CHRIS ADLER & MACHINE: Making Sacrament, psychological warfare, and the typewriter kick drum

Speaker 1 (00:00:00):

Welcome to the Unstoppable Recording Machine Podcast, brought to you by Isotope. We craft innovative audio products that inspire and enable people to be creative. Visit isotope.com for more info. This episode is also brought to you by Sonar Works. Sonar Works is on a mission to ensure everybody hears music the way it was meant to be across all devices. Visit sonar works.com for more info. And now your host, Eyal

Speaker 2 (00:00:29):

Levi. Welcome to the URM podcast. I am Eyal Levi, and I just want to tell you that this show is brought to you by URM Academy, the world's best education for rock and metal producers. Every month on Nail the Mix, we bring you one of the world's best producers to mix a song from scratch, from artists like th God, Ms. Sugar Periphery The Day to Remember. Bring me the Horizon, eth many, many more, and we give you the raw multitrack so you can mix along. You'll also get access to Mix Lab, our collection of bite-sized mixing tutorials and Portfolio Builder, which are pro quality multi-tracks that are cleared for use in your portfolio. You can find out [email protected]. Also, I want to take a second to tell you about something I'm very, very excited about and it's the URM Summit. Once a year we hold an event where hundreds of producers from all over the world come together for four days of networking, workshops, seminars, and of course hanging out.

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This industry is all about relationships and think about it, what could you gain from getting to personally know your peers from all over the world who have the same goals as you, the same struggles as you, and who can not only help you with inspiration and motivation, but also with potential professional collaborations? I've seen a lot of professional collaborations come from the summit in the past, and speaking of networking and relationships, there's no other event where you'll get to learn from and hang out with some of the very best in the production business. I mean, you could go to something like Nam, but good luck getting more than five minutes with your hero at this. You actually will get to hang out, hang out, hang out, and just a few of this year's instructors are Andrew Wade Kipa, Lou Blasco, Taylor Larson, Billy Decker, Canan, Kevin Charco, Jesse Cannon, and more seriously, this is one of the best and most productive events you will ever go to.

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So if that sounds like something that's up your alley, go to URM summit.com to find out more. Alright, now that that's out of the way, I just want to thank you guys for showing up to listen to this podcast. And I want to say welcome back because I've been gone for what, six weeks now? Six weeks since the last episode. I know some of you guys may have gotten worried that we were done or something like that, but I just want you to know that once a year for about a month or five weeks or six weeks, I take a break from podcasting and it's in order to recharge the batteries. Last year we had a bunch of dear whoever episodes like, dear Ou Dear Mary Zimmer, this year we just decided to just put on the brakes because we have so much going on.

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We didn't want to half-ass the podcast. So we took a brief little break. But now coming back hard with season four of the URM podcast, believe it or not, it's hard for me to believe, and this episode is one that I could have only dreamt about doing at the very beginning. We've got two people on here that I've been looking up to for ages. One of them has been on the podcast before one of 'em has it. We've got both Machine and Chris Adler, and if you don't know who they are, I mean most of you will. You don't need an introduction for most of you, but just in case you don't know who they are, machine's a fame producer, engineer, and a mix and master and has worked with, of course Lama God, but also a ton of other projects such as Clutch, Crowt, fallout Boy, mindless Self-Indulgence, and many stellar artists.

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And not just that, he's helped start the careers and mentor some of today's best and most luminary metal producers and mixers like Will Putney, Josh Wilber s Sni. I mean this guy is a fucking legend and so cool to talk to. And then we also have the mighty Chris Adler, who of course is the drummer from Lamb of God since their inception in 1994, who's also worked with various bands like Protest the Hero Testament and even won of Grammy for best metal performance for his work on Mega Death's dystopia album. He's also a well-known entrepreneur, the Business Brains Behind Lamb of God, and just a very impressive guy that I've always wanted to get to pick the brain of. And now I got the chance. This is a long podcast, but a great one. It was a great conversation where we talk all about the making of sacrament, how machine helped Lamb of God define the sound that would then become what we know as the huge badass band Lamb of God, as well as just entrepreneurial wisdom that I think musicians and engineers at all levels could benefit from. This is just a great episode and I hope you guys enjoy it. So without further ado, here are Machine and Chris Adler. Chris Adler Machine. Welcome to the URM Podcast.

Speaker 3 (00:05:29):

Hey there.

Speaker 2 (00:05:30):

Hello.

Speaker 3 (00:05:30):

Lovely to be here.

Speaker 2 (00:05:32):

So before we started recording, we were talking about Garage band and cheat codes and kids using it to make their own music. You know what, just to finish off that convo real quick, I don't actually think that it's a cheat code because anything that gets kids thinking about music, creating music being creative, that's good in my opinion.

Speaker 3 (00:05:56):

Yeah, exactly. That's exactly what I was kind of spitting the machine was. I see the ease in using it even to create without necessarily creating it. But in that it is kind of a real generic kind of starter product. My daughter in the backseat of the car pressing here and here and here, she doesn't understand the melody, but she'll correct this and change that and then Dad listen to this. And I'm looking back at her like, holy shit, how'd you do that? And she's feeling really proud about it and now she's kind of more interested in kind of digging in further.

Speaker 2 (00:06:40):

Does she play any instruments?

Speaker 3 (00:06:43):

I've tried to teach her and she's not bad maybe on my level at playing drums. She's also in piano lessons and that kind of stuff. So yeah, I'm definitely trying to encourage that for her. Although if she ever gets into a band, I'll be, I know. So bummed out.

Speaker 4 (00:07:08):

I know I have one kid, my girl is so legitimately talented, has no interest in going to vocal lessons, being in one of these bands at a School of Rock type of any of this stuff that I could give to her.

Speaker 3 (00:07:26):

But

Speaker 4 (00:07:27):

Just schools it. I mean, she came out of the womb with perfect pitch. It's crazy. Wow. Just like all pop stuff. Exactly.

Speaker 3 (00:07:40):

I'm pretty sure

Speaker 4 (00:07:41):

Katie Perry

Speaker 3 (00:07:42):

Daughter

Speaker 4 (00:07:42):

I a

Speaker 3 (00:07:43):

Cheerleader and to rap that, that's the way it goes. I think all rock stars have daughters.

Speaker 4 (00:07:49):

Yeah. And then Ike likes Upon a burning Bodies turned down for what? With Ice Tea, which I did, where they're in a strip club and they're like fucking rock stars.

Speaker 3 (00:08:04):

Congratulations on that.

Speaker 2 (00:08:06):

Yeah, life achievement unlocked. Do you think that it's a genetic thing or do you think it's just how they're brought up? My dad was a musician too, and I was surrounded by it. It didn't even seem even make sense to go into anything but music just because it was growing up into a cult except music basically. If you want to get right down to it,

Speaker 3 (00:08:36):

I think there's something to that environmental versus kind of what's passed down. I certainly see my daughter being very creative in different ways. She's ahead of her field in art and stuff like that, but obviously it's very difficult for me as a drummer with a drum set set up in the dining room to give lessons. She's, come on dad, let's do something else, or whatever. She sees it as kind of that's been done. You got that, what am I going to do? It certainly in that kind of task of prevailing in the business certainly would give her the advantage to continue with it. But I think just like all kids, I mean, you guys know, everybody knows you grow up and it's like, whatever my dad is doing, I'm going to rebel against that. My parents don't smoke, so I'm going to smoke

Speaker 4 (00:09:41):

Or my parents party, so I'm going to be straight edge.

Speaker 3 (00:09:43):

Exactly. It's always the rebellion, which like I was saying earlier, I'm pretty sure she's going to end up being a cheerleader into rap, but she has some genetic obviously, well, I would think so. Capability she does

(00:09:57):

Doing it. Sure she does. But there's a rebellion that every kid has to get away, and I think that's why I ended up kind where I was with my parents are listening to The Beatles. They're not really into music. My mom's very focused on getting us into creative activities, very supportive, and both were, but it was more of a, I think at the time probably like, can I get this kid into a music lesson for an hour so I can go do some shit I want to do? But it is definitely there. It's for them to choose. And that's been a weird thing because, well, for me anyway, with my daughter, everything I do is come on, dad, turn off the boy music. But at the same time, she'll pull up Spotify and put on some, I don't even know Katy Perry or there's this, I don't know what the name of the guy is, but peanut butter, jelly time Peanut butter jelly time, fun of the year. So I mean, she's embedded in everything that I do and is very familiar, but in that, I think we all rebel naturally in that genetic way against what our parents do.

Speaker 4 (00:11:20):

I have that exact story, but as far as rebelling, but to give my little spin on this conversation of influence like nature and nurture is what makes up our personality and our musical DNA. And there's absolutely a nature, a biological thing your brain is born with that makes you predisposed to being talented in music. And that same thing with athletes or whatever, or scholars. And then nurture is your influences when you hit the real world. And as I was just discovering what I was liking, the monkeys or the Beatles or the then kiss and the friendly stuff, there was a constant progressive music style happening all around me. Classical music, constant, really technical, playing very, I can't tell you the key, I never learned theory. So I cannot tell you the insane key structures and time signatures that my dad would be rehearsing and I would just exposed to, but

Speaker 2 (00:12:34):

What he was a musician

Speaker 4 (00:12:36):

As a musician. But that nurturing played into my growth of my brain and my DNA where I sort of, when it came to working with bands like King Crimson and Lamb of God, and really progressive bands, I didn't feel nervous. I didn't feel at a place I could just roll with that

Speaker 2 (00:12:57):

Just in your

Speaker 4 (00:12:58):

DNA, and that was in, no, not my DNA. That was in my nurturing. Got it. The nature, nature versus nurture, nature is you're born with an ability to music, ability to hear pitch. Some people are born, they will always be tone deaf.

Speaker 3 (00:13:16):

It's very much a thing that I've realized with my daughter is that I've got this drum set here, I've got guitar amped sitting next to it, acoustic guitar, piano. The more I push it, the less she's interested.

Speaker 4 (00:13:33):

Right.

Speaker 3 (00:13:33):

While I tried to give her lessons, and I don't know how to give lessons, I never had one, but I was able to teach her some stuff and able for her to kind of play along to Gloria. Gloria, and you can see the smile, you can see the confidence in it, but the more I push the concept, the less interested she was. So I basically stop the belly and just let her kind watch the whole thing. And now I find her seeking it.

Speaker 4 (00:14:04):

This is what I do, this is what I do. I do. It's like the secret lab. It's like there's a lot of stories about geniuses and scientists that had parents that would go to the lab and this was a forbidden place for the children or whatever it was, or the editing room. And it was a forbidden back in the days in the fifties and sixties, it was a forbidden place for children and they just weren't allowed in. And then they wanted that so bad when it came time for them to become adult, they wanted into that laboratory so bad. So now I'm like reverse psychology that shit on my kids.

Speaker 3 (00:14:42):

Exactly it.

Speaker 4 (00:14:43):

I'm like, no, I got a session. I'm like,

Speaker 3 (00:14:46):

Do this. That's really smart. Actually.

Speaker 4 (00:14:47):

I got to do that and I'm really not even encouraging them. And then they're, my dad did this and my dad did that, and that's how it works.

Speaker 2 (00:14:59):

I can totally confirm the rebellion thing is real. I've actually learned

Speaker 4 (00:15:05):

The secret access to what you cannot have as a kid. The desires you want as a child of things you cannot have when you

Speaker 3 (00:15:15):

Stuff.

Speaker 4 (00:15:15):

Yes. Oh, that, oh,

Speaker 3 (00:15:17):

I'm not allowed to smoke cigarettes.

Speaker 4 (00:15:18):

Oh, you're not allowed. Oh, you're not allowed in the studio. Oh, no, no, that's for adults. That's for adults and serious musicians.

Speaker 2 (00:15:26):

I learned something interesting recently, which is that, and I don't know if this is true or not, but that this rebellion thing that we've been talking about, that natural tendency, it's there, it's a natural thing that develops in kids because it's them starting to develop the skills that they're going to need in order to be able to actually leave the house at some point and fend for themselves. If they don't start doing that, start getting ready for that at some point, they'll never be able to get out there on their own and be an independent human. So the rebellion, even though it's irrational sometimes when teenagers do it or when kids do it, they're not thinking about how they're rebelling. It's just this natural instinct. But that's what it is. It's that independence that they're eventually going to really need starting to rear its head. And I can tell you guys too, that my dad pushed classical music on me really, really hard as a kid. He would make me do violin and piano, and he would sit there with me and enforce that shit. And I hated it so much that I think I went into metal as a result just to spite him. So

(00:16:43):

I mean, that wasn't the reason in my mind that I went into it. I actually liked it. But thinking back, I'm sure that that's what that was. Has to be.

