FLOTSAM AND JETSAM Drummer: 'We're One Of The Better Live Speed Metal Bands Out There'

Blasting-Zone.com recently conducted an in-depth interview with FLOTSAM AND JETSAM drummer Craig Nielsen. Several excerpts follow:

Blasting-Zone.com: This ["Dreams of Death"] is your first new studio album since "My God" in 2001. Why such a long wait?

Craig: "We lost our deal with Metal Blade. That was the main reason. We were shopping for a deal for a while. We had offers on the table, but it's a negotiation and it always takes some time. We didn't start writing songs until we had a deal in place because that's just stupid. There no sense in writing material for no reason. No one even picked up a guitar to write a single riff until the deal was final. It took some time for Metal Blade to formally drop us. It's not that they really dropped us, they just declined to pick up their option. It was a three-record deal with an option to do up to five and they declined to pick up the option for the fourth, because, frankly, our budgets were pretty high. With Metal Blade, we were contracted with some pretty high budgets. At the time, all of metal was taking a giant boot in the ass. There were all these reasons why metal wasn't selling. In that environment, I don’t think Metal Blade felt comfortable paying out what they would have had to pay, so they decided not to continue.”

Blasting-Zone.com: Any truth to the rumors that you won’t be touring much in support of "Dreams of Death"?

Craig: "After all of these records and all of these tours, Eric [A.K., vocals] has two kids, a wife and two mortgages, and a lot of financial responsibility. Every time we go on tour, we all have to leave our jobs. Bosses usually aren't too understanding about leaving for eight weeks and then coming back and wanting your job back. After doing that like ten times, Eric was like, 'Man, I can't do this. I can't afford it. We wanna do festivals, big shows where we fly in. It's not that we're lazy — we just wanna reach a lot of people at once. We're one of the better live speed metal bands out there. Ask anyone that's seen us. We have not lost one bit of our fire, our edge, any of that shit. We play a lot of songs off 'Doomsday for the Deceiver' and we play them faster than they were originally done. We're ready to go out there and hold our own onstage with any fucking band there is. We wanna play some really big shows. We hope we get invited to Europe to do the Dynamo next year. We were offered the W.A.S.P. tour, but we — Eric in particular — turned it down. We've toured in the past with James Rivera (HELSTAR, SEVEN WITCHES) as our vocalist, but everyone identifies this band very strongly with Eric A.K. Trying to replace him would just be fuckin' stupid, even though a lot of other bands are doin' it. I don't even know why EXODUS still call themselves EXODUS…"

Blasting-Zone.com: It’s more like the Gary Holt band now…

Craig: "Yeah, but they're still calling it EXODUS. FATES WARNING is the same way. I think there’s only one original guy left — everyone else has changed out. Everyone loves to make an issue with bandmember changes with FLOTSAM AND JETSAM. Are you fucking kidding me? TESTAMENT has a different drummer on every tour. We're not doin' any of that crazy shit! As far as bandmember changes go, I think we're being unfairly singled out when were actually one of the more stable groups."

Blasting-Zone.com: At this point in your career, how sick are you of people referring to FLOTSAM AND JETSAM as the band that provided Jason Newsted to METALLICA…

Craig: "Jason Ward is sick of it, as you can imagine. He's an extremely talented bassist that's paid his dues yet people still love to heckle him and give him shit, even though he's one of the best bassist on Earth. Some of the die-hards still like to heckle him about Jason Newsted. He's the one that has a bigger problem with it. Personally, to me, there's no such thing as bad press. Anytime a story is told about METALLICA, they mention Jason Newsted and FLOTSAM AND JETSAM. If you ask me, it's one of the best things that's ever happened to the band. If that keeps that band's name in the press… I don't care about how it happens, but I do understand why Jason Ward would have a bigger problem with it."

Blasting-Zone.com: Well, I don't really think you guys have anything left to prove. Your fans know what you are capable of…

Craig: "Exactly. And when we play live, we play tribute to our early albums a lot more than almost any other fucking band. I don't think SLAYER plays as many songs from their first few albums as we do. We play a lot of songs off 'No Place for Disgrace'. It ends up being about half of our set. Not a lot of bands do that — they just wanna promote the latest album. We play like three songs from 'Doomsday for the Deceiver' and three songs from 'No Place for Disgrace' at every show. We go through a lot of really old material."

Read the entire interview at this location.