Former FATES WARNING Drummer Discusses SLAVIOR Project

Mark Carras of RockMyMonkey.com recently conducted an interview with ex-FATES WARNING drummer Mark Zonder about his new band SLAVIOR. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow:

Rock My Monkey: I hope you don't take offense to this question, but because of the whole rapcore trend of the late '90s, it's still fresh in the minds of so many metal fans, most have a zero tolerance towards anything even close to a syncopated vocal. Do you think that that might get SLAVIOR judged unfairly by the fans that normally buy Inside Out releases?

MARK ZONDER: No. There's so much more going on. If it was an album where you turned it on and the first thing you heard was a beat box and then you hear like a scratchy guitar, and then Greg comes in shuckin' and jivin', okay, maybe. But that's not the forte. The song opens, it's rockin', there's different elements of different things. You could say the same thing-there's a jazz part in the middle of a song called "Swept Away". There's real drum machine parts that I play that I'm playing samples for. That's just for the music. We're not trying to be anything. When Greg brought that in, my first thought was, oh my god, anybody that knew me in the '80s would sit down and tell me, okay, there's going to be a guy rappin' a little bit on your record in 2007, I would have shot myself. But as it turns out, he comes in with these parts, and I just sit there, and I go, man, this is brilliant. This is absolutely brilliant. I sort of encourage that more out of him. I tell Greg, I go, dude, do whatever you want. If you want to sing in the shower, fine. Do whatever you want, man. The guy is so talented that whatever comes out just works. That's sort of that beauty of taking three different elements, because myself, Wayne, and Greg, as much as we come from similar places, we come from totally different places. Greg studied a lot of the new stuff that's going on. Personally I couldn't tell you any band that's happening right now. I spend my time listening to older stuff, and just practicing and developing my own stuff, and studying books and studying different styles of music, and trying to incorporate it into what we do. I couldn't tell you — I mean, I could tell you, but I'm not listening to the bands that people compare us to. I'm not listening to SEVENDUST. I'm not listening to GODSMACK. I don't own the record. I think they're great. I think they're cool. I'm glad they're blazing the trail. I'm not sitting here studying what's going on in it. And that's the beauty when you look at SLAVIOR that there's so many different elements that are going into it, it's not like you can go, oh yeah, all those guys grew up listening to DEEP PURPLE together, so that's why they sound like DEEP PURPLE. Because that used to be the big thing. I remember people, a lot of people that compare bands, it's like, that's what you listen to, what do you think you're going to sound like? But we're not all nineteen years old, and there's been a lot of experiences, and people have different musical tastes and stuff. And that was the whole thing where on that song, "Dove", that has the reggae feel. I totally stole that from a SCORPIONS song back in the '70s. When they had a tune that had that sort of reggae feel, I thought it was the greatest idea to take that kind of feel and put it into a rock context. So I worked on a groove, came up with it, Wayne came in, researched a little bit, Copped all the reggae stuff with the keyboard and everything, and then we went to town. So it's just a mix of styles. I don't think we're going to get knocked for that. We're not a progressive band, per se. If you listen closely, there's a lot of time signature changes going on, there's a lot of polyrythems going on, but this was made for the masses. This just wasn't made for a little sect. And that was part of the agreement with Inside Out was that they wanted to take the label in a little different direction, and expand a little bit, and hit more to the mainstream instead of just that really dedicated prog following. Which is great, and god bless them, but there's a lot more out there of people to reach. That was just part of the sector we're trying to reach.

Rock My Monkey: Well, I got to say in asking that question, I asked it because some of the press out there is saying that there are rap elements. But I myself am notoriously ruthless against bands that use a straight-up rapcore vocal nowadays. But honestly I didn't hear anything that I would call a rapcore vocal on there. There is the song "Dove", which is more of a reggae, and that's clearly got a reggae influence, but it was a little syncopated, but I wouldn't call it actually any rapcore vocal.

Mark Zonder: Well, depends what your definition of rapcore vocal is. I would say there is in, not necessarily coining that phrase, but in the song "Shatter", but the band's playing sort of a samba type groove behind it where it breaks down a little bit, and Greg sort of talks in that, but it's not like hardcore, and there's no beat box going on, and there's no scratching going on. It's sort of just that vocal element with a whole different style of music behind it. So maybe it doesn't jump out and slap you in the face as much as if we just like broke it down and just tried to really cop whoever, you know, Ice-T, Ice Cube, whatever.

Rock My Monkey: You guys have absolutely nothing in common with LIMP BIZKIT, let's say. Because I don't hear anything of that. That's the kind of stuff I think people would get irritated with, and you guys, I think, are far removed from that.

Mark Zonder: Yeah, people know me better than that, though. I mean, we're not going there.

Rock My Monkey: Right. Exactly.

Mark Zonder: Again, it sort of goes back to what I'm saying as, I'd like to think that common elements would be maybe between whether it's KID ROCK or LIMP BIZKIT, or maybe some of those choruses that are really strong, that are just like repetitive phrase choruses, that are more shouted, I guess you could say, without quite hitting that cookie monster thing, but they're definitely the "angry white youth" kind of thing.

Rock My Monkey: Right, right, right.

Mark Zonder: That would be a comparison, and I don't have any problem borrowing from different styles, because there's people doing it before they did it anyways. Like someone's always said, music's just about stealing from different places. And that's all there is to it. But no, I mean, any of those kinds of things I think are great. When Greg brought those kinds of things in, or when me and Wayne came up with that whole thing where we went to a complete jazz part, and had that complete jazz nightclub feeling. Greg came in and sang perfectly over that. To me, that's what makes great music. It doesn't mean it's going to sell anything. It doesn't mean we're not going to sell anything. But when we sit down and create, we're not going "Wow, how many can we sell with this one?" It's about, "Wow, does this get you going, does this turn you on, does this make you go 'oh man, I can't wait until people here this." And that's what it's all about. That's how we're putting the different styles together.

Check out the entire interview in text and MP3 format at this location.