Full Metal Straight Jacket

early 2001

What can a poor boy do / except play in a rock'n'roll band ? The four Peora-born boys' idea of make-up used to come from their striving for an escape from an ugly reality. Today, LD 5O, their debut album, gives a deeper insight into their aspirations - musical as well as philosophical. Stanley Kubrick and David Lynch, Voivod and Skinny Puppy fans, Mudvayne hit it big when they meet Shawn Crahan, the Slipknot clown, who takes them under his benevolent and brightly colored wing. LD 5O is more than a record, it's a kind of 17 tracks long feature film, an autonomous universe on the rock scene, far from medias and their labels. Far from being a " monolithic " band, Mudvayne moves, explodes and tries day after day to push back its own human and musical limits. Believe it or not, 2OO1 should be Mudvayne's year. We met a band definitely greater than life (minus its then-sick singer). In the meantime, don't confuse mass metal with math metal...

Where does the name Mudvayne come from?
sPaG : Kud, our singer, first put out the name, back five years ago, so it was kind of his idea. He found the name of the band. There's no particular meaning : the sound of it, for sure ; you might hear some stories, specially stories in America, about aliens, certain contacts we might have with alien consciousness, that spured us to use it as a vehicle to propagate the colonization of America. That's one potential idea, and you can say yes or no too, but that's interesting, nevertheless!

And for the title of the LP : LD 5O, which is a chemical componant : why ?

sPaG : LD.5O is a pharmacological term used by the medical industry to standardize the toxicity of chemicals, specifically. Probably, in huge medical books, medical scientists and doctors have a standardisation for every single thing that you can possibly have in your body. It was a very useful metaphor for us, during the writing of the album.

You come from Peoria, which is a small place in Illinois : Was this factor very important when you formed Mudvayne ?
Gurrg : Yes, of course, it's very important, there's certainly something to do with how we came out and the way we're writing...
sPaG : Bringing up imagination is an interesting point and that's how I wanna answer that question : where we are from, there is very little cultural background, there's a big lack of culture : consequently, you're forced to draw from your imagination in a place where there's little culture, you live in your imagination, you live in the media, so to speak, you live with sitcoms, with cartoons, with videos games, and with the music. So, in that imaginary world, you find a life, you find a culture, and so this have been an unmistakeable influence on the way the band is now. Why talk about aliens, if you have a rich culture ? 4000 years old buildings like you have in Europe, this must stimulate, flatter your mind. If we had that, maybe our attention would'nt have been looking up the stars, or thinking about other planets !

You made your first Lp by yourselves : " Kill I oughta ", printed at 1000 copies : any chance to see it again in the shops ?
sPaG : No : There's copies circulating now and there, but we are going forward, we're not going back.
Ryknow : It was just for your local fans...
sPaG : Yes : there were such a demand for us to put out something locally, 'cause we'd been playing for some time! Three of those songs on " Kill I oughta " are live songs that we just tracked on our own. We wanted something to give to the fans. But we were not disappointed by this record, not at all...
Ryknow : " Kill I oughta " is a precursor, like " LD.5O " is a precursor to what is to come.
sPaG : We don't want to look back and regret anything : it's us !
Ryknow : It's our music, and it all speaks to people.

Could you develop this idea of " math metal " ?
sPaG : Well, people try all the time to qualify or give a name to whatever we do, so it was quite a joke between Kud and I : we said : how ! that math metal bring your abacus ! There are obvious numerical things behind the way that we write our music, and that's not maybe necessarily typical in a lot of metal to pursue numbers specifically. In that sense too, " math " being a general metaphor for speaking of abstractions, of concepts, or symbols. The term math, metaphorically was very appropriate.

