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Killswitch Engage recently kicked off the UK leg of their ‘Atonement’ tour in Norwich, bassist and top bloke Mike D’Antonio took some time out after soundcheck to answer a few questions. Read his thoughts below on the new album ,’Atonement’, signing with Metal Blade, and touring with Iron Maiden. Only one place to start though – the dazzling cover artwork on ‘Atonement’.
Rather than going down the cliched route of “how is the tour going” as an opening question, I think we have to start with the retina-blitzing artwork on the ‘Atonement’ album. You must be blown away by the final result?
Oh cool! We had Richey Beckett from the UK do the artwork, he’s an artist that I’ve loved for a long time, and I was hoping that at some point we could get something done by him. But he has a very busy schedule, he does a lot of art for many, many bands, he has a very unique style, but it just so happens that he was able to carve out a couple of months to get that piece done and we were just overwhelmed with how great it came out. The original idea that I got from Jesse, as far as the idea for the artwork was – “Fire from the lion’s mane”! So that perfectly describes the piece that Richey did for us, with a bunch of other cool stuff thrown in, and I couldn’t be happier, it translates really well onto the CD jackets. I’m a graphic artist myself and sometimes the colours don’t come out that well, it’s a really dark piece, and I was extremely worried that maybe it would look too dark once printed but everything turned out great.
It looks amazing on vinyl, you almost don’t want to open the wrapping!
I love it on vinyl, I was really stoked at how good it looked on that big format. I think that could be my favourite piece out of the bunch.
Has anyone came up to you yet with tattoos of the artwork?
Not this record yet, many other records for sure, I think it’s maybe a little too new yet, tonight is really the first show of the tour and I think once the cycle kicks in we’ll probably see a bunch of them, I might get one!
It is quite a hypnotic piece, one that you can find yourself looking at for some time!
It’s very funny, I was working on this the last time that we were in Europe and I opened up the file for the first time, and I was in front of the other dudes and I was like “Holy smokes!”. Everytime I look at it I see a new something else, a new little skull, you can stare at it for a while and I would assume that the more drugs you consume the cooler it looks!
In the age of streaming, when a band take that amount of time to make something special for their product, It’s further proof to me that the album will never die out.
Thanks, I appreciate that, and we were really looking for a new look. We were on a brand new label, Metal Blade, and we wanted something that was ferocious and metal, maybe more than what we’ve done in the past, a whole new scheme and that definitely happened with this one.
On the subject of Metal Blade, I don’t think of Metal Blade as a traditional “record label”, they’re more like a family. I have this image in my head of them sitting around the office all day listening to Motorhead and Iron Maiden!
You’re dead on, that’s the exact thing that I took away from every meeting, we’ve known them for a while and we’ve become really good friends. They came out to some shows when there was no signing type thing involved, they were just really cool guys that liked the band and we hung out with them. We were really looking for a partner, not a record label this time, we thought that the partnership could do some cool things. They came up with some cool things that maybe we wouldn’t have thought of, kind of like fans suggesting things. Gosh, everything that they have done so far has been on point. The rollout for the record was done extremely well, probably the best rollout, meaning advertising etc, that we’ve had in quite a long time, we couldn’t be happier and we love those dudes. We wanted to make this record for them, it was like – let’s make this record for Metal Blade, let’s metal this thing up, give them a record that they can be proud of.
There is a trend at the moment where a lot of bands are toning down the heaviness, trying to reach a new audience (Bullet For My Valentine being one example), but with ‘Atonement’ there was no such worry!
Thank you, you always go into every record thinking it’s going to be the craziest one that you’ve ever written, and maybe when it’s all done and you are listening back, it may not be as crushingly crazy as you might think! But this one all the way through felt like we had a real ripper on our hands, we recorded so many songs that we could pick and choose what should be on the record, rather than just settling on a few tracks that might not have fit. Metal Blade were just stoked that we had written some real metal!
Being in the business for so long, do you still get nervous in the run up to an album release?
Of course (laughs) 100%, I mean it could be the end of your career…or the beginning of a new one! A lot of it is just anxiety, wanting to have it out so that we can play the new songs for people, you hope people are as stoked as you are about the release, I mean we were high-fiving each other in the studio! You hope that people listening share that enthusiasm.
You used the words high-fived, the video for Signal Fire had a great moment when Jesse and Howard fist-bumped! Watching it was like…yesss!
That was a really fun video, we see Howard here and there and it’s great that his new band is doing so well, he looks and sounds amazing these days, he’s definitely out of his funk, it was killer to see a really good friend back to the way we remembered him. We hadn’t seen him for a while, and then he was suddenly there for the video and everyone was just joking around, it just seemed like he never left. That vibe definitely shows in the video. There was so much laughing during the making that my face hurt!
When a band first starts out, they are trying to find their audience, but is it harder when a band are more established like yourself, and have to retain that audience?
I think with the way that the music industry is today, you certainly feel people slipping away from music, in general. It’s kind of a sad time, I feel music in maybe a different way from others, without it in my life I would have a pretty sad life. Maybe kids today haven’t grown up with music, maybe their parents didn’t play it.
You mentioned how much music means to you, from a total fanboy point of view, how much of a blast was it when Killswitch opened for Iron Maiden?!
Haha! Are you talking about my favourite Summer of all time?
Sounds like it!
Holy crap, they were the nicest people ever, their crew are one of the best out there, ridicoulsy nice. We expected to get ordered around, and that couldn’t have been further from the truth, they said two things – make it to stage on time, and don’t spit on our stage and we’re good. Amazing, huge huge stadiums, and we’ve never played anything that big in Europe. I guess the only issue was, we were the thing in between the people in the front rows and their favourite band. So maybe there were so people that weren’t too stoked but whatever!
Hardcore Maiden fans are traditionally a tough audience, they are there for Maiden and Maiden alone.
Luckily we never got booed, no Iron Maiden chants, we got some cool applause and then at the end they were cheering. And that’s about the best you can do when you are playing with Iron Maiden.
At least they weren’t in the bar while you were on!
Funny you should say that, at one of the shows, half the audience were missing and we didn’t know what was going on. We were like – this is a Iron Maiden show, where is everyone?! It turns out that the bar was outside the venue!
I can’t even gush enough about what a fun time that tour was, and I would love to do that again. We showed up the first day and Bruce Dickinson walked by and was like – hey! What are you guys doing, and we were like – we’re drinking some of your beer, thank you for giving it to us..and he said – have you seen my flamethrowers?! So were like, eh no! And then he started going on about sword fighting and flame throwers!
He is one of those guys who prove that men can multi-task after all!
Yes, and also, his book is great by the way.
How happy are you that hardcore seems to be having a resurgence of late?
You mean bands like Code Orange yeah, the new school bands are such fun, their energy is incredible. They’re taking note of the older bands and how they did it back then, some of the newer stuff like Knocked Loose is not a direct rip-off of the ‘90’s, but it’s pretty darn close and it’s close enough for me to be like – that’s Disembodied, that’s this that’s that. I think the revival should have come earlier but I’m glad it’s back, they have a revival of everything these days! Now it’s the turn of hardcore. It’s funny the way things ebb and flow, it’s funny that they come back, I would never have even thought that people would go towards hardcore again. It was definitely a different scene to the mainstream and unless you were in that inner circle, I don’t think that you would have known it was around.
Catch Mike and Killswitch Engage on tour throughout October and November, all tour dates can be found here.
Interview – Dave
Live images – Rob Wilkins
