Interviews

Casey Chaos - Shoutweb.com

Where hardcore, metal, and punk have taken on a commercial tone and sold their souls over the past few years, Amen is an exorcism in the form of a car crash. Amen’s sophomore effort We Have Come For Your Parents, released on Ross Robinson’s I AM Recordings through Virgin Records, is an important album because it dares to take an uncensored ax to society. It’s a verbal and musical attack on the American Dream.

Casey Chaos - vocals
Paul Fig - guitar
Sonny Mayo - guitar
John "Tumor" Fahnestock - bass
Shannon Larkin - drums

Shoutweb: Every time I say "A-men" someone tells me its pronounced "Ah-Men".

Casey: You can call it whatever you want.

Sonny: It depends on what part of the country you’re from. You can call it whatever you want.

Casey: You can call it "Shit-Men" if you want to.

Shoutweb: I am first wondering if you guys have any opinions on these "underground" bands which are becoming more mainstream.

Casey: Like...?

Shoutweb: A lot of Shoutweb kids comment that Slipknot is cool because they’re not on MTV. I guess it’s the idea of "selling out" and their opinion of what that means.

Casey: For us, we signed to Virgin and we could have easily made a record that was a rap rock record and cashed in on our label and put out a commercial record. But that’s not the intent of the band. We don’t create that. Slipknot makes music that they believe in. I think for the most part with most American music today, a lot of bands are created just for money and for fame. That’s kind of obvious to me who is a sellout and who isn’t. When you listen to something and you go, "Oh, this sounds just like so and so". It’s one thing to be influenced by something but just to jump on a bandwagon because everyone is getting signed in that movement and to sound like everybody else? That’s a sellout. So what we did, which is the only thing I can do as an artist, is create something honest. We made the most un-commercial album for a commercial world.

Shoutweb: Where did all of this come from? Eminem talks about how he’s a product of our own society.

Casey: American society did it to me. I grew up in New York and it was multi-cultured and I was a happy little boy and everybody was accepting everybody else. There was more individualism. My mother, when I was seven and a half or almost eight, moved to Florida and it was totally backwards, group thought, redneck mentality. If you didn’t wear flannel and shoot a backhoe you weren’t cool. I mean, it happens in every city in the world. In major cities it doesn’t happen as much but that’s why things like Columbine happen. There are these group thought people that think you’re not cool unless you’re like them due to their own insecurities.

Shoutweb: Some have attempted to blame it on exactly this kind of music.

Casey: Yeah, and that’s why we called the album what we did ("We Have Come For Your Parents") because parents are to blame. The kids aren’t even to blame. It’s Calvin Klein. He’s more to blame than Ozzy or any other band in the history of music. Calvin Klein has murdered more people.

Shoutweb: In terms of their soul and their spirit, you mean? Or selling out to commercialism?

Casey: No, he murdered them. There are a lot of women that are trying to maintain this image of what he portrays. He verges on teen pornography and child pornography with his advertising campaigns and he is dishonest as opposed to, if you’re a pornographer for Hustler or Penthouse. That is truth in advertising. You get what you buy. With Calvin Klein, what he’s promoting is anorexia, murder, and group thought. Basically, you have to wear those clothes to be cool. Calvin Klein I just use as a pinpoint because he seems to be the head of it all to me. I don’t think it’s the kids to blame. It’s definitely not music without a doubt. Music is the savor. When I discovered Black Flag as a kid I discovered that there were other people that felt the same way I did. I didn’t have to listen to "You Give Love a Bad Name".

Shoutweb: So I’m assuming that you’re not going to be on the Calvin Klein tour.

Casey: If Calvin Klein puts a tour together, we will not be on it.

Shoutweb: He does actually. P.O.D. is on it.

Casey: (in sarcastic disbelief) Calvin Klein is doing a tour. Who else is on the tour?

Shoutweb: I’m not sure.

Casey: (seeming to be in shock) Calvin Klein is doing a tour.

Sonny: We would like to tour with P.O.D. on the "Good Versus Evil Tour".

Shoutweb: They can be the prayer and you guys can be the Amen at the end.

Casey: Wait a second. He’s actually doing a tour? (starting to come out of shock)

Shoutweb: Yes.

