I was lucky enough to be standing in the right place at the right time for this little interview. Most bands are lucky enough that I don't recognize them face-to-face, and John from Cryptopsy would have been one of them except he was talking to a fan nearby and I must have been eavesdropping. He probably never knew what hit him when I rushed up and slammed him for an interview, because he actually agreed to it. I must say that, to date, this is one of the interviews that I'm most proud of because, well, it's CRYPTOPSY. After getting this interview, I wanted to tell someone so bad (and I was at the Ohio Deathfest by myself...awww) so I made a long-distance collect call. Well, hey! I was happy!

Anyway, this interview took place in Cryptopsy's minivan, outside of the Phantasy Theater in Cleveland, Ohio--Deathfest 1999 with Flo and Alex asleep in the back...haha! Hey, even brutal guys like this have to sleep...

ID: Give me a little history on Cryptopsy.
Well, Cryptopsy is a band that started in 1993...was actually a band that started out in something like 1989 with another name. The band was called Necrosis back then. They had a different style, and then one day learned that there was this other band from Florida, I think, that was also called Necrosis. They decided to change the band name and change the whole concept. So in 1992, they came up with Cryptopsy...I wasn't in the band back then. The only original member that's left in the band was the drummer from those days.
In 1993 they recorded a four-song demo, the "Ungentle Exhumation" demo. And after that I got in the band maybe eight or nine months after they released that demo and right before recording our first album "Blasphemy Made Flesh". I only helped them write two songs for that album; all the other songs were already written. And [there were] line-up changes, it wasn't the same basis as on the demo. We got another bass player (still a different one than the one we have now), I got in on lead, and the line-up stayed that way for the "None So Vile" album, which is our second album. We kicked out our bassist--the one that was on the "Blasphemy Made Flesh" album--we kicked him out because he couldn't tour and he was starting to have trouble following. So we got the bassist that we have now, Eric. And Steve, one of the original founding members, on rhythm guitar--the one that was on the "Ungentle Exhumation" demo--left the band for a career move. He had a really good job opportunity that he couldn't refuse, so he left. We recorded our second album, "None So Vile", as a four-piece and right after recording it we got another guitarist, Miguel...a lot of line-up changes in Cryptopsy, a lot of them. And then we stayed like that for three years. We recorded "Whisper Supremecy" with Miguel; he helped to write the "Whisper Supremecy" album. We did the Death Across America tour with Miguel [Death Across America Tour with Nile, Gorguts and Oppressor]. Shortly after that tour another tour was getting booked and Miguel had legal problems, he couldn't get his working papers. The first time we smuggled him across [the border]. We learned by our lawyer that if we smuggled him across and got caught we were accomplices...so we were all screwed. So we had no choice; we told him to get his papers done, he didn't do that, so we had no choice but to kick him out and get Alex. Oh yeah, something very important that I forgot: After the second album, Lord Worm, our original singer, left the band. Not really because we weren't friends anymore--because we're still friends--but it's just that the musical style that we were going towards wasn't exactly what he wanted. Like he was more a black metal fan. So Lord Worm trained and helped Mike, our new singer, adapt to his songs and helped him out for a few songs on the new album. Mike wrote six songs lyrically on the new album. Since the new album, tours in the US, a few shows up in Canada, today we're here in Cleveland and next week it's Dynamo, our first show in Europe will be the Dynamo Festival. That is a dream come true. I've never taken the airplane in my life; I'm going to lift off the ground for the first time in my life next week...Next week at this time I'll be in Holland! After that we're coming back for two weeks then heading out for a tour in Europe this time. On that tour is Nile, Cryptopsy, Vader, Enslaved, and Six Feet Under. We'll be back at the beginning of June, after that we only have two more shows internationally. At the end of July we're supposed to play Milwaukee...we won't because during the time that Milwaukee [Metalfest] is taking place we're playing Japan.

ID: Well, that's even better...
John: Yeah, let's say that the choice was fairly easy. After that we have a few shows up in Canada and then we're just gonna stay put because we only have [two songs] started for a new album. We'll have to have a new album out for next summer, so we've really got to get down to taking some time off and just writing stuff.

