(CordMag speaks in blue. Artist responses in grey.)

I've seen a ton of songs in soundtracks for games and movies. How much control do you guys as a band have over the use of the songs?

BURTON C. BELL (VOCALS): Oh yeah, that's all us. We have say in that... The ones we are most interested in is the video games. We actually pursue those. Our drummer Raymond Herrera is the video game guru. That's his vice. He knows people who design games. He just had the X-Box designers down at our show last night.

Your albums tend to be thematic. Does that come from any particular place?

BCB: It just kind of happened. I think the catalyst was the Demanufacture album... We were all broke, we were all fighting the system... That moment in time, Dante's Divine Comedy was my favorite book. After everything was recorded, mixed and mastered, somebody at the label asked if I could write some explanations of the songs. I decided I'd do something better; I'm going to write scenarios for each song. Our hero does this... I put it into third person and created a story...

One question that I haven't seen asked anywhere, is do you have a postion on MP3s, filesharing, videotaping concerts, etc...

BCB: I'm on the fence with that one. I do download. Due to my modem and my dial-up, I don't download much. I'll download a song, but I will go buy the album... On the other hand I am an artist. This is my work, and like any artist, we're trying to survive. Industry needs to evolve, people need to evolve. This is a technology that's ever growing, and it's not going away. I don't blame people for downloading.

I've been looking at how bands and fans can interact, like with how Einsturzende Neubauten is working with http://www.neubauten.org and the fans subscribe. Paying money direct to the band...

BCB: That is something I've been thinking of doing for my other project. It cuts out the record company. It's like funding an artist, and they become part of this special array of people. It's very tight, it's very unique, and almost intimate. Special artwork, a special seven inch, etc. You are funding this artist to enable him to record this. Patronage. That's genius. That's how it's going to happen. It's what's going to get rid of the music industry.

Once people realize that "Wow! they're handling their own work, and they're getting paid directly, and people are supporting it, and they're getting great music recorded well and they're getting more!"

Ascension of the Watchers is my project, which I'm going to use that idea we just spoke on... Have you ever had an audience go really bad on you?

BCB: Yeah - it was on an Ozzy tour, on his Retirement Sucks tour. we opened up for him in 1995 for 3 months. The European audience was really mean to us. spitting on us, and throwing things at us. There was no encore.

Elsewhere

By Richard Murray
Photos : fearfactory.com
Published : June 4, 2004.