It’s late Saturday afternoon and the HELLYEAH sound check is booming away. We are waiting for our interview with Vinnie Paul (drummer).
HELLYEAH have debuted #1 on the US BILLBOARD Hard Rock Charts (Top 20 on the overall charts) and the single ‘Sangre Por Sangre (Blood For Blood)’ hit the Top 20 at rock radio in the US. HELLYEAH have made an impressive showing with their fourth album, ‘Blood for Blood’. The band have gone through some changes in recent times and now they are back and loving every minute of it, including the line-up change and their new album.
We talk to Vinnie about their crowd reaction at Bloodstock, choosing Kevin Churko to produce their most recent album, Vinnie’s drumming inspiration and finally what he gets up to on the tour bus!
RAMzine: Hi Vinnie, thanks for speaking to RAMzine ahead of your Slade Rooms gig tonight. You hit the ground running for Bloodstock and a few dates in the UK, how’s it going so far?
“It’s been absolutely awesome! Without a doubt, Bloodstock was the highlight of the entire European tour. We’ve been to Germany, Hungary, Italy, Belgium….can’t remember where else but we were in several places before we got here and Bloodstock was our first show and the crowd was absolutely amazing!
We headlined the second stage and we were kinda like “wow I dunno whether we should be headlining this shit or not cos not a lot of people know us” and it was the biggest crowd they had got there all day long. The crowd just chanted “HELLYEAH” from the minute we started until we finished.
We really felt like it was our show that night and the crowd really fucking treated us great, then on tour all the headline shows have been sold out or very nearly. The crowds have been great and it feels like England is really embracing HELLYEAH this time around – we are having a good time over here.”
RAMzine: Soon you will be back in the US for a kick ass tour with a few more famous names like Volbeat and Five Finger Death Punch, tell me about that?
“Ah now we are really excited about that. Before our record we came out, we did a complete tour of the United States and Canada with Avenged Sevenfold which was absolutely awesome. They have probably the most die-hard fans in the world right now, a very dedicated fan base and they really accepted us and gave us a great start to the record and so we’re now over here and then we go back.
We’ve known the Five Finger Death Punch guys since the first tour we did on ‘Family Values’, they are very good friends and Volbeat was one of the best tours we ever did before. Michael Poulsen is amazing and the whole band are so happy that Rob Caggiano is part of what they are doing now, he is a good friend of ours who formerly was in Anthrax – to be able to play on the same bill as both those bands plus the upcoming band from Texas, Nothing More. It’s a really great bill all four bands are super-intense but very different from each other and it’s just about sold out everywhere so we’re gonna get along great. It’s gonna be a blast.”
RAMzine: You latest album ‘Blood for Blood’ has been out for a few months now and is your boldest statement yet, how does the writing process begin and who is involved?
“Well you know we wanted this record to start immediately after the Gigantour which was over in September last year. It really became apparent to us that Bob and Greg weren’t on the same page as us and they had some serious personal issues in their lives and they were really becoming a problem to the band – we knew we needed to part company with them so we did.
“Myself and Tom Maxwell wrote all the music at my house which was the same place we did the previous HELLYEAH records. I engineered and recorded it and pre-produced it all. Then we hooked up with my friend Kevin Churko in Vegas who was working with Mutt Lange, the greatest producer on the face of the earth, he’s done Ozzie’s latest couple of records and a lot of great music and we decided we wanted an outside producer, and he just seemed to be the obvious choice. He really helped us paint the picture we wanted, he understood our vision. When your back is against the wall and you go from five guys down to three guys, you really have to focus and dedicate yourself to it and its turned out to be the best record we’ve ever made.”
RAMzine: I have to admit I liked your 2012 studio album ‘Band of Brothers’ but now I am hearing more heavier stuff on this album and I really do like it. Was it the intention to notch it up a cog or two?
” ‘Band of Brothers’ was us getting back to our roots and really getting back to the heavy metal thing. The first two HELLYEAH records were very experimental for us you know, we probably confused a lot of people with what we did with me being from Pantera and Chad from Mudvayne and Nothingface.
We wanted to do something that was fun, we wanted to get away from anything that we couldn’t have done in our previous bands. A song like ‘Alcohaulin’ Ass’ would never fly in Mudvayne or Pantera or anything like that, so it was really a great opportunity for us musically to do some stuff outside the box.
