“This album is very open and honest and kind of comes from a dark, twisted place”: interview with Mushroomhead’s Steve “Skinny” Felton

Cleveland, Ohio-based masked metallers Mushroomhead have released their latest album, the cinematic “Call The Devil,” earlier in August, via Napalm Records. The album features production by band mastermind/drummer Steve “Skinny” Felton, as well as Matt Wallace (Faith No More, 3 Doors Down) on mixing, who has previously worked with Mushroomhead on their iconic album “XIII”. Also featured on “Call The Devil” is Jacob Hansen in mastering duties (Volbeat, Epica, Arch Enemy).

Having just finished an European tour alongside Dymytry and Silenzer, Mushroomhead‘s mastermind Skinny took some time to chat with Chaoszine. The interview dug deep into the band’s creative process, both from a songwriting point of view, as well as an artistic project, complete with masks, performance and imagery. Skinny also addressed the band’s take on Finland and the Midnight Sun, and how to build a setlist and choose from a catalogue of nine albums spanning a 30-year-long career.

You can read the full interview below.

I’m so glad to talk to you, Skinny.
Yes, thank you for taking the time to do that. I’m super excited to do this. Thank you.

So you just finished the European tour, which included Finland. How did you like the country?
Yes. Absolutely wonderful. Loved it. There was a little bit of jet lag. We had 12 shows in a row, and we had missed a flight. So by the time we got there, we were still kind of awake for, like, a couple of days. And it was interesting how the sun didn’t set. You know, the way we were expecting it to at all. And it was daylight for way longer than we thought it would be. And the sleep deprivation, you know, that really kicked in. But the festival was awesome. It was really fun. And a once in a lifetime experience at that point, we had never been there. So everyone was just super excited to be there.

You’re touring in support of your album “Call the Devil”. Your career now spans around 30 years, and you have nine albums out. So how is it picking a set list for a concert these days?
It is very difficult. We ran across this just as we finished up the new one, thinking about getting out on tour. And, you know, if you take two songs up every album, there’s 18 songs. We don’t have time to play 18 songs. So, it’s been really fun and kind of challenging, but we’re considering changing it up, even for this next tour, possibly, you know, every other night, every couple of nights or whatever. So we might not be doing the same set every night, just because we already missed playing other songs. And, you know, some of the songs that are brand new, we wanna try those out and see how they go over live. That’s something we found that in a lot of instances, we listen to the album, we create it, you know, and we get out live and we think like, “Oh, that song would be good live, and that song would be really fun to do.” And sometimes they are fun, but maybe they don’t go over well with the crowd. Maybe they’re either too slow of a tempo, it doesn’t have the right production for it, if it’s a big dramatic song like that. So, it’s interesting to experiment and play new material to see how it goes over. And then sometimes we’re wrong. We’re like, “Wow, people love that song. I hate that song.” [laughter]

Does that happen? They love it and you hate it?
Well, yeah, I mean, not to where you hate it, but you’re like, “Wow, I didn’t see that one, I wasn’t expecting such a response from certain songs.” You’re like, “Wow, okay.” And a lot of times, it’s the ones that aren’t your favorite, you know, and you’re just– maybe you’re sick of performing them and you bring them back and people are like, “Oh my God.” And you’re like, “Oh, okay.” Well, it’s been 30 years, I almost forgot about that song. So, um, it is very challenging to pick a set list, to come back to your question, yes.

Yeah, but do you understand, like a fan who has been around from the beginning, they’re gonna be very sad as a member of the audience if you don’t play certain songs from your early days right?
Right. Yeah and I understand that sometimes there’s absolute songs that it’s like, “Well, we have to play, there’s no way we can play a show, you know, without some of these songs.” And sometimes we do and, you know, we get the same type of response to where it’s like, “Oh, all I wanted to hear was that one song and they didn’t play it.” So it’s very challenging after 30 years, you know, can’t please everyone. [laughter]

You guys do absolutely the right thing, changing things up, you must keep things interesting for yourselves, right?
Yeah, and fresh, you know, we got to keep ourselves occupied and keep ourselves entertained as well.

So “Call the Devil” is a fantastic album, with all the mood changes that it goes through. So I understand you worked on it with Matt Wallace again. And the mastering was done by Jacob Hansen, who is also fantastic. So how was working with them?

