Ben Falgoust checks in for a heart-to-heart with SMN on haunted studios, touring with the greats, and a long musing on the identity of black metal. Also included is the final word on where the name Goatwhore comes from.

Let’s start off talking about your newest album, A Haunting Curse. Between your car accident and the incidents involving Hurricane Katrina: It almost seems like you and Goatwhore have a haunting curse of your own. How did Katrina affect the outcome of this record?

That’s what the title is a basis of, Goatwhore as a whole and also personal, individual levels too… whatever kind of troublesome things in life that we’ve been doing like the situation of me being in a van accident on a personal level and Katrina affecting us as a whole and a unit. But there’s other aspects too about the title, but overall the basic thing with Katrina, we actually utilized in a positive fashion. We took the situation and turned it into finishing up A Haunting Curse because when it hit we were at the middle-point of writing for it and then it seemed like everything was going to be halted. Then we decided to take everything and go out to Phoenix where our drummer’s from and get together and finish writing the record.

So in a way, we took the situation that happened with that and made it into something positive for us to kind of move forward, where a lot of people would let it slow them down, you know? I guess it’s because we’ve been through a lot of things both as a band and individually in the past and seeing the kind of delay things happening that this time we were like “We can’t let this delay this”, we got to keep the movement going and do what we have to do. So we actually utilized it in a positive kind of outlook which is kind of contradictory to say. People say that you play this style of music which is mostly negative so for us to pull something positive out of nowhere is actually kind of a hypocritical thing I guess. But either way we kind of benefited from it in a sense of us moving forward and finishing the record.

So I guess this is a good example of “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”?

Pretty much, yeah, in a sense.

The production on this album seems more punishing than your previous work. How was it working with the famed Erik Rutan?

Dude, he’s amazing to work with. It’s just awesome to have an engineer/producer that has had the knowledge-base and everything from the past playing with bands like Morbid Angel, Ripping Corpse, Hate Eternal, so he was already there as far as extreme music, you know? Whereas sometimes you go into the studio and the producer maybe had a little involvement with some metal here or something like that and you have to kind of explain things to him. Erik’s already in that area and the only thing you have to go over with him is how you want your sound compared to things he’s done in the past.

He’s a tough guy to be in the studio with… but it’s not a bad thing. He’s a perfectionist. He wants to make sure things sound good because he wants to make sure the band sounds good and that the whole recording comes out good because it also makes him look good as well. But he’s definitely an amazing person to work with man, he’s quite a fucking ballbuster.

On a different note, you recorded the album prior, Funeral Dirge for the Rotting Sun, in Noise Lab studios that is supposedly haunted…

Yeah, Noise Lab is supposed to be haunted and there were some instances there that seemed kind of awkward.

Awkward how?

Well there was a night when just me and Sammy and the engineer were there and we were going over some things. We kind of took a break for a little while, it was probably 1 or 2 in the morning, and it was like a two level house. The bottom level was the whole studio and the top level was like a living area so a band could come up and rent the place for a couple months and live upstairs. We were downstairs and we heard like bunches of footsteps running upstairs like numerous people were up there, but there’s only – there’s no way - everything’s locked up there and the only way to get up there was this spiral staircase that was in the back of the studio downstairs. We went up there and there wasn’t anyone there, it was just an odd fucking thing. Then Sammy said he saw some shit out of the corner of his eye one night when he was doing his little guitar tracks in a booth. It was real quick so he didn’t know what it was… It was just some little weird things that happened in the studio doing that record.

Well, I was about to ask “Do you have anything freaky to share?” but that certainly fits the bill!

Yeah pretty much but other than that – freaky? We were parked in a rest area in the state of Kentucky one night, like we sleep in the van a lot when we’re on tour and we’ll pull in at a truck stop or a rest area. And we got woken up in the middle of the night by a drunk driver that ran straight into the front of our van because he was going down the Interstate the wrong way and came into the rest area the wrong way and just piled into the front of our ride. I mean, I guess that’s a bit freaky or odd.

That’s a little unnerving, yeah!

Yeah very much and he actually got free – his car was kind of stuck to ours the way he hit it and he was trying to get in reverse and get out and finally he broke free and took off. When the cops got there we explained to them the story and they were asking if we had been drinking. And it was like dude, you’ve got this guy going down the Interstate backwards the wrong direction, drunk, risking people’s lives, and you’re questioning us right now if we have been drinking? And we’ve just been parked here sleeping. It was totally ridiculous. But it was odd, just to wake up and see somebody piled up in front of your vehicle, that’s for sure.

