Beyond the Metal Life and Touring:  Interview with bassist Todd Stern of Psycroptic

September 28th, 2019

Through the even flow of touring in the life of Metal bands, Psycroptic have paved their way into the Death Metal for nearly 20 years, providing the audience with a captivating style of schizophrenic riffing styles, alongside tight musicianship and a vivid imagination felt within each note and lyric sung.  I had the chance to talk with Todd Stern, bassist of Psycroptic, discussing the new record, Joe Haley’s impeccable riffing style and songwriting for the band, the sad reality of playing albums live, and much more!

(The entire audio portion of this interview can be found at the bottom of the page)

Metalchondria:  I would like to say as well, with my years with Metal Assault and with Metalchondria, this is the first time I've ever interviewed a band twice, ever!

Todd Stern:  What up!  

Metalchondria: This is a fantastic tour!  Every band's different, and as this is taking place after the show, Conjurer for example:  Heavy, Doom, they were unexpected.

Honestly, I've never heard of the band until this tour.  I don't know why I haven't been paying attention, but great band, ultra-heavy.  They happen to be gentlemen, and a pleasure to be around, which is fucking killer, you know?

How did this tour come about?  Were you offered this, talked together, how did this turn out?

Well, to be honest, Revo(cation) and Psycroptic have been looking to do something in the states together, for a couple of years now.  In 2017, we did an Australian tour.  And over there, Psycroptic headlined, because you know, they're from there, we're from there, I mean I'm not from there.  But the band's from there, and we do pretty well in Australia.  But you know, knowing that Revo would be build higher than us in the states, we were looking to do a support tour for them, for about a year or so.  But we were waiting for the timing to be right.  It's always kind of a bit of a fuckround between album cycles, and who's got what going on, and this one just kind of happened to be prime...like I said, timing.  They gave us the offer, but they also wanted to do a co-headliner with Voivod, so we got offered the 3 out of 5 spot, and we couldn't turn it down because it's a great opportunity for us.  Voivod had that fucking legendary status that adds that whole like kind of, street cred to the bill.  And Revo, they got a massive presence now.  I don't want to inappropriately use that word because, you see the size of the tour, the whole...I don't know how long you've been following the band; I feel like they've been a slow burn from Day 1. They keep up and coming, every release they get bigger and bigger, their following gets stronger.  This is just perfectly appropriate, like the lineup, the venues, the markets, it makes perfect sense to me.  It seems like the crowd shows up early, and stays until the very end, that's cool.

I would agree with that too, I've seen pictures of the tour, and:  Big shows, big attendance, seems well attended overall, right?

Well I mean, like I said, I used the word massive, this isn't a stadium tour by any stretch.  But...it seems to me, very attractive to the audience, in terms of like every town we go, it's consistent.  I don't know how to say what I'm saying, but everywhere we go, no matter what night of the week it is, we're getting like a strong response from the audience, and you know, Revocation again, I think they're doing better now than they've ever done, in terms of like, their grip on the audience, the amount of people that come out to see them, and how bloodthirsty the fans are and shit like that, so it feels like all the pieces are in place, you know?

And 10 months since "As the Kingdom Drowns' came out.  I remembered talking with you, and Jason (Peppiatt, vocalist of Psycroptic), speaking of also, there's another Jason replacing Jason for this tour.  Is he okay?  Is there something at home?

We only do Jasons’, that's our bit.

(Laughs) I'm Jason, too!

(Laughs) The thing is, Pep, he's got kids at home.  The timing was so, that he couldn't sort out what he needed to sort out at home, without staying home from this tour.  It would have probably created a big problem for him with his family, if he just left for this tour.  So, as much as it sucks, we had to kind of fucking decide last minute whether we're not we were still going to do it.  (Jason) Keyser's (vocalist of Origin) available, he's no stranger to singing for this band.  They've done tours with him, I've done a ton of tours with him, and I've only been in the band for a couple years.  And, dude's ready to go at a moment's notice, great performer, great front man, and he can fucking the songs in his sleep!  He's awesome.

