Blackened Thrash Metal act Skeletonwitch are back with a brand new album. Recorded with the prominent producer Kurt Ballou (Converge), Serpents Unleashed (Prosthetic Records) comes out in a special moment in Skeletonwitch’s career. The band is also celebrating the tenth anniversary. More than enough reasons to chat with the guitarist and founding member, Scott Hedrick.

How do you recall these first ten years of activity with Skeletonwitch? Could you name some highlights that the band had along this ten year road?

It actually went really fast, really quickly. I can’t believe it has been ten years already. Makes me feel old. [laughs] It seems just like yesterday we were playing in a pile wood stage that we built in the yard of our house when we were just college students… All of a sudden here we are putting out another record. It’s been really great. I really wouldn’t change anything about it. We never knew where things would go… We just love to play music and being in a band, and those things progress. Every time we couldn’t believe that we had another tour or we signed with a record label or even going to Europe for the first. We kept our heads down while working hard and sometimes we look over the “trenches” and… Holy crap!!! We had a lot of highlights, but one that I want to mention is when we did our first big tour with Danzig (one month tour). Being a part of that tour, hanging out with him and receiving complements from the man himself… It was a really big honour since we’re really big Misfits and Danzig fans. I’ll never forget those moments. This is what matter for us, and not being on Top 200 of the Billboard charts. Of course we’re proud of that, but we treasure the moments like we had with Danzig way more.

If you had to compare this Serpents Unleashed to the other four records, what would you say?

I would say the production is the closest where I always wanted to be. Without a doubt I would say that all the members of the band are most happy with the final result. Not to say that we were unhappy in the past, but we’re always looking to make it better. If you look to the work Kurt Ballou (producer) does, it’s easy to see that he as a knack to bring records to life. I think this record is the closest you can come to the energy of a Skeletonwitch’s live show. We often hear from people that we’re a live band, that you have to see us live. I think this time we finally capture that on record. The record has teeth. It’s really in your face and alive. I think people will notice that right away, since the first moments of listening to the new record. On our side of things, with the songwriting, we’re very much a song oriented kind of band. We may not repeat parts a lot, like in a traditional songwriting format, but we are always worried on writing memorable tunes. A lot of time you see an extreme metal band just trying to be extreme and in that process losing focus on writing just good songs… We, definitely, don’t work like that, and I think this is probably the best batch of songs that we’ve released as a band. Nate for the most part has been our main songwriter. I would contribute with some parts, riffs, ideas and so what. With this record I contributed way more… I actually wrote songs from beginning to end, a thing that actually never happened before. On that level I feel very proud too.

It was awesome to see new approaches on the band’s sound, like in the beginning of ‘Unending, Everliving’. How important is trying new things in this band?

I think it’s important that we just try what we feel what comes natural. In other words, it’s good to try new things but also we shouldn’t do it if it doesn’t feel right. We will not write a song in a weird time signature if it doesn’t makes sense. It’s more about pushing the boundaries of writing really good songs. And trying to pushing the boundaries can put you in a way where it’s kind of easier or in a way where is really complex. Maybe we will have a eight minutes songs in the next record. Who knows?

Why did you guys choose to work with Kurt Ballou? How it was that experience in Kurt’s Godcity Studio?

From the beginning we knew that we wanted to have Kurt Ballou producing our record, and that almost happen earlier since he was about to work with us in our third record, Breathing the Fire, back in 2009. Back then it didn’t work because his schedules are insane. Him always touring with Converge and working with a large number of bands.Finally everything worked this time and we had the chance of working with him. We told our label and everyone else that Kurt was the guy that we wanted. They tried to come up with some alternatives but we said right away “No! We want this guy so shut up!” The experience was really good. Kurt is really funny. A lot funnier that you actually might think, since sometimes he comes across of being a really serious guy… That’s not really the case at all. He is a hard worker and got everybody focused on recording the record. He doesn’t want people in the studio getting all drunk and partying, what is a good think since we get carried away sometimes. Besides that it was really easy to work with. We understood our sense of humour and fitted in really well. It take a couple of days to get used to each other, but after that it was like we were old friends.

You guys believe in the Phil Anselmo’s words: “Get out and play! Get in the van and go around as many times as you can and from there build your fanbase”?

Absolutely! That is what we have been doing for the past ten years and I believe that’s the way you should do it. I believe there’s no other way around it, but I also think it’s the most fun way to do it. A band does not exist in a laptop. It’s so good go around the world and play in front of people.

The artwork is freakin’ amazing. How it was working with John Baizley? You guys gave him total freedom?

Well… sort of. John always asks for the music and the lyrics. Before he starts to work on the artwork he heard the record and read all the lyrics. Usually after that he draws a rough sketch and send it to us explaining what’s going on, explaining his vision and everything else. We reply with some feedback and it goes back and forth for some time, to where come a time where basically everyone is happy with the product. After those moments he moves forward and starts to add ink, etc. You don’t ask an artwork to John and then the things come right back and falls into your lap. It’s a process where there’s a lot of back and forth, but yeah… We had a lot of freedom. It seems stupid, to me, have a guys talented like John and don’t use his skills and visions.

Finally, let’s talk about the ‘Burned From Bone’ video. It’s such a great idea of using that “behind the scenes” footage instead of that stupid concept that is the lyric video.

I hate those things. I think they are so cheesy. Records labels always try to do that kind of stuff because they think people like it, but I think they’re deadly wrong in that specific case. About the ‘Burned From Bone’ video: we always try to get as much footage of the studio as we can, and we all took footage with our phones… Because we don’t have a nice video camera. [laughs] When we got there and we’re recording footage with our phones, Kurt said “Why I don’t record a video of you guys playing the same song? You can use it later if you want.” So, it was his idea and he think it was really nice one. He recorded the footage and then we had someone to edit everything.

Tiago Moreira

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