antiMusic: Somebody I know saw you on the Black Magic tour. We've seen you guys countless times over the years. And she said it was the first time that we could remember where you kind of blew your cool and was kind of arguing with the crowd and were complaining about the sound setup. And I think it was also about that time that Mad, if I did hear right, missed the whole European tour. Was this about the time that the whole kind of train started coming off the track for Swollen?

Prevail: Well I would say that the train had left the station and it looked like it was going to be a smooth trip to our final destination and somewhere along the way someone did one of those old school things in the movie, you know, when no one's looking and the vaudevillian villain pushes the lever and it goes on the other track and runs over Penelope …sort of thing.

antiMusic: (laughs)

Prevail: Yeah, I think there was definitely a period where we hitting a little bit of a wall of frustration, for certain. We had slated a big European tour and unfortunately Mad's addiction got in the way of him being able to go and it hindered him being able to get on a plane. It was actually a bit of an odd time for us. So Rob and I ended up calling promoters and tour agents and asking, "What should we do? Rob and I are still willing to go over and rock" and we just sort of explained the situation and what's going on. And we did and we had a good time.

But it was definitely odd for me, you know. We're out, just Rob and I, in Switzerland, performing in front of 5-6,000 people and I'm used to turning around and there's Mad and he wasn't there. Not to say that we didn't have a good time seeing the sights. And I love performing. I think it's part of what I was born for, so I definitely never have qualms about getting on stage and being in front of people and having a good time with the music. But definitely the dynamic was just a little different without Mad being there. When we came back, that was pretty much a period where we all sat down and really had to decide if this was something that we wanted to continue to do. and here we are a year and a half later and we've got a new album called Armed to the Teeth out and we're making plans to get back on top and make the resurgence valid.

antiMusic: How close did it come—if at all—to the end of Swollen Members and were you considering your options at any point, I mean seriously considering?

Prevail: Yeah, we were. I think there were definitely times when Mad was questioning even whether he was going to be alive the next day or the following week, you know. I think there were really times when those were serious questions in his personal life, which of course in turn leads to making me have to question what my options were exactly. Where can I go from here? What's happening? How do I save my friend's life? What goes on if we do? Is there going to be resentment for not trying to help earlier? Is there going to be resentment for trying to drag him away this thing that's got its claws so deep into him?

There were a lot of questions that I never had to ask myself before. So, yeah, there were certainly days when I wondered if there was going to be any musical future for me or the group. Luckily we did what not only good friends do but what good groups do, group that have stood the test of time; your Rolling Stones, your AC/DCs, your Red Hot Chili Peppers that have seen the face of what this thing can do to a group and they stick together through thick and thin and go through it and just make it happen and turn it into a positive situation through the music.

antiMusic: As seamlessly as you guys blend in Swollen, I may be wrong, but I think I've read that you guys don't run in the same circles when you're not working. Was it MORE difficult to spend tine away from Mad when he was going through this and wonder what he was up to, or was it necessary to sort of keep the distance to preserve the relationship?

Prevail: The first 9 months to a year I, Rob and I didn't really know. We had come back from L.A. just after Heavy… and Moka had left the group. Things were a little odd. We started recording Black Magic. That came out and everything was awesome. We kept recording and then everyone just sort of needed a little break away from each other. So the recording went down to maybe 2 days a week kind of thing. Rob and I would pop over to Mad's house. Believe me, I've seen him wear sunglasses at night for years, so I didn't think anything of it, you know?

He wasn't acting any differently. Nothing else really seemed like it was changing. And then one day he just sort of came out and said: "Look you guys I don't know if you know exactly what's going on, but these things started as just a sort of weekend party pill. And now unfortunately it's gotten its hooks into me and I'm doing them pretty much every day."

And we didn't realize. I didn't realize. I didn't know how deadly those things were. And they just kept accumulating and he was becoming more and more secretive even though it was out in the open. Do you understand? I think because it came out in the open with him addressing it to us, for him then it became more of a secretive thing that he had to do, in a private place. That of course turned around into he didn't care where he was doing it…(laughs). Everywhere.

So it certainly went through its stages, but saying that, there comes a point in the journey where a person like Madchild, you stand by him because you have the belief in the kind of person he is.

This is a guy that I've seen working, coming from working at Subway to building one of the most powerful independent record labels regardless of hip hop I would say in the music industry. And especially at that time Battleaxe had so much power and validity that it was amazing to see him building it up. The guy used to sleep on pizza boxes. I knew he had it somewhere in him. He just had to go back and find it. And when he did, the creativity that he brought back with him helped finish Armed to the Teeth with such great creativity and it inspired the rest of us. Not only to stand by him but also to kick it into overdrive in the next couple of years.

antiMusic: To move on from that stuff, to happier topics. As you say you come out of that particular s*** storm with a brand spanking new baby record. I've read that Mad said what kickstarted it for him was working with Tre Nyce. He said that you were the one that brought him into the circle. How did you come across him, was he a fan and why did you decide to make him a Battleaxe Warrior?

