Psychonaut – Mark De Vattimo

Perth’s self-proclaimed “power-speed-death-thrash-rock-metal” band Psychonaut certainly aren’t new to the Australian metal scene, but definitely should have more recognition across Australia. Forming in 1999 and releasing their debut album ‘Masters of Procrastination’ in 2004, the band returned to the studio in late 2011 to record their fun-packed follow up album ‘Shock ‘Em Dead!’. Metal Obsession really enjoyed this album, being rated 8/10 in a review, and another contributor naming it the second best Australian album of 2012. Psychonaut mastermind Mark De Vattimo (vocals/guitar) is also well known for playing guitar in Voyager for 10 years, and is the winner of the ‘WF Metal Awards Best Guitarist’ in 2007 & 2009 and ‘WAMi Best Guitarist Nominee’ in 2005. With a nearly-finished debut music video, work on a new album and a possible appearance in the USA for a mini-tour/Rocklahoma Festival this year, big things are happening for Psychonaut at the moment.

Metal Obsession spoke to Mark recently to discuss metal releases in 2013, their past two albums, their upcoming music video and metalheads.

Metal Obsession: To kick this interview off, what albums are you most looking forward to in 2013?

Mark De Vattimo: Aw man, what a hard question. I haven’t actually mentally started this year yet. I would love for Van Halen to bring a new one out. Hopefully KISS at the end of the year might do another one. Psychonaut as well hopefully, who knows? I haven’t actually looked into who’s doing what this year. I would love to see some older thrash bands release new material, apart from the regulars such as Overkill and Testament, just some more obscure bands. Stuff like Agent Steel, bands that when they play those big festivals in the US and Europe, bands that are sort of, in the bottom two thirds of the bill. Sacred Reich, Toxik, Metal Church, even Exciter, because I listen to a lot of that stuff.

MO: How about the new Jason Newsted EP ‘Metal’ that came out the other day, have you had a chance to listen to that yet?

MDV: In all honesty I haven’t, mate. I didn’t even know what he was up to. Some musicians I follow their careers, others, like what you just mentioned, I just find out on the spot. But Jason can do anything with his life actually. He doesn’t have to answer to anybody, he just did his time in probably the world’s biggest metal band. Whether he was wise enough to leave/get kicked out, whatever it was, it’s up to him. And Rob Trujillo, obviously from Suicidal Tendencies, he’s an excellent replacement, entertaining too.

MO: So about 6 months ago, you released “Shock ‘Em Dead!”, the follow up album to your 2004 debut “Masters of Procrastination”. How has the reception been from the album so far?

MDV: Pretty good actually. Internationally, we’ve been getting quite a lot of reviews, and obviously in Australia as well. Firestarter, the label that we are distributed through, what those guys do is they send out promo packages to so many different labels, reviewers, webzines and magazines, and you might not get a review for a year in a half, it just takes time. There’s a review that just got done in Germany, and I probably sent them the album back in May 2012. But obviously the Australian reviews are a bit more immediate; they come out within a month.

So it’s been good. There has been a lot of encouragement, and people seem to understand what the album is about. It’s not sort of the latest trend of some genre that’s the same sound for 60-70 minutes, this has a varied melting pot of all styles of metal on it, without sort of concentrating on one. Anybody who is a true headbanger, and not just a genre whore, will understand this album. So, I would say, maybe on average, the reception has been 8/10, which is good.

MO: Did you take 8 years to release a new album so you could live up to the title of your last album, Masters of Procrastination?

MDV: You’re a comedian, Patrick. Yes we did!

Nah, but the real reason is, I was in Voyager for 10 years, so that took up a lot of time, doing tours and other albums with that band, so Psychonaut just kind of went to the wayside. Even though we were still doing gigs on the side, I mean a lot of gigs, and we were just trying to save money and get all that together, so eventually when we had the right line up and had all the songs ready and well developed, then we could just go in the studio and do it.

I remember when I was younger, bands like Slayer would take 4 years between albums, and I would think “This doesn’t make sense, why should it take so long?” But now, being older, I can understand it. Things happen when they happen. You force yourself to put an album out, it might be shit, or it might really good, you just never know. But it just seemed like the right time to do it, and we managed to have enough money. But yeah, that won’t be happening again, Psychonaut is no longer procrastinating, thank god.

