By James Wright

Everyone has at least one dirty little secret that they locked deep inside. Kept far away from those who would use this secret against them. These secrets are commonly referred to as “skeletons in the closet”. TVT Recording artist Nothingface have come to unlock the door to those secrets.

Nothingface are not new to the hard music scene. Bursting onto the scene in the later half of the 90’s and touring relentlessly with the likes of Pantera, Stuck Mojo, and as a part of the Tattoo the Earth festival. Releasing their 4th album entitled “Skeltons” in April, Nothingface has once again set out to destroy any preconceived notions about themselves and about heavy music. With an unbridled brutality and angelic melodies, this a record too good to be denied by the mainstream.

Shoutweb recently had the pleasure of talking to Nothingface frontman Matt Holt for nearly an hour about his amazing new record, what skeletons were exposed, the negative aspects of the music industry and just how the hell he survived battles with drugs, homelessness and an uncaring world.

Shoutweb: Tell me about the time between albums… Apparently this was a pretty rough period for everybody in the band.

Matt: Basically it all started just before we came off the road for "Violence". We had a tour booked out west with VOD and our booking agent left the business, which left us using VOD's agent to book the tour. The way they booked the tour, they put us in a position where VOD was making most of the money even though we were headlining. So we couldn't pay for the tour. None of that money ever made it into any of our pockets. It all went to paying the costs of the buses, food, roadies etc. It turned out we had to drop off the tour or go into massive debt, so we came off the road earlier than how wanted. We also had some disagreements with TVT, over how our record should be marketed. It had us at the point where we were ready to break up. It's definitely been the long road for this band right from the beginning. We were never the band that knew a lot of bigger bands and we couldn't just call our friends for favors like some bands.

Shoutweb: I still remember that tour you did with Stuck Mojo a while back. That would have been my dream show.

Matt: Yea' we toured with them for a long time. A lot of the reason we draw so well in the South East is because of us doing is because of them letting us open up for them. Up in the North East it's a band called Sam Black Church. We toured with both those bands forever. Stuck Mojo and Sam Black Church have helped our band more than anybody.

Shoutweb: So what happened before the album came together?

Matt: Well our drummer had some girlfriend problems and they broke up. Then we go to record the record after we've all been put through a deep depression and we're writing the record, which we think is coming out amazing, and our label says it's not gonna be any good. So we had to fight them tooth and nail on that. So by the time we got to the studio we had been through hell and back. During the record our guitar player's mother died, our bass player's wife left him and I got into a bunch of harder drugs and I've never been one to do that shit before. I've stopped now though.

Shoutweb: Good, cause I don't think anyone wants to see you turn into another Layne Staley.

Matt: That ain't me man. I'm a pothead and that's it. It was purely a curiosity thing and it just so happened I had nobody around to tell me I couldn't! It was stupid. Then, a week after I get home, my house burnt down in an electrical fire! I got out of there with a pair of Dickies, a shirt and a flashlight.

Nothingface live at the Knitting Factory, NYC on April 21, 2003. Copyright (c) Therese McKeon/Shoutweb.com

Shoutweb: I had heard someone in the past say, "The best art is born out of intense pain." Was that true in this case?

Matt: Yea' but it was totally accidental. We didn't go about doing anything different this time around or anything. It's just the vibe for us was very negative for about a year straight. Even the band wasn't getting along as good as we should have been because everything was going to shit and we were taking it out on each other. That's never happened before because we've always been a group of guys that are unbelievably close. Even when Bill took that hiatus from the band it never affected us being friends. That was really the hardest thing because we're about as close to a family as you can get and because the problems were stemming from the band, we couldn't really be there to support each other. I can't say that writing this record was an enjoyable process by any means.

Shoutweb: So was a lot of the depression and negative energy from the industry bullshit you were forced to endure?

Matt: Definitely. You start making music because at one point when you were younger, you looked up at someone in a band or heard a record and said, "I have to do this." Then you get into the business and you find out how crooked it is and how poorly the musicians are actually taken care of on all levels, it almost ruins your love of music at times. There is no union for musicians or standardized benefits. It's not like it is in Canada, we do have to pay for our health care here in the U.S and most bands can't even afford to pay for a goddamn doctor's appointment! We're on the road so much that you can be at the doctor's a lot, especially if you're a singer. Record companies don't care if you're healthy or not, all they care about is seeing you get on stage and supporting the record they're putting out. The kid working in the mailroom at the label has full benefits and they get a bi-weekly paycheck, but the artist gets nothing. When you're in the business you start finding out how bands you loved got to be where they are and sometimes it's not the most pure way. Being behind the scenes is almost like finding out how a magician does his magic tricks.

