antiMusic: What made you want to cover the Pantera song "Walk"?

Prophet: Well, I'm a huge Pantera fan. No. 1, I've seen at least 10 times. Dimebag is my favourite modern metal guitar player. It's really a weird thing, Morley, because we had started working on that song literally like three weeks before Dimebag Darrell was murdered. St Madness has always done a few covers, like on Scare the World, we have a version of "Breaking the Law". And on We Make Evil Fun, we have two songs. We have "Hey Joe", and we have "Wild Thing". We've always done a cover here and there. So we were just doing this out of as, we miss Pantera and blah, blah, blah. And the night Dimebag was killed, I had a friend who had a friend, who was actually at the show when he was murdered, so I knew that he had been killed within 5 minutes of him being shot. Because the guy at the show called my friend, who then immediately called me. And I ran to the TV and put on the TV and there was nothing on yet about it. I can't believe that we live in a world, where an idiot will go up on stage and shoot an entertainer. I mean I'm just so blown away by it, still, that you know, once that happened, once Dimebag died, we had talked as a band, and we said, you know what, there's no way we're NOT going to play it now. And so when we went into the studio we all thought about Dimebag when we recorded it and we gave it everything we had.

antiMusic: It's funny we're talking about this today because isn't it the date that he and John Lennon were killed?

Prophet: Yeah. Today is the anniversary of Lennon and Dimebag Darrell's murders.

antiMusic: Does that ever give you pause, do you ever think about that when you're on stage, that there's morons like that out there?

Prophet: Yeah, I do.

antiMusic: And that you've got to be careful that maybe what you say in records, you don't get that same kind of response? Essentially I guess there's nothing you can do. Freaks will be freaks.

Prophet: Yeah but I've thought about it though. I'll tell you back in the '80s you know, you could go to metal concerts, and literally a girl could take her clothes off and run through the crowd and people would whistle and cheer and stuff. But she wouldn't get assaulted and I've gone to concerts now and you know, a girl's just standing there and there's guys groping her and grabbing her. It's a different world now than it used to be. And I find that's the part that's really sad because you know when people go to a concert, they look forward to it. They think about it for weeks, especially you know, these big festivals and stuff, and they save their money. Everybody works really hard. Everybody has a hard life, and their entertainment is really important to them. And I'm just a believer that when people go to a concert, they should be able to have a really good time and go home and talk about what a really good time they had. Not go home and talk about how their girlfriend or wife was groped or how somebody got their head kicked in for no reason. Or someone shooting someone on stage. I don't know what's in the mind of people today. But I think it's really sad because the ultimate end result of that is, your government eventually is going to step in and they're going to shut your concerts down, and they're going to shut down live music in the clubs. And they're going to take that stuff away. If they find that concerts aren't safe anymore or going to a club isn't safe anymore, then they're going to stop having live music. And everybody suffers then because of these idiots.

antiMusic: They're orchestrators of their own demise…it's the same thing as downloading.

Prophet: Exactly. Exactly.

antiMusic: If they keep doing it, bands like yours are not going to be able to pull it through.

Prophet: Well, no. I'll tell you this, okay, now we've found sites online in Germany, in Australia that are giving away our whole albums, for free.

antiMusic: Oh, man!

Prophet: But I have to be honest with you, it's a double-edged sword. One part of me is bummed and I'm going, hey, you know, we could use the money. On the other hand, I'm really happy that people are listening to the music. So that's the tough thing. Before you had the Internet, if the band wanted to get noticed in Europe or in a different country, basically you had to go to specialty shops and find these magazines or find friends in other countries. With the Internet you literally have the world at your fingertips. So that's a great thing for bands, because a band can make itself famous now. If you're willing to do hard work on the Internet, you can make yourself famous in MANY countries.

Before if you were a band in say Los Angeles, you'd send your album to like Kerrang and you know, hopefully they'd write it up. Hopefully...you know, because obviously you don't know. Now you can go online and find hundreds of magazines. So it is double-edged, definitely.

antiMusic: For those of us who are new to St. Madness, can you give us a capsulized background on it...who else is part of it.

Prophet: Well, we started in May 1993, and back then we were called Crown Of Thorns. And we were Crown of Thorns up until August of '97 I think it was. And during 97, we had found that there was a Christian band out of New Jersey, that actually had trademarked the name Crown of Thorns back in '91. So when we realized that they owned the trademark, there was no way we could fight them in court. And the album that we had out at the time was called the Spiritual Visions of St. Madness. So I convinced the band to change the band name to St. Madness. I thought maybe it would be easier on our fans. If you change your name it's never an easy thing. You know, some people love the name of your band and if you change it they suddenly don't like you as much or whatever. For us it was like a natural thing. Over the years we've had a number of people in the band. I'm the original founder. I'm still in it. I'll be in it probably, you know till the end. Although I believe that St. Madness is bigger than the some of its parts. I told the band, I said look, something ever happens to me, and you want to get a new vocalist, go for it. And they keep pointing at my 19 year old son and saying: "You're next". (laughs)

antiMusic: (laughs) It's the legacy.

