SATAN IS ALIVE AND WELL:
INTERVIEW WITH STEVE AUSTIN OF TODAY IS THE DAY
by Patrick Kennedy
Eight years ago, Steve Austin began Today is the Day as an instrument of sonic power and mysticism. With a sound as blinding and violent as an execution style killing in midday traffic, Today is the Day has secured a signature sound against the tide of imposters and lightweights currently inhabiting the realm of heavy music. Marrying psychedelic technical metal and extreme noise, dark ambient soundscapes, acoustic flights, and contemporary movie and television samples, the band has acted as a unique touchstone for many of hardcore and metal's newer faces. This is a way of life on earth.
Lets talk about the genesis of the band, and where it is now. What did this emerge from, theoretically and otherwise?
Well, when a band I was in called Alien In The Land Of Our Birth broke up in Detroit, I was looking for a place that had good practice rooms. I had lived half my life in Nashville, so me and the drummer from Alien..... went down there and started Today Is The Day in March 1992. We got our bass player from Birmingham, Alabama, did a collection of singles and two albums for AmRep with that same line-up. In 1996, we did the third Today Is The Day album with a guy named Scott Wexton on keyboards and the original drummer. I finally stopped playing with anyone from the original period, and got two new guys for the last album, Temple of the Morning Star, both more or less in studio musician roles. I met my wife while on tour with Eyehategod in November of last year, fell in love, and got married here in Boston. So I moved Austin Enterprises (his studio) up to Clinton, Ma, which is much better location as far as underground, heavy music is concerned. Now there are two brand new band members in Today is the Day for the next album, which will be called In The Eyes Of God, who are probably the most gifted I've ever had. Both of these guys came from a band called Lethargy, from Rochester. This new drummer is the second coming of Dave Lombardo mixed with Bill Bruford, seriously into the killing machine style of playing. Light years ahead.
So where is the music heading at this juncture?
The new Today is the Day album will definitely be a far different experience than any of the previous rock that we have done before. Its an extension of Temple of the Morning Star in the sense of its heaviness and the tuning, and the songs are still basically two minute long bursts of insanity. And it's a longer album, 21 songs all with drums, bass, guitar, vocals and samples, not including instrumentals. It has greatest impact, its the most driving music we have ever made. Somehow in one month the new drummer and I wrote all of these songs, which I think is gonna be one of the most futuristic heavy metal albums ever.
As far as conceptualizing an album, how does it work? Does a general theme for an album germinate first, and then you work from the top down, or is it like most bands, just collecting songs and then building from that?
I almost do the entire album backwards. I go ahead and get the artwork done way ahead of time, and the concept, including title. So for this album, it was already entitled In The Eyes Of God, and the songs have something to do with that theme, songs like "Spotting A Unicorn", "Who Is The Black Angel?", "Possession", "The Color Of Psychic Power", "The Russian Child Porn Ballet", "The Cold Harshness Of Being Wrong Throughout Your Entire Life", so its basically all about one man's struggle to live in this world, fighting against everything that wants to stop him and his family. I had the titles long before I even wrote the songs.
So text prior to music? These are concept albums, basically?
Right, well I will usually backlog lyrics and write tons before I place them to music. For the last album I was more into shorter themes, as far as the amount of words per song, so this album is a little deeper with a lot more detail. If anything, the lyrics are more akin to, say, the lyrics from "Willpower."
A little more personalized?
Yeah, a little more indepth, but probably still even more abstact and fucked up as far as being able to understand what I am saying.
Interesting, because generally there is a sense in which people's conception of Today Is The Day becomes either dismissive or it is regarded from a safe distance: "too creepy, too involved, depressing, frightening, satanic, and so on", because it defies all categories proper.
