Metal, Hardcore, Indie, Rock
Chaoszine had the opportunity to chat with Chad Green, lead vocalist of the band Frozen Soul about their new album, fantasy, and emo music. Here’s what we talked about!
Hey, Chad, how are you doing at the moment?
Chad Green: I’m okay, how are you?
Great, great, thanks. I’ve had the pleasure of seeing you and photographing you in Vienna and in Munich, opening for Heaven Shall Burn, so it was amazing to see you on tour. And now, of course, you’ll be releasing a new album, “No Place Of Warmth”. You’ve said you’ve stopped overthinking and wrote from instinct. What’s something that instinct told you that logic never would have?
Chad Green: Just to keep things simple. It’s easy to overthink things, and we did a lot of overthinking on the last record. We were happy with it, but we just a little bit too worried about what people thought, worried about reactions and stuff like that. I think we lost a little bit of the idea and the reason we were there, which was to have fun and to play music we love. With this record, we tried to use the KISS strategy. Keep it simple, stupid, we definitely just went off that instinct. And it led us in a way we were super happy with.
That’s awesome. And that’s a strategy that works because KISS made it work and they’re quite successful. Can you share with us if there’s a song on the album that started in one way and then completely changed into something different?
Chad Green: Every song on the record. We have hardly any material when we started in the studio, so we had to figure out where to get our footing the first two weeks we were there. Then once we did that, we started revamping stuff that we had already worked on in the past and set aside while we had to tour. There are songs like “Invoke War“, you know, that were a completely different song, “Frost Forged“, completely different song than it is now on the record. I think they all turned out for the best. And we’re all happy with them. Chris had a melody that he had played on something a long time ago, and then we turned that into a whole song.
Do you think that people become stronger because of the cold they endure or in spite of it?
Chad Green: A little of both. I envision that spite as the result of enduring the cold. You can only endure something so long, you’re going to hit some kind of barrier at some point. That spite is what’s going to push you to get through it the most, you know. And that’s where death metal comes into play; it’s already a good way to express the rage, so I think it’s a good combination.
Also in your songs, you sometimes you also talk about death and passing. Are you trying to make it less frightening, more honest or just unavoidable?
Chad Green: I don’t think I’m trying to do any of that necessarily. I think we write our songs in a very general, fun, loving way. I don’t know if you’ve watched any pro wrestling or anything like that, but wrestlers have theme songs that they come out to, and it’s always way more badass than just seeing a person run out from the back of a stage. Our music is supposed to be the background music to your adventure. So you can be the hero to your story, you know, because that’s kind of how I grew up listening to music.
I didn’t have a lot of money. I didn’t have a ton of CDs and records and all these ways to find out what lyrics were. I just listened to stuff; sometimes I would record it off of my radio and play it back. I couldn’t understand most of the songs so I would pull out certain words and make my own meaning up. I think that was awesome that I was able to figure out how to do that as a kid. I didn’t have a dad to look up to. I didn’t have a hero to be like, “This is the person that’s helping guide me“.
I had my grandfather, but he was so busy, he was never really there for me emotionally. So I kind of needed me, I kind of adopted music as my mentor, so when we write our music, it’s supposed to be that background music for you. In life, you experience so many things like loss, trials and tribulations that you never expect to have to deal with. I think making sure that the song can give someone what they need in whatever situation rather than trying to create some sort of message necessarily about a specific type of experience, is just the better route for us as a band, you know. There are meanings to all the songs on a deeper level, they definitely deal a lot with loss and my life experiences in my lyrics.
You answered also my upcoming question, because I was about to ask you if there was a moment in your life where music became a form of healing, rather than hurt. And I think that you pretty much explained that.
Chad Green: Yeah. I did an interview the other day with Metal Hammer and they were talking about Slipknot and I mentioned when I was younger, that was one of the first bands that taught me that I can handle it. It wasn’t through a message in their music, it wasn’t through lyrics. It was through the sound, and just me walking around with my hoodie on being pissed off. Feeling like I had someone next to me that I could be pissed off with. That was a real early age when I discovered the ability to do that. And so now it’s just kind of second nature, that’s just kind of the reason why I love all this kind of stuff. It’s very therapeutic.
Do you have any Finnish bands that you like, or that you’re inspired off or that you listen to? Since our website is based in Finland?
Chad Green One of the bands that heavily influenced Frozen Soul in the early days was Sentenced. The one that we always saw was “Shadows of Past” and they changed it to “Shadows of the Past”. That’s probably one of the greatest death metal records of all time. The demo was awesome. I’m not really sure the history of that band and what happened and made them change to the gothic stuff, but that was cool too. We were screaming about Sentenced and nobody in our area even had a clue who they were. But we were loving it. So yeah, that band rules.
