ATHEIST Drummer On Band's Early Years: We Had Dog Food Thrown At Us, We Were Booed Off Stages

Mike Sloan of Blistering.com recently conducted an interview with drummer Steve Flynn of reactivated seminal technical metal pioneers ATHEIST. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

Blistering.com: I listened to the album for the first time today straight through without interruption. Man, I have to honestly say that I'm blown away by "Jupiter". It totally exceeded my expectations for the album. With that said, I'm imagining all the guys in ATHEIST are pleased with how the album turned out.

Steve Flynn: Thank you very much. Yes, we are proud of it. We are also very proud of our other records, which, if you know the history of the band, pretty much everybody hated them when they were released. [laughs] It's a unique situation in that many years have passed and ATHEIST sort of became this entity that was given or afforded the moniker or credit of being a founding member of this movement of progressive technical death metal. But the experience of the band was anything but. We had dog food thrown at us, we were booed off stages while magazines and people who were in the business thought the band was forward-thinking, was new and innovative and loved us and gave us great ratings. All the magazines and record companies thought we were great, but when we went out to play for people, it was horrible. People hated us. So when it came time for us to do the new record, we told people all along that we were really happy with what came out, we like the music and we are simply doing the same thing we did at any other time in history when Kelly [Shaefer, vocals/guitar] and I get together to write music. But if people like it, it's going to be a first for us because we're just not used to that kind of thing. But thank you as you heard it today and that's incredible that you like it. But again, our experiences have been that people just didn't like it despite the fact that the band became sort of lauded as founders of this progressive death metal kind of movement.

Blistering.com: I was hoping for the best but expecting the worst because I'm a cynic at heart but I'm blown away how great it is.

Flynn: Thank you. I think you're sort of encapsulating the experience that we've had. I think you just said it. The thing with "Elements" is that the core of the band wasn't together. Roger [Patterson, bass] was dead and Kelly and I weren't writing together and the real history of the band is that Kelly and I started the band. Roger Patterson, with his complex bass lines, was really integral to developing the sound that eventually became recognized as whatever you think of ATHEIST. It was sort of a combination of Kelly and I writing sort of guitar riffs. I wrote a lot of the guitar, being a drummer, and I've written guitar on "Jupiter". With Roger really writing all the complex stuff and Kelly and I just sitting there putting it together and arranging it and trying to shape it and so forth, that was ATHEIST. And when we weren't together on "Elements", one of the first things people said about the record is that it didn't sound like ATHEIST, but it sounded maybe like a progression. But then everybody knew they brought in the other guitar player, they hired this studio drummer to come in and of course it was technical music. It was really, really fucking good. There are songs on there like "Mineral" and "Air" that we play live regularly that are just brilliant songs. I had nothing to do with them and I started the band. Kelly is just so mentally talented and so are Rand [Burkey, ex-guitarist] and Tony [Choy, ex-bassist] and all those guys. But for whatever ATHEIST became known for, it was all before that. It was what Kelly and I had done together. So whether you hated the band or loved the band, it was for what we did as a core cadre of musicians that spawned that. You might ask me about Tony and his involvement and I don't want to jump the gun on your questions and/or where you want to take the conversation. But most people don't really understand how the music came about. And that's not right or wrong because that's quite logical. The amount of time that went by — I spent 14 years not playing the drums. I didn't pick up my drumsticks literally for 14 years and then in 2006 I started playing drums again and formed this band called GNOSTIC. Then the ATHEIST stuff kind of came back to what it is now because there was a demand for it. When it was time to write a record, we didn't know [what to expect]. I mean, everybody hated what we did. We did three albums. Well, three as ATHEIST; the first two with me and then "Elements" without me and Kelly together and everybody hated us! We were like, "Well, we'll see, I don't know!" When Season of Mist wanted us to make a record, they were asking us what it was going to be like and I was just like, "I don't know! It's going to be me, Kelly and the guys around us." I just knew we were going to do the same thing we did together back in 1991. We were going to write stuff that we like and hopefully it will come out okay and people will think about it what they think. But back to your point that you're making about the difference between "Elements" and the others is the central theme is that the core group that made up the sound just wasn't together. That's why "Elements" is so distinctively different. And Tony, as much as we love Tony Choy and how great he is as a bass player, he had nothing to do with "Piece of Time" and nothing to do with "Unquestionable Presence". He did have a good deal of impact on "Elements" and that was widely considered to be different than anything else we did as a band. So when people who hear this new one will say that it sort of sounds like the missing link, well yeah; that's because Kelly and I are the ones who started the band.

Read the entire interview from Blistering.com.

"Second To Sun", a brand new song from ATHEIST, is available for streaming using the audio player below. The track comes off the band's long-awaited fourth album, "Jupiter", which will be released on November 9 (one day earlier internationally) via Season Of Mist. The CD was recorded at LedBelly studios in Atlanta, Georgia with engineer Matt Washburn and was mixed by Jason Suecof (TRIVIUM, CHIMAIRA, DEVILDRIVER). The cover artwork (see below) was created by Eliran Kantor, who has previously worked with TESTAMENT, SIGH, ANACRUSIS and GWAR, among others.

"Second To Sun" audio stream: