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.
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| 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.
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.
Interviewing Dallas Coyle
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.
