CRUSHER Magazine: Feature: Gene Hoglan-Strapping Young Lad

GH: Yeah, they’re killer, man. Total over-the-top, like they play everything kind of metal but all blasting heavy shit. There’s another band from Vancouver called Zimmer’s Hole. I don’t know if you’ve heard of them or not, but they’re Byron and Jed’s other band. They’re crazy; they’re the coolest metal band on the planet because they just take… they’re comedy metal, thrash metal, but they’re total comedy and they take the piss out of everybody. It’s hilarious. And their live show is really awesome. Check out their website. It’s called legionofflames.com

CN: Legion of flames?

GH: Yeah, there’s two "f"'s in there.

CN: There’s two “f”’s, of flames, ok, I thought you said “of lames,” you know. That would be pretty funny…

GH: Yeah, totally.

CN: You know, since they’re taking the piss out of everyone, I thought that was the actual name of it.

GH: Yeah, yeah.

CN: Well it seems like it’s you and the same core 10 or 12 people that are doing stuff in different projects at this point.

GH: Pretty much, yeah. Because what we used to do, you know, we’ve done tours of Australia and Japan and Europe, with Devin Townsend Band opening, where we come out and play like, an hour’s worth of Devin’s music. And then we end the set with an hour of Strapping. It’s really cool. But that was taking up so much of our time and Dev knew that Byron and Jed had Zimmer’s Hole. And I’ve got Punch Drunk that I’m trying to get off the ground and stuff. And he wanted to find some dudes that could really commit. Dev is a self-professed control freak, and he’s like, ‘I can’t tell you guys what to play; you guys are all monsters in your own rights. I can’t be like, play this set just like this!’ And with these young kids he’s got playing in the Devin Townsend band he can, so…

CN: He can do that, yeah.

GH: He’s got the best of both worlds. He’s got the Yin and Yang of Strap, just crazy in your face fucking we-hate-you-metal, to the beautiful Devin Townsend music. And he can just be on stage and not have to be this one-eyed screaming ghoul, you know?

CN: That’s good too.

GH: Yeah, so he definitely gets the best of both worlds.

CN: Yeah, because you can’t have too much of just one.

GH: I can have all of one. Like, if I were to only play in Strapping, and have Strapping be either so popular, or busy, or in-demand, that this was all we had to do, I would totally do it. I mean, I love playing in all my other bands, but I get everything in Strapping. I love playing Strapping’s music, so, we’re my favorite band pretty much.

CN: It seems like you guys have a lot of fun on the bus, like you get along really great.

GH: Yeah, we do. Its total family brotherhood and all that shit. You know, we’ve played together so long that…I think some of it might have to do with the fact that I’m Canadian.

CN: Yeah, different attitude.

GH: A little more laid-back, a little more sympathetic. Say, if your bro in the band is having a bad day you can kind of sense it. You let him do his thing, and you let him have his space rather than be a jerk and “what’s fucking wrong with you, man? What’s your fucking problem?” and shit like that. Just exacerbating the stress, or whatever. You know, we don’t really do that. We all just get along. We all sit around and joke and laugh and have a good time together. That’s one of the things that makes Strapping so magic for myself, is that we each have a good time. This band has just evolved into this crushing killing machine that will make you laugh your ass off at the same time, because humor is a big part of our thing, too.

CN: There you go. But it’s been…you seem to pick things that are…well, I know you entertain yourself, but they’re challenging as well. They seem like, if not to yourself but to the genre of metal.

GH: Right on. That’s cool; I’m down with that. You know, why not break some boundaries down. I don’t mind playing challenging music. If I had said yes to the number of bands that have said, “Hey dude, want to jam with us?” You know, if I can’t respect your music or what you stand for I have to say “no.” It keeps me broke, but I’ve always said you’ve gotta look at yourself in the mirror. (At that moment he hears squeaking noise behind the couch in the dressing room where we are doing the interview.) Is that a mouse?

CN: Rat.

GH: Rat?

CN: Yeah.

GH: (Without skipping a beat, he’s back to his answer.) You’ve gotta look yourself in the mirror and be able to look yourself in the eye. And if I were to play for some of these large bands that have bankrolls and stuff I would hate it. When I think about playing for anybody else… Punch Drunk rocks live; we fucking totally kick ass, but Strapping is magic. I can’t conceive how bands cannot move people. How can you be in a band that doesn’t touch people viciously, in some important way. It’s hard not to give it all, not to sweat on stage. If I were to play for some band that was like boom-kick, boom-kick, boom-kick. All the money in the world just doesn’t mean…happiness for that. You gotta feel true to yourself and solid about what you’re doing. You gotta enjoy it.