Prevail: Well Tre came into the fold through a mutual friend that we have, our homeboy Craig, who introduced us. Craig had been telling me for literally a year: "look, you know, this kid is up, he's dope, he's got so much talent." And I was at that point where we were just getting back to figuring our thing out. I didn't know that I was going to be able to have that supportive hand to reach out to another up and coming artist. So I went; "Cool, cool, cool. Get me a demo. Get me something that I can listen to." And then one day I was over at Craig's. And Kemo called and Kemo's like: "This kid Tre Nyce was just here. He spits this freestyle. I'm tripping. Check it out." And when I hear someone like Kemo say that, now my interest is completely peaked. We ended up meeting and doing a studio session. And that actually first song ended up becoming "Bang Bang "which is on the album. And it was amazing because Rob had the beat up. Tre went out on the patio. Thirty seconds later he comes in: "I've got the chorus." "What do you mean, you've only been…the beat's been on for less than a minute. What do you mean you've got the chorus?" "I've got the chorus. No, trust me. I've got the chorus. Give me the headphones." Boom. And that was the beginning of Tre Nyce and the involvement in Swollen Members and Battleaxe Warriors.

antiMusic: Oh man, I've got to apologize in my nervousness, I forgot to say I LOVE the new record.

Prevail: Oh thank you brother.

antiMusic: Like I was telling Mad, like we all know obviously there are a couple surprises. At first I went "What?" It took me back but after I played it 3 or 4 times, I love the entire thing. There isn't a cut I don't love on there. So, the quality, the care that was put in there really shows.

Prevail: I agree. There I take my hat off to Mad and Rob for having such a great vision. And they've obviously… we've been working together for so long, but especially those two on the executive producer aspect of things and then producing the record, they just have a great linear vision of how they want an album to come out. And I think on Armed to the Teeth, after the fact, prior to that they really got the sound and the style dialed in.

antiMusic: When Tre came on board, how far along were you on this record or was it still pretty much the Beautiful Death Machine material that you were apparently working on at the same time.

Prevail: It was. It was the Beautiful Death Machine. And you know there was a period there where we were experimenting with a lot of different sounds which is what we've always done but we were doing it in a particularly interesting way this time around. We would wake up one day and say, okay the last three days we've been doing, whatever, James Blunt. Okay, for the next three days let's do something Outkast like. So we'd just go in that direction. That energy, you know, that vibe and see what we could come up with our own creative outlet put into it. And some of those songs they didn't hit, they didn't stick but we were able to really figure out, how to let loose our inhibitions and just really take the blinders off and just run with something brand new and shock ourselves a little bit. Of course the times are changing man. The sound is fresh on Armed to the Teeth, and the momentum is there. I really feel that there's a great current quality to it that helped to scope the sound of the album.

antiMusic: Exactly. There's a few miles lyrically speaking between "Circuit Breaker" or "Ground Breaking" and "Pornstar". Were you trying to push the boundaries of the Swollen sound or were you simply tired of writing more abstract lyrical matter OR were you thinking this approach might resonate with American audiences more?

Prevail: I mean honestly Morley, I think it was a combination of all three of those things. There are definitely on the album, classic Swollen Members cuts, like "Kyla".

antiMusic: "Funeral March".

Prevail: Yeah. "Funeral March". We always want to maintain that. That's where we come from. That's when you boil everything down, that's the base, rudimentary truth of Swollen Members. We never want to forget that. We never will because of the great access we have to our listening audience. They're so honest with us that it's just perpetuated daily in our thought process. But at the same time as an artist you want to be able to do something new and shock yourself and sort of take yourself out of your element. And I think the shock value on this one definitely registered for a lot of people because of the fact that it registered with us. And you can just hear it in our voice. It doesn't sound like something that's been practiced and polished and contrived. This is us excited in the studio, like "I can't believe I just wrote this verse or this chorus! Let's get it on. I'm so excited to record it right now. Let's get it. Turn the mike on! Boom." And we were able to catch that energy because we were living all in the house together with 24/7 access to the microphone.

antiMusic: You tried on some different sides of you on this record vocally unlike any other record that I can recall. You brought your hood voice for "Flyest"

Prevail: (laughs)

antiMusic: and brought an ethnic flavor to "Bollywood Chick".

Prevail: Yeah. (laughs)

antiMusic: Did you feel more inspired to expand your vocal arsenal as it were this time out?

