August Burns Red Interview
June 9 2010
Tastemakers had the chance to catch up with Matt Greiner, drummer for the metal quintet August Burns Red, before their October 16 show at the Palladium in Worcester, MA.
TM: So, how did you guys start the band?
MG: I was seventeen at the time; I played drums for a band called Secondhand for a few weeks prior to August Burns Red. I had a genuine interest in playing drums for a band an met up with some mutual friends who also had an interest in playing music- it just so happens that it was heavy music. We got together, started playing in a basement of a friend’s house. We covered three bands songs, a Luti-Kriss song- which is not the rapper, but ex-Norma Jean. We covered a Poison The Well song and we covered an Evergreen Terrace song, their cover of a cover. We covered a cover, they covered Depeche Mode- we covered their cover. We got started six and a half years ago, about three months after our first show we started to write our own stuff. We recorded a five song EP, and then started to write more. Moving on to record a full length, Thrill Seeker, we then started to tour outside of Pennsylvania. Then we recorded Messengers and started touring overseas in addition to the US. Now we have Constellations out and we’ve been to Australia, Puerto Rico, and Mexico. You name it; we may have been there, haha.
TM: That’s awesome dude, sounds like a good trip. To move into the question, I’ve read a little bit about the story behind the name “August Burns Red,” it seems kind of messed up. Would you mind elaborating on that?
MG: Sure, it’s a little demented to be honest. Our first singer, Jon Hershey, quit the band four years ago. He tracked one EP with us called Looks Fragile After All, which had five songs. He toured with us on a regional tour in summer of ‘04, I believe, and after that he quit. He was dating this girl in high school named August and things went too far, too fast physically and emotionally, you name it. So, he got fed up with it and broke up with her. She came over his house in the middle of the night and burnt his doghouse down; she was like off her chain, just nuts. She was a nutcase basically, an emotional wreck. Inside the doghouse was his dog, which was coincidentally, named Redd, R-E-D-D. He was a reddish Irish setter or something, one of those dogs. Well, the dog burned alive. The next day the newspaper headlines read: AUGUST BURNS RED. When we started the band, he deemed it a crucial enough story to be made into a band name. The rest is history. It’s not so much a month and it’s not so much a color. It’s a girl’s name and a dog, haha.
TM: Wow, that is pretty messed up!
MG: It’s super messed up, man. We don’t talk to her, she doesn’t talk to us. I’m sure she’s aware of the name and where we got it. Maybe she takes pride in it… I hope not. I hope it’s not a redeeming thing for her.
TM: I hope not either, maybe she’s telling everyone about it.
MG: Exactly, like her “claim to fame.”
TM: You said Jon Hershey quit the band, so you’ve had three vocalists since then?
MG: That’s correct.
TM: How did that happen?
MG: I’m starting to lose count, we’ve had three so far, haha. We started out with Jon but we didn’t do any touring until that little regional tour. Jon was not a touring personality. He was very uncomfortable out on tour, on the road and he kind of wanted to pursue other things like school and stuff. So, he quit and we found Josh McManness who recorded Thrill Seeker with us. Then we started touring coast-to-coast, to California and back. We could tell Josh wasn’t feeling it. He was dating a girl at the time, he wanted to go back to school, so he quit. After that, we tried out singer for the net couple months and we came across Jake. He toured with us for four or five months before we ever established him as our official singer. We kind of pulled him along for a little bit, but Jake is our third official singer and definitely not ever leaving. He’s there, man. We’re a solidified line up now that we’ve been through one bassist and three singers.
TM: It definitely shows on both Messengers and Constellations.
MG: Yeah, it’s good chemistry now. It’s not so much like we’re forcing to keep people in the band. People in the band actually want to play now, they’re not like “Aw, this sucks. I have to go on tour and leave my girlfriend.” Our guitarist Brent is married, so it’s not like we don’t have people at home. We do, but this is our job, we just go and do it and we all get along with each other.
TM: So do you think your music has matured from Thrill Seeker to Messengers and from Messengers to Constellations? Have you moved on musically?
