CARLA HARVEY On BUTCHER BABIES 'Singing' More On 'Lilith' Album: 'It's Taken Us To The Next Level, I Think'

Meltdown of Detroit's WRIF radio station recently conducted an interview with BUTCHER BABIES frontwoman Carla Harvey. You can listen to the chat via the widget below. A few excerpts follow (transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET).

On how her surroundings inspire her while songwriting:

Carla: "With songs, for example on the last album, 'Lilith', Heidi [Shepherd, vocals] and I sat together and we kind of made a list of topics that we wanted to explore for the new album. Then we sat together, and we did these writing exercises where we would sit and for half an hour in silence, we would write whatever comes to mind about this particular topic. It's a great exercise. You can do it alone or with a friend or whatever. Some of the stuff that comes out when you just sit there and let your pen flow is incredible. We would read aloud to each other after we were done doing our writing exercises and even if we thought what we had written was silly, the other person would pick out things they thought were incredible from these passages. It became a really neat thing for us to do together. We got some really great material out of doing that. It became a really special moment between the two of us."

On whether the other members are involved during the lyric writing process for BUTCHER BABIES:

Carla: "Sometimes the boys throw in some lyrics as well. In fact, on 'Monsters Ball', Henry [Flury, guitar] wrote the chorus. Sometimes the boys have an incredible way with words. Obviously, 95 percent of the lyrics are Heidi and I, but the boys do come up with some really cool stuff once in a while."

On the dichotomy of styles found on "Lilith":

Carla: "Yeah, you know Heidi and I grew up listening to other kinds of metal. It's enabled us to fuse our preferences of metal together into this really unique sound. I think it's allowed BUTCHER BABIES to be something completely different than a lot of bands out there. Over the years, we've had so much fun learning how to harmonize our screams. And on this album, we did more with our singing voices than we've ever done before. The product is something that we're extremely proud of and it's taken us to the next level, I think."

On whether "Lilith" is "sexier" than its predecessors:

Carla: Yeah, I think it is. We had always shied away from sexual themes in our music because we figured it was easy and that's what people expected. But then we realized we were doing ourselves a disservice by not exploring that realm because sex is the most basic of human needs. It's a basic human emotion. It's something that everybody needs, wants, has strong emotions about it, etcetera, so why not write about it? There's nothing wrong with being a woman and exploring sexual feelings, sexual tension."

On what ultimately motivates and drives her:

Carla: "I think being from Detroit, I feel a lot of people who were born and raised in Detroit have a certain tenacity about them. It's not always an easy city to be from, it's cold and the opportunities are not always there, but we thrive. I feel that we won't take no for an answer and we keep going, so I think my roots, being from a hard-working middle-class environment and having that Detroit tenacity is what keeps me going. I never give up. I don't care what people say."

"Lilith" was released on October 27 via Century Media. The follow-up to 2015's "Take It Like A Man" was produced by Steve Evetts (THE DILLINGER ESCAPE PLAN, SEPULTURA, SUICIDE SILENCE) and marks the band's recording debut with new drummer Chase Brickenden, who replaced Chris Warner in 2016.

Interview (audio):