God Forbid – Dallas Coyle, Guitars & Vocals
It’s January 15th, 2009 and I’m headed to The Whisky in Los Angeles to interview GOD FORBID Guitarist/Vocalist/Songwriter Dallas Coyle. I call when I arrive and he meets me outside the club and gives me a copy of their forthcoming album, Earthsblood. I disappear for an hour to digest their new masterpiece which is destined to showcase them as a new band who is determined and ready to shed the horrible tag of, “2nd rate metalcore.” As soon as my ears are finished being blessed, we meet up again to have a conversation where I found Dallas to be sincere and friendly as well as completely absorbed and committed to GF.
Ten Songs; and the first one totally threw me for a loop, the instrumental that’s really kinda gothy and dramatic.
Laughs!
I was like, that’s different! Then the 2nd track is blasts right from the beginning that I thought was a really cool change. The album as a whole is a lot to take in at one listen and I was blown away by the changes and the moods in it. The last song, I didn’t think you guys could keep it that slow for 4 minutes until it kicks in at the end. The album really hits and the comments I’ve read online about the album being kick ass; I always get worried when people talk about that.
Laughs! I did the blog on Metalsucks before we got mixed and we were working on it for so long. I really didn’t know what it was because at that point we didn’t know what the track listing was and I was really nervous just because we worked on it so hard and there’s a lot of singing but I don’t think the singing takes away from the heaviness of the album. So I did a blog about how I didn’t know if it was going to be good or anything but then we started to get the
mix done it was like this record sounds good. People gave me props for not pushing up the record but two weeks later I was like, “damn, this shit sounds amazing!”
I was blown away, there’s a lot going on musically. Lyrically, I’ve read a little bit about some of the inspiration being from THERE WILL BE BLOOD (starring Daniel Day-Lewis). Were you a fan of the movie?
That movie was my favorite movie of last year, well not last year, the year before that. My brother and I are big film buffs and we went to see that movie at some small theater and we were talking about the movie on the way home talking about some of the underlying themes that the movie has on top of the actual script. I think our record is kinda similar if you listen to it once you have to go back to it. We wanted the album to be optimistic, but as it came out it’s a dark record. It’s not a terrible feeling, it’s kinda like a morose vibe. The movie and the record are similar in our eyes.
Who wrote all the lyrics?
Me and Byron Davis (Vocals) write most of the lyrics. I’d say that I write probably 70% of the lyrics then Byron writes the other 30%, but this record was probably 60/40. The last song, “Bat The Angels,” “The New Clear;” those songs I wrote all of the lyrics immediately because those songs really vibed with me. If I write a song I normally write 100% of the tracks but the other songs Byron will write 60% because the heavier stuff, the straight thrash stuff I don’t really like writing stuff to a typical thrash song. No one has a stranglehold on anything.
When you write the songs, is it you and your brother together or do you sit and do your own thing?
Usually with my brother’s stuff he usually has the first part of the song written then we play it the way he hears it in his head and we go back and forth and argue about everything. Then we just kinda chip away at the songs like a quilt. My songs kinda start off in the practice space and we jam on it then we just really kinda punch it out. The last song (on the album) was written in the practice space and was the third song we wrote. The first (full) song on the album,
the one with the blasts was probably the first song we wrote.
It’s interesting as there’s one song with a tribal / middle eastern vibe in the verses; “The New Clear.”
That was kinda the hardest song to write because my brother had all the riffs and I had a riff that he changed. He arranged that whole song. Our producer Erik Rachael was like, “this is the best song you guys have written,” before we put down the lyrics. Then we put the lyrics down we had a hard time you know because there’s a lot of melodic singing in the beginning. But what are you really gonna do over that style of clean stuff. We’re not gonna sit here and scream over that shit just because people like screaming. I think that song is the most left field we’ve ever gone in our career but I think if you’re a fan of GOD FORBID I think you’ll accept it because we’ve kind of done that in our career. I’m really happy with that track that it allows us, on the next record, to go different places. Like on Constitution of Treason we had that clean song that sounded like THE BEATLES and nobody gave a shit for but it allows us to do the song that you were talking about.
It’s cool to see that progression as you go through album after album with you guys you’ve developed more vocals as there’s a lot of vocal layering. Was that conscious or did it come natural?
It was conscious because the last record there were harmonies, I wouldn’t say it was layering. But what me and my brother wanted to do was make sure we were both present on the record. He would have parts that he would sing and I would have parts that I would sing. The only songs that really had me singing every part were Bat The Angels and the last song “Gaia” because I had them down so well. We were running out of time in the studio so I was like I’m gonna do these songs as I can harmonize these songs really easily this way.
How deep is your musical background? Did you study?
