Author: Jernej Vene
Interview date: 19.03.1997
Vene: After your success in the eighties, real heavy metal sort of faded into obscurity. Your band kept fighting for its ideals anyway. So you recently put out a new album, Kill, Fuck, Die. What do you expect from it overall?
Lawless: The reaction’s been split so far. Our newer listeners, the ones who’ve been with us for five or six years, say it’s our best record. The ones who’ve been with us longer say they’re a bit surprised, because the songs are great, but the production is something totally different from what they’re used to. Maybe they were expecting something like Wild Child, but if you look at our career, there have never been two albums that were exactly alike. The new record is really a continuation from where Chris Holmes and I left off. My initial reaction is the same as with Headless Children. The new album is headed for a similar fate. Like that one, it didn’t explode right after release. It took about half a year for people to get used to the idea and accept the message.
Vene: You produced Kill, Fuck, Die yourself. Do you think it’s better when the musician produces, or is it sometimes better to leave the job to someone outside the band?
Lawless: It depends on the situation. In the past we brought in outside people many times, but not a single one of those collaborations worked out. We’ve had pretty bad experiences with it. Somewhere out there is surely somebody who’d be right for us, but unfortunately I haven’t met him yet.
Vene: Can you briefly explain the main idea and the feel of the new album to our readers?
Lawless: It’s a very intense record, in fact it’s our most intense and extremely aggressive one. Chris and I hadn’t worked together in six years, and if we were going to get back together, we had to make a real W.A.S.P. record. We had to become the dirtiest, smelliest, nastiest, most unhinged band on the planet again. True fans wouldn’t have accepted anything else. We really had to make an aggressive record.
Vene: The music and the lyrics are aggressive. How do you two create? Is it momentary inspiration, or do you carry ideas around for a long time?
Lawless: To give you an idea: you’d have to spend twenty-four hours with Chris Holmes. He’s without a doubt the angriest man on the face of the earth. His influence on me is huge. On one side he’s really pleasant, but the other side embodies pure evil. When he gets angry, and that happens fairly often, it rubs off on me. You can feel it especially in the lyrics I write myself. The reason it works is this: when he gets carried away, I pull him back, and vice versa. So we always meet somewhere in the middle. We both feed off each other’s aggression, and that gives us a sound that’s unique to W.A.S.P. It’s not just one person in this band, it’s the whole feel, the vibes rippling around in our circle.
Vene: How do you feel about Chris being a member of the band again after seven years?
Lawless: We understand each other better now than before. After he left I made records with other people, but I never felt that chemistry I felt with him. When you work with someone again, you appreciate it more than the first time. Kind of like when you’ve got something and don’t realize it until you lose it. Most people never get that, but I did. I had something, I lost it, and in the end I got it back. So I feel incredibly lucky.
Vene: On the new album you explored new sonic territory. This is probably your darkest-sounding album.
Lawless: Without a doubt. We tried to capture the spirit of our first record, but at the same time we wanted to take it somewhere we’d never been. We absolutely didn’t want to go down memory lane. Besides the music, our performance matters too, and it had to match the music. If the music is more intense, the show had to follow. Look at what the young bands are doing! The nineties did to the eighties what the sixties did to the fifties. There are lots of bands that were successful in the seventies and eighties who are now sitting around waiting for that time to come back. And I’ll tell you one thing: they’ll be sitting there a long time. New bands like Stabbing Westward or Rage Aganst The Machine have brought aggression back to rock ‘n’ roll and pushed it a step forward at the same time. They’re nothing like the glam rock bands from the end of the eighties. We’ve arrived where we belong. That’s why I’m glad I’m still part of it, and so is my band. I never could identify with many of the other bands that were around when we started out. I’m more comfortable now than I was back then, ten years ago and more.
Vene: Besides Stabbing Westward and Rage Against The Machine, are there any other newer, younger bands you like?
Lawless: Oh, plenty. The whole scene is healthier than it was ten years ago. I’m not saying that just because it’s ten years later, I actually follow what’s going on. When Eddie Cochran wrote Summertime Blues, he nailed the true meaning of rock ‘n’ roll. The scene drifted away from that message, everything got watered down, and that’s why it collapsed. Then Nirvana and others came along and showed again what real rock ‘n’ roll should be. When we play Animal or Mean Man, they still say we’re too hard. I’m always amazed, and I tell them that’s the true spirit of what real rock should be. The labels do their own thing, though, and the big labels are killing heavy metal as we know it.
Vene: What brought W.A.S.P. this big success, and how do you deal with fame in everyday life?
Lawless: It’s got to be the music. People also know us for our shows. Our records still sell well, mostly thanks to our truly devoted fans. I hope it’s down to the music rather than the shows. So I think the music is the key to our success, and it’ll stay that way going forward.
