Nuclear Assault Interview

Undoubtedly, one of the most influential thrash metal acts that emerged in the late 1980's was the group Nuclear Assault, a band known for breakneck beats that were the perfect backdrop to the socially aware and often witty high pitched screaming of vocalist John Connelly. Much of the reason for this monstrous group's success could be attributed to the fact that while they were certainly heavy, they had a sound that was wholly their own. Nuclear Assault have been plugging away and is still putting out high quality thrash to this very day. The group will make an appearance at the Louder Harder Faster festival in Allentown PA that will see the band performing with its original lineup of Anthony Bramante, Glenn Evans, Dan Lilker and John Connelly. Erin Fox speaks with Glenn Evans about the band's long awaited album and their upcoming reunion appearance.


The Gauntlet: It's great to see that Nuclear Assault is getting back into the swing of things! What is the band currently up to as we speak?

Glenn Evans: We're finishing up the new album. It's being mastered now, as we speak. It was recorded a few years ago and it's taken a long, long time to get this thing done, because everybody is spread out. I live in Florida, everybody else lives in New York, so it's kind of hard to get things done. But, we have been touring, we did a few European tours. We did the No Mercy fest with Testament, and we did another tour with Exodus and Agent Steel. We've done Brazil a couple of times, played a bunch of shows down there. We did a US tour and we did a live album to see if we still had fans out there and if there was still a market and it seems that there was, so we just started touring. We went in to record the album, it's called "Third World Genocide" and it will be out in June hopefully. We have a European tour planned in June, I think seventeen shows over in Europe and that's about it.


The Gauntlet: I just talked with Tim and he said that everything was all taken care of and it would be ready tomorrow.

Glenn Evans: I've heard that before.


The Gauntlet: I had a feeling that's what you might say.

Glenn Evans: Actually, Tim did a great job of engineering and recording this album and we have been emailing each other back and forth with the mixes, co-producing it and we finally got it where we wanted it. Then, he sent it in to get it mastered and there was a new guy mastering it and he did a shitty job, so we had to go back and tweak it and actually, the master came out better. We hired a guy out of New York City because he had a good track record. He's done Slayer and a bunch of other bands, he just did the OverKill album, I'm not going to mention any names, then we got the master back and it was horrible and we were like "What's up with this?" He mastered it again and it just didn't sound good enough.


The Gauntlet: What was it about the mastering that you did not like?

Glenn Evans: Actually, the first mastering was way too hot. It was clipping everywhere, bottom end, high end. You couldn't crank it up without blowing out your speakers. The second one was tweaked down a bit, it was warm and it was good, but it was still clipping a little bit. All of the tones and frequencies were there. As far as this other place in New York, they just flat out didn't do anything. It sounded like they just EQed it a little bit and threw some limiter and compression on it and that was about it. It's not the sound I'm looking for, I know that. A mastering is supposed to enhance the recording; it's not supposed to take away from it. So, we have been going back and forth with this mastering thing and it's been mastered four times already and they're close, but not close enough.


The Gauntlet: What is it that you were looking to get out of this record sound-wise? Were you going for a different sound than you have gone with on previous studio albums?

Glenn Evans: No, we don't want it to sound like every other record that's on the radio these days that's all compressed and maxed out. It doesn't have to be the loudest album on the planet, but it's Nuclear Assault, so it's got to sound like Nuclear Assault and not like whomever.


The Gauntlet: Well, Nuclear Assault has always been a band with a distinct sound. Of all of the thrash bands of the late 80's, you guys were a band that had a truly original sound that was unlike any other band on the scene.

Glenn Evans Yeah, it's definitely different. Let's put it this way, I just got the new Over Kill record sent to me by the guitar player, he lives down here in Florida, and the mastering on that, the same guy in New York did it and it just sounds the same. I don't like it; it's just not my preference. This album has been ten years in the making, John wrote most of the material, Danny wrote a few songs, I wrote a few songs but it's Nuclear Assault and it sounds like Nuclear Assault because that's what people are expecting. People are expecting another "Survive" or another "Handle With Care." I mean, we're really nitpicking this shit to death at this point and we shouldn't be, but because it's our first album in ten years, it has to be perfect.


The Gauntlet: It's really great that you want to live up to fan's expectations and you obviously have some very large expectations as well. It really shows that you care.

Glenn Evans: Yeah, we want this to be a record that people will people will play over and over again; we don't want them to play it once and throw it aside. I personally think that this is our best record and for the first time, we have songs that may hit the radio waves as well. John is a very witty person as far as writing and lyrics. He's got the best lyrics I've ever read. If you listen to everybody else's lyrics it's like "Kill this and kill that, blah, blah, blah. It's all crap to me, there's no literature there. When John writes lyrics, he amazes me, he really does. His lyrics fit the aggression of the music extremely well. Everything just falls into place with this band. We don't even see each other and when we got into the studio, it just falls right into place. Just like any other band that reunites. It's there, the magic's there.


The Gauntlet: Is john continuing on with the same lyrical themes as he has in the past? Is he still taking on things like religion, speaking about politics and those sorts of subjects?

Glenn Evans: He's got a lot to talk about. The record is called "Third World Genocide" so that should give you an idea.


The Gauntlet: What can you tell us about the new tracks on the record?

Glenn Evans: I can tell you about a lot of them. "Price Of Freedom", we actually did that on the last couple of tours and there's one called "Eroded Liberty", the title track, there's even one called "Long Haired Asshole."


