Des from HIGH ON FIRE and Lily from KNOBROCK enjoy a session of social intercourse

Posted on Feb 8, 2011 / Posted by Lily Howell /

 

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Soundwave Festival 2011 has a line-up that rocks a ridiculous amount of ass. Not only that, it’s given me a chance to get inside the minds of many a rocker from around the globe. This time, it’s Des, from a little Californian trio that goes by the [way cool] name of HIGH ON FIRE. This interview had an awesome, casual vibe to it and talking to Des was like catching up with an old friend. Props to Des and check out what Des and I had to say.

Lily: It looks like 2010 was a great year for you with the Snakes for the Divine album that you recorded with fantastic Greg Fidelman, you opened some shows for Metallica in Europe and you’ve just toured with Fear Factory.

Des: Yeah, 2010 was good.  You know, especially compared to 2009, we had to take a lot of time off and had to finish writing the record and record it and stuff, but yeah we were busy in 2010 for sure.  The record came out earlier in the year and we had some great US headline tours off of that record and then also some great support tours like you said with METALLICA and FEAR FACTORY, and we also did some cool festivals also.  Yeah, so hopefully we can just keep going on that momentum and just write another record and start the whole cycle again.

Lily: Can you take me through some history of HIGH ON FIRE?  Like, how did you guys come to form?

Des: It was, I believe, in 97, Matt and I had a mutual friend but we didn’t really know each other quite yet and SLEEP, just broke up. I’d just moved to California so I’d never even seen SLEEP or heard of them. So anyway, I remember talking to a friend and just being like, oh, I just got to San Francisco and I’m trying to jam with people.  It was just fucking lame, can’t really meet anyone.  Everyone, you know, don’t have the same ideas, blah, blah, blah.  You know, struggling artist.

Lily: The usual story?

Des: Yeah exactly, yeah totally, and then so she was just like, well you know I’ve got a friend whose band just broke up and I know he’s really wanting to keep playing blah, blah, blah so she introduced us, we met and I actually had to drive like 45 minutes south of San Francisco to go and meet up with him with just my drums in my car.  He had to sit in the back seat with all my drums on him.  I don’t know, when we first met it was just like we clicked.  We went and jammed and he was kind of, already jamming with some other guys, and then after a few months knowing like there was another guitar player in the band and writing-wise that didn’t work out, with conflicting ideas and George, our first bass player, actually came to try out to sing and then he jumped on the bass.

Lily: Was he cool with that? He happily switched from vocals to bass?

Des: Well, yeah, this was George Rice.  He was our first bass player.  So he came in once just to try out to sing but then he was a better bass player than a singer and plus he just wanted to play bass anyway.  I think he only said he was going to come to try out to sing hoping that he would get the chance actually to play bass because we already had a bass player at the time.  So we were just like, well, fuck man, you are kicking ass on the bass.  Why don’t you just play bass, and we got rid of the other guy and then Matt’s like, you know, fuck it, I’ll try to sing, and it worked out. Since then we’ve been through three bass players.  We’re on our third bass player now.  That’s Jeff Matz and he’s working out great.  I don’t think we’ll be looking for another bass player any time soon.

Lily: That’s almost a little ‘SPINAL TAP’ isn’t it?

Des: Oh almost yeah.  We got a friend of ours, Joe Preston, he was just supposed to be like a fill in bass player, just for our third record, BLESSED BLACK WINGS, so this was back in like 2004, 2005. But we just kept getting offered tours and we were like, hey, do you feel like doing a tour with us?  We’ll pay you to just come on tour with us.  He said, sure, and then one tour became another and then the record came out and then we were like, well you know, we’ve got to tour another record.  Two years later he’s still with us.  Finally he’s just like, you know man, I just thought I was coming in to try and do a record and a tour and you guys have been fucking touring way more than I want to and blah, blah, blah.  So… but it’s all good. We still keep in touch with him and so now we have Jeff.

Lily: Has your music evolved since HIGH ON FIRE first started and how would you say it’s evolved, if at all?

Des: Yeah, I think it has.  I mean, like, when we started off, especially with Matt just getting out of SLEEP, you know, it was just kind of more slower and slower oriented riffs and just kind of more of a regular back beat and just the power but we’ve – you know, I feel like with song writing we’ve evolved, as musicians we’ve evolved.  And we’ve gone in a faster direction.

Lily: It’s kind of hard not to evolve really isn’t it?

Des: Yeah.  I mean you get that not necessarily going faster means evolving because, you know, it’s just for some reason that’s the direction the song writing has gone. I think we’re better songwriters as far as like – it’s not just verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, verse, chorus you know.  But yeah, I think as musicians and as songwriters we’ve evolved for sure.

Lily: When did you start playing drums and can you tell me some of your favourite drummers?

Des: Yeah.  I actually first started playing drums when I was 10 which was 27 years ago, and at the time my favourite drummer was Tommy Lee as a… you know, it was the early 80s, all that…

Lily: Well his stick twirling was pretty impressive.

