BIOHAZARD's BILLY GRAZIADEI On 'Divided We Fall' Album: 'We Delivered Something That I'm Super Proud Of'

In a new interview with the Vulgar Display Of Podcast, BIOHAZARD guitarist/vocalist Billy Graziadei spoke about the band's latest album, "Divided We Fall", which was recorded and released after he and his bandmates spent two years touring around the globe. Billy said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "I'm not a cocky dude, but we nailed it with this record. We had a great producer, Matt Hyde, and Matt said to me, he goes, 'Listen, I like what you do with Sen Dog, POWERFLO, I'd love to produce you guys…' I have a solo band called BILLYBIO, and he was, like, 'I love what you do with your solo stuff — great stuff — and I'd love to work with you. But…' And I'm, like, 'What do you mean 'but'?' And he goes, 'I don't need you to be Billy BIOHAZARD 2023; I need you to be Billy BIOHAZARD 1993.' And I'm, like, 'For what? I fucking learned so much shit. I'm a better player, better songwriter, better singer. I know how to do what I do.' It's like telling [Mike] Tyson, 'Listen, in this fight, forget everything you learned and go back to 1984 or '85 and be that dude, before you had any fights.' So at first I stepped back a second and I was, like, 'What the fuck does that mean?' But he was right. And he said, 'When you guys made the music, when I fell in love with you guys, it was that era.' And he goes, 'That's when you sold all your records. That's when you resonated the most with all your fans.' He goes, 'So whatever you did between then and now, just forget about it. Just go in…'"

He continued: "I'm sitting on my guitar doing my warmups in the morning. I didn't do any of that stuff. I didn't do any vocal [exercises]. I learned all these things to preserve my voice so I could yell and scream and be on tour for fucking 250 days a year. I threw all that shit out. I didn't do vocal warmups. I blew my voice out. I fucked my shit up so bad. But I went in like it was 1993 and delivered what I needed to deliver. And he pulled that out of all of us, which was something that we haven't had in a long time. He had the balls to stand up to us. He wasn't insulting. He just basically kind of massaged the area of BIOHAZARD that that is a part of us, but just gets covered up."

Billy added: "Bands always say shit, like, 'Oh, we went back to our roots.' You don't go back to your roots. The roots are there. They just get covered with a bunch of bullshit. And you gotta get that gravel and that dirt off of the roots so the roots shine. And a lot of bands have done that. Matt helped us get past all that bullshit and go back to what really fucking makes our dicks hard. That's what we're made of. That's the meat and potatoes of BIOHAZARD. And I remember, he said, 'It's easy. Just be you.'

"For me, I always wanted to outdo the version of me yesterday. Whatever it is — whether it's jiu-jitsu, songwriting, singing, lyrics, whatever I'm doing, I wanna be a better version," he explained. "Even being a father, I wanna be a better father, be a better guitar player, be a better singer than I was yesterday. And that's how I push myself forward with everything I do. And with that, sometimes, I think, that drive, [while it's] admirable and something I'm proud of it, it kind of pulls you away from the source of how you started.

"I never released a record that I'm not proud of. So all the records I love, but when you strip everything away, sometimes those old pair of fucking Converse or Doc Martens and Camel fucking pants or shorts just fucking fit perfect. And that's what it is with BIOHAZARD."

Reflecting on the fact that "Divided We Fall" was made after he and the rest of the classic BIOHAZARD lineup — bassist/vocalist Evan Seinfeld, drummer Danny Schuler and guitarist Bobby Hambel — played a number of concerts all over the world, Billy said: "I didn't think [the reunion tour] was gonna last longer than maybe two or three shows. And then it was two or three months. And then it was two or three years, and we found ourselves in the studio. So, coming out with this record after being on tour for two and a half years, and all we do is play all the classic BIOHAZARD songs. So we had that kind of energy flowing through our veins like it was 1993 again. So it just seemed to all culminate in a perfect way, a perfect storm. And Matt nailed it on the head. And we went in and did the record. And we had a bunch of crazy shit that happened. But BIOHAZARD is more like the underdog prize fighter who, if you're backed against the fucking ropes, you come out swinging, and we delivered something that I'm super proud of."

