Interview with Glen Benton... 23rd Feb '04 (taken from Deicide website)

Three years on from the poorly-received "In Torment, In Hell" album, Deicide are a band with a point to prove. Having recently signed to Earache Records for the release of their seventh studio album, the ultra-blasphemous death metal holocaust that is "Scars Of The Crucifix", the Floridian quartet are primed and ready to launch a fresh assault on extreme music fans the world over. We caught up with frontman Glen Benton at the band's rehearsal room in deepest, darkest Florida and found the great man in fine form. Ladies and gentlemen, Deicide are back and this time they're heading straight to Hell...

Did you just want to take the bands you liked and push everything a bit further?
"Pretty much. We just started writing heavy stuff and it sounded really fuckin' heavy, with the emphasis on evil, and we just went ahead with it, full force!"

Did you plan to be a well known band when you started?
"It just happened. We were peddling around here for a couple of years and we knew that if we didn't record something then we'd fizzle out like everyone else. We got the demo and that got us signed. At the time we didn't think anything of it. It was just good times in our lives. That first album was a reflection of who we were at the time, like with every record. Everybody grows, certain things change, social situations and climates..."

Did you ever deliberately plan to get attention by being controversial?
"I could easily get a reaction so I'd do a lot of that stuff. Sometimes when I do an interview I'm in a good mood, sometimes I'm in a bad mood, sometimes you'll get good answers and sometimes I'm in one of my sarcastic moods and it could go either way. That's just the way I am."

Do you regret anything you said?
"Well, there was the 'I'm gonna die at 33' thing. I made that statement and it was said in a hypothetical way. It wasn't like it was something I was looking forward to! But I had a real bad bike crash when I was 33 so it came pretty close."

What did you think when you received threats from the Norwegian black metal scene?
"They were just being fucking adolescents and doing shit that you do as a kid. Burning churches and shit like that. It's just stupid shit. Your band must really suck, man, if you have to go out and burn a church to get people to hear your music. That and going out and killing someone or whatever. What did that guy gain? He's sitting in a jail now looking like Adolf Hitler. That really furthered his career, right?"

Have you ever been a fan of black metal?
"You know, I've watched a lot of different music styles come and go, grunge and all that shit. It's one of those things. There's some good black metal bands out there. I don't care about your personal beliefs until you put it down on tape and there's no substance to it. Music's made to be enjoyed and I can't enjoy a lot of that stuff. It's very one-dimensional, like rap music. That's how it strikes me. But I do like some of those bands. There's some great bands doing that shit. I really like Immortal. They have some substance to their music, but it's just like in our style of music. There's some bands that step up and stay the course, and bands that don't have what it takes and just disappear."

As one of death metal's biggest bands, do you feel pressure to deliver the goods?
"Definitely. We ain't gonna lose. The last two records for Roadrunner were just obligations for us. It was a case of 'get in, get it done, get off that label'. I think there's some good songs on "Insineratehymn" but the last one was real rushed. We just wanted to get the fuck out. It only took four days to record it. 'There you go! Now go fuck yourselves!'. Earache gave us a good deal and they've been good so far. We've got a one record deal so everyone's got to be honest and work. So far they've done on one record more than Roadrunner did on two or three records, man."

You sound angrier than ever on the new album?
„Oh yeah, man. I&Mac226;m getting old and grouchy. When I was doing the album, I wanted to outdo myself, both lyrically and with the vocals. I had a lot of shit sitting in my brain that I wanted to get out. It just builds up and stores itself, so when I sit down to write it just falls out of me. I have a sheet of paper by my bed so if I wake up with an idea I just write it down.‰

How exactly does your Satanism manifest itself these days?
"It's just a way of life, man. I'm not out torturing people's kids or doing stupid bullshit like that, it's just about being the fucking anti-Christian that I am. I'm anti-Christian and I'm anti-established religion and that's the way I live my life. I'm just doing my own thing. The only time I set out to offend anybody is when I speak my mind and sing these fucking songs. I don't preach to anybody. I just say what I've got to say in my lyrics and that's it."

How do people in your neighbourhood treat you? Do they know who you are?
"They know I play in a band, that I'm a musician, but that's it. They don't know the actual band I'm in. I could tell them a thousand times and they still wouldn't remember. All they give a fuck about is if I take care of my house and my yard."

How have you changed since the early days?
"When you're a kid you're fucking naïve. You're stupid. You find your niche and everything falls into place. I'm comfortable with everything in my life."

