I had setup two interviews with Nothingface through their record label, TVT Records; one with Matt, and then one right after with the rest of the band to take some pictures of their tattoos. I got a call from the record company that my interviews had to be pushed back an hour. 'No problem', I thought. When I got to the venue I tried to call the tour manager's cell phone to meet up with him. DISCONNECTED! Oh man, panic sets in. I called TVT Records back; the girl I had been dealing with was no longer there. I call back, asking for anyone else I could talk to. After about an hour and a half of calling cell phones and leaving voicemails, I finally met up with Bobby from Nothingface's management. He led me and my buddy Scott inside, and we got to hang out with Matt and watch Ministry rehearse while we waited for the band to finish up an earlier photoshoot. Then it was off to the tour bus to get started with the interview. (If all the questions don't seem to really follow each other, its because there was a lot of off-topic conversation going on that led into questions that I had not prepared for.)


d@n: I've read how other people have described the music that you play. In Metal Edge they called it "loud rock". How do you describe it?

Matt: I guess aggressive music, angry music. I'm not really one to really put labels on the music. I mean, I don't mind if you do call us something, but we don't write music with the intention of being, like, hard punk one day, Jane's Addiction on Thursday, or anything like that. You can call us opera for all I care; we don't really attempt to be one specific type of music.

d@n: Tell me about coming up in DC. What was the scene like there when you guys were starting out? Were there a lot of bands to compete with, or not many at all?

Matt: Well, I wouldn't say that there were a lot of bands to compete with, but I wouldn't say that there were any bands that helped us either. Basically, the scene in DC doesn't exist, there's a small scene in Baltimore, with a few decent bands. But the bands aren't really intertwined together, and it’s not a very supportive scene. I'm frequently called an asshole cos I don't go out to bars and hang out with other bands. We didn't want to stay in that situation; we played maybe one or two local shows, and went on tour.

d@n: How do you think the music has changed between your first album, Pacifier, and the new album, Skeletons?

Matt: Well, I think that the sound keeps getting a little bit bigger. Overall, it just seems that we keep getting heavier and more melodic at the same time; we keep going in both directions. So it depends on what group of songs of ours you hear. You can't even judge the sound of our band by listening to even four songs, not even with what I'm trying to do with the lyrics, but just the music itself.

d@n: How do you feel about the proliferation of filesharing on the internet, specifically the mp3 explosion and the idea that it takes away from the music industry?

Matt: Something I don't like about it right now is that it's taking away money from the music industry. That's why for the last couple years everything that we hear is sounding the same, because there may be a band that sounds very different but at the same time, because of their differences, may be the greatest thing since cheese, and influence everybody. And that band is not going to get signed now, because the music industry doesn't feel that it can take a chance any longer. People seem to think that musicians are very well off, and have all this money, but I don't even own a car. I live in a little bedroom at Bill's house, and that’s it. All my money goes to paying for food on the road. But regardless, as much money as a person has, its no-one else's right to threaten their livlihood.

d@n: I see that heavy music is making a comeback of sorts. Do you feel that it will continue this way? Where do you see mainstream or underground music heading?

Matt: Well everything works in cycles. There are more miserable people in the world than happy people, so there will always be a place for angry music. I get to stand on stage and scream "fuck you" to everyone in the crowd, and not necessarily "fuck you" to the people in the crowd, but they can associate with that anger.

d@n: If you had to pick a location, where would you say you like playing shows the most?

Matt: I really like playing pretty much anywhere outside of Los Angeles. Not that I have anything against LA, but it's like a scene where famous people like to come out and drink for free, and get on the guest list, and be seen. I just like playing outside of LA where real people come out to the shows to see the bands play live. I mean, like the other night, the lead singer of Puddle of Mudd came to the show, and went up to one of the guys in Ministry and said "Hey, great show" and Ministry hadn't even played yet.

d@n: I'm sure you guys don't get to play really small shows anymore, but what do you like playing better: smaller, more intimate venues, or larger festival type shows like Tattoo the Earth?

