Assuck are pretty much known as the best grind band around these days. I figured they might like to talk drums and guitar since Steve works at Morrissound, the big death metal studio. Also since Rob is regarded by most as one of the best grind / metal drummers ever. I did this one before their show with Acrid on August 6th, 1997, I believe, at Speak In Tongues in Cleveland. Present were Steve Heritage (guitar & vocals) and Rob Proctor (drums). Also present was Kyle from Acrid and Grade.
S: You wanna talk about guitars? Talk to him [Rob]. He just fell in love with guitars. He’s got four already. I don’t know if you still use it, but I saw a picture of you playing a Telecaster, which is an unusual guitar for the kind of music you play. S: Why? Well, traditionally it’s associated with other kinds of music, and unless you’ve replaced the pickups it’s not going to sound very heavy. S: Of course. I have DiMarzio pickups, the Super Distortions. Are those real hot? S: They’re the hottest ones DiMarzio makes. Except, I was playing an Axis the other day, and it had custom made DiMarzio pickups, and they were really nice. R: They were rockin’. S: Sounded 20 times better than any guitar in the shop. I’ve heard that those DiMarzio’s are rated at 1100 millivolts or something ridiculous like that. S: That’s very possible. I don’t know. But I definitely like passive pickups better than active ones. Why’s that? S: First of all, I don’t want to change a battery all the time, and worry about the sound being different every night, because I don’t have a fresh battery in there. Second of all, yes, they do have a lot of gain, but they don’t produce feedback, and they don’t sound the same at all. They’re more of a cracklier type sound than a note sound. A lot people really like the EMG’s and stuff like that. What kind of an amp are you using these days? S: I’ve used the same amp for a long time, it’s an Ampeg Solid State 150. One of those old ones with the Fender-type knobs on it? S: No, no, no, it doesn’t have Fender knobs. It’s older compared to the new Ampegs, but it’s not like old really. It’s like late 80’s, something like that. I played an Ampeg, I think V... S & R: VH140C! This is the one before that. The VH is the Variable Harmonics amp, this is the tube-simulating version, the SS, which is what I play. I really like the Ampegs a lot. S: They sound great. I don’t see why so many people just gravitate towards the Marshall. I mean, the Marshall’s a good amp, but... S: Marshall’s don’t sound good by themselves. You gotta have a pedal or something, and what’s the point of that? And if you do what we do, and you drop them, like the first show on this trip, I knocked the whole full stack over, and my head bounced like three feet in the air, and I just put back up, plugged it in, and went. If it was a tube amp, I would have been borrowing equipment. The thing with solid state is though, if you break it, it’s gone. S: True. But if you have a sound that you like, with solid state, you just turn it on and it’s there, you don’t have to turn it up. R: It doesn’t change either. S: Right. The efficiency of the speaker is the only thing that changes it. What kind of speakers and cabinets are you using then? S: I’ve got Marshall cabinets, but I’ve used Crate cabinets, whatever. I just stick Celestions in them. Celestion 75’s. Actually, one of my cabinets right now has 70’s in it, the other has 75’s. But that’s just because that’s what was available. Who do you like tone-wise? S: Oooh... Don’t say “tone” to us! Why’s that? R: We don’t believe in “guitar tone” and tubes and S: Tweed! (laughs) R: All that stuff, all that buzzword in guitar magazines and shit, we hate it. We just know what we like. S: We like volume. R: Volume wars. We like the shit to be loud. S: Who has a good guitar sound, is that what you’re asking me? Well, pretty much everybody I know that has an SS150 or VH140C, that can play intelligbley, has good sound to me. There’s some kids in a band called Dragbody from Florida, they actually have really good sound. They use SovTek heads. R: ... he’s got a Metal Zone pedal. S: It’s bizarre that it sounds as good as it does, because those are generally bad combinations. R: SovTek doesn’t even have a gain stage I don’t think. S: Yeah, it’s just an overdrive... Do you like the Boogies? The Triple Rectifiers and stuff? Those are pretty popular these days. S: Well they’re really expensive. It’s a good way to blow a lot of money. If you stick on the silicon diodes they sound about 20 times better than by just the tube preamp thing. But it doesn’t seem like it’s worth the money to me. Way too nice. How about the 5150? I like those. R: Well it says Peavey on it. S: Yeah. That’s definitely a problem. Actually I have a Peavey practice amp, but... I dunno, I’ve plugged in a couple of them, and I thought they sounded twangy, at best. R: I don’t like the way tubes have that slow attack. I mean, you can tell the difference. Solid state amps are like digital, you can hear it. Do you like rack stuff? R: I like rack stuff a lot. I’ve got a Hughes & Kettner one space preamp, that (some or other) 100. I think racks are really efficient. R: I just run a really big power amp. S: Kyle’s [from Acrid / Grade, who were on the tour] jealous because we’re winning the volume war. [They jabber about “the MX 150... 