BLACK TIDE Bassist Talks Next Album

Arielle Castillo of New Times Broward-Palm Beach reports that Miami, Florida metallers BLACK TIDE have written a bunch of new times, and will enter a studio in the middle of a Kansas cornfield to record them out before hitting the Warped Tour this summer. "We didn't want to be distracted by our personal lives," bassist Zakk Sandler said. "So we had to find a place where nobody was going to be able to fucking bother us. I wanted to do three weeks in Siberia, and there is a studio out there I found, and I was like, See? But nobody wanted to send us to Russia."

Accoding to Sandler, the new material will mark a change in direction and melodic style, due, in part, to 16-year-old frontman Gabriel Garcia's voice changing. (Older songs have also been reworked.) And a new crop of influences might initially take longtime fans aback. "Gabriel's been listening to INCUBUS and shit, like Warped Tour-type bands like SAOSIN. We've all just been going back and listening to things we haven't listened to, or kind of that we needed to listen to," Sandler said.

BLACK TIDE has yet to decide on a producer for the band's sophomore attempt. "We've definitely gotten a few offers from some pretty big-name producers, but we're just feeling it out," Sandler said. "It's awesome to have input, but for the primary writing we'd like to do it all by ourselves, and not have anybody else's opinion for a change. Because I hate other people's opinions when it comes to music."

Read more from New Times Broward-Palm Beach.

"The Rock Star Stories" conducted an interview with Zakk Sandler when BLACK TIDE played the House of Blues in Chicago, Illinois on March 1, 2009. Watch the chat below.