Matt: I do not like playing outside, you know? It's not as intimate. I don't know, I feel like I'm at a big picnic, and I feel like a public spectacle for some reason. I don't feel like I'm sitting in a room with my friends playing music, where I feel most comfortable. I like small venues, like 200 and 300 seaters for craziness, 'cause, like, the shows can turn into, like, the Sick of It All shows I used to see when I was a kid. And I like the larger rooms at the same time, because it reminds me of my first dreams of becoming a musician, and how much I looked up to those people and envied them, and wanted to be there. They are all equal, you know? I love playing music in any place, period, you know, but um... I'd have to say both, and I know it’s not very specific, but it's just the truth.

d@n: Nothingface is on tour in support of the new album, Skeletons, but what can we expect from the setlist? Will it be mainly new songs, or old songs, or both?

Matt: About half and half, you know, I mean, half of it's new stuff, and half of it's old songs. Right now we're not able to play a lot of old songs, because our set is only 35 minutes or something like that. And the reason we're playing the majority of new stuff is just cos we haven't played it out, and we want to get better at playing it. When we start doing headlining shows, I'd say the majority will be the old stuff, because, you know, there's more records, we gotta play it. We don't play much stuff off of Pacifier because we were still trying to figure out where we wanted to go and what we wanted to do so, there’s not a lot off of that record that we're very proud of, that we feel that we want to showcase to people. I understand that certain people want us to play certain songs, but it's got to be somewhat of a compromise: we have to enjoy what were playing, so, you know, you enjoy watching us.

d@n: Some bands I've interviewed or read interviews with say that they really hate touring. How do you feel about it?

Matt: I can't believe that anyone says they don't like touring, that's pretty awful. How do they expect to be a musician, if they don't like touring? When I go home man, it's awful. If I'm there for more than a month, then I slip into depression. I love lookin' out the window of a van or a bus and shit go by, and stopping at different places, you know, seeing shithole truck stops and weird little gas stations, the world's largest frying pan... You know, I love touring. Our country is so diverse, all these climates, and the different conditions, that everywhere you go is really unique. If you go to the desert, if you're from the East Coast, then you feel like you’re on Mars or something. Being from the East Coast, all we see is the Appalachian Mountains, which are like hills compared to the Rockies. I never get sick of seeing that shit. As cheesy as it sounds, I love just looking around.

d@n: What's life like on the bus? What happens on a usual day in the touring life of Nothingface?

Matt: A lot of sleeping. Um.. a couple of us smoke a lot of pot, but not our bass player. We get all stressed out and play a show. And then, I sit back here and smoke weed, and they drink a lot and we talk to fans. And occasionally we'll have some of the other bands on the bus, and have a big drunken party. Some of these younger bands that haven't been touring as long as us, it’s kinda fun to make 'em drink till they're sick.

d@n: What kind of setbacks do you see as a band, and how do you overcome them?

Matt: Um, we never really thought about how we overcome things, it’s just like "yep, that sucks" and we just keep going. I mean, we've gone through times when we're like "shit, fuck it, let's break up", but we can't ever do it, no matter how irritated we get with this shitty fucking business. Basically the kind of setbacks we see, are just the music industry in general. This is definitely a business that, and a lot of the bigger bands will tell you different, but no one gives a fuck about you if you're a musician. You're somebody that creates a product that somebody else sells. In their eyes, all musicians are disposable - even the ones that make millions, because they are only around a couple years, or if they are lucky a half a decade or a decade. But these businesses expect to be in business a lot longer than that, so you are disposable as a musician. The guys that work in the mail rooms at the record labels get full benefits, but the bands are expected to start a corporation on their own, based on the money they make on road and merchandise, and give out benefits packages to the people they hire, as well as themselves, you know, so that's a problem. I don't understand the suit mentality, I can't seem to grasp it. I can't separate fucking people for money. You know, and it's not to say that our record label is bad, because it's not necessarily them. Our past management that we had and that, you know, never gave a shit about us, made us think that they did the whole time, but in the long run just basically ended up screwing us. And uh, we had a lawyer in the past that just really didn't give a fuck about us. He was all into us when we were talking to him on the phone, but when it came time to negotiate our deal; he had his assistant do it. You know, the business makes it really hard to sit back and play music sometimes. And that's all I want to fucking do. I don't want to be a business man, I don't want to worry about what the Nothingface stock does on Wall Street the day we go public, I don't give a shit, all I wanna do is write good records, be proud of the music we play and put on good shows. That's it, and tour. You got enough tape there?

d@n: Tell me about the title Skeletons. I saw that at one point, people on the messageboards were throwing out ideas. Did it come from a fan, or was it more personal, like maybe you have some skeletons in the closet?

