HYPERBLASTING TRUTHSLAYER: IN DEPTH INTERVIEW WITH DRUMMING EXTRAORDINAIRE JOHN LONGSTRETH OF ORIGIN
(Property of YouTube)
For well over 20 years, Hyperblasting Death Metal veterans Origin have continued to slay the planet, with some of the most interesting, well written extreme Metal you will ever hear. I had a chance to sit down with long time drummer John Longstreth, and we discussed Origin's songwriting, changing key vocalists, Longstreth's time with Gorguts, ever changing technology in the music world, and more!
(Full audio interview is located at the bottom of the page)
Metalchondria: You briefly talked about San Francisco from the other night, how was that show, and the rest of this tour so far?
John Longstreth: San Francisco is fantastic! That's where our guitar player Paul (Ryan) lives. So we get to the venue, everybody knows us and it's a pretty good time. What we were talking about before is interesting, it was August weather over there. You just spend the entire time sitting outside, you know? And San Francisco was fantastic, last night was Sacramento, that was amazing. Huge crowd! Tonight is like I think, 200 presale so tonight will be amazing, and tomorrow's Pomona. Then, we exit California from there, Texas and Arizona next. (Looks in another direction) Whoa, check out the Defenders of the Faith coat. That is awesome!
If I remember correctly, is this your first time touring with Morbid Angel, at least in the states?
Probably 3 years ago, we did Summer Slaughter. And they were headlining Summer Slaughter. They were doing the "20 year Covenant." It was David Vincent, Tim Yeung, and "Destructhor" Thor. They were doing the Covenant, one song from each other album after, I think so, something like that. That was fun. But this tour is different because, it's a different kind of Morbid Angel, you know? This is the Tucker era of Morbid Angel, which depending camp you're a part of, I would consider this more "brutal Death Metal utilitarian" type. It's not big hits, not any hooks, it's watch these guys play real nasty Death Metal. It's not much flash to it, very stripped down and very hard. So for some people, it's weird. I think it's amazing. I've always been more of a Tucker era Morbid Angel fan, because I was with Angelcorpse in Studio B, while Morbid Angel was in Studio A, mixing "Formulas"(Formulas Fatal to the Flesh, 1998), so I kind of got to see it. It was one of my first, "Oh wow, meeting some of my influences", back in '97 as a kid, so I've always carried that with me. And because it's only 3 bands, instead of 12 bands or 10 bands or whatever, these guys are a little more out to come out and hang out, great dudes. So far, everything has been really awesome, and have about a week left, and then we're done.
It's been about a year since Unparalleled Universe came out, and noticed over the course of Origin's discography, I would consider there to be two parts of Origin, the first four albums up to Antithesis, and then Entity, Omnipresent and the new record, a very different stage of Origin. The songs are longer, clean passages, more atmosphere and samples. Was this more of Paul and yourself with collaborations, the entire band maybe? What spawned this new, not straying too far from Origin, but something uniquely different and unusual compared to say "Informis"(Informis Infinitas Inhumanitas) and the others?
Well, it's just how the band evolved, right? So when you had the first two albums of the band, you had the self-titled and you have "Informis", you had 3 guys doing their own vocal patterns. You had Mark Manning, and shortly after James Lee, who was our vocalist, and then Paul and Jeremy (Turner) on each side of the stage doing vocals, and then you bring in (Mike) Flores doing vocals. At one point in time, while I was out of the band, I think there was 4 vocals on the front, so as far as I'm concerned the first Origin doesn't really have much of a frontman. You have a guy talking in between songs, but at the same time, you have all the vocals kind of evenly distributing amongst the frontline of the band. That kind of stopped, when I came back during "Antithesis" , while you still Jeremy, Mike and Paul doing backup vocals, there was a much stronger front man presence. You know, James just starting doing more of a front man thing, and shortly after unfortunately James was out of the band. We went through Mica ("Maniac" Meneke 2010-2011 with the band) was in and out, we got Jason (Keyser, formerly in Skinless), who is an absolute front man! We definitely have more of a Death Metal Van Halen (laughs), what I would call it. A charismatic blonde dude jumping all over the place, half drunk, saying funny shit. As far as the change of the music, we only did like a couple of really long songs, I think? I believe we only did a handful of them. "Debased Humanity" was long, that was before I came back.
