4-- The Michigan Daily - Weekend etc. - Thursday, February 9, 1995
Biohazard deals steel-fisted love and kindness
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By Kirk Miller
Daily Arts Writer
No sleep'til Brooklyn. Yeah, that
and a quarter might buy you some
attitude in New York. Fuck, Biohaz-
ard has attitude in spades, real inner
city pissed off, hard-core fist-first kind
of swagger that towers over all other
wannabe hard-core heroes. Ill com-
munication indeed.
"State of the World Address" is
the latest fuck-you combo of aggro
thrash riffing and rap-chanted lyrics
BIOHAZARD
(With Machine Headand
Slayer)
Where: State Theater,
tonight, tomorrow
Tickets: Sold out for
Friday, but tickets are still
available for tonight. Call
645-6666 for more info.
pline," as well as two thumbs up from
Beavis and Butt-Head, the band signed
to Warner Brothers and released an
extremely well-produced, versatile
album that took hard-core to a new
level, bringing in Sen Dog of Cypress
Hill, sampled lines from "Reservoir
Dogs" and even threw in several pretty
acoustic breaks. Not all of which is
met with open arms by the conserva-
tive metal community.
But, as 'hazard guitarist / co-vo-
calist and man of ever-changing hair
Billy Graziadei points out, he's not
sure exactly who will show up at any
given show.
"We've had kids at our shows
with Neo-Nazi stuff," he angrily dis-
missed. "We talk to them, we say 'We
stand strong against that shit, get the
fuck out or stay and listen to our lyrics
and maybe change your mind.' We
used to stand up against these'kids
physically, and we still will if we
have to, but we realize you can't fight
someone and beat someone. We talk
to people and have a discussion. Some-
times more than not you can make
sense with people."
As Graziadei pointed out during
the phone interview, the band has a
lot to say and many ways to say it.
One type of different song on their
new album (and included prominently
on the inner sleeve photo). is "Re-
member," an ode to Vietnam vets that
was inspired by friends and family of
the band members who served in the
war.
"It was misunderstood by a lot of
European press," he lamented. "They
thought it was a pro-war song or some
crazy shit. We are definitely anti-war
... it's about growing up in a house-
hold that's really fucked up because
of war."
Which might explain the album
title of "State of the World Address,"
which goes behind just inner city life
to explore tensions over the globe.
"The world is more my concern,"
Graziadei claimed. "It's more of a
generational thing. I look at the
younger generation and I see things
getting better. It seems that our gen-
eration and the younger generation
are willing to talk about things like
racism, whereas for our parents that
was taboo. It was 'Stay with your
own, stick with them, don't go near
them,' which is very fucked up but
that's how it was."
from the band that exudes anger so
well. After a respectable showing for
their previous work "Urban Disci-
If ever there was a such thing as an
angry band that was completely ap-
proachable, then Biohazard would
define it. Most legendary at their
shows are the hundreds of people
they geton stage to slam, stage dive or
chant choruses in the background.
Even as the band has had to put a stop
to this during the larger tour dates
with Slayer, they still occasionally
miss the old times.
"I dig bigger stadiums, where you
can run around a lot more," he admit-
ted. "But a smaller atmosphere you
can smell everyone's sweat and kids
knock into you. That's something
we'll always love and miss and never
get away from, even if we get to a
point where we're too big to play
there."
Being on a major label has cer-
tainly increased their popularity, in-
cluding landing them on diverse pack-
age tours with House of Pain, Cypress
Hill, Fishbone, Pantera, Prong and
currently Slayer, who have the most
fickle fans in the world. However,
response has been positive.
"It was rumored that every band
gets booed, but it's been great," he
said. "We try to tour with different
types of bands, fitting with bands that
you might have nothing in common
with. It's much more common in Eu-
rope, but here it's only in
Lollapalooza, once a year."
New songs such as "Tales From
the Hard Side" and especially the new
single "Five Blocks to the Subway"
will most likely have a tough time
finding a home on radio and album
rock radio, but the band fan ranks
continue to swell from the under-
ground. Already the band will be fea-
tured in three upcoming movie
soundtracks (including "The Crow
II" soundtrack, which doesn't actu-
ally have a film for the music yet) and
received the daunting task of contrib-
uting to the Black Sabbath tribute
album. Their take on the pro-religion
and rather out-of-the-ordinary Sab-
bath tune "After Forever" was prob-
ably the first time in history a band
did a song better than Sabbath them-
selves could have done.
