w/ Gary Mann
Dawn/TheMetalWeb.com: As we speak, the band is currently on tour in the US. How's the tour going thus far and how have the reactions been to the Life In Ruin stuff live?

Gary Mann: We just got off a seven-week tour with Still Remains and Demiricous. We just got done with that a couple days ago and that tour was pretty cool. It was kind of hit or miss. There were some markets where there were forty kids, but then some markets where there was five hundred. But, it was cool. It was an awesome tour. Today were on our way to the next tour starting with Devil Driver, Bury Your Dead and Remembering Never. That first show is today in San Diego.

Dawn/TheMetalWeb.com: You’re actually going to be in my part of the woods too in June at the Starland.

Gary Mann: I can't wait! That club is amazing.

Dawn/TheMetalWeb.com: The Starland is great. It has great sound. You got a great stage there and it holds a lot of people.

Gary Mann: Definitely! We did the Hell Fest make-up show there with Six Feet Under, Unearth and a whole bunch of crazy bands.

Dawn/TheMetalWeb.com: Yeah, it'll be a good show. You guys also just played the NE Metal Fest. Was this the first time that you guys played that because I had read that in an interview with you?

Gary Mann: No, we played it last year. Last year we played second on the second stage. That was awesome but then this year we got 6:00 on a main stage. So, hopefully that's a sign that we got things going on. (Laughs)

Dawn/TheMetalWeb.com: Yeah, a sign of good things to come. (Laughs) After listening to the album, what made the band decide to choose Life In Ruin as the title track for the album?

Gary Mann: That's actually a way better question for our singer to answer.

Dawn/TheMetalWeb.com: No, you can answer it. You're in the band. You have rights! (Laughs)

Gary Mann: (Laughs) I can kind of give you my interpretation of it. It always turns out to be no where near what it was suppose to be about. I don’t know. I actually hate these questions. (Laughs) The singers right here do you want him to answer it?

Dawn/TheMetalWeb.com: (Laughs) He can if he’d like to chime in. Sure, why not.

Alan French: Hey, how are you?

Dawn/TheMetalWeb.com: I’m good. I asked Gary a specific question and he couldn’t answer it so apparently he gave the question to you. After listening to the album, what made the band decide to choose Life In Ruin as the title track for the album?

Alan French: The title kind of comes from a few movies that were made. The first one was made back in the early 80’s called Koyaanisqatsi , which is Indian. What that means is Life Out of Balance. That’s the first movie in the series, there’s three of them. The first ones called Life Out of Balance, the second ones called Life in Transition and the third ones called Life at War. It’s kind of going along those lines, extrapolating from that. You kind of see your life in ruin. Those movies deal with how the worlds becoming more fast paced and we’re kind of moving away from the natural environment and more to a setting that’s based with technology and all that jazz.

Dawn/TheMetalWeb.com: Wow, I wasn’t expecting that answer. (Laughs) I’ve never heard of the movie.

Alan French: It’s a documentary. It’s just images and music and it basically shows a lot of shots of buckling city scapes. It starts out showing more natural things, cliffs and mountains. Then it goes on and shows these big modelistic buildings and cities that people live in now. It’s not quite like anything else. It’s pretty interesting.

Gary Mann: See and you wanted me to answer that shit. (Laughs)

Dawn/TheMetalWeb.com: I was going to say, I didn’t expect that.

Gary Mann: My answer would have been, I was in the other room , I came in, Life In Ruin.

Dawn/TheMetalWeb.com: Ok, back to you. Back to Gary’s questions. (Laughs) What were the songwriting sessions for this record like as opposed to The Ground is Rushing Up to Meet Us, especially with it being a couple years since your last release?

Gary Mann: Our guitar player at the time didn’t want to help us write. (Laughs) He’s like, ah, I don’t really want to and then every time we’d try to write, he didn’t say if he liked it or he disliked it. He kind of just sat there. So, we kicked him out.

Dawn/TheMetalWeb.com: I was going to say, I’m assuming he’s no longer there. (Laughs)

Gary Mann: Yeah, so he’s gone and we’re like, great, we have to write a record and this sucks. (Laughs) So, how we wrote it was kind of crazy. First off, we actually wrote it and re-wrote it three times before we went into the studio because we figured we got to try to make it with this one and write the best record we could possibly write. We actually wrote the record in our drummers bedroom. He moved his bed, dresser, TV and everything into his closet. (Laughs) We’re from a really small town of like 20,000 people. There’s no place to practice at all. There’s no places to rent. So, we had to write in his bedroom. I guess it came out alright.