(Under) 4 minutes.
"Debased Humanity" was only 4 minutes? Okay, so you got "Wrath of Vishnu" and "Saligia", "Antithesis."
"Consequence of Solution" is over 6 minutes.
Yeah, "Consequence" is a long one, too. The band still relies heavily on the 3-4 minute (makes buzzer sound) stop kind of thing, that's still our bread and butter. That has never changed, I think you're missing some elements that were in the beginning. You had Jeremy writing material, you had Clinton (Appelhanz) writing material at one point in time, you know? Now it's just Paul writing and all that, so if anything it's more consistent, I would think. And it does lean on this specific side. It's hard to say, because I've been there watching it happen slowly, so I don't really even notice the changes as much as people outside. I'm just here, playing more Origin drums, right?
Talking about Jason, formerly in Skinless, as you mentioned an outstanding front man, able to warm the crowd in a split second. And the differences between Jason and James, James's vocal attack was very everywhere, so many words all at once, complex like a web with so many parts to it. And Jason's style is more straightforward, still very brutal though. Can you talk about the differences between adjusting from having that old style for so long, to someone who came from a brutal but traditional side of Death Metal, in Skinless?
With James Lee, we got him at the very beginning. He had a demo that he did, that he played everything on basically, I think he programmed the drum machine, played the guitar, did all the vocals and all that stuff. He was a fan of the band, and we just called him up, and he came up on his birthday. So with James, it's really sad. He kind of developed himself off this band, and when it didn't work out, it really kind of sucked because he was developed himself into the band, and became that part. Jason, he had a couple of bands ahead of him, so he came in with a different, and with an established set of tools, a set of skills that he had to adjust to. He used to say, one Origin practice would be 10x as hard as the "hottest Skinless show in August at the end of a tour" kind of thing, right? It was a definite, we knew and had it in mind, Jason's showmanship when we were hiring him. It was a big balancing act the first year, getting him to talk the right amount, not talk the right amount, us leaving holes open for him to speak, and a lot of times, "Here's the 4 count to the next song." he's looking around like what the fuck happened? Later it grew into each other but it's working great! He brought with him, like he runs the merch side as far as the business is concerned, Jason runs the merchandise. He brought with him his own set of skills.
I would say the majority of Origin, in relation to Paul and yourself, Mike, and now Jason. But particularly with Mike, Paul and yourself, the real core of Origin that most know has been there consistently with everything, talk about the songwriting in general; does Paul write the majority? Does everyone write little bits and pieces with Paul writing the majority of it? How is the process of writing this kind of music together after all of these years, and it's easier now overtime as musicians?
It's easier now, because I've been doing it for 20 years. I know Paul, and I know what he's going to do, and he knows what I'm going to do. And yeah, Paul at minimal will write a guitar riff, but he'll have drum ideas. The way it goes: Here's a guitar riff, this is going to be a blasty riff, here's the guitar riff, this is going to be a groove section, so groove drums. And here's a guitar riff, series of punches, kind of a thing like that. A lot of times, he'll say, "I got this thing, and I don't know what to do with it. Listen to it, and we'll sit there and we'll hack at it and make it work." He will write lyrics from time to time, but usually when Jason asks him to. A lot of times, Jason will say I need more of the old school approach Paul, put some lyrics here. But for the most part, Paul and I write, put everything together, and Jason will come in with lyrics and patterns, and all that stuff. As far as vocals are concerned, Paul might say something like, arrange it verse chorus verse chorus bridge verse chorus, you know? Don't put anything here, or there, so it's structured enough to make it easy. But at the time it's not so tight where people don't get to put their personality on it. And it's important, every band has to have that, have some sort of "guy" that's in there, holding it together. Some guys in other bands write everything out on the computer, and they expect their drummer to play everything the way he wrote it, you know? I knew a guy who was in a very, very big Death Metal band for a minute who offered me a job, who said, "You will play it exactly like this." And he showed me his Guitar Pro drum machine recordings, we haven't heard from that band, for well over 10 years.
