went in and recorded, did another track and went in, and so on; this was it; I did all my vocals within two hours maybe three. This CD, it was cool actually. It was hard as far as personal performance he beat on me and I don’t like the way that works on me. He was like, “Go back, do it again, do it again". It was like, I left the studio that night and I’ve never slept like that, and ever like where I was so beat up and so destroyed I could’ve slept for three days straight. It was like I was so physically drained as a result of it but, I feel like he definitely got the best vocal performance and the closest thing to what I do live, if not better than what I do live.

Guy: Yeah, but in the case of our drummer, that was a good take and I’d hear some stuff in there and be like, “Brad, that take was on.” Well sure enough, by the end of that session, I was noticing little things that I never thought or noticed before. Like, I can’t listen to the first record in lot of ways because I picked up on so many little flaws and so many things like the drums are off and the guitars are off, the things that wouldn’t fly with this record and just beat on us for whatever.

Karma: Okay, so did it take you long to complete it as far as the production of it?

Guy: Two weeks with a lot of f'in around and a lot of experimentation to record and then a week to mix and master, three weeks total. Which I guess in like the grand scheme of things isn’t bad.

Karma: Well, not all, and especially when you are as satisfied with it as you are, so it’s time well spent.

Guy: He actually kind approached me about working on it. I had a couple of artists in mind that I really wanted to see about working with. One of the guys never got back to me; the other guy wanted a little too much money. You know, honestly it was when I started talking to Paul, it didn’t even matter because Paul’s’ work was so much beyond anything. Paul is now officially my favorite artist and also one of my best friends right now. So, it’s kind of turned around from like working on a band/artist level to like working on a friend level. Paul was like an official member to the band. He came into the game when we hadn’t even finished writing a bunch of the songs yet, came up and observed a lot of the writing process, he had the lyrics every step of the way and so much creative input, even to the point where he had a say as to how the lyrics unfolded. Wait a minute, hold on again.

Guy: [Starts to talk to someone] Full Blown Chaos! They wanted me to name drop!

Guy: Oh yeah! Paul would say in how the lyrics unfolded, “What about changing this line to this line or whatever". Really, open minded, “What about going off into this direction, and talking about this somehow". It was like, "Wow!", I’ve never worked with anybody on lyrics before, and it’s always just been me. It’s crazy as far as like the layout goes I had to go to my dictionary for everything. It’s like the layout came out way better than I expected it to but he had more of a part in this and I took it so seriously, I’m like… It's like little things about that layout that most people might not ever comprehend it. Most people may not ever comprehend. For instance, the back of the CD, most artists are really weird about barcodes. They don’t want to ruin the layout by putting barcodes on but in all practicality, you have to it on because it’s what you do.

Guy: So, he always incorporates barcodes into the theme of the record. When he did the Mastodon record [Leviathan] he had the barcode in the shape of the silhouette of the whale. On our record, if you look at the fine print the whole record is based off of schizophrenics or weirdoes or whatever, it says something about "The barcodes replace the people, they attract people, they know what you're buying", and that’s actually was actually a quote from a schizophrenic person, “What are your thoughts on barcodes?” He said, “They check their soap, their vegetable.” he got real nitpicky. There’s lines from different songs where he ended up going the extra mile and I supplied him with this medical dictionary that I found, this old school 1940's medical dictionary. He’d take a line from the song, say for instance it was about paranoia or something like that. He would take a medical definition, part from the thing which defines paranoia or like the song “Lay The Tarp” there’s a line, “Excuses are like assholes and yours stinks.” [We both laugh] It’s goofy but in the theme they look like suns, but actually they’re cartoon assholes. Underneath it somewhere it says, a ring like muscle that surrounds an orifice, which is the medical definition of a sphincter.

Guy: But actually, I don’t think paranoia was in the layout but we did a sweatshirt for us and he put the definition of paranoia underneath the back of the hood. So, it’s like we got a hoodie with the definition of paranoia underneath the back of the hood so you wouldn’t necessarily see it unless you are walking behind somebody and the hoods up. It’s all about irony, and it’s all about… Red Chord, I take seriously. I take my writing very seriously but we’re a very tongue in cheek kind of band and a lot of fun with what were doing.

