An interview with MIKE MARTIN
Interviewed at the Comcast Theater in CT at the 2009 ROCKSTAR ENERGY DRINK MAYHEM FESTIVAL
Interviewed by Lena Lamoray and Brandon Lee
Forward by Lena Lamoray
ALL THAT REMAINS hail from Massachusetts and have set the national charts ablaze with their soundtrack of life. They have headlined venues around the world and toured with pretty much everyone including SLIPKNOT and DISTURBED. They are working hard this summer on the ROCKSTAR ENERGY DRINK MAYHEM FESTIVAL and starting in September they will be headlining the HARD DRIVE LIVE TOUR 2009 which will feature LACUNA COIL and MAYLENE & THE SONS OF DISASTER as well.
I got to pick MIKE MARTIN’S brain at the ROCKSTAR ENERGY DRINK MAYHEM FESTIVAL. He is the all star guitar player of ALL THAT REMAINS. He has battled everything on stage from flying fish to those pesky feminine products all without missing a beat. Someone give this guy an award! Check out MIKE MARTIN and the rest of ALL THAT REMAINS on tour and their albums are available everywhere.
Lena: What did JASON SUECOF bring to the table that was different than working with ADAM D. (the swashbuckling guitar player from KILLSWITCH ENGAGE)?
MIKE MARTIN: He had some different ideas vocally. JASON seemed pretty quick with vocal ideas so I would say the vocals would be the most different thing. Everything else was pretty much goofy and the same atmosphere.
Lena: Did he wear a cape?
MIKE MARTIN: No, he didn’t wear a cape, no.
Lena: And hopefully no explosions! (ADAM D. was lurking right behind us. I think he has the supersonic hearing to go with his man cape)
Lena: Did your love of videogames push you to get involved in ROCKBAND?
MIKE MARTIN: I know we all love video games in general but we were on GUITAR HERO 2 before that and it was such a big thing for us so of course we wanted to get involved with ROCKBAND, too. We definitely wanted to get on it. It is kind of like the new MTV.
Brandon: Are you any good at it?
MIKE MARTIN: Yeah, I haven’t played it in awhile so right now I’m awful but I can get to expert levels when I practice.
Lena: Do you play your own stuff?
MIKE MARTIN: I used to play SIX on GUITAR HERO 2 and I blazed on that one!
Lena: Being a metal band, did you ever think that you would be topping the national billboard charts?
MIKE MARTIN: Nope, definitely not. There is so much stuff that has come so far with everyone. I go out in the seats for a lot of this tour and watch KILLSWITCH because they are hometown friends of ours and it literally feels like I am at an amphitheater watching METALLICA. They have explosions and pyro and it gives me goose bumps every time I watch it, it’s unbelievable to see how far everything has come.
Lena: They are one of my favorite bands on this tour.
MIKE MARTIN: Oh yeah, mine too. Right now we are doing it but we know we can take it further and try to make the right moves. It is kind of crazy just to see every band as long as we have know each other just doing what we are doing is awesome. It is taking us way further than we ever expected, more than we are going to kill your mother and that stuff.
Lena: Speaking of local metal bands, Why do you think New England produces so many successful metal bands, like your band, UNEARTH, KILLSWITCH ENGAGE, etc.?
MIKE MARTIN: I think everyone just came out of that same family where the standard was higher and everybody was never satisfied and took it a lot more serious. People took more time with the music and just concentrated on it more and just a higher standard in general of what music should be like. We had a lot of people like ADAM D. from KILLSWITCH who are uncontrollable guitar player who just musically kept the bar really high for what music should be. They never strayed from it and just adapted to it which was cool and it just all really clicked for this whole area and we got really lucky. It is starting to feel really special now. If you look back at the past ten years and wow it definitely is special and it doesn’t happen all the time.
Lena: No, it doesn’t.
Lena: You’ve had music featured on SAW III, what do you think was the scariest trap of the movie?
MIKE MARTIN: Which was the one with the freezing, where the girl was frozen to death?
Brandon: I think it’s the third one.
Lena: The one that you are on, so let’s talk about that one.
MIKE MARTIN: Oh, I’m not even doing that on purpose. The freezing one just got to me. I don’t know why since it’s not even the most brutal one. Wasn’t there one where they were pulling the limbs in all different directions? Wasn’t that one of the first ones? Yeah, that one was pretty bad.
Lena: Yeah, and then the rib splitting.
