BIOHAZARD Is Officially Working On New Album: 'We're Back Stronger Than Ever'

In an interview with Ace Annese of Reality Check TV at the seventh annual Metal Hall Of Fame gala, which took place on January 24 at the Marriott Delta hotel in Garden Grove, California, BIOHAZARD guitarist/vocalist Billy Graziadei spoke about the status of the reunited classic lineup of the band — Graziadei, guitarist Bobby Hambel, drummer Danny Schuler and bassist/vocalist Evan Seinfeld. He said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET):  "We're back stronger than ever. I think any band who gets back together as a reunion says that, but this is for real.

"When we first came up with the idea, our manager Scott Koenig and lifelong friend, who passed away, the last conversation I had with Scott, he said to me, 'Put that bullshit aside. Put the band back together,'" he recalled. "I have a band with Sen Dog from CYPRESS HILL and Christian [Olde Wolbers] from FEAR FACTORY; it's called POWERFLO; I do solo [music]. And I was, like, 'You know what? Nah, man.' And Scott passed the next day. I saw Evan at the Rainbow [in West Hollywood] for Scott's memorial, and I went up to him and said 'hi'. I gave him a hug. And I said, 'I wish it was under better circumstances.' And that was the beginning. So I think a lot of this is Scott — Scott was the catalyst to make this happen. I know he's looking over this being proud as fuck."

Billy continued: "So, at first, we were, like, 'Yeah, it'll be fun. It'll be a great thing to play the old songs again.' And then it worked. The first show was Milwaukee Metal Fest, which is a great thing done by Jamey Jasta from HATEBREED. That show rocked. Then we played New York two nights, and those shows were on fire. And we were, like, 'Wow, this is fucking amazing.' So we kept doing it. We went on tour, and we were, like, 'Okay, something will probably happen. Some argument about something in the past will come up and it'll be over after six months.' It never happened. Then we started talking about new music, sharing ideas and now we're working on a new record. And we're back."

Asked if BIOHAZARD already has any new music recorded, Billy said: "Of course. I have a [recording studio]… [But it's] not ready [to be released]. It's not done yet."

Pressed about whether BIOHAZARD fans can expect to hear some new material from the band this year, Billy said: "A hundred percent. I haven't talked about this yet, so you're the first to hear this."

Earlier in the month, Schuler told That Fuzzing Rock Show about the possibility of new music from BIOHAZARD: "I don't know what the band sounds like now. I know what we sound like live, and I think we sound really good live. We've definitely gone back to not giving a fuck about anything except having fun, which is really healthy for us. We're not sweating the small stuff, I guess you would say. And we just we just wanna have fun. So, when we're having fun is when we do our best shit. So, we just go and do our thing and it sounds like us. And for me, that's a great thing, 'cause I love the way the band sounds.

"As far as what our new music is gonna sound like, I have no idea," he continued. "I don't know, once the band comes together and we start jamming on all the stuff that we have, how it's gonna evolve, but I know where my head is at and I know what I wanna do, but I can't speak for the other three guys. I'm hoping we do a real old-school, real-deal BIOHAZARD record.

"There's so many great new bands out there who have taken elements of things that us and a lot of other bands from back then kind of did, there's a lot of bands now who have taken a lot of those elements and do it really, really well — way better than we could ever do it," he explained. "So I don't wanna try to compete, try to outdo all these new bands, because they do a different kind of heavy. I think a lot of it's created in the studio with technology. Some of them sound great live, but I don't wanna compete with those kind of bands, because they're so fucking heavy and over the top.

"I know what we can do and I know what we can pull off live at a show for real. And I think we're gonna make a fucking awesome record that's gonna be great," Danny added. "But until that actually happens, I don't fucking know. Anything could happen. Definitely the vibe in the band is definitely like it was in the beginning. That's for sure."

Danny also talked about the upcoming BIOHAZARD documentary, saying: "Well, it's not finished. The documentary is not finished. Our old friend Drew Stone, who's really been there since almost the beginning with us and has always been filming shit, is producing and directing and editing a documentary film about BIOHAZARD — about our history and about coming back together And I don't think anybody's really being tight-lipped about it, but it's not finished, so there's nothing to really talk about until it gets there. But, yeah, up in Albany, at the Extreme Music Awards, he played a little trailer that he came up with, and when I saw him last week when we played down in Baltimore, he actually played me a 75- or 100-minute cut of the film. So I just saw it for the first time myself and it's in a very raw kind of form. But there's a lot of great old shit in there — a lot of great old stuff. A lot of great new stuff — a lot of funny, cool, insightful, interesting interviews and good stuff. It's gonna be a cool thing.

"I don't know how to really feel about a movie being made about us," he continued. "To me, I kind of feel like who's gonna give a shit about that? But seeing it, sitting down and watching it, I was, like, 'Fuck man.' There's like 35 years of history here. There's a lot. How do you even make a movie about all those years?

