SEBASTIAN BACH Writing New Material With HATEBREED's JASTA

Andrew Treadwell of Behind The Amps recently conducted an interview with former SKID ROW frontman Sebastian Bach. A few excerpts from the chat follow:

Behind The Amps: Songs like "Negative Light" and "By Your Side", are really showing your voice, but how did you choose what subject matters to talk about?

Bach: I always make the words, the subject matter, I try to make the sound of my voice match up with the words, and as far as subject matter goes, I started writing lyrics for this album in the year 2000, and the first song we wrote was "Falling Into You", which is kind of like a love song, and then 9/11 happened, and after 9/11 happened, I started writing lyrics about the war like "Take You Down With Me", which is totally about a soldier, you know if he is going to die, he is going to kill the guy who is killing him. And then "You Don't Understand", is a song written from the perspective of being a soldier who spends his days driving a tank around, killing people, and wondering if he is going to live to see another day. So I think anybody writing lyrics, from the year 2000 to 2007, could not help but be influenced by situations in the world, you know. And also me having a nineteen year old son, brought it home even more intensely, because we were getting draft registry notices in the mail, which I would put in the shredder, and I would get a draft registry for my son, and I would spend the day writing lyrics, how could I not write about that (laughs),you know I was like, "You're not fucking gonna get my fucking son" (laughs),so that's why a lot of the subject matter has to do with that.

Behind The Amps: And what about the photos in your album?

Bach: Oh! Wow, you are pretty much the first person to ask me about that. I took pretty much all of the photos, in the inside, not the poster. You have different packaging over there to America, so I don't really know exactly what the Australian packaging is. But I took most of the shots on the inside, and one weird thing, is that my dad just had his last art show here in New York, a posthumous show, that he scheduled before his death, and I was reading about his art, and they said about my dad's art, that all of his landscapes that he painted, had a bright sun in them, like the sun, and that was like the focal point of most of his landscapes. And I realized that I like to take pictures, for some reason, of the sun. It's a spiritual thing, a heavenly thing, and it's just strange that he always painted the sun, and I'm gravitated towards taking pictures of it. When I put it all together, it just fits, and it goes along with the side "By Your Side", which is kind of an ode to him, and anyone who has lost a love one. So it was weird that we look at that image of the sun, in the same way, kind of.

Behind The Amps: Once you leave [Australia], you have some festival appearances, and then you are going out on the POISON tour. Do you feel that your band has a little extra to prove, to show fans that you're not a band that rests on the past, and you have more to offer with new music?

Bach: Well, in a word, YES (laughs). I know for a fact that a lot of people will be coming to see me with POISON, expecting to here a little bit of old songs, and that's not what they're gonna hear. So one thing I like about rock 'n' roll, is it is all about self-expression, nobody can tell me what to say, nobody can tell me what to sing, and I'm gonna give "Angel Down", the record, everything I've got. That means, playing it all summer long, for as long as I can. I'm not out there to "Remember yesterday, Walkin' hand in hand," even though that's my song, my intention is to focus on the new record, definitely.

Behind The Amps: And although "Angel Down" is less than a year old, have you worked on any new songs or demos?

Bach: Yes, I'm actually working right now, I have four songs, that I am writing lyrics to, that I am collaborating with, with Jamey Jasta from HATEBREED. They are one of my favourite new metal bands, they write incredible metal anthems, and I'm working with Jamey, which is very exciting for me.

Read the entire interview at Behind The Amps.