DINO: Ever since I was a kid, first hearing Black Sabbath and AC/DC records, I've always loved metal music and it just evolved from there, and working at the record store really helped feed that appetite I had for new music. And just being a local scene-ster in that genre of music, whether it was grind-core, death-metal, speed-metal, thrash...any kind of metal there was, I was into it. I was like 17 when I was working at that record store in Hollywood and I was telling customers "buy this tape!" There was even a point when we were selling demo tapes from local metal bands, and that was cool and helped out a lot of local bands. The funny this was when Fear Factory first signed to Roadrunner, I was still working at the record store. I remember the day our first record came out, I think I sold 60 copies of our cassettes just from all the kids I knew and all my friends.
SW: I know you were quite involved with many of the Roadrunner artists, were you actually doing A&R for the label?
DINO: I was an A&R scout for Roadrunner. They hired me after a couple bands that I got signed to the label. It's funny, because the original deal Fear Factory signed with Roadrunner was for $30,000. Our lawyer advised us not to sign the deal, but when you're like 19 years-old, you don't know about the business so we ended up signing the deal and a few years later we were like "what the f**k did we do!?" I am now completely free from Roadrunner - from both the label and publishing. I'm in a really good position right now.