You were guests on Headbanger’s Ball and the first video for “Alchemy of the Black Sun Cult” had a good bit of air-time there. Has that exposure seemed to pay off?

Yeah, I guess we’ve gotten a lot of stuff from it. I’m sure it does – the label sends, you know, whenever they added sales boosting up and we meet people at the shows that never heard of us but saw the video. That’s how they were introduced to the band so it definitely did. And we actually have another video that’s currently being worked on for the song “Forever Consumed Oblivion” off A Haunting Curse so maybe sometime within a month or so we might see that one as well.

I read that MTV2 censored the word “Christ” from the lyric “murdering the slaves of Christ”. Did that censorship bother you?

It is kind of funny that – especially with all the crazy rap shit that MTV plays, some of the stuff they play – that they’d actually be concerned about a line like that within one of our songs, you know? It’s kind of ridiculous actually. But what can you do? It’s the whole political scheme of the music business.

You released A Haunting Curse with Metal Blade. In general, how have things changed for Goatwhore since you left your old label, Rotten?

Actually it’s been real good. Definitely, I mean, Metal Blade and Rotten – it’s two different worlds. Metal Blade’s definitely a more powerful label, they have a lot more input worldwide. Rotten did what they could when we were with them but we definitely had to move up because we were touring a lot and we need to get out on the road more. And with that comes, you know, we need a label with bigger distribution and more worldwide exposure to kind of benefit that.

It seems like the logical next step.

Yeah, yeah, and if anything in the business scheme of what we’re doing it’s the best thing to do so things can kind of grow a little more so we can be able to, you know, tour outside of the US and other places and have a little more distribution of ourselves.

In the past year you’ve toured with the likes of Emperor, Celtic Frost and Venom. That list plays like a who’s who of black metal pioneers. What’s it like touring with the bands who directly influenced your music?

It’s awesome! I’m sure that a lot of people couldn’t really say that, you know, if you ask them – the big question is always who would be the greatest band to ever tour with… I guess we kind of did that in our eyes. I guess the next big thing we could do would be Slayer, that would be something unique. But as far as bands that definitely influenced us a lot like Emperor, Venom, and Celtic Frost, and in such a small amount of time…

It was within a year right?

Yeah, in like four months! So it’s kind of odd too because usually someone would be like – one year we did a tour with Celtic Frost then a couple years later we did some dates with Venom – it was like a four month period when all this shit went down. So that’s pretty crazy to cover that terrain in that short a time, you know? Some bands never get to tour with someone who influenced them or who they’d really like to tour with.

And not only that but sometimes you get asked that and after the interview you’re like – I’ll always wonder if the way these bands act will break down the idolism of them you know? If they’ll be assholes or whatever and I’ll look at it totally different now. But I have to say that out of all of them, none of them did. They were all cool as hell and all hung out and talked and did stuff, so it actually made it even stronger that they were such big influences and that they were so cool to us as well. You’re always afraid that you’re going to lose the idol-thing especially bands that are a major league influence. I always dread it because it’s like – what if they’re fucking pricks - or something like that. But it’s awesome that they all turned out to be really good individuals as well.

So this tour you’re on now, with 1349, Nachtmystium, and Averse Sefira… pretty evil lineup! How have the other bands on the bill been?

They’ve all been really good man. You know we’ve done a lot of weird tours, like in January and February we were out on the God Forbid tour which is definitely different. But we want to cover the terrain because we don’t want to get painted into that black metal corner, you know? We are influenced by it but I think Goatwhore does sometimes offer different things. Sometimes with labels, especially in this generation, people shut bands off before they even hear them just because they’re labeled something. So when people can see that we’ve done these different tours they might open people from other extreme – I mean I grew up on hardcore, punk, thrash metal, death metal, black metal, so I like a lot of things but there’s people who only stick to one extreme style. So if you have a band that can go out and interact with those, it kind of opens it up a little more and covers more terrain with extreme music. Because Goatwhore has a little more to offer than your basic black metal thing.

But this tour’s been really cool because it’s back to a subculture we’re more closely associated with. 1349 is a great band, they come from the whole legendary Norwegian scene that kind of spurred the whole black metal craze and the other two bands – Nachtmystium and Averse Sefira – are really great as well. All the guys get along really great in all the bands. That always makes for a tour because if you have one group that just doesn’t roll right it makes the tour uncomfortable. At the beginning you’re like, “When is this tour going to end”? I can’t stand being on the road with these guys. But everybody here’s been getting along really well and it’s been working out really well.

You’re soon going to embark on your first European Tour ever with the likes of Marduk and Enslaved. Are you excited to take Goatwhore to our friends overseas?

