Pipeman is Thrashing With Skinner The Metal Chameleon

0:04 Hey, you have done to censure for Wow Pray Young. Waycup of America. It's time for the Adventures of pipe Man on W four c Y dot com. West pomp Beach is number one internet radio station. Here's your host, the pipe Man. I lost Wash, I lost as I lost the bass last watch all Day Shaw. This is pipe Man here on the Adventures pipe Man W four c Y Radio.

0:59 And I'm here our next guest. I'm very excited about because, oh my god, he's like he's the metal chameleon. So let's welcome to the show. Norman Skinner, how are you been? Good man? Thanks for having me. I love that title. I love that title because probably nobody else has it, and because I'm a total chameleon and you totally are with all the projects that you do. It's like I joke about it on my show that I'm schizophrenic because I have all these different personalities, and I think I'm gonna give you the same honor. You know, for your musical talents. It's like you have multiple personalities doing all these music talents.

1:41 Well, I mean, if I'm a firm believer, if you're going to be in multiple projects, you should do something different. Don't do the same thing, right, right, I mean even within your own projects sometimes, you know, like I was talking about this in the last interview, if you make a whole album, it shouldn't be the same song every year song on the album. Oh absolutely, you know, because otherwise why bother I like the albums where I want to listen to the whole album. And maybe even newer people today that don't like the listen albums would listen to the whole album maybe if there is a little more diversity like that, right. Yeah, right. I mean not to bag on certain bands, but you know, when you become a formula band, everyone already knows what to expect. There's no surprises.

2:27 You know, you just spoke my total language, because okay, so I'm an old school you know, thrash metal head from the very beginning, you know, went to Metallica's first show ever, Slayers first show ever. And you know, one thing I always say is if you take the Big Four of thrash or any of the other early thrash bands, they didn't sound exactly the same. They didn't sound like they were in one genre. They just they had their uniqueness to them. And metal was never like a formula thing. It's like I remember when I first started playing guitar. I was like, my dad was yelling at me, thought I suck because I was experimenting, trying to see what sounds I could make and how distorted I could make it and all that stuff because I was experimenting. To me, that's what metal was. It's like nowadays. I always say, it's like they take an algebraic equation to make metal, some of these bands, And that's not what metal was ever about.

3:31 No, there's definitely a lot of that going on. Right And you know, I am also an old school fan of Forbidden, also a amazing thrash metal band that falls right into what I'm saying. And now you're the vocalist for Forbidden and it's pretty badass. So maybe tell the story of how that happened. Oh, it was an accident. Actually, they were doing something called bay Aery Interthrational, which is you get a bunch of old school thrash guys and you get them in a room together and they play a bunch of covers.

4:13 But the caveat is you cannot play your own songs. So if you're in Death Angel, you can't play a Death Angel song, you gotta play one of the other guys nice. So they were gonna they were putting together a show for a Dynamo festival in the Netherlands. Yea, all of their singers. They had guest singers like, you know, Marc os Awega from Death Angel, Randy from Lamagd, guys like that, but they had no singers to rehearse. They were all either out of state on tour whatever. Chris Kantos now Forbidden drummer former Machine had drummer, said hey, why don't we get that guy, Norman Skinner. He's you know, he lives a couple hours away, but he's got a pretty good voice. He can maybe help us out and do some of these cover songs. So so I get a call from Craig from Forbidden and he's like, hey, you know, can you learn twelve songs? Just come down for a couple of weekends and help us, you know, with our spots and keep us on track. So I learned twelve tracks, went down there for a few weekends, just sang all the songs. So here's where it gets interesting.

5:19 One of the songs was a Forbidden song, and every day we were not playing that song. We were doing every other song except that one song. So I raised my hand and I'm like, hey, what about this forbidden song? Are we going to do that one? And the core group that rehearsing everything, we're all Forbidden members. Literally, it was the whole twenty ten o Megawave line up in that room. Wow. So they're like, well, we're not going to play this song because we're in the band. So then somebody said, you know what, maybe we should do it in case someone drops out or we need to do something on the fly. So I sang it. Now. Little did I know people that were hanging out in the hall because there's a lot of musicians, right Yeah, Yeah, I started singing it. Like the door opened behind me and people were like, like, what's going on? You know, and uh, I didn't know what was going on. But then afterwards I think that sort of planned to seed that, hey there is a guy somewhat local to us that could deliver this stuff and maybe, you know, maybe we could do some of it. But it didn't happen for you know, almost six seven months later when I got the call.

