I read that you were born in St. Louis, Missouri. Did you also grow up there?
“I was actually born in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I moved to St. Louis when I was 9 years old and I grew up there. I really liked it there. My parents were wonderful, it was great. We had a great homelife. I had a lot of friends and got into playing music when I was about 15. I really focussed on that afterwards. It was all good. I got a two year degree in music education later on, and then I transferred over to psychology at the university of Missouri. I was playing with some guys in a local bar band, we also had original material, and we all decided to move to Hollywood in St. Louis.”
I read that THE BEATLES was sort of the starting point and the band which got you interested in music. How old were you back then and what made them special in your opinion?
“I must have been around 10 or 11, something like that. I just heard one of their early songs like ‘I Wanna Hold Your Hand’ on the radio. I was in the basement, doing my homework, and when I heard it come on I was just fascinated by the sound. I was just wondering ‘What is that? What is that sound? How did they make that?’. It just jumped out of the speakers and I remember it being really different from everything else. THE BEATLES were my first real fascination with the idea of recording and how to make records and what that was all about.”
How old were you when you started playing guitar? Did you immediately notice that you had a talent for it?
“I don’t know (laughs). I was like 15. I think I wasn’t necessarily the most talented or the smartest guy. However, I was very determined and worked very hard. I was very persistent. That’s how it all started. I did that with the guitar, and I did that later on in the recording business. I’m an okay musician. I loved music school and music theory and learning how to play classical music. I really loved that time. I’m an okay musician, but it gets strange when you compare myself as a musician to a lot of the people I worked with. I’m playing nowadays here in a band in New Mexico, GO AXE ALICE. We have a female singer. It’s kind of a Hardrock band with a little bit of a Punk edge. I’m currently also remixing the CHRIS POLAND album “Return To Metalopolis” and I’m also doing some work with LEATHERWOLF. My analogy is that we’re in different leagues. Those guys are the major leagues, and we’re like the little leagues. It’s not exactly comparing apples to apples (laughs). We’re one of the better bands in Alamogordo, but you can’t really compare us to LEATHERWOLF or KINGS OF THRASH or any of the bands I worked with.”
At the end of high school, you played in several cover bands for a while and performed in bars in Orange County. What was that like?
“We played a lot in clubs in East St. Louis, a neighbourhood which was a bit more rough. We played at later hours, and we played a really broad variety of music. We did current Rock stuff which you would hear on the radio, this was the mid to late ’70s. We did old Rock’n’Roll stuff like CHUCK BERRY and things like that. And we also did Country. It was really diverse, we just tried to keep the audience happy. In Orange County, there was a circuit of clubs and a couple of bands which played these clubs. We’d do six nights in a certain club, and then do two weeks in another and just keep rotating around in the different clubs. Later on, we had two female singers, and we did HEART, FLEETWOOD MAC, THE PRETENDERS, PAT BENETAR… just stuff that was popular and which you heard on the radio back then. Since the girls could sing really high, we also did LED ZEPPELIN and JOURNEY and some other stuff. That was a very different scene with really young people who were into the current styles. That band was very professional and we reached a lot of people. We had a big following in Orange County. It was a lot of fun, but after doing that for a couple of years, it was clear to me that I needed to do something to get out of it. Once you’re there and you’re doing it for a while, you start to wonder what you’re going to do next. And so I formed a new band, MENAGE, with one of the singers of our Orange County band, Linda Schultz. We started writing our own material and recorded those songs in our apartment (laughs). We got signed to a management deal, which was basically a record deal that the management company was going to resell to a record company. Bands would do showcases in Hollywood for record companies. The whole point was to try to get signed by a major label. However, we didn’t play that many gigs with MENAGE in the end. We weren’t together that long because our drummer Marc Droubay left the band and joined SURVIVOR. Our management company wanted to sue Marc. I didn’t want to go along with that, and so they kicked us off the management deal. I was kind of disgusted with the whole thing and moved to Hollywood afterwards.”
When did you start working as a sound engineer?
“After I moved to California, my parents followed me since my father changed jobs and started to work in California. I put together a small studio in their garage back then. That’s how I started recording other people’s music. Friends of mine heard that I was recording in my garage and wanted to know if I could record their band. That’s basically how I got started. I met a guy a bit later who had a recording studio in a shopping mall. He was moving out of that space into a larger space, and so I decided to lease that space and gave him some money for everything that was in there like the control room with the speakers and everything. I moved the little equipment I had from my parent’s garage to that place, and I recorded a couple of cool albums there. The biggest one was a Punk compilation titled “Hell Comes To Your House”.”
That album features bands like SOCIAL DISTORTION, RED KROSS and CHRISTIAN DEATH among others. I’d say those are pretty big names.
“They weren’t at the time. They became pretty big later on, but they were definitely not that known back then. I was mainly just at the right place at the right time. The two guys who got that whole thing going and asked me to do that were Steve Sinclair and Ron Goudy. They both became executives at independent record companies. Steve went to Combat Records which became Relativity later on, and Ron went to Enigma Records. Those two guys gave me most of my work later on. The really big stuff came from Steve. However, we started with “Hell Comes To Your House”. That compilation turned out really well, it still sounds pretty good. We recorded it with an 8-track recorder and a 12-channel mixing board. It’s a very decent record with a few great bands on there.”
Would you say that when you started working as an engineer in a studio, things went pretty smoothly right from the start or did it take you some time to find your way?
“I was just an engineer and I wasn’t thinking about producing albums necessarily. All those Punk bands had different people producing their music. I was just trying to find out how to make it sound good. I seemed to catch on to that right away, I seemed to have a knack for that. Working with whatever kind of gear I had at the time certainly helped as well. I got the basic idea of engineering and how to make things sound good almost right away.”
Did you work as an engineer in various studios in Los Angeles when you started out? I’m mainly asking because when I was checking the albums you worked on, I noticed that most of them were recorded in Music Grinder, a studio located on Melrose Avenue in Hollywood.
“Music Grinder was one of the places where I was a staff engineer, so a second engineer. I was a salary-employee. I sometimes worked seven days a week, but often also six days a week. I worked really long hours. You also had to clean the studio and do all the other stuff, but I also learned how to control the tape-machine and do all the technical stuff. I did some really great stuff as an assistant engineer. I got to work on a JEAN-LUC PONTY album with Allan Holdsworth, that was just magical. I also did one song with TOTO which was a song for George Benson. The keyboard player of TOTO – David Paich – wrote that song. That was also a really fun session. There was a TV show titled “Star Search” back then, which was like an early version of “America’s Got Talent”. Those guys used to come in all the time and do sessions. The funny thing is that I got fired from that job because I kept talking to the clients (laughs). I was supposed to be unheard and I had to stop talking to the clients. They told me I was not a good fit for a second producer, and that I was more like a producer. They told me to go out and find some bands, and then come back and rent the studio. I had to become a producer, they told me that was something I was going to be good at. I did that, and it all worked out in the end, but I had to work as a staff engineer first before I got some big gigs like the debut album of SUICIDAL TENDENCIES. That album opened a lot of doors for me. Lisa Fancher of Frontier Records hired me and gave me the engineer duties for that album because she had heard what I had done on “Hell Comes To Your House” with CHRISTIAN DEATH. Pretty much my whole career is due to the fact that I did that compilation. I don’t know what would have happened otherwise, but pretty much everything that came after that was because of that record.”
Music Grinder had an in-house engineer Casey McMackin. He would become a frequent collaborator with you on future projects.
“That’s right. When I returned to Music Grinder, I had kind of a system. I would record the drums at Music Grinder which was a rather big studio. I would take those recordings and then go to a much smaller studio which was less expensive, and do all the guitar overdubs and the vocal overdubs there. Then we would return to Music Grinder to mix it. It was a formula for me to make high quality records for not much money which the independent record labels obviously liked. When I came back there, Casey was one of the staff engineers, and so I hired him as the first engineer to help me. He was a really good engineer, and secondly I was learning more about producing. It’s helpful to have two people to do those jobs. Sometimes you can do everything by yourself and it would work out just fine, but I was trying to focus on managing the whole session and taking care of what people and bands needed to be there in the right frame of mind. Eventually we parted ways because I got the feeling that he was competing with me, but we did some great stuff together like MEGADETH, DEATH and some NUCLEAR ASSAULT.”
You said that “Hell Comes To Your House” led you to being hired to engineer the self-titled debut album of SUICIDAL TENDENCIES together with producer Glen E. Friedman. SUICIDAL TENDENCIES was a band with a very own sound, like a cross between Punk, Hardcore and Metal.
“Absolutely. When we did that record, it was still a time where Metal fans and Punks didn’t get along at all. If a guy with long hair stumbled in the wrong Punk show, he might get into a fight and beat up. That wasn’t unheard of. There was particularly rivalry between the Huntington Beach Punks and the Hollywood Metal guys. They really hated each other. When SUICIDAL TENDENCIES walked into the studio, three of them looked like they were part of a Venice Beach gang and the other one had hair passed his shoulders. Visually, it was literally those scenes coming together, and that’s what the band sounded like. They were a Punk band with a Metal guitar player. SUICIDAL TENDENCIES were very groundbreaking and hugely influential. They really led the way for the merging of Hardcore, Punk and Metal.”
SUICIDAL TENDENCIES was a pretty controversial band back then, and not only because of their band name. Did you also notice that vibe back then?
“Not really. I was already obsessed with trying to make good records. I was extremely motivated and singleminded about it. I didn’t think about any of those other things. All I cared about was how the record was going to sound. We had a low budget, we had to work fast, and so I had to get things right the first time. I did start cutting my hair back then kind of mid-length. It wasn’t long and it wasn’t short. That way I was kind of neutral when I went to Punk sessions or when I would go to see Metalbands. Nobody would identify that way as being part of the ‘other group’ (laughs). When bands came over to record, it was often their first time in a studio. And whether they were Punk or Metal bands, they often went like ‘That’s not real Punk!’ or ‘That’s not real Metal!’. I had no patience with that. I always told them that they shouldn’t think like that. Just do what you do, be true to yourself and don’t worry about what other people may think.”
It seems like the music which SUICIDAL TENDENCIES played was a genre you felt very comfortable with if you take into account that you also worked with bands like LUDICHRIST, CRUMBSUCKERS, EXCEL and UNCLE SLAM later on.
“Oh, absolutely! I loved the Punk attitude. You know… we don’t give a fuck, we’re going to break all the rules! It was fun to go to the studio with such bands and make records like that (laughs). LUDICHRIST and CRUMBSUCKERS are two of my favourite bands of all time, LUDICHRIST in particular. There’s no genre of music that I don’t like, and that’s always been very helpful in order to get into what people are doing. Steve Sinclair signed all those bands and sent them over to me to make albums.”
In 1985, you were hired by Steve to produce “Seven Churches”, the debut album of POSSESSED. Had you already heard from the band before when they contacted you to do that job, and what was your opinion when you heard their music for the first time?
“I hadn’t heard of them before. “Seven Churches” was the first extreme Metal album that I ever did. I thought it was going to be really hard to record their music, and it was. It was very challenging to capture their music on tape. Nowadays, people know how to do that, but back then all that was totally new. We were breaking ground with that album. The interesting thing is that I had just finished working with the band STRYPER when I got the POSSESSED job. There was literally one week between those two bands. It’s funny when you think about the irony of that, but POSSESSED was a really great band. They worked hard in the studio. Almost all of those bands fit the same profile back then. They worked hard and were very determined and organised and performed well in the studio. Beyond that, they all seemed to be similar in the sense that they were just young guys that liked beer, girls and horror movies. They weren’t complicated and strange people or anything like that. They were just regular guys, doing their thing.”
Jeff Becerra and Larry Lalonde were both only 16 when the album was recorded. What did you think of the band as songwriters?
“I wasn’t really focussed on how I would interpret their songs. My approach back then which I always kept, is that the bands knew best how their sound should be. That approach was partly driven by my management deal with my original band. I recorded a few songs back then in a professional studio, and when I listen to them now, I notice what the producer tried to do. He wanted us to sound like a poppy version of PAT BENETAR, and we weren’t anything like that. We were much heavier than that. I hated that whole approach so much, and I resented that guy for imposing his ideas and his vision on me because that’s how those recordings sounded like. My vision of how my band should sound was gone. I found that incredibly frustrating. Whenever I was in the studio with people, and they told me they wanted to sound like this kind of band or that way, I always tried to listen to them and do exactly what they wanted and tried to capture what they were really like.”
Was there anyone in the band taking charge or was “Seven Churches” really like a group effort?
“I had the idea that their original guitar player Mike Torrao and Jeff Becerra were the guys who did most of the writing, and were the driving force behind the band. I tried to capture what they tried to do. The thing that’s interesting about “Seven Churches” and POSSESSED is that I was just starting out as an independent producer at the time. Other people I knew back then who were into engineering and producing looked at what I was doing over there with POSSESSED, and were going like ‘Why are you doing this? This isn’t going to go anywhere!’ (laughs). However, my approach was ‘They’re a artists, and it’s my job to capture their sound and get it on tape.’ People didn’t take POSSESSED seriously at all and thought that I was just wasting my time. I heard that more than once back then, which is kind of interesting when you look back at that album nowadays.”
“Seven Churches” was recorded at the Prairie Sun Studios. The rumour has it that Prairie Sun Studios also housed a chicken ranch back then. Is that correct?
“Prairie Sun was a real and big farm out in the country which had a really good studio. They also had great people to work with. I don’t remember if they also housed chickens. However, I do remember that there was a kind of bunk house where the band stayed, they were all there together. They had a separate and little apartment for me which was a bit nicer. I thought the whole recording session was really fun, they were great guys.”
You played the opening parts of the track ‘The Exorcist’ which is your version of MIKE OLDFIELD’s ‘Tubular Bells’. Was that an idea of the band?
“I think the band asked me to do that, and I was like ‘Sure!’. We kind of put the whole intro of ‘The Exorcist’ together with all of us. I first listened to MIKE OLDFIELD’s version and learned how to play the basic parts, and I took it from there. It was not such a big deal on my part. I went to music school and I knew how to play keyboards and learned how to arrange things. That was very valuable later on.”
You told that you had just finished working with STRYPER. The whole approach of POSSESSED was the total opposite and very obscure and sort of satanic. Could you somehow relate to what they wanted to do, or did you look at it more like ‘innocent and youthful flirting with satanism’?
“I can very well remember being in the studio all by myself late at night working on mixes, and thinking ‘This stuff is a little scary!’ (laughs). I had to take a break from time to time and walk around a little bit. However, I didn’t take the whole satanic thing very seriously, because they were just interested in the stuff every teenager was interested in like girls, beer and horror movies, like I said. They weren’t doing any weird stuff whatsoever. STRYPER, on the other hand, they were very serious christians. I did their first EP together with Ron Goudie which was titled “The Yellow And Black Attack”. I distinctly remember that it was very weird being in the studio with them. Before they would come out to do a take in the studio, they would grab Ron and me to get into a circle and pray together. They were incredibly nice guys and everything, but the contrast between those two bands couldn’t be bigger. If POSSESSED were going to get in trouble, it was because they were drinking beer which they weren’t supposed to. STRYPER were very seriously living the newborn christian life. Jesus was a big part of what they were doing.”
“Seven Churches” was recorded in one week in March / April 1985 during Spring Break because the band members had to go back to school after the recordings. Did you have the feeling back then that things had to be done pretty fast because the time was limited?
“No, I wouldn’t say so. We had to do things fast because we had a small budget. Combat was really tight with the money. Combat was a business, and I got a lot of clients via them because my methodology produced pretty good sounding albums for not that much money. I don’t like the sound of many of those records nowadays. I don’t like the mixing. I think I was a really good engineer, I was really good at getting the stuff on tape. However, I wasn’t an assistant long enough to learn the part of mixing. I’ve been mixing again for the past few years. I quit my job and bought some equipment, and I became way better at mixing. We mixed an album most of the time in a day and a half back then. We didn’t take enough time to mix an album back then because there was just no money to do that.”
Shortly after recording “Seven Churches”, you decided to leave the music business with the intention of going back to school to study computer science. However, Steve Sinclair urged you to come over to Los Angeles to check out a rehearsal of Combat’s latest signing, MEGADETH. You watched the band do a rehearsal. MEGADETH came right off the road at the time, they were very tight. Apparently you were immediately convinced to work with them.
“That’s indeed the story (laughs). When I saw them play the songs of “Peace Sells… But Who’s Buying?”, it was the only time in my life that I immediately had a feeling like ‘This is going to be an important and huge record!’. This is going to be the thing you only get the chance to do once in your lifetime. I quit school the next day, moved to Hollywood and told Steve that I was in. It was a no-brainer, because they were so good. I had never seen a band play that good before, and very few since.”
Were all the songs of “Peace Sells… But Who’s Buying?” already written and completely worked out when you started recording? Or was there still any songwriting that needed to be done?
“They had the album down. There were things that they still worked on in the studio and which were kind of left open, like for example a part where a solo of Chris Poland had to come in. Some of those things were really exciting to see come to life in the studio, as we didn’t know what was going to happen beforehand. However, most of it was already worked out. Dave wrote all of his solos in advance, that’s the way he’s always done it. Whereas Chris just picks up the guitar and plays. He’ll play things differently on different days.”
Which songs on “Peace Sells… But Who’s Buying?” were standing out in your opinion? Personally, I always thought that the opener ‘Wake Up Dead’ is just great. The middle section of that song when the guitar solos come in is still just fantastic.
“That’s a tough one because the songs on that album are so good. I really like ‘Wake Up Dead, ‘The Conjuring’, ‘Good Mourning / Black Friday’… . However, there’s a groove in almost every song, and they’re all so catchy. It was just so exciting to record all that stuff. I did my usual thing. We went to Music Grinder, and I rented drums from a guy called the Drum Doctor. He would bring out the exact same kit as the drummer played, and set them up the same way. When drummer Gar Samuelson would come in, he just brought his pedals. We would spend about 20 minutes getting the sound right, and then we would start recording. We basically recorded the drum parts in Music Grinder, but everybody was playing at the same time. I would be in the control room with Casey listening to the stuff, and we were just blown away. I feel very fortunate that I was at that place at that time and witnessed all that.”
Dave Mustaine and David Ellefson were both homeless at the time. Guitarist Chris Poland and drummer Gar Samuelson would often be absent for hours because of their heroin addiction. That must have made things not exactly easy when it comes to recording that album.
“It’s correct that Dave and David were homeless. I was living just a few miles away from the studio, and so Dave spent a few nights on my girlfriend’s couch. Chris asked for my car, and used it to get around. They didn’t miss a lot of time because they were doing drugs. There were just a few times that they couldn’t score in the morning, and so they were sick. They couldn’t play when they were sick. They had to go out to get drugs. That’s the curse of heroin, it’s an awful drug. However, it didn’t interfere that much with recording. There were a few mornings where we were ready to go and Chris and Gar weren’t, because they weren’t able to score. There were several times where I gave them some money, and they went out and got some drugs and came back and we recorded for the rest of the day. I must say that the drugs didn’t affect their performance. They were able to perform at an extremely high level. A lot of people have this misconception that you can’t perform at a high level when you’re high, but that’s simply not true. The main challenge was to get everybody in the studio and get everybody in the right space, and manage all of this outside stuff. Dave would tell me not to give them my money, but we had to make a record. If that was needed to get the band record that morning, that was what I was going to do.”
It is mentioned on the sleeve of “Peace Sells… But Who’s Buying?” that the album was produced by Dave Mustaine and you. How much was Dave involved?
“He was the guy who decided how the songs were going to go. He didn’t have that much to do with getting the sound right and capturing things. That was my gig. However, he was totally in control of what was going to happen musically. So he was definitely a producer in the sense that “Peace Sells… But Who’s Buying?” was totally his vision. The album has his songs and his arrangements. All of the decisions were made by Dave. I admired Chris Poland much more as a guitar player than Dave Mustaine. That’s the one thing that caused some friction between Dave and me. We got along fine, but I was immediately blown away by the playing of Chris. When he put his hands on the guitar, it was just magic. This beautiful tone would come out, and it was fluent and melodic. It was just amazing. I didn’t like the way Dave sounded. Dave had a very harsh and aggressive sound which he got by using his pick a certain way. Even though he played some clever parts, it was the sound that Chris made that I thought that was just magical. Dave didn’t appreciate that at all, but it wasn’t a really big deal.”
