With their new album out on 4th March 2022, Tony Bliss digs a little deeper, with input from guitatist Phil Demmel.
With reformations and reunions continuing to be big business across the rock and metal landscape, there is certainly no lack of past heavyweights dusting off their instruments and delivering a look back at past glories - and more importantly fresh and thrilling new material - to the delight of eager die-hards worldwide. There are few who wait quite as long as Calfornian thrash legends Vio-lence however, with the release of their forthcoming EP ‘Let The World Burn’ coming a full twenty nine years after 1993’s ‘Nothing To Gain’.
Featuring five cuts of scalpel-keen Bay Area fury, the band (featuring original guitarist Phil Demmel, vocalist Sean Killian and drummer Perry Stickland) sound as focused and hungry as any contemporary metal band you could name, whilst never straying far from the vintage Vio-lence thunder. ‘I listened to (the bands seminal 1988 debut) ‘Eternal Nightmare' a bit and wanted to capture all that fire and angst of high school me when I wrote that record, but I (also) wanted to encompass thirty five years of guitar playing and writing and performing…and add that maturity’, explains Demmel. ``The songs do sound current but they still have that old school feel, which I think comes from the production we used…we wanted it to feel like five dudes jamming and have imperfections in there’.
He adds, ‘We’ve been influenced by newer bands, but I don’t listen to a whole bunch of new stuff. I’m really influenced by the stuff I was brought up on…early Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer, Sabotage…so we carry our influences but we wanted to sound like Vio-lence, and I (wanted that) to be unmistakable’.
Indeed, with the line-up rounded off by ex-Overkill six-stringer Bobby Gustafson and former Fear Factory bassist Christian Olde Wolbers - who as Demmel notes ‘bring a level of musicianship, professionalism and experience…coupled with just being awesome dudes’ - the metallic pedigree in the Vio-lence ranks is undeniable, and tracks such as opening shit-kicker ‘Flesh From Bone’ and the mid-paced muscularity of ‘Upon Their Cross’ do give a sense that these five veterans are fully inflamed by the creative process; this begs the question as to whether these songs are as box-fresh as they sound, and why the band opted for an EP in lieu of a full length, whilst clearly on such blazing form.
‘When we got back together in 2001 we had started writing a record and we had two songs done…but when we got back together and started talking about writing and maybe doing these songs again, they sounded dated…like the early 2000’s, like that time period you know, and we wanted a fresh start, so we kinda scrapped them and started all anew. We used up every bit (of music). I wanted to do three, maybe four songs just to see where we were as a group and not have this burden of writing ten songs and forty five minutes of thrash metal. I hadn't written thrash in a bit so I wanted to keep those expectations low…I wanted to leave people wanting more, instead of them turning it off, and to rabbit punch you in the face five times and leave you ‘what the fuck was that, that was awesome, I want more’ type of deal’.
‘Nothing (was) left over…I have recently started writing and we have another song in the mix, but that’s another story…’
Hints of even more new material to come aside, 2022 is set to be a busy one for Vio-lence. Celebrating its thirty fifth birthday next year, Demmel confirms that a commemorative reissue of ‘Eternal Nightmare’ is in the works, along with a host of tour dates across the U.S with Coroner, an appearance at Maryland Deathfest, and ‘some shows overseas, some festivals including Bloodstock and Alcatraz…and lining up some other stuff as we speak, there’s a lot of stuff gonna be happening this year’. With so much in store and armed with a handful of killer new songs, expect Vio-lence to slot right alongside their still shreddin’ ‘n’ screamin’ 80's peers, further enhancing the notion that the spirit of classic thrash metal is still as potent and urgent as ever.
