INTERVIEW WITH IMPENDING DOOM
| P A R T O N E |
BY
MICAH L. JONES
We departed from Crestview, Florida to Montgomery, Alabama to meet up with the guys of Impending Doom while on tour. The day turned to a roadside rescue as the band’s van broke down. We made several trips back and forth shuttling the head-bangers and trying to get their van of equipment to the show location. People like to think a rock star’s life is full of glamour but in all reality traveling in strange places and having your vehicle break down is real life just like the rest of us. We watched the set and attempted to get some concert photos in the worst possible lighting situation and then waited outside to meet with the guys for an interview. We all decided on a very late night, well early morning dinner at IHOP. You may not like the “noise” that some would refer to their music as but you can’t knock these California dudes with a heart for God. This kind of music is something relatively new to be done for our Lord and these guys do it well and with class. They have no fear and are not ashamed of who they are or to share it with their crowds. Crowds that definitely need to hear their message. They began their set in a circle for a moment of prayer and weren’t shy to share their faith while performing to a more than energetic crowd. They even hang out afterwards to offer prayer or to talk with any who will hear them about their faith. So even if you can’t understand the lyrics just pick up a copy of their CD and read their lyrics that come straight from their heart and speak loud and clear of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ!
Prophet Newz: What made you guys decide to do this kind of music?
Brook Reeves: It’s just like… I don’t know… It’s weird how we all came together. It’s so weird, like we all listen to like… I don’t know—
Rodney Ramos: I think it’s just starting music, like different bands and then just trying to find the right sound I guess.
Brook Reeves: No, it’s like we all like death metal and stuff and then we were all like Christian dudes and we were like “alright” and then we were like there’s not many… there’s hardly any Christian bands like us so it’s like a new ministry, you know. A lot of these kids are like—
David Sittig: They hate God….
Brook Reeves: Exactly, a lot of these kids… the only time they would hear about—
Prophet Newz: Yeah, we saw the T-shirt at the concert. (Referring to a T-shirt we saw a kid wearing that said “F*** YOUR GOD”)
Brook Reeves: I talked to the kid and he offered us to stay at his house. I was like “oh wow”.
Prophet Newz: Really…?
Brook Reeves: Yeah, he’s a real nice kid, just different, different opinions that I really think…. I talked to him good like, for about fifteen minutes. So, that was cool and then a… but like a lot of these kids none of them go to church, you know like, a lot of them don’t go to church and then like they see us playing and talking about God and they’re like “I like this kind of music” and you know, you kind of like relate. A lot of these kids like… I don’t like a lot of these like little indie, little Christian bands you know, a lot of them I don’t like and if I wasn’t a Christian I’d be like “I don’t care about that music”. So, like yeah we can relate with them with that kind of music. So, it’s cool, it’s like I love talking to kids about it, it’s a good bumper, I love this music, it’s a good bump.
(And right when we were about to ask the next question everybody started laughing over it’s subject)
Brook Reeves: When will they quit. The good question… it comes. (Laughter)
Prophet Newz: What is Gorship?
(Laughter broke out between everybody)
Brook Reeves: Here comes the question. (Laughter)
Prophet Newz: We’ve done our studying. (Laughter)
(Everybody continued to laugh.)
David Sittig: You wanna take this one? (Referring to Brook)
Brook Reeves: Yeah, it’s like a word I made up, like worship but, like in death metal I call it Gorship, cause like gore and gory, like everybody in metal wants to be like some brutal gory band. So, you know we’re not gory or anything, so Gorship worship—
David Sittig: Gore music, worship lyrics.
Brook Reeves: We brought worship into metal, you know what I mean, worship into death metal.
Prophet Newz: Do you think that some people might find it offensive to call worship Gorship?
Manny Contreras: Yeah they do.
Brook Reeves: There’s a couple of them.
David Sittig: Yeah there’s been a couple people. Well, a couple people think like—
Brook Reeves: I mean it’s our best selling hoodie, I mean I don’t think—
Manny Contreras: Yeah, I know but you gotta think of other Christians.
David Sittig: Yeah, some people think it means “worship gore”.
