Forbidden Returns: Bay Area Thrash Legends Discuss Their First New Album Since 2010

0:19 This is the Pipe Man here on the Adventures of Pipe Man W4CY radio. Super excited about our next guest because as everybody knows, I go way back with thrash metal, way back to L.A. And Bay Area. And these, this band, oh, my God, they are one of the pioneers, but one of the best Bay Area thrashers. So let's welcome to the show Craig from Forbidden. How are you? Hey, thank you, Pipe, man. So what kind of pipe are we talking? Whatever pipe you want it to be. You know what's so funny about that is it probably matches a bunch of what everybody thinks. Because on my logo, I do have a wave because I'm a surfer. And like, I never asked the, how'd you get your band name?

1:09 Stupid question. But everybody I interview, like I do festivals all over the world. And I always get the question of where's pipe man come from. And just like that. So, so, so surfing for you. And I was like, are we like, is it a glass pipe? Is it, or is it like, you know. I'll tell you what it really is. It's my last name's Piper, and that's where it comes from. Well, there you go. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. All right. Well, moving on. I love when bands try to figure it out, though, or they even have written songs in an interview of what they think my name comes from.

1:51 It's great. I love it. Okay. Well, now I know. Now I know. So it's a double entendre, surfing and last name. You're playing on words, and I live a punny life, so I totally get it. There you go. So super excited. You have the new album coming out, like the first one since 2010. Yeah. So I want. To know what energized this idea to put out a new album now? Was there some impetus that now it's time? There was a lot of different things that had to come together to move the needle to make me want to do this. And one was the closing of one door with my previous band, Dressed to Dead. It just kind of all happened at once. And some of the parts wasn't able to commit to the things that it takes to promote a band, real life stuff, like family and jobs, businesses and whatnot. And I just kind of realized, holy crap, it's going to come to an end and I need to you know, I remember my bass player and I locked eyes that night and looked at each other at a practice and was like, I think that's a wrap. We just kind of knew it, called each other on the ride home. Like, and he was with me in, uh, a band I was in called a man made God and, uh, James Walker. And so he was with me through my whole, like, you know, the different things I'd done successions since forbidden. And, uh, Yeah,

3:25 so that happened. I went home. I just didn't know how to feel. I woke up the next morning. I saw an email from the Alcatraz Festival asking if we'd be interested in reviving for Forbidden to take Anthrax's spot at Alcatraz in Belgium. And that didn't really, it was the way that it was worded, my friend's the organizer, and he goes, and if you got a replacement singer, because I know Russ is retired and possibly Chris Contos to play drums, because you play with them in the Boneless Ones, which was a side project. I was doing with Chris. And it was those things that all at one time that made me realize like the universe is telling me. So in that moment, I had to think about calling everybody and talking and first Russ, like, is it okay? Cause Russ is very retired, living a sober life and not interested in any of this anymore, but I wanted to make sure it was good. So I had to talk to Russ. I had to talk, you know, reach out to, I knew Norman could do the gig.

4:23 I wanted to reach out to Matt and Steve first, Mac Camacho and Steve Smythe, to see if they were interested. It was like all these things that happened. But in that, and without getting too boring or stretching the story out too long, and eventually getting to the Chris Contos enter the picture last, he was the last one because we kind of were tentative, like we didn't want to mess our friendship up with that kind of but he agreed that he'd be pretty resentful if I was doing this stuff without him and he could have had a chance to do it. So it's like, you know, making an album and all that stuff I wanted to do. So that was really with the decisions like, okay, so there's a show, but this time I think the world, the metal world in specifically, not the entire world, because we're a culty band, you know, but I think the metal world has a place for forbidden in today's, Political climate, climate, climate, subject matter, musically. It's like, it just seemed to me like, okay, I'm going to go into this and really write a record for the times we're living in. And it was the perfect time for Forbidden's little off-kilter philosophical stances on things, you know? So I got excited about the prospect of writing a record and having something to say. at the same time I thought about, okay, and we're going to play in front of, you know, tens of thousands of people at this Alcatraz festival. So there's, there's multiple things

5:56 coming together. Yeah. And you know, what's pretty wild to me is I say this all the time and you just kind of confirm part of it is like, man, you could take a lot of the songs from the eighties, specifically thrash metal songs, especially change some names and, And the same shit you can still write about today, just with some different names and a little bit of changes. Yeah, well, you can. And then there's the surface level of all of it, which just seems like, oh, they're talking about, you know, society and the environment and... good and evil and nuclear war. There's all that stuff. Back in those days, in the 80s, people were much more simple about it. All we were really talking about was nuclear war and the devil. It was a far different climate.

