PipemanRadio Interviews Hatred Reigns

0:04 Hey, you have done to censure? Wow crazy your whycoup of America. It's time for the Adventures of Pipeman on W four c Y dot com West Pomp Beats, his number one internet radio station. Here's your host, the light Manti Teacher for or four drill turn of your bird. This is the pipe Man here on the Adventures pipe Man W four c Y Radio. And I'm very excited about our next interview because man, they are some hill or musicians with some badass music you're gonna have to check out. So let's welcome to his show, Hatred Rains. How are you good? How are you doing good? You know, normal South Florida weather chaos, but you know, could be worse, right, could be having the first snowstorm of a year, Oh for sure. But thank you for taking the time to bring us on your show. Hey always you know, if it's good music, I want to promote it because listen, I come from a time where you know, hardly anybody knew what metal was, and I love that word.

1:37 In a time where so many people do and where bands like you get to really get to be heard because your musicianship is incredible. Can you tell me how this all started for you guys, like just your music. Each one of you probably has a different story, your musical journey that brought you to this point. So I'm Jeff, the founding number of Hatred Rains. My journey starts back in the winter of nineteen eighty nine, the honest our drummer brought me over to his house. I played percussion and he said, man, come tick of the drum kit that I got. So went over to his house. Sitting beside the drum kit was a guitarist said, man, picked that up, and I'm glad I did because it's changed my life ever since then. But also in the spring of nineteen eighty nine, my brother went to see the Injustice for All tour. Would not take me next morning because I was just a little thirteen year old, little little torp, you know. Next morning woke up and I saw Lady Justice and the Hammer Justice shirts, and I got to say, my reason for really playing music wasn't even the music. It was the visual artwork by pus Ed that got me into it. Although my brother had me listening to Cooper, Ozzy Osbourne and like the likes of Iron Maiden, that definitely piqued my interest, but that's what really sparked my intersts and Neil and I drummer for Hatred Raynes created music from the get go, from the winter of nineteen eighty nine. Its inventing, creating stuff. So I've been playing in many different form different bands with Neil off and on since then. As for yourself, Mitch, what got

3:09 you going? Uh? For me? I was born and raised in Saudi Arabia, so there was absolutely no metal scene, nor was that music acceptable in any manner. So I was exposed to LimeWire and bear Share and frost Wire and that's how I found all these amazing bands. And then I just you know, taught myself how to you know, just play music, really play guitar and overall production until I moved to Canada to study. And then that's when I met members from like the local scene, and then I started bands with them. And that's really my story. So I love both your stories and for different reasons. Though, I love your story because I don't think people realize because today it's a little different. Like I have interviewed a bunch of of you know, different bands from parts to the Middle East where you couldn't really have a metal band, just like you're saying. And I think it's so cool that you actually were able to get exposure because when you were talking about lime ire and stuff, I'm thinking myself, Man, how do you even have access to that? You know, I would think that would be banned because you know, you can you know, put bands on what you can connect to on the internet. And I'm sure that happens in your home country sometimes too, right. Oh. Absolutely, Luckily like there, it wasn't monitored that heavily, so if you really wanted to find something, you could. But yeah, like LimeWire, frost Wire, just torrents

4:41 and stuff. That's how, really, how I was able to discover music. Yeah, I know Korea and other parts of Asia, China they have major lockdowns that you're saying, so there's limitations. So I bet you you experienced that. Indonesia too has since there's a lot of places that different controls in place. Oh. You know, it's funny you mentioned Indonesia because I was just a Bali back in January through March last in this year, and somebody introduced me as some band there. They were like amazing and they had this song. The song that was played for me was Kuda Rock City, like a play on words of Detroit Rock City. But you know, it's amazing that today maybe there's being a little more openness and maybe there's a chance for you know, more artists throughout the world in areas where it's so restrictive that maybe they get a chance to be artists themselves, because I think music is one of the best therapies there is, not only for the listener, but more importantly for the artists themselves. Absolutely, I think in every place in the world there's always going to be a scene, but like you say, it depends on how well it's being promoted or the risk that people are willing to take to get exposure, because you know, certain people can be that the military or not the military, but the police and stuff like that

6:11 can be not too friendly to people who they frown upon certain genres of music and death metal metal for sure, seems to get a lot of censorship, Like I remember as in Korea and anything Cannibal corpsea haid in major censorship, like the packages were sealed and they wouldn't let anything be visually promoted because of you know, the how could upset people. So I'm sure you had that in Saudi, for sure. The censorship is one thing. But in Saudi, whenever I heard there was an underground scene there, whenever they threw a show, the last thing I heard was that the promoters or and even like the performers got arrested. Yeah, and that's the last thing I heard of them, or something happened to them or something happened. Yeah. That is just it just it just said. It's sad that music isn't isn't appreciated for what music is, because there's music is so diverse, and like you said, it's it's something you can escape through. It can something you can be expressive with. And you know, metal has its place in the world, and so many people frown upon it. They're just so quick to judge.

