11/04/2006
Stress Factor 9 - Interview With The Band
By: Alon Miasnikov
Interview With: Stress Factor 9
Canada's Stress Factor 9 are a new hope for 80's thrash aficionados, reuniting the classic Annihilator duo of vocalist Randy Rampage and drummer Ray Hartmann, the band creates raw and aggressive metal which cannot be easily labeled. To find out more about the band and their debut album – Brainwarp Mindspin, Randy, Ray and guitarists Kick and Frank were kind enough to answer our questions.
Hey guys, I'd like to start with your debut album, Brainwarp Mindspin, what does the title mean?
Randy: There isn't any real deep dark significance to the name, I was just so burnt out after working all day & recording all night, that those two words described where my head felt at the time & I thought they kinda sounded good together and didn't sound at all like a typical, or phony, pretentious name for a metal album. I thought it fit with the name STRESS FACTOR 9 & the lyrical content of the album. So I said to the guys, hey that's the name for the CD!!!
How would you describe the band's music?
Randy: Man!! We accidentally created a whole new genre we call "heavy (politically oriented, melodic, punk, power pop, jazz fusion, thrash) metal"...!!!?!?!?! Whoa!! Try and say that fast 5 times... But seriously folks, I think it's a straight ahead heavy sound with many different influences from everything that we've all experienced in our musical careers!! We sorta went at it with a no holds barred, nothings too weird attitude!! Once you've heard the whole thing you will see what I mean. I'm sure that someone will come up with some silly category name to pigeonhole us into.
Ray: I would describe our music as aggressive but not extreme. We try and keep a solid song structure together. We're writing songs that are heavy and have memorable parts.
How happy are you with the sound, and working with Shaun Thingvold?
Randy: I'm really amazed at the sound of the finished product. It really blew me away when I finally heard the whole thing as a package!!! Shaun did a wicked job mixing it !!! Every song has its own overall sound and nuances but they fit together nicely as a package!! The overall sound is very clear and clean without a lot of effects, which gives it a powerful sound with wide EQ range (lots of screamin' highs and a big fat thumpy bottom end.). The minimal use of heavy effects, and a hell of a lot of work on Kick's part during the bed tracks, keeping everything clean and consistent meant that not much compression was required in the mixing and mastering. The result being a big wide open sound instead of a heavily compressed squish mix.
Kick: Ty Tabor (King's X) mastered it, and he loves to squish stuff, but the natural mix was very orderly with strong, but highly controlled low end, so there wasn't much squishing to do.
I understand the album is to be distributed by Century Media Records, is it also released by them?
Kick: This time out, we own everything, which has freed Century Media up to promote it cheerfully, because they are not out on a limb. Medium level bands that have some cred, but can't be pushed on Clear Channel are actually better off to get full scale distribution, but keep full ownership and manufacturing as we have. As people heard during the Napster trials, big labels keep almost all the money from CD sales, charge the band back for all costs, and after that the band might make a buck or two per disc or less. This album was destined to start with word of mouth to music fans, no matter who handled it. Whatever label we go with for the follow up album can pick up future repressings of this one.
Now some info about the band, what's the band's current line up?
How did the other band members join?
Randy Rampage (vocals), Ray Hartmann (drums), Kick (guitar, vocals), Francis Frighful (guitar), Stuart Carruthers of Grip Inc helped form and name the band, and record and write a number of the songs, but he has pre-exisiting obligations to the band Tenet (side project of Jed from Strapping Young Lad) who have a deal with Century Media. So Markus McCallum from Gene Hoglan's band Hurt stepped in now and we got the album done.
Francis Frightful, or as we call him "Frank Fright", is the leader of the top non-japanese thrash punk band in the orient, funny as that sounds. His band Opposition Party had over a decade of hard touring and reputation in asia, and when he heard about the project, we tried working with him and found out right away that Rampage, Kick, and Frank are very likeminded. We wanted straight up rockin' riffs and tone above all else in this band, and he had what we wanted.
Some History, Randy and Ray are mainly known for their Annihilator past, What were the reasons for the two originally leaving Annihilator?
Ray: I have left and re-joined the band a few times now. It comes down to a matter of survival. I was never able to sustain any kind of income in Annihilator so I had to keep working a day job. I have no animosity towards Jeff and we are still friends. As you probably know already, there is no job security playing with Annihilator.
I know the two had been playing in other bands since, I remember a video by a band which Randy sang in sometimes in the 90's, and I know Ray played in Random Damage, and can you elaborate on that?
