Former OVERKILL Drummer Discusses 'Born In The Basement' DVD

Dawn of TheMetalWeb.com recently conducted an interview with former OVERKILL drummer Rat Skates about a number of topics, including his new DVD, "Born in the Basement". An excerpt from the chat follows:

TheMetalWeb.com: I have to say that I loved "Born in the Basement"! It brought back so many memories of a different era. Though I have to say, I felt it to be more of an autobiography from your standpoint while being a member in OVERKILL than just a thesis on the thrash movement of the early '80s. Would you agree and if so, why now after all these years did you feel the need to do this?

Rat Skates: Thank you! This is how this started; I'm the co-producer of the movie "Get Thrashed". I've been working on it with Rick, who's the director, for about four years at this point. Rick is I believe 35 years old and he's sort of in that, what I refer to as the mid-school, not the old-school thrash. Old-school thrash really is 1981, '83, '84 and he came in a little bit towards the real back end of the '80s whole thing because he wasn't old enough to even go to a lot of the shows. I started working on this with him being that I'm one of the first guys involved with the whole scene, and you saw "Born in the Basement", so you saw everything that I was working on. I had saved everything that I put my time into over the years. Rick would give me a section, and I'd start doing photos and start doing all kinds of graphic things to it and sometimes I would look and say, I know I have a better photo somewhere. I started looking through my stuff and I hadn't done that in twenty years. I'm really looking at it and just like how you watched "Born in the Basement", it's bringing back these memories. I'm looking at the people and I'm thinking, wow, all these things that I'm remembering that I haven't thought about in years and it really started to hit me. Besides the fact that I saved everything, with all the bands, the thrash movement, the culture was different and the time was different, but it was a DIY effort. I'm sure you know because you have your own business, The Metal Web, and it's your company and your thing and you kind of do things for yourself and you find a way to make it happen and that's it. In this day and age, sure, you still have to work at something, but back then there was no MySpace, no Internet. Well, you know this stuff! (Laughs)

TheMetalWeb.com: You guys use to hand me stuff at Rock 'n' Roll Heaven all the time, flyers, all that stuff! (Laughs)

Rat Skates: Yeah, you do whatever it takes. My life was based around OVERKILL and OVERKILL was my thing. So, realizing it was a DIY effort, I said to Rick, I'm going to cut a piece here for a bonus thing on the DIY of the thrash metal movement. I literally spent a few hours and I sat there and said, there's too much, it's too involved because it's not just what we did, like hey, just copy machines and shit like that. It's a thought. It's a mind set and it's part of your personality. When I had left OVERKILL, I had purposely stayed away from the press because I was still very upset about everything, that my dream that I established on leaving it behind. I didn't do any interviews. I never clarified anywhere publicly why I had left and then of course, what I had been doing through the years.

TheMetalWeb.com: Yeah, you kind of went underground. I would ask people that we knew back then, have you seen Rat?

Rat Skates: I had done other things musically after. In the early '90s when the grunge thing was saturating everything, thrash at that point had died out a lot and I wasn't playing in a thrash band anyway. I was playing in a rock band called BOMB SQUAD. The point is, I removed myself from it because there was no reason for me to say musically or in the public eye because I wasn't doing that. I had started moving on to different artistic things, which is production and film work.

TheMetalWeb.com: But, you were always into that kind of stuff.

Rat Skates: I love music. We all do. I happen to really get a kick out of editing and graphics and just all the things that I'm able to fortunately do with this stuff. Well, since you saw "Born in the Basement" and music's my love, but the combination of what I loved and what had to go with it, being touring, it weighed itself out. It cancelled out. It was a hard reality for me and actually turned me into an alcoholic. Where I could not be a musician because I had to travel because that's something that you had to do and it was really disappointing for me. So, if that's kind of answering the question. (Laughs)

TheMetalWeb.com: (Laughs) I don't even remember what the question was.

Rat Skates: (Laughs) Ok, what compelled me to do "Born in the Basement"? It's definitely an autobiography. As you seen in "Born In The Basement", it's a combination of the DIY thinking of thrash metal and I'm trying to relate what I did to what the other guys were doing and I don't have other guys in it. But, that's something else I'm working on actually. I also told my story, my journey and tried to relate it to the movement, to the culture and to the club band scene. I tried to get the best of all worlds, so to speak. It can definitely be viewed, without a doubt, as this is the "story of OVERKILL". I didn't call it, "this is the OVERKILL story" or OVERKILL whatever, it's Rat Skates. It's a musician and this is my journey. As a film maker and I just know this from other film makers, I don't want to get booked too strongly into one thing. Even though you may do a good job at it, you get labeled and they'll say, Rat Skates is a thrash metal film maker and I don't want that. Fortunately, outside of the music circles, I've had an interest in it and that's what I wanted. I just wanted to tell a compelling story, even if you're not a metal fan, about a guy working at what he believed in. If I linked it too strongly to thrash to OVERKILL, I'm actually limiting my potential and I didn't want to do that. Plus, I am not a member of OVERKILL. If they had wanted to tell this early story of actually how OVERKILL was formed, which I did actually tell, they could have done that because they had a DVD out a few years ago which I just saw recently. I haven't actually said this publicly, but I will now, when I was shown that DVD, I was insulted. I was insulted that I was barely mentioned at all. I was jumped over so fast almost like; I was a burden and let's just get through this as fast as we can. Besides being insulted, that's not fair to the people who know OVERKILL, like yourself from those early days. There's a history and a root and everything that's happened after that, nothing could have happened after that if the beginning wasn't there. With DD and Bobby, OVERKILL's in its 20th version or whatever and the thing is they've had so many different musicians and everything, but still, OVERKILL has a name from the day, they have a colored logo, and things are still identifiable. It was insulting to me and also, throughout the years whenever I am asked about, they tap dance and blow that question off so fast that I'm insulted by it.

Read the entire interview at TheMetalWeb.com.