Interview: Sean Martin of Hatebreed - Page 2

Do you have any side projects?

Yeah. Me and Jamey both do. Jamey has Icepick and Kingdom of Sorrow and I have House of Blow and Exoskeleton. Jamey's two are heavy. They're definitely both heavy. My stuff is totally on the other end. Exoskeleton's electro-punk and House of Blow is like… I don’t even know what it sounds like, it's weird music. (laughs) It's really good, but it's more electronic-based music. You do other stuff outside of the realm of metal and that way Hatebreed always stays fresh and heavy and brutal, the way it's supposed to be, instead of me saying, "Let throw a keyboard part in there…" That'll never happen because I can just do it with something else.

Everything I'm doing, I'm shopping around, see what I can do with it anyway. We've recorded stuff but we haven't done anything next-step-wise, on how we're going to put it out.

Do you play out? Have you done any tours?

Yeah, we've played out. We haven't done any tours. I don’t really have a lot of time because I'm always on tour with Hatebreed, but Exoskeleton's played maybe three or four shows. House of Blow's played a show. We're still recording stuff, too. I only have a couple weeks off at a clip. Sometimes it's at the studio, sometimes it's on stage. It's cool. It's fun. It's a release. It keeps me busy, too, when I'm off the road. We're only home two weeks at a time, so it keeps me from getting stagnant.

So you're still doing that relentless kind of touring.

Yeah, we'll do that for a while, I'm sure.

Think so?

I hope so. It's better than a day job (laughs). I love it. It grinds you down, but it doesn't mean I don't want to do it.

You mentioned before about Hatebreed changing labels. What drives your choices in changing? Are you guys doing short term, like, a couple albums…?

I think it's a matter of us trying to find the right place that understands what we do with the band, how to market us. Sometimes it doesn't work out. That doesn't mean the relationships go bad, but it means that you've got to find someone who has the time and the money and the effort to understand that we're a very heavy band. It's not that we’re not as marketable, but at Universal, well, we're not a "pop" big big group so they didn't know what to do with us. They were great while we were there.

Article Author: gette

Georgette Nicolaides is a writer, musician, and visual artist. She plays noisy violin in the ambient/psychedelic project Atlantic Drone and is currently reading about eight different books. &#@%$ ADD! …

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