SEBASTIAN BACH Says Modern Rock Albums Sound 'Too Perfect'

Former SKID ROW singer Sebastian Bach was recently interviewed on "The Five Count" radio show in Mankato, Minnesota. You can now listen to the chat below.

Speaking about the lack of great frontmen in today's rock music scene compared to how it was back when he first started out, Bach said: "I think a lot of that has to do with musicians nowadays recording with so much computer technology that it's almost impossible to feel their real soul. Like in a SKID ROW song, like '18 And Life' or 'I Remember You' or 'Monkey Business', that's really the sound that was coming out of my mouth; it's not Pro Tools or computers or anything like that. They didn't exist then. And the same, obviously, with all our favorite records in the '70s and the '80s, before computer came in the scene and recording. I think that's why we can't find any good frontmen — 'cause we can't hear them [laughs] behind all this technology; everything sounds too perfect. Human beings aren't perfect."

He added: "I think when you record an album and you go to sing and you can give a half-assed take, and then the producer, or the engineer, puts it on his laptop and adjusts it so it sounds like a good take, but it really is a bad take, that's like the opposite of the way we used to make records. We used to sing it a hundred times, or however many times it took, until we found the magic, most amazing take that we could do. And that's like the opposite way of recording. So maybe we know how to do it better than relying on a computer to help us. I think that when you have to do it on your own, you develop better skills, obviously."

Bach said in a 2015 interview that he was "really dying to make a record that sounds like the records of the '70s that I always listened to." He told the "Iron City Rocks" podcast: "What I mean [by that] is recording it in a way that… Like, when I listen to 'Women And Children First' by VAN HALEN, the guitar's all the way on the left, and the vocals are in the middle, with the drums who knows where, and it's just very different sounding, recording-wise, than the way albums are made today. So I think the next time I make an album, that's really what I'm gonna be going for."

He continued: "BLACK SABBATH's '13' sounds like a '70s BLACK SABBATH album, as much as it could in 2014. So whatever the fuck they were doing, I just would love to have an album of mine that sounds like that.

"I love 'Give 'Em Hell' [Bach's 2014 solo album]… 'Give 'Em Hell' is like 'Star Wars'; it's, like, 'Holy shit!' I mean, it's a very modern-sounding record. And when it really got that sound was when it went to mastering with Tom Baker; he made it sound so fucking 'spacey,' and I totally love it. But my taste, as a fan, a rock fan, the next one I do, I'm gonna be going for, like… If I could have a BLACK SABBATH '13' kind of production, that's what I'll be looking for."

Sebastian Bach's autobiography, "18 And Life On Skid Row", came out on December 6 via Dey Street Books (formerly It Books),an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.