David Sanchez of Havok at Milwaukee Metal Fest - PipemanRadio Interview

0:04 Hi, you live done two censure? Wow for you your This is the Pipe Man here on the Adventures pipe Man W four c Y Radio, and I'm here. With David Sanchez from Havoc. Nice here at Milwaukee Metalfest. How does it feel to be playing right across the street from the hotel that Jeffrey Dahmer hotel will call? It makes me horny? It's funny because I play a shirt yesterday because it had Dahmer on the back, and I didn't even put two and two together that that hotel was the hotel until the interview I did today upstairs and we had it as the backdrop.

0:53 Oh yeah, it so heinous. There's way cooler stuff going on today at the Rave than there was in that room in that hotel exactly. Yeah. Do they have catering over there? Is that where catering is? Yeah? Yeah, they might be serving mystery meat over there. I know, right. So have you guys ever played this festival before? Yeah, we played the festival a couple of years ago, I think in twenty twenty three or twenty four, and we played in the small room and it was so packed that people couldn't get into the room. They were complaining later, so they threw us in a bigger room this year. It should be really fun. Oh, it definitely will be. It was a lot of fun last time. I'm sure that was. Fun because like I saw a violence last night in that room and it was insane. It was like it was like old school shows at like CBGB's or at the Troubadour or shit like that.

1:43 Lots of seed things. Oh yeah, yeah, so it's funny. I just said in the last interview, I actually filmed some stage dive in I sent it to my youngest door and she's like, is that how you knocked out your front teeth? Because I climbed up a Marshall stack at like sixteen years old and dove and the crowd did a split while it's full swan oh in the air. Yeah, that'll do it. I've chipped a tooth from uh you know mospit happening right in front of me, and someone knocked into my mic when I was singing, and oh man gave me a good little chip. Well I didn't notice till like three days later. Really it hurt when it happened in the show, But you have your all the adrenaline and you're like whatever. I was brushing my teeth a few days later and I looked up in the mirror, like really inspected my mouth. I said, what the yeah good, what are you gonna do?

2:30 And you're right the adrelling because when it happened, I hit the floor. I didn't feel a thing. Yeah, but then on the way to the hospital, like fifteen twenty minutes later or like, holy shit, that hurts. So what can we expect today? Here some havoc. We can expect havoc on stage. You're good, career. We're gonna I think we're gonna wreak it and we're gonna play some fast, tight, heavy metal, which is a way we like to do it. And I was listening to your newest song and it's one of your best songs ever. It's fucking bad ass. Best songs ever. That's a stretch, but thank you. Yeah, we've got some new music that's gonna be coming out.

3:15 We should be releasing a full length by the end of this year. And I think we're gonna keep trickling out new songs as it approaches. So how you find a songwriting process or playing songs now compared to before, Like, what's the evolution been like for you guys. Well, we have a new guitar player now. His name is Brett Rekfortig, and he's a really amazing musician. He went to Berkeley and study jazz and he's a phenomenal guitar player and creative and he helped a lot with the writing on this new record. So that's been a big evolution is working with a different guitar player and somebody who like completely understands all the nuances and theory.

3:57 So if we like dig ourselves into a musical hole, he can, like very creatively and cleverly get out of it. He understands arranging and how to switch keys, and he's a brilliant guitar player. So that's been really cool to work with. Yeah, that a real serious musician, you know. I've always worked with people who are serious, but like he's a next level He's one of those guys like I could turn around and play any chord anywhere on the neck and he'll know, oh, that's a G sharp minor AD nine like what. Well, And it's funny too because a lot of miss musicians wouldn't know those technical aspects of it. But I've talked to a lot of musicians from Berkeley and they are all like genius.

4:38 So yeah, you have to be a shredder to get even get into the school, right, to even become a dropout of Berkeley. You have to be a good musician. Right. That's pretty good. Yeah, So what else is on horizon for Havoc after this festival and beyond besides the album? Yeah, we're on tour right now with kill Switch, Engage, machine Head, and Iron Reagan. We're doing that for a pretty much all the month of June, and then we go to Latin America for two weeks. We take a couple months off, and then we go to Europe in the fall, and then we'll be touring again later in the year. But I can't say what that is yet, but nice, we're gonna be real busy releasing a lot of new music, and then I think next year we'll get even more busy and maybe continue writing.

5:21 And So do you have a favorite place in the world that you played in all your career to play? I think with a broad stroke, I could say Latin America because the audiences down there go absolutely insane. Yeah, like the craziest show you could imagine in the us like you were describing violence last night. Every show down there is like that. They go absolutely nuts. They love metal down there, and they get super rowdy and they'll make you feel like Iron Maiden or something. If you have like a guitar melody in your song, they'll be singing and chanting it like with your guitar parts, and it's something. It's something special. I love playing down there.

6:05 You know what else's core about that is when you play in a country like that that English isn't their language, but yet they know all the words your songs and they know what it means. Yeah, it's they're not just singing it back to you that it's like they do it with heart. Yeah, and they have to do some research. But I think there's also we as English speakers get a little bit spoiled because the entire world consumes American and English speaking media. Yeah, Like most of the movies and stuff that go globally they're all in English, and all the TV shows they're in English. So a lot of people learn English I think from consuming television and movies and music.

6:45 Well, that is the way to do it too. Like you know, when you study a foreign language, they tell you like watch movies. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, yeah. I mean if we were stuck in in you know, Costa Rica for five years and everything was in Spanish and we had to read it with English subtitles, we'd probably learned Spanish way faster than we do sitting in a classroom and you know, freshman year at high school. It's so funny that you say that, because I go to Costa Rica all the time. Oh cool, And so that is what somebody told me there because I took Spanish for. Like seven years in school. Yeah, but they only teach you like the Spanish and Spain Jullion exactly, and nobody else speaks it.