Is there a spiritual dimension to your work with Frozen Soul?
Chad Green: I mean, not really. We don’t really talk about religion and that kind of stuff in our music, because I would say that I’m not a religious person, but I definitely am, in some sense, a spiritual person. I grew up loving fantasy and games, the more imaginative side of life. I want to believe that there’s something fucking awesome out there beyond this world, beyond our consciousness and realm of understanding, nothing would be cooler than that. A lot of the coolest stories and universes created for comics and all that stuff are based out of that thinking. So no, but yes.
Gerard Way was guest in the title track from “No Place Of Warmth“ but if you had to be a guest in one of My Chemical Romance songs, which one would you choose?
Chad Green: I don’t even know. I wasn’t ever a My Chemical Romance fan. I think they’re an amazing band, super accomplished, full of very talented people. Gerard is a visionary, he’s very talented, and he’s a very busy guy. And he’s done so much with his life, more than what most people can dream of doing with their lives, you know. He’s influenced so many people, generations of people and will continue to inspire generations forever. When I was a kid, I was introduced to the singing, dancing, 80s music, Rod Stewart and all that kind of stuff from my mom. Then got into nu metal and stuff when I was becoming a teenager and then it kind of progressed from there.
And I hit a little phase where I met a girl and, you know, I had some friends in school and they were listening to screamo type stuff, like Underoath, the first Avenged Sevenfold record. And I think My Chemical Romance was in there, but I kind of phased a little through that and went straight to death metal and hardcore because I was introduced to extreme metal kind of before I saw that screamo stuff. I was open-minded to it because my friends liked it. I was never like, “I don’t want to listen to that.“. I liked rap, I liked country, I liked all that stuff.
I stuck to the aggressive stuff, so I started finding bands like Slayer and stuff. Then my friend, when I was a teenager introduced me to Decapitated and stuff like that. I thought those bands were so incredibly extreme. I remember the “Vital Remains” cover with the fucking hammer smashing fucking Jesus’s chest or something. I was like, “What is this? This is crazy.”
I didn’t fully start liking that style of extreme music yet. Then I found the singy screamo breakdown stuff, you know, and in there was My Chemical Romance. I always respected it. But my two little brothers were more of the ones that fell into that. They also liked AFI and Misfits, more into the more upbeat, punkier side of things and stuff. I just kind of skipped over that. But I will say since meeting Gerard and finding out how cool he is and stuff over the last couple years, I have listened to it.
Honestly, like, just “The Black Parade” in all is a really solid record. Looking at it as my musical tastes have changed, it really does feel like a record like Queen would put out. It feels just like a legendary rock record, you know, and it’s very catchy and very unique and nobody else sounds like that, you know. So probably, I don’t know, anything on that, I guess, you know, but I don’t really have a specific song because it just wasn’t what I was super exposed and into as a kid.
Are there any, like fantasy or sci-fi series or movies that you enjoy watching?
Chad Green: Yeah, I enjoy like the typical stuff, like Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones. All the Alien movies. I collect the alien toys and stuff, I have a bunch of them behind me actually, still in the box. I kind of spread it across, I’ve kind of gone through phases where I’m more into fantasy style stuff than I am horror and sci-fi. I like playing games.
I love watching movies because I like to be immersed in whatever I’m watching. So I can really watch almost anything and really enjoy it because I become one with the movie when I’m watching it. But gaming, I prefer the fantasy style. I play first-person shooter games, but I love like World of Warcraft and I played EverQuest for many years and other games like that.
It influences a lot of the Frozen Soul stuff. The blanket over the top of the music is definitely from the aspect of horror and fantasy and stuff like that. But yeah, I used to really like movies like The Labyrinth and Dark Crystal and I love like The Thing. I love movies with a lot of practical effects and puppets, stuff that requires a lot of effort and imagination to make look real.
Okay, then as a little game to end the interview, I would like you to cast the whole Frozen Soul band as characters from Lord of the Rings.
Chad Green: Well, Matt is Gollum. I’m a cave troll. Chris is Treebeard. I’d say Sam is definitely just gotta be Galadriel. Michael,I’d say Pippin. I don’t really see myself as any of the characters, but I just think the cave trolls are big and stupid and just brooding around.
Chad, thank you so much for being such a good sport and for taking the time to do this interview with me. Is there anything else that you want to add to our viewers and readers?
Chad Green: Yeah, you know, check out “No Place Warmth”, hope you like it.
