St. Madness MorleyView

by Morley Seaver

St. Madness is one of those bands that quickly gets your attention. Check out their website and you'll find a bunch of corpse-painted evil-looking dudes that quite obviously like to put some sizzle along with their steak. At first glance you might be inclined to think they're black metal from Norway. On the contrary, this is a metal band from Arizona and they have a real variety in their material that is quite pleasing. Not just capable of mowing you down with power, the band sucks you in with some subtlety and gets you laughing with some of the wink and a grin lyrical matter….before mowing you down with power.

The thing that punched me right between the eyes about St. Madness was the high quality of their songs. Two cuts in particular from their MySpace stood out, "Arizona" and "Ever After". Both songs are just excellent and are powered by the singer Prophet's soulful vocals. They're from the band's latest release Vampires in the Church and the rest of the record, I'm happy to say, doesn't stray too far from the lofty goals set by the other two.

The title cut is a hard-charging bottle of Red Bull in aural form that sets the mark high for the remaining songs. Interspersed throughout the record are entertaining pieces like "Covered in Blood Again", and "Carl the Clown" with the laugh-out-loud provoking "Head" almost worth the price of admission alone. Not just mindless fun, Prophet also delves into some social commentary with "Expressionless" and some thoughts on plastic surgery and also about pedophiles on "Missing Girl's Body Found". Altogether this is just an awesome, awesome record.

The band is currently in the studio readying a spring release but I wanted to talk about Vampires and get some background on the band. I spoke by phone with Prophet recently who proved to be a real friendly and interesting guy. Here's our conversation.

antiMusic: Vampires in the Church was very special and I love the heck out of it. Did you know you had something special as it was coming together?

Prophet: Yeah, because even throughout the recording process, it was like effortless. It was the weirdest thing, cause we've made 6 records and that one was by far the easiest to make. It was like we just went in and everyone was in good spirits, pretty much the entire time. You know you hear a lot of bands will break up when then go in the studio and stuff, and they have major band fights over creative differences and whatnot. When we went in to do that record, it was great from beginning to end.

antiMusic: I know you've got new material on the way, but we'll talk a bit about your last record Vampires in the Church. I guess the two things that struck me right away about the record and the band was first of all, the diversity of the material and then also, the lyrical content. So I guess outside of AC/DC, I never really get into bands that have just one gear. I kinda get bored after a while. Did you go through a lot of songs when assembling this record to make sure it kind of stood out?

Prophet: Well, first of all, I write the lyrics for St. Madness. And have from Day One, so if there's anything twisted in there, it's my fault. But musically, we have always been a band that respects many different styles of music. Metal is our spine and our backbone, but in that itself, there's many different kinds of metal, so we don't want to be put in any little box, you know. I mean I love the blues. I love some opera and I love Slayer. I love Louis Armstrong. So for me I just like good music. So if we one day write a reggae song, and we really dig it, I'll put it on the record.

antiMusic: Cool. The lyrics also either make a statement or tell a story. They seem to fit into the two columns. Do you spend a lot of time, or for this record anyway, did you spend a lot of time working on your words, or did the songs just kind of come to you already formed like a story beginning to end?

Prophet: It was weird. The song "Ever After", for instance, was a song that we wrote in one rehearsal in one day. And we all stopped and looked at each other, and went "Wow! Did we just write the coolest song in the world or what?" I write primarily about things that interest me, you know? And sometimes it's political. Like in our record we did years ago, it was called Scare the World, I wrote primarily about the end of time, and about things that I believe that are going to happen to the earth, like an asteroid hitting it and so forth. So, on one hand we'll write crazy stuff that's sexual, like "Head", which is really just a fun song, and it's designed to entertain some and to get under the skin of others.

antiMusic: (laughs)

Prophet: You know what I mean? Like some people would listen to that and love it and others would become very irritated by a song like that. And we're good with both ways. (laughs)

antiMusic: (laughs)

Prophet: Again, it's all back to the not wanting to be…I don't ever want to become so predictable that you know, like you said, AC/DC is one of the few bands that can use the same recipe over and over again and it works. Whereas with us, you never really know what you're going to get from one record to another. But it's always metal and like you asked earlier about Vampires in the Church, we had some songs that didn't make it on the album. There would be four or five tops. We really wrote for the album.

antiMusic: Can we talk about a couple of the songs, either what they're about, or something that happened when recording them, I mean some of them are obvious what they're about but one of the greatest statement songs is "Expressionless". What's up with that?

Prophet: Well I watch my share of TV. And I live in Scottsdale Arizona, and I see a lot of Botox, and a lot of facelifts, and I'm not even trying to say with the songs that I'm against people trying to better themselves, but with some people it seems like it becomes like a tattoo does with others, where it's an addiction. Where once they start cutting up their face or they're adding this or that to their body. It becomes like an addiction for those who have the money to do it. And after a while they all start looking like puppets. I think Joan Rivers, Michael Jackson, you know, all those people, they look like puppets after a while. Even Priscilla Presley, which I hate saying because she's a beautiful woman, but I saw her on TV not too long ago and she does not look like herself anymore. You know there's something to be said about beautiful elderly people. I mean there are some ladies that, as they get older, they don't do all that stuff, and they're still really beautiful. The song "Expressionless", the message behind it is trying to say to people, "Look, you know, if you can become really happy with what God gave you, which is who you are, then you don't always have to worry about "I've got to do this or that, or this or that." A little bit I understand, but some of them go way too far over the top. And I think the end result is major depression. When you look in the mirror and you don't even see yourself anymore, after a while, you just see this face that doesn't move, it's sad.

antiMusic: What about the title cut?