(Smiles) I know who that is. (If you want to know who the band is, and after the interview he confirmed to me that I was correct, ask me after you read or listen to this.11:36 into the audio.)
So that was kind of interesting, and with the Gorguts thing, Luc (Lemay) was really interesting like that. He would have this guitar riff, and he would throw shapes at me. He would be like, "Alright! Very "attacky" with the snare, or not. Lots of cymbals or "rot-groove." I'm lucky to have songwriters around me to trust me enough to take ball and run with it, as long as they point me in the right direction, in which I'm totally fine with.
Speaking of playing with Luc, Paul, and all of the other bands you've been in as well, filling in live, the studio, everything. Would you say that Origin would be considered more of your band than all the rest, and doing all of the other things, have you learned more as a drummer being in Origin, where you have more creative control? Or being in the other bands having a different perspective, that may expand on things you never thought about?
Well, the way I qualify the Gorguts thing is, that was music school in comparison. Origin is a real "I studied at the School of Hard Knocks", you know? What I learned in Origin is basically, that's all survival skills. I learned very quickly how to write music with Paul, that was one thing. What came after, how to manage laundry on the road, how to bring a drum kit out that I don't want to claw my eyes out with every time I have to set it up. Survival skills, how to budget, how to be a functional person while on tour, so that's sort of like being in the Military with Origin, kind of. No offense to our, soldiers? I don't know anything about being in the Military. But, Gorguts was very much like going to music school, because there was so many things, physically playing the Gorguts material difficult, mentally it was very strange. A lot of odd numbers, a lot of just really different thought patterns happening, and Luc is a very visceral, artistic method, lots of big hand gestures, a very orchestral point of view, which is really cool. But there was a bit of a divide for us with that, because I'm just a fucking street rat that plays blastbeats in comparison, so luckily Colin (Marston, bassist for Gorguts) NYU graduate wizard, would be like, "Oh! That makes perfect sense!" And he would step in, and he would explain what they were trying to do, what I was doing, and how to get to what they're trying to do. So Colin was very much, "music professor" in that whole bit, and I'm lucky to still be working with Colin and Kevin (Hufnagel, guitarist in Gorguts) quite a bit. I'm actually going to Colin's studio once I get off this tour, just to put some drums down, to record drums (laughs).
Are you no longer with Gorguts in terms of studio recording? Was that because of time with Origin and other projects?
Well, the way the Gorguts thing went down, before we played Note 1, Luc and I had a talk on the way to New York City, where I now live, the project was based in Queens, because Kevin and Colin were down in Queens and Luc was in Montreal. He'd come down upstate NY and we'd shoot straight down (whistles). And on the way down to our first rehearsal, Luc and I had the talk about if and when the Origin and Gorguts schedules clash, I have to prioritize Origin, you pick up whoever you need to do. And that's basically what happened, and it still sucked. It hurt so bad to lose that gig but, I knew I didn't lose that gig because I was a bad drummer, because nobody got along, I lost that gig because I couldn't put the time in. That's all that really came down to it, that's it really. I think out of our control, the album (2013's "Colored Sands") took a lot longer to come out than wanted it to. So, had it gone the way, the way I think I was looking at it at the time, a little dusty now, but had the album come out while Origin was in it's downtime, I think I would have gotten a lot more done with that band, with Gorguts, then I actually ended up doing. The album ended up being postponed, and then the Origin album and Gorguts album came out around the same time, so I was busy with Origin, and it was just unfortunate. But that's what that is.
With how technology, social media, and access to material is improving ever so, every like 6 months, or even sooner, I know about 5-7 years ago, you were making a DVD about your techniques, drumming style, and all of that as well. I can't remember if the project ever got off, and if it did or didn't, is it a lot easier for bands now to make those kind of "How to videos", maybe as a digital service for fans to get access, and for bands to make more of a presence and income than previous?
