Vocalist Sean Killian of reunited San Francisco Bay Area thrashers VIO-LENCE has told Italy’s Poisoned Rock webzine that fans won’t have to wait very long for some fresh music from his band.
“We did a cover song that’s gonna come out on the 20th of this month,” he said (see video below). “It’s a band from the Bay Area that we covered one of their songs — a punk band. And we did a video for it. And so Metal Blade Records is gonna get it out on Spotify and iTunes, and we’ll put it out on YouTube as well. That’s coming on August 20th.”
This past January, VIO-LENCE parted ways with guitarist Ray Vegas and replaced him with Bobby Gustafson (ex-OVERKILL). The band’s current lineup also includes guitarist Phil Demmel, drummer Perry Strickland and bassist Christian Olde-Wolbers (ex-FEAR FACTORY).
VIO-LENCE is currently working on material for a new EP, tentatively due in early 2021 via Metal Blade Records.
Asked by Poisoned Rock what Gustafson‘s addition to VIO-LENCE has brought to the band’s sound, Killian said: “Most of what we’re writing is just Phil and I right now. It’s just Phil, Perry and I in the rehearsal studio, and we’ve been writing. We’ve got three songs now that we were able to demo a couple of weeks ago so we can sit down and listen to it and make adjustments to it.
“Bobby, he’s just a solid guitar player, and he fits in really well with us,” he continued. “But yeah, he’ll be contributing in the future. But on this five-song EP, it’s something Phil and I, we wanted to do. We’ve been talking about it since the middle of last year, [before] we got Bobby in the band. It’s something that we wanted to get out. And then, when we do a record afterwards, we’ll definitely be having Bobby contribute. But as far as playing live, he’s just a great guitar player — he’s a great musician and a great presence on stage. We kind of needed that.”
Demmel recently told Metal Master Kingdom that VIO-LENCE was taking its time working on the new EP.
“We’ve got three originals done,” he said. “We had a cover song that we were working on to play at a local live show, and that got canceled. I wanted to have some content, [so I said], ‘Let’s just go in and record this song. Let’s do a video — just have something to kind of fill this void.’ ‘Cause we don’t write all that fast. This is an important release for us. It’s been 30 years since we’ve put something out. We wanna make a statement, so we want it to be good. In the interim, I spoke with [our record label] Metal Blade, and everybody was on board to do this fun little video.”
Killian previously described VIO-LENCE‘s new material as “a cross between ‘Eternal [Nightmare]’ [1988], ‘Oppressing [The Masses]’ [1990] and also our ’93 demo. It’s fast, it’s heavy. We’ve got a couple of good chunk riffs and stuff like that,” he explained. “We wanna get stuff in that’s gonna start a pit up too. But we think people are gonna go crazy when they hear it. We’ve got some heavy lyrics, some heavy subjects. I mean, we’re not a political band by any means, so when I say ‘heavy,’ it’s just heavy shit that comes out of my demented head.”
VIO-LENCE released three studio albums between 1988 and 1993. The group reunited soon after Demmel left MACHINE HEAD in late 2018.
VIO-LENCE performed its first comeback concert in April 2019 at the Oakland Metro in Oakland, California and spent the last year playing select shows in the U.S. and Europe.
Although MACHINE HEAD frontman Robb Flynn was part of VIO-LENCE‘s classic incarnation and played on the band’s debut album, “Eternal Nightmare”, he wasn’t approached about taking part in any of the comeback shows.
Killian underwent a successful liver transplant surgery in March 2018. The year before, Killian was diagnosed with stage four liver cirrhosis, which was caused in part by a genetic condition called hemochromatosis.