ID: Hectic schedule...
John: Yeah, but you know it's like...I'm not complaining but I find that the human species is just never happy enough. Like when we were not that popular and things weren't going that well on the first and second album--things were going well, but not going as fast as we would want them--we were complaining 'Aww, we're not doing shows, we're not doing tours'. This and that. Now we're on a big label, now we're always on the road and it's like, 'Ugh, we'd like to have some time OFF!' So it's like you're never happy. But I'm just going with the flow and we're all hyped, ya know. We're gonna go on another continent and try to invade their space as well.

ID: What are some of your influences?
John: That's a tough one. Well, we obviously all have one thing in common: A death metal influence. Suffocation, Malevolent Creation, Morbid Angel, Entombed...all the other bands. There's so many good bands that we've listened to...Sinister, Ill-Disposed. We were much into the underground scene, but a few years back when the scene was becoming more and more stale we started to listen to other stuff. And not only because of that, because we wanted to be able to incorporate more stuff into our music...ya know, get some other inputs than only death metal.

ID: Like what?
John: Well, Mike, our singer, likes a lot of hardcore, like Hatebreed and bands like that, and more doom stuff. Flo listens to pretty much anything. Like he'll go to like Dave Matthews to Primus to Dream Theater to technical stuff to jazz. Jazz is a very rich style of music; there's a lot of things that you can suck out of jazz, especially to put in our style of music. People should definitely look into that more because jazz has so many fucked up ideas. Sometimes you don't understand everything right away, but once you listen to it a couple of times you start understanding the feel.
Personally, I like Yngwie Malmsteen, Al Dimeola is a great guitarist. I like Dream Theater, Primus, Arch Enemy albums...that's more like metal, not death metal. There's so many things that we listen to. Like, we don't just listen to death metal anymore, we try to get a lot of inputs. But what I like is since the past two years, it's cool to see there's good bands coming out, and are giving a good impact. Things are going well with us...Not only us, but a band like Nile. I kind of feel like we're founding the next generation of extreme music. Cuz like Cryptopsy's around, Nile's around, Gorgasm's around, Cephalic Carnage is around...so many bands are redefining what it is now and it's different. And that's cool because it's not the same structure, it's not all the same formula...

ID: Yeah, everybody's got their own individuality...
John: Exactly...So I actually listen to more death metal today, than I did a year ago because there's good extreme albums that I could put in and they'll be totally different. Like Nile...they have a totally different way of thinking and way of writing it. And with their Egyptian influence and everything, it's great, ya know? We all feed on that, but we all try to gain a lot of input from a lot of other styles so we can have a better output. A more diversified output for our albums.

ID: It's kind of like you were saying, you can take stuff from jazz and incorporate it into death metal and a lot of people don't realize it, but it's there.
John: Yeah. The last album, the "Whisper Supremecy" album, I know that a lot of people liked the album. Some people have said to us, 'We find that there's a bit too much going on'. That's okay, it's just that we had, as a goal, to surpass the extremity of our second album "None So Vile" that a lot of people thought that we couldn't do. So we had to extract a bit of the catchiness to get into more extreme and went to get fucked up ideas like in jazz and Dave Matthews, Dream Theater...Dream Theater are fucked up! Like they have good ideas and progressive rock, progressive metal. Even though it sounds odd...like at the first listen people will say, 'It sounds odd!' But the whole concept of that riff or that song is based upon that. Live, when we do the songs, that's how we do it. You gotta be different...you can't write the same album twice.

ID: Exactly. And I cannot stand to see bands who start out so heavy and then say "Oh we're gonna get more progressive" and then they end up lighter. They don't move ahead, it's more like they move back.
John: Yeah. Well, we wanted to get definitely more progressive, but we wanted to keep our Cryptopsy-brutal aspect.

ID: Which makes you guys just...bad-ass!
John: Well, thank you!

