by Morgan Y. Evans
LINKS:
Once the vocals kick in, longtime or even casual fans of Brooklyn's "drab four" a.k.a. Type O Negative, are sure to recognize the voice of Kenny Hickey. Once this has clicked, it's easy to realize the machine-like slow-as-gravy yet spot-on and organic drumming can only be Johnny Kelly, Kenny's longtime band mate in Type O (and also more recently in Danzig's touring band). Kenny and Johnny, despite all the vast and elaborate compositions they'd achieved in Type O (or perhaps because of it) felt the need to release a more straightforward real slow burning blazer of an album with Heaven Is Gone. This disc ups the Sabbath and classic rock influences and yet highlights the band's own voice.
On the merits of "Black No.1 (Little Miss Scare-All)" alone, Kenny is the best back up vocalist ever, as far as I'm concerned. Tell me that his part of the song (“Yeah you wanna go out...", etc.) isn't the fun-est shit in the world to holler when drunk? Try it and see. Back up vocalists are underrated, but vital. What would "Jamie's Cryin" by Van Halen be without Michael Anthony's "Gimme a call sometime"? Not as cool, that's what! Anyway, while exemplary as a guitarist capable of channeling all of Type O's weird influences, Kenny is underrated as a vocalist, so it's cool to see him stepping forward and capably helming this hard rock band. His range is sort of that of a slightly screechier Chris Cornell meets ‘80s rock and the raw side of AC/DC (though not as cat strangled).
Heaven Is Gone is vastly enjoyable for fans who at times don't want to hear Type O's humorous side or disagree with some of that band’s vocalist Peter Steele's recent turn to anti-abortion Catholicism after a tragic jail stint. Type O have always been a bit confusing, if great. (For instance, Steele writing about not wanting to be pursued by gay men and then humorously covering a song from Hedwig And The Angry Inch). I wonder if it gets confusing for Johnny as drummer for Danzig, a band big on pentagrams, and simultaneously working with Type O's Peter Steele, who now allegedly prays for forgiveness before shows.
I have sometimes made mix playlists of Type O without the lesbian moaning parts of some albums or the sarcastic songs, as World Coming Down and most of October Rust are more serious for when you want that. Other times you want mixes of only the lesbian moaning! Still, while you might not always agree with Steele or like certain aspects of Type O better than others, there's no denying they are super talented and an important band. In comparison, Seventh Void's debut is more directly a basic rock/doom album, though it has a good range of emotion within the framework or classic rock-influenced, badass gloom. I bet this band has one hell of a live show and they certainly also hold up and continue the legacy of the performers.
It's weird at first not to hear Steele's awesome and unparalleled low ass crooning alongside Kenny and Johnny's recognizable perfect sludge stylings, but Seventh Void make up for it by kicking ass 100% as their own entity. Longtime fans of Kenny and Johnny will thrill to hear their continued trademark musical energy showcased in this new outfit, which also features Matt Brown and Hank Hell. Riff after riff and groove after groove on Heaven Is Gone connect hard. This is a juggernaut of a disc. Guitar and bass aside, much of the credit can go to the salivation-inducing concept (for drum fans, at least) of Pantera's Vinnie Paul working on the drums with Johnny along with famed producer Sterling Winfield. Vinnie even put the record out on his new label Big Vin Records, a company based out of Dallas that is sure to introduce us to some great new music, since Vinnie is the man. Seventh Void even had their CD Release kick off party at Vinnie Paul's XXX bar The Clubhouse in Dallas!
I talked with Johnny Kelly about how it feels to finally have this long-planned
Seventh Void record out, chilling with Vinnie Paul plus philosophical
topics like religion, dealing with life and death, and what the present
and promising future holds for Seventh Void, Danzig and, of course, Type
O!
MORGAN Y. EVANS: This is the loudest I've heard your drums sound ever!
JOHNNY KELLY: Well, we had Vinnie Paul producing it with Sterling Winfield. I knew the drums were gonna sound monstrous.
MYE: No understatement.
Sterling rules and everyone knows Vinnie. How'd it get started, working
with Big Vin Records?
MYE: That's great there was the friendship there and he gave you the time to develop the album right for your debut.
JK: Yeah. It was a really cool experience all around. As the band was developing Vinnie was always there encouraging it. Him and Sterling took the mixes and brought it up to the next level. It didn't sound like a demo anymore.
MYE: "Shadow On Me", it's cool you mention that song. It was probably my first favorite from spinning the disc in my car the last few weeks.
JK: Right on.
MYE: I love the tempos on this album. It's driving and intense even though almost every song is doom-speed. It's still intense and doesn't drag.
