A new direction for Flotsam and Jetsam!
For their seventeenth album, Rats in the Temple, the band which has been active since 1981 (under various names, adopting its current name in 1984) features Eric A.K. (vocals), Michael Gilbert (guitar), Steve Conley (guitar, Fifth Angel), Ken Mary (drums, Fifth Angel, Metal Church), and Bill Bodily (bass, Contrarian, Inhumatus, Toxik) have signed with Napalm Records.
Harvesting the Hate kicks off the album with a sound that’s both aggressive and epic in its use of samples, allowing the modern mix to pay homage to the imposing elements before the vocals kick in, making the blend even more dynamic, whether during the fierce passages or the clean vocals. Thrash roots are exploited to the fullest, while Damnation takes on darker, almost theatrical tones, contrasting with the effective and aggressive Old School roots, remaining in a fairly straightforward style, whereas Absolution hits hard right from the opening seconds, featuring the signature staccato riffing characteristic of the genre. The band shifts to a slightly more accessible sound with Blame the Knife, a track with a catchy, head-spinning groove that will appeal to newcomers to the band’s world, as well as to festivalgoers passing by the stage. Then, the title track Rats in the Temple features a long sample to ease things into before kicking into high gear, once again unleashing that highly effective, jerky energy. It’s worth noting that the track features not only lead vocals but also plenty of backing vocals alongside its devastating rhythm section, while The Ghost Behind My Door channels Thrash Metal’s the most aggressive and ferocious side to deliver a lively foundation while openly drawing inspiration from power metal for the chorus. The epic solo provides a smooth transition to the final chorus before First on the Spike, where the song returns to a heavy rhythm section – again softened by the vocals, which vary slightly at times, offering mysterious touches – while the lead guitar lines are sharper. The Edge of Nowhere picks up on these ethereal elements for the intro before hitting full throttle, albeit with a few brief pauses, and then Last Rites offers us a true moment of respite with its introduction that leads into thick riffs, where fans will be happy to raise their fists and mosh along, especially during the unifying chorus. The heavy vocal peaks play a major role in these energetic moments, but the track quickly transitions into the groovy A Taste for War, which starts off slowly, allowing the drums to carry a minimalist yet melodious vibe that lets the band slow things down before picking up the pace again with the epic Her Blood Your Pain. Here, too, the band doesn’t shy away from its haunting harmonies between two rougher passages, then shifts to piercing peaks with Anthem for the Broken, which is sure to wreak havoc in the mosh pits before uniting them once again during the choruses, and the track strikes me as the perfect opener for one of their upcoming shows. The album closes with the powerful intro to Not Goin’ Down That Way, followed by a rhythm section straight out of American Thrash Metal, nuanced by a few ethereal touches, which space out the assaults to deliver a finale where all their influences come together brilliantly.
Their reputation is clearly well-established, but Flotsam and Jetsam takes pleasure in balancing their tracks between pure violence and epic elements, and you can really feel it! Rats in the Temple isn’t just another album from an already legendary band, but truly another cornerstone in their legacy!
90/100
A few questions to Eric A.K., vocalist of the Thrash Metal band Flotsam and Jetsam, about the release of the band’s seventeenth album, Rats in the Temple.
So just to let you know, I will sometimes cut my microphone because I’m a bit sick, so I don’t want to cough when you talk.
Eric A.K. (vocals): Oh, that’s all right, I’ll probably cough a few times myself.
First of all, thank you for taking the time to talk with me. How do you feel?
Eric: I’m good. I’m very good. It’s a little warm out today, but I’m good.
So, the first question is how would you describe Flotsam and Jetsam‘s music without using the word Thrash Metal on any other subgenre?
Eric: Oh, well. I like to think of it as aggressive emotional music. We write to incise an emotion from people, and it doesn’t matter what emotion, whether it’s aggression, anger, sadness, whatever we want to create emotion.
At first the band had 3 other names. Do you remember why you officially picked the name Flotsam and Jetsam back in time and how do you still link it to the music you play now?