Casey: We have more creative control with Virgin than we ever had with Roadrunner. It should be the other way around with it being an independent versus a major label. There was one image that they asked me to change. Because they’ve been the greatest and best label in the world and they treat us so well I said, "Sure, no problem." Usually artistically and visually I want what I want but I totally will work with them because they’re so great.

Shoutweb: Did you know Ross Robinson before you made this record?

Casey: We lived in our cars when we met. He came and saw us and wanted to do a demo.

Shoutweb: The album comes out on Halloween. Is there any significance to that?

Tumor: Originally it was supposed to come out the first week in October but the label wanted time to prepare and make sure that they were ready for it to hit the streets so they moved it to Halloween.

Sonny: It just happened to fall on the last Tuesday in October, which is completely fitting.

Shoutweb: The album title is "We Have Come For Your Parents". What are you going to do to these parents? (laughter)

Casey: (laughter) It’s kind of a piss take. Originally I wanted to call the album "Kill Your Parents" but I thought that might be a little… I didn’t know if Virgin would really go for that. It’s a piss take on the Dead Boys. They had a punk album called "We Have Come For Your Children" so it was a piss take and also, culturally, I think it’s the opposite situation now.

Shoutweb: This is not a record where you can miss the point of any song. You don’t have to interpret what these songs mean because they’re pretty much out there. I hear you mention "lies" throughout the record in the lyrics of different songs. With the name of the band, the religious themes, the graphics, and the lyrics on this record, is this the only message that Amen is putting out there?

Casey: I don’t think there is an only message. Hypocrisy is a pretty broad thing and sexuality. I just sing about things that are important to me like my addictions, my disease, and my disorders and just try to be human and honest. Ultimately I’m just singing about where I live and what I’ve gone through. I’m not into singing about libraries or all the stuff that people are singing about now – jumping around and trying to get some pussy. That’s not my trip. It’s always been angst-ridden I guess.

Shoutweb: I heard about the Essex show in England where you were saying that you had a cold and you were playing with torn tendons in your foot.

Casey: Yeah, that was the Garage show. I was sick. I had a hundred and one fever. I’m a baby.

Sonny: He got hit hard.

Casey: I said that. I think I said it twice. I couldn’t remember if I said it once or twice but I just wanted to make it known that I’m sick and I’m going to do what I can. The whole place was like, "Aw, little baby!"

Sonny: They were yelling, "Play some fucking music, you wanker!"

Shoutweb: I would have to think that there are some places that would try to ban your shows in the U.S.

Tumor: So far not in America. Not yet.

Shoutweb: Is there a difference in the audiences from Europe to the U.S.?

Sonny: I would say that there is a difference in the audience at this time being that we’ve played some festivals here and we toured with Coal Chamber and Slipknot and so on. People in England and Europe in general, they seem to have "gotten" it. Off the first album, they got it immediately. But here, and not trying to take away from Americans, but they're being force fed by every means, being told what’s cool and what’s not. Here it’s not an immediate (imitates a 2-4 drumbeat) thing where you can start bobbing your head to it. It’s pissed off, honest, not pretty music. It’s not a fucking fashion show. For most of our shows in England, they knew every damn word. They were just on top of it. Maybe they got it before America did. If America never gets it then so be it.

Casey: In Europe, we played festivals. We played Redding and Leeds for 100,000 people or whatever. We were on the second stage and there were like 10,000 kids in there chanting the name Amen fifteen minutes before we hit the stage. America is a group thought society. We base our beliefs on icons that are shoved in front of our face like Calvin Klein and every other blockbuster film or rock star they want to force feed everybody. It makes it more acceptable to be this group thought thing. In Europe, there’s way more individualism. It’s a BIG difference. Not to say that there aren’t people like that in America – which there are – but it just so happens that whenever there are people like that you have everyone else looking at them – like Columbine. The reason I keep bringing that up is because it’s a really important thing that happened. It was tragic but at the same time at least they’ll learn what the problems are – and it’s not music.

Sonny: It’s about spending time with your kids and getting involved in their lives. That’s what I believe personally. Instead of putting them in front of some computer or putting them in front of some video game where they’re blasting everybody to death. They say, "Hey, let’s go do that for real, man." When I first started playing guitar and wanting to do this I cut out a cardboard shape of a guitar and taped it to a tennis racquet and acted like an idiot in front of my mirror or whatever. Then all of the sudden my friends and I said, "Hey man, we’re eleven or twelve years old now. Let’s get real guitars!"