Of course it is! And like the DVD project, we hired the wrong editing crew, and basically died on the editing table. We just re-filmed it, so it's actually going to happen. It was a lot of back and forth between the record label and the company, and all this stuff. It's just such a nightmare. (laughs) God, I feel like an idiot talking about this. Even saying that, buying a DVD is a little strange these days, because what you have nowadays, is you have kids doing these YouTube channels, and surviving off of this. "These kids with their fan dangled YouTube, I tell you what, get off my grass!" I don't know, I'm a little behind the times, so it's a little difficult for me to say but, of course, the further we go with technology I mean, people are recording their own records these days. Recording studios are dying around the world, no one really wants to spend the money to be in a gigantic room with all the gear anymore. People just go to their buddy's house who has a recording studio in his basement, video studio in his basement.
In terms of technology and saying you're more old-school, is there something with modern technology that you really like, that you really wish we had then? And is there also something present that you can't stand, and wish it was the other way?
What I like? It's a duel edge sword, isn't it? What I like is that it's easier to write a record with me being in New York, and Paul being in California. So I like that a lot. We can get it on Skype, we talk it over, write things down on paper, blah blah blah and all that stuff. We bounce MP3s back and forth, if we need. What I don't like about it, is how it's making music sound these days. I love the new Judas Priest record. I think it's phenomenal, it's the best thing they've done in a long time. Why is the snare drum on that Judas Priest record, sound like a sample? It just sounds fake as hell, and you know it's not necessary. But, that's the norm. That's what drums sound like these days, and in order to keep the current trends I think, people want to hear these perfect, fake drums, you're not hearing the instruments anymore. And it doesn't matter if it was at one point in time, a really nicely tuned snare drum, that got sound replaced, or if you're hearing the actual note, hearing the dude hit it, but they just hit it with so much technology. You're hearing the technology these days, and it's just kind of strange, I don't know.
My buddy Jared just bought an old-school Atari 2 inch tape machine, and he's just over the moon about recording tunes on this 2 inch tape machine, and he's one of the guys that really wants to bring the human, hearing musicians play music, that's what he wants to put out. I understand that you go in a recording studio, you record your record and that's your piece of art, that is your palette, you do all this. It's just gotten too weird sounding these days, and my favorite part of Death Metal is watching insane sicko musicians go to town. I like seeing a dude burn out in a blastbeat, "Ugh!" And he's got to come back, and that's cool! I like that. You want to watch the limits of the human being being put to the test! And every now and then, it's nice to see a dude burn out, because he's always going to snap back. But when you're putting out these music, like Nintendo music is great, old school 8-bit Konami and SNK, Capcom music is great! But, it's MIDI, and now Death Metal sounds a lot like MIDI, to me, and womp womp...It's not suppose to be perfect, idiot! (Laughs) Death Metal is suppose to reflect, it's a reaction to some fucked up things happening in society, so why should your music sound perfect and clean? I guess that represents the upbringings of some of these people that are putting out this super clean, dribble bleh, sorry, a tangent!
My last main question, is a two part question. In 2002, "Informis Infinitas Inhumanitas" came out, and still one of my favorite Death Metal albums ever. It was one of the first times I really heard extreme music on that kind of a level. Tell me, so long ago, 1, What was it like recording it? What was the feeling of making something so unique and special that would make Origin, so many years later, ever evolving and changing. And 2, in 2002-2003 that era of Extreme Metal where Vital Remains sold out The Galaxy during the album "Dechristianize", pinpointing that 4 year stretch of '02-'06. From that point to now, the recollection of that album and time period?
Ahh, okay. I've been in the band for about a year and a half to two years at the time. When we did the first record, most of the material had been writing. I think I was involved with the writing of, actually all of the material had been written for the first record. I went in and changed the drums on maybe 3 of the songs, otherwise I was kind of just rehashing what George (Fluke), their previous drummer was doing. And after that record came out, I kind of, we had a talk, and I'm like, "Okay, well I'm much more this kind of a drummer, if I'm going to be the drummer of Origin and all that stuff." And yeah, we talked about that, and we just started writing.
