Interview with singer Jose "Aladdin" Barrales (Interview conducted by Talita Jenman for Earache Records)
Talita: What happened with the Michael Rosen session?
Jose: It was weird... Everytime we got in the studio, everything sounded good, but there were a lot of problems where we clashed and I kept telling him, "We should change this and that", and he'd be like, "No, it sounds good this way", or, "It's better that way". He kept bringing up Green Day and bands like that, that we should sound a little bit more like. I mean, I have nothing against those bands, it's just, it's not us. He kept reassuring us that it would be better once it was all mixed and mastered, but it seemed like he was a little stressed, over-stressed. To me it seemed like he was too busy with other stuff, like he had other stuff to do, Tesla stuff etc. It just seemed like he really wanted us rushed out of there. It wasn't really comfortable. I dunno, we just clashed too much.
Talita: So what studio was this and when?
Jose: It was December and it was at J Street Recorders in Sacramento.
Talita: Were you excited about working with him at first?
Jose: Yeah of course, we were like "Oh wow, he's worked with a lot of cool bands", you know, Testament, Vio-lence, and we were all up for it, but every time we brought those bands up he really didn't want to talk about them. It was like "Oh no, you guys should look at these bands", it just seemed like he wasn't really into the whole thing. I mean we had good times with him, I have nothing against the guy either, just the end product wasn't what we expected.
Talita: What did the rest of the band think about you scrapping a Michael Rosen session, and how did you come to that decision?
Jose: The whole time, everything in there seemed so great. He kept reassuring us, "Oh yeah it's gonna be good", but we never really took the time to listen to stuff over while we were in the studio, and on our way back home he gave us a rough mix to listen to and it was like, "Wow, this isn't really what we expected". I kept listening to it over and over at my house, and I kept in contact with the rest of the band and I was like, "We could do way better than this. It just doesn't seem like us", it was lacking energy. It lacked a lot of stuff really, it just wasn't the same, it wasn't our songs. He cut a lot of stuff, and just cut and pasted stuff, it just didn't seem right. It just seemed like it really didn't go. He'd just cut something and it wasn't meant to be played like that, you could tell right away, but he said it was perfect. There were a lot of essential songs like 'Immortal Life' and 'Feed The Beast' that we were really used to and we really liked the way they were, and he really changed a lot of stuff that we really didn't like. He kept saying, "Oh, well I'm not trying to replicate the EP, I'm trying to make it my own", but it just didn't sound right. Like the shouts on 'Immortal Life', he wanted to take that all off and it just wasn't the same. It just didn't sound right to me.
Talita: So you got home and listened to it more and then you all came to a decision?
Jose: Yeah, we were like, "Well, it's just not going to be the same". It just really didn't have bite to the tracks, it was just bland, we just expected much more. We still had a bit of like "OK, let's just wait and see when he mixes it and see if it's gonna sound right". Then we actually mixed and he sent us some tracks and it just sounded the same to us, I really couldn't tell the difference. The guitars were really low distortion, it just didn't seem right. With the guitars, Juan and Alex were telling him in the studio, "We should put up the gain", and stuff like that, and he would tell them no and he'd turn it down. We just weren't really feeling it.
Talita: So it was artistic differences?
Jose: Yeah.
Talita: What decision did you make after deciding that the Michael Rosen session wasn't really for you? What did you do next?
Jose: We decided we should go back to the old studio. It worked out for us on the EP, and the guy there - the engineer that worked there - he's a really cool guy, and he lets us work how we want to work. He suggests stuff, like he'll say, "This doesn't really sound good here", and whatnot, and then he tries to make it better. It was a more comfortable environment I think. That's another thing that kind of lacked in the Rosen sessions - it just seemed like he really didn't want us there. I dunno, it wasn't really comfortable. At the Love Juice studios, we'd been there many times before and everything was comfortable, the guy was so cool about everything, and I think the songs came out way better than the Rosen sessions, and that's what you hear now.
Talita: So looking back on it, when you say to people, "We scrapped a Michael Rosen session", what do people think?
Jose: They think we're crazy! It's like, this is a producer that's gotten Grammys and stuff like that, but they've never really heard the Rosen tracks, and deep inside us we know we could have done better and, well, we did better with the other tracks, and you could tell the difference.
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