Attention Deficit Delirium

Scott Rockenfield reports that the new Queensrÿche album will be like Rage For Order "through a time tunnel".

Queensrÿche drummer Scott Rockenfield reveals that the band has just signed a new deal with Roadrunner Records and that their upcoming album is taking the Seattle-based metal quintet in some new directions.

“I add a lot of film score elements or sound effects [into my drum work], especially on the new thing we’re working on right now,” Rockenfield tells A.D.D. “Geoff [Tate] and I have really spent a lot of time together redesigning the Queensrÿche thing, which you’re going to love. It’s huge rock but with a great dance vibe to it, real modern dance. It’s kind of like Rage [For Order] through a time tunnel, bringing it into the now. There are a lot of electronic elements to it. It’s a big rock thing that is going to have a lot of color to it — it’s good and really intense.”

The drummer offers no set song titles yet, but adds: “We’re moving into really dark and heavy rock for us. It’s not like a Lady Gaga dance record, but it’s a combination of a lot of different elements — Lady Gaga meets Nine Inch Nails meets Queensrÿche, because when you get Geoff’s voice [in the mix] that really starts to define what we do. We don’t have a big plan for a concept, but that could change, too.”





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Who: Scott Rockenfield, drummer for Queensrÿche and film composer.
What: The Top 5 MP3s in his iPod right now.
Where: On tour across America.
Latest Album: Queensrÿche’s American Soldier and the Albino Farm soundtrack.



Scott Rockenfield likes his pop and film scores.
(Photo © 2010 by Bryan Reesman.)

1. LADY GAGA “Paparazzi” — I like her delivery. I like her. I think she’s got a great personality; just her thing of how she’s going about becoming the star she is and her whole costume thing. She’s just got a machine going on, and she’s got a presentation. I don’t think enough people do that type of thing where they really live and breathe what they’re doing.

2. MILEY CYRUS “Can’t Be Tamed” — Just closing my eyes and not even thinking about Miley Cyrus or what that stereotype should mean to me, which I’ve tried not to do, it’s a cool song. I like the modern pop [thing] — it’s a very intense, upbeat, driving, energetic song with a great delivery. I saw the video, which adds to a lot to it where she’s wearing the angel wings. I see those things and put them together. She’s a machine, has money behind her and is making some cool stuff, so I like the song for that.

3. MOBY “Beautiful” — I just like him in general. I think he’s done some cool stuff.

4. Film soundtrack: DISTRICT 9 (selection) by Clinton Shorter — The music is really inspiring and has some great ethereal voices and percussion that go on through the whole thing. I listen to it front to back when I’m driving or doing my thing.

5. Film soundtrack: THE BOOK OF ELI (selection) by Atticus Ross — I think he used to be in a rock band. I can find no history of him doing a film score. It’s a great sounding, dark, moody electronic film score. I like the movie as well.


Live versions of Scott’s picks: Lady Gaga, Miley Cyrus and Moby.


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Geoff Tate: Professional singer and avid wino.
(Photo credit: Sarah Prout Photography.)

For hard rock and metal fans, Geoff Tate needs no introduction. The dynamic, dramatic frontman for Queensrÿche — who have now been making music for nearly 30 years, believe it or not — has influenced scores of singers, sung on classic albums like Rage For Order and helped elevate metal into a thought-provoking art form. And he’s always a fun interview.

Just prior to Christmas, Tate discussed his wine brand Insania for a story I was working on for Grammy.com ["Eat, Drink & Rock and Roll"], and he offered plenty more to ADD about his group’s nine-month tour supporting the American Soldier album, their next release, his exploits in the wine business, his former vegan ways, the rigors of modern touring and the proposed Operation: Mindcrime musical for Broadway. (Read Part Two here.)


It’s good to hear that Queensrÿche’s recent tour did well, especially given our shaky economy.
I know a lot of media outlets have been talking about live music and saying that the whole scene is dead and that nobody cares about live music anymore, but I think that’s really false. It might be true in certain isolated places or in the country that they’re writing from, but I have to say that more people want live music. They love it. It’s not something you can replace with digital recordings. The biggest problem about live music is letting people know that it’s happening. It’s so difficult for people to find out what’s going on because the way so many websites are constructed is so convoluted, and there’s so much information, it’s hard to navigate. And there are hardly any papers anymore. That’s what I see.

