ben & brian soilent green

Interview by: Mary Evans

Date: 09 May 2011

Venue: Moho Live, Manchester, UK

Photos by: Mary Evans / Soilent Green

When I was told we had the opportunity to interview Soilent Green again I jumped at the chance. Our international correspondent Aline had already interviewed Ben for the site back in October last year but this time we had the opportunity to catch the band while they were out in the UK.

Lots of laughing ensued and you can check out what the guys had to say below...

First of all, thank you both very much for taking the time to do this interview for us, can I just ask you to introduce yourselves?

Brian:  I’m Brian Patton and I play guitars…

Ben:  And I’m Ben Falgoust and I play vocals…

(Both of them start laughing)

Ben: What!?

Brian: So he’s got the bands with the equipments…

Ben: I’ve got the bands with the equipments!!

So, for people who haven’t heard you before can you describe the band a little bit?

Brian: I dunno, I guess it’s just blues, it’s influenced by a lot of things… blues, grindcore and old punk rock and stuff like that.  I hate labels for music… I just like to say we play music!

Ben: I’d say it’s hard to label us, coz it’s like you’re painting something into a corner in a way…

Brian:  I mean, just listen, there’s hardcore, punk, coz remember there’s a lot of influences in our music and there’s a lot of textural changes and stuff so it’s kinda hard to put a label on.

So, I was looking on the internet and I couldn’t tell… have you played here before?

Ben: Not Manchester…

But have you played the UK?

Ben:  We played the UK like eleven years ago…

Ok, so what’s it like being back then?

Brian:  It’s actually really cool…

Ben: It’s really good

A lot of bands get maybe five or six dates, but you’ve had eleven so that’s quite impressive for a band that hasn’t been out for such a long time!

Ben: Really? I guess we’re trying to catch up for the past!

What have the crowds been like?

Ben: They’ve been overall pretty good…  they’re pretty crazy actually…

Brian: Yeah, they’re wild!

Ben: Nothing like insanely over packed, you’re not going to see like four hundred people here or anything like that, but for the amount of people that do come out and the way they act during the performance is pretty out of control.

So over recent weeks you’ve been playing shows in Europe, along with some festivals… what’s it been like taking the band back out on the road?

Brian: It’s just like old times.  We’ve been doing it for so long, it’s just like riding a bike, you never forget it.  We’re definitely happy to be back and chipping at it again.

Ben: It’s unique too to come back out here and do it…

Brian: Coz this is the first thing that we’ve done.  We haven’t played in America in like a year or two or something like that…

Yeah, because you all have different bands don’t you?

Brian: Right, right…

What was Norway like?

Ben: It was actually really good…

Brian:  It was f***in amazing actually!  I mean, I played it last year as well, the Inferno fest, which is obviously a huge black metal thing and I played that one with Eyehategod… and with us as well…  I think people just want to hear extreme music, so they went off!

It’s quite a good festival to get on the line up isn’t it!?

Brian: Yeah, it’s great!  Yeah, of course!

Ben: No, definitely, it was really good.  I was actually really stoked after the whole performance, just like the response and the feedback from it and everything.  It was really good!

Have you had a chance to check out the cities you’ve been playing in?

Brian:  A couple of times yeah. In Greece we flew in and had pretty much that entire afternoon and evening off and we had a chance to get around and…

Ben: Eat good food…

Brian: Eat really good food and saw the sights… and in Brussels as well we had a day off and our van crapped out on us so we basically had no choice but to sit around…

Ben: And in Budapest too, we had a day off.  You don’t really get that much time, it’s usually like in, out, in out…

Brian: You’re at the club and it depends on where the club is, you know, you really don’t see much!

But you’ve been to some really amazing places this tour haven’t you…

Brian: Yeah, yeah!

Ben: Yeah, places I’ve never been, ever!

Brian: Barcelona was insane!  The place that we stayed was smack dab in the middle of everything so we were able to kind of experience the insanity that is f****n Barcelona.

Given that you’ve been around for so long, how easy or hard is it, to come up with a set list given the amount of material you have to choose from?

Ben:  It’s actually easy!  It’s easy because we…

(Ben starts laughing… Brian then hits him, motioning to be quiet and the two carry on laughing…)

Brian: It’s pretty easy, let’s just say that!

Ben:  But if somebody saw that there’s only so many songs that we remember…

Brian: ... that we still play!  I mean every time we add a new song I have to re teach it to myself basically!

So, for you guys it’s not how many songs you’ve got it’s how many remember then?

