Karlie caught up with Stich D and The A.V.D from The Defiled back stage at Bristol Academy to talk about releasing their album for free with Metal Hammer, touring with The Murderdolls and much more.

Can you give us a brief history of how the band came together and how you came up with the name The Defiled?
AVD: First of all be more original. [Laughs] I’m only joking. The name The Defiled I remember at the back of this studio we all put a little…

Stitch D: [Interrupts] You weren’t in the band when we came up with the name The Defiled, we’d played gigs without you.

AVD: No, I was the drummer at the time remember?

Stitch D: I thought we had it before you.

AVD: No,and there was the thing with the keyboard player. We were all in the back writing down names. Then we came up with Cancer Pigeons.

Stitch D: Yeah then we decided to scrap that, then the Cancer Bats came out and we were like, shit, maybe we should have gone with that name!

AVD: Yeah, I was the drummer in the beginning. We were called Devoid to begin with.

Stitch D: Yeah, we had cliché goth names. We were cliché goths.

AVD:When we came up with the Defiled I thought it sounded like a filing system or something. We should have called ourselves The Amphetamine Sluts.

You have just teamed up with Metal Hammer to give away your album ‘Grave Times’, how did this idea come about? And do you have a rough idea of how the magazine/CD sales have been since the release?
Stitch D: It was really weird because we recorded the album really fast, mixed it for quite some time, and then we had it done and we literally got a phone call from two of the guys from Metal Hammer saying ‘what’s going on, do you guys wanna do it?’’. Then that was literally it, we didn’t pursue anything, they literally came to us and said, look, we wanna do this, we haven’t done this before, we really love you guys, can we do it?

AVD: We were thinking of releasing it with a labels and shit.

Stitch D: If we had released it with a label we would have had to wait a while, I mean, we’re not gonna get any money no matter what anyway. It would have taken another year to get it out, and we would have been hanging on like, ‘oh we need this, we need this’.

AVD: And then you’ve got to hope that the label pushes you and not the other bands

Stitch D: We had one of the best booking agents in Britain, we had the best PR guy in Britain, the only thing a label would have given us would have been the press but we already had that.

AVD: The music business is changing right now, we’re doing it a new way, we don’t need to do it the old fucking way. It’s like, ‘’Dude, let’s try and sell some albums!’’. Fuck you man, just give it out, there’s a whole new way to make money. As long as we can pay our fucking bills man. Artists are used to releasing a single then sitting on their fucking ass, you wanna make money go out and play some gigs, that’s what it’s all about, building your fan base. You want some money? Play a gig.

Stitch D: It worked quite well because Joey [Jordison] came up to us and said to us ‘’I’ve hand-picked you guys for this tour’’. He literally loves us, every day he comes and watches us sound check. We idolise him.

AVD: It’s weird, ‘cos he’s not wearing his mask, you’ll just be talking to him like ‘blah blahblah’, and then it will dawn on you, ‘holy shit I’m talkin’ to Joey, possibly the best drummer in the world!’

How long did it take you to create ‘Grave Times’ and what themes and stories are covered within the album?
Stitch D: It didn’t actually take very long to do at all, we’d demo’d 6 or 7 other songs beforehand, we literally went to [AVD’s] house, recorded all the drums, bass, guitar, everything ourselves, THAT WAS IT. Played 2 songs on the spot, that was kind of it.

AVD: Themes and stories I suppose….

Stitch D: We’d just lost a bass player who was our best friend.

AVD: The first song is based on that situation, losing a band member that you thought you could count on. The first song was inspired by him,. I called him up and told him, it’s kind of harsh, but when we did it we were angry. We were like, ‘’yeah, you’re a dick’’. Yeah I was very angry and I think we all were, man. It’s not like we feel the same way about it now, you can take it on many levels. [Asks Stitch] What other stories are covered? Fear, Agoraphobia…

Stitch D:…Vigilante justice, ‘Blood Cells’ was about…

AVD: Yeah… cutting out people’s organs [Laughs]

Stitch D: ‘Black Death’ was about the black death…

AVD: We were gonna call the album ‘Black Death’ and we were gonna theme it

Stitch: A purely concept album

AVD: And then we were like, no, that’s gay. We kind of sit in the studio and kind of freestyle the lyrics as we go along to be honest. I think it comes out better that way, right? [Laughs]

You seem to love rewarding your fans with free music as you have also just made your ‘Reworks’ EP available for free download on the Jägermeister website as well, how did you find remixing your songs?
AVD: Well, I always like to come at things at different angles, musically or otherwise. It was just a natural thing to re-work these tunes. It’s not a remix, the aim was not to remix these tracks into a drum and bass song or a house song, or this or that song. It was to make a new version of the song.

[Everyone laughs as Nelly’s ‘Low’ starts blasting out from the stage]

AVD: What the fuck is going on man? [Laughs]Anyway, the thing is, this is before we’d written Final Sleep, which is the last song on the album, and I don’t think we’d showcased Stitch’s voice enough to be honest. Because he has a really good voice, man. I especially went out my way to remix it and get him to re-sing it to showcase what a good singer he is. It’s not remixed, it’s just re-done. Then off the back of that we did ‘Final Sleep’ which is another slow song. I think we have a really really good singer and I don’t think people understand how good he is, I think we need to showcase that more. It’s not about just going fucking heavy and screaming, which is obviously what we love to do, like, face-melting. We do have an amazing singer and we want people to check it out. With the next reworks I think we’re gonna be looking at doing more acoustic shit.

