FLOTSAM AND JETSAM Drummer Talks 'The Cold', Lineup Changes And State Of Metal Scene

Get Ready To Rock! recently conducted an interview with drummer Craig Nielsen of veteran Arizona metallers FLOTSAM AND JETSAM. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

Get Ready To Rock!: Having listened to your latest effort, you sound stronger than ever! Excitement is back, not only within the ranks of FLOTSAM AND JETSAM, but within the ranks of the media.

Craig: Well, thank you very much! We took the appropriate amount of time to write the songs this time round. Mark (Simpson; guitar) has become tremendously better in understanding how the riffs from his head can be translated into the studio. It takes a songwriter a few records I think in order to get used to how ideas can get across into the final recording. So, Mark has some tremendous ideas that in his head knew how to get them on tape exactly as he imagined and this comes with time in the studio, so this was a perfect timing for these songs.

Get Ready To Rock!: I believe that there was a five year gap between "The Cold" and your previous album, "Dreams Of Death", right? Talking about it, "Dreams Of Death" was quite an enjoyable album, but, and I hope that you will take this the right way, was not the kind of album that would make me sing along to every single composition as "The Cold" is capable of doing. This new album has totally dominated my thoughts and that has not happened for quite some time really. What can I say — I am genuinely excited here!

Craig: You are right, it did take us five years since the release of "Dreams Of Death" in order to create our next album as Mark really started writing the songs for the new record three years ago. He started writing songs and he did it slowly and then I actually tracked the drums for this record August over two years ago! It was as a result of various reasons that our record's recording process and mixing got delayed. I could go on forever about this but the bottom line is that it was not to be a five year gap between albums — the gap was only really meant to be a two-year one.

Get Ready To Rock!: I want to ask what is happening with the band as I am aware that there have been some lineup changes recently. In the past there were some really significant changed happening, with Eric (A.K Knutson; vocals) leaving, so I am always slightly scared when I hear the term "lineup change" in relation with FLOTSAM AND JETSAM. A few people are probably wondering, myself included, what is the atmosphere in the band nowadays.

Craig: Eric left very briefly at the time of "My God" tour (2001) and that was a long time ago. He left for less than six months as he was very disillusioned with a few things that had to do with FLOTSAM AND JETSAM and others of a more personal nature. He wanted to make some changes! This didn't last very long as he came back very quickly. As for other changes, Ed Carlson (guitars) left and was replaced by Michael Gilbert (guitars). We did some touring with another bass player at some point just because Jason (Ward) has a scheduling problem — he simply couldn't do the last European tour which was two weeks, and so we replaced Jason for those shows. Jason never left the band; he simply couldn't do those shows which had been booked for a while. Something came up in his life and he simply couldn't go, so we hired some guy from Phoenix (Arizona) to do these shows — no big deal. We came back and nothing else has changed for the last fifteen years since Mark and I got hired; we were hired on the same day! So, there are no other changes other than for Ed leaving and being replaced by another original guitarist Michael Gilbert. However, neither Ed or Michael had anything to do with the songs on "The Cold" — that's 100% Mark Simpson's playing and Mark Simpson's recording; no other guitar players have recorded anything on that record by Mark. The record was made in the transition of Ed deciding... you know, Ed became sober and made some very positive changes to his life. Unfortunately for some musicians when they become sober, they find it difficult to go on tour and be around people who party non-stop, as things become a bit lonely for the sober guy. So Ed decided that he wanted to make a change and Michael Gilbert was more than happy to come and re-claim his position as the original guitar player in the band. That transition came very smoothly and Michael never forgot apparently how to play any of the older songs. When he came we thought that it would take a little while for him to come up to speed but it didn't. He was already there! He was very, very surprising as to how well he played those songs after all these years away! With respect to your question about how all this affected the new songs, nothing to do with any change of players had anything to do with this record, because this record was always Mark Simpson from start to finish as far as guitar playing is concerned!

Get Ready To Rock!: A good question would be how FLOTSAM AND JETSAM are currently perceived in the States nowadays? The U.S. is a slightly "temperamental" market & certainly not as loyal as that in Europe! Europe always supported heavy metal music, something that cannot always be said about America. I am aware that things have improved a lot these last three or four years, but have they improved to the point of making you really confident about the album's potential success in the States?

Craig: Hmm ... the album has been picked up by some serious satellite radio stations which have twenty million subscribers. They picked it up a couple of weeks ago an since then the record sales in the States have doubled, so that is something. It's getting a few requests on that radio and that is a good format. Before satellite radio metal had no chance in the States on radio — all there was was college radio; some little college programs that played metal two hours on a Saturday and now you can listen to that stuff twenty four hours a day through a satellite to which twenty million people subscribe to! So really, the potential exposure, if you can get on that program, is pretty outstanding! I don't know the numbers per se, how they compare to those of others, but Warner Brothers did not expect so many sales, especially as the climate of record buying is so horrible in the States right now. But, as far as metal in general in the States is concerned, what happened is that fans got spoiled and they expect three or four headliners on the same bill or they don't come out! It used to be that, you as the headliner would go out and play with local talent wherever you were and that was good enough — you could expect a decent show. Now, kids don't come out for one headliner. Like if EXODUS went out or Nevermore and they didn't have another good band to tour with, the show would not be nearly as good as if they were to go out together! But the problem is that, when you package up headliners, everybody wants to get paid and nobody can get paid what they want and it becomes a logistics nightmare. I would hope that the labels would figure out ... Metal bands here do well when they are packaged up and do not do well when they're not. I would think that there would be more effort from record labels to put together festival-type things like you find in every country in Europe in the summer. I would hope that the United States would catch on to that but, in fact, fewer and fewer festivals are being put on in the States instead of more. I think that they got it all wrong; I think that metal would still do very well here if labels were to get smart and package up big shows and get more people to come out so that the bands that are out there to perform can actually earn a living out of what they are doing. Nobody has yet stepped up and thought creatively about how to maximize potential. There are three hundred million people here and I am sure that Metal would do well if they packaged up tours better. Now the best you can do is to have two or three bands to come in one bill and that's what people would come out for. But if you were to put together seven or eight bands, as in a typical European festival, I think that they will really go for that here. Nobody has thought of doing that yet!

Reaad the entire interview from Get Ready To Rock!.