Guy: Paul’s very much of the same mind. I don’t think that I could be doing death metal very seriously because I think most extreme music is a joke on some level. It’s hard for me to take some 40 year old guy on stage, screaming and being real serious and angry, that seriously. Talking about cutting up virgins and decapitating people or whatever.

Guy: Death metal's a joke, hardcore for the most part is like there’s so much parody in every genre.

Karma: This is true and I guess it’s all up the individual on how you’re gonna read into it as well.

Karma: Prior to Clients was Fused Together In Revolving Doors that album was released in…

Guy: ...Fused came out in March of 2002. We played; we recorded music in November 2001 and came out in March 2002. Essentially, though, the first year the CD didn’t happen we toured, toured, and toured. You couldn’t find it anywhere, it didn’t really get any sort of attention. We were playing basements, backyards, and anywhere that would have us. Then by the time the album started taking off, the theory should’ve been we would take the time off to write a new record, then the album started selling. All of a sudden it goes from like it was out for a while and we sold 5,000 copies and most people don’t understand it. Most of them sold at shows and stuff, and then you start touring some more. Then your shows start getting bigger, bigger and bigger and you get tour offers and it’s like well do we say sorry we can’t do this tour and go sign with a label? The other the side is the more you tour, the more you’re worth, and it’s definitely different times when the world is ready for different bands.

When we came out, we were doing this, grind, death metal, hardcore; crossover stuff and people were joking about it, straight up. We got so much shit at one point where people refused to accept that we were a serious band because they were like, “That band, they kind of have breakdowns, and most bands do have the goofy vocals with the death metal stuff.” Then all of a sudden, a year or two later, those kids are at our shows moshing it up and singing along, pretending like they were there from day one and our biggest supporters.

There was a lot of support that we got from home but there were a lot of other people in a lot of different places that wrote us off as just being goofy. They couldn’t understand it, it’s like, “Well, I don’t believe that the vocals sound like that, why don’t they have singing parts,” this and that. It was like, seriously, fuck that and it was a lot of resistance. We at different points in time were begging labels to pick us up. But the labels were saying straight up like “Oh, I don’t really know, you guys are too death metal or too hardcore.” Those were the labels that were pulling us out, like labels we would not have ever considered going with and we signed with Metal Blade. Like labels were saying, “I’m sorry, we can’t work with you, you guys are too hardcore” and on the metal core side, “You guys are too death metal, we don’t know what the hell to do with you.” We got so much shit, then it was like, “You know what, fuck it! I don’t even want a label we don’t need one, we’re gonna go out, we got our thing!" like Robotic Empire was cool to us. They were small and their operation is really tiny as we are really tiny and we definitely grew at different paces and stuff but it was like, alright well, all of a sudden were in this boat where we have 28,000 CDs in press of that first one. We toured 15 different countries and essentially people are just now hearing about us for the first time.

We had an underground, kind of cult following, we still do to the point where the average person still doesn’t know The Red Chord but the people that do, it’s the people that we’ve been playing to for the last three to four years. It’s like the people have been there since day one, the people that have seen us on tour it’s like the Caliban tour and the tours before checked us out when we went on tour with Between The Buried and Me, Premonitions of War in January/February of 2003 and Bleeding Through in 2003. All the people that were really there and in support of us we definitely can’t say how much we appreciate all of their continued support because for the amount of opposition and the hard time we had starting out that there was definitely a period of time that we were up to questioning everything that you were doing. It was like, “Oh we can’t get more than $40 a night, no ones booking us.” You know, now it’s grown and it’s gotten easier over the course of the years cause a year or two ago everything changed around where we kept doing it and if you can’t find a band to take you out go fuckin do your own tour.