MO: The song I found the most interesting on your new album “Shock ‘Em Dead!” was ‘Lemmy von Frankenstein’, with what seems to be about Lemmy from Motorhead as a character from the series of Frankenstein movies. Where did you get the influence to write this song, did you see any similarities between the two before you wrote the song?

MDV: Well that song was almost called ‘Completely Destroyed’. So for about maybe five years, I had that kicking around, I had the arrangement, and the middle section was meant to be this big drum solo, like a Peter Criss type drum solo, or a Judas Priest ‘Painkiller’ type of thing. What happened was, we attempted it once to record it as the original version, and then one day while I was in the shower, and the idea came to me (the best ideas come to you in the shower), that – cause I kept hearing about Dave Grohl and his Probot project, and Lemmy has been on a few different songs here and there. Obviously we wouldn’t be able to afford, or even get in contact with Lemmy, so I thought, we’ll just do it ourselves.

So I had an idea to put Lemmy and use him as a fictional character, like you mentioned, in a Hammer Horror scenario. Lemmy is one of those people who have done everything; drugs, touring, seen all sorts of people, travelled the world, but the one thing he hasn’t done is obviously created a woman. So I thought it would just be something humourous, and metal fans like yourself pick up on that and they understand it, and they really dig it. So sometimes, you don’t have to be sitting infront of a guitar and amp, a computer or even infront of a book, sometimes it’s there right in the shower!

I also do these little tribute gigs every now and again, just out of the blue, I throw some people together and for example, I say “Let’s do a Motorhead gig!” I can do some pretty good impersonations of him, so I thought, why not. It also doesn’t really make sense, because the verses done in the Lemmy voice, I was singing over a funk riff. You wouldn’t really catch Lemmy singing over funk, so I thought that added a bit of contrast as well. It turned out really well, and it’s actually one of my favourite songs too.

MO: You’ve been writing some other songs about musicians as well, haven’t you?

MDV: Yes, I am working on another one about Tony Iommi of Black Sabbath, called ‘Iommi World’. There is also one about the Judas Priest court case in the late 80’s, when they got dragged into the courts over those two guys who shot themselves while listening to their album, and one of them died. I had all of these other ideas and I thought, it would be good to do an album about famous heavy metal moments in history, sort of like a musical diary. But what can you do? Sometimes you have to do serious songs. You can do comedic type music and be serious about it, like Frank Zappa did, or you can go the other way which is sort of retro-comical like Steel Panther. To me, it’s all about a theatrical type thing.

MO: Speaking of writing music, how is the writing process for your next album going so far?

MDV: Well generally to me that sort of steers the whole ship. So, I’ll get an idea in my head about an album concept, because I’m a big fan of The Who as well mate, and they did a couple of concept albums. So I had an idea to do that, but at the same time, I could just be watching a movie, or a certain line out of anything that’s just really well written, and it flows really well. You can build a song from that one line, like our song ‘Planet of the Apes’ for example.

But I think this time, the four of us are going to collaborate, because a lot of these songs are written, by myself and some other people in the past. So in the past, I’ve had songs written and other people will help me, you use them as a computer, rather than me sitting there trying to layer everything with a drum machine. So I think this time around, we’re going to team up and be a bit more of a band. I wouldn’t call us a band, a little more of a gang actually.

So with an idea, you just have to develop it and take it somewhere. It can be ridiculous, but a lot of the bands I see come out these days, especially new ones, are either just doing a blatant rip off of what’s already happened, or dressing like their favourite band, stuff like that. I’m not sure what their lyrics are about either. I’m getting a bit over songs about inner turmoil, emotion and all those other types of stuff, and we need to get back to the entertainment side of music, because this is what it was all about in the first place.

MO: You’re currently putting the final touches on the bands debut video for the song ‘False Metal’. Can you please explain the video for me?

MDV: Ok, so this is probably the bands third video, the other ones we did years ago, but this will be the first official one. What it was, it was for the song ‘False Metal’, which is sort of a tribute to metal, like Manowar. Here’s just a brief outline on the lyrics.