		GENE HOGLAN STRAPPING YOUNG LAD by Christine Natanael/photos by Wayne Dennon LINKS: strappingyounglad.com
		There are certain players, that when you mention their name in a room full of musicians, bring on jaw-dropping awe-inspiring sighs of admiration. Increasingly, as I speak to younger players, especially of the death and black metal genres, one player’s name brings this reaction consistently. That would be the man who holds down the drum stool for the monolith that is known by the moniker Strapping Young Lad. Gene Hoglan has become a drum god to the younger legions. And I’m glad for him. He absolutely deserves the adulaton.
My first interaction with Gene came somewhere back maybe in ’88 or ’89 (it’s hard to tell for sure due to the mind-numbing amounts of substances we all used to ingest back then). It was during the days of the mighty Dark Angel and it involved a mad bad Toyota death ride. (More on that later.) He’s since gone on to many bands. You guys know the laundry list—Death, Testament, Almighty Punchdrunk, several Devin Townsend projects, Daemonic, Strapping Young Lad, etc., etc.,--and that doesn’t even include the many studio things he’s contributed to. The man is a god-awesome obsessed machine when it comes to his instrument. And during all the years that I’ve known him, the times we’ve partied together, and the times he’s held my drunk ass up, I had never actually interviewed the guy. So when I heard they were coming to NYC, I figured that it was high time. I met up with the Strapping Young Lad guys at Don Hill’s nightclub. It was a busy night, and there was a lot of stuff going on on the tour bus. Juliya from FUSE-tv was hanging out and Jed had just set my son up to do some Playstation 2 damage with a Slayer cd playing as the soundtrack. It was definitely a little noisy to do an interview. So Gene and I split for the relatively quieter confines of the band’s dressing room. But we were to find little peace there either. A welcome guest was Gunther from Symphony X. The unwelcome guests were the many large rats running across the pipes in the ceiling and peeking their little noses through the holes in the ceiling tiles. One even decided to get his moment of fame during our interview….so read on for the details….
CN: I’ve never actually interviewed you before, have I, in the what, fifteen years I’ve known you? I always like to start with ancient history, which is, what’s your first musical memory? GH: Hmm…first musical memory. Um, I was two and half, and I hear “No One To Depend On” by Santana. And I told my folks: ‘I want that record. Buy that one for me.’ CN: Oh really? GH: Yeah, I stood up, man. But that would be the first thing I remember. CN: Really.
GH: Yeah, I’ve been into music my whole life. I grew up on AM radio, 1969 to 77, really, the old stuff which most people know and love. CN: So you just listened to the radio and…when did you decide that you wanted to play it? GH: When I was 11. That’s when I pretty much said, ‘This is the time,’ you know, ‘I want to do this.’ I remember reading interviews with Kiss, with Peter Chris. I was about ten years old when I announced to my folks, you know, ‘I’m gonna be the biggest band in the world, mom and dad! I’m gonna play Madison Square Garden!’ I was like, ‘Hey, works for him. Me too! Ditto, mom and dad.’ So, I was 11 when I said I wanted to be a rock dude. I got my first kit a couple of years later, but I’d always-- I’d mastered the air drum. I’m an air drum master. CN: You knew that’s what you wanted to do, was drums, though; you didn’t want to be on guitar or anything else? GH: No, no, drums, I was a total drummer. Rhythm has been a part of my life since day one, I don’t know why. There’s two things I can do well, you know. One is play drums, and the other is play baseball. So I was a total jock when I was a kid-- playing baseball--and had the choice of really concentrating on the baseball and turning pro. A lot of the guys that I used to dominate when I was in little league and pony league and stuff, they’re all winning gold gloves in the majors, now. But I was so anti-conformity, you know, and there weren’t any Dennis Rodman’s at the time, you know? Now you can look like a freak, wear you hair however you want, have as many tattoos as you want. At that time it just didn’t exist, so I was always being told by all my baseball coaches and stuff, you know, fucking, ‘You gotta cut your hair if you’re gonna take this seriously,’ you know, ‘take that dress off,’ ‘take the makeup off,’ or whatever, you know? I would always show up to games in my sister’s clothes, wearing makeup and just stupid shit. I was bigger than all the other kids so who’s gonna kick my ass? CN: Right. GH: I was the best player in the league. So what are you going to do? Strike me out and make me look like an idiot? You’re not going to do that, you know? There was just too much conformity involved in baseball, so I figured, well, rock and roll is the way I want to be, so…I already decided a few years ago that this is what I’m gonna do. And my dad was always telling me, you know, why don’t you play baseball until you’re, lets say, thirty, and then retire a bizillionaire and then start your band. I was like, come on, Dad that ain’t cool. I don’t want to do that. And now there’s all these sports figures that have musical careers and I was like, ‘Probably should have listened to dad.’ CN: Yeah, but they never do that well with their musical careers after they’ve done sports. GH: But Shaq still sold like a million copies of his record. CN: That’s true. GH: You’ve got Scott Spezio over in the Angels you know, he’s in a band with Zack and John Tempesta (called Sand Frog). You know, so it’s like… bastards! CN: Maybe you should have thought about that. GH: Yeah, given it some more thought. Sorry, Dad. CN: So you got your kit, started playing, what, home in the basement, in the garage? GH: Yeah, in the garage. CN: What, playing with records or with kids from the neighborhood?
