After hitting the scene in 2010, the thrash metal gods Butcher Babies have been breaking records, stereotypes, and hearts. Butcher Babies is an American metal band from Los Angeles, California with an amazing repertoir of albums and EPs, as well as a sophomore full-length album Take it like a Man coming out in less than a month. Their debut album, Goliath, released two years ago, and after selling 3,300 copies in the U.S. alone during its first week, these ladies are not stopping the momentum they have built. They have become a juggernaut of a band to be reckoned with and we are more than ecstatic to have had a moment in time to speak with both Carla and Heidi about all things Butcher Babies!
I saw you at Rock on the Range last year, and also on the tour with Black Label Society this year. You guys rocked it!
Heidi: Thank you! That was a blast!
You guys put on a heck of a show.
Carla: We do have some fun on stage!
I wanted to ask you, I know you have a new album coming out soon. What are fans going to find that might surprise them a little bit?
Carla: For this album we wanted to go back to our roots which are based in aggressive thrash-metal. On Goliath we did a lot of vocal harmonies that are very beautiful and we had a lot of fun doing that stuff. I think at that time we felt that we kind of had to because we wanted to prove that we could scream, we could sing, we could do everything. For this album we wanted to just to go back to our roots because we knew that’s what the fans wanted to hear, they wanted the aggressive stuff that has a really great vibe, so we went back to that.
When you are touring now, do you focus a little more on that or do you focus on songs people may be more familiar with?
Heidi: The thing is that the new album isn’t out yet—it’s coming out, but not out. So we play a mix of Goliath and Uncovered live. On this tour that we’re on right now, we’ve actually been playing two new songs just to give the die-hard fan base the chance to hear it first. We play those two and we rock those two but we also give them the older stuff they can sing along to as well. But when the album does come out, we will be focusing a lot on the newer material because as Carla stated, it is very aggressive and it is made for the fans—it’s gonna make them move. So we will be focusing on that as well.
So nothing slow on the new album?
Heidi: Actually there is one song on the new album that is slow, one of the last ones we recorded—it is a very beautiful, haunting song. We’re really excited about that one, it’ll be really exciting to hear what the fans think about that.
Carla: A complete departure from what we normally do.
Heidi: Yeah, everyone says it is our “Don’t Speak” (laughs) Can’t wait for everyone to hear it—it’s just one song, we just wanted to bring in one softer song. It’s all melodic and beautiful and so we’re pretty excited about that too. But, definitely the base of the album is all aggressive.
Production-wise, did you work with some of the same people you worked with on previously, or did you bringing in some new ears?
Heidi: We did our EP Uncovered with Logan Mader and decided that we wanted to use him as well for this new album. Goliath was done by Josh Willbur and he has his staple sound, and it is great. Our management wanted us to work with Logan for the EP that we released last October. We love his production—it was really cool and really new and fresh—so we decided to bring him along for the new album.
What were inspirations for the new album? What kind of drove some of your thoughts in the song writing process?
Carla: Our crowd really inspired the writing process. We wanted to create songs that would get the crowd moving. As far as lyrics, Heidi and I always dig deep into our hearts and souls and get out the raw stuff, the raw anger, emotions that we’ve been through in our lives to create the lyrical content of songs.
Heidi: There’s several songs on there that are pretty emotional, and we really dug in and looked at different experiences in our lives. Carla and I grew up in incredibly different places but with pretty much the same experiences, and with the same emotions as kids. And it’s cool that we have each other—we can look back and we have different experiences but the same emotions so it’s really cool to be able to pull those emotions and put them into music and turn negatives into positives through music. That’s really what we’ve focused on for this album. It’s a very raw, very honest, very emotional album.
Could you talk about the differences you guys had? You said that there were some differences as far as where you were coming from.
Carla: As Heidi said, we grew up differently. I grew up in Detroit and Heidi grew up in Provo, Utah—completely different experiences. But we’re both human beings—when you’re writing books, they say there are only seven stories that human beings have. We all share the same life experiences and the same emotions—we definitely connected on that emotional level, we can finish each other’s sentences because of that.
Those are probably drastically different places to grow up, but you can still come out of it and have a lot of similarities.
Heidi: Yeah, a lot of people have those—you grew up in different places but, if you have issues in your childhood you have those emotions. You have the same emotions as those issues that you may have both had, even though it might have been a kind of different experience, the emotion is still the same.
