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Interview with Lorenzo Antonucci of Sworn Enemy
January 15, 2006 By: Scott Alisoglu
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I remember sitting in a cramped van interviewing all five members of Sworn Enemy a few years back at a show that included Six Feet Under, Skinless, and (I think) Death Threat. The band has come a long way since then, jumping from Jamey Jasta’s [Hatebreed] label to Elektra (As Real As it Gets), playing Ozzfest, and supporting just about every major heavy music act known to man. After Elektra dropped the band, Sworn Enemy pulled together,
started writing another album, and eventually landed on Abacus. The new album is called The Beginning of the End and it is by far the most metallic thing the boys have recorded to date. Elements of the hardcore sound remain, but more than anything else The Beginning of the End is a balls-out thrash album that will in all likelihood do the following: (1) Rip your face off; and (2) stomp your guts out. I caught up with guitarist Lorenzo Antonnucci as the band chilled in its RV outside of The Granada Theater in Lawrence, Kansas, waiting for its turn to take the stage on a bill that featured the
Among The Living Anthrax lineup, God Forbid, and Manntis. Read on.
The last time I saw you guys was on the tour with Skinless and Six Feet Under a few years back. You’ve come a long ways since then. How has the current tour with Anthrax and God Forbid been going?
It’s been goin’ real good. We’ve been gettin' along with our good friends in God Forbid, gettin’ along with our new friends in Manntis… We’ve been friends with Anthrax for 20 years because we’ve loved them…not that we were literally friends with them, but they’re cool with us. Everything is great.
Anthrax is obviously an influence.
Oh yeah! One of the biggest, in my opinion.
Do you get a little extra spark on stage knowing that you’re sharing it with Anthrax every night? I know you always give it everything you’ve got, but do you have a little extra kick this time around?
Yeah, totally. To impress the legends and their fans… It’s a very hard act to follow. You’ve got to try your best.
The crowds have been digging you guys too?
Awesome, some great nights!
And you go back a long ways with God Forbid.
Yeah, since like ’99, when they started and when we were just getting together.
It seems like you’ve toured with just about every goddamn metal band on the planet!
Yeah, the band we haven’t toured with is probably Machine Head. It’s one band we’ve never toured with
And would you say that you went over well with the crowd on just about every tour?
It grew. It took a while. We would always bring our fans and our fans would always make the metal fans or the Six Feet Under death metal kids that did not really like us… We won most of ‘em over, at least so they thought we were an ok band. Now we gotta make ‘em think that we’re a real good band. Now we gotta make ‘em go get our CD.
Going back a bit, you made a big leap going from Stillborn to Elektra. That’s not even going from small label to big indie; that’s like small label to huge label. Talk about going from Stillborn to Elektra.
It was cool at first. We thought we had made it. We got offered the deal, we went in and recorded in a rush because it was like, "It’s got to be done now.” We were on Elektra and like every band was like, “how the fuck did Sworn Enemy get on Elektra?” Then they didn’t promote us. They didn’t give a fuck about us. They put out the record, it sold what it sold, they got us on Ozzfest, and it was like, “Ok, we’re gonna fold and we’re gonna forget about this band.” They dropped us.
Did you not sell as much of As Real As It Gets as they expected? I mean it sold like 30,000 copies, which is pretty damn respectable.
It wasn’t the selling. It just wasn’t worth it to them to even bother marketing the band anymore if we weren’t a buzz or weren’t growing fast. If it was a lot of work for them to get us in stores and sell more records, then why would they do it? They’re a label that 30,000 or 100,000 records don’t mean shit to them.
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I assume you didn’t get screwed.
Nah, they dropped us, they let us go, and for a year we were homeless; we had nothing. We had no label, no nothing; we just had our manager.
So you just kept touring?
We did Europe and Fear Factory and then we took a long break, like four or five months off, and then started writing the record.
How long did it take to get the Abacus deal then?
Probably a year.
Were you entertaining a lot of offers?
