Welcome to the bane of one reviewer's "professional" existence. To hopefully-real-quick clarify why this single interview is coming out so late...October 2008, during my student exchange year in America, I was honored to interview one of my favourite musicians of all time, Iced Earth's Jon Schaffer, when they played The Palladium in Worcester, MA. Great show, interview went really smoothly, awesome. As a combination of study-rushing, probably-once-in-a-lifetime-chance to travel around the US and procrastination delayed the uploading of this interview to june 2009, my activity was crippled by worrying that the piece wasn't current enough at the time. As much of the interview dealt with the Crucible Of Man-album, I decided to wait until the mentioned Something Wicked-box set would come out, since the album would be a part of it. Surely a dumb decision in hindsight (which is always 20/20), but you live and learn. Now that The Box was finally released by Century Media last month, and we're still feverishly waiting for the talked-about-below Festivals of the Wicked-DVD (and as Schaffer's new Sons Of Liberty-project is officially releasing their debut album next month), the time has come for Metalreviews.com to present my chitchat with Jon Schaffer that took place in their tour bus on that brisk October evening (He also signed my kazoo after the formalities, yay!).
Right off the bat Mr. Schaffer, now with The Crucible Of Man and thus the entire entity that is the Something Wicked-saga released and out there for the public, in retrospect – How do you feel about this…monster of a body of work?
JS: I think we accomplished what we set out to do from a storytelling standpoint, a writing standpoint and a production standpoint. I mean there were some things we learned about part 1 after the fact that we were able to tweak and adjust on part 2, which were something like the bottom end-issues. We were being a bit too conservative on part 1, wanting to make sure that people’s speakers could handle it at a cranked volume, EQ’d out a bit too much low end and made it a little less punchier and heavier than it could’ve been so we were able to fix that on part 2. Because all the tracks – or the rhythm guitars, bass, drums, lead guitar melodies, acoustics – were recorded in the exact same time frame, for Framing Armageddon and Crucible Of Man, but from a mixing standpoint we did figure some things out for part 2. But I’m happy, really happy with it.
Before going into details about The Crucible Of Man, I’d like to pose a general question that has in my experience caused mixed reactions between different musicians – As an artist, do you feel at ease with explaining the backgrounds and meanings behind your songs or would you rather just release the music and let everyone make their own interpretations?
JS: Well, I don’t have a problem with either one. If somebody’s interested about where a song came from and what it’s about I’m happy to talk about it but if someone gets a completely different meaning out of one of my songs, I’m cool with that too. As long as they get something gratifying out of it in the end, it doesn’t matter if it’s what I intended or not.
Glad to clear that up and with that said, the new record, Crucible Of Man – Throughout the entire album there is a very clear theme of seething misanthropy, of course logical when thinking about the story itself, especially the central character of Set Abominae. But at the very end with Come What May, there appears an equally clear ray of hope, a positive vibe among the mayhem. How does this mood change come to pass?
JS: Well, the difference is that most of the album is from Set’s perspective and Come What May is not. It’s just from the outside looking in. It could be from anyone, it could be from God, you know. The point is that it’s shedding a little bit of light that there is hope if mankind would ever get its shit together. Then there could be a chance that Set would not succeed in wiping us all out off the face of the Earth. You know, the point was to put something in there that offers just a little ray of hope to mankind.
And it’s all about different perspectives, first and foremost. I mean, Set would obviously never, like in Crucify The King he is actually speaking to Jesus Christ as he has crucified him. He’s the guy who is launching the spear of destiny into his side. I mean, he has shapeshifted into a Roman soldier who is there and he is the one responsible for the growth of Christianity. The Setians knew that they had to come up with one more religion that would sweep worldwide and become a very divisive thing. It was all part of the plan and that’s what Jesus’ role in it was. In the end, even though he was a special man with the gift of the second sight in the story, he was still a pawn to Set.
Excellent. So to briefly clarify, Set is not going soft and lamenting the horror of his ways in the end or anything like that?
JS: No.
Good, this fully restores my faith in the complete story, brilliant.
JS: *laughs* So are you not a big fan of humanity, I take it?
Well, no, no I wouldn’t say that I…wish horrible death upon everyone but just in the context of this big story, this reassurance makes me like it a whole lot more.
JS: *laughs* Yeah, cool.
Thinking about the Something Wicked-saga in its entirety, would you say that it is mostly pure fantasy or are there definite allegorical, symbolic elements even in the big picture?
