Originally published in ‘zine issue #39, 2008
Story and photos by A.E., originally for the Goucher Quindecim.
I am stoked. In the spring of 2006, seminal tech metal band Atheist announces a series of reunion shows during inaugural European metal festivals like Hole in the Sky (Norway), Evolution (Italy) and Wacken (Germany) for audiences of up to 60,000. It is a given that they will return to their American homeland to bring their pioneering brand of jazz-fusion death metal, and I for one immediately presume the first show will be in their hometown of Tampa, Florida. But when rock news site Blabbermouth.net informs the metal world that Atheist’s first USA show in 13 years will be in Baltimore for the first annual Auditory Assault Festival, I shout aloud and startle my roommate.
My friends and I don’t even get to the door before I catch an earful of Atheist soundchecking their classic thrasher “On They Slay” and follow it to open double doors at the back of the Sonar club, where I watch singer Kelly Shaefer warm up and nail the vocals. With them are live fill-in guitarists Chris Baker and Sonny Carson. I’m pumped already––never mind the fact that the band won’t take the stage until midnight.
Thanks to a contact at the band’s home on Relapse Records, I am introduced to Kelly––a tall hippyish dude with bleach blonde hair and a knit hat––and drummer Steve Flynn, clad in gym shorts and a Florida State University sweatshirt and baseball cap. They can’t possibly be nicer if they try and are very willing to participate in what becomes a 20-minute interview. Bassist Tony Choy is stuck at the airport and arrives later, so his responses are added where possible.
D.U.: How has the fan response been?
Kelly Shaefer: The fan response has been overwhelming. We can’t often say how lucky and grateful we are to come back and have that.
Steve Flynn: It’s certainly been overwhelming from my perspective, too. We didn’t expect to get what we did overseas; it was unbelievable.
Tony Choy: In a nutshell, it’s been better than I’d ever thought. When Kelly first told me about this venture—about reuniting—I was kinda doubtful. “Really? Are you sure?” And he said “Man, it’s time again.” Wacken was incredible––every [festival appearance] that we did has been super accepted. Couldn’t be happier.
Which from what I understand is different than your old days. Kelly, I recall you mentioning that touring with Cannibal Corpse was like “ABCs and calculus.” I found that amusing. [laughs]
Shaefer: Me and my big mouth.
Flynn: Well, people wanted to see blast beats, and Cannibal Corpse did that really well, and we were really different from them. And we had a hard time winning over people.
Shaefer: Europe was different. Back then, there was a smaller group of people down with technical metal. But still, in, like, Germany back in the early ’90s, they just wanted Bathory stuff—really heavy. And we were just completely different. We were confusing them, I think. Now there’s an intellectual metal audience over there, and we’re curious to see what America’s like 13 years later.
I just got my hands on Focus [Cynic’s 1993 album].
Flynn: It’s ridiculous, it’s insane.
A lot of parallels between both bands—they were also doing jazz-fusion stuff but used the synth vocals and the keyboard.
Flynn: We did one [show with Cynic] way back … with Roger [Patterson, the band’s late original bassist]. It was cool.
“You can’t close your mind when you’re a musician.”
How long had you guys been playing when you guys did Piece of Time? It’s obviously not as technical as the later albums.
Flynn: Probably four or five years, I’d been playing drums.
Shaefer: Yeah, I’d been playing guitar for about four years. I started at 14 but never really “got it” until age 15. Then 17 was when we got together.
Flynn: No, 16 was when we got together. You and I.
Shaefer: Right, and we played for a couple years and finally did the demos and started getting good around ‘87.
Flynn: The song “On They Slay” we probably wrote two years before [we really got going].
Shaefer: Those lyrics are the youngest I’ve ever been.
Flynn: When we wrote that and “Unholy War,” we were probably had only been playing three years. How old are you?
Almost 19.
Flynn: [laughs] The song’s older than you are!