What was the hardest part about this particular tour in terms of reaching out to people?
Just that, letting people know that the band is in town. It’s always the toughest thing, and I think other artists experience that same thing, too. We always talk about it when people get together. People are always saying to all musicians, “Oh, I didn’t know you were in town.” Great. Thank you, promoter!

Tate turning over the spotlight to guitarist Michael Wilton. (Photo Credit: Greg Watermann.)

Do you think that age also plays a factor in this? Even though I’m in the media, I find it hard to keep up with everything that’s going on because there’s so much information out there. I figure as people get older they don’t follow things as much, especially those who are outside of the business. They wait for other people to come to them and tell them what’s happening.
Yeah, that’s very true, too. A lot of people get their information off TV nowadays. So unless you’re a TV star nobody knows about you.

So the American Soldier tour did well overall?
It went great. It was really a knuckle biter at the beginning because there wasn’t a lot of pre-sold tickets, and we base all of our internal economy on touring. It slowly started building, and I have to say it was a really successful tour this year. I’m very happy about that.


You have your own brand of wine called Insania that you created in conjunction with Three Rivers Winery. Have you always had an affinity for wine, or is it something that has developed throughout your life?
It’s normal in our house to drink wine, and I really discovered through touring and traveling to different countries where they have a wine culture that I had a taste for and interest in it. Over the years I got a little more interested in it and tried several different wines. My wife and I just got back from France. We were touring the wine areas and sampling different types of wine and familiarizing ourselves with smaller wineries around the country, and we had a great time. The interest just keeps growing, and we have quite a wine collection now. In fact, I have to build a bigger place to store everything I’ve got because it’s stuck in corners and closets. You’ve got to keep stuff at the right temperature or your investment goes bad.

When you fly overseas, given that you cannot take liquids on planes anymore, how do you bring everything back?
You have to ship it back. But it is difficult.

A deluge of Insania.
(Photo credit: Sarah Prout Photography.)

Do you have to use specific importers to bring wine back?
Yes, you have to go through importers and people with licenses. It’s a big, convoluted mess. Our liquor laws in the United States are Prohibition-era wine and alcohol laws, and slowly state-by-state they’re trying to repeal things and upgrade them to the 21st century, but it’s just slow going. Our state, Washington, is the second largest wine producer in the country, and we just recently had some changes in our import laws and shipping laws. It took this long. California is way ahead of us on that. Unfortunately we’re a Puritan-based society that is really stuck on religions, so it kind of flies in the face of that. Other countries don’t have that kind of background and have more of a wine culture, like France, Spain and Italy. They’re so far ahead of us in what they do. We have the resources here in this country, and there are a lot of great wine producing regions in the country, but we’re just now getting a hold on it. American wine has made quite a mark internationally. You can go to fine restaurants in Paris and see American wines on the menu, which is great. When we travel we try to spread the word about what we do, not only our wine but other people’s wines as well that are based in the country.





How seriously do people take a wine brand from a rock star? When people find out that they’re drinking something from the singer for Queensrÿche, what is the first reaction that you get?
I think very interested, until they taste it, then they go, “Wow! This is serious.” It’s a very well done wine, very elegant. In fact, we just had a really interesting experience. The band played a cruise ship that went to the Caribbean [around November], and they had these events planned. They asked us if they could do a wine tasting, and I said sure. I brought some cases of it onto the ship, and had this big wine tasting for all the guests of the ship. It was a fantastic event, then afterwards the captain invited us to have dinner with him. It was this beautiful gourmet meal, and they served Insania as the wine for the meal. On this Italian-based cruise ship, they had a master sommier. There are a handful of guys that have this title, and they’re incredibly well-trained wine connoisseurs. After a couple of courses of wine, my wife said I should get the master to sample the wine and tell us what he thought. I said, “Oh honey, this guy is a huge pro. What if he doesn’t like it?” They had all these guests there, like 75 people. She had a few drinks and got her courage up and asked him to sample it and tell us what he thought, and he loved it. He gave it a rave review in front of everybody, and we were just sitting there sweating. He’s from Italy, and they have this centuries-old wine industry. He was very kind and loved it. He finished his glass and asked for another one.

