Butcher Babies on Growth, New Album, and Emotional Storytelling at Louder Than Life

0:04 Hey, you're listening to The Adventure of Spider-Man on W4CY Radio. This is the Pipe Man here on The Adventure of Spider-Man W4CY Radio, and I'm here with... Hi, I'm Heidi. I'm Henry. And we're from Butcher Babies. Yes! I'm so excited. We just had a code red, and my other interview ended... And then I'm like, damn, I'm not going to talk to Heidi and Henry. And then I got the text from your tour manager during the Code Red. I'm like, okay, cool. I'm chill now. I can sit in the air conditioning and not worry about it.

0:46 We missed it by the skin of our teeth. Oh. We got to play. Thank goodness. It was our lucky day. We are about to hop in the ride over to see you when the Code Red hit. But we are so grateful that we walked through the actual grounds. I wouldn't have been able to actually see the grounds. So it was awesome to be able to walk through it and see everything, see all the amazing stuff that they have here at Louder Than Life. It's absolutely incredible, the thought that they put into it. It's growing. Oh, my God. Remember back in the days at Champions Park? We played the very first Louder Than Life that ever happened. That's wild.

1:27 It is such an honor to be here today and to actually have played. Yeah. It was a great day. I got to tell you, though, I'm glad to see you so excited because it was so freaking hot for you guys to play, too. Oh, my God. That one was a hot one. It was a cool 92 degrees with a thousand percent humidity. I know, right? But you know what? Honestly, it was really fun. The crowd gave a thousand percent. We were in the shade for the most part. Really? That's cool. So we got lucky there. No. I like to wear long sleeves on stage so my hair doesn't get caught in my armpit. Yeah. And I feel like that was a good decision today.

2:09 Right? Yeah. I don't even think of that, like getting caught in your armpit. Yeah. I had hair down to here. I'll remember it getting caught in my armpit, but I guess... On stage, when you're headbanging... When you're doing what you do, because you just swirl it around. Oh, that'd be awful. H-strings and hair. Oh, yeah. Yeah, no, that's not fun. Right? You know? It seems like this whole summer has been like this, though. Wacken, it was super freaking hot. When I was in Italy, it was super freaking hot. Bloodstock was super freaking hot. Incarceration, super freaking hot. And I was just at Rock, Oklahoma. Super freaking hot. You know, the first year that they had Louder Than Life, it was actually cold. But you know what? We live in Las Vegas.

2:55 Yeah, so it's pretty hot. I live in South Florida. This is a little bit, you know, the heat we're used to, it's this humidity. But it's okay. We're just super great. Well, see, you don't have the humidity there. I have it in Florida. But I've been all summer like, man, I can't wait to stop home for a day or two to cool off. And who says that going to Florida? You know? Yeah, exactly. The post-show shower is pointless. We just... Right? Yeah. Exactly. It takes two seconds. Like, I arrived here this morning. It wasn't five seconds, and it's like I never took a shower. There's no point in curling my hair. Right? So... I got to tell you, too, you got the new album coming out.

3:36 Yes. And I love the new song, Leaving California. Thank you. That's so cool. Oh, my goodness. Thank you so much. You know, when we were writing that song, like, man, is this... This is too on the nose for us, but it's a documentary. Right. We really did. In 2020, in the middle and the height of everything, we did leave California. And I remember going over the hill out of Los Angeles. I just kind of started humming to myself the chorus. Nice. I'm leaving California. And the song started developing at that time.

4:17 And when we actually started to really nose to the grind and write this album, I brought it up to Henry and I said, is this too on the nose? And he gratefully, you know, I'm glad. That he was like, no, this is... This is something we wanted to write. It should be on the nose. This was a part of our story and it's just like, you know, getting out of that state. Everybody wants to go there, but we were just like, let's leave. It's a place I thought that it was going to be our forever home. I left there twice. Oh, you know, so you're... And every time I go back. You broke up with the same person twice? I mean, I... Like, and I go back, and I, you know, I have so many friends there and stuff, and I'm like, oh, maybe I should move back, and then I get on a plane, and I get off on the 405 in LAX, and I'm like, five minutes, I'm like, oh my god, I'm never coming back here.

5:06 Well, you know, the great thing is, is that this song, you know, California really is kind of a metaphor. You know, it's just about Something in your life that you thought was permanent, something in your life that you thought was going to be there forever. Yes. And then realizing that it's ran itself dry, which is fine. You know, priorities change, things change, life changes. And it's about taking those changes and just running with them. It's a bittersweet moment, but looking at it with all the fondness in the world. No doubt. And just looking at it and being like, I'm grateful for these moments. And that's really what leaving California is about. See, and I knew it was kind of like that.