We got turned down by Metal Blade, we sent it to Trustkill, we sent our demos to Prosthetic, we sent it to Century Media, all the labels that we felt like would be a good home for us. We even tried Roadrunner. Abacus… Well, Rob from Century Media is into the band. He just loved the band, liked our style. He just tracked us down somehow and everything started flowin’ from there. |
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By the time that happened did you have most of the album written?
We went and decided to write this record with no label, no nothing. We would do it out our of own pocket. Not pay for the recording, but the cost of renting a studio, blah, blah, blah. Before we went to the studio we had eight songs done, and four unsure of. We went to the studio and our producer [Tim Lambesis] chopped all the songs up and made ‘em better.
You mentioned the producer. How did you end up with Tim Lambesis’ [As I Lay Dying]. I guess that surprised me a little bit.
Those guys [AILD] have been our friends for two years now. I have a personal friendship with Tim. We talk all the time. He was curious and he was concerned about what we were doing. He thought that we had somewhat of a talent and why give it up. He just kept asking me, “What are you gonna do? What are you gonna do?” I said we’re gonna try to get a deal. So he tried to get us on Metal Blade. He was trying to push to them what we had recorded with Zeuss. He said, “yo, I wanna produce it.” They were playing in our neighborhood, like a half-hour away from our houses in Queens and we had our studio. So he came to our studio. We jammed, we talked, and he was like, “Listen to my album, listen to Shadows Are Security, and tell me what you think.” We put it on and I was just like, “Wow, I want our drums to sound like that, I want our guitar tone to sound like that; Jesus, this is great!” It was just me and Pauly [Antignai] that got to listen to it; Sal [Lococo] wasn’t there. Sal just went with our word. At first it was like we didn’t know what he [Tim] did, but we were kind of desperate at the same time. Zeuss wasn’t available to do our record, so we were kinda fucked. We wanted the record to come out as soon as possible. Me, I had a good feeling from the minute Tim said it to me, but the other guys were kinda sceptical. Nobody knew, the band [AILD] grew so fast, nobody really knew about them. We didn’t actually listen to them and know how his producing was and all that. Obviously, his record is doing 2,500 a week for a year strong, so he’s got to be doing something good. All that stuff mixed together and we just went with it.
It’s interesting, you had a producer in Tim, you had an engineer [Steve Russell], and a mixer [Zeuss]. You had a full-blown production team. So Tim’s role really was helping you guys with the arrangements.
He kind of did a producing-engineering type of job because he wanted the best drum sound. This whole record sounds great because of his push for everything. He wanted this guitar tone, he wanted that drum sound, he wanted this drum set, he wanted that $1,000 a day room or whatever just to record the drums in. He was very picky and I respect him for it. He doesn’t fuckin’ stop. He’ll keep fightin’ for what he wants.
So he was working with Steve Russell to get the right sound.
Steve Russell engineered all their [AILD] records and he has worked with like P.O.D. and stuff like that. Good dude.
The first thing that really hits you about The Beginning of the End is just how fuckin’ metal it is. We’re not talkin’ metalcore either. It’s basically a ripping thrash album. But to me it still sounds like a hardcore band that just happens to be playing thrash metal. Was it a natural progression? You always had it in
ya.
We just wanted to get more musical man. We just think that a lot of hardcore is very repetitive. We just wanted to be
musicians man. Not that they’re not playing music… We wanted to do leads, we wanted to make our record something that you get when you put on something like Metallica…and we have the hardcore feel in it. We love all hardcore from New York. New York hardcore is what we love. Any other hardcore I don’t know nothin’ about. New York hardcore is what I know. Every metal band that me, Sal, and Pauly grew up loving – Biohazard, Testament, Slayer, Pantera, Metallica, Anthrax, Exodus, Nuclear Assault, D.R.I., Cro-Mags… All those bands had the same kinda feel. Like not every one of them had the same fans, but to me it was all kinda the same feel. So we just wanted all our influences and make it into one and make some kinda crazy baby.
It’s not like you can’t hear a hardcore band in there, but it is kind of a thrash album.
Well, we wanted to bring thrash back.
And it’s all up-tempo. It’s basically go for the throat all the way through. It’s a pissed off album, like you were going in to prove something.
Yeah, we had to; we had to step it up.