6:33 Between that time, they had me come out to San Francisco to another Bayer at a threshal show where I singing like nine songs, one of them being Challis of Blood with the back of my backing band was war Bringer. So it's basically me Fro war Bringer doing Challice and the place went insane. And then Chris Contest is like, you guys are stupid if you don't get Forbidden back together. I still didn't think anything of it. Fast forward, I get a call from Craig and I'm thinking he's gonna offer me more Bayer their thrational stuff. He's like, how would you like to be the new singer for Reform Forbidden? Wow? I said yeah. I didn't even talk to anybody. He didn't talk to family friends. I just said yes, So so sort of an accident. Just kind of was helping them out with something. Once, you know, things just lined up.

7:20 You know, that's how sometimes the best things happen. So there it is, And so tell us a little bit about what's going on with Forbidden, what's going on with your other bands, and then then let's focus on your solo stuff, which is kick ass. Oh, thanks, Forbidden, we're writing I mean we've already announced, you know, we'll be doing the summer run. We're you know, we're gonna play Faking and he'll Sinky Metal Fest and a few others that haven't been announced yet, but we're gonna do a nice little euro run. It is the thirty fifth anniversary I believe of Twisted in the form, so we're gonna be playing that in its entirety, so fans have that to look forward to. Other than that, we're writing right this week. I am expecting the first two songs to be delivered to me so I can start the very initial first vocal melodies and lyrics too New Forbid music, So we're literally on the on the eve of diving into that and getting that going. Very cool, but yeah, that's it for Forbidden. It's kind of quiet.

8:24 It's a lot of writing right now. Aside from that, my band of Iyan, we just released a single twelve BC Legions in December. On January seventeenth, there will be a new single called Tomorrow's a New Day being released. We'll have one more in February, another single, and then the full album Queen of Fantoms comes out March seventh, So that's going to be our third album. And for fans that are unaware because obviously it's a smaller band than Forbidden. We're like a really heavy power metal band. So like, you know, I have a trivia question for you, by the way, but finish description. No, that's I mean, that's literally we're a heavy power metal band. It's like if you like regular power metal, but sometimes it seems a little cheesy and goblins and unicorns. Right, we might be right up your alley because we take a little more serious and it's got a heavy edge.

9:15 To it, so it is bad ass. Now here's my trivia question for you, and you might be I've asked this before when it's pertinent, you might be the first one to ever answer it or properly answer it. All right, what thrash metal band was originally coined as power metal? Oh? Originally? I mean my first guess would be Forbidden. But if it's if it's not Forbidden, I don't know. I mean, yeah, I'm not sure that. If I had to pick one as a fan, they're the closest because Russ Anderson was more of a power metal singer, you know, being influenced by like you know, Rob Halford and stuff.

10:03 So yeah, so here here it is. Well, I'll give you the short story of something I've said a bunch of times, and that's why I'll make it short. But yeah, I went to that first Metallica show and the guitarist got off the stage came started talking to me, because it's how it was back in the day, you know, at the little clubs, hands me his business card and says Metallica, power Metal, Dave Mustain. Love that that's awesome, right, That's like that is a that is a party antidote, right, because there. Was no such thing as thrash metal before that, you know.

10:47 So there you go. I mean, I think it's wild today to even think of them as a power metal band. Completely different now, yeah. Right, so uh and so let's talk about what I have behind me. Ah yeah, my solo stuff. What's funny is most people don't know a lot about my SOULO. They know about my other bands, right, and they slowly go, oh, this guy has his own solo albums he puts out and uh, I'm super proud of that. That's my latest one. It came out literally. Here's here's what's funny. I worked on that album for about eight years on the back burner.

11:28 I mean, I released tons of albums with other bands, but I was always working on that one, kind of little by little perfection. Yeah, over over eight years, I get it just where I want it. I release it literally the next week they announced I'm the singer Forbidden. Well you can see what happened to that album. It just got buried. Wow. Yeah, so you know it's it's all good. But yeah, the album's called The Dark. Design released a bunch of singles off of it. It's I'm just super out of it. It's my second solo album. My first one was called a Sleepwalkers came out twenty fourteen, but Sleepwalkers a little more thrash with some power in elements. Right, this one's really my bread and butter where I get to show off all the different styles.