5:48 Like a combination of both. Yeah. But what I can say, as I've followed you and talked to you for like years... Like I remember the first time I interviewed you and I was like one of the only person that got the whole plasmatics thing that you remember. Yeah. And I'm like, I listen to your music now and it's like you've grown so much. It's like you've really evolved. And we talked about it on Shiprock too, about even with your voice. Like I still love the brutal voice, but then it's like people get to see that you really can sing. Thank you. There's this weird misconception that screamers can't sing. Right.

6:31 It's so weird. I don't know why people think that. But, you know, I was so grateful to be able to showcase that because I was classically trained as a kid. And that is something that I was so excited about as a kid and in all the choirs and everything. And as I got older, my passion just became getting up there and screaming at people. And honestly... It still is. Right. But there is something to be said about the ebb and flow, yes, and being able to see people looking at us and singing also these lyrics back at us. Today was a classic example. We closed with a song called Sincerity. I love that one, too. That's one of our cleaner songs, and we released it in 2024. When I saw.

7:13 You on Shiprock, that's when you released that one. Yes, and I saw more people singing along to that song than I think anything in the set. And it just goes to show that these songs are welcomed by our fan base. They want to sing along as much as they want to scream along. So I'm very grateful to be able to give that to them. I think it expands it, too, because now you bring the people in that maybe wouldn't be there before. Yeah. You know, I think I was still kind of an angry teenager when we started this band. I was 23 years old, and I still was harboring, I think, a lot of those emotions and feelings. I'm 41 now. And so, you know, there's a lot that I want to scream about, but there's also a lot I want to sing about.

7:54 Yeah. And I really feel grateful that, you know, my band is on board with all of this. And not just our band, but our fans, too. The song that we just released called Blame It On The Wind is our fastest, largest streaming song that we've ever released. Wow. It has great airplay at radio stations and Octane. And it's just kind of grew legs of its own. And so, you know, being able to do both is just a huge blessing in our eyes. That's key. And how do you feel about it, Henry? About the whole evolution of Butcher Babies. It's just been like, you know, this album was such a cool creative process for us. Because it's like this rebirthing of the band. And it really opened us up creatively.

8:43 We were able to really expand and really focus on writing songs. really good memorable songs and that was important and I think we really achieved that here. We had one goal because Henry and I what we do is we we lock ourselves in our studio and we write and we did that for months in between tours and we would just we'd get home from a tour and lock ourselves in the studio and our one goal was writing with a purpose. And that purpose has shown itself through this album. And I'm so grateful that people are singing along. I'm so grateful that people are relating to these songs. I'm so grateful that these songs carry a story. This is my autobiography. I got to really, really dive into so many experiences in my life and put it on paper. And Henry was so welcoming with all of that. I had to sit down because I was going to therapy for the first time in my life.

9:41 And so I was like expelling so many emotions. And I sat down and Henry's hearing a lot of this stuff for the first time. And even though we've been in a band together for nearly 20 years, ball and chain too. So he's hearing a lot of these things for the first time too. And I couldn't have asked for a more... supportive partner and band member. I love that. And see, I kind of believe too that when things happen that we think may be a bad thing, that they actually are a good thing. And we can't see the forest beyond the tree. And now you're seeing the forest. Yeah. And it's all about believing that that forest exists.

10:22 So thank you for that. That's a beautiful analogy. Right. I got to tell you something too. I was going to bring something for you and I'll have to bring it next time. Think of it as download. This guy had like painting these albums with logos and I have one that says butcher babies. Oh dang. That's cool. Next time I see you, I'll bring it for you. Yeah. That's cool. It is pretty rad. Yeah. And it's unique. Nobody else has it. It's like a commercial thing. It's just this artist that downloads. Wow. I would love to see it. Take a picture and tag me. I will. Or send it to me on the old social media because I'd love to see it.

11:03 I will. And I'm going to have to actually reconnect with you because you know what happened to me on the way to Louder Than Life? I got hacked in my Facebook in Vietnam. And Facebook... disabled in five minutes permanently my Facebook, my Meta, my Instagram, my WhatsApp, and my Messenger. Doesn't that feel like all of a sudden the last 20 years of your life is gone? It was. What a weird feeling. And I've been trying to get a hold of a human. You can't talk to a freaking human there. It's like, No, I didn't do it. They're like, you violate. I don't know what these Vietnamese people did. On that note, I'm. Turning off my Bluetooth. Right?

