Friday the 13th - not a bad day in my books. Especially not bad when I interview Gene Hoglan on the eve of recording a new Strapping Young Lad album.
 

What bands have you been in, as a recording/touring/full bandmember, in chronological order, and say a little something about each.

GH  Oh lord. Alright well lemme see. First band I was in probably of note was a band called Dark Angel and we were recording records from 1984 through to like 1992 or something like that. That's as far as I was in the band. Before that I was in a little band called War God that ended up being on a few compilation records but that doesn't really count. War God's guitarist went on to join that band Phantom Blue and her name's Michelle Meldrum. She's a really talented guitarist and she's got a band still. That was really my first ever recorded band. Dark Angel came along after that. We were kind of some of the progenitors of thrash metal, Dark Angel was, and then immediately following Dark Angel's demise was Death and I did two records with them, spent about three years with them. I did an album called Individual Thought Patterns and another one called Symbolic. Lemme see after that was probably Strapping. That's my main, that's my shit now. We did the Strapping album and then after that I did the Testament record and I was with them for about eight months. Then a few sessions that I've done are Old Man's Child and Daemon, and done a lot of Devin Townsend albums and what else. God whacks of others.
 

Tenet

GH  Yeah we've got Tenet coming up. Punchdrunk, Just Cause those are my other main bands here in Vancouver and we both have records out. What else? I did one for a chick named Frygirl and that's just where I was playing bongos on, or congos or whatever and that was pretty cool. I've got an album coming out next year of middle eastern drums that I'm doing for a belly dancing friend of my sister's, who's a really talented belly dancer. She's like belly dancer of the universe and stuff like that. She wins all the big competitions and she writes a lot of her own music I guess. I'm going to be doing a middle eastern drum record for her, and we've got more Strapping coming out and lemme see what else. Yeah I've got 20 to 25 records out I know. I don't know the exact count but I know it's somewhere in between that. So my recording career has been going on since basically ‘86. So ‘86 to 2004, 18 years.
 

When did you start playing drums then, when you were five?

GH  I got my first kit when I was 13. I'm 36 now so I've been playing for about 23 years, but I've always been playing drums, always air drumming. I had the coolest air drum kit ever when I was a kid. I've been drumming all my life. There's pretty much two things I've ever been good at, one is playing drums and the other is playing baseball. So when I was a kid I had a chance to maybe start concentrating on turning pro but you know that was back before the Dennis Rodman days where you could be a freak or have tattoos or have long hair or look like a mutant. You had to be really jock-ish back then and I was anything but. I've always had long hair. I used to dress in my sisters clothes and wear make-up to the games and just look like a total fairy you know, anything to psyche the other team out or whatever. This giant dude who's got his sister's clothes on, and yeah I was really good at baseball but it was too... not conformist, but you had a lot more freedom to be yourself and be creative with rock and roll. So when I hit that crux in the road I just took the left hand path.
 

How many instruments do you play?

GH  Pretty much any percussive instrument and most stringed instruments I play and I'm pretty self taught with both you know. I've never taken a drum lesson and I've never taken a guitar lesson. I've played guitar for 20 years now. I play more guitar than drums these days. I just remember when I was a kid and you've got your buddy who's the guitarist and he's getting ok, he's alright, and you ask him "dude can you play this, can you play like some Arabian stuff or Egyptian sounding stuff" and they're just sitting there noodling and doing their thing and then like 20 minutes later they're like "what was that you wanted me to do?" and I'm just arrgh I'll learn it myself you know. I love flamenco and all the eerie sounding guitar stuff so I just picked up the guitar and that's all I ever play. Play drum for six hours a day, play guitar for four hours a day. I've always been a drummer first but I'm as much a guitarist as anything. I played a lot of rhythm guitars on Dark Angel records, I even played a lead on a Dark Angel record. For one split second I'm doing every single instrument while the lead is going on, playing all the drums, there's no vocals going on so that's alright but I think I'm playing the bass and a rhythm guitar as well as the lead. Pretty stupid but...
 

