Over the past year or so, Thirty 2 Life have become one of my favourite bands. With the recent release of “Got One in the Chamber” I thought it would be appropriate to get in touch with them and ask a few questions. You can check out Thirty 2 Life on their official MySpace.

Thirty 2 Life

Lou: Hi guys, thank you for agreeing to answer my questions again! It’s been a while since the last interview, so I’m sure we’ve got plenty to talk about. Anyway, let’s start things off nice and easy – how are you doing today?

Michael: We’re doing well. It’s nice and sunny and 60 degress here, a bit odd for January but I’m not gonna complain.

Lou: “Got One In The Chamber” is now available and I’ve been listening to it quite a bit. You’ve still got that Sentenced vibe happening, but you seem to also have come into your own sound a bit more now. Do you feel this is the case?

Michael: I’m so glad the “Got One In The Chamber” cd was finally released. It was a long time coming. We started recording songs for it in 2007, then Andy decided he was leaving the band. He had written and was doing vocals on half of the songs we were gonna put on the cd, so when he left we didn’t have enough songs.
So Brian joined us and I got busy writing songs. On Feb. 8, 2008 my cousin Billy died, the next day Daniel’s dad died. I was close to Billy, he was one of my best friends, a metalhead and one badass guitarist. Daniel was extremely close to his dad, so we spent the rest of that year battling depression. The sadness that we were feeling comes across on the cd. It was a rough year, but we slowly got the songs written and recorded. In early 2009 we did the drum tracks to 2 more songs, then we were planning on finishing those, calling the cd done and putting it out. But, as you know, in April 2009 Daniel died. Daniel and I had been working on mixing the songs and he had taken the hard drive with all of our recordings on it to his house to work on his drum tracks. When he died the hard drive was in his room and we had no idea when we would be able to get it and finish mixing. I had copies of the songs here, so we just tried to polish those up the best that we could.
Maybe one day we will be able to get that hard drive and get better mixes on some of those songs, possibly do a “re-release”. But for now the cd is out and we’re looking forward to moving on and working on the next one. Yes, I would agree with you about the “Sentenced” vibe. The song “The Day We Dread” sounds like it could have been one of their’s, but the rest of the songs on the cd don’t sound too much like them. Some of our newer material moves even farther away from the “Sentenced” influence.

Lou: “The Silence Sings” is a hell of a song. Would you be able to tell us anything about the lyrics to it at all?

Michael: “The Silence Sings”…a sad song, but a good song. When I write lyrics I’ll start with a line or a couple of words, then build the song around them. On this song I started with “‘Neath the evening sun” and built on the theme of night, quiet and loneliness. So the song ended up being about someone who is feeling lonely and depressed, they keep how they’re feeling a secret from their friends and family and decide to end it. My favorite line in this song is “the truth’s more painful in the blinding light of day”.

Lou: What, or who, inspires you?

Michael: Music inspires me. If I’m having trouble writing a song, I’ll put it away and listen to a lot of different music for a couple of days. Also, watching a badass guitarist live or on DVD always makes me wanna pick up my guitar.

Lou: How do you achieve your sound? What tips would you give to a would-be guitarist trying to play along with your CD?

Michael: Our sound is based on guitars with lots of gain and low end, and we usually have a keyboard in there somewhere. Actually our stuff is pretty simple, shouldn’t be too hard to figure out and play along with. So my tip would be the tuning, it’s one half step down from standard.

Lou: What has the reaction from the press and from your fans been like about the new CD?

Michael: The only press we’ve done regarding the “Got One In The Chamber” cd was with The ASU Herald. To be honest, most people around here are probably sick of us and wish we’d hang it up. LOL! We used to get alot of press and all kinds of radio play around here, but that’s kinda went away the last couple of years. But hell, that stuff don’t matter. What matters is the people getting our cd’s and digging the music. We’ve had a good response about the new cd. Some people like “Raise Your Flag”, others like “The Day We Dread” and “The Silence Sings”. Those are the three songs we hear about the most. But we did have one guy tell us that “Despise Me” made him wanna punch somebody.

Lou: Do you have any plans to create any kind of promotional video for any of the tracks on “Got One In The Chamber”?

Michael: You know, we were actually planning on making a video for one of the songs. But, that was before Daniels death. He would’ve been the one to do that, since he was our computer guru. We’ll probably try it one of these days.