Yeah, he is a veteran.  And talking about the album as well, because I was mentioning what you both said last year at Oakland Death Fest where I saw the band, you were saying the new album was going to have "Big choruses!", and all these things, I was like, curious.  You really don't hear that in Death Metal.  Hearing the album, first of all, production:  Outstanding!  You can hear everything, perfect amount of bass, etc-

Well, this is the first time in over 10 years, that the band decided to outsource the final mix.  So, on the Ob(servant) album, somebody else mixed it, even though Joe (Haley, guitarist of Psycroptic) had recorded it.  Joe does all of the engineering and tracking for this band.  And the final product left a bad taste in everyone's mouth, so they steered clear of outsourcing the mix to anyone else, for years!  Finally, on this one, as a collective, kind of put a fresh set of ears on it.  We decided to go with Will.  Will's a friend of mine, I've known him for ages, and he's a Jersey dude, you know?  And he was interested in doing it, everyone seems to be giving positive feedback about the final product.  I think it's fucking great!  As a whole, I think it's a more intense, stronger mix than I'm used to hearing from Psycroptic, so to hear other people say that it's fucking, working in our favor, is refreshing for me to hear.  Because it's scary, you don't know if it's going to turn people away.  You don't want to alienate fans that you already have, but you also want to bring new people on board, you know what I mean?  And the big chorus thing, that's all Joe.  He just writes that way, he thinks that way.  And I think the older we get, the more he wants to...have song structures that are memorable, and catchy, in a good way, you know?  The early years of Psycroptic, where everything was all over the place, the riffs never fucking repeat, he kind of wishes that never happened, you know what I mean?

Is that actually why, I was going to ask later but I'll ask now, is that a reason why Psycroptic don't generally play from The Isle of Disenchantment, or "Scepters", is that why?

The truth?  (laughs) Joe hates those fucking songs (laughs)!

That's crazy!

But we've been, okay...So everywhere you go, you're always going to get some kind of request, from back in the day, of course!  And we still bust out every now and then, "The Colour of Sleep", or like shit from Scepters of the Ancients, but I don't know how to play 3/4 of that shit.  I only learned what I needed to, in order to play in this band. But yeah, to be totally, totally truthful, we got a half hour on this tour. That's it.  You want to play your strongest material; we're promoting a new record that's not even a year old--

10 months.

Yeah yeah, exactly.  So you know, half the set, or 4 of the 7 songs are from the newest album.  And then the rest, we do one from the self-titled, we do one from The Inherited Repression, which is 2012, and then we do Ob(servant).  What else are you going to fucking do?  You only have so much time.  Look at the Revo guys, I don't even know how many full lengths under their belt now.

I think 8?

Right right, more than Psycroptic.

You guys at 7.

We've been a band for 20 years, think about that.  And they're super prolific, they keep putting out strong material and it's hard to make a setlist that's going to satisfy everybody.  In fact, it's impossible to me, a setlist that can satisfy everybody.  So they do a good job of kind of making it so that each tour, has it's own appeal, in terms of like, what were you going to hear on this one?  They were advertising as, we're going to play the newest record, in it's entirety, and people fucking love it!

It's a great album!

They only do one song tonight that's not on the record, you know.  And people love that as well, because they get an extra bonus, but you don't know what it's going to be, you know?  Shit like that.

I actually like when bands play from a new album, when it's a really good album.  Not like it's just a gimmick, or. "Yeah, we'll just put something out."  And when you really, really believe in it, and you play the whole thing, a strong record like that, it means something. 

For a while, you'd see bands would do records in their entirety, live, if it already were like the legacy, you know?  It'd be like 20 years, of you know, Rust in Peace by Megadeth, or whatever.  But when it's a new release, like you said, bands have to feel very strongly about it, in order to fucking stepping up to the plate and playing the whole thing live.  Rivers of Nihil just did it, and you can almost tell in today's day and age, how immediate the response is from the audience, like to the new release, whether or not it'll be worth your while to bring that to the stage.  But no matter what, you're going to have a difficult time creating a setlist, that will just satisfy all.  People come to the merch table; they're always going to bitch about shit.  There are haters in the audience, and they'll still pay to see you, and they'll still think your band is rad, and still support you.  But they might come up to the merch table and be like, "Why didn't you fucking play, that song?!"  Because if I did, some other motherfucker walked up and said, "Why didn't you play the other one?!"  It's just how it goes.

They're called fans/fanatics, for a reason (smiles), you know?

Right, right, right!  And respect, I get it.