Brook Reeves: Yeah, some people think like we worship gore dude and it’s like—
David Sittig: Which is… which is not it. There’s not one way to worship God so….
Prophet Newz: I’m sure that… some people are going to find it offensive, even your music, which I’m sure you’ve already been told it’s “of Satan” and all that stuff.
Brook Reeves, David Sittig and Manny Contreras: Yeah….
Brook Reeves: Heard that one a million times.
Prophet Newz: Well, it’s not anything new, their not just picking on you. It’s been going on since the beginning of Christian rock.
Brook Reeves: Yeah, they’ll do anything to make it seem like you know… I don’t know; that’s what I like about it, they think it’s for Satan and we’re like “nah, it’s not” and then we just like… it’s totally like it clashes and like you know, it gets people to listen you know like “what the heck, a Christian death metal” band and then they like get into it, they actually listen to us sometimes like “alright” you know.
Prophet Newz: The best example of that is when Jesus went and ate at a tax collector’s house.
Brook Reeves: Exactly, exactly… yep, exactly.
Prophet Newz: In certain parts of your guys ’ songs, mainly when the drums are doing the really fast stuff, you can’t really understand what the guitar’s are doing. And I don’t know if that’s because the tuning of guitar’s are so heavy or if it’s the way it was recorded?
Brook Reeves: Probably the recording….
David Sittig: Yeah, we tune in Drop A which is really, really low.
Manny Contreras: Which is five steps from standard.
Brook Reeves: Yeah, it’s the recording too. We only spent like three-thousand on the recording and like a lot of these bands are like… As I lay Dying spend sixty-grand easy on the recording, that’s like a minimum. So, like three to sixty, like you really get what you pay for. So, that’s what a lot… like if we had a hundred-thousand dollar recording budget you would understand every note so….
David Sittig: (laughter)
Prophet Newz: It was definitely easier to understand during the concert.
Brook Reeves: Yeah, yeah… yeah… yeah cause be play it a lot louder so, that’s mostly that.
Prophet Newz: Actually, we kind of touched on this during our travel with you guys. (Everybody laughed) These other bands that you’re touring with, what do they think of you as a Christian metal band?
Manny Contreras: Umm….
Brook Reeves: What do they think of us?
Prophet Newz: Yeah.
Manny Contreras: I’m pretty sure they get the image of like good kids, like a… cause one of the bands we’re on tour with—Winds Of Plague—Johnny says… the lead singer told us “How can we play after like a satanic band, like how can we play after you guys all saying good stuff and positive stuff and here we come after all you guys with the negative energy and saying all this against you guys” so like….
David Sittig: They recognize what we’re about.
Brook Reeves: Hey they like… I know they can see Christ in us and they don’t like… they like it cause they said that like we’re like a Christian band that actually doesn’t judge them, like we live a Christ life but we don’t point fingers at them.
Prophet Newz: So you’re not taking a Bible and shoving it down their throat? (Vague laughter)
Brook Reeves: Yeah, exactly.
David Sittig: Yeah, we don’t do that.
Rodney Ramos: We’re no one to judge.
Prophet Newz: It’s more about example?
Brook Reeves: Exactly, that’s what I believe, example… like anytime I do actually get the chance you know, to talk to them about it, then I will, but you know I’m not going to go around forcing it on them. I figure they’re going to see us for forty days you know, straight days, they’ll know what we’re about.
Prophet Newz: Alright, who writes your songs and music?
Manny Contreras: Probably, focus on us two. (Referring to Brook and himself)
Prophet Newz: Songs and the music?
Brook Reeves: Well I write the lyrics—
Manny Contreras: Yeah, he writes the lyrics and me and our old drummer write all the music.
Prophet Newz: Old drummer?
Manny Contreras: Yeah, Andy. He’s at school right now.
Brook Reeves: He… he’s scholarship boy. (David laughed) School boy... he’s a little school girl. So, that’s what he’s doing. (Everybody laughed)
Prophet Newz: Which band has influenced you the most? (Everybody went silent) Any of you can answer this.
David Sittig: There’s two answers to it.
Greg Pewthers: Music wise or guitar playing wise you’re asking or just in general?
