PRO-PAIN Mainman Talks About Forthcoming Album

Vassil Varbanov of Bulgaria's Tangra Mega Rock recently conducted an interview with PRO-PAIN frontman Gary Meskil. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow.

Tangra Mega Rock: Have you already started writing stuff for your 11th studio album?

Gary Meskil: Yeah. When we put our minds to it, we get pretty productive, so we kind of just set a time frame for ourselves and say, this is when we have to do it. We've always worked that way, even back in the old days we had literally no time to write a record, but we got it in there anyway, in amidst of all the touring. Oddly enough, this time around we are almost done with the new record we're gonna start mixing it this week. We're really, really excited about it. Yesterday we had Rob Barrett from CANNIBAL CORPSE come in and do a lead, we've got a few other guests as well some of our German friends will be appearing on the record, which is called "End in Sight". We think it's our best album yet Rob from CANNIBAL even said this is our "Master of Puppets"!

Tangra Mega Rock: How does it sound? Is it a political record like the previous one?

Gary Meskil: Well, it's not as plainfully political as "Age of Tyranny", which I think was really up to the times in terms of its political content. This time I wasn't so inspired to write something as deeply political. There are shades of politically inspired material in it, but I think it's vaguer in that sense. However, we're really happy with the lyrics on this one it lends itself to interpretation a little bit more, and everything is a bit more grey and hidden within the lyrics.

Tangra Mega Rock: Why? Does this mean that the political situation in the USA and the whole world is getting better?

Gary Meskil: I certainly hope so, but it seems like we're in for more of the same here in the USA unfortunately. There are a lot of candidates that are pretending to be all about change, but... I hope that it happens and that they are serious about it, but I don't have a lot of faith in the candidates that are running right now, so it's gonna be a very difficult decision for me come voting time whom I'm gonna support, because I really don't like any of the existing candidates.

Tangra Mega Rock: What's been the biggest lesson that you've learned after so many years of touring and recording?

Gary Meskil: To be as independent as possible, to do whatever you can yourself... We learned a lot of hard lessons. We gave certain duties in the past to other people and things didn't turn out either the way they were supposed to or that we had hoped. Throughout the years we found out that the more we did ourselves, the more we enjoyed ourselves and the more things came out in alignment with our vision. That's important... and it's really important to us as artists, because we don't look at things in terms of record sales or how many people are in the crowd that just goes with the territory. For us it's more about being artists and really honest and true to our craft, so at the end of the day we can really be proud of our accomplishments.

Tangra Mega Rock: You mentioned that through the years you've crossed people that you shouldn't have...

Gary Meskil: Yeah, more so in the early days. We really learned from our mistakes early on. We were involved with certain people and record companies that we didn't have to, we went with a lot of guidance from others... We were never really managed, but we kind of had a shadow manager in the background years ago... We've worked with various producers and people that were steering the band in what we felt was the wrong direction. I know they were thinking they were doing the right thing, so there's certainly nothing against any of those people, but in order to achieve the ultimate results in terms of what your vision is, you have to work hard and take as much into your own hands as possible.

Tangra Mega Rock: Does this mean that the world outside a band is something you cannot trust, and it makes the relationship within the band even stronger?

Gary Meskil: Yeah, I think so... It's important to learn from mistakes, and we've made as many mistakes as any other band and people out there, so it's also important to make adjustments as you go. We're at a really good place with PRO-PAIN right now we're pleased with our accomplishments and where we're going from here. It's not like we're out and playing shows just for the sake of nostalgia no, we feel that we have really good new music to offer, and we're just as excited about the new stuff as about the old one, if not more.

Read the entire interview from Tangra Mega Rock.

The chat can also be downloaded as an MP3 audio file at this location.