11:44 Oh, turn that right off. Maybe that guy's right that it's the end of humanity at the end of the decade. So you guys really got to create some good music. Hey, you know what? It's no, yeah, it is. We're all out here. We're just leaving it all on the table because you never know what tomorrow holds. Exactly. You never know. Tell me more about the new album. It drops in October. So tell me more about what I don't know about the album. Well, obviously the album, it showcases a new dynamic in the band. But to us, we're kind of viewing this as almost a debut album. Because it's not just different, it's just more focused.

12:25 It's a lot more musical than previous albums. And we're exploring and doing things that we haven't done in the past. So you're going to hear stuff and you're going to be like, wow, that's... Not what I expected from that band. And we didn't bring on many outside writers. We had one song that our team was like, hey, we have this opportunity to write with Gene Simmons' daughter, Sophie. And she's amazing. So we did. And we wrote a song with Sophie Simmons. And it's called Broken and Beautiful. And that is on the album. But it's mostly just between the two of us sitting in our studio writing. And really, really diving through these emotions. You know, something that I felt like I was kind of missing in some of our previous work was the focus of emotion. And you know what I.

13:16 You need that in music. What I fell in love with music about is I felt like... the artist was speaking to how I was feeling. And so especially kind of, I love our last album. I love, love, love it. But I do feel like there was a little bit of a lack of presence of the human connection there. And so that is something that when we sat down, we said, all right, what are we refocusing on? And we refocused on that. And we sat down and we hashed out these songs. And it was Truly, between lyrics and music, it was the two of us sitting there. I mean, there's a song called Black Clouds Over Georgia, where it probably has more solo work in it than any of our previous albums combined.

14:00 Yeah, it's one big solo. It's a conversation between the guitar and the vocals. I love that. And the song is so personal and so intense. And it was one of these stories that I had to be like, all right, Henry, I want to write about this. I went over in therapy. I really, really want to dive into this. And we really felt like the guitar needed as much as the vocals to tell the story. And so you hear a lot of that on this album. In fact, I think every song that we've released has a guitar solo. And we didn't have solos. Nice. in our previous albums for the most part.

14:43 I've always like, I, you know, I grew up in the, I'm a child of the eighties. And I'm just like, me too. So like big guitar solos and guitar heroes was such an important thing. And it's just like, I feel not that it's a lost art, but it's just like, not a lot of emphasis is placed on it. And so I was like, can I write something that's, that's memorable and like actually adds to the song and makes it, you know, it lifts the song up. So, you know, I, I was never like a huge fan of solos. And now I'm like, I'm like, If I'm going to do this, I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it right. I'm going to do it like the 80s. You've got to show the emotion. I feel like we're bringing musicianship back. It disappeared, and it's slowly coming back. The 90s kind of killed it. It was not cool to be a skilled musician, and then all of a sudden... all that came back and so I got to open up the books again and be like, oh yeah, what was this stuff?

15:33 I remember learning in the beginning that I had to throw away to be cool. Right, right. And he has a couple extra strings on that guitar so he can do a lot of work with it. And I think also, too, what my opinion is, is maybe now... Finally, for the first time in Butcher Babies, you have no filter in your writing. You're just being exactly who you want to be without worrying about anything else, just exploring everything inside of you. That is exactly right. And that's what's making it better. And I've had a lot of people ask me, did you really feel like putting all of this out into the public was the right idea? And I said, yes, absolutely.

16:18 We've done five albums. This is our sixth. And it is necessary at this point for me to sing about these things because it's my therapy. Music is the greatest therapy for you, the artist, and for me, the listener. So why not? You've got to put it all out there. It's a cool way to put it out there because saying it, we're kind of inhibited, but when you're singing it, playing it, it's almost like it's not necessarily real in one part, but it's real to you. But you're not really saying it to the world. Because it's in a song. Yeah. Yep. It's turning some potentially negative emotions or experiences into new positive memories.

17:06 Game it out. And every time we get to get on stage and play these songs, it is a new positive memory. And so it's replacing... any of that negativity or anything that we may have felt in the past and so I'm so grateful every time we get to get up and play these songs and now in about 13 days everyone gets to hear the rest of it I mean I can't it's so wild to think about it's been a couple years in the making so. I'm so happy about it I'm happy for you guys because you look like you're the happiest playing music in all the years I've known you you are not wrong so there you go so there you go and I'm happy that whoever moved that storm away so we could talk right now.

17:50 Yes! Thank you for being, once again, on the Adventures of Pipe Man, giving us fucking awesome music. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you for listening to the Adventures of Pipe Man on W4CY radio.