JS: It’s definitely both. There are things that are taken from our human history, there are…you know, in its truest form, it is absolutely fantasy, science fiction, things that I came up with. But what it does, what’s cool about the story is that you can take any period of human history and apply it into the Something Wicked-universe and write cool storylines. It’s neverending storytelling, that’s what’s great about it. It’s a cottage industry onto its own. In terms of storytelling, the Something Wicked-universe is every bit as big as the Star Trek- or Star Wars-universes. It’s far darker and you know, not for kiddies, but in terms of a story, we could take anything like the fall of the Roman empire and apply it into the Something Wicked-saga by twisting it, which is the cool part.
Indeed. Because the cookiest connection that came to my mind after repeated listenings was that Set is a clear representative of mother nature, coming to crush us all due to the ways we’ve been abusing her throughout human history.
JS: Well, actually in a sense, he is, because the grand architect of the universe, in the story, the Setians are the direct descendants of the grand architect, of god, which is why they have all the knowledge and ability to manipulate the folds of time and space, of the time continuum. They don’t need to go out and flex their muscles throughout the universe. They are content, because they are an all-knowing species, at least the high council of elders is but all of them are very enlightened. Then when mankind comes after this power and knowledge that they have, the Setians realize that this is a part of the architect’s design and they have to submit to the prophecy. They know that a part of them is going to get wiped out, they have to deal with that but they know.
So in a sense, Set is a weapon of the grand architect so later on, you know, I’ve said this in a lot of interviews, this is just a look into this story. It’s so big and it covers so much time that to do it even in two records is really difficult. I’m just slicing little pieces from this giant timeline to give people some looks into it. When it’s all exposed, I mean, even with graphic novels, we’re going to have a hard time covering everything, but once we do actual novels, then the details will come out. And it’s all planned, it’s just a matter of time.
Can you pinpoint specific musical moments from the new album that would really stick out to you as favourites of sorts or something you’d be especially proud of? For example, I seriously dig the choirs in In Sacred Flames, which are like the eerie thumps that you hear and feel before a Tyrannosaurus Rex of a riff comes and attacks. Any feelings like that?
JS: Yeah, I mean, In Sacred Flames is one of my favourite pieces of music I’ve ever written. That’s one of the things I’ve been trying to write for my entire career and especially being able to use a real human choir, not having to use keyboards. The ultimate thing would’ve been to use a real orchestra and a real human choir but we couldn’t afford both so we went with real singers and then samples for the orchestrations, which nowadays sound pretty good anyways. Still, it would’ve been nice, but that’s definitely one of those parts. There’s a couple of moments in Come What May that are really powerful, but there are several. But I definitely agree that In Sacred Flames is one of those moments, it’s gets heavy and becomes just spooky stuff.
How has the road been treating you guys thus far on the current North American-trek? Hopefully your back’s been alright since the latest surgery.
JS: It’s been good, man. Tearing up Worcester today, really excited about tomorrow in New York. It’s always been one of my favourite places to play, it’s the Nokia Theater, one of the biggest places in the States for us to play. And the back’s been good, I’ve been taking care of myself and watching what I do. I mean, I can’t do the kind of stuff on stage that I used to do. I’ve got titanium plates in my neck holding my spine together and I’ve had some lower back issues as well. So the days of me thrashing like an animal are over but that doesn’t matter.
Well, that’s literally metal.
JS: Yeah, exactly, a metal neck. *laughs*
Have you been doing any recording/filming during this tour for possible future releases?
JS: We actually did during the summer, filmed several festivals. We filmed quite extensively at Rock Hard and Metal Camp. A DVD is in the works for the Summer of Slaughter-tour thing. It’s not going to be the typical, I mean, it’s not going to be the epitomy of an Iced Earth-DVD. It’s going to be far better than Alive In Athens but it’s going to be us in a festival situation, which is always different than us doing a headlining show. I mean, even if we are the headliners of a festival-show, it’s not the same show with the same production and all. But it will be cut well, look and sound good. That’s probably the next thing that we’ll be focusing on after the touring, getting that mixed and ready to roll. The label was originally talking about getting that out in the spring next year, so we’re working on that. And we have been filming on our own during this tour, but it hasn’t really been with professional cameras or such or for releases, just for us to study.
One of my favourite things about Iced Earth is your rapid-chugging riffing-style which can get really challenging and technical at least to an amateur guitarist’s ears like mine. Was there a specific way in which you developed this playing style?
JS: It’s something that just, it’s just my style, I didn’t even really work at it that hard, it just happened. That’s the way I fell. I didn’t learn how to play other people’s music. A lot of guys spend time learning how to play like the guitarists they listen to but for me, my hero was a bass player, Steve Harris, so to me it didn’t really matter. I just played the guitar and a buddy of mine showed me a power chord and I started to making up parts. I took this whole road very differently than a lot of other people do and I actually recommend that to guys who are starting out, because you really shouldn’t be too concerned with what I’m doing or what other guitarists are doing. Find what you have to offer, dig down inside because even if you just listen to music, you’re going to be influenced by it. You don’t have to play other people’s songs to be influenced. Just by hearing it, you’re going to absorb it.