Prophet: But I have the same drummer and the same lead guitar player now as when we had on Vampires in the Church. And you know, for whatever reason, bands go through members. And you'll see it in the huge bands that are hugely successful and you'll see it in the bands that are just starting out. For whatever reason, ultimately being in a band is a job. And with your co-workers for whatever reason, you become tired of people after working with them for so long or you have what they call creative difference or whatnot. But I still am in touch with every single former member.

antiMusic: Oh, that's cool.

Prophet: Yeah. We've had probably 10 different people in the band since it started. We just kept it together. And here's what weird too, Morley. February 2000 my father died---he was my step-dad but he raised me since I was a year old, so he's dad. And for whatever reason I was burned out on just life and we brought St. Madness down just briefly. And at that time I met Wiley Arnett who's the lead guitar player for the band Sacred Reich. And we became friends and founded a new band together called The Human Condition, which is still together now.

antiMusic: I just found that out yesterday.

Prophet: Okay. I was with The Human Condition from July of 2000 until Nov. 2003. And I had every intention of not bringing back St. Madness. You know, we had done…back when we were in the '90s, we were playing tons of shows and we did a lot of traveling. We just did so much I just think I burned out. While I was in The Human Condition, interest in St. Madness continued to grow and so, that was the reason I put together We Make Evil Fun. I did that because it's a best-of album of the albums that came before it. I wanted to see if there was still a viable interest in St. Madness. And oddly enough while I was in The Human Condition, the punk metal band Guttermouth did a remake of one of our songs called "Sexual Abuse", and they put it on a Fearless Records compilation cd called Punk Goes Metal.

And Punk Goes Metal sold. I mean it was huge, but it sold a pretty fair amount. So all of a sudden our name was in tons of places that we hadn't even had it in before. And again people are writing us. And I started to really miss St. Madness. So in November of 2003 I decided to leave The Human Condition and re-launch St. Madness and so in Jan of 2003 I literally moved out of the rehearsal studio from The Human Condition and went across the hall which is probably (laughs) you know 25 feet away and got the old St. Madness room back. So The Human Condition got a new singer and they've had him now since I left. And they're across the hall. And we're all still really good friends. The thing about when I was in The Human Condition, they were looking for a more positive style lyrist. And I'm not against that. By the time I left we had written 17 songs and we made an EP of four songs. But there was a boxer here by the name of Alana Babydoll Reid, she was the junior flyweight champion and she was using one of our songs as her entrance music, which was kind of cool. I wanted to write darker stuff. I like scary movies, I like gothic stuff, I like medieval castles and dragons and all that stuff so that didn't really fit into what The Human Condition wanted so along with the interest in people writing us, I did one interview for a magazine out of New York called Transcending the Mundane and this was when I was in Human Condition. And in one interview he asked about St. Madness 14 times (laughs). I felt bad when I brought it back to the band and we read it, I just felt like man, this is a different interview for my new band and they're still asking about the old one. It really just kind of had a life of its own and I just felt compelled to go back to it. And I'm glad I did.

antiMusic: I read that you were asked to audition for Sabbath at one point. Is that true and how did they hear about you?