ID: Do you feel that in the scene, that bands help each other out or that there's an underlying competitiveness?
John: That's a complicated question. When it started out, there was a lot of bands were helping each other out. Us, in Montreal--because before 98/99 we didn't do much outside of Montreal except for a few festivals down in the States--we were all helping each other out, and then at some point, you're right, there was some kind of competition that was taking place. Internationally, I don't know. But it didn't seem to last very long because since that there's this new generation coming out...like we get along perfect with Cephalic, with Devourment, with Nile. Nile are like fuckin' tour brothers to us. Like with the Death Across America tour, they helped out a lot. They have that big RV and we were all cramped in a little van, they would take some people with them. Really cool guys. Those guys are the shit, man!

ID: Yeah, they are! [And Karl needs to email me!! --Jamie]
John: I just hope that we're scheduled to be in the same tour bus as them in Europe. We're all gonna be cramped up in tour buses, but I wanna be cramped up with THOSE guys because I know with those guys everything will go well. So on that side, for the past couple of years I find that the feeling of the beginning of the underground is coming back. More people are helping each other out and I think that's going to make the new generation. Like, okay, maybe for now all the bands are not Morbid Angels and Malevolent Creations and bands like that, but ya know if bands like that have been around for a long time, they've paid their dues and they deserve where they're at now. Us, we're going through the same process, trying to pay our dues, trying to cramp ourselves the more that we can to save a few bucks (laughs). Like I said, all the bands try to help us out, we stick together and hopefully we'll be the next generation.

ID: What do you think about helping out really unknown bands? Like if somebody comes up to you and says, "Hey, listen to my band's cd!" Do you actually listen to it?
John: Yeah, I do.

ID: If you came across something that you really liked, would you try to help them out?
John: Yeah! Well, bands like Cephalic Carnage, Nile and bands like that I didn't know of until I got the cd through the mail. I pretty much listen to every cd. It's for sure that sometimes I get some bands that don't have that good of a production and they start off with a really typical duh duh duh...bumbumbumbum and right there, it's like, okay, this is gonna be typical. So I will listen, but I won't listen to like the whole demo or album. But for sure, when I fall onto something good, I'll listen to it. Another band that I forgot to mention is this band from Denmark, Autumn Leaves...I got their cd maybe three years ago, their first album. Listened to the whole goddamned thing...they impressed the shit out of me! And I just got their second album a few weeks ago. Yeah, if the album is good, if it's new, if it's a different concept I will definitely listen to it. As far as helping out the bands, when we're in Montreal and we're playing shows, we know a lot of bands. We try to get friends of ours or bands that we know need help in Montreal. Down in the States, when we're going on tour, it's a booking agency that books it so we have no control on that. When we get there it's like, okay, there's an opening act so it's them and that's it.

ID: Being on a label like Century Media, do you have any kind of pull or influence, like you could go to them and say "These guys kick ass...check 'em out"?
John: Well, the thing is, the label isn't really the one who decides what band is going to be on the bill. For example, the last two tours we did were with Digger International stationed in Chicago. They put together the whole tour, they put together all the bands. Century Media has no say. Century Media just calls them up and says 'Well, we'd like to have Cryptopsy on that bill" and they say, "Okay, cool".

ID: Well, what about as far as label interest?
John: Oh, well for sure, if there's some bands that are unsigned that we find cool, we openly talk about it. Like there's this band from Springfield, Massachusetts called Shadows Fall. Century Media were asking about the band and we said, "Yeah, it's a cool band!" It's not as brutal as what we do, but it's a different concept, it's catchy and people get into that shit. And because of that, we helped them out with a cool word to the label and now they're now in negotiations. So when we can help out, sure! But like Nile is signed to Relapse and all the other bands are signed to labels, so there's so much we can do.

ID: Do you think there's any kind of competition or animosity between black metal and death metal bands?
John: I know that there's some people that do have problems between black metal and death metal. We've never had any problems with any black metal bands. Our ex-vocalist, Lord Worm, was a huge black metal fan. We're not big black metal fans, in the band. Our new guitarist will listen to some of it, I like the new Emperor, but it's not a style that I get into at 100%. But it is what it is and people like the style, and I respect that...if the kids wanna hear that, well good for them. We played often with black metal bands up in Montreal, we never had any problems. Like there was this project that we could tour Europe with Dimmu Borgir...The thing is, it would be extremely stupid to have styles one against each other because, if that's the case, the shows are gonna be smaller. Because, like Wurster two weeks ago, there was black metal bands, there was extreme bands, there was thrash bands, there were hardcore bands. What happened? All the kids were in there together. Hardcore with metalheads with punks...that's what it should be.

