More than two weeks later, we finally get to the third and final installment of this.
That. Was always. The issue. With me trying to maintain. A regular Blog. Or anything relating to building anything personal. Was the time - or lack thereof - that I had to devote to it. I've beaten that dead horse, buried it and dug it up a few more times to keep kicking its ass, so I'll stop that train of thought right there.
Now then, the final interview with Dallas Coyle. Which I thought for a while had caused some tension between him and God Forbid's lead vocalist, Byron Davis. I heard Davis speak on Doc Coyle's podcast, The Ex-Man, about how a former member of the band thought he was much more instrumental to the band's sound and success than everybody else. And Davis was none to happy about it.
I don't know for sure the the comments made in our interview are what he was referring to, or Dallas's blog on why he left the band, or something else entirely. I have no way of verifying that my interview was the source of that, so I'm not going to make that claim.
But I'm confident that I can claim I was the first to publish Dallas Coyle's side on why he left God Forbid. And that interview is below.
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411 Music Interview: Dallas Coyle
Posted by Michael Melchor on 02.25.10
Now it can be told.
It’s been almost a year since Dallas Coyle, guitarist and vocalist for God Forbid, left the band. At the time, the band had just released the follow up to 2007’s critically-acclaimed IV: A Constitution of Treason. Earthsblood started out strong enough with the band & the record 100%–
–until word came that Dallas was sitting out the tour. Rumors began running rampant that Dallas was not only sitting out the tour, but the band as a whole entity. The rumors came to a halt when Dallas’s brother, Doc Coyle addressed the statements and rumors by announcing the truth: his own brother had, indeed, left the band.
At the time, no one knew what was going on or why Dallas had left his band and his brother behind. However, it is a situation that was building for a few years; a 2007 interview with Dallas for 411 Music showed signs of Dallas already burning out on the cycle of touring. As it turns out, the seeds were much deeper – and planted much earlier.
“I wanted to leave as early as 2006,” Dallas revealed over a series of phone conversations starting on January 28. “I wanted to shift focus of the band away from Byron; Byron has that presence where he’s scarier when silent, but then erupts and scares the hell out of you. I wanted to shift the focus away from him as the frontman – the focal point of the band when we’re on stage – and on to myself. Of course, the band didn’t want to go for it,” Dallas laughs, somewhat self-deprecatingly, before going a little deeper into the problems.
“I wanted God Forbid to be different from other metal bands. After [IV: A Constitution Of Treason], I was looking to kind of steer away from the heavy thrash and go in more of a direction like Deftones White Pony with next album. More groove oriented & heavy without being all about thrash & speed. I wanted to change things up and really push the boundaries – see what we were capable of. Not only did no one in the band or at the label like the idea, but they all thought I was crazy!” he laughs.
In the wake of the announcement that Dallas had left, very little was heard from either camp. Doc Coyle summed up the reasons as best he could in his statement: I don’t want to go into the hairy details, but all I can say is that there was a mutual disagreement between Dallas and I, and the disagreement became angry on both sides, and he decided to sit out the tour the day we were supposed to leave. We later learned he did not want to tour anymore at all. Everyone in the band, including myself, was upset and shocked. For me, it’s a lot tougher because he’s my brother and I have a very close bond with him. We’ve done everything together our whole lives, so it’s difficult to deal with emotionally but I understand he has bigger responsibilities at home to care for. I wish he would’ve handled it in a different way, but I am not angry at him for leaving if he is unhappy with our situation. I really hope he finds success and happiness in his future pursuits.
The “mutual disagreement,” as it turns out, was the final impetus for the split that Dallas knew had to happen. “Doc & I had an argument that was the breaking point for all of this shit, but even that – it was like I could see it coming, you know? I just wasn’t happy with being told to be quiet and go with the flow. Never was.”
Dallas continues, “I did “God Forbid TV” for a while and then stopped because the last one was just me doing social commentary. I was working on film at the time and I was using “GFTV” to experiment with that. Doc pulled me aside once because the band wanted him to talk to me about it. Doc told me, ‘man, this isn’t God Forbid TV. None of us are even in it.’ I answered back, ‘Yeah it is – I’m in it. You have a member of the band in it.’ Other things I did like that, the band and everyone else always thought I was nuts. It’s just because I was always outspoken and never just wanted to go with the flow. I was also talked to – by not only the band, but some people at [Century Media] as well – about my first Metal Sucks blog. I mean, I called Hilary Clinton a nigger!”, he laughs again. “I was always told not to say certain things, just to shut up and play. All that did was make me madder and wanting to do it more because I hate being told what to do.
“All the things I did, things he did, were from not wanting to stay inside the box. I like taking risks and venturing out to see what else can be done. I wanted to do that with God Forbid – to see how far the band could have been taken if we’d switched up and gone in a different direction. The band never liked that and the label didn’t seem to care either way. I was displeased with ideological differences between myself and the rest of the band for a long time. I just knew I would leave the band at some point. It seemed everyone else in the band was content with being what we were and I didn’t like that because I knew we were capable of more. One of the biggest things that opened my eyes was our experience with Constitution Of Treason. I thought that record should have been a lot bigger than it was. I mean, it did very well and all the critics and fans of ours loved it, but I saw it as a fully realized work in the form of a metal album. I wrote all the lyrics for that album, and I thought it turned out really great. Century Media never really got behind it, though. After a pattern of that for a long time, I just got really frustrated at seeing all of my ideas go to waste. That’s when I saw the writing on the wall – when I knew I’d be out of the band sooner than later.”