Speaker 3 (00:16:56):

Yeah, I agree. It all comes. I mean, whether you believe in the philosophers are not. It really comes, and this may be a little crazy for this podcast, but it comes down to this kind of Freudian thing of, as a boy, you fall in love with your mom, and then when you realize that shit ain't going to happen, you go the other direction. And as a girl, the same way it's kind of set up to allow us to be individuals.

Speaker 2 (00:17:26):

Well, I mean, the alternative just wouldn't work. You literally wouldn't be able to survive

Speaker 3 (00:17:34):

Unless you're the partridge family.

Speaker 2 (00:17:35):

Yeah. And that's just kind of weird. Alright, so that your parents were not musicians, but you still had music around you at all times. How did that lead to becoming a

Speaker 3 (00:17:51):

Musician To me or Mac Machine?

Speaker 2 (00:17:52):

No, to you. I mean, Machin had musician parents, so that makes

Speaker 3 (00:17:57):

Sense. Yeah. My mom was a member of the Oratorio Society and has been her whole life and loves the idea of singing. So I had eight years of basically homeschooled singing lessons and then went into different instruments. My dad was not particularly good at it, but always joined local players in the plays, or, gosh, I'm not sure how to describe it. The local players of a stage show of some kind, play a mimic of something that had been done prior. So they were both artistically inclined. My mom was far better at what she did than my dad was, but they sought that out as well. And were very supportive of everything that myself and my younger brother were doing as far as any kind of creative stuff they weren't really stoked on. For people who don't weeks that came over for band

Speaker 4 (00:19:09):

Practice, for people who don't know, Chris's younger brother is in Lamb of God. His name is Willie Adler.

Speaker 3 (00:19:15):

That's right. He's a subcontractor.

Speaker 4 (00:19:18):

Stop. No, but I mean, it's not a given. I don't think everyone who's listening to this podcast knows is your brother.

Speaker 3 (00:19:26):

Sometimes that works out well. Sometimes it's just a curse.

Speaker 4 (00:19:30):

I forget, dude, I forget. He's your brother. You guys are so different.

Speaker 3 (00:19:35):

We are. Yeah. It's weird. I've asked my parents at least 20 times. Come on guys, tell me the truth. I was adopted. Right.

Speaker 2 (00:19:45):

Well, are you more like them or is he more like them?

Speaker 4 (00:19:48):

Well, obviously, yeah,

Speaker 2 (00:19:49):

If you think that you're the one that was adopted, then he's more like them. Alright.

Speaker 3 (00:19:54):

Yeah. I think he's exactly like my dad. I'm exactly like my mom. But one of the funny things that I've had a conversation with many people about is that I always tell people, Willie has all the talent that you could ask for. He's incredible musician and he does all kinds of weird stuff that is just off the charts of the normal process, which is what I love about working with them, especially in metal where it's kind of a defined thing and it is this, and we use these scales and power cords and all that shit at the same time. I have very little talent, but incredible motivation to do it where he's super lazy. He'll sit on his couch and write Paradise City and then get a hamburger and go to bed.

Speaker 2 (00:20:48):

Man, that is the curse of talented people is the work ethic part. It really is.

Speaker 3 (00:20:56):

And so him and me together, while I am absolutely insecure about my playing, I'm motivated because it's what I want do. So I'll yank his ass out of bed and say, dude, we can do some shit together. That's kind of been the relationship the whole time.

Speaker 2 (00:21:16):

How did the metal thing come about? Was that in childhood or?

Speaker 3 (00:21:23):

It was, yeah. I mean, we grew up, I think the first album I ever bought was Thriller on Vinyl, which I still have.

Speaker 2 (00:21:30):

That's my favorite player album

Speaker 3 (00:21:34):

If anybody wants

Speaker 4 (00:21:35):

To buy

Speaker 3 (00:21:35):

It.

Speaker 4 (00:21:37):

Wait, Michael Jackson. No,

Speaker 2 (00:21:39):

I'm

Speaker 3 (00:21:40):

Kidding. Yeah, he's fucking with. But from there,

Speaker 2 (00:21:44):

It's not really my favorite slay at Hobbles.

Speaker 3 (00:21:47):

From there we get into this kind of skateboard culture, this tape trading kind of thing. And the coolest part about that for me, and the thing I remember, and this is a tangent, I'll get back to it, but as my mom allowed us to subscribe to Thrasher Magazine, she also went and on her own, pulled the back pages out of it, the instructions on how to build a halfpipe, and she built a halfpipe in our backyard for us to skate by herself.

Speaker 2 (00:22:21):

That's dedication.

Speaker 3 (00:22:22):

That didn't help. Nobody knew. I mean, I knew there was something being built in the backyard. I didn't know it was going to be that. And then she put a chain across the middle of it so that people couldn't come over in the middle of the night and skate on and stuff. And she was really into what we were doing regardless of what it was. But back to the point in that kind of skate culture, even though it was suburban and kind of white bread, there was a lot of tape trading. And I was into Michael Jackson, and then I kind found Aerosmith for a minute. Then I started getting these tapes of a real good mix of stuff. But the one obviously that stuck out for me was this Megadeath song on one of these tapes. It was Seven Seconds T-S-O-L-S-O-D, and then this mega death thing. And I had been very, as much as a white suburban kid could be into this kind of punk rock vibe with Roag and stuff like that. But I think when I heard SOD and Mega Death, that's really where it went from Michael Jackson, pretty much straight to mega death.

Speaker 4 (00:23:40):

How old

Speaker 3 (00:23:40):

Were you?

Speaker 4 (00:23:41):

Yeah,

Speaker 3 (00:23:42):

This had to be, I was in sixth grade, so whatever age that is, 12.

Speaker 2 (00:23:48):

Okay. Okay. So you got into the metal thing around the same age that I did. But a machine that never happened for you, right?

Speaker 4 (00:23:55):

No, no. Still hasn't happened to this day.

Speaker 3 (00:23:59):

I'm going to send you a tape.

Speaker 4 (00:24:03):

I actually did not believe when I met Chris Adler, there was such a thing as instrumental metal. He's like, well, what are you listening to right now, Chris? He's like, I'm also listening to Instrumental Metal. I'm like, no, that doesn't exist. That's not possible. He's like, stop fucking with me. Come on. And he's like, no, no. Well, I go to his house for the first time and there's yes, in fact, instrumental metal playing.

Speaker 2 (00:24:33):

What was it about it that you didn't believe was real?

Speaker 4 (00:24:35):

Oh, no, no, no, no. I don't believe. It's not that I don't believe it's real. It's that metal by design fulfills things for people's musical needs. I'm a good music person. I like metal. I like Lamb of God, I like handpicked metal bands, but I'm not on the cusp of what's happening in metal. I don't subscribe to metal blogs. It doesn't hold my interest as a genre over some others. Not that when something brilliant comes out, well Shuga or I'm not just as blown away as the next guy that could be in anything. I love what's great. So if you look at culture, and you know how I like to call myself a sociologist of music. When you look at culture, and when I met Chris and I went to see them play for the first time and saw them with these bands like Kill, switching, engage and do that, and I kind of was really researching. I just understood, I understood the fulfillment factor that Metal gives to its audience. It's audience that really live metal lifestyle, metal culture. It's the muscle car in you. It's energy it, it's the ticking of numbers and math where you sneak in melody, it's body contact. It's like guy on guy. It's like wrestling.

(00:26:21):

Dude, I to this day have never been in an actual mosh pit ever. I am a pit analyzer. I have this idea that maybe we could pad me up in a helmet, football pads, and then send me into a slayer pit and film it and just for more of my research. But I have thesis.

(00:26:48):

Exactly. Exactly. No, I've never been in a pit. But no, the point of all this not being funny, the point of all this is that no heavy music. And when I say metal, I mean metal here guys, not five Finger death punch. I mean, metal means to me what Chris Adler and Lama, God taught me metal was double kicks and screaming vocals. I'm not talking about Hard Rock, I'm not talking about that. Chris needed to explain to me, this is metal. It's not this hair stuff. It's not that. But real metal of the day meant that meant there wasn't going to be a lot of singing and there was going to be shit tons of double kicks and blast beats. That was, I'm talking when I say metal, that's what I'm saying, metal. That energy. That energy and the things that it does for people. And it will forever carry thousands and millions and millions of people, which is what's amazing about the genre. It'll forever ever do that, and it'll never go away when other music forms come and go. Metal will do so less so because of these things that it fulfills for people is awesome. It's awesome.

Speaker 2 (00:28:10):

That's one of the best descriptions I've ever heard of the genre, actually. I think just by

Speaker 3 (00:28:16):

Nature,

Speaker 4 (00:28:17):

I mean, I had to say to you, Chris, I had to say to you, coming into this project, I had to say, Hey, let's say I was the best producer from another Galaxy. I killed it on Planet Zoltan, right? I was the man. And then remember, I was like, I had you give me homework. I was like, give me the two best production modern day metal records. Give me the two records that defined your band. And then there was another category, which I forgot what it was, but I was like, I wanted your help, really, really learning about why you were so successful prior to me meeting you and what's important about it and what I could do from my perspective to just kick fucking ass with it. Just take it to another level.

Speaker 2 (00:29:08):

So Chris, I have a question for you based on what Machine just said. I do have a question for you. So you guys worked with Devin before him, right?

Speaker 3 (00:29:15):

We did.

Speaker 2 (00:29:16):

Okay.

Speaker 3 (00:29:17):

Just recently. Prior, yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:29:19):

Yeah. And he's like a metal genius, basically. So, alright, so you're a real metal dude who's been into it since the age of 12. You worked with Devin Townsend, all that stuff, and I remember the vibe about the band back in those days. What drew you to this dude who's not part of the scene?

Speaker 3 (00:29:42):

Right. Well, that certainly feeds into what he was just saying. We love the idea of, at the time, actually, no one in the band had ever heard of Devon Townsend, and I'm going to put an asterisk here in that, that didn't really work out so well. But I was a huge fan of what he had done with the recent Soil Work album that had been completed and really felt like this is the guy that, it's a crazy story because at the time, certainly at the time of working with Devin, none of us, I talked to guys into working with Devin, but no one ever really understood the role of a producer. Basically everybody thought that was an engineer. Just turn the knobs, make it sound like that last shit you did. Don't tell me how to do my job because there's no way, and I probably have this as a quote in Machine's Head, there's no way you're going to tell me how to do what I do better than I already do it. Wow.

Speaker 4 (00:30:52):

I know. They were so fucking brutal to me, man, when they first met me. Holy shit. Yeah, you have no idea the shit that piled on and Oh, all of 'em. It took so long to break those walls down.

Speaker 3 (00:31:06):

That's extreme. We broke machine in half on Ashes of the Wake and I

Speaker 4 (00:31:11):

To didn't want to come back

Speaker 3 (00:31:14):

And take him to dinner and convince him that, okay, we now understand a little bit about the things that you were able to get in on the last record that have helped us out.

Speaker 4 (00:31:26):

Yeah, Al, I wanted out Ashes of the week. I was done. I was like, I'm good. I don't want to do another record.

Speaker 3 (00:31:33):

He was the first guy that we reached out to produce a record. He said, no, I called him up. I was like, what's going on? He, I can't deal with this anymore, man. It's so brutal with you guys just to get one idea across. It's like 10 days of crying in my hotel room. But at the same time, the few things that he did was able to inject into ashes were the things that we realized very quickly when we took that on the road. Were the ones that made a huge difference in our security or insecurity, I guess, of thinking that we knew exactly what we wanted to do, and B, it's very hard to let somebody else in. I ran with Devin. When Devin came to the studio, we were doing palaces, picked him up at the airport, brought him in the studio, and we were already set up in the studio and we said, okay, have a seat in the control booth. We're going to play the album that we want to put out

Speaker 2 (00:32:37):

From front. You micd it up for him before he even arrived. That's amazing.

Speaker 3 (00:32:42):

Yes. Have a seat. Wow. We're going to play this album from front to back and then you can help us do it again and just turn the knobs and make it sound really awesome. That's all there is to it. That's it. Yeah. So we had no idea of what a producer really was, but back to the question, the reason that after, well the Devon experience didn't go particularly well in that there was a lot of kind of technical issues and computers fucking up and not the right studio, and him really not being an engineer, more of a producer, which we didn't understand the difference at the time, but the reason we ended up even taking the meeting with Machine was because after that I really was hell bent on finding someone out of the scene that could understand it and have us stick out a little bit because they didn't understand the scene. That doesn't mean that I wanted to push machine in a different direction, but the concept was if every Andy Sneak mix sounds the same, if metal just sounds like this, how do we get out of this box?

Speaker 2 (00:34:03):

That's actually a really ballsy move because I'm sure you know that when guys try to produce metal records and they don't understand how it works, a lot of the times they come out horrible, really good producers too. Guys that excel at Hard Rock or Excel at Pop or something, they'll take on that one metal band and it'll just be a disaster. And that happens over and over again. So that's a very ballsy move.