ID: Yeah, I think when bands start arguing amongst themselves, amongst the styles, you're going to separate it all. Metal has a hard enough time getting airplay and things like that as it is. When you get a festival like this or like Milwaukee where you can combine all the different types of music...
John: Exactly. We find it stupid...maybe two, three years ago, that's how it was. Ya know, hardcore kids wouldn't stand metal kids, they wouldn't stand the black metal kids. That being said, it's not because both bands are playing together that the black metal kids have to like what we play. If there's a few who like it, well good. If they don't like it, well, they're there.

ID: And you may introduce them to a new type of music...
John: Yeah, ya know, music is an art. It's like looking at a painting, you can't look at the same painting all your life. There's so many other things in music. So hell yeah, if they book all kinds of bands together like that we find that it's good for the scene. People, okay, maybe they won't like it, but maybe a few of them will. Maybe a few black metal kids or death metal kids will get into more hardcore, because there is a few hardcore bands out there that are pretty fuckin' brutal, if you ask me. Like hardcore with blast beats...I was pretty impressed when I saw that. It's blast beats but it's still hardcore, it's not death metal, ya know?

ID: Along the same lines as what you were saying about how you can't look at the same painting your whole life: If someone's looking at a painting, another person will pull something from it that the other person didn't and that's the same with music.
John: Yep, exactly.

ID: So, you said you're gonna be going back into the studio and recording for next summer?
John: We'll try to have another album out for the middle of next summer, probably around the same time as "Whisper Supremacy" came out...about two years apart. We always put two years between our albums because we wanna make sure that everything is as we want it. We don't like to speed write. Sometimes yes, we will write a song and it's gonna come out like that; sometimes it's not gonna be that way. We just don't wanna rush anything. I know that there's some bands that can write like eight songs in like two weeks...That I cannot understand. I cannot understand because, for me, each song has to have a different identity. And that's why we leave a lot of time because during that time there's new albums coming out, new influences. By past experience, if we write two songs really close to one another, they would somehow resemble each other. We wanna make sure that each song off the album is different than the one before. It's getting hard because we have three albums out. We have one new song that's finalized, but we're wondering, 'What are we gonna do next?' But then again, we've always stressed over that and we've always managed to do something.

ID: Do you ever feel like you get stuck in a rut...like if you're listening to a certain cd a lot, or a certain band or a certain style, do you find that when you're trying to write that you keep coming up with the same sound as what you're listening to?
John: Yes and no. Sometimes yes, but with Cryptopsy, as soon as a riff sounds like another riff it's like "Scrapped!" And sometimes it's gonna be a good riff, but "Oh, sounds like Morbid Angel. Forget it, it's out!" We don't even try to rearrange it. When people hear our songs, we want people to say, "Now, this is Cryptopsy." "This can't be anybody else, but Cryptopsy." Why? Because the way that they structured this passage or the way that they played this riff or something, ya know? Like if Suffocation came out with another album with another name and you'd pick it up and put it in the cd player and go "Now this is Suffocation" because this is exactly what Suffocation do. That's what we try to do...keep our identity.

ID: If you weren't playing in a metal band, what do you think you'd be doing?
John: Musically?

ID: Anything...Like what are your interests outside of music?
John: I like sports. I'm into hockey, big time. I actually quit hockey when I was really young...

ID: Don't even mention hockey...I'm from Michigan...Detroit Red Wings...
John: Aww, fuckin' "Hockey Town" my ass! But you guys are winning, so...

ID: Actually, we just lost two in a row.
John: Yeah, but they'll come back. [Thanks a lot, JOHN! You JINXED us! --Jamie] No offense, but yeah, Detroit is Hockey Town because they're winning, but you come to Montreal you'll see what Hockey Town is when there's journalists all over the place...Actually, that's the problem in Montreal, that there's too much press around the team, it stresses them out. As soon as they make a little mistake on the ice, the reporter comes up, "Yeah, you did this mistake. What happened there?"
Other than that, I work at a car auction...I'd probably just be working there, or maybe I'd still be playing hockey. I chose this path like ten years ago and I haven't looked back.

