Exclusive Interview With ATR’s Dynamic Guitar Duo: Oli Herbert And Mike Martin

As I stated in my last interview with Trivium, the tour manager had some issues with her laptop so there was a lot of waiting around for her to try to get my interviews. I even saw Phil about 10 minutes before my scheduled interview with him and asked him if it was cool to try to get the interview even though the tour manager wasn’t around. He said that he had just woke up and wanted to get something to eat. I was totally understanding and about 20 minutes or so later, the tour manager showed up and I talked to her about my scheduled interviews. I waited around a little while longer and finally got the interview with Corey from Trivium. She said that she would try to get me in with Phil and I waited around for about an hour longer before finally saying screw it and went to get my tickets and photo pass. At the beginning of 36 Crazyfists set She texts me and said she could get me in with Mike Martin so I agreed figuring it was better than no interview at all. She took me up and to my surprise I got to speak to Mike Martin and Oli Herbert as well. They were watching the World Series play-offs, being Boston Red Sox Fans. Oli looked like he was feeling pretty good, but said that he was still recovering from the night before from drinking after they played New Haven Connecticut.

MM: Hey Mike, how’s it going?

Mike Martin: Good, we’re just watching the Sox game.

MM: I’m a Yankees fan, myself.

Mike: Then you must hate us.

MM: Nah, I’ve had 4 years to get over it. (Referring to the last time the 2004 play-offs where the Yankees were up 3 games and then lost the next 4.) Good thing I didn’t put money on that series.

I was scheduled to talk to Phil and all these questions were geared toward him so maybe you can answer them and maybe not…

Oli: We’ll try to answer them like Phil.

MM: On the new album. With all the layered clean vocals, a lot of people were not necessarily saying that their bad, but weird. Was there any reason why they layered them so much?

Oli: You’re talking about all the vocal tracks?

MM: Yeah.

Oli: Just to give it a bigger sound.

MM: To make it sound bigger? Something different than before?

Oli: Just to give a thicker sound.

Mike: It wasn’t to specifically to piss people off. They’re going to freaked out when they hear more singing regardless, they’re going to hear more singing and say (In a kind of deeper condescending voice) “Oh, That’s not metal”.

MM: Was that something that Jason Seucoff suggested doing?

Oli: Absolutely.

MM: You guys covered Nevermore’s Believe In Nothing. I thought it was a good cover. Some people said it was good but it made you want to hear the original. Right after it was released it was announced that Firewind did a cover of the same song. Are you guys familiar with Firewind?

Mike: Yeah, we got a kick out of that. We shared a bus with them in England.

MM: I saw them live back in May, they were great, I expected Firewind’s cover to be a lot better because Apollo has a different range than Phil does because he’s got that big power metal sound but I actually liked your version better. (Shameless ass kissing)

Mike: Anytime you read anything on the internet, most people get on there just to smash the band, especially Blabbermouth. They’re going to comment (again with the voice)”Uh, that’s the worst just cause I feel like saying it.

Oli: You’re never going to top the original, but you try to keep it as close as possible. We changed it a bit with the chorus and a little guitar and added some more layers.

(Mike Martin claps at the TV because the Red Sox just scored. He comments that everything started going well in the game ever since I got there. I guess I was like a good luck charm or some shit. Too bad the Sox lost the next day)

MM: IN the new Revolver and how You (Oli) and Jason would get in there and you (Mike) and Phil would get in there and would ask them to “Dumb it down” a bit.

Mike: Yeah, definitely as far as Oli goes, Jason being a drummer…I think every drummer we’ve ever worked with has gotten mad at us because at some point we might say “Hey, can you just do a really dumb Metallica beat there or something.” and they would say (Once more with the voice) “That just sounds stupid” It’s always like that with a drummer go, you’re gonna deal with that all the time. Sometimes a really heavy riff just sounds so much better with like the dumbest possible drumming that there is. A lot of drummers don’t want people to think that they’re crappy drummers and want to put something complicated over it, but we want to do whatever fits the song best. Oli writes some very aggressive stuff sometimes too, sometimes he comes with a whole song on the computer and if we did it exactly how it sounds, the computer would not sound like the band at all. We have to strip it down here and there.

MM: When you (Oli) write the main riffs and leads and rhythms and it comes down to what Mike will be playing, so you suggest to him how he should be playing it?

Oli: I usually have both the parts written.

Mike: Everybody kind of picks everyone’s parts apart and sometimes say, “Hey you should try this” and sometimes it sounds a lot better. Everybody pretty much knows how to push each others buttons the right way and it works out for the better.

Oli: I write the guitar and bass parts…

Mike: He’s a writing machine…

Oli: I take each guitar part and work on the sound and try to make it sound as big as possible.