Eric: That was a Jason Newstead thing. He was reading one of the Hobbit books, the JR Tolkien books, and I think it was either a chapter title or two characters in the story named Flotsam and Jetsam, and they got lost, I guess, out exploring. And then Jason looked it up, and it means “wreckage and garbage from a shipwreck”. And it also means like homeless people and bag ladies, and people who live in the street, and it’s just kind of a misfit kind of a name, and we felt like that kind of fit us well.
So Flotsam and Jetsam will soon release its 17th album named Rats in the Temple. How do you feel about the album?
Eric: I think it’s up to par with the last 2 or 3 at least. It definitely turned out better than we had hoped. And we put a lot of work into this one, so we hope that the public loves it as much as we do.
Maybe you could sum up Rats in the Temple in only three words?
Eric: Three words… I’m gonna say… I don’t know, “another attempt at aggression”.
That really fits! So Rats in the Temple happens two years after the previous album. Are there any changes you noticed in the composition process?
Eric: No, not really. The last three or four records we’ve been writing and recording the same way, and it seems to be working for us. So until something changes or we decide to try something new, we’ll continue recording the way we’ve been recording and writing the way we’ve been writing.
So absolutely nothing new, just your recipe?
Eric: Yes, yes.
Flotsam and Jetsam’s sound is of course rooted in Thrash Metal and now reaches more than 40 years of career. Maybe there are some bands you could quote as influences?
Eric: There’s a lot of bands that are influences on us. Of course, when we started, it was the beginning: Dio, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest… Once we had our first record out, that’s when Metallica started getting into the scene really big and that had quite an influence on us too, but it’s just the main staple, big name Metal guys that were around in the mid-eighties.
Maybe you have some other influences apart from music to create your music and to write lyrics?
Eric: The news and whatever is going on in the world at the time, regardless of whether you sit down and try to write something about that stuff, if you hear about what’s going on in the world over and over and over again, it’s going to influence your writing at one point or another. So even if I didn’t sit down and go, I’m gonna write a song about whatever is going on in Iran or whatever. That definitely has an influence on your thought process, because you hear about it all day and every day. But I usually listen to music, I see what kind of emotion it strikes in me, and then that’s where I start my writing process as far as lyrics.
Maybe you have a personal favorite song on Rats in the Temple?
Eric: That’s a tough one, because I like almost all of them. I think that Harvesting the Hate is one of my favorites. Rats in the Temple, of course, is one of my favorites, and… jeez, there’s a lot of them that I like a lot, so it’s been hard to pick one favorite out of them.
Maybe there was one which was the hardest one to complete for you as a vocalist?
Eric: A Taste for War. It was difficult because Ken (Ken Mary, drummer, ed.) and I just couldn’t agree on one little part. It really bugged me. He really loved it, and we battled back and forth about that for a long time, and Ken finally won, like he usually does. So we left the part in, it hasn’t bothered anyone but me since, it’s just one of my taste things, but other than that, they were all pretty difficult. I’m 61 years old now, so singing Happy Birthday is difficult at this point.
Almost all songs are, at least to me, quite majestic at first, then really aggressive, of course, due to Thrash roots. Is this the band’s will to make everything this federative?
Eric: We always want to try to throw a little dramatics in there, those attention. We didn’t try to do it on every song, but I think it turned out almost that way. We start off with just the basic aggression of a song, and then, we sit down with Ken, and Ken throws some ideas out, and we throw some ideas back at him, and next thing, we’ve got some little orchestra piece for an intro on it, and It works out most of the time, so it’s kind of cool. We’re also looking for something we can use as an intro live too, so we throw something that could be an intro on a few different songs.
All of you guys in the band are now veterans in the Metal scene. How do you keep motivating and pushing forward personally and as a band?
Eric: I think we have realistic expectations now. If we end up with some paid vacations where we get to go see something new in the world or go visit friends we’ve met, in places we’ve been a million times already. That’s a paid vacation. We know we’re not going to be buying a different colored Lamborghini for every day of the week or anything like that, you know, it’s a Metal band. But if we can get out and see the world and have some working vacations and get to play our music live for a bunch of people who love us, that’s payment enough.
That’s an interesting point of view, I think. About live shows, how do you live a Flotsam and Jetsam show from yourself personally?