6:50 When we wrote Omega Wave, I had written that song and album essentially about something off in the distance that you see. It's so giant, you see it coming, but it's not here yet. And that would have been all the conspiracies and everything that everybody was kind of into in those early 2000s into 2010 when that album was written. You name it, the paranoias were showcased on that. There was a bit of a sense of humor to the whole thing. And Forbidden's always had a sense of humor. Whether you catch it or not, it's always been in there. All the lyrics I've written have a little tongue-in-cheek in them.

7:31 But this time... I don't think it's off in the distance. I think it's here. I think the Omega wave is actually a lot of the things that were, were our worst fears. The way that we're being used against each other and manipulated through algorithms. You know, everything to do with the climate itself and the pole shift that we're in the middle of. This planet's like in a pole shift, which is happening rather quickly. But it seems slow to us because we're living in it. It's like it hasn't happened yet until it happens. So there's a million things happening at one time. And we're doing... self-destructive things to the planet on top of the planet doing its cycling so the really you know it seemed like the perfect time to get into that uh and you know the uh the psychologicals philosophical battle we have within ourselves to do what's right and wrong and, and figure out what's right and wrong amidst all the disinformation, static, white noise, everything else. It's like, it just, it's so time for a forbidden record, whether everyone hears it, it's, it's just time for this bands to have its little stance, you know, and say in, in the midst of all this chaos. And, and that was really how the mindset going into the, recording and writing and everything for this album, I feel like it's, it was just the perfect timing for us.

8:59 And I, you know, I could be wrong, but I don't think I am. I think you're right. I think it's amazing how the universe works that it all worked out like that too, because like I was thinking about while you're talking to, okay, in the eighties, we were talking about AI and machines were going to take over. And here we are, we're in AI and you have some dude saying that will be the end of humanity at the end of the decade. And now I feel like we're at Y2K again. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And who knows what truth there is to all that, you know, you know, the, I mean, you know, AI is obviously a faster way to solve some problems, but if you, you know, but if you put two AIs face to face on a phone and ask them to count to a hundred, they're confused. Right. So the, it's, you know, pick your poison, you know, you're, but the way I see it, like we're in the middle of it and there's really sadly no stopping any of this stuff. No.

9:59 Like it's, it's, you know, that wave, it's like, you can't stop a tidal wave. You can't stop a tsunami. You can't stop. And I don't, I don't mean, and I feel horrible for, You know, the younger generations and the generations of the future that are being robbed of the opportunities that, you know, our generation had. It's awful. But, you know, you really go back. You got to go back multiple generations to the beginning of this fuckery. And, you know, when the hippies gave up and became yuppies, that was the beginning of the end. It's so funny that you say that. Cause I always talk about how weird it is that the hippies became the yuppies became the boomers. Right. Right.

10:39 Like how did that happen? Yeah. People, people love to say, all right, boomer, like when you have any kind of subject, but kids today, they're not, they're, they're actually pretty awesome. Like, you know, they don't party as much as we used to. They, they're a little, they're a little overly concerned with feelings and, and, Um, and the way things seem and the way things are, but they, but there's something in them that's actually quite cool and wonderful. Um, but they don't see the bigger picture either. You know, they're, they're missing some of the bigger pictures and their understanding of, of AI is skewed. You know, it's like, it's just really interesting watching, but I have deep respect for the, the, the kids of today.

11:22 My son's 22 and, uh, he's just a lot smarter than I ever was, but he's also, but he's also come to this kind of practical, like, you know, pragmatic. Yeah. Like, what am I going to do about this? Like it, and it's sad. It's sad because they don't feel like they could just get up and fight for the way to stop things. So they just use the internet to complain about things and nothing changes in a post. Nothing changes from having an opinion. Nothing changes about AI from having an opinion about AI that's all controlled by an algorithm controlled by AI. It's the ironic truth to the whole thing. We all depend on AI if we're even doing this interview right now. There's some degree where it's being pulled into this medium. The album is all about that.

12:19 And more, you know. And see, that's what I think is cool about an old school band like you writing new music today because I always felt like music then was talking about real shit in a real way. And I don't think it's the same today most of the time. So I think that is why it's time for Forbidden because I think we need a little bit of real, you know, like people don't even read, they read headlines. They don't even read things. We could write whatever title we wanted for this interview and they would click on it based on the title, not based on the content.

13:03 And you're reading it all via, you know, the internet, which is all being skewed. Like rarely I have, I follow a news source, which is, I I'm forgetting the name and I don't want to stop to look at it, but it shows news from the left news from the right news from the center. Right. So you kind of got to, you got to kind of look at all of it and try to come up with it. But for me personally, it's like, I've been mistaken as somebody that's a very left liberal, you know, libtarded, whatever they want to call it. And I'm not. I'm not. I've just always been anti-brainwashing. And I saw... 10 years ago, things started to pop up where they were using every conspiracy theory that was ever used against, you know, different races along the way. And most specifically, you know, the Nazis used against the Jewish people in the most recent times as the same, the same theories they were throwing out about the Jews back then they were throwing up, throwing out about Democrats in, in, you know, QAnon and stuff like that. So I, I, I tagged that early.

14:18 I'm like, guys, keep your eyes on the ball. This is the same playbook used for different things. So I watched, I watched an entire country start fighting with each other over this shit. And I've lost many friends and some of them, you know, literally they've died, you know, getting caught in that quagmire. And yeah. Yeah. So, you know, for me, I've got just my bullshit detectors really strong. Doesn't mean I'm always right. I'm more aligned with things that don't stand with Nazis. Things that don't harbor ill will against orientations and races and things like that. That's just me.

15:05 To me, that's not being liberal or conservative. That's just being a human being, man. Right. Yeah, but the human being... It's like... you want to say there's no, there ain't no good guys. There ain't no bad guys. There's only you and me. And we just don't agree. Right. You know that song like that is, yeah, there's, there's, there's some truth to that, but that's also a fucking cop out because you should know, you should know deep inside when you're, you know, isolating yourself or putting yourself on a, on some sort of pedestal because you think you're better. Like, and that's the problem that we have today is people want to separate so much. And it's there, you know, there is only one, kind of human, human race. It's not, you know, skin color and blood and borders and all this shit. It's all an illusion held, made to keep us down. And, you know, people, oh my God, what new world order, one world government, like, well, that shouldn't frighten you unless it's all being used to manipulate people and herd them like cattle, which sadly it is. So, but, but if you say these things, people are so triggered. They're so triggered to react like, what are you, a communist? No, man.

16:18 I'm going to get into a little bit of our songwriting. The song Burning the Lungs of Earth, people took that song and they said, oh, what are you talking about, saving the planet? I'm like, no. We're talking about once the planet's done with us and we've ruined it and we've burned and exhausted all of our resources, It'll just flip itself over, flick us like fleas, and start again. Yeah. Has before. Yes, yes. They're digging up societies that they think are over 100,000 years old with things that are technologically advanced. This particular race and this particular timeline, we're ecologically unsound.

17:07 There was other societies that I believe, they dug them up that were more ecologically sound and took care of their planet, but yet the planet still does what the planet does. And it doesn't matter what your intentions were. You can ruin it, but it'll just grow back anyway. My grandmother used to have a saying, the only thing constant is change. Right. That is true. But even that doesn't change. Right. Exactly. You know, and to me, music is the best therapy for you to artists and for me to listener. So what better way to do that, but to express your beliefs or feelings or whatever it is in a song that we can even pull our own meaning out of and our own, which.

17:58 You should, I think it's really important to do that. You know, people ask me to explain the songs. I explain them to a certain degree and then, The rest should really be up to the listener. Yeah. You know, we have a way we do that now and the way that song subjects are come up with. And it used to be a thing that I do most most of the lyrical writing and always the titles. And, you know, and then with Norman in the band and we haven't really gotten into him, I I handed him divided by zero. I said, here's a chorus. Here's some of the verse. This is what I want to write it about. And then he finished it. And it was great. And I was like, can you do more of that? Because it had been a long time since I didn't have to finish everything. Because Russ didn't necessarily love that aspect of writing.

18:46 He likes melodies and, you know, he'd write some lyrics here and there, but he mostly left that in my court. So I realized right then, I'm like, holy shit, this guy gets it and he's great and I don't have to do it all. Yay. You know, so it was really amazing. that I could throw him song titles and tell him what I wanted it to be about. And then he would research the stuff. He had really his own ideas, his own melodies. We just helped him finish it. And Chris Contos helped a lot with that too. On a couple songs, he kind of helped steer the subject matter a little bit more. And so between the three of us with really Norm at the helm, we did some great work together to get this story told. And, I love that too because I think that's what makes truly good music when the whole band is collaborating and putting their own piece into it. I even think that is the key to good bands and having their uniqueness.