Prophet Newz: Which ever. Is there a band that you kind of style yourselves after? (Everybody laughed)
Brook Reeves: It’s not the most Christian band ever, Cannibal Corpse. (Everybody continued to laugh)
Greg Pewthers: Exactly, like guitar playing wise Cannibal Corpse and like—
Brook Reeves: Devourment, a bunch of like secular bands. (Laughter)
Prophet Newz: Hey, it’s okay, some of those bands sound good.
Brook Reeves: Exactly….
Prophet Newz: And you know what, God blessed them with the talent. (Everybody laughed) Now, whether they use… who they use it for, that’s their choice.
Brook Reeves: Yeah, exactly.
Prophet Newz: You can’t knock talent.
Brook Reeves: No… they are talented people though, for sure.
Prophet Newz: Okay, well that’s those two. (Referring to Greg and Brook) How about you three? (Referring to David, Manny and Rodney)
Manny Contreras: When I was writing the album I wasn’t really listening to like... that kind of music. I can’t really say but, I definitely have influences like… I’m not gonna say it.
Brook Reeves: Say it.
David Sittig: We all kind of have the same you know…. Cannibal Corpse, Behemoth, Nile….
Rodney Ramos: I don’t really listen to a lot of death metal. (David laughed) I just listen to a lot of soft stuff like… just like everything.
Prophet Newz: So you’re a little bit different from the rest of them.
David Sittig: We all listen… we all listen—
Rodney Ramos: … listen to the same stuff.
Manny Contreras: Yeah we all listen to the same stuff but, we don’t—
Rodney Ramos: …we don’t stick to just the generic death metal.
Manny Contreras: I like a lot of like technical music—
David Sittig: We’re more open minded.
Manny Contreras: I don’t really like plain like death metal… just the same riff over and over. I like more like catchy stuff like there’s this band I like because of their technicality, Ion Dissonance. I just like groovy stuff like that, more catchy stuff. So, I could say that’s a good influence on me.
Prophet Newz: How did you guy’s come up with your name for the band? Is it a message to other people?
Brook Reeves: Really it was like I liked the word “doom” and so like…. We we’re like a nameless band for like months, so long and we were starting to play shows and we didn’t have a name. So, we were like “do we have a name yet?”
Manny Contreras: When we were recording, right when we were recording—
Brook Reeves: Yeah, we didn’t have a name for a long time. People were like “you guy’s a band?” Yeah, “what’s it called?” (Silence, then everybody laughed) So, I was like I like the word “doom” cause it’s like, you know it’s sounds like, really like evil or whatever; it’s sounds like just a pissed off like word. So, there was already a band called “Doom” and I was just thinking of like other words I could put with it and I was… “Impending Doom” just came into my head one day and I was like “that sounds pretty catchy.” And you can say like if you live like a Christ-less life… your impending… impending doom.
Prophet Newz: If you don’t have Jesus you have an impending doom.
Brook Reeves: Yeah. So, like that’s our station every time we’re asked that question.
Prophet Newz: Your families, do they support you guys and what you’re doing?
Rodney Ramos: Yeah, they do.
David Sittig: Definitely.
Greg Pewthers: Big time.
Rodney Ramos: We wouldn’t be here if they didn’t.
Manny Contreras: Back when we didn’t have a van my dad use to take us to like Arizona, out of state to play shows and stuff like that cause didn’t have like money and stuff like that.
Brook Reeves: Yeah, we all have like Christian based families so, they help out a lot.
Prophet Newz: If you guys were not in a band what would you all be doing?
Rodney Ramos: I’d probably be going to film school.
Manny Contreras: Yeah, I’d probably do something with art. I’d be playing music anyways but, I don’t think I’d be playing this kind of music.
David Sittig: College, definitely.
Greg Pewthers: I either… playing baseball or working.
Brook Reeves: Umm… if I didn’t have this band my life would be like down the drain. (Everybody started laughing)
Rodney Ramos: Making glass….
Brook Reeves: Yeah, I’d be like straight bum dude. (Everybody laughed harder) I think like, my mom would force me to go to school. So, I’d be going to school.
PROPHET NEWZ 2008
TO BE CONTINUED....