7:26 So but they say, watch. The novellas and you'll learn span how to converse in Spanish. Because yeah, you have to start. Thinking that way, you know, like it's hard when you translate it. And I feel like in a show like that too, a lot of the language would be fairly natural and common phrases. Yeah, there wouldn't be a lot of like high biological scientific jargon or something. It's all very practical language exactly. So what was that one moment in your life that you knew this is what you want to do? Watching Metallica live Shit Binging and Purge, and I had already started playing guitar, but then that made me double down on my efforts. And because I was watching that and seeing people lose their minds and it looked like Metallica was having so much fun on stage, I was like that, I want to figure out how to do that.

8:19 That's what I want to do, and started writing songs and playing shows. And once started playing shows and like feeling the energy from crowds, enjoying what your fingers and your body and mind and voice are creating. Like that's a really cool feeling, I bet you. It feels very similar to when like somebody paints a motorcycle and with some custom stuff and then they get to step back and look at their work and somebody admires it and tells them, dude, that bike is amazing, that painte job is so cool. I'm sure it's the same kind of feel.

9:00 You know, well, yeah, because you as an artist too. Usually ours are the most critical of themselves and confirmed we'll see, and then when people say that to you, it's like, oh wow, like even you know, doing anything artistic, like when somebody validates it, you know, Yeah, it would be a special feeling. It would be fun even if nobody was there to validate it. However, the validation of it makes it more fun. Yeah, totally. And it makes you feel like you're doing it right, you know. That's the way I think of it. It's like, yeah, and it's a big exchange of energy too, Like we get energy from the audience when they're enjoying it.

9:43 We have a better time, and we play better and can headbing harder, and it's just a nice like cycle. Yeah, because it's a good exchange of energy. And I like having the outlet of music to yell and scream because it's a great like pressure release valve. No doubt, no doubt. I always talk about all the time, like music's the best therapy there is. Hell. Yeah, and you take mashpitz. I always tell people like thank God for the moshpitz, or I might kick killed or killed kick somebody's ass out on the streets. You never know, like we're talking about Dahmer, Like this is an outlet. This is an outlet for whatever is fucked up going on in your life or your head.

10:26 Yeah, if you tried to do what people do in moshpits at the grocery store, you'd be under arrest very right. Exactly here is completely okay and welcomed and accepted. And we all help each other and pick each other up, and you know. It's like, there's this beautiful thing. It's a great thing. One story, good or bad in your whole musical career, what's the one that sticks out in your mind most? Oh man, let's see. But I would say the first time we ever played in South America. We played in Columbia at a free festival called rockyl Parque, and the Colombian government pays for it and it's a free festival, so there's a ton of people there. And it was the first time we ever played in Latin America, and it was the most people we'd ever played in front of.

11:12 I think we played in front of like thirty thousand people, maybe a little more. And there was parts where they were chanting like it was a soccer game or football game, and like singing the words and stuff. It was really really something special. I'll never forget that. That was one of the coolest things I've ever done. That is cool and free. We need buy of those here in the States. Yeah, but we're too busy giving money to other places. So yeah, right, it was spending it on stupid shit exactly. That's a whole nother story. We could go another five hours on that. I know, we definitely could. And isn't it kind of I don't know, I kind of kind of bad and trippy that the songs that were written in the eighties could easily be just changed some of the names and the same songs in twenty twenty six.

12:04 It blows my mind that, oh. Well, kinds of the songs specifically, are you talking about. Oh like, any of the thrash songs or metal songs that were like about government and what's going on, and songs about Reagan and songs about you know, I mean we're calling through this. We were talking about Iran in the eighties. Yeah, a lot of the it's all the same wars, just different names, like you said, exactly, And it's uh, it's the like one of the eternal struggles of a civilization is the desire for freedom and liberty and someone else trying to come in and push other people around. That is a tale as old as time, and I don't know if it'll ever go away, but that's something that I will always rage against because it matters a lot, and some people get some people get a little like bent out of shape, like really, you're talking about free them in liberty again, Like yes, it's kind of the most important thing in the world.

13:04 Oh my god, that's so terrible. Oh yeah, it's so annoying that you're always talking about personal freedom and liberty and not wanting to be under someone else's dumb. It's really important to me. It matters a lot to a lot of people. So you know, I don't get sick of it because it's it's the eternal struggle of mankind and it's never going to go away, and ignoring it doesn't help it. Oh, no, doubt about it makes it worse, you know. And you know I always talk about like so many people that are you know, it's calling the assholes that are so worried about things that don't affect their life in any way, like oh totally, you know, like that you should give food to the hungry, like, and they make a big deal against it, you know, like how does that affect you? Are you not going to eat because somebody that doesn't have any food gets food?

13:59 Yeah? One example there's a lot of crazy norms like that in our society that don't make any sense, and then there's a lot of things that would make sense that are illegal. Exactly exactly. I do have a solution for all the world's problems. My solution is we have one big music festival that everybody's required to attend and we just all go into mosh pit and work it out. That sounds pretty good, right. It's called Milwaukee Metalfest. There it is, and it's at the Havoc Show. So thanks a lot for being here and playing. I will definitely be at your set. It will be a lot of fun and it's great. Thanks for being on the Adventures of pipe Man.

14:41 Yeah, thank you. Happy to be here. Thank you for listening to the Adventures of pipe Man on w for CUI Radio.