Absolutely amazing. This is our third album that Matt had mixed. And actually we got to see him when we were finishing up some of the mixes. I went out to LA, spent a couple of days with him. And I’ve known him since, you know, 2004, 2003, when the Universal album “XIII” came out. And we just kind of kept in touch throughout the whole time. And as far as Jacob goes, he was a suggestion from the label to check out for some mastering. And obviously, we knew the name, all the Volbeat stuff, and just he’s done so much incredible work over the years. So that was definitely helped out by Napalm. And, again, it’s been a pleasure to work with those guys. They really understand the band and everything they’ve been able to suggest being very collaborative and it was definitely the right guy for the job for “Call the Devil”. So, yeah, Napalm had suggested Jacob and his masters came back very clean, very quick, and I was just ecstatic, super happy, like, wow, listen to that right off the bat. Like, we didn’t really have to send a lot back. Like, the guy knows what he’s doing, he gets the band, he just nailed it. And the same with Matt Wallace bringing all of his history and his catalog to the table and knowing the band after two albums prior. So working on the third one, it was very much like riding a bike and he’s good at bringing up all the keyboards and all the big lush tones and making things very ominous and big in the surround sound world. Just bringing sounds to life that I didn’t even expect or I kind of forgot, maybe it was buried in there in the previous mixes or just layered in. And the way he presents it, brings a whole new life to things. So fresh ears from both of those guys. And I can’t suggest that enough when you’re so close to producing and recording your own material, if you can get some guys that you really like and trust and look up to; if you have the opportunity, absolutely try to reach out and get some fresh ears because your project will come back with more life to it than you would ever imagine. So, again, super honored and proud to work with those guys and just amazed at how it all came out.

Your lyrics on this latest album “Call the Devil” are pure poetry. If you just read them without the music, without everything else, which I know it’s a whole package, but to just read the lyrics, they stand out alone. It could become like a poetry book. How did the songs come about? Do you write the lyrics together with the music?
Thank you. On the lyrical content, I think this one’s very open and honest and kind of comes from a dark, twisted place. Steve Rauckhorst is amazing at twisting a phrase and putting things into perspective that you wouldn’t normally put, you know, those three words together, so to speak.I can’t really speak for him on every emotional level of where he came from and some of his writing and contribution, but like I said, there’s a lot of honesty in his voice and his delivery, so, he’s absolutely feeling what he’s writing. And I can hear it, and as I read along to it, I think the same thing, that that’s very twisted and unique. And it’s very poetic sometimes in what it’s saying. So, yeah, lyrically, I think this one, it’s pretty dark, and kind of straight to the point sometimes, but like you said, if you read it without audio, you know, music to it, it almost reads out like poetry or a play almost, the way things don’t rhyme or they don’t resolve with a rhyme always. It’s not just straight chorus, verse, chorus. These things are just their own little hooks almost, and then they turn into even more. Like, I compare the last song on the album to very much like an opera piece, where it’s like three or four separate acts, and you can almost see it done that way and performed, because they’re their own little pieces, but together, they paint a much larger picture and takes you on a bigger ride. And those are the types of songs that we have that I think are very much influenced by, say, Pink Floyd, “The Wall” you know? Yeah, so when they get into the longer songs, and they’re not traditional arrangements, and it just becomes a lot of voice and texture, and let’s face it, art, and then you come in with a band screaming sometimes, and that’s definitely one of the things that Pink Floyd, “The Wall”, one of my hugest influences, that you can hear on “Shame in a Basket“, the last song on the album, quite a bit.

I noticed something that was like an outlier in the album is a song called “Decomposition“, and that’s the song that I liked the most. It was so humorous, even without the lyrics, just the music itself, the first riff and everything about it is humorous, like some sad clown kind of thing. It’s so expressive, and so amazing. So how’d you come up with something like that?
So a lot of that lyrically, that’s another Steve Rauckhorst one, but, you know, sonically, that comes from the mind of Dr. F. Ryan Farrell. He’s just amazing when it comes to creating with keyboards and textures and sounds and styles. And he was definitely going for more of that carnival type of feel to where it’s kind of silly, it’s kind of spooky, is it friendly? Are you gonna put your hand in the bag and do you pull out candy do you get your hand ripped off? You know, there’s something mysterious about it as well. So when lyrically it came in, it was two contrasts that very well complemented each other. But that song definitely is fun. It has a bigger open vibe to it, it’s not so aggressive metal, it’s like it’s got that carnival, open, fun vibe. Everyone’s welcome if you really wanna look, you know? [laughter]

Yeah, it’s like an old European movie, like Fellini, where everything is a little off.
Yes, and it’s supposed to be unsettling, like the complement and contrast thing to where I’m not sure if I even like this; this is neat, this is interesting. And it’s really one of the only moments on the album that has that flavor. We have a lot of flavors all over the album, but that one definitely captured that carnival vibe, that creepiness.

Yes, exactly. So the new masks are so brutally beautiful and fantastic. They take your aesthetic to another level. How is the process of creating those masks until you reach a final design?
Well, it seems to get somewhat easier every time, as long as they fit in the long run. And by fit, I mean to where your ears line up and your eyes line up, you know, to where you can breathe. Sometimes the idea and the sculpting and everything once it’s done ends up a little too big or too small. So, there’s a lot that goes into it. The two sculptors that did this round of masks, Joe Gall, who is also our new guitar player, sculpted six of the new ones, and the other three were done by a guy named Jordan Patton, who we’ve worked with in the past as well, just another amazing special effects guy. A lot of this stuff is either kind of hand-drawn napkin style, or sent; there’s a lot of file sharing, you know, check out this video game or check out this movie or what if we did something like this? A lot of kind of hands-on and reference style. But these artists, what they do is they take those main ideas and they sculpt them directly out of clay. And some of us get our head casts done so things fit proper, and then, you know, the mold is made and then it’s poured in latex. So we’re very, very hands-on. And some of us do our own paint jobs on them to decide what the theme or the look is. It’s, again, very hands-on what we do there, and it kind of always has been. But the new designs are killer, and those are the two guys: Joe Gall and Jordan Patton.