Matt: You can look at it like that; we looked at it more like leaving skeletons behind us, and just walking on. It's really weird; we found an artistic image that our album cover is based on, and we kind of figured, "that image summed up the entire year for us". And actually one of the songs was called Skeletons. We were trying to think of album titles, and I was looking through the song titles, and thought, "'Skeletons', that kind of sums what we're trying to do." I can't really go too far into it philosophically, because we didn't really discuss it. We didn't sit down, and say "OK, this is what the word's about", we don't ever do that. But there it was, you know? There was no magical epiphany or anything like that. It's an image that describes the year, and a word that sums up both.

d@n: What happens to the songs that don't quite make it onto the album? Do you just forget them and drop them, or save them for later use, maybe test them out live?

Matt: Usually forget 'em and drop 'em. If they didn't make the record, it's because we didn't like it. You know, we're not going to let anyone tell us what's gonna go on our album, or anything like that; just pay for the shit and don't tell us how to do our job, you know? There have been songs that we have played, like, at the end of our tours, right before we go in to record, and then dumped. There was a song that we played at our last couple of shows when we were touring for Violence which we played a couple of times, and it actually ended up on the internet, and we dumped that song. And um.. you know, sometimes, if we need it, if someone wants to use a song on a compilation or something like that and they heard it somehow, and they really like it, demanding that we play that song, then we'll consider it, but I can't remember a time when we've ever done that.

d@n: In your lyrics you make quite clear your disdain for organized religion. Do you find personal faiths in God equally insidious, or just the institution that the church has become?

Matt: Well, I'm not going to deny that there is something out there that is bigger than humanity; I'm not going to go ahead and call it 'God' or anything like that. Um, basically, my problem is mainly with Christianity and Catholicism. Worship whatever you want, there's nothing wrong with the basic idea of the religions, it's what they've used the ideas of their religion for. You go throughout Texas and you have these tele-evangelists like Benny Hinn and all these people that, you know, charge huge amounts of dollars to get into their sermon, then they pass around these collection plates all day, in arenas, and expect you to give your money to prove your faith. And these people live like kings, you know, feeding off the very weakest of people. Personally, I have enough confidence and faith in myself as a human being that I can live without needing to drop to my knees and be a God-fearing American, you know? There's no point. I mean, organized religion as a whole, or religions in general, have been the cause of the majority or wars around the world. There have been more people murdered, and killed, or slaughtered, over their religion than anything. And how people just overlook all that. I mean we all learn about the Spanish Inquisition, just to bring up one small piece of the whole. "Oh it was terrible, but its not like that now." No, now priests just fuck little boys, they don't kill them! They just fuck 'em! It's just disgusting to me. It's hard for me to get all into this, and not go on for hours. But yeah, I mean, I think that everybody should have the right to believe whatever you believe, do whatever makes you happy, I'm not trying to tell anyone what to believe or whatever else. Christianity and Catholicism especially need to slow down as a corporation, and stay mainly as a religion. They need to stay the fuck out of politics, and stay out of people's lives that don't want you there, that's mainly it.

d@n: Outspoken as you are on most topics, I would bet that you have strong feelings about politics as well. How do you feel about the current state of America, and the issues taking place all over the world?

