PunkTV.ca

3 Inches of Blood Interview - Jamie Hooper one on one with Punk Tv's Dixon Christie

PunkTV.ca: First of all, please introduce yourself.

I’m Jamie from 3 inches of Blood.

 

PunkTV.ca: It’s Dixon Christie here from PunkTV.ca, we’ve got 3 Inches of Blood’s Jamie Hooper, it is February the 8^th 2007. First of all tell us about your day.

It’s been interesting. I had a driving shift from about 5 this morning until about 11. We went and got a hotel and had a shower which was much needed. We basically had to have a bottle of bleach and a scrub brush.

 

PunkTV.ca: Did you get it all off?

Oh ya, it’s all off now. We’ve been in the van the past 35 hours roughly because we drove straight from Chicago to here and we only stopped for gas.

 

PunkTV.ca: What happened in Chicago?

Our van decided that it was going to have everything break at once as we were suppose to leave town to meet a deadline in Denver to play a show for this Cradle tour. So we had to forfeit the Denver show unfortunately and we spent an extra day in Chicago trying to get a new van. Which we fluked out because Nick, our bass player, a friend of his lives in Chicago and their band just broke up and they had a new van with only like 40 000 clicks on it and they’ve been looking to unload it because being a broken up band they have no use for it and they probably needed the money.

 

PunkTV.ca: Who was the band?

Off the top of my head I can’t think of it. I remember somebody referencing pop punk so we’ll have to get the pop punk germs out of the van.

 

PunkTV.ca: You’re talking to PunkTV.ca, we love punk rock and metal.

We love punk rock too.

 

PunkTV.ca: You guys are big rock stars now and you can afford to buy a new band on the road.

This is definitely not the case. We’re about the poorest mother fuckers around, or mofos for the CRTC.

 

PunkTV.ca: What’s your per diem?

Ten bucks a day and that doesn’t go very far when you’re smoking a pack of cigarettes…

 

PunkTV.ca: And drinking as much beer as you do.

Ya exactly. That’s like a 6 pack and that’s about it.

 

PunkTV.ca: I bet you’re happy to get back to B.C. and Alberta where at least you know where to buy good weed cheap.

Especially Alberta where the beer’s cheaper too. Coming out from the U.S. and coming to Canada it’s like 3 times as much for a 6 pack. You can get a 6 pack of PBR in Washington state for like 2.99 and those are tall boys. It’s the deal of the century.

 

PunkTV.ca: I think they have some beer here that’s 10.99 for a dozen.

AGD, I love that stuff.

 

PunkTV.ca: Do you? Ok so bring the kids up to date. For kids that don’t know you guys are huge touring with all of the biggest bands in the world right now but you started by getting together some old friends to jam and you were jamming out an old band of yours and you said hey this rocks so hard we want to check this out. Tell us about that.

It was more a matter of trying to get a bunch of old band mates together to play some shows and when we all sat down it was way more fun to just play something fresh and metal trying to relearn some shitty power songs or whatever. It was much more fun to crack a 6 pack and pump the metal we all love.

 

PunkTV.ca: Isn’t it amazing how it’s finally coming around. Even 5 or 10 years ago we could never be having this conversation, you could never have such a blatantly and positively 80s power metal influenced metal band hybrid with, I don’t want to use any terms, but it’s definitely hardcore, death metal kind of influenced music. You’ve got all the great, they call mellowdeath sometimes but it’s all the sweet melodics but with the chugging and everything. We wouldn’t have been able to have this conversation 10 years ago, we’re in a better time and space aren’t we?

People are more open minded these days it seems. We’re lucky that way with our shows to because sometimes you go to shows and it’s like people ain’t get along so well but people have made a note when coming to our shows that it’s fucked up we’ll go to a 3 inches show and there’s black metal dudes, there’s crust punks, there’s like straight edge kids, there’s old ass metal dudes with poodle hair and everyone’s in the same spot having a good time drinking beers, how does that work? You won’t see that at very many shows so it’s nice to be able to cross a few boundaries that way.

 

PunkTV.ca: We talk about that with a lot of kids and I think you really got to thank shows like Taste Of Chaos. Warped Tour, I’d still like to see a lot more punk rock at Warped tour because that’s one show that I’ve been going to for 15 years and I would like to see a lot more punk rock. But I think like a Taste Of Chaos and a Sounds of the Underground and shows like that have really taught us that you can have black metal and doomcore and death metal and Trivium and As I Lay Dying all on the same set and still pack the shit up and Cannibal Corpse too.

That’s totally true. We played the Sounds of the Underground Vancouver date this year and it was great because you’d go straight from Cannibal Corpse to Terror to us to Gwar. Like us between Terror and Gwar is such a weird combination and then Cannibal Corpse, The Black Dahlia and then As I lay Dying and it’s like it’s a pretty good mix match of bands going on. And the place is full for every band, it’s not like there’s this cliché of kids for this bands and them for this band, everyone is watching every band so it’s pretty cool.