One thing that I think might weird me out during tonight’s show is seeing one of my favourite vocalists, Matt Barlow, on stage but without his sexier-than-thou, metal god-mane of red hair. Has it been at all weird to you after spending so much time so close to that mane in the past?
JS: *laughs* You know, it doesn’t really feel any different to me at all. Maybe it’s because I got used to jamming with Tim [Owens], who has short hair but I don’t know, it doesn’t really matter to me actually. You know, sometimes Matt used to get his hair stuck in my headstock, around my tuning pegs. *laughs* That’s not something to miss, but the thing that counts is the chemistry on stage and that’s all, I don’t really care about the hair. You know, my hair’s a lot greyer than it used to be but it’s still long, haven’t lost it yet!
I’ve heard some rumblings about a possible Something Wicked-box set coming out or being in the works, anything that you could yet clarify?
JS: Well, it’s been talked about, but man there’s some stuff going on with SPV now and I don’t know what’s going to happen. They’re in serious financial trouble and I don’t know if they’re going to pull out of it. It’s definitely something that we wanted to do, talked about doing. I even left some tracks off of part 2 because I thought that it would make more sense once we would have Matt re-sing Framing, that the whole thing would flow better and I would add the segways in. I mean, I left like three segways off, three segways and one song off of part 2. Because I thought that “You know, it actually flows better like this” and once we’d get it all done, put it all out there, it would sound better, or flow better, let’s put it that way, by having the same singer on both albums. But now, I’m not sure what’s happening so I’m just being straight up and honest with you. I don’t know if they’re going to be pulling out of it. You know, if they were to go bankrupt, we would get our masters back and be able to go to another label to potentially do it some day but as it stands right now, it’s completely up in the air.
A question that is probably really premature, but after an endeavour as huge as the Something Wicked-saga is, do you have any hunch where Iced Earth could be going next musically?
JS: Yeah man, right now it’s a little early for me to be thinking about that. The thing is, when I get to the mode of writing, I’m going to be in a different mindframe than I’m in now. Right now, I have this feeling that I’d like to do a back-to-basics metal record without all the big epic stuff, but I’ll probably be getting wild hair up my ass in six months that says “Man, you gotta do a song about the Normandy-invasion” or whatever, not that, but who knows. You know, that kind of thing could happen and I’d be really tempted to jump into something and get crazy with it, so I just don’t know at this point.
What’s the latest thing that made you overjoyed?
JS: My daughter. Pretty much anything that she does. Just seeing her, you know, I built a little playground area on my property and just got it finished a couple of days before this leg started so it was a blast seeing her play on that. She’s three and a half years old now so anything, you know, I flew in because I was with my CO-buddies in Virginia Beach for the last couple of days and I flew into Norfolk on Sunday and the bus came later and in my bunk there was a drawing that she did for me so that put a huge smile on my face. Any of that kind of stuff, anything to do with her.
Indeed. I actually should’ve reversed the order of these questions but too late, in turn, what’s the latest thing that made you seriously pissed off?
JS: Ooooh…probably…some of the ways things have been handled on this tour. *laughs* Some tour management issues, stuff like that.
Now, to wrap this all up in an appropriately philosophical package, to you Mr. Schaffer, what is the deepest essence of heavy metal?
JS: Aaaah…you know, the deepest essence, I mean, this music is a way of life where a lot of other musics aren’t. That’s what metal is to me, it’s a commitment and most people that are into it, certainly the guys who have committed their lives to playing it, you know, once you’re in it’s like you’re not leaving. The fanbase is like that too for the most part, you know, even if you grow up, you’re a metal head in high school and you get a job and have a family, they still tend to listen to metal. They might not be actively out searching for new bands and that kind of stuff but a lot of them stick with what they knew. I just see that, that tells me that it’s a way of life and I’m not sure if it’s because, I’ve often actually wondered that myself. Is it because the music is honest and because the people who get attached to it know that and they appreciate that kind of loyalty, I don’t know.
And it’s very theatrical, one thing that’s cool in metal is that you can like, crank up the music, close your eyes and you’re going to feel that you’re going to be involved in a story of some kind. You know, most of the really good metal stuff is painting a picture visually and I think it’s what people dig about it.
Excellent. We have nothing to add to that. Mr. Schaffer, thank you very much for your time and we hope to see you soon in Europe and hear from Iced Earth in release-form as soon as possible.
JS: Thank you very much, we’ll be seeing you all as well.
There are 10 comments on this interview. Last one on Mon Aug 09, 2010 6:33 am
View and Post comments