Everyone has their favorites.  And talking about the new album too, noticing outside the production, how diverse it was.  Like "Deadlands", that's like the first Thrash, I think Thrash/Psycroptic song for me, the main riff in it.  And the little thing in there with the staccato, harmonics in there.  Still, that's like a "Thrash song" I would not hear from Psycroptic.

And that whole song almost got canned.  

How so?

(Pauses) I mean, Joe wrote it.  Dave originally heard it, and thought it was too soft (laughs).  He did some shit that made it sound a bit more fucking hard hitting, as far as drums go.  Eventually it won everyone over with the vote.  I was the one pressuring Joe to do a guitar solo on there, because he just refuses to.  And I think part of the reason Joe doesn't want to solo, is because people want him to?  Which is funny, but whatever.  Whether that is, or whether that isn't the reason, he's never actually told me the real reason.  He's a great player, but doesn't fucking do guitar solos, he just doesn't.  So on that, I said dude, this song is begging for a fucking guitar solo, would you just...swallow your pride and just get it, you know?  And he did, and I think it's awesome.  We'll never play it live, but--

That mosh pit would be smoking if you did!

Maybe! And who knows?  Maybe we'll end up, I'll end up eating my words and we'll end up doing the whole record on tour.  But for now, it just seems like for now, it's awesome that we put it out, and it's awesome that it came out the way it did, but I don't expect ever to remember the riffs, you know what I mean?

I know Jason isn't here to talk about it, but one thing I also heard:  I felt his vocal approach was a theme, the way that certain choruses and parts, I felt a "three layered vocal", kind of what Nergal did with Demigod years ago.  I really liked it, it was different, and I think it's okay for vocalists and other musicians to do, a "theme", or something special for an album.  Did you notice that as well?

I think the vocal production is more heavy on this record, so it tricks people into thinking that his approach is different.  Pepp to me, he has a style, and I think that he never steps too far out of his boundaries, although he does experiment on every release.  For me, it just ended up being what I expected from it, but I've also spent a lot of time listening to what that dude's style is like.  And I think, in a lot of ways, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." type of dude, you know?  I'm just into it, and yeah I don't know, if what he was going for, translates differently to the audience's ears, than it does to mine.  Because the perspective is not the same, does that make sense?  As long as people like it, I'm fucking down!

And talk more about the album too, my favorite song at least for me, "Beyond the Black."

Yeah yeah!

There's a riff about 2:20 into the song, there's a chugging setup, and just "Joe's way", and you can also mention to him, he's one of the best guitarists I've ever heard.  That riff section...

(Todd and I singing that particular part of the song, because I am such a nerd)

We just did a video for that song, and we're going to try to push that one a little bit more.  Because, I think that's a great song, well everyone...again!  It's the same fucking principle.  We all think it's a great song, but you only have so much shit you can push, people can only handle so much content, you know?  And it ends up being a realistic fact of life, that if you put out a record with 9 songs on it, chances are three years from now, you'll only going to be 1 or 2 of those songs live, 3 or 4 max, you know?  

It's a weird problem in Metal, isn't it?

Yeah, because it's hard, you don't have fucking record producers telling you what your next single's going to be, it's not that type of thing.  So it's just a bunch of dudes trying to pick, "Which one should we fucking kind of push further?"  And that one's getting a bit of a push.  As soon as we're going to put this video out, but yeah, I love the same part that you just described (laughs).

Yeah, that's Joe, and as I said, one of the best guitarists I've ever heard and seen in my life, and again as you mentioned previously about him with interviews:  Someday, someday, I promise that I would love to talk guitar with him for as long as I could.  

He just doesn't like chatting about his style, you know?  I'm kind of doing it for him (laughs).  Which is funny, but yeah, maybe just shy?  "I do what I do, why do people want to ask me questions about it?"  It's almost bizarre to him that people want to ask questions about it.  I'm like, of course they want to fucking know!  It's how it goes.

I don't know if I'm being accurate that this album, how much of a say in terms of the production, songwriting ideas, were you pretty heavily involved in this album?

No no, the album was actually written before I even joined the band.  

Wow!