MM:Phil keeps it lyrically simple without over-thinking the lyrics by throwing big words in there. You don’t have to sit there and wonder what that means.

Mike: Some people might say it’s stupid but by keeping it simple the kids really relate to it. There are so many people on the internet with tattoos of the lyrics all over them.

Oli:It’s not as dumbed down as like, let’s say Hatebreed, it’s just obvious, especially in metal, you have to have a straight forward message.

MM: You guys sold like 28,000 in your first week and that’s twice as much as the last record. Some people say “I don’t give a shit about record sales because I don’t make my money off of cd sales” but every cares how many people are buying the cd. You guys care, right?

Mike: Numbers to an extent don’t lie. There are some bands that don;t sell a lot of records but they draw a ton of people, but for the most part numbers are numbers and it gauges how you do to an extent.

Oli: It looks good on paper too

Mike: Yeah, it always looks good on paper, even if you;re not drawing a lot of people, the venue might see the numbers and say, “Oh, you’re selling this much, we’ll give you this much money.

Oli: We don’t see money from cd sales for a long time, but it’s always better to sell a lot of albums. We don’t write the records with the though in mind that we’re going to sell a million records, we just right the songs the way we think they should be.

Mike: It’s all like a resume thing.

MM: What about label support? Do cd sales key in to a lot of label support meaning, like the bus is a big expense. Does the label help out fund that kind of stuff.

Oli: The label does but you have to pay it back. They might say, we’re going to give you $40,000 to pay for your bus, but that money will come out of your record sales. You’re way better off being able to just pay for it yourself as a band and not take money from labels because they’ll just take it back. It’s an advance and you always have to pay it back.

MM: I just wanted to better understand that. Do cd sales directly effect label support going in to the future?

Mike: Sometimes with festivals you have to take some money for tour support because you get so little money from festivals.

Oli: You take as little as you possibly need because…

Mike: You don’t want to dig yourself a hole.

MM: How many bottles of Jim Beam do you guys usually go through on a tour

Mike: Jim beam…hmm.. that’s been really slacking off on this tour a lot. Jeanne and Phil  are the main ones and they have barely drank at all on this tour. Phil quit smoking this tour so his Red Bull and whiskey intake has really slacked off cause the two kind of go hand in hand. For a little while there it was getting pretty impressive.

MM: You gu8ys still big in to Guitar Hero on the bus?

Oli: We haven’t had it this time around. We’ve been rockin’ the Whitesnake live Still Of the Night DVD. We have NHL Hockey and he (Mike) kicks my ass every time. Sometimes I feel like cross-checking him on stage sometimes.

Mike: He hit me in the face with his guitar yesterday…

Oli: Yeah, that was for the game.

MM: First thought. First thing that comes to mind…

Oli: We both get to do it?

MM: Yeah why not? ok…Sarah Palin?

Mike: Stupid…

Oli: Hot

Mike: I don’t know why everybody says that.

MM: She’s got a cuteness too her but she’s ridiculously stupid

Mike: I saw her on that Katie Couric interview and I was like ‘Oh my god’, I could have answered that question and I’m a moron.

MM: Favorite city to tour?

Mike: New Haven Connecticut. Last night was so out of control you would not believe it.

Oli: Want to know the worst city to tour in? Sioux Falls South Dakota.

MM: Why’s that?

Mike: It just sucked. The turn out sucked and the kids just stood there with their fingers in their asses the whole time.

MM: What’s the worse job you’ve ever had before playing in ATR?

Mike: I’ve only had one other job, it was a family business awesome, so I’ve never really had a shitty job.

Oli: Dishwashing at Dennys. That’s a bad fucking job. I got fired and I was happy.

MM: What kind of music do you generally listen to, Oli?

Oli: I like a lot of progressive power metal. I also like a lot of traditional music like classical and jazz.

MM: It’s seems like a lot of your guitar playing is classically influenced.

Oli: Oh yeah.

MM: How about you mike?

Mike: I like a lot of 80’s hair metal, it’s like my favorite thing ever as a kid. I also listen to an insane amount of bubblegum pop because I really like bad music. I can’t help it, I just like it.

MM: Favorite porn star?

Mike: I’d say right now….I love Gina Lynn.

MM: I have no clue who that is…

Mike: I know them all…I’ve done a severe amount of masturbating…

Oli: I would say Belladonna because she’ll do anything dirty

MM: Well that’s all the questions I have. Thanks for your time and I’ll see you out there.

There may have been some other stuff said but you could hear 36 Crazyfists playing in the background and something were inaudible. I wanted to talk to Oli in my first interview back in March but only had a chance to talk to Phil and Mike Martin for a short time, so this was cool for me and Oli seemed like a really cool buy. They ended that tour last Sunday and will be heading out with In Flames, Gojira and 35 Crazyfists starting on November 6th in Montreal Canada.

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