But you know exactly which section it is.

GH  I haven't heard the song in a million years but yeah I do.
 

Have you done any producing or other music related stuff?

GH  Well I've produced three recordings. One was a full length record for a band called Silent Scream from back in LA and I was a terrible producer. I forgot why they asked me to produce it but their guitarist Chris McCarthy ended up joining Dark Angel for our last year and a half of existence or whatever last year or something like that, but I must've done something because I remember they had a reason why they were asking me to produce their record because it ‘s like "why, I've never produced an album." The only close thing to an album that I helped produce was Leave Scars from Dark Angel and that was terrible, the production on that was fucking awful. So I produced that and then when I was living over in England I produced a couple of 7" or something like that, you know real small demos for a couple of bands. One was called Solstice and I think they have albums out on Candlelight now, real doom stuff, and another band was called Chorus of Ruin. But I wasn't a very good producer and I overheard the house engineer talking about me to one of his friends one time, like way after the session and he was referring to me as "the guy who showed up and did nothing all day" and then just said "yeah sounds good, sounds bad" you know. I was like "isn't that what a producer does?" I remember I played lead on an Evil Dead record. They asked me, they were like "we heard that lead you did on the Dark Angel thing and how about doing one for us?" and I was like "ah cool." I think that was my first outside recording session, outside of Dark Angel and it was for guitar, it wasn't even for drums. So that was pretty cool.
 

I'd heard about how you'd done lights.

GH  Yeah actually did lights when I was in highschool. I would do lights for all for all the local bands and stuff. That's originally what I wanted to be you know, before I realized how easy it was to get into a band and get motivated to do stuff. I was like "wow maybe I'll just do lights for bands." I went on the road doing lights for bands and stuff like that, so that was like my first touring times or whatever. That was like 20 years ago, my first tour.
 

Ever put any hidden or backwards messages in a song?

GH  On Leave Scars there was a song called Worms, that all it was was just this stupid pointless instrumental. Just very ambient, very eerie sounding and really just terrible. But I remember we put a backwards message on that and if you play it forwards it says something like "hey everybody this is Gene and I'm just here to tell you that you're complete idiot for listening to this backwards and you're going to ruin your record and you're failing in school, your mom hates ya so why don't you get up and do some homework and stop beating on your little sister" or something like that, just something totally corny and yeah so that's the only backwards message I ever put on.
 

How about a hidden one?

GH  Yeah there's tons all over the place. Any sort of sample, really any band that uses samples that has some speaking on it, and Strapping's no stranger to that, I mean those are all hidden messages. You can't really make out what they're saying. But intentionally hidden, sure we just didn't crank them up in the mix, they're just sitting in the background. Yeah there's stuff like that, but putting a hidden message on, something that you really want to be heard, why hide it you know. Save it for the end of the record, scream it.
 

Well you could hide something in the lyrics.

GH  Ok well yeah that. I remember I used to like to do acrostic ons in lyrics, like the last verse of Leave Scars, the song Leave Scars, I did an acrostic on with the word darkness. The first line began with a D and the second line began with an A and the third line began with an R and so forth. On Time Does Not Heal there's a song called A Subtle Induction which was about the movie Bambi and how Bambi was actually really a kind of terrifying movie for children you know. Everybody thought "oh cute, we're going to take the kids to see Bambi." It had just gotten re-released in the theaters and I was working in a nail salon at the time, it's really my only ever job that I ever really had, and I just remember hearing all these ladies, you know younger ladies, saying "I took my 5 year old to go see Bambi last night and they just screamed, they cried all night long after the movie" and it just got me to thinking. I actually went to go see it because I always liked Disney things, and I went to go see it and I was like "Jesus no wonder they're crying." I remember seeing it when I was a kid, but the song kind of delineates how he's born the prince of the forest, he was born kind of with a silver spoon in his mouth, but he kind of comes from a broken home ‘cause his father was never around. All his friends were all kind of outcasts,. Thumper was a real trouble maker and Flower was androgynous. I thought Flower the skunk was a girl until he starts hitting on a girlie skunk that was obviously girlie. One straddled the androgynous fence. His girlfriend gets accosted and almost murdered by a gang of thugs, and his mom is shot. Then finally his forest, his home goes up in flames and now he's homeless. It's a terrifying movie for a 5 year old child. So at the end I hid an acrostic on, it says Bambi as you read it down, that the last lines in the song and the last song on the album. Little hidden message there. So yeah I forgot about those sort of messages. Cool.
 