Tony, what’s your musical background like, as you didn’t join until Unquestionable Presence? I take it you have some training, as you’re playing Latin music now?
Choy: I’m Cuban, and I’ve been surrounded by so many different genres of music, even when I was in metal. When I was playing in Cynic, people used to joke that, “Hey, these guys sit around and listen to Chick Corea and play death metal.” After the Elements album, you can hear me making the transition out of metal. I call it “salsa metal.” Very Latin-oriented, very groovy. I grew up on pop, Latin, jazz, funk—anything that grooves, anything that has passion. I like metal, I like rock … you can’t close your mind when you’re a musician—especially if you want to survive in music! This is what I do for a living. We were joking about it earlier—Tony Choy was playing in a salsa band last night and now he’s doing death metal. Last night I was in a group called Made In Miami playing jazz and salsa and now I’m doing Atheist.
My next question is about Roger. Of course he amazes me and he has a really original sound. How much did he know about music?
Flynn: Music theory? Very little.
So it was by his ear?
Flynn: Pure, raw, God-given talent. Just unbelievable musical ability. Had no clue about it.
Shaefer: He was a very simple kid, you know? He liked to smoke pot, hang out … bum cigarettes from everybody. He had this dexterity that was feline, man. His fingers were so strong, and he had a lot of attack. In metal, you play really fast and a lot of guys don’t have that because it’s really hard. His fingers were really long and he used all four.
Flynn: He had an ability to write riffs that was just ridiculous.
Shaefer: When he did, we’d have to sit all night just to get them, you know?
Flynn: He busted out the intro to “Piece of Time” and I was like, “What the hell was that?”
Shaefer: My hardest thing was “I Deny.” [hums opening bassline] And I thought, “What the hell am I gonna do on guitar?” [both hum opening riff] That was a moment were we realized how orchestration was the best way it was gonna be. Everybody was playing something different [in the song] and we made it our goal for it to be that way.
Flynn: That became our niche.
What do you guys think of technical bands today?
Flynn: There’s some bands that have some really technical drummers. Like Flo [Mournier, Cryptopsy] … ridiculous how good so many of them are now. It’s been a renaissance instead of being … well, I love Dave Lombardo, but his stuff is just powerful, straightforward stuff. Players now try to do Richard Christy and Gene Hoglan and be really musical with the drums, and it’s really refreshing to hear.
Shaefer: There’s so many amazing bands. MySpace has been really beneficial. I mean, if we would of had that when we were together, that way to see your demo? That many people? I mean, it’s been so helpful for Gnostic [featuring Flynn, Baker, and Carson] because we just send people right over. If you don’t use MySpace [for music promotion] you’re asleep at the wheel. You can expose yourself to a lot of people and get a fanbase without a label’s help.
Choy: I’ve dabbled into a few bands, and these guys [in Atheist] keep me in tune. I don’t listen to a lot of metal when I’m far away from it. But it’s come a long way. There’s groups like Linear Sphere and Spiral Architect and these guys are like, “Wow! I’m really baffled!” These guys are coming right after us and it’s amazing. I applaud these people. Great musicians. I’m glad that people in the scene want to really play their instruments, not just headbang.
I think that’s about the only good thing it has to offer. How do you guys think songwriting should be balanced with technicality? How did you guys go about that?
Shaefer: I’d love to create this glamorous portrait of how we did it. But we just rolled up a joint, sat down—
Flynn: And whatever came out, came out.
Shaefer: We’d start playing and recognize if it was an Atheist riff or not, and just go from there. [Steve’s] drumming always evolved until we rolled tape. He was always changing stuff and we practiced six days a week, spending a lot of time working on those songs. It took us a couple of weeks per song to write. These days, people write faster than that. I do too. But back when we were young we had lots of time. We sat around, got high, and made the music as crazy as we could make it, and that’s how we made it.
Flynn: Some people that don’t smoke weed think, “Oh, that’s a terrible thing to tell the kids,” but that’s how we did it.