Speaker 3 (00:34:33):

It's weird because there was a meeting we had in a hotel lobby in New York City, and it was our first meeting.

Speaker 4 (00:34:40):

That was our first meeting, right?

Speaker 3 (00:34:41):

Yeah. I think it was Mark Morton and myself that went up to meet machine in order to, I interview for the ashes of the Wake producer.

Speaker 4 (00:34:53):

So the band is first signed to a major label deal. It

Speaker 3 (00:34:57):

Just got on

Speaker 4 (00:34:57):

Epic so they could have had any metal producer they wanted at that moment.

Speaker 3 (00:35:02):

In fact, the label said, we're going to have you do this with Bob Rock in Hawaii. Holy shit. It was like, that doesn't sound bad, but I don't know. Let's think about this. That could end up being sad but true all the time. But at shows up in the lobby of this hotel where we're all supposed to sit down and have dinner and drinks or whatever, and he's got this cat in the hat, hat on, and Mark and I are in camo shorts and black t-shirts and here's this guy's like, hey, and we can do this, we can do this, we can do this and we can do this. Definitely sold himself well, but it was definitely scary in the way that you're talking about where I don't know that this is going to work, but the one thing that he said during that meeting that really kind of caught my attention was his experience with sound design and loving the band prodigy. And I'm a huge fan of that band. I love the technical aspects in the same way that I was a huge fan of what Devin was doing with soil work and just the kind of ear candy kind of stuff that even a shit song, it sounds amazing. And so we walked out and in the end, I don't think that was a very positive meeting. I think we actually told him was like, how the fuck do you think you're going to be able to help us? You don't even know what the fuck is going on.

Speaker 4 (00:36:33):

That's what Mark said.

Speaker 3 (00:36:34):

Yeah. But I loved the idea of bringing in somebody from totally the outside and giving it a go at the time. I agree with what you're saying, that it's obviously a risk, but at the time for us, it's not necessarily a risk. It's a hope.

Speaker 2 (00:36:53):

So it would've been a bigger risk in some ways to go with on the safe path.

Speaker 4 (00:36:58):

Yeah.

Speaker 3 (00:36:58):

Yes.

Speaker 2 (00:36:59):

We would've just been everybody else

Speaker 4 (00:37:01):

To my, can I just add a little to your, alright, there was

Speaker 3 (00:37:07):

Pepper in some details.

Speaker 4 (00:37:08):

There was a few other connection points that happened in that meeting creatively as well.

Speaker 3 (00:37:17):

You like calamari as well, but other than

Speaker 4 (00:37:21):

No, no, there definitely was. It's like we talked a lot about a standard of what metal sounded like because basically what was happening at this time, Al was heavy bands were getting on Kroc, which is the biggest Rio Station in New York. So these major labels were going where metal only lived on Roadrunner and Metal Blade in these labels, major labels were going, Ooh, we should sign metal because someone one day is going to take over the reins of Metallica and one of these incredibly talented bands are going to develop. And so lot of bands. So there was a lot of interest in this. So I talked a lot about this sort of standard that I was hearing about what the current current relative metal bands were putting out. Your kill switch engages and stuff and kind of pieced apart, took apart. What I didn't think was really cool about it at all.

(00:38:30):

And also I didn't think it was necessarily metal was just how drums sound, like drum machines and I had this whole list and I could go through it, but I think everyone in the band took a, whoa. He just said all that. Took a step back and then thought, well there's a lot of truth in that and if we figure this out together and trust this guy, maybe we could do our own version of it. And back to what you said in the first thing, Chris, we get our own unique version of this, but yeah, I really connected was drums all like this? No one cares fucking about vocals. Bass guitar is so secondary, blah, blah, blah. It's like, what's wrong with it? What's wrong with the picture? It's like vocals are so a last thought at the end. They're buried. I just went through the whole list of things that I was like, it doesn't have to be that way to be heavy metal. Heavy metal.

Speaker 2 (00:39:35):

So basically you guys were on the same page about everything that was wrong and the popular metal productions of the day.

Speaker 4 (00:39:44):

No, no, but we figured eyesight, but we figured it out. We figured it out and compromised our own way. You're going to see that and nail the mix and that kind of gave us our unique sound. So it all worked. You follow me?

Speaker 2 (00:39:59):

Absolutely. I think. Alright. So you guys, it was

Speaker 3 (00:40:03):

Very, very uncomfortable.

Speaker 2 (00:40:04):

Yeah, I want to get into that a little. So what was uncomfortable about it?

Speaker 3 (00:40:09):

Well, we love the idea of being able to stand out in some form or fashion from everything that was going on, but it's very difficult to allow someone in and start saying, what if we extended that chorus or what if we did this verse again and that kind of stuff. Conceptually the idea was great in practice it was really very difficult and we butted heads to the point of really when we wanted machine to come back for the next record, he didn't want to do it. And there really wasn't a lot of comfort in that first record because even though we kind of romanticized the idea fear, it was hard to accept where it was going because in the end truly we just wanted to sound like the cool metal bands that were out there. But we knew, I think everybody knew enough deep

Speaker 2 (00:41:08):

Inside. What do you think was hard about that? I'm actually very curious because

Speaker 4 (00:41:13):

Hey, Al, question, what do you think? How different do you think it was how, I mean, as a guy listening to metal bands, that record comes out from your outside perspective, how was it so out of the box that it wasn't metal,

Speaker 2 (00:41:28):

It wasn't metal or it wasn't cool. It was totally metal. It was absolutely metal, but it had a totally different, different aesthetic than what was I guess the norm to a degree, but it didn't sound like the Andy Sneak Colin Richardson records, which I think they sounded great in their own ways.

Speaker 4 (00:41:48):

Can I ask you another question? Did Slipknot do that for you?

Speaker 2 (00:41:52):

Yes.

Speaker 4 (00:41:53):

Did Ms. Suga do that for you?

Speaker 2 (00:41:54):

Yes.

Speaker 4 (00:41:55):

Did System of A Down do that for you?

Speaker 3 (00:41:56):

Yep.

Speaker 4 (00:41:57):

Okay. That's what we're talking about

Speaker 3 (00:41:59):

Until it happens. So it's like this kind of risk and where do we want to be? What are we doing? You sign up for the idea, it's difficult to swallow in the process and then you put out something that's like you guys are talking about slightly off the path and it's sink or swim. Holy shit, how are we going to do this? Is it going to work? And it took off and it was the gamble at the same time. I think both sides were fighting really hard the whole time. And that conflict actually in the same way that the conflict exists within the band itself created a product that couldn't have been what it is without the fight.

Speaker 4 (00:42:47):

You're right. Sadly, you're so right and you can basically, and that's Lamb of God, period, whether I'm there or not, you guys, you're all going to do that to each other and that's how you come out with your unique, amazing stuff.

Speaker 3 (00:43:05):

Very interesting dynamic in the band where I wouldn't say we hate each other, but it is a challenge always. We are kind of this who's alpha in this discussion all the time, every single thing. And it's difficult, but we've found in our inability to be, well, I should say ability to be as stubborn as we are, that I'm not going to quit first. So we just keep taxing each other so hard. Yeah, going back like losing friendships, but going back for sacrament, creating something more creative.

Speaker 4 (00:43:43):

More creative after doing Ashes of the Wake and Chris coming into New York and talking to me and really signing up for Sacrament and then my pre mental prep for going into Sacrament was similar to that of I think what I would've done to myself for psychological warfare if I knew that I was going to go to war, get captured and get my head fucked with and twisted and try to hold it together, but trying to be gone insane every day. That was my prep going in. So what made you say yes, I knew this is going to be crazy.

Speaker 2 (00:44:23):

Why'd you say Yes? Then

Speaker 4 (00:44:24):

I said yes, because Chris showed so much heart and proper intent and he sat down with his wife and he's like, this is coming from all of us. He's like, look dude, we did fight along last record and we were scared and we learned a lot and all these things, all these, I'm not going to cite the examples of who said what or who, but all these things did so much for us and it's like we're a little chiller now. I promise you this. We are chiller now. We're not as afraid. We're ready to have more fun. We're ready to try more ideas. And we don't realize that that doesn't mean you're going to ruin us anymore. On the first record, we were, we didn't know. We didn't know we were defending everything. Everything was more scary. So we basically, sacrament was like right. Sacrament was getting the first record right, not right, but completing more of the concepts that we were on about to make us who we are as a team.

Speaker 2 (00:45:37):

We all know of metal bands who have taken a risk on a record and it's completely backfired on them. So I definitely think that, especially with first having gotten onto the major label, so as an outsider, just a guy in a local band who listened to metal and was just starting to learn about production, I had a total outsider's perspective to, I remember the vibe about the band was people were saying, this is going to be the next Pantera or something. They were like, that's how it was being pushed. So I can imagine the pressure to not fuck that up must have been tremendous. And like I said, we all know of when metal bands take risks like that to go off the path. Sometimes they backfire in pretty spectacular ways.

Speaker 3 (00:46:35):

They do.

Speaker 2 (00:46:36):

Yeah,

Speaker 3 (00:46:37):

I think the difference here was it wasn't so much Machine's input wasn't so much as to rewrite the song. It was okay, is this what you call the chorus? Okay, can we do that just twice here and then we'll come back down into this and that kind of thing. So it wasn't stuff that he was forcing us to rewrite necessarily. It was a matter of kind of arrangement that allowed some kind of contagious vibe to it. But as we've written the songs prior to going in, well, no, this is the way the song goes, so it's difficult to have that objective opinion, but after Ashes, that's what we allowed to let go. You can see this from a different view than we can in this room five days a week, six hours a day, and this is how the fucking song goes.

Speaker 2 (00:47:35):

Can you think of an example? So Machine came up with a lot of the ideas that then on the road translated with the audience in a way that blew your guys' minds. Can you guys think of one, just one example of,

Speaker 4 (00:47:51):

Yeah,

Speaker 3 (00:47:51):

There's a huge

Speaker 2 (00:47:52):

Example.

Speaker 4 (00:47:53):

Now you've got something to die for,

Speaker 3 (00:47:55):

Right?

Speaker 4 (00:47:56):

Dude, now you've got something to die for. First of all, I met Randy and there were rules, right? The rules, there were many rules, right? Many, many rules. First rule was I'll never do anything with a pitch, a scream, pitch or sing. No way. Absolutely not never. The second rule was, I'll never repeat a lyric. I don't see the point in that

Speaker 3 (00:48:17):

Eric Punk rock.

Speaker 4 (00:48:18):

So he was reading in pre-production and now you've got something to die for was a line in a verse. That's how it started. And I heard that and I was like, look. And I was like, okay, I can't say, I can't say chorus, I can't say. I was like, Randy, there's something that really, really affected me and it's kind of punk rock and it changed my life and I heard this guy go, fuck you. I won't do what you told me. Fuck you. I won't do what you told me. Fuck you. I won't do what you tell me. And I was like, Randy, if you say now you've got something to die for and you say it again and then you say it again, you are going to have a reaction, a fucking connection. You're not used to. I'm warning you. I'm like, if you do that, if you have the balls to do that, if Dell's words are going to connect starting a war,

Speaker 3 (00:49:24):

I remember that exact conversation

Speaker 4 (00:49:25):

And it took a long time and blah, blah, blah. And that's,

Speaker 3 (00:49:28):

It wasn't something that he hadn't already written?

Speaker 4 (00:49:31):

No, no. It was a verse line. It was a verse line.

Speaker 3 (00:49:33):

So it was a matter of forming it, putting it in the right place and finding that ability to kind of bring it over and over, which we weren't adept at doing at all. We started out instrumental. We didn't have a singer. We didn't want a singer. The only reason we have a singer still is the guy won't fucking leave. So in that he's shady situation to begin with now telling him, say what you want to say, but do it here and then do it again here. It was quite a task.

Speaker 2 (00:50:12):

And basically when you recorded it, did you know that it was going to be this anthem basically, or you figured it out when you were on the road?

Speaker 4 (00:50:24):

Well, I did.

Speaker 2 (00:50:25):

Well, you knew.

Speaker 4 (00:50:26):

I'm

Speaker 2 (00:50:26):

Wondering when they figured it out.

Speaker 3 (00:50:30):

That's tough. I remember exactly how this went down. We're recording this and Machine is not the most metalhead looking dude around and doesn't really roll with that vibe or lifestyle. And he's telling us, he's like, listen, just try this. We don't have to record it. It's not going to stay. Nobody's going to hear it. This is a non-destructive process of what's going on. Let's just demo this out and listen to it for a minute and kind of go over this. Working with Machine in the studio certainly posed challenges to where we had kind of come up from and what we wanted to do, and now he's kind of championing this idea of this repeated chorus. And I don't mean that in a, yeah, I think it'll be cool or whatever. I mean the dude is jumping up and down in a pony jumpsuit saying, you guys, it's going to be amazing. There's going to be 10,000 people screaming it with you. It's going to be amazing. And we're just like, what the, we played to 14 people, dude, this isn't really what we do. And it was almost like going into that process was it seemed almost like a favor to him at the time. That's amazing.