Matt: Well, I don't think it's as bad as it was, say, in the 50s and the 60s, when were toe-to-toe with Russia, pointing nuclear weapons at each other. I think that people are being a little bit selfish trying to be that scared of terrorist attacks. You have a better chance of winning the lottery 3 times in a lifetime than being hit by a terrorist attack. I think that things will be a lot better when we get Hitler Bush out of office. I mean, the guy himself is a murderer. Just start from the beginning when he was the governor of Texas. How the hell do you execute more people in the state of Texas, in the 90s, in his term, than you do throughout the entire history of Texas? I mean, how does that happen? Do they not count lynching? And then he goes on to be president, though an error in politics, just "by accident", the Supreme Court justices that his father appointed, happen to decide that he won the election, that his brother just "happened" to give to him out of Florida, because remember, people in their 60s and 70s can't read that well, so they voted wrong, you know? And they had to do all the recounts and everything. Jesus Christ, they remind me of the Corleones from The Godfather! And the whole thing with Iraq, don't tell people that were going to war over chemical and nuclear weapons when you gave these people this shit to go to war with Iran in the 80s. Don't talk about ousting a dictator that you installed in the 70s. Tell people the truth. Saddam Hussien burnt our oil reserves in Kuwait, that's why gas prices are so high, we're going there to get back what he took. Most Americans can understand this, he took your shit, lets go get it back; pretty much every American can understand this. And as far as the protesters are concerned, I mean, yeah, protest, but protest in your own damned towns. A lot of these people are going to San Francisco and New York, and they aren't even from there, and they are going to have to raise taxes in these towns to pay for the extra amount of police power and everything that is being spent to calm these protesters down. And it's just going to make this country a worse place, everyone is sick of paying money to live here as it is. And these suburbanites, and there's nothing wrong with suburbanites, but these ones that think that dancing in the streets is making things harder for our soldiers who are getting shot at, and think that they are doing something good, well, I think you're fucking crazy. And another thing about supporting these troops: I'm tired of hearing Bush saying how much he supports the troops and things like this. He just signed a bill that’s going take about 13 billion dollars out of the benefits packages of veterans, and it’s going to hit right when this war ends. When all these guys come home, they are going to find out that their Medicare is cut back; they aren't going to be able to go to psychologists as freely and shit like that. We're just living in a huge toilet filled with shit right now. And it’s not as bad as it can get, but as soon as we get someone else in office that actually cares more about small people than people that spend all their money on stock and the wealthy sections of our country. It's weird, usually I'm kind of dead on this shit, I can whip out facts and everything else fast as shit. I only took one bong hit, and I'm not really stoned, but I seem to have burned myself out at some point.

d@n: I know that you guys are going to be on tour with Ministry, and then Ozzfest later on in the summer 'til August sometime, but what happens after that? Will you take some time off, stay on the road, go back in the studio?

Matt: No, we're going to stay on the road as long as we can. At this point I don't really know what were going to be doing in the fall. It's not concrete, I'm sure we'll know probably closer to the first month of summer, maybe a little bit later than that. But the goal is to stay on tour for at least two years, try to play 300 shows a year, get out there as much as we can: US, Europe, Asia, and anywhere else that will take us. And um, you know, stay on the road, play in front of crowds, and eventually we'll record another record.

d@n: What is the band listening to these days? What's big on the tour bus?

Matt: Oh um, The Refused. The same shit we've always been listening to: Led Zeppelin, The Beatles, Strapping Young Lad, old Pantera records, Radiohead, Tom Jones... I mean, the only thing that we don't listen to is a lot of new heavy music. Not to say that we're better than anybody else, I mean, I like what we do, but I'm not into a lot of the new heavy music that's around. Oh, I love Faith No More, I'm a huge Mike Patton fan and pretty much anything he does - Mr. Bungle, any of that stuff - I love to death, the whole band does. I mean, as far as me, I'm not really into anything really new. I think the last record I bought was the last Refused record; I like their first album too.

d@n: Does smoking cigarettes affect you when you sing? Do you notice any complications?

Matt: Well I've always been a smoker, so I don't really notice the difference. I assume it causes some problems, I'm sure if I didn't smoke I'd have much greater lung capacity. I seem to do OK. I don't smoke on stage; I make sure to not smoke pot hours before we play.

d@n: Who are your vocal influences?

Matt: John Lennon, Tom Gordon, Phil Anslemo, David Bowie, James Hetfield back in the day, except for the lyrics. Singer of Quicksand, Jason Blackmore from Molly Macguire. Ken Andrews from Failure.

d@n: As far as your harmonies are concerned, do you write them all yourself?

Matt: Yeah, and I sing them all myself. I'd let Bill do them, because he can do them, but it just doesn't sound exactly the way I want them to. The harmonies are probably the funnest part of writing vocals for me.

d@n: It's cool cos you use a lot of fifths as well in your vocals.

Matt: Yeah, I grew up as a guitar player.

d@n: I like on the new record you add a few like minors, and things.

Matt: Yeah, the harmonies on the new record are a lot more complicated. Most of the time, they are separate melodies. On Violence, I did just sing different octaves and fifths with the regular melody, this time its just like "fuck it".

d@n: On the new album, you do a lot of cool shit, and I really respect that.

