Hatebreed mainman Jamey Jasta recently popped into the Metal Hammer offices for a bit of a chat. But instead of answering the questions we wrote down, the hardcore hero was put to the test by you guys!
Ryan Hughes asks…
What do you do to prevent your voice being hoarse as fuck?
“Right before I left for this tour I had to cancel a Jasta show. I went to the ear, nose and throat doctor and he said ‘Are you eating a lot of spicy food?’ and I was, I had a Mexican one day, Indian the next day, Thai/Asian the day after… He said it was the acid reflux made my voice hoarse. I’ve never had vocal problems before, but I had to have a camera down my throat and he said there was no permanent damage, but he gave me medicine for the reflux and said to cancel my interviews on Friday and cancel the show on Saturday, so that I don’t blow it out before having to come over for Groezrock. I didn’t cancel any interviews on Friday but I had to cancel my Jasta show ‘cause I actually have to sing like five or six of those songs, and I gotta be in key. I apologise to everybody. It was for New England Metal Fest and I feel bad, it had such a great bill, but I’ll get back and make it up to everybody.”
samuelj41944686 asks…
What was the best part about making the new Hatebreed record?
“The best part was stripping everything down, simplifying everything, and saying ‘Look, we are who we are, this is what it is, we can add new ingredients but we’re not reinventing the wheel.’ You put it on and you know it’s us, the identity is there and that’s the main focus. We’ve learned from other bands’ mistakes, we’ve seen the bands that have gone in a different direction and it didn’t work, so we didn’t need to make that same mistake.”
Carrollcide asks…
Is there ever going to be another Kingdom Of Sorrow album?
“Not in the near future. I’ve really gotta thank everybody who bought the first two records because I think without the sales of those records, we wouldn’t have been able to get to Soundwave or Mayhem – they were big opportunities for the band. For a side-project to get opportunities like that was big. We played with Metallica, Slayer… we did off-day shows with Anthrax and Slayer, that was a lot of fun. But Crowbar and Hatebreed is the head of the snake, right? Let’s make sure we’re focusing on the main stuff, and if life brings us back together in 2⁄3 years then we’ll do another one. I have the songs, but the time needs to be right. I’m a Crowbar fan through and through, I have a tattoo on my arm – I’d rather a new Crowbar than a new Kingdom Of Sorrow.”
Matt Hocking asks…
After Soundwave fell over, will your Australian diehards get to see you guys any time soon?
“It could happen. It’s starting to be very possible and we’re very optimistic. There was a Facebook page in New Zealand and we said ‘If it gets 1000 likes then we’ll play New Zealand,’ and it got 1000. So we said ‘If it gets 1500 then we’ll play,’ and now it’s up to like 2000, so we owe them a show. We definitely owe Australia a whole tour – we’re gonna figure it out. I saw Bring Me The Horizon just put their tour on sale so we don’t wanna be playing the same night as them down the road. That’s another thing we’re up against now everywhere in the world, there’s so many shows so many nights of the week, we wanna make sure to not make fans choose. I wanna get (Soundwave organiser) AJ on my podcast to spill all the beans. It’d be great to have it chronicled, where it went wrong, whose fault really was it… gimme the exclusive!”
Brian James asks…
How many times have you pooped yourself, as an adult?
“We had food poisoning or something at one of the shows in The Philippines. I thought I was going to shit myself onstage, and you know that if someone sees that they’re gonna get their phones out and put it on YouTube – nobody’s got any respect, it’s like ‘Fuck you, we’re gonna get a million hits on you shitting yourself!’ But once you hit the stage you clench up. The nerves make it so it’s kinda hard to shit yourself onstage; the adrenaline solidifies everything so I made it through. But that night when I got back to the hotel I barely made it to the toilet. That’s why you gotta be careful when you go to new places, don’t go for the shit with the eyeballs in it, just eat the regular noodles. But what did I do? I’m like ‘Give me the one with the face!’ I’m eating a face in a soup bowl ha ha!”
ZachAttackAV asks…
What is your one vice?