Eric: We’ve always been kind of a music only band. If there’s a big light show and fog and all of that stuff, it’s because they already had it there. We don’t carry any of that stuff with us, we want our audience to be there just for the music, and not even necessarily to watch us play it, but just to hear it live and hear how aggressive it is, not only in the studio, but live on stage, and we like to think that just our song is enough. The little extra speed and aggression because we’re doing it live is enough to entertain the people for the night, we don’t feel like we need any huge lights and theatrics and all that besides like an intro or an outro of the show, we don’t really do a lot of flame throwing and all that kind of stuff that some other bands do, but it doesn’t make the other bands any less of a band, it just makes them kind of dependent on a light show.
Do you have some rituals or habits before or after the show?
Eric: Lots of water all day. We’re not a big partying band anymore. We’re all getting older, we travel, we like to be comfortable. We like to go some place nice to eat every night, and then, when the show is over, we talk to as many fans as we can, sign as many things as they want us to, and then we’re off to turn in for the night usually. We like to get our sleep so we can do the same show the next night.
I unfortunately never see the band on stage for now. Maybe you enjoy playing in France?
Eric: Yes, I think the last time we played was Hellfest, and it was… I don’t know, it was ridiculously hot, but it was a lot of fun, a lot of people.
Yeah, Hellfest is always really hot. Maybe you have a memory about the last Hellfest show?
Eric: Just seeing other bands that we’ve toured with in the past and meeting people we haven’t seen in quite a while. There’s a lot of bands that we’ve become friends with over the years, and it’s kind of nice to see them at a festival and hang out and have a beer with them, talk about what’s new and what isn’t. So I mean, other than that, the crowd is always my biggest memory.
You recently did a few shows in Europe back in May and June. How were those shows?
Eric: They were great. The last little two week tours we’ve done in Europe were amazing. If the shows weren’t sold out, they were almost sold out, so it’s been really nice. I think these last few records have done a lot for us.
And how did you build the setlist between the new album coming and also so much material from the past?
Eric: There’s always a couple songs from the first two records that we have to play, or people get angry if we don’t. And then we want to push the newer stuff. So there’s a whole middle of the career that kind of gets left out sometimes, because we’re out on tour to push the new record, and we have to play the old stuff, so that kind of limits the rest of our setlist.
What will come next for Flotsam and Jetsam after the album release? Maybe you already have some plans?
Eric: We have a lot of touring plans for the rest of this year. We’re doing some LA stuff. And then we’re going to Australia and New Zealand. And then in November we start, I think, a four or five week European tour. We’re doing a week in Spain, and then we go to Poland and Greece, and then we’re back over into Central Europe and I think we’re touring till almost Christmas, so it’s gonna be interesting.
We’re coming to the end of the interview with some lighter questions. Maybe you heard about the French Metal scene and maybe you like some bands from France?
Eric: I’m horrible with band names, but there’s a lot of good young bands coming out right now who are leaning towards the good old eighties Thrash Metal, and it’s nice to see that starting to resurgent a little bit.
Now an imagination question: are there any bands you would like to play with, and I would let you create your dream poster with Flotsam and Jetsam headlining with three other bands!
Eric: As far as playing with bigger bands… I still have always wanted to do a tour or at least a couple shows with Metallica, that would be nice. You know, we’ve played with so many bands, it’s like I’ve checked them all off my bucket list, so… there are… Like I said, I’m horrible with new bands’ names, but there are some bands out there I’ve heard recently, and I think they’re gonna be a big draw if they’re not already, and it would be nice to take a couple of the bands that I believe have something going for them out on tour with us to watch them grow as a band and as a touring company.
The last one is the most funny question: with which dish or drink would you compare Flotsam and Jetsam’s music?
Eric: Oh that’s a good one! I’m gonna go with my favorite: Flotsam and Jetsam is a Jack Daniel’s and Coke.
That’s a really great pick. I definitely agree.
Eric: You know, it’s a sweet soda that will knock your brain in the dirt if you let it!
Yeah, definitely! So as I said that was the last question for me, thank you very much for your time and your music and the last words are yours!
Eric: Oh, thank you very much. have a good one!