19:41 I find a lot of times today metal bands and newer metal bands, like they have this formula, like how they make their music, like a algebraic equation. And I take the thrash metal bands of the eighties and like, none of them sounded the same. You could tell which band was which, you know? Well, yeah, at the, at, at the top of the musical food chain, you can definitely, uh, hear the differences between them. And then you had everybody that was trying to be like, wanted to be like, but forbidden, you know, our lane is way the fuck over here. Like we're, we are so different in, in many aspects, you know, and, uh, having a great singer like Russ was the first and foremost thing like, you know, Russ was, he could do anything. And, and he, and so that opened doors for us to be just as much heavy metal as it did thrash metal.

20:36 And this album, I feel like, is just as much heavy metal as it is thrash metal, as it is prog. We stretched out and fully embraced that we can do anything. And everybody contributed. See, I love that. Because it should be. I like the blending of genres nowadays because of what I was saying before. Because that creates a uniqueness. And we all like different parts of the genre or different genres. So it's not like If you're a thrash metal head, you only listen to thrash metal, you know? So it is cool when you blend other components in to make something new and fresh because what was done was already done. Don't need to do it again.

21:21 Well, I always say nothing is original. Everything is unique. Exactly. You know, we're all, it's like fingerprints. Like this finger looks like that finger, but they're completely different if you really pull up and examine them. 100%. I agree completely. How did it feel making this new album compared to previous albums? It felt great. Your first album, you don't know what you're doing. You're just writing it. I was 15 when I started writing that record and then 18 when we recorded it. and, uh, clueless, you know, but, uh, twisted in a form when we got Tim Calvert, the band, him and I started working the way a guitar duo should work. And we sat down and we hashed everything out and syncopated and harmonized. And so there was a big growth through twisted in a form. And then the, the other two albums were in turbulent times where nobody gave a fuck about thrash metal. Right. So we wrote those kind of only for ourselves and hardly anybody else.

22:28 And then, uh, You know, Omega Wave, I was on a mission, but I didn't get as much help as I want. I got a lot of help from Mark. And I mean, everyone did help, but we lived separately. We weren't hanging out as much. I'd work with Mark a bunch. Steve lived in England. Russ didn't want to get together until the end of the process to finish lyrics and melodies. So we were all just kind of everywhere. And on this album, it started together. Chris and I worked through, you know, 75% of the album together until he had things come up in his life where he couldn't be around as much. And that's when we got, you know, Jeremy on app. And then him and I worked like Tim Calvert and I, we sat down and we created demos for everything and wrote four songs together.

23:15 And so it feels like, even though it was a span of two years writing this thing or two, two and a half years, it feels like it was the most, conducive and put together album out of all of them where everybody was on a mission you know so it felt great writing it and felt even better recording it because we were so prepared when we went in the studio and the approach we had was to keep it raw keep it real many of the songs are written in e which is the old tuning that we used back in the first two albums that nobody uses these days in our in our particular genre so it was nice to bring that sound back without, I don't think people realize it when they're listening to it, but it's, that's, what's making your shoulders go up in your ears perk is that you're hearing a sound that you used to hear. Yeah.

23:59 And we're just way better production and recording. Cause Zach Oren is incredible and he did a great job of capturing it, but it's very raw and it's very, uh, sincere. See, and I love that. And that's what it should be all about. And, uh, yeah, you know, I listened to your new stuff now and like I was, watching the video for burning the lungs of earth. And it gave me. The nostalgia of the old school, but then, yeah, I guess from the production stuff and blending the genres, the modernization of 2026. So it's like the 2026 version of 1985. Right. And there's, We're talking about an hour and four minutes worth of music that are seamlessly blended together. And the sequencing of the album is a big, big part of it. And the album is... If you're looking at the digital link, you don't see it, but the album is actually in four quadrants. And it's three, three, three, and two. And the last one being a space opera, right?

25:04 Like with Flower of Life and Soul Grape. So every quadrant of the record has a little philosophical... flavor to it it's not a concept but it's a theme to everything yeah yeah so so it all fits together in a way where it you know like the old school records did but we're metal you know so it's it's you know if you're expecting just thrash metal you might be disappointed because we over delivered you know we we just do thrash metal we did thrash metal heavy metal prog we, we hit on a lot of different elements, everything we love about music. We did. I didn't see any reason to hold back or try to fit into any kind of particular genre. Cause I think that would have been more disappointing to the listener than, uh, than what we did and stretching ourselves out and giving, you know, we bared it all, you know, we're, we're, we're, we're up there. We're naked. We're it's right there. It's right for you, you know?