Prevail: Yeah, I did. I wanted to see…you know we started to listen to…I remember I was driving around one night, I was listening to the new Ludacris album. And he's just so amplified and he just goes into a character, and when you hear it you know it's Ludacris now. I know I've already pigeonholed myself from Balance onward by having sort of stylistically different approaches on almost every song but on this one I thought, okay if that's my thing, I'm just going to go with it. So let me see how many characters I can approach that are suitable to these tracks while still keeping it Swollen Members, you know? I think "Reclaim The Throne" is a great example of that. I was inspired by that old school, Cypress Hill kind of flavor. It has that sort of B. Real sort of quality to it, but it's still me but it has that fresh, out of the box, shocking sound to it that Cypress Hill has always been able to come up with, that just grabs your ear. So there's definitely influences there, where I took the cues from. But I was very excited, yeah, to be able to explore those different voices.

antiMusic: Why did you resurrect "Red Dragon" for this record?

Prevail: (laughs) That was a great gift actually that Moka allowed us to jump on. It had always been one of my favorite songs and one of my favorite songs to perform. And I always thought the crowd reaction was amazing, even after Moka had parted ways from Swollen and followed his solo career. Doing the shows afterwards, people always asked, "You guys going to do "Red Dragon"?" "Ah, well, we can't really… it's Moka's song, you know? But it is a great song. Isn't it dope?" It was cool because we'd made our reconnection with Red Dragon, Colin McKay and Sluggo and Moses. We'd just done our show in Vegas and Jason, who's got this huge show on Sirius Radio loved the song, and actually called up Kevin Zinger and said "What do you think are the chances of Swollen jumping on this?" So Mad in turn called Moka, rehashing the relationship, which I think is great, which led to the remix of "Red Dragon" which we're performing now nightly at the shows. And it's f*cking dope to be able to that classic with your own verse on it. (laughs)

antiMusic: What prompted you to do the cuts that were released this summer, the "Swollen Fornication" and the Nirvana song because they're both amazing and please tell me you're doing the first one in your set?

Prevail: Well, we are going to start revamping the set and looking at adding that to it. We do the Nirvana one, "Smells like S&M". We do that right now as the closing song for the set after the encore. It's a really great way to end a show. It's super high energy. (laughs)

antiMusic: No kidding.

Prevail: But that and "Swollen Fornication", they all came from a little EP that we were going to put out, our version of a mash up, where Rob would take the original beat, sample it, maybe put some drums on it but nothing too far away from the original sound of the song. Then we'd use the actual chorus from the original song as the concept to write our lyrics around. Which is kind of a unique approach and hence how you get songs like "Swollen Fornication" where we're talking about our connection to Los Angeles and Southern California.

antiMusic: You've got a long relationship with Everlast. Collaboration seems to be one of the cornerstones of the rap game. How important are your special guests to the success of the record?

Prevail: Huge. And as you say, Everlast, I think, between him and Evidence, are the two primary examples of people that we've worked with from Balance that have really helped shape our sound. Not only from an inspirational point of view as musicians that we look up to, but as people and friends that they've become. One of my favorite memories is, I was working for a clothing company called Dussault that's still up and rocking and doing great. They opened a store in L.A. and the next day I had to jet back to Vancouver and head to the airport and Everlast had come to the party and he said, "Dude, let me give you a ride the next day."

So we rolled around for like five hours, listened to his new album a couple of times back to back, driving around L.A. and it was… that's a pretty rare moment. I don't think a lot of people get a chance to experience something like that. It showed me the mutual respect that we have for each other. We're rolling around listening to his album before it comes out and he's asking me what I thought. And that to me was a very special thing. It just really encapsulates the great relationships that we have with artists of that caliber. On this one too, we got to work with Talib, Krondon finally, Phil the Ag again, Tech N9ne for the first time, and of course Glasses Malone. We knocked a lot of people off of the Swollen Members collaboration guest list. (laughs)

antiMusic: How cool was it to work with Talib Kweli?

Prevail: I've obviously been a fan of Talib, and most definitely Black Star. So it's been quite a long time that I've been following his tremendous career as an artist. He's a great lyricist, in my opinion, one of the best of our generation. That was the dopest. It was great just to do a posse cut, back to back, no chorus. Just dope mc after dope mc after dope mc all over different beats and tempos so they can really showcase and highlight their skills.

antiMusic: How does the writing really work within Swollen? Is it different every time or do you come up with loose items on your own and then work them up with Mad and apply them to the beat? Or do you have to hear the beat first to write your verses?