7:10 Like, for instance, my mom, I let her listen to the video today. Her first song is Wow, it's really governor vocals like yeah. But it's always interesting how that's they go to the vocals as first, but vocally it's a component as an instrument, as part of the music. It's not just we focused on the vocals. But that's the mainstream music influence on so many people, like classical music, doesn't have vocals in it, but you appreciate it for what it is. Music is gonna appeal to a different audience base. Every type of music has a core fan base, or you just have the popular music scene that you know, easy listening that's comforting and just you know, it connects to people. I don't know music for me.

7:53 One day, I'll be listening to one source of music. Next day I'll be listening to something totally different because I don't know how I'm feeling that day, right, And I agree with what you said about how it goes together, because could you imagine like a technical death metal band playing with the singer being somebody like Taylor Swift as an example, It wouldn't go together. It's not who's talented or who's not talented, it just it wouldn't go together. It would kind of be like eating, you know, chocolate covered liver or something like that. Well, to me, I'm really super impressed with Mitch. Mitch's vocals. He actually is not an original member. He was brought on as our engineer and to help produce the album, and then subsequently our vocalist. He stepped down on the band and Mitch stepped into the role because you want to see this through to fruition, and really grateful that he did, because I think his vocals really solidify the album, bring the music together cohesively. They're kind of like the bass for that other end of the spectrum. They kind of the two pieces of bread holding all the meat together.

8:56 As you got the bass in the in the bottom and the top is is the piece of is the vocals if you ask me, yeah, man, there you go. And then you know, I think it's kind of cool when you go from one side of the mixer board to the other side of the mixer board, because it amazes me, as somebody that does a lot of airviews, how many musicians know zero about sound quality, you know. So I think it just makes you a better band to have somebody that is in the band but also is an engineer type, a technical type that understands the sound part of it. Yeah. Absolutely. Like I'm not I'm not renowned for my work by any means, but from my experience seeing the bands that actually have members that bring like a lot of assets outside of their own role playing the instrument to the band, those are the bands that are actually have seen or going somewhere or even have opportunities outside of just playing music or in their bands. So I'm grateful for Jeff bringing me on board, and I'm also grateful for being able to contribute what I can. Yeah.

10:09 To me, Mitch really was instrumental for seeing this through. Like he he knew that I had a passion for in a vision for what I want to achieve. But without Mitch, I really truly am grateful for his contributions to get to get the product that you guys are hearing. Can it always be improved upon? Everything could be approved upon? At some point you just got to say enough enough, we're there this this, let's release this as is, because then you get into too you know two under the microscope of just being too anal on it. But to me, I'm really grateful for Mitch's contributions help the if the fans dig what we're what we're releasing and sharing with the world. And I agree with you because that's why I have my engineer edit my interviews, because if I edited my interviews, I would take a fifteen man interview and probably take five weeks to edit it. It couldn't be too much of a perfectionist on every little part. Yeah, I definitely, I definitely need to be rained in some days, but not a pun intended.

11:05 But it does fun intended. But I'm just saying being perfectionist is great, but same time you have to just let someone else breathe and work with it. One thing I am also proud of is that we've done a lot of this ourselves, Like even the video, we shot most of the stuff ourselves, or even have my daughter or we had a friend do it, but our drummer, he did a lot of the video editing for everything. Either I might have done a rough cut of the video, but he actually did the final release versions. And like Mitch said, each member is bringing some talent to the project. So it's kind of nice to say that we've done a lot of this release our selves, which is I'm proud of that.

11:48 I mean to many degrees. Yes, we've hired people to do art work, We've hired people to assist us in other ways. Our good friend Darkmoton Productions were very very kind to let us do the mix and mastering at his studio, So thank you very much, Joe. So we're really grateful for the for the outside people who've assisted us, but for the majority of it we have done it in with the band within the band. Yeah. By far, out of all my bands or products that I've been a part of, this has been the most dui that I've ever accomplished. And I've noticed that we've actually built a lot more content than my previous bands are my other bands because of how much we just do it ourselves, whereas with the other bands, we always have to budget and work around people's times and you know, managing other people's lives, and it's not usually the easiest I think too, you know, like think about, like Jeff, you're talking about going back to nineteen eighty nine, when your musician has been doing it this long. I think just by being in the industry, you learn these other crafts, like your drummer does the video editing and stuff like that. You know, you think of you know, you mentioned Metallica. You think of what Metallica was capable of doing in the eighties compared to what they're capable of doing now. It goes way beyond the scope of their musicianship. It does, and I think their passion is showing more in the new music than the

