Megadeth has announced the lined for the very first ever Megacruise! Joining them will be Anthrax, Testament, Corrosion of Conformity, Armored Saint, Devildriver and more! The ship will set sail for a five-day journey on October 13, 2019 from Los Angeles, California and hit ports of San Diego, California and Ensenada, Mexico on the NCL Jewel before returning on October 18, 2019.Continue reading
In Part II of our interview with DROPDEAD from last fall’s Housecore Horror Festival, Ghost Cult’s Andrew Francis along with Ben Barnett and Bob Otis discussed the challenges of running a veteran band and still having the everyday challenges of life to deal with. Also they spoke of their lifelong political activism, and how it has stood on equal footing to the music they make since the beginning.
The music business is an unforgiving career choice for most. We asked Ben and Bob about their family lives, and how they manage to keep up with personal responsibilities and still tour, make albums etc.
Ben: “I have a girlfriend and help take care of my gram when I have time.”
Bob: “I’m a mental health worker during the day, and I do animal rescue during the night and also the
band, which is an extension of the animal rescue work because it’s animal rights related and politics. Maybe not all animal rights, but things based in that area. just an extension of things I already do.
Ben: I own two shops (Armageddon Record Shop in Cambridge, MA and Providence, RI ) a label, try to hang out with my friends, play a little music, take care of my Gram. As I said, there’s a lot of shit going on.”
Ben: “We fit it in best we can , we’re not trying to make it- there’s no goal besides to play music with our friends. Occasionally we have the opportunity to come to fest’s like these (Housecore) make new friends, see some great bands, hang out, and have some vegan tacos.”
Bob: “Part of it for me, personally is it’s a good podium to talk about our beliefs and the things we really believe in. I do cat rescue and similar things, and the animal rights as part of my life is fully supported in the band and my home life.
Considering the above sentiments, we figured out that it must be hard to hit the road and tour, leaving behind your family:
Bob: The days of being able to jet out and go somewhere for six months out of the year are definitely behind us we all have our responsibilities and real jobs adult jobs but we do the best we can. We’ve been going for 25 years now so, and I’ll go for another 25 if I can do it with this guy here. I don’t care aha! We’ll be in wheelchairs still trying to play in the band!”
On the differences between local shows in New England and playing Texas where fans might not be too familiar with your band:
Ben:“Yea there’s definitely stuff going on back there. Like today one of the guys at the shop in Providence, his grandfather is going to pass at any moment, and we just gotta tell him take the day off and close up shop. it doesn’t matter.”
Bob: “I actually have a house full of sick cats and kittens that my girl friend is home taking care of while I’m gone. Funny enough my father is watching mine back home as well.”
Bob: “Those things are our responsibilities back home, but stepping away and being here is our responsibility too. We’ve had a message for a very long time and I truly believe it, so to me this is equally important to me as well.
So basically being in DROPDEAD means staying humble, no vacations, and no party type atmospheres other bands dream of.
Ben: “Well no there’s some of that, I’ve never like to go out and have fun as much as we do now. back in the day I probably took it for granted but now I really enjoy it for what it is. My friendships too. The business part of it and the shows is just an extension of what we are doing for fun. I think I’m having a good time and enjoying it. I don’t think I let myself enjoy it that much back in the day. I was a little more serious.
Bob: “And we didn’t have time, most of the stuff we did was on a super budget and sleeping on a concrete floor somewhere and it was real raw. After 25 years and getting the respect of other bands and people and putting in the time now we get the flight paid for, or the room, and we never take that for granted. We still play cellar shows and shit like that but it’s a little easier that way now than it used to be when we were sleeping out on rocks on the side of the road.
Ben: “So no I don’t take any of this for granted I don’t think any one owes me anything, but its nice to stay in a hotel for a night and some one pays for the flight we’ve put in a lot of hard years lost girlfriends, apartments, and jobs to continue this because we believe what we say and you suck it up do what you love or you don’t do it. Don’t complain about it. Both worlds can co-exist, and we are thankful.
This interview took place in November during the Paris terror attacks. Having to talked to the politically astute guys who have made a career of understanding crisis worldwide, we could not help but ask about the relevance to those tragic acts. The bands own desire to shine a light on similar situations, such as their song ‘Bosnia” in 1992, or other songs in their catalog seemed relevant at the time:
Bob: “I say its extremism which is happening then with ethnic cleansing and same with France yesterday its extremism and ridiculous beliefs and religion things that we stand against all things we don’t believe in.
“That and none of us are religious in the band. I think its one of the biggest problems in the world next to capitalism and to me personally, is the destruction of the animal kingdom. All of those three things are the big factors of whats destroying the world to me. so of course we don’t believe it or we try to talk about it and share our ideas on it. When we first wrote the song ‘Bosnia’ that was in the early 90s and with the ethnic cleansing that was going on. I felt it was important to talk about. It’s kinda of a quick song, really four lines long. I always thought of it is political haiku the guys don’t leave me a lot time to write a long song to get our ideas out.”
