DARKEST HOUR's SCHLEIBAUM Talks Guitarist Split, New Album

Christopher Porter of the Washington Post Express recently conducted an interview with guitarist Mike Schleibaum of Washington D.C. metallers DARKEST HOUR. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

Washington Post Express: What really happened with Kris and DARKEST HOUR?

Schleibaum: Let's put it this way: The press is an interesting place to tell the dirty insides of the way a band operates. So, in fairness to Kris and our friendship .... The problem with DARKEST HOUR is it's kind of like a tribe. We have the same sound guy and the same tour manager and the same merch guy forever. There's eight of us and we live in that little fuckin' van right there. We were friends before the band, and sometimes in this fucked-up world — because this is really a fucked-up world to be a touring musician. People think you're famous as shit — and you don't have no money. People think you're rich — and you can't buy a Value Meal at McDonald's. So, it's a fucked a game to be in, and in this messed up world, sometimes real-life problems start to creep in, and it just got to the point where there were problems that were creeping into the band that didn't have anything to do with the band that got overwhelming. And from a friendship point, we were like, "Hey, man, we need a break so people can figure out what they want." And when that time happened, certain people decided that they couldn't handle what this band's about.

Washington Post Express: Did it have anything to do with him being a new father?

Schleibaum: He has a kid, but it has nothing to do with the fact that he has a kid. Our bass player, Paul [Burnette], has a kid and he negotiates being in a band and raising a kid very well. It's more to do with — not wanting to air a dude's personal shit. I'm trying to respect him as a friend by saying, "Hey, all you have to know as a listener is: You like DARKEST HOUR as an entity? Well, it wouldn't exist if we kept going the way we were." We had to make some changes, and I believe his life will be much better off and our lives will be better off, and there's where we put it. I know it sounds super political, but why do you need to know? Nobody here is Britney Spears, nobody here is a fucking rock star.

Washington Post Express: Why did you switch from Devin Townsend to Brian McTernan to produce "The Eternal Return"?

Schleibaum: Brian McTernan, our hometown guy. First of all we did Devin two times and it started to feel like — and I'm sure Devin would agree with this because he's my boy — that his sound was really starting to infiltrate the sound of the band. Not in a negative way, but just to the point were it started to get dependent, and we kind of felt like we needed to shake it up. "Undoing Ruin", "Deliver Us", there's a girl on the cover, there's a boy on the cover — they're kind of like twins, even in the way they sound, even in the songwriting. But we needed something new. We wanted to find out what is DARKEST HOUR. Our friend Brian is in Fells Point, it's close to home, it's real, he's been producing bands for a decade after he did that last DARKEST HOUR, he knows where we came from, he knows where we want to go to, and he knows the industry. It just felt like we needed to go back to somebody who know where we came from to figure out the actual essence of what we're trying to do. What I feel like we got is — I'm not saying there aren't bands who aren't playing Swedish-influenced death metal, but I am saying now DARKEST HOUR has a sound and we sort of found that by instead of saying, "What can we do different? Let's make it more melodic, or make it more prog, or let's make it faster." We just figured out what the fuck's badass, do that, make some songs you like to listen to, there's tons of shredding and all the bullshit that all the other songs have to make them intricate, but this is a band that grew up in front of everybody. We've been touring since I was right out of college; we've been touring since '99. We grew up in front of everybody, and every record got a little better. This record is, like, adults who beat the fuck out of each other to make some pissed-off shit. We still love metal, there's eight of us in that van, we're all hanging out, all here all day at a heavy metal fest ... just because we love it. ... The record is a reflection of that, as supposed to other bands who aren't that happy with what they're doing.

Read the entire interview from Washington Post Express.