American Heathen has never achieved such fame as their friends from Exodus or Testament.The fact of being under the radar does not mean, however, some loss in quality - quite the opposite.The band presented have always presented a high level and constantly tried to explore new areas within thrash metal genre. During Mystic Festival I was lucky enough to speak for a while with band’s singer- David White.

Hi! It’s nice to have you in Oldschool Metal Maniac Magazine. Let’s start with more recent times. There’s a ten years of difference between “The Evolution Of Chaos” and “Empire of The Blind”. That’s a lot- what caused it?

 

I’d say it’s mostly because of Exodus and Slayer. Gary Holt was filling in for Jeff Hanneman.

After Jeff passed away Gary joined Slayer as a full time guitarist. Kragen Lum had to temporary replace him in Exodus. With those shifts it was a bit difficult for us, especially that in the meantime we’ve signed a record deal with Nuclear Blast.

The fact that Lee (Altus) and Kragen were gone slowed done our writing process. Consequently- during that time Kragen was writing all the time and he wrote almost all of the record.

And that was good, because we knew that the clock was ticking and we had to release the record as soon as possible. We ran over Kragen’s material and decided to do it. But I agree, it took a lot of time.

 

 

You’re pretty close personally with Exodus. Do you think that it’s affecting Heathen directly? I mean the time aspect is pretty obvious, but do you think that Heathen is gaining some extra popularity because people recognize “Exodus guys” playing there?

 

There are good sides and bad sides of it. Lee is in Exodus for a full time and that makes us slowing down a bit. Even when we were putting together “The Evolution of Chaos” it caused some delays and we had to do 2005 tour with no record.

But we did it anyway - we were about to finish the material and we were aware of the fact, that some labels were constantly looking at us. When we went with Kragen to studio, Lee was touring a lot. And it was tough for him - he had to come home, go to the studio etc.

Luckily, the studio was very kind for us - they understood our situation and allowed us to take our time. But it was hard. When Gary joined Slayer it opened some opportunities for Kragen, but it made us having two guitarists less available. After “The Evolution of Chaos” we did three tours with Exodus, and it was good because we could play for their crowed.

We shared the bus with them etc. It was advantageous. Now we’re headlining the tour, and we took Toxik with us. But it’s only sixteen shows.

Than we’ll come back again in July to do a lot of shows with Exodus and Testament. So answering to your question - sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s bad, but we take it as it is and we’re trying to get some positives from it. And I don’t have to have a tour all the time - if I’m not playing I can stay home with my family or focus on the job that I love -teaching.

 

This time with Toxik, later Exodus and Testament - every time you are in Europe you are a part of some super-strong line-up. Is it intentional? Are you picky when it comes to choosing the bands that you want to play with?

 

Sure! Of course - sometimes we’re lucky, like with 1991 tour we did with Sepultura.

At first it was supposed to be Heathen, Metal Church and Sepultura, but Metal Church received an invitation to do tour with Judas Priest and Alice Cooper, so they took that and the band that replaced them in our tour was Sacred Reich.

After that we always wanted to have good tour and good shows. We also want to play with the people we like. When we did a tour with Overkill I didn’t know them that well. But that was a good tour and a lot of fun.Besides, Destruction also took part in that tour, and they’re our good friends. It’s strategic for us to always do a good tour.

Before COVID hit we were going to do a tour with Potential Threat - they’re good, they’re great friends and they’ve never been there, so we wanted to give them a shot. Unfortunately, pandemic happened. Right now Jim (DeMaria), our drummer also plays in Toxik so we wanted to help them, especially that they started in similar years as we do.

And they’re amazing, so I’m excited for that tour. We care about our fans and we want them to enjoy the tour. We aim for our fans thinking “wow that was great” after every gig of the tour.

 

Are there any plans for the new record? It’s been two years already.

 

Yeah, sure! Right now we all live in a different parts of country - Jim is in New York, I’m in Florida, Kragen is in the south and Jason is in LA. During the pandemic it was hard to get together, but everyone was working on stuff.

After all the tours we’re going to go into studio in October.

We have some material already that we need to put together. We hope to have a record next year. Sure, I said it last time and finally it was ten years. But the plan is to have it next year and to go with it to festivals.

 

I was wondering about Recovered compilation from 2004. It’s pretty unusual - there are some older songs, some covers. What was idea behing it?

