By Martin Popoff
"You know what? I would say that it certainly doesn't sound dated, that's for sure," explains Snake vaguely when asked about the direction of the new material. Vaguely, he continues: "I mean, our guitars are as heavy as ever. The basic songwriting structure is still intact. Over the years, you move forward but yet you still are who you are. And for us, again, we couldn't... as much as I like so much of the new stuff that is out there, we just couldn't do that. It would be totally disingenuous. And people see through that shit so quickly that, what's the point? Soon as you start chasing trends, you're always two steps behind. We've never really had any interest in that. We've always done what we've done; whether it's been in favour or out of favour, we're going to continue what we do. So I would say what we're doing is not what we did ten years ago but there are a lot of those elements involved, from a songwriting standpoint and structure and whatnot. But hopefully lyrically we've gotten better and musically we've gotten better. But we still take the same heavy-ass energetic approach."
"We were fortunate because we had a loyal fanbase," reflects Snake when the conversation rolls back around to the under-rated Subhuman Race and its still pretty damn healthy sales. "The thing is too, at that particular moment in time, and this is just the way music is; music goes in trends. We released that record in '95 and you release that record... it could've been Rubber Soul, and it wouldn't have sold. It just wasn't the climate. People just didn't want that, and of course it's disappointing at the time because you really put a lot of labor of love into it. And to have it not be as successful as you wish it could be or you thought it could be, is always a drag. But it is what it is and you take the good and the bad in this business. The idea of longevity is to be able to persevere through all of that. It's really easy to accept success, you know? It's the decline in success and maintaining some sort of integrity and stability through that... that's what makes, I think, great bands and great artists."
As promised, here are the full tour details, lining up columns and stuff be damned...
