Ben Falgoust

Goatwhore

Sinking their teeth into the flesh of the underworld, the US Black / Death Metal GOATWHORE maintain their ferocity with vengeance. About to release "Constricting Rage Of The Merciless" via Metal Blade Records, Ben Falgoust, lead vocals, talked to Michael Coyle regarding the new album and more…
By Michael Coyle
July 10, 2014
Interview - Ben Falgoust (Goatwhore) interview
Greetings Ben, thanks for doing this interview for Metal Temple, How are you?

I'm doing good, I'm doing really good, were not on tour or anything right now, just kinda at home, I have a job when I'm at home, I do that right now and we start up around July 5th, we do some shows to get out to the summer slaughter tour in the US, we'll be doing that with Morbid Angel, Dying Fetus, Decrepit Birth, Origin numerous other bands, after that we do the Gwar bq Mr David Brockie.

Yea, it was a shame what happened to him

Yea, that's a horrible thing but it's really cool that we get to do this which is amazing, and the record drops July 8th here, not sure on the dates, somewhere around that time around Europe and the UK and everywhere else as well, you know from there were gonna start rehearsing this Friday, our guys  Zack lives in Arizona, James lives in Florida and they just come in and we start rehearsing getting things together  getting the set together and making sure we play properly instead of sloppily (laughs), but pretty much what's going on, nothing fancy ye know I don't have like a big mansion, sitting by the pool drinking vodka and anything like that.

Nah ye don't need that i mean you don't need big mansions or anything like that when you're doing the one thing you love, playing music for those who want to hear it.  

Yea yea, no indeed, all I need is a van with a trailer and I'm good (laughs)

So yea I wanted to ask actually about the new album, this was produced by Erik Rutan wasn't it?

Yes, Mr Rutan produced the new record we did.

Yea I mean Erik has a long history when it comes down to being a producer and a member of Hate Eternal and a past member of Morbid Angel.

He's got a lot of history to him you know with everything he's done all the way from you know ripping corpse to playing with Morbid Angel to Hate Eternal you know doing the studio on numerous records, not only us but Cannibal Corpse, Agnostic Front, Madball I mean the list goes on and on of all the things he's done, so he's pretty much taken the element in of you know playing music and being an engineer and just evolving to the point to set himself up really good, he's really into it, he's always been into it, he's defiantly not like this person that's just there for the moment and then he's going to be out man.

Yea I mean it's almost like with Andy Sneap in a way because not only is he a member of Hell and Sabbat, but he is also a very infamous producer when it comes down to bands like Megadeth and others.

Yea yea defiantly, I mean is the thing with producers like that is their familiar with it so their familiar with metal and different kinds of metal's  and the format, and it's good because they can conceive the idea , I mean yes each band is different  and they are approached differently but they have the basic idea already set in place, and then you just work out everything  else, I mean you come in and you're like no were this kind of band we want a bit more grit in what we do we want a little more groove in what we do,  we want a little more nastiness we want things to sound like that and they work around things you know, when they change aspects or what they do as engineers and producers for each band that comes through there, you know when I was growing up all those great Death Metal bands came out of Morisday studios and Scott burnsdale, but then after a while they all started to sound similar, these guys nowadays work to make their sounds their record sounds different from each other  specially because of the different bands that are coming out.

Well defiantly, so when it comes to a decent producer it is hard to find someone who actually gets the idea.

Defiantly I mean especially when you go in and do your part I mean we have a comfortable relationship when were in the studio sometimes studios don't get what's going on, since we have this relationship together since like the fourth record were working on with him we all know each other we all fuck with each other  you know things like that but when it's time to do our part he is on your  ass about it you know he defiantly  wants you to do one hundred and fifty percent  performance of what your gonna  do, I mean overall he can be like I don't give shit  it's your band if you wanna sound like shit then play like shit, but it's like he's almost like he's in the band even though he's not writing for it, but things like that he's got concern. You know he pushes you just when you think you did a good performance and you feel good about it he'll just go it sounded good man but I really think you could do better , and he'll push you to that limit, he'll push you to that limit and he knows when you know in throughout the day our working and it's been a long day an things are going he's like were stopping with this right now, and will be like wait and he'll say no I can tell that your just worn out you just need to take a break for a while, you need to get some rest lets just reconvene tomorrow and sort it all out and so, he's just all around really great individual man.

So I wanted to ask about the new album (constricting rage of the merciless) what was the writing and recording process like, and what was it like personally for you recording the album, as well was there a difference from this album compared to Blood For The Master or was there some common ground would you say ?

I think the biggest difference was that we did this album on two inch tape which we've never done everything else would be straight in digitally, and we decided to bring back an older format, and Erik has a tape machine and luckily enough to get tape, because tape is a hard commodity to come by as well today, everything though is pretty similar for everyone you know we sit down and see what Sammy has and work from scratch, sometime we take a song and its parts and pieces of different riffs all the way from the first recorded ever did to now of riffs that Sammy has that were either never used I mean we don't throw anything away we keep them all you know since day one every single riff we do not use.

What was the metal alliance tour like?

That tour was amazing the whole outcome of that tour was amazing, it just it felt right from day one it felt right, you know some tours you get out on and the first day times get jumbled up and everything's trying to get sorted out and its fucking mad chaos and its like that for two days, but the first ay everything ran so smoothly and worked out so well everybody got along, I mean we've done shows with Behemoth in the past we've done shows with 1349 in the past, we fit together really but we all share different little quality's in what we do, Behemoth, 1349 to inquisition we all had aspects that kept the crowd pretty much involved and entranced the hole night you know here some shows some of the crowd will go to the bar area or the smoke area whatever and they'll be like I'm not really interested in this band, the only time the crowd went to the bar was in between the bands hurry go get your drink get whatever  and get back down to the floor and it was all packed and full every single night, all the bands played amazing every night there was never really a crappy night every night was full on just relentless in your face, and everybody put on a hell of  fucking performance and everybody got along really good you know it was like it was I think it was like four weeks but it only felt like a week cause everything went so well and everything went smooth, awesome gig.

So just to conclude do you have a message for the fans in the UK?

I wanna say check out the new record, and as Judas Priest says keep the faith.

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