Brian: Well not necessarily, if we need one we’ll add one and if there’s a song we haven’t played in a while and we want to play it we’ll pull it out…

Ben:  Yeah, like right before we left, we had to literally, in two days, add another song to the list because we saw that we were going to be headlining some things, so we were like ‘Oh we need to put in another song, maybe a lengthier song’, and in two days we went over it and everything…

Rehearsals are really important to you because you’re not playing much?

Brian: Well yeah, of course!

Ben: Very much so, we wouldn’t be able to just like not do anything for a year and say ‘Let’s play this show without a rehearsal’ you have to have something…

Brian: We crunch! I mean, honestly, for a band like just having one rehearsal after not playing for a month or two, to be able to pull off the shows it’s pretty hard… yeah it’s rough pulling in new stuff.

Ben: But usually it falls into place.  It’s almost like you’re, almost like you’re a little kid walking for the first time and all of a sudden it’s like ‘Oh, there it is’ and then he’s running. It all of a sudden just pops in.  At first you’re in there and you’re jamming and you’re like ‘Oh shit, what’s next? What’s next? Ok, ok, what’s next?’.  But then, after that, it’s like ‘Ok, now everything fell back into place’.

So, by this point on a tour you’re feeling like you’ve never not been on tour then?

Ben: Yeah, exactly, like right now it’s running smooth…

Have you got any songs that just don’t work live, that you’ve just sort of relegated to the ‘never to play again’ list?

Brian: A lot of our songs have a little something for everybody in them, so if there’s a part that kids aren’t really digging, usually the next part they might end up tapping into. So, you know, I don’t think so, a lot of our songs…

Ben: We’ve cycled through a lot of songs and we’ve never actually been like ‘Well hey, let’s not play that song…

Brian: Let’s just cut this one because it doesn’t go over well… yeah…

Ben: It’s just that we change the set up when we’re doing tours so songs change, it wasn’t like ‘Yeah, people didn’t really like this song’.  Every song is like a journey, in a sense, and chaos and changing constantly so…

Brian: We just usually pick the songs that we like to play…

Ben: The songs we remember the best!

When you spoke with our writer / photographer Aline late last year you mentioned that the band were hoping to get back in the studio this year… are things still panning out this way?

Brian: Um, it probably wouldn’t happen by the end of this year, more than likely I’d hope that if everything works out that we could have something written by the end of this year and maybe try to work out being in the studio probably by Spring time of next year…

Ben: It’s just complicated…

Brian: It’s kind of a long process and everybody is busy doing other things, you know Tommy is on a tour cycle with Crowbar right now and had to actually take a break from that to do this.  And, Ben’s going in the studio with Goatwhore, and I’m doing a lot of stuff with Eyehategod, so we’re all doing our own thing.  Realistically I’d say probably, maybe, next year, Spring time.

Ben: It’s kinda hard too, because our stuff, when we write it’s not like something that can just fall into place.  It takes a little while…

Brian: It’s not one of those things where you just get in a jam room where you just play stuff and what comes out happens… we have to actually sit down and construct and me and Tommy sit there and work all the music out so it takes a little bit of time…

Ben:  It’s like one of those 20 000 puzzle piece things, and you throw all the pieces out and then you’re like, ‘Ohhhh, you got a little bit together!’.

Brian: What a lot of bands are doing nowadays in comparison is probably not as technical as a lot of math metal bands are but, I mean, there’s still a lot of changes and we never usually repeat a lot of riffs so there’s still a lot to come up with… and I’m old and slow…

You just find some bands churn stuff out year after year don’t they, but your fans are having to wait because you’re all so busy and obviously it takes a long time to write?

Brian: Yeah, yeah…

Ben: Yeah, coz then you’ve just got to work it out to where everybody’s at home and everybody’s on par to getting there to do that.

Can you tell us a little about what we can expect from the new material or have you not started any yet?

Brian: Well, obviously I want to stay true to our sound so I mean more than likely it will be along the same lines but I’ve got a lot of ideas.  I’m hoping to incorporate another guitar player on this record this time around because there’s a lot of harmonies and a lot of stuff that I’ve been wanting to do that I can’t do, obviously by myself.  I mean, I don’t know, it’ll be Soilent Green.

Ben: It won’t be like anything that drastic of a step, we will probably add some new things to it…

Brian: Yeah, I always try to incorporate new influences into the music all of the time, so it’ll be us, but it’ll be fresh, hopefully.  That’s why it’s nice to wait four years for a record…

(Ben and Brian both laugh…)

Ben: Coz then it is fresh!

