HATEBREED Frontman On Next Album: 'There Probably Won't Be Any Melody Whatsoever'

Brendan Crabb of Australia's Loud recently conducted an interview with vocalist Jamey Jasta of Connecticut hardcore/metal masters HATEBREED. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

Loud: What's the latest on [the upcoming HATEBREED studio album]?

Jamey: It's going good. We've got a lot of ideas and I'd say we'll probably get into the studio right when we get back from [playing the Soundwave Festival in] Australia.

Loud: Where do you envision the next album going? Havier? Faster? More melodic?

Jamey: Well, there probably won't be any melody whatsoever. (laughs) It'll be fast, heavy, I would say very reminiscent of the last record's faster, heavier songs like "Merciless Tide" and "Hands Of A Dying Man".

Loud: Do you have any idea of a tentative release date for that perhaps?

Jamey: I don't know. We were talking about that the other day and we were thinking about whether we should put something out in October, or should we try to maybe just wait until next January and tour more on the "Perseverance" ten-year anniversary tour. Because originally we thought about doing some dates and just doing the whole "Perseverance" album. But then we scrapped that idea and decided we were going to tour all of Europe and all of the festivals in the summer, and then promoters asked us to come to other places and we're going to do some more touring. So I don't know, I'm not sure yet.

Loud: HATEBREED aside, you released your solo record (JASTA) last year, which seemed to be well-received. Are you planning to do some more solo material or maybe a new KINGDOM OF SORROW record in the near future?

Jamey: KINGDOM OF SORROW's going to be on hiatus for a while, just because we did the Mayhem fest tour and we felt like we ended on a high note and we were able to support that record, "Behind the Blackest Tears", that came out on Relapse in 2010. So we thought, you know what, let's end it on a high note, take a hiatus, maybe a year or two, maybe three, who knows? DOWN is mixing a new EP right now and they're going to start touring again and then Kirk (Windstein) is going to start working on a new CROWBAR record. So KINGDOM definitely won't be recording anything anytime soon, but there is a chance we might do some festivals or something; maybe not this summer, but next summer. As far as another JASTA record, I would love to do that, but my main priority is HATEBREED and I'm probably going to do this HATEBREED record and then tour on the record for at least a year and a half to two years.

Loud: In what direction do you see the [music] industry headed in the future? Will CDs become obsolete sooner rather than later?

Jamey: (Pauses) I'm not sure just yet. I still want to own CDs, I like the packaging, I have like my library of CDs in my CD cases. But I do like when something isn't released physically, if it's just on vinyl I do like to get the digital copy and I have my iTunes pretty organised. I can't speak for the younger generation; all I can speak for is myself and I like to own vinyl and CDs and I like have them stick around for a while. But we'll see what happens. I mean, vinyl's made a little bit of a comeback, but I don't know what's going to happen.

Loud: I remember that thrill in your early teens when you saved for weeks to buy that one album you want, but there's just so much easily available at people's fingertips these days.

Jamey: Yeah, it's kind of taken the special feeling out of it, especially because people don't give things a chance as much. They have so much available to them that they download stuff and don't even listen to it. (laughs) I've sent things to people to listen to and they're like, "I've got a thousand other CDs I want to listen to." I'm like, "Wow, where did you get them?" And they say, "Oh, this blog, it had 5000 CDs for free," and I just go, "Oh my God." There's a lot of content; the universe that we live in is a very fast-moving place now. It's not like it was when I was a kid, when you had one tape and you listened to that tape in your Walkman while you skated or while you were on the bus to school or whatever. Now, you have thousands of people's discographies at your fingertips, you can stream it on your cell phone.

Read the entire interview from Loud.