Page 6 - RockRevoltMagazine-Fall2016

I feel, I feel it

You released your 9th full length album Unleashed on August 5th . Can you
take us through the writing process and everyone’s place in that process.
Also what you mindset was going into it.

We are so excited about this record. We starting writing the record about 2
or 3 months after the last record came out. I was listening to a lot of music,
having fun and I thought you know I should just start writing now. I was
getting inspired on the road, we were touring quite a lot, well that’s probably an
understatement (laughing), we were touring all the time. My wife Kory, who
also plays guitar and keys for the band, we write the songs together mainly and
we wrote about 30 songs over a period of about 8 months. Kept demoing songs
and really enjoyed writing without having the pressure of having to record an
album anytime soon. Everyone starts going you need this or a song that goes or
a lyric that goes more like this or I don’t like that lyric. It was nice to just be able
to write and not care what anyone was saying. It was fun, so that’s kind of how we
made the record. We were enjoying the writing process a lot, writing things that
were fun. I didn’t overthink it and when we went into the studio it was kind of the
same process. Which leads me to the reason we titled the record Unleashed because
I felt like making this record was like Skillet off the chains. A lot less people telling us
what we needed to do and how we had to do it and a lot more about me writing what I
wanted to write. It was a lot of fun to write, a lot of fun to record and we are really excited
about the record.

That’s great being with a big record company such as Atlantic Records and them letting

you do your thing that sounds a bit unusual.
Well you know to be honest it is unusual. I think that Atlantic was thoroughly involved with
the last project and it made for some hardships on certain ends. There were some things Invincible
that were really good about it and some things that really worked me over. I wrote about 75
songs on the last record and I just couldn’t do that again. Every radio format there is, I can’t
write 10 songs in each format. This time it was you’re going to get what you get. But they’re still
very involved and had a lot to say about the songs. But really let us make the record we wanted
to make and I think it shows on the record, I think it’s the strongest record we’ve done. I think YMOIUNE VMFIANEKCELIEBLE
everything worked pretty well this time.

I would agree, great album, one of my favorites off of it is Out of Hell. Now on this record you
used multiple producers, you started with Brian Howes and then brought in Seth Mosley and
Kevin Churko. What was the purpose behind that? Was it planned or did it just happen?
Well it’s funny that you mentioned Out of Hell, that’s my favorite song on the record. If were up to
me I would probably have 8 songs like it on the album. I’m a metalhead in the end. The thing that’s
good about Skillet’s music is that it reaches a whole lot of different kinds of people. We have lots and
lots of fans that come to shows, they say I honestly don’t even like rock music but I like Skillet. We have
a pop thing, we have a modern thing, it’s good but the hard side of that is you’ve got to write for so many
formats. As we were working on the writing I wanted to hook up with Kevin Churko, I’m a huge of his, MYEOUBRMAAVKEE
he did the last Papa Roach and all the Five Finger Death Punch Records, I’m a big fan. I was talking to my
friend Jacoby who’s the lead singer for Papa Roach and he said oh he’s such a great guy give him a call. He
gave me his phone number and I called him and said hey this is John with Skillet, he knew who my band
was and I said what do you think about us coming out and writing together and see how it goes? We went
out and started writing and recording. A lot of times when you write with people you work on demos, turn

UNLEASHED YTOIUT'RANE IMUMY

I feel, I feel it
Invincible