Witchgrinder The Rue Morgue Records Interview

Ten years ago Melbourne metal lords Witchgrinder delivered one of their most seminal albums. Haunted saw the band move away from the sound that they had established on The Demon Calling two years earlier and saw the band tackle something fresh with new band members.

With the release of the Splatter Vinyl 10th Anniversary Edition of Haunted, I recently sat down with Witchgrinder vocalist Travis Everett to take a deep dive into the album.

“We had a two-year gap and then had a new drummer named Shane step in,” says Everett reflecting on the mood around the band during the creation of Haunted. “We had been out playing for about a year and we realised that our fans loved everything from The Demon Calling but as far as our stage show was going we wanted to make it a lot more in your face. So with our style, and I am not sure why, we decided that we wanted to go even heavier. We wanted more speed and we wanted more aggression – we wanted to move faster than the previous album. We also wanted more of a thrash element to it rather than the groove sound that we had.”

That leads me to ask whether or not the style change changed the songwriting process at all.

“No, not really,” he says after thinking for a moment. “I mean we had all played that style before. Maybe not live but sitting in our rooms yeah. And it was still kind of based on the bands that had influenced us in the beginning. It was just their faster stuff. Thrash bands tend to have a couple of groove tracks in there and I don’t think we ever really did get to that complete thrash band speed we were still a little bit behind that. But yeah it was a lot faster than the first album.”

After talking for a while about the genre and feel of Haunted our discussion moved onto the lyrical content and even that saw a small change.

“I was still thinking about horror movie themes but there was probably a little more true crime mixed in as well,” he admits. “There was a lot of true crime in there. There was more of that than the supernatural themes and stories that were on the first album. I’ve always been interested in true crime. I have always watched horror movies as well but I have also watched true crime documentaries as well. I think it all fits into the same place.”

“I was watching a lot of movies and documentaries at the time,” he continues. “And I think once we had the name of the album “Haunted” I started to think about things like ghost stories – are they true or not? You hear people swear that they have seen a ghost or felt their presence. I was thinking about all of those things. Lyrically I always start with a list of song titles and once I name a few songs I find a theme starts to appear for me and it kind of just takes off from there. I’m never really conscious of lyrics before we go into an album it is always the music I am more conscious of.”

The 10th Anniversary of Haunted also seems to come with some bitter-sweet memories for Everett who admits that personally, it does feel like he was working on it a decade ago.

“The 10th anniversary of The Demon Calling was only two years ago and at the time I thought it seemed a long but with Haunted it feels a-lot longer,” he explains. “There have just been so many things – life is so different to what it was then. I think that it why it feels so long ago. The songs do still feel fresh playing live because we pick different songs every time but also Witchgrinder has had multiple line-up changes. I have been the machine behind the band since the beginning so there is that – but also Haunted feels so long ago because I have changed so much as a person.”

“It was a really crazy time when Haunted came out,” he continues. “The band was kind of just started taking off – we had a great manager named Robyn who taught me so many things but I was also partying like crazy. If I look back at it I upset a few people back then and it was all because of the partying. I worked myself so hard with the music, booking things, writing things and organising things, I just burnt myself out and the way to cope with that was to drink a lot. I was trying to relax and deal with things and with that I hurt the band so looking back at it now there are some things that I would have done differently.”

With that personal pain there I ask Everett whether that makes it difficult to celebrate the anniversary of the album.

“Not really –  I mean that was ten years ago,” he says. “All the guys on that album I am still talk too – they are all buddies and we are all still mates. Maybe at the time it was a bit difficult but after ten years no it is all good. We have all grown up and we are all proud of the Haunted album. I’ve been listening to it recently because there is a remaster for the vinyl. I have gone back over it and yeah it isn’t weird at all. It is good to look back.”

With the personal talk out of the way, our discussion turns to what fans can expect on this Splatter Vinyl edition of the album.

“Well of course it is remastered,” he says with a laugh. “There are also some alternations with the mix as well. At one stage we did talk about going back and remixing it all, not because Darcy didn’t do a good job mixing it but we were very rushed and I can’t remember why but time went very fast. So yes I did think about remixing the whole thing but I didn’t because I think the beauty in that album is that mix and I think if I changed it too much it wouldn’t be what it is. Some things have been changed though – like a drum turned up or down and a couple of other volume things – I think my vocals were a little lower than they should’ve been at times – so we made some tweaks and that is exciting. I also chose the look of the vinyl and it looks cool. We didn’t want just the classic black vinyl so I chose something a little smokey. It looks great.”

This is not one that you want to miss so pre-order your copy of Haunted the Splatter Vinyl Anniversary Edition.

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