Interview: Scott Hedrick of Skeletonwitch.

I recently had the chance to talk with Scott Hedrick of Skeletonwitch, one of my personal favorite metal bands. We talked about their new album, favorite music releases and his thoughts on the band being banned by Disney. Skeletonwitch are currently halfway through their tour supporting Amon Amarth and Enslaved, be sure to check out the remaining tour dates. Skeletonwitch are also currently supporting they latest album “Serpents Rising” out now on Prosthetic Records, I heavily recommend checking it out.
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Q – So how’s the tour been treating you guys so far?

Scott – It’s been good. We’ve known Amon Amarth for a long time, we’ve toured together in the past, and they’re old friends of ours. Enslaved are now our new friends, who we’ve been getting along with swimingly. The turnouts have been cool, it’s just one of those tours where every aspect is awesome. Not trying to sound over positive, but I have nothing to complain about.

Q – “Serpents Unleashed” has been out for a little over three months now, how has the reception been?

Scott – It’s been great. We don’t concern ourselves too much with what people say, but it’s impossible not too look and just see, but we’re happy with it. We put out the best record that we could possibly put out, and fortunately people are saying that it’s our best record, so I’m stoked that they are agreeing with us.

Q – Can you tell us about the lyrical themes for “Serpents Unleashed” ?

Scott – I can’t really because I don’t write the lyrics, our vocalist Chance does. I can tell you that his lyrics are not very literal, like alright, “this song is about high gas prices” or “this song is about a specific politician”, there’s always enough assholes out there (laughs). Our imagery and our lyrics are more of an escape, and of larger stories, you know like “good verses evil”, and other interesting tales within each song.

Q – You guys had Kurt Ballou from Converge produce the album, as well as John Baizley from Baroness do the artwork. How did it come about having those guys work on the album, and what was it like working with them?

Scott – It was great. John is a good friend of ours, he did our “Beyond The Permafrost cover”, which is our first album we did for Prosthetic. We used to play house shows with Baroness, John and I have slept on the floor together in some shitty little DIY space, so yeah, we go way back. It was basically just calling up John and asking him to do it. And with Kurt, we almost worked with him before on our “Breathing The Fire” record but our schedules didn’t allow it, so we’re both on eachother’s radar, we were glad he was able to it.

Q – What are your thoughts on being banned by Disney and the House Of Blues?

Scott – It’s ridiculous, especially if any of you had ever met us before or have known us personally. It’s just funny that they would ban us, we also don’t even know exactly why, whether it’s lyrical content or t-shirt designs or what.

Brandon(interviewer) – You guys have joined a club with the likes of Machine Head, Exodus, The Faceless and Goatwhore.

Scott – From being banned?

Brandon(interviewer) – Yeah.

Scott – It’s funny cause Cradle Of Filth aren’t banned, yet they have a t-shirt that says “Jesus Is A Cunt”. But yeah, I wish we knew why, we’re just not sure why. My best guess would be our song “Reduced To The Failure Of Prayer”, cause it’s an anti-religious song.

Brandon(Interviewer) – Oh and Cattle Decapitation as well.

Scott – (laughs) Yeah I can see that.

Q – “Bringers Of Death” is probably one of the greatest pieces of metal ever written. That being said, are there any possible further collaborations with Adult Swim?

Scott – There’s nothing in the works right now, but I wouldn’t rule it out. If they were interested in doing something else we’d be up for it, depending on what is is.

Q – Do you have a favorite show(s) on Adult Swim?

Scott – Whenever we get to a hotel after a show, Adult Swim gets put on a lot, it’s just an easy go-too sort of thing that everyone’s okay with watching at the end of the night. I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve seen every episode of Family Guy, or American Dad. I watch so much Adult Swim and half the time it’s not even my choice (laughs).

Q – Are there any plans on wanting to possibly re-release “At One With The Shadows” ?

Scott – Actually yeah there is. I don’t know when, “Serpents Unleashed” only came out a few months ago so we need to give it a little time before we throw something else in the works, but we absolute plan on re-issueing it. I don’t know what we’re going to do with the audio, whether we’re going to remaster it or not. I typically tend to not like to rewrite history, to change this to this, or if we were to do that, I’d put in the original version and the updated version. Cause when we recorded that we were scraping, digging through couch cusions for change to pay for studio time. We were young so we didn’t really know our way around a studio. but you can hear that in the recording and I don’t want to change that.

Brandon(interviewer) – It’s an incredibly raw sounding album.

Scott – It sure is (laughs). So if we do reissue it, it’ll certainly sound like it did before. We’ve talked about it but we don’t know if we would remaster it, but if we do we would put them both in the release.

Q – You guys released the music video for “I Am Death” back on October 29th, you premiered it exclusively on bloodydisgusting.com, what lead you to want to do that?

Scott – It was actually Prosthetic. We did the video and shot it, did the whole concept for it, and once it was done they were like, “Hey, there’s a few different places we could do this” so we said “hey, let’s do this one”, and it was just cool like that. There’s this whole crossover thing with metal and horror movies, and it was just a fun spot to do it with the video being so horror influenced. It just seemed like a good match.

Q – Well like you said, metal and horror films have always gone hand in hand. What are some of your favorite horror films?

Scott – “Return Of The Living Dead” is one of my favorites, another one that’s hilarios but pretty fucked up is “Necromantic 2” (laughs), that’s one of Nate’s favorites, our other guitar player. But yeah “Return Of The Living Dead” is great, it also has that Roky Erickson on the soundtrack. It’s got a lot of the things I personally love about horror movies, the campy feel, the awesome soundtrack, there’s just a lot going on there. The guy that you need to talk too is our drummer Dustin, he’s got a lot of horror based tattoos, he even goes to the horror conventions (laughs).

Q – What’s the best concert you’ve ever attended that you didn’t play?

Scott – Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, that or At The Drive-In when I was fifteen or sixteen I believe.

Brandon(interviewer) – I wish they would do some more shows again.

Scott – Yeah, it was on their last tour they did for their “Relationship Of Command” album, it was them with the Virgin City Devils.

Q – What are some of your favorite music releases from the last year?

Scott – I listen to mostly older stuff, I’m such a record nerd. This isn’t metal at all, but a guy named Daniel Bachman, he’s an acoustic guitar player, it’s instrumental, but his record was killer. I listen to a lot of weird shit that’s not really metal. The last Enslaved record was killer, the new Amon Amarth is killer, I know that’s cheesy to say since we’re on tour with them, but it’s true.

Q – Who do you think would win in a beard-off, Chance(Skeletonwitch) or Johan(Amon Amarth) ?

Scott – I can’t grow a beard to save my life (laughs). That’s tough, I’m gonna call it a tie, it’s different styles of beard (laughs).

Q – After this tour is finished, what’s next for Skeletonwitch?

Scott – Next is going to be Australia, New Zeland and Southeast Asia, and then probably some festivals over in Europe this summer, and then we’ll see after that. A headlining tour in the US and Canada is Imminent, that’s something we will be soon announced, hopefully.

Brandon(interviewer) – Yeah, I know you guys are always touring extensively.

Scott – (laugh) Yeah we do, we’re on the road more than we’re at home, by a long shot.

Q – Thanks for taking the time to talk with us, is there any last thing you’d like to say to your fans?

Scott – Just thank you, thanks to anyone who has ever supported Skeletonwitch.