Last Updated on 11:13 AM by Giorgos Tsekas
One of the perks of being a member of team such as Metal Invader is the chances this team offers of exchanging a few words with some of your childhood heroes. That’s the case with this interview right here. Flotsam and Jetsam, a Giant in the History of Power / Thrash accepted my / our invitation and answered a few questions, elaborating on the upcoming F&J record, the band’s future plans and – guess what – the possibility of visiting our country again this October. What are you waiting for? Start reading!
Hello there and welcome to Metal Invader! I’m excited for this interview, as I’ve been a fan of the band for a long time. For starters, is everything ok? How are you?
Thanks! I’m doing good and everything with the band is going well at the moment. We just performed at a metal festival in Sacramento with Death Angel and Skinlab, and we’re getting closer and closer to finalizing a direct support slot for a 4-5 week U.S. tour for May/June, to promote the album.
Thankfully, you are in the process of producing a new record, so new material to headbang to, is on its way. Have you finished the recordings? At which stage are you right now?
The album is finished and off to the label for production. As of Feb 20th all the artwork and CD booklet design, LP artwork and master were completed and sent off to the label. It’s scheduled for a May 20th release date that includes a limited edition boxset that has some extra metal goodies in it. We just released a lyric video of our first single off the album ‘Iron Maiden’ that can be viewed here:
We’re feeling good about the album we put together for the fans of thrash/power metal. And AFM Records is very happy with it, also.
Have you experienced any problems through the course of creating this record or did everything flow as expected?
It flowed fairly well. Our only issue was having our summer touring dates in 2015, split the recording process up in half. The drums were completely records 3-4 months before we started getting everything else tracked. We finished up our tracking in January of this year. Then it was off to mixing.
Where did you record and who handled / will be handling the mixing and mastering process?
We tracked the drums, some guitars, bass and vocals at SonicPhish studios in the Phoenix area and guitar, bass and vocals at Gnome Lord Studios, which Michael Gilbert runs. Both Michael and Steve Conley did the engineering on the album. We used Chris Collier of CMC21 Productions to mix and master our album. Chris did a phenomenal job. All the instruments have a great slot in the mix and he represented the band’s live sound, quite well. We hope you and the fans feel the same way.
It’s been said that your upcoming release will be a self-titled one. Why did you choose to do that instead of giving a particular title to it?
When we started talking through song titles to see if there was a lyric theme, we felt there really wasn’t anything that tied the songs together when it came to a theme. But, the one thing that did tie the songs together was the new entity of Flotsam that we now are, with Steve Conley, myself, and Jason Bittner now in the band. We were all wanting to get back to more of the old school Flotsam thrash sound, since that’s where the band was when I left them in 1987. We looked at the self-titled aspect as being the start of the incarnation of the band that was always looking back on the history of the band’s sound.
Over the years you stroke record deals with several labels. First of all, why does this keep happening?
A/R reps change, labels change direction… labels don’t really know how to promote bands in certain genres, or really didn’t have good promotion budgets or staffing. There are all kinds of reasons. We pretty much had distribution deals with Metal Blade for the last two albums, since they were both self-produced by the band. And, in those cases there really isn’t much promotion that goes into a band with a distribution only deal. Which is why we selected the label this album is being released on.
Elaborating on that, your upcoming album will be released via AFM Records. How has your collaboration been so far?
AFM Records has been great. They’re long time fans of the band, absolutely love the album and have big plans for promotion. We went with them primarily because they were the one label that presented us with an actual business plan for the band and the album. That, along with them being fans and having a genuine passion for the band, as well as being a label based in Germany where Flotsam has always done well in sales a concert attendance, we all felt they were the label for us. And, they’re still proving us right.
Talking about changes, Flotsam and Jetsam have suffered many lineup changes through the course of time, up until today. Do you feel confident about the band’s current lineup?