Casey: The whole thing about Columbine, once again, is that everyone is looking at these kids that murdered as the enemy. I don’t see them as the people that were the problem. They were the people that were just pushed into a corner and nobody really knows the truth about how far they were pushed. The enemies are the people that these fucking pieces of shit and the whole newscaster interviewing all these preppy jocks that are constantly fucking harassing people because they don’t fit into their category. Those are the enemies. That’s the problem. It’s not the kids that went on the shooting spree. The shooting spree is just a product of the problem. If I had balls or if I hadn’t had proper parenting at that age, I would have been doing the same fucking thing. I felt that strongly. I was that freak. I was that person. Everyone around me was the enemy. That is the thing about American culture that I despise. That type of people, which unfortunately is the status quo in American culture.

Shoutweb: Are you guys going to vote?

Sonny: No.

Tumor: No. I can’t say I can.

Sonny: You may call it apathetic but I don’t feel that either one of those humans has anything to offer me except for being a patsy for whoever it is who’s really pulling the strings.

Casey: President is basically what Mickey Mouse was to Walt Disney. It doesn’t matter. It makes no difference – at least this is my truth. I don’t think it matters who the fucking puppet is up there. It’s still the corporation that is calling all the moves. The real problem with this election is that there is no choice. They fucking all suck. To have anybody even want to vote for any of them is un-American. They’re trying to take rights away. They’re talking about this whole censorship… AGAIN! Censoring music… AGAIN! And films, and video games, and doing all these ratings. I watched it and I was just dumbfounded. I told everybody on the bus, "You have *got* to see what the fuck is going on right now!" That was pornography to me. Seeing that conversation was pornography to me.

Shoutweb: What were you watching?

Casey: The thing on C-SPAN about Violence in Video Games, Music, and Film. To me, that was pornography. That was worse than any Hustler magazine or any sort of triple "X" video. A bunch of guys literally lying and trying to say that music makes people kill. And they’re all fucking corpses. Those guys aren’t even alive! They aren’t even human. Those guys have no clue. They live in their fucking penthouses or chateaux or wherever the fuck they live. They have no idea what’s going on in the streets of America or what they’re thinking. I went to Amsterdam and Amsterdam is paradise. That is truly a free society and not because of the sexuality or you can smoke weed. Babies aren’t crying. People aren’t honking their horns. There is a difference in humanity. The people are a little more human. There is a church on one side of the street and the red light district on the other.

Sonny: Literally, there is a church wall and fifteen or twenty feet away there’s twenty windows with whores in them.

Casey: Once you go to Europe and you come back, you can see the differences in the culture. The president of Virgin in Holland told me, "I think the difference between here and America is dinner with the family. We sit down and have dinner together as a family." That doesn’t exist here. We eat our TV dinner and sit in front of the television.

Shoutweb: I was at Tattoo the Earth at Giants Stadium in New Jersey this summer. I saw Mick from Slipknot hanging out on the side of the second stage. He was telling me about the first few shows and how you had to trek from Oregon to Kansas City and then to New Jersey. He said, "I haven’t gone to sleep yet because for the past two shows I’ve missed Amen’s set. I have to stay up to catch Amen and Hatebreed!"

Sonny: As far as Slipknot, we were up in Indigo Ranch doing our album then that bled over. We were doing vocal tracks while they began tracking their album. Casey was doing vocals but we’d all go up there and hang out. Indigo Ranch is up in the hills in Malibu, California so we were all in this little cabin vibe hanging out with them so we got really close. We toured together with Machine Head and Coal Chamber and Slipknot. As far as Hatebreed, I had met them previously because a friend of mine who is in Soulfly, Mikey, and I went to see them in July of ’98. Last year we went on tour with them and I was like, "Hey, man, I met you guys last year." We were the only ones who approached them, basically the entire tour so we immediately hit it off. We just have the same kind of vibe. We actually have the same type of reputation that precedes us all. We just hit it off really, really well. Slipknot, those guys are just our buds.

Shoutweb: You guys were supposed to tour with them but they’re not going out now.

Casey: They’re going to write their next record.

Tumor: The cat’s out of the bag. I heard that three times today.

Shoutweb: It’s on your web site.

Tumor: Our web site?

