Mushroomhead: Welcome to The Maskquerade
Twenty-seven years, nine albums, and many line up changes later, Cleveland, Ohio’s MUSHROOMHEAD still can’t get away from the stigma of being in SLIPKNOT‘s shadow. With a similar sound, look and feel, the comparison’s aren’t too far away but regardless of this, you can’t help but give the band their due, led by the peerless percussion of Steve ‘Skinny’ Felton, who we sit down with today to discuss all things MUSHROOMHEAD and the creation of their latest album A Wonderful Life.
The world is currently at an impasse, everything artistic has paused or stopped, theatres, cinemas, clubs, and arenas are all gathering dust where once the sound of music once rang out. We all know whether you’re an artist or a punter, that the music we all love will soon be back but for now we all must pause. Being in the game for so long, we talk with Skinny about what the headspace in the MUSHROOMHEAD camp is like at the moment. “Well, it feels like we are one step away from the world at the moment. Kind of locked away, doing our own thing, making videos, and visual content. Trying to ignore the outside world to perfectly honest, is where our headspace is at the moment. It truly is needed sometimes just to live inside of your own bubble. We have various rooms within our studio set up and we lock ourselves away and knuckle down to what we create.”
The world can be a cruel and indifferent world so we discuss if the band ever gets nervous when the songs they have been pouring blood, sweat, and tears into are released into the world, akin to a nice juicy steak thrown into a lion’s cage. “I don’t know if it’s nervous but it’s more like a relief. I think the nervousness comes with overthinking things, what the fans think, what the label thinks etc. I know that we have created an honest body of work on this album. I kind of try and keep my head focused, I just hope the rest of the world likes it as much as we do. Most of the time you have to dive in headfirst, go with your gut, and stick to the plan.”
The world also moves at a great pace, one person’s trend or next best thing is next week’s bargain-basement choice, so we find out what the band has been doing for the last six years since the release of the previous album The Righteous and The Butterfly. “There are a few major reasons, we always seem to stick to the three to a four year plan and we want to ideally be around the two to three year plan. A lot of times we were out on the road. From 2016 up until last year, we really wanted to reestablish the band within Europe. We made a base for our equipment in Germany and for sure we wanted to come back to the UK, where we haven’t played for 12 years. All that work paid off because we did a deal with Napalm Records, a German-based label, they approached us. They’re a very metal-based record label and we jumped in headfirst. With the production we have with the water drums and the sheer production value, people have called us the heavy metal version of the BLUE MAN GROUP!”
Nothing works like clockwork but with all the talk of album cycles and touring schedules keywords in the music industry, Skinny tells us about where once album’s creativity is finished and another one springs forth from the bands creative well. “We started about December 2018 and stopped around January 2020. We did a lot of the writing and arranging on the road. Small sounds designs and soundscapes. Some of the vocal ideas came straight from the recordings we did on the bus. For example, in the song The Flood, the entire chorus was done in our front lounge. Our song Seen It All has some birds in the beginning, we stuck the mic out of the window and recorded them. Plus we used Abbey Road while we were in London, the vocals for the The Heresy‘ were recorded there.”
Since the band was born at the arse end of grunge (hey, remember that kids?!) in 1993, Skinny has produced or co-produced each album the masked marauders in MUSHROOMHEAD has done. With this being the band’s latest album, we find out if Skinny has thrown any new tricks into the ring. “On this one, I learned to keep my mouth shut a little bit more than usual. Let everyone get their ideas out and/or vision. Through all these years of producing I’ve learned patience and the ability not to say No as much, No doesn’t really work well with artists looking to create, we need to find strong spots within all ideas and let expression free.”
A Wonderful Life is out now via Napalm Records.
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