(00:52:01):

And so we definitely didn't realize it in the moment. In fact, I think most of the guys, including myself, were a bit opposed to this kind of anthemic concept knowing that the 12 people that we play to normally we're going to lose two of them because now we sold out to kind of have a sing along and the other 10 were in the opening bands probably or their parents. But yeah, I mean it hit pretty direct. I think we got an offer for an Oz Fest tour there shortly after, and I don't know what the distribution was, but the things that he was jumping up and down in the room about in a tracksuit were exactly the things that hit in the way that he knew that we were not necessarily afraid of, but hesitant about going in that direction because potentially in where we had come from, that's the end of our credibility,

Speaker 4 (00:53:09):

Right? And the difference between Ashes of the Wake and Sacrament is that they realized that the trust, they realized that there is a guy that could sneak this in into the context of what still appears brutal and heavy and dangerous. They realized I had my eye on the ball of that. They weren't short first on the first record Ashes, but I think that was the thing when you came to New York, you told me like, oh, we get it now. We get it. We didn't lose anything. You snuck it in and it was real. And that was the perfect thing to say to me, my job. I mean, that's what first time

Speaker 3 (00:54:00):

We understood what producer is because like I said with Devin and then Ashes with Machine, it was basically the way you would think of an engineer, just make the shit we've come up with sound great. That's what a producer does. And when we saw those little things that he was able to sneak in, even though at the time, like I said, we thought we were probably just doing him a favor or tired of arguing about it, let's just fucking do it. Those were the little things that showed up and it was like, oh shit, there's a mind change there where you realized an objective opinion is necessary because you're in this tiny little bubble where you know what you're doing. Everybody has the same point on the horizon and it's very, very hard to let somebody come in and change that direction even slightly. And we didn't know it until we saw these things that he fought us enough for to get in and then have that come back to us in the live setting.

Speaker 2 (00:55:07):

Machin, I have a question about your mental process with this kind of stuff because just to give you an example, whenever I've done something in my life that has been successful now the mix or whatever, I've been able to see clearly how it would work in a very, I don't know, it's almost like being able to see the future, but I knew it was going to work, I knew exactly how it would work and it's like I just saw it clearly and that it had to happen. I'm just wondering, so when you have these parts, when you're producing a record that you have to get it much that you have to fight for it that hard, what's it? Are you seeing the future? What's it in your head if you could try to describe it?

Speaker 4 (00:55:57):

That's a great question. And for every record I do, I need to see the end game before I start the game. And if I don't, I'm very honest with the bands and I tell them I don't fully see it yet. And I often ask the bands for help for conceptual help. Sometimes I walk in there and I think I may know the band really, really well or what it could be. Sometimes I'm like, I haven't got the whole thing, but I have to have, before I start, I have to have the whole end game in my mind. You could ask any band I've worked with about this and then it's just a key of a coach. These are our game plans, these are our plays, these are our things. Can we work them out and stick to them? And that's usually when you win those initial concepts and instincts are usually the right ones and for every, so yes, Al, yes, that is the case and that's for everything, every type of band, every type of music. And I want every band to have their signatures, their things that are theirs and uniquely unique to them.

(00:57:21):

And that's just the guy I want to be. I look back on my career and see these different types of bands and different types of records and just know that I get it right. I get it right most of the time. Most all the time. I don't bat a thousand, but I'm

Speaker 5 (00:57:42):

Fucking up. No, nobody does.

Speaker 4 (00:57:43):

I'm up there, I'm up there. I mean, I'm really up there for getting it right.

Speaker 2 (00:57:49):

Nobody bats a thousand. But I am guessing that if you didn't see the end game perfectly clearly, it's real. There's no way that you could convince people, lamb of God, who were not.

Speaker 4 (00:58:09):

Well, sometimes I don't. I mean, most of the time I do because I've got a really fun animated personality and I can be very manipulative and convincing and mindf fucking, but once in a while, once in a while I have a meeting with a band, I'm totally honest with them and I don't get the gig because I've deliberately scared them off and that's okay. That's okay. I don't want to make marginal compromised records. So you're either like, whoa, kids got some ideas. And I'm not so threatened by the way he's saying them. Or some bands are just like, this is too scary for us and I don't get those records. And that's okay.

Speaker 2 (00:58:55):

Yeah, I mean, can't win them all. Alright, so it's a success, but it's a brutal experience. Chris goes to meet with you and talks you into doing, the next one says that they're chilled out and let's do it again. Let's talk about the next one was it actually chilled out?

Speaker 3 (00:59:20):

If I could take a minute before we go into that, which I'm sure wasn't quite as chilled out as I told him, but I was hopeful for him taking the gig. One of the things that I've definitely learned, and what machine kind of hinted on there is that in that there basically were no rewrites of anything that we did. There wasn't him coming in and saying, no, I need a new part, I need a new intro, I need a new outro or stuff like that. What I've learned is, and not knowing, again, admittedly, what a producer really does other than what an engineer does at the time, is that the producer's role really is almost like a shrink. You have to have the people skills and in the way he said, manipulate things into a certain way. That's really the skill of what I've found going forward, working with other people.

(01:00:24):

It's about how you can worm your way into the mindset and figure it out via the relationships. It's not about the song, it's not about turning knobs, it's about how you are able to create the vision that you come into the project with. And sometimes obviously it's not going to work if it's too far apart, but if it's within, I dunno, a 20% margin or something like that, the producers that we've worked with, it's been all the same. It's a matter of getting inside the heads of the guys knowing or girls knowing where everybody wants to go and finding a way to get each of them to agree that this meets close enough to where we want it to go. And then when you get all five, the whole thing kind of changes into a form of acceptance of what it is. It's really like a psychological warfare.

Speaker 4 (01:01:35):

And as the process starts and goes through, if it's a good match, you earn your trust and it becomes easier.

Speaker 3 (01:01:45):

I flew up to New York to have, take him to dinner and talk about sacrament.

Speaker 4 (01:01:50):

The thing is just for, can I just please say a message for all

Speaker 3 (01:01:54):

The

Speaker 4 (01:01:54):

Bands? Yes,

Speaker 2 (01:01:55):

Please

Speaker 4 (01:01:55):

Do. And artists listening to this, the thing is that we were a great match and a lot of things that we were talking about the fear and this and that is taught because there are many, many, many circumstances where bands do get the wrong producer, guys that have strong ideas or guys that think they know what is right and it may not be, or guys that producers, I think because they have a bigger discography that they're better than the band or they know more. It's up to you as a band to drill your potential producer, be hardcore, ask them tough questions and figure this out before you waste money and get into the studio. Because a lot of these disaster stories like Chris in the beginning of this podcast was just talking about, oh God, all these scenarios where producers have ruined these records, well they warn a good match.

(01:02:54):

So it's up to you fucked up with your first girlfriend and you learn more about what kind of girl you want next, and then you fucked up with her and then you learn more about what kind of girl you want next. It's up to you to be really tough. I love it when bands play me examples of other bands that I did not produce that it's a challenge for me. Look what this producer did here. I love when bands go to me and go, I'm a big fan of this producer, that producer and this producer, and what do you think we could do to fix this? Or, I mean, really don't be afraid, no matter how big that producer is as a band, don't be afraid to really challenge them before you get into a studio to make sure you guys are the right match. For me, I say bring it on.

Speaker 3 (01:03:48):

It's a difficult balance though because you got the thing that you believe in the form that it's in. And then you have the objective opinion coming in saying, well, what if we did this and this and that? And nobody that is in a band or in a position to record is kind of, well nobody starting out anyway, is in the mindset of, oh yeah, let's change everything for this dude because you're already taking the gamble on what it is that you've written and having that come across in a certain way. And now here's somebody else that you don't know that wasn't there the whole time. That didn't really, wasn't instrumental in writing the tunes saying, well, I think it would be better this way. And I mean, I remember actually saying this to Mac Machine, I was like, what the fuck do you know? You don't know. You can't do this better than we can. What are you talking about? And it's a really, really difficult starting out to swallow the concept of allowing somebody to the point of changing your creation. But in what we've learned in a very hard way and why I had to go Romance machine in New York is that it makes a huge difference to allow,

Speaker 4 (01:05:12):

It takes the right type of band to I think now that I'm listening to all this takes the right type of band to think like this type of band, like Slipknot, a type of band like Lambada, a type of band like Mastodon. It takes the right type of band because in today's day there's a lot of guys that do metal that they have a style. So if you are a certain kind of metal band, this works a lot. They're like, oh, we want the da da dude sound. I see a lot of that. Basically you've got producer engineers that really do a thing and they do it really well. Then they can choose that application for the sound of their band. So they're choosing metal producers based on their known application, right?

Speaker 2 (01:06:03):

Yes.

Speaker 4 (01:06:07):

And that's God and Chris and Al. Is that more than half of the average band's mindset or

Speaker 2 (01:06:13):

What do think? I'd say that's way more than half. I think that's the majority of bands,

Speaker 4 (01:06:19):

Right? So not everyone's a system of A down. Not everyone's a band like that that just wants to take those risks and

Speaker 2 (01:06:31):

Not even wants capable of.

Speaker 4 (01:06:33):

Yeah,

Speaker 2 (01:06:34):

I think that there's definitely good bands that are just not exceptional, that are still out there making records and touring and all that, but I think it takes the bandwidth both the exceptional talent and the exceptional mindset to be able to pull that off.

Speaker 4 (01:06:55):

What the thing is is that Lamb of God knew that no matter what I said or how I came off in the beginning, lamb of God knew that they were so good as a metal band and they themselves understood metal and themselves so well that we weren't going to let this guy fuck it up no matter what. And that inner strength and power, I know tool personally had that when they went with their producer who is not a metal producer and they knew that, look, this guy's really cool. He does all this world, world percussion and he could add all this application, but we're not worried about this guy taking to out of Tool and Lama God are that band too. They weren't worried. Ultimately they would just fucking out. They just beat me up or out. Psychology Out manipulate me. It definitely goes the other way too.

Speaker 2 (01:07:56):

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(01:09:52):

Machin, what would you say? Okay, so that advice that you just gave to bands, which is stand Your Ground if it's worth standing for and ask the tough questions. On the flip side, because there's a ton of producers and up and coming engineers listening to this, what would you say to a producer about when you're on the other side of getting grilled, and Chris, I'd like to hear your take on this too. What is it when you're grilling a producer, what are the kinds of things that would win you over and machine, what advice would you give to guys who are getting grilled so that they don't get defensive or emotional or whatever? You could react badly when you feel like you're getting hammered like that?

Speaker 4 (01:10:46):

Well, reacting badly would be a bad sign if I was the band because it's like an educational sit down. I'm not going, I'm not asking any of these questions In an insulting matter where starting the record process, we're starting the creative process. It's like a boardroom and we're sketching out this screenplay. We're like, oh, how will this go down? So someone getting defensive as a producer, very bad sign as a leader, very bad sign right there not cool what else needs to be said? I mean, just don't come at the guy mean Mark did where he said to me, what the fuck do you think you know about our

Speaker 3 (01:11:31):

Band that we don't already know? But it's almost impossible to not have that reaction, especially as a young band, to have somebody come in and say, well, I have an opinion on your creation that we're going to need to do this and this and that. Because starting out, whether it's your first demo, first record, second record, whatever, there's a lot of ego in that and it's certainly easy to find what we were looking for at the time and luckily didn't get, which is an engineer that just kind of turns the knobs and makes it sound like everything else and you stay in the mainstream of what everything else sounds like. It's very difficult to step out of that knowing that it's not so much a risk in our case in that there were no real major rewrites of anything. But it's still, it's almost an insult when you have somebody telling you, I think this is better because you've been working on this product for so long and you believe in it and it's really hard to kind of accept anybody else's thoughts on it because you believe that this is going to be special, it's going to stand out on its own, really don't want any outside information about it because you believe in what you've done creatively is different than what's out there.