Dawn/TheMetalWeb.com: When you went into record, what was it like as opposed to your last record?

Gary Mann: When we went in there this time, we were way more confident. Partly, because we wrote it three times over and this was the best we could get it. Before, we wrote whatever we wanted to write and that was it. We never thought about structure. We never thought about that kind of shit. It’s like, got this part, got this part. We put seven parts in the song, nothing repeats. It’s lame. (Laughs) With the kind of music that we’re trying to write you can’t really do that and have it come out right. So, we were like, let’s try to actually write these songs this time instead of just shit out of a guitar fill. We definitely concentrated on that without trying to be to cliché. There’s a lot of bands like As I Lay Dying, their format that they write their songs in is a straight pop format. It’s verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, chorus and that’s fine and they do it well. But, we didn’t want that exact format. We want choruses and we want structure but we don’t want to be bored by the time we get two minutes into the song, we’ve already have done three choruses. We don’t want that crap.

Dawn/TheMetalWeb.com: You like diversity.

Gary Mann: Exactly. I don’t even know. I hate that part of it. I hate being in a room with a bunch of assholes, where your bringing a bunch of parts in and your like, yeah, this is going to be awesome and then you bring it to practice and everyone’s like, screw your part. (Laughs) I hate writing and recording.

Dawn/TheMetalWeb.com: Really, you don’t like that?

Gary Mann: No. (Laughs) God damn, I hate it! I hate recording more than I hate pretty much anything besides mushrooms.

Dawn/TheMetalWeb.com: Mushrooms?

Gary Mann: Yeah, mushrooms. Their disgusting. (Laughs) Recording is way more stressful.

Dawn/TheMetalWeb.com: (Laughs) This has to be one of the funniest interviews I’ve ever done. The things that come out of your mouth. Your like, the things I hate most are mushrooms and... where does it come from? (Laughs) I only kidding. You have to know I’m a joker and it’s anyone I interview with. From Cannibal Corpse to you guys to Demiricous to whoever, it’s just the way I am. I try to make people feel comfortable. So don’t take me too literally.

Gary Mann: (Laughs) That’s actually good because most people don’t understand our sense of humor because were from NY. Nobody understands sarcasm anywhere else in the country. People take you like you’re just an asshole.

Dawn/TheMetalWeb.com: You know what I think it is, I think it’s a New Jersey and New York thing. (Laughs)

Gary Mann: Half of Massachusetts gets it.

Dawn/TheMetalWeb.com: Tell me about working with producer Jason Suecof (Trivium, God Forbid) as well as why the band chose him in particular to handle all the aspects of the recording.

Gary Mann: The reason we picked the producer we did is for the two albums that we heard that he did which were awesome. God Forbid, which is one of our favorite bands and Trivium. Their record came out amazing. This dude knows what he’s doing. Plus, we wanted to try to do different stuff with vocals, not necessarily try to do singing stuff, but, we wanted to do a lot of different stuff and all the records that he produced had a lot of different crazy singing stuff in it. We said, cool, he must know his shit. He did exactly what we were hoping he would do. He helped shape our songs into something and gave us ideas we never even thought of. He would say, this parts cool, let’s try doing this or let’s try doing this scale after the scale you have, just a bunch of different ideas. It was amazing.

Dawn/TheMetalWeb.com: Let’s talk about the artwork. The person that did your CD art did a great job at portraying the album title with a man’s body disintegrating into chunks of rock or clay. But, what are the skulls suppose to signify because he has them being shown almost transparently on different parts of the body as it’s disintegrating? That’s the only part I didn’t get and normally I’m good at this stuff. (Laughs)

Gary Mann: Yeah, I thought that was one of the coolest parts. It’s meaning is how eventually if we keep going the way we’re going, nothing’s going to be left. We’re all going to die. The plants are going to die. In everything, it shows a body part disintegrating and there’s always a skull there, meaning deaths always right there.
We told him what we wanted at first and gave him a bunch of references to check out and the first thing he sent us was a bunch of planes flying over buildings, like a war sort of thing. We told him that wasn’t what we wanted. He also did Unearth’s artwork. But, it’s not the same shit for us. We said, it looked really good but, what the hell is this plane doing here. (Laughs) Then the second thing he sent us was all that stuff. We didn’t want black. We didn’t want a dark black CD because that’s what every single CD looks like. So, he actually made it white and he made it look way better than I thought it would be. We’re proud of everything that came out of that CD.

Dawn/TheMetalWeb.com: Water Into Wine Cooler is an interesting piece lyrically. Can you tell me the significance behind this track because it almost seems as if it's a rebellion against someone who follows a strict religion?