JK: We were going for more of the stuff we were into growing up—Sabbath, Zeppelin—it has a, whatever...an early Soundgarden feel to it at times.
MYE: Yeah! Badmotorfinger. I picked up on it in some of the guitar sounds and tempos, reminding me of "Slaves & Bulldozers".
JK: Yeah. [laughing] That's where it came from. As the band was finding itself, that seemed like the place we were most comfortable.
MYE: Some Danzig songs are a little more straightforward rock than Type O Negative, but this is cool because you've done a more straightforward rock album but put your own signature on it, you know?
JK: Pretty much. You've described it very accurately.
MYE: Just having fun instead of expectations?
JK: It started out, innocently enough, Kenny had some rock riffs and asked for my help with it. From there we put the band together. We got Matt and Matt brought Hank in.
MYE: How'd you know those guys were right?
JK: They're from our neighborhood. Brooklyn has a very small hard rock scene. There's only a few places to play and rehearse. Everybody plays with each other at some point or another. Matt we knew from when he used to be in Uranium 235, who had the same management as Type O at one time. They did a lot of touring supporting Type O Negative.
MYE: Right on.
JK: Ironically enough, he was playing in a band with Sal Abruscato, Type O's original drummer who I replaced. We're still good friends with Sal. Kenny talked to Sal about what we were doing, and the music had gotten more complex to the point where we were gonna need another guitar player. Sal suggested Matt, and we were like, "Oh! Why didn't we think of that? He's right there.” Matt brought a lot of really cool things to the table. Bringing Matt in raised the bar for what we were doing. He's a ProTools genius. Him and Kenny produced the record. We recorded it in our rehearsal room.
MYE: You recorded live?
JK: Some of it was recorded live, then we did overdubs on the basic tracks. Vocals and stuff, but it was all done in our rehearsal room.
MYE: It's got a real powerful energy, but there's still finesse to it.
JK: Thank you.
MYE: How does it feel having the record finished, representing this side of your personality?
JK: For starters I can’t believe that it’s actually released. It’s been so long since we first started working on these songs. Now to actually go into a record store and see it there, it feels like we accomplished something. Kenny and I have been playing together for over twenty years, before Type O. I’ve been in Type O for fifteen years and Kenny has been in it for twenty. It’s cool to finally get a record out together of something we set out to do as teenagers. We’ve traveled a lot of miles together as band mates and friends.
MYE: October Rust wasn’t written in a day, and Heaven Is Gone doesn’t feel thrown together either. It feels lived.
JK: With Seventh Void as well as Type O, literally a lot of blood, sweat and tears goes into it. It shows in the catalogues. It’s the work ethic we’re used to, putting everything into it as possible. You're short changing the song by trying to just throw something in there and call it finished.
MYE: What are your favorite highlights of the album? I like the energy of "Drowning Inside".
JK: I like the title track. It's a powerful song with great lyrics. I like the way it breaks down in the middle. There's some good dynamics. I like "End Of All Time" for its feel and attitude—all the songs—its one of those records. I dig it. I'd buy it as a fan if I heard it on the radio.
MYE: You can definitely play it all the way through and repeat it. It has its own voice.
JK: I don't think there's really any filler on it. I think the most obscure song is the last one "Last Walk In the Light", but even that, I think, it just goes different places musically. For the next record, it shows we could do something different as opposed to just filling an album's worth of doom licks. There's lots of flavors on Heaven Is Gone, but overall mainly a classic rock feel to it.
MYE: [laughing] A heavy classic rock feel!
JK: Right. Exactly.
MYE: Was Kenny freaked out doing this much vocally? He's often worked as a backup vocalist. Was it hard for him to feel the pressure of being the main singer in Seventh Void?
JK: It's more work for him and he's not happy about it. [laughing]
MYE: Did you crack the whip on him? [laughing]
JK: No, not really crack the whip. He's really his own worst critic. He's always constantly working on different melodies when we're recording to try and make it as powerful as possible. Over the years he's really tried to find the identity of the band. He was gonna be the singer so he was writing stuff to work around his voice. There's been a lot of working on these songs just by him, and in turn he'd make Matt completely nuts. He would always go to Matt's house, waking him up. "I wanna try this!" Then he'd do a vocal track and wanna try something different and go re-record it. I don't even know how many times he re-did the vocals on the record, but a lot of it was experimenting.
MYE: I was wondering if he'd worked that the most, not that it sounds punched a lot or feeble, more that just instrumentally I thought you guys might be more comfortable. Kenny's had great backup vocals for years, though.
