With:	Shane Clark
Conducted by:	Doc G. (in person)
Published:	10.06.2011
Band profile:	3 Inches Of Blood

A busy time for 3 Inches Of Blood; a steady co-headlining tour, a new EP, and also wrapping up filming of an upcoming documentary directed by Tom MacLeod. Aside from getting a little insight as to potential sounds for an upcoming album (currently being written) from the mouth of guitarist Shane Clark, I also managed to get film-maker Tom Macleod to sit in and give us the inside scoop as to what this upcoming DVD will be all about




Doc: So you guys are doing yet another tour through Canada - something you do quite a bit, has it got boring so far, stopping through the same towns repeatedly?

Shane: Not Canada for us, that's where we have the most fans. Being a Canadian band, is it what it is. It's what we do. We try not to play Canada too much, it's not the biggest place, but a couple times every album we'll come through. It doesn't get boring though.

Doc: This whole tour has obviously got an extreme emphasis on Canadian...everything. Do you think a tour like this would translate well outside of the country?

Shane: Yeah. Me and some of the guys from Cancer Bats have been sort of throwing that idea around. Maybe doing a "Warriors Of The Great White North" type thing in the UK.

Doc: I guess it would have that whole sort of foreign appeal to it...

Shane: It's just a conversation at this point, but I think it would go over well.

Doc: Well, Finntroll and Ensiferum did this whole Finnish Metal Tour thing a few months ago and it was a pretty big hit here.

Shane: The folk metal is definitely its own entity now. They get a lot of fans. We did a tour with Eluveitie this year, and we were really surprised what a really good crossover that was. There's more similarities than differences, especially with what we're doing - it's the straight up metal side that's there.

Doc: I've also noticed you guys always tour through small shit holes like Timmins and Thunder Bay - how much of that is cult following, and how much is just you guys being charitable?

Shane: No, no. There's metal fans all over Canada. Timmins was insane. Generally with the smaller towns, they really appreciate you coming by, because no one goes there...Not a lot of bands go there, I should say. It's for the fans who don't have to travel 4 or 5 hours to the big cities to go. We go to them.




Doc: With this new documentary you're currently filming, what can you tell us about it?

Shane: Well, we brought Tom along with us, he's a film maker, and he's basically just documenting what we're doing. We didn't say "ok guys, we want to write a documentary." Tom does documentaries, so we're really just leaving it up to him. It's more of a fly-on-the-wall thing. We're not changing anything we do. Some people may act up a little bit, because there's a camera around, but other than that it's just business as usual for us. It's a snap-shot in time. We're doing what we always have done and always will be doing. So this is just something for the archives in way, and a film in its own right.

Doc: How many clips of Dave Mustaine crying do you guys have in it?

Shane: None.

Doc: It's not a band documentary unless you've got a crying Dave Mustaine in it.

Shane: Well, there's already one movie that has that.

Doc: So what about you, Tom, what can you tell us about it?

Tom: We kind of threw the idea around. We came up with the idea when we were walking around skid row in East Hastings - Shane, Justin, and I. Just sort of tossed the idea around. Came on tour, fly on the wall type thing.

Doc: So you knew the band before this?

Tom: Yeah we've been working together on a few things over the past 2 years. Just small video clips, and inadvertently did their last video, 12:34. That just kind of happened. I just threw something together, sent it to them, they sent it to their label and it all worked out. I'm just along for the ride, trying to end up with a solid project at the end. It's going amazing, a lot better than I could have hoped so far. You can plan as much as you can for something like this, but you write it as it goes. Luckily these guys are comfortable with my camera.

Doc: So how much live material are we going to be seeing on this DVD?

Shane: It's really up to Tom...

Tom: It's more "The Life Of The Band". So it's more of the backstage stuff, a lot of the travelling, interactions, that's how the story is told. Obviously there is going to be a lot of live shots, but it's just one camera, so you can't really document full performances with anything less than three cameras.

Doc: So just like a few clips here and there?

Tom: Yeah, definitely a lot of shots showing different venues.

Shane: We have a live DVD that's being currently worked on. I have no idea when it will see the light of day, but that's sort of taking care of the live performance thing.