26:06 I think that's what's different now as you get older, too, is like there's no gatekeeping of yourself. Forget everybody else. But like even yourself, when we were younger, you know, it. Was like, oh, it has to be just like this or else it's not cool. You know, and really deep down, we thought all those other things were cool. We just didn't admit it to ourselves. Yeah, yeah. The insecurities of being young and looking over your shoulder. We certainly don't have those anymore. Us personally, I think bands do gatekeep themselves. A lot of bands do. And if we had put out many, many records in a row and did a long catalog without disappearing for a while and coming back, who knows how you get affected.

26:56 We may be gatekeep, you know, like worried about fitting in because we've made this niche. I don't think we have a niche. I think our niche is outer niche, you know? So I think that we just kind of trusted ourselves and, and the end result, we don't know yet. We, you know, we've just begun embarking on this trip. It's a mystery. Like we don't know where this thing's going. We just know that the reaction to the album from, you know, the press and our peers and people we look up to has been really, really good, but we don't know what the public's going to think. Like that's a whole different animal. That's part of the excitement too, right? Like that's the excitement you had when you were young that sometimes gets lost as you get, you know, on in this industry.

27:42 Yeah. It's very exciting. I'm a little tentative nervous, you know, because I just don't know. And we're going to start a tour the same day. And I think our tour is going to start, uh, You know, I've been using the comment coming in like a lamb and going out like a lion just because I think that the tour is starting the same day the album comes out. People are going to catch on to the album as it goes. You know, and I think people are going to watch videos of this band on tour as we go and things are just going to catch and catch and catch. You know, it's a big risk going out as a headliner for your first tour when your album comes out. But the timing dictated that it was best for us to do that because the opening slots weren't as good as what we could do in this situation. And so we got, we do have some support slots for next year that are looking really, really good, but that's next year.

28:27 When this album drops, we're going out with heathen and void and, and the chips fall where they may. And I think it's going to grow as it goes. Well, it's going to be a killer tour. It's a killer album, both kicking off on the 23rd of this month. So only a week away and that's pretty exciting. And, uh, I can't wait to see a lot more of you and, uh, Maybe see you at more festivals in 2027 since I do all of them. And, you know, it'll be fun to catch one of your shows at the festivals next year, too. Oh, you do the Danny Wimmer festivals? You go to all those? I do all the Wimmer. I do a bunch of others here in the States. I do also Download, Bloodstock, Grass Pop, Hellfest, Valken.

29:13 Badass. So were you at Valken when we played last year? I was. Okay cool yeah that was a crazy day that was the most spinal tap day that we've ever had we i just gotta tell a funny story so we we pull in and we're in two two vans and a car our entourage because we came just from the netherlands and uh nobody spoke any english that was running security and they pointed us in every different direction other than where the artists go like we're artists we're playing they're over here over there so we didn't make it to our parking spot until less than an hour before showtime And then had to do the travel through the mud and the muck. And we made it up on stage just in time to plug our stuff in and set the drums up.

30:04 I'm laughing, too. I'm laughing, too, because I've gone through that experience. It's like, oh, no, go there, go there, go there. And then walking in, like, yeah, where's media? And nobody knew where it was. Well, the best part for me was that I chose to wear my shark sandwich shirt that day. And so I was like, huh, that was on right on point. You know, like it was it was wild. But yeah, it's a great festival. I met. Who did I meet that day? What's his name? Bob Geldof. Because Boomtown Rats played that day. I guess they hated it because it was Papa Roach's on the other stage while they were playing.

30:45 It was all loud. Bobby Bobby and having that with his white boot. He wore white boots to that festival. Oh, my God. He got out of the car, shook her hand. We talk for a second. You were white boots. I was like, oh, he's going to be mad. Oh, but it was great. It was great. It was amazing experience. Well, I look forward to meeting you. Absolutely. Let's do it. And I look forward to your new music coming out and everybody needs to get it or they can't listen to my show. There you go. All right, brother. Well, I will talk to you when I see you out there. All right. Sounds good. Thanks a lot for being on the Adventures of Pipe Man.

31:25 All right. Take care, man. Thank you for listening to the Adventures of Pipe Man on W4CY radio.