13:18 old music. I personally am a fan of the old music, not to go down that rabbit hole. But they also have management in people behind them as a crew, where we're four guys doing ourselves because we're passionate, but I also want to share. Like the other members of the bands, they all have other bands they play in. So this is really my passion project. My left for me to do my vision and showcase the musical direction that I've that I had for this album. Going forward, we really want to collaborate and write the music collectively, so future releases will be more of a Hatred Rene's full full concept instead of, you know, primarily my music vision, so that that this album kind of showcases. Yes, as an engineer, when I was brought in this project, I wanted to execute my client's vision first and foremost before even considering myself a band member. So when it came to a lot of input, I guess like I was kind of indifferent, but at least I stayed within the bounds of what the vision was instead of trying to put my input forcefully just because I'm a member and I love hearing that because see, it's that kind of cohesiveness that I think is what makes a band and now want to even go back to the game where you're talking about It's funny you were talking about Metallica because of two reasons. One is I was at the first Metallica show ever, So I am that person that when you were just saying before, like I'm kill them all all the way, take fight fire with fire and put it on kill them all and

14:50 take Jumping Fire and put on Ride the Lightning, and me and my friends you say that would be the perfect album with Dave. I did same with Dave. I even met Dave. So there were like twenty five of us there. And after the gig, Dave came off stage and started talking to me, my friend, and they handed me this business card and it said Metallica power Metal Dave Mustain because there was no such thing as thrash yet and they were power metal for a minute. Oh man, that's that's that's historic for sure. Yeah. I wish I did. I was fifteen and I'm like, well, I need this for you know. Oh man, I beg you go back. I wish you had that just just for keepsake.

15:33 Yeah, you know, back then, you would never never imagine like they would be the band they like, I saw it. I go on tour and I'd do music festival coverage at music festivals, and I saw them at Download and I remember just sitting there just a couple of months ago, and sitting there, I'm like, this just kind of blows my mind that there's this many people here for Metallica, you know, and there's legends. What was interesting too, is okay, so Mitch, you got into metal because of things like lime Wire and Lars was you know, he was actually right, but he was like the one that was trying to stop all that.

16:18 So it just goes to show there's two sides to every equation, isn't there There is? Absolutely yeah, there is. And that's the thing about music, how you get exposed to how you discover it. Like we don't have tape stores anymore, we don't have CD stores, and like my daughter is growing up in a very different world that I am accustomed to. Like what we went to a shirt store, music store, I said, I used to spend hours in here, Like why right? This is a different culture than from what her generation will be exposed to to what we know. And Mitch, yeck, he might discover things online, but you know, we all have such a different, different history and experience totally and going back to some thing you said in the beginning, it totally hit me, was you know art music is visual too, It's not just the music. And like I remember you talk about going into record stores, like I went into record stores or I would see flyers all over LA and I picked what music I listened to and what show I went to by the the visual art that I saw and what they look like. And artwork is plays a major component for me. I could share example. So I was holding obituary slowly wrought tape in Kallis, Maine, and I had Sepulteurs beneath beneath the remains in my other hand, and I either choose which to buy, and I went with Sepulteura because I just love Michael Whalen's artwork. It's it's what speaks to me to the most. So when we were choosing artwork ourselves, we went through

17:52 a bunch of different artists before we found Petro Sino or Lord again is what he goes by, And we actually did get contact by another artist two weeks after we made a decision go with Pedro. But I'm really appreciative of what Pedro designed for us, Like, you make a decision, you got to stick with it. But he definitely provided and created something that's visually appealing. They I will share a joke that we have inside the band. One of our members is color blind, and he'd be like, he can't see at the sketch because he couldn't distinguish what it was. But once the colors were added and he could see the full design, it made more sense to him. So I'm grateful he was trusting with me to work with Pedro to design some artwork that's appealing and to your to your point, I definitely am attracted to an album by its cover. They said, never judge a book by its cover, but that will draw you in. So to me, having something colorful with lots of detail and depth, it appeals to my to my senses. But who knows, maybe next time art work will also have like a feather on the front. Who knows something simple to be contrasting. So a lot to wait to see what the future holds. But this is the current artwork for represent Awaken the Ancient. It also shows that the band actually has like a thought out concept for their art and then just instead of just slapping like something that looks brutal or whatever. And I feel Hatred Rains has definitely achieved that, and we didn't go with AI either. There you go.

19:18 I love it because, uh, you know, it's funny. I've tested a out eye out for certain things in radio, and although it's good, if you just rely on it, which people do so much nowadays with technology, it can be pretty wrong because it's like even for like show notes for an interview, it'll misspell a band's name, and if you don't proofread that, that's how you're putting it out there. So I think even if you're gonna use AI, put that human element into it as well. Oh yeah, hbsolutely you definitely got You gotta just like Anthony, you gotta read it and read it a few times, have a few eyes on it. But mistakes still slips through the cracks. Some people just misread. Thing happens all the time. But no doubt I personally, if we're gonna talk about AI, I'm on the fence. I'm very analog. I'm not very a digital type person, and I fixed computers to share with you as my job.

