Floatsam And Jetsam On Touring Australia For The First Time

For the first time ever down under, US thrash metal legends Flotsam and Jetsam will join forces with Australian thrash pioneers Mortal Sin for a devastating co-headline tour across Australia starting with Brisbane tonight. Like a two-headed beast of pure thrash fury, these genre-defining acts will deliver a relentless assault for Australian fans, bringing together decades of history, influence and raw power in one unmissable run.

Over a career spanning more than forty years, Flotsam and Jetsam have stood shoulder to shoulder with the likes of Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer and Venom, earning their place as one of thrash metal’s most respected and enduring names. From their landmark debut Doomsday for the Deceiver – famously awarded the only ever 6K rating in Kerrang! history – through to modern thrash masterpieces like The End of Chaos, Blood in the Water and I Am The Weapon, the Arizona legends continue to prove why they remain one of the genre’s most ferocious live acts. The band now return armed with a brand-new album, Rats In The Temple, out now via Napalm Records. The record delivers thirteen tracks of razor-sharp thrash packed with crushing riffs, ornate guitar harmonies, pummelling rhythms and dark lyrical themes centred around war, betrayal and human destruction. Early reports are already calling the album another major step forward in the band’s ongoing modern-era resurgence. Guitarist Michael Gilbert talks about the tour and new album.

It sounds like it’s all happening for the band at the minute, heading down to Australia for the very first time.
Yeah, only took us forty years to get there, right? No, we’re really excited about it. We’ve never been, we don’t even know what to expect. You know, I’m terrified of big spiders, and I hear that you got giant spiders down there, but it should be off the hook, since we’ve never played there before, and bringing Flotsam down to Australia. Hope the fans are digging it. It’s a good tour package and we’re looking forward to it.

Touring with Mortal Sin, that’s a pretty awesome double bill.
I have to agree, when they put it together, it makes a lot of sense, so I’m really excited about it.

In a career that’s spanned as long as yours, to finally get here, does it just go to prove how difficult it is organising international touring?
We usually have agents that do that sort of stuff, and it just depends on who you’re working with. Some agents have better connections than others, and we happen to be working with an agent in Europe who’s got great connections with South America, and also with Australia, and of course Europe. So that’s really helpful, too.

With this tour, are you focusing on the album that’s about to come out, Rats in the Temple?
Yep, but the tricky part about it is we’re focusing on that, but since we’ve never played Australia before, I’m sure we’re going to have to throw some of the classics from the first record and the second record in there. Whatever we got todo, whatever people want to hear from us, we’re down to play it, for sure.

You might have to play for three or four hours at this rate?
Alright, we’ll do it. Absolutely.

What do you look forward to most about touring Australia? Beyond the shows, do you get to put the tourist hat on and have a look around?
That’s funny you say that, because I was just thinking about it, what am I going to do when the tour’s over? I should probably stay there for a couple of days and maybe see some stuff. I don’t know, I haven’t decided yet. I got to figure that out and map it out. Hopefully I can do that. That’d be awesome. We don’t have any shows coming up directly after, so it might be an option for us.

How do you cope with the limbo phase before the album comes out?
I pace at home. I’m a pacer, so I’m just waiting. I’m being patient, but I’m pacing a lot. Like, let’s go! I want to get it going.

How has the band’s sound evolved between albums?
Over the years, at least for guitar players, since I’m one of the guitar players, how it’s evolved for us is we started using Kempers and amp modelers a while back, and it’s made the recording process a lot easier. My guitar tone is the same every time, because it just gets plugged in directly. It’s easy to tweak, you don’t spend all day trying to place a microphone on it like back in the old days.
As far as writing, with technology everything’s gotten a lot easier too. We don’t have to get into a big storage unit and play through our set and try to write while we’re all in the same room. We can write remotely and send each other files back and forth. We’re pretty good and efficient at that right now. It’s a pretty speedy process.

Being the sixteenth album, are they still just as challenging, or does it get easier?
We’ve never had any issues with coming up with riffs. Steve and I are usually the two guys that start the riffs, and we put it on tape for the guys to listen to if they want to use it. Cool if they don’t, there’s never any hard feelings. We just try to pick the best ones we possibly can. The way it usually starts is from a riff, and then we just pass it around until we’re happy with it. Sometimes we’re beating a dead horse that just doesn’t work, and other times it happens really quickly, some magic with some of the songs.