Queensrÿche circa 2009.
(Photo Credit: Greg Watermann.)

It seems like a lot of bands have been jumping on the cruise bandwagon of the last few years. It has become the hip thing to do in the last couple of years. Is it a lucrative business? Does it feel strange to do cruises, kind of like playing Vegas?
I love playing Vegas. It’s just another avenue to play music live, and we’re all about that. We’ll play anywhere. We’ve played music on the back of a flatbed truck. We’ve played it in the middle of the desert. We’ve played it on street corners and radio stations and coliseums and soccer stadiums. Wherever you can play, that’s what you do because you’re a musician. The cruise ship thing has opened up as a venue, and the fans really love it because they save for a year to get the tickets. They go for a week and enjoy themselves and get to see their favorite bands play. It’s a really great atmosphere actually. We had a fantastic time, and I’d definitely do it again.

The Insania insignia.

Did the fans get to meet and mingle with the band on the cruise?
Yeah. You’re stuck on a boat in the middle of the ocean. It’s a big ship, but you still see everybody. You’re in the same restaurants and clubs, out by the pool or on excursions off the boat onto the islands. Sometimes you book the same event. We went on this waterfall tour in Jamaica where they took us up in the mountains. We got to swim in these beautiful, exotic pools of water and waterfalls, and there were fans with us as well. It was a really good time, I have to say. It’s no big deal hanging out with fans. We do it all the time. We do meet and greets after every show, where we have 50 to 75 members of the audience come back and meet the band, take photos and sign autographs. It’s just part of what we do. Some bands don’t like that, but for us it works great.


Last time I spoke to you, you suspected that one of your daughters or son-in-laws may have blown out your stereo system. Have you fixed that?
I’m on my third one since then. Right now one of the channels of my new amp is blown out, and I’m waiting on the holidays to get that fixed.

Whose fault is that?
I haven’t quite pinned it down. We still have a house full of kids, so it could be any one of them. Right now they’re all guilty until proven innocent.

Geoff Tate, the happy bottler.
(Photo credit: Sarah Prout Photography.)

That’s what happens when you have a lot of kids. You could do a semi-movie remake: Cheaper By The Half-Dozen, the rock star version.
That’s what my wife says — when all the kids are out of the house in a couple of years, we’re going to sell this place and get a small condo. But where are they going to go? They’re going to come back for the holidays or say, “Hey, I’ve got to move in for six months while I get my life together.” You have to have a place for them to go. I don’t think we’ll probably ever downsize. They’ll keep coming home and bringing friends, boyfriends and fiancées. Tonight is our Christmas, so having all the kids over. It’s Yule tonight, the longest night of the year, everybody comes over, we have a big dinner and everybody stays up all night.

As far as your future with wine, is this endeavor something you would plan to continue after you retire from being a rock star? Do you see that as a viable occupation?
Oh yeah. I’d love to keep doing it. It’s a challenge to make it every year and to keep making it consistent. You have to deal with Mother Nature, the kind of grapes you get and the kind of growing season it is. I absolutely love it. This year we’re adding a white, next year we’re thinking of adding a different brand, something that’s perhaps a bit lighter. We’re definitely thinking about the future.


Part Two of ADD’s interview with Geoff Tate is found here.



Karl Sanders: Would you buy a used sarcophagus from this man?

They may hail from modern day South Carolina, but death metal veterans Nile have their minds firmly planted in the world of ancient Egypt. Driven by harsh growls, ferocious guitars, pummeling percussion and the lyrical ruminations of guitarist/co-vocalist/founder Karl Sanders, the group continues to mine dark, aggressive sounds ripe with influences from the distant past. The quartet’s sixth and latest opus, Those Whom The Gods Detest, takes their sound to the next level with top-notch production from Neil Kernon (whose credits include Queensrÿche, Cannibal Corpse and Hall & Oates). And, of course, there is their penchant for song titles both exotic — “Kem Khefa Kheshef” and “Iskander D’hul Karnon” — and epic — “Utterances Of The Crawling Dead,” “Permitting The Noble Dead To Descend To The Underworld” and “Yezd Desert Ghul Ritual In The Abandoned Towers Of Silence”.