Prevail: It's about a 75/25 blend where the music comes first and then we're able to fill in, whether it's a concept or we just want to let everybody just flex and get an abstract verse off their chest. The other 25 per cent is that you'll get an idea or a chorus or a theme in your head and take it to Rob or Tre and try to work out the notation for it, which is always difficult for me because the guys always bug me about being tone deaf (laughs)

antiMusic: (laughs)

Prevail: Somehow I still manage to get a pretty good percentage of choruses on this album sounding okay, so I thank them for their uhm, undying support. (laughs)

antiMusic: Does it take a long time to shape the final form of the song? Do you play with the formation of the verses like who goes first and then second and how do you determine that. Does it have to go strictly with the flow of the lyrics or is it about who's voice sounds better on a different part or what?

Prevail: You know to be honest, it's different every time. Sometimes it's whose in the studio at that particular time and they're ready to go with their verses written so maybe they set off the track. If they have an idea for the chorus and they've written a verse around that concept for that chorus, usually that person will go first and everybody else will follow their lead. But it is back and forth. Sometimes Mad's verse sounds like it should be the intro and mine should be second and we just try to figure out everything within the verses. And like I said earlier, Mad and Rob have figured out that stuff very well.

antiMusic: Part of the band's popularity is directly related to your personal live presence and how you're able to involve a crowd along with your freestyling segments. Do you always look forward to hanging upside on a lighting rig and crowdsurfing or do you sometimes that you've created a monster that you have to feed every night or it'll bite you?

Prevail: (laughs) That's interesting. I think…something happens to me…I reference this show we did six months ago. Rob came back stage and he gave us the mics and the promoter's obviously got a room full of people out there. He's nervous. It's kind of one of his first shows. He's nervous, anxious energy, you know? He's looking in the crowd, doing the Swollen, Swollen, chant, and he's looking at Mad and you know, Mad's walking back and forth doing his pre-show pace up and down hall, to get his focus on. Rob's ready to go, he's on stage about to press the instant replay.

And I'm just standing there as if I'm waiting for someone to bring me a coffee or a plate of food or something like that. And the promoter looks at me and says: "Are you excited for the show, man? Are you ready to go? Are you hyped? Are you ok?" I say, "Just wait, man. Just wait. As soon as my foot hits the stage, it's cool." And he asks, "Can I get you a Red Bull or something?" And I say "No, it's okay. It's cool. It's fine." And he's like "Okay, okay." And I watched him and as soon as I stepped on stage, I looked over my shoulder and I just smiled at him. And then I just ran out into the crowd and jumped off the barricade. I looked over and he did one of those left hand over the front of his face, like oh-my-god-I-can't-believe-he-just-did-that kind of expression. (laughs) I'm a little bit of a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde with it. I live for the live performance. I love the recording aspect of it but I live to be out here doing what we're doing here, which is touring.

antiMusic: With Mad back, you're obviously back on a mission to reclaim the throne in Canada…not that you really ever lost it. How do you think this record's going to do in the U.S.?

Prevail: It's proving to be our most successful album to date, which is amazing. I do think that the importance of us being out here touring and on the road and going back to the mentality of, "Hey you know what? We're not going to be a headlining group straight out of the gate right now. We've got to pay our dues and go back to being the opening group and driving ourselves, and working our way up." And so that's what we did. We started with the Canadian tour just to set everything up. Last maybe 9 months ago, I was just starting to get a feel for how things are going to work and we were driving around in the Suburban, touring the trailer. And then the next tour we did, opening for Kottonmouth Kings, it was the same thing. We drove Mad's car from Vancouver to Michigan and back, you know just really grinding it out. getting a feel for what it really actually will be to start building everything up again. Not necessarily from ground zero because I feel that we've got a strong foundation to build on. But this time let's get the structure so that it will be able to sustain itself over the long durations.

antiMusic: What's the sort of game plan? Do you have a firm idea of when you'll release Beautiful Death Machine or is that just kind of, in the offing, you'll see how everything goes for now.

Prevail: Well, we definitely will, you know, this tour goes up until the 14 of December. We'll take a few weeks off for Christmas and then get back into recording and touring in January. I would imagine we'll record for the first probably 3 weeks in January and then get back on the road in February and then do the overseas stuff and then get back to doing the American and Canadian North American markets and doing the secondary markets, all the places we didn't hit this time and just string it together like we did the last time in Canada. It's funny, people say, why are you playing Guelph? Why are you playing Timmins? Why are you in Sault St. Marie? Well, if you are able to play Calgary, Edmonton, you can do the Sault, you can do T-Bay, you can do Toronto, you can do Montréal, and you can still go over and play Fort Mac. When you pull that needle and thread you're able to draw the whole country together. And that's what we were lucky enough to do the first time and it's a formula that we're curious to revisit and then see if it can work for us again.

Morley and antiMusic thank Prevail for taking time out to do this interview.