With the Internet and social media shaping daily life the way that it does, it’s rare to really get your first impression of a band (outside of the local scene) in the live setting. But last April, Product of Hate came through upstate NY with Allegaeon and The Agonist and instantly struck a chord with this writer. Intense (and pissed off) riffing, energetic playing, and just enough melody to keep things interesting were all a part of the band’s shtick. Then came the waiting for their full-length, Buried in Violence.
Released this past Friday, the band’s debut effort makes good on their intense live performance. Punch-you-in-the-gut thrash riffing and ripping solos coupled with plenty of violent groove and surprisingly catchy choruses lends itself to a number of memorable tracks that you won’t easily forget. Chomping at the bit for an interview, vocalist Adam Gilley was kind enough to oblige one afternoon just before the album’s release. Read on to find out about the band’s early days, some helpful suggestions for Youtube advertisements, and tattoos.
Dead Rhetoric: Product of Hate has been around since 2007. What can you say of the band’s early days?
Adam Gilley: We’ve all known each other in some sense, because we all played in different bands before we got together. Eventually, I started jamming with Mike [McGuire] and Cody [Rathbone] and I’m not going to lie, I was not thrilled with what they were playing. I was like, “not for me, not doing it.” I left my head over at their house, so of course, they said “come back and jam again.” So I was like, “dammit, I have to go back over there and play.” So I did, and they were playing different music – heavier stuff. Ever since then, I said I’d play with them and before you know it, we got Cody’s brother [Gene] to play lead guitar and we got Mark [Campbell] to play bass.
Dead Rhetoric: I take it they were playing something “less metal” the first time around?
Gilley: I don’t want to say it was like punk rock, but it was very weird. I can’t explain it. My style was that I wanted something heavy – not too heavy, like death metal. But if I have to categorize, I wanted something along the lines of Pantera, Lamb of God, Devildriver…something with a Strapping Young Lad-influence. That’s what I wanted, and when I came back around the second time, they were playing that style of music, and were actually playing some Lamb of God. Mike wasn’t the drummer first, he was the rhythm guitar player, and eventually we just stuck him on drums. We thought he was a better drummer than a guitar player.
It’s crazy, looking back from 2007 until now, how much the music industry has changed. I feel like if we were as far as we are now with our music, back then, we would have been picked up by a label a long time ago. Everything has turned into social media now – it kinda sucks. It’s all about having fans on Facebook! Are you kidding me? It’s been stressful a couple of times….
Dead Rhetoric: You mentioned how the music industry has changed. How do you feel the band has come along since then?
Gilley: I feel we’ve matured, as a band, a lot. We started putting more melodic stuff in there. I’m a vocalist – I want to be able to do everything. I want to be able to do the singing, the death metal screams, the yelling – I want to do it all and incorporate it as much as I can. From the first EP to this debut album, I feel like when you hear it, you can hear how much we’ve progressed.
Dead Rhetoric: It seems the album was delayed a bit. Initially it seemed like it was going to be a summer/fall [2015] release. Any reason for the delay?
Gilley: We recorded the album a year or two ago, and then we pitched it to labels. Then we had to get it remastered. We decided to go to James Murphy, because he was the guy we went to for our EP. He’s good at what he does, he’s really nice, easy to talk to and communicate back and forth with. It took longer than expected, because when we sent him the tracks, we ended up sending the wrong mixes. They were the mixes before they had been edited. He was already working with other projects at the time, so we had to wait until he was finished with those projects and send the right mixes. Even then, we still had troubles – it was just a pain in the butt. We’ve got it done now, and that’s nice!
Dead Rhetoric: Does it feel good, that after all these delays, you are finally getting it out there for people to hear?
Gilley: Oh my god, you have no idea! I’m stoked. It’s about time we get our music out there, I’ve been waiting a long time for that. I’ve shown close friends the album, but that’s not enough. I want the world to hear it.
Dead Rhetoric: You just did a video shoot last weekend, what can we expect when it’s finished?
Gilley: I think that everyone will enjoy it. It’s entertaining, that’s for sure. It fits the song so well. It was for the song “Monster.” Hopefully you’ll be seeing it sooner than later. We tried to do something a little bit different I guess, and stay out of the “playing in a warehouse” thing. I liked the last videos that we put out, but I think James, our manager, did a really good job of editing these videos. I think people will be pretty excited – it’s brutal. It’s not too violent, there’s not a lot of blood because we wanted to keep away from that to make sure it was different from our last videos.
Dead Rhetoric: You mentioned the other two videos. Those were done a while ago. Was it more just allowing people to see something as opposed to just doing a lyric video?
Gilley: Yeah, we also used them as a marketing tool back then. It was something to have behind us, since we didn’t have a label, to have something to show initiative. It was fun – it was one hell of a time! Even then, if you watch those videos, and you watch the new video, you will see how the band has progressed. With me personally, doing what I do for live shows – I’ve stepped up my live performance so much in the last 5 years, just trying to be more entertaining to people. Looking at the videos, you can definitely tell I’m working harder at what I do and am putting more of my emotion into it.
Dead Rhetoric: You are planning to do a couple more videos as well right?
Gilley: We did two performance videos that we plan on putting out pretty soon. Be on the lookout for those.
Dead Rhetoric: Everything has shifted, particularly with things like MTV. You have a good emphasis on video – do you feel it’s a good marketing tool just going from say, Youtube?
Gilley: Yes and no. It really sucks, the way that the music industry has shifted. MTV has become reality TV. They shouldn’t even be allowed to put “M” into it, it should be “RTV.” Fricking knock-up teens and give them a TV show – it’s ridiculous. It sucks, because I remember being a kid and growing up watching music videos on TV, wanting to be “that guy.” I wanted to be in a band and have my songs on the radio and videos on TV. With Youtube, it’s nice because it’s where everyone knows they can go to for videos. The thing that sucks is that you have to look it up. It’s not like a TV show where you are discovering new music by watching. You have to know who the band is and look them up, or there has to be some sort of an advertisement for you. I’ve watched a lot of music videos on Youtube, and they don’t really do advertisements for bands. Say I’m watching a video for Slipknot or something, they always have that “skip this ad in 5 seconds” and it’s some Swiffer mop or something. I feel like they should take another band and promote them in the ad. That would just help out with the music so much.
With Youtube as big as it is, at least there is something to go off of still with the music videos. CDs are almost becoming irrelevant these days – it’s a bummer. I’m still buying CDs. If my phone or computer crashed, I don’t have music then. I’m not going to take that chance. At least if I have CDs and albums, I have something to play it in. That stuff’s not going to disappear.