Show & Tell - an interview with Chris Ojeda, OJ, of Byzantine

CHRIS OJEDA (OJ) OF BYZANTINE
04.02.04

The word Byzantine calls many images to mind, none of which was ever four good 'ole boys from the woods of West Virginia playing rock music.

That's about to change.

Equal parts Meshuggah, Lamb Of God and Pantera, Byzantine's first full-length release, The Fundamental Component, is a solid debut; especially for a band hailing from a heavy metal black hole.

We spoke with singer/guitarist OJ (Chris Ojeda) about holding down two jobs, weekend gigs and what the future holds for Byzantine.

S&T: What’s up, dude?

OJ: Not much, man. We're on the road. We're just able to do weekend shows right now because we all still have jobs and we don’t have a tour set up yet so we're just booking shows and right now we're heading to one.

S&T: Oh, so you all still have jobs?

OJ: Yeah. Actually I just picked up a second job.

S&T: Really?

OJ: We're trying to work as much as possible and get money for the road.

S&T: Whatchya doin' for work?

OJ: At night I’m working for a pizza place. I'm delivering pizzas (laughs) and during the day I'm working at a law firm.

S&T: Do you like it?

OJ: The pizza place is good money but I hate being bossed around by a bunch of shit-asses. They take pizza delivery way to seriously. And the other job, well, I don't think I'll have a good job 'til we all quit and take up music full-time.

S&T: So how is the new album doing?

OJ: It's doing good. I just talked to AJ a little while ago. He said we're getting ready to hit the 2,000 mark on soundscan which is good. He's really proud of us because we haven’t toured yet, he didn’t expect us to hit two grand yet this quickly so I guess word of mouth and all the press we've been doing has been helping a lot.

S&T: Well, that’s definitely a good sign.

OJ: Yeah, we got an article coming in Guitar One next issue so that should help a lot and we're trying to get Blabbermouth to review the album because, well, everybody looks at Blabbermouth. That's just like my daily newspaper for metal, you know what I mean?

S&T: You ever go to smnnews.com?

OJ: Yeah, that’s a good one too. I go there a lot too.

S&T: Did you happen to look at it yesterday?

OJ: No, why?

S&T: They did an April Fool's joke, made it look like somebody hacked into the site and made it all pink with weird ass pictures and shit. It was hilarious.

OJ: (laughs)

S&T: I'd heard about it from the Lamb of God message board.

OJ: Oh you go there a lot?

S&T: Not really, just every now and then.

OJ: I’m there like every day. I don't post much, I just read all the funny shit and wait for (Lamb of God singer Randy Blythe) to get on there drunk and start laying it into a bunch of people.

S&T: He's hilarious.

OJ: Yeah, he's funny shit.

S&T: Do you know him?

OJ: Yeah, we're good buddies. They're the ones that got us signed. We became friends with them through the internet and our tour manager, Zak, he used to work their street team and used to work for Stuck Mojo so Zak talked to David, their street team guy, and gave them our CD. It got to (Lamb of God drummer Chris Adler) and Chris loved it so we played a bunch of shows with them and then they got us to the label and they signed us so we kind of owe it all to Lamb of God. And then we became really good buddies with them and are now. We got a good friend in the pocket but we don’t bug the shit outta them, we give them their space but they help us out a lot.

S&T: So you stay in contact with them.

OJ: Yeah. I talked to Randy a couple of days ago. He's got a side project called "Halo Of Locusts" and he called me yesterday and asked me if they could open up some shows for us (laughs) so they're gonna come out with his side band and open up for like no money (laughs).

S&T: That’s awesome!

OJ: Yeah, it's gonna be crazy! They're fucking heavy and we're really good buddies...

S&T: You said when you signed to Prosthetic Records there were no other opportunities. Are there now?

OJ: No (laughter). It's still weird; we're still in the woods, we ain't in the clear yet. We had Roadrunner look at us for like a split second and they were like, "nah, you're still underdeveloped," so it wasn’t like we didn’t want to sign with Prosthetic it was just our only option and it was a great option 'cause now, after we've taken a look at it, Prosthetic has such a buzz about it that I think we picked the right label. Even if we had like Relapse looking at us we still would have went with Prosthetic because we get to grow along with them, and we get to talk to the head of the fucking label and just talk and bullshit so it’s a really good like student teacher ratio you know what I mean? They're so small and there’s not many bands on there.

S&T: So it's a very personal relationship?

OJ: It's very personal, yeah. I think we needed that because we come out of West Virginia where there’s not really a big scene. We needed something like that to help us out.

S&T: So where's your family sit on things?

