GOD FORBID - It's Crushing At The Top... Page 3
by Martin Popoff

Any changes in the writing chemistry this time around? "I think with this record, me and Dallas (Coyle - guitars; the band is rounded out by Doc Coyle - guitars/vocals, John Outcalt - bass and Corey Pierce - drums) had a lot of time working together writing lyrics. He had some songs that he wanted and I had some songs ready, and then we had a few songs that we wrote together for the record. I mean, our writing process has changed over the years, but everyone has a full say on what goes on with the record, and how we want to come across. But Dallas and I wrote separately with one theme in mind. We kind of put our minds together and worked off of each other."

"All bands argue," adds Byron, when asked about the band's well-documented "heated" past. "We've been pretty much... all our history we've ever had we resolved when we wrote Gone Forever. So now it's just another chance to write another record to prove ourselves once again that we can be an evolving band."

"Well, I almost got into an altercation with some skinheads in Florida," says Byron, when asked about drama on the road, a place God Forbid always seems to be. "We were playing a show with Hatebreed, and there were some Nazi skinheads out there in the crowd, and I had left the backstage area and was walking through the crowd area, and they were following me around, but I didn't know they were. But luckily security spotted them and kicked them all out before anything happened."

Do you find God Forbid has to fight the race issue at all?

"I mean, it's not that regular but it's regular. We don't think about it. It never comes into our minds. There are people that don't like us because we are who we are, but so what? We don't let that affect what we do. You're always going to have someone that hates you or likes you or whatever. And you just roll with it."

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