swan song

Bolt Thrower – Realm Of Chaos

Bandcamp HERE

Were you terribly uncomfortable at the recent Grammy Award Show?

I don’t know. It’s just a strange subject. It’s almost as if the music industry is patting itself on the back in a way. This was the seventh Grammy nomination for us and had we won one for our first nomination I would have had a really cool attitude about it because it would have meant that the people who were actually voting were paying attention to music for music’s sake as opposed to some other reason.

I was happy that we were nominated because it was an independent record company and it was a low-profile record. We didn’t win a Grammy until we’d sold several millions and it seems that what sells a lot is what wins, even though the record may or may not be any good, but that seems to be the requirement.

I’m not critical of the people who work in the music industry, and I appreciate the Grammy. (But) to me it’s their party and it’s not really mine. It’s not for the musicians. It has more to do with the industry. You can tell after a Grammy period all the record labels and artists who won a bunch take out full-page ads in the trades gloating. That’s fine. That’s what they do, they sell records and they work really hard to develop careers. If they’re into it, I’m not going to be disrespectful, but I’d hate for anyone to think that it’s something that was a necessity for me or the rest of the band, or that it was a benchmark to us of legitimacy for us because it’s not. It doesn’t really matter that much to us. It seems like it’s for someone else. I’d never get up and say that. If I was totally not into it, the best thing to do is to not show up.

Maybe ten years from now I’ll reflect and say “wow, that happened and it was pretty unusual. Not every kid on the block gets to go up and pick up a Grammy Award.” It’s just one more thing to take the focus away from what we like to do, which is to write music and make records and try not to think about anything whether it’s how many records we sell or what people think of us. (x)