OJ: Oh, they're sort of well, they're coming around. I mean I graduated college and I didn’t do anything with my degree so they’ve been really pissed off about that but now since we're starting to get a little bit of success they're kind of buying me now. My mom called me about an hour ago and she was jamming the album, she was like, "I just bought it" (laughs) so it's pretty cool.

S&T: What was your degree in?

OJ: I got a Bachelor of Science degree in agriculture.

S&T: Is that something you wanted to do with the rest of your life?

OJ: No, no, no. The thing is the truth when I looked through the book for degrees it was the first one I came to besides accounting so I took it because I can’t do math. I never wanted to do anything else besides this.

S&T: Most bands buy their CD when it first comes out. Did you buy yours?

OJ: Oh yeah, we all bought one. We all wanted to get that Soundscan. Plus I just wanted to have the experience of going into FYE or a Sam Goody and purchasing my album.

S&T: Yeah, just seeing your album there...

OJ: Yeah, it was pretty cool.

S&T: Any new material?

OJ: We've actually got a couple songs together already for the next one. We don’t wanna procrastinate and everybody talks about hitting the sophomore slump uh mainly because you don’t have a lot of time to write the second one so we've already jumped on it. I think we've already got three new ones and we'll probably take an old song we had a long time ago so we've probably got like 4 out of the 10 that we need to write, 'cause we might get on tour and not quit for like 4 or 5 months and not have any time to write it. I wanted to jump on it right now.

S&T: How does the new material sound?

OJ: Sounds pretty good. Actually most of this new stuff we're writing in practice so it's got a little bit more of groovy stuff to it but it uh it's really just not gonna be vastly different. I think it's pretty much just gonna be a continuation of the first one you know what I mean? We'll play with a little bit better recording and a bigger budget so if anybody likes the first one they should like the second one.

S&T: Going through your history I saw you guys used to have a drum machine?

OJ: Yeah, we had a drum machine for about 2 years 'cause drummers were really hard to find, good ones in this area at least, and we wanted to get out there and play anyway. So we wrote 4 or 5 songs with the drum machine and started gigging out and that it would be easier to find a drummer if we were out pushing ourselves but it took us like 2 years to find one. Eventually (Wolfe) our drummer, he’s an actual, he’s been playing guitar for 12 years and just switched over to drums a couple years ago. He was just like, "screw it, I’m gonna play drums," and blew everyone away. It was weird, he’s kinda learning playing drums along with us.

S&T: How would you feel if fans looked bad upon you for using a drum machine?

OJ: It's alright. Most times when people think you have a drum machine, they're gonna think, "Oh my God, they're fucking straight forward industrial," but when most people heard it they couldn’t tell it was a drum machine. Me and Tony tried to program it to sound like a real drummer so when we got a drummer he didn’t have to change everything greatly. It really hasn’t been that different except we're a lot louder live and a lot funner.

S&T: You’re going to be appearing at the Metal and Hardcore Festival in Worcester, Mass?

OJ: Yeah, this will be our first time playing the festival.

S&T: What are your preparations?

OJ: Just drink beer. This month we're trying to get prepared for... we know we need a really good showing there, you know what I mean? A lot of people are kinda iffy about us and as far as getting us on the tour everybody’s like well we don’t sound like anyone else so we need to go show people we can throw down live so we can secure a tour. Right now we're just trying to play as many shows as possible and right now we got a show every weekend so we're just preparing that way.

S&T: You being from West Virginia does that have any inspiration in your music?

OJ: Yeah, I mean in the lyrics I know it does. A lot of it is based on West Virginia history and a lot of the stuff that happens around here like the first track ("Hatfield") is mainly everything I could find about West Virginia I put in it. If you take a lyric in it it's got some kind of connotation referring to West Virginia. The song "Skin Removal" is totally about mountain top removal and the coal mining industry here which is a big issue, which is kind of weird because you wouldn’t think of a metal band singing about coal mining but it definitely helps inspiration wise.

S&T: So there's a rumor on the internet that you’re Jewish.

OJ: JEWISH (laughing)! I'm not Jewish.

S&T: Yep, I read on the internet that you were Jewish.

OJ: OH hahahahahaahahaha, that I killed Christ? No, we're just fucking around, man. No, I’m, what the hell am I? I’m a beer bottle Baptist I guess.

S&T: (laughs).

OJ: That’s hilarious. I’m gonna play that off. I’m gonna grow a couple of those twirly things on the side of my head. (Laughs) No, I’m Spanish so whatever. That is my dad is Catholic, my mom is Protestant. So yeah, I’m not Jewish.

S&T: I'd read that you got the band name out of a thesaurus. Did you make the music to fit the name or does the name just happen to fit?

