The Autumn Offering (Blistering.com)

Here's my The Autumn Offering interview at Blistering.com. Check it out.

Bands face a crossing point within their careers, and discover when changes are necessary to elevate to the next level. The Autumn Offering did that and made their strongest release to date, Fear Will Cast No Shadow.

Over the past nine years, the Autumn Offering introduced their brand of modern thrash metal through constant touring. This Dayton Beach, Florida quartet did self-booked tours in 2003 before befriending Hatebreed frontman Jamey Jasta. Jasta released the band’s debut CD Relevations of the Unsung through Stillborn Records (later re-released by Victory Records).

After the release of 2006’s Embrace the Gutter, the band made major lineup changes. Known for constant lineup problems, they made their biggest change by recruiting former Hell Within vocalist Matt McChesney in May 2007. He brought a wider range of vocal styles, which the band lacked in the past. Plus the band experimented with more thrash metal sounds than before.

Since the interview, the band also recruited new drummer Brian Sculley. McChesney spoke to Blistering.com about the new record, the newly found spirit within the Autumn Offering, and reaching new fans on the road.

Blistering.com: How is the Dope tour going?

Matt McChesney: It’s cool. It’s a little different as far as the crowd goes. But we had some good responses and won over fans.

Blistering.com: How long have you officially been in the band?

MM: Since May (2007).

Blistering.com: How did you get involved with the Autumn Offering? You were in another band.

MM: I was in a band called Hell Within. We did a couple of tours with the Autumn Offering. So I knew them pretty well. They fired their singer and the last tour we did, they were hinting to me…I did “Cowboys From Hell” with them every night. They were hinting at it. The direction that Hell Within was going was not what I wanted to do. So it was a pretty easy choice.

Blistering.com: Did you originally join to help The Autumn Offering and also stay in Hell Within, or did you completely leave Hell Within?

MM:I quit to join full time, but I kind of had an understanding that with Hell Within that I would try to pull off both, but it became clear that it wasn’t going to work. I had to make a choice. I chose to go with the Autumn Offering.

Blistering.com: You brought a new dynamic that was not there before. How much of the songwriting were you involved with? Were you there from the beginning?

MM: Basically, what happened was that Tommy [Church], the lead guitar player, started sending me demos in last April or early May after their tour was done. I had started writing stuff. Me, Tommy and Matt [Johnson, guitar] basically wrote the whole record. We got down to [Jason] Suecof in Orlando, moved a bunch guitar parts around, and wrote a bunch of different drum and bass parts. The record was pretty complete by the time we got there. We changed some vocal stuff. It’s the normal stuff you do in the studio. We worked pretty well in the studio. We had the same vision for the record. They wanted a lot of singing, since they never had that before. They didn’t want to be boxed in with the band that has screaming the whole time. They didn’t want to do that any more.

Blistering.com: What was the biggest difference between how Hell Within operated and how The Autumn Offering works?

MM: I wrote a lot of the music and the lyrics in Hell Within. It became harder to convey the ideas I wanted. On the last record with Hell Within [Shadows of Vanity], which I thought was a great record, but I had to fight almost for the screaming parts. They didn’t want screaming at all any more. They wanted almost like what Avenged Sevenfold did. I didn’t want to do that. I want the heaviness. If you hear the Autumn Offering record, there’s a lot of singing on it, but at the same time, there’s a lot of songs that don’t have any singing on it at all. I didn’t want to specifically go in one direction and alienate half our fanbase by giving them a completely different record. What happened was some of the fans grew with it, and some of them were like ‘this is a completely different band.’

Blistering.com: How does your lyrical approach differ from the previous vocalist’s?

MM:I know their thing before, which I wanted to get away from, was the whole white trash thrash thing on Embrace the Gutter. My lyrics come from poems. I think the stuff I write is a lot heavier than anything they’ve done before. There’s probably stuff that’s a lot lighter. It’s all ends of the spectrum. Whereas their last vocalist – I don’t even know what he wrote. I don’t know if he wrote the lyrics at all. They were decent but it was straight up to a point. I tried to bring in my thing. I think it works pretty well. I took the best of what I did in Hell Within with the best of what they had to offer in their band, and combined them both.

Blistering.com: Are you on good terms with the Hell Within guys?

MM: Yeah. I went to Tony [Zimmerman, guitars]’s wedding. I mean, there’s a little weirdness, but I played with those guys for six years. So we’re basically cool. They understood my decision. I don’t think they liked the way I went about doing it. They understood at the end of the day.

Blistering.com: Hell Within didn’t tour as much as the Autumn Offering, did they?

MM: Not as much. We definitely toured quite a bit. The year our first record came out, we toured a lot. I never toured on the new Hell Within record. I left the band the month the record came out.

Blistering.com: Tell me about your shows with Dope. Is it quite different than what you’re used to? How was the response?

MM:I could tell you that we were the only band every night that had people pitting and moshing. I don’t know if that was just our fans. I know we won over a lot of their fans. They would come over to our merch table. They weren’t expecting someone like us. They predominately listen to that industrial kind metal, like Static X. They’ve probably heard bands like us and maybe never seen us live. So we probably moved some of them over to our side. I don’t think they’ll abandon their Hot Topic roots. It’s cool they’re into what we’re doing. I think people come as long as it’s heavy and it grooves. I think there were some of their fans that didn’t like us. They were there to see Dope. But that’s fine.

Blistering.com: I noticed on Fear Will Cast No Shadow, the music has progressed into more of a modern thrash sound. Was that a conscious thing?

MM: Yeah, it was a conscious thing. There are so many bands and you want to do something that separates yourself from the herd. I don’t think we did anything super groundbreaking. But I think we wrote 11 really good songs, especially in an old Bay Area thrash thing. There are a lot of harmonies and At The Gates guitar work that people seem to be big on. There are a lot of solos. We didn’t want to do the one note and the breakdown stuff. It’s so played out. I don’t think the band ever was too big on that. There were breakdowns in the past. There are some killer ones on this record. The thing is that they belong and fit the songs.

Blistering.com: How much of the old material are you still doing in your current set list?

MM: We had about 35 minute sets on tour. We did “Embrace the Gutter,” “Ghost,” and “Revelations”…we did three old songs.

Blistering.com: Is it weird singing the older songs?

MM: Oh no. I heard those songs for two tours straight every night! I didn’t really need to look at the words. It was easy. It was all heavy stuff, which was easy for me to pull off. I actually like doing the older songs. I try to put a different spin on them. I’ll change a few of the screaming parts.

Blistering.com: Anything else you want to plug?

MM: We have a video on Headbanger’s Ball. Please give the record a shot. The reviews so far are either the people absolutely love it, which is how I would want it. I wouldn’t want middle ground, like ‘it’s OK…’ It’s either the best record of the year or the worst pile of crap I’ve heard. Usually the negative feedback comes from those startup websites that no one cares about anyways.

One thing I’ll say that bothered me with the Internet thing. You know the guitar player from Hawthorne Heights (Casey Calvert) and how he died. I went on Lambgoat… and it’s all these bastards and ‘I’m glad he’s dead’ and this and that. The thing with the internet is that any moron has a voice now and can say whatever they want. I can’t imagine saying something like that about someone that died so tragically. I can’t stand it. It sucks. It’s not like the old days when Metallica was coming up.

http://www.theautumnoffering.com/