Right, people just often freak out on things that are said really straight. Its hard to run away from a phrase like "what are you made of?" because it gets inside and has to do with the person who is listening. I'm really into the notion of "forget everything you know," all this programming and all this shit the world teaches you. So much of that is L. Ron Hubbard Dianetics, reactive mind type of shit, like thats the natural way you think of things. The world needs some "forget everything," its either too fucking earnest and sincere or its too outrageous and wacky, as far as people who try to do something different, and end up missing the whole point. Its not about how fucking crazy and outlandish you can be, all the crazy things you can say, its about trying to tie them together to real human existence to prove a point. For instance, people aren't supposed to fuck someone else's wife in the ass, and someone who is very conservative might say "I don't know anyone who would do that out of meanness". Well, thats real life, people do things, all kinds of things that you wouldn't even imagine that goes against all convention. There are no rules on this planet, and most peoples lives are charted the day they are born, and they don't even realize it. You are your own trip, this world is a temporary thing, and there are systems in place here to keep the planet running. And most of entertainment, whether music, movies, books, etc.., you look behind most of it, and its big money, big corporations. Its all been censored and filtered out. You're not getting reality on the screen or on an album, but not only that, you're not getting imaginative stuff out there, because if its imaginative or psychotic its against the rules.
Oh, agreed, definitely.
Not to go off on another thing, but a good example is back in the 1400's Nostradamus lived in this place in south France, and there were all these books, the books of the various religions in their original form. The absolute originals, or at least the very few existing copies. So knowledge was a super safeguarded type of thing because of the governments in place at the time. There was this small circle of guys who were scientists who held on to these books, and all of that information, be it true or false, was so scary to the government, that they were willing to kill anyone who had it. And these weren't even books about building bombs, they were about personal salvation and strength. Its awfully ironic that things that might make an individual want to take a stab and do things on their own have never been popularized in this world.
Its interesting that you mentioned phenomena such as that, because it brings to mind secret societies like the Templars and other branches of Illuminati. The Templars were ostensibly the guardians of European pilgrims heading to Jerusalem, and they were a fairly subterranean thing in many ways, that were, and always have been alleged to be a Satanic sect in the original sense of Lucifer being "light-bearing", the giver of knowledge, and that this knowledge is knowledge against divine reverance. The founding fathers of this country bear that lineage. So what we are getting at is a basic understanding of what is Satanism. Satanism is nothing more than a heightened self-awareness, a Will to Power.
And its funny that you say that, because one of my favorite books is called "A Way of Power" which is on the occult, which talks about things that I have even used as song titles, like the song "Realization"; there is a section in the book that says "realization is the key to the universe", if you realize your surroundings, who you are, what you are, and everything that is going on, then that is a power that you have over everyone else, those who don't truly realize who they are.
So were you raised in a Christian?
I totally was, my dad went to the Church of God, my parents were more like dysfunctionally religious, they tried the Catholic church and didn't dig it, then went to something else. We ended up going to the strictest kind, which is Southern Baptist, and in that Church I basically saw the guy who ran it get kicked out for having sex with all these dudes. I've been around strange religious things ever since I was five years old. I went to churches that were in motor homes or basements where they had snake ceremonies. I was healed at 6 years old, a preacher put his hand on my forehead. I had that whole experience all the way until I got up into high school. The whole thing is like a big false insurance plan, that everything is going to be alright. The way I live my life today, well, I am looking across from me now at a two foot crucifix with Jesus mounted on it upside down on my wall, and his legs are broken off. It's the first thing you see when you walk into our apartment. People come in and think "what does this mean, are these people totally satanists?", and what it really is is that we are totally open-minded and into self-belief, and we are not afraid to have various symbols on our wall. I love the upside down cross, and I love the pentagram, and the eye in the pyramid. I'm into all forms of religious imagery, whether its good or bad to someone else, it all equals the same thing to me. I'm into no idea of religion. The best case is to be born and have straight forward parents who tell you "look, you've got, say, 70 years, you better rock on every one of them, so make the most of them".