I have noticed that ‘Grave Times’ is due for release on the 14th February, bundled together with the reworks EP, is this for your future fans that missed out on the whole Metal Hammer deal?
Stitch D: We have to have a world wide release, obviously Metal Hammer is only sold in certain countries, we have American fans, and we have to make it available for people that don’t get Metal Hammer. We have to raise some money somehow!

AVD: It’s all fun and games ‘til the bills come!

Stitch D: We had a really talented girl from a band called Angelspit do the artwork for us, it’s this delux, matt black 2 disc digipack with shiny shit on it. Looks really cool!

AVD: We had to sign 300 copies last night.

Stitch D: Our hands are literally only just recovering now. Today we had to take them to Play.com it was manic, literally last minute.

AVD:We kept thinking we were done then another box would appear! Then we’d have to go to the merch stand and [fans were asking] ‘Could you sign this? Could you sign this?’ Oh my god!

So would you say you’re quite dedicated to your fans?
AVD: Definitely, I go out my fucking way to be really cool. Fans thatr talk to us, I’ve got a few fans into Ozzfest for free, free gig entries. When I was young if the band I liked were like,’ fuck it man, come backstage’, I would have been like, ‘Fuck yeah!’

Stitch D: Some fans have our logo tattoed all over them, it’s just like, fuck!

AVD: Over their legs, their chest, arms, it’s like, fuck, we’d better do something about this!

Stitch D: We’re just waiting for the eyelid tattoo next.

AVD: When you get a band tattoo remember that it’s a lot of pressure on the band!

Stitch D: [Looks at his arms] Youbecome reckless after a while. The other day I got a retarded owl on my leg with an eyeabove his face. I started to learn to tattoo years ago and just used to sit in my room and getdrunk then tattoo myself. I’ve got a giant bowling ball on my leg. I won a game of bowling and I got back and our bass player that I was living with was like ‘ What the fuck’s he doing? It’s 4 o’clock in the morning!’ And I’m sat there ‘zzzzzzzzzzz’ I did a bowling ball this big [circles both hands together] and it’s so bad. I was pissed on Lambrini at 4am sat naked in my room. I did a heart done with a scroll, and I left the scroll thinking that when I marry my wife I’ll get her name tattooed in there. Yeah…. I got ‘Pizza’ tattooed in there. When I saw her I was like, baby, I’m sorry, it’s pizza! [Laughs]

AVD: But her name is Pizza, you know that right? Not really haha.

So tonight is the third show of the Murderdolls UK tour, how’s the tour going so far and how hav you found being on the road with Black Veil Brides and Murderdolls?
AVD: As we said man, the Murderdolls have been really fucking cool to us.

Stitch D: It’s been really good. We’ve had so many crowdsurfers it’s been amazing, just constant!

Being the opening band of the tour how long have your sets been and how have you found picking
a set list?
AVD: It came quite easily really

Stitch D: Yeah, we’ve been playing this set for the last 6 months [Laughs]We had to drop one song because we’ve been going 5 minutes over every night.

The tour finishes on the 14th February in Exeter, what have you got planned after this?
Stitch D: We’re gonna do a headline tour, it’s being booked now. We’ve got that then thinking about the festival season.

So can we expect to see The Defiled at any of the UK festivals this year?
AVD: We can’t answer that question. It’s so gay but it’s just the way it is.

Stitch D: All it takes is for something to get out then we won’t be playing any!

You’ve teamed up with Jägermeister for quite some time now, how would you say they have helped yourselves and other bands within the music industry?
AVD: Without Jägermeister we would be nowhere. When you’re a kid you don’t realise things do need money whether you fucking like it or not, you do need backing. No record label has done it for us, and the only fuckers to do it for us and believe in us, the first people to believe in us, were Jägermeister. We totally respect them for what they have done for us. I mean, we love the drink anyway, we drink litres of it and they came up to us!

Stitch D: Jäger is quite good for the voice, actually.

AVD: When they came to us that’s when people started taking us seriously. We really owe a lot to Jägermeister. They’re kind of like our record label in a way. Jägermeister does things for metal that no one else does, just yeah, drink Jägermeister!!

So do you find yourself having a lot of Jägermeister parties whilst on tour?
Stitch D: Yeah! Some days we need a lot of time to recover.

So would you like another Jägermeister tour again soon?
AVD: Yeah, I think they’re going to do a swap with America, they’re gonna send some American bands over here then some British bands over there

Stitch D: They’re gonna get like, Slayer, and they’re gonna get us! [Laughs]

One last question that we ask everyone, if you could be an animal out of a giraffe or a zebra, which one would you be and why?
Stitch D: I’d be a zebra ‘cos they look cool.

AVD: Giraffe, so I could fuck him up the arse then come out of his head. [Everyone in hysterics] I could ‘head’ him.

Stitch D: You want to ‘body’ me?! We found out about a fetish called ‘bodying’, where women get off while giving birth, like the body passing out of them.

AVD: I like to joke with the guys, your penis has touched your mother’s vagina!! You’ve all ‘bodied’ your mothers! It’s kinda sick.

Thank you for your time guys, looking forward to your show!

Interview by Karlie M