(01:12:56):

And it's fine as it is. So it's a real risk on the band's part. And that's not an advertisement for young bands to be subdued and let a producer do whatever they want. You should argue the point, and that's really the whole thing is that, okay, you have an idea, let's record it and listen to it. And even after one of the things Machine was actually smart enough to bring in a guy on our records that we worked together named Josh Wilber, who we've worked with since. And one of the things that I really, really love about Josh and Machine, because they shared this whole concept was better is better. Don't argue what's so personal to you. Let's just try this and let's all listen to it and let's think about it and put the fucking tape in your car, whatever. Let's just take a minute. This is not going out anywhere else other than this. Take a second and try to get out of your bubble for a minute and feel my idea now, if you don't like it, come back. Let's talk. Let's do it again in a different way, whatever. But just the initial idea of having somebody come in and say, no, I think it'd be better if you did this. It's almost offensive

(01:14:20):

Young

Speaker 4 (01:14:20):

Chris. Check it out. We talk about spectrums like kids that have a DD or various things, spectrums as far as all bands go. There's a spectrum for a perspective of like, oh my God, serious talent, serious focus, obsession, work so hard, someone suggesting change, lambic God, this is going to be a major problem to the other end of the spectrum. Whereas I really like creative collaboration, blah, blah, you the band. Lamb of God in its entirety is all the way on the other side of the spectrum, dude, honestly. And listening audience members, no, not all bands are like that, Chris. Some bands, they're up for it. They're really, really up for it. Like the collaboration and everywhere in between you have to feel it out. Certain songs more, certain songs less,

Speaker 3 (01:15:26):

And I think we certainly are more than ever before, but in the way that you, in the concept of if I'm going to produce a record and I come in and really have a global view of this and it's not, maybe it's 50% there of what I'm seeing, I think it takes a band questioning what they do in order to swallow all of that. So it's difficult on a production side to have a band that's a hundred percent confident with what they're doing to allow somebody else in. So I mean situation kind of varies either way. And on the first record, Ashe of the Wake, we were absolutely a hundred percent confident. And not that we weren't on Sacrament, but we realized the things that he was able to sneak in actually made a huge difference in our kind of growth at the time or how it was perceived. And were certainly willing to back down off of that a hundred percent confidence to maybe 90% and allow him was 90% great.

Speaker 4 (01:16:34):

And you were still cool and you were still brutal and you were still heavy and you were still credible and you were still Lamb of God, right? I promised you that. I promised you say that that's what

Speaker 2 (01:16:47):

Happened. So what happened? So what was the vision then for the second record when you guys got together to talk about what it would be and to start figuring that out? How did you guys voice that to each other?

Speaker 3 (01:17:02):

Immediate for me when I went up and told him like, okay, we've realized the difficulties that we put you through and we'd really like you to come in as a sixth member of the band and have the same opinion weight that any other member would have. And I suppose that's kind of what got him in bed. But it was still difficult because when he came in that next time where we imagined like, Hey, let's do this chorus twice, or let's go back to the bridge or whatever. Now it's this grandiose, I know the guy from Nine Inch Nails, this is going to be a, we're going to get a symphony in here. And what huge ideas, what symphony lies, that's not lies. You're talking about keyboards and shit. It was like, oh shit, what do we do?

Speaker 4 (01:17:57):

No, no, no. You and me were talking about psychoacoustic, ambient, eerie shit from movie soundtracks and how we were going to get that and Operation Mind crime type shit. Right.

Speaker 3 (01:18:12):

That's funny that you say that because that was exactly the example that

Speaker 4 (01:18:15):

We talked about and we love that. We both

Speaker 3 (01:18:17):

Love that idea. Yeah, that's my favorite record ever. And I do love it, but it doesn't,

Speaker 4 (01:18:23):

That's like the only metal record I knew as a kid,

Speaker 3 (01:18:27):

It didn't fit us, but

(01:18:30):

The machine came in with the concept of what's the brutal version of this record? How did we make mind crime brutal. And we already had the brutal riffs and now we're talking about production stuff, which got a little scary for us. And there still is very much an insistence in the band that will never, ever run tracks or not be able to perform the songs as they appear on the record, which is why unfortunately we're not able to do a couple of things that we've written. But in the studio it was like, oh shit. You know what I mean? We have one minute in time to kind of paint this picture. Why wouldn't we paint it in its most beautiful way that we can? Maybe we can't do that on stage. And I appreciate the insistence of all the guys in the band of not wanting to run tracks, but it's difficult in the process where you're allowing these concepts in that are kind of above the original idea of where we're going.

(01:19:38):

So are we shooting ourselves in the foot here? Is this going to be a hit song that we can never do? But that was on the second one in that we made 'em kind of the sixth member. There were far more grandiose ideas with the sacrament record and we took a lot of risk on that, but we also fought pretty hard back on, and I think there was a definite discussion had that we don't want to put this on the record because we are not going to be able to perform this. And one of the things machine told us at the time was, worry about that later. Let's make this the best it can be.

Speaker 2 (01:20:18):

And did you agree with that?

Speaker 3 (01:20:19):

I did. Because at that point, we've been doing it for long enough to understand that holding back a positive creative idea is just stupid. There's no reason that we shouldn't make this everything. It can be if the kind of internal punk rock vibe makes it impossible to pull it off, that's another story and we can talk about that. But there's no reason, and it wasn't that we went along with everything, but it was far more appreciated to kind of take this to a level that even we didn't see or understand from the beginning, but hearing it back again in a non-destructive way, just, Hey, check this out. I put this thing in here and this thing in here. It's like, holy shit, that's badass. I don't know how the fuck we're going to do it, but why aren't we taking the best picture we can in that moment?

Speaker 4 (01:21:16):

And remember there was a rule where they could never be main parts. It was all psychoacoustics, it was never, it could never replace where there was a guitar riff. And I've applied that rule to other heavy bands. It's like,

Speaker 2 (01:21:33):

That's a great rule actually. We

Speaker 4 (01:21:35):

Can do ear candy, we can do ear candy. And I call them psychoacoustics to things to create mood and tension. But if they're not main parts, if it's not a main prodigy synth line, then it's never missed. You know what I mean? You can choose backing tracks or choose not backing tracks and the basis of the songs are still there. And that was a rule we stuck by, right?

Speaker 3 (01:21:58):

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, still there's a couple of things we don't do because there might be slightly more than the background stuff, but in general

Speaker 4 (01:22:10):

Was just what was just one outro where I just started remixing, but that was, yeah,

Speaker 3 (01:22:14):

What was data line or something? I'm not sure.

Speaker 4 (01:22:17):

There was one cool fade out outro where I just started remixing and it made the record,

Speaker 3 (01:22:22):

It's real hard to fade out live is what I figured out.

Speaker 4 (01:22:28):

What was that? It had base drops and base drops were a new thing at the time. What was it?

Speaker 3 (01:22:34):

It was either one gun or a faded line.

Speaker 4 (01:22:37):

Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:22:38):

Yeah. That was cool. All kinds of machine sounds and all that

Speaker 2 (01:22:41):

Shit. So machine, you said that Chris was probably the most metal guy in the band. Did you find his dedication to the sound and desire for perfection to be a huge help when capturing drum tones and takes for the album?

Speaker 4 (01:22:54):

Yes. Chris was absolutely not only the most metal guy in the band, but Chris is the most metal guy I've ever met. Chris Adler, he largely taught me so many things about metal. I mean through our experience. Well, I have no shame in saying that. And it's grown since then. And Willie his very metal as well. Randy's got some punk rock in him and he's metal as fuck. And Mark, he's got some swag in him, Alman brothers and that. And he is metal as fuck. And John is metal as fuck, and he likes, loves hip hop like me, the bass player, John.

Speaker 2 (01:23:44):

That makes sense. Yeah, bass players.

Speaker 4 (01:23:46):

Yeah. What is that, Chris? With John Loving hip hop so much,

Speaker 3 (01:23:51):

Man, both him and Mark and Randy Hip. Yeah, on the last tour they're talking about all these, I don't know if they're fabricated or not, but all these beefs with the hip hop artists and all this stuff and they're really into it. And then he did this and then he said that and it's like, what the

Speaker 4 (01:24:09):

Fuck? Yeah. So frigging smart with marketing themselves plus metal bands. We should all dis each other sports

Speaker 3 (01:24:18):

Actually. It works. They do. Yeah. It was a thing at the moment. I kept overhearing all these conversations. I was like, well, why don't we just kind of fabricate something with somebody on our level and kind of take us both up to a different spot.

Speaker 4 (01:24:36):

Awesome. What could that be like? It's not going to be gangster. So in Metal world, what would that be?

Speaker 2 (01:24:45):

The black metal murders.

Speaker 4 (01:24:46):

How would you beef in metal

Speaker 2 (01:24:48):

Cut out somebody's skull and make a necklace out of it in Norway?

Speaker 3 (01:24:53):

I think, yeah, I think the best way would just be to say they're just playing tracks.

Speaker 4 (01:24:58):

Yes, of course.

Speaker 2 (01:25:01):

So the black metal examples too extreme I guess.

Speaker 3 (01:25:06):

I don't want to get killed.

Speaker 2 (01:25:07):

Yeah, unfortunately when at least in the black metal scene when bands beef, that's what happens. So I think it's better for bands not to beef, but I don't know, over the years it seems like when bands beef, they will go to violence at points. Remember a Muir and the Acacia Strain, they went a few years back and over the years, wasn't it Axel Rose and Vince Neal too?

Speaker 3 (01:25:35):

Yes.

Speaker 2 (01:25:36):

Went to blows as well.

Speaker 3 (01:25:37):

Yep.

Speaker 2 (01:25:38):

Yeah, it's just better not to beef, but anyways,

Speaker 4 (01:25:41):

Back to do not promote violence here.

Speaker 2 (01:25:44):

Yes, definitely not. So back to sacrament, can you guys talk a little bit about the drum production? I know it was a deconstructed recording process where things, shells and symbols were tracked, separate and so on. What was both of your experiences with that method previously to that and what were some of the learning moments and key takeaways from doing it with that method?

Speaker 4 (01:26:06):

Chris, you decide who talks first.

Speaker 3 (01:26:10):

You just want to know how much I'm willing to give away about this. So what we did was like you said, kind of separated everything. And that was a bit of a learning curve on my part because now we basically have hands and feet and so meaning that they're going to be recorded at different times. So I'd have to kind of deconstruct, take my feet out of it and just do the hands and then take my hands out of it and just do the feet. And it didn't come very naturally at all. So what we ended up doing, I think at least for the feet part of it, and the same the other way around, but for the feet part of it basically covered the entire drum kit with many pillows and blankets and stuff over the top of the symbols. Anything that we could do to totally make the hands kind of silent but still allowing me to play because it was really impossible to kind of fully separate everything on my end. And then with the feet, we just took the kick drums away and put little practice pads with blankets over them so I could play the feet while I did the hands as well.

Speaker 4 (01:27:21):

And what's interesting is how in time it slowly you started leaning off and leaning off and then you were just tapping the floor and then there were times where you could just completely,

Speaker 3 (01:27:36):

Yeah, there was a bit of learning curve

Speaker 4 (01:27:38):

Separate depends

Speaker 3 (01:27:40):

A bit of a learning curve for me to take either of those things away, but slowly as we did it got song two, song three, whatever, it became a little more natural. I didn't feel the need kind of not need, but the muscle memory, everything that was going on. I didn't have to do the feet and I could get a better performance with my hands if I didn't.

Speaker 4 (01:28:01):

Yeah. Yes, exactly. I wanted to ask you that as a fan. Why creatively, why Chris Adler would we do this method?

Speaker 3 (01:28:11):

Well, I think we were both very interested in not necessarily redefining but creating a unique sound. And of course when you got, at least when I was coming up, you do your first demo, it's on a boombox or something, and then you get the cheap recording studio with the bad mics and everything's a bit mushy and you can't hear that splash symbol that I thought was so cool when we were writing the song and all that kind of stuff. And there's no way to go back in because now you've got snare in the overheads and there's only so much you can separate in these things. So the more you can isolate them, the more you can kind of get a bit of a more, I don't know, pristine sound out of each thing and then be able to mix that properly as pieces of a kit as opposed to 10 mics that were on the whole time and you can't really pull one out.

Speaker 4 (01:29:04):

And I'd like to add one thing to that as well is also, I noticed this is the first time we met, so this is back for our first record ashes where we were, this was before I even brought this up, and you are definitely going to be playing your whole kit in your mind on that record. And you did play initially our initial tracking on that, if you remember, we did play in the whole kit and then we started separating only certain things, but the idea started within the first 10 minutes of me watching you play the very first time we met in the very first pre-production, your body language and your whole demeanor was you were putting, oh, like 80% of your mental focus onto your feet

(01:29:59):

And you were complaining about your feet and you're like, and I'm listening to you play. I'm thinking, wow. I mean the things he's doing with his feet are unbelievable. I mean it's really the other snare drum. It's like there's times where it's so complex with 32nd nose to 24th nose back to this to complex things where there's so much more actioning happening down there than with his upper limbs. So as I didn't like that because as someone who knows how to capture great sounding drums and I wanted create drums and drums, I know that the way those drums are hit and the way they're tuned has a lot to do with how they're going to sound in the end. And I really didn't like that he had to put so much focus onto his feet. I felt that there were times where the way he was just the action on the way he would snap his snare or go into a tomal or hit the bell of that ride just right.

