TOXIC HOLOCAUST
Over the last 20 years, Portland, OR’s Toxic Holocaust–the creation of multi-instrumentalist Joel Grind–has taken their own unique combination of speed-punk and thrash metal and become a fierce crossover juggernaut. It feels like it’s been an eternity since they released their last album, Chemistry of Consciousness, back in 2013 via Relapse Records. Now, six years later, they’re back with their highly anticipated sixth album, Primal Future: 2019, on their new label home, eOne.
During those six years between the two albums, Toxic Holocaust took advantage of opportunities to tour around the globe, hard and often. Otherwise, Joel managed to expand his horizons by seeing to his interests behind the scenes of the action–recording, mixing, and mastering records for other bands and artists. He’s already making a name for himself to the extent that the gig could possibly carry him on in the future, should recording and touring for himself ever cease for whatever reason down the line.
He’s just finished up Toxic Holocaust’s first full-length album in more than half a decade. Primal Future: 2019 sees the band playing slightly longer songs comprised of riffs that strike out and go for the throat, that’re delivered in well-thought-out arrangements. In sequence, the album’s structure sends you through a twisting journey through a primitive digital dystopia that exists in an alternate realm in the future of the past. The intermittent presence of echoes and reverbs in the production heightens the experience by injecting some tenuous but effective disorientation and anxiety into the mix. Despite the fundamental rawness of the album’s foundation, the pummeling riffage attacks with prominent fury and Joel’s commanding vocal presence cuts through the sonic hell winds with crystal clarity. All of the elements fall in place together to make Primal Future: 2019 one of the best Toxic Holocaust albums to date.
Now that the record is done and finally in the hands of ravenous fans all around the world, Joel is just trying to take the whole experience from the process in and enjoy the prospect of things to come as a result. I recently had a chance to speak with Joel about the new album, and anything else that popped up at any moment. He’s stoked to be releasing his first new album in more than half a decade, which is possibly the best Toxic Holocaust album to date. With a killer new album under his belt, new songs to play live, and a budding career working on the technical aspect of recording music, things are looking pretty exciting for the future.
Dig it!
You’ve been doing this with Toxic Holocaust since 1999, so you’re 20 years on. Two complete decades. Can you believe that?
No, man! It’s been a long time, now. But time flies by when you’re doing something you really love doing because you love it so much. You don’t realize that it’s been 20 years!
That’s essentially a generation, you know.
Oh, absolutely. If I’d have had a kid when I started the band, the kid would’ve been out of high school already. It’s insane. When we play shows and kids come up to me who are like 15,16 years old, I think, “Man, this band is older than this kid!” It’s still so bizarre to me.
So, it’s been six years, almost to the week, since you released Chemistry of Consciousness.
Yeah, it seems like all of my records happened to be released around the same time of year, in October. It is really bizarre. A lot of things have happened between the two albums so I guess that’s a big part of the reason why it’s taken so long.
Had you planned to go on some kind of hiatus at some point, or do you even consider that span of time a hiatus for the band?
Looking back on it, I guess it was kind of a hiatus but it’s not something that was planned. The last record I did was the last one for Relapse, so part of that time was looking for a new label. I started my own business recording, mixing, and mastering for other bands. When you’re starting up a new business it’s hard to turn away clients. It’s kind of been non-stop, trying to build a name up doing that stuff. Then there was moving, which took some of the time. At one point I was living in Los Angeles. I don’t know, it was just a bunch of crazy stuff that was happening during that time. But I feel like I’ve recharged my batteries so I really started feeling a renewed sense of excitement about getting back to doing this (Toxic Holocaust) again. It’s not that I didn’t want to do it before, I think that I just started to feel a little bit of a burnout, mostly from constantly touring so much. But yeah, I feel refreshed and excited to come back with some new stuff, finally!
I guess you guys did do a lot of touring over the last few years…
Yeah. The touring between the last record and this one was the most touring we’d ever done before. It was hard to be recording and mixing all of these other bands and then want to go and do the same thing for my own band. It was hard to find that balance but I think I’ve finally found it.
Had you always wanted to work behind the scenes, recording, mixing, producing, mastering, etc. or was that something that you became interested in once you’d been a part of the game yourself for a while?
It’s actually something that I’ve always wanted to do. When I was about 16 I was working part-time jobs so I could save up to buy my own recording rig. I bought a mobile rig that I would take to friends’ houses and record their bands. So, I was always interested in that aspect of the process. Then after the last record, I decided to start doing it as a business. It seemed kind of like a no-brainer, you know. And it’s great to have something going on so I don’t have to be out on the road for such a long time. That way I can still do music and be creative.
So, in the midst of your other work, when did you begin the writing for Primal Future: 2019?
I’ve actually been writing the whole time, these last six years. Some of the riffs I’d had ideas for but didn’t develop on Chemistry of Consciousness. They were sitting in a hard drive waiting to be worked with. For the last record, I went for super short songs, to the point. Some of the other stuff was a little more embellished, with more involved arrangements. Stuff like that. So, that was in my head when I started writing the new songs. I wanted to do something different for this record. I just did a lot of writing and tried to make good selections and choices for what riffs were going where. I actually wound up writing enough material to start another record. But, I’m sure there’ll be some things to come out, maybe split singles or something like that. Who knows? Maybe even get a head start on the next record.
It’s good to have a surplus of material for the future.
