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Prong Interview: Quality Control

Prong (from left to right: drummer Aaron Rossi, vocalist/guitarist Tommy Victor, bassist/backing vocalist Jason Christopher); Photo by Tim Tronckoe

BY JORDAN MAINZER

Prong’s not a one-hit wonder--not because they have more than one hit, but because despite its appearance on a Beavis and Butthead episode, you can’t really call “Snap Your Fingers, Snap Your Neck” a hit. It doesn’t even have its own Wikipedia page. And as much as the band’s sole consistent member is concerned with their lack of hits, he--and they--are better than that. 

Save for a five year period of inactivity, the Tommy Victor-helmed metal band has been making music for over thirty years, with some of its most inspired material coming in the 2010′s. The inspired Carved Into Stone and Zero Days were career highlights, seeing the band combine the heavy hooks and progressive riffs they’ve always been known for. (Before the release of those records, Victor was devoting time to Ministry, with whom he likely had a falling out, based on his words about frontman Al Jourgensen, and he’s also still the guitarist of Danzig) And now, the band has offered a five-song EP, released on the label that’s represented them the better part of the past decade, Steamhammer, to whet the appetite of fans for their next release, whenever it may come. Age of Defiance contains two new songs and three live recordings with the current lineup of drummer Aaron Rossi and bassist/backing vocalist Jason Christopher. Its three live recordings are not from Zero Days, let alone from this past decade. Instead, they included “Another Worldly Device” and “Cut-Rate” from their 25-year-old breakout Cleansing as well as the title track to its follow-up, Rude Awakening.

Speaking to Victor over the phone late last year, it’s clear he’s constantly reflecting on his entire career, where both Prong and the metal and music world were then and are now. On paper, his general observations may come across as “ok boomer” dismissiveness, but I can tell you from his tone that he legitimately ponders and is curious about his place. The conversation eventually turned into me expressing generalized, likely unearned pearls of wisdom about the state of things, and him playing the weary cynic. The whole time, it was enjoyable and illuminating.

Read the Q+A, edited for length and clarity, below.

Since I Left You: You released the Age of Defiance to tide fans over. What’s the history of the two studio recordings on it?

Tommy Victor: That’s a good question. [In 2018], in January, I came off a tour and wrote a whole bunch of songs. I think 11 I fully demoed in crappy home recordings. That was gonna be for a full-length record. We were trying to expand the life of Zero Days, so we put out the “Blood Out Of Stone” video and single. We had that in the works and thought we shouldn’t put out another album for a while. People tend to just listen to a couple songs anyhow. I thought a lot of songs off of Zero Days got ignored or overlooked. And we had put out a series of long players over a good period of time, so an EP sounded like a good idea. I just picked one song [from the demos, “Age of Defiance”], and thought the quality control has really been upped, because out of the 11 songs that were demoed, I was only picking one song out of this to really focus on. I liked that idea, so we recorded that one. Then I wrote a brand spanking new song specifically for the EP once it was decided just to do two songs, and that was “End of Sanity”. Completely new for this. I think the other songs are gonna go in the trash pile.

SILY: So that’s why you chose “Age of Defiance” to represent this release?

TV: Right.

SILY: “The End Of Sanity” you describe as a crossover track. It’s pretty catchy but still really heavy.

TV: Good. I always worry about that.

SILY: You still worry about how your music is gonna be received?

TV: Oh, absolutely. I’m an artist, but I’m not that much of an artist. I’m still insecure about a lot of the stuff. I do the best I can. That song, too, to go into the depths of how I come up with something like that. Apart from the demos, I recorded a bunch of riffs on my phone, whether on the road or hanging around. I spent the day going through all of them. I was like, “This one’s pretty cool.” I downloaded it off my phone and put it on the computer. Apparently, it was recorded during a Danzig tour. I rearranged it and came up with something completely different. There’s a lot of work that goes behind this. Then I added the other riffs on the spot. But I try to have a lot of quality control and effort put into this. And the lyrics are a whole other thing. I like to have the opportunity to do two songs. I don’t have this huge chore or task of doing 14 songs. This is great! I’d love this to continue, to put out a couple songs here and there. It’s been a lot of work but a lot less of a headache.

