DEATH ANGEL Guitarist On Why Band Continues To Work With Producer JASON SUECOF: 'If It Ain't Broke, Don't Try To Fix It'

DEATH ANGEL guitarist Rob Cavestany recently spoke with Rustyn Rose of Metal Nation. The full conversation can be streamed below. A few excerpts follow (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET).

On the band continuing to deliver quality new material:

Rob: "We're stubborn, and we don't want to give up. We don't want to fade out, and we don't want to wither away — not just yet. We just have a fire burning for this shit. We love what we do. Another thing is, we've so far done a decent job of keeping ourselves intact to where we can still do it properly. We're on a mission to leave as big of a mark on the music world as we can in our lifetime. It's been our dream ever since [we started], and we're still going at it. We love music; we love to play; and as long as you can keep this thing going, then you get to go on tour, you get to make records, you get to feel the energy and excitement, and it's kind of keeping you young if you take care of yourself the right way. We'll see how far we can go, but I feel fortunate we're in this place we're in right now."

On the fact that the group has now recorded four albums with both a consistent lineup and producer Jason Suecof:

Rob: "I think it's played a huge role. I think we made the right decision to work with Jason on [2010's] 'Relentless Retribution', and we were very, very pleased with the way that record turned out — everything about it — so of course, we went back for more, and more, and more. Now at this point, it's basically the idea of 'if it ain't broke, don't try to fix it.' We just figure at this point, we have the production team intact, and now it's just about creating the best songs and the best music we can come up with, and being confident that when we get into the studio and actually record the record, it's going to come out sonically sounding fucking awesome. Now, we're just competing with our own selves, with our own previous records, trying to make it sound better and be better than the one before it."

On shouldering a heavy workload for the band in regard to both songwriting and pre-production:

Rob: "I guess I like to torture myself and put myself in these exhausting situations, because I'm kind of a workaholic anyway, and if I wasn't doing that, then I'm just going to end up getting antsy and wanting to put myself into a challenging situation. I'm not doing it on purpose, but I always seem to end up in that place. That's just the kind of guy I am. I just consider that that's my purpose here on this planet, in this lifetime and in this band. That's my role, and a lot of guys are counting on me to keep it rolling. I want to fulfill the task and rise to the challenge."

On how the band keeps their music sounding "organic":

Rob: "That's happening by a couple things, I think. First of all, the cast — the players involved in here — are old-school. Our whole band is coming from the old-school. We can't help it — we were there in the old school. We're old-school cats. We're not modern cats. If anything, that's one of the reasons we work with Jason, because he's the modern cat. He's a dude that's on the cutting edge of technology and production, and I definitely want that happening to our music. Otherwise, we're going to be fucking dinosaurs over here, and I don't want that happening. I want to fuse the old school with a new, modern production. Part of that is just us being us, and being totally influenced by old-school music. Secondly, it's pushing to get together in the same room, as two actual humans organically having the energy come out of two or more people in the room, and getting it to flow into a creative space and trying to capture that into recording. When I write songs, I'm doing it with the modern technology in my studio and coming up with the parts and recording on Pro Tools and everything. I could leave it that way and just start moving on and starting to get the vocals in there, but before doing that, we'll take the extra work and the extra step. I meet Will [Carroll], our drummer, at our rehearsal studio, and we sit there and organically work on the songs together and jam them out live in the room. He's playing live drums, and we're working on beats and arrangements, and I'll record his live drums into the demos. The same thing's going to happen with Damien [Sisson, bass]. I could very well send him the files, and he could just work on it using the internet, and he doesn't even ever have to encounter me in the same room. But we don't do that — he comes over to my house, and then we sit together and vibe out and jam together and go over the parts. There's an organic energy happening that way. Something different happens when you do that. Same thing in the recording studio — I'm there together with Mark [Osegueda]. We're going over the vocal ideas, melodies, harmonies. That's about as much as you can do to put an organic thing into it in this day and age."

DEATH ANGEL's ninth studio album, "Humanicide", will be released on May 31 via Nuclear Blast. It marks the band's fourth consecutive album to be produced by Jason Suecof (DEICIDE, TRIVIUM, THE BLACK DAHLIA MURDER),as well as the first time the band has ever recorded more than three albums with the same lineup.

DEATH ANGEL is currently touring America with OVERKILL.