metalshrine

How´s the tour been going then?

Mike Wengren: It´s been horrible... No, it´s really been awesome! It´s been an awesome tour and it´s nice for us... we started the band, a bunch of guys from Chicago and just playing music for fun and have it build to such a great level. Not just in our home country the United States, but then to be able and take it globally. We´ve been coming to Europe for quite a few years now and to see every time we come back that it gets better and better, is just that more exciting for us.

You played here this past summer didn´t you? I missed it.

John Moyer: It was awesome! Judas Priest was headlining and Testament played there as well and that was our first festival show...we did a festival run then too and it was the first one for us. A great way to get on that festival run. The European fans always take it to another level.

Yeah, I was gonna ask you about that. Is there a difference when it comes to the US audience compared to the European audience?

John: Absolutely!

Mike: For example, we have a couple of moments in the show when it dies down for a minute and you can hear the audience´s reaction to it whenever we reach the end of the song or... I don´t want to give anything away... or maybe coming into a drum solo or something like that and you heart hem do things that you just won´t hear in the United States. Whether that´s a chant like "Disturb clap, clap, clap, Disturb clap, clap, clap!". They´re this amazing entity of intensity and really loud and they´ll just keep it going.

Is the US your biggest market?

Mike: Yes, as far as record sales the US has been our biggest market. We´ve sold 9, almost 10 million just in the States alone. All over we´ve done really well also, like in New Zealand and Australia record sales wise. Canada and Europe is getting there. It´s nice to have the success in the States, primarily because we´re from there, but also knowing what a fickle market it is and how heavy music doesn´t really have as prominent a position as it seems to have when we come overseas.

John: It seems like there are a lot more bands out here that are accepted, that can tour around and there´s like more places to play in Europe and even when we were in Australia, it just seemed that there was a lot more acceptance to heavy music than there is in the States, so I think we feel very fortunate to be one of those few accepted bands that has success there.

Right. The first album came out in 2000 right?

John: Correct.

Considering that, you´ve sold a lot of records considering the times we live in with downloading and all that stuff. I mean, for a new band these days you have to be glad for selling 50000 records I guess.

John: True.

Mike: Yeah, we´re very fortunate.

John: You know what, I gotta tell you this story dude. Some of our most rabid fans are the ones that are downloading it for free. I´ll tell you something funny that happened when "Indestructible" came out. The week that it came out, Mike was with his wife in LA. He was driving down the street and it just came out and this guy in a car is next to him and he´s jamming "Indestructible".

Mike: No, the record was not out! It was the week before.

John: Ah right, it was not out yet. It was the week it was shipped. Once it hits the truck you don´t have control over it. Someone´s gonna put it on the radio. Well, Mike heard the music on this guy´s stereo, rolls down his window and goes "Hey dude, what are you listening to?". The guy goes "It´s Disturbed and it rocks!" and he pulls it out and throws Mike the cd. "Don´t worry bro, I´ll burn another one!". (laughs)

Mike: He did! He didn´t know who I was. In a way I was pissed off because the record hadn´t been released yet and somehow he got it and he burned a copy. Obviously he stole it and downloaded it for free, so I was a little aggrevated but on the other hand he was rocking out and he was ready to pass the word on and tell everybody how much he loved it. It´s pretty cool.

Yeah, I guess it´s a double edged sword.

Mike: It is a double edged sword!

It can be good for destributing your music and getting it out there.

Mike: I think it´s a great avenue for bands to definitely get their music out there, but I think that... some bands may whine and complain because they´re not selling enough records, but I think that what that does is to put the responsibility back on the artist to put out good music. I think a lot of music these days and I´m not gonna name anyone specific, but I think they put out mediocre music. They spend a lot of time and they put out just a single or two and they do well on radio and they´re great songs, but the rest of the record is filled with a lot of filler songs. We´ve always prided ourselves, not to sound egotistical in any way, but we´ve always prided ourselves on putting out a record worth of songs that we feel could all have single potential. We want to make sure that our fans aren´t just buying a single or two with a bunch of filler songs. Every song on that record, we put all of our heart into it, all of our energy and we really make sure that it is a very good, complete, full album. With that being said, I think that it shows because the fans appreciate that and they know that they´re gonna get their money´s worth when we put out a record. I think that´s a lot of reasons why they continue to bu your records and why we still sell albums. We give them their money´s worth.

A lot of artists I´ve talked to, and considering downloading and selling less albums, they say that now the focus is on the live show and to find other ways to make money.

Mike: Well, I don´t think record sales have never been, at least for bands in this genre, hasn´t been the biggest source of income. The biggest income for the bands has always been touring and merchandise and stuff like that. For us, it´s always to get the music out there, but like I said, it think it just comes back to the artist. You have to, you know, put out good music and I think that maybe some bands who complain about it are just being called out because maybe their records weren´t that great.

What´s the difference when it comes to producing yourselves or having an outside producer? Is there a major difference?

John: I think it wasn´t as big a difference as it could be in certain circumstances. The reason is that all the records that the band has done have all been done at the same studio, Groove studio in Chicago. Even initially with the band´s demos. You know, after doing demos and three records and all with the same producer and using a lot of the same equipment and we´ve always been the type of band that before we even go into the studio, we demo the songs out. We have a really solid idea of what we´re going to sound like and even with working with a producer, a lot of times our initial visions don´t change. It sounds better sonically speaking, but a lot of times the core of the song, the arrangements and ideas don´t really get tampered with that much from point A to point Z. So having done that on three previous records and also the demos, that gave the band and especially Dan, who took the most of the duties of producing, confidence to go into a familiar environment, process the same way we´ve always done it, only this time around to be in charge of it ourselves to have the final say. Knowing the way we already work and having the confidence to go in there and do it, it was different but it wasn´t different because nothing changed in our process. There was just one less person in the room.