Everyone seems to be doing cover songs and tribute albums are coming out constantly - do you think that's a good thing?

GH  Uhm ultimately not really. For instance in LA there aren't really that many rock and roll bands anymore you know. There's a few bands or whatever, but everything is a tribute now. Every band down there, like you'll have clubs all they do is tribute acts: tribute to Kiss, tribute to Cheap Trick, tribute to Aerosmith, Van Halen, Queensryche, and these are all the hack musicians that could never make it in a band but they'll do their once a week Van Halen tribute somewhere and probably get paid coin for it. I don't know, I think it's pretty boring. I've got enough cover songs and tributes. I don't mind a band doing a cover song that's cool and if you're on a tribute record to somebody that's alright but if your entire band is based on being a tribute, which a lot of these bands are you know. Like one of the more recent tribute things we did, Strapping did a thing for the Melvins tribute album that's coming out and we did a song called Zodiac, we did a really cool version of it. That's a cool song by the Melvins. For the new Metallica tribute Dark Angel did Creeping Death but we did the Ride the Lightning demo version of it which was really haulin' double bass, and by the time the record came out it was like "oh you guys ruined the coolest tune you guys had." It just turned into this half tempo rock song and we were like "this thing used to be slamming" so we did the Ride the Lightning demo version of it, so that's cool.
 

There's at least one label where all they put out is tribute albums.

GH  I think it's for that label. It's the Bob Kulick label, whatever that one is called I forgot what it is, but he ended up producing it. He's the ghost guitarist for so many bands throughout eternity. He's played for Kiss, and he was always the guy that would come in to have to do leads when your hot guitarist is too drunk to record and you've got to get the session done. He comes in, plays the lead. His brother is the guy in Kiss and he played in a band called Blackthorne with Graham Bonnet, and I just remember talking to him about that he's like "fuck not too many people know about that." I really dug Graham Bonnet growing up so I paid attention to all the stuff he was doing and I always knew who you were too. He thought that was pretty cool
 

Are radio and video airplay important now that people can hear music over the Internet?

GH  I'm sure it is still important, not really for my sort of bands. I was just having a discussion last night about how music has changed so much you know. Back in the 70s there were so many great songs that are your favorite songs or whatever, you grew up in the 70s fuck you know, that if you ever saw the guy who did it, that's a really ugly guy and he would never make it - bald, big beard, chubby, plain looking but he wrote this beautiful song and sang it and it's awesome. It's all over the radio and you're like "wow this song moves me." These days that's why songwriting has gone down, the quality of it, so much. You have to be so pretty it seems like, your image is very important and of course if you're in a band I'm cool with that, I'm down with image being important that's fine. But if you're trying to sell pop or whatever that's why these pop artists rarely write their own songs. They get that fat tubby ugly guy writing them the songs and it just doesn't have the same character than if that fat tubby guy was singing it himself. So I'm sure they're important to some people but not really to me. You'll never hear any of my bands on the radio. You'll see us on the odd specialty heavy metal show, the Loud's or the Headbangers Ball's or something like that, but you'll never see standard airplay out of anything I've ever done or probably ever do in the future.
 

How do you feel about the RIAA's sue 'em all tactics about downloading?

