Heavy metal and hardcore music have become two distinct styles of heavy music that have complimented each other into forming a new sound. Bands such as Coalesce, Deadguy, Integrity and Earth Crisis were some of the names that played this style of music and helped push its popularity for future generations to become inspired by.
Shai Hulud became one of the longer running bands that have influenced the sound now known as metalcore. Starting over 13 years ago in South Florida, they have been cited as an influence upon many bands out today. Their deeply thought-provoking lyrics, along with a diversely arranged musical style has attracted fans for years.
They return with their latest release titled Misanthropy Pure, their first record in five years. Guitarist Matt Fox spoke to Blistering.com about the new record, their recent lineup changes, and his knowledge and love of heavy music.
Blistering.com: It’s been a few years since Shai Hulud’s been actively touring and recording. Could you give us an update on what’s been happening within that time?
Matt Fox: You know what’s funny? Probably in the eyes of people that are reading, maybe it seems like we took some time off. On our end, it has been constantly rebuilding, and I think consistently touring. Maybe not as aggressively, and a few months out of the year, but since we parted ways with our singer [Geert Van Der Velde] in 2003, we’ve been still touring with sometimes with the guy we parted ways with and sometimes with a friend filling in. So we have been pretty busy. I’ll tell you this…it’s a really neat feeling. It sounds corny saying it because everyone says exciting, but it is! It’s exciting to have a new album out for people to comment on, whether it’s positive or negative. Even releasing a new song on Myspace, getting people’s reactions, whether they love it or hate it…it is exciting. It’s corny to say to have something new to share with people and to go out and hopefully have people be there to rock with us. It really is an interesting and exciting feeling.
Blistering.com: Towards the ending cycle of That Within Blood Ill-Tempered, things ended on a sour note. There were tensions with Geert that became public. What exactly happened there and then leading to using Chad [Gilbert] to do that run? Could you clarify what happened to lead towards uncertainties then?
MF: Sure. I could see why you would think that. I’ll tell you everything. First, I will tell you that we are still very good friends with Geert. It’s like being friends with someone you dated for a long time. You realize that he or she is awesome, great, and smart, but for some reason, it’s not gelling. You realize that it’s not going to work any longer, but that doesn’t mean that you want that person out of your life. That’s how we feel about Geert, and I think that’s how Geert feels about us. I think it’s pretty clear that there is a deep and mutual respect between him and the band – myself and [Matt] Fletcher, who were in the band with him. Even when things were tense when he was in the band towards the end, like I said….there’s nothing in Geert’s character that is mean or nasty or ill spirited. He is a very good, decent caring person. Whether or not I could be in a band with somebody doesn’t take away from the fact that he has those characteristics. So that’s why he’s a friend of mine now and why he will be a friend of mine twenty years from now.
But at the time, without going into the dirty laundry basket, it’s the same things you’ve heard a million times. It’s not like the Motley Crue book The Dirt. No one was sleeping with somebody’s wife or anything like that. It’s just being in the van, difference of opinions, all of a sudden this guy is sick and tired of everything this guy says, and if this guy touches me again, I’m going to kill him. It’s those kinds of tensions, and we were in a band with him for four years. I think we all have, in our own right, strong personalities. Sometimes you can’t make it work. It’s as simple as it is. As meaningless as that sounds, it gets to a point where all of the useless things that people are fighting about…the people that are looking from afar think “What the hell is wrong with you guys? Are you kidding me? You can’t get over that?” All of those little things that seem so trivial to people on the outside, when you’re living it, especially in a van, sleeping on floors not getting ample sleep, those tensions get so high and gets to a point where you’ve got to split. That’s really it. I have no one event where I can say “OK, Geert’s out of the band because he did this…” I don’t think he could say the same thing about us. It was just clashes of personalities and people irritating each other. In retrospect, to even thinking about it, it’s like “Geez, could we have not made it work?” Who knows? Maybe we could have. We are stable now and at the end of the day, we have a good relationship with a good person still. No hard feelings there. He’s busy with his band. He’s got a band now called The Black Atlantic, which he is doing well with. Everything’s good on that front.