Oh yes, definitely. It’s been, I guess you can say, a long time coming. We’ve been wanting to go over there but because of the label thing we discussed earlier – Rotten didn’t really have any major distribution there.

Just didn’t have the reach?

Yeah, so we couldn’t work it out. It was more or less an import for Europeans so there wasn’t really any push for them to put up money for us to go there. So now that we’re with Metal Blade, since they’ve got a big office in Europe as well, it opens it up for us to go do this. We hope with this though too that it’ll kind of open us up more as well. So we’re definitely excited about it and really stoked. Especially playing with all the bands that are on that tour. It’s amazing man. It’s definitely influential bands from over there that are big in that scene.

Yeah, Enslaved another big BM pioneer! Are you just working down the list?

It’s like dude, it’s going quick! It’s like this band, this band, this band, we’re going out with all these bands, it’s awesome!

Darkthrone and Mayhem are next! So let’s talk about black metal for a second. What would you say to the “kvlt” black metal fan that says black metal never made it past 1994? I’m sure the type needs no further description.

First thing I want to say is that the Norwegians have more of a right to say what is true (Editor’s note: I’m not writing “tr00″ over and over) and isn’t true black metal, more than any fucking American individual. And I think all that attitude is a bit kind of bullshit anyway. It is what it is, you know, even the Norwegians weren’t the first. They spurred from a classical edge, from the Venom and the Celtic Frost.

They were the second wave.

Yeah, exactly. But they were definitely the ones that spurred the whole second wave of it so if anybody has a right they definitely have a right out of most. But they’re fairly open about it. You don’t see 1349 on this tour downgrading bands being like “you all are not true because we are the true kings” or shit like that. They accept that other bands are into – I mean that’s what helped create their scene even more was the popularity of all these other areas, even the US.

I think sometimes when the US people bring that up a lot it kind of makes us look stupid, man. Because then the Norwegians and the people who are involved with it and more in a sense started it are like “How can they be so stupid by saying this?” So sometimes it’s a little dumb. I mean, we don’t run around claiming anything we just say “These are our main influences” and this is how we are. We like to play this, we tour, we push it, we do this thing and if you like it, you like it and if you don’t, you don’t. If you want to sit here and say we’re true and this and that, I mean whatever. I mean, I used to write bands a lot when I was younger, I used to write Euronymous, I bought a shirt for Mayhem before they did Deathcrush and all that. I have letters from Euronymous, I used to write Mika from Impaled Nazarene –

Wow, those are collector’s items now!

Yeah! And I have kids that are like “You’re not true, you play in that band” and it’s like, whatever man, I was writing these bands when you weren’t even around into this shit so how are you going to say who’s true or not? You know it gets a bit absurd with that shit. People are doing this because this is what they enjoy, you know? I think someone would get really upset if they found out that their idols in some of these Norwegian bands in their off-time go to DJ clubs and do DJ shit instead of playing black metal. It’s like, sometimes it’s deeper than you really know so don’t try to sit here and play the bigger kid or the bigger guy and think you know all when other people have done just as much as you, you know? It’s all about what you’re doing and what you enjoy and what you want to play. I mean of course, we started in like – what was it, ’96 or something?

But it’s like, if people in your area, that’s all anybody knows about the style, how are you going to put a band together? So you find people that are into that kind of style and that’s basically how it was. Sammy was into it, I was into it, we lived in different parts of Louisiana and eventually we got together and things evolved from there. It takes time you know, people want to start kicking things down you’re wasting your time, you know? You should be focused on what you’re doing musically rather than downgrading other people for what they’re doing already.

I guess that leads into my next question. The current state of black metal seems to be all over the map. We’ve got a more traditional sound in Eastern Europe, the suicide-obsessed one-man projects in San Francisco, you’re mixing it up with NOLA-style sludge and death, and all the while Dimmu Borgir are playing with a symphony. Where do you see black metal evolving to? Has the genre become so varied that applying a label to it is irrelevant?

It’s kind of irrelevant but in a way – I don’t know – because even within black metal it branches off and stems. Just like you were saying, the San Francisco thing, and – I mean there’s just bands everywhere and bands people won’t even know about where it’s one guy doing everything somewhere out in the middle of nowhere. And he just does it because he likes to do it and he has a little CD and one day his CD leaks and becomes some kind of craze. But it’ll evolve because there’s always evolution within it. But like Dimmu is the more symphonic strain and I think they pull it off better than Cradle of Filth that’s for sure.

Haha, I agree with you there.