 

PunkTV.ca: Then you get bands like As I Lay Dying and Norma Jean. There’s a couple of Christian bands so you throw in something that’s completely off the wall. You’ve got death metal Satan worshippers on the one side.

Behemoth even made cracks about the Christan core on the tour and it was hilarious. The singer in between songs made some wise crack about Christian bands on the tour and Medicaide and shit. We we’re like that’s awesome. The guys had like synchronized hair whipping, it was brutal.

 

PunkTV.ca: You know one of the bands, now that you mention it, does it most prolifically is Fat Mike from NOFX. He did it for I think like 50 shows and he forced that poor band UnderOath, they quit the tour. He bugged them so bad that they quit the tour and they went off the tour.

That’s pretty insane. Have you ever heard of a band from Winnipeg called Swallowing Shit? It’s not hardcore, it’s like fucking spastic brutal grind power metal stuff, it’s real good. Swallowing Shit which is political grindcore basically you can call it and they had a song called Christian Metal is Equal to Nazi Reggae and it is one of the best song titles I have ever heard in my life.

 

PunkTV.ca: Speaking of titles, Three Inches of Blood, I thought it came from a movie but it actually came from one of Bob’s dreams.

Actually there’s a few explanations for where that came from, it’s not always the same explanations. But out reasoning for the title in the current manifestation is when the heavy metal army rolls through town, that’s how deep the poser’s blood will run in the streets. It’s kind of like the crusades except this is the unholy crusade rather than the righteous Christian crusade, it’s the opposite.

 

PunkTV.ca: Why are themes like crusades and glory and honor and Vikings and fire and blood, why are these crusades so important to bands like you guys?

I’m not sure that they are so important. The idea, not exactly the theology behind such things. It’s all from the Manowar sort of aspect, there’s this imaginary army of people that is trying to stop Manowar from being so metal. You never see these people but Manowar is like we’re metal we won’t let these people bring us down and of course it’s all imaginary. You’ve seen Heavy Metal the Headbanger’s journey, the part where Dee Schneider was in front of that committee and defending metal and saying that they don’t cause kids to shoot themselves in the face and Judas Priest doesn’t make people kill themselves, it’s the same sort of thing. The metal heads have to unite in metal and the metal heads are the underdogs so you have to have those songs of metal glory and triumph over adversity and sticking up for your metal rights.

 

PunkTV.ca: Even the emo bands, do they need to unite?

Fuck them. They don’t need to unite, they need to die by our hands

 

PunkTV.ca: I didn’t agree with that. Tell us about the Vancouver metal scene. Aside from you guys, Strapping Young Lad and my good friends in Time is the Enemy, are there any other good bands from Vancouver and I heard the scene there sucks.

It goes up and down but there are a lot of fucking awesome bands from Vancouver, A Javelin Reign is good, Mass Grave who we just played with those guys are fucking awesome. Limb from Limb is another brilliant band, Blood of course. There’s some good noise projects like the Rita and stuff like that. There are a lot of more underground stuff in Vancouver that if you don’t live there you just don’t know about, like basement shows and punk houses those are the best things that are always going on. Good music is always being played in someone’s basement with a keg not in a venue with a thousand people watching.

 

PunkTV.ca: My good buddy Joey Shithead lives there and he is one of the few fucking labels that buy ads and pay for them right away. All hails to the Joey Shithead, he’s got a new band too.

He keeps spreading the word in the proper underground too. He advertises his music where it matters in zines and stuff, that’s important.

 

PunkTV.ca: You said that your influence is Motorhead, Metallica and beer. Let’s talk about the bands you love best today and the beer you drink most.

The beer we drink most is Pacific Pilsner sold only I think in B.C and brewed in Prince George.

 

PunkTV.ca: Pilsner is a good beer. In Alberta Pilsner is a good quality beer. Nice clean taste, no bitter aftertaste, no bitter beer mouth, none of that.

We’re big fans of the beer.

 

PunkTV.ca: You don’t look like it, well you look very thin. Bob is the big beer drinker in your band?

We’re all big beer drinkers. I’m probably the biggest beer drinker actually.

 

PunkTV.ca: What’s a normal night of beer consumption for you?

We’re talking 12 give or take. The other night I was pushing to 20.

 

PunkTV.ca: How have you enjoyed being on the road with Cradle of Filth? I know that Dani Filth is not drinking on this tour and I know that most of the band is not drinking or drugging or doing much on the tour. How has that been?