SILY: It’s the same work, but put into less songs.

TV: Yeah!

SILY: What would prevent you from doing that? The label release cycles?

TV: I’m confused about their whole release cycle. I don’t really know what their strategies are. Because I don’t know that, I think they’ve gotten the wrong idea that I’ve criticized them about it. I’m not; they’ve done a fantastic job with Prong. It’s just that I’m confused about how they decide what has to be done. I don’t really know. I know he told me this is gonna carry through this year, but we’ll see what happens.

SILY: From an artistic standpoint, coming out with a whole album as opposed to releasing one-off songs is different, but from the perspective of keeping people interested, people are used to these short bursts.

TV: I guess they are. Our label is an old-fashioned heavy metal label, which may sound wrong, but they have the metal integrity of full-length albums and vinyl. They don’t really care too much about what the pop world is doing. But I know R&B artists team up with other people for a constant barrage of singles. I don’t listen to those pop playlists, but I know billions of people do. It’s what people listen to these days, when you go to the gym. Whoever with whoever. These singles that come out.

You can make money from Spotify if you generate the type of digital-only releases these artists are doing. It’s a mythos to say nobody’s making money from Spotify. Yeah, metal bands are not, because nobody listens to metal. But in the wide scope of things, 15 million plays in a day, you’re making a good chunk of change. And that’s just on Spotify.

SILY: It’s also being counted towards the charts.

TV: Yeah, it’s Gold now. It’s ridiculous. Nobody sells 500,000 copies of a record anymore. There’s no place to buy records!

SILY: No big places.

TV: Yeah.

SILY: When I heard that this release was going to be two never-heard-before studio recordings and three live cuts, I expected the live cuts to be three recently released Prong songs. But there’s one from 10 years ago and two from the early 90′s. Why these songs?

TV: Well, it’s the 25th anniversary of Cleansing. As far as why “Another Worldly Device” and “Cut-Rate”, I don’t know. We could have done “Snap Your Fingers, Snap Your Neck”. And I think “Rude Awakening” is one of those Prong songs that’s been overlooked a little bit, and it shows a side of Prong where people are like, “That’s a really good song!” but they don’t really get it. We rolled the dice with that one, sort of.

SILY: Do you play that one a touch slower live?

TV: Probably. Alexei [Rodriguez] would play fast, and Ted [Parsons] would play it fast. We’re probably a little slower now. It moves up and down. Sometimes, we’re trying to get the hell out of there at night.

SILY: When were these recorded?

TV: Several years ago. 2014 at the earliest, maybe 2015. I should know that.

SILY: Were they from different shows?

TV: No. The whole session was different shows, but I think those were all from Berlin.

SILY: What’s the story behind the album art?

TV: I’ve been dabbling with painting. I sent a bunch of my art to the art director, and this is what he came up with. I was like, “Wow, this is awesome!” I had done one piece which was my idea for the cover, which was nothing really that great, just a black canvas and sort of distorted Prong logo in red and that kind of lettering. He just went full force with [the image I gave him] and came up with the rest of it. I really like the color scheme--it was something really different. He really got it, he really nailed it. Nicolas Fritz is this guy’s name. He’s from Steamhammer. Normally, we haven’t gone with the guy from the label, but I thought, “I’m gonna give it a shot. I’m gonna start with something and send it to him and see if he can manipulate it.” He went in a totally different direction, and I really liked what he was doing.

SILY: What else is upcoming for Prong?

TV: More touring. There’s the European tour. We’re trying to get down to South America. If the Foo Fighters want us to go out with them in America, I’ll take that tour. Other than that, I don’t know what we’re gonna do. Three tours [this year] would be good.

SILY: Have you played the two new songs live yet?

TV: Good question. We have not! We were planning to. We just got off a tour; we were just out with Agnostic Front. Based on the shortness of our set time, we decided it wouldn’t be a good idea to be interfering with the show by playing new songs.