Mike: Instead of having an outside opinion to bounce stuff off of, we pulled from the friendship we have. Years and years of experience playing together and knowing each other better than anyone knows us. Instead of having to turn to someone outside the circle, we turned within the circle and personally we all feel that we came up with the best material. When one guy was stuck on something, the guys who know him the most, we inspired that person to get him out of that and we were able to create some of the best material to date.

When you work, do you write like 20-25 songs and then choose from those?

Mike: We´ve never been the kind of band who has written a surplus of songs and then try to pick the best ones. The way we see it, is that we start out with a guitar riff and then we add the beat and then Danny and I work on that together and then as a band, as a collaborative effort we´l, finish it up. If it´s not a complete song then it always gets put on the back burner until another day when maybe something come salong. The good riffs and the good beats and the good songs always seem to have a way of making it, rising to the surface. We don´t waste time or energy on something that´s not gonna make the record. We´ve been fortunate enough with that everything we´ve come up with so far has been record worthy. If it´s not, like we said, it goes on the back burner and maybe on some other day it resurfaces.


Another thing when it comes to where you´re at now, does it tend to be more business than just playing? Are you involved in everything around the band or do you just leave that to the accountants, the lawyers and so on?

Mike: We´re very hands on and we´ve always been hands on. We´re not the kind of guys... we´re some what control freaks and we´ve never been the kind of guys that just leave it to someone else´s hands. We have people obviously that we hire to do certain jobs, but we oversee all aspects of the business so to speak. We´re very concerned with the way a t-shirt looks and so on. Every bit of energy we put in to the music is obviously number one and the live show as well, but every other aspect of it is very important to us too. The way our fans percieve us on the Internet, on the websites, the merchandise, everything.

John: You mentioned how like now, selling millions of records and has that changed? Actually that´s how it always has been. The band was like that in the beginning and you know, selling records just put it on a bigger level. It doesn´t really change the way that we look at how we do our daily business.

This character, like on the new album, who came up with it from the beginning?

Mike: That was something that early back in the day when we were still a local band, we were looking for a little bit of an image, a little mascot that people would sort of connect to. It was this image of a face. David was sitting around with a friend of his at a computer screen one day and they were trying to come up with this image and David had made this face and his friend tried to come up with something real, real simple and almost cartoonish and put it in the computer and sort of distorted it and it was the original, two dimesional version of what we call the guy. We didn´t realize what a mosnter we sort of created at the time, because some of our fans even before we had gotten a record deal, were getting tattoos of it on their body and they just seemed to really connect with it. So over the records, even though we got away from it on the second record, we decided to bring him back and let him evolve and really become a three dimensional character.More detailed, more graphic, more menacing and for some reason people have just latched on to it. They really seem to connect with this figure.

Is Helsinki the final show and then you go back to the US?

John: Yes!

More touring after that or...?

Mike: Touring, touring and more touring. We have a lot of legs left on this tour and we´ll probably be touring at leat until the summer of next year. There´s no solidified plans, but there´s talk about maybe coming back over here one more time before this cycle is done and before we write the next record.

You´ve got the "Music as a weapon tour" starting in March 2009 right?

John: That´s correct.

Any bands confirmed for that?

John: We can´t really say anything yet. There´s a couple of great bands that we´re still trying to solidify. We can´t say it now unfortunately if it doesn´t pan out, but we always pride ourselves... We do the "Music as a weapon tour" every touring cycle and again we pride ourselves by that specific package. I mean, any tour we do we always try and pair ourselves up with great bands. We don´t want fans to pay for a ticket and see a couple of mediocre bands and then have us come on stage. We want to have a great, full package every single time and "Music as a weapon" is sort of our big, signature headlining run and we really pride ourselves with the bands that we align ourselves with. We definitely can promise it´s gonna be a motherfucker of a tour!

This ep? Why not a whole live album? You´re working with i-Tunes here.

Mike: I´m not sure what that...

John: You know what, I´m not totally familiar with that ep. It just came out on i-Tunes right? I´m not sure where the live tracks are taken from.

Mike: Yeah ok, I´m not totally sure. Sometimes...

It´s not an official release?

Mike: No, actually it isn´t an official release. It´s some idea that the record label had. I think it was just another way of trying to give some of the diehard fans an extra content. If I´m not mistaken it´s paired up with a couple of live songs and some live footage, some video footage as well.

John: We record almost every show and we have a video guy out with us almost 100 % of the time. So there´s a lot of material out there and for a long time we didn´t release any of it and now with "Indestructable" there was a companion dvd that had a lot of footage from the "Music as a weapon" from the "10000 fists tour". Then of course all our studio footage and I think now we´re just trying to be a lot more... you know archiving it and getting more and more out there.

Alright. Well, good luck with the show tonight! Are you flying right back home after Helsinki?

John: Yeah, the day after.

Ok. Have you seen anything of Stockholm today?

John: We´ve seen a lot of rain. (laughs)

Yeah, it´s really crappy weather.

John: It´s beautiful though. It´s a gorgeous city.

It is. Thanks!