JK: Yeah, it's more work for him.
JK: We wanted it to be really heavy but to have melody, so there's hooks in there. A song has a real chorus people can grab onto. Musically I think the songs came together real well.
MYE: "Closing In", even right off the bat, it’s a real good starter. There's times maybe people feel there's nothing they can do in life to improve situations. That song talks about things closing in. I'm wondering how music helped you in times where or if you ever felt like that?
JK: Music is the great escape. If you're sad, it's easy to get lost in a song or pull you out of it and sometimes a song can be there for you to lean on and commiserate with. To let people know you're not alone. Everybody's got problems and stuff. Sometimes people identify with that. There's a lot of stuff on the record that's really life experiences. It's not a happy band. [laughing] That's one thing that's consistent with Type O.
MYE: There's a lot of struggle and you can hear the point of view of the voices in the songs. I was wondering about some of the imagery like the religious imagery in "Heaven is Gone" could be about losing hope or even the Dante's inferno aspect of the band name.
JK: "Heaven Is Gone" is not a religious topic, specifically. It's about a really close friend of ours who had surgery done and then died on the table. He got revived and unfortunately did end up passing away. Our friend was very religious and Kenny went to see him in the hospital and he asked him, "What did you see? Did you see the light when you died? What happened?" and our friend was very upset and said, "Nothing! Nothing happened. It's all a lie. It's all bullshit." [laughing]
MYE: Woah.
JK: It's about someone that has faith finding out or feeling in the end that there wasn't anything.
MYE: That's heavy.
JK: Yeah, it's heavy and it's sad, too. He was a friend of ours and stuff.
MYE: I hope he's found some peace anyway.
JK: Yeah. One way or another. He helped us with that song, for sure.
MYE: It's interesting. That reminds me of Type O's Life Is Killing Me, not so much medical stuff gone awry as people not doing a good job.
JK: Yeah. That was more about money over being concerned about saving someone.
MYE: Right, not like all doctors are trying to do that.
JK: Right.
MYE: I was wondering too, I wasn't sure because I know the last Type O record dealt with some Catholicism and stuff and I was wondering how much that played a role with this record and what your take on it was?
JK: It plays a role in it, of course. Faith is definitely something discussed in the band quite a bit. There's always a lot of questions with it.
MYE: Is it ever hard to reconcile with playing heavy metal for you?
JK: I never try to put the two together. For me it's something you're expressing and debating. There's always some philosophizing to it, as you really don't know about it until you get there.
MYE: You are who you are in the meantime, right?
JK: Yeah. I use religion to take it as stories and learn from it, not necessarily that it's going to give me a place in heaven or something like that, but whatever, to teach morals and stuff.
MYE: But you still wanna do what comes naturally.
JK: Yeah, it's not at the forefront where this is why I'm this kind of person.
MYE: But it's still part of you, right. Yeah, I was just curious. I love the old Dante writing, especially Purgatorio, because it comes to terms with the stage of coming to terms and transforming. How did you guys settle on the band name?
JK: Kenny came up with it, and I was like, "OK! Fine! Finally we have a name!" [laughing]
JK: I was like, "Seventh Void? Great! What does it mean?" [laughing] Then he explained it to me. It's the seventh circle of Hell where all the thieves and murderers go and stuff like that. I was like,"Works for me! Fine! You belong there. Great!" [laughing]
MYE: [laughing] What else is going on in your life these days as far as your personal life or with Danzig?
JK: I was in California a couple of weeks ago working on the new Danzig record.
MYE: So he definitely is making another one? That's awesome.
JK: Yeah. Not sure when it will be done, but I'm pretty happy finally after playing with him for going on seven years, I'm finally on a Danzig record.
MYE: That's gonna be so killer to have you documented like that and with Tommy Victor, too!
JK: Yeah, I'm finally part of the family tree. Otherwise,uh...Type O's gonna start working on another record soon.
MYE: You are? You guys sometimes take a long time between albums.
JK: We're at the two year mark right now since Dead Again was released. Hopefully we can do it faster than the last time, four years between records, which was really one of the motivators for me and Kenny to finally do another band.
MYE: And Peter Steele's been doing the Carnivore reunion.
JK: Yeah, he hasn't really done much with it in awhile. The last couple of shows they did Seventh Void opened up for them.
MYE: Yeah, it was more for a few shows, right?
JK: Yeah. Mainly northeast, and he wanted me and Kenny to be there with him, so we opened up.
MYE: Hey man, great talking. I've been a fan of your playing a long time.
JK: Thanks,
and glad you like the record.