Shoutweb: Is that the biggest misconception about musicians? That when your band gets signed you're immediately riding in limos with groupies and tons of money.

Matt: Maybe that's what it's like when your band blows up but for the majority of the bands who aren't at that level, who sell out maybe 1,000 seating clubs, their roadies and tech are making more money then they are. It's gets to a point where you're playing so many shows back to back that you can't tour in a van any longer. Then when get a tour bus that costs a lot of money, then management gets 20% of what you make and your booking agent gets 10%-15% off of each show. It gets to the point where there is very little left for the band and that's if you are very smart businessmen! This is once you've reached a certain level, because you have to reach a certain level just so you can pay your bills. This is the life that I've chosen; I don't need all that money to make good music. Just the fact that I get to be out here playing every night is more than enough for me, but it's the way people treat you. They treat you like you never need anything or that you don't need anyone to lean on just because you have a career that anybody out there would love to have. Let's face it; the President of the United States would rather be a rock star! At times this job can be just as fun and better than you ever dreamed off and then there are the bad times when it's 100 times worse then you could have ever imagined.

Shoutweb: Does touring with bands you love make up for that sometimes? You've toured with Ministry, Pantera and Ozzy coming up.

Matt: In the beginning it did but the fact is that this is a business so you need to check your shit at the door. Touring with a band like Pantera and Ministry is amazing but it's just one more experience. It's really hard to say because it depends on what type of person you are. If you are all about self-preservation then it won't mean shit because you wanna pay your bills and live as close to a normal human being as you can. If you're someone who's very nostalgic and stuck in your own little world then it can be very satisfying at times. The only time I was ever nervous about being on stage is when I looked to the right and saw Phil Anselmo standing there watching us. As a metal singer, you're talking about one of the most influential singer's in metal history. That made me stop for a second and say, "Woah." To get to pick his brain was invaluable and you can't buy it. When those types of things happen it makes you a better musician.

Shoutweb: So are you optimistic with the release of "Skeletons" and Nothingface being a part of this year's Ozzfest?

Matt: I'm definitely a lot more optimistic with this record. Not just because of the opportunities we're getting early on but because I think it's the best work we've ever done. On this record you have 13 songs that are pretty much all completely different then the one before it.

Shoutweb: Musically, this album is quite different from the previous three.

Matt: I guess you could say that. We go from as heavy as you get to as melodic as you can get. From something like death metal to something like A Perfect Circle with the melodies and harmonies. This is the kind of record that we've been looking to make for a long time. One of the things that sets us apart from the rest of the scene is that we can pull of so many different types of music within the same song. There are a million bands that can do that, like Mr. Bungle, but in the genre people stick us in we defiantly stick out. Most of these nu-metal bands now, they're either super heavy all the time or super melodic; it's usually very one-sided.

Shoutweb: Well you voice seems much more dynamic this time around.

Matt: Well with this record I kind of threw caution to the wind and said, "Fuck it." I used to get a bit weirded out when I did the melodic stuff because a lot of our fans pegged us as a heavy band. When we play live we go balls out and play all the heavy shit because that's what we love to do. When we play live we love to play the heavy shit, but when we want to sit down and write we usually play this moody type of Pink Floyd/Radiohead stuff. I was always really paranoid about people calling our band a "sell out" just because I can sing and write melodic part. If we end up with some kind of radio hit because of that then people will cry, "sell out", but the fact of the matter is we've been doing this a long time. So this time around I just said, "Fuck it," and that's partly why the lyrics are so brutal is because I just didn't care. I've been bitched at by the label and critics but I just don't care.

Shoutweb: I think a friend of mine came up with the best description of your music. He said something to the effect of, "Musically Nothingface are amazing but their lyrics are so fucking evil that you wanna bathe in holy water when you're done listening to them."