Gary Mann: That’s definitely what it is. We actually were considering maybe not playing it on our last tour because there’s so many Christian bands.

Dawn/TheMetalWeb.com: Who?

Gary Mann: Still Remains is. So, we were not sure if we should play that song. I love that song and so we were like, screw that, we’re playing that song. But, yeah that’s definitely what it is about. We’re not about telling anybody not to believe and if you have faith that’s fine. But, if you believe in a bunch of rules that some random retard tells you that you have to do, it doesn’t make any sense. Especially, with something like religion, I would think, that there can’t really be a set rule that you should follow. If it’s about your belief, then it’s about your faith. When people sit around and pray and wait for somebody else to take care of their problems, it’s lame. You can’t pray and expect somebody else to do shit for you. It’s not going to happen. If you have me talking about religion, I’ll rant forever.

Dawn/TheMetalWeb.com: Well, it’s not only Christians, look at the people in Iraq and how far they take it. Don’t get me going either. You and I will have a debate for three hours. (Laughs)

Gary Mann: The band As I Lay Dying, we’ve had a ton of conversations about religion with them and it’s never disrespectful, like hey, go screw your god. You can have civil conversations about beliefs and not have people go crazy. People like my parents, my mom, who are like psychopaths and actually stand on the corners of streets with painted signs of Jesus’ bloody body and you’re going to burn in hell if you don’t accept him as your savior. There’s no way I’m going to look at a bloody picture of your stupid god and go, I never thought of that and I totally believe now.

Dawn/TheMetalWeb.com: Or they believe that a certain picture is the Virgin Mary and they’ll stand there thinking that it’s her crying blood in a window.

Gary Mann: Exactly. It’s like get over it. Go do something for yourself.

Dawn/TheMetalWeb.com: Musically, where do you feel you’re the strongest on this record?

Gary Mann: Well, I wrote maybe five parts on the whole record.

Dawn/TheMetalWeb.com: Ok, well which of those five parts do you feel you’re the strongest on this record? (Laughs)

Gary Mann: It’s really hard to explain. Have you ever been in a band before?

Dawn/TheMetalWeb.com: I have yes, years ago. I was actually a singer though. Singers got it easy. (Laughs)

Gary Mann: Did you actually like writing?

Dawn/TheMetalWeb.com: I did all the lyrical writing but I didn’t do any of the songwriting.

Gary Mann: Uh, songwriting, I hate it. How songwriting goes in this is, our guitar player brings in a bunch of riffs and we sit around and go, okay, that’s ok and then I help them with transitions and stuff like that. I wrote a couple breakdowns and maybe like two riffs. But, I hate it.

Dawn/TheMetalWeb.com: So, there’s no particular song that you’re like, wow, I did great on or I like that part?

Gary Mann: Well, there’s one part and we don’t even play it live, which is depressing. (Laughs) The song The Ultimate Nullifier, which is song seven, the ending breakdown of that. I feel if we played that on the Devil Driver tour we’re doing, everybody would be dead by the end of the breakdown. We’re not playing it. We’re not ready, which is so lame. That’s the part I’m the most proud of. I feel like everybody would die. If your in a metal band, that’s the desired effect.

Dawn/TheMetalWeb.com: Well, majority rules but, there’s still one that feels that you guys should play it. You know what, just play it! Start playing it in the middle of the set. I’m only kidding. (Laughs)

Gary Mann: Exactly, what the hell. I will! I’ll be like, I’m going to play a different song. (Laughs)

Dawn/TheMetalWeb.com: Dawn from The Metal Web! said I can do this! (Laughs)

Gary Mann: Yeah, I got permission for it! (Laughs)

Dawn/TheMetalWeb.com: If Hope Dies has an incredible touring history supporting some major bands and being a part of some impressive bills. What treks still stand out in your mind?

Gary Mann: The best tour I think was with Zao and The Agony Scene.

Dawn/TheMetalWeb.com: I heard of Zao. Agony who? Are they signed?

Gary Mann: You’ve never heard of The Agony Scene? Holy crap, they have like 30,000 records and their on Roadrunner.

Dawn/TheMetalWeb.com: Oh, ok. I don’t really deal with a lot of Roadrunner bands.

Gary Mann: Oh, you hate Roadrunner?

Dawn/TheMetalWeb.com: No, I don’t hate them. I just don’t deal with a lot of their bands.

Gary Mann: Alright, I’m going to tell Bill. (Laughs)

Dawn/TheMetalWeb.com: But I deal with Spitfire and Epic, ok their bigger. I’m only kidding. (Laughs)

Gary Mann: (Laughs) Who does Spitfire have anymore?