Guy: I was like, if you can’t find a booking agent, I’ll book it. I would book our own shows and I’d say like, 70% of all the shows we ever played were booked by me personally and not like some agency or whatever. It’s definitely got to where I can handle all the stuff that we need now and we need a booking agent to do a lot of that stuff now. It's all about DIY , know!

Karma: Definitely! Okay, going back to the first CD, what is the meaning behind Fused Together In Revolving Doors?

The Red Chord Fused Together In Revolving Doors

Guy: It was vaguely based on a fire back in, I think it was in Boston in the 70's. Where there was a club that caught fire and all these people ended up dying as a result of not having the adequate emergency exits and the only exit on the way out was a set of revolving doors. That is actually, I mean, Fused Together In Revolving Doors like the title came together long after all the songs. Some of those songs, as we recorded them were already three years old, before we actually went into the studio in 2001. So some of them are a good six years old now, from like the very beginning of the earlier stages of the band.

In the case of all of them together, I think there was a real…there was some tongue in cheek stuff on that one. It was like a dark, weird, and kind of twisted view on humanity and being disgusted by the way human behavior goes. I thought the idea of there being a fire and rather than people keeping their cool everyone’s so self motivated to get out that as people are making a run for the door, they ended up clogging the door with bodies and tripping over each other to the point where nobody made it out alive. And after the heat and the flames engulfed everything, it actually fused bodies together in the sets of revolving doors and the handprint on the cover of the last CD would signify like a handprint etched into the glass from the heat. So, I mean, it was essentially being disgusted with humanity as a whole and the selfish behavior that comes out in compulsive situations.

Karma: What an awesome metaphor. Your new video, “Antman” which premiered on Headbangers Ball that long ago. Congrats!! Who came up with the concept?

Karma: Well, congratulations. It’s an awesome video, who came up with the concept?

Guy: Thank you. It was based roughly on…Well we were limited on the budget with what we could do and afford. Definitely if I’d had a bigger budget I there would have been stuff then I would’ve done it a bit differently but, overall being our first video it is a stepping stone into hopefully bigger and better things. The concept was based on the song essentially and since I wrote all the lyrics so, it’s another game for me. It’s all about this antman character that roams about in his days and schizophrenically babbling to everybody.

Karma: Well, I was speaking a little bit earlier about people that know you guys and how you are very well loved and highly respected amongst your peers, couple interviews we've had you are always mentioned: Bury Your Dead, Trevor Phipps [Unearth]… Rich Casey says that he's really looking forward to hearing the new album.

Guy: Well, he went on tour with us for six weeks so he’s definitely got a copy now. I mean he got it first hand glimpse, I’m pretty sure that Rich that he appreciates it. I dunno if he told you that he was in Blood Has Been Shed for a bit too. They tend not to bring that up for some reason. Him and mark were both in Blood Has been Shed at different points. Mark, the drummer, was on Silent Circus, the Between The Buried And Me record. He was in a band before that called Peaceful before that with the singer of The Hope Conspiracy. Eric, the other guitar player, was in Reflux at one point…

Guy: …and all sorts of stuff. So it’s weird because I figured that those would all be selling points, the fact that they’re very straight ahead, thuggish, and mosh type of band. I think people that like Bury Your Dead don’t often realize that there’s a lot of talent in that band and they play songs that they want because they want to; that is because that is the realm of their capabilities. I think it’s cool because they’re a bunch of confident musicians who write some catchy tunes and tough guy type of songs because that’s what they’re into in this band.

Karma: Ben Perri From From Autumn To Ashes says, "Hello & looks forward to touring with you on the SOTU!"

Guy: Oh cool, yeah Ben, its crazy cause like the first time that Autumn To Ashes ever came through Boston, they were still on Tribunal or whatever. We got this call a week before their show and you know from some guy, “I’m booking the show and no ones gonna show up it’s From Autumn to Ashes, this other band, and whatever.” They threw this crappy death metal band on the show who I won’t mention cause they were dickheads…

Guy: This is only years ago. We ended up playing [with] From Autumn To Ashes. It was just weird because they came through, they are cool guys, you talk to them a little bit, there’s like forty or fifty people at the show of which forty were there to see us cause it was a handful of kids that grew up with the guys in Long Island. We played another show, where we got on the same day of the show it was supposed to be a first music showcase. It was Killswitch Engage, From Autumn To Ashes, and The Red Chord ended up getting on it last minute and there was seventy people at the show, maybe even less than that and in Boston for From Autumn To Ashes and Killswitch.