(01:30:59):

The brain cells were so much on the feet and so I wanted to be able to, that was my instant, I had that idea in 10 minutes I meeting you, I remember writing you this huge two page letter and why we should do it and no one's going to know and we are going to get this great sounding this and remember you kind of half blew me off and then we did parts and then for Sacrament we were like, oh, this is game on, yo, this is, yeah, and he played, it's like he played all the parts in with his feet as we tracked them, as we track the kick on sacrament, but it was then fully separated in the recording process as overdubs

Speaker 2 (01:31:44):

Something. I've recorded a lot of great metal drummers at this point and also in my band I had a dude named Kevin Talley who's a great metal drummer. He's actually the person who introduced me to doing it like this and I've done this sort of thing with great drummers through the years and it is not because they couldn't play or anything like that, but because a human being only has a hundred percent of focus that they can give to anything, and if you want them to put a hundred percent into the hands really go pantera on the hands, it is not always going to coincide with putting a hundred percent to the feet and that's just as important. So with great drummers, that's sometimes the solution so you can get the best of everything because people, they're all humans, so they're going to have to divert their focus at times to different things that give them more or less trouble. And so that's just, you're going to have fluctuating levels of intensity and focus on different parts of the drum set depending on where their head's at. Also what's going on that day. I found that it works great with great drummers. It's actually a lot harder to do with shitty drummers.

Speaker 4 (01:33:00):

Believe me. If you can't play the part as a whole, you're not going to be able to dissect it very easily.

Speaker 2 (01:33:07):

No,

Speaker 4 (01:33:07):

Definitely not. Duly noted. I mean, and not only could he play these parts as a whole, I mean he had them really no other human I've ever met. He has them like this inner programming brain where he can see all these things and naturally dissect. It's unbelievable to do this with Chris, this process.

Speaker 3 (01:33:28):

It was definitely weird and I think any kind of band, at least coming up when we were, or my generation of bands, no one thinks, oh, I'm going to go into the studio and not play my whole drum kit. But I think the thing that really sold me on it was there was a different situation where machine was working, I think with one of the guitar players, and I think it was Mark and Mark was real concerned about creating something that we couldn't replicate live and machine's answered to that was, listen, you guys wrote the songs amazing. Why spend the money to come into the studio and not paint the best picture of it that we possibly can worry about playing live later? I mean, we're not going to put on a bunch of keyboards and tracks and all that kind of stuff. We're just padding this, doing that, whatever.

(01:34:23):

And that made perfect sense to me. It's like why wouldn't we allow this song to be kind of everything that we would want it to be, but can't really physically any of us individually or together necessarily do in that we're like you said, wrapped up in our a hundred percent focus of what we're trying to do. So I did like that idea, although it was a bit, it's a weird to think because it's almost like there's an anxiety in that. You have to swallow the fact that it is going to sound better if you do that. And that kind of turns into, well then does that kind of mean I'm not good enough?

Speaker 4 (01:34:57):

No, it actually makes you a better drummer when you get back to doing it again. I think because you've learned

Speaker 3 (01:35:03):

Agree the process, think

Speaker 4 (01:35:04):

About it

Speaker 3 (01:35:04):

Differently, but to start the process you kind of have to surrender that ego of, no, I know what I'm doing. I can play this shit.

Speaker 4 (01:35:12):

Here's the irony in what Chris just said, we don't overdub guitars. Oh, oh, oh, that's okay.

Speaker 3 (01:35:23):

So

Speaker 4 (01:35:23):

We can't overdub drums. What's up? We overdub guitars all day. Oh, vocals you want to double, you want to harmony. Oh, wait a second. Do that else to s sing it crazy easy.

Speaker 2 (01:35:41):

It's true though. It's absolutely true. I mean, it's not that drummers can't play this stuff at all. It's just if you want it at that level of that level of quality, you got to do what you got to do

Speaker 4 (01:35:56):

In

Speaker 2 (01:35:56):

Order to get the job done. That's all there is to it. It's

Speaker 4 (01:35:59):

Really not an the guitars and vocals.

Speaker 3 (01:36:01):

Yeah, and I guess what I figured out was that it really wasn't an argument over ability. It was what sound are we going for here? How clean can we get everything? Basically how well can we paint the picture and insisting on maybe not overdubbing guitars or insisting on playing the whole kit. It's like you've written these songs, you've practiced it for six months, obviously we know exactly what we want now. Why don't we just make it sound a lot better than it does in your rehearsal space?

Speaker 2 (01:36:31):

Yeah, and like I said, I can't say this enough, the only guys I've been able to do this with are some of the best drummers in metal. I've not been able to do this with the guys that come in and suck and can't play their songs or whatever. That's a whole other thing, but the only guys I can pull this off with are dudes who bring it. Absolutely.

Speaker 4 (01:36:54):

Yeah, definitely. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:36:57):

Normally I wait till the very end to ask audience questions, but a lot of these audience questions are about what we're talking about right now. So I figured that just to keep things on topic, I'll ask some of them right now.

Speaker 3 (01:37:12):

Sure.

Speaker 2 (01:37:13):

So here's one from David Veles who says the final drum sound on the record. How close is it to the original drum sound you had in your head before you started tracking? To put it another way, did you keep trying things until you got the exact tone in your head or did you keep thinking to yourself, we can make it better, we can make it even better until you couldn't make it better anymore, even though that wasn't what you were aiming for before you started? I asked because I don't think I've ever nailed what was in my head before I started tracking, but alas, I am a mere mortal.

Speaker 4 (01:37:46):

So my message to David is we never ever finish mixing. We surrender. Does that make sense?

Speaker 2 (01:37:57):

It gets taken away from you.

Speaker 4 (01:38:00):

I push and push and push and I know I've got the idea in my head, but I can't at least the exact idea. I just know what I'm going for. And that goes for a lot of creative people, especially a perfectionist types of people like you see commonly in metal and certainly in definitely lambic God. So it's like I've come to the point now since when I started, it was very expensive to keep trying and do recalls, very expensive, hiring big studios of big consoles, recalling now there's a different world where we can try and progress and progress and I've adapted to that world. It had to, and that's why I just say it's like, look, I just realized that. So to answer David, I'm always pushing to make it better and better and I just realized with a lot of things I do that I have to have the personality and come to the point where I just say, I'm not done. I just surrender and it's cool and I'm cool with surrendering

Speaker 3 (01:39:07):

And on my end, Chris

Speaker 4 (01:39:09):

Adler on the other hand, does not

Speaker 3 (01:39:11):

Surrender. No, that's not true. It may not have been then, and I think experience kind of builds this ability to know that I'm listening to these performances back in the control room and does it sound like the drum sound that I want on the record? No, it doesn't. But I know now that as long as we have these really clean individual things that in the mix, there's going to be a ton of stuff done to this to have it sit properly and have even everything out and maybe add, you'll be able to EQ each thing to a point where that's when I guess coming from the drum kit into the control room, I know you have to know I didn't when we were kids, but you have to know that that's not the end. It's going to go from there into a whole nother process that's really going to polish everything up. Not knowing that. And I think, what was it David just asked, if you're kind of on a low budget and you do the drums and come into the control room, don't ask yourself right then if you trust the person that's going to be working it after this or mixing it if it's perfect for the record because it's just definitely not going to be, it might sound cool in the studio speakers or whatever, but it's far from the final product. Yep.

Speaker 2 (01:40:32):

Yeah, actually I totally agree with that. So here's another one from Colin Pompey. Can Chris or Machine go more in depth about the process of choosing tempos and feel of a song during Pre-Pro? The idea of shifting tempos is foreign in me. What goes into identifying a good spot for this to happen?

Speaker 3 (01:40:50):

Wow, that was one of the coolest things that I remember from both of the records that we did with Machine in that the band was very hesitant to set a BPM for a song or apart. And what machine was able to offer us was that in pre-production, just kind of set up a very general kind of micing system in the room so we can get the idea of the song and then we can all sit and listen to it and talk about it, take it, burn it to a cd, take it in the car or whatever. But at the same time, there were these parts of the songs that as the band played it as we had written, it would kind of ramp down or ramp up and it really gave to us in straightening it out, attempting to, it really kind of lost the feel. It was no longer that kind of tension of what is coming up. And so what Machine was able to do was take these demo tracks in Pro Tools and kind of draw a tempo map to it so it wasn't kind of sterilized from the feel of what the band was naturally doing.

Speaker 4 (01:42:00):

And then we got to work from there and then we got to play to

Speaker 3 (01:42:03):

Those

Speaker 4 (01:42:04):

Clicks and then we got to even better it in a way and listen back and debate over transitional tempos or let's, let's drop this part down and we got to come back to pre-production with fresh years and really know that we had the right energy flow before we were going to go into the drum studio, which is really nice. This is one really wonderful, one of the many wonderful things about pre-production is that you can do all that and learn all that.

Speaker 3 (01:42:36):

Even in the guys in the band's mind, we don't know that this part's coming up. So as we're playing everybody increased by three BPM, but when it happens kind of naturally, then you can go analyze it, see it, and then either accentuate it or get rid of it if that's what the band doesn't want to do, didn't realize they were doing that kind of thing. So it's really nice to have that process in play where you can really sit back and I mean, I know most bands don't have time and money to have a producer sitting around for six weeks working on stuff like that, but we were fortunate in that we did. Technology's caught up. I mean it's crazy now with Elastic and all that shit, but at the time we had the ability to do it and everything's kept sounding better and better and better. So it was a really great experience.

Speaker 2 (01:43:24):

If you think about it, lots of the best metal records of all time were done without a click and lots of the energy on those records comes from speeding up in the drum fill into the next part or things or it getting slower when it goes to halftime or whatever, whatever it is. A lot of these classic records have those natural ebbs and flows that playing to a click destroys. It just does. And so fluctuating these tempos per section of the song, that is the way to get around that problem I think.

Speaker 3 (01:44:01):

Yeah, and I don't think we set anything up necessarily on purpose to have that effect, but we were able to capture the natural flow of the tunes in that way and use that to do exactly what you said, not sterilize the whole thing.

Speaker 4 (01:44:17):

Yeah, and also I got to add one thing to this, Chris is a player. When you commit to a tempo, it feels good to him. He's a player that his playing does not suffer whatsoever when he's playing to that click track. There are many, many drummers, they don't rehearse that way. They don't grow up that way and they get to a studio and click track is new to them and they may not realize this, but they start hitting their drums really poorly because their brains going to the click track. So this is absolutely not Chris Adler. Chris Adler is very comfortable with nailing it with a click. And so we would do a lot with designing that changing click. And even the information he was given, was it cowbells on quarters or was it that did it slow down where it needed more information? So it put a cowbell and then a ghosting cowbell on eighth or whatever. It was always very friendly to Chris to have that. No. Ooh, we found the right one. We found the right thing. And it does not suffer in his playing whatsoever. So again, that becomes a big

Speaker 3 (01:45:27):

Positive. And one of the things that I noticed about myself in working with Machine and I was coming up first couple of records, I was scared to death of a click track. I thought that was, I'm just a punk rock kid, I don't know what I'm doing for the pros this for the guys in Modern Drummer and stuff like that. But in working with Devin on the album before this, he kind of insisted on it. But then working with Machine, it was great because a lot of times what I like in a click track is not kind of the standard thing. I would work with machine all the time to have the click track be in six as opposed to eight. So I'm not on top of it on the snare or on the kick. And I could kind of feel that syncopation throughout the whole thing. And in fact, that came up with even some different fills and drum parts because I was hearing this thing kind of going on the track next to me and it was really cool to have that concept of with the click itself and then learning something else cool that I could do because of that.

Speaker 4 (01:46:29):

Yeah, I'm always designing. My clicks don't come from the computer. They come from a sampler, a midi sampler. So I have an array of sounds and array of things and I'm always programming the midi on the fly for every band, for every click track for whatever feels great to enhance their playing. That's a big thing. Thank you. Yeah, man, you got everything about what I do and you'll see the studio next week, design of it. Everything is about for the player, for making their experience feel good and feel comfortable and play better. It's all about every design of everything I do is always I play a little instrument. Sure, I know what it's like to be on the other side and I listen very carefully to my musicians and what they need. And it's not too hard to figure out how to make systems that make people play great in a recording in general.