Prophet: That's absolutely true. Well here's a good one for all bands to know: when you're playing a Monday night and you say to your band mates, "Ah there's nobody here. Don't worry about it." I'm here to tell you that you should always think about it, because about 10 years ago we played a Monday night, at a famous bar here that is now gone, called the Mason Jar. And the Mason Jar was a historical place. I mean everybody's played there including Pantera. Including Ace Frehley when he came in through with Frehley's Comet and Bill Ward came through with his band and s forth. And on this Monday night, we were probably looking at 40 people in the whole club. We play our show. And I'm a believer if it's 40 people or 40 thousand, you give it all you've got and we always have and we did. Well, after the show I was sitting having a cigar, and our manager Marge ran up to me and she goes: you've got to come with me right now. I'm like WHAT? I mean I'm covered in theatrical blood, in face paint and sweat. I was trying to chill. So I get up and I walk over to the bar and I'm met by the owner of the bar whose name is Franco. And Franco goes…he's a little Italian guy and he goes, "Dude, man you I tell you, you got to listen to this guy right now. Something good come for you. You got to listen to him." And I'm like "What?" And he brings me over to this guy. And the guy shakes my hand, and he goes "Hello. My name is John Baxter. I manage Rob Halford". And this is in early '97… I don't remember the exact date. But I said, "Oh cool. Really nice to meet you." And at that time Rob Halford still lived here in Phoenix. He goes: "You've got a helluva band there." And I said, "Well thanks a lot." And he said "Problem is I'm not looking for a band." So I said, "Well what are you looking for?" And he said "I'm looking for a vocalist". And I thought, ok, this guy wants to form a band or whatever. And I said "For who?" And he said "For Black Sabbath." And I said "Come again?" And he said, "I'm serious. Rob Halford has been singing in Black Sabbath and him and I had a falling out with Tony Iommi. So I watched your show tonight and you move like Ozzy and you sound kinda like him. Do you think that there's any way possible that you could pull off singing Black Sabbath music?" I said "Man, Black Sabbath is probably my favourite band of all time. Yeah, I think I could do it." (laughs) I said, "Are you being real with me?" And he goes "Yeah, I'm being real with you. Here's what I want to do. I want to call Rob" He picks up the phone, and he called Rob who was in L.A. at the time. He tells Rob Halford and says "I just found the next singer for Black Sabbath." He talks to Rob for a few minutes and then says "I'll call Sabbath and set up an audition for you. Give me a call on Friday." So he leaves, and you know Franco comes up to me and he's freaking out, and Franco knew everybody and he's like "Dude you've got to listen to this guy because he's real." So we look him up on the internet and we find out sure enough, he was Halford's manager at the time. And basically I called him on Friday and he goes, "You know I've got something to tell you that's really crazy. You're not going to believe this." And I said "What?" He said "Ozzy just rejoined Sabbath and they're going to put together a record and a tour." And I said, "You're kidding me." I mean Ozzy had been out of Sabbath since 1979 or whatever it was, so you know, nobody thought they were going to join together. It was just weird timing. But Baxter basically said, "Look stay out there. You're a great vocalist and you'd fit that band really well. And if that ever comes up again, you'll hear from me." And that was when Ozzy got back with them for that tour and they did the two new songs.

antiMusic: Oh my god. So what were you thinking when that guy gets on the phone with Halford in a bar and says he found the next vocalist for Sabbath?

Prophet: I was numb. I was already tired from the show we'd done. But instantly, I woke up…wide awake, I'll tell you that. (laughs)

antiMusic: Yeah, no kidding.

Prophet: And you know, for me, if I had gone to the audition and had got it or not got it, either way, it was a huge honor to even be considered for that.

antiMusic: Absolutely.

Prophet: By a guy like John Baxter. So it's a huge honor either way. I wish you know, I'd get a call from Tony Iommi now. (laughs). Because I'm ready man. I'd take a shot, you know. (laughs)

antiMusic: Yeah. Absolutely. You said before that your son is part of the crew. Does it seem strange at all for you to act the role of front person and talk about being "covered in blood again", when he's standing behind you...I know he's 19 but maybe when he was younger?

Prophet: He was raised in the band. Joshua has been going to Crown of Thorn and St. Madness rehearsals since it literally began. Nothing shocks him. He knows his dad and it's very important for people to know, I'm an entertainer, and as Prophet I'm an entertainer. Some people that makes them feel disappointed because you know they want their metal bands to be angry and pissed off all the time and I'm really just a regular guy. When I go home I'm really just my kids' dad. When I'm on stage as Prophet, Joshua understands the difference in being an entertainer and performer and being a real nut job. I may be crazy but I'm not a nut job and so everything I write, take it with tongue and cheek. I had some guy call me, and I'm your new biggest fan, and it was some guy from California and he said, I want you to know I burned all my other metal albums. I'm only listening to St. Madness and you're my god. And I'm like, look dude (laughs) Like I appreciate that and I'm glad you like our music but please don't burn your metal albums. I love metal. Or give them to me. And I said, listen you've got to understand, what we do, I'm an entertainer. And that's all that I am. And I write from my heart, and I sing from my heart. And ultimately like Alice Cooper, like Ozzy Osborne, they're entertainers. Slayer are entertainers. We're in the entertainment business. So I just try to tell people; try not to take your music too far to where you're starting to judge how you look at life by what bands you listen to, and things like that, because some people take it too far. Like you said, you know, we can get, someone can get shot on stage just because of something I say in a song and that's really ridiculous.

antiMusic: You describe your music as carni-metal. You've got the big stage show with special guests. At what point did it evolve into the theatrical side of things or was it like that from point one?