But Dimmu’s definitely a band that’s set a grain and other bands kind of build from that you know? And then Darkthrone’s another one, and it’s just a more dirtied-up sound of black metal. So you’ve got like the cleaner approaches and the “I just want to do it on a jambox and be sick as fuck” approaches. Whatever approach you want to do is fine, it doesn’t matter, like I said before it’s how you want to do it and what you like to do.

I guess the real question is how do you define black metal and what are the underlying elements that unite all these bands?

Ah, yeah yeah, it’s a tough thing man, it’s a tough thing. I guess some bands can say they’re black metal but I don’t think – It’s kind of like in a sense you have a distinct sound with it, you know? That’s why I said Goatwhore couldn’t necessarily be solidly black metal because it does have a lot of different elements but you can hear the black metal parts when we do do them.

So you have this tone you hear when you listen to Darkthrone, and when you listen to Dimmu that you can tell where the black metal is. It’s hard to explain but it’s almost like a feeling and a sound and tone they kind of have. Kind of representative of where it was birthed from. Because you have the older stuff like Venom and Celtic Frost that sound nothing like the new modern black metal and sometimes it gets kind of hard because it’s like – is that really black metal or is that really black metal? So I think sometimes people just base it on how much evil shit you have in the lyrics and that’s black metal. But you can’t even do that because -

How much you hate Christians maybe?

Yeah, how much you hate Christians or corpse-paint or any of that. It just gets – it’s hard man. I guess the label thing because I’m older is starting to become a null and void thing because you listen to bands and it’s like “Yeah, they’ve got some of that but they’ve also got some of this too”.

In a way too, black metal’s kind of like – and I know people will hate me for saying this but – it’s like an evil, more disgusted style of punk. Because if you listen to some of the drum shit and the way beats go in it’s kind of like punk-style, scat beats and shit like that. So it was kind of structured off of that in a sense. But then you throw in black clothes, spikes, and face-paint and then you have black metal. Just turn the treble up on the guitars a little bit, make it nasty-sounding and you just have a different approach with it. But it’s all rudiments from the same shit and everything.

That’s why I listen to so many extreme styles because so many of those bands have so many different things but they were all kind of birthed from the same area. I mean Black Sabbath is probably, ultimately, the biggest thing for all of these bands. Even though none of them sound directly like Black Sabbath but it’s definitely a rudiment of the beginning of everything and the creation of it in a sense.

And even further back with Led Zeppelin.

Led Zeppelin, yeah, but you can keep going further back you know?

Elvis!

Dude, I know I’ll sound crazy but even if you listen to some Queen stuff it’s like the evolution of metal. Because if you listen to Brian May’s guitar tone on some of the songs like “Fat-Bottomed Girls” and shit like that, he’s got like a metal guitar sound. It’s like you can keep going back and back and build off of that and say “Well that dude had a total metal sounding guitar”, you know?

It’s always interesting to trace back where it all came from.

Yeah! It branches so much. Then as it branches each – like I said black metal and death metal – it even branches in those areas. So you have deathcore, or you have thrash/death metal or black/death metal. Then you have black metal but you also have symphonic black metal, you have necro black metal, then the categories start breaking up so much and it’s like, holy shit man. It’s like The Matrix computer numbers everything’s breaking down so much, it’s like black metal square-root fucking who knows? Fucking madness sometimes!

And then the people who aren’t into metal are like, “Well it all sounds the same to me!”

Yeah of course, they always say that. In a way it’s kind of like an acquired taste, you know? When I was younger and I first heard it I was totally into it, I was like “Oh my god, this shit’s insane I love it” but I did have friends I grew up with who didn’t like any metal and they were like “That shit all sounds the same!” You just gotta listen to it, you know? You can differentiate, like I can differentiate every band.

Really it’s almost the same with any genre. If you’re not into it, it all kind of sounds the same but the more you listen the more you start to notice –

Country all sounds the same to me, fuck. I hate it but –

You talk to someone who’s into country and –

And they’ll know everything different about it, but to me it all sounds the fucking same, you know?

So what’s next for Goatwhore? Are you going to concentrate on your other band, Soilent Green, once the touring for this album wraps?

Ok, well this tour ends in Albequerque but we’ll go on to do dates for the New England Hardcore and Metal festival and so we end like about the end of April, get to go back home for about five days and then we’re off to Europe for May. And then come home from that and I’ll be home for a month working on new material with Soilent Green and then I think Goatwhore will be going out again through July to the beginning of August. Then I’ll probably go back home, do the new record with Soilent Green, and then go back out with Goatwhore again. Then the new record for Soilent Green will come out towards the end of the year or the early part of next year.