It’s pretty cool because I think it's really amazing there’s definitely a lack of consistency and a lack of bands that actually started and continued to do it for the long haul. I know that like stylistically were like the antithesis of From Autumn to Ashes but I will give those guys all the credit in the world. That show was probably four or five years ago. They kept the same name which is more than I can say about 90% of the other bands. They continually toured and did their thing whether people were hating them or not. And from that point that they’re opening up for Red Chord at those bars and playing with Killswitch and Red Chord in Boston to seventy people, they’ve kind of come up in the same circles in a lot of ways by continually doing it. It’s like any band that’s gonna go that route and keep touring and touring I have all the respect for and I think it’s cool that those guys are still at it. Definitely, tell them I said what’s up.

Guy: It should be interesting touring with them on Sounds because I haven’t seen them since Metalfest of like, 2002. I’m on tour all the time; they’re on tour all the time. Realistically, if they’re playing somewhere in Massachusetts, chances are I’m somewhere else in the country.

Karma: Well, in an interview with Trevor Phipps, he discussed your label Black Market Activities to one of the other interviewers. Tell me about that & how it ties in with Metal Blade?

Guy: I have been doing the label now like my first releases came out in July of 2003 and I probably planned it out a year or two before that. I came out with three releases at once in 2003 and kind of taken more time with the fourth through twelfth releases and taken a lot more time and a lot more seriously.

Essentially, my day job envelops most of my time and so does the band. I got a really great roster of really amazing bands and I essentially use The Red Chord as like the poster boy of what these bands should do. It’s like a good tour is not gonna fall into your lap, you’ve got to go do your own thing. If you have to play to five or ten people a night, you have to do that or a year. You gotta go back and play most of these places to fifteen or thirty people a night; you have to do that for a year. You’re gonna come back and essentially be playing to like seventy-five to a hundred and fifty kids a night and like any small business it’s consistency and quality. If you can go out and rock the shit outta the room with the same intensity to a crowd of five or ten people, those people are gonna remember you for the rest of their lives. An those are the ones that are gonna be there when the CD kind of comes out down the line on a bigger label or whatever and they’re gonna be saying, “Hey, I remember when I saw this band when they were playing by my house".

I stay on my bands and I work with bands that just blow me away. Right now my roster is fairly small but I’m really happy with it. Bands that include, From A Second Story Window, Ed Gein, and Pariah, a new band that has a release coming out in August, probably the closest thing I’ve ever done to like Red Chord style, but much more of a death metal, Animosity. I saw them a few years back and I played with them in the spring of 2003 when we were on tour with Bleeding Through and these guys were like fifteen, sixteen years old. I got a call from the singer, “I just got out of high school, would you want to do a record?” Now, the guys are like eighteen, nineteen, and one of the guys might be twenty and their stuff got so good. They were amazing when I saw them when they were like fifteen or sixteen, now that they’re all like over age and whatever they’ve matured so well and they are really a phenomenal band. Otherwise, this band Psyopus and I get a Premonitions of War release and a Black Dahlia Murder release coming out. Like prior to signing with Victory and Metal Blade respectively.

Metal Blade a lot of people are confused about the relationship there. Metal Blade is our distributor; I’m not owned or operated by Metal Blade or their staff. I love the people at Metal Blade, I will help them out in any way that they need, and they’ve given me so much more support that they’ve gone above and beyond the call of duty and above and beyond the guidelines of a distribution deal. They distribute my stuff in the US, Canada, and Japan and I license and release stuff myself for Europe or the UK.

Karma: That is truly awesome. Guy, I have to say I do admire your business savvy.