You said that your idea was to develop characters through your make ups and pseudos : when and how did this idea come to you ?
sPaG : We don't attach any specific identities to the make up : it's something we use on stage to bring a visual aspect to our shows; we don't identify any specific character or personage with the make up. We see it more like an abstraction, a visual stimulus and we're not really too literal with it, which is dangerous : if you take something like the make up too literaly, you shut yourself down to the possibilities of evolving, of changing, of moving forward. Suddenly, you are...Mickey Mouse ! ! ! Suddenly, you are that character and then you shut yourself down for the potential for audience realizing the growth and the evolutioning change.
Ryknow : We try to do the same things with the videos as well, trying to have things look different from the way we are on stage to give way for us to do different things. You should look like this, because it's the way you 've always looked, but no, it's not the way we've always looked : we changed a lot since our beginnings, and we keep it evolving. In time, people will see many different things from us. That's very important.
sPaG : As a side note, you could use our stage names, our album names, you can call me sPaG when the make up is on, but you don't finally call me sPaG now, without my make up on. We wanted to develop a visual potential of the band, not characters.
Ryknow : We wanted to develop different types of things, but maybe things we didn't have the money to do. We had two dollars to buy make up but not thousand dollars on costumes for each one of us, or stage props or screens, we'd love to have footage.

Like Tool, for example ?
sPaG : Yes, like any of the greatest travelling high produced bands : Pink Floyd, Nine Inch Nails...
Ryknow : We went to see Creed and Sevendust and the production was just...unreal ! Huge sixty foot tall video screens ! Visually, it's very stimulating, and we definitely want to move forward into something that is very stimulating visually. And so it was the first way that we found with the tools we had in hands and the money we had to do that.

Could this make up be a kind of handicap for Mudvayne, as people could only see that and not your music ?
sPaG : It's not so much a handicap in the use of it, but it can be in the perception the media have of it, and the direction the media want to go in. It's the general human nature to try to box things in, and close artists in, and draw correlation with other things, it gives a point of reference which is valuable to the audience, but in the process it also limits the artist.

The music of Mudvayne is very complex and rich : aren't you annoyed to be classified as nu metal band or neo Slipknot band ?
sPaG : Neo Slipknot band ? yes ! Nu metal band ? I like the idea of new/ nu, the concept of nu is exciting for me.
Ryknow : Nu is a compliment to us, and I think that means nu metallers are considering us as nu metal band,...we are nu ? We agree with those things together. If you look at the definition of those words, we are those things.
sPaG : The general acceptance that the public has of Slipknot is an obvious indication of the fact that the music industry is going in a new direction. The fact that a band like Slipknot, regardless of their look, but just listening at how extreme their music is, the fact that they can sell a platinum album is an indication of the fact that there is a new trend in metal.
Ryknow : Bands like them have paved the way for bands to be more expressive with the way they look and more extreme with the way they play.

For a song like " Cradle ", which is very personal, is it easier for you to sing it live with this make up ?
sPaG : The make up has nothing to do with it : the make up we wera on stage has nothing to do with the spirit of the conception of the songs, lyrically or musically, and there's not even a way to talk about that, really. We write our music and we don't sit around in the basement with our make up on and write our music. Of course, the make up in the live situation, because it's so dramatic, protects the dramatic energy of the music.

How was it to tour with Slipknot and what did you learn there ?
sPaG : They are our brothers ! They are very family oriented, and we felt a family sort of comraderie touring with them, there was no isolation between the bands, we spend all our time together, encouraging each other, supporting each other, and it was a great experience touring with them, it was a great way for us to start our touring experience, with such a positive atmosphere.
Ryknow : They taught us how to be real people on tour, we were very apprehensive to go on tour with bands like Biohazard. But then you meet them and you realize they're really nice people.

What were your influences when you started ?
sPaG : Musically we were obviously influenced by the newly coming about rap metal scene or whatever it's called : Korn kind of exploded the music scene in the early nineties, when we were beginning to form the band ; and so came the Deftones and Tool, and we were in the general spirit of where music was going, coming out of that revolution. So the band began in those roots for sure. But we listen to all different kinds of music, as long as it's quality.

You are heavy Stanley Kubrick's fans, especially " 2001... " : which is the reason of the song " Monolith " : do you see LD.50 as a movie without pictures ?
sPaG : I should clarify that we have no intention of setting out to make a soundtrack for the movie 2001,we drew artistic ideas and general themes from it, but in no specific or literal way did we set out to try to remake that movie. Speaking about the album in a cinematic sense, yes, absolutely : we took the perspective to create a cinematic experience. There are consistent themes floating through the album from the beginning to the end, things you can almost in a metaphoric way say are plot, like the four shadow things throughout the album, that in a sense is very cinematic, and our love of cinema was a reason for wanting to have that sort of feeling. As an artist, I think film is the greatest and most powerful form of artistic expression available to us. The use of visual and sound simultaneously is so dimentional, so powerful, that it's undeniable that it's a very rich form of artistic expression. The angle being musicians, we tried to someway to reflect that also, that's very positive.