Matt: (Laughs) Well I've never heard that before but the one I agreed with was someone called us a schizophrenic band. That I agree with that because one minute we wanna be Pantera and the next we wanna be as melodic as Stone Temple Pilots.

Shoutweb: How instrumental was Bill Kennedy in the making of "Skeletons"?

Matt: As soon as we talked to him on the phone, we knew he wanted the record to sound the same way we did. This guy was going to be able to bring out the dynamics of our band. He was going to make the heavy shit even more brutal and melodic stuff big and huge or soft and quite. Honestly, I had never listened to any of the records he's done before. I didn't even need to check it out because after one conversation I knew this was the guy. Kennedy is a wacko and totally like a mad scientist. Some bands like having laid back producers who will just shut the fuck up but Kennedy is a moody fucking guy and he'll tell you that. He won't make the recording process entirely easy, but we needed that. I'm the type of guy, that if you let me, I'll walk all over you. I wouldn't call myself an asshole, just an opportunist. I'm also lazy and what he did was keep me on track. I totally needed that because like I said before, this was the worst period of my life. That's why I started slipping into that stupid shit, I was out of my mind. I can't even tell you what it was that made me snap. I think that by coming home after that last record, I lost it. I was just not me. We wouldn't have been able to do this record if it wasn't for Kennedy. We're responsible for writing good music and playing our parts well, but he's responsible for making it sound the way it sounds. We're the type of band that doesn't take suggestions, so it's hard to change our songs and everything else; Kennedy didn't do that. He listened to shit, hit buttons, and created tones. The weird thing was that he knew who we were as a band. When we did "Violence", we worked with Drew Mazurk. He's a great producer, the whole record sounds amazing, but when he mixed "Violence" there was an edge that was missing in the guitars. The melodic songs sounded big and great, but the heavy songs just didn't have the power that they needed. Basically, that's what we had in the past. Kennedy recorded and mixed as though we were a heavy band, where as Mazurk mixed us as though we were a melodic band.

Shoutweb: I think "Violence" was kind of missing the rawness that "Everyday Atrocity" had. This time around, did you try and change that and make sure that you had the heavy sound? It's obviously present in the music.

Nothingface live at their record release party on April 21, 2003 at the Knitting Factory in NYC. Copyright (c) Therese McKeon/Shoutweb.com

Matt: Just the way the sounds were, we didn't feel the need to do these super riffy-ass songs that are super hard to play all the time, just to show everyone how muscular we are and shit; that's stupid. If you're at this level, you better be able to play as fast as Slayer does, or you shouldn't be here at all, but you shouldn't do is clog up your music with that. Constantly, throughout the whole record, show some diversity. The song "Here Come the Butchers", that's a metal-punk song in a way. The song called for a really raw, gritty guitar sound, something that was not perfect and it has that good, raw, nasty punch to it. When the chords kicked in, it's a huge sound and that's exactly what we're looking for.

Shoutweb: This time around, lyrically, it sounds like you're a little bit more blatant.

Matt: Yea', I'd had enough. On all the past records, throughout an entire song, the lyrics jump around from subject to subject. I guess because maybe there was a lack of inspiration. With this record, I just went for it. I have no problem with Christianity and Catholicism as a religion and the ideas that religions are built on, but what is done with it over the past two thousand years? There's been more war, executions and murders in this world because of Jesus than any other reason. I do pay attention to history, I do know what the Spanish and Italian impositions were, and I do know that the Christian and Catholic Church have a huge history of brutality. So when this rape thing started coming out, I was so sickened by it, I was literally angry on a daily basis and I don't even know any of these people. I never went to Catholic school or anything. I'm not trying to claim that I was abused by the church. That's not why I'm upset. That's not it. Most of these rape cases are coming from the fifties and sixties and there's few in the seventies. Most of these people are older people whose lives are really screwed up because of this. So probably, the minority of rape victims are the one's coming out, talking about it. All the people who were molested in the eighties and nineties, for instance, probably haven't come out because maybe they haven't reached that age to where it's become somewhat traumatic for them. That's what I'm saying. Most rape victims do not come out about it. They stay in the closet. Especially now, that it's become so public and that if you come out about it, you're going to be on television because they sensationalize everything. They find every bit of news they possibly can, even if it's not newsworthy. I'm trying to find my notebook now because I had a statistic in it that was absolutely gross. I don't know where I put it. A lot of these people don't realize that they're as fanatical as these Muslims that are attacking our country. That really, really bothers me. The statistic was, according to the New York Times, 4,280 rape charges filed against 1,125 different priests, or something like that. Out of the 127 archdioceses in the United States, only 13 of them did not have a priest to face charges. So now you have to start doing the math. Only about 10% of the rape victims came out and the reported cases steadily increase from the fifties, sixties, and seventies. That means that the highest numbers are in the eighties and nineties. Now that it's public, we won't find out about the rest of them. This shit has died from the media, you're not hearing about any of these people going to jail, or even being punished in the slightest bit; it's completely gone. Only when the media starts covering something that does matter, it upset somebody that matters and got it taken out of the media as soon as possible.