But there is no way to deny that often the most fervent and intense artists are those who were raised in a pious manner and who have disavowed such things and have turned to something that may be specifically against that religious upbringing. Look at Nietszche as the most obvious example.
Probably a marked turning point for me, the final blow with religion, was my dad dying in 1996. He had just been, ironically, saved. I looked in his journals and it said precisely that; he even predicted his own death in that journal. It was a car accident and not a medical death, and when I was at the funeral home this guy was looking at me, and I thought he was an insurance salesman or car dealer, and he goes on to tell me he was the pastor of this church, and that my father had given his soul to Jesus before death, so we had nothing to worry about, blah blah. The next day during the actual ceremony, he got up and talked about my dad in first person about his life, etc.., and I was thinking, "you are such an incredibly stupid fuck". First of all, he didn't know my dad whatsoever, and sure as hell didn't know him spiritually. The idea of trying to console me and my family with god and whatnot was bullshit. I just said to myself, anything I can do to fuck this up until the day I die, I will do, meaning Christianity. Any abomination I can do to it, I will do. They sell false insurance plans. The people that attend are nothing more than a residual to keep the church going. At the end of the death ceremony, I played "Your Cheating Heart" by Hank Williams Sr. over the PA of the funeral home because that was some honest to goodness reality, like "this man was my friend, he loved Hank Williams Sr. and I do too, and this is my way of saying good bye to him." I didn't need any bullshit about where he was going, etc..
Those are defining moments in peoples lives, where things converge and you realize your path. I was raised with the same belief system, and finally it dawned on me that "if there is no god, anything is possible" which, oddly, was a verbatim statement made by Dostoyevsky, and I had no idea. It blew me away, and that was the moment everything turned against itself. An idea so fucking simple....
.....could be a complete and utter change in the way you do things, down to the way you write words or music. If you sit down to do something with that mindset, you can fucking go anywhere. When you realize that one simple key in life, you can be a completely different type of person.
Lets talk about the movie "Last Temptation of Christ". Now, on the last tour, the one we played with you all on, you were opening with samples from the soundtrack, what is your take on that one, it's a spiritual movie, but very peculiar.
Its strange that when I think back, I sometimes wonder what the point was, and it sounds stupid, but its all about love, its not about religion or a force in the sky. He was moved to do one thing, going from town to town talking about love. What Jesus would represent to me, was that he was a normal guy, a little left of center, a little freaky, and people weren't down with it. He gave up everything, and lived a totally clean, spiritual life, but I don't know if any of this happened. But the beauty of this film is that it breaks down the bullshit about Jesus and religion. A lot to learn. I am a pretty hateful fucking person, and when I saw the movie, I was totally thinking how weird it was, certain things were kinda cool. Jesus stood for independence, doing his own thing. It was all about love, and got misconstrued to being about going to church and give money, when he was basically telling a bunch of primitive people "don't kill each other".
It puts it in a very human context, with Jesus as a completely anti-establishment figure who ironically became THE defining establishment in the world.
You should watch that movie on acid. I saw it on two hits and it was a totally different realm. Sometimes certain sections that were so spiritual and so moving, I would just start crying from watching.
Author Don DeLillo claims that the artist, whether writer, painter, musician, etc. as a cultural and social force is dead, that he has been absorbed completely by culture itself, and that only acts of terror stand beyond such absorption. In other words, the terrorist has replaced the artist as representing and effecting true danger and change. Whats your take on that idea?
Well, terror is effecting, it makes people change their minds one way or another.
Terror and danger cannot be made into a commercial, or an after school special and bought and sold. It gets back to the point of danger in rock and roll. Back in the 50's, 60's and 70's, people like Elvis and Jerry Lee Lewis, Iggy Stooge and onward were considered dangerous. Now you have bullshit like Marilyn Manson, who stage their own protest rallies.
Yeah, it's all PR, marketing. The Man uses people like Marilyn Manson as a way to dilute negative ideas, because he is just such a laughable joke, or take him seriously. Any kid who would get into Satanism because of him would have to literally be mentally retarded. It would be like following a clown into Satanism.