Sweet Jesus! Is it hard to kind of switch modes between them when you go from one band to working with the others?

I think the hardest thing is calibrating the time, you know? Because of course all the members get aggravated because you’re doing something with somebody else… It’s kind of like having numerous girlfriends and you gotta go back and forth with’em. It’s like your traveling and having girlfriends all over the States or some shit and when you leave this one, this one starts getting antsy and wants to talk to you and everything and understand and is like “Are you still with – “ and I’m like “Yeah, I’m still, everything’s fine I’m just doing this.”

But you just try to work it out, you know? Sometimes it conflicts but when you come to those conflictions I guess the band that really needs to be doing something at that time takes precedent. Like, Goatwhore has a new record out right now so we need to be out supporting it. And the same thing when Soilent has its record out, you know? And I’m sure if a huge tour possibility came up with one over the other and the other had a smaller one I’d have to take the bigger one because it would be a better thing for the band at that time.

There are slight things that overlap but usually you work it out. I like it because they’re both two different things for me. And to come home from one and go to the other one… it doesn’t keep you in that same mode. I guess I get bored with things fast. I’m not bored of Goatwhore and I’m not bored of Soilent Green but it does break it, going back and forth. And then I get back in the practice room with one and I’m back in flow again.

Keeps things interesting?

Yeah it does, it really does. And it works out well for me, I’m happy with it and how it goes, you know? And I know some of the guys have issues with it and I appreciate their patience with it but they all knew I was doing this back when. So it’s like, deal with it, this is how it’s going to be. I’ll be sitting at home – that’s the other thing, I got in another band because a lot of times I’d be sitting at home not doing anything and I was like, well I’ll just do another band and it’ll constantly be revolving.

I like how it works out and I like how it gives me that kind of refreshing thing. I get home from Goatwhore and I’m a little tired and then the guys in Soilent are like, “Come practice”, and I’m like, “I’m tired but let me come see” and I get like rejuvenated. It’s something different from what I’ve been out on the road with for the last month and a half. Then I’ll practice with them for a bit, then go back out with Goatwhore and at the first show it’s like, “Wow! Something different!” and I’m back to that again. So it’s cool, it goes back and forth constantly, it’s like a second wind constantly.

Alright, I got one last question for you: All over the internet, stories about where the name Goatwhore came from have had the words “allegedly” and “supposedly” attached to them. Let’s set the record straight: what’s the story?

I mean, the stories you’ve read are probably all the true ones! The thing is, there’s two things, ok? There’s one that’s bare-bone kind of fact shit, and there’s the one that everyone talks about. And the one everyone talks about is the whole strip club situation. Sammy and a couple of his buddies went out to a strip club one night. They were hanging out and getting really fucked up and there was a stripper there with her hair in pigtails. And they said she had an ugly-ass face but it was long, kind of like a goat/horse long-looking face. One of his buddies was really fucked up and she was coming around getting tips you know, after they do their little dance. And she was like “So you guys gonna tip me out?” and his friend stood up and said “Fucking get away from us you goatwhore!” And so Sammy was like, “Wow, that’s a good name I think I’m gonna use that name”.

And then there’s the whole Aleister Crowley thing too where Aleister Crowley used to let his wives or mistresses have sex with like a goat and the numerous men or vice-versa in like rituals and things like that hence a goatwhore.

So that’s where he got the name goatwhore when he called her that?

In a sense, yes. So I guess that would be the truest one and then the Aleister Crowley thing is kinda stuck in there to whiten the other one, you know?

Well now we can get the tags “supposedly” and “allegedly” out of the way!

I wish you would just put it in there and say “I think all interviews and magazines need to reference me at this point because I’ve just got the full word that this is how it is and so you don’t have to ask that question anymore you can just reference it to this interview!”

You got it! Well thanks for your time, that’s it! Have any last words to add?

That’s about it man! Just check us out if we’re ever in town and don’t judge us before you hear us, you know? Make sure you know what we’re about and then you can talk shit about us! But if you’ve never seen us or heard us, don’t talk shit about us. That’s lame. I don’t even do that! I mean, I’ve gotta listen to a band before I say, “Man, they’re fucking terrible.”

Interview by Martin Parets

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This entry was posted on Sunday, April 15th, 2007 at 1:37 pm. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

metalpaizon wrote:

Dude this band is bad ass! There new album A Haunted Curse is a great album!

July 9th, 2007 at 2:23 pm

Lauren Hutton Makeup wrote:

Lauren Hutton Makeup…

I Googled for something completely different, but found your page…and have to say thanks. nice read….

September 18th, 2007 at 9:40 am

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