Shoutweb: Do you think that a lot of it got covered over because it's the Catholic Church?

Matt: Definitely. It says, "In God we trust" on our dollar bill, and we're not talking about a law. We're a country that was built on religion. I will not believe for a second that it didn't have something to do with it. I know when I say, "the devil lives in Rome," I'm obviously talking about the Pope. Now I don't have a problem with Pope John Paul II, because from what I understand about him, he's been a very righteous man. It's just the symbol of what this person stands for. This is a human being that for some reason, God talks to more often, and likes more than every other human on the face of the earth. I never really understood why it was like that. I don't know that I ever will, until this power passes and another one comes into power. Now we live in a time where almost everything is based on a dream. You're going to have a guy who's in there doing everything he can to be Pope. Instead of being a good bishop, and getting selected. It's going to be a way more political thing. I don't know how much power the Pope actually has. I don't care. There shouldn't be one person that stands above all others, or that's supposed to be better than all the others. From what I know, that is a contradiction to the bible. There's worse problems in the world today than there was a year ago with that shit. That's the worse thing that the church has done since the witch trials and all the executions. Right now, we live in a country that's supposed to be a democracy. We have a president that didn't get elected and that completely contradicts the word democracy. He was appointed president by a bunch of Supreme Court judges that his father put into place. Also at the same time, a discrepancy happened in his brother's state. Jeb Bush is the governor of Florida, in case some ignorant people didn't hear that. You think a governor can't hide some votes? It's really insulting how stupid our government thinks the public is. I hate the fact that they think they have to hide everything from us. I have no problem with killing Sadam Hussein. The guy's an asshole. Leaders like that should be gone, but don't lie to us about why we're doing it. They have chemical power that we gave Sadam Hussein in the early eighties to fight the Iran-Iraq war. What he instantly turned around and did, was stack the cards. Now they're using the chemical, biological and probably nuclear weapons that we gave him and attacking him. What we're really going up there to do is replace the oil that he burnt in 1991 in the first Gulf War. Most Americans will understand that they stole our shit. Sadam Hussein burnt our oil reserves in Kuwait. Kuwait gave this oil for protection from the rest of the Middle East, and got invaded. We drove them out and once we did that, he lit our oil on fire. Now, Iraq's the second largest oil-producing nation in the Middle East, so we just went and took our oil back. Most Americans could understand that because most of us do believe in the preservation of the country. The less resources we have, the less power we have. We like being the most powerful country in the world. If we're going to go into power suit, acting like horrible dictators, then we really need to do that, instead of just doing that to help out our country. We need to show the world a commitment in this type of thing. If we feel that we need to go out to the rest of the world and kick everyone's ass, and be cruel to their people, then most people could understand that. We need to do that then. Instead of just leaving it at Saddam Hussein, we need to go to Burma and get rid of that motherfucker. Because they're doing ethnic cleansing, just like they were doing in Bosnia. We need to tell the Israeli's to chill the fuck out and to give the Palestinians just a little bit of freedom. They have plots on the Palestinian's land. We got to make an effort to show that we actually want to change the world and make it a little better, but it ain't gonna happen. I've gotten some backlash because of the lyrics from "Ether" and "I am Him", and whatever else is on there that is considered to be anti-American. I do consider myself to be a patriot. To me, you're not being a patriot if you're just standing by and letting shit happen to your country without speaking up. To be patriotic is to actually have a voice and change the shit that's going on. At the same time, I don't agree with all the protests and all that. Protest before the war starts, but once that shit starts, there is 250 000 Americans over there taking orders because they have a job to do. They volunteered for a job that they didn't know was going to take them to Iraq or a war that was going to be disputed. They didn't know that when they signed up, so they shouldn't be persecuted for it. The last thing that they should be witness to is turning on the television, whatever little amount of television they're allowed to watch, and see a bunch of dumb-ass hippies in San Francisco protesting. I'm really sick of fanaticism; it's making this country and the rest of the world a very dangerous place.