It's the Reader's Digest version of any sort of Will to Power idea.
You know, being in Today is the Day, I have been able to visit spots of the worst acts of terrorism in the united states. I have collected artifacts: girders from the Oklahoma bombing, coloring book pages from the same thing. We went to the towers that were hit by the Arabs in NYC. We went to Waco. One of my favorite films is one called "Waco: The Rules of Engagement." Everything from that, every thing surrounding Waco is on video. They had FBI people there to call the local media in so they would be there when they blew up the compound, which is insane, they were making publicity for themselves! Its sick. Now the king not only assassinates people but gets all the town criers together to be there and watch it.
Well, with that, and with the millenium approaching, you have these two poles - folks who champion technological advancement, and folks like Ted Kacszinski, the Unabomber, who was a brilliant mathematician who has this break with the science and moves off into the wilderness.
I totally know where they are coming from, because me and my wife joke all the time about becoming total separtists. Who wouldn't wanna be, you are off in your own world. Its like, you don't have to deal with the pig on the corner.
But thats almost essentially what you are doing with touring, what you are doing with Today is the Day. You are recording everything, writing everything, doing your own thing, not punching a clock on someone else's time.
Yeah, we don't need shit from anyone. We do our own thing. The guy who is doing our artwork is this legendary tattoo artist, Paul Booth, who doesn't hang out with people, he is into his own world and his own trip, so I am very proud to be working with him on this new album because basically he creating a cover that is all about "forget everything you know, this is freedom, power, violence". I can't tell you what the graphic is exactly, but it ties in with all of this, and the power it will have visually will hopefully be on a par with Frankenchrist, when Jello Biafra got arrested.
In the past few years, and these are all years after Supernova was put out, a lot of young bands have seemingly attempted to copy the musical ideas you've been doing. It seems to have spawned some sort of post-hardcore movement. They are skilled technical musicians, but they seem to make the assumption that heaviness is purely a matter of volume, turning up all the way, when actually, dynamics make music heavy. It's the Pink Floyd and King Crimson style interludes, the acoustic shit, the falsetto voices and sampling that give the shit its true force. I think these points are very much lost on most of these folks.
I would take credit for basically starting that whole thing, yes. People get the idea that its just "blow em away bam bam bam". Its like if I punch someone in the face like 10 times. They are gonna realize that the first hit was hard, but after a few its just not there. Unless you have some sort of dynamic flow. Its way more akin to the dynamics of a true human personality. Though I can be fueled, and can get fucked off, and destroy somone or a room, I also like to lay down and take my shoes off and relax with my woman. The music that we play is a more accurate depiction of true human life.
It is rooted in intellect. Mental acuity. Sharpness. Realizing that tomorrow may very well be the last one, and you better find a better reason to get out of bed.
Most people are just so wrapped up in their own trip, so that they are freaked out about saying any thing that has to do with fault of their own, or cracks or indiscretions. Its like if you are gonna tell a guy a story, do you wanna tell him some bullshit or something ineffective, or do you wanna give him details of a moving, honest experience. All these people want to look good, and be the champion, and be the winner.
So whats the end in mind here with Today is the Day, the name, whats it mean, where's it going? Its on my arm, it's the way I live my life, and I drive people nuts because of it. I can't sit still, I can't lay around and be a lazy fuck, I have got to get shit done, there is a world to live in out there. It's a way of living your life. Today is the Day as the name means the same as it does today. Back then there were a whole bunch of bands laying around talking about how bad things were and not really coming up with a plan on how to overcome. Today is the Day was the exact opposite of say, Nirvana. Instead of Nevermind, its like, "no, you're gonna mind, motherfucker, cause I have a problem with you, and I am my own man, and I can live my life the way I want to. Strike, take action, don't lay on your ass, do something about it. A philosophy and a way of life.