NOTHINGFACE Vocalist Talks About VINNIE PAUL's New Project

In a recent interview conducted by Greg Maki of Live-Metal.net, NOTHINGFACE vocalist Matt Holt discussed the new project featuring NOTHINGFACE members Tom Maxwell (guitar) and Jerry Montano (bass),former PANTERA/DAMAGEPLAN drummer Vinnie Paul and MUDVAYNE members Chad Gray (vocals) and Greg Tribbett (guitar).

Live-Metal: How is this new band or project or whatever it is with Tom and Jerry and Vinnie Paul and the MUDVAYNE guys going to affect NOTHINGFACE?

Matt Holt: "I don't think it'll affect us at all. First of all, Tom is 100-percent — I mean, NOTHINGFACE is his baby. And Chad and Greg, they're not going to leave MUDVAYNE. It's something that especially Tom and Chad and Jerry had talked about for a very long time, and Vinnie and Greg became part of it over time. I'm happy for those guys to finally do this. If anything, it'll probably help us because if it puts Tom and Jerry in front of mainstream people, it's just gonna bring more attention to us. I'm not looking at it as something that's hindering us or anything else like that. I think it's cool. Actually, I haven't heard it. I haven't gotten a chance to hear any of it yet. I can't even tell you what it sounds like. I've heard it was kinda Southern metal-ish. I can imagine what those guys would put together knowing all those guys so well. But it's gonna be good. People should be excited about it if they are. It's not going to affect NOTHINGFACE at all."

Live-Metal: How did [NOTHINGFACE] get back together again?

Matt Holt: "Well, one of the main things was we went through hell on our old record label. It seemed like toward the end on Ozzfest they were just doing everything they could to do the littlest they could do possible. It all started — I mean, we were already having problems — but the beginning of the end was somewhere in Buffalo, New York, on Ozzfest when they left us sitting at a truck stop with our bus for, like, nine hours with no gas, and the generators run off the gas and it's like 100-some degrees out there, boiling, can't move, because they didn't feel like paying our tour support. When we're on the road playing headlining shows, we pay for everything ourselves, but on Ozzfest you don't get paid, so we're kind of relying on them and they were pissed about it. It makes no sense because we're playing in front of 20,000 people a day; what's your problem?

"So I got out on stage and there's this guy from TVT Records there, and 'Everybody raise your middle fingers.' So everybody raised them. 'Yell, 'Fuck you, TVT Records.'' So they got pissed. 'Don't you ever do that again, blah blah. We'll give you the money to finish the tour. You better finish the fuckin' tour.' So, we took the money and went straight home, said, 'Fuck you. We're never playing another show on TVT again.' So, realizing that we're still under contract with TVT and just the stress of everything, we all just kind of went our separate ways.

"I went to help out Bill [Gaal], our old bass player, with his project in California. California wasn't for me. The project wasn't for me. I wasn't for them. Whatever. It was a different thing. I didn't fit in. I was too metal, you know? I'm not a FOO FIGHTERS kind of guy, so it didn't really work out for me. I'm also not a backup singer, so whatever. So I came back here. Me and Tom started talking again and it was kind of something that was just inevitable. Tom and I have some type of weird bond that we've always had that no matter what happens in either one of our personal lives, we always find our way back together. We just started talking and figured out it was the thing that would make us happiest. And at this point, we were no longer under contract with TVT. For the first time in the band's history, we were free and clear completely contractually, allowed to take as long as we want to write a new record and hopefully get a new deal. We've had a good relationship with Jerry for a long time. He started playing with Tom and [drummer] Tommy [Sickles] after I was gone and he had played with NOTHINGFACE before. We did a DISTURBED and a PANTERA tour, so he was the obvious choice. So there it is. We've been writing and preparing ever since. We did that first tour in late winter basically to just kind of say, 'Hey, we're not dead. Look, heart's still pumping,' and put out a couple songs. Now we're just finishing it up."

Live-Metal: So is the plan to write and record another album before—

Matt Holt: "Before we do another major tour, yeah. A lot of the reason is just it's very hard without any financial backing. We could go out there and book our own tour, but I don't know that the band could necessarily gain anything off it. I mean, we'll put some money in our pockets, but there's a little bit more to that. We don't want to over-saturate and play constantly because after a while you keep coming to the same places over and over again on the same tour over and over again, basically, with you headlining. People end up saying, 'Well, I'm see ‘em when they come back again.' We'd rather right now do it strategically and find other tours we can hop onto that will put us in front of new fans first and just try to rebuild this thing to the best we can. But, yeah, the plan is finish writing the record, get a new deal, put it out hopefully — I don't know, but hopefully, we'll start touring heavily again, like, next spring. Record will be out some time maybe around then, as well, maybe by summertime, hopefully. I don't know. There's no label right now or anything, so there's no plan."

Read the entire interview at www.live-metal.net.