Throwdown Interview

The Gauntlet: Throwdown has been doing quite a bit of touring, how has the road been to you guys lately?

Dave: The road has treated us, our van and our trailer like absolute dogshit. The people that come to our shows on the other hand have been golden. Our fans are truly amazing.

The Gauntlet: This summer Throwdown hits Warped Tour, is this something you guys are excited to be part of?

Dave: Yeah, absolutely. Ya know, we did just a few dates of Warped Tour some years back and had an amazing time and turned a lot of heads at those dates. We were by far the heaviest band on the bill, so a lot of people would stop and watch much like they do when a car is on fire on the side of the highway. We had a lot of people come to us or write us after those shows and say how we were their first introduction to hardcore or metal. I like that a lot. I'm looking forward to the same this summer as well, hopefully.

The Gauntlet: Are you a fan of any of the band's you will be touring with on Warped Tour?

Dave: Helmet and (I believe) Bad Religion are both playing which are two bands I love but have never seen. Our bass player, Matt, will probably dress up in different costumes to accumulate as many autographs from Page Hamilton and company as possible without having them call security on him. He's a super fan. There's a band called ASG that is playing on the other leg of the tour we're not on, which I'm really disappointed about not getting to see. They're this amazing three-piece with a great Southern rock vibe and pretty much one of my favorite bands right now. Yknow when you hear a band on CD and you just know they kill it live? They're one of those bands.

The Gauntlet: When did you guys start jumping on more metal oriented tours?

Well, aside from Hatebreed (who undeniably has tons of metal crossover and fans), hardcore bands have never really asked us out on their tours. Not trying to give anyone a sob story, but we headlined our own tours for a little over 5 years before Hatebreed took us out in 2003. We were and still are so grateful to them for being the first to give a shit about us! A lot of metal bands and people in the 'metal world' took a liking to us since then, though, and we've gone out with bands all over that spectrum, from Lamb of God to Norma Jean to As I Lay Dying to Soulfly just to name a few. Some of the more purist hardcore kids whine about us touring with bands from other genres, but the truth is, if we didn't, we couldn't conceivably stay on the road as much as we'd like to and play for them. You can't go and do the same headlining tour four months in a row. That's just ridiculous, and no matter what anyone says, they're not going to come out two times in a row let alone several to see the same tour package. We will always be who we are and we will always keep things interesting, you can count on both those things equally.

The Gauntlet: How are crowd reactions to a more hardcore oriented act such as your selves?

Dave: We define ourselves on a number of different things but heavily on our live show and the interaction with the crowd that pays to see it. I really feel that we've earned every fan we have because we always deliver a show and always make the crowd a part of that show. We don't sell ourselves with an image or contrived persona. I think it's a shame that a lot of young musicians starting bands feel compelled to do that, but I can't fault them for that because of the example that a lot of our peers set. They'll literally spend more time deciding which dude in the band is going to wear a clever hat and who should and shouldn't be wearing make-up rather than writing songs from their heart. We're just dudes. We love our music and love playing it for people, and it shows when we're on stage. I think that most people can naturally appreciate when a band is genuinely passionate about what they're doing and saying, even if it isn't their particular cup of tea. Those are the type of people we want to play and appeal to, regardless of what they dress like or typically listen to.

The Gauntlet: Do you think a lot of fans that enjoy types of heavier music are crossing over to find themselves liking hardcore bands as well as metal, death metal and the likes?

Dave: I absolutely do. And again, I think that for a band like us, we have those more diverse tours to thank for that as well. We were on the same Lamb of God tour with Children of Bodom, for example, a band metal band from Finland that at first glance has nothing in common with us on almost any level. We really got into their music and them ours and found that we had some common elements, be it the heaviness or whatever, that made mutual fans out of a surprising amount of people all over. On our last tour with The Black Dahlia Murder, we had a lot of people that were excited to see every band on the bill and not there for just one band or the other. I think that's great. I hope that continues to be the case in the States in general and people don't feel like they have to be bound by some unspoken code to only like a single sub-genre. The 'heavy music' genre is way too small and underrated in the grand scope of things to be concerned with the differences across each subdivision. People should be taking pride in the common ground rather than trying to segregate them selves and the bands they like.

The Gauntlet: The songs off "Vendetta" are definitely more on the metal side, or rather you guys sound like your pushing the music in a heavier direction song wise, is this due to influence or a natural progression that Throwdown is going towards?

Dave: Yknow it's funny, I think people see that more than we do. The metal influence that is. A lot of the elements that make people typically say Vendetta is 'more metal' were there on the previous record. Just no one noticed I guess! It's like I realized I had a bit of a range and people think we're turncoats or something! Hahaha. No really, I realize some of our metal influences came out on the record quite strongly, but it was definitely a natural evolution for us. We've been fans of metal since we first started buying TAPES, so we couldn't reject how it has influenced us since before we picked up instruments, even if we wanted to. A ton of the great hardcore bands we've always been influenced by like Earth Crisis, Chokehold, Hatebreed, Merauder and others were heavily influenced by the great metal bands as well, such as Sabbath, Metallica, Sepultura and Pantera to name a few. At the end of the day, we've just come to embrace the influence of every style of music we appreciate from hardcore to metal to rock to even country blues like Johnny Cash or more 'eccentric' bands like Radiohead or Tool. A band needs to grow and progress or else it just dies from the inside out. Few bands can get away with putting out the same album over and over again, and only a small percentage of those bands even truly get away with it in my book.

The Gauntlet: Is there any new material in the works?

Dave: Yeah we've tossed the idea around of recording a new album in late 2006 to be released in the first half of '07. We've only got two or three songs worth of stuff put together right now, but we're just trying to stay ahead of the game.

The Gauntlet: How is the new stuff coming along?

Dave: Awesome. We can't wait to really get into the thick of the writing process to see how a lot of the ideas come out. It's almost like we're anticipating the next record like we anticipate a band's that we're fans of, yknow? We have an idea of what to expect but are eager to hear it for the first time.

The Gauntlet: Can fans expect another "Vendetta" or is there something much more going on with the new stuff?

Dave: It will be a natural progression from Vendetta, but we don't plan to tread on familiar ground again simply because it's comfortable. We enjoy trying to outdo ourselves, challenge ourselves as individual musicians and as a band and also just try things we were afraid to attempt before. There will be some new ground for us that we are quite confident our fans will appreciate as much as the elements that turned them onto us in the beginning.

The Gauntlet: Who will be taking over the production for the next one?

Dave: That's still undecided.

The Gauntlet: Do you guys have a month set aside for recording?

Dave: Not yet, but we are planning to hit the studio in the winter sometime.

The Gauntlet: What other touring plans are going on for the summer besides Warped tour?

Dave: We'll be doing a few of the Strhess Tour dates on the West Coast with Shadows Fall and Poison The Well. The details haven't been worked out yet, but we are likely doing a tour with three great bands sometime in August.

The Gauntlet: Thanks for your time, is there anything else you would like to add?

Dave: Yes, my roommate just found the new Tool record and gave it to me and I can barely type because it is that amazing. Thanks for the interview man!