WEB-EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: EMMURE ON CHANGING BAND MEMBERS AND RECORDING THEIR NEW ALBUM, ‘FELONY’

In Revolver’s November issue, we interview Emmure vocalist Frankie Palmeri and guitarist Jesse Ketive about their band’s new album, Felony (Victory). 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 Your new album, Felony, hit stores in August. How long did it take you guys to write this album?
FRANKIE PALMERI Me and our guitar player, Jesse, we pretty much spent a good solid three months writing this record. It was done in sections. We would come home off a tour and get ideas together, then we’d go back on tour and let everything stew for a while, then go back and revisit it. A lot of 2009 was spent writing the record. We recorded it in June of 2009. It’s the kind of thing where I feel like it’s not even over yet. But we’re all honestly relieved and real proud of the final product and looking forward to everybody checking it out. Usually, the way it used to go is we would crunch down to the minute but this time we had a little time and that gave us some leeway.
JESSE KETIVE It’s less stressful when there’s less people controlling what you’re gonna do or putting their two sense into what’s going on. There were less people to get involved so it was a little easier. We had more time to work on it, too. We worked on it for a little bit then went on tour, got a chance to think about what we were doing and came back to it and got to work on it a little more, which is a little more of an advantage than we normally get to do.

The Lionetti brothers—guitarist Ben and drummer Joe—left while you guys were on the road. That had to be rough.
PALMERI When they left? No, it was actually awesome. We were all pretty stoked on it. They were holding us back from being the band we could be. It was really all for the better. I’m sure they’re both doing their own thing, whatever that may be. I really strongly believe that the culmination of things we’ve been through as a band is gonna lead to this record coming out.

Mike Mulholland stepped in on guitar and Michael Kaabe took over the drums. How are things working out with them?
PALMERI It’s working out really great. Mike is a friend of ours that we’ve had from over the years working on the road together. Michael Kaabe, he is actually just from around the way in my neighborhood. Me and Jesse grew up with him. It was a natural fit to have good friends and people that you’ve messed with come into a project like this. Musicianship-wise, they’re probably two of the most talented people I’ve ever gotten to meet. Just to have them be a part of this is very special to us.
KETIVE Yeah. Me and Mike Kaabe used to just jam and play every song we liked, everything from Lamb of God to Pantera and Metallica and anything or any death metal we were listening to. We were always very fluent with music. As far as recording the new record, Mike recorded very fast and the vibes were quick and what we wanted him to do.

You worked with producer Antoine Lussier, who plays guitar in Ion Dissonance. What was it like working with him?
PALMERI He would push us to work harder, but me, personally, I think I have a good work ethic when I’m in the studio. I’m usually all business. I wake up early. I go to bed early. I track as long as possible. I scream until I have a headache. That’s really all you can do, you push yourself until you can’t push yourself anymore. The whole recording experience with Antoine was something I’ll always look back on and be really proud of. We really busted our ass there. The studio space in Saint-Zénon was like two hours north of Montreal and two hours north of Montreal there’s nothing but woods. We were basically in the middle of nowhere with each other and we were running out of food, we were running out of weed. We basically had every reason to be stressed out up there. That kind of helps out in the long run. It was all hard work, but it was work that paid off.

Frankie, it sounds like you did more vocally on this album. You even do some singing on “Don’t Be One.” How do you handle the strain that puts on your vocal cords?
PALMERI It was really just conditioning myself. Like I said before, when I go into the studio I have a good work ethic. You have to really take care of yourself to be prepared to do stuff like that. You can’t just party all night, get a couple of hours of sleep and then go into the vocal booth the next day and expect to sound like a million bucks.

Interview by Valerie McQueen