SLOUGH FEG - Hard-Boiled Eggheads Page 3
by Martin Popoff

"It sounds kind of funny doesn't it?" chuckles Mike, asked about giving the album its odd Hardworlder title. "Hard luck - that's kind of what it's about (laughs). A bunch of people told me it sounded gay. Hardworlder... like some macho biker gay thing. Whatever. It is a kind of Priest-style album in a way, more than some of our other albums (laughs). But that's not really the point. You know, obviously we're not a joke, but I think humour is totally necessary in entertainment. I don't like a lot of stuff that is like deadpan serious. Even the most doomy bands, like Saint Vitus or Black Sabbath, have their sense of humour. And I think that is one thing that is missing from a lot of metal now, especially a lot of European power metal or black metal. They don't have a sense of humour, and that's boring. The best entertainers in the world, metal or otherwise, but especially in metal, have a sense of humour incorporated into their music. And when they don't, it's kind of stiff."

"So it's not supposed to be funny, but at the same time, when I came up to the name, I laughed at it. Actually, I didn't even come up with it - Justin Phelps did, our producer, our engineer. When we were making Atavism, someone came up to us and were starting a band or trying to get into a band, and I said, 'Well, don't quit your day job,' or something like that. They're saying, 'Oh, you guys go to Europe and you tour America and make records and that must be really great.' And I'm like 'Well, it's great, but it's not. It's a dead end.' At the time I didn't have a job and it kind of sucked, and I'm saying I was going to be sitting around looking for a job in shitty anywhere, in a factory or something, and it's going to suck. And I'm like, 'Yeah, it's a hard world. I'm in a band touring and not really making any money.' And Justin out of the blue said 'Hardworlder.' It's just one of those things that happened. It sounded cool, because I wanted to do a record about... because a lot of the record is about that. It's the idea of aging, but it's not a negative, it's a positive. You're in a hard world but you're able to survive and be artistic as you get older, where most people stop and get married. I've got nothing against getting married, but most of them quit and end up in the suburbs. 'Oh, I used to be into metal.' Half-assed. I don't want to compromise like that."

The title track itself, although amusingly one would never notice, is about the hard world of relationship bust-ups. Elsewhere - amongst a Manilla Road cover and likely the first Horslips cover anybody in metal has ever dared - there's 'Frankfurt-Hahn Airport Blues'.

SLOUGH FEG - Hard-Boiled Eggheads Page 4