Brian: At that point it’s fresh as hell!  It’s like ‘I just heard these guys’… and it’s like ‘No, you had to rest for four years!’. 

So you wait for them to forget what you sound like yeah?

Brian: Yeah!!

Ben, you've cited the likes of Freddie Mercury, Rob Halford and Lee Dorian as people you've been a fan of. Now they're not names you'd necessarily expect to see alongside each other but I'm sure most can appreciate their contributions to the music industry... what in your opinion makes them so special?

Ben: Different things with all of them, there’s like, with Freddie Mercury he was really eclectic.  Well Queen in itself was eclectic.  But, just the way he could change his mode through everything like that.  I’ve been a Lee Dorian fan back from early Napalm Death and everything and even into Cathedral I just liked everything he did.  I liked his tone.  It was always something too about a tone, like the way somebody projected something and those were the things that were the influences and ideas behind it, of getting that tone that fit in with everything with the music. 

It was something that was impactive.  Even like Rob Halford with Priest, how impactive he is.  If you take him out and you listen to Judas Priest stuff a lot of it is really simplistic and when you lay Halford over it it brings it to a whole new level too.

I just thought it was really interesting that you’d have three such different sort of performers…

Brian: That’s the whole point of our band, we all are the same way.  We listen to anything from jazz, r&b, to you know, obviously, metal and all variations of and it’s nice to listen to good music and in my opinion every genre has something good to offer.

Ben: Which, in turn, gives us more to offer within the band as far as structuring riffs, the way everything flows, the different kind of genres it goes in and out of as well.  Not that I can sing like any of the above but, you know, it’s just the idea behind them, the idea of what they did and how they did it and how they projected themselves.

Can you describe the other guys in the band in a few words? This is hard when there’s two people!

(Ben starts laughing…)

Ben: That’s a good one!!  That’s a good one!

Brian:  Nope!!  I can’t describe them, they’re indescribable.

(Everyone starts laughing again…)

Oh come on!

Brian: They’re my brothers, I’ll just say that.  I love them to death!

Individually though, can we have a description of each of them?

Brian:  Well, I grew up with Tommy…

Ben: I could show my pictures that might explain, you know, like my little pictures I have for each of y’all.  I find muppets that remind me of people around me, so I have these little muppet pictures that kind of represent each of them…

Brian: Nah, but I mean I’ve been knowing Tommy for a looong time.  We grew up together and he’s my brother, and you know…

Ben: They conflict, they…

Brian: We want to kill each other at times but then, you know, we want to hug each other and say I love you at the same time.  Ben, I’ve been knowing him since he was a f***ing kid.  He lived right around the block from me and he played in another band, Paralysis, and I’d watch them practice at their house.  The New Orleans scene was a tight knit friendly scene, especially back then when we started out and so, yeah, we all kinda knew each other growing up.  Basically we’re all just childhood friends.

Scott came into the picture a couple of years ago and he’s (laughs) probably one of the funniest dudes I know…

Ben: He actually fit in really well.  It was kinda hard like after… our bass player Scott quit and, the one before him, that ended up being killed…

Brian: Yeah, he ended up getting shot…

Ben:  It was really hard to like fill in that spot.  It was almost like Scott Crochet came out of nowhere…

Brian: His other band, I heard, and I knew right away, I was like ‘We need to get this guy’ and he fit like a glove.

Ben:  And wait, didn’t he play with a pick at first and then he totally…

Brian: He was trying different stuff out, just to kind of feel, he wasn’t really used to playing music like we play, so to him it was a new thing but he was such a decent musician he’d pick it up.  But he decided to try to feel out different techniques to get the point across.

Ben: And he’d go out of his way to make sure, to get everything down, because it was a different kind of thing.  Like it was homework!  He’d go home and make sure…

Brian: It’s always homework!  Every time we get a new musician it’s homework!  I think I’ve written that music on paper so many times for people! (laughs)

Do you have any regrets when it comes to anything related to the band?

Brian: I wouldn’t say regrets… I mean we’ve got, obviously, kind of a shaded history just because of a lot of the incidents that have happened to us, but I don’t regret a thing.  We’re still here, we survived and we’re where we should be.  Nah, there’s no regrets. 

I mean I wish some things would have worked out better, I mean the music business is a mother***er so, I mean honestly, like dealing with record labels and stuff like that you wish some things would have worked out differently so there’s regrets in that kind of aspect but ya know, what can you do?!  We’d given up on any of that stuff a long time ago, we just play music because we like to play music.  We don’t make tons of money doing it, but we’re actually lucky enough to be able to tour.

Alternatively then what has been the highlight of your career so far?