Des: Oh yeah.  Yeah I know, I don’t think I was more impressed with his drumming, it was more of his theatrics.

Lily: Yeah, well that’s really what he’s got going for him isn’t it?

Des: Yeah, yeah, I actually would sit in my fucking bedroom and try to practice twirling sticks. [Laughs] I mean, being with older kids and skaters or the other punk rockers, you know, I got into all different types of stuff, like Mackie from CRO-MAGS, Dave Lombardo, even Lars Ulrich.  I mean when I first heard Master of Puppets, that one blew me away.

Lily: Oh it’s a good album.

Des: Yeah, you know, we can go on and on, but I mean, that was kind of when I first got into drums.

Lily: It’s funny, the first metal band, if you could call them that, that I got into was MOTLEY CRUE

Des: Right.  Yeah my first concert actually was Motley Crue when I was 10.

Lily: Well you can be more proud of that.  My first concert was STRYPER.

Des: Oh damn!

Lily: I saw them twice. Front row centre.

Des: [laughs]. Well you know they had some cool imagery going on there.  I remember like one of their album covers was like this decked out van with a bunch of missiles on it and shit or machine guns or something.

Lily: Yeah, well they were soldiers of God.

Des: Oh yeah, that’s right, yeah.  That’s funny.

Lily: How did you come to love heavy metal?

Des: Well you know before all that, you know when I was younger – I was like eight or nine years old – a friend of mine who lived down the street, his dad was into all that classic rock and stuff and we were just – he got his basement decked out, like shag carpet, panelling on the walls and like the lights that you plug into your stereo that flash to the music you play and there was like black light posters, like RUSH, FOGHAT and [BLACK] SABBATH, JUDAS PRIEST, like the old Judas Priest and when Ozzie first went solo.  So I was like just listening to albums with him in their basement.  I was like, oh this is cool, and just kind of getting into different stuff.  I’d make a mixed tape and bring them home and just listen to them.

Lily: Oh, didn’t you love mixed tapes?

Des: Yep.

Lily: You could give them away as birthday presents – “I’ve made you a mixed tape.”

Des: [Laughs] I know, man, and some kids nowadays, a mixed tape, what’s that?

Lily: I know.  They really don’t know what they’re missing, the youth of today.

Des: I know, and you’d actually get to sit there and put on the album on the record player and have to cue up the tape right so you have just enough space in between songs and…

Lily: …And you know what else, you had to listen to the whole thing.

Des: Exactly, yeah that’s true.  You had to listen to that whole song while you made your tape and you couldn’t move around because you didn’t want the record player to skip.

Lily: Who would be some of your favourite metal bands now?

Des: You know I think, well, as far as newer bands?  I mean we’ve gotten pretty lucky to go on tour with a lot of cool bands.  I mean there’s MASTADON – definitely a big fan of theirs – and there’s a band PRIESTESS from Canada, they’re cool. TORCH, and we just actually did a tour with TORCH and they’re super cool. And there’s like, there’s DISFEAR who’s from Sweden.  They’re a bit more, kind of hard core punk. TRAGEDY, they’re maybe not so new.  I think they’ve been around for a while though. I mean that’s just some off the top of my head.

Lily: What do you like to do when you’re not making music or touring?

Des: Well, as of recently I’ve – just doing whatever I can do to get my son tuckered out to take a nap. I’ve got a two year old boy.  Pretty much when I get home from tour his mum just hands him to me.  It’s like, “Here, he’s yours now.” So basically just right now, being a dad. It’s cool man.  It keeps me out of the bar.  I have enough partying on the road, I don’t need to keep partying when I get home.

Lily: Can you tell me something that your fans may not know about you?

Des: Yeah, I’ve been recently really getting into soccer.  I’m a big soccer fan, but everyone else calls it football.

Lily: We call it soccer in Australia.  I love it.

Do you still have any dreams or aspirations with your music career, or anything else, or do you feel you’ve fulfilled your dreams with HIGH ON FIRE?

Des: You know, I’ve probably fulfilled some of my childhood dreams with High on Fire, you know, I get to play in a metal band and I’m pretty much doing this full time now. But you know, as time goes on.  Obviously, you know, you start hoping and dreaming for other things but I mean, I feel lucky and I get to travel around the world and play music with bands, you know, some of my best friends create and get to play it to people who enjoy and appreciate what we do. So hopefully I just, you know – will I be able to play what we’re doing 40 years from now?  Probably not but hopefully I can still be doing something, hopefully something that’s still relative to this.

Lily: Is there anything you’d like to say the Australian fans in the lead up to the Soundwave festival?

Des: Just come out and enjoy the show.  Hopefully you dig it.

And ‘dig it’, we will. HIGH ON FIRE are playing throughout Australia later this month. Check the Soundwave Festival website for details.

-Lily

Tags: black sabbath, disfear, fear factory, high on fire, interview, knobrock, mastadon, metallica, priestess, sleep, soundwave festival, torch, tragedy