Prophet: You know, our first album which we put out in '94, and it's called Loneliness is Black. We did not wear face paint. You know we had a light show. We had banners, and we had stuff like you know fog, but not really theatrics or anything like that. I'll tell you exactly what did it. One part of it was Metallica turning over and becoming an alternative metal band. You know I can remember when heavy metal started to take a big hit for the worse here in America. I remember saying to my band, at least we have Metallica. And then all of a sudden, Metallica's music and their attitude, even more than their music, seemed to change. And I'll be honest I got disgusted with it, and I'm metal to the death. I love metal music, because since I was a teenager, metal gave me an outlet. It gave me a life, and it gave me a huge opportunity to be creative. I love heavy, aggressive music so when Metallica changed, I was pretty upset. And here in Arizona in the early 90s and pretty much around the country, here and I'm not sure if it was the same in Canada, alternative music became like the big thing. And Nirvana and all that stuff, and I'm a Nirvana fan, but I was not a fan of the Nirvana fans who were trying to kill metal and trying to say… you know all of a sudden, everybody's yelling Long Live Rock and Roll and the next day they're making fun of you if you like metal, or if you're in a metal band. So the more that kind of music became popular and the more bands like Metallica were, I don't want to say sellout because it IS the music business but the more they started to sell their music of soul away from what so many people believed in, we went heavier, darker, and more theatrical. And we had a special show that we were doing here for a magazine and I told our manager a week before the show, I said, you know, for this coming show, I'm going to wear face paint. And I said, I don't know how the band's going to react to that, but that's what I'm going to do. So she said, well you'd better tell them. So I went to rehearsal and I said, look guys, when we do this show, I'm going to wear face paint. And I really thought I would be either laughed out the room or kicked out of the room. Our bass player at the time said, "Well if YOU do it, we'd better do it too, or we'll look dumb". And I'm like "You guys can do it if you want. You don't have to." And they're like "No no no. We WANT to". And once we started doing it, that was it. And you know, we got people writing us, and some were saying, oh you're a KISS rip-off. We got a review for our second record Spirits of Visions in Metal Mania. And the reviewer said we were trying to rip off Marilyn Manson, which made me realize that the person never listened to our album because our music was metal and Marilyn Manson was very industrial and so forth back then. So I felt that he saw the face paint and he didn't like face painted bands, so he wrote a bad review. He probably skipped through the record real quick, you know. And I'm like "Wow, that's pretty unfair because again, we're entertainers." If you come to a St. Madness show and you work hard all week and you're going to spend your dollars to come see our band, we want to give you something that you're not going to see walking down the street everyday. Something a little different. And that's why we just decided to go much more theatrical and a whole lot darker. You know the first record, it was heavy and it was dark, but it wasn't anything like the rest of the records. But I'm glad it all happened Morley because we became what we did and I'm real happy with it.

antiMusic: As you mentioned before, you're also a cancer survivor. Obviously it would change your perspective. Has that filtered down to your records?

Prophet: Living through cancer? Yeah, in the sense it made me a lot more grateful to be alive, I'll tell you that. And it woke me up on some levels. When I'm healthy and things are going good, I have a tendency to take life a little bit for granted and when I became that sick—and here's the weird thing—we recorded the album Vampires in the Church in May of 2005 and then in 0ct. of 2005 I was diagnosed with cancer. And my son was freaking out because here I just wrote in the song about, look if I ever leave the world before you…and right after that I'm diagnosed with cancer. It just made me stop and really take a look at life, you know, my loved ones, and it gave me a greater appreciation even with me sick. I don't know that if it made me right certain words on the new record or anything like that, but maybe you'll pick up on a different attitude or something coming from me when you hear the new record.

antiMusic: You are in the process of putting together the new record. You are recording in January so I imagine most if not all the songs are done. What can you tell us about it?