It’s good, it’s fun. We still manage to sneak in our daily quota, that’s not affecting our intake at all. I don’t know how they’ve operated in the past but they seem to be on the ball and enjoying themselves. I know if I was on a sober tour I probably wouldn’t be having quite as much fun as I normally do but each to their own I suppose.

 

PunkTV.ca: Advance and Vanquish, you guys are still touring the hell out of that. At some point isn’t it enough. Where is this album, Fire Up the Blades? Like your logo, it’s all coming together. You know the first time I say your logo I was like what the fuck is that? Oh I know what that is yeah.

It’s funny because you get people coming to the shows who obviously aren’t pot heads and they’ll have some guy come up to the merch table like I’ll have the one with the target on it or a kid will be like I want one with the spiral and you’ll be like alright buddy.

 

PunkTV.ca: You can’t really find hash anymore.

Depends on where you look I suppose. It’s funny because you go to like the UK or something and that’s the only thing you can get is crappy hash.

 

PunkTV.ca: People in Vancouver hot knife marijuana?

Yup.

 

PunkTV.ca: Pop bottle?

Only to conserve your money of course, you got to stretch it out especially when you’re in a metal band.

 

PunkTV.ca: Living on 10 dollars a day.

When you’re on tour. When you’re not on tour it’s zero dollars because It doesn’t go so far.

 

PunkTV.ca: When you have a particularly good merch day do you guys get to go wow we can get 20 bucks each today?

No we don’t do that. We had to buy a new van the other day.

 

PunkTV.ca: So if PunkTV bought you beer or bought you a dinner, we’d be your friends for life. Ok well we’re going to buy you a beer or food. We want to be your friends for life.

Beer is the priority.

 

PunkTV.ca: Ok then let’s get you some beer. I know you guys got to go on tour with the Darkness and Justin from the Darkness actually did some back up on stage with you. Tell us about that, I guess he got his voice shredded.

I’m not sure that was the direct result of singing Deadly Sinners or not but there was one show that he came on stage and I got down on my knees like I was holding Excalibur or some shit like that and he took the mic and he sang Deadly Sinners with Ken. It was pretty cool because there were big crowds and we weren’t used to playing in front of crowds. So it’s kind of cool to have a guy from, they’re style isn’t necessarily my bag of tricks sort of thing but it was cool to have somebody from an influential band in front of a large crowd of people sing one of our songs.

 

PunkTV.ca: When you think about it the Darkness and that album breaking through as it did in a lot of ways it did pave the way for the new movement of the old metal. I mean really that’s what we’re talking about.

Somewhat, in sort of a Def Leppardy or Thin Lizzy sense but not in a Destruction, Creator, Sodom sense which we feel is far more important. Although we do have our Thin Lizzy influences. Don’t get me wrong, we listen to a lot of new wave-ish heavy metal, 70s rock and we have equal parts influence and equal parts Carpathian Forest influence. We’ll listen to everything from Neil Diamond to Carpathian Forest to Leonard Cohen. Our influences come from all over.

 

PunkTV.ca: You ever read Leonard Cohen’s book Beautiful Losers. Did you love it? Do you have any male friends like that?

Not so much.

 

PunkTV.ca: Any of the weird love triads that he celebrated in the book?

No.

 

PunkTV.ca: You know because of the descriptiveness of it and you know his nature, that had to be autobiographical. Who’s you’re favorite writer?

Right now its Kurt Vronin. I just finished his book Irons of Titan actually this morning at about 3 o’clock in the van and it was darn good, he’s got a bunch of books. I’m a big Paul Throw fan, Graeme Greene.

 

PunkTV.ca: Your list should include people like Bukowski. He was a consummate drinker.

I’m not a big fan of Bukowski. Actually a few weeks ago I watched a Bukowski 3 DVD set wasted sitting on his couch rambling about bull shit under the guise of being interviewed but it’s just him ranting for like 4 hours and at one point his lady friend, I don’t know what their relationship is, she’s sitting on the couch with him and he like fully is punching her and kicking her and calling her a cunt infront of the TV camera. It’s like holy fuck it’s the shittiest DVD alive. But they’re usually the most creative outlet because maybe being an old wasted asshole helps that.

 

PunkTV.ca: For a real diversion in that Elmore Leonard.

I haven’t read any of him.

 

PunkTV.ca: Get Shorty and Stick, like all kind of cinema noir, dark, pulp fiction-y type stuff and it’s good stuff. Tell us about your upcoming tours and what you’ve got coming up and tell the kids about the album.

