Thanks to John Kevill for giving me a lively interview and a chance to ask some questions about his current tour with Enforcer, the songwriting process in Warbringer, and some world history discussions. Thank you John Kevill for the chat and also to Salem Rose Music for setting it up.
I’d like to thank you for taking the time to talk. How’s the tour going so far?
We are four days in and I’m actually feeling alright. The kind of show we play can wreck you pretty quick if you’re not careful, and sometimes even if you are, so that’s good. I’m pretty happy about how my voice has been. I’ve had a tough time with a few of the high parts towards the end of the set, that happens, but I haven’t broken down or anything yet. And the shows have all been really strong. We’ve toured with Enforcer before so we know them. The second time you tour with a band often you get to really friendly terms then. The first time you’re kinda working out how you work with them, then the second time you’re like “Dude!” And you have all of the shared memories and stuff. So it’s been really cool, I like the band we’re touring with and I like the state of my band right now and how we’re playing, so I can’t really complain. There’s no days off. That’ going to be really savage. So that’s why I’ve been more or less trying to take this tour super seriously and try to nail the vocal every night. That’s my prime directive here.
So you’re doing 54 shows in 54 days?
50 to go, four down.
How is that possible? How do you guys do it night after night?
Well, it’s possible when your booking agent disregards your request to have like a three- to four-week tour with a few days off and hit the big cities and just books 54 days instead. So that’s how it’s possible. How we’re going to do it, I’ll tell you at the other end of it. Basically, for me it means that I’m not drinking a drop on this tour, I pretty much have to look at it like I’m an athlete or something. Otherwise I’m simply going to be short of my own expectations. One of the things that pisses me off the worst is when… it doesn’t piss me off, it’s not like it’s anyone else’s fault, but it hurts me when I know that I didn’t do that great of a job. I know my own parts pretty damn well, so I know when I don’t get them quite right. And then fans come up and say, “that was a great show!” I’m happy they enjoyed it, but inside I wanted to do better for them. That always bothers me. I’m pretty much, my goal is to never feel like that this tour. We’ll see if I can do it.
Over the years you’ve done a few covers songs on your albums. How do you choose a song to cover?
(Laughs) The answer is a lot less sexy than you might hope. Basically, the reason we do cover songs… I’m not against cover songs, per se, but it’s such an easy talking point to cover a song someone already knows because they can latch onto that instead of having to delve into the band’s own material. Very often, I can’t tell you the number of times someone has said “you should do a metal cover of (insert famous pop song)” or something being anachronistic and I’m like…Children of Bodom did Baby One More Time. What’s the use of that? Is that going to be a good song, really? Come on. Sure, it’s funny and for people who don’t actually listen to metal. So we always try to keep it within our influences, within metal to some degree or like rock and metal at least ‘cause I think we did a f—— Zep cover.
The truth for how you choose a cover song is this: We write the record. The label still wants two bonus tracks for the European and Japanese editions, and we pick some easy shit that we can learn and bust out in like an hour. That’s the formula for cover songs and we try to pick something we like. This time we did Discharge, which is kind of the ultimate of that. It’s like a two-riff song
The new Warbringer album comes out September 25th?
September 25th is when the single we just played tonight comes out. That’s the opening track. The title of the song is not the same as the title of the record but contains the title of the record. It’s a good lead in. It’s an energetic, fast number. The record’s not all like that but it sounds, even compared to what we’ve been doing, it sounds really like old-school 1984, ’85 thrash to me. The real early period, which we haven’t touched in a while since, like, the first record or two. So, it’s kinda like going back to that era of our band but with the songwriting chops that we have now.
The record’s really diverse. It goes places, it ends somewhere else than where it starts. It contains some stuff that’s different than anything we’ve done so it will be interesting to see what fans think. I’d say it’s a thrash rooted record but, and actually Vanquished and Empires were kinda like this too, where they’re rooted in thrash metal but to just call it that would be sorta to miss a lot of the stuff on there.
Would you ever consider doing a concept album?
We kinda already do that, to some extent. I’m never going to commit to a concept record because then you run into problems because you just put a box around yourself before you even start. What I do is, I have a really loose concept and I go off of that. Woe To The Vanquished, the last one, is probably the closest I got to a single, unifying concept. It’s about human civilization and the big picture and warfare and domination and why the hell do we have and do these things? I try to look at both from the view on the battlefield, like in Shellfire, or like a civilization, across-the-grand-scope-of-time view like Divinity of Flesh. Or like Woe To The Vanquished goes back to the ancient roots of all the conflict and stuff. When the Guns Fell Silent is a World War I epic and I think the first World War is where the whole modern military and industrial state complex comes from and we live in that world.
