Sioux: How is the tour going so far?
Scott: It’s been great. It’s been awesome, absolutely killer. We’re the first band to go on every night and playing in front of much bigger crowds than we normally do. Everyone on the tour is really cool, from the top down, including Glen Danzing himself, who is really fucking nice. He introduced himself to us, and welcomed us to the tour. From the crew on down, it’s a tight nit group, we all party together, hang out and have fun, so the tour has been really awesome and is going very well.

Sioux: With the recent departure of bassist Eric Harris how has that effected the band, any insight on why he left? Also, you welcomed new bassist Evan Linger, how is that working out?
Scott: It’s been a good thing for the band, honestly. I won’t really get into the departure, but there were a lot of problems. He was a fantastic bass player and we had lots of fun with him. We all lived together in Cleveland for a year and a half, and were friends and hung out a lot. There was deeper stuff going on there and we had some personality clashes, and it came to a head, and eventually we decided that it wasn’t going to work out. However, I wish him the best and have no ill will towards him. Now our new bass player Evan, he was actually a guitar player in a band in Cleveland that we played a lot of shows with, and a good friend of ours. He’s an awesome fucking guitar player. When we parted ways with Eric, we immediately called Evan and asked him if he’d like to play for SKELETONWITCH and he said “Fuck Yes I Do!” and told him he was playing bass, and he was like “oh shit,” but said he’d love to do it. So he switched to bass. He’s a guitar player becoming a bass player; he’s still learning the ins and outs of playing bass as opposed to guitar. He’s really, really cool and really fucking smart and a great player and he’s learning quickly. He’s been doing a great job. He’s had four shows with us in Ohio, like smaller bar shows, and then was immediately onstage in front of hundreds of people at the first Danzig show. So it was a huge leap out of no where, to play new material that he learned in three weeks. He’s been kicking ass. As far as the temperament in the band and the mentality it’s really good, there’s no weird vibes.

Sioux: Can you tell me about the new video that SKELETONWITCH just completed. Was it fun to shoot or a pain in the ass?
Scott: It was really fun! It was our first music video we’ve ever done. The whole thing was shot over two days. One day was shot at an old venue near Athens, Ohio, where we live. And then we did another shoot at a state park, out in the woods. The video’s cool, its lots of head banging, lots of hair. Its real fast, real intense, there’s probably sixty pounds of animal guts, weapons and some other crazy shit in there. So hopefully it will be on Headbangers Ball within the next few weeks.

Sioux: What is your favorite thing about touring?
Scott: Oh wow, that’s a tough question. For me personally, it's probably meeting all the people. Everyone in the band is a metal head and we all love watching the bands play on the tour. It’s also fun to drink beer and just hang out with everybody. Really, just traveling and going to new places and meeting more fans of metal.

Sioux: You went to Europe with Hate Eternal, how was that experience? Also, have you noticed any difference between European metal fans and American metal fans?
Scott: The tour was awesome. It was Hate Eternal, Cephalic Carnage and us. For part of the tour there was a German band Deadborn, and for part of the tour there was an Irish band called Man Must Die. The experience was amazing. We had so much fun. We shared a bus with Hate Eternal and Cephalic Carnage. We all partied our asses off and had a great time. At the core, European and American metal fans; actually metal fans the world over, are the same. There are small differences. One thing we noticed was metal fans were a little more segmented in Europe. Because we were on tour with Hate Eternal and Cephalic Carnage so there were a pretty good segment of fans that really wanted to hear the most extreme brutal death metal and technical grind core, and when we get up there and play thrash metal and all of a sudden there’s an Iron Maiden like harmony and then a black metal blast beat, some of them were scratching their heads looking like “I don’t know about this.” So I think we caught some of them off guard because we weren’t that style. By and large though, it’s the same, people are just as nice, just as hospitable, and of course they drink a ton of beer.

Sioux: What was SKELETONWITCH’s reaction when you found out you were a part of the Blackest Of The Black tour?
Scott: We were so stoked! We actually found out when we were in Europe. I remember standing in Switzerland, just finished playing a show and being drunk. My brother, who is also our manager, told me we would possibly be part of the tour. I was freezing my ass off and I remember running back to the show to load out and I called him at this phone booth four blocks away, and he told me we got it, and I remember being so fucking excited. I ran back to the venue and told the other guys and we were so stoked. We were beside ourselves because we are huge Danzig fans. Every night on the tour, we watch Danzig, with our fist in the air.

Sioux: What is your least favorite part of touring?
Scott: How bad we smell *laughs* and how crappy we eat. We eat a lot of fast food and stuff like that because we don’t make much money. You get rundown and tired and smelly and eat crappy food, but sometimes that is part of the fun too. It’s a good thing and a bad thing. Because we are out here doing what we always wanted to do. So sometimes when you feel rundown and awful someone will come up and pay a compliment to your band or buy you a beer, or you’ll meet someone really cool and then we’ll think this is really awesome and this is why we do this. Actually we don’t really see too many negative sides to touring

Sioux: Are you currently working on a follow-up to Beyond The Permafrost? Can you give us some insight on the new music?
(while outside behind the venue conducting the interview, a rowdy fan is being arrested and yelling “FUCK YOU!” to all the security guards and cops)

Scott: *amusingly laughs*… Sioux and I are watching someone get arrested! Yes, we are working on a follow up. We have a few songs completed and ready to go. Then we have a lot of riffs and ideas that we’ve been working on. We don’t have much of a chance to write on the road because we are busy driving, setting up, playing, leaving, driving. So when we are home we continue to work on it. After the Blackest Of The Black tour, our biggest focus is the next album. We don’t have a title yet for the new album. Chance, our singer, comes up with the lyrics and all the song titles and he waits until all the music is complete and decides what kind of vibe he’s getting from the music. It won’t be any change of direction. It’s gonna be more of SKELETONWITCH. It will sound like a little more of where we are at right now because it is being written in a shorter period of time. It will be a little more brutal, a little faster and thrashy. It will have more teeth and go for throat.

Sioux: I admire bands that look as metal as they sound. Long hair in metal, especially American metal, is hard to find these days. What do you think of these bands that claim to be metal but basically look unmetal with short hair and trendy clothes?
Scott: Our taste is in metal from the past. There’s not really any newer metal bands that we like. I don’t like metal core. I’m not really feeling these new metal bands on the scene. The short haired, gym shorts look, combined with death metal is confusing to me. He looks emo, but is going to play death metal! It’s not my thing at all. There are so many bands like that and I think “what the fuck are you guys doing?” When I was fourteen, my older brother took me to see Slayer for my first concert, and it totally changed my life. When they came out, they were larger than life. A few years ago I saw Satyricon and they were fucking awesome too. When you’re a fan of music, and you go see bands and are physically looking at them, that’s an impact as well as the music. I like it when a metal band is a fucking metal band and they come out and have presence, and are head banging. That’s what I love about metal. Visually and musically I want them to steam roll me over and kick my ass.

Sioux: That is it. Thanks for the interview Scott :)
Scott: We appreciate you guys at Nocturnal Hall for taking the time to talk to us, and thanks to everybody that listens to us, buys our records and has come out and seen us on tour. We appreciate the support!