CRUSTCAKE INTERVIEWS: IMMOLATION

by Andrew Wilhelm (TX)

The only way I can introduce New York death metal legends Immolation is through a divisive, crass question: If you don't listen to them, why are you reading this blog? Respect their contributions to metal, but more than that, respect their dedication. Like Morbid Angel, their approach to death metal is labyrinth-like, but with their ties to New York, they know where to throw down a mosh part. Hard to believe some bands actually don't peter out after playing for 22 years. Years after Dawn of Possession and Failures for Gods, Ross Dolan still commands as a frontman and Bob Vigna hasn't slowed down with his riffs or the jerky body movements he plays those riffs in. You want to talk about getting owned hard? Open for Immolation - there's no way you can follow them.

I spoke with Dolan on their sweet new record, Majesty and Decay, playing live, and kids these days.

Crustcake: I heard that something went down with Rose Funeral at the Oklahoma City stop on the Nile/Krisuin tour, where they had to kick out a couple attendees. Did that really happen, or is it just another internet rumor?

Ross Dolan, bass and vocals: Something definitely happened. I didn't really know what happened, I was just back at the merch table. Yeah, there were a couple guys, there was a fight that started between the Rose Funeral guys and a couple other people, and a couple people got kicked out. But I really don't know specifics, I was out of the loop.

Crustcake: Have you guys ever had to deal with any annoying hecklers?

Dolan: Eh, not really, every once in a while. You know, we had a couple of idiots on the Cradle of Filth tour, when we supported then in Europe. Just a couple of fuckin' douchebags, who, you know once you confront them, they have nothing to say. If you're going to go to a show, support the bands. If you don't like any of the bands, don't go to the fuckin' show. It makes no sense to me. We've been pretty lucky over the years, we don't really get any of that kind of stuff where it comes down to fights or anything like that. We get an idiot or two every once in a while who screams something out or does something stupid, but that's few and far between. In 22 years, that's maybe happened twice.

Crustcake: I've seen you guys about three times now, and while y'all aren't always the headliners, I think you guys have blown the headliners away, that's just my opinion though -

Dolan: Thanks.

Crustcake: Anyway, y'all definitely put a lot into your live show. Why is playing live important to you?

Dolan: Live is the only thing that is important. That's where it counts. The records are important, because that gets your name out there and that's how people you. But, it's when they come out to experience the live show and that's when it counts. That's the only time it counts because that's when your fuckin' on that stage and you're doing it live. If you fuck up or sound like ass, people are gonna leave that show saying, "man, those guys suck." That's your time to make it count. The hour we're up on stage, that's the only time we want to make it count. We go up there and try to feel the vibe coming off the crowd, even if the vibe is a little lackluster, we go for it. We create our own vibe. You've always got to give it 110%, as far as I'm concerned, when you're playing live. When kids leave the show, and they say, "wow, these guys fuckin' crushed," that's what I want to hear. That's what it's about. That's your job - that's why you're there.

"No Jesus, No Beast"



Crustcake: Is there more pressure to put on a good show because people don't buy records as much anymore?

Dolan: To be honest with you dude, record sales have never meant anything to us. We were always one of those bands, an underground band, we never sold more than a certain amount of records and we never saw certainly any money off the record sales. That's an industry thing, that's something that never affected us. For us, it was all about the live show since day one. It was all about going out there, performing live in front of the people who support you. It was about impressing them enough so that they would come and buy a shirt or buy a cd or come out to the next show. That's where it matters. The fact that the industry is hurting has no bearing one way or another on our performance live. Our performance live has always been something we took seriously from the very beginning and we still do. And there was never pressure for us to out-perform or over-perform because of sales in the industry being down. That has no bearing on anything we do, to be honest with you.

Crustcake: Are there any differences in playing live since you guys started?

Dolan: When we started doing this in 1988, there wasn't a huge death metal scene, the death metal scene hadn't exploded yet. It was still very underground and still very slow, I guess. It was kinda like, you know, you pretty wrote to pretty much all the bands that were out there at the time, whether it would be Nihilist or Morbid Angel or whoever it was at the time we were in touch with. We wrote to them, there was no e-mail, none of that bullshit, it was more of an initimate kind of vibe. Even shows back then, you would know everybody at shows, anyone who came out to an underground show back then was really die-hard and really into the music. You fast-forward 22 years to now, and you have the internet and a million bands, and you have so much exposure, and you have so many choices. It's kind of hard to reach a lot of kids, even though you have the Internet, it's still kinda hard because there's so many choices out there for them.

Crustcake: Going on that tangent a little further, social networking sites like Myspace, Facebook and all that say that they bring people closer together, but they can also make people further apart. What's your impression of this?

Dolan: It's an easy way to keep in touch with people. We have a lot of friends in Europe and it's not feasible to fuckin' call people all the time on the telephone. I would say in those circumstances, it's a key, it keeps you in touch. And it's a really cool way for an underground band like us to promote further than what the labels do, and what you're able to do just by touring. But for the younger kids, I'm gonna put a spin on it this way: for younger kids, I don't think it's a great thing. Kids today, they come home, they've got their computer, they got their video games, there's no interaction with other kids, they're not outside running around and laying and hanging out with other kids. They're just so involved with their computer and texting and emailing. It's kind of weird, it's something we didn't have back when I was growing up. We were all about not being in the house, about going out, playing sports, riding your bike, about connecting with other people and making friends. It wasn't about sitting at home on the computer. It's a double-edged sword to me.

