After the show, I spoke with guitarist / singer Brent Hinds.


Show & Tell: Brent?

Brent Hinds: Yeah.


S&T: This is Argus from Show & Tell.

BH: Hey man, listen, I know this sucks, but my battery is about to die.


S&T: Is there a different phone we can use, or should we postpone?
 
BH: [v.o.] Can I use your phone for a second, to do an interview? Does it have a.... I don't know. Doesn't have an antenna. [to s&t] Let me get your number and call you back. Well, actually I do have your number.


S&T: Call the 818 number.

BH: Yeah 818, I got it.

[ring ring]


S&T: Hello?

BH: Argus?


S&T: Brent. How's it goin', man?

BH: What's up.


S&T: Oh, man. Well, I wanna congratulate you for being in such a great band.

BH: Oh well, thank you. Congratulate my friends for being in the band with me.


S&T: The four of you have a great chemistry.

BH: I just thank my lead singer/bass player who stands in the middle of the stage. He stinks. He wears the same clothes every day. We wear the same clothes every day. We stink!


S&T: Somebody, I think it was Brann, in an interview described you guys as "crusty prog"?

BH: Crust prog!


S&T: Crust prog.

BH: That's us, dude.


S&T: Well, check it out, man, I love the crust but I also want to ask you about the prog. On Lifesblood [2001], way back then I noticed, I think it was "Hail to Fire," I heard that and I was like, "Dude, he's playing King Crimson!"

BH: Fuckin' Robert Fripp and King Crimson, even that latest thing they did was amazing. I heard it the other day.


S&T: Totally. Tell me about that – would you consider yourself having prog rock influences?

BH: I like to listen to all that kinda stuff, but I don't really consider myself anything—


S&T: You don't think you're a prog rock guitarist.

BH: Naw, naw, I don't so, I think I'm more of like a – holy shit, what was that? Hold on a second. I dunno, this phone just made a beeping noise. Some lady left her phone in the van. Then she started crying.


S&T: I guess she's missing her call waiting.

BH: I dunno, yeah, it was weird. She had a crying problem.


S&T: Crying problem?

BH: Yeah, she couldn't stop crying.


S&T: That's sad.

BH: So, I don't consider myself a prog rock guitar player. I consider myself barely even a guitar player.


S&T: Really!? Dude, you guys, your musicianship is extraordinary.

BH: Thank you, man. We have a good time, we have a good time.


S&T: It shows. So tell me, do you have any formal music education or anything like that?

BH: No, none of us (do). None of us took lessons or anything like that. We just like music a lot. When we were growing up – I was talking to someone ‘bout this the other day, I think I was talking to Melanie from [tour mates] Burning Brides about this. I started collecting records and being such a huge music fan, I just started playing music instead. I was a huge music fan and that kinda put me down the path of actually picking up the instrument and learning to play music, you know. Being a part of it, wanting to be more than a fan, wanting to be a musician as well.


S&T: So you were your own source.

BH: All of us kinda came from that. You know, Brann grew up and his mom was in a band, he's been playing drums since he was like three years old or something. We all started really young too. Troy's brother was in a band, Troy grew up watching his older brother play bass, so he wound up playing bass forever, playing guitar forever. Bill was playing guitar forever.


S&T: When did you get your first guitar?

BH: I got my first guitar when I was about ten years old, but I didn't really start playing it ‘til I was about twelve or something.


S&T: What were you playing when you were twelve?

BH: Led Zeppelin. Next door neighbor taught me "Stairway to Heaven." Jeff King. I don't know what the hell happened to him.


S&T: Where was that, was that in Atlanta?

BH: No, that was Alabama. Birmingham, Alabama.


S&T: Let me ask you about the Neurosis connection. I'm a big fan of Neurosis. Are you guys fans? Friends? How do you know Scott [Kelly, singer/guitarist]?

BH: We're both. We're both friends and fans. First we were fans, now we're friends. I used to go see 'em play all the time back in the day, and then—


S&T: "Back in the day," like when?

BH: Back when they were on tour all the time, like the early nineties and stuff.


S&T: Enemy of the Sun [1993], Souls at Zero [1992]....

BH: Yeah, Souls at Zero, yeah. And then Brann and Bill were in Today Is the Day. They were on tour with Neurosis at Times of Grace [1999].


S&T: Yeah, I saw that. Little did I know....

BH: Yeah, so they got to know 'em. Got to know Scott. And following them around through the years, I got to know Dave Ed [bassist/vocalist] and Steve von Till [singer/guitarist].... Oh, must be this phone, it keeps making this noise – this phone might cut out in a couple of seconds.... Yeah, this thing only has one bar of battery, too.


S&T: Okay, well, can we use it up?

BH: Yeah, yeah, we can use it up.


S&T: So it looks like Scott [Kelly of Neurosis] wrote the lyrics to "Aqua Dementia."

BH: No, I wrote the lyrics.


S&T: You wrote "Aqua Dementia"?

BH: Yeah, I wrote the music and the lyrics, and then—


S&T: I thought he had a credit on it.

BH: Then I talked to Scott on the phone, and he wrote what he sings, I wrote what I sing. And I wrote the music.


S&T: How do you guys write lyrics generally? You guys definitely have a style.