GH  I don't know, I think they should probably go to every band individually and say "look man do you have a problem with these people doing this - check yes" and then you as a band send in your form back to them. Ok this band has a problem with it, ok we'll go after the people that are downloading their songs, but these other twelve bands probably who don't have a problem with it... I don't really have a problem with it, I mean sure it takes money out of your pocket but we're not making millions anyway you know. If we lose ten grand over the course of a record because somebody downloaded our music, oh well, what can you do. Ten grand big whoop you know. If we were losing millions of dollars, it's going to make you improve your quality of musicianship. I think I tend to know the scrupulous downloaders who will go out and buy the material that they download. For every band they hear, you've got to be good, and any band I'm in if you're going to download ten things that day I guarantee you one of my bands will be one of the things you're like "hell I'm gonna go out and buy." A lot of people will go out buy the stuff. Maybe for everybody that does download and then goes out and buys the stuff they enjoy, there might be the people that don't, that just rape off the internet, at least you've got a large music archive. Nobody thinks about the musicians, everybody thinks that musicians are just rich. You put out an album, you're rich. I used to think that, a lot of young people do. It's like if you litter. If every single person chucked out their McDonalds coke cup, this place would be a trash heap. But there are the one person in ten that go "well I'm not really hurting anything, I'll chuck out my coke cup" and if everybody did that, then you'd be ruined. This planet would be a fucking shit pile even worse than it is. But for those who don't do that you know. I don't know, I'm just rambling. It's going to improve the quality of your music though because if people can listen to your music for free and you suck, they're not going to go out and buy your shit. If you're decent and you're quality and if you are conscientious about what you're doing, then people will get behind that and go out and buy your record and enjoy it and want to support you. So I think it's going to weed out the crappy bands. I think ultimately it has the point of doing that. Of course no band is crappy but some bands just have no heart.
 

It's not really a new problem. People have taped albums from their friends before.

GH  Of course. That's why Venom back in the day, they would have "home taping is killing music, so are Venom" they used to put that little sticker on things. So ultimately it's not going to affect much. It might take a few dollars out of our pockets but we're not making millions anyway.
 

What music do you listen to that people might not expect?

GH  Oh Stevie Wonder is my hero, Marvin Gaye, I love Motown. I don't know if they'd expect that or not because I preach it all the time. Stevie Wonder is my flat out favorite drummer, he's my idol, my hero. Al DiMeola is another hero, Brian May from Queen is another hero - musicians I fully look up to. I love Motown, I love doo whop, I love sweet soul, old R&B. I grew up with it so I've always enjoyed it. I'm one of the fortunate people who's parents had cool musical taste you know. I've listened to what my friends parents made them listen to it's like "ah you poor bastard" you know, you're stuck with Pink Floyd The Wall or Dark Side of the Moon growing up. At least I got Motown and mariachi music, cool stuff. My folks always had decent musical taste.
 

Are there any other bands around right now that you'd consider joining?

GH  Zimmers Hole but Steve Wheeler rules and he's always going to be in the band but if he ever chopped a leg off or whatever I'd be there. I would never be allowed to be in Zimmers Hole though because I don't share the same appreciation for AC/DC that the rest of the band does so I've been told "dude you'll never be in the Hole." Of course there's the band from the Bay area called Mirv but their drummer Jeff Gomes is awesome but if they ever needed a second drummer. They're amazing. Yeah you know I always think about bands that I like and then when I get to interview time I can't remember who I actually like. I'm actually becoming a music hater, which really is sad being a musician and starting to dislike music. I always like the stuff we put out. I like Dev's music. That's a guy that when I first heard, he was singing for Steve Vai but I was always like "fuck that would be cool to work with that guy, he looks like a nutbag." So here I am doing it and it's awesome.
 

What do you do to prepare for a show?