SILY: Have you practiced them a bunch?

TV: No. We need to start. We’re gonna do them on the next tour.

SILY: How was your show at Reggie’s?

TV: I think we were competing with someone of major significance playing elsewhere that night. I’ve never been to that venue before. We played a lot of places that normally we wouldn’t have played or never heard of.

SILY: In terms of metal, Queensryche was playing that night, but I don’t know who else. You never know why people don’t come out.

TV: It wasn’t a disaster, but somebody else of significance definitely played that night. I think it was just right after a festival.

SILY: Riot Fest. 

TV: Riot Fest was that weekend.

SILY: Do you tend to play festivals at all?

TV: We try to. We try to get on ‘em. In Europe, we do. In America, for some reason, we’re bypassed. I do know the reasons, but I’m not gonna share that with you. In Europe, we do a lot of festivals.

SILY: I imagine Riot Fest would be receptive to a band like you. They’re not a metal festival and call themselves a punk festival, but they have metal. Slayer just headlined it.

TV: I don’t know what dictates these things. When we’re asked, we’ll do it. But right now, to beat down doors to get on these things, fly in, and make no money isn’t really that interesting to me.

SILY: You’d rather go on a tour where people are gonna come to your shows, even if small.

TV: I gotta keep an eye on finances. We’re not a bunch of kids excited to do things for nothing. I’m not gonna wind up broke.

SILY: Is there anything you’ve been listening to, reading, or watching lately that’s caught your attention?

TV: I’m always watching stuff these days. Right now, I’m watching Rebellion. It’s about the Easter Uprising. Good show. I watched El Camino. It was good; I wasn’t blown away by it. 

Now, you’re really gonna get another side of me. We were dying to see this movie, and it did not disappoint, because the TV show was unbelievable: Downton Abbey. That was amazing.

As far as listening, I go back and forth. I listen to anything from Interpol to Death From Above 1979 to old Jeff Beck Group stuff. I went through a whole big jazz period, Ornette Coleman and Miles Davis. I’m really into musical theater, too. I was listening to the Rent soundtrack on the road. [laughs] Like, a lot!

SILY: Do your other band mates share your tastes?

TV: No one listens to anything publicly anymore. It’s just headphones. Everyone’s so isolated. Years ago, we’d jointly listen to stuff, complain, throw CDs out the window of the van. There’s no camaraderie anymore. Everyone’s on their own little agenda in their own heads.

SILY: I imagine that’s both good and bad.

TV: Uh...I don’t know. People are more intolerant of one another these days.

SILY: So they keep to themselves.

TV: They keep to themselves. I’m better off that way because I listen to podcasts that other people will definitely not listen to. There’s a lot of stupid shit out there, so that’s really what goes down. As far as music, though, it goes all over the place. Doom metal, some of it’s good, but I don’t pay that much attention to it.

SILY: There are so many different sub-genres of it.

TV: I was just talking about that to someone the other day. It’s disgusting. I don’t like that. Their audiences are too divided. It’s really a sad shame that it’s like that. It’s just the way it is. Doom metal people. People who only listen to hatecore bands or deathcore. Even industrial has a million different sub-genres.

SILY: It’s cool to take things in different directions but bad to be insular about it.

TV: Digital technology did this. Every Tom, Dick, and Harry can make his own record and put it up on Spotify. There are 30,000 releases a week or something now.

SILY: The good music’s out there, it’s just harder to find.

TV: Everything’s algorithmically done. The new Prong single, “End Of Sanity” is out, and automatically, unless you’ve somehow gotten in touch with the programmers, after the first week, it’s gonna get bumped down on some of the playlists. It just starts dwindling down, and your plays after a week have already gone down. It’s disappeared. Prong has the luxury of being a luxury band with a song that gets played on some of the other playlists, so we stay up there, but if it wasn’t for that, we’d be in the doldrums, that’s for sure.

SILY: I guess you gotta be thankful for that.