Brian: Being in Rolling Stone magazine was pretty cool!  Playing Beast Feast Fest in Japan, Tokyo Fest with tons of bands, yeah that was amazing!

Ben: It was like huge too… a big ass arena, it was pretty crazy.  We did some shows in Pantera back in the 101 Proof  days…

Brian:  Even all the way to like to playing CB’s…

Ben: CBGB’s.  We played CB’s like near the end too.

Brian: Like our first show in San Francisco… sold out show!  We were headlining and there was a line around the corner!  To us, we were a young band, and we were like ‘WOW’… we were overwhelmed.

Ben: There’s a lot of different little things… from little small things to really big things.

You’ve had quite a good ride so far though, despite the things that have gone wrong…

Ben: Yeah, of course…

You can’t dwell on them though can you?

Ben: No, no.  You’ve gotta just be like ‘This happened’ and keep moving, if you can.

Brian: That’s the whole feeling in New Orleans, that’s why when the hurricane came through everybody had that attitude because you had to.  It’s like, what can you do?  Everybody has their own little story of tragedy in their life so why even dwell on it?

You can’t move forward if you’re dwelling on the past can you?

Brian: No!

What’s the biggest dream you’ve yet to realise for the band?  What would you want for the band?  Just to be able to carry on or…?

Brian: It’ll pay my rent?

That’d be nice, yeah!

Brian: That’d be nice!

Ben: Some tours with like some other bands.  I’d like to do a European tour with Soilent with like Napalm Death, that’d be unique.  It’s different too like touring the US and our here, and with different bands as well, and you see how Napalm does in the States and how they do over here.  We’ve toured with them in the States before so it would be a total different experience to tour with them over here as well.

Well, your fan bases are different as well aren’t they?

Ben:  Yeah, yeah, they are different, but…

Well say if they are touring in the States it’d be completely different for them being, would they be the smaller band?

Brian: F*** no…

Ben: No, no, they’d be the bigger band.  It’d be just a little different.  Out here they do a lot better than they do in the States… the States are just tough in general for everybody.

We’ve noticed with a lot of European bands who are trying to make it out there and they’ll spend like most of the year touring…

Brian: A lot of European bands are doing that…

Ben: You gotta do a lot of work and it’s a lot of area to cover…

Driving yeah?

Brian: Depending on what part of the country but for the majority of it, yeah…

People don’t appreciate how far it is though do they when they head out on tour?  I know that because everyone says to me, ‘Oh I played Australia, we did a tour of Australia?’ So I say, ‘Did you get to Perth?’ and when they say no I tell them they’ve not toured Australia!  And they’re like ‘Oh no, but it’s soooo big!’.  They don’t appreciate the size when they come from Europe because you can get everywhere within a couple of hours…

Brian: Oh yeah, yeah…

Ben:  We had some long drives on this, like when we got down by Spain, but for the most part a lot of the drives are short.  Especially now, at the end, doing the whole UK it’s like short drives.  We’re almost at the point because we don’t even know what to do every day because it’s just like ‘Oh yeah, the next place is 2.5 hours away!’ so we stopped off at a castle the other day, we stopped at a pub and got some food!

So it’s quite different to have time to do that?

Ben: Yeah, like after being near the end of the European run, like ten hour drive, nine hour drive, ten hour drive, sleep like three to four hours, ten hour drive… and then get here and everything be like, everything kind of changes for the last 11 shows with shorter drives and more time to actually take advantage of things and see things.

So then you’re actually relaxing for the last part of the tour rather than stressing out then?

Ben: Well maybe that, or drinking more or doing something else more!

(They both laugh again)

Ben: Trying to kill time!

No but you’re not stressing out like ‘I’ve gotta get there!!’?

Ben: Well no, definitely.  Literally we were coming in some shows…

Brian: We would leave the venue at 2am and have to be back on the van for 4.30am to pull out.

Ben: So you’d like lay down, sometimes it wasn’t even worth laying down, you’d just try and get in the van and sleep in some crooked ass position for nine hours! (laughs)

If you could resurrect one band, who would it be and why?

Brian: Damn!  I don’t know, I mean, there’s a few.  Resurrect one band… 

Ben: Resurrect one band…

Brian: For me it’d probably be the John Coltrane Trio or maybe…

Ben:  You could resurrect Jimi…

Brian: Hendrix?

Ben: Yeah!

Brian: That’s like the expected f***ing thing to say man!

Ben: We could resurrect Freddie Mercury and we could have Queen…

Brian: That’d be killer man! That would be killer!

