Metal, Hardcore, Indie, Rock
Led by Sonny Vincent (Testors) and frontman Bobby Liebling (Pentagram), together with drummer Alex Schwers (Slime), guitarists Hugo Conim, Dee Dammers, and Alex Farrar on bass, The Limit is about to release a new album titled “Another Drop”. We had the chance to chat with Sonny and Bobby about this new adventure, their new label and more.
Hey guys, how are you doing at the moment?
Bobby Liebling: I’m doing good. I’m a little jumpy, but I’m okay.
Sonny Vincent: I’m doing good.
Awesome. So you’re releasing an album this month. It feels like it’s very like unfiltered, very urgent, like a force. In today’s modern music industry, which is dominated by this digital polished and perfectionism, why is it still vital for you to deliver a sound that is still just pure?
Bobby Liebling: To me, it’s because it’s not phony. We’re actually doing it. You know, it’s not a load of a, “Hey, we got a swift machine here. So let’s make fake stuff“. I don’t, I can’t stand that when they do that with music and AI. I mean, you can pull on now, you can be literally can be a Ringo Starr on drums cause they have his samples. Ronnie Dio singing, Michael Schenker on guitar. I mean, it’s, that’s crazy, and they write the songs for you too. In the format of the band that you pick, like you can pick a Led Zeppelin song and say, you want the musicians I just stated on there and literally you can’t tell any difference.
That’s cuckoo. That’s skating. It’s fake. It stinks. That’s my opinion about that. As well as the hologram concerts of “Let’s revive a dead guy and put him up on stage for y’all to make a spectacle out of him for his family“. That stinks. That’s rotten. It’s morbid. Come on. We’ve gone a little too far with that kind of crap. I think that’s just me, but yeah.
Sonny Vincent: For me, like we didn’t set out a sort of a manifesto where we sat down and said, “Okay, we’re not going to do any tricks. We’re not going to use any kind of programs to work on these songs and record them and make them“. We just did what we’ve done many times for years. So that’s, that’s the process of writing the songs, writing the lyrics, writing the music, going into a studio and recording. And that’s what we’re used to doing. So that’s what we did. We do ultimately have no interest in pressing a button and creating a song, you know, we just need to do it our way. And so that’s what we did.
You’re releasing the album with Silver Lining music, how has this label embraced your raw and uncompromising approach?
Bobby Liebling: I learned a lot more about the label yesterday. Someone who’s on the Pentagram team did some delving for me into it and read some extensive stuff about it. I’m kind of flipping out because, Jesus, we’re on a major label. I mean a major label, not an independent little baby. It’s got so many damn big bands on it that I can’t count them. And I’m shocked.
They’ve been good to us so far and taking care of a lot of stuff for us as in giving us publicists automatically, so like a lot of interviews immediately. And then I find out still many huge, you know, million selling platinum record bands are on the label. I couldn’t believe it. That’s why we’re doing our first gig, where we’re doing it sort of. We’ll get to that in a sec, I guess. It’s a cool label and, I’m honored. I mean, I can’t believe the whole thing. They’ve got a whole potential to take off.
Sonny Vincent: Yeah. And they also have a philosophy, the label. When you go to their website, you can read what their goals are, and they’re very artists oriented. It was a little bit difficult going through the contract because that wasn’t really made by the label; that was made by the attorney that they hire, but still, dealing with the people on the staff, you get a clear understanding and feeling that they’re totally trying to please the artist, which is the opposite of a lot of other major labels. So we’re happy to be with them and we worked out all our contract details and we are moving forward. A
Bobby Liebling: The gentleman who was the proprietor of the entire Wacken festival is also the head of the label and the label is predominant. It’s much more a distro and promo company than it is just a record label. In fact, you know, more than it is a record label, they just put out records by artists that they have a lot of interest in promoting and distributing. When I looked at the roster, they had 50 different sure shot bands on there that have already left their mark in music history. And I’m quite honored that they picked this up now that I’ve heard a lot more extensive things about it.
Fabulous. Yeah.I’m happy that there are still some people still that care about artists and want what’s best for the artists because yeah, as you said, sometimes it’s really tricky to find someone who cares. Is there a track on “Another Drop” that started in one way and then completely changed into the final result?
Sonny Vincent: Um, well, no, because it was an organic process. I wrote the music, the riffs, the parts and the changes and Bobby wrote the words. So each step of the way we were very intimately involved with the songs. They developed in our hands and there wasn’t something that suddenly took a left turn and changed a lot. We kind of steered the ship through each song together and came up with the final result. No.