"I watched the AGNOSTIC FRONT movie, 'The Godfathers Of Hardcore', which was so well done and so awesome. But even with them, you're talking about 40 years, 40-something years of guys playing. How do you make a little hour-and-a-half movie? They did an amazing job on that.

"But the BIOHAZARD thing, it's gonna be a look back at the history of the band and kind of telling the story of how things went wrong and some of the fucked up shit, and then kind of how it came back together and how we are now. I mean, for a fan, I think it's gonna be cool."

Last August, BIOHAZARD confirmed that it was working on new music.

"The inspiration's coming from these shows," Bobby told Le Coin Metal in an interview. "Being back together, celebrating and doing all these shows, it's great. We're having a good time, but now we're getting the vibe from the crowd and we're feeling it, and it's getting in our bones. We're getting that hunger and the ideas are starting to come out off of these shows."

Added Billy: "For me, it's kind of cool because the other reason I did [my solo project] BILLYBIO is because there was no BIOHAZARD, and the songs that I would've been showing these guys just [ended up] BILLYBIO songs. So being back with these guys is, like… It's cool to have another outlet for my music."

The first reunion gig from Graziadei, Hambel, Schuler and Seinfeld took place on May 26, 2023 at the Milwaukee Metal Fest at The Rave/Eagles Ballroom in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

In January 2023, Schuler told Dan Shinder of Drum Talk TV, Schuler about how BIOHAZARD came back together: "We haven't toured in about seven years, almost eight years. In about 2015, [that] was the last year of touring. We wrapped it up after that. We went in the studio to go do a record and things just kind of imploded; everybody's a bunch of crazy personalities. In the ensuing years, we didn't do anything as BIOHAZARD. And then about a year and a half ago, my brother, who lives in Torrance, California, was flying back home to New York to come see everybody. And he gets to the airport here, and he says to me, 'You won't believe who I saw at the airport.' And I said, 'Who was that?' And he goes, 'I saw Evan,' the bass player from BIOHAZARD, Evan Seinfeld, who I hadn't spoken to in 10 years. And they had a good conversation, and it was cordial. And he basically sent a message through my brother, 'Tell Danny I said hi.' So a week later, I'm going on vacation. I'm feeling good. I'm going down to the beach house here in [New] Jersey with my wife and my kids, and I said to my wife, 'Maybe I should call him' — you know, just bury the hatchet. Who cares anymore? Like everybody, COVID and all these people dying and all this stuff, it's, like, who the hell cares about all that old stuff that made you mad. So my wife was, like, 'Yeah, why don't you give him a call? Don't be an asshole. Call him.'

"Anyway, long story short, I did call him and we spoke," he continued. "And we just kind of buried the hatchet. And the other guys in the band, Bobby and Billy, had been speaking, and we've been speaking, and everybody just kind of started talking a little bit. And unfortunately, our former manager, Scott Koenig, who was out in Los Angeles, he passed away. And that was a real moment where it was, like, 'Wow.' Scott was with us from the beginning, and he was like a fifth member of the band. … That was in October of '21. … I got that call. And the same week, Ir friend of ours from a band called DOG EAT DOG, our friend Sean Kilkenny passed away the same day as Scott. So it was two phone calls, two brothers, two great, close friends, like family, both passed at the same time. And for me, that was kind of one of those things where it's just, like, who cares about all the negative bullshit in the past? Who cares? We're still here. We did great stuff together. We created something cool. We should all be friends. And that was my thinking. And everyone kind of felt the same way. And that kind of was the beginning of how it started, getting the band together."

In 2022, Graziadei said in an interview that there had been "talk" about putting BIOHAZARD back together.

The group, which is acknowledged as one of the earliest outfits to fuse hardcore punk and heavy metal with elements of hip-hop, had been out of the public eye since Scott Roberts left the band eight years ago.

Roberts, who played guitar on BIOHAZARD's 2005 album "Means To An End", rejoined the group in June 2011 as the replacement for Seinfeld. Scott fronted BIOHAZARD for nearly five years before exiting the band in February 2016.

In an August 2020 interview with the "Aftershocks" podcast, Roberts said that he left BIOHAZARD because he "wasn't happy" anymore. "There was one guy that I wasn't getting along with very well, and it made touring not fun anymore for me," he said. "My reason to stick around was to make a new record that was great and I'd be proud of and all that stuff, and then it became kind of clear that wasn't gonna happen, so I was, like, 'What am I doing it for?' So I quit."

Seinfeld made his last recorded appearance with BIOHAZARD on 2012's "Reborn In Defiance" album, which marked the first LP featuring the band's original lineup in 18 years.

Graziadei is currently a member of the aforementioned POWERFLO, which also features Olde Wolbers, Sen Dog and Rogelio Lozano from DOWNSET.

Billy's solo project, BILLYBIO, released a new album, "Leaders And Liars", in March 2022 via AFM Records.