I was living in Lawrence, Kansas at the time, and we had this little outbuilding off of the house that I was renting with my girlfriend and all that. And we wrote a large chunk of it in the Winter time, there was no insulation in that building, so it was freezing cold! We had these space heaters, these Kerosene space heaters, and we would start these Kerosene heaters and getting high from it, because the ventilation was terrible. Yeah, so we're writing these songs and we're pushing at it. We're not making any specifics jumps forward. I mean, maybe we were I don't know, but it really didn't come down to it until we got in the recording studio, and I got a headache. It was a massive headache, and I don't know why. My friend was like, here's some Excedrin, be careful there's caffeine in it, and I was like, "Okay whatever, cool!" I didn't hear what he said, I popped 4 Excedrin, like I would normally pop my 4 Ibuprofen. 20 minutes later, I felt wonderful (laughs). And we go in, we start tracking, "Arrgghhhhhhh, fucking harder!" Right? I came out of the room and the dudes were looking at me like, what are you doing? I'm like, "What are you talking about?!" I think I just became a meth head or something (laughs), for a minute for doing that record, so basically we wrote the album, went to the studio, and everything jumped by about 10-15 BPMs. At first, it was unintentional, but then we kind of realized these songs sounded, wow, these songs sounded a hell of a lot better being much faster, so we just continued on. I took a lot of Excedrin, and drank a lot of Red Bull, and just maxed out! And so that album ends up, comes out and people are like, Origin? Whatever. At this point` in time, Cryptopsy was blowing up and all that, so all of sudden that album is getting mentioned in the sentences with Cryptopsy, and Krisiun, and Hate Eternal, all of a sudden we were a contender. Whoa. So that was pretty fucking cool, I guess.
Really, that's it. We just pushed it a little. We really didn't know how...that's the thing. You just go to YouTube and look up a technique and here's a technique, here's 10 steps of practice and how to get to it, how to perfect it and boom, you're done. Otherwise we were going to shows, sneaking backstage to look at drummers, look at guitar players, "What's he doing? What's he got over there? Oh, he has a Rat Pedal, that's cool!" I remember sitting down and watching Dave Culross play with Malevolent Creation, not having a clue how blastbeats were actually played, so I just watched that guy. Sneak up on dudes, and kind of quietly pirate what they're doing, you know? Dillinger Escape Plan was around a lot at that point in time, so that was interesting because we would be watching these Dillinger dudes with this, Chris Pennie (drummer), immaculate technique! Just with beautiful stick work, just watch the dude just total master saying, ahh okay, I see! I watched him, watched a lot of Morbid Angel, watching a lot of fucking VHS tapes at that point in time, and that's how we kind of did it. We tried to beat the band that we all kind of fantasized about, or what about just not giving a fuck and playing everything as fast as fucking possible and watching the look on people's faces? "Okay! Let's do it!" That's "Informis!"
That was my first Death Metal show in November 2002 at The Galaxy, Dreams of Damnation, Origin, The Berzerker, Vader, and Immolation.
Yeah yeah yeah, that was a good tour that, I don't really remember that show too much, but...
The guitar sound for Origin that night wasn't very good, but it was still amazing.
We were still figuring out how to work the technology and we didn't have our own sound guy or anything like that, we were just kind of rolling as we were. But that tour was good, and there as week or two weeks worth of shows after that tour, that actually lead me leaving the band. We were so fucking miserable, the shows at the end of that tour. But I remember, that was still a good tour.
Any last words you'd like to say for anyone tonight, Morbid Angel, Origin fans, Death Metal fans, and about a week left in the tour, anything you'd like to say moving forward in 2018?
Not really. (Long pause). (Laughs) Just kidding. No, thanks for the interview, it was awesome. I don't know man, we'll be back out again next year. I think this is probably all we're gonna do for the states, we're going to do some Europe stuff. This is my buddy Alex, he's brought us more cupcakes, and that's about it, thank you very much!