	GH: Records. Played along with records. And the thing was, I was air-drumming for so long before I got my kit that… I was listening to Rush and U.K. and things like that--Gino Vannelli, the big great drummers in all these bands--and I would learn how to play their stuff just air drumming. So by the time I got to a kit it was really easy, you know? I totally had the aptitude for it. Um, the thing…when I was going to junior hi, my house was located like a block from my junior high. So all the kids would always walk by my house on the way home. And I’d come home and start jamming, and you were gonna get roasted if you were in there playing an AC/DC sort of thing…boom, kick, boom, kick…so I’d come home and put a Rush record on put the headphones on and play along with that. And everybody was like ‘Holy shit. We know that’s Gene. Hell, he’s got the shit.’ I didn’t really join my first band until I was like 15 or so. And ironically at that it was a band called Dark Angel. It had nothing to do with the Dark Angel that I ended up joining. As a matter of fact I made them change their name because I thought Dark Angel was a gay name, so…
CN: Little did you know! Haha… GH: Yeah. So a couple years later this other Dark Angel already had their shit together so I couldn’t fuckin’ come in and say, you realize that’s a gay name, right? CN: Yeah, that kind of would have been hard to do. GH: So. CN: That first band didn’t play anything really… GH: We never got out of the garage. We ended up almost going to jail for…for…I remember one time our singer said, ‘yeah, I got this place for us to rehearse in. We’re gonna go to my buddy’s house; he’s away for the week but he said use his garage, it’s ok.’ You know, yeah, right, duh. CN: The people are out of town; they had no way of knowing, right? GH: Yeah, and we showed up. And no, nobody was out of town. He broke into a house and we set up in this garage and we’re jamming, and the cops are coming--all of a sudden the people show up and they’re like, ‘What the fuck are you doing in our house?’ ‘We’re like, ‘Wait a minute, he said it’s his friend’s house and said it’s ok.’ And you know, then, ‘No, it’s not ok!’ So, that was that. That…never did anything. I was in a band for a short while later with a guy named Scott Owen, who ended up playing in Hirax and um--I remember he stole my riff tape that I had made, and a lot of those riffs ended up on Hirax’ records. So…after that I was in a band for a short while called War God. Their guitarist was named Michelle Melgram, and she went on to play with Phantom Blue. She’s got her solo act now, and she’s married to John Norum of Europe. She’s a total guitar shredder, thrashing guitar-shredding chick, so, that was cool. Then I joined Dark Angel and it’s pretty much common knowledge from there. CN: Yeah…all that ancient history, I have to dredge it up. GH: Yeah, that’s ok. I remember it like it was yesterday. CN: True, true. I think my first meeting with you was at the Concrete Convention in L.A. I thought you were going to kill me in that little Toyota that we took a ride in.
GH: Oh, oh! When we were driving around, trying to find that crazy club? CN: Yeah, I was like ‘Dude, you gotta slow down!’ I had just had a really bad motorcycle accident and you were like ‘No, faster, waaa!’ I was loosing it man. I was not a happy camper. GH: Aw… CN: But you enjoyed it. GH: Yeah… [laughing] CN: [Laughing] So you’ve always been a Strapping Young Lad or you’ve done it on and off, because I know you do Punchdrunk, you do…
GH: Yeah, I do Just Cause and all the other stuff that I do… yeah, Strapping has… When I joined the band in ’96, when we recorded City in ‘96, it got released in ’97 because it was like late ’96 when we recorded it. I pretty much just finished doing the Strapping record and then I jumped in the studio with Testament and did Demonic with them. And it was supposed to be about a month and half of rehearsals and like a week of tracking or whatever. It ended up taking like 8 months to complete and a lot of rehearsals and everything, and so by the time I was done with Demonic I pretty much flew directly to Vancouver to start rehearsing for the Strapping tour that we had. The album was coming out and we were doing the video and playing some shows. So I’ve been in Strapping since ’97 but I still do tons of sessions and stuff like that, tons of stuff. Gotta pay the bills somehow, you know? CN: Yeah… GH: And so I’m doing a lot of solo stuff. I really like that because it allows you to explore different aspects of your playing, you know? Like I’ve done a couple of drum solo records with no double bass, you know, shit like that. And that’s also a kick. So, that’s cool, you know, because I can play drums, you know? I can actually play. I’m not just a fucking polling, blasting, you know, double bass dude all the time. CN: But that is what you’re kind of known for. GH: Yeah, but I can do other things. CN: Out of all the other stuff you’ve recorded what would you say was the most challenging thing to play on? GH: Uh, City was really challenging because that was a brand new style for me, doing blast-beats and everything; Dark Angel never had blast-beats; we only had fast thrashing polka beats or whatever. You know, so playing blast was pretty challenging. CN: Wow.