Oh, it’s definitely better to have more rather than not enough, for sure. Who knows how I’ll feel about the stuff I wrote when the time comes to write another record? Will I change stuff? Will I keep it the same? Will I just scrap it? At least it’s there and it could possibly take some of the pressure off of me when I do go to start writing again, you know.
Just to make sure I’m correct in its description, the new album does have at least a loose, abstract concept or some kind of connection throughout, right?
Loosley, yeah. It’s all in a realm of a dystopian cyberpunk future.
Where did you look to find the ideas? What did you want to do with the stories?
I just kind of took the idea of technology taking over our lives. I was thinking about how our lives would be if we had the technology we have now back in the 1980s. A lot of movies in the ’80s set in the future took place here and now. You know, like in the year 2019, 2020. So, I wanted to take the point of view from those films from then and set it in the now. The idea is that we’ve gone so far into the future that we’ve kind of destroyed everything back to the stone age or something.
We’ve become primitive, hence Primal Future…
Exactly, yes!
Did you lay out a story for yourself and write your lyrics accordingly or did you let it all come to you as you went on?
I start a lot of songs with a loose Idea and then just go from there. It’s weird how sometimes when you’re creating, things come to you but you don’t quite know how it happened. You kind of tap into something when you’re writing songs, where you’re getting these ideas but you don’t know where it’s all coming from. There were some times where I might’ve been watching a cool science fiction exploitation film from the ’80s and something would click and the ideas would just start coming.
You went back to recording everything yourself with this album. What did that whole process look like? Did you just hole up, locked in your studio for x amount of time? How did it play out for you?
It was really cool because I could say, “Ok, it’s Tuesday, I’ve got some free time. I’m going to go work on a song.” That kind of thing. It also gave me time to not hear the song, too. In my opinion, it’s really important to step back sometimes to let a song breathe. If you’re too close to something for too long, you can lose sight of what you’re doing. If you take time away, you can come back with fresh ears and keep your perspective.
When you finally went in to start recording, did you go in knowing exactly what you wanted the album to sound like? Had you already heard it all in your head?
Yeah, it’s really close to what I wanted it to sound like. I went in there wanting to do something that was in stark contrast from the last album. The production is all different, the writing is all different, the songs are a little longer, it’s not blown out. It was an ongoing process. I’d start out with an idea and let it build from there.
Going back to when you mentioned the last record for Relapse, you’d been with them since An Overdose of Death… was released back in 2008. So Primal Future: 2019 is the first Toxic Holocaust not on Relapse in more than a decade.
Yeah, Relapse is amazing. I’m still really tight with those guys over there. Basically, it was just the end of my contract so I wanted to shop the new record around to see what else was out there. I really wanted to push the European market a little bit more and eOne has really good distribution in Europe. So, it was about trying something different. Nothing more than that.
Was the new record already done by the time you started looking around?
It was pretty much done. I think I still had to do the vocals, but other than that it was already finished.
Have you ever kicked around the idea of starting a small label maybe and releasing it all yourself?
I’ve definitely thought about it before, and I’ve actually done that in the past with other solo records I’ve done. But something like Toxic Holocaust would just be such an undertaking because of things like the advertising and pushing the record and stuff. I feel like things would just fall through the cracks. I really want to focus on touring and making music. If you spread yourself too thin you have things that don’t get the attention that it needs. If it was something like a solo project away from Toxic Holocaust I could probably do it because the demand wouldn’t be as high, so I could focus on it a lot more. But, I really think that you need to have people working on it with you.
Shifting gears a little bit, when did you first realize that music was going to be an important part of your life?
It was probably around the time I was 12 or 13. I was like, “Alright, this is what I want to do.” I wasn’t playing any instruments or anything like that but that was when music was becoming more than just something you’d casually listen to. On the bus ride home from school I’d get excited to listen to whatever I was into at the time. That was when I decided music would be a lifetime thing. I was fortunate because my mom was a really big music fan. She got me into a lot of bands, which was really cool. That gave me a little spark, but when I was just a little bit older I had a friend who had an older brother who was into skateboarding and he would be skating the half-pipe listening to all of this music which I later found out was thrash metal. He would let me borrow tapes or he would make me copies of tapes he had. That was like a turning point for me.
What about your first concert experience?
My mom took me to see Guns N Roses and Metallica back in 1992 when they were on tour together. And again, that was one of those experiences that’re life-changing and live on in my memory forever.
I know you were really influenced by the ‘Big 4’ bands…
Oh, yeah…
Did you know immediately what you wanted to do, musically? Did you want to try to go harder or heavier or faster or more technical, or did you even really approach your early songwriting like that at all?
Not really, because I was learning at the same time that I was writing. That’s why I started playing guitar in the first place–I wanted to write songs. I was a drummer first but I wanted to write music, so that’s really the only reason I even decided to pick it [guitar] up. Punk was a big influence at that point because I knew that it didn’t have to be super technical to write cool songs. But I never wanted to sound like anybody else. I didn’t want to be a clone, so it was really important for me to develop my own sound.
Do you ever think about your life had you not chosen this path for yourself? Do you have any idea what you’d be doing instead?
Well, When I first started becoming well-known for Toxic, I ran the shipping department for a company I worked for in Maryland. In that area, it was considered to be a really good job to have. People were always trying to get in there to work. So, I guess I’d probably be doing something like that because it was the kind of job you could make a career out of. I guess I haven’t really thought about that very often, come to think of it. Yeah, I’d probably be doing something with that. But once I found music I knew that it would play some kind of part in my life, for sure.
STATIKNOIZE 