This is the first in a series of three chronicling my history with God Forbid that - while I don't know this for certain - turned out to be a fascinating series of events for someone like me then.
I won't take up a lot of time talking about the band and my feelings on them because if you read below, my feelings are pretty clear. But geting caught up to current day is notable to discuss.
God Forbid broke up in 2013 and broke the hearts of many of us. Nine years later, they reunited to play the Blue Ridge Rock Festival and have played a handful of shows since. There's been talk of new music but - true to form - they're not rushing anything.
What's also notable - and certainly relevant to the series of evens being chronicled here - is that Dallas Coyle is not part of the reunion. It was a few years after this interview that Dallas left the band and has not been back with them since. Despite his brother Doc being one of the main players.
This was an interview I had chased down and was thrilled to do. But I had no idea it would lead to what it did.
For now, here's how this chain of events started.
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411 Music Interview: Dallas Coyle of God Forbid
Posted By Michael Melchor on 02.22.07
God Forbid – comprised of Byron Davis
(lead vocals) brothers Doc and Dallas Coyle (guitars and backing vocals), John
Outcalt (bass) and Corey Pierce (drums) – is a flat-out beast. And the
frightening thing is they’ve done nothing but grow in size and viciousness from
day one.
Their first efforts, the EP Out Of Misery
and the album Reject The Sickness, were mere growls not unlike the MGM lion.
Intimidating and regal, but still mere statements of what was about to come.
The band assumed pounce position with Determination and then lashed out and
struck with the near-epic Gone Forever in 2004.
The warning, pounce, and first confirmed
strike were enough to do massive damage. Names of media darlings such as Lamb
Of God and Shadows Fall, both credited with bringing about the New Wave of
American Heavy Metal, now had another name alongside their ranks.
The great thing was that no one noticed
that the band was a multi-cultural juggernaut. Corey Pierce and the Coyle
brothers transcended stereotypical boundaries simply by playing their asses off
alongside Outcalt – the only typically-looking metalhead of the bunch. Davis
didn’t terrify because of his size or color; he did because his vocals were a
primal shriek distinctive even in a world of screams and roars.
 |
| Byron Davis of God Forbid |
God Forbid didn’t sit back and accept
complacence in their first proper blow, oh no. After Gone Forever came the
killing blow – IV: Constitution Of Treason. Their seminal work (to date) – and
the incursion that they fed upon to become a terrifying monster to be reckoned
with – is a concept album about the end of the world. Twice. Much more steeped
in allegory than politics (although a good case can be made for the latter
also), Constitution Of Treason is a warning to its future prey and the rest of
the humans the monster shares the planet with that those who do not remember
history will be destroyed by it.
After a near-three year hunt, I finally
cornered a part of this demanding juggernaut. Dallas Coyle, lyrical provider,
creator of “GFTV” and architect of the band’s surprising business model – sat
down with us shortly the band marked more of its territory. This time, the land
to be conquered was Orlando, FL by way of a headlining performance on the
band’s current headlining “Chains Of Humanity” tour at the Backbooth on
February 6, 2007.
What follows is a look into the mind of
the savage musical animal – and one of the most enlightening conversations I’ve
ever had with any musician.
Michael Melchor: I know it’s been out for
a while, but as far as the reaction to it live and what you’ve heard from fans
and friends, how has reaction been to IV: Constitution Of Treason?
Dallas Coyle: Been really good. People
think that it’s our best material live because it’s heavier, I guess. We’re a
better live band than on CD, we still haven’t captured our live sound on CD
yet. Every time we play, people are like, “Man, you guys are tighter and
heavier live than on CD!” Which, to me, is almost impossible because we spend
months doing the CD. [Laughs] But the songs on Constitution Of Treason resonate
really well; some of the songs go on forever, but every single song we play off
of Constitution Of Treason is electric with the crowd.
MM: Oh yeah. I love that whole album top
to bottom.
DC: Yeah, I do, too. I like all of our
albums, but that’s the one I’m partial to, I think.
MM: So that’s your personal favorite?
DC: Yeah, but I think it’s everyone’s
favorite [from us].
MM: I know, as far as lyrically, there’s a
strong political statement on there.