8 ohms... blah blah blah”] Also, what are you tuned to? S: My bottom string’s tuned to D, the rest is tuned to scale. You mean dropped D? S: No, it’s not dropped D. I don’t want to learn how to play guitar wrong. I don’t want to have to convert from the single finger cheating method. If there’s ever a time in my life where I don’t want to play this kind of music, just play guitar, I don’t want to have to transpose it in my head. In the late 80’s, early 90’s, it seemed like there was a contest to see who could tune the lowest. S: Yeah, like Entombed, Bolt Thrower, and all that stuff. Dude, General Surgery. S: Yeah! R: It was awesome, as long as you don’t want to tell what’s going on- klklkkkkkkkkkkllkjjjj [makes noise to simulate detuned noise]. Just an all out assault. One thing about your records, is that despite all the distortion and playing so fast, you can pretty much always tell what’s going on. How live are your records? S: Not very live at all. R: Not at all. S: Like on the last one, “Misery Index”, none of us recorded our keeper tracks on the same day. The vocals were done over a period of four days. Either of you record with a click track? R: We practiced with a click track a couple times. We tried it, didn’t really like it. S: Super hard to keep up with that fast, because if you miss one... Like if people are practicing with a click track, they can get off a little and find it back, but when it’s going that fast, it’s like, “Whoah, we lost it.” How about triggering and sampling? R: What do you mean, specifically? Like the kick drum or whatever. R: On the record? Yeah. S: All the kick drums are triggered. R: I played an acoustic set, and we used a gate to trigger a sampler. That’s pretty much how most of the Morrissound stuff works, isn’t it? S: That the way it works with most of the stuff Scott [Burns, famous death metal producer / engineer] does! He’s the king of that. Well I know the classic complaint with Morrissound is the clickiness of the bass drum. R: It doesn’t have anything to do with the sound of the bass drum, it’s just a volume thing, so everything’s the same volume. We use a sample of the bass drum I was playing. A lot of people- and I’m not saying this is you- use triggers becuase they can’t hit hard enough or fast enough. S: It’s not that you can’t hit it hard enough, it’s keeping it on time and stuff. R: No, it’s got to be consistent. I mean, if you can fix it, why leave it like that? See, when you’re playing fast, you can’t hit as hard. It’s just impossible. We just use it to smooth it out, and I think it sounds a lot better that way. It’s the same sound, and I did play all the drum beats, it’s not like we made something up. Well it’s something you can duplicate live, so there’s no problem. Now, when you’re doing your blast beats, are you doing them with one foot or two? R: I only use one. I’ve never used two feet for blast beats. How come? R: It’s kinda cheating. S: It’s... goofy. R: I’m not into it, I think it’s kinda stupid to do it that way. S: Like Suffocation. R: I don’t play regular beats that way, so why should I? I never really learned how to do it that way. I play drums a little, and I do blast beats with one foot. I always thought you were supposed to do them with two feet, but everyone I talk says “Oh no, that’s cheating. Do them with one foot.” R: One foot’s, if you ask me, the way to do it. A lot of people do the beat like this [with my hands and feet I play the fake blast beat where the snare is going twice as fast as the bass drum that Assuck plays all the time]. R: I’ve heard that one before. [laughs] Our first record’s like that. Some of it. Actually, some of it, I had just started doing it the “right” way, whatever you want to call it. There is some on the record, but I kinda like the way it came out, because they sound different. But I don’t play the old songs like that anymore.So tell me a little bit about Bombs of Death. S: [laughs] Bombs of Death is a project band I did with Max, who was in Plutocracy, who is in Spazz, and Dylan from Struggle, when we were out in California. I’ve heard rumors about it being a Hirax / Slayer tribute? S: The title is a Hirax song, and the riffs are Slayer copy riffs. [smiles] So yes. Is it ever going to see light of day? S: It’s out! They’re selling them tonight. It’s a split with Acrid. And you [Rob] used to be in Nasty Savage?[Steve chuckles] S: I like Nasty Savage. R: I like them too! When I was in high school they were one of my favorite bands, and then a few years later I ended up being in the band. It was fun.