"Divided We Fall" arrived on October 17, 2025 via BLKIIBLK. The recording sessions for the LP took place at Shorefire Recording Studios in Long Branch, New Jersey and The Hydeaway in Van Nuys, California, with engineering by Joseph DeMaio and additional recording from Matt Hyde. Guitar and production tech duties were handled by Phil Caivano.

BIOHAZARD recently teamed up with the American hip-hop group ONYX for a North American tour.

Last December, Billy was asked by Chris Akin Presents if the state of the world, with so much hatred and division in society, was an inspiration for him and his bandmates to release "Divided We Fall". Billy responded: "We've always been a product of our environment. And all of our lyrics, all of our music, everything we've released has been a product of that influence.

"'Divided We Fall', it is more timely now that there is no unity and there's such division," he continued. "And it could be anything… There's so much stuff. It was kind of like that a long time ago, and when I realized, being on tour and playing all those classic songs for the past couple years that our music is as timely and relevant now that it was then. With 'Divided We Fall', we sing about things that I think resonate with not just ourselves, but will resonate with new people, people who don't know BIOHAZARD.

"I think the other deep meaning is being back together, there's a twist on that," Billy explained. "We're stronger together than we are separately. I mean, even though I have [the] POWERFLO and BILLYBIO [projects], which I love, being in BIOHAZARD, it's a different thing. It's part of who I am. It's in my DNA for so long, I can't deny it. That's why I went with the name BILLYBIO [for my solo project]. I was gonna call it GENERATION Z. I was gonna call it GENERATION KILL, all these other names I had, and I was, like, 'You know what? This is who I am. Let me embrace it,' because there's songs in there that were gonna be BIOHAZARD songs, [that I did] with BILLYBIO, that there was no BIOHAZARD, so they became BILLYBIO songs.

"But back to BIOHAZARD, I think we don't pull any punches, we speak how it is, but unification and unity and survival has always been an underlying theme for us," Billy added. "And this record is a huge statement saying, especially with… 'Divided We Fall' is a line from 'Fuck The System'. So, I suggested it. I'm, like, 'Let's call the song 'Divided We Fall',' and we ended up not doing it, but it stuck perfect and seemed to summarize everything on the record and the times — like 'State Of World Address' did, like 'Urban Discipline' did.

"I remember making the first record we released, self-titled. We left New York, and we realized it wasn't just New York that was messed up. [We saw similar things] in Chicago, we saw similar things in Detroit and Seattle and L.A. and Dallas, all these cities around the country. We came home and released 'Urban Discipline'. That was our cry and what we've learned and how we realized it wasn't just New York that was affecting us. It was city life in general, that urban life. On that record, we toured so much and came back realizing that it wasn't just the cities in America, it was the world and cities all over the world. So 'State Of The World Address' was a reflection of that experience. 'Divided We Fall' is a direct mirror of what we've seen, collectively, not just in the past couple years since we've been [back] together — because I'm always writing, we're always creating stuff — it's how we've seen things have gone over the past 10 years, the past decade. And people who are gonna pick up this record might have been 10 years old, eight years old when BIOHAZARD stopped doing anything. So it's almost like we're the same microscope, we're the same telescope that we were back then, and we're just looking through it with a little bit more educated eyes. We're not so quick to form judgment or to judge, and we could see things a little bit bigger. Sometimes when you look at things very focused, you kind of miss out on everything around it, and you kind of back up to take a bird's eye view, you see the bigger picture. And our earlier records, it was more narrow. But we're a little bit older and wiser. We see the big picture, and 'Divided We Fall' kind of sums that up."

Photo credit: Istvan Bruggen