DC: Well, we use metaphors. It’s more
humanitarian than political; more about people than government. I wrote most of
the lyrics for that album.
MM: It can be read that way, though.
DC: Oh, it can certainly be read that way,
but there’s no deeper message than the metaphorical side of it.
MM: Yeah, that comes through really clear.
More of an allegory with the message, “Those that don’t remember the past are
doomed to repeat it”.
DC: Yeah, which happens all the time. But
it’s different now with the internet; the internet’s changed everything. No one
knows what the future’s gonna be like now. It’s very exciting.
MM: Yeah, that’s very good. Now, you’ve
been with Century Media quite a bit. There’ve been several bands – which I
never expected to happen – like Lamb Of God with Sony and Shadows Fall with
Atlantic, that have been noticed and signed to major labels. Is that something
you’re keeping an eye on, or are you happy where you are?
DC: It’s not so much being happy where we
are, but it’s not something we’re looking at. If it comes, it comes, if it
doesn’t, it doesn’t. You waste a lot of time doing that, and if we waste too
much time doing that, it takes away from the ultimate message of what we’re
doing, which is doing it our way instead of just as a way to live.
MM: Right. The two bands I mentioned
seemed to do the same thing; they just got noticed while they were doing their
thing.
DC: We’ve toured with both of those bands
a bunch of times and I know both of them. Lamb Of God made it differently that
Shadows Fall. I know both of them and their processes and we’re so different
from both of those bands culturally and musically and in how we do things that
we’re in a position that we want to do things on our own and then come back and
explore the band a bit after we’ve done that. If a major label comes, that’s
fine, but we’ll use the resources we have to do what we gotta do and get the band
bigger.
MM: And that, I’ve noticed, has been a
slow but very steady growth. With Gone Forever, you gained quite an audience
and with [IV], it’s happening again.
DC: Well, I think the internet’s gonna be
good for our band because the label doesn’t want to put any more money into the
record now because it’s old, but we’re finding that people now don’t think it’s
old at all. There have been people that got the record the first week and come
up to us and say they still listen to it. That’s more important than Century
Media saying the record lasts for 18 months, you know? A lot of people in the
business now have certain ideas about how things work but they’re basing it off
of an old model.
MM: I’m almost – but not quite – surprised
they haven’t changed the model based on so much more being available. Most
music is available in digital form through iTunes and Rhapsody and things like
that.
DC: With CDs, the music’s always been
digital.
MM: Right, but they’re still thinking in
analog mode.
DC: Exactly. People love to blame
everybody for everything and don’t want to do anything to make it better. They
think they have an idea of how to do things, but all they’re doing is
re-structuring the money into the same things without creating any new avenues
and that’s a big mistake. A lot of labels are guilty of that. I won’t name any
names, but…[Laughs]
MM: [Laughs] Exactly. Like when Napster
started – Shawn Fanning approached every one of the major labels and said,
“Look, this is a great way to get music out.” The response he got was, “No,
this isn’t gonna go anywhere. Not interested.” And look what happened with
that.
DC: With them and the internet, it’s
like…if you’re my mother and you tell me something once, I’ll be like, “Okay,
that’s cool.” It you tell me a second time, it’s cool. A third time, I’ll be
annoyed and when you tell me a fourth time, I’m gonna tell you to shut the fuck
up.
MM: [Laughs]
DC: You tell me the internet’s stealing
money out of your pockets once, I’m like, “Okay, I hear ya.” Same thing with
twice, but now you’ve told me, what, 20,30,40 times? Labels use that as an
excuse as to why they don’t sell records when they really don’t know what the
fuck they’re doing. It comes down to them, not us. If they can’t make the
record visible to sell it, what the fuck are they there for?
MM: Exactly; what’s the purpose otherwise?
Now, since [IV] came out, you’ve toured quite a bit for it.
DC: We were in the beginning, then we took
some time off. We did some European shows, then took some time off. Now we’re
doing this tour and taking some time off again. We’re not going to be that
touring band that’s touring 12 months out of the year. We’re done with that
shit. There’s other ways to live in the band without touring. Touring makes a
lot of other people money. It costs a lot of money for us to tour – about
$30,000 a month.