So, in terms of like, arrangement maybe here and there, how long should parts last, what should start and end where, I did, I probably named 4, 5 songs on the record, and I probably did most of the sequencing.  What I mean by that is like, what order you hear them in on the album.  But that was also a group effort, and I maybe remembering it inaccurately, but I wasn't there for the writing process, at all.  I joined the band after the record was fully written, I just helped kind of suggest what I think, should go in what place, and even that was minimal.  But it was an issue of timing, I feel like on the next one I feel like I'll be a lot more involved, you know what I mean?  So, it's funny, to even fucking be the dude who's doing interviews about the record, because it already happened.  But those guys just like, they love having me doing the interviews, and I can't tell you why (laughs).

I was going to say as well, are you the tour manager for this tour, or just with them in general?

No no no, I do the backend for Psycroptic, but on this tour we're 3 out of 5.  There's a real tour manager, Joel from Revocation, and on a tour like this we're a support band, I don't need to do much tour managing.  But yeah, I have a fair bit of experience with that.

Do you like having the responsibility?  It seems like you're the one to go to for those kind of things, because as you said based off their personalities, that's something I can't imagine they want to do.  Do you welcome, and like it?

I like it, and I don't like it, it's a love/hate.  It makes me fucking nuts, but also need to get involved because of maybe I know a CD type of thing.  So there's some kind of duality going on there with that.  I wish somedays, wish that I would never have to touch it ever again, and somedays I wish nobody else would ever fucking...get their hands near my shit, and just let me do my thing, you know what I mean?  I end up doing it, and I end up letting it drive me insane, but that's no different than anything else in my life, that's just how I kind of go.

A couple questions about the album, is the band still in Drop D?

Drop D, and there's a 5-string bass on this last record.  The lowest is low A, guitar is playing ol' 6 string Drop D.

Can you explain, at least from what you see as a bass player and someone in the band, in terms of his style playing in Drop tuning?  A lot of bands, bad Metal and Rock bands, play Drop D for kind of their tone, but for him, it's got to be the riff structures go, and how schizophrenic everything is.  Why does he play in Drop D, as far as you know?

Well I mean, it has to do what kind of, riff structures is a great way to put it, but you get into a force of habit, and I think it's helpful as your career goes along, to have lot of releases that are tuned, in the same tuning.  Because you can bust out any song at any time, without having to worry about whether that's going to sound right to the audience.  I know a lot of bands who have changed their shit up over the years, and maybe which they hadn't, or maybe slightly experimented by just dropping a half a step or something like that.  Then sometimes, it's a huge fuckaround to get it right live, so you end up doing one of two things:  Either bringing extra gear, taking extra time, or...just playing songs differently live than they sound on the recording.  But keeping it consistent, you can avoid all of that.  And I think Joe just likes playing in drop, because he got used to it when he was young, and that's how he thinks.  I mean, that dude's a fucking genius.  You can give him any tuning and he can figure out what to do with his guitar, but he just likes it.

Hence my desire to talk to him someday about that stuff because, just everything I see him do.  Also, as well, "Upon these Stones", too, I like the incorporation of this atmosphere in the middle of the song.  You have the clean parts, and them coming back hard and then later on, bringing that on.  The band's still really continuing to evolve, and I really hear the evolution in the production, in the speed as well.  It's not a super crazy fast album, but the riffs are fast, but I feel a more midtempo then say, Ob(Servant), I would say.  Did the band not seem to mind going a little slower, no?

I mean, we're old now.  Going fast isn't a prerequisite, it doesn't have to be fast.  I love the songs that are faster, but it's also nice to have a little bit of a fucking slowburner, well, we've been doing that song live for a while, but even on the record, I think it gives your ears a bit of a break.  The response to it has been pretty good.  Personally, we don't mind it at all, it gives you room to breathe.  But, it does lack intensity at times, when you are used to a band that loves to go fast.  I hope that it's never a bumout for people, but I also think that we all came from an era where you worship bands that went really fast, but eventually put out shit that was slower, that hit just as hard.

South of Heaven, for me.

Perfect example.  So, you always had that in your mind, it could work if it's slow, so why not?  What's wrong with it, you know what I mean?

As I said, the riffs are still really fast, and I think it's still really intense, based off the production and writing style.

It's got parts in it that are ripping for sure!

So after this tour, and you mentioned last year that with your visas, for about a calendar year you want to tour about 3 or 4 times to get your money's worth, and to get the exposure, especially with the album coming out and everything.  Is there anything going on next?