Speaker 3 (01:47:44):

And there is some friction in that process in that when you start that, even though machine's saying now I'm working to make sure that the artist is comfortable, the artist before they get comfortable is obviously uncomfortable. So there's this, you have to trust that person and know it can be frustrating if for me, let's say the click is not on the time that I want. I don't want to necessarily admit that. Is that a failure on my part? Or even knowing hopefully that machine wants exactly what he just said to happen. It's hard to say this just isn't working for me because that's another blow to ego of your own and maybe how this producer is normally set up to do something and you don't want to frustrate the process or spend any more time than necessary when you're paying for it. So it can be a little challenging, but once everybody realizes they're on the same team, it becomes very friendly process.

Speaker 2 (01:48:41):

Yeah, it's interesting you say that. I've had that issue with drummers quite a bit where the click track isn't right in their headphones and they won't say anything because they're afraid of rocking the boat and it's like, I wish they would say something. So I find that it's my job to be a detective and really pay attention to their vibe and what they're saying and how they're reacting. So I can tell if it's okay in their headphones because nine out of 10 times they're not going to say anything because they're just being polite, which is not good. But I get it. I totally get it. So here's a question from Don Kendall. So I guess this is more for you machine. When you set up drum mics for recording, what do you look for in drum room mics specifically in metal? Is it just depth or vibe or something my simple brain hasn't thought of? Do you do a ton of experimenting or do you have go-to a go-to starting point?

Speaker 4 (01:49:38):

I don't have a go-to starting point. I really use my ears as microphones to listen to that given drum room, that driven environment, right? Because I have been in a lot of different studios actually. So when we're talking about room mics, they're capturing the sound of the drums as they are interacting with the room. So the room is part of the sound. So the best thing you could do on this is like ghetto logic. You're going to hear this term a lot coming up from me. This is like ghetto minded. It means common sense things. Your ears are microphones. So when you go into a new room, one of the greatest things to do is just take a snare and walk around and find a good spot for that snare drum in the room and then set up the kit and then just walk around high and low and find really good spots where the drums sound in the room. Now I guarantee you those are going to be great spots for microphones.

(01:50:43):

And then this, it's taken me years and I'm still developing this. It's just then the understanding, and this just takes time dudes. I mean just understanding the character of different microphones where when, oh, the ribbon, oh, these coals or these ribbons are going to be really cooled down here. And then the many steps I can take with them later in the mix and so on and so forth. Or when an overhead six feet, 10 feet above the kit with this kind of mic is going to give me this. That just takes time. Experimenting, trial and error. You guys are lucky because you've got these great shows like Nail the Mix and Euro Academy and all this YouTube shit, and you can go just see what everyone does and you get a big jumpstart on trying it yourself. And there's nothing wrong with that.

(01:51:41):

I didn't have as much as that. I tried and failed and learned fast and got to use my ears more. And it's not on my personality to just do more of that by nature. I'm just a scientist. I got to answer Don's question. So Don, I got you sorted about how to figure out the room, right? Use your ear for certain spots as far as different mics. If you want vintage, like use ribbon mics, dude, that's the sound, that's the classic sound. They'll come in dark and then you'll EQ high end into them on purpose. And that's the sound, that's the classic rock sound, four fourteens, a K, G, four fourteens, just generally really common mics and make great great room mics. I like them on figure eight often. I often putting them near a wall. So one side of the figure eight, here's the wall as well. That's just a common thing that happens, but inevitably I'm not going to decide until my ears walk around the room and I get to pick spots. Is that enough?

Speaker 2 (01:52:54):

That was great, thank you. Alright, Eric, Burt is asking this to both of you. Can you talk about the symbol selection for this record? I've always struggled finding a balance of volume and tone and the symbols on this record seem to have been made for each other in terms of the pitch intervals and volume, particularly the high hats sound heavy. Without sounding too loud,

Speaker 3 (01:53:15):

That's Chris. Yeah, well, I think it's very much the same process that machine was talking about. I'm fortunate enough to have a endorsement with minor symbols and in going into the studio, I let them know and see if they can send me out some options and we just spend the time in the room, pick a particular song, maybe a verse or a chorus or whatever, and walk through that with as many options as we could get. And one of the things that we came up with on Sacrament was even the hi hats sound that he's talking about, I had a different series of bottom hats to the top hat, meaning that not only we were trying different lines of hi hats, we were taking the top of this and the bottom of that and seeing what difference that kind of thing made. So just really a matter of time and just experimenting and hopefully having the resources to switch things in and out. And you're lucky to be

Speaker 4 (01:54:11):

Endorsed by Absolutely. One of my favorite simple companies.

Speaker 2 (01:54:16):

Mine

Speaker 4 (01:54:17):

Are awesome.

Speaker 2 (01:54:19):

They really are. Yeah,

Speaker 4 (01:54:21):

I didn't quite get it at first. Then I realized later with certain guys coming around with mine, I was like, oh wow, these are awesome to me. I don't remember them. I don't remember them as a kid, I just don't know why. Maybe they were there, I just don't remember them. It was like they weren't,

Speaker 3 (01:54:38):

Well, they were, but they were student level stuff. You get 'em in the music and art store for kids that are just starting. And so the company's made huge headway in the market and my experience with them has been incredible. And when I started actually I was using all zn and it took me, I dunno, two years to even find the right zn that I wanted because I didn't have a box of things to swap out. I just have to go to the store, hit it in the store, sounded good, take it back to the room, sounds like shit. So when mine approached me, I didn't have a full endorsement with Diligent at all, but I was very hesitant to go with mine because it had taken me two years to figure out which Symbols said I wanted. And he said, okay, yeah, no problem. Lemme send you some anyway and blah blah blah. And called me up and he said, what do you think of these? And I was honest with him. I was like, dude, these kind of suck. And so he sent me some different stuff over about a year. Chris Brewer at Vinyl was sending me all this different stuff just to try out. And every once in a while I was like, oh, that does sound better than the Z 16 or whatever it was.

(01:55:49):

And slowly I was kind of placing them in my rehearsal space and I said, listen Chris, I think we've got everything pretty much nailed down. This is actually going through all these series of things. These are actually closer to what I have been hearing in my head the whole time than the ZI ones are, but there's not a ride symbol in the bunch that sounds anything like what I would want. And so he called me back about a week later and said, would you mind flying over to Germany with me and talking to the owners of the company about what's wrong with the ride symbols? And I was like, well, I don't mind, but who am I? I think our record sold 35,000 or something. It's like, I know you have bigger artists than me. He's like, man, I really believe that you are going to kind of make a dent in what you're doing and I really want to get you over there in front of these guys. So I go over there and it's round table, big German dudes and suits and said, okay, so what's wrong with the ride?

(01:57:03):

And what I thought was amazing, was it not metal enough about this ride symbol they're made from metal? Yes. So I do not understand. So well, not only do they fly me over there and have this meeting, they then kept me there for I think about a week. And we went into the facility and tried all these different things where they were able to change alloys and sizes and all this stuff. And I was just so impressed with knowing that I was not top tier drummer or in a top tier band, that they were making the effort in every way to improve what they were doing. And that was in shit 2003. So obviously it's come even further since then. And I think everybody makes, every simple company makes a great line of symbols, but the relationship I have with them and their proof of dedication to their product really impressed me. And I wouldn't even consider changing ever.

Speaker 2 (01:58:01):

I don't think you can go wrong with any of the big ones, but I can just say specifically with mine, it took me a second to catch on. I guess my studio was endorsed by Zian and the drummer in my band played Zian and my brother, who's a drummer played. So it was just, that's what I was used to. And I had spent a long time getting to know what I liked in a recording with those, but more and more drummers would start coming through that had minor endorsements and so I was forced to start using them. At first, I wasn't sure it was different, but over time grew on me. Now I fucking love them. They're great. I

Speaker 5 (01:58:42):

Think

Speaker 2 (01:58:42):

They're phenomenal. I had to figure out how to work with them and I think they're fantastic.

Speaker 3 (01:58:48):

Yeah, it's basically we're telling the same story.

Speaker 2 (01:58:51):

Yeah, that's just echoing it. So alright, here's one from Jason Alford. Whose idea for whose idea was it for the typewriter sample on the kick? That was brilliant. It blew me away.

Speaker 4 (01:59:07):

Mine. Alright. I mean, so look, here's the thing. In my planning and education for recording Lamb of God, I asked for records to learn about metal. And one of the ones about in the category of records to learn about production, who's the most mind blowing metal production? One of those was this band Masu. And I was very, very envious of their kick sound. And it was so cool sounding to me and it was so signature, the most important thing, so signature to that band. And I wanted so badly for Lamb of God to have that. I thought they were important enough. And Chris is a legacy drummer in the making. I'm like, I think it's really important that Chris has a signature kick, such an important instrument in metal. And we tried so hard. I mean Chris and I, we taped things to the kick drum. There were so many failed experiments to finding what's going to be our signature things. So when you put on that at God record and you hear this awesome drummer, it's him.

(02:00:39):

It's all based on failure basically. Then I just started listening, just realized this attack me. I mean, I sampled this, I sampled that. I tried taping this to the kick drum, that's the kick drum. And I just realized to myself, I was like a lot of this, what this actually is, is when I listen to various records, data attack portion kind of sounds like one of those old school typewriters. That's kind of what it sounds like. So I was like, let me go the internet and download it. Tick, tick, tick, tick. I was like, and then I blended that in and that sounded really metal to me in with the regular kick drum sound and slightly unique. Yes, it happens to be an old school typewriter sample.

Speaker 3 (02:01:25):

Wow. I thought the question was facetious,

Speaker 4 (02:01:29):

Chris, did you, you know that I did that

Speaker 3 (02:01:32):

We had talked about you had a millisecond of glass shattering this kind of sound design

Speaker 4 (02:01:38):

That didn't work right.

Speaker 3 (02:01:40):

And what machine, and I actually had a conversation about this last week where he said basically the same thing. I was really going for that chuga sound, which of course I love as well,

Speaker 4 (02:01:51):

Or your own chuga sound. But

Speaker 3 (02:01:53):

What we got to, even with what Machine just said was getting to that, what ended up being a failure and he was telling me, I kind of feel bad. I wish it was. And I was like, dude, if we had achieved it, that exact sound, then there would be nothing special about what we did. So our failure, it was actually the biggest success we could have

Speaker 4 (02:02:15):

Had. Well said.

Speaker 3 (02:02:17):

Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 4 (02:02:20):

As how many things are invented, by the way, by failing. And you get something else. But yeah, MAGA was a guide and it was a guide because it was so standout and so signature, but the intent was never to copy Ms. Sugar. The topic was to have our version of a signature sound and that had the presence and the character. How that one was just so cool. It was a challenge. Did it?

Speaker 2 (02:02:48):

Yeah, definitely. Mission accomplished on that. Sorry. I think so. Alright, so moving on past Sacrament. A few things I just want to cover. And Chris, you said you had some sort of announcement, so I want to make sure that we don't forget that. I'm just asking, wondering if you want to do that now or later

Speaker 3 (02:03:09):

Now it's fine. So

Speaker 2 (02:03:11):

What's on your mind?

Speaker 3 (02:03:12):

Well, in that I'm not very good at sitting around doing nothing. So if the band's not on tour, if we're not writing, we're not recording, I'm still playing a lot of drums, going to the gym a lot. But I kind of find a lot of downtime and I don't want to allow myself that and get in trouble or something. So I've been thinking about it for a while and just waiting for the right band to kind of come around. But I worked for a long time, a product manager and digital sales guy at Epic Records is a guy named Jason Berg. And Oh,

Speaker 2 (02:03:46):

I know Jason, he's great. He's

Speaker 3 (02:03:47):

Been on the podcast actually. Oh, cool. And we keep in touch once a month or whatever, we send each other a list of bands like, oh, have you heard this kind of thing? And then we'll kind of debate back and forth. And I guess it was about a month ago, I was having one of those calls with him and we both at the same time say, I don't really have a list this time. I just have one band. And he's like, that's crazy. Me too. Well, so the band that I was referring to is this band called Discarnate from the uk and oh, they're sick dude. I have not had goosebumps when I've listened to their newest record since I heard symbolic. And every time I listen to it, it's still just goosebumps over and over. So he and I are talking about this. We both independently go out to see the band who totally crush it, live as well and get to know the guys.

(02:04:42):

They're super cool, they're super fun. But just talking to 'em about the things Jason and I know about, and they're still a fairly young band and realizing they really don't have a team of any kind working with them and the drummers doing much of the work. They are assigned to a small label in Florida, but there's really not anybody behind them. So Jason and I decided to start a management company just for this band. It's called Kintsugi Management, and we're heading down to Florida to talk to the label people. We've had meetings with everybody else around in the UK where they are and the people they have over here in the US and we're starting it up, taking 'em on. We've done the deal with them and really looking forward to working with these guys over the next couple of years in that we both know most of the potholes around the world, both in business and touring. And I really want to help these guys because they are incredible and they're still friends and I see 'em playing in to 12 people for a bag of chips and it's like, man, that ship will burn you out so fast. And there's so much talent in this band that I want to kind of help ensure that they have the ability to have somebody else doing the fighting while they can continue to be friends as long as possible and keep writing stuff.