GH: Yeah, they’re killer, man. Total over-the-top, like they play everything kind of metal but all blasting heavy shit. There’s another band from Vancouver called Zimmer’s Hole. I don’t know if you’ve heard of them or not, but they’re Byron and Jed’s other band. They’re crazy; they’re the coolest metal band on the planet because they just take… they’re comedy metal, thrash metal, but they’re total comedy and they take the piss out of everybody. It’s hilarious. And their live show is really awesome. Check out their website. It’s called legionofflames.com CN: Legion of flames? GH: Yeah, there’s two "f"'s in there. CN: There’s two “f”’s, of flames, ok, I thought you said “of lames,” you know. That would be pretty funny… GH: Yeah, totally. CN: You know, since they’re taking the piss out of everyone, I thought that was the actual name of it. GH: Yeah, yeah. CN: Well it seems like it’s you and the same core 10 or 12 people that are doing stuff in different projects at this point. GH: Pretty much, yeah. Because what we used to do, you know, we’ve done tours of Australia and Japan and Europe, with Devin Townsend Band opening, where we come out and play like, an hour’s worth of Devin’s music. And then we end the set with an hour of Strapping. It’s really cool. But that was taking up so much of our time and Dev knew that Byron and Jed had Zimmer’s Hole. And I’ve got Punch Drunk that I’m trying to get off the ground and stuff. And he wanted to find some dudes that could really commit. Dev is a self-professed control freak, and he’s like, ‘I can’t tell you guys what to play; you guys are all monsters in your own rights. I can’t be like, play this set just like this!’ And with these young kids he’s got playing in the Devin Townsend band he can, so… CN: He can do that, yeah. GH: He’s got the best of both worlds. He’s got the Yin and Yang of Strap, just crazy in your face fucking we-hate-you-metal, to the beautiful Devin Townsend music. And he can just be on stage and not have to be this one-eyed screaming ghoul, you know? CN: That’s good too. GH: Yeah, so he definitely gets the best of both worlds. CN: Yeah, because you can’t have too much of just one. GH: I can have all of one. Like, if I were to only play in Strapping, and have Strapping be either so popular, or busy, or in-demand, that this was all we had to do, I would totally do it. I mean, I love playing in all my other bands, but I get everything in Strapping. I love playing Strapping’s music, so, we’re my favorite band pretty much. CN: It seems like you guys have a lot of fun on the bus, like you get along really great. GH: Yeah, we do. Its total family brotherhood and all that shit. You know, we’ve played together so long that…I think some of it might have to do with the fact that I’m Canadian. CN: Yeah, different attitude. GH: A little more laid-back, a little more sympathetic. Say, if your bro in the band is having a bad day you can kind of sense it. You let him do his thing, and you let him have his space rather than be a jerk and “what’s fucking wrong with you, man? What’s your fucking problem?” and shit like that. Just exacerbating the stress, or whatever. You know, we don’t really do that. We all just get along. We all sit around and joke and laugh and have a good time together. That’s one of the things that makes Strapping so magic for myself, is that we each have a good time. This band has just evolved into this crushing killing machine that will make you laugh your ass off at the same time, because humor is a big part of our thing, too. CN: There you go. But it’s been…you seem to pick things that are…well, I know you entertain yourself, but they’re challenging as well. They seem like, if not to yourself but to the genre of metal. GH: Right on. That’s cool; I’m down with that. You know, why not break some boundaries down. I don’t mind playing challenging music. If I had said yes to the number of bands that have said, “Hey dude, want to jam with us?” You know, if I can’t respect your music or what you stand for I have to say “no.” It keeps me broke, but I’ve always said you’ve gotta look at yourself in the mirror. (At that moment he hears squeaking noise behind the couch in the dressing room where we are doing the interview.) Is that a mouse? CN: Rat. GH: Rat? CN: Yeah. GH: (Without skipping a beat, he’s back to his answer.) You’ve gotta look yourself in the mirror and be able to look yourself in the eye. And if I were to play for some of these large bands that have bankrolls and stuff I would hate it. When I think about playing for anybody else… Punch Drunk rocks live; we fucking totally kick ass, but Strapping is magic. I can’t conceive how bands cannot move people. How can you be in a band that doesn’t touch people viciously, in some important way. It’s hard not to give it all, not to sweat on stage. If I were to play for some band that was like boom-kick, boom-kick, boom-kick. All the money in the world just doesn’t mean…happiness for that. You gotta feel true to yourself and solid about what you’re doing. You gotta enjoy it.