Was it clear what you wanted to do with this particular album, or does that unfold as you work through songs?
What was clear to us is we always want to try to top ourselves. We’re always worried about… you’ve seen bands that put out a good record, and then the following record is just not working for them. We don’t want to fall in that category, so we work pretty hard at it. We’re trying to stay congruent with what we did prior, and I think the last four records, we found we’re on a trajectory going upward, and the process is working for us really well right now. We’re not going to change it, but we’re not going to keep all the songs the same either. You hear some metal bands where it sounds like the same record every time, we definitely don’t want to be a band like that. We want to keep it interesting, and not scare any of our fans away by doing so.

How exciting was it when you started seeing those songs take shape and realizing you had something pretty cool?
Yeah, they start to take shape after we send everything over to AK, and he starts doing the vocals on it, and he’s kind of backwards, because when I write a song, it’s always structured pretty much like an AC/DC song. You got your main riff, then your verse, you got your main riff, second verse, then you go into your chorus. That’s kind of a standard rock kind of thing, and I usually try to write like that. But when I give it to AK, the choruses come back as the verses… I mean, he’s got it all backwards, but it works. For me, that’s when the magic starts to happen, because it’s like a different song to me. So it’s pretty cool. Then you can realise whether we keep working on it, or we ding it.

Were there many songs that changed from the initial idea to what the final version became?
An example of that — Rats in the Temple. That song was… I wrote it for my solo record that I’ve been working on since… I don’t even know how many years, it’s been a million years. I don’t know if I’m ever going to release it, but this was one of the songs off of that, and it was instrumental. I sent it over to Ken, and Ken’s like, “I can do a lot with this, let me work on it for a bit.” And again, he arranged everything, changed it up a bit. We took a lot of the solos out so we could start putting vocals in there, and it just evolved into something I’m super proud of. I think the rest of the guys are too. It’s an aggressive, mean song. It accomplished exactly what we were trying to do.

When you talk about your solo record, is it just a matter of not having enough time between touring and working with Flotsam?
There’s a few factors. I’m a little scared to release something on my own that’s all been done using tools like an electronic drummer. I mean, I’m the only one doing anything, I’m doing all the programming and everything, and it’s a little scary to release something like that and then I look at other players too, and there’s just so many good players out there, I’m like… seriously, why would anybody want a solo record from me? I don’t know, I’m not even qualified to be a guitar tech for some of these guys, they’re so good.

What was your reaction when you played the album back cover to cover for the first time?
You know, this is a good story, because we were in Europe, and the first time that we heard it, we all heard it together. We were playing it for a couple of friends, and we listened to it all the way through on a drive. When we finally ended the drive, I was worn out. I was like, man, I don’t even want to listen to music anymore, becauseit’s so in your face, and it’s just beating you up the whole way through, and it’s like a workout. So that puts a giant smile on my face, that it’s not a boring record. You’re going to sit there and listen to it, and it’s aggressive. It’s just mean. It’s a mean record.

At this stage of your career, still pushing forward hard and not resting on what you did early on — that must be satisfying?
Yeah, it is for sure. We see a lot of these bands these days playing over in Europe, doing the festival season, and they’re playing all the old classic songs. We love doing that too, but we’ve got to showcase these last four records that we really want to showcase the songs and evolve with the new line-up. It’s not a new line-up anymore, but it is to some people. We want to present where the band is now to people, and hopefully the new songs appeal, and we can be playing those at the festivals and our next tours.

That must offer a subtle contrast with these new songs in the setlist now?
There’s still some classics that we got to play — No Place for Disgrace, Doomsday for the Deceiver, Hammerhead. But some of the new… we’re getting requests for some of the new ones, Primal, New Kind of Hero off the last record and hopefully Rats too, now the record is out. There’s another sleeper track on there called Absolution, which I think is gonna be a classic at some point.

Interview By Rob Lyon

Catch Floatsam and Jetsam on the following dates, tickets HERE…