But that isn't the pinnacle of suc-
cess for Biohazard.
"If we sold ten more albums than
we had family members that's suc-
cessful to me," Graziadei claimed.
"We want to reach as many people as
possible, but if we don't we don't."
01
Machine Head is for real
By Kirk Miller
Daily Arts Writer
Religion, mind control and para-
noia have a lot in common, and one
listen to the debut album "Burn My
Eyes" by new thrash gods Machine
Head will definitely make you think
twice about going to church.
Skip to the second-to-last track
"Real Eyes, Realize, Real Lies" and
you'll hear several different sampled
voices of hate, ignorance and intoler-
ance. And it's all too real, according
to lead singer / guitarist Robb Flynn.
"We got that stuff from really ob-
scure cable access shows," the native
Oakland man explained during a
phone interview. "In Oakland the
Nation of Islam has a lot of power. If
you watch the TV show you see the
whole 'White man is the devil.' Then
you turn on another show and it's
another religion doing the same thing,
but reversed. And to me it's absurd. I
was never raised to be religious, let
alone when I see these fucking people
MACHINE HEAD
(With Biohazard and Slayer).
Where: State Theater,
tonight, tomorrow
Tickets: Sold out for
Friday. but tickets are still
available for tonight. Call
645-6666 for more info.
said. "Fromhard-core hip-hop to hard-
core punk to extreme death metal to
alternative bands. We definitely tried
to keep the Bay Area sound (home to
such thrash legends as Metallica,
Death Angel and Exodus), though
expand on it. That sound for a long
time was one of the things that was
fresh and always pushing boundaries."
He added music has agreater purpose.
"I think music should intimidate
people, scare you a little bit," he
laughed. However, the band stays
clear of tour mates' Slayer domain of
evil and death, preferring to shock in
a more noticeable manner.
"Obviously we write about reality,"
he said."But I never preach. I never
want to tell someone that 'this is the
way you have to be, this is the way to
think.' My job first and foremost is to
entertain you, so I'm going to tell you a
story. If my story's a little harsher it's
because I've seen some harsher things
in life. It's like violent poetry."
One of the songs that is frequently
misunderstood is the standout first
single "Davidian," which is not about
the Waco incident specifically.
"The name 'Davidian' has actu-
ally been around for a long time," he
explained. "It originally meant. until
three years ago someone who takes
the pain, hate and poverty around
them and turns it into something posi-
tive. But then three years ago this
fucking dickhead made it revered for-
ever as this fucked-up cult that killed
people. I was inspired to write the
song at the time because I just found
that out and thought, 'I bet nobody
knows that.' They'll freak out about it
but oh well. I wanted to make a point
and see who grasped it."
Just so you don't think Machine
Head and Flynn are all serious, he is
more than willing to go on about how
cool it is to open for Slayer ("loved
them forever" he admitted), some new
industrial remixes of songs by a mem-
ber of Front Line Assembly that was
just finished ("they came out phat,
man ... very trippy industrial ... mu-
sic to kill people by") and the joys of
playing "Doom" on the Sega 32X
attachment. He also was "hella drunk"
on Super Bowl Sunday. As he men-
tioned, they're just out to have fun.
"Live we'realotmore loose," he said.
"We're far less concerned with playing
everything perfect and more concerned
that everyone has a good time."
Don't forget who's watching you.
be militant about it."
Before anyone accuses Flynn of
sacrilege, he made an addendum.
"I think religion can be helpful for
a person," he admitted. "But I also
think people who use religion today,
like evangelists, take adv*ptage of
people. But any problems you over-
come in life are because you over-
came them, from what's inside you."
The phrase "an open mind with a
closed fist" is on the ads for the band,
and never has the statement meant
more. Machine Head started two years
ago out of the ashes of several lesser
Bay Area thrash bands, scored a deal
with Roadrunner Records and almost
immediately began to pull in incred-
ible reviews for their starkly realistic
and powerful blend of technical riffing
and stark rage; essentially this is the
best thrash album since Sepultura's
"Chaos A.D." and the most diverse.
"Musically we listen to an unbe-
lievably vast amount of music," Flynn
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