But I think when people say “you write about war” I’m like, well, maybe about five out of 10 songs, to be honest. Descending Blade is a guy with a gun but it’s just a random story about a sniper, it’s not really connected to the big picture of the record. It has its own little self-contained concept. Spectral Asylum is pure dark fantasy and it has nothing to do with any of the rest of the songs. Remain Violent is modern police brutality, so it’s loosely related.
So that’s what I mean, I think you listen to the record and you get an overarching theme but instead of having to write eight songs specifically on that theme, I can kind of color outside the lines a bit and I think that’s going to serve the songs better and I’m not trying so hard to bend the song into that concept.
I kind of do the same thing this next record. A lot of it is, I’m always going with the historical, civilizational, warfare, society, those kinds of themes. But then, in the middle of the record, it’s like some highly personal lyrics in a dark kind of sense. You know, it’s some different kinds of stuff.
Ok, so, since you’re an historian…
No, no, no, people don’t know what it takes to be a real historian. The guys I look up to, I’m nowhere near them. I am working on it.
Alright, so, as an historian-in-progress?
If I finish my bachelor’s degree, I can teach high school, but that’s not what I’m going for.
Does that give you an advantage in the songwriting department?
I like to think so, because, quite frankly, I think… ok, I don’t play an instrument, I’m all about structure and songwriting and lyrics. I think it does give me an advantage because I think a lot of people basically don’t think about what they write. I think a lot of music lyrics are basically an afterthought. I think if you’re trying to make the best music that you should make every element as sweet as possible, so that’s my job, make the lyrics sweet.
I think it gives me an advantage because my theme in Warbringer about how that aspect of my life helps me with the lyrics is basically that, ok, we’re making evil music, right? So, we want to write about something evil that goes with it. So how about the real stuff? Ok, Satan’s a character. When Venom and Slayer were doing their Satanic stuff in the early ‘80’s they were in an Evangelical society so it’s artistic then because of the context of where they are, it’s a protest, shocking thing. Now? No one cares. We’re more or less an atheist society. We’re getting there.
So it’s not the same, and every death metal band or black metal band has just been milking that goat since the early 80’s and it’s not new or exciting or artistic in any way anymore and I don’t believe heavy metal is just some bullshit you put on because you’re a pissed off teenager, I think it’s a legitimate art form that deserves to last a while. So I try to make it so that our songs express something about the world and I think if you look at the world and all the kind of wrong stuff that’s out there, like you live in a world where slavery was a thing, mass genocide was and is a thing, industrial scale technological warfare continues to be a threat and you also have people that are going to sit in traffic for an hour every day to basically be just barely on the cusp of keeping the hamster wheel going where they don’t fall into homelessness or something, which you can see the consequences on every city street corner in America.
So, all this stuff, if you live in that world and you don’t feel pissed off, if you don’t feel a heavy metal roar in you at some point, I don’t get it. I think there is something universal in this music because the modern world is kind of inhuman and we humans gotta live in it. There are plenty of benefits to it as well, it’s the other side of the coin but the side of the coin that I’m talking about is just they “WHY NOT!!??” I try to look at the past roots of it and the present and I try to always keep it connected.
What is an historical event that you think people should be talking about?
Oh shit, well, the go-to answer for me is World War I, it’s pretty much the grimmest thing ever, it’s sort of the beginning of the rise of America and the modern world order. It’s about three or four major steps back by now. But I don’t think you can understand where we are without it.
But if you really want to get into it, what the modern world is the product…basically, I aim to be an historian of everything from the French Revolution through the second world war and getting into the cold war a little. But these are each chapters in the same book, so to speak, of the development of modern world power and how it is. And we’re in a really interesting phase right now, because America pretty much comes out of the world wars, like, in the sun. Just doing great and the one last obstacle is the Soviet Union and that’s been gone since about the time of my birth. A few years after.
And the problem that America’s been having is how do they keep… (laughs) how do they? I’m an American! How does America keep its one-world power status and the answer, if I’m going to predict is, we can’t. We haven’t been doing so great of a job. Our peak was probably sometime in the mid to late 1990’s and you’ve seen since the 2000’s the downturn, and that’s spooky. So, it doesn’t mean things are hellish in America or anything. But I think if we don’t make some correct choices, which, I think if you look at the current situation in this country and the political discourse it’s not looking good, if we don’t make some correct choices, we’re going to lose that and you’ve got authoritarian powers, like China’s the one to actually be worried about.
All this stuff is a spooky thing. And I’m not trying to… you know, in the Warbringer song version you’re going to get complete doomsday, worst-case scenario, but there’s a lot of other scenarios that are less bad and less insane, but still bad that are perhaps more likely. The free world and all that has to be preserved. We need overall to continue in that way because everyone takes it for granted because it’s where they live but it is NOT to be taken for granted. There’s no precedent for taking it for granted at all.
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