12:16 I like, that's what I liked about it. I felt it, you know, like there's some bands that just take you on a journey, and that's what that felt like. Oh nice, I mean I love hearing that every song. You know, there were a lot of songs I didn't that didn't make it. But with this I was able to work with various musicians pick the songs that I want. I was in charge of the structures you know, it was my my, my baby, so you know, I got final veto on everything. Yeah, right, Yeah, it turned out fantastic. I'm actually working on the first three songs for you know, for maybe an upcoming Skinner album. But I will always I'll always be working on solo material just because it's it's another creative outlet for myself.

13:06 So I think it also for any artist. I think it allows him to stay in bands longer, Like you know, Lars finally admitted like you know, and James that you know, maybe they should have let Jason do his thing and he probably was still been with the band. Yeah, you know, because if you don't have a creative outlet where, like you said, you have last veto where you can really express your creativity when you're in a band, you do it's like anything else you do have to you know, appeal to everybody, not just yourself.

13:47 Oh yeah, there's a lot of there's a lot of conceding and then fighting. Battles exactly and goes right back to what I said, and them begin about my dad like saying, yeah, and you should quick guitar. You suck, you know, because I was just trying to do what I wanted to do like, I ain't care what anybody thought I was. I was trying to find the sound. Sure you know, So what else do you have going on that you need to talk about or that people need to know to look out for? Other than you know? We got new Forbidden music in the works. Na Vin album's coming out, New Skinner stuff's being written. I do have another recording project called Elamantis.

14:36 Literally before I left the house, I just got all the drum tracks for the first album delivered, so we're tracking the first album. It's and once again I'm doing something completely different than all my other projects. This one is it's a multi album concept story. We got. I have about four albums written. This is the first one. We're tracking different musicians. It's more symphonic, a lot of guests vocals. I don't even sing on some of these songs. Other people do. But it's a vampire love story with a supernatural twist to it. It's it's just this whole different thing. And once again it's it's branching out, getting another creative outlet, doing something completely different than I've been doing with the other projects.

15:25 It's to turn it into a Netflix series. It absolutely it has the potential to go in a lot of different ways, right, But yeah, it's pretty it's pretty cool. You know, it's in the early stages as you know, we're tracking, I'm really seeing the songs start to take shape. So it's like, oh, all right, it sounds good for like comics and graphic novels too, you know. Oh yeah, like it could just be a whole thing of art. It could. It could. I'll cost me some money, yeah, right. I think people don't realize that. Like I even saw I'm a published author, and if I go do events with my books, people just want me to give them to them for free, like they think they are free.

16:08 Like I don't even make enough to buy a piece of gum, like off of a book, you know how it is. And say with music sales, you know, it's like they want you just why should I buy it from you? Like because it costs me money, that's why, you know. So I'm a big I'm big about you know, support people buy their merch. It's you know, artists, music artists especially. You know, it's the only way nowadays that you guys can survive is off of the merch and it's the only thing that's really a direct link to you the artists, opposed to everybody else that has their hand in the pot. So with that said, tell everybody how they can reach out to you on the web on socials and check out everything that you have.

17:02 Yeah, definitely, it's a one stop shop. You go to Norman Skinner dot net. All my socials are listed and you know up in the bar, there's a store there where you can buy all different merch from past bands, ones that we haven't even discussed, current bands, and I will be hell linking all of We have a ton and I say time, I mean a ton of new forbidden merch being launched in the next month. I'm gonna link all of those to my store so they can go to my site as well, and it'll anything that's not anything that's forbidden will automatically push you to the other store. But yeah, hit me up. I always tell people I go. I'm a very normal dude, down to earth.

17:42 I like to make friends, not necessarily fans, So hit me up on the socials. I reply to all my messages. So nice. Well, I love all that you do and you're a main seam musician. Everybody that doesn't know should check out everything in yours, not just what they know and special. Your solo stuff is badass. So I recommend everybody get that album and check out Old Merch because yeah, I was in that store. I'm like, now that's a merch store, So go do it, or they can't listen to my show. Hey, thanks a lot for everything. Thanks for being on the Adventures pipe Man.

18:23 Awesome. Thank you. Have a good day. Brother, you too, man. Thank you for listening to the Adventures of Pipe Man. I'm w for CUI Radio.