An interview with Ray Mazzola of Full Blown Chaos By Ellen Gager

MWE: So how are you doing?

RM: Better.

MWE: Better?

RM: Yah, actually I got discharged from the hospital today.

MWE: Oh! What happened?

RM: From the Black Widow bite.

MWE: Yah, I had read that you were bitten by a Black Widow, can you go into detail?

RM: It was April 25, got bit by a Black Widow down in Florida. Came back to the hotel room, and we had six people in one room, no room on the bed, so I had to hunker down on the floor. And I laid down and I got bit in my sleep. It was bad for a little while, went to the doctor and they said everything was fine, but as it turns out, whatever venom didn't flush out of my system pooled up, and after a few weeks, it gave me blood poisoning. And it pooled up in my leg around the bite, so I had gotten cellulitis around it, the whole leg swelled up again and was all infected and I got sepsis.

So, I got a massive blood infection and I was in the hospital for the past six days. Not fun. Now I'm on a spectrum of antibiotics and other meds and blood thinners and everything else. But I'm glad I got it taken care of.

MWE: You've played with some of the hardest of modern hardcore. Who have been some of your favorite bands or musicians to work with?

RM: Just about every band that we've toured with has been really great. I mean, you've got some bands that are a little more outgoing than others, but Hatebreed is probably one of the funnest bands that we've been out with. We've done numerous tours with them and done a lot of work with them. Great dudes, great people, and we have a fun time. There's a bunch of bands. We had a great time with The Red Chord. We split a bus with them in Europe, and they were great friends of ours for a long time, and we always did shows, but we were never able to squeeze together a tour. So, we finally had an opportunity, we ended up getting a tour out in Europe. With Hatebreed, no less, and Agnostic Front, Napalm Death, Bleed The Sky, Born From Pain, and it was a great time. We had a lot of fun with them, and actually Bury Your Dead, 'cuz we did this one tour; it was two months worth of...it was Walls of Jericho, Bury Your Dead, Premonition of War, us, and it was so much fun, like the whole entire tour. I think that was probably the most fun out of any tour that we've ever done, 'cuz that was like all of our friends, and we specifically put the tour together just so we could tour with our friends. So, it was a pretty good time.

This summer is just gonna be ridiculous on top of that, just because the majority of the bands that are on Ozzfest this year, we've toured with or are great friends with already.

MWE: What do you look forward to most on this upcoming Ozzfest stint?

RM: A lot of the things...there's a bunch... they really can't outweigh each other, there's like a lot of things that are up there. One, it's just being able to perform in front of that many people every day. Whether we're goin' on first, we're goin' on last out of the rotation, I don't care. I mean, we're gonna be playing in front of thousands of people the whole time and whether it's three, 30, 300, 3000, we play the same way and we're gonna be making a lot of new fans, gonna be meeting a lot of new people, and for me especially, that's some of the most fun, because I get a lot of feedback. I'm able to see what songs people like, what they don't like, what they want to hear the next time we come through. If they do like us, great, what are our strengths? If you don't like us, tell us why, maybe we can cater to something that you like. We get to meet a lot of people and we try to be one of those bands where we know everybody personally. I mean it's hard to do, 'cuz there's thousands of people out there, but we try to do our best. That's one of the main things, just being able to meet everybody, and play in front of all these people and all these new faces and fresh ears and seeing how they react to the music. Another this is, having so many friends on the tour--All That Remains, A Life Once Lost, Red Chord, Walls of Jericho, Hatebreed, Bleeding Through--there's so many bands that we're really close with that are on this tour this year that it's just gonna be a great time. We already started planning out barbecues and poker games, so it's gonna be a lot of fun.

MWE: What was your tour experience with Exodus like?

RM: The tour ended about two weeks ago, and it was a lot of fun. It was a lot of hard luck; we called it the hard luck tour after awhile just because everybody broke down. All our vehicles broke at one point or another, me getting bit a by a Black Widow, there were some gloomy moments, but there were some things that were able to shine through. Exodus, probably a bunch of the best people I've ever toured with. Great people, great individuals. We were texting each other days after the tour ended, just being like, "We miss you guys", and they're like, "We miss you guys". So, just great people, they looked out for us like no other. We've never had a band that would give us the shirts off their own back as much as Exodus. We had a lot of fun with them.

Gary, he has a great time. You have to look at someone who's in his position, he's been doing this for so long. He's seen it all; he's doing it because he loves it. It's not a payday, he's doin' it for the thrill factor, he loves music, it's what drives him.