They’re fantastic. Kudos to them. Whenever I see masked bands, it always takes me back to Kiss, because they didn’t have masks but they had makeup, and that was like a mask because they had characters. I also think of their unmasked phase in the early ’80s, you know, with albums like “Lick It Up”. Do you see yourselves ever doing something like that, taking the masks off and going on stage and performing?
Yeah, I think for this brand, for Mushroomhead, it should always be the masks, without a doubt. I think if anyone felt that strong that they wanted to do something else, the more power to them without the mask, you know, if they really wanna go out there and show their face now, you know, I think it would have been better to do 30 years ago when we were younger. But [laughter] I think the mask actually helped now with the age.

But getting older is part of life, you know?
It is, it is. And some of the masks are aging, too. You see them kind of getting more decomposed or more battle damaged to them, too. They’re weathering and changing. So, it’s part of the honest evolution, right?

But they’re nicer now, but not in a way of prettier, but they’re nicer in terms of more elaborate.
Yeah, yeah. The way the designs are, for sure, everything functions a little bit cleaner, too.

Yeah, imagine wearing that when you’re playing drums. Come on. It can’t be comfortable.
Yeah, it’s not the best to hear or breathe or see out of. You certainly can’t communicate. One of the biggest things we have on stage is hand signals, because you can’t read a facial expression, even. You can’t tell if someone’s laughing or pointing at– you know, you really have to be on it. And sometimes in the dark clubs, it’s even harder, because you can’t really see; your peripheral vision is absolutely blocked. But either way, it’s really fun, and, you know, I truly enjoy– you had mentioned Kiss, and it was one of the things that was an early inspiration for me growing up. Kiss, Alice Cooper, The Residents. And then, you know, you get into ’90s, and, you know, you’re talking, like Mr. Bungle and Gwar, they were kind of doing it, too. There really wasn’t a whole lot. But even when I was growing up and I saw Kiss and saw Alice Cooper, as much as I didn’t care for their music, I loved what they were doing theatrically, and I was so inspired by that that I always wanted something more than a heavy metal band. I wanted to be able to incorporate some sort of act along with it. What that was, I don’t know. I still don’t know. We’re trying to figure it out. But, that’s part of the creation of art, right? Just got to keep creating.

Mushroomhead is like a complex and multi-layered art project. It’s not just music. It’s the masks and the live performance, the music videos, the lyrics, it’s very cinematic. It’s like going to the opera or watching a good movie. So, how did this vision start? Did it happen naturally, or was there a thought behind it at first?
You know, I think it’s grown to some degree on its own. There was always a thought of what it could be. And then, as times change and you get older and you’re looking at how the rest of the world is either reacting to it or what else is going on in the world, try to find a happy medium to kind of adapt as the times change and as you continue to make art. You don’t wanna come out of left field and alienate anyone — fans that you might have picked up along the way. But you wanna continue to try to push the boundaries, step out of your comfort zone, and create, like I mentioned before, keeping yourself occupied and entertained. And being able to understand that you have to get out of your comfort zone and you have to be willing to take some risks even and say, “Okay, this is just art. If the song doesn’t come out the way I want, I’ll make another one.” You know, and understand that every move isn’t gonna make or break you: it’s just art. And I think when you let it come from a natural place, you’re gonna be better off with a response from other people. Because whether people are musicians or artists or not, I think the majority of humanity and human beings can tell when someone’s singing from their soul versus reading it/singing. Or like there’s a groove in a band that just makes you move versus you see a cover band or you see a band play a song very similar and it doesn’t make you move. Like, when it’s coming from the heart and it’s honest, people can relate in gigantic ways. And I think that that’s the biggest thing I can say about anyone creating is just stay true to yourself, man, and you’ll have more success.

The band has been through many lineup changes and some for tragic reasons, unfortunately. So how do those changes affect your sound? And have you always had to reinvent yourselves over all these years on the road?
Well, you know, I don’t think it’s reinventing, it’s just part of the adapting and the evolving, if you will. Having member changes always takes you out of your comfort zone, and sometimes you don’t know what you’re gonna get. And the reality is life is very unpredictable and everything is kind of that way. So you have to be willing to accept change and see where it could go before you say, “Oh, I don’t know if this is gonna work.” Especially with this type of thing, you have to have patience. Biggest thing in this game for me is understanding everyone else first. [laughter] So having patience working with others is definitely key to it.

Thank you so much, Skinny, for this interview.
Thank you so much for taking the time to do this.