Bonus feature: Pig Destroyer
The July issue of Decibel (out June 5th) will have a full feature on Pig Destroyer and their new LP Phantom Limb. In the meantime, a few questions from the interview with J.R. Hayes that didn’t figure into the finished article.
Do drugs still play a role in your writing?
Yes and no. I don’t rely on them for my writing, but I do use them. Indirectly, taking weed for example, I’m a very stressed, neurotic, kind of twitchy person; so in order for me to be able to concentrate and get into my mind and get something down on a piece of paper, I gotta relax somehow, whether it’s a couple of sips of whiskey or whatever. There are certain drugs that nobody can write on, or at least I can’t. They just kind of allow you to step outside and get a different perspective on your emotions and what you’re feeling, and maybe come up with a good idea to tie a lyric together that you’ve got laying around or something.
Is the rest of the band in the loop about what kind of lyrics and concepts you’re working on?
Not really. We’ve been a band together for so long now that they trust me not to come up with something that sucks outright. I usually take as much time as I can, like in this case I pretty much waited until the week we were going into the studio to finalize everything; up to that point I’m always switching words around and changing things. That’s just the type of writer that I am, I’m always picking at it like a scab. I pretty much waited until I had everything written and then I showed it to them, and they approved so it was cool. I think Scott didn’t like the title “Girl in the Slayer Jacket” at first but now he’s warmed up to it.
Phantom Limb is the second album in a row with tits on the cover.
Yeah, it looks that way. There’s gonna be a sticker for the stores that can’t handle boobies, places where kids are gonna be I guess. We did it for Terrifyer with a slipcase. My compromise with the label was that as long as all the original artwork was included in it, they can do whatever they want, but I don’t want to change what we did. That was a compromise that I made, and I wish I didn’t have to, but I can’t be a complete dick. Sometimes you gotta work with the label instead of against it.