We asked if there was a song about the Paris attacks coming as a form of a response:
Ben: “I may, we sing about a lot of things but I’ve been writing about animal cruelty so the songs will deal with that more so but once I have time to digest it and form my own thoughts on it then yea, maybe we’ll sing about it. but definitely we will sing about religious extremism in one way or another.”
Shortly after this point the interview kinda turned in to more of a conversation about a slew of other things. Interviews are great but as always to learn more about the band, they encourage fans to seek them out and to get involved in their causes, or your own. When not on tour, Ben can be found in the Armageddon Shops and Bob is accessible via Facebook, or of course going to a DROPDEAD show. They are more than willing to talk you and share their ideas and have a beer. Check em out, expand your mind, and get some more food for thought…
“Don’t you realize? you’re eating death! and the taste in your mouth, is the corpse on your breath!”
INTERVIEW BY ANDREW FRANCIS
CONCERT PHOTOS BY EMMA PARSONS PHOTOGRAPHY
Napalm Death, by Susanne A. Maathuis
Social issues have always been at the heart of the bands lyrics and at the core of their message, but they are not a politically motivated act. At the heart, Napalm Death is still centered round very human issues.
“I understand why people make that general point, but I think that Napalm is a humanitarian band, in the sense that our main objective is to recognise humanity and to try and promote humanity. I think humanity is really lacking in a lot of areas of the world amongst human beings. The things that, in my opinion, dehumanise people like religion, acquisition of extreme wealth, we wouldn’t do things to human beings that they do. That’s my main point. So, even though I’m the kind of person that comes from a left wing perspective, I also recognise that really what it’s about is taking the politics out. Politics as well can be a great dehumaniser; it can make people do things that they wouldn’t usually do in the pursuit of power.”
“Don’t get me wrong, what we talk about could definitely be linked into politics. I think that my thing is that, lets be honest, when you even say the word politics in a lot of conversations it instantly gets people on the back foot, its such a divisive thing. A lot of politics, don’t forget, can be just about tokenism. If the objective is to have a better world for people and more egalitarian way of life then sometimes the tokenism of politics can be completely useless to that aim.”
Nothing has changed for ‘Apex Predator’. Spurred on by a tragedy in Bangledesh, the band get right back to the heart of the issue, tackling consumer culture and our desire for cheap, disposable goods.
“I know it was mentioned in the pre-release stuff quite heavily but just to say it again. The Rana Plaza event, the sweatshop in Bangladesh collapsed with all those people in it. I find coming up with an album title and a starting point can be tricky for me sometimes, I take several days to mull it over and then I throw it round with the other band members but this time when that event happened I just knew. I said ‘I’ve got to write about this’. The most powerful thing for me was to make an expose of not only that particular event, but the whole process of production, consumption and disposal. The big thing is cheap goods, especially in rich western countries in which the UK is one. This insistence on cheap goods, cheap clothes, cheap food, cheap gadgets, but with that cheapness somebody always pays somewhere down the line. Maybe not us monetarily but someone always pays in far more severe ways and in many respects they pay with their lives. Manufacturing standards in a lot of countries are pretty lamentable so I really wanted to bring that out and make an expose on that triple stage culture: production, consumption, and disposal. People in some parts of the world make the goods and once were done with them, they go back so not only have they suffered possibly through the manufacturing but they’ve also suffered because they’re taking the detritus and the crap, the stuff that goes into landfill and really toxifies the earth or being burnt in great piles of rubbish. China and Southeast Asia is a great dumping ground for that kind of stuff. They’re suffering at all stages and I wanted to bring that out, the way that still now in this day and age there is such a big imbalance between those that manufacture and those that consume. There really is a massive gap in the wealth and also the power.”
Despite their size, there are still places in the world that Napalm has yet to venture. With such divisive ideas however, it’s a little unsurprising that they don’t always have the best international relations.
“I think that on the touring side of things that it would be nice to reach more places in the world. I think it’s worth mentioning we can’t play some places in the Middle East because we are a pro secular band with a very atheistic outlook. We are hypercritical of religion and in my opinion it’s absolutely right for us to do that. Unfortunately that doesn’t always go down well in some parts of the world. Because of what we say and our refusal to dilute those things then we are told we wont be allowed to play so that’s the way it is. I’m not going to change the thrust of what the band says because that would be, first of all, be selling ourselves down the river but also diminishing the very things were trying to present to people so I’m not going to do that for anybody. Those aside there are many places we still want to play. The Indian subcontinent, some places in Africa that we didn’t get to play so hopefully we will get there in the end. Apparently Napalm is one of the most requested bands in some countries round the world so it would be nice if we could spread our wings even more. I’m not naive I know that Napalm is not going to get the world spinning on its axis, but we put our ideas on the table and from an entertainment point of view we certainly try our best with our music to make a certain change to things and we could through our ideas affect change as many other bands have done and continue to do, it would be nice if our music could affect change in that way. We live in hope I suppose.”
CAITLIN SMITH