ID: What made you get into music?
John: Well, I always liked music. My parents are music freaks; my father also plays guitar so he taught me the basics. When I was playing hockey, I did one show with a band once and I had the feeling that I was a "rock star", so I quit hockey..."I'm gonna be a rock star!" But it didn't happen that way. But that's what made me change to music. The first time that I played with an actual drummer and a complete band, I said to myself, 'Yeah, that's what I wanna do.'

ID: So you're at the point with Cryptopsy now where you don't have to work a day job, right?
John: (Laughs at me). Wrong!! We gotta work, oh yeah! We're not living off this at all, no. We all work; we're like everybody else. I work a couple of days a week at the auction. Flo works. Alex works. Eric works. Mike does, too.

ID: How do you manage to tour around your jobs? Your bosses must be really cool...
John: More than cool...Hey Flo, is your boss cool?
Flo: No, she's a fuckin' ~something inaudible from his sleeping position...sounded like he said she smokes crack...LOL~
John: (Laughs). I'm lucky because where I work they're really understanding about that. But sometimes for other band members, it can become complicated, but we try to deal with it and try to do what we wanna do. And maybe someday, we will live off it. And when we do, people will be saying, "There they are! They're selling out!"

ID: Yeaaah...What do you think about that? About bands like--Cradle of Filth comes to mind--just over the past couple of years, they just blew right up there and people say they "sold out". Do you agree with that kind of statement?
John: No, I don't think they sold out because they continued doing what they always did. A band that I call a sell-out is Metallica.

ID: Exactly!
John: That is a total, total sell-out.

ID: I remember back when they said they would never do videos and all that and I think that once they got the money in their pockets...
John: Yeah, but still though...In the "And Justice For All" album time, they didn't have to do the Black album and go totally commercial. They were filling arenas all over the world already with "And Justice For All". But, it's more money and now instead of playing one night in each town, they're playing two nights in each town. When you call one album "Load" and the other one after that you call "ReLoad"...I dunno, maybe they have a lack of ideas or something. But that, for me, is a total sell-out.

ID: I think the money kind of blinded the talent that they did have.
John: Well, yeah. That's what they wanted to do, they did it and they're successful. But as far as metal goes, when you go to a Metallica show nowadays it's like 60% Mr. and Mrs. Anyone and maybe 40% of metalheads, if you're lucky.

ID: But I'm starting to see that with bands like Cradle of Filth, though. I see people who only listened to Tool or something like that and now they talk about "Oh, COF this, COF that." And they don't know any other black metal bands, any other death metal bands...
John: Yeah, but they're huge, ya know? They have merchandising...Like how many different shirts do they have!? The company that takes care of them does miracles for them; that's why they're so known. Musically, they didn't write an album TO sell out. They just continued to do what they had always done. But Metallica with the "Black" album...What a disappointment when I picked that up!

ID: Do you write at all when you're on tour?
John: Not really. We have ideas, we talk about concepts and stuff like that, but we're so picky that we can't just write sitting backstage or something; we have to have all our instruments and try to sort things out. Brainstorming and structuring, stuff like that. Like I said, we don't really write songs, chain-produce songs...We like taking our time, making sure we have time to practice, that we have the time to do what we wanna do and finalize each song as we want it finalized. Sometimes, we'll even finish a song and two months after, we'll modify it, ya know? But that's what makes the song more different; adds a bit more detail here, more detail there.

ID: Well, what's in the future for Cryptopsy?
John: Europe, for now. Next week, Dynamo...Touring Europe, Japan...short tour in Canada. Like I said earlier, we're going to mellow out this fall and write, and hopefully everything will go well and we'll have an album out for next summer. From there, I'm not thinking about that right now...I'm just concentrating on what we're doing now and we know that we have to start to write.

Thanks to John for taking the time to do the interview...You guys kicked ass that night! And hey, email me, John, if you happen to check the zine out.

Also, to the Michigan/Red Wings fans reading this, blame John for the Red Wings loss! =)