I read in a very old article that the guys of METALLICA also came by in the studio back then when MEGADETH was recording “Peace Sells… But Who’s Buying?”.
“They did. It was a pleasant meeting. They came to the control room, and we played them a couple of songs. Everybody chatted and everybody was friendly. They were just nice guys. They just stepped by to say ‘Hi’ and hear a couple of songs. That was basically it. There was a lot of buzz going around in Hollywood at the time when MEGADETH was recording “Peace Sells… But Who’s Buying?”. The word was going around that MEGADETH was in the studio, and that they were just killing it. People would hear a little bit of the album here and there, and they would tell other people. When we were halfway into the recordings, the phone was ringing all the time. All the record companies wanted to talk to Dave. They didn’t have Dave’s number, and so they just called the studio.”
Keeping the area in mind where you lived, I was wondering if a possibility to work together with SLAYER never came up back then?
“SLAYER didn’t have a deal with Combat. They were on Metal Blade, and they also had great producers. I still think that what Rick Rubin did with “Reign In Blood” is just brilliant. SLAYER got one of the greatest producers ever to work with. They certainly knew what they were doing.”
Has there ever been a band you would have really loved to work with, but somehow that didn’t happen?
“I got the offer to work together with SOUNDGARDEN. That was around the time when they did their debut album “Ultramega OK”. Their record company flew me to Chicago to see them play and talk to them, and then I flew to Seattle from Los Angeles. I just got back from Australia, I recorded an album with MORTAL SIN there. I had been out of the country for a long time, and my girlfriend was not happy about that. When I saw the guys of SOUNDGARDEN, I asked them where they wanted to record. They had some really nice studios in Seattle, but I wanted to work in Music Grinder. I also wanted to wake up in my own bed in the morning for a while, have a cup of coffee, go down to the studio, do some work and go home in the evening. They understood that and felt the same. I pretty much had that gig, but I talked them out of it somehow by telling them how great it was to record in your own city.”
Apparently there was also talk of working with PANTERA at a certain point. For which album was that?
“Steve mentioned them to me at one point. PANTERA didn’t have a deal with Combat, so I don’t remember what the deal was. I just remember that Steve mentioned PANTERA to me at one point, and that there was a possibility to do an album with them. That’s really all it was. However, you must keep in mind that the proposal was coming from Steve Sinclair. When he said that he might get me a gig, 9 times out of 10 I would get the gig. It wasn’t just some random thing.”
You said in an interview that there has been one band you also had the offer to work together with which you declined. In the end, you were very happy with your decision. That band was THE GREAT KAT. She’s always been a very strange person and musician. The strange thing is that THE GREAT KAT is apparently still around, and that she has even released nine albums so far this year.
“I didn’t know that (laughs). I just didn’t care for what she was doing. The main reason why I turned her down was because when she got on the phone with me, she was just screaming at me. When I turned her down, she said that I was going to regret it for the rest of my life. I didn’t want to be around that person. She was not someone I wanted to work with.”
In 1986, you recorded “Darkness Desecends” with DARK ANGEL. “Darkness Descends” was the last DARK ANGEL album to feature original vocalist Don Doty and the first album to feature drummer Gene Hoglan. Were you already familiar with Gene at the time because he was already quite known in the scene back then as far as I know.
“I wasn’t aware of what Gene Hoglan had done previously at the time. When DARK ANGEL was in the studio, both Casey and I were just blown away by his performance. Gene is just a monster behind the drums. His playing was just so powerful. We had just done MEGADETH previously, and then this guy comes in (laughs). He was brilliant right from the start. The thing that I remember the most about “Darkness Descends” was his drumming. I’ve been hanging around with Gene quite a bit this past year. DARK ANGEL played “Darkness Descends” in its entirety in San Francisco as a sort of tribute to Jim Durkin, their guitar player who passed away in 2023. I went to that show and got to hang out with them. A couple of weeks ago, I saw DEATH TO ALL play in Los Angeles. They did “Scream Bloody Gore” in its entirety. Gene told me that the drumsound on “Darkness Descends” is the best drum sound he had ever gotten. He’s never been able to achieve that again. I was really taken aback by that, and listened to the album again at home because I wanted to figure out why he was saying that (laughs).”
When you listen to “Darkness Descends”, you hear a band firing on all cylinders. You can really feel that the band is totally going for it.
“We recorded the album during day time, and I still remember that there was some friction between the band and me at one point. When Don Doty was doing his vocals, they were screaming and yelling at him and just giving him a hard time. I told them that they couldn’t do that, and that it wasn’t going to motivate their singer. I made the rest of the band leave when Doty did his vocals. I talked to Eric Meyer and Gene Hoglan about it, and both of them remembered that situation really well. They said that I had it wrong when I tried to take control of the recording session and said that they had to go. They both said that Don Doty was a dumb ass, and that he needed a lot of direction. When they screamed at him, he did better (laughs). I wasn’t giving the right kind of direction and they were. It was pretty intense at the time. I thought it was my session and my job, and I wasn’t okay with the approach of just taking down their singer. I wasn’t comfortable with that approach. I would probably do the same thing today. I think that Eric was also taken aback a little by how wild and crazy Casey and I were back then. I had a serious problem with alcohol back then. I also took amphetamines, that was my choice of drugs so I would be alert and could work late at night. We also weren’t shy about our use of drugs and alcohol, we didn’t care if people would see us using or not. The problem with that is that it affects your judgement. You’re functioning at a high level, and so your judgement is going to be impaired. I got sober in 1989 and I’ve been sober ever since. It’s one of the reasons why I’m enjoying mixing again so much these days. You need to be very focussed and you need to make good decisions when you’re mixing.”