And what were for you the most interesting ideas in this film ?
sPaG : A couple of things : specificaly, Stanley Kubrick is known for being able to communicate highly intellectual ideas in a very non verbal way. And, as an artist, it's so exciting, especially being a musician, functioning in a non verbal media ; if you pay attention to the movie, the first half an hour have no dialogue, and it's such a rich amount of highly abstract and conceptual ideas which are communicated, not verbally, not specifically, but instantly, when you start to pay attention to the movie, that's overwhelming. And if we could in some way as musical artists also achieve that, that level of communication, but still not be too literal, I think we'd have succeeded in the greatest fashion. In another way, 2OO1 was very very influential on us, specifically in reference to what the monolith represented. I think Kubrick intended this : I don't think he tried in any way to say that the monolith was a thing, but his intention was that this monolith was a metaphoric representation of those experiences, things, events, that a person comes in contact with, that give an opportunity to radically revisualize themselves, the world, and to change. The monolith became the representation of that to us, as a metaphore. In that way, every song on the album is a monolith, an instantaneous opportunity for the point of contact that the listener has to radically see themselves in a new way, to experience something very specific. We wanted to encapsulate that idea in the album, not in a literal way, but we wanted to capture that spirit.

You have a very nice website : is it an important tool for the band and it is a kind of extension of the record and the live shows?
sPaG : Absolutely, and specifically one thing that is interesting is the fact that our lyrics weren't printed on the album but you can get them on our website. Then, immediately, the website became a very powerful vehicle to relate to the fans. It's changing all the time, evoluting, as the band gives more research to it, like the live shows, the stage. If we want to see ourselves as a visual medium outside of just being a musical medium, like we wanna see our shows, then it goes without saying that the website is a very powerful medium to bring other dimensions to the band. I'd love to see other artists or other bands, as technology evolves, websites and technology give us opportunities to communicate and show and express our ideas in new ways. The E-Mail address goes directly to us, and we try to answer our mail as much as we can.
Ryknow : An important thing to say is that if someone gets an E-Mail from us, it's us, not some person at Sony music. And even if all the e-mails don't get an answer, they are read anyway. We read all the E-Mails. It's crazy, because there are so many ! But it's alright, it's great to hear the comments from the people who listen to our music.
sPaG : But I'm afraid that in the future, the E-Mail is something we won't be able to keep up ; so we would like to turn over to somebody who would represent us, and more specific E-Mails could get to us. But in a lot of those E-Mails, people just want to say that they respect what we're doing, and we read that, we see that. Cheers, thank you !

Could you give 4 lp's which changed your life ?
sPaG : I can cite three albums that really had a big impact on me as an artist : " Venus access " by Skinny Puppy, which really blew my mind, the energy and the spirit of it were so unlike a lot of the electronic music that was going on at the time, " Nail ", by Scrapping foetus off the wheel, probably my all time favorite album, and " Killing technology " by Voivod, specifically as a drummer and a heavy metal artist, which totally and radically changed the way I saw heavy metal. I've seen Voivod three different times in the States, and every time it was a wonderful experience.
Gurrg : What was the question ? Oh, no, no specific albums, but much more a fascination with the guitar ; I spent hours in my fucking bedroom trying to figure it out.
Ryknow : I remember the first Jimi Hendrix song that I ever heard, "The wind cries Mary", as well as the Beach Boys, the Beatles, the big band jazz stuff that my grandfather hooked me up to. I can't necessarily name an album that took me beyond where I was, but I can cite many albums that I feel are still very much a part of me.

Mudvayne : the future ?
sPaG : I guess we hope that, beyond the longevity of the band, we will always have some career inside music, whether doing film scores or being involved with other artists.