Job For A Cowboy
Interview by James Hammond

Interview with: Jon “The Charn” Rice (Drums)

MG How’s the tour been going so far, this is the 4th show so far right?

Jon Really great man, the crowds have been really energetic and we’ve been seeing loads of kids coming out every night so far for the shows. We really like playing these smaller venues as you get a much more intimate response from the crowd. On bigger stages and at festivals you tend to lose the connection. We like to stick to the small, smelly packed out venues.

MG How did you come about this pretty brutal tour line-up (Trigger The Bloodshed, Annotations Of An Autopsy, Whitechapel and JFAC)?

Jon Well this is a brand new UK headliner tour, the last time we came to the UK we were supporting Lamb Of God on their shows, with our tour we have full control over who else we put on the bill. We’ve been touring in the USA with Whitechapel so it made sense to bring those guys along. Annotations and Trigger are 2 really awesome British metal bands and we’re really pleased to have them on the road with us for this tour.

We wanted to give a massive package of bands for a small price. Kids today want to see a full on show and we are always determined to make sure they get their monies worth.

MG Your last album “Ruination” had a lot of vocal themes and influences, could you expand a little on them?

Jon Well Jonny writes all the lyrics, I just hit shit! He used lots of different governments, political stories and aspects of the state of this world for all of the songs. Jonny tends to do the vocals last when we write songs. He does a really cool job though, I rarely read through every word of the lyrics but when I glanced at some of the stuff he was writing I was like “dude that’s insane!”

MG What have you guys been up to since the album came out?

Jon Mainly touring, I think we toured for about 1 ½ years. We took a couple of months off then we went straight onto the festival run. It’s been really busy but an amazing experience as well. At this year’s Download festival I was taking a shower while AC/DC were playing Dirty Deeds. That’s definitely a moment that I’ll remember forever and probably won’t ever happen again.

I also got to finally check out Bloodbath at one of the European festivals which was awesome.

MG Any Plans for a new album yet?

Jon We haven’t really thought about it too much. There are some basic ideas floating about but no song names or album titles. Somebody might sit down and shred the shit out of their guitar with some new cool riffs but nobody’s really writing songs yet.

MG What kind of set can we expect tonight? Is it a fairly solid set for the whole tour?

Jon Yeah we’ve kept a fairly solid set, a good mix of old and new songs. We’re also playing a cover of Total Satan which is really cool. It’s a break in the set to relax and have some fun with a song that isn’t ours. The it’s straight back to concentrating on the rest of the show haha.

And finally.....

MG If you had to eat a raccoon, how would you cook it?

Jon Damn, erm that’s a random question!

I reckon really well done to kill off any germs, cover it in BBQ sauce and serve it with some Corn bread. Sounds good to me!