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Chicago rockers Madina Lake will be releasing their third studio album World War III in September. Aside from the new material, the album also features three tracks from their 2010 EP The Dresden Codex, including former single Hey Superstar, which was used as the theme for US wrestling show TNA. The album will be the group’s first since their 2009 LP Attics To Eden. Since then the band went through a period of upheaval that included leaving their former record label Roadrunner Records, under going a change in management and dealing with personal issues. The group hit a low point when in June of 2010, bassist Matthew Leone was hospitalized after he was attacked in a Chicago street. At the time, Matthew was trying to help a woman who was being beaten by her husband, and although Matthew subdued him, the man severely attacked Matthew from behind. Matthew was rushed to hospital in a critical condition, and doctors had to remove one-third of his skull in order to allow the swelling in his brain to go down. Matthew’s life hung in the balance. Today we are happy to report, that Matthew has made a remarkable recovery back to health, and life is slowly returning back to normal for him and the group.
In this exclusive interview with
Joe Matera,
Matthew Leone discusses his road to recovery, the group’s new studio album and on
Madina Lake being labeled a metal band.
UG: I want to begin the interview today by asking you, how you are feeling?
Matthew Leone: I feel great, thank you for asking. It has been a long road for me. I have had to hike and it has been annoying but I am on the other side of it now and it feels like I’m sliding down the mountain and having fun.
So how has the recovery process been for you, it has as you’ve obviously stated, been a long steep road.
Yes it has. The recovery to be honest, and I am not going to pull any punches here, but it was and has been brutal. Before this all happened, I used to see somebody, say for an example with an arm in a cast and I’d be like, ‘I would hate for that to happen to me’ And then I find myself in hospital with a broken skull and everything else. It was terrible. But once we knew I was going to live, we knew that it was going to be ok as it gave us peace of mind to work on it. It got so intense, sad and scary at one point and then after the second surgery, it got worse where we had a little bit of problem where I went flat. But thankfully, I eventually stabilized and then I went into recovery. And it was then that we knew that I was going to live. That was the first time where we really addressed what life was going to be like for me from that point on. Their [doctors] prognosis was not good at all and so far - and I have been lucky enough to have the support of my wife and Nathan and the band and everybody - I recovered beyond what it was anticipated.
You mentioned your wife, you got married recently?
Yes I did, and my wife Autumn is just an amazing person. We have a very free lifestyle, and we encourage each other’s individuality and explorations and passions.
Will she be joining you on the upcoming tour?
As she has been living all over the world and doing her own thing too, going on tour with me is not an issue.
"It is a record that we just want the public to judge us by."
Yes it is and it is an amazing back story. We as a group had hit rock bottom and then while we were at the bottom, the bottom fell out, which was when I got hurt. We had got dropped by our label, by our management, by our booking agent. It seemed everybody just ran for the hills. But you know what? We are a band that will never quit no matter what. And while we were experiencing all that career hardship, we also had personal hardships happening to us such as divorces and breakups and whatever else was going. And then add on top of that, what happened to me.
Was it hard then going into this new record with what had happened to you personally?
Yes, as we had a bunch of ideas floating around that were just starting to take focus at around the time I got hurt. Then I had about four or five month period before I could start playing again. So for the process we started purging all the intensity of the life that we had been living, purging it in real time, and channeling it right through our fingers and it was like a cathartic portal opening. And we made the record on our own, just the four us and not with another single human being around us. It was as almost like a defense mechanism or survival mechanism for us to do this, like we had to do it, no matter what. You know I can almost barely remember the writing process for this album. I just remember that at the time it was there for us when we needed it, and when we listen to the record now we just love it.
‘World War III’ is the third and final installment in your trilogy of albums that featured a concept of a metaphorical universe, something which you initially created?
Yeah, we decided that when we started making the first album, we were going to do this kind of concept trilogy. We wrote it all down and I wrote the narrative to all of the songs on the records because all of the things that Nathan [Leone, vocalist] sings about, are real events and real things that have happened to us. So in order to express that, I created this metaphorical town where people could identify with it if they wanted to peel back the layers of the music, and find more substance in what Madina Lake was and is about. They can then relate it to their own town. I just wrote it along this metaphysical theme where it was all heading towards the finale which is World War III. And there is a book that will be released in tandem with the new record so I am hoping a few kids like it too.
You mentioned self-producing the record, so was it hard to be objective as both artist and producer?
There are a few different schools of thought on this perspective and to be honest, I am not sure exactly where I stand on it. But I can affirm that I am really happy with the choice we made and the choices we made as a whole band. I think the main reason is because record producers tend to all sound the same because everyone knows the same tricks, and every one is using the same software and gear. Yet back in the day if you heard a Stones record or a Tom Waits record, you knew right away which artist it was just because it was the chemistry of the players and the way they recorded. They had an identity. And it is something we too have been desperately aspiring to have since the first record. And on this record, it is our first toe being dipped into the waters so to speak. This is just us and the chemistry between the four of us and no other influences whatsoever.
On one of the album’s tracks titled Imagineer, the group collaborated with Smashing Pumpkins’ Billy Corgan who co-produced and co-wrote the track, how did that come about?
Billy was one of our idols and a really big inspiration growing up. When I went down, he heard about it and managed to pull together and do a benefit show for me at the Metro in Chicago [the benefit eventually raised over $80,000] and that is a really big deal for such a high profile artist to do something like that. I couldn’t believe it and it really blew my mind. So I wrote Billy a thank you letter and it was this very long and over the top letter and I gave it to someone who passed it onto him. The next day, I got letter back from Billy that was just as long as mine! He was such a nice guy, warm, loving and caring. Then he invited Nathan and I to Sedona, Arizona to work on some stuff with him. So we went there and we stayed there for five days. And during that time he came to us with one of these riffs he was working on and we started working on it together, on an acoustic guitar and trying to arrange it. Then we brought it back home to our guys and they really brought the song home for us. And then we sent it back to Billy and he really loved it.
"We are a band that will never quit no matter what."
For us, there is always anywhere from fifteen to twenty seeds of song ideas that we can turn into something relatively quickly even as far as to the point of having lyrics. So there are a few extra ideas floating around for sure but we are not sure at the moment what to do with them.
Turning to gear, what bass and amp did you use for the new record?
I used a Line 6 POD which Mateo [Camargo, guitarist and programmer] effected through my Ampeg. I mainly used a Ampeg SVT head which like I said, was effected through the POD. We found some really cool distortions in there. Also we plugged into a SansAmp. Bass wise, I mainly played an Ernie Ball Music Man Stingray and a Fender Jazz bass which I love a lot.
A lot of critics tend to tag Madina Lake as a metal band, so do you consider that to be a suitable label for the band?
No, we don’t. I know it is a cliché as every band tend to say we don’t want to be part of any genre, but what happened to us to earn that tag was that we were put on Roadrunner Records. But we were a little more rock than most of the bands on Roadrunner, many of whom are metal bands. So our second record Attics To Eden was a reaction to that, because it was more of a straight up rock record. And now we come to this new record World War III and it is just who we really are. And whatever that is, whether that is alternative, electronic, heavy, light metal, or whatever World War III is us. So it is a record that we just want the public to judge us by.
Interview by Joe Matera
Ultimate-Guitar.Com © 2011