BH: I dunno, kinda talk about the weather and stuff like that.


S&T: Do you come up with phrases and collect them, or something like that?

BH: It's kind of a tricky question.


S&T: I'm a writer so I think about that kinda thing.

BH: Writing the lyrics usually comes kind of at the last minute, you know? I'm always concentrating on writing the music first because that's the part that really matters to me for some reason, how the music sounds. As far as writing the lyrics go, I just try to write about things I think are kinda neat and stuff, you know, like hydras and world domination and stuff like that. I don't even know.


S&T: Let me ask you about Moby-Dick....

BH: Fucking phone keeps making these beeping noises.


S&T: Can I ask you about Moby-Dick? Are you guys all fans (of the book)?

BH: Well, obviously that's how we came up with a lot of the lyrics for Leviathan [2004], through that book, but I mean mostly our lyrics are pretty much things that are on your mind and shit like that.


S&T: They're definitely personal, definitely internal. Are you guys fans of other literature as well?

BH: Uh-huh, yeah.


S&T: What sort of stuff, would you say? What other kind of books?

BH: Conspiracy type stuff. Anything on conspiracies is fun to read about. Any drug-related literature, people just getting totally blown out of their minds. I'm not a big murder mystery or anything like that type of guy. But if it's anything conspiracy or drug related I'll usually read it, no matter who wrote it. Doesn't really matter who writes it so long as it doesn't have too many adjectives describing one thing all the time, I hate that.


S&T: Adjectivitis.

BH: I like people to get to the point.


S&T: Would you do another — I don't know if it's appropriate to call Leviathan a "concept album," maybe more like a "theme album." Would you guys do something like that again?

BH: I dunno, that's another kind of tricky question. I dunno.


S&T: You guys are all about touring now? Are you writing?

BH: Yeah, we're writing music. I don't think – I haven't written any lyrics since we wrote Leviathan. Pretty much all those lyrics were written in the studio. "Do your homework now because the shit's due tomorrow."


S&T: "The shit's due tomorrow." [laughs] Tell me about Paul Romano [graphic designer]. Is he a friend of you guys?

BH: Of course. We always stay at his house, every time we're in Philadelphia we stay at Paul Romano's house, he cooks us dinner, cooks us lasagne, buys us beer, lets us do our laundry. We stay at this huge fuckin' awesome house and watch crazy ridiculous movies and stay up forever and talk, and then when we wake up the next morning he's down there cooking breakfast for everybody. He's the host with the most. He's always working on some crazy painting, he's such a frickin' good painter, it's amazing.


S&T: I have that poster for Leviathan.

BH: Yeah, I know, that thing's fuckin' huge. You should see that in real life. That thing's like as big as a wall, it's gigantic. And he did this cover for that new Trivium album. He was working on that the last time we were over there. He's just a fucking amazing artist.


S&T: How do you know him?

BH: He used to work at Relapse I think. He used to do some kind of graphic design type work like four or five years ago at Relapse, and so that's how we know him. We met him through Relapse, basically.


S&T: So when I saw you, you covered "The Bit," by the Melvins.

BH: Yeah, yeah, man, the Melvins rule.


S&T: I was so thrilled to hear that. They're one band I was thinking might be an influence, 'cause they get, you know, they have their experimental stuff – I don't know if I'd say "proggy," but they get their crazy time signature stuff.

BH: They're the best, man. We're listening to the new Fantomas album right now.


S&T: That's good shit?

BH: Yeah, as far as I can hear. I'm sittin' way in the back, but yeah, fuck yeah. Fantomas rules too.


S&T: Do you like Mr. Bungle?

BH: Yeah, I do like Mr. Bungle. I like Fantomas better.


S&T: Even better than Mr. Bungle?

BH: Yeah, I like Fantomas better. It's  heavier. And [Melvins singer/guitarist] King Buzzo's in it, so you know, it's kinda automatically better.


S&T: Well, he is King.

BH: [laughs]


S&T: Okay, just a couple more little things – in "Blood and Thunder," the weird instrumental passage, I think it's you, not Bill, that sorta desert-sounding passage, it sounds like "To Tame a Land" by Iron Maiden, you know that song, from like twenty years ago?

BH: Yeah.


S&T: You know what I'm talking about? That made me think of that.

BH: Yeah, yeah. That part used to be a lot crazier, but then I forgot what I was playing. When I first wrote the song that part was all crazy, and then I forgot it and then I think Bill and Brann came up with that part.


S&T: I'm curious what other music you grew up with.

BH: What kinda music I grew up with?


S&T: Yeah, other than Led Zeppelin.

BH: Country.


S&T: Like Hank Williams, Sr.?

BH: Yeah, yeah – oh, shit, this phone's gonna cut out on us, I'm tellin ya, it keeps beeping like crazy.


S&T: All right, man.

BH: I'm just letting you know before it just cuts out.


S&T: Thanks, man – let me ask you quickly, then, about the South, because there's a lot of amazing hard music in the South. There's one band in particular that I want to ask you about, Damad.

BH: Yeah, Damad, yeah, they fucking rule.


S&T: You know them? With Victoria?

BH: Yeah of course, definitely.


S&T: They're crusty.

BH: Yeah, we know them....
 
[phone cuts out]