TV: I’m thankful for that. There could be more songs of that nature, but they seem to be concentrating on the one hit and that’s it. There’s Metallica, Godsmack, and a bunch of other bands. Rob Zombie, Tool, and everyone else suffers.

SILY: Or it becomes a token. You get these execs going, “Let’s make a diverse playlist, let’s put one metal song in there.” Who’s it gonna be? The most popular band.

TV: Oh, yeah.

SILY: Who do you consider your peers?

TV: That’s a really good question. I don’t really consider anybody. I think about that all the time. Not in a pompous fashion, but we just stand alone. A lot of people don’t get it or don’t like it; it is what it is. We’re not part of genre groups. It doesn’t fit into anything. The band we thought we were closest to--and we’re not--was Helmet, because we just toured with them a couple years ago. It was a great tour, and there’s a huge difference between both bands.

SILY: It’s funny you say that--in preparation for this interview, I was listening to an old song of yours on YouTube, and it auto-played into Helmet.

TV: Yeah. It’s the closest thing, but there’s a huge difference between the bands. There’s nobody that’s in the Prong realm. It’s completely on its own.

SILY: Do you like that?

TV: No, I do not like that. It’s out of my own choosing, that’s for sure.

SILY: You’d rather have a frame of reference or grouped contextually with other bands?

TV: It would help marketing-wise and popularity-wise, getting on tours, package deals, festivals, etc. It would have helped tremendously. But being this weird anomaly that stands outside the pack, it’s not helpful when you’re trying to get packages to tour with, and being on playlists, the way things are now, with everything so filed and separated. A band like Yes, years ago--I guess Genesis was somewhat similar--but they were popular. They didn’t fit in with anybody. Neither did Jethro Tull. To me, that’s progressive rock. Now, forget it. Especially in metal. It’s just ridiculous. It’s really bad.

SILY: At least you have the artistic integrity.

TV: I don’t even have that. I try the best I can. I don’t put out any old garbage. I try to have quality control. I’ve always been like that. When I was a kid, I had to study extra for tests. I can’t slam-dunk stuff. It doesn’t happen.

SILY: Sometimes it’s a blessing, sometimes, it’s a curse.

TV: It’s having a legacy of a career that’s what’s important at this stage. There are some bands with a huge legacy, but the last four records have just been, “What the hell is this garbage?” Like really bad. At least I can say with Prong--and maybe it’s because the early records weren’t that good--but the recent records aren’t that bad. A lot of people haven’t heard them, but I can’t be ashamed of them. I haven’t been mailing in any records lately.

SILY: I like Carved Into Stone quite a bit.

TV: We put a lot of time into that. It was a big project, major project. It took a year to put that whole thing together. I was out of Ministry, like “Fuck Al Jorgensen.” “Rio Grande Blood”, “Relapse”, and “The Last Sucker”’s riffs could have been Prong songs but went to Ministry. I just never made a fucking penny off of those songs, and they could have been put into Prong stuff. I shot my load on those, but I put a stop to it and went in and did Carved Into Stone and somehow salvaged that period of my life. [laughs]

Tour dates:

2/14 - Dynamo - Eindhoven, Netherlands

2/15 - Student Central (ULU) - London, United Kingdom

2/16 - Muziekodroom - Hasselt, Belgium

2/17 - Z-Bau - House of Contemporary Culture - Nuremberg, Germany

2/18 - Backstage Halle - Munich, Germany

2/19 - A38 Hajó - Budapest, Hungary

2/20 - Barrak music club - Ostrava, Czech Republic

2/21 - Arena Wien - Wien, Austria

2/22 - Legend Club - Milano, Italy

2/23 - Kiff - Aarau, Switzerland

2/24 - Garage - Saabrucken, Germany

2/25 - KufA e.V. - Braunschweig, Germany

2/26 - Kulttempel - Oberhausen, Germany

2/27 - Bahnhof Pauli - Hamburg, Germany

2/28 - SO36 - Berlin, Germany

2/29 - AJZTalschock - Chemnitz, Germany