Shaefer: I would record riffs and bring them to practice, then write lyrics and bring those back too.
Flynn: I think the only formula was writing stuff [for drums] that I wanted to write and would find cool as a drummer. Like, if I heard it I would go, “Oh, that’s really cool.”
Shaefer: Believe it or not, we tried to make it catchy. Our manager at the time was Borivoj Krgin, who [now] does Blabbermouth.net, and he was always telling us it was. So we would shoot for that. We were fans of Iron Maiden and bands like them who had big hooks in their metal.
And Tony, what’re your thoughts?
Choy: You have to have somewhat of a song structure. You can’t just be technical to be technical, y’know? You should incorporate many things to make a song a song. A lot of people want to be the most technical and crazy, but then you’re like, “I don’t even know what I just heard.” Song structure is definitely important. Show off your chops, but make it in a song structure. I think people would dig it more.
I think of Atheist songs as having a disjointed kind of catchy. Like your own kind of catchy—the opening bassline of “Mother Man” for instance. It’s spidery.
Flynn: That’s Roger. That’s totally Roger.
Can you guys see your impact today?
Shaefer: We can. And we feel grateful as hell. And we’re absolutely humbled by all of this, the press. I mean, you’re 19 years old, man! And you’re standing here interviewing us about music that’s—
Flynn: 19 years old.
Shaefer: Yeah, 19 years old. That’s a huge thing as an artist when you can make something that continues into a new generation.
Flynn: Kelly wasn’t as surprised as me, because I’ve been removed from the [metal] scene for a long time, and we started this with the [Relapse Records] reissues, I was not only amazed by how many people came out and said, “You were a big influence,” but also the stature of people—people like … Okay, so I just had a conversation with Richard Christy, who played on the Death albums, and he was like, “Oh my God, I was a huge fan of you and Atheist,” and I was like, “Come on, this guy—this guy is amazing!” And that blows you away, you know? We never set out and expected that. And like Kelly said, you can’t pay any greater compliment to a painter or a sculptor or musician than saying that their stuff is still relevant more than a decade after it’s been done.
Shaefer: Think about something you’d say when you were five years old. And then someone comes up to you years later and says, “Man … that stuff you said when you were five? It changed my life, man.” We hear all these little stories from people and how they discovered the band. We were definitely the bastard metal band back in the day; we didn’t get much accolade. There were a few [industry and record label] people that were hip to what we were doing.
Flynn: Industry people always loved what we were doing. Magazines, people who were producing bands always gave us really high praise. Other bands were just going, “What the hell’re you doing?” They were just confused.
To further pat you guys on the back, I’ve been working on some of Roger’s stuff and it’s still incredibly hard.
Flynn: [laughs] Tony is still working on those!
Thank you guys so much for your time; it’s been beyond an honor.
Flynn: Our pleasure, man. Shaefer: No problem!
Choy: You’re very welcome.
The show is every bit as amazing as a fan could’ve hoped. They open with the tranquil picking of “Unquestionable Presence” and then straight into the raw riffing of “On They Slay.” Every instrument except the drums, unfortunately, manages to fail mid-song at a few different points, and there’s mistake here or there in the mid-set songs like “Retribution,” but the band soldiers on—these are musicians who have faced much greater hardships. The worst was the loss of Roger, to whom Kelly dedicated the classic, frantic-yet-groovy “Mother Man,” to the loudly cheering audience. When the bass interlude is reached, Choy launches into a freeform bass solo as Shaefer, Flynn, Baker, and Carson retreat offstage. Flynn then returns to his drum throne to engage in a little call and response with Tony, after which the entire band returns to end the show with “And the Psychic Saw” and bring out an encore of the cornerstone “Piece of Time.” Thirteen years after they called it quits, Atheist’s technicality is still unbridled, unequaled, relevant and mindblowing.
Check in with Atheist at www.officialatheist.com. ■
Photos: Atheist performing that night.