GH  Copious amounts of heroin, as much cocaine as I can get my hands on, Jack Daniels and booze. No I take a nap, for one. I'm always napping, like I frequently nap right up until stage time, and there's a guy knocking on my head "Gene we're on in five minutes, what the fuck?" you know. I usually take a nap and then I do warm ups. Warm up and try to get everything limber. That could take five minutes or fifteen minutes, just depending on how much time I have. Usually I don't spend much time backstage ‘cause it's usually pretty boring back there. If I want to read a book I'll go on the bus to do that. I usually don't hang around backstage a lot, I like hanging out with people and seeing what people have to say and meeting folks and all that sort of stuff. So hang out in the crowd, check out the shows, check out the opening bands. I'm in such a state of zen when I'm onstage anyway so I'm pretty relaxed. I used to be the wildman drummer, screaming at the crowd, yelling, bitching. Back in Dark Angel that was my persona or whatever, just getting the crowd into it, pissing off the crowd before we ever even played and shit like that. That's why I completely appreciate what Dev does, getting a rise out of the crowd before we even play a note, you know shit like that is always cool. But I just put myself in the right mental state to where it's like, ok you have a job every single night to amaze people and that's your job, that's what you're put on this earth to do, so you are prepared to go out and do that. It's never a mantra that I tell myself but that's just my mindset you know. People are here to scrutinize you and criticize you, and just make sure they've got nothing to say other than "damn."
 

What's the most embarrassing thing that's happened to you on tour?

GH  On tour? I don't really get embarrassed that much. I don't know many people who do because you're pretty much hanging your ass out on stage every night anyway if you're an entertainer. But embarrassing, god there's been tons. With Dark Angel one time we had I think it was 24 high powered rifles pointed at all our heads by the cops who thought we were a rolling crystal meth wagon. There was a time I crapped my pants onstage and that was pretty ugly. There was all the fights you get into, and you just found out your bassist beat up the singer of that other band and that's always fucking hell. Our bassist got thrown into jail in Germany for a week and it cost us $31,000 American dollars to get him out. At least we got ourselves a bass slave. We used to call him up when we got home "hey you're coming over to mow my lawn fucker", "no fuck you asshole." Yeah none of it's embarrassing. I mean I could write books. I started writing a book towards the tail end of being in Death, I was just writing out a bunch of anecdotes and shit that happens on the road. That would be an awesome book to read you know, cool road stories. There you go.
 

Had any Spinal Tap moments?

GH  All the time. I hear so many bands that like to put themselves in the categories of "oh that happens to us every night." Of course shit like that happens, goofy shit. Yeah tons, too numerous to mention and they're pretty cliche and boring if you do.
 

Any skeletons in your closet?

GH  Nice, you whipped out the picture of me naked on the Savage Grace album cover. No, that wasn't a skeleton. There's a lot of things that I've done that a lot of people might not be aware of you know. I've played on christian records before, they needed a little piece. My drum tech Steve, he was recording stuff for a christian label. It was just a gig for him, and he called me up and I'd come in a do a little something or whatever. That's something a lot of people probably wouldn't know. All the other facts that are dumb silly little facts about my career are pretty well known. Like I made my vinyl debut on a Slayer record, I was singing background on Evil Has No Boundaries on their first record. I held Dave Lombardo's drums in place for the Haunting the Chapel ep, for Chemical Warfare in general you know. That's how I kind of remember the song Chemical Warfare because that tom was right above my head. I just remember going "fuck Dave I hope you can do this in one take ‘cause this hurts!" Yeah I don't know, lemme think. I'll stand behind anything I did. Do you know anything? Do you know any secrets?
 

Possibly not printable ones.

GH  Cool. Awesome.
 

Anything else you'd like to say?

GH  Buy the new Strapping record. Thanks to anybody who reads this and isn't fucking appalled or bored by it. Check out Punchdrunk, Zimmers Hole, Just Cause. You can find their shit on the ‘net, it's all pretty ripping metal. The new Strapping dvd is coming out in the next few months.
 

Yeah ‘cause you're just about to start recording a new Strapping record.

GH  Yeah we start that next week, so that's going to be awesome.
 

Any exclusive scoops?

GH  It will crush all. It will fucking decimate. It's going to be the mightiest record we've done. It's going to be crushing. It's an evolution you know. It's going to piss off some Strapping fans and it's going to make other ones go "fucking yeah!" That's what we're here to do.
 

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