Bobby Liebling: A few of them slightly morphed I would say in my opinion, because one thing that we have a lot of involvement when we’re initially putting the songs together is this. Sonny will write the basic music to them, and a lot of the songs, when written in their original format musically, I have a certain thing with the lyrics where let’s say I want to fit in a lot more lyrics in a verse with a lot more words in them. So we sometimes will slow the whole song down to half speed to accommodate this. Then we kind of arrange them together. Sonny’s got a great knack for hooks, which I’ve never been much of doing, all that stuff that will make that song stick in your head. Also, later when we get in the studio, Sonny’s got some fantastic ideas for backing vocals. It reminds me of a lot of this stuff. I know he’s probably influenced somewhat by groups like the Beatles because he has a knack for putting these little “la la” parts that kind of spiff it up and make it really involved.
I think that they did change a little bit, but they are organic, like you said. Here’s the thing, “Bob, can you write the words for this?” and I might write out some words. Sometimes when you’re not inspired, you can’t get started. And usually I’m the type of lyricist that once I start and write one line, I’ve got 200 lines and there’s too many and I have to kind of, you know, abridge them and fit them in. Therefore, having to maybe speed up something a little in the entire tempo or slow it down the entire tempo, we work all that out, you know, and we have a really good working relationship as far as writing the tunes.
Let’s just say rap was not my cup of tea to say the least. And in the last three weeks I’ve learned there are some rap things that have some actually meriting, highlight parts that I’ve actually gotten into. I don’t know what the artists are. I haven’t even gotten that deep yet, but it’s like, “Wow, that’s pretty cool what the guy’s doing there.“
And it kind of broadened my taste a bit. I’ve learned why the appreciation, I feel like because a couple of people who I have been around, listen exclusively to rap and hip hop. It’s going all day sometimes where I live and, younger people and so forth, it’s a different generational thing. And at first I’d say, “That’s not music. There’s a beat and talking“. Music contains notation, which technically it does. Okay. But to call it music, it’s got kind of a format. That’s something I learned now another yet another genre.
Sonny Vincent: People want to research it and get deeper into it. There’s different levels of it and it does have a wide birth. You can listen to rap that is about recycling and nature and things like that. Or single mom issues.I was in New York and I was with some women who were shopping; I was just sitting in a chair at all these different designer shops in Soho and the music was playing. I’m going to focus on the music and I’m listening to it. I’m going, “What do you call this?” This was like, I don’t know, 18 years ago. It would be like a song in the format was a woman singing, going, “Oh, I’m going to get married. I love him so much. Wedding bells“. And then a guy would go, “Yeah, I know what you want, baby. I want to get in the bathtub, lift up your leg. I got it all. I know what you want, honey. We’re getting married“. And I thought, “What the hell kind of music is that?” And it was called modern R&B. I said, Okay.
I was traveling with some young lineup of mine from Atlanta once. They have a really broad range of what they listen to. It’s not just the narrow kind of choice of music. And I was in the back of the bus and I was like thinking like, “Well, let them listen to their fucking music“. You know, some of it was great. And some of it was like a little bit hard for me to listen to, but then suddenly they were cranking the gangster hip hop. Well, it was going like, “I come to your house. I fuck your wife. I kill your children. Boom, boom, boom.” You know? And I said, “Dudes, turn that shit off or drop me off at a fucking train station“. You know, it’s like, I could not listen to that.
Bobby Liebling: I mean if you heard this stuff in rock music I’m sorry, it would get censored, you’d get cancelled right away. We’d get cancelled completely. I can’t believe it’s today’s world, what in the hell have we all come to? I like Ice-T, Snoop Dogg, some of the traditional rap stuff. The original rap is very different. It’s an expression, you know.
The energy of all the singles that you’ve released so far is just made for like a live show environment. Are there any plans for some shows or maybe a tour following the release in July?
Sonny Vincent: Yes. We’re gonna play the Wacken festival on August 1st And on July 31st We play a warm-up show in a club that is is run by the Wacken festival in a town nearby the festival So we’ve got a few days of rehearsal and then the warm-up show and then the show at the festival.
Bobby Liebling: Yeah, that’s really our first big one. That’s an honorable spot. It’s a hell of a shot to get for to come out on the stage for like 80,000 people your first gig with people you’ve never played on stage with, this kind of freaky.
Sonny Vincent: It’s gonna be a lot of fun because we all get along, you know famously and we’ve never done a full gig with this lineup. That’ll be great. There’s talk of a serious tour coming up in 2027 for The Limit after the album comes out and sinks in with the public a bit. It’s always nice when people know the songs, you know, I spent years playing my music to like a baptist preacher church, right? Playing to people that never heard anything of mine, so like later when people started to know the music, that’s a little bit a different level. You get a good feeling from that.
Bobby Liebling: I’m gonna let the album sink in a little bit and then do some tours. Yep, and we both have our own separate careers too, and so it’s gonna take a lot of planning. Let’s face it. I toured an awful lot this year, I go out tomorrow again for the last one.
Sonny Vincent: I’m always playing music and writing and recording as well. So yeah The Limit thing, we’ll know in advance when that tour comes up, so we’ll let everybody know.