Dallas’s own statement at the time was much more succinct and much less telling, simply telling his fans that, “his split from the band has nothing to do with any familial issues with his brother, but that he has decided to leave the band for personal reasons. Beyond that, he wishes to remain quiet at the time and asks that his privacy be respected.” Dallas later (barely) expounded on that statement, saying, ”I left God Forbid because I had personal issues to deal with and I felt I needed to move on. I’m proud of my time with the band and I’m proud of all the records we made. It was time to move on and that’s it.”
The band has moved on with Matt Wicklund (ex-Himsa) joining the band and Dallas keeping a lower profile, working on new projects and also formed his own consulting firm for bands and musicians. Everyone was happy in their own place, the metal world had moved on, cats and dogs joined hands to sing songs of peace, and all was right with the world.
Almost a year later, Dallas is ready to shed his “low profile” and get back to work on several projects. Musically, Dallas was recording under the moniker “Souls At War” – and had been for several months. No one really heard Souls At War, and that was deliberate. A new year meant new opportunities. Souls At War was scrapped, and from its ashes was born Genetic.
“The project is me and my vibe as far as what I want to hear in heavy music and the way I want it performed,” Dallas says of his new musical venture. “Souls At War was kind of a stepping stone – a way to learn recording a little bit and also to step back into metal. God Forbid was pretty heavy, but I didn’t know if I wanted to do that again. Then, the new year hit on a more positive note, and a lot of [the songs for Genetic] just came out of me. I never really wanted to scream or anything like that, but the aggressive voice I found for Genetic really fits for what I’m doing and I really don’t consider it screaming. I guess it does teeter on that, but it’s the way I would want to do it. Genetic is definitely the be-all-end-all version of the music I’m going to be doing for the near future. There’s going to be a lot to the project; the MySpace page is just the first step.”
The first step to much more planned. Dallas, apparently, has a lot planned in store for Genetic – much of it will shock long time fans of his former band and himself. Many that have heard the new project don’t quite know what to make of it – and Dallas is perfectly happy with that. “Every single person that’s given Genetic a good, proper listen – they all say something different about it. I’ve heard [that it sounds like] Testament to Alice In Chains to Rammstein, to Carcass – I’ve heard almost every band you could possibly think of,” he laughs. “And that’s what I want. If everyone said the exact same thing, that shit would be boring. I’m definitely achieving what I want to with that. The cool thing is, people are responding strongly. No one’s come out and said they don’t like it, but I’m sure there are going to be people that hate it,” he laughs again. “That’s what I’m looking for – I’m looking to divide the line. I want to hear that people love it and that people hate it. That reaction is better than no reaction at all.”
Among the items on his plate is – a rock opera? It’s an idea that even surprised Dallas himself. “That’s something based around the film stuff I’ve been doing. Me and my co-writer for “Polyester Dreams” [Andrew Harrison] are working on it. He came up with the idea to do a rock opera and I never thought about doing a rock opera because I write all kinds of different music. He suggested this and I said, ‘You know, I hate musicals. I hate musical films’,” he laughs. “I don’t like ‘Rocky Horror Picture Show’ or any of that stuff. But the thing is, the story we came up with together for the rock opera was pretty cool. So we started working out the songs and it started working out really well. So, we’re moving forward with that, working on some more stuff for it, and we may be shooting that soon.”
As for the comparisons to earlier work – such as the aforementioned Constitution Of Treason – the opera is still a different beast. “For a rock opera,” Dallas explains, “you have to write 3-4 different types of songs for, like, 3 different types of characters. It works out because I’m writing more music than I would if I didn’t have this outlet. Over the last 12 months, working on this and other stuff like this has helped me find a vibe for Genetic as well. I was able to separate what Genetic was from everything else. Genetic is 100% mine, whereas most of the other stuff I do is collaboration. Like, [Harrison] writes the lyrics for the rock opera. I just write the music. It’s more of a collaboration.”
As if two involving projects weren’t enough, there’s also a screenplay in the works. But not of the rock opera. “It’s called ‘The Vultures’. It’s a pretty weird movie that’s been kicking my ass,” he laughs. “I kinda came back to it after a long time of just letting it sit. [Andrew Harrison] and I are working on this as well, and this is kind of different. It takes a lot more time to get a feature [film] off the ground. It’s at that growing stage that anything hits – it’s in its ugly stage right now, but when it turns that corner, it’s going to be the mature form of what it’s going to be. We’re in that position with the script, and it’s been kicking my ass; my brain is hurting. So I put it down for a while to take a step back so I could look at it with fresh eyes.”
All three projects, Dallas sums up, “are all part of the same onion, I would say. They’re all separate, but I need one to fuel the other. I’m not a very one-track-minded person. One of the reasons I left God Forbid was because I couldn’t do that band my whole life. I’m not that type of person – I can’t be stuck with something forever because that shit is boring. I’m not interested in re-creating something over and over again. Once something is done, that’s it. I appreciate longevity, but I don’t appreciate beating a dead horse. One thing about me being in charge of Genetic – if I hit a wall, I can put it down and not have to worry about the pressure of other people wanting me to do it. I have the creative freedom now that I’ll really enjoy in the future.”