"Vampires in the Church"? It's got two meanings. One, the obvious about vampires. But the lyrical content is also about the Catholic priests that molested children. I was raised Catholic my whole life and I have nothing bad to say about the church, or anybody's church for that matter. But as a Roman Catholic, who by the way hasn't gone to church in a while, I went a few weeks back with my mother. She needed a ride and I took her. I was appalled by anyone who hurts children, let alone someone who's put in a spiritual position like that of authority where not only do kids believe in you and trust in you, but your whole congregation believes in the priest and trusts in him. Those guys who did these evil things are bringing down the whole religion in a sense. Throughout the '80s, I'll give you a for instance, and maybe it'll make sense. In the '80s you had guys like Oral Roberts, saying, look, "I need 8 million dollars or God's going to call me home." And then you had your Jimmy Swaggarts caught with prostitutes, and you had Jim Baker who embezzled money. Jessica Hawn the lady who brought down Jim Baker is a friend of mine, although I haven't seen her in a few years. All those people kind of gave Christ a bad name and I'm not overly religious or even religious but I'm just saying it's kind of like Gandhi. People who put down Gandhi…I think that you're putting down a man of peace who tried to do only good and it makes you look stupid, you know? But the people who represent a religion…when they do terrible things like that to children, they make the whole rest of the world look at that religion and go, "You know what? Screw those people!" And so they do so much damage, it's no different than if you hear you have a congressman or senator who is caught with some guy in a public bathroom to try to get a blowjob. It makes other countries and other people look at our government like, what a bunch of screwballs! I can't judge anybody. I'm no better than anybody else but when you are given a position of authority like that where people trust in you and believe in you, you know, it just makes me so freaking angry to think these people are so sick that they can't control themselves to not hurt children. And so the outrage that's in the lyrics, it's not really saying, you know, screw the church or anybody's church, but it's saying, to hell with people like that who hurt children. I have another song on the same record called "Missing Girl's Body Found".

antiMusic: Yeah, I was going to ask you about that.

Prophet: Okay, that's a true story. It's based on a true story. In 2004 there was a little 11 year-old girl in Florida who was abducted by a man at a car wash that happened to be closed that day because it was Sunday. And she was walking home from a slumber party the next day. There happened to be security cameras running so they caught on tape this guy grabbing this little 11 year-old girl. Her name was Carlie Brusha. Three days later they found her body in the church parking lot. The guy had raped her and strangled her and he's in prison. And his name is Joseph Smith. Anyway he got the death penalty which I'm really glad to report.

But again, it's another person who's preying on children. And I've got two kids of my own, although my oldest is turning 19 in a week. I love being a father more than anything in the whole world and I just cannot understand people who hurt the weak or the elderly, especially the children. So you know, if I feel it I'll put it in a song and write it and you know, take the risk of maybe some people will look at our band and go, ah I don't like people who write about those subjects. And that's fine but I try to be true to my own self and I write about things that are important to me.

antiMusic: Right. Like the song "Ever After".

Prophet: Yeah. "Ever After" goes along with the other songs in the sense that I'm outraged at people who hurt children because I love my kids so much. My eldest son, Joshua, who performs as Happy Evil, with the band, is also our guitar tech, and he also helps me things on stage, I raised him pretty much by myself, as a single dad, and he always worries about losing me and I tried to tell him, look Josh, if I should ever leave this world before you, I'll never really leave you. I'll stay with you until the end. And when you come to heaven some day, I'll be there waiting for you don't worry, you know?
And I'll watch over you while you're here. And that's what the song is about. It's just to say to him, look you don't understand. Even death is not going to separate me from my love for you and for watching over you.

antiMusic: It's just one of the most beautiful songs I've ever heard. You also have another song, one of my favorites, "Arizona". Does being from that part of the U.S. have an effect on your songwriting or was this just sort of a little tribute to your home state?

Prophet: Well, a little bit of both. When I first moved to Arizona it was back in 1986, I didn't know very much about Arizona, I didn't know very much about Native American people. And it's funny, I've lived a lot of places but everywhere I lived I really didn't know very many Native American people. In my search to get closer to a creator or who ever it is that made all this, I found a lot of religions are very, very judgmental and very prideful and boastful and blah, blah, blah. And what I learned about some Native American spirituality is it's very very humble. And when they talk about the creator, they call him the great spirit, and you know, I don't see and prideful boasting or judging of others. And I just have a great respect for them and their spirituality. And I think it goes along with living here in the desert. I love Arizona and I'm a California native, I was born there. There's just something about Arizona. And Arizona has been very good to St. Madness in the sense we came out of here in 1993 and we got to do some really fantastic stuff. And the metal scene here and the people here have been so good to us that that's my way and our way of giving a little something back. And it's really a song of love and respect and kind of a big thank you.

antiMusic: "Arizona" was selected as part of the Montel Williams MS Foundation CD to help aid MS research. Do you know how this came about?

Prophet: Yeah, our manager Marge, wrote them and they said, "Yeah, send the music down and we'll have a look at it" and as soon as they heard it they loved it and wrote us back almost immediately and said yes, definitely we want to put the song on there.

Click here for Part II
 
 

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