OJ: Umm, no, we didn’t go about to do anything like that, it kinda came about like once we put the album together and looked at it as a whole, a theme going on, but we didn’t set out to do anything like that. You know we tried to do a couple play on words with it to have a tie-in but mainly we just write lyrics and music and put it together and let other people figure out what we're doing so no, we didn’t set out to do anything like that.

S&T: Are you doing anything differently to write the next album?

OJ: We're trying to incorporate Wolfe a lot more. Like I said, we wrote the first album, most of it was written before he got in the band. There was a couple songs like "Brundlefly" he totally wrote all of it and we totally dug it so we're just trying to let him figure out what he needs to do and write it together. What’s weird is it doesn’t sound any different, which is good, but we're just trying to put everyone’s style into it with new riffs and new ideas. We wanna flow with the second album, I don’t want every album to sound like a totally different band. I wanna keep some kind of direction going so I hope it's just a better version of the last album.

S&T: Any fears about going on tour and leaving your friends and family?

OJ: No (laughs). I’ve been home for 29 years and I’m ready to lose all of them! I don’t think none of us are worried about that. Our bass player travels all over the fucking place like going fishing to Canada and stuff so he’s really road tested already. We're just ready to get out there to start making some money and putting a name out there. I think all of us are just tired of doing our day jobs and if getting on the road ends that then we're ready to get on the road.

S&T: Are you excited that you might get the chance to tour Europe?

OJ: Oh hell yeah! All this is totally exciting. We didn’t expect to get here so to have people say our album is coming out in Europe and to be in Guitar One and just making friends with bands we listen to is just mind blowing. We're just four rednecks from West Virginia. The only thing I’m scared of to tell you the truth, Kevin, I’m scared about losing my voice because I’ve never been tested this far you know what I mean? Going on the road for three weeks, I’ve never sang that much. We've only done weekend shows. I’m gonna have to prepare mentally like do some yoga or something.

S&T: Do you find it weird when people come up to you and know who you are and you don’t know them?

OJ: Yeah, it's crazy. I mean it's what I always envisioned, you know, when you're in junior high and you're there smoking cigarettes and you're just thinking about playing with Metallica and signing autographs it's like that and stuff. It's just cool but my girlfriend don’t fucking like it. We get girls all like, "ahhhh!" and she thinks I’m screwing them all but I’m like, "dude, they're all Goth girls and all fat and ugly," I mean come on! But yeah, it’s a trip just being able to do interviews with people from like Connecticut and all this crazy stuff. It's just insane. I mean all the people back home, if someone makes it in music and stuff it's almost the second coming of Christ 'cause nothing ever happens back home. It's crazy, I don’t think I’ve bought a beer in a bar in the past 6 months.

S&T: So people back home look at you differently now?

OJ: You know where we live in around Charleston, everyone knows me there as OJ but back home nobody knows me... they all call me Chris. They know me as the kid who pitched in high school and the baseball player and good student but in Charleston they know me as the guitar player. So when you go back home nobody reads magazines and stuff like that.

S&T: I’m sure it will happen in time.

OJ: Hopefully.

S&T: What do you do in your spare time?

OJ: I like to hang out with my girlfriend, cook and I used to like to box. I was really into boxing. I used to get into tough man contests but there’s no gyms in Charleston so I kinda dropped outta that.

S&T: How long have you been with your girlfriend?

OJ: Mmmm, 2 years at least. We were together in college then we broke up then 3 years later we got back together for a year now.

S&T: Does she support the band?

OJ: Yeah, except when sluts come up. Then she’s not supportive. We’ve got everyone behind us.

S&T: Does she go with you on tour?

OJ: No, she stays home. Right now we're pulling a U-Haul in a 1988 van so I don’t think she could take the funk with 5 guys farting and stuff like that but when we get a tour bus I think she'll come out which will be cool because I'll actually get laid on the road.

S&T: What would I witness if I hung out with you for a couple of days?

OJ: Probably witness beer drinking and cook outs; play horse shoes and go four-wheeling and a couple of us go golfing. I used to be on the golf team in high school and to tell you the truth I quit when they called us all in for the team picture they didn’t call me in because I had long hair so I said screw you all.

S&T: You have to drive from West Virginia to Michigan today?

OJ: Yeah, just to play a show and drive right back. It’s a haul but the thing is once we started playing out of our own state every show was in New England so this 8-hour drive is cake.

S&T: Have you ever thought about moving to New England where the scene is a little bigger?

OJ: It would be cool but I don’t think I could take that cold weather, man. I mean we actually have 4 seasons down here where we are. I don’t think I could ever get used to that bullshit. I think we all like living in the woods so I don’t think we'll ever move.

S&T: Ok, OJ, thanks for giving me the time to talk to you.

OJ: Ok, Kevin, thank you for the exposure.

interview by kevin curtis