Prophet: Well the record is going to be called Saintanic. And the title cut on the album, the reason why it was written, is because from the start when we put this band together, we always had people coming up to us saying "You're satanic". And you know, "blah blah, blah, you worship the devil, and you do blood on the stage and you do all this stuff". So finally after all these years I just wrote a song about it, which, it never really answers the question. It just says, look, every where we go people are asking us you know, are we satanic. And we're Saintanic. (laughs) I can't wait to put this new record out. We wrote some incredible tunes. I'm so glad to be working with the guitar player from Vampires in the Church again because we have like a really good songwriting relationship. I mean we can look at each other and just write songs. When we recorded Vampires in the Church, it went so easy because we all have a click, and the drummer…he was on all our records except the very first one, so having him back again as well spurred a whole bunch of creativity. Over the last two years during my cancer and so forth, when I was going through chemo and all that I was working with two other guitar players and we were writing some stuff it didn't really work out, and I thought well what are we going to do? While we're looking for a guitar player I started working on some acoustic stuff, and we had talked about putting out an acoustic record for St. Madness. So we recorded six songs for that. In the process of that, Christian Satan who on the Vampires in the Church record went by Alter Boy, came back to the band and we started writing some heavy stuff. And once we started going back to heavy stuff I put the acoustic, the whole idea of putting out an acoustic record on hold, although I do have every intention of finishing that record. We were just so excited about the heavy stuff. So you know one thing led to another and we're actually also going to be doing our version, a cover, or remake of "Crazy Train" by Ozzy. I have a couple of songs that are near and dear to the heart. One song is called "The Sunday Paper", which the lyrics are dedicated to my father who passed away in 2000. There's also a song on there that's called "You Are My Light", which I wrote the lyrics in dedication to my mom, who last February was diagnosed with ALS or Lou Gherig's disease.

antiMusic: Ah geez, your family's been hit hard.

Prophet: Yeah. I lost my father in 2000 and finally got my brain and everything back and St. Madness back in Jan of 04 and things were going ok and I'm hit with cancer. I make it through that. They cure the cancer. I go through the chemo and a year later my mother's diagnosed with Lou Gherig's disease. Yeah, it's been one heavy duty mountain to climb after another. Which did have some affect on me in the band as far as just writing and attitude and so forth but you know I've decided illness and death comes for us all. What I'm going to do now is just be there for my mom and be strong for her. And be the best son I can be. At the same time, give everything to the band that I have. And like I said, I can't wait to go record.

antiMusic: Do you have a potential release date? You're recording all through Jan. so I imagine mid spring or so?

Prophet: Yeah, it'll be sometime in 2008. I don't have a definite date yet. And the reason for that Morley is because we put out every single one of our records on our own label, and I'll be honest with you, we have not aggressively sought out too many labels. 

antiMusic: That was my next question.

Prophet: Yeah, I write Brian from Metal Blade Records. I email him a few times a year and he always writes back. And we've submitted a couple of records to him that Metal Blade Records turned down. Metal Blade even turned down Vampires in the Church.

antiMusic: I can't believe that. They're nuts. I figured at this point you just decided you were going the indie route and you didn't care about labels. I can't imagine how he could have turned Vampires down.

Prophet: They did though. They turned it down but they did it nicely. They said hey we think you've got some great material on there but it's not really Metal Blade material right now. So I'm like, cool, cool, you know. We haven't really sought out any bigger labels. I mean if someone ever wants to step up, I'll be glad to work with anybody if they're good people. Of course the more financial capital you have behind you, the farther you can get in this world. We've done everything on our own dime and on our own sweat and our own hard work. 

antiMusic: Well you're probably further ahead in so many ways. You hear so many stories about bands doing it on their own now because they're frustrated with major labels.

Prophet: Well the beauty of being independent, you can put out whatever record you want. You don't have some label guy coming in, and going, well I don't like these last two songs. I don't want them on the record. We make the record we want to make. So we have that independence. And I figure if you put out enough independent records, that even if you suck, to a bigger label, they're going to understand that they're signing what's on all those other records. So they're not going to look at you, like if it's your first record. They're not going look at you and go, we're going to shape you into what's popular today. Because you really couldn't do that with a band like St. Madness. You can't suddenly make them Mudvayne or Mushroomhead, or Avenged Sevenfold, or any of these people. We are what we are. So here and there smaller labels have stepped up here and there and offered us deals and we just haven't found anything to make it worth while for us to stop doing it on our own label.

antiMusic: This is kind of tied into what we're talking about now, but do you have any plans for an extensive tour following the release of the record or is it mostly dependant on sales.

Prophet: It's dependant on sales. The sad thing is, if you go online, and you Google St. Madness and put it parentheses, thousands of returns come back. And we have people write us from all over the world, all the time, asking when we're coming to their town, to their country. There's this huge metal magazine in Brazil, one of them is named Rock Brigade. There's Webbanger online, there's Roadie Crew. We've done interviews in Rock Brigade, three different ones already since '99 and they put out 300 thousand copies per issue one month. They have a huge readership and one of their writers over there, told me he thinks St. Madness is one of his ultimate favourite metal bands of all time. And this guy interviews everybody. And I'm so honored by that. I'm also sad by that because a lot of people write us from Brazil and ask "When are you going to come do concerts in Brazil?" And man I tell you I would pack my stuff right now, but we have to, you know, be able to at least get there and back. We need someone to sponsor us or whatever down there and say yah, we want you to come down and play the festivals. We get people writing us from Europe all the time, saying St. Madness would be really big here in Sweden. All my friends have heard of you. And again with the Internet, and people getting your music for free and so forth, you lose a lot of your ability to tour. So what we're doing we're making different kinds of t-shirts and merchandizing now and trying to get enough sales with that so where we can do some more traveling again. We've played at two Milwaukee Metal Fests. And those are really cool because you get a hundred bands from all over the world, and when we played those we got to play around with like The Misfits and Six Feet Under

antiMusic: Ah cool, good cross section.

