Mudvayne's musical alchemy defies categorisation, seamlessly blending death metal, jazz, fusion, progressive rock, and world music into an audacious mix that completely sets them apart from their peers; so much so that they are unofficially credited with creating the ‘math metal’ genre.
Dubbed the ‘Ill Noise from Illinois’ Mudvayne one of the most celebrated acts of their era, having sold over six million albums worldwide. They're also the only metal band to have been purposely written into an episode of The Sopranos. With a staggering three platinum albums in Australia alone, they’ve been revered downunder for decades. Having reunited for the second time in 2021, they will finally return to Australia next month after an eighteen-year absence. They’ll arrive intent on dishing up the anthems that have come to define so many fans' lives, including highlights from their breakout debut L.D.50 and the classic Lost and Found.
Returning to to a world where everything nu-metal is hitting hard with a new generation, Mudvayne will drop a healthy dose of nu-stalgia on an expectant audience when they make their way to Australia with fellow nu-metal faves, Coal Chamber.
Ahead of the tour, we caught up for a chat with frontman Chad Gray who hinted that this may be the last time we see Mudvayne in Australia, before opening up on a range of topics including the current state of his childhood icons Motley Crue, the sound of modern heavy music, the nu-metal explosion and the Mudvayne songs that he holds closest to his heart.
Mudvayne are FINALLY headed back to Australia this month with Coal Chamber. Are you looking forward to coming back down under?
“We love Australia, we haven't been there in 18 years. That's not necessarily our fucking fault. But that's the reality. And we're so happy. But honestly, this might be the last time we're ever down there. There are a lot of people who have been listening to our music for a long time and have never seen us play, and we may never be back. This could be the be-all and end-all right here. So I hope that everybody that had the opportunity to come comes because it's gonna be fucking fun. We're over the moon about it!”.
“I love Australia. I love the people. I've got so many friends that I've made down there from when I was down there before that I am still in constant contact with just great, really great so we're excited. Man, I appreciate you guys bringing us back.”
I'm sure Australia will be stoked to see you, but probably not stoked about the fact that you seem to be indicating that the end of the road may be nearer than we'd like, for Mudvayne. What's going on in your world? Chad? This doesn't sound great!
“I mean, I don't think the end of the road is here, but, dude, we haven't been there in 18 years. If that were to happen again. I’d be like fucking 75 years old. You know what I mean? So this might be the last trip. We're thankful for that opportunity. If I did come back 18 years from now you probably wouldn't want to see me up there anyway.”
You could always do a Motley Crue and just keep going forever.
“If I ever become like that, fucking shoot me in the fucking head I'm sorry. I'm sorry, but like, I've been seeing all this sucking shit online man, of them doing it and I'm just like, ‘God damn!’ I was just talking to a friend about this a couple of days ago because I got this thing sent to me on Instagram where Vince is not even singing words, these days like, he is just making sounds.”
“I talked to a friend of mine and I'm like, ‘Dude, THIS, THIS is the fucking band, that got me into metal?’. Like ‘Too Fast For Love’ was my introduction to metal, ‘Shout At The Devil’ was like my fucking world. It was like God to me. Then I got into Metallica, from that. But Motley Crue was the first fucking real band for me, and Black Sabbath, but for me, Sabbath came after Motley Crue, then I kind of went backwards and listened to the ‘70s stuff like Motorhead and stuff. So I'm just like, THIS is the band that got me into fucking metal? What the fuck?. What are your thoughts on it?”
I’m reminded of that Neill Young lyric that’s paraphrased in High Fidelity, you know, “It’s better to burn out than fade away”?
“The world’s on fire, bro. I dunno, I’m just scratching my head. I’m like ‘And YOU’RE playing stadiums?’ Like, God. Damn! I mean, dude, it’s crazy to me, dude. It's crazy. That fucking band was so powerful to me. When I was 13 years old or something. I was just like ‘This is the greatest shit on the planet’, and I'm like looking at it. I'm like, ‘What the fuck?”
Well, at least Mudvayne haven’t started withering away yet, right?
