LAMB OF GOD, SOILWORK, DEVILDRIVER Singers Sound Off On Illegal Music Downloading

Metal Injection recently conducted a joint interview with the vocalists of three of the biggest bands in underground metal today, LAMB OF GOD's Randy Blythe, SOILWORK's Björn "Speed" Strid and DEVILDRIVER's Dez Fafara. One of the topics brought up during the discussion is a hot topic in the music industry, and that is illegal music downloading. An excerpt from the chat follows:

Speed: Well, I have kind of mixed feelings towards it [illegal music downloading], because in the past our albums have been out like three months before release and that's kind of frustrating; I want the whole package to be there. There is a reason why we picked that cover for the music, and if people just want to burn it on a CD-R, fine, but I will say that metal fans are usually very loyal so if they like it they will probably buy it because they want the whole package, but it's still kind of frustrating; you come right out of the studio and it's out [on the file-sharing networks].

Randy: I used to buy vinyl, you know, get the whole package like you said. Kids today never even owned a CD and just have iPods.

Dez: It's gonna kill underground art. It's not gonna hurt Britney Spears and other people like that, but it's going to make the poet, the painter, the underground musician not be able to do his gig full-time, and if he can't do his gig full-time, he can't give you the art that's full-on. Gold records used to be gold records. Now they're telling you if you sell 100,000 copies that's like a gold record, so what we all say is well, where's the plaque? Change the industry standard, I want the plaque. Why are we not coming together as artists and suing iTunes and iPod? When you invent iTunes, it's supposed to accept something that was paid for, and the only way it can go from iTunes and the only way it can go onto iPod is that it was paid for so the iPod accepts it. But you know, right now, you can download illegal songs that go straight into your iTunes and iPod. So the fact that his device allows something like that, you can't go against the hugest guy in the world, but if every artist came together and just said, 'No more! You made the unit and the unit was only supposed to accept legally downloaded song and it's not, so you're the one fucking the artist. You pay everybody all the royalties that you owe from THE BEATLES on down."

The subject of illegal music downloading, as well as other topics, are discussed in a 12-minute video interview, available on the Metal Injectionvideo-on-demand page.