“On this tour my one vice is pizza. I’ve probably gained like 12lb on this tour already and I don’t care, I’m just gonna have my weight fluctuate and eat what I want. Now that I can’t have spicy foods it’s like ‘What am I gonna do?’ But I gotta give it up. I’ve got an addictive personality so I could eat pizza every day for the next 30 days. We’ll see what happens.”
HamSpanner asks…
What is on your workout playlist?
“We shot a video for Looking Down The Barrel Of Today and in the two weeks leading up to the video I went running every day. I made a running playlist and ran 2⁄3 miles every day and I lost maybe 15lb to shoot the video and it was great, I felt good. I had Kataklysm on there, I had Cannibal Corpse, Lamb Of God, Terror, Norma Jean, Zao, Unearth, Killswitch Engage… I had a bunch of good jams on there. When you get to that three mile mark and you wanna quit, some hard-ass track will come on like Death Walking Terror for that extra boost at the end.”
Steve Blower asks…
What night is bath night?
“This tour has ten bands on the tour so you’re gonna go into a dirty shower – you don’t know what’s going on in that shower. The night after Groezrock we went to Maastricht, had a Saturday night off in this amazing hotel with a huge restaurant, so Frank and I had this huge dinner. I hadn’t checked into my room yet and I was told it was sold-out, but then I was upgraded to a suite so when I went in the suite I had this huge jacuzzi tub and dove in to chill. I haven’t been in a jacuzzi for ten years. I put on the jets and chilled in there for like an hour listening to Deftones’ White Pony. It’s amazing bath music.”
Brendan Mcgee asks…
When you have a crowd like yours, how does it feel to play Destroy Everything?
“It’s great, we open the show with it now because a lot of these shows have a curfew and you know how it is with the last train. You don’t wanna be waiting to the end of the show, you might miss the train, so we just go out all hits blazing. People who don’t have to catch a train get some hits at the end too, but the big ones are at the beginning – it feels great. Last night in Manchester the whole place was jumping and going crazy, it was awesome. Destroy Everything, Honor Never Dies, I Will Be Heard, In Ashes They Shall Reap, Everyone Bleeds Now get huge responses. We’ve had one or two big big songs on every record in the last five records. The first record songs go over with the old school fans, but it really depends when you got into the band.”
CoreyTaylorRock asks…
Me and dustindrumz are starting a Toto tribute band: Toto Recall. Are you available for auditions?
“As long as the album is Get Your Ass To Mars. The Toto songs have to relate to Arnold Schwarzenegger or the film Total Recall itself. There needs to be a song about three tits – ‘cause who wouldn’t like three tits? That was the most talked about thing when that movie came out.”
Tiago Ferraz asks…
Do you like any deathcore bands?
“When I make playlists for these streaming services, I choose a bunch of deathcore bands. I’ll choose Despised Icon, Chelsea Grin – today I played Chelsea Grin on TeamRock Radio. We’ve taken a lot of those bands on tour. We’ve taken All Shall Perish, Whitechapel… I think all those bands are great. The elitist death metal fans might not get into it ‘cause it’s a younger audience but a lot of those bands can hold their own. We took out Cannibal Corpse, Unearth, Born Of Osiris and Hate Eternal, and every band got a great reaction on that tour. You’ve got to have an open mind.”
Jeff Reeb Cleary asks…
What is the strangest thing you’ve ever been asked to do while on tour, and did you actually do it?
“I don’t do it any more, but I used to go to the barricade and I’d keep getting scratched, bitten and I thought I can’t do it any more. One time I got bitten in the stomach in Japan, this girl bit me so hard and didn’t let go that she broke the skin and it got infected – I got a staph infection and it was fucking horrible. But this one time I was bleeding pretty bad out of my hand and this girl asked if she could lick it and I’m like ‘No! You don’t know I don’t have some crazy bloodborne disease, you don’t want that.’ But she said she did and I think that went too far. She might have been a vampire.”
Hatebreed: Jamey Jasta's guide to having a positive mental attitude
