GENE HOGLAN Talks About Songwriting Process For Next STRAPPING YOUNG LAD Album

MetalEater.com recently conducted an interview with STRAPPING YOUNG LAD drummer Gene Hoglan. An excerpt from the chat follows:

MetalEater.com: What are your plans for Christmas?

Gene Hoglan: "Well, I'm going home for a few days. I come back before the first (of January) and then we start writing the next STRAPPING album in January. We've already started writing it actually. We want to get it completed by the end of March and just keep hitting the road, you know; come up with a really fast, punchy record that's just fully kick-ass. And that's one thing I love about STRAPPING is that we've never pigeon-holed ourselves into one thing, you know. We never will either. The next album will be absolutely different from 'Alien', but it's going to kick ass 'cause it's STRAPPING, you know. We didn't try to rewrite 'City'; we didn't try to rewrite the chicken feather record ('SYL'); we're not going to try to rewrite 'Alien' either. It's going to be a brand new fuckin' sound from us and that's what we try on every record, you know. We try to make every record different from the last one — make it kind of separate. I've always liked that with bands that can evolve and do it well. You know, a lot of bands evolve and then you just kind of lose track of them after a while; and that's fair enough. And a lot of bands don't evolve at all, like AC/DC or something. You know what you're going to get on an AC/DC record; a KREATOR record; an OVERKILL record. All those bands are awesome, but you know what you're getting. Now VOIVOD — they evolved a lot as they went. A lot of people didn't like their later stuff, but a lot of people only like their early stuff. It doesn't matter to us, man. We have to write music for us. So that's why the next record is going to fully kick ass. It's going to be fuckin' fully brutal and stompin'. It's going to be awesome!"

MetalEater.com: Are you taking a different approach to writing this record since you started writing it already in the back of the tour bus?

Gene Hoglan: "Well, I think the different approach that's going to probably end up happening is usually we've taken like six to eight months to write the record, and this time we're going to do it in about a month and a half or two months. But that's an exciting challenge, you know. Let's write some wicked, really short songs. We're 'feeling' the short songs right now. We're just punching three and a half-minute/four-minute songs and huge choruses and just brutality. It's going to be cool, man. It's going to be another step for STRAPPING."

MetalEater.com: From what you're saying, it sounds like it's going to be a lot heavier than "Alien".

Gene Hoglan: "Sure. Shit yeah!"

MetalEater.com: "Alien" is pretty heavy though.

Gene Hoglan: "Well, that was easy to write, you know. All our albums are easy to write. This next album will be a little bit tougher in the fact that we want to do it so soon and we want to keep everything just rolling forward. It's an interesting challenge, but we're always so good under pressure. We're good like that. Not like there's pressure to write it or anything, but you know, we have to get it crackin'. So we're definitely going to deliver a ripping record. It's going to be awesome!"

Read the entire interview at MetalEater.com.