“Darkness Descends” has been cited as a major influence on the Death Metal and Thrash Metal scene. I can still vividly remember the discussions which were held about which album was the heaviest, “Reign In Blood” or “Darkness Descends”.
“By the time we got to “Darkness Descends”, I understood that this was the genre I’m in. Steve and I understood the elements of this kind of music, and we were achieving in capturing the aggressiveness and the brutality on tape. We also wanted to become better at it and go further. We didn’t care what other people thought.”
Did you sometimes also accompany bands on the road to take care of their sound as a sound guy or did you just focus on working in the studio?
“No, I didn’t do live sound back then. I did some live sound for a few Punk bands. All the Punk bands wanted to play at the Whiskey A Go Go, that was the big place to play. I lived in a room with my roommate just behind that venue, and so I did a lot of live sound for the Punk bands I recorded.”
“Scream Bloody Gore”, the debut album of DEATH, was released at the end of May 1987. Therefore, I guess that you started recording that album with the band at the end of 1986?
“That’s correct, that was right after “Darkness Descends”. I was still working with Casey back then. We were getting our technique and our methodology down for recording this stuff. “Scream Bloody Gore” is one of the best if you look at how powerful that album is. Chuck did a great job on the guitar and the bass and the vocals. That album came out really good.”
The demos and rehearsal tapes of DEATH had been going around in the underground scene for many years before they recorded “Scream Bloody Gore”. Were you already familiar with their music somehow before you met the band?
“No, I wasn’t. My whole approach was always ‘Tell me about your band, tell me how you want to sound like, and I will capture that and put it on tape for you!’. That was my whole thing. I didn’t do a lot of pre-production. I made sure that the instruments were good and that the set-up was good, making sure that everything that we were going to record was the best and in perfect condition. Good bands also knew what they were doing. They had rehearsed their songs, and they could play the parts. It was just a matter of getting that big sound of the recording on tape. Chuck Schuldiner was 19 and Chris Reifert was 18 at the time, they were both still very young. When I was in the studio with SOCIAL DIISTORTION in 1980, they were all like 16 and they were drinking beer. I was often the only adult over 21, and I sometimes thought that I could really get in trouble. Chuck drank some beer sometimes and smoked a little pot. When they were in the studio, I sometimes also had the thought like ‘This will not be good if people find out what’s going on here.’ (laughs). Over here in the US, it’s really frowned upon if adults make drugs and alcohol available to minors. It’s illegal and you can get really into trouble for that. It’s a thought that crossed my mind a few times when I was in the studio with these really young guys.”
You had already recorded POSSESSED and DARK ANGEL before, so you were already familiar with rather extreme and heavy music. Nevertheless, I’d say that “Scream Bloody Gore” is a whole other level when it comes to brutality. Did you have that feeling as well when you started recording the album?
“I just thought they were a really good band, and I immediately had the feeling that this was going to be a really great record. It wasn’t like this one is going to be more brutal than that one or whatever. We were just embracing the idea of aggressiveness and brutality and how to get that on a record. Chuck worked very hard and was very efficient, and we just got things done. “Scream Bloody Gore” came out so good because we spent a lot of time on getting things right.”
“Scream Bloody Gore” was first recorded in Florida in July 1986. However, the band was unsatisfied with the recording upon hearing the initial rhythm tracks, and so they travelled to Los Angeles to re-record “Scream Bloody Gore” with you. Did you get to hear those first recorded sessions at the time?
“I didn’t listen to them back then, and I didn’t listen to them afterwards but I may do that just out of curiosity. People were coming to me because I was doing a good job. All those extreme bands also talked to each other and talked to each other about my work. I wasn’t really interested in the next big thing or anything like that. I wasn’t listening to a lot of records when I wasn’t working back then. You know, my biggest regret is that I didn’t become sober sooner. When I got sober, I needed to get away from Hollywood and all of that stuff for a while. I’m sure I would have had a different life if I would have gotten away from alcohol sooner. I would have worked a lot harder and I would have been more professional. I think I would have understood sooner what the elements are that make certain records great.”
The Florida sessions which were recorded in July 1986 are included as bonus material on a Relapse issue. What strikes me the most is that ‘Legion Of Doom’ was still included at the time, a song that didn’t make the album in the end. I was therefore wondering if you maybe gave the band advice which songs to pick for the album when they were recording together with you, like ‘This song is stronger, I would leave that one out.’ or something like that?