MWE: Give me a little more insight, about your new album due out this year, Within The Grasp Of Titans.

RM: We had a great time writing this one. We had a lot of time and we never stopped writing. That's one thing with us, we never just go, "Okay, time to write a new record." We've been writing since the last record. We had a lot of time, we went into the studio with about 30 songs and even stuff that we were still writing. Just bits and pieces of material, stuff that can be pulled together. We get into the studio on a mission. We don't need any more than two weeks. Two weeks is even too much sometimes for us, just because we get in and we know exactly what we have to do. We sit down with the Engineer the first day and we get sounds and we work out a game plan, and that's what we stick to. We're very business once we're in the studio, we don't mess around...I see tons of videos and DVDs of people messing around in the studio, but you know what? We don't have that type of time. Time is money, especially when you're recording. We just try to do the best job we possibly can with the time that we have, and we're no nonsense. We just get in there, get it done, and then iron out any wrinkles afterwards.

But with this record, we combined our influences, like we're super influenced by...we have a lot of heavy, metal influences and a lot of hardcore influences. Like our hardcore influences are Agnostic Front, Sick Of It All, Biohazard, Judge, bands like that, and then we have our metal side, which is Slayer, Testament, Obituary, Exodus, and we combine the two. With that, we did it to the point where it's not exactly copying anybody, there's nothing really that you could pinpoint and be like, "that sounds like that, or that sounds like that". We did our own blending, we just made it out of our old influences, and with the lyrical content, there's something for everybody on it. There's something on this record where anybody can listen to it and pick something out that they can relate to. We try to have a very personal aspect, it's like the whole course of a day, is what the album is.

MWE: You guys have a lot of real-life content within your music, is it stuff you've all experienced, is it things you've been through? Where does that come from?

RM: The majority of it is my own experiences. Like, we have a lot of friends and family that are overseas right now and a lot of people shun the military, and I try to protest the fact that people are against the war. It's okay to be against the war, but don't be against the troops. They're doing their job, and I always try to stress it, and every show we do, I always give a shout out for the troops. Always, no matter if we're overseas or at home, just because these people are doing their jobs, and chances are they're in the position where they can get killed. They're doing it 'cuz they believe in protecting their families, their country, their counties, their communities, it's an honor and devotion for what they're doing. So I try to express as much gratitude through song--we have a song "Red Tide?" on Wake The Demons that's basically about persevering out there when somebody has the mindset that somebody has to have...we have friends and family that are in Fallujah right now, that have been there for a couple of years, that have come back and reenlisted just because they feel that if they're not there, the job's not gonna get done.

Like other material, you have songs that are very, very becoming. Just, never taking no for an answer, I've had a lot of people in my life telling me that I'm doing the wrong thing, I'm not gonna make it anywhere, I shouldn't be doing it, I'm chasing a dream, I'm wasting my time, and I wrote songs about that too. There's a lot of people that are always trying to get me down and try to downplay what I'm doing, but there's a saying, "If you love your job, you'll never work a day in your life," and that's exactly what I'm doing now. We have a newer song on Within The Grasp Of Titans-the new record that'll be out on the 25th now, it was originally on July 11, but we pushed it back two weeks just to have a little more push behind it, put a little more air in the lift-there's a song called "Solemn Promise", a song I wrote for my Mom. She's been fighting cancer for years and we play it every night now. It gets such a great response, even though it's something that's a little different from our type of music, but the content and the actual life of the song, you can't get away from. It's just basically about being somebody's strength when they have none, especially in that position where their body is failing and any wrong frame of mind can basically put them under. And even when you can't be, you still have to be there for them, even if you don't think that they need you, but they do. That's putting yourself in the position to be that person. So that's what that song's about, even when I can't be there for my Mom, I'm calling her every day, just to make sure. When I was just in the hospital, she was in no position to come see me and she came to see me every day, which put the song into perspective for me, because there were a lot of people I thought were gonna come that didn't. People that I would do for them, so it made me...I told my mom about the song previous to being in the hospital, and she had mentioned it while I was there. It jerked a bunch of tears from me because she's definitely been the one who's always been there for me, and I'll always be there for her, until her time comes. So, a lot of our content is very personal, but it's not personal to the point where somebody else hasn't experienced it.

MWE: What is the album title about, Within The Grasp Of Titans?