MM: Damn, that is a lot. So was it a
matter of hit it heavy when it first came out and then scale back to take some
personal time as well?
DC: Well, a lot of it is pressure from
other people. When you listen to a lot of people about what you should be doing
with your band, you forget to listen to yourself about what you should be doing
with your band. Hopefully the band knows what they should do, but the label
says you should do this and your manager says you should do that and it happens
that way…at this point, our band is like, “Fuck everybody.” If you don’t listen
to what we say, then fuck you. We don’t need to write another album; we’ve already
written a great album. Most bands don’t do that in a career. We don’t need to
go back to them to write another album right now. Everything – and this is what
I tell most bands – everyone wants to blame the label for everything but it’s
just as much our fault as it is the label’s as far as the process and how
things can go. That’s why, right now, we tour when we want to tour and when the
demand is there, we’re gonna supply the music. It’s pretty much that simple.
MM: That leads me ahead a little bit, then
– has there been any writing of new material or are you not worried about that
right now?
DC: No, we’re not writing anything for a
new album right now because music is in such a state of disarray that, for us
to put out an album right now being on an independent label, it just wouldn’t
do anything for the band. Our last one opened at #119 on the Billboard Charts
and, the way things are going now, Best Buy is filtering out a lot of their
heavy music out of their stores. It costs more money for us to put a record in
stores and we wouldn’t have as many records in the stores for our next one. For
me, I don’t want to put out an album and have it do less that [IV] when our
next album’s gonna be a lot better just because of money. It doesn’t make sense
to me. I’m just gonna wait and see how things go and see how to sell a record
the way wee need to in order for it to do better.
MM: So you’re pretty much in charge of
your own business model, then.
DC: Yeah, and the label hates it. [Laughs]
MM: [Laughs] I’m sure!
DC: The label hates it and management
hates it, because when you’re not doing things they way they think you should,
they think you’re shutting down the avenues of the way you sell things. But
we’ve been doing this so long that we know the way they do thinghs just doesn’t
work anymore. It’s like, why should we keep helping someone else fuck our
career, you know?
MM: They’re of the “sight unseen” mindset
– that, if you don’t have anything out there, then people forget about you.
But—
DC: With the internet, not anymore.
MM: Well, the internet, too, but
especially with heavy music in general. With metal, once you latch on to a
band, you’re with them damn near for life, depending on how things go.
 |
| Interviewing Dallas Coyle |
DC: Right. The good things about bands
like Trivium and Avenged Sevenfold is that they get kids into metal. Everyone
hates those bands because they get kids into metal, but it’s like, “You know,
you were that same motherfuckin’ kid and you were listening to the band that
everyone else was trashing, so shut the fuck up.” Everyone has that same
attitude in hating people that are successful. It’s not like you get successful
and stay that way; you have to work to stay that way. It’s very hard to do
that. That’s why our band is in a good position; we’ve been successful but we
can only get more so because we’re not as successful as these other bands.
We’re older than the other bands save for the guys in Shadows Fall, so we’re in
a good position. With management, we’re in a bad position because they want to
say this is our last shot, but, like you said, in metal, it’s for life. As long
as you keep impressing the people you’ve got already, then you’re never gonna
lose. And with the internet, it makes it easier than ever before because we now
have people in Brazil and Portugal , for example, who have the internet whereas
they never did before and they’re hearing our album. They want to say the
internet is taking away from music; no, it’s building more fans of the band.
MM: Right. Now only gaining fans but, when
you have a core audience that stays with you, you always have that in terms of
success.,
DC: Exactly. Our records sell 100,000
worldwide and that’s some crazy shit. [Laughs] That’s nothing to cry about.
Bands sell more than that in the States alone, but that’s not our band. Why
should we be worrying about everyone else? We’re the only ones that have to
live with this band. Everyone [in God Forbid] understands that, finally. It
took a while, but we’re all on the same page now. Now that they do, they’re a
lot more free and there’s a lot less stress on the road and being on the road
is the hardest part about doing music, to an extent, because you never have
personal space unless you do something like get your own hotel room, which is
only good for about 4 hours, anyway. It’s a waste. We have 15 people on this
bus; we have a 5-person crew, there’s Mnemic, which is 5, and then there’s the
5 of us. It’s cramped, but we all get along because we’re all here for the same
thing.
