WEB-EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: MUNICIPAL WASTE'S TONY FORESTA ON WRITING THEIR NEW ALBUM, 'MASSIVE AGGRESSIVE'

In Revolver’s October issue, we interview Municipal Waste vocalist Tony Foresta about his band’s new album, Massive Aggressive (Earache). For those of you who didn't get enough (or are too cheap to buy the magazine), here's the best of the rest of our wide-ranging chat.

REVOLVER How long did it take you to write this album?
TONY FORESTA Well, we’re always writing. Even after the last record, we were knocking around ideas for the new record. So I would say two years, but we knew what we wanted to do once The Art of Partying was finished. We knew we had to take it in a different direction. Basically, it was after last summer’s touring. When it stated to get cold we kind of hunkered down and wrote most of the album.

Did you guys do any writing on the road?
Between tours we’d practice for the next tour and knock around a new song. Once we had a long period of time off between tours, we’d go and nitpick through each song. We were really picky with this album. We demoed every song and went through it and changed a lot of stuff.

Is that what the writing process is usually like for Municipal Waste? Do you guys get a few demos together and then flesh out the songs before recording?
For this album it was. It was different. For most of the albums we just kind of went for it and just go by memory when we go in the studio. But with this one we demoed everything. We were the most prepared than we ever were. We practiced so hard before recording.

Why change things up this time around?
We’re usually pretty tight in the studio but we just wanted to make sure there was no messing around. We knew exactly what we wanted to do when we went in there.

You worked with producer Zeuss again.
It’s kind of like he’s the fifth band member, because we’ve worked with him for such a long time. He cares a lot about what we do. He’s really into the band and he wanted to make sure that we were happy and that we came through with the album we wanted. What was different about this album was that we made Zeuss come down to Richmond and record with us because the last album we went and did with him. So, we made him stay in Richmond and hang out in our dirty studio and record the album.

How’d that work out?
It was good. He liked it. It was hard for him to record in a different environment. He’s a pro, so he knows how to do it. It was great for us because we could just go home and sleep in our beds. It took a lot of stress off of us for writing and getting our tracks done.

What’s the music scene like in Richmond? Is there a big metal scene there?
There’s a big everything scene. There’s so many different bands. There’s a lot of really good underground bands that aren’t signed coming up; tons of them, actually. There’s also punk bands, hardcore bands, indie-rock bands, I mean anything. It’s a really small town but it has such a huge, vibrant music scene.

Sounds like a good place to be writing and recording.
It’s kind of mixed, too. It isn’t just like the metalheads go to the metal shows, and the punks go to the punk shows. Everyone hangs out with each other. Nobody’s really snobby. Everyone’s open-minded there.

Do you have a guilty pleasure sort of band.
There’s this band that everyone keeps telling me I’d like—I haven’t seen them yet—but they’re a “yacht rock” cover band. While we were gone this past weekend my friends rented a boat and everyone dressed up as these ’70’s yacht rockers and they just played. It had an open bar. It added up to like a hundred people and I think it was like 30 bucks a person. It was pretty crazy from what I hear.

That sounds awesome and incredibly dangerous. I’d be terrified that someone would fall overboard.
It was on the James River in Richmond, so I mean it could be dangerous but you could probably swim to the shore if you have to. From the reports I got back, there were a lot of people falling down but no one falling overboard.

I love the album title, Massive Aggressive. What’s the story behind it?
I was explaining how someone I knew was being passive aggressive about something and I felt the exact opposite and I was like I just want to be massive aggressive. Then we were like oh that should be a song title and we were laughing about it, but it ended up being the album title. There is a song called “Massive Aggressive” on the album. That was it. I was really pissed off at somebody.

The cover art is pretty brutal. Who came up with the concept?
We wanted to go for something that both has a real metal look to it but also has a punk attitude to it, too. We wanted to have something that looks kind of like Napalm Death’s Scum meets Misfits’ Earth A.D. We’re punks playing metal, basically, and we wanted to get that across not only with our music but with the artwork. It’s actually the same guy who did our last album artwork, too, but it looks totally different.

Yeah, it does. It’s still cool but it looks completely different.
I like the fact that we kept the same people involved with recording the last record and doing the cover for the last record, but it sounds different, it looks different. Everyone kind of went out of their way to create something new.

You guys hosted a listening party in London in June. How did that go?
I’m pretty hungover [Laughs]. It was great. The Crobar is a metal bar here in Soho. The weather here is pretty nice right now so people were hanging out and drinking outside in front of the Crobar so that was pretty nice. We were dancing, too. Had a little dance party, pushing each other around to whatever killer metal song came on the jukebox.

What were people’s reactions to the album?
People were stoked. Listening parties are pretty uptight from what I’ve been told. I heard it’s a lot of people not really talking and just standing around, looking at each other, looking at the band. Nobody wants to get up because they’re scared that the band’s gonna think they don’t like it. But it was real relaxed and everyone was laid back. People were banging their heads. I thought that was pretty funny. They were like this whole thing sounds amazing and were congratulating us a lot.

So you’re doing a club tour and doing some festivals in Europe right now. How’s the tour going?
We just did Metaltown in Sweden. That was the first festival. That was really cool. We haven’t been to Sweden that much, so just to see kids singing along was cool. We played a new song and that was probably the best reaction of any of the songs we played. We played “Acid Sentence,” and when we played the slow part the entire place was fist-pumping to the song. The album isn’t even out yet and people are freaking out that much to a new song I think we’re sitting on something good.

Interview by Valerie McQueen