Prophet: You know, Cannibal Corpse…so many different bands from all over the world. Emperor and Sodom and Death. Like we played the 1998 Milwaukee Metal Fest, and so did Death. So we got to see Chuck not long before he died. It's a real honor. And here's what was really cool too Morley, was out of that hundred bands, 90 of them were death metal or black metal. Maybe 10 of them were more classic or regular metal. We kind of fall into the more old school, mixed with some modern kind of sound. Everybody was totally cool to us. We didn't get bad attitudes from anybody. It was just a great atmosphere. I'm a band person, I LOVE hanging out with other bands. And I love seeing other bands. And I feel really bad hearing other bands talking s*** about each other , or being mean to each other at gigs, or limiting each other. We have a belief, with any band that opens for us. We never cut their sound less than us or tell them that they can't have certain lights. Listen if your band can kick our ass on stage, all the better for you. I'll go home that night and say to the band; "Look we got our ass kicked tonight. We better rehearse harder." I don't believe in holding back other people. I see a lot of that going on in the music, and even on the small club level they do it there as well. And I think the whole thing is sad because I guess everybody feels like, if I don't step on everybody that big mister label guy isn't going to discover me or whatever. And my belief is if your band kicks ass, and you know it kicks ass, and you believe it, you have no reason to treat people like s***. If you really kick ass that much, people are going to know it. And you don't have to be mean to other bands, and put them down, or play long sets so you cut into the other band's set and stuff. I just don't believe in that stuff. 

antiMusic: There's a thing called karma.

Prophet: I believe in karma. And you're right. Whatever you put out there, you're going to get back. And like I said, if a band plays great that night, I'll be the first guy to go up to them after the show and say to them, and say, "Man you guys kicked ass . And I'm glad we were on the bill with you." But you know we've even got some negative flack from some bands, and stuff. And I just look at it, like wow man, you know, at this point in my life, I'm doing it because I love music and I have a really good time doing it. I love creating the art of music. That's why I keep doing it. Whether I make money or I don't make money, you know. We've HAD money. We've RUN OUT of money. We've got to do some really great things, so if I died right now, I'm fine. I'm proud of the life I've lived.

antiMusic: That's a cool attitude to have.

Prophet: In 1998, we got to play side stage for Van Halen. They came through here with Gary Cherone on vocals, who I never thought was right for that band…(laughs)

antiMusic: No not really.

Prophet: But it was a great experience. And they had Monster Magnet with them and it was cool because when we did our set, all the Van Halen crew came over and watched our show. And it was cool. The band didn't but all their crew did. (laughs)

antiMusic: (laughs) That's still cool.

Prophet: Oh it was awesome. I mean growing up, the old Van Halen was one of my favourite bands back then. I like having a good time Morley. And since the '90s, so many people are gloom and doom, or negativity or let's write more songs about how mom and dad didn't give me enough love. You know, and the thing that is sad, I hear a lot of people put down the '80s or make a joke about it but in the '80s all those bands were about having a good time. You go out you, you party with your friends, you get wild, you have a great time. I still believe in that. When people come out to our shows, I want them to have a really good time, and it want them to go home going wow, that was awesome. I don't want to give people too much doom and gloom and that's why we always put a bit of humor in our show and in our music. Again, you know if you pay your money to go to a St. Madness show, we want you to have a good time. I love it when people sing with the band. When they know the lyrics to the songs. I write songs on purpose where I try to sing in such a way where you can understand what I'm singing because I want people to be able to learn the lyrics and they can sing along with us.

antiMusic: Yeah, so they feel as though they're part of the show as well.

Prophet: Yeah, well they are. You know a band has really made it when your crowd can sing back all the lyrics to you. I'm working on one right now for next year that should go over well. Right now it's a poem, but it's going to be a song called "f*** You It's Christmas".

antiMusic: (laughs) 

Prophet: What it's about is here in America over the last five years or so, maybe a little more…

antiMusic: You can't say Christmas?