MM: The common goals and mindsets that
keep people together.
DC: Right. There’s definite line right now
– there’s your frat boys, and there’s your non-frat boys. People like us aren’t
frat boys; we understand that there are things that are artistic and there are
things that take analysis and there are people that don’t understand that shit.
That’s where you have your worker bees and then your rulers. We’re the people
the government doesn’t want to exist because they want everything to fit in
this’d 9-to-5 category – which we’re getting away from because you have people
coming in this country who are working those jobs so Americans can get away
from that and do the things they want to do. It’s fucking stupid; everyone who
runs shit is stupid because they’re working off of old-school, industrialism
bullshit.
MM: Right. I remember – and granted,
there’s much more important shit going on right now – but I remember everyone
raising a fuss about the immigration issue and I was thinking, “Why?”
DC: I mean, our country was based off that
shit alone.
MM: Exactly! Have you seen the bottom of
the Statue of Liberty lately?
DC: Yeah, right!
MM: Have you seen the bit about “give us
your huddled masses” bit that founded this country in the first place?
DC: I mean, have you seen these Americans
that are in bad positions because they’re losing jobs to these Mexicans, but
don’t you understand that the Americans that are losing these jobs to Mexicans
shouldn’t be doing these jobs in the first place? They should be doing
something more creative because they’re fucking Americans and that’s what this
country is built off of. Innovation with a plan for leadership. A lot of people
want to hold people down and that’s what’s keeping our country fucked up.
Europe is in an even worse position than America because you have a lot of
these countries that don’t allow a lot of things into their government because
they get to keep a certain slowness. There are countries that actually have a
slow movement – “we don’t want the internet, we don’t want this or that.”
That’s why America is so great because we’re one of the only countries that has
that leadership mentality.
MM: It’s been that way since the
beginning, but now people have gotten comfortable or complacent.
DC: Reality TV, man. Makes it easier for
everyone to feel like their lives aren’t as fucked-up, you know? We all have
that shit to deal with—
MM: But no one wants to look inward and
taker that control of themselves to do it.
DC: Right, they’d rather watch Tommy Lee
and Pam Anderson,. Hey, I watch that shit too, that shit’s great. [Laughs] But
I don’t let it fuck with my life.
MM: It seems that way all around. Now just
with the industry and the labels, but everywhere. No one wants to look at
themselves and see what they change to better themselves.
DC: That’s what America is all about.
People think America’s gonna fall like Rome, and it’s not. Economics are just
gonna shift to other countries and things are gonna work differently, but our
country’s gonna be the model for everything as long as the government doesn’t
fuck it up. That’s why I think bands and musicians and artists and actors are
more important in America now than they ever have been because you have people
like Will Smith. He’s the biggest actor in Hollywood, and he’s black. Think back
top the 1920s and what it was like in Hollywood back then. But now he’s a
worldwide movie star and, essentially, in 20 years,. This guy’s gonna be out
next president. You think about it that way, life is gonna be so much different
in 20 years. George Bush is not gonna be in power. Gas is not going to be our
only source of energy. We may have hydrogen power, it could be plants—
MM: Or biodiesel.
DC: Exactly. That’s what people should be
thinking about instead of worrying about immigrants. Immigrants are gonna be
here all the time and it makes it easier for us to do what we want to do
without having to go work at Subway or some shit. And I can tell you, working
at Subway is not fun.
MM: No,. it’s not. [Laughs] I can attest
to that.
DC: That’s why people kill themselves.
Wall Street brokers jump off of buildings because they think they need to be
doing something that they don’t want to do, even though they’re successful.
What is success? It’s definitely not money.
MM: You’re right about that. Any ideas
when there may be a new “GFTV”?