Matt: Thanks man, no-one ever brings that shit up, and that's what I'm most proud of. They are like "hey man, you can scream your head off!" and I'm like, "thanks".

d@n: So did you record the whole album at Bill's house?

Matt: No, no, we went up to Vancouver and recorded at the Armory, and we mixed at the Wherehouse up there. But there will be a day when he does [record the entire album]. Not necessarily in his basement, but we do have a whole ProTools rig in there. But Bill is a genius with that shit. If I had some demos, I'd play them for you, but still, it’s a huge, drastic difference. And after listening to the demos its like, "Oh, we didn’t like that there" or "I didn’t like how he said that". So we'll change the words here, or you know how it goes, you can write some brilliant lyrics, but it don’t flow correctly with the melody. I stopped a long time ago trying to write lyrics to try to fit with the music. So now I get a disc, write a melody and sit there and count syllables.

d@n: How is it with meeting girls on the road?

Matt: We do the best we can to stay away from groupies and the like, 'cause they just end up causing problems. I wouldn’t say it’s hard to meet good girls on the road and stuff like that, that are actually decent enough to date, but the hard thing about it is once you meet 'em, you know, the girl might like you and stuff like that, but once she gets a dose of how often you have to travel, eventually it always ends up fucked. So, it's almost impossible to stay in a relationship, if you weren’t in a relationship before you started touring, you know, a really strong one, it’s almost impossible to stay in one while your on the road. Sometimes you just have to go, and she hasn't experienced that, then it's fucked. Oh, it's irritating sometimes. Chicks do some shitty things.

d@n: Like what? I wanna know.

Matt: Oh I don’t give a shit, I'll tell ya! Print this shit! This chick needs to get shot with a long-range rifle: me and this girl were gonna rent an apartment, and I was moving out of state for it, just to make sure the relationship worked. Halfway into it, she tells me that she’s been living with this other guy at her dad's house for the last three months! After we had talked about all this, and were gonna do it and everything, and I was "oh man". Yeah... so, honestly, I'm really careful about who I talk to, you know? I mean, it definitely changed my rule that if I'm gonna meet someone or hookup with someone, then I have to know from the first time meeting them that I want to see them again, or else it's a complete waste of time. I mean, I don’t have to do the shove-a-beer-bottle-up-a-chick's-ass and have-sex-with-6-chicks things. Having sex with more than one girl is not easy, it's not that fun; because you can't concentrate on how fun it is, because you're trying to do your job, it's too much to do man! It's fun to look at, but it's harder than it sounds.

(The conversation then proceeds on about how every guy is convinced how he can fuck better than every other guy, ending with Matt exclaiming, "What an awkward conversation! Three guys in a little room talking about dicks!" Much laughter ensues.)

d@n: How do you manage hooking up weed on the road?

Matt: Without giving out too much information, I have a lot of friends all over the place. They know I'm coming, or I'll talk to them ahead of time so they know I'm coming, and what I want. And um, you make sure you don't buy small bags. I mean, I don't sit here and buy ounces and shit, you know. I kind of set it up. I'll look at the tour and I'll see how it is, and I can kind of average it out how big of a bag, and how long it will last me. It doesn't always work, but I can't say that I've gone more than a day without finding it. Usually the fans are willing to help you out, and you bring some backstage, and they wanna smoke you out. I usually try not to do that a lot 'cause I tend to get sick from sharing paraphernalia. I feel bad about it, but I gotta still play the show the next night, so I'll ask for a bud. Sometimes you'll end up with a giant sack of weed from getting a bud here and a bud there. Some people just give it to you 'cause they know you smoke weed. It's always hard when you get a big bag of schwag. People are like "You wanna smoke?" and I'm like "yeah, maybe later."


That was just about the end of the interview, with some other talk about drugs, music and women, but nothing that would really translate to written pages. I just wanted to say that from the beginning, everyone on Nothingface's staff and everyone in the band made me feel extremely comfortable and welcomed. Even with the mixup and disconnected phone, people really made an effort to help us eventually get hooked up with the band, and helped make sure the interview was a success. Nothingface went on later that night and put on one of the best live performances I have ever seen.