We probably will do another U.S. tour in the beginning of 2020.  We don't have it booked yet.  We honestly want to take a little bit more of time off to write more.  So, we're talking about doing another record, which is, it won't be released anytime soon, but we're talking about taking some time off of this one, after this one, to write the next one.  The band has been touring pretty fucking hard recently, so it'll be good for us to take maybe 4 or 5 months off the cycle of touring, and just get our shit together.  Maybe write some music, maybe record, toss some ideas around, talk about what we want to do for next year, but we don't have anything booked at the moment.  

Based off this tour, the tour package, crowd response and everything, do you believe if you do that tour, it could maybe possibly be a headlining based off this tour?

I'll think it'll be a fucking co-headliner, if anything.  We're torn between wanting to do support tours in the states, and want to do headlining tours in the states, for various reasons.  But if we do a co-headliner, I think it'll satisfy all of our needs, you know what I mean?  Kind of like what Voivod and Revo are doing right now, something like that.

The band's been around nearly 20 years, I feel like this is the first in a year in a half, that the band can really kind of tour actively.  Before it would be Summer Slaughter back in 2008-2009, then 4-5 years later, they come back, you know?  Almost as long as in-between each record back in the day, it's nice to see the band tour consistently.  Is that something that will continue forward, as much as you possibly can?

I like to think so.  I think that me joining the band, gave the dudes more of a reason to tour than they had in the years prior.  Because, it would have been a situation where they would be constantly finding fillings, an original member couldn't do the tour.  And again, we're still doing, every now and then, we have to have a fill-in singer because of prior commitments that make people make in their lives.  But for a while, it was impossible to tour as hard.  So what I'm saying is, for a very long stretch of time, it was impossible for the band to tour, as hard as they would have liked to.  And now, it's a fair bit easier with me in the lineup, than it was before I joined.  We're still not able to go at any moment’s notice, so there's a balance.  I like to think that we're going to be more and more and more active until, whenever.  Everyone wants to play shows and put out music, so here we are, you know?

Any last words for the rest of this tour?  All of the Psycroptic fans, as well as the fans for this incredible tour, and what's going to happen for 2020?

Last words.  You know what, come to the shows!  Bands spend a lot of time writing and recording, so that people can enjoy their music.  But because of the way the platform has changed, and because the fact that fans can just have access to the music unlimited, all the time, and any moments notice, it means a lot to us to just come to the shows.  If you want to come to the shows, you'll have a fucking good time, I promise.

And last thing about that too, getting people to the shows, I've asked numerous bands and people over the years:  Sometimes I feel there's this amazing show, there should be way more people and awareness for the package itself.  What have you seen over your years or anything noticing little thing you may have made a suggestion for a good idea, to help spread more awareness?  There was a period of time, where Vital Remains headlined The Galaxy, they couldn't do that now!  But during Dechristianize back then, it was different, you know what I mean?  Digital means weren't quite prominent yet, not quite yet.  I would like to bring that back.

I wish I knew; I really do.  I wish I had an answer.  The age that we live in, has created a ton of convenience that we all take for granted, including myself.  But it comes with this major, major setback (fans walk by and shake Todd's hand and thanks him for the Psycroptic set).  Yeah, the problem is, because of so much access to this stimulation, things don't mean as much.  And because things don't mean as much, it's so much easier to just forgo the opportunity to have a fun night out, at the El Rey Theater and go see your favorite band because, your entertainment at your fingertips is equally as stimulating.  It's the same phenomenon of like, why do I go to a baseball game and deal with the traffic, parking, and the bullshit, when I got this giant fucking 55-inch TV at home, with this HI-Def clarity, I don't even have leave the fucking house?  I can watch the game naked on my couch, or whatever the fuck.  The too much convenience, too much access to that stimulation has caused this like, what's the word I'm looking for?  This apathetic like bullshit, non-aggressive attitude about, "Oh, I'll catch them next time.  I caught them last time."  When I was growing up, going to see your favorite band was the sickest thing you can possibly do with your time!   And I don't know if it's ever going to come back, I wish it would.  I wish I knew how to answer your question.

For the record, I've seen Suffocation 22 times.  Every time I can see a band, I want to see them as much as possible.  The band's playing 4 times a year, I want to go to all 4!

Hopefully there's a tipping point, and it comes back in the other direction.  It's still cool to see bands, and there's still a massive scene for live music and production.  I just don't know if we're in the right genre for it! (laughs).