I didn’t study but my Dad’s a jazz piano player and my Mom was a jazz singer. When we were growing up he would play MILES DAVIS all day and my mom would play ARETHA FRANKLIN. We were growing up with music and my brother and I joined All City Band and I played trumpet and he played saxophone. But then when I found guitar I pretty much put trumpet down forever. We started playing and within two years we were able to play METALLICA and SLAYER and then we met up with Corey Pierce (Drums) and Byron and we started writing our own songs and it took about 2 to 3 years. Or maybe like 2 years after that when John Outcalt (Bass) came in the band we did our first EP. About 4 years after playing we did the EP. We were pretty hardcore just getting every single record like SUFFOCATION, DARKANE, I got the first SOILWORK record when no one knew who Soilwork was crawling through the internet and I would spend my paychecks only on metal. I was really into the technical stuff but now I’m more into the rock playing. I actually listen to ALL SHALL PERISH and THE FACELESS but when it comes to writing I’m more about the slower groove stuff.
There’s a lot of that on the album.
One of the reasons why is because our band, a lot of people give us shit and say we’re a 2nd rate metalcore band but I couldn’t disagree with them more. From a musical standpoint we understand what our tools are, we understand how to manipulate it, but we also understand how people who like our music want to hear from us so we don’t step too far out. So on this record we started using 7-strings we realized there’s only so fast you can play.
The strings start to bend.
The strings and it starts to sound unclear. That’s why there’s songs like Bat The Angles that like all the way through they’re kinda groovy then at the end it’s like that MESHUGGAH groove because we’re tuned to G. You can do open notes and be heavy there. We understand our instrument a lot better than we technically understand it. We don’t read music, my brother’s starting to read music. We understand the person who likes our band and how far we can go and that’s one of the things I like about being in the band. (temporary interruption from parking attendant who asks us to move the car). [laughs and comments about posting that online] I get bothered when people call us a 2nd rate metalcore band but at the same time I like it because the people that really like our band know that we’re not and it makes them say GOD FORBID is not that way. Maybe the first album we were metalcore, but at the time you can’t say we were because there was no genre like that then.
The musical climate is changing and you guys maybe haven’t broken that threshold yet of being the underground band yet as you’ve hit that cusp where you’re right there and everyone knows who you are. Hopefully this album will be that step up.
You never know what the kids are going to buy though. I think in Europe it’s going to go well. But I don’t really know what I think as we don’t have expectations anymore.
That’s the best thing.
Our records before we had expectations you know and this record there’s no expectations. The more you pay attention to it the more you expect. I’d rather be happy selling 65,000 records than be unhappy expecting to sell more than we sold before.
You have a career though! You’ve got album after album. You’re not hanging it up after one record and not revolving band members who don’t want to struggle or are pissed off because they’re not making tons of money. The album sounds like you committed to it in full as there’s so much going on.
It was weird as we write albums now and don’t go song for song. We’re writing an album, we practice 4-5 days a week then we get into a groove and we just go. This record, my brother and I knew we wanted to make the record more simple like Gone Forever. It would be the first track would stand alone, the second track would stand alone, like none of them were into one another. Constitution was kind of like that; if you listen to “Lonely Dead” on its own, it sounds different if you don’t listen to the songs before it. On this record you can listen to “Shallow,” just a thrash song, just listen to it like, “check this out” and be into it and that was conscious. We wanted to make a simple record but we wanted to have the whole thing be progressive. The whole thing to me, except for two songs, is very progressive. We really wanted to show our musicianship because OPETH and CHILDREN OF BODOM are very popular bands and a lot of it is not because of their personas, it’s because of their music. And we’re not nearly as good as those bands as far as technicality and songwriting and musicianship, but for what we do we stepped it up a level. We made it clear to the average person that we don’t want to be a niche band anymore. We want everyone to buy our records so we made sure every single song was dense and had a lot of substance. But it was simple enough so if a guy was just getting into metal who just heard PANTERA and you’re the guy who knows about all these bands and you play a song like Bat The Angels which has a Pantera like feel to it and although he’s hearing a lot of crazy stuff, structurally it’s not very crazy.
The guitar tones were killer.
Awesome, Thank You! This record is beefy! It’s like, Damm, there’s a lot of sound within. I think that’s one reason why our band can really do well because that sonic sound of what our band lends to like almost, I hate to say it like that KORN crowd, the hip-hop people that like the bass and the groove but also the metalheads who really, like we’re heavy and brutal and melodic so we’re tyring to be diverse.
But it’s cohesive and it doesn’t sound like it’s just there for the hell of it as it flows.
The thing is with this record like I’m very, very happy with this record more so than any of the other records as there’s some songs on the other records where I feel like there are good metal songs because that’s what we want to do, but on this record everything fits together well. There’s no part that jumps out at me like, “oooooh I wish we had done that better.” I think the parts flow into each other well, I think the songs are set up well, I think the songs that need 3 choruses have 3 choruses, songs that don’t need 3 choruses like Bat The Angels only has 2 choruses but it’s a very big chorus. We are learning how to not go overboard learning how to fit our heavy with our melodic better. I think the record is an accomplishment for us, but you can’t force people to buy records.
What we have there is a very true statement about the public that we can’t force people to buy records, but records as great as Earthsblood (see review) need to be heard and you can do that come February 24.
(+31 rating, 7 votes)
you should leak that shit onto demonoid.com homie
“on Constitution of Treason we had that clean song that sounded like THE BEATLES”
Excuse me?