 

After “Victims of Deception” we were thinking about doing an EP with one or two covers, but we were unsure about budget. We showed label our idea of doing “Kill The King” and our unfinished ideas of “Hellbound” and “Eye of The Storm”.

Later we went to the studio to do more songs - we did “The Holy War” and “Death on Two Legs”. We wanted to put something out. It was just after Lee was gone to play with Die Krupps.

We finished that and put everything on tape in 1993. We were sitting in the studio and listening it - we got the project started. Engineer played one of the songs and the tape started to slow down. He opened the machine and entire tape was black. You know, tapes were old and started to fall apart. They were baked.

We had to try to put it on digital format. Luckily we made it and finished all the recordings. We decided to release it ourselves, which was a huge thing for us. Sure, we were thinking to re-release it and add some songs, kinda like Metallica did with Garage Inc.

It’s good to do some covers, to face your inspirations. “Death on Two Legs” was my favorite- it was amazing to record our version of Queen song!

 

Let’s go a bit into your past - what are your memories from your time in Blind Illusion?

 

When Blind Illusion started it was me and Alvin Petty (artist who did the cover art to “Victims Of Deception”). He played the guitars and I was playing the drums.

Mark Biedermann was my neighbor and we were like three musketeers. But later Mark moved out of town, so we mostly hanged out during the weekends.

I took my drums to Alvin’s house and we wanted to make a band. Mark saw it and asked to join the band and got a bass guitar. Mark got really good and played also the guitar and started a band. Alvin left and we found another drummer.

At one party when we were jamming and listening Boston I started singing and the guys told me that I was really good. The next day Mark called me and asked to join the band.

I agreed and joined. I was playing with Chris Olsen by that time in some small band and took him with me, so we have established first serious line up- it was Mark, Chris, Bret (Hern) and me. I loved that band - we did demo with Chris, which was recently released on vinyl and CD. It contained four or five songs. We also recorded ten songs live - everything we had to pick which ones we’ll put on demo. I didn’t even remembered it.

Mark sent it to me recently and I forgot all songs. Anyway, we did that demo and it got into Rampage Radio. It was “WOW” for us, you know, we were in the radio! Unfortunately, back at those time nobody was booking metal or rock bands in Bay Area - everything was dominated by the new wave. We couldn’t get a gig.

We played parties and we had hundreds of people, but we wanted to take things to the next level. It was frustrating that we couldn’t. Some people left the band. After that one of the radio stations started a thing called “Metal Monday”. After that three clubs started doing that shows. I called Mark and we started doing it seriously.

Exodus blasted also in the area - we went to school with those guys. Exodus also played a lot at the parties, so when “Metal Monday” happened they were ready.

And they were force to be reckoned with. It started buzzing with Bay Area, especially that a bit later Metallica appeared and we all know the story. When Blind Illusion started I was seventeen and I was there until I was twenty three.

That six years seems like a lifetime. But at some point I was no longer happy, couldn’t get along with Mark. I went later on to some gig and met Lee’s girlfriend and I told here that I was about to go for an audition for some band.

She told me that Lee’s band was looking for a singer. I went to jam with them and it happened. Mark and me are close friends now Mark has a great band and I’m super happy for them.

 

Why your time in Defiance lasted only three years?

 

The whole metal scene died in Bay Area back then. It was just frustrating. Doug Harrington (with whom I have a close friendship later) was a man with whom he did not get along. Nothing happened musically, nothing was going on.

And if I don't feel joy, it's a waste of time. I had to leave. Anyway, Jim also left then. You know, we wrote new material that didn't sound like Defiance - they went more into Machine Head direction.

But I didn't feel happy there, avoided rehearsals, and just got tired. I have a lot of fun with Heathen, even if we don’t rehearse a lot. I also have other projects, sometimes playing drums here and there. I even have a reggae band! I get a lot of joy from it.

 

It’s hard to imagine you playing reggae.

 

You know, I grew up listening to different kinds of music. I’m influenced by Bob Marley, his philosophy and state of mind. I’m a bit of a hippy. I like good energy.

 

Last word goes to you - is there anything you’d like to tell our readers?

 

I just want to thank for support. Keep metal together, support your local bands and metal in general.

We do it for you.

 

Wojciech Michalak