Prophet: Exactly. People are putting down Christmas! Here's what cracks me up. You'll see a lot of people that will make fun of a guy like Jesus and put out bloody pictures and you know, I say to those guys, if you're really so bad ass why don't you go put down Mohamed. Because you're putting down somebody who was a good soul who tried to do good for people. Like Gandhi, I have a lot of respect for people like Gandhi or Mother Theresa, people who give up their whole life just to help other people. I don't believe in putting those people down. I just think it shows weakness to me. So you know, for me, I just want to have a good time, and we will have some bands from time to time, on the Internet write to us, "Take that corpse paint off. You're a disgrace." Because we write songs like "Head" (laughs) and stuff like that. But that's exactly why I write stuff like that. I WANT St. Madness to irritate some people. I want St. Madness to get under some people's skin. I don't want to be loved by everybody. Again, we wouldn't be a shock metal band anymore otherwise . So I'm always trying to think of some way that I can say something that I can get people go, "Did he just say that?" And "f*** You It's Christmas" basically says look, a long time ago, some good men started America. And those men believed in a greater power than human beings. They believed in a god. And they put "in God we trust" on our money. They were willing to give their lives to start a country where people could be free. They could believe in God and worship him without persecution or if they chose not to believe in God that's fine. You could be of any race here. You could be of any culture. You could have any political beliefs. The whole idea of why they made America was for people who felt persecuted in other countries could come here and not feel persecuted. Now the very people who were saved by these early people now have their beliefs are put down. In other words they're saying, we want you take out "in god we trust" because we want to separate church and state. We don't want this and we don't want that. Well I'm a person who believes, if you take out a higher creator out of your country, your country is going to become lawless and is going to fall apart because human beings have no reason to be nice to each other if there really is nothing after this life. There's no reason for people to act decent because then everybody's going to be, screw everybody, who cares? And I look at what's going on around me in the world, and I'm a lyricist so I write about it. Sometimes it makes people really angry. We had a song, actually a record in 1998 called God Bless America and the lead song, "God Bless America" I wrote about my dislike of Bill Clinton. And I basically talk about his scandals and his lying and all this stuff. And you know we had a certain amount of people who were like, Bill Clinton's a great president, how can you say that blah blah blah. And I'm like, well, you know, I'm stating my opinion, and don't think on it too hard, I'm just an entertainer. I'm not trying to lead people anywhere. Unless it's to lead them to go buy heavy metal records. (laughs) Buy metal records. I don't care whose. They don't have to be a St. Madness record. But yeah, support metal. I tell people try to buy some of your local metal bands' records, as well as the big guys that you like who are on the radio. But try to buy a few albums of your bands in your home town. Continue making metal strong. And I think metal is stronger now than it was in the '90s in America.

antiMusic: Absolutely. It's diversified so much and I think the great equalizer is the internet as you've found out right?

Prophet: Ahhum. And for me again, when I say heavy metal, I'm saying death metal, black metal, progressive metal. I put them all under heavy metal because the term heavy means loud and heavy and metal. So you know in America, don't use heavy metal because they'll think you mean Poison. Or Warrant. Or Firehouse or some other glam band. And yeah, glam falls under that term, but you know when the term heavy metal came out, it certainly wasn't some guys in spandex. It really was about the bands that were out, that were the Black Sabbath and the darker bands like that. That's what started those terms. And then all of suddenly glam rock got popular and they were suddenly calling bands that were really power pop, they were calling them metal. And they weren't really metal to me. I don't consider Poison a metal band. Or Warrant. I know they do. But I don't really consider them metal. And to me the Godfathers of metal, besides people like Black Sabbath, I'd have to say Motorhead. Motorhead's been around for ever.

antiMusic: Priest.

Prophet: Yeah, Priest. I remember one thing that I didn't like about Pantera and there really was only one, and that was in the later years, when they were doing concerts, Phil would be running around on stage going, "We're the new kings of metal". And I'm standing there going, you know Phil, I love you dude but have you forgot Iron Maiden and Judas Priest? And you're the king of metal? I mean I love Pantera but you certainly were not the kings of metal. Although I will say in the 90s, Ozzfest and Pantera were probably the two biggest saviours of metal in America

antiMusic: Absolutely you're right.