MG: Musically? Yes. A tremendous amount. I think that’s due to us being on tour all the time and knowing what works live and what doesn’t work live. We’ve been playing with each other long enough that we know what music we want to play collectively as a band. We have just gotten way better at our instruments. We weren’t very good at plying our instruments on Thrill Seeker. We kind of just started playing. So we went in with Adam D. and he kind of like forced us into different tempos and different sounds. It was great for the band but we weren’t at a level where we could perform that live. We had to practice a lot so we could get out there and play it live. With the next album, we tried to step up the game constantly. It’s been a progression since Thrill Seeker, it has to be. If you’re digressing as a musician, that’s just depressing. We have matured and it has enabled us to write better records. We’re not as limited as to what we can and can’t play.
TM: Definitely. Speaking of producers, what was it like working with Jason Suecof on your latest album?
MG: He’s a genius. Jason Suecof is a genius. He hears riffs for the first time, starts screaming random words to it and they’re great patterns. So, his true colors definitely shine through in the vocal department. As for drums, it was fun working with him. It wasn’t great but it wasn’t terrible. The drums and guitars sounded good. He’s very eccentric, he’s all over the place. He has A.D.D., he’s very distracted all the time. He’ll be talking about one thing and then all of the sudden something will catch his peripheral and he’ll zoom out. And he’s gone. Sometimes it’s frustrating when you’re a band that’s used to having things set in stone. When we go into the studio, if there’s someone there who is like, “Well, let’s just take some time and chill out,” that’s a little frustrating because all we want to do is track the record sometimes. He kind of wanted to sit back and hang out which would be ideal for some bands.
TM: So you guys are all about the business?
MG: Well, I don’t know, I guess we’re just lame. We’re just straight up with how we do it. We know how we want it to sound and that’s it. He was great to work with and the record sounds awesome. He was very interesting to work with and that makes for a great experience.
TM: What would you say you’ve done differently with your drumming on Constellations?
MG: I focused on writing drum parts that weren’t centered around drum parts but rather made for better songs. I made sure that the songs were complimented by my drum parts and did not take away from them. I think that was my main thing on the new album. There’s faster stuff than ever on Constellations and slower stuff than ever on Constellations, so it’s not like I held back. I definitely had a different mindset going into this record.
TM: Sweet, it’s sounding really awesome. So, on the subject of touring, everyone has a “worst show.” What’s the worst thing that’s ever happened to you guys on tour?
MG: We’ve had some bad experiences on tour, but there is this one in particular. We were playing some smaller shows on the East Coast, I forget where. We were playing in this school/church auditorium and the kids were rowdier than usual because it was one on one. One of the kids did a back flip or something off the stage and landed on his neck, no one caught him. He snapped his neck and was just laying there. We literally had to stop playing after that song, which we’ve never done before. So we didn’t finish our set, we were waiting around for forty-five minutes for this kid to be picked up by an ambulance. The ambulance finally came, put him on a stretcher and he was like motionless. He was out of his mind, saying weird stuff. Eventually, we got an e-mail from him saying “I’m doing much better,” but we heard some paralegal stuff like there was a chance he was going to sue us. We didn’t have insurance at the time. To make a long story short, we have insurance now. He’s good to go, never sued us, and we’re on talking terms. That was definitely a terrible experience, haha.
TM: It must’ve been terrifying to watch this kid go from having the best time to lying motionless.
MG: Exactly, we had no idea what was going on. It was scary and just not good for anyone.
TM: As a metal band, what do you expect of the fans at shows? What do you want them to feel?
MG: I hope they’re excited about how we sound and how we perform. It should be a balance between us sounding great and us entertaining. As performers, I think it’s important that we move around and entertain the crowd. I just want kids to enjoy themselves. I want to see that they’re soaking up what we’re playing and then talking to us afterwards.
TM: What album has the biggest influence on your drumming?
MG: Further Seems Forever’s The Moon Is Down is definitely one of my favorite records of all time. The drumming on that record is incredible. Another band is Extol, they have this record called Undeceived, they’re from Norway. It’s Norwegian death metal, they were kind of the portal as far as getting me into weird time signatures. I would listen to it over and over again and I would count it but I wouldn’t understand what was going on. I wouldn’t understand why it would restart after five beats instead of four.
TM: Last question. If you could describe August Burns Red in one word, what would it be?
MG: Remember-able. Hopefully more than anything, that’s what we aspire to be. Not heavy, not fast, but remember-able.
© 2010. All rights reserved.