The album we just finished recording around Christmas time, like December 22^nd we basically finished recording it. Of course we just finalized the artwork and the cover art and everything just yesterday and the track listing, what songs are going to be on it and what order we just decided that yesterday. It’s coming out May 8^th, it was suppose to be out in March but it got delayed because dealing with record labels there’s way too many cooks in the kitchen. So May 8^th is when it comes out. We’re on this Cradle of Filth tour until March 4^th so from here we go down the West coast, across the south, the East coast to New York. Then from there we’re going to the UK for 3 weeks and we’re doing 3 weeks of shows in England, Scotland and Ireland which is nice because we’ll actually get to go to the Thin Lizzy statue down by his house so that’s going to be a pilgrimage for me to make for sure. We’re there for 3 weeks and we’re just waiting on a couple tours that we’re hoping to get after that. We’ll probably be doing the US either on our own or opening for somebody.

 

PunkTV.ca: The real question is when can the kids get a hold of the new album Fire Up the Blades?

May 8^th.

 

PunkTV.ca: One more thing, I’ve seen a startling number of kids with the number 3 tattooed on their body.

One guy came to the Seattle show on New Years Eve and he had the circle 3 the size of a coffee cup saucer right in his armpit which is apparently the most painful place ever. There’s another guy in England his name’s Ian and he has Three Inches of Blood just the words tattooed from his wrist to his elbow on the inside of his forearm and then he’s got the big circle 3 on his chest. And there’s some hip hope guy in Boise Idaho who came and he’s like I don’t listen to metal but I listen to you guys and he had like a half sleeve or Orcs and Demons. It’s a phenomenon and it’s a little weird. I’ve got a couple tattoos that are artwork from albums I love but I don’t have any band names tattooed on my body, that’s crazy. So every time somebody shows me I’m like that’s awesome and flattering but you’re crazy. It’s definitely cool to see for sure.

 

PunkTV.ca: I got to tell you about a really bad tattoo that one kid I know got and by kid I mean he’s 35 and he works in a tattoo shop and just to fuck with the head of his boss, his boss name is Charlie, he got a big black and white jail house style tat of him across his whole leg with his face and across the top it says Charles in Charge. Ok you’re 50 and you’re looking back and saying that wasn’t such a great idea, a tattoo of Charles in Charge across his leg and it’s his boss. I said do you love this guy, is he your best friend? No, not particularly.

I got 2 of the most hilarious tattoos that I’ve seen shopping in Providence Rhode Island and the guys come to our show when we’re in town and they give us free tattoos and we have a post-show party at their shop and beer and get 5 am drunk tattoos. One guy there, we were at the shop getting tanked and there was a stencil on the desk that the guy was getting done the next day. You know the Minor Threat art of the beer bottle wearing the jacket, the bottle of violence art and it’s the beer bottle wearing the leather jacket holding 2 beers and it’s the same idea but it’s a hot dog wearing a leather jacket with a bottle of ketchup and a bottle of mustard in its hands and above the banner instead of saying Guilty of Being White, that song title from Minor Threat, it says Guilty of Being Delicious and the thing is like this big. One of the guys Mike who tattoos us there he’s got a full back piece like neck to ass side to side and it’s a monkey riding a unicycle playing the accordion smoking 80 cigarettes at the same time wearing a Viking helmet with horns and above it and below it is a banner saying only God can judge me and his goal was to get the world’s stupidest tattoo. It’s like 2 and a half feet tall and wide, it’s pretty spectacular

 

PunkTV.ca: Which of the following experience have you had; have you seen the face of God, have you had an alien encounter or have you seen a ghost?

None of the above although when we were recoding the record Dan Turner, who was the engineer, he was in mushroom studios in Vancouver about 1:30 in the miring and he claims to have seen a ghost in the control room while he was doing some editing. The guys who work there claim that they also, between certain nights between 1 and 2 if you’re alone in the place you get this eerie someone’s there feeling. The guy kept saying he kept seeing flashes of black like somebody running behind him out of the corner of his eye. I think it’s bull shit but of course I’m the world’s biggest skeptic. I like empirical evidence to back things up not some guy who’s tanked at one in the morning seeing a ghost.

 

PunkTV.ca: Empiricism, are you at all into Carl Hume?

Not so much. I haven’t delved into him too much.

 

PunkTV.ca: What would surprise kids most to learn about you or Three Inches of Blood?

That we’re all big Neil Diamond fans.

 

PunkTV.ca: Neil Diamond rocks.

 I saw him about 6 months ago when he did the last tour and it was fabulous. He had this crazy toned stage and he had the horn section and the back up section and it was divided into like a pie and as each section was required it was raised up from underneath and then they’d do their bit and sink back down and I would close up.

 

PunkTV.ca: One of my clients actually came through my house the other day and I had like 21 Neil Diamond albums, he saw all my Neil Diamond records. He’s from Korea and he’s like you have vinyl records, do you want to sell them? I go ya 5000 US so I sold my entire collection including all my Neil Diamond albums. So if anybody has any Neil Diamond albums they can send me I’m completely out of Neil Diamond vinyl but I got 5000 dollars US.