Guy: I wish there were a cooler explanation behind it. One second, maybe I can give you Greg, he says there is a cooler explanation than what I really meant. Let me see if I can find him. [Guy attempts to find Greg Weeks, the bass player] I don’t want to give the normal answer cause it’s boring and stupid and Mike will get mad at me if I give a fake answer so I’d rather he get mad at Greg. [While trying to find Greg, Guy stumbles upon the Full Blown Chaos guys again] I'm totally spanking Ray, from Full Blown Chaos' ass!

Greg: Well, I’ll let you know this much. I’m actually not really allowed to comment on it at this time because he’s a very secretive gentleman. Only he could tell you the truth. I’d hate to be so cryptic with this but this is something that he himself, personally will have to tell you or I could be killed. [We both laugh]

Greg: Yeah, it’s one of those things; I do have to say it’s one of those things.

Greg: Alright let me walk around and I’ll grab him. Oh, I’m having so much fun. Well, I have the man right here so you can hear it straight out of the horses’ mouth.

Mike: Well, I have a bizarre cable access show called Gunface and originally there were a couple of Mikes in the band so they called me Gunface. I didn’t name the show after myself; I was named after my show. It’s a really weird show and I’m actually gonna be putting out a DVD for it at some point.

Mike: Namely, really strange segments…It’s kind of hard to describe. Like a person eating a bowl of cereal that’s made by about twelve people. Kind of pretty bizarre video compilations, I guess. It’s hard to describe really. It’s strange and sometimes funny and sometimes just weird for no reason.

Karma: Well I don’t have too many more questions for you; I know you need your rest...

Karma: So, if you could go back and change the hands of time, what would you go back and do differently?

Guy: Well, probably a lot of stuff likes going to get a degree in business and make a lot of money. But that’s neither here nor there so I’m stuck being a rocker.

Karma: If you could commission your favorite band to do Red Chord cover, which song would it be and who would do it?

Guy: I dunno, that's a good question. I wouldn’t waste my time on hearing our songs again; I’d rather hear my favorite band playing their own songs.

Guy: A couple of my favorite bands ever like…I would love to collaborate, I don’t even know if this would be remotely possible but I tried really hard to get the Used vocalist on the last for them to get CDs or do like guest appearances or something on one of the parts. That didn’t really work out and I didn’t hear anything back from management. I think like that guy has got one of the best voices ever. Otherwise, I’d love to see…I was a really big fan of Buried Alive which was the band pre-Terror but unfortunately they’re not around anymore so I'd definitely have to ask Terror or something like that and Suffocation is like my favorite metal band ever. I been real into stuff like Mars Volta and shit like that so it’s really all over the place from the toughest of tough guy hardcore, to the heaviest death metal, to Mars Volta, Muse, stuff like that.

Guy: Oh, I dunno, pump gas or something. I dunno really. Some of them have their own things; some of them have healthy relationships and stuff like that. Some of them might be married, some of them moved out of their parent’s house. [Chuckles] I have absolutely no idea.

Karma: I will be interviewing Carl from Nora later in the week; do you have any questions for him?

Guy: Ask Carl, why he was the one label that we actually wanted an offer from but never got it.

Guy: I was calling for the longest time about picking us up but its funny cause like, Metal Blade's said something like, “We got an email from Carl and he says he really loves the new CD”. I said that’s could cause for the longest time I tried to get an offer out of Ferret and he was like, “I dunno man, I don't think I can work with this.” I like Ferret a lot, I think it’s a really cool label and they do great things and have a lot of great bands one being A Life Once Lost who we are actually on tour with. I have nothing but respect for what Carl’s done especially as the head of my own label. I think it’s awesome to see that Ferret was started by one guy with a handful of people contributing here and there and it is what it is, a huge underground label.

Guy: Thank you for taking the time and wish me luck cause my voice can totally crap out on me.

I'd like to thank Guy for sharing his infinite pearls of wisdom with all of us and to Jensen Lee at Adrenaline PR for making this interview a possibility.