NEVERMORE Frontman Talks About Being 'Screwed' By His Record Label

NEVERMORE singer Warrel Dane spoke to Electric Basement about the band's decision to work with former QUEENSRŸCHE guitarist Kelly Gray on their latest CD, "Enemies Of Reality", instead of once again utilizing the services of Andy Sneap (MACHINE HEAD, SKINLAB, ARCH ENEMY, STUCK MOJO),who had done such an amazing job on 2000's "Dead Heart In A Dead World".

"[Our record label Century Media Records] cut our budget down to shit for this record because we wouldn't re-sign with them until after the album was done," Dane said. "At this point I can be honest about it. I haven't really talked about it too much in the press. I'm not going to badmouth them. But they were really pressuring us for the last two years to re-sign with them because of the success of 'Dead Heart…'. We told them from day fucking one, no, we are going to finish out our contract and see what the last record does. The only reason a record label would pursue that course of action is because they realize that the band is gaining in popularity with each record. So if they can make you resign before your contract is done, they can screw you just a little bit more. This record looks like it might be bigger than 'Dead Heart…'. So we did the right thing obviously. And it would be nice for us to make a living off of music.

''There are a lot of kids who are playing in metal bands, and they don't realize how cutthroat the music business is," he added. "It can totally destroy your faith in playing music. At some point you become a commodity and that can be pretty scary. You do it because you love the music — you don't do it because you want to be a businessman. But at some point, you need to become business-savvy. And that's a hard lesson to learn, but that's the way the recording industry works. It's designed to put the money in the pockets of the labels and fuck the artists.

"But now we have a lot of options. Century Media has made us a good offer, and a few other labels have made us some offers, but we don't know what we are going to do. All I know is we are going on the road and we are going to see what this record does."

When asked if there was any concern using Kelly Gray to produce the album, since the heaviest bands he had previously worked with were QUEENSRŸCHE and DOKKEN, Dane laughed and said, "We gave him a bunch of metal discs to listen to. We gave him 'Heartwork' from CARCASS. We gave him a lot of underground metal to listen to, and I think he really didn't realize just how big the underground movement really is. And I think then he really opened his eyes up. He knows that the scene may not be huge, but it is constant and it will always be there. We gave him a full metal jacket (laughs). We turned the guy from QUEENSRŸCHE into a total death-metalhead!" Read the rest of the interview here.