Very much so. Steve and I have been in the band for 3 years now, and Jason about 1.5 years. So, we’ve became a tight unit on and off stage in that time. Steve is a great fit as a player and songwriter, has the same musical influence as the rest of us and Jason has been a fan of the band since he was 16-17 years old, playing to Doomsday and No Place in his bedroom. So, he understands the legacy of the band and he’s allowed to still put his personality into the songs to still be himself, while keeping it as Flotsam as he feels it needs to be. The current line up is also what drove the self title for the album, because we’re really starting off new as a band putting out their first album.
As I figure, 3 out of the 5 members of the band joined the group after your last release (“Ugly Noise”, 2012), therefore the upcoming record will be their first one with Flotsam and Jetsam (well, except for you, Spencer who had bass duties in the pre-production demo and re-release of “No Place For Disgrace”) ; correct me please if I’m wrong. My question is, did the new members bring fresh air to the band and new ideas composition – wise? Do you feel that this time the lineup recipe will prove to be a successful and a long-lasting one?
Michael Gilbert and Eric Knutson are the anchors of the band that will always keep the music, new and old, Flotsam and Jetsam. We all threw songs on the table and worked them out as a band in rehearsal. With us stringed instrument guys bring forward the different structure bases of the new songs as the foundation then us as a band working them out before the guys took them back into the studio to do their thing. It’s allowed us to have an album that has a pretty cool flow of songs that aren’t necessarily written the same, but tied together with the final production by Chris Collier that completely gives the album some uniformity with tones and mixes.
Flotsam and Jetsam as a band have been around for three decades now. How does that make you feel?
Ha! Old…. Very old. No, really…. if we think of the fact we’re a band that’s still able to tour and has fans that are still waiting for any new album we put out, we must be doing something right as a band. We’ve had a career that 99% of the musicians in the world would dream of having. We never crossed into that Testament/Anthrax/ Exodus level of success, which there’s still hope for, but all we can do is be true to ourselves and try to give fans quality music as a band. We’ve done a lot of cool things as a band and have great plans in the future to do more.
If you had the change to go back in time and change something in your career, i.e. a critical decision, would you do it? If so, what would that change involve?
Me personally, I would have communicated better back when I was in the band in 1987. My only issue with the band was their personal manager, who I felt had too much say in the band’s decisions. They didn’t know at the time I wasn’t a fan of his, because the guy gave them the impression I wasn’t happy with the band. A little communication would’ve changed a lot of things. As far as the original guys, I haven’t heard them say anything other than maybe not trying to change their logo and look as a band, trying to find the magical formula to breakthrough to the other side. They looked back I have thought that they should’ve stabilized the ‘brand’ of Flotsam with sticking with the No Place For Disgrace logo and building off that.
As opposed to many bands in the field that have been around as much as you have, your presence has been a dynamic and productive one, judging by the number of your releases and the excessive tours you’ve done over the years. What keeps a band like you going strong?
A passion for what we do. We all love to play music, especially metal, even though we all do other types of music. Flotsam becomes the metal glue for all of us, because we’ve made it our only metal project. It allows us to use other outlets for creativity that’s not what would be considered Flotsam and bring our metal offerings to the band and not somewhere else. Traveling and meeting people all over the world, like our fans in Greece, is an added bonus and a driving force to keep doing what we’re doing.
You’ve established a solid relationship with the Greek crowd, which shows its affection toward the band massively every time you visit our country. How do you feel about it and, extending the question, will you be visiting us again soon?
We love the passion the Greek fans give band to the band. The crowds have a very cool 1986-1988 American thrash metal scene feeling to it; when the American thrash bands were taking their sound to the world, and the crowds were giving the energy right back to us. We’re in talks for a 4-5 week tour in Sept/Oct as a direct support slot for a German band and we’ve heard stops in Greece are a part of the tour routing. So, expect us in October.
Alright, let’s wrap thing up! That was all from me, the last words are yours! What message do you want to send to our readers?
After getting another chance to play in Greece last year, we’re definitely looking forward to playing for you again; introducing new songs off the upcoming album for you, as well as playing all the classics you were in the mosh pit for last year. We appreciate the passion for music from the metalheads of Greece and respect that characteristic in them. It’s very genuine and means a lot to us as a band.