We had a chance to speak with Ben Savage of Whitechapel during their stop in Auburn Hills, Michigan on the Vans Warped Tour, 07/22/2016.
Side Stage Magazine: How’s the tour going? Are you guys having fun?
Ben Savage: Yeah, yeah. We’re surprisingly getting… having some success on this tour.
Surprisingly?
No, I mean, you know, we’ve been a band for six albums deep. There’s a lot of young, hot bands out right now. So, I think we’re still kicking it with them.
You have your cult following.
Yes, we have our cult (laughs).
And now you’re bringing in the new ones.
Yes, that’s what we’re doing.
So, I have a few people who I know who are big fans of you.
Ooh.
I asked them if there was anything specific that they wanted to know.
Okay.
They wanted to know which bands influence you guys musically.
Man. There’s just so many.
Main ones? Cool ones?
BS: Man, I don’t know.
The most obscure?
What we try to do is… I don’t know. We just try to rip off from tons of bands. Right? And then just kind of put them together.
You know this is being recorded, right? (laughing) I like it.
No, we just try to rip tons of bands and we just put them together, and, you know, it kind of makes it sound like us. But, ah, as far as… I don’t know. There are tons of bands: Pig Destroyer, Radiohead, Metallica, Slayer. You know, the right-of-passage bands. All those, and then, you know, I’m kind of a nerd. I’ve been searching online for new bands and stuff.
That doesn’t make you a nerd.
But, there’s this band from San Antonio, called Absurdist. They’re like grind core, just crazy, insane. I think they have only have a band camp or something. They’ve played like two shows in their lives, but I think they’re killer.
So you guys listen to anything besides metal?
Yeah… Radiohead, you know.
We heard some rumors that you listen to country. Is that true?
Um.. yes, some of us do. Gabe… Gabe [Crisp] probably listens to the most country, our bassist. Gabe and Alex [Wade], they’re like stage left guitar, and stage left bass. They both listen to country. I don’t know.
Do you have to be left to listen to country?
Well, you’re usually right, wouldn’t you say? It’s the opposite with our band. Well, if you look from the crowd, it’s right. Stage left’s different from left.
I saw a lot of country last week: Dierks Bentley, Tim McGraw was there.
I like some… I like Shania Twain. You know, I just love the big, epic songs, the stupid big country songs. You know, like back in the 90’s, or something, they had the huge productions. They had the craziest musicians from Nashville come in and play and make it sound huge. So that sort of stuff’s cool. But I hate all that mainstream pop bullshit/country.
So you aren’t going to cover Hello?
Hello? By Adele? Oh, Adele. I like Adele.
You’re surprising us today.
You guys have been around for a long time. You’ve been doing this for a long time. So, if you weren’t doing this, what would you be doing?
Trying to do this?
Like Yoda, there is no try, only do?
Yeah. Try to do this. I mean, you know, I kind of lucked out ’cause I fell into a group of guys that are driven. Driven enough to do this. Our guitarist Alex [Wade] used to book shows around areas, so that’s how we got shows. We’d do shows around, you know, we’re from the south, so we’d book shows around the southeast. We’d just meet bands that were touring while we were doing those shows. And we’d hop on tour with the band, later on down the line, and that’s how we got more recognition. Then we signed to Metal Blade and then we got management, and getting management helped us get bigger and more national tours. And we just kind of rode that wave from there. It is like a wave too, cause if you catch it, you know… there’s stuff you’ve got… You’re writing, an album every two years to keep it fresh. Writing, having a new record gets you more tour offers, cause you have a new record , you know. Surprised that we have a new record out on Warped Tour this year. Wonder how we got that. Wonder how we got a new Warped Tour.
Do you surf, you know, with the wave analogy?
Yeah, we’re surfing it, yeah. You’ve got to, or you get kicked off.
Caught in the undertow. That’d be a good song. Undertow.
Yeah. Undertow. That’s a great record. Tool? Undertow. I love it. He knows what I’m talking about. [Points to tour manager] Me and him love Tool, our tour manager.
You know, now, that could have been the first answer, Tool.
Yeah, Tool. Exactly. Actually, on the new record, Phil’s singing now, we’ve been getting a lot of comparisons to Maynard, like his singing style.
That’s a good thing.
Never a bad thing.
So what was the meaning behind Mark of the Blade?
Basically, a celebration of being a band for ten years. Leaving our mark, on the… on what we do, on people. The blade kind of represents the band, in a way. The Tennessee Tri-Star: three stars, east, west and middle Tennessee, represents where we’re from. Then the saw blade around it represents the music, kind of abrasive and straight to the point. The Mark of the Blade, people get tattoos of that blade on themselves, so it’s kind of like a celebration of the band, being in the band for ten years, and celebrating the mark that we’ve laid down.
You have one of those crazy script logos, don’t you? Like, it’s hard to read?
No, no. Our logo is like… We had an old logo that was kind of … distorted.
Yes, that’s the word… distorted. I find those hard to read, but they’re really common.
Yeah. Our past two records have had a new logo on them, that’s actually very legible to read. But some fans don’t like it cause it is legible. They think we’ve sold out.
So, it must be a thing, like a metal thing, to have a distorted logo. It’s a right of passage.
I guess
You don’t look old enough to have six albums out.
We wrote the first record when I was like…
Ten?
Eighteen or nineteen. Wow
And they just come out one a year, every year, six years?
Yeah, that’s a lot of riffs.
So what are your plans after Warped? Do you have tours plans coming up that you can talk about?
Yeah, we’re doing a month tour with Suicide Silence in the States. And then we’re doing a month in Europe. Doing like a headlining tour in Europe, Never Say Die! Tour, with Thy Art is Murder, Carnifex, Fallujah. That’ll be going, Germany mostly. Spain actually too. We’ve never played Spain before.
Is that what you’re most looking forward to? Going over there?
Yeah. We’ve never been there, so that’d be cool. Spain. We’ve been to Europe a few times.
Is there anything you want to pass on to your fans?
Check out the new record, Mark of the Blade.
What exact date was it out?
It was out June 24th. So, it’s been out about a month.
Thank you for talking to us.
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