20:11 But I'm still old school, like I like hard tapes. I like reading a book in my hand, flipping the page, smelling the papers pages, they flipped through them, Like that's the kind of person I am because that's the generation I grew up in. But you also are in this digital world. Like, so we got contrasts. So Mitches is the grew up in a different era than myself. Neil and I the drummer, were from like the old school audio tracking, analog tape, the tape, all these different all these different sources. These guys are like metronomes and clicks. That's the standard that they're accustomed to. So trying to meld both worlds that make everyone find a happy place could be a challenge. But what is the new standard? Well, that's really tricky when you have people who are old school and new school mixing blooding together. So so I'm saying Hatred Grains is is an interesting dynamic. But I think the new the new album, the current album is definitely representative of what we're doing. But I'm actually super curious for the future to see where the writing's going to evolve and develop between all the members. I love the blending, by the way, because as an example, I am very much a techie, but I also with certain things like like with a book, I can't stand reading a book on computer, iPad or phone. I want to read an actual book, you know. Same with music, like there's certain things like you know, even if somebody understands music theory and stuff like digital music misses like the mids in it. There's

21:42 something about you know, because digital is the you know, it's not a curve, it's straight line. So there's something missing there. But the new school people don't know it's missing because it's all they experience, whereas the old school people they experience something else. And so I think the blending is actually what makes it better in my opinion, absolutely yes, the blending both analog and digital is actually how you get the results that are a little bit it's it fits today's standards, but you also hear the musicianship, so it's not flat and monotone. So, for example, from the engineering standpoint, instead of relying fully on plugins, you can rely on plugins, but also use outboard gear as like a mixbus processor or actual compressors that you can run like your your signal chains through little little little steps like that can definitely completely change, like the saturation of the sound completely. And to that point about blending Hatred range from the from the get go, I always wanted to blend new elements with old school elements. So we're not trying to reinvent the wheel.

22:56 We're not trying to be Oh, we're something new in front us. Not at all to me. It's just blending old with new and that's what we're doing stylistically with recording. Majority of the recording we actually use clicks, but there had to be some perts we actually had to use free time because that's what the part required to get the best results. So in many ways, Hatred Rains tries to blend old with new skills, new styles to represent what our sound is that we're trying to create and share love it. So the new album, Awaken the Ancient drops December first. Maybe you could tell everybody how they can connect to you guys on socials, on the web, how they can get the new album, buy merch, check out, tour dates, all that good stuff. So we have two distr Kid is one of the pre sell links that we have available, which will be included in this interview at the bottom, as well as Hatred Rein's bandcamp dot com is the other place where you can get our merch, and we don't have everything created just yet. There's going to be some merch being added in time, but at this point in time, there's going to be our older shirts and older merch available. But as of December first, there will be some new merch designs and some stuff coming your guys way for to check out love It.

24:12 Any final words you guys want to leave our listeners with. I think we've kind of me personally. I think we've kind of touched on everything that we want to talk about. Yeah. For for myself, really, I would like us to do some touring. I'd really like to get off this continent and go travel play some shows in another cities. If we come to State side, that'd be amazing as well. I'm excited to play in tour in Canada, don't get me wrong, and love our country. I just like to try to spread our wings and go go share our music through here and there and everywhere, like Indonesia, go to these places that they're kind of frowned upon and share and bring our music there to bring it to other people, because I think people are thursday they want. They want to experience the live music of bands, not just online and or hearing it in the cars.

24:56 Yeah, you want to come play in the Middle East, but potentially costumes. They don't know what it looks like. I was just gonna say, it's funny you should say that, because I think it would be kind of cool, because I actually have interviewed a few Israeli bands lately and one like really lately. You know, it's a shame what's going on over there. No matter what side of defense it is, it doesn't matter. But when you have bands that you know are releasing art that could be beneficial to them and everybody that's listening, and they're restricted because of this kind of stuff, I think music would heal all this. I think the end of all wars would be music. To me, music has been one of the soothing person everything. The most most traumatic events that have happened for people, they turn to music, or they turn to art or something to be calming.

25:49 You know, nature is one beautiful thing, but I think art in music is another expressive form that people are able to enjoy. I mean, sports is there as well, but we're talking about music and art in this In this meeting and that to me is always something I turned to for sure one hundred. Well you guys rock I think I think, based on listening to your music, you should try to play Hellfest because you would fit in right very well there. I hope you spread this great art throughout the world and keep doing it. And thanks for being on the Adventures of Pipe Man. Thanks, thank you for listening to the Adventures of Pipemin on w for CUI Radio.