Prophet: It really made me sick when I saw certain metal bands suddenly wearing plaid and dressing like the alternative people. I'm like "Oh my god, so you guys are really into it for whatever's popular. There's really no soul coming from you." And I thought, man you can't do that because, like standing in the ocean, a lot of fish are going to swim by you, and they're the trend. If you sell out what's in your soul to follow a trend, that trend is always going to have a certain shelf life that's only going to be so long. And once you do that….like if we had jumped on a trend then all of a sudden…like for instance in the '80s when you had so many spandex, big haired bands, after a while the whole thing became sort of a joke because people had seen so many guys running around with their poufed up and their spandex and their so forth. Everyone was trying to be a guitar god. You know, too much sugar rots your teeth. And too much of a good thing makes you tired of it. So I am grateful for what the '80s did in the sense that it made bands take a step back and the bands that decided to stay metal, they went really heavy metal. A lot of them is what brought death metal and black metal more to the forefront. So I think in that sense, that's good. But we always stayed metal, no matter what. We never changed. And I don't think we ever will. as long as this band exists we're going to do what St. Madness does how we do it. And we're never going to drop our metal roots. I could never even imagine that. I would not St. Madness suddenly to sound like Nickelback. I respect those guys, but that's not what I want to be.

antiMusic: Well, I could talk to you all day but I've kept you way past how long I said I would. Is there anything else you'd like to add?

Prophet: Cool, I appreciate that. First, I like to say, big thanks to you for that really nice review that you wrote about the record. We really, really appreciate it. And it's close to my heart. Because ultimately whether you make money or you don't make money in music, when people feel that good about something you've created, that's a huge honor. And that's really what I'm in it for anyway. I want people to enjoy the music that we create. When people do enjoy it, it just puts a huge smile on my face. Because that's why we put it out there. Like I said, we went through periods where we had money. I've owned three different BMWs and blah blah blah. And the I went through periods of time where I'm eating a lot less. (laughs) All in all, that's the beauty of it, it's down in the trenches. When we do it, it's obvious we do it because we love it, because we keep doing it, regardless of what comes our way, good bad, indifferent. And we do it simply because of love of music. And I feel honored to even be on stage. Every show we do, I never forget when I'm standing up there, "Hey, This could be my last show." You know, anything can happen. And I just thank God or whoever for giving me an ability to create music and be one of the guys on stage because when I was a kid I was in the audience looking at bands like Black Oak Arkansas. I remember looking at Jim Dandy from Black Oak Arkansas when I was like 14 or whatever, thinking man, I wish I could do that. And at that time I had no aspirations of being in a band whatsoever. But he was so cool on stage and people were having such a good time and I was thinking, man I would like to be a party host. I would love to be the guys on stage that are creating this party for all these people here. And lo and behold in 1998, Black Oak Arkansans came to Arizona and we got the opening spot and I got to get Jim Dandy drunk on our bus. At that time we had a tour bus.

antiMusic: Ah how cool is that?

Prophet: (laughs) And they didn't have one by the way. (laughs) They had a beautiful conversion van and a nice trailer but they didn't have a bus. So we sent our guys over to their guys and say, look tell the band if they want to come relax before they play, please do. So we get a knock on our bus door and whose down there but Jim Dandy. And he says to my manger, "Ma'am, someone said we could come relax on your bus." And she said, 'Why you're Jim Dandy aren't you." And he said, "Yes ma'am, I am." And he was the most, of all the rock stars I've met, and I've met a lot of them, he is the coolest dude, and….I don't know if you ever heard of Black Oak Arkansas..

antiMusic: Absolutely. Jim Dandy to the rescue.

Prophet: Right. He is the same guy on stage as he is off stage. He's very polite. No rock star bulls*** is to be found on the guy. He'll hang out with you. He hung out and talked with us all night. I mean his band was saying, "Jim we gotta go." And he was sitting out there and what was cool was people were showing up with 30 year old posters for him to sign. (laughs) and he was just blown away at all the people. But it was an honor to open for him. And I got to say, "Jim when I was a kid, I saw you in Springfield Missouri, and I was looking at you and going, man I wish I can be a singer like that some day. And lo and behold I'm opening for you. Man I can't thank you enough." And he was just the coolest dude, you know. He said "Well, you keep being you and I'll keep being me and we'll keep rock and roll going." And I was like, "Alright man." And it was funny because the Black Oak Arkansas fans of course, as you know, they're not as heavy as we are, so when we opened for them, and I'm drinking blood onstage and their jaws were on the floor. (laughs) but Jim Dandy loved it. God he gave us his home phone number and his wife's name. He put us on their website, on MySpace if you look at the bands that they've performed with, they put our name in there. Like I said, I personally got to do, tons and tons of stuff. So if I left the world tomorrow, I have no regrets. Well thank you again for the interview. 

antiMusic: It was my absolute pleasure. Thanks so much for the time, Prophet and congrats once again on Vampires in the Church. It's a special record.

Prophet: Thank you so much for saying that. Take care.

Morley and antiMUSIC thank Prophet for taking the time for this interview.

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