Chad Bowar: How did new drummer Dave McGraw come to join the band?
Travis Ryan: We had our eyes on him for three or so years. He was in a band called Sleep Terror, and our guitar player knew their guitar player. We saw him play and kept our eyes on him in case anything ever happened. Our previous drummer Mike Laughlin was a good friend, but was always on the verge of quitting, so we knew we would need somebody at some point.
You’ve had some turnover in the drummer position over the years. Will Dave provide more stability?
It’s been kind of an ongoing process since we signed to Metal Blade, but this is the guy. We have a drummer that had a say in the songwriting and contributed to some of that, which is a first for us. We get along really well with him, too. The first tour we did with him was late 2007 with Vader, and it seemed like he had done the last five or six tours with us since we clicked so well.
What makes The Harvest Floor Cattle Decapitation’s best album to date?
With Karma Bloody Karma we tried buckling down and creating the best album we could. The ones previous were throwing (stuff) against the wall and seeing if it would stick. But with Karma and the new one we sat down to write a good record. We needed a drummer that was on the same page as us, and Mike really wasn’t. We all had both feet in the water and he was only sticking his toes in once in a while.
You had a lot of guests on the album. Is that something you set out to do beforehand, or as you wrote the songs did you decide to ask various people to contribute?
We always keep different people in mind for guest appearances. We usually just use our friends, but this time we handpicked people for certain parts. We used Ross Sewage from Impaled for a real brutal part because I liked his guttural style. Dino Sommese is in Dystopia, a band that I’m a huge fan of, and I always liked his vocal style in that band. There was a perfect part for him, plus the lyrics go along with what Dystopia and his old band Carcinogen sang about. I thought it would be cool to have him on there.
Jackie Perez-Gratz from Grayceon is a friend of ours, and we had her in mind for a couple of years to do strings on a record. We wanted to subtly throw in some violin or cello, and she’s an electric cellist. It really worked, and what made it work was Billy Anderson’s production style. He was able to seamlessly integrate her cello without standing out.
To top it off we got Jarboe from Swans. I had a doomy, drony death dirge in my head for an intro to the final song. I said to send her the intro instead of the whole song so it didn’t turn her off. But it turns out she’s a fan of death metal. I sent her the song when we were done along with the song it attaches to, which is very brutal. She loved it. That was a surprise. The only reason we were able to hook up with her is that she is friends with Billy Anderson. He had engineered some of the recordings on the final Swans studio album. I still can’t believe she’s on the album. It’s a treat, something I can definitely brag about.
You must have worked well with Billy on the last CD to bring him back to produce The Harvest Floor.
It’s funny. Me and him actually butt heads quite a lot. It’s because we’re two very volatile people, very high strung and hyper. We are two peas in a pod. We can clash once in a while. It almost didn’t happen, but we had a big talk about everything and put everything behind us. There was a little bit of that on this record, but we both went in wanting the same outcome, and we got it. On Karma Bloody Karma we didn’t really know each other very well, but now we do and know how each other are and what to look for.
You’ve had similar lyrical themes and values on your CDs relating to animal rights. Was there anything specifically that inspired a song or lyric on this one?
No, not really. The last few records have not strayed away from it, but it’s not that cut and dried. We don’t come out and write songs about animal rights. It’s more of awareness how we treat animals and how we treat each other. Our first two records laid all that out on the line, and ever since then we’ve been going to a more anti human route. The last couple records especially there will be the themes attached to the album cover, and then weird ideas. This time we had a song about scraping somebody’s face across the concrete, gory songs for the sake of being brutal. Then there are songs with a little more thought, and songs that are a mixture of both. I tend to not stick to current events.
Tell me about the video shoot for the song “Regret And The Grave” that you recently did.
It was pretty interesting, and from what I hear from the director, pretty disturbing. We wanted to emulate what was happening on the cover of The Harvest Floor. The storyline is kind of loose. I didn’t even read the treatment completely. I’ve been so absurdly busy for this record. Usually I’m anal about having full control over imagery and the way our stuff is presented, but I told him to have at it.
We shot it in Griffith Park in Glendale, California, just north of Hollywood. It was me and our bass player dressed up as the shock trooper guys that are on our cover. We were herding people into the killing grounds where they are executed. The execution part is where it really gets weird, but I’m not going to explain why. People can decide for themselves what they think. It’s pretty much leading humans to the slaughterhouse, the fear that goes along with not knowing where you’re going, but what your fate is.