As far as going with Chad [Gilbert]…I don’t know if it was our idea or his. Somehow we all got in touch. We’ve all been somewhat in touch through email or phone calls here and there. Doing the idea was to do a few shows with Chad singing. So we were into the idea because we had just finished a Japanese tour with Geert. Even though we knew that our time wasn’t completely done with Geert after we did the Chad shows, we did another run with Geert in Australia. We knew we didn’t part on horrible terms with Geert. Since we didn’t have a singer and Geert was not in the band, we thought “Let’s do the shows with Chad.” Those went well. I think we did four shows. Chad sang the songs we did originally and playing some songs we hadn’t focused on in some time. That was cool. The shows we did after that, I think the next year, we did a month tour in Australia with Geert. We had been active even in our inactivity.
Blistering.com: For a short while, you had the band under the name The Warmth of Red Blood. Why did you change the name, and then revert back to Shai Hulud?
MF: I just answered the question and I’ll tell you pretty much the same thing that I said. We made a decision out of fear. As boring as that sounds, or as weak as that sounds, we were scared. We parted ways with Geert, and we simply had no idea what we were going to do. Matt Fletcher and I, who were the mainstays in the band, at that point because we had a friend filling in on guitar and on drums – we never wanted to stop with Shai Hulud. We didn’t want to stop playing “A Profound Hatred of Man.” We didn’t want to stop playing “If Born From This Soil.” We also wanted to keep writing the new album that we were writing as Shai Hulud, which is finally being released as Misanthropy Pure. So we didn’t want to stop any of this. But our lives, to make it sound so dramatic, had changed. Now we don’t have a singer. Can Shai Hulud, a band that’s sustained member changes, particularly vocalist changes a few times – can we get away with replacing a singer again while keeping the name. We were uncertain so we asked some friends – 50% of our friends said “Are you kidding me? Of course you should keep the name. That’s your band. It doesn’t matter who is singing. Don’t you dare get rid of the name?” And then we asked another 50% and said the opposite. “Are you kidding? Keeping the name is the worst thing you guys could do. If you part ways with Geert, do not keep the name.” So that leaves us scratching our heads being confused, even more than we already are. We kept the fact that we didn’t know what the hell we were going to do. We went over it a million times in our heads. We finally decided changing the name was the best idea. But let’s take lyrics from the Shai Hulud songs so it shows we are continuing. It allows us to play Shai Hulud songs. It allows us to continue writing these types of songs.
As far as why we changed back, it was because we recorded a demo. We played that for some friends too, and they asked if this was the new Shai Hulud. We said it’s the Warmth of Red Blood. They said it sounds like Shai Hulud to me. It’s not…it’s going to be Shai Hulud no matter what you want to call it. If you don’t call it Shai Hulud, everyone’s going to think it’s a Shai Hulud rip-off. Everyone said it sounds like Shai Hulud or is trying to be Shai Hulud. Unless you want to be ripped apart, you’d better keep the name. We made the decision last minute. It’s a year and a half later…I don’t know if it’s the right decision. We get criticized and accused of breaking up and getting back together 13 times, which is not accurate. No one knows what was going on our end, so it’s easier to say that.
Blistering.com: The title song “Misanthropy Pure” has more of a stripped down approach to it than past material. Was this intentional?
MF: You bring up a couple of interesting points. It’s funny because you say it’s stripped down, and I completely agree with you 100%. That song was intentionally written like that. The song is comprised of three or four riffs. All of the riffs we thought were catchy and very groovy. Literally it had a lot of groove. We thought let’s keep this song rockin. Let’s keep this going in form. We’ll throw in a couple of tricks in there as we always do, but these riffs speak for themselves. The lyrics also do too. We don’t need to give it anything more. The interesting part is about it is, when we released the song on the Myspace page, I got quite a few comments saying “Oh my god! Shai Hulud got a lot more technical! This song is the craziest Shai Hulud song ever heard” We in the band thought if this is the most technical song they’ve ever heard, they better not buy the album! As far as I’m concerned, it’s a verse-chorus-verse-chorus song. I think it’s really easy to follow.