Casey: They’re going to do the new record and that’s why we’re not touring with them.

Shoutweb: Everybody has been saying that they’re burned out.

Casey: When you go on tour for a year and a half, yeah. They only have to wear masks on stage every night and fucking sweat for a year and a half straight. Let me go make a new record, man. You’ll be happy when it comes out. The sooner they do it, the sooner they’ll be back. Paul called me all apologetic about the tour and I said, "Dude, don’t worry about it. Do your thing, man."

Sonny: We had a hard time coordinating everything. We always wanted to tour with them but we had the problems with Roadrunner.

Casey: They’re at a point right now where they can say, "This is who we want as an opener. We don’t care how much money they’re giving us. This is who we want to tour with." They were one of the main reasons we got on Tattoo The Earth. We were on it and we were confirmed and then two weeks before it they said, "No bands are confirmed for the side stage." Then Shawn, Paul, or Joey called me and told me, "You are on and that’s that." They made it happen. Also, a guy Lauren from Famous, he was doing a lot of stuff for us too. Those were the people who were the reason we were on that tour.

Shoutweb: Lauren did a Tattoo The Earth tour diary for Shoutweb. He was writing, "Man, Amen just tore the shit up today!"

Casey: He’s a cool guy. It even came down to, because of our reputation, we had to sign a contract stipulating that if we broke any gear that we’d have to leave the tour graciously. It was a little side contract we had to sign. Hence, the reason behind why Hatebreed and Amen became family on that tour! (laughter)

All: (laughter)

Shoutweb: Did everybody have to sign that contract?

Casey: No. Just us. Not even Hatebreed had to sign that. Hatebreed came up to us within the first week. It was either Boulder or one of them that came up to us and said, "I knew we’d fucking hit it off great. You guys have almost as bad a reputation as us!" (laughter) "That’s why we have to tour together – the Scumbags Across America Tour!"

Sonny: The Scumbags Across America Tour. Coming to a town near you!

All: (laughter)

Shoutweb: That Tattoo The Earth show at Giants Stadium was awesome. The crowd really loved you guys.

Casey: Really? I couldn’t tell if it was a good show for us or not. I had my friends there from New York. I went to play the show then watched part of Hatebreed and then went to the city and just hung out. When you’re on tour like that you get to see all the bands everyday anyway.

Shoutweb: You guys wrote a lot of material in a short amount of time for this record.

Tumor: In two months time.

Casey: I wrote 56 songs from December to February. Then I gave two CDs to the band and to Ross and said, "You guys pick what songs you want to do." That was the hardest thing about the album, picking the songs.

Sonny: We’d find songs that were really fun to play or we liked the way it sounded. He gave it up to us and the band and Ross. The band came back and said these were the songs that we would like on the record. We just gave it up to a higher power. Literally like a twelve-step program. We just said, "Tell us what you want us to do, man." Every single song was and is amazing.

Shoutweb: You could have gone for the double CD!

Casey: We could have had triple CDs. We ended up putting 25 down on paper and then going in and tracking 20 in 30 days. If there was a conscious decision on anything, it was the ammunition I had with the whole Roadrunner experience. It sort of fueled it, in retrospect. At the time I didn’t think so because I write all the time anyway. At that point, shit was just pouring out. Once I demoed it with Larkin, and we narrowed it down, I sat down with Ross and we listened to both CDs. He had the CD for a bit so we would listen for a while and it would have a commercial or hooky overtone and he would say, "This one here… OUT!" (laughter)

Shoutweb: (laughter) That sounds like a good measure.

Sonny: We’re going as hard and uncompromising as possible and not holding anything back.

Shoutweb: Even if it was a good song?

Sonny: Yeah!

Casey: We threw out a lot of them. Actually we put them in a dark room.

Shoutweb: If you take all of those and put them on the next album people will say, "They sold out!"

Casey: There were also some more that were the same vibe but different songs.

Tumor: More rock and roll.

Casey: There was a lot of stuff that was songs from the past that a lot of people liked – especially Fig, the guitar player. He’s constantly picking up old demos that we did and saying, "This is what we have to do!" For me, a lot of my philosophy is to not go backwards. All that music represented that time and where I was coming from. So with the next record that hopefully we’ll record in about a year or so, will be a representation of that time. That’s what we’re trying to do. All of the bands that I’ve ever looked to for inspiration or bands that ever really meant anything, they put music out that represented where they were at during that time. Led Zeppelin would put out two records a year sometimes. Cheap Trick or Black Flag or whoever it may be just did it to document where the band was at emotionally. Aerosmith… the list goes on. Every band that I think is legendary so to speak.