Crustcake: Something else about the internet is that it tends to make people more anonymous. They're more likely to talk shit than if they had to go up to that person face-to-face-

Dolan: Dude, you're absolutely right. I read Blabbermouth, and I read a lot of this stuff. It just kills me the thing people will say. Everybody's a critic, everybody can do it better than everybody. It's very easy to comment and say some douchy shit, when you're an anonymous fuckin' icon. There's no fuckin' balls with that. But to actually come up and say "Listen, I don't like this" and to give a reason why, to articulate a point, that's a whole different that people today don't get.

Crustcake: I wonder what my generation's going to be like 20-30 years from now not knowing much about direct confrontation...

Dolan: It's definitely gonna be different. At least we had to chance and interact and if you had differences you learned to settle your differences, maybe without throwing down, but at least face-to-face, you learn how to come to some medium ground where you can all be happy. When you don't deal with people face-to-face, and it's all done electronically through [the] Internet, it's very hard. How do you develop those social skills to interact with other people? The younger generation's gonna have to sort that out.

"Furthest From the Truth"



Crustcake: Going into the new record [Majesty and Decay], it sounds more like Immolation's older material. What direction were you going for with this record?

Dolan: We really don't sit down and consciously decide "Let's try this" or "Let's go in this direction" or "Let's do this." We really don't. Each we start the writing process, it's a clean slate, a completely new entity. We have no intentions other than to write something we are happy with, something that we can leave the recording studio "Ok, we're happy with this, we're proud of this, and this is something we don't mind putting our name on. Something we don't mind out fans hearing." You know what i mean?

Crustcake: Yeah. It does sound a little less straightforward than the last couple records.

Dolan: Yeah, it definitely has some of the traditional twists and turns of the early Immolation stuff. But I'd say it has a lot of straightforward stuff on there as well, a lot of heavier, a lot catchy stuff - but in a good way, not in a happy way. We always keep that in mind. We never try to stray too far from the path we've started along back in '88. So we try to keep that in mind and write stuff, like I said, first and foremost, that we're happy with. I think we're happy with it, I'm pretty sure that our fans will be happy with it too. That's the way we've gone about for the last 22 years and it seems to work.

Crustcake: The lyrical direction continues in the path from the last couple records where it's not so much about religion as it is about other topics. What influenced the lyrical direction on this record?

Dolan: A lot. I'm a big reader, we all read a lot. I drew a lot of inspiration's for this record from books I've read in the last year or two. I've read a lot of stuff on World War II, we've all kind of been fascinated with that. We read a little bit here and there when we can, we try to find stuff that's interesting to us. A lot of inspiration just comes from life, everyday life, things you see going on in the world around you, whether it's what's going on in the Middle East right or what's going on in our own country. We try to keep the political stuff very subtle because we never were a political band. There's been a lot of politics on the last couple records, it's just written in a way that it's very subtle. And there's a lot of social stuff, commenting on social issues. And there's a lot of personal stuff on the last record. We definitely have stayed a little bit from the religious thing only because, let's face it, the first five or six albums were exclusively about religion to one point, in one aspect or another. You can only say so much about particular topics before it gets very redundant. We're finding new ways to say different things. There's a couple songs on the new record like "Power..." "Divine Code" and "Comfort to Cowards," which are three songs that are about religion. The other stuff touches on war, touches on social things. "The Purge," for example, is a kind of like a continuation of what we started on "World Agony." But they're all very angry songs, and they're very relevant to what's going on in the world today.

Crustcake: "The Purge" is something I was gonna ask you about. You make reference to "the cancer is growing" and "human scourge." What exactly are you referring to?

Dolan: Us. People. Humanity. We're all to blame. It's just a look at how far we've come and how far we haven't come. Technology has brought us so far, but because of our general greed and ignorance and selfishness and lack of respect for our fellow man or where we live. We consume all our natural resources. Like I said, it's a continuation of "World Agony" in a sense, a more extreme take on it. We're all to blame, I'm not pointing any figures. We're all part of the problem. It's like an overview, standing back and looking at all the shit we've done and created, whether it be through war or corporations or whatever.

Crustcake: Going back to what you said earlier, I do notice a lot of extreme bands aren't direct in social commentary. Why do you think that might be?

Dolan: I don't know. I like to be more straightforward, to an extent. When we write stuff, we have very specific ideas and topics in mind. I try not to be as specific when writing them, however, because I like people to take something out of it of their own. You can have five people read the lyrics of one song and everybody's gonna get something different out of it. I like to leave it open enough where people can read it and say "Oh I kinda get it, this means this to me." I was the same way. I was a big lyric guy growing up, in the 80s and 90s, when I used to buy CDs it was the first thing I did - always read the lyrics. I'd always think "Woah, this is about this. This means this to me." That's what we kinda try to do. Make our point, but in a such a way people can take something else out of it if they want. I think moreso on the new record song are very specific, if you're intelligent enough to read into them you can basically tell what they're about. They're written in such a way you can get something else out of them, I think.

"The Rapture of Ghosts"



Crustcake: Why do you think Immolation has been able to go on for as long as y'all have?

Dolan: We enjoy what we're doing. If we didn't enjoy it, we wouldn't be doing it. Believe me, we don't make a living off of this, this isn't a job for us. This is strictly something we enjoy doing, it's a passion for us. We all work, we all have full-time jobs. We do the work thing and the family thing, but this is something we are all on the same page with, it's something that has been a driving force in our lives. It's something I can't imagine my life without. I think the fact that we enjoy doing it, and we don't look at it as a job, we look at it as something we're more passionate about that has allowed us to at least exist and be relevant for this many years.