Shoutweb: Does the idea of mainstream success appeal to Nothingface as a whole?

Matt: It does for one reason. We want to leave a legacy. We want to leave music that influences musicians in the future. We're not going to come out and say we're the saviors of metal or anything like that. There's a lot of bad music out there that's very one-sided. A lot of young kids are missing out on what real art is when it comes to music, but it is out there. I'm hoping that there's going to be a band like us and a few others out there that can get that mainstream success and we can maybe start to change it a little bit. Maybe record labels will start taking chances and signing bands that are a little bit more colorful. The reason that all music sounds the same these days is because record labels aren't taking chances. They want to go out and sign everything that sounds like whatever's hitting real good and sell a bunch of records because basically, they're losing so much money on the internet that they know they're not going to sell as many records. They want to make sure it's going to sell, so everything's getting more and more generic. The record labels are more and more fearful of making chancy investments. They're making it harder and harder for bands like us to get anywhere. Linkin Park has no problem putting out two records that sound identical. They might as well have written this last record, the new one, at the same time they did their first one because it's the same; they're just different lyrics and song titles. Basically, music has to be saved from the clutches of these marketing bands that have the guy in the band, like Fred Durst, that will sit there and care more about marketing their product than actually making a good product. That's what we are. We create products. We don't make records. They refer to them as units, and products, and that kind of shit. When you're at the record label, they refer to you as the artist because they want to make sure you're happy. When you're in a sales meeting and all that other stupid shit, they refer to your record, your lifeblood, as product. There's no soul to it to them. That's what happens when so much money gets into the music industry. The reason that this file sharing and music downloading thing is bad, I don't lose any money, but the reason it's bad is because at one point, the people that own these record labels are going to start selling them because they're going to be too fearful of losing money. All the records that are out there being downloaded are going to be gone one day. Everyone's going to wonder what's the problem with musicians just making records and putting them up on the internet for everyone and forgetting record labels all together. For one, they're going to sound like shit, so the quality of music is going to go down. Everybody and their mother is going to be able to put out something, so it'll actually make it harder and harder to find good music. There will be no money in it. Not even minimum wage, so musicians won't be quitting their day jobs solely to focus on making good music. A lot of the fun in enjoying music, going to shows, and sharing it with your friends and all that is going to be gone. I have one more thing to say about the mainstream success thing. We've been around long enough now, that I really hope our fans don't stand up and yell, "sell out" if we do get big. We've never done anything in our career, in our music, to specifically sell records, ever. It's only been what we truly like in our music, and that's it. If the fans start standing up and screaming out we're sell outs, they need to step back and start educating themselves because there are even a few bands out there now that are called "sell outs" that aren't. I don't think they realize how that can make bands feel from time to time and we are still real people. I know if a majority of our core fans are screaming sellout because our record goes platinum and everything like that, I'm not going to give that much of a fuck. Past them, or how good my next record is probably. I'm not going to feel that they actually care. If you like a band a lot, don't feel cheated because that band gets big because other people know about them. Be proud of them. Be happy for them. I'll go outside and I'll talk to fans. A lot of the time, I'll have five or six at the least that are calling somebody a "sellout". You can't really call Linkin Park sellouts because they didn't really do anything honest before. They didn't start out from anything. They just are whores from the get-go.

Shoutweb: I appreciate this, thanks for doing this interview.

Matt: Thank you. You're one of the guys out there that gives bands like mine a chance to get to more people.

Shoutweb: It's weird because if you go back five years ago, or even three years ago, if someone had said to me that I'd be talking to Matt Holt from Nothingface, I would have never believed them.

Matt: I'm sure you're probably disappointed; I'm pretty nerdy, video game playing kind of guy. I'm not the wild and crazy party dude or anything. I don't like loud environments or anything. It's kind of like, "yea', I play video games."