Shoutweb: I know the Napster subject has been beaten to death but I’d like to hear your opinions on it.

Tumor: I think if a kid really wants the album, then they’ll want to artwork too and they’ll go out and buy it. I think Napster is more of a quick fix thing. If they’re going to spend all that time to download all of that material. It kind of sucks for bands who have their album out before it’s actually released and kids are buying it.

Casey: For me, it’s just where we’re at culturally. Another good representation. It’s like a Jerry Springer show. It’s not good or bad. You can’t take sides. Or like this election. What was an interesting thing, and once again, I’ll talk about the presidents of Virgin in Europe, predominantly Amsterdam and Holland. He was very concerned about Napster. They were really, really, really anti-Napster. I didn’t understand why because I just found out about it then. I’m not that computer literate. A CD in Europe and certain countries ends up costing four times as much. For example, in Holland, after the exchange rate, it ends up costing something like forty dollars. Kids allowance or jobs only let’s them afford maybe two CDs a month let’s say. If they can get them for free on the Internet then they will only buy CDs when they absolutely want to buy one. If you’re talking about shelling out forty bucks, you’re not going to get everything you want. One thing I do not like is what happened to The Deftones. Their entire album and B-sides were on fucking Napster before the record ever came out. I think that’s bullshit. I think for them to do that, that is a crime. It’s not fair to the band. It wasn’t mixed or mastered properly. It was all their music before the record comes out. Once the record is out there, everyone’s going to do their own home taping or burn a CD. You can’t stop that shit. I think that’s just bullshit. I think that’s total bullshit. If they put it on there themselves then that’s a different story. Somebody has access to the tapes and fucking stole from them. It’s like the Pam and Tommy Lee thing.

Shoutweb: Casey, with all of the angst-ridden nature of these songs, is it a release for you to be on stage?

Casey: When I was a kid I was a professional skateboarder when I was ten. So that was my way of pushing myself to the extreme, as far as you can go with any sort of extreme sport let’s say. Once I started breaking too many bones doing that I turned to something I didn’t break as many bones at. It was just screaming so I wasn’t breaking any bones. For me, I transcended from skateboarding to screaming in a hard core band for fun and just as an outlet because I had a broken arm for six months and I couldn’t move. That’s basically why, because I’m not a musician. It was just an outlet. A way to get everything inside, out. To do everything possible to detach my body from my soul.

Shoutweb: The songs that you rejected for this record, did they run the gamut of emotions? When I say "is that all that the band is about?" I mean that is where you are at this time but that doesn’t define what the message is.

Casey: Right now we’re signed to Virgin and I’ve never been happier in my life. The next record is definitely going to end up sounding something like N Sync or something.

Shoutweb: (laughter)

Casey: You can see the bus we’re on and the way they treat us.

Shoutweb: You’re living the cushy lifestyle?

Casey: Yeah. Now what am I going to be mad about?

Shoutweb: (laughter) Are you going to start writing ballads?

Casey: There are a lot of songs that I’ve written that are completely a different vibe. It sounds like Amen but it sounds like a real dark Amen let’s say or maybe a more rock oriented Amen. It varies so right now what we wanted was to make the most violent album in the history of major label music. There are bands out there that are much more angry and much more violent than us but they have their own labels or very, very underground labels. For a major label to get behind something like this, it hasn’t been done since Stooges Funhouse and they only lasted a month after the record came out! (laughter)

All: (laughter)

Shoutweb: So let’s see, that means you have until November 30th!

Shoutweb: Touring is bringing you around the U.S. and I know that the fans can visit the web site to get the latest.

Tumor: We try to keep it a non-stop running machine, you know? In America, it’s going to take a little more time. We’re trying to build somewhat of an underground base in America. Europe is pretty much set in stone. We’re going to back to Europe for the holidays and tear it up over there. We’re basically trying to land the right American tour. It’s the hardest thing to do over here. A lot of these new bands, they get everything handed to them on a silver platter. A band like us, we have to fight and do what we can to get something like that.