“All I do is just sit and talk shit about people. That’s all I've been doing, bitching about people, about how they don't play music anymore. Btiching about Motley Crue, the band that got me into metal, and I don't know what they're doing and that all new fucking bands sound the same. I’ve said before, that all new bands sound the same. That’s not completely true, some bands are doing some fucking cool shit, that I like. But then there’s these fucking guys that are behind them trying to sound like them. It’s like you can't just sound like them because they’re hot, and because they’re popping.”
“It’s just weird for me. I’m old enough that everyone’s saying ‘It’s just fucking old man yells at cloud, blah, blah, blah, whatever’, like I’m not completely privy to all the algorithmic values of music, and the worth is playing and sounding like this band or that band, because if they sound like that, then the algorithm will pick them up and they’ll get plays. I’m like ‘Does everybody just want to be successful? Or do people want to create music that is an extension of and a reflection of yourself?’ Is it still an extension of you, of your creativity and the things that you fell in love with? That’s why I started doing what I do, and why I’ve continued to do the things I do, because I found something in it. It’s a way that I can speak to the world and it makes me feel good, it makes me feel whole.”
“I know that I’m honest in my music, and I’m vulnerable in my music and I was to try to fucking help people. I want to remind people that they’re not alone. Remind people that they can't get through it, they can do it. Lean on me, I lean back on you. I want to lift you and I want you to lift me and change the world. Am I talking crazy? Am I old, because I talk like that?”
The difference might be that bands don't have the backing these days to be able to continue what they're doing in a financial sense, without perhaps conquering these algorithms. That might be part of the reason. The appeal or the purpose of writing music doesn’t seem to have changed for most people, but It may be the business that gets in the way of originality sometimes.
“‘Well the business is always getting in the way of something. The business will always get in the way if you allow it to get in the way, you know what I mean? When I was coming up, when I was growing up, all I wanted to do was get signed. That’s how I was going to make it big. Those kids, us, back then, we’d sell our fucking soul to get the music out there. Because we loved music so much and needed these labels to get music out there. Now that I’ve seen the business from my side of it and I’m a little longer in the tooth, I’m looking at these young kids going ‘What are you doing? You have all the resources in the world to work your fucking asses off. It’s going to take a lot of work, but you have the resources to get your music out there and to promote your music yourself. You need a fucking label. If you get a label now, that means you’re signing over your masters for what they call ‘ in perpetuity’, which means forever. You’re never getting those masters back. You create your music, you sign a fucking record deal, and they keep your masters forever.”
“For that reason alone, I’d be like ‘Man, fuck you’. You know what I mean? I wish I had the opportunity all the younger kids have now. But all I'm seeing is fucking young people that just want to be successful. That's it, they just want to be successful, they're forgetting about what it takes to go into what you'd have to put into it, to see success, you know? What you have to put into it, is truthfulness and honesty and vulnerability. That’s the one thing you can control is what you give your music, that’s completely within your control.”
What advice would you give these young musicians then?
“Just commit to what they want to say and do. But like ‘this is what I want to do, this is what I'm gonna fucking do, I don't care what you say, I'm doing this!’ As long as you do that, with a level of honesty, you're always going to have that. Nobody can ever fucking take that away from you. It’s important that younger, short in-the-tooth folks get that, you know what I mean? That like what you have is yours. And do it for you. Because then it's believable. If you do it for somebody else, it's not believable. I can see right through it, you know, and that's what you get when you get these fucking bands that are trying to just jump on the fucking wagon!”
“Let's take the sub-genre of metalcore. One band. One band. Created that name. They said ‘Oh, we’re metalcore’. One band did that. That’s not something that ten bands can do at one time. One band did it. And now there is a whole sub-genre full of metalcore. It’s the same as hair metal, you think about Motley Crue, then you had RATT and Poison and people came out of the woodwork, competing to see who could look the most like a girl. But the thing was in glam and hair metal there were a lot of bands that were fucking good but they were all hair metal. But they didn’t all sound like Motley Crue or sound like RATT.”