It’s about a young guy, y’know, he probably lives at home in the basement with his parents, and he wants to write this ultimate heavy metal epic. So he sits there and says “Oh, I got this really cool riff”, which is why the opening lyric says “I got a good riff, it’s like an Exodus riff.” So he’s going through all these different types of riffs. Then, for lyrics, he’s trying to get some inspiration. Just bare a mind that, when you’re in a house as comfortable as we are, we haven’t been in a big war, we haven’t been to hell, we haven’t had sex in graveyards, like bands in the past have written about. So this is a young kid trying to write about being in a scenario, so he goes through the stereotypical, generic heavy metal subjects; suicide, Satanism, the end of the world, all that type of shit. All of a sudden, there’s a force from behind that’s sort of guiding him to write this song.

So the idea was to do a song like that. The lyrics were in real time, which means as the guy is writing it, he’s actually living it. So even when were playing that song live, it feels like we’re writing that song for the first time. There’s a bit of a death metal breakdown in the middle which is more of a Celtic Frost like breakdown, with half speed, big riffs, also some death metal vocals and Manowar screams over it. Basically this song is pretty much a tribute to metal in general.

I also, probably forgot what your question was… *laughs*

MO: *laughs* Well it was about what happens in the video, but that was a good description of the song.

MDV: Ok, well a guy over here who used to run the Western Front Forum, back when forums ruled the world and Facebook didn’t, he has a party over at his place once a year. It’s one of these places which are rough and ready, if you rock up there, there’s kegs everywhere and people jumping around doing air guitar, he’s got a jukebox, it’s really cool. So I thought, that’s the perfect atmosphere and concept to have a video for False Metal.

So I got all these red curtains that I’ve had for years, and Mike (guitarist) had this big coffin. So we pretty much took all of the furniture out of that guys loungeroom, stuck all of this stuff on the wall, we had Louie Rambo who plays for Malignant Monster on drums. At the time, we didn’t really have a drummer, so he slapped on his corpse paint and all that type of stuff, which is another metal costume I guess. So yeah, we just got a bunch of drunken people in there, went through the song about ten times, and the idea was to convey this old school, traditional metal thing, where there’s a headbanging party going on, let’s all drink beer, smoke joints and that type of stuff.

Because we’re influenced by all things 80’s, we really wanted the vibe of the Suicidal Tendencies ‘Possessed to Skate’ video. They’re in there just trashing the house, so obviously we couldn’t do that. We had ideas of guys riding motorbikes, girls kissing each other and stuff, but when you’re dealing with thirty really drunk people, it’s hard to direct any type of traffic, so some things just couldn’t happen. So we just kept the emphasis on the band, and put people in there.

MO: What’s one thing that pisses you off about certain metalheads?

MDV: It’s hard to not generalise here, because being a metalhead myself, and being from a different sort of… generation I guess. But I think modern metalheads, not all of them, but the ones that wear all the uniform and stuff, we just have to watch that we’re not becoming cartoon characters. It’s no different than country music and hip-hop, they’ve all got their stereotypes and outlandish characters. I think the one thing that does piss me off about some metalheads is, some of them put booze before watching bands. I know that over here where I live, there are less gig attenders. Maybe that’s because alcohol costs too much, or travelling taxis is hard, but I just think that we have to stick together a bit more.

I think I liked metal music when it was a bit more underground, when it was not popular. And I think the real answer to your question is that, there are probably too many offshoots and too many subgenres, y’know, emo this and goth that. These things have been around for years, but it’s just heavy metal music pretty much. I dunno, that’s a really hard question.

MO: Is there anything else you’d like to say?

MDV: I would like to say to you Patrick, thank you for your support, and also, the Australian metal fans. We’ve been trying real hard to get out on tour, but the logistics of it sometimes don’t work, even in your own country. Surprisingly enough, it’s easier to book gigs internationally than it is to book here. So please bare with us and we’ll get out there eventually.

If you go to our website, http://psychonaut-au.com, just join the mailing list, please! Or else we’ll find out where you live and kill you! I guess that doesn’t make sense though, because when you’re dead, you won’t be able to use a computer.

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