Casey: You know the way it is. The machinery. There are a lot of components. It’s payola and numbers.

Tumor: They sold this many records last week so they’re going to get that tour.

Casey: Even Slipknot when they were talking about Tattoo The Earth. Mick, every night, was almost mad that they had to headline over Slayer. You know? Because everyone grew up on Slayer! But because they sell more records… it’s a strange thing, the whole numbers game. It’s fucking ruthless. That Soundscan thing is the death of music.

Shoutweb: That’s what Mick was telling me. They were going to stop touring but then they started selling 20,000 a week again so Roadrunner put them on Tattoo The Earth.

Tumor: It’s hard because you’re tired and then you have to come out with this brilliant second album and you’re just fucking tired. How can you be creative?

Shoutweb: There are a lot of second albums that are about life on the road.

Tumor: That’s what they say. A band has their whole life to write their first album and four to six weeks to write their second. It may be a year but you’re touring that whole time and then when you get time it’s like, "Okay, go write it." Then you have four to six weeks to come up with something brilliant. The music suffers and it’s not as original, man.

Casey: That definitely is a difference between bands that I’ve always looked at as a band and bands that are just advertisements. It’s the sound of the time. Rage Against The Machine is a great band and they’re an honest band. A couple seconds later there are a million bands that sound like them or Korn. I think that’s worse than murder because at least murder is honest. Plagiarism is just… I don’t know. I’m just so jaded! (laughter)

All: (laughter)

Shoutweb: "Ungrateful Dead" has lyrics for "because of all the dogs you’ve fed" and I know that there are references you make about the Internet and computers in general. Obviously, the kids that are reading this are seeing it on their computers. What do you want to say to them?

Casey: I would say, enjoy your computer but live your life. Not through your fucking computer. Use it as the tool that it is and be able to get information and have your touch-tone fucking inhumane society through your computer but it’s important to live life. People are building relationships and having sex with their computers. That’s saying something about us as people I think. I think it’s important that people are able to get out of their fucking house and live their fucking lives. I think it’s one of those things where it’s use it or abuse it. Definitely use it. I use it. I have my laptop right here. I have my computer on the road. I’m creating artwork on it. I even noticed it when we were sitting at home and we were off tour. I was browsing through the Internet and I suddenly thought, "What the fuck am I doing?" (laughter) "What, it’s 9 o’clock? I’ve been sitting in front of this computer for 12 hours?"

Casey: I think it’s important. We’re losing humanity. We’re losing touch with humans. There are people and then they are humans and I’m having a hard time finding humans anymore. I think that’s what I try to reach out for musically – humanity. To touch people who either are detached from it or fallen astray. I don’t know what it is. I’ve just noticed that there are a lot of people who are these computer people who I have to deal with. I created the artwork on our web site. But there are other people that I have to talk to because I can’t put it up there. People that I talk to that make the Flash and all that. It’s very hard to communicate with these people for me. I’m having a hard time.

Shoutweb: You’re talking to me just fine.

Casey: I know! But there are these people who are these hacker types and I am trying to communicate and it doesn’t happen. "I’ll e-mail you." That’s the other fucking thing. I fucking hate e-mail. God, I fucking hate it. It’s great for artwork. It’s great when you want to say, "Here’s the mock up of the cover." You send it to everybody at once – perfect. But when you’re calling to say hi? Just call me and talk to me because I can’t type! I can never check my e-mail while we’re on the road. I’m not anti-computer. I’m anti-people who live on there.

Shoutweb: It’s like those people who may be pouring their hearts out to a friend on the computer and yet they can’t even talk to their parents.

Casey: I feel sorry for a person for whom that is their life. These old men or these people who are fucking jacking off on their computers. You’re having sex with your computer? What’s next? You’re going to have a baby with your computer? We’re cloning people. We might as well have computer babies. There’s going to be a way. They’ll figure it out.

Shoutweb: To all the kids that are thinking of picking up the album, what can they expect?

Tumor: Real, fucking honest music from our heart. Not this bullshit that’s being force-fed to everybody.

Casey: It’s an alternative to what’s out there if you want to hear the most violent, honest recording that doesn’t sound like anything else. It’s the best band or the worst band. It’s nothing middle of the road that sounds like anything else you’ve heard. It’s there if you want it.