It is one of the simpler songs that we’ve ever wrote. It’s not indicative of the album. The album goes in many directions. There are some songs that are insanely complicated and others that are purely fast. There are others that have more intricacies than the title track. It’s funny how a few different people could hear the same song and be on polar opposite end of how they perceive the song.
Blistering.com: Tell me about your mind frame entering the writing of this record.
MF: The overall mindframe what I’ve been saying to those that has asked is that we’ve wanted to maintain…we’re always going to maintain our melody. We’re a melody-driven band. There’s no way to consciously write more melodies because we do it naturally. We wanted to take the intricacies and the melody-driven aspects of That Within Blood Ill Tempered and give it a swift kick in the ass. I know some people who consider That Within Blood Ill Tempered their favorite album by Shai Hulud. It’s a big compliment. Obviously, being a big part of the album, I can see where the appeal is. I can see where people can latch onto about it. I like it quite a bit too. But conversely, some of the criticisms that we got was that 100% melodic all the time and it was so intricate that unless you happened to catch it right off the bat, it really lost you. Obviously anything that’s a little bit more difficult than you’re used to, you would give it a time or two to sink in. If it doesn’t, you move on to something else you can comprehend.
All that said, we wanted to have a Shai Hulud album that is heavy, melodic and still intricate, but give it a swift kick in the ass, make it a little punchier, and make it so it rocks. At the end of the day, we wanted people to groove to our music. That’s not to say there are breakdowns because I don’t think you will find one conventional breakdown on the album. What I do think we manage to accomplish is offer up a Shai Hulud album that is a little more digestible than maybe what we’ve released in the past but without succumbing to any of the current trends that catapult metalcore bands into superstardom available to them.
Blistering.com: You switched from your longtime record label Revelation to Metal Blade. Why did you make the switch?
MF: We’ve been with Revelation since the beginning. You’ve being with a label for so long you know what they’re capable of. You know where you are and you know what the bands on the label can do. That’s not to say we have any delusions of grandeurs that we want to be the biggest band in the world or anything. But we knew what we felt, whether this is the truth or not. We truly felt that we reached the ceiling with Revelation. The owner of the company is a sweet, friendly guy that I like quite a bit. His name is Jordan Cooper. He is very content with everything that he’s built. Apparently they once had an offer to go sign with a bigger distributor and they didn’t. When I asked Jordan why, I’m paraphrasing him but he said I’m very content with what we do. You can never fault anybody for that. That’s a beautiful thing. That’s what I set out to do. I built it and I’m very comfortable with it. So that said, that’s awesome and I respect Jordan and his label for what he’s done for us. But we knew we couldn’t accomplish anything more than what we had with them. So once we fulfilled our contract, they offered us right off the bat, “We’d love to sign you. Here’s what we’ll offer you for the next album.” We were thankful and appreciative. We’re not saying no, but let us look around.
Then all of our friends at the time happened to have signed to Metal Blade. Every band that was doing well: Into the Moat, As I Lay Dying, Black Dahlia Murder, Unearth and the Red Chord - we were all chummy with. Every one of those bands had mentioned to us to look into Metal Blade. So we happened to have a publicist named Kelli Mallela, who liked our band and she’d been talking to me for a while too. We didn’t have to do much work other than write the songs and record them. Then Kelli, the songs and all of our friends in those bands all really came up to bat and helped us to get signed. We didn’t look anywhere else. It was unique for us. We’ve been signed to two labels and both of those labels we went to first. We sent Revelation our demo and they said they wanted to sign us. We were thrilled because they put out Chain of Strength, Youth of Today, and Burn. With Metal Blade, we wanted to sign to them and we sent them a demo and got signed to them. We were thrilled to be on Metal Blade. What did they put out? Slayer, Voivod, and Corrosion of Conformity – bands that we grew up on. We were so lucky they were available to us.
Blistering.com: Where did you find the new members of the band? Who are the new members in the band?