RM: We were knocking around a bunch of ideas for the album and this is our best one to date. I think this is our most aggressive, our heaviest album, our heaviest of material that we put together, and we wanted something that had just enough power behind it. The name, Within The Grasp Of Titans, it's the idea, the metaphor behind it. Imagine being in a giant's hand, that much power, where they could just crush everything. They could either decimate everything or let it go. You have to be able to respect that much power and that's exactly what the album pulls, from beginning to end. That's the theory behind the title, Within The Grasp Of Titans, it's just concentrated aggression.

MWE: This one's coming out on Stillborn, are you still happy with them? How do you feel about them as a label?

RM: Stillborn is a growing label, they're understaffed unfortunately, but that's just because. Everybody's busy, everybody who works at the label is in bands. You have two major counterparts, you have Jamey Jasta and you have Jay Reason. Jay Reason is the vocalist for Abacus and they're starting to pick up, they're getting a lot of wind under them now. They're a great band, great music, and he's looking to do his own thing. And then you have Jamey, who's the busiest man in music right now. He's the only person I've ever seen put 30 hours into a 24-hour day. I've never seen him sleep, ever, in my life. I've been on the bus with them for weeks and never seen him sleep, he's a busy man. We do a lot of work ourselves and a lot of attention gets pulled because of that, but just because we're very self-sufficient. A lot of tours that we've done, we've done a lot of work. We've done a lot of the footwork ourselves just because we know that we're not gonna mess up if we're handling it. But Jamey has done a lot for us. It might not be a label for bands that are looking to start off, but it is definitely a great working label. It definitely is the label [to be on] when you're in our position, and we've worked our way up to it. We're looking to do bigger and better things after this, but with this release we're hoping to help populate the roster of Stillborn.

MWE: How do you feel about some of your labelmates who are starting to make it big themselves like Figure Four and Sworn Enemy?

RM: Sworn Enemy's not on our label anymore, the were, they're the reasons why we got signed onto the label, in the first place, because our drummer, Jeff, he dropped out of school when he was 15 to fill in for Sworn Enemy, so we were all friends already. Sworn Enemy had just got signed to Stillborn and they were going out on tour, with God Forbid and E. Town Concrete, and I think Snot, actually at the time (or maybe it was Amen, I wasn't in the band yet). But Jeff dropped out of school to fill in for them and then Full Blown got...I had just joined Full Blown right after that and it just all came together and Jamey got our attention because Jeff filled in and one thing led to another. And now we have a really good camaraderie with the other bands, especially Subzero, great band, very hard workers, and probably one of the best vocalists/frontmen our there, and they've been for 15 years just doin' it, trying to make it happen and trying to make it work. There's The Risk Taken, which is still on Stillborn right now, great band, great hearts. It's definitely a label for the big of heart.

MWE: Do you have any words of wisdom for musicians out there who are trying to get a break in the world?

RM: Don't mistake lack of genius for talent, ever. You can't follow, just because you think you can duplicate what's out there right now doesn't mean that you a have a creative spirit and that you can achieve in this business. I mean, if you have your own thing, stick with it. That's one thing, we didn't change our style, we never will change our style. We're a very aggressive band and with our music, we evolve with our influences. As long as people stay true to themselves, then their music shouldn't be hindered by any outside influences. Longevity is the key to this game. The longer you're in it, the more people you're gonna network with. You have to put yourself out there and you have to be in the game to actually be noticed, and do a lot of footwork. You have to make a lot of friends in high places and there's only one way to do that; you have to put yourself out there. It's risky, and it takes a lot of your own personal money, a lot of blood and sweat, and a lot of tears. It a lot of work, a lot of hard work, and there's a lot of bands who get picked up like (snap) 1-2-3, and they might be big now, but they have no discipline, so they'll definitely fail.

MWE: Anything you would like to add?

RM: Yah, come check us out at Ozzfest, we're gonna be walking around the crowds. Us and Bad Acid Trip are the only bands who aren't going to be doing buses, we're most likely doing vans or RVs so we're definitely gonna be out there in the crowd with everybody. Everybody come see us at the FYE tent, the Jager tent--we're gonna be doing a lot of signings. I'm gonna be running around trying to meet as many people as possible, and committing everybody to memory, I'm gonna be taking as much ginkgo biloba as possible, just for that reason. And, the new record comes out July 25, Within The Grasp Of Titans, on Stillborn records, and there's something for everybody on it, so please pick it up.