Lou: Have you got any gigs coming up?

Michael: Hopefully 2010 will be a busy year for us. So far we’ve got these upcoming shows:
Feb. 5 The Dead Horse Saloon in San Angelo, TX
Feb. 12 Metal in The Park in Paragould, AR
March 20 The Dungeon in Bono, AR
Also, the 3rd annual Billyfest will be in June. It’s a memorial concert honoring my cousin Billy. One night is all local bands and one night is all out of town bands.
Last years proceeds went to St. Judes Childrens Hospital and to the family of Daniel Frederick.

Lou: How would you describe a T2L show?

Michael: If we are playing locally, people know us and know the older songs. We’ll start the set with some newer stuff then kick into “Gagged and Bound”.
That usually gets them fired up. And of course there’s always people screaming “Killing You” between songs. And we always play it last. If we’re playing out of town in front of a crowd that’s never heard us, that’s a little tougher. We always try to play what we think are our best songs and win them over with musicianship and good songs.

Lou: You mentioned in the previous interview that you used to have some T2L t-shirts, but had run out of them. Would you consider getting some more printed? I think that one with some of the lyrics from “Raise Your Flag” would be awesome. ‘Raise your flag / surrender / now your fight is over / on your lips the kiss of death” (sorry if I got the words wrong there!)

Michael: Our ReverbNation store has a shirt that has the cover of our “Powered By Pain” cd on it. We will probably have some printed ourselves this year, we’ve been talking about it and discussing different ideas. One idea is similar to yours, but with the lyrics to “I Dreamed Of Killing You” on the back.

Lou: Changing the subject ever-so-slightly… I don’t know if you are aware of it, but here in England the Battle for the Christmas Number 1 slot in the charts was kinda unique – with Rage Against The Machine going up against some X Factor bloke (X Factor is a reality TV show thing)… and awesomely, RATM won. The campaign behind them was purely Internet based, with various groups being set up on Facebook, and loads of people (obviously) downloaded the song from iTunes and Amazon so that it counted towards the chart… So, I have a couple of questions that are kinda related to that… The first one is that should the occasion ever arise when your legions of fans (because there WILL be legions) decide to get one of your songs to Number 1 in the charts, which song out of your current discography would you like them to pick?

Michael: Should there ever be a “legion” of fans, I guess the song would be “Gagged and Bound”. Judging by the plays and downloads online, that song is our most popular by far.

Lou: Do you think that the mainstream charts even matter any more? Aside from RATM at Christmas, the charts in England aren’t exactly looking healthy for anyone who’s into Rock and Metal. Is this the case in the US?

Michael: The mainstream charts don’t matter to us, that’s for damn sure. I don’t keep up with the charts or listen to the radio that much, but sometimes on a Saturday morning I’ll have my tv on VH1 and watch their countdown. If that’s the stuff that’s on the mainstream charts, then yes, they’re in sad shape.

Lou: Thirty 2 Life has, as far as I’ve been aware, always embraced the Internet. I mean, a lot of your tracks are available for fans to download for free from your Reverbnation page and we touched upon this briefly in your last interview with Loucifer Speaks. Would you ever be interested in doing something like the RATM thing? Not necessarily to get a number 1, but to spread the word about Thirty 2 Life that little bit further? If you were ever up for this, I’d SO be there to help promote you! Just say the word!

Michael: Hell yes, we’d be interested in doing something like that. If we could get enough people excited about us to spread the word and expose more people to our music that would be great.

Lou: What’s coming up for T2L in 2010?

Michael: Hopefully 2010 will be a good year for us. We’re looking forward to getting back to traveling and getting to work recording a new cd.
There are three songs in our set that we never got to record with Daniel and they are: “The Chill Of February”-which is like a letter written to my cousin Billy(RIP),
“Dead And Gone”-one of our older songs that we were playing when Andy was still in the band, “Fingerprints”-a song about violent sex. We’ve been working with Josh(the new drummer) since May 2009. While he’s been getting familiar with our older material we’ve also been working on these new songs: “The Whirlwind”, “Tripwire”, “Shadows”, “Lying On Your Deth Bed”-an instrumental which is a nod to a thrash metal band Daniel and I played in called Deth Bed. I’m excited about getting these songs recorded and can’t wait for people to hear them. It’s a new year and a new beginning for us in a way, so we’re gonna move on, leave the sadness behind us and keep cranking out music.