With ‘Band of Brothers’, we wanted to get back to what we did with our heavy roots and I think we got really close to where we wanted to go with it. We just took it to another level, it was much more focused and much more intense. You know I’m really, really proud of it. We’ve worked really hard on it and like I said, it was fun working with Kevin, having an outside opinion, an outside ear to really give us a sounding board that we needed at this point in time and we are looking forward to working with him again.”
RAMzine: You chose Kevin Churko to produce ‘Blood for Blood‘ – his pedigree is outstanding. What was it that pushed you to use Kevin?
“It wasn’t anything in particular that pushed us to use him, I did the demos at my house and after we finished we were like “man we need a change” because the music is great but we need someone really cool to get the best out of us. We started talking about different producers and I bought a house in Vegas (five years ago). Kevin’s studio is literally two miles from my house and I used to run into him around town and at shows. He was a big fan of all the stuff I had done with Pantera, and I was a big fan of all his stuff. We did a little shop talk and kinda got to be friends. As soon as we started to talk about outside producers, it was like “this Kevin Churko out in Vegas, he’s the guy” and so once we got to Vegas, we had one meeting with him and all the guys, Chad and Tom fell in love with him. You learn to trust someone really fast. That’s the most important thing about being around a producer, you have to trust them because you have to be willing to fail in front of them to get the very best out of what you do and sometimes it’s hard to do.
A lot of people have a hard time letting their ego down and I’m always Billy Bad-ass and standing there naked and saying “man you’re not so good today”, so we got past that real fast with him and he was really into this record. He said it was one of his favourite records he had ever made – that coming from him with his track record, meant a lot to us and it was a great working relationship. I hope it continues in the future.”
RAMzine: Let’s talk about your drumming! I think you’ve found another dimension because with ‘Say When’ it really shows at the start. I think you’ve taken yourself up a level.
“Absolutely, being able to not have to be in the studio 18 hours a day, produce, engineer, mix, master, edit. To be able to focus on the drums and then go away for 8-10 hours, have some drinks and a good time and then come back and hear they songs as they are coming together. Then be able to put in your two cents worth was really important and I wanted to get back to a more aggressive style of drumming on this record, and that’s what we did. So I feel good about it and I’m glad you picked up on it.”
RAMzine: Staying with drums, who inspired you?
“Aw man, I mean I have four favourite drummers in the whole world and the one people always go “no way” and then one that always made me wanna play drums was Peter Criss. I mean the first record I ever owned was Kiss ‘Alive’. Even though his drumming was so simple, you could remember it. It’s almost like you could air drum to all those drums and stuff.
Then obviously I liked John Bonham (Led Zeppelin). He’s the greatest drummer who probably ever lived in my opinion. Then there’s Alex Van Halen, I love the energy that he always played with.
Somebody who didn’t really reflect my playing is Neil Peart (Rush). He is an amazing drummer and then the one who made ma wanna play double kick was Tommy Aldridge (Ozzy Osbourne, Gary Moore, Whitesnake). The first time I ever heard ‘Boom Boom (Out Go The Lights)’ by the Pat Travers Band, he was doing stuff with his feet that I had never heard people do with their hands. I just flipped out and it was crazy. I just went to my Dad and said “Dad I gotta have another bass drum” and he was like “Son what’s wrong with the one you got?” [Laughing] I said “Nothing, I need another one” and he was like “Two bass drums? For what?” and I said “You’ll see man, I need another bass drum”. So that’s what got me started.”
RAMzine: Post gig now. You’re travelling on the tour bus and hit a quiet moment, what do you do?
“Erm, not a lot here cos things are so different than at home. At home I am a raging party animal man, I wanna go out every night whether it’s to a rock bar, to jam with other bands, strip bars or whatever you know.
But over here it doesn’t seem like surroundings that are familiar so usually when I get done I get back on the bus and have some drinks and just pop on some movies that I’ve never seen. I don’t watch a lot of movies or TV on my own time and people ask me all the time have you seen certain movies, like Saving Private Ryan. No, I’ve never seen it, you know, ET, I’ve never seen it. So I’ll get on the bus and go through whatever’s in there and something I’ve never seen that people are always talking about I’ll put on, just so I can say hey I watched… you know I watched Blazing Saddles today for the first time! Never seen it before and my friends talk about it all the time and I’m like it’s not that fucking good, but I watched it. So that’s kinda what I do.”
RAMzine: Vinnie, thanks so much for your time tonight.
Interview and Article by www.facebook.com/BillibeeCreativeLimited