“No, I didn’t. Chuck just knew exactly what he wanted to do. I didn’t give him any advice when it came to that. He would talk about certain parts of songs, and if it sounded messy or not quite right, we would bring him into the studio and ask what’s going on. It was more generally pointing out that certain parts could be better. He would then change his playing a little bit in order to make it sound tight. We were doing that when we did the bass and the guitar overdubs. But that was pretty much it. I sometimes gave bands advice from a songwriting perspective. I always told them that they should look for parts where they leave out instruments, like ‘This section will sound cool if you just keep the bass and the drums, and when you bring in the guitar later’. Bands were really receptive to that, especially when they played really fast. If you listen to the middle section of ‘Zombie Ritual’, that’s a perfect example. It just sounds huge that way.”
I had “Scream Bloody Gore” first as a recording of a vinyl version on a cassette. I was very surprised when I stumbled upon the CD version later on, and noticed that the CD version had two more songs: ‘Beyond The Unholy Grave’ and ‘Land Of No Return’. The CD version lasts around 44 minutes, so those two songs would have fit on the vinyl version as well. Do you know why those two songs were left off, because ‘Beyond The Unholy Grave’ is one of the best DEATH tracks ever.
“I don’t know. I don’t think I mastered that album. I think Chuck took the tapes and mastered the recordings in Florida. I can’t tell you much more about that.”
The artwork of “Scream Bloody Gore” was done by Ed Repka. Was he sort of the guy to go to for Combat as he made artwork for many of their bands?
“You’d have to talk to Steve for that. I just took care of the recordings, and that was the end of it for me. I’m currently trying to learn more about how the music business works, because I just don’t know. When you work exclusively for a label like I did back then, they have people who take care of the artwork, copyright and all the legal stuff. There were very different departments back then.”
What went through your mind when you held the finished album with the artwork and everything in your hands for the first time? I’m just asking because “Scream Bloody Gore” is almost like the perfect album to me. It has great songs, tight playing, an excellent sound and production, brutal lyrics and fantastic artwork. Everything just fits together perfectly.
“I don’t know to be honest. When I had delivered the masters of an album to the record company, I would just start with the next record. I didn’t spend a lot of time at home looking at my albums or follow what was going on or any of that. I just made records. I really wished that I would have taken more pictures back then. I have almost no pictures at all of me working with bands in the studio back then. It just never occurred to me that I should do that. I never realised at the time that those albums would be famous one day, except for “Peace Sells… But Who’s Buying?” because that was a very exceptional album. There were also records I did which I thought were really great and which didn’t do much. EXCEL is a good example. I thought they were a really good band, but they didn’t do anything.”
In December 1986, you were in the studio with NUCLEAR ASSAULT for “The Plague”, an EP with some old and new material. You also did the albums “Survive” and “Handle With Care” with them later on. I sometimes wonder why NUCLEAR ASSAULT doesn’t get mentioned more. I mean, their thrashy songs are great. And they also had some really extreme stuff which was even close to Grindcore and bands like REPULSION if you consider a track like ‘Hang The Pope’, ‘My America’ or ‘Lesbians’.
“I did a whole bunch of albums right in a row back then. There was a lot going on between 1984 and 1988. NUCLEAR ASSAULT was a band from New York. The Thrash scene in New York was very closely tied to the Hardcore / Punk scene, and you could also hear that. NUCLEAR ASSAULT had their roots in the Punk scene. They also had a sort of Punk attitude and the Punk outlook on things. They didn’t care if they would be played on the radio or not. I’d say it was their New York Punk influence that inspired their really short and extreme songs.”
It’s interesting that you mentioned NUCLEAR ASSAULT had a Punk outlook on things because their lyrics were very socially aware and quite interesting.
“Absolutely! The Punks were very enlightened and socially conscious. The Hair Metal bands, all they sang about were girls and parties (laughs).”
If you listen to the NUCLEAR ASSAULT albums you produced, you can always hear the bass of Dan Lilker very well. Take a track like ‘Critical Mass’ for example. It’s very up front in the mix.
“Absolutely! Dan Lilker was great. He was just a great bass player, and he had a great sound. We just went for it, that was part of our deal. Turn that thing up and make it sound really loud (laughs)!”
Besides all those mainly American bands, you also worked with the German Thrash Metal band KREATOR. I read in an interview with frontman Mille that they wanted to work with you back then because of the sound of “Peace Sells… But Who’s Buying?”.
“I don’t know, but I can imagine that “Peace Sells… But Who’s Buying?” was an influence. The first time I worked together with KREATOR was in 1989 when we did “Extreme Aggression”. “Peace Sells… But Who’s Buying?” had been out by then for a couple of years, and was still doing really well. Noise Records contacted my management company because KREATOR wanted to work together with me. So I listened to some of their stuff and I was on board because I thought they were very good. We recorded “Extreme Aggression” first in Germany in the Hansa studio in Berlin, a studio which Noise Records used quite often back then. However, I just couldn’t get the sound right like I could at Music Grinder. We were in this little studio in Berlin and I just couldn’t make the recordings sound like they were supposed to sound. I proposed to move the whole thing over to Hollywood and they didn’t want to do it at first because it was very expensive, but in the end they did. When we arrived in the environment I was used to, it was smooth sailing all the way. When KREATOR did their next album “Coma Of Souls”, they didn’t even talk about working in Berlin. They went straight to Hollywood at that time.”