Has being a parent changed you?
"Being a parent is cool, man. I'm more of a big kid myself. Being a parent just means that I have someone to play with. That's how it is. I have a 12 year old and a two-and-a-half year old. I'll be sitting there wrestling with the two-and-a-half year old and suddenly someone takes the wind out of you and it's the 12 year old. There's one big brawl going on and we're getting bawled at by my old lady.

Do you think your kids will follow in your footsteps?
'Daemon, my oldest, he plays guitar, man. He plays a lot of Metallica stuff and he's learning more. That's his only mission in life, to get a band together. I can relate to that because that was my mission too. When you're that age you know what you want. He's been to shows and he's seen it. He sees that I walk out and there's hundreds of people going berserk, and he sees all the fringe benefits of it, the money and the travelling, all the bullshit. He knows that's what he wants to do. He's a character, man. He's determined. He's been hollering at me for a new guitar lately. I just say 'When that one falls apart you get a new one!'


Have you ever made much money from being in Deicide?
"I've made enough to survive. I do other little things here and there to get by, but I don't live extravagantly or anything. I've got a modest three bedroom house in suburbia, just like the rest of us. We don't live in mansions. That's why we got the hell off Roadrunner Records. We've made how many records and we're still living like this? It's not good, man. I feel like I'm a farmer because I go out and make a bunch of money on a tour but I come back and I have to live on it for four months or six months. It's like a regular job but you get paid in advance."

Do you still enjoy it as much as you used to?
"I love it. What else is there to do? It's who I am. The older I get the more I've come to grips with it. I used to fight it, but now I know. I'm Glen Benton. I'm in Deicide. Then you hear your fucking dad saying 'When are you going to grow up?' That's motivation enough, man! There's nothing else to do and I might as well go with it."

Does this new album feel like a fresh opportunity to get what you deserve from being in the band?
"I love it, man. I think so. It's about time. There's a lot of bands out there that barely scrape by. Sabbath, Priest, a lot of those bands for years scraped by before they saw any money. We're just one of them. Dio, man. How many years did he work before he made any money? Hopefully we'll see some real money this time."

Would you say this is your best album?
"It's up there. This one's different. The last two weren't so great. This time it was time for us to do it the way we used to do it. The emphasis is on attack. We've learnt from our mistakes. Having to live with those last two records, that's the only motivation we needed. We knew before we started on this one, that this was an important record for us."

Did you have any songs in mind as benchmarks for the new material?
"Man, there's so many songs. I should give you one off each record. 'Once Upon The Cross', 'Dead By Dawn', 'Lunatic Of God's Creation' there's a lot of great Deicide songs, right?"

Are there any bands around today that excite you?
'Those guys from Brazil, Krisiun. They're bad ass and they're good guys too, man. They're a tight band. Their lead guitar player's a fucking ripper!"

How do you think death metal has fared over the last few years?
'Its like every brand of music, man. The metal scene's always rejuvenating every ten years or so. It rebuilds itself every generation. All the kids coming to the shows now are all 14, 15, 16. They get turned on to stuff by their buddies and people say 'You think that's fucking heavy! Listen to this shit!' and that's how it goes, how it's always been. I used to work in a music store when I was a kid and I used to snag all the underground metal that would come into the store. A lot of those records were coming as open promos to play in the store so I ended up with probably $10,000 worth of vinyl. I remember when 'Melissa' by Mercyful Fate came out. It was like 'What the fuck is this?'"

Was there one band in particular that inspired you when you were a kid?
"Black Sabbath, man. I heard them when I was eight or nine years old. I loved it the first time I heard 'Paranoid' and 'Children Of The Grave' and all that shit. I remember being in high school and Ozzy leaving Sabbath and then Dio stepping in. I still liked 'em for those two records. I liked 'Born Again', too. The production's all fucked up but it's weird to hear Gillan screaming like he does. It's totally different. He created a different feel for that record. Those screams are insane, man. I saw them on tour for that tour and he was all fucking hoarse and couldn't hit his highs. It happens to all those screamers, man. Halford's day is coming soon, too!"

How do you look after your voice?
"It just comes naturally. I don't do anything special to look after it. When my throat is sore I can hit the highs easier than the lows, but for the most part I have a lot of control over it. The first time I toured Europe I had my tonsils taken out two weeks prior and everyone told me not to do it, but I was screaming every day for two weeks and I ended up with this fucking huge callous on it and it's sounded like this ever since."