MF: Where did we find them? Who are the new guys? We recently confirmed a guitar player. He hasn’t toured with us yet. He’s a cool guy and a great guitar player. His name is Chad Geshucky. What’s cool is that he comes from South Florida, where the band is from. As far as I’m concerned, even though we live in Poughkeepsie, New York and have since 2000, Shai Hulud is a product and influence of South Florida and the music that was popular at the time. That’s where I grew up. I was undated with what was popular in South Florida. He’s from South Florida. It means something to me that we have that deeper connection. He’s doing his first tour with us with M.O.D., Madball and Bitter End. Whether or not he will stay, who knows? We hope so. Members of bands come and go so often.
The singer that’s on this last album is another Matt. So that’s three Matts. We refer to ourselves as a Mattric, which some people find funny and some find incredibly geeky. His name is Matt Mazzali and he’s a guy from a band in our area called Crime Lab and their guitar player at the time brought him over, sounded good, and wasn’t racist which is very important for us. We tried him out and brought him on tour. He did a great job on the album and he’s only going to improve. This is the first real band. He’s been in local bands that did well in the area. This is his first band that has filmed a video or gone on tour or recorded a quality sounding album. It’s all new to him and every day he’s learning and improving as well. We invested a lot in him and we hope that he is going to be the singer for a long time.
We don’t have a drummer. We’re borrowing a friend of ours named Mike Justin [ex Unearth]. He’s been helping out. We’ll hopefully be confirming a new drummer. Keeping a band together is very difficult. Bands that are able to keep the same members are very fortunate. I don’t know why we’re singled out as having so many member changes, as opposed to other bands. Every band we tour with that we’re friends with, I find out that I have only one friend in the band now. I end up making new friends in the band, but members change all of the time. Whether it is a singer, bass player, drummer or guitar player…it doesn’t matter. It’s a silly thing to focus on. Unless you’re talking about Van Halen and David Lee Roth - there’s always one member of a band you cannot replace. David Lee Roth is one of those guys. All that said, they even replaced him.
Blistering.com: On the last album, Shai Hulud ventured on more metal tours like Shadows Fall and the Haunted than in your past. Did you see you a real difference in the audiences you played for?
MF: The lines are blurred. When we were going on tours back in the day, our first real tour was with Bloodlet. Are they a hardcore band or a metal band? After that we did a tour with Overcast. Is that a hardcore band or a metal band? So I think the most proper metal band that we ever toured with would be the Haunted, because not that they didn’t have hardcore influences – that was a metal band that came up in the metal scene, opposed to Bloodlet and Overcast, who were metal bands but were introduced in the hardcore scene. Just to note, it wasn’t an intentional decision for us to go do metal tours. All that said, bands like Have Heart and With Honor, we’d love to tour with those guys. Those are clearly hardcore bands and we love quite a bit.
But as far as difference between crowds, I don’t remember. The other tours I’m talking about were so blurred hardcore and metal audiences. Maybe on the Haunted tour, there were some nights where it was their crowd and who we were playing for just weren’t interested in Shai Hulud. I remember one show. It was in Canada actually. I can’t remember where. It was on the Haunted tour…it might have been on the Shadows Fall tour actually, where there were two people sitting down in the audience flicking us off because they hated us so much. They were clearly more metal heads that were there for the metal bands. These days there doesn’t seem to be much of a line.
Last time we were in Edmonton, which was with Misery Signals…Misery Signals is kind of like us. We both have a hardcore and a metal following. I saw these two kids…like 15 or 16, maybe 17 at oldest. They had long
hair, very sincere and they had their jean jackets with their patches on. Nothing remotely hardcore – we’re talking Metallica, Slayer, Kreator, King Diamond…basically all of the same patches that I had when I was 13. They were a couple of metalhead kids and definitely started talking to them because it was like looking at me 15 years earlier. I told them that I was a huge metal fan. They said they didn’t know much about hardcore. They found out that a band that’s considered somewhat hardcore like we are, have very metal influences. I’m telling them about Canadian metal they weren’t aware of. They’ve never heard Dead Brain Cells or Razor that I grew up with. So they were impressed that I was into metal and playing in a hardcore band. They were right up front during our show and banging their heads. You have the hardcore guys moshing and throwing their fists like they do, and then you have these metal head kids that are reacting the way I used to react when I was 13.
WALLS OF JERICHO 