“Then you’ve got nu-metal, you had Korn, Deftones, System of a Down, Papa Roach, and Marilyn Manson. I could go on and on and on. I could name bands and none of them sounded like the other band. None of them sound alike. But they're all part of the same subgenre. You know what I mean? In metalcore, they all fucking sound like the same band. You know what I mean? That's what's frustrating. For me being part of a subgenre that came up that's still being celebrated to this fucking day, is amazing, and I'm very proud to be a part of it. Although back then I probably wasn't, you know. I mean, I'm, I'm a metal kid. I fucking walk around with my two middle fingers in the air. I didn't want to be put in a box. You know? So when you told me I was fucking nu-metal I was, like, ‘fuck you’. You know what I mean? Now it's like, okay. It turned out to be cool. You know what I mean? It turned out to be a cool thing. People are still celebrating it, man. It’s fucking cool.”
You’re teaming up with another band from that nu-metal explosion Coal Chamber for this tour. How do you feel about being on the road with them again?
“I'm, I'm excited about coming down with Coal Chamber too man, those guys are really good, really good fucking people. We had a lot of fun with them this past summer, they came out with us. And we had we had a really good time. And I'm excited. I'm excited. For them. I'm excited for us. I'm excited for you guys. For us to be able to come down there and play for you guys. I think I think it's gonna be a lot of fun. And I hope that people embrace this and take advantage of this very unique opportunity. I would say that unique, to say the least.”
Looking back on that time that you had when you were one of the biggest metal bands in the world and associated with that nu-metal scene, are you filled with a lot of positive recollections?
“Yeah, man, it was fucking great. We had a lot of not-good people around us. The death of Mudvayne was the people around us. The people we surrounded ourselves with, because we were green and young. And shit, they were fucking out to fucking take advantage of us. You know what I mean? And the like, it ended up hurting us very badly. We ended up paying the ultimate price man, it drove us apart. You know what I mean? It wasn't, wasn't our own doing.”
“Now that we're back, we get it and we realize that we were always doing it for the right reasons and we still are. Even though it was fucking distorted by everybody else around us. I think this has given us a new fire and allowed us to appreciate what we created and I think the fans being as fucking awesome as they are still wanting us around is a fantastic thing. And I'm very grateful for our fans. And I'm very grateful for the metal community and what it provides to all of us as far as just an opportunity to be a part of something larger than ourselves. I mean, that's what ultimately everybody wants. That’s why people turn to religion because they need to be a part of God and something bigger than themselves. You know? This is my god. I mean metal is my god, metal is my fucking religion. I believe in a very much and I keep giving it given to it and it keeps giving back and I'm just I'm thankful very thankful.”
Sticking to this theme of metal being your religion, and Mudvayne being the music you’ve created within that religion, to continue that analogy, what Mudvayne song would you point to as the most sacred hymn?
“I love some of the more subtle sides of what we do. I love the heavy shit, I do, but I also love playing Severed, A Cinderella Story, Falling To Sleep and World’s So Cold, that side of Mudvayne is very special to me. There’s only a certain level of musicians that can do that, that can be that spread out. To be able to play Dig, Nothing To Gain, Determined, to be able to do that, but then have that other side. Those songs on the other side resonate with me because they were written from very real places. They’re very open, they’re very honest, they’re vulnerable, and they're just very real songs to me. Those songs all have very special meanings to me.”
“Yeah, I can be pissed off and aggro and all that shit, and it’s good, you want to have that in your life for sure, but the other side of life, the songs that are inspired by stories that you don’t talk about, and the only way you can hear them being spoken is through music, through song, maybe that’s why I hold them a little dearer to my heart. As I said, I’ve been walking through life with my two middle fingers up going fuck, fucky, fucky fuck. So I know about anger, but this wasn’t me screaming on a mountain top, this was my fucked up childhood, this was my fucked up life.”
Mudvayne & Coal Chamber Australian Tour 2024
February 14: Fortitude Music Hall, Brisbane - 90% Sold
February 16: Hordern Pavilion, Sydney - Selling Fast
February 17: Festival Hall, Melbourne - Final Tickets
February 19: Hindley Street Music Hall, Adelaide - Final Tickets
February 21: Metro City, Perth - 90% Sold
Tickets are on sale now via ThePhoenix.
Listen to our NU METAL MANIACS playlist