A lot of recent reviews have said that you sound a lot more cheerful these days?
"Touring used to bum me out, man. I don't know. Sometimes on the road you get exhausted from travelling and sitting around for 23 hours just to play for an hour. I don't drink as much as I used to, I guess, and I'm having a better time. We used to drink Jack Daniels straight all the time and I'd been jumping off tables and shit and fucking myself up."

How important is the UK to Deicide?
"I've always enjoyed coming over to the UK. Apart from the bomb threat bullshit it's been pretty good over there. We recorded our new video in England, man."

That's the video for "Scars Of The Crucifix", whats it like?
It's a black and white video of us just screaming it out, man. It's cool for a first video. Roadrunner never did one for us, believe it or not. Hopefully they'll play this one on a TV station somewhere! I didn't want to go for one of these theatrical things with flames and a fantasy world and all that shit. We just wanted to play, find a good fucking location and do it. Let the camera do the work, man. It's a good video for what it is. I let my mother see it the other day and it's the first time she's ever seen what I do. That was pretty funny."

Did she enjoy it?
"Oh yeah. She was like, 'Well, ain't that something!'"

Do you think you're still at the top end of what's possible in extreme music or have other bands pushed it further?
"Well, how can you push it much further without making it boring? It's the hooks that excite me and give me the ideas for the lyrics and shit. If it's just relentless and all on one level then it loses the excitement. It's like when I get a new idea for a song. It's got to be more offensive than the last one, man. It's got to piss people off.


Is offending people still that important to you?
"Yeah, definitely. I remember when I was a kid I went to some junior camp shit, for a day or something, and the teachers were playing what they called 'Satan music' and they played Eric Clapton's 'Cocaine' and said it was the Devil and shit! I was thinking 'It's fucking Eric Clapton! You should hear the fucking stuff I'm listening to at home!' Those people have no clue and I love to piss those motherfuckers off. I've always thought was a cool thing to do.

Have you ever thought about writing about something completely different?
"I can't! Every time I try to write it just comes back to Satan and anti-God. That's just the way my thought patterns work. You wanna hear a good one? I wrote a poem for my old lady the other day. I just bought a new stove. It's black. If you cook on it, it gets real messy quick. So I put this poem on the stove for her. 'If you cook on the stove and make a mess, on this stove I've just purchased, I'll put my foot up your ass to my knee, and then you will learn the meaning of clean. I can't help it, man, I'm a fucking poet! Hey, that's just my way of expressing myself. I remember writing funny jingles in my bedroom when I was a kid, just being silly and writing funny songs."

Do you think people forget that you might have a sense of humour?
"People think I'm an animal, man. They think I'm a heathen and that they can't talk to me or approach me. People are afraid. I'm no different to you or anyone else, man. When I'm in a bad mood I don't want to be bothered, but catch me on the right day and I'm cool."

What do you want to achieve now?
"Just to keep on going, man. With the next record we're going to get stupid, real over the top. On this record we just wanted to see what would happen, and now we've seen it we're just going to get outrageous on the next one and push it to its pinnacle. When we came in and started this record we knew which direction it needed to go in. We changed a lot of tempos because I thought they'd sound more convincing faster or with a different feel. It worked out good, I think."

It's always good to hear an album that lasts for less than 30 minutes. Was that deliberate?
"When I listen to a record if it's really long I just lose interest. Some of the best records are like bam, bam, BAM! See you later! It should be an experience, like going to see a movie. You should want to see it again. I think we may venture off a bit on the next record, maybe do some experimenting. We're at that point in our career. It's still fun. If it ain't fun then it ain't worth doing any more. I'm at that point in my life where I do things because I want to. Like with women, it's like 'You're leaving? Okay, bye! Have some child support!' I don't give a fuck. I don't care about that kind of shit. You reach that point in your life, man. I've lost best friends, I've been in all kinds of situations, my kid's face got mauled off by a dog and they had to sew his face back on. I've been through a lot of shit. It's not going to affect me anymore. Whatever! Music's always been there and it's not going away. With women it's like, 'We've seen you come, we'll see you go'. This band will be here when you're not. I've put a few relationships behind me. It's always going to be there."

How important is metal to you?
"Metal's in your blood, man, it's like a disease! When you're metal, you just know it. You go grocery shopping and you feel metal. You know everyone's looking at you! I was in a bar last week and this guy saw my long hair and said 'You must play in a band and I said Yeah' and he said 'I bet it's a metal band!' Like, really? That was real clever of you to work that one out, man. Okay, so I'm a goddamn circus freak and everyone knows it. That's just the way it is."