LIZZY BORDEN Discusses 'Appointment With Death'

Mark Carras of RockMyMonkey.com recently conducted an interview with Lizzy Borden. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow:

Rock My Monkey: Cool. Now, how much of a challenge was it to do a concept record about death without going for the overly morbid clichés that so many metal bands today use?

Lizzy Borden: Well, that was the challenge. I mean, the last album I did was called "Deal with the Devil", and I played the devil. So this one, when I decided I wanted to play death, I was trying to figure out how to be able to incorporate that within all the song without just talking about funerals and stuff. Really I was able to just vent through different characters throughout the whole thing. I talk about, you know, pretty much death is in the room on every song, whatever character is talking about suicide, or war, or various different topics that is the main theme throughout "Appointment with Death". But yeah, I was trying not to just go for the easy kill there. I was really trying to get inside the minds of the characters and what they were thinking while they were about to do the things that they were about to do.

Rock My Monkey: One thing I noticed about listening to this album is, and with actually listening to all your stuff throughout your career is that there's a real sense for the craft of songwriting. Do you think that a false sense of brutality has replaced that craft of songwriting in metal today?

Lizzy Borden: In some bands, yeah. They're just going for the easy kill.
It's about crushing the senses so you don't even notice that there's really not a song in there. What we try and do is we are involved in the craft. And even after, you know, usually a song will appear in its basic form, and it's there, but for the most part you really want to try and dig down deep and see what else is involved. There's so many different melody lines. There's so many ways to do guitar solos. There's so many different avenues that you can make. If you write songs for a long period of time, you would want to chase those down, which is kind of what we do.

Rock My Monkey: How was it working on the new CD with your new guitarist, Ira Black? How did he affect the evolution of the LIZZY BORDEN sound?

Lizzy Borden: He was instrumental in coming in and giving us kind of a… we wanted to go a little heavier, but we didn't want to be the clichéd band trying to go heavy. We really wanted to try and adapt the LIZZY BORDEN, the traditional LIZZY BORDEN sound, but also update it a little bit. And he was perfect for that because he came in as a LIZZY BORDEN fan, and that helps a lot because he knew the history, and he knew what the band needed and what it was lacking guitar-wise. So he came in and gave us that and Ira was just absolutely amazing at that. We auditioned a lot of different players, and he came in and nailed it right away. Stuff that he does to the old material just enhances it without changing it, and all the stuff he brought to the new record is absolutely amazing.

Rock My Monkey: Other than the concept of death, is there anything else fans should listen to within the lyrics, like an actual storyline, for example?

Lizzy Borden: Well, in all the records, I make theme records. I just pick a theme and then I go with it. All the songs connect together. I write a little kind of a sketchy script that all the characters go through. They all interconnect together. But at the same time I don't like to shove a concept down people's throats. If I ever did a concept record like "Tommy", it definitely would be a different sort of record. But this one I want all the songs to individually stand up on their own. And I think they have. But if you dig down deep and you read the lyrics, you can see how they connect together. The different characters that are speaking are definitely, they're in the same position throughout the whole album. And we also kind of have a sub-plot in there where we're playing the four horseman, and each guy is obviously a different horseman. So that's kind of a subplot through the whole thing. But really it's down to digging down deep into the lyrics. If you want to dig down deep it's all there. And if you don't, you just want to listen to have fun, then that's there, too. So you don't have to be tied down to the concept.

Rock My Monkey: You have guest players on here that are an extremely diverse mix of metal legends. Did you go after George Lynch and Erik Rutan with that goal of diversity in mind?

Lizzy Borden: Well, each guy came to the project a different way. George Lynch was a friend of bass player, Marten Andersson. Marten actually plays in the George Lynch band whenever they play around. He's the bass player. So it was one of those things where we asked him, we said we had a perfect song for him to do. He loved the idea. He heard the song and loved it, so he came in and blasted away. Erik came in because he actually mixed the record, and he was affiliated with Brian Slagel from Metal Blade Records, our label. He was the one who got that connection together. Corey from TRIVIUM, I met him through someone else, and he was a really big LIZZY BORDEN fan, so when it came time to doing this, I just called him and up and said, "You want to come down and do a solo?" They were touring at the time and when they came into L.A. he came into the studio and blasted one out. Each guy came, and then Dave Meniketti who was from Y&T, just a dream guitar player for me, because when I was a kid I was in front of the stage while he was playing his Les Paul, just absolutely amazing memories for me. So to have him on this record is real special for me. So each guy came to the project a different way. They've all put their stamp on it. It just really makes, it makes each song really unique.

Rock My Monkey: Did any of the guest musicians add anything that would shock anyone? For example, did George Lynch play on one of the more thrashy songs, or Corey playing on one of the more '80s sounding songs, like "Under Your Skin"?

Lizzy Borden: Well, actually Corey played on kind of a traditional LIZZY BORDEN song, "Abnormal". George played on "The Death of Love", which to me really wasn't his style, but that's why I picked it for him, because it was just something a little bit different. When he listened to it, he loved it, but he didn't know what to do with it. So he just started playing, and for about two hours just playing solos all over the song. And Corey came in, and when he did "Abnormal" he nailed it. He knew exactly what the song needed, and he put it on there and did it in one take. Each guy had their different idea on what the song needed. I let them run with it when they came in. Dave did it at his own studio. I think he did it one take, too. He just got it. Each guy I kind of gave a song to that I kind of had an idea would grasp what needed to be done. I could hear their soloing on that particular song. So for the most part everyone just got it right away and knew exactly what to do.

Check out the entire interview in text and MP3 format at this location.