HATEBREED Frontman Talks About Playing Columbus For First Time Since DIMEBAG's Death

Josh Thompson of Columbus, OH's The Lantern recently conducted an interview with HATEBREED frontman Jamey Jasta. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow:

The Lantern: What thoughts are running through your mind coming to the city [Columbus] that "Dimebag" Darrell was murdered in?

Jamey Jasta: "I'm trying to keep the outlook positive. Obviously it's very upsetting for us having been close friends with him. You know, the fans, they are incredible and we're not going to turn our backs on such a great scene just because of a tragic event. Plus, the music is also very therapeutic for us — we go and put our hearts into it and give Dime a shout-out — that's what he'd want us to do, he wouldn't want us to skip a city."

The Lantern: Why did you pick the bands that you did for your tour?

Jamey Jasta: "Mainly because we wanted to give some newer, smaller bands a shot and not take out bands that were more established. MOST PRECIOUS BLOOD is a friendship thing, we've known those guys ... for a long, long time having played some of our first shows with INDECISION, their old band. FULL BLOWN CHAOS is on my label. GIZMACHI, MANNTIS and IF HOPE DIES were all submitted. GIZMACHI is actually managed by Clown from SLIPKNOT who has helped us out a ton in the past and we wanted to help them. It was great, like the first night of the tour, last night (Tuesday),everybody got a great reaction, the place was packed on a Tuesday night, people were going ballistic so we're looking forward to the rest of it."

The Lantern: What's in HATEBREED's future, you guys got any new albums coming up or anything like that?

Jamey Jasta: "We're going to have a new album come out hopefully May or June of next year, we're going to be recording in January, February and March. We're still deciding on a producer but things are looking good and we've got some killer songs, we've been playing two of them live."

The Lantern: What was it like opening up for JUDAS PRIEST and ANTHRAX (Oct. 5 in Bridgeport, Conn.)?

Jamey Jasta: "That was fun. It was little weird, I gotta be honest, it was a little weird playing the seats, just because there's no pit and everybody's sort-of just stuck in their seat, but everybody got up and was banging their head and having a good time. It was more of like an honor for us just to share the stage with the original ANTHRAX and with JUDAS PRIEST, again, who we played off-day shows from Ozzfest with them and they were so good to us, so it was great to see them again. We grew up practicing like less than a mile from that arena, so to play a big arena in a place where we started in a little basement less than a mile away, that was really a trip, that was an honor."

The Lantern: How has hosting MTV2's "Headbanger's Ball" affected the band?

Jamey Jasta: "It really hasn't affected the band. I'd say, like one way or another. I think it's affected a lot of other bands, like as far as really establishing great careers for people because it's such a huge medium for bands to get their music out there. For HATEBREED, we were already selling 2-300,000 albums before it came out, so we were pretty much already established in that world, but, you know it's great that we have that medium to have our videos played because when, you know, 'Perseverance' came out, 'I Will Be Heard' was never played on MTV2, so now that it's got a chance and the new video's got a chance, hopefully that will affect for another year to come or whatever. I just re-signed (to host 'Headbanger's Ball') too."

Read the entire interview at TheLantern.com.