DC: I was gonna do one – I was doing one
on the tour, but there’s too may people around to do it because I do that all
by myself and I need to be doing it for 5-6 hours at a clip when I’m not being
bothered. “GFTV”, for me, is more of a socially conscious thing – it’s top get
to know the band, but also the “Cosmo Kramer” stuff, to me, is hilarious
because that’s one of the things that people should not be worried about. “I’ve
said “nigger” so may fucking times in my life and I’ve called black people “nigger”
. Crash won best movie of the year and you look and, “wait, isn’t that what
happened with Michael Richards?” That’s exactly what that movie was about. It
was a defense mechanism situation, not necessarily a racist thing. It was the
only thing he had to fight what he was working for. So, that’s what the “Cosmo
Kramer” shorts are about; “Cosmo Kramer” could be anybody. It could be me. It’s
the same thing as calling a Mexican dude a spic because he cuts me off on the
road. I’m not gonna – I could call him an “asshole”, but it doesn’t hurt him as
much.
MM: That’s what I’d thought about him. I’d
written a piece about that for the site and what I think he was trying to do
was…when somebody pisses you off, you’re gonna want to find the one thing
that’s just gonna drive them nuts. Obviously, to me, that’s what he went for.
But then, he tried to turn it into a discussion of—
DC: This is so shocking, why is it so
shocking?
MM: Right!
DC: He’s not a comedian, though, and
that’s what people don’t understand – he’s a frustrated actor who’s in a comedy
because he’s typecast as a comedian. When you’re living for 7 or 8 years doing
something you don’t want to be doing but you have to because it’s the only way
you can live, frustration is gonna mount. Unfortunately, there was someone
there with a camera and, unfortunately, the internet exists.
MM: In the wrong place at the wrong time.
DC: Yeah but, at the same time, Dave
Chapelle did shit like that on his show all the time and he actually took the
power out of the word “nigger”. You have people like Jesse Jackson and Al
Sharpton saying people should not say the word “nigger” – that’s the most
un-American way to deal with anything. You’re talking about censorship. That’s
the worst thing that any empowering black leader can do; when you say you want
to take a word like that and abolish it, you’ve given up on your race as a
people; you’re making it easier for people to shit on black people. You think a
Mexican person would kill someone because they called them a spic? No. But
black people kill white people because they call them a nigger. You have to
analyze that shit. No one wants to talk about it because everyone has their own
ideas about it with it being such a political issue, but fuck them. They don’t
know what life is about. It’s petty. Our band is the one band that shouldn’t be
doing what we’re doing in this scene because, if it was the way they really
thought it was, white people wouldn’t to our music because we’re black, and
it’s definitely not like that. Fuck everyone else who thinks that everyone else
is the reason their life is crap. That’s your fault; if your life is crap,
that’s your fault.
MM: Absolutely. Given the country and
opportunity we have, there’s plenty of time and chance to make better.
DC: Exactly. Here in Orlando, I can go
down the street and get myself a marketing job in 5 weeks. Only because I know
I can do it; most people who know they can do something have so many people
telling them they can’t that they start to believe that. How many people, when
you’re younger, say they’re gonna do something and the people around them say,
“Oh, you can’t do that shit”? They only say that because they can’t do it, you
know? If you can conceive, you can believe. Albert Einstein – that motherfucker
wasn’t even a mathematician and he figured out that “E=mc2”
MM: [Laughs]
DC: That’s like me being a musician and
figuring out how to get a satellite to run around Mars. The human mind is more
powerful than anything that’s ever been created. “If your life is crap, that’s
your fault.” That’s gonna be our next shirt. “Don’t blame the white man.”
[Laughs] Because now, even white people are blaming the white man! Motherfucker
what are you talking about? You’re white! [Laughs] It’s not the white man, it’s
the white rock! Put the crack down and the “man” will disappear.
MM: Don’t believe the pipe, dude.
DC: Exactly – “Don’t believe the pipe.”
[Laughs] Do some Public Enemy shit with Byron on the front leaned back. That’s
our shirt right there.
MM: I’ll take one of those, too!
DC: Yeah, you’d better trademark that shit
before we make all the money off of it. [Laughs] And that’ll be your fault,
too.
MM: Remind me to contact the trademark
office tomorrow. [Laughs]
DC: Ideas are the most important thing in
America right now. You can always make money off of an idea.
MM: Yeah it is. Thank you so much for
taking the time out to talk to us; that was great.
DC: Yeah, that was awesome.
Special thanks to Doc – no relation – for
photographing the festivities.
And very quickly realized that was a dumb question.