The Gauntlet: You have always had tracks with a bit of humor to them, for example "Buttfuck" from "The Plague." (Editor's note: The title of this track was changed to "You Figure It Out" at the request of the group's record company at the time) It was always really great that Nuclear Assault maintained a message and had something relevant to say and at the same time, maintained a sense of humor.


Glenn Evans: That's the whole point, you don't want to get too serious, but you want to get your point across. I actually have everything right here. Here's a sample from "Human Wreckage", "Across the globe hatred stirs the beast within, another war for holy causes seems a sin. Letting loose hate, your book says to a whore, I don't think that your God approves of your holy war", it's just like John's lyrics are really incredible. He's got another joke song called "Whine and Cheese." "Defiled Innocence" is about all of these priests molesting children in the churches. "Exoskeletal", "Discharged Reason", "Fractured Minds" and then there's a hockey song. Then, there's "Long Haired Asshole", that's my favorite. Actually, we're shooting a video for that. I have this cabin in upstate New York, After the Louder Harder Faster festival; I'm going right from there to my cabin. Basically, we're all going to show up there during the week and we're going to shoot the video at the cabin. That week, I'm going to the cabin just to hang out, to go hunting and camping and then everybody is going to show up Wednesday or Thursday and we're going to shoot the video Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Then I head back to Florida on Monday. It's a pretty funny song. It's one of john's classics, making fun of himself. For instance, it says "People with short hair and business suits, they run all organized crime. They dress real neat and smell real sweet, but I'm a long haired asshole." It's not a serious video, these days if you put out something like that -we could do a video for "Price Of Freedom" or "Third World Genocide", which we are going to do, but, something like "Long Haired Asshole", it's so against the grain, maybe we could see some action out of it and get this band a wider, broader audience. Hopefully it will make people say "Who the hell are these guys?"

(There are tons of police sirens)


The Gauntlet: Wow, it sounds like an emergency outside!

Glenn Evans: Yeah, it sounds like it! Like I said, we didn't just want to put out another thrash record. It's definitely thrash, but we do have a couple of joke songs on there. "Whine and Cheese" is about punk mall rock and kids that don't have anything to do except hang out and complain about how their life sucks. It's basically like "Quit complaining, do something with your life"


The Gauntlet: Are you going to be focusing on the new material at Louder Harder Faster or will you be mixing in the older, classic songs?

Glenn Evans: Anthony Bramante, the original lead guitarist will be doing the Allentown show with us. The original lineup included Danny, I, John and Anthony, and Anthony did a bunch of shows with us, but he didn't do the European tour and he didn't do Brazil with us. This other guy, Eric Burke did. Eric Burke has basically been a part of the band for the past few years. Anthony, he couldn't do it. He did a bunch of shows and said he couldn't do it. He said, "I've got a family and a full time job." But he's doing the Allentown show with us and Carl Cochran is doing the European tour. Eric, he just did the Brazilian tour with us. So now, we're going through lead guitarists kind of like Red Hot Chili Peppers, a new lead guitarist for every tour. But, it's nice to get Anthony back for these one off shows here and there. Eric did a great job and Carl's a great guitarist, so we're not using slackers, they're definitely great guitar players.


The Gauntlet: How do you go about choosing which old songs to play, there are so many great choices that the fans would love to hear you play.

Glenn Evans: It's hard. There are so many albums so you really have to choose. So this time, basically what we are doing is taking a couple songs off of each record. These are the most popular songs, the video songs like "Brainwashed", "Critical Mass", "Trail Of Tears", we're doing a few off of each record. Obviously, "Hang The Pope", we do "Sin", "Game Over" and "Buttfuck" off of "The Plague." We're trying to do things that are in our range now. Obviously, we can't play some of the stuff that we could do when we were twenty years old. Now, we're playing bigger places than we have in our whole career, and when you play that fast and extreme in these bigger places, it gets to sound like mush. So, that's why we geared this album, for example, the song "Third World Genocide" is made for an arena or a big room, we've been doing outdoor festivals as well. We're going to do a few songs off of each record; we're going to do a few songs off of each album. A few songs off of "Survive", some off of "Handle With Care", some songs off of "The Plague", some songs from "Game Over". "Something Wicked", we might be doing a few songs off of that one.


The Gauntlet: Now, "Something Wicked" is probably your most obscure album. Those will seem like new songs to many people.

Glenn Evans: Yeah, that was a line-up change and that just kind of threw everything way off base. "Out Of Order" was supposed to be called "Sign In Blood", and the record company rejected it, it was supposed to be a picture of us signing a contract in blood, which is basically what the music business is all about, so they came up with the concept "Out Of Order" and just kind of made mish-mosh out of it. Basically, that was recorded at a time when the band was splitting up so it was like; nobody was in the studio, that kind of thing. Nobody cared about it, but there are a few songs on there that I would like to go and remix and re-release it someday, the way it's supposed to be. There are some heavy songs on there. We did the drum tracks at The Hit Factory in New York City, one of the best drum rooms in the world. The drum sound we got was incredible. It just doesn't come through on the album. The mix was done in three hours because of the timeframe we had to record the album. We recorded it in two months and they wanted it by the deadline, May 1st. April 30th at three o' clock in the morning, we had to have it done and delivered by the next day, so it was a rush on the mix, and it was crap. This album, "Third World Genocide", this has been put together really nice. It's a good package, it's a good sound, it's a good quality album, I think that people are going to like it!


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Tags:  Nuclear Assault  , Glenn Evans, interviews

EF    May 05, 2005