HATEBREED's JAMEY JASTA On The Challenges Of Making 'The Concrete Confessional'

Vocalist Jamey Jasta of Connecticut hardcore/metal masters HATEBREED was recently interviewed by Artisan News. You can now watch the chat below. A couple of excerpts follow (transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET).

On HATEBREED's new album, "The Concrete Confessional":

Jamey: "The biggest challenge or obstacle getting the record done was just not overthinking the process, not overthinking the songwriting. People like the HATEBREED recipe. We wanna keep it pretty pure; short, to-the-point songs; catchy riffs but [that] are still heavy, still memorable; a lot of big hooks, big singalongs, but nothing that's too repetitive or too derivative of anything we've done in the past. It's okay to rip yourself off to a certain extent, but not to the point where it's, like, people have heard it before. I think we found a good place with this one."

On once again working with producer Chris "Zeuss" Harris:

Jamey: "I think the working with Zeuss… One of the reasons why we keep going back to him is because he can tell us when we're straying too far from formula. On [2013's] 'The Divinity Of Purpose', we were in that position of, like, it's the sophomore jinx, because Wayne [Lozinak, guitar] was back in the band for the self-titled [2009 album], so you have to kind of beat that sophomore jinx. We proved a lot of people wrong with the self-titled, there was a lot of big tracks, we toured the world. How do you follow up, so that people don't keep holding him to that flame? 'Oh, this lineup was better.' And so, we had to work with Josh [Wilbur]. I think also, as far as vocals go, I needed to go to a new place. And some fans really liked it; if you listen to a song like 'Bitter Truth' [off 'The Divinity Of Purpose'], it's very different, vocally, from anything we've done. But working with Zeuss on this one through the production and through the vocals, we just kept it very straightforward; there's only a couple of new elements vocally, and a couple of new elements guitar-wise. And so if you like self-titled and you like 'Divinity', you're gonna love this record, but if you like 'Perseverance' [2002] and you like 'The Rise Of Brutality' [2003], you're also gonna like this record, and Zeuss worked on all those records. And Josh mixed this record still. I didn't do the vocals with him, but he still mixed it, so he knows the tone. Zeuss is one of those guys, he can tell me, 'That sucks. Get rid of it. Try something different.'[There's] not a lot of guys I can trust [with] telling me that."

"The Concrete Confessional" will be released on May 13 via Nuclear Blast Entertainment. The artwork for the follow-up to 2013's "The Divinity Of Purpose" was created by Marcelo Vasco (SLAYER).

HATEBREED — vocalist Jamey Jasta, guitarists Wayne Lozinak and Frank Novinec, bassist Chris Beattie and Matt Byrne on drums — will begin this project's first North American run on May 13 in Cleveland, Ohio.

"The Divinity Of Purpose" sold 17,000 copies in the United States in its first week of release to land at position No. 20 on The Billboard 200 chart.