Tom: This is more behind the scenes, showing how hard the band works.

Doc: Yeah, the smaller cult following bands definitely don't have the cushy road life.

Tom: It even surprised me, how much these guys have to work. It's not as glamourous as people might think, but it's fun.

Doc: Is this going to be released through Century Media or is this going to be something totally separate?

Shane: It's just being filmed at this point, so I have no idea.

Tom: Yeah, we take care of the business side once there's a good movie to work with.




Doc: So you guys also have a new EP out, the last album was really organic sounding, how does Anthems For The Victorious compare?

Shane: That was definitely the vibe of the last album. Because we did that, we don't want to repeat ourselves and keep on with one kind of vibe. It's a 7", these are two original songs that I had in the can that we decided to record. We're playing them both tonight, they're way more aggressive, really riff oriented. It's got the big chorus kind of stuff on it. It's something between albums for the fans.

Doc: You just did download and vinyl. Not doing CD's at this point is pretty obvious, but why did you guys decide to do the vinyl, as opposed to straight-up download only?

Shane: We're all vinyl collectors. I like buying 7"s and stuff, we kind of wanted to do it because of that.

Doc: Is it one of those albums that sounds more full on vinyl?

Shane: Well, being a fan of vinyl I'm sure the compression is different. It's just a format we wanted to do. We didn't want to just do the digital one, we've done that in the past, and it's cool, but we wanted to do a limited release for the tour.

Doc: This is also the first time you've made two recordings with the exact same line-up, how does that change things?

Shane: It's good because now we haven't had any strife with people quitting, or any kind of things like that. The band over the last 4 years has grown, so now we don't have to focus on anything but moving forward, continuing on the vibe we have now.

Doc: You guys also haven't pulled in any new bassist for the recording...

Shane: Yeah, I play the bass on this release.

Doc: Are you guys planning on ever hiring a new full-time bassist?

Shane: Maybe. It depends if the right person comes along. Some of the guys I look up to in the music business - Meshuggah is a good example, they don't have a permanent bass player, they have a permanent touring guy. It's more of a thing like, things are just smooth the way they are. We have a couple guys who are really into being the touring guy, it all depends maybe if one of these guys wants to stick it out. As it stands now we're just going to keep it the way it's going. If it's not broken - don't fix it.

Doc: This is also the first EP you've done which is a standalone recording, is this going to segue into your next album at all?

Shane: Not really. This is a standalone thing. Again, it's sort of just a snapshot in time of where we're at. We just fired off these songs. When this tour is done - on sunday, we're going to start writing the new record over the summer. Right now I don't think any of these songs are going to be on the record. Maybe if there's a deluxe edition we may throw those songs on, remix them for fun and put them on.

Doc: The last album had a really earthy, old-school feel to it, whereas the one before it had a sharper, thrashier feel to it, do you have anything in mind for what you want this upcoming one to sound like?

Shane: Maybe a mix of the two. I really liked the recording of the last record, Jack Edino is great, he's really good, but I think maybe in hindsight it's a little bit quiet. I think the mastering process didn't go as well as hoped. Live and learn. The way we record is...I hate the term "organic", it's everywhere, it fucking bothers me.

Doc: Yeah...Sorry about that...

Shane: Nah, I'm not blaming you. That was a precursor to me saying it again, but the way we record is generally pretty organic. Not a whole lot of processed sounds, it's basically just microphones on our live rigs.

Doc: You kind of went between 2 extremes with the last 2 albums.

Shane: Fire Up The Blades is extremely produced. That was a really cool sounding record, but again we don't want to repeat ourselves, we want to move forward and just do it the best way we can convey the songs.

Doc: The over-digitalizing makes it harder to reproduce live.

Shane: Absolutely. The way the drums were recorded were never played that way live. Not to say that our drummer at the time wasn't competent, but it was very non-human sounding. For this one we haven't been using any click track or inhuman drum samples. We'll probably do more of a thing like that. It's hard to say at this point, we haven't even written any songs yet.

Doc: That about does it. Any last words you'd like to throw out there?

Shane: Always like to thank the fans, come and check us out, come and party.