Ray: Random Damage was a great band. We had lots of cool songs especially on our 2nd cd. Unfortunately it was never released. The singer guitar player is now in a Abba tribute band - heheh
Randy: Yeah, right after my split with Annihilator in 1990 on the Testament tour, I put together a band with a guitar player from the original DOA days by the name of Brad Kent, who had also played with SanFran's #1 punk band the Avengers, and had worked with me on a solo project. He was working with a couple of local hired guns on bass and drums and were a really tight unit so I jumped in with a bunch of new material and started recording about 10 songs at Fiasco Brothers studios which was where Alice in Hell was recorded and mixed. My drummer sent a tape to the local FM rock station that was screening bands for a nationwide "battle of the bands" type thing that was being sponsored by Canada's largest beer company.
The song that he sent them was a really rough mix of an early version of what would become "ByTor". All figured it would be good for a laugh as all the other bands were "radio oriented professional ass kissers" while we were like this weird, heavy, raunchy, wild sort of NewYorkDolls, Metallica, Sex Pistols, Iggy & the Stooges all on crystal meth sounding unit!!! Anyway it was the one time that the underdogs actually won!! We recorded some tunes where Aerosmith, Bon Jovi, Metallica, were recording at the time. Shot a video for "ByTor" with a well known film company, signed a management deal, and all was going great. Then we blew all our money on drugs and never played outside of Vancouver. There must be a lesson in there somewhere.
How did the Annihilator reunion album get put together? Why were the two out of the band again after that?
Ray: Jeff and I did not see or speak to each other for about 7 years after I quit during the recording of STWOF. I just phoned him up out of the blue one day and we got together and caught up on old times. He had just released Remains and had no band to speak of. We started talking about Rampage. Jeff said he could probably get along with Randy better now because he is not as stressed out these days. Wrong !! We decided to do a reunion CD and tour but Jeff and Randy just do not get along. Randy was fired with four shows left to do. I was sleeping when the now famous "bus incident" went down. I woke up and Rampage was gone.
Kick: ...well Jeff's updated website says "... in hindsight, I think I could have controlled what happened a bit better and I wish I'd hung on to him until the end of the tour."
How did Randy and Ray decide to work together again in Stress Factor 9?
Kick: Randy and I wanted to put together a full scale serious project, and Ray was our absolute top pick. Fortunately Ray was available and eager to bash some tunes with Randy, in a friendly, co-operative environment. We had also been communicating with Dan Spitz, but that was right when he got the call to return to Anthrax.
What part did ex-Annihilator collaborators John Bates and Anthony Greenham take in the recording of the album?
Kick: It's a tight knit group of musicians here. I know John Bates in the rockabilly scene and we've been boating. Such history : Rampage replaced Bates in Annihilator, Bates had written the lyrics for Alice in Hell (the song and half the album) as well as many others including stuff for the Criteria For a Black Widow album that reunited Ray and Rampage. He was an obvious choice to contribute some lyrics. Randy and I had a lot of the album done, and I gave Bates a mix of a few songs with "blah blah blah" being sung where the lyrics should go, he worked from that splendidly.
Anthony was part of an exciting time for Annihilator's early deal-getting stages, and appeared on the album cover and video for Alice in Hell. He co-coordinated several videos and concerts for my previous indie band Vertical After, but now he is one of the top production guys in rock and roll, in charge of Nickelback's arena shows. Fortunately he had a few tiny holes in his schedule. I particularly love his lead work on our song Road-Rageacide, we kept the first take, because it just sounded like how metal rock leads should feel.
The band members have plenty of punk relations; in what ways do you think that's reflected in the band's music and lyrics?
Frank: it definitely shows in the music as far as I'm concerned cuz I'm basically more of a punk guitarist than a guitar god. Both me and Kick got very similar 80's musical background - when punk and metal 'crossovered'. And of course, Randy's long association with DOA and the punk scene adds another snarling punk dimension to our songs too.
You did some support shows for Overkill, how did they go for the band?
Kick: Stress Factor 9 enjoyed playing with OverKill in the fall of 2005, great fun, Bobby & DD are real pros. For Randy and Ray it was cool to see those guys again, since they toured together before on the Annihilator reunion tour...
Ray: We had a lot of fun on that tour. The shows were great and it was good to have Rampage out front once again - while it lasted.
What are your plans for the near future of the band?
A series of short tours to Europe and Japan, and some fly-out gigs to select USA cities. We have already begun writing the follow up album.
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