Speaker 2 (02:06:08):

That's awesome. Jason actually showed them to me maybe a month or two ago and I heard them and whatever song it was, I listened to it like 10 times in a row and was like, this is fucking great. And I hit 'em up immediately and was like, I want them on nail the mix. I don't care if they're not huge, I want them on nail the mix. And Jacob Hanson, the guy who mixed it, he's phenomenal too. So for not being big, they sure found a great mixer, but I hadn't heard something that fresh in a really long time.

Speaker 3 (02:06:44):

It's like they a, I don't want to continue the process of more and more sub-genres, but they've got this kind of death groove thing going on and they totally own the lane. I mean, there's nobody else doing it like this and the songs are just undeniable.

Speaker 2 (02:06:59):

It reminds me of a modern, you remember impossibility of Reason era chimera? Yeah. It reminds me of how heavy that was for its time, but a modern version with death metal vocals with some dying fetus in there. It's really groovy in a good way.

Speaker 3 (02:07:16):

So it we're really excited about getting to work with these guys and hopefully everybody will be hearing a lot more about 'em now that they've got some muscle behind him.

Speaker 2 (02:07:24):

That's killer. So speaking of that, you're not liking to stay idle. One thing that I've heard about you for years now, way back to even 2005 when my band almost signed to Prosthetic and ej, the main guy prosthetic was telling me about Lamb of God. He would basically talk about you a lot. He'd be like, Chris is the business guy in that band. That guy's a brain. Nothing would be happening unless without his mind. And he'd say things like that. And I paid attention to that. And so I remember a few years later, the producer edition or whatever it was called for Sacrament came out. I was like, wow, that's a really good idea. That was way ahead of its time. And I just paid attention to Lamb of God marketing and I know that there's a whole team behind it, but obviously I also knew that none of that stuff happened without the band. None of that happened independently of the band. And the guy told me repeatedly that you were the guy in the band who was behind a lot of that stuff. And so I followed you. And so your avid clinician, and I heard that you and your wife, I don't know if you guys still do this, had started a company that ran fan clubs

(02:08:52):

For bigger bands. I remember hearing about that in 2008, 2009. And so I've always heard that you were a very entrepreneurially minded musician, and so I just wanted to talk about that a little bit and see if you define yourself that way or where that even comes from.

Speaker 3 (02:09:13):

Yeah, I'm blushing. Certainly part of it is not wanting to just be idle, but from the outside, I'm sure, as we all know, this whole thing is a lot more glamorous than it is on the inside. So a lot of the things that I got into were certainly creative ideas, but they were out of some necessity of having either the band stand out a little bit and doing things a little bit differently, taking tours, putting tours together that some people would say it didn't make sense, but it allowed at the time, kids that were coming to our show to not see basically the same band four times in a row, having other bands on the bill and also expanded our fan base quite a lot by turning their fans on to kind of who we are. But for me personally, then I went into, wrote a couple books about the making of some of these albums and have always been answering the phone to working with other projects and doing whatever I can not only to keep myself busy, but because again, it's as big as Lamb of God is or however big you think they are.

(02:10:28):

We are all just a couple days away from getting back on the roof or being a bartender or finding the second job. It's just really by the time everything kind of trickles down and then is divided by five, there's just not a lot there. So I got to eat, I got to pay the rent. I want to feed my kid, make sure she's got her school supplies and shit like that. So it's far from Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. I have to keep busy really out of necessity.

Speaker 2 (02:11:00):

Yeah, I mean, sure, but a lot of musicians at similar levels or a little higher or lower, whatever, A lot of musicians also have families and lives, but don't do all that stuff. They just rely on their bands, which I think is really stupid. But I've learned, I can think that it's stupid, but I think that some people are just wired to be entrepreneurial and some people aren't, and you can't make someone be that way. So I just think that some people just have that in them

Speaker 3 (02:11:38):

And

Speaker 2 (02:11:38):

Some don't.

Speaker 3 (02:11:39):

We may have talked about this a little bit earlier, but even talking to my mom or dad about the same kind of thing, I've always told him that my brother Willie is incredibly talented. In fact, he has all the talent, but he didn't really get any of the motivation, and I got all the motivation and very little talent. So I was motivated to not only figure out how to play the drums and do it really well, but that obviously carries over and spills over into every other aspect of my life where, I dunno, man, I think you're right. I guess I'm wired that way. I just can't sit around and play games or whatever. I'm very interested in finding a way to navigate this creative endeavor and keep us all afloat.

Speaker 2 (02:12:30):

One thing I know that it's like this for me, and I've talked to a lot of people who are also wired this way, but I mean honestly, I have big visions for the future, always have and have always followed whether or not people told me they were unrealistic. If I logically could see them working out, if I could reconcile it with my own doubts. But at the end of the day, one of the biggest motivators for me is abject fear

Speaker 5 (02:13:02):

That

Speaker 2 (02:13:03):

This could all fall apart and I'd have to get a job or bad shit would happen, life would fall apart. It's just this never ending fear of just things going away. Right.

Speaker 3 (02:13:17):

Yeah, I absolutely have that too. I mean, there's no 401k in this. There's no monthly salary. It is really based on whatever work you put in, hopefully you're able to take something out. But like you said, if something goes wrong, somebody breaks their wrist, falls off a bike, whatever, it could all be over very, very quickly,

Speaker 2 (02:13:37):

Hires a hitman to kill other wife. You never know.

Speaker 3 (02:13:40):

Sorry.

Speaker 4 (02:13:43):

So I'd like to just interject for anyone listening that's thinking about being more entrepreneurial, right? In Chris's story about Willie saying he's not motivated, he's motivated. He has times where he is more or less motivated. But I think I see so many guys and they're getting into so many things. I just wanted to say from experience and life experience, one big key thing that was left out here was one's ability to handle multiple moving parts. So some people are motivated and some people are like me, are extremely motivated, but then there has to be the CEO mind factor, which is the ability to handle multiple moving parts. And that doesn't mean that you're stupid or not because you have to be very OCD and very super focused. If say you wanted to be a brain surgeon or a rocket scientist, you couldn't even pass the courses or get there. But some people, those same people could not be CEO of a company and deal with multiple moving parts and see more things from the outside or be able to surrender faster or blah, blah, blah. And that is another type of smart person. So in addition to motivated it's one's ability to be able to juggle like that, they're brain wired to be able to handle those multiple moving parts.

Speaker 2 (02:15:31):

I've heard it referred to as T-shaped, I'm going to probably say this wrong, but either T-shaped people or eye shaped people, whereas an eye would be, like you said, the brain surgeon or the guitar virtuoso or something.

(02:15:47):

Someone who all they can focus on is that one thing, the thing that they live for that they put all their energy into. And if that one thing fails, they're kind of fucked, but they're better at that one thing than anybody else. And then you get the T-shaped person, which is more like what I am, where pretty good at one main area, which is music. I'm pretty good guitar player, but never even close to as good as the really great ones. I was pretty good at mixing and engineering and all that, but never as good as the really great ones. But I can envision multiple things happening at the same time in the big picture and know how to get things going and all that. That's what you mean by the CEO of mine, I'm pretty sure is that is what they would call the T-shaped person.

Speaker 4 (02:16:37):

There's

Speaker 2 (02:16:37):

The one main thing, but then there's several other things that they can do as well. Maybe they're not the best in the world at them,

Speaker 5 (02:16:44):

But they know

Speaker 2 (02:16:45):

How to put them all together in a way that works for moving things forward.

Speaker 4 (02:16:50):

And then you've got Chris Adler who is the best at one thing. And so what's up with that, Chris, you a fucking martian freaks in nature. Well,

Speaker 3 (02:17:01):

I don't

Speaker 4 (02:17:01):

Get a lot of sleeps, so Yeah, and you're motivated,

Speaker 3 (02:17:05):

And I didn't mean to, and you're so motivated. It's scary. I didn't mean to insult Willie. Obviously he's motivated to be incredible guitar player. It's just in comparison

Speaker 4 (02:17:20):

And maybe he just doesn't want us as many moving parts.

Speaker 3 (02:17:24):

And a lot mean it's a struggle. I mean, none of it's easy. So if you are that eye shaped person and things are going well, why create the frustration of trying to do something else?

Speaker 2 (02:17:35):

And it's hard to, if you want to be, say you want to be a guitar virtuoso, there really isn't brainpower for anything else. I mean, you got to go all in. You can't really do anything else,

Speaker 5 (02:17:48):

Right?

Speaker 2 (02:17:50):

I mean, it's the same reason for why the guitar virtuosos are not like the best writers, for instance. It's not that they're not talented enough, just they chose to take those hours of the day that they have for creativity and put it into guitar playing that they can't really focus on business too much or else they're not going to get their practice in. And if they don't get their practice in, they're not going to be the best.

Speaker 3 (02:18:14):

And that's something that people ask at my clinics and something I started talking about where I get asked a lot, who do you think is the best drummer in the world? And I always say, I don't know his or her name, but I'm pretty sure they're in their mom or dad's basement practicing 24 hours a day and no one's ever going to know who they are. So there has to be a point where you kind of open things up a little bit and maybe that is a bit of a detriment to being the world-class player. But again, what's the point if you can't get out there

Speaker 2 (02:18:49):

Kind of no point in my opinion, at least for me personally,

Speaker 3 (02:18:53):

I mean believe there's some self-satisfaction, but it's not going to get you very far.

Speaker 2 (02:18:59):

Correct me if I'm wrong, I think that I saw you say somewhere that for you, drumming isn't so much about drumming, it's more about get means to an end and being able to perform the stuff that you're working on rather than the person who just is all about drums all day long, 24 7, doesn't matter what, just drums, drums, drums, drums. Obviously you worked your ass off on drums, but it was more like, I'm playing these songs on this tour, get awesome at these. Is that accurate? Did I read that correctly or am I inventing that?

Speaker 3 (02:19:35):

I'm not sure if I've said that, but I've never really, I think we talked about this earlier as well. Drums really aren't my thing. I don't have a favorite drummer, well, I guess Stuart Copeland would be, but I really play drums the way that I wish I was able to play guitar. It's not necessarily my passion. I mean, there is a lot of pride in what I do and I want to be as good as I can, but it's almost out of necessity because that's what this band needs. And prior to this band, I was playing guitar and bass, so starting playing drums in this, it was, well, we need a drummer. And then me not wanting to be embarrassed as a shitty drummer, so busting ass to put that together, but also keeping my day job, which at the time was a IT job and blowing up the band online as much as I can on all the IRC boards back in the day and starting to talk to labels, management companies, that kind of thing. So

Speaker 4 (02:20:32):

Yeah, Chris Adler's really entrepreneurial. Matter of fact, he got the deal in Epic and that's when we met in the hotel and then literally kept his IT job literally right until I think I very first came for Pre-Pro for the very first record. That was the day or the week he quit his whole other job, full-time job while he was inventing with modern day social media techniques and booking techniques and all this entrepreneurial stuff on how to actually break this span. Chris deserves so much of the reason and responsibility for this thing starting from all I've learned from all these guys. Thanks, man.

Speaker 2 (02:21:21):

Well, that's exactly what I mean. Then that type of person is not going to spend 14 hours a day on an instrument. They're going to spend enough time until they can do what needs to be done so that, so that you don't embarrass yourself and so that you can take pride in it, but not to the point where it's getting in the way of all these other things that you also have to do in order to fulfill the big picture because someone like you sees the big picture in a way that other people don't. Yeah,

Speaker 3 (02:21:51):

I mean, if I have an hour of free time, I'm not going to sit around doing flas. I want to make sure I know how to play the song, and then let's see how we market this in other ways and kind of keep up with what's going on.

Speaker 2 (02:22:05):

Yeah. The thing that the T-shaped people have that the eye shape people don't is that vision and the understanding for how to work all those different elements. So without them, nothing moves forward, and so they both need each other, I think. But this whole Jack of all trades thing is total bullshit in my opinion, because you need someone who has their hands in all pies, who understands where it's all going, where it could be, what it will be, all those things. Otherwise nothing happens. Right?

Speaker 3 (02:22:39):

Yeah. I mean, I definitely have a vision of a larger band more so than I have a vision of BPMs on my feet.

Speaker 2 (02:22:50):

Makes sense. Makes total sense. That's what I was curious about. Well, looks like we're out of time. I know that we could probably keep talking for another few hours, but I want to be respectful of time considerations, and this has been a long podcast. I want to thank you both for coming on, being so open and just taking the time. It's very awesome of both of you. Thank you.

Speaker 4 (02:23:15):

I'm glad to be asked. It was fun. And you're very welcome, sir. Anytime.

Speaker 1 (02:23:20):

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