Instead of the Queen that they pretend to be now you mean?

Ben:  That’s a hard f***ng spot to fill man!

That’s something you’d never want to do though is it, fill his shoes?

Ben: No way! No, no!  There’s some things in music are just…

They should be left alone!

Brian: Yeah, yeah!

Ben: Yeah, because it’s just like ‘wow, how do you find somebody?’

Brian: There’s nobody that would sound like that guy, I don’t think.

Ben: Yeah, that’s a hard pair of shoes to fill right there, for sure!

If you had to be remembered for one thing non music related what would it be?

Brian: Stupidity!

Tommy in the background!:  Drinking booze!

Ben: Drinking booze!

See I got left to think of all the shit questions because Aline asked all the good / technical questions back in October!  You’re getting bad ones from me!

Ben: What would you want to be known for besides music?

Brian: Falling down…

Ben: Being a stunt band! Like stunt crashing and things!

Brian: I’m really good at sitting on my couch… flipping all the channels… complaining a lot…

Brian: Every now and then I’d do some laundry… pretty good at folding, you can add that in!

You do the ironing then?

Brian: Nah!

Ben: I’d do some ironing, I’d do some ironing.  Sometimes you gotta do your own clothes ya know!

So here they lie, dead, they did ironing…

(Everyone is laughing)

Ben:  I dunno, it’s weird.  Well, you know I would like to be known as a band that isn’t like… you know how some people they have these stories of bands and they’re not about the music or anything but ‘These guys were the f****n worst people ever’.  ‘They used to be my hero’s and then I met them and they were f***d off’.  I don’t really think we come off, we hang out a lot with fans that come to shows…

Brian: and other bands in general.  We’re just people that want to have a good time and play music, that usually comes off.  Even with the guys we’re touring with now, Dripback, those guys, immediately we were just brothers.  We could just tell by looking at them that we were gonna get along.  I’ve in close situations with bands where it doesn’t really work out that way sometimes.

Ben: And then when you’re stuck for a month… so I guess maybe something like that, that people will remember…

Brian: us as being friendly!

Friendly and do their ironing…

Brian: Peace, love!!!

Do you have any bizarre fan stories you can share?

Brian: Bizarre fan stories?  I don’t know!

I had one recently where a guy said he woke up and there was a girl naked in his bed and he didn’t know how she got there.  He says that she bribed the guy on reception and left all her clothes outside his room…

Ben:  She bribed the guy?

On reception! 

Ben: Wow!

I don’t know how she bribed him, it must have been pretty special!

Ben:  I can’t say we’ve ever had anything like that

Brian: No, we’re boring!

It’s coz you do your ironing! Speaking of fans, do you have a message for your UK fans?

Brian: A message?

Ben: Yeah, come out the shows!!

Brian: Have a pint and cheers to ya!

Ben: And hopefully we’ll be back… in eleven years!

In eleven years? We might all be dead by then!

Someone else chips in and says he had to wait a good sixteen for Eyehategod, he missed the Goatwhore tour and had to wait for Crowbar…

You’ll be waiting a long time!

Brian:  F*** man you gotta work out your scheduling!

You should have easily been able to fit that in!

Ben: I would have to say too, after the shows, we’re not finished in the UK yet, but so far I have to say…

Brian: The fans are really f***ng amazing man, yeah

Ben:  They’re f***ng awesome.  Even if it was a smaller crowd, they were still f***ng totally intense and awesome and totally into it and stoked that we came.  Especially on this, like we said eleven shows in odd cities that usually don’t get anything and they’re like ‘I can’t believe you even came to our town, why would you even come to… ?!’.  We played Derby… and it’s like ‘Don’t ask why, just be happy!’… that’s the reason you don’t get it coz you keep asking why!

Ben: But yeah, overall the support from these shows that we’ve had so far, and we’re just at the middle point of 11 shows!

Yeah, it’s because they’ve had eleven years to get the day off work!

Ben: That too!

Ben: Hopefully if we come back in less time it’ll still be just as good!

Have you had any interest in festivals over here?

Ben: Well like, two years ago we did Hellfest and on this tour we did Roadburn and Inferno… SWR fest in Portugal... but as far as that we’ve not had any other interest.

Yeah, but for the UK!  You guys would fit right into Bloodstock type of thing…

Ben: Yeah, I’ve heard a lot about Bloodstock.  I guess maybe this will help with us being out here with all this and maybe the interest and hopefully, they’ll think ‘Oh them, let’s try and bring them to next year’s festival’.

Well, that’s it!  Thank you and I hope the gig goes well!

Ben: Awesome!