You play a couple of solos on this one as well, and they are well placed. I got the impression that you just felt like a certain song needed a solo and the rest didn’t.
Basically, it’s not written to have a solo part. “Forgotten” and “Absorb the Lies” have ‘em. We had a solo on As Real As it Gets on “One Way Trip.” It’s not the greatest, but it’s a solo. So on this album we wanted to have a couple of solos to add some flavor to it. Slow builds…we don’t want to just drastically change into this metal band, ya know what I mean? We just want to play how we feel. The next record if there is more room for solos we’ll do more of ‘em. Why get rid of ‘em? I love solos. The first solo I heard was fuckin’ Metallica shit. I was like, “aagghhh!” It was the best thing in the world.
I also think you found the perfect style on this album for Sal’s vocals. For some reason, this album suits his vocals better than any of the previous ones.
I feel like that, oh yeah.
Obviously, nobody sounds like Sal. [Sal speaks up]
Sal: I like that I don’t sound like nobody. |
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It is not the typical barking hardcore vocal.
Well that’s what we try to do. We want you to hear exactly what he’s saying, but not be so high-pitched and not be so low-pitched because then you’re gonna sound just like Jamie [Jasta] or anybody else. We want to have our own sound and we work very hard to make our own sound.
I like As Real As it Gets a lot. I think I like this one better, but it’s till growing on me. It seems like a fairly natural progression. You could have bits of it before, but it seems you’ve now pulled out all the stops. As for the standouts, I didn’t think there was one that stood out above the rest, with the possible exception of “We Hate” because of the lyrics.
We just hate bands that are doing better than we are [laughs]. No, no [laughs], every one of our boys are doing well right now, so I’m happy for them. |
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Is it just about a certain type of band then?
Not a certain type of band. To me, how I look at the lyrics, a lot of bands that claim they’re hardcore or come from the hardcore scene wear fuckin’ makeup, tight fuckin’ jeans, lookin’ like fuckin’ girls. That is far beyond hardcore. Whatever, everybody has their own style. But the fact that they use hardcore or they use hardcore shows to wear these pants and somehow fuck up the scene to make these kids that are naïve turn into these weird lookin’ kids… Whatever. We just look like people from New York. We’re just big dudes that dress how we dress. We’re not tryin’ to dress like girls to get attention. That’s cool, everything works, and I get it, but we just don’t like it. So we wanted to tell our fans and their fans what we think about it. If you have a good sense of humor, you’re not gonna take it like we’re gonna fuckin’ kill you. We’re just thinking out loud and we put it into a song. But we’re not using it as a single. We’re not gonna try to make the song make us or break us, but if that song becomes a fuckin’ hit and people go crazy when we play that song, then yeah, we’re gonna make it a single [laughs].
It just kind of catches your attention. It’s honest.
[Sal chimes in from the bunk in the RV] Ya like that one, huh?
Well, I actually like some of the other songs better. I just happened to notice that because the lyrics [“We hate your music, we hate you too”] jump out at you. It’s like, “god, these guys are pissed off about something.” But anyway, from here on in I assume it’ll be non-stop touring.
We’re doing this and another Six Feet Under run.
Chris Barnes must really like you guys, huh?
Yeah, we got along with Chris Barnes. A lot of people were sceptical like, “Oh, if you go out with Six Feet Under watch out ‘cause Barnes is weird, he doesn’t hang out.” That dude was inviting us on the bus the whole time, he’d fuckin’ hang out. He’s awesome.
Yeah, it’s funny, for all the things you hear about Barnes, every band I’ve talked to that has toured with Six Feet Under has nothing but good things to say about him – how they’d take care of them, make sure they were fed, etc.
Oh, every one of ‘em. Yeah, these people talkin’ shit, hatin’ on people, whatever it is.
You’ve been to Europe, right?
Yeah, three times.
Are you going over well in Europe? Are people nuts about Sworn Enemy?
Yeah, it’s slowly building, but a lot faster than it did out here.
That’s about it. It’s good to see you guys getting your due.
Thank you man.
www.abacusrecordings.com
www.swornenemynyc.com
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