JULY 2005 - Long before the band reformed as MIDDIAN, Mike Scheidt agreed to a lengthy exchange about the past and future direction of his original legendary doom band YOB. Despite the band's hellish, apocalyptic roar, frontman Scheidt turned out to be a very intelligent, down-to-earth guy and a good sport to boot, as this humorous interview with Mark Marchman demonstrates.

Marchman: Mike, nice to finally get a chance to talk.

Mike Scheidt: Yeah, real cool. Thanks for the great review on the new record, man. Well, all our records, really.

Marchman: No sweat. Glad people actually take the time to read them. So, it's hard to believe that it's been over 20 years since "Upstairs at Eric's" came out.

MS: What?

Marchman: Yeah, I remember I first heard "Don't Go" during that Stallone movie "Tango & Cash". Did you guys know what the movie was about before they included the song, or did you just hear your music during the movie later?

MS: Dude. Are you talking about that band YAZ? That's ... not us. Fuckin' 80s dance music.

Marchman: What? (shuffling of papers) GODDAMMIT!! Sorry man. I've got this new chick helping with the interviews and paperwork and stuff around here. She's got like thirteen cats or something and my shit keeps getting screwed up and lost and clawed by cats.

MS: It's cool man. Take your time.

Marchman: (several minutes later) OK, I think I figured it out . I swear it's just easier to do everything myself.

MS: Yeah, but then you end up getting all stressed out.

Marchman: Too late for that. Anyway, here we go. The first song on the new CD is "Quantum Mystic". I was wondering if the lyrics have anything to do with Gandhi?

MS: It's about a guy named Sri Nisargatta.

Marchman: Tell me a little about it.

MS: Well, he was a teacher in India. He was not really a Hindu, but he sort of grew up in that culture. But he spent most of his life poor and he worked with his family farming. When he got old enough, he moved to Bombay with his brother and they started a cigarette shop, and it became really popular. So he ended up opening up like three or four more of them, and for the first time in his life he had a little money. So, he'd always been interested in Hinduism, but also spirituality in general, like being a truth seeker. So he started going to this teacher. He had always been a very simple man, totally uneducated and in just three years, he had this sort of mind blowing awakening and then just taught for the rest of his life. He taught about everything from the Bhagavad Glta, (which is kinda like the Hindu bible), and stuff like Ramana Maharshi teaches and whatnot. He taught until he died, and didn't learn to read until much later in life, so the fact that he could go into depth on so many really deep subjects was a spectacle.

Marchman: Now I feel like a slouch because I didn't want to get up and go to work this morning.

MS: (laughs) Yeah man, he's got a number of books that are out there that are pretty fantastic. They've all been translated.

Marchman: Your past albums have all had sort of loose themes that bind the songs together to a certain degree. Can you tell us a little about them, including the most recent themes surrounding "The Unreal Never Lived"?

MS: "Elaborations of Carbon" was from a book, just having to do with carbon-based life forms. I think that people get so lost in what we're taught and being products of our society that we forget there is level upon level of mysterious interaction that makes it all possible for us to actually be alive. So that's kind of the theme for "Elaborations of Carbon". I mean, each song kind of has its own theme on that album. "Catharsis" was more to do with delving into a spiritual quest, but in a painful sense. It's not preachy, but real honest and more personal. But it's ambiguous at the same time, not trying to spell it all out, y'know. "Illusion of Motion" is getting more into bigger picture stuff in a way, like quantum physics and how each level of reality and each level of personal reality is constructed with things that we don't understand, ultimately. It's stuff that is labeled for us or by humans in general and the labels themselves aren't "things" and from the world that we kind of create, our labels don't really affect the world. Y'know, call something a 'flower', it doesn't change anything about what flowers have done for millennia. It's just a name we give it, but we don't know what it is. We don't know what a human being is. We've named ourselves, and that's fine and dandy and it takes some of the mystery away that we can name things, and it gives us a means to talk to each other. But ultimately it's just a name. If human beings were wiped off the planet, every single bit of human knowledge and invention wouldn't mean shit to anything else.

Marchman: So"The Unreal Never Lived" is a continuation of this idea?

MS: It's getting closer to that. To be able to name something, we think that our creation has this solid reality, when in fact it really doesn't. Things come and go, blink in and out of existence and our bodies are re-created every three weeks. Things come and go, but there's something somehow that doesn't. There's this kind of sub-stratum that allows this reality and consciousness to keep on happening. And that becomes more, y'know the ground.

Marchman: The ground.