Dawn/TheMetalWeb.com: I know, they lost a lot of bands. They still have Overkill who I do quite a bit with and a few others.

Gary Mann: There’s a guy in our hometown who is obsessed with Overkill.

Dawn/TheMetalWeb.com: Good, tell him to go to my site. There’s interviews and pictures. (Laughs)

Gary Mann: He says, Bobby Blitz Ellsworth and Overkill are so much more Metal than you and you’ll never be that Metal! (Laughs)

Dawn/TheMetalWeb.com: Ah, that’s not true. You’re both two different styles.

Gary Mann: Yeah, we’re actually called Metal-core.

Dawn/TheMetalWeb.com: No, I don’t think your Metal-core. I hate that. I hate that label.

Gary Mann: Good, tell everybody you know. (Laughs)

Dawn/TheMetalWeb.com: I hate that label on bands. It sounds like mall-core. Do you know what I mean? You guys definitely are not Metal-core. I would consider you more bordering thrash.

Gary Mann: I do know. I agree, but then again we can’t say we’re thrash because then it’s like, oh, you sound like Slayer.

Dawn/TheMetalWeb.com: How about we don’t sound like anybody but ourselves. Listen to it and see if you like it.

Gary Mann: That’s exactly what I tell people. A lot of our reviews on this CD have been so... if there were banners used and they didn’t like the record, it would have been fine, people like whatever they want. On one review, they said we sounded like a mixture of Throwdown and a hardcore band that sounds like Judas Priest. We don’t sound anything like that. Whoever did this review is an asshole and have no idea what their talking about. (Laughs)

Dawn/TheMetalWeb.com: In the end, where does If Hope Dies stand as a unique entity? We kind of hinted on that.

Gary Mann: Against everybody else? Honestly, what we always try to get across, like we were just talking about actually, if we’re more Metal or Thrash or Nu-metal or any of those kind of labels and shit like that, who cares. What we want to do is we want to go out and we want to have a blast. What we want to show, which is actually in our new record when you hear it, I think it’s lots of fun. We have rock kind of parts in it for our choruses and we want to have fun with this shit and as soon as it stops being fun, then we’re getting the hell out of here. We want to show that live and we hope people actually get that out of it. That’s pretty much all we want to do as far as standing out. We have Metal-core elements, we have Thrash elements but, who cares. It doesn’t really matter how we sound to me I guess. We just want to go out, we want to have fun and if we can make a career out of it, then sweet. But, if we don’t then we had a blast doing it. We can go into our pattern in lives knowing that we tried our hardest.

Dawn/TheMetalWeb.com: That’s a great answer because if it’s not fun, what the hells the point. If you’re just going out there to make a million bucks, you may be highly disappointed. It has to be fun for the band first. Yes, it’s important for record sales and media and whatever else. But, first and foremost it’s about the band and that’s not a pompous thing.

Gary Mann: Yeah, otherwise there’s no point to this. You’ve had to have interviewed bands before or have even met bands that are so self-righteous and their like, oh, I’m in this band and we’re still working the hot shit. It’s like, how do people even get that attitude. If I sold three million records and I ended up hating the people in my band, I’m not going to do this. There’s no way I’m going to be living in a van or if we ever graduate to a bus, I’m not going to live in a bus with a bunch of guys I don’t give a shit about. It’s fun because these are all my friends and we get a lot of cool opportunities and if they keep coming and getting bigger, then cool. If we sell a bunch of CD’s and make a living, cool. If we don’t, whatever.

Dawn/TheMetalWeb.com: That’s the way it should be. Primarily it’s got to be fun. Otherwise, it’s more of a chore. I’ve known so many bands that hated each other, though, they would play on stage. Eventually, most of them break-up.

Gary Mann: To me anyway, there’s no pried in that. I think half the reason we’re proud off this record is we all stayed in a room together and a record came out that we would actually listen to if it wasn’t our band. We’re really proud of it because it’s all of our friends that wrote it.

Dawn/TheMetalWeb.com: Gary thanks for interviewing with me. With that said, do you have any final words for The Metal Web!?

Gary Mann: Metal Web, I want every one of you jerks… it took us about thirteen NJ shows for people to actually take to it. (Laughs) Hopefully, this next show coming up will be like the last three shows there, which were amazing. We want everyone to go nuts and sing along with us. Try to match our energy and we’ll be happy as hell.


OFFICIAL SITE "IF HOPE DIES": http://www.ifhopedies.com


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