“Coma Of Souls” was recorded in the summer of 1990. That album has a far more clean production, but I think that the songs on that album are a lot stronger compared to “Extreme Aggression”.
“I think the band just progressed. A lot of people seem to prefer “Extreme Aggression” because it’s more raw. “Coma Of Souls” is somehow too refined and too nice for them. They’re definitely different, but I like both albums. However, I’d say I prefer “Extreme Aggression” a bit more because it’s more intense. Mille was a great guy to work with. He’s very talented and also very nice as a person. He really stood out.”
One of the last more extreme albums you worked on was “Cursed”, the debut album of the German Death Metal band MORGOTH. Apparently Mille of KREATOR advised them to go to you to mix the album. The songs on “Cursed” have this dark edge to it which was really something special. Did you have that feeling as well?
“I remember doing that album, but I don’t have that strong feelings about it to be honest. It was just work. I don’t think that the band even came over to Hollywood. At least I can’t remember that I spent any time with those guys. I think I just got the recordings to work with.”
Have you never thought about writing a book about your career? I’m pretty sure that many people would be interested in reading something like that.
“It crossed my mind a couple of times, but it seems a little egotistical to me. There seems to be a real resurgence in the interest of what happened in the ’80s when it comes to Metal. Mike Gonzalez, the bass player of DARK ANGEL, lives pretty nearby. I sometimes see him. They toured a lot last year. They went to Europe, South America and did a bunch of shows in the US. DARK ANGEL is way bigger now compared to 1989 and 1990 when he joined the band. You can see that there’s a new generation that is eager to pick up all the old stuff.”
When did you take a break from the music scene and what were your main reasons at the time?
“I got sober in 1989, like I said. It wasn’t just a casual thing, I had a serious drug and alcohol problem. People were regularly dying because of heroin, and so I wanted to get away from all that. I associated the partying and all that with the music, and I felt like I needed to get away from all that. That wasn’t the right decision, it doesn’t make sense to me nowadays, and I did regret that decision later on. My girlfriend at the time got pregnant, and I can vividly remember her saying she was nursing the baby to the sound of police helicopters, which was true. When the windows were open in the summer, you could hear the helicopters going up and down the road all the time. She thought we should raise our child elsewhere, and that’s when we moved to Portland, Oregon. When we got there, I focussed on raising our children, because we also got a second child. I didn’t think about the music scene anymore at all. I focussed on my work in the computer business and my children and my family. In 2013, I had a heart attack. When I was laying on the floor and when it was starting to become clear to me what was going on and I started to realize that I might not make it, I didn’t think about my kids or my wife or the things people usually seem to think of. All I thought was that I needed to be doing music (laughs). I felt like I wasn’t ready to die yet. That’s when I started thinking seriously about returning to the scene. A little later, I bought some new equipment, monitors and computers. I bought a new house in 2017 and installed a good mixing room in my garage. In 2020, my second wife died from cancer. All of a sudden I was alone in my house without my wife. The kids were out of the house and grown up. The whole pandemic situation made me realize that I didn’t want to just sit around anymore and lose more time. I sold the house, moved to a new place, bought professional monitors and that’s what got me going again. Once I had those, I could mix again. I’m really having a good time right now. I go to a lot of concerts, I get to hang around with people. I saw MEGADETH again last year. Hearing the crowd sing along with ‘Peace Sells… But Who’s Buying?’ gave me a great feeling. Those are full circle moments. You’re back where you were before. I’m really enjoying the work I’m doing right now. It’s all about music again. I get to mix stuff again, I just did a remix of the CHRIS POLAND album “Return To Metalopolis”. I picked up guitar playing again. I joined a new band, GO AXE ALICE, like I said. We’re going to play at the Whiskey A Go Go in about two weeks. We’re supporting the band BRITTNY’S RAGE that evening.”
Back in the days, you recorded albums on tape. The breakthrough of the internet completely changed the music industry the past 30 years. Was it easy to sort of pick things up where you left them when it comes to working and mixing?
“Not really. Not until I spent about 8000 dollar on speakers. Then it occurred to me that I really needed those speakers, because I struggled before. Before that, I would try to do the mixes in my garage, and they were okay, but they never sounded really awesome. I now have a room which is great, everything sounds very good in here. I can finally hear what I’m doing. I’m very happy I made that investment, because it’s been very rewarding.”
Nowadays, many bands record their albums at home or in their rehearsal room by themselves. You said in an interview that many bands could benefit from a professional mix. How can you help them?
“My target market for my business are the DIY-bands who are doing recordings in their own house. You can get so far with that, but you need to have a real room with speakers. What I can do is take their home recording, and elevate that quite a bit so it will sound much more professional. I recently bought an analogue mixing system, but I’ve also got digital components. I really like that. I can guarantee that there will be a big difference between the mix that I can provide and the mix DIY-bands will come with. I’m about to finish my new control room, I’ll move in there pretty soon. It’s designed by a studio designer. I got a whole bunch of stuff I’m currently working on. If people want to contact me for future projects, they can send me an e-mail (randyburnsmusic@gmail.com) or reach out to me via Facebook.”
www.facebook.com/randyburnsproducer, www.reverbnation.com/randyburnsmusic
Pictures provided by Randy Burns
Interview: Steven Willems