MS: It's a bunch of fucking hooha, really. It's just me being uber-fucking-weird (laughs). But y'know, this stuff to me, I feel more resonance with it than writing about how you're gonna fuckin' die. Or how I'm chasing you down the alley, I've got my knife... and all that shit. I mean, I have CDs like that and I love "Reign in Blood" and all that crap, but at a certain point just perpetuating shit like that starts to feel like a copout to me. It's like...are people growing? Is it possible for people to grow out of just singing about killing women and being narcissistic and singing about all the shit that maybe entertains somebody for the moment? Really, it can seem kinda pointless.

Marchman: Really, most of the discs we get these days don't even include the lyrics. It's becoming more of a lost art than anything, at least with the heavy stuff.

MS: Yeah, man. I can see what you mean. Our fuckin' lyrical nonsense has it's place, and so does AC/DC...babes and rock. In the context of metal, and the concept of super-heavy-uber-metal there's a lot of re-hashed themes. And it's like, it comes across as false. There are bands that have a certain honesty and trueness, even if it's a negative trueness, like certain black metal bands have this vibe that is so sincere, it almost seems brand new.

Marchman: What are some of the more radical ideas you've considered with YAZ, maybe toyed with but not actually implemented on an record yet?

MS: With YOB, you mean. Hmm. Well, I've toyed with the idea of having an album that's just far out. Y'know, you take the most cosmic, spacious, melodic, tripped-out aspects of what we do within the heavy. I've thought about doing an album like that, just fully off the planet. "Catharsis" has a lot of real sincere elements of that, but with the YOB 2005 stylings within that context. Almost like "Dark Side of the Moon" meets YOB.

Marchman: You mean abandoning cadence completely?

MS: Not really abandoning it. It's like a painter. They'll use different colors, brush strokes, and mediums, but it isn't like they're abandoning any one technique for another. Each canvas is it's own creation. Nothing would ever be abandoned; the dynamics I enjoy will always come back. But when I look at four albums of material, the challenge is...how do you not make it the same? How do you write a new album that does feel new and fresh and isn't a rehash. That's a challenge.

Marchman: Will Metal Blade be pushing you guys out on an extensive tour this time?

MS: YOB does everything backwards. We're all family guys, and the truth of the matter is that doom metal don't pay the bills! We get out as much as we can. We do west coast trips, and one U.S. tour, we've done 'em for the last two years. But really none of us are 25. We all have responsibilities. Sure, we could abandon our kids and wives (laughs), but there's just no light at the end of the tunnel when it comes to doing that, monetarily. Then to really go out and totally do that in this style of music, the danger is keeping it pure, and not jumping on the next hardcore tour, y'know. Most tours get tossed in our direction, PREMONITION OF WAR, stuff like that. The best thing that can happen for a label is for a band to get bigger and bigger and bigger. But for us it's tricky because we want to keep what we do pure. And if that is self-defeating in keeping us from becoming the next best thing to buttered toast, then that's probably what's going to happen. I know that's kind of an ambiguous answer.

Marchman: Which types of offers would work for you as far as names go?

MS: I think that certain large tours we would seriously consider, like when BOLT THROWER puts out their new album, we'd pull every string we have to do something like that. But to get out on some death metal tour or hardcore tour or whatever, I don't know. I don't want to abandon our fans and supporters for a bigger audience. Maybe they'll wanna go see a bunch of hardcore bands and pay sixteen bucks to see us, and maybe they won't. We do this because we love it, and we want to play with bands that we wanna play with. We want to play with GRAVES AT SEA and THE HIDDEN HAND. Shows that are essentially 300 people shows as opposed to 1000 people shows. But we're having the time of our lives doing that, versus being on a tour where we're going to be seeing bands every night that are just kind of meh.

Marchman: So how was Metal Blade initially about that approach to touring?

MS: Well, when we negotiated with them. We were not convinced that they were the right place for us. They seemed a little big, we never sent them a promo pack. We would have never even thought of them. Brian Slagel emailed us! He had "Catharsis" and loved it and wanted to sign the band. We were talking with smaller labels, and we were nervous. On the one hand, we grew up on this label. When we were negotiating, we knew that there were things that we couldn't do and places we couldn't go. We can't tour six months a year. So we told them straight up that we would only tour one month a year or we couldn't sign. So we just put all of our cards on the table, and they just kept saying yes. I could see it being a tension later on, as YOB on Metal Blade has done very well. They've done well for us, and we've done well for them. I've seen positive press for them signing us, and I could see where it could become frustrating for them at some point, having this band that is popular but can't really get out.

Marchman: There are no other doom bands on that label.

MS: Nope. They haven't had any since the 80s.

Marchman: Do you ever have contact with Alison Moyet these days? I think the last thing I heard was "It Won't Be Long". That was years ago.

MS: I think, you're back on you're YAZ questions again, dude.

Marchman: Shit. Wait a sec. Ok, your bass player Isamu contributes vocals to the new record. Has he shown an interest in singing before? Why this record?