MIKE MARTIN: Yeah, those movies just got more and more brutal as they went. I’ll pick the limb splitting one.
Lena: The one with the twisting. Where they twisted his head around.
MIKE MARTIN: Yeah, I’m not a horror movie buff that stuff gets to me. I’m just a happy go lucky guy.
Lena: I have a bunny what do you have? (I figured I would lighten up the mood and help get the horror movie scariness out of the way…..what is better at that than a bunny and puppy discussion)?
MIKE MARTIN: Two dogs. Two cocker spaniels. Two bastards.
Lena: What was the craziest thing ever thrown on stage?
MIKE MARTIN: I almost got hit by a dead fish on WARPED TOUR last year. It whizzed right by my head. It was weird and it looked like freshly dead like they just pulled it out of the fucking water. It was creepy!
Lena: Who would throw that?
MIKE MARTIN: We saw the fish flying through the crowd while we were playing, someone was throwing a fish around and all of a sudden it came whizzing by me and fell on the stage. That would have to be my weirdest.
Lena: Just by taking pictures in the front I’ve gotten hit with water bottles and shoes.
MIKE MARTIN: Yes, a lot of shoes. Shoes everywhere on this tour.
Lena: It sucks getting hit with them but then you know that someone is walking around missing one or both of their shoes.
MIKE MARTIN: Tampons, a ton of tampons on this tour.
Lena: Ugh, please do not tell me they are used.
MIKE MARTIN: Oh, no they are not used, thank god.
Lena: What is in store for your fans in the future?
MIKE MARTIN: Hopefully, some longevity. Everyone in the band has gotten to the point where we can actually just enjoy doing this. We can make a living. We are not rich and famous or anything but we are making a living enough where we can just say wow, we are really lucky to have this job and we are not slumming it in a van anymore. So, it’s really cool and we just want to do it as long as we can and nobody is really good at anything else so hopefully the fans have a lot of albums in store. We want to keep on touring and be like bands that have been doing it a long time like SLAYER and CANNIBAL CORPSE who have been doing it for twenty five years. We are going to do it for as long as we can.
Lena: Are you going to be touring with UNEARTH anytime soon?
MIKE MARTIN: No, I know that we are doing a show with UNEARTH when we get off this tour in New York in Jones Beach so that’s going to be cool. As far as a tour goes, I know we are trying to tour with them but it just never works. They are one of our favorite bands.
Lena: You should play with them at Anchor’s Up. Have you ever heard of that place?
MIKE MARTIN: No.
Lena: I went to see a band there and it is literally in a basement and is really small and holds about 50 people. I have NO idea how they are going to make that work.
MIKE MARTIN: Oh, no. I’ve played enough basements and I think I’ve had enough of them for at least five years.
Lena: Yeah, I honestly have no idea how they are going to fit in there.
Brandon: You covered NEVERMORE’S, BELIEVE IN NOTHING, are you planning on covering any other songs?
MIKE MARTIN: Yeah, the two songs that we have always talked about covering the most are UNCLE TOM’S CABIN by WARRANT and HAMMER SMASH FACE by CANNIBAL CORPSE. Those are the two songs that we want to cover the most. When it will happen I don’t know. It’s a matter of how much time we have. We also talked about just doing a cover album. There are just so many great songs that people have done over the years. We wanted to do BLACK CAT by JANET JACKSON. All these weird songs.
Lena: Are you going to have a wardrobe malfunction?
MIKE MARTIN: Yeah, we’ll have boobs flying out. If we ever have a long break and time to screw around we would do a whole cover album.
Brandon: How about a Christmas album?
MIKE MARTIN: Yeah, TWISTED SISTER style! Maybe, you never know as we grow older what could happen.
Brandon: At the last show someone’s mom was there so were you on your best behavior?
MIKE MARTIN: Boston, yeah. Phil usually makes vulgar oral sex remarks but his mom was there so he was holding back a lot. He says some nasty stuff.
Lena: Like KEN (KEN SUSI, the sensational talent of UNEARTH with the very best and comical potty mouth, the reason why we love him so much!).
MIKE MARTIN: Ha, ha, yeah, but I don’t think KEN ever holds anything back. He’s bad! Even KILLSWITCH in Boston, I could feel ADAM holding back a little, too because he had a lot of family there. That’s the bad thing about having your parents there because your mom is always your mom and saying bitch, shit, fuck and so on in front of her is wrong and you have to hold back a bit.