Carla: And we want our fan base to take what they want out of the songs as well. We want them to feel connected to the songs as well, even though they didn’t go through the same things that Heidi or I may have gone through.
And they may have their own experience, and they kind of put that on top of it.
Carla: Exactly, that’s what music does for you.
Heidi: It’s a beautiful thing! (laughs)
I’m curious—I know you have a lot of dark themes in your work, I’m going to guess you’re both probably horror fans, is that right?
Carla: YES! You are right!
BUTCHER BABIES – Monsters Ball (OFFICIAL VIDEO)
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I happen to be a horror film director, and one of the things I want to ask is, and I’m not sure if it’s happened yet, has anyone used your music for score in their film yet.
Carla: No! Not yet! We’re really hoping that would happen someday, and I think a horror film would be absolutely perfect!
I think it would too! What are some of your favorite horror films? And has that kind of influenced some of where your music and videos go?
Heidi: Oh absolutely! If you saw the music video for “They’re Coming To Take Me Away” it’s reminiscent of a slasher film—one person goes, then another person goes, and everyone’s getting picked off and then at the end the big reveal! That’s definitely reminiscent of old horror films. I love the new “Evil Dead.” I think it’s done so well, so perfectly! I also just saw “It Follows” which was really good—that to me was a really well-done horror flick. God, there’s so many!
Carla: I love the classic horror movies, I always have. My favorite horror movie of all time is the original “Texas Chainsaw Massacre.” I love the chase scenes—I know there are people who argue that Jessica Biel is way better in the new “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” but I love the classic chase scenes, and I forget the name of the actress that was in the original, (It was Marilyn Burns—editor) but she did her own stunts because there was not enough money for a stunt person. It’s just so cool to watch what they did with limited stuff they had to make movies with.
Heidi: We did an interview just recently where we came up with favorite females in horror, and it was really cool to go through with both of us listing some of our favorites. Another thriller I really loved was “Monster” with Charlize Theron. I thought it was so good and done so well, and she did such a great job in that role. Both of us, we’ll sit up at night and watch scary movies in our little bedroom in our bus, so it’s fun.
That’s cool! As far as classic horror films, were there any that inspired you guys, even beyond writing, to the things you do onstage or in videos?
Heidi: On Goliath there’s a song called “The Grim Sleeper” which was about a serial killer in Los Angeles many many many years ago, but they just made a movie about him, also called “Grim Sleeper.”
Carla: We also made song about Albert Fish—I wouldn’t say horror movies necessarily inspired us, but real-life horror stories, real-life serial killers, real-life experiences that we’ve gone through that have scared the shit out of us, stuff like that.
Heidi: On the new album there’s a song that we’re pretty pumped on, it was based on this kid who was obsessed with the TV show “Dexter” and had his dark passenger with him and his dark passenger’s name was Ed. He killed his girlfriend and said that Ed made him do it, and we were so inspired by that, and that was inspired by “Dexter” the TV show. So we were inspired by that, wrote about that and that is on the new album. I think that as Carla said, things that happened in real-life too, those are really great things to write about. I did actually watch “Human Centipede” 1 and 2 and took notes once upon a time, and a lot of those notes ended up on Goliath.
Terrific. So, as far as hitting the live circuit—are there any places that you are really looking forward to playing?
Carla: Detroit is my hometown, so I obviously love playing my hometown and see my family and friends, there is always a great crowd there. New Orleans is my favorite city in the world, so I love playing there as well.
Heidi: We always have a great time in Canada! I think for us, something that is really exciting is heading over to Europe all summer. Hitting so many different markets we haven’t hit, and seeing familiar faces in markets that we have hit before. We are pretty pumped—we’re playing in Paris, we’re playing everywhere so we’re pretty excited.
That’s great! Are there differences with fans overseas, the way they interact with you?
Carla: I don’t think so. I think metal fans are pretty much the same anywhere.
Heidi: It’s the universal language!
Carla: We’ve been all around the world at this point, everyone is the same, they are there to rock out! Everyone is very respectful and we have a great time making these fans into friends.
Heidi: I think the craziest one for us was in Mexico for the “Hell and Heaven Festival.” Anywhere we went it was kind of a big riot. That was weird. (laughs) We’d never experienced anything like that before. Metal is the universal language, it really is. Metal heads are there to have a good time and rock out.
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