MS: Isamu has a killer band called HC MINDS. He's their singer and for many years I was the drummer. I played in HC MINDS before YOB existed in the mid-nineties. He's got a killer voice, and we've talked about him singing a song or part of a song for a long time. I think ultimately we found a place to make it happen, and it was the perfect tune.

Marchman: It seems like there's been an evolution in YOB's album / t-shirt artwork over the last few albums. I've seen some more cartoony styles with the earlier designs, leading up to the last album cover which makes a very fresh, bold sort of statement.

MS: The first album was Malleus (from Italy's UFOMAMMUT). For 12th Records, he just wants the same theme, he does all the artwork. For the second album, we were signed to this label called Lunasound that tanked and didn't tell anybody. They sold their contracts to Abstract Sound / Candlelight. When we were coming up with artwork ideas, we sent them some files for ideas. The guy was going to work with them. Then we never hear from him, our contract is being violated left and right as these new people try and get up to speed. We told them we wanted to hear the album and see the artwork. When the promos arrived, it was exactly what we had sent them, unchanged! So, that one turned out kind of weird. We would have done more if we'd known how it was going to turn out. "Illusion of Motion" was very intentional with Isamu doing all the layouts and me sort of conceptually throwing out ideas behind it. For the latest one, Isamu was too busy with work to do the artwork. We have a really good friend up in Seattle named Aaron Edge who has a company called Odium that does album art and t-shirts and stuff like that. So when we were recording, I'd get home from work around midnight which is around the time that Aaron is getting up and running. So we'd be exchanging emails and phone calls every night. I kind of gave him all the concepts and Aaron did a really good job.

MS: We had more money. When we recorded "The Illusion of Motion", it was on our own dime. Metal Blade picked it up and we ended up getting reimbursed. But this time around we had a better budget. We were able to walk into the studio and really prepare and have a game plan. We'd been playing these songs live and rehearsed the tunes for a number of months, so we were ready as far as our performance goes. It was kind of a mixture of everything. I think when a band has that sort of time, they can make a better record. Plus, we were serious. There are bands that walk into the studio that just have some rough ideas. We had a record written.

Marchman: Do you do any kind of vocal warm ups in a live setting or before recording?

MS: Not really. My vocal warm ups have more to do with song choice. I'll choose songs that are good vocal warm ups. I've gotten strong enough that I don't have to use everything I have to get out a roar.

Marchman : I remember hearing some rumblings about a change in vocal style from "Catharsis" to "The Illusion of Motion". Did you get wind of any complaints from the fans on the change between those two records?

MS: There's a difference, I think. Partly just being a better singer. There's a lot more aggressive-styled vocals on "Illusion..." than "Catharsis". More death roars and screams. There's probably more variety but that's just the way the material grew and necessitated it.

Marchman: Hey, since YOB is "boy" spelled backwards, and "Boy" is a U2 album, does that mean you've considered alternate projects or album names like "Raw" or "Rebocto"?

MS: (laughs): Y'know, I never really thought about it that way. But some ideas have their time. And you never know what's around the corner. That band...I am just amazed that they are the icons that they are. They just don't strike me with the quality of bands that have been icons before them. I'd puke on Bono's shoes.

Marchman: So if somebody asked you to name the most inspirational band for you personally, given only five seconds to answer, what's the first name that comes to mind?

MS: SLEEP. They're the the reason why YOB exists.

Marchman: Which record?

MS: When they came out with "Holy Mountain" in the early 1990s, I think a lot of people just went, "Whoa!" y'know. They hit some root sounds, the SABBATH sounds and the 70s far-out heavy. But then there was something that was crushing and unique about them. I started playing riffs a little differently. At the same time that I discovered them, I saw CATHEDRAL with NAPALM DEATH, CARCASS and BRUTAL TRUTH and they just floored me. I had "Forest of Equilibrium" and I didn't get it at first. I saw them live and it was just before "Soul Sacrifice" came out. I just couldn't believe it. So between SLEEP and CATHEDRAL, I permanently changed the way I play. Then CATHEDRAL kinda went down that boogie lane. Kinda hit or miss after that...a few solid records. So SLEEP and CATHEDRAL for me.

Marchman: Any kid that buys that "Forest of Equilibrium" record gets the bonus of all those killer bands Dorrian mentions in the liner notes like CAMEL and NECROMANDUS, etc. Great reference point.

MS: Yep.

Marchman: Well Mr. Scheidt, we really appreciate your taking time to talk with us.

MS: You're welcome, man. Take care.

Marchman: Thanks for all the great music, too.

MS: Thanks. Hopefully, there's a lot more coming.

OFFICIAL YOB SITE: myspace.com/yobdoom

Photos : Joel Wheeler

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