I recently spoke with Sanders for ShockHound, and there was plenty of extra material for an exclusive ADD Q&A.


Is it true that you guys recently played in Africa?
Actually, we were scheduled for three shows, and the money was pretty good. But then they decided to cut it down to one big show, and of course correspondingly cut down our money to next to nothing. So by the time it was over we were maybe going to lose a couple hundred bucks, and we’re not in the business of losing money. We’re in the business of playing music and earning a living. So the African shows did not happen, much to our dismay.

Where were you supposed to play?
A couple of South African [cities] — Johannesburg, Cape Town and one other place.

In response to a review of your new album on Blabbermouth, one fan posted that you play “mummy metal”. I was curious as to what other tags have been given to your music over the years?
Mummy metal, that’s a good one. We gave ourselves a tag, or Ithyphallic metal. I’ve seen “Egypt-core”. I can’t think of anything else that stood out.

Masters of mummy metal.

Over the years, after all of the albums you’ve done and all the different styles of music you’ve absorbed, how do you keep things fresh and interesting when you’re doing a new Nile record? How did you approach this album differently than things you’ve done in the past?
You’ve got to think beyond things like it has to be fast, it needs this particular minor scale and have this stuff in there. It’s about the musical ideas themselves. Having new riffs, new ways of layering things together, putting new instruments in there certainly doesn’t hurt. Also, [co-vocalist/guitarist] Dallas [Toler-Wade]  and I really work hard on the guitar playing. I still take guitar lessons, even though I teach myself. There are some incredible jazz guitarists in this town [in Greenville, South Carolina], so you can never stop learning. Superficially death metal is always going to have the elements that make it death metal. It’s going to be fast and brutal, it’s going to have those growling vocals, it’s going to have insane drums and minor tonalities and a sense of doom and destruction. That’s just a given for the genre. So you’ve got to dig deeper than that and actually examine the musical content rather than just the superficial, stylistic given.

Metal is more diverse now than it’s ever been. The subgenres themselves have a lot of clichés, but the playing field is wide open. There are still plenty of vintage metal bands that listen to, like Living Death and Bulldozer. Some of it was cruder and a little sloppier, but people weren’t playing that fast at that point.
Dude, when you listen to records made in the ’80s you go, “Holy moley. That’s so primitive sounding. People can play circles around that stuff nowadays.”

But there’s still a freshness to a lot of it that doesn’t go away. Certain bands back then might not technically have had the proficiency that you hear today, but I don’t think many people are making music of that quality today.
I would agree with that. It’s about musical content, the idea themselves. I’ll even put on a Beatles record now and then and just go, “Wow. That’s incredible. I wouldn’t have thought to put that chord there.”

Nile live in 2007. (Photo credit: Cecil.)

What parallels do find between ancient Egyptian society and modern American society?
I don’t know if I necessarily find any, but I think there are some universal truths. Human beings are still the same evil, vicious creatures that they always have been, and I think societies are generally ruled by the top 2% or 3%. Everyone else is some form of slave. In modern America with our capitalist structure, we don’t realize that we’re slaves. We’re just economic slaves. We’re still all peasants in the eyes of the ruling class. We’re just here to be exploited. I think in recent times Americans are getting used and used a whole lot more.

Given how tough everything is for bands nowadays, how is Nile holding up?
Taking a beating. In the age of downloading, everyone thinks that all the money will be made on tour. Dude, that’s also where we’re getting hit really hard. Just the rising cost of transportation — the bus and the cost of diesel fuel — is our biggest fucking expense. That stuff has skyrocketed, yet we don’t see an increase in the amount of money from the promoters. They might be charging higher ticket prices to kids, but that money is not really trickling down to us. We’re getting it on all sides, man. Some of the larger cities are imposing higher and higher fees for selling your merch. Concert T-shirts are at a stupid[ly high] price now because you get taxed 40 to 45% right out of the gate, off the top. The band has to buy the shirts to start off with, and somebody is taking 40% of the gross in every city. It’s no picnic out there.

The latest Nile album cover, featuring Akhenaten, the Egyptian pharoah who instated monotheism and was quickly deposed for his reforms.

Many musicians are now doing other things on the side to make more money.
I’m giving guitar lessons, and I’ve got my side project, so that helps a little bit. But times are tough, man, and I don’t see them getting any better.

How does your son feel about what you do?
He thinks it’s cool and all. He thinks I should buy him a guitar for Christmas, but he’s already got four electric guitars. I’m going, “What do you need another electric guitar for?” He answers, “Dad, you’ve got twentysomething electric guitars. Why can’t I have one?” I’m trying to explain his 14-year-old guy that I have those guitars because that’s how I make a living. You’re 14, why do you need four guitars?

When you’re creating art for your album covers, how much of a stickler for detail are you?
That’s always been an issue with me, because no matter how much of a stickler I might be, the reality is the record company gives you X amount of dollars for an art budget, and you have to come in under that budget with whatever artist you choose. Historical accuracy or artistic consideration takes the second tier of importance. Oftentimes you have to accept what the record company is willing to give you.

As far as production, how much comes out of your pocket and how much comes out of their pocket?
That’s a funny one because today I got my balance sheet for the record budget, and in there is $900 worth of expenses that I turned in that I didn’t get reimbursed for and had to eat. That’s always a bone of contention there, and it’s not going to get any better. CD sales are declining 35% each successive year, so in the next five years we’re going to see bands have their budgets completely slashed. We have to take a budget cut as well.

Karl has already picked out his casket thanks to the untold riches that the music industry generates for death metal bands.

On this album you worked with producer Neil Kernon, and he’s known for doing a lot of high-profile albums. Some people are saying this is the best sounding album you’ve done. Was it like to work with him, and how did he work within your budgetary constraints?
We had to work on a great bit of the album here in my little home studio. I have a spare room that I turned into a place to record stuff. It’s where I did my [recent] solo record, and we did a lot of the new Nile record here. If you’re working at home you don’t have to pay for hotel rooms for everybody or pay for studio costs. That helped, but this is still the most expensive record we’ve ever made. Aside from money and all that, Neil’s a great guy. We love him. He knows what’s going on. He’s made a lot of really incredible records. He has so much experience and is such a musical guy, and he does incredible work.

How do you feel he helped Nile improve their studio sound on this record?
This time around Neil was a Nazi. He demanded perfection on every take. There is stuff where we did 100 takes before he was happy. It got to be a running joke. We would do a spectacular take, and Neil would say, “That’s great! That’s awesome! That’s perfect! Now do it again.” There was no room for anything less than perfection on this record. Everything’s in tune and everything’s in time. It’s what you’ve actually got to do. We figured out that to be able to hear everything clearly and cleanly takes a level of precision for music this fast and this dense. If you’re going to hear it, then it needs to be done right, just so that you can hear it. Otherwise if there are little bits that aren’t dead on, they add up. Even if it’s so imperceptible that you can’t even tell, that little bit still adds up. On this record every instrument was meticulously done. Christ, we spent from June to mid-September tracking and mixing this thing.

And your vocals sound pretty clear, growls and all. Everything is separated out.
Absolutely. We spent meticulous attention to detail on everything, on a microcosmic level, and it adds up to an album where you can hear stuff. You can tell what the fuck I’m growling, you can hear that high-speed guitar run, and the fast drums are all there and you can hear them. With declining budgets and all, we’ve raised the bar to that point. How can we ever go back? We can’t.

Ancient axe attack.

That makes your career more expensive.
Yeah, it means we take the hit. All record companies are going to go out of business in the next five years. So what does that mean? How does that translate down to us? That means that if we want to have a record deal, the amount of available record contracts will shrink. The amount of money the record companies can afford to pay you is going to shrink. But the costs to make these records is not going to shrink. Think about that. So that means a music career, making records, is not going to be easy in the foreseeable future. It’s going to get tougher.

So what is the game plan for Nile?
It boils down to how we are going to make money to counteract that. We’re talking about expanding into new, emerging world markets, like India and China, where there is a middle class that has disposable income. People in China have jobs. There’s work there. They have disposable income.

At least in India they might be able to relate to some of your Eastern sounds.
I actually get a lot of letters from India, and a lot of people there dig what we do. It looks like we’re going to have to go outside of America because America is starting to suck. I think it’s going to get worse here.