A FEW MINUTES WITH JUSTIN GODFREY OF THE
ABOMINABLE IRON SLOTH
I interviewed Justin in his apartment. He has the most charming apartment.
The kind of apartment that makes you think of black and white movies with
Marilyn Monroe. I loved his built in loft bed.
The complete photo shoot with notes is here.
The abominable Iron Sloth's founder, Justin Godfrey is an unassuming, quiet
gentleman who, surprisingly enough, has quite a bit to say.
Living in Chico, CA it's easy to see how Justin could derive so
much inspiration from the vibrant culture of a big university town. Still, Justin
admits
that he turned to a thesaurus to create the name of his band.
Justin himself is the singer/songwriter for Iron Sloth and when asked about
inspiration, he says it's never a one-shot ordeal. "I can't just sit down
and write songs. (I) carry a little digital voice recorder all day; little
songs or melodies will often pop into my head or different words or phrases
I like. And I just add them to the recorder, basically building a ton of
stuff.
Justin says he takes the material he's gathered from his recorder-or his
cell phone and assembles them into his computer.
"I can be listening to a song," Justin said, "I can hear one part and go
"oh, I remember where I was when that thing came to my head'. And for each
part of a song there's usually twelve or fifteen or twenty things going on
in one song and most people don't know that. It's funny; when I listen to
them, I go 'oh yeah, this was a really awkward day here. This was a terrible
day. This was a good day right here when I thought of this one . . . stuff
like that. I guess I'm the only one who notices that."
CFM: Any county-western influences?
JUSTIN: A little. I listen to a lot of Johnny Cash, George Jones and Merrill
Haggard.
CFM: By choice?
JUSTIN: Yeah. Old country songs. They're simple and they're just. . .
somehow they're sarcastic or witty. Something to think about.
CFM: When were you first aware you were able to write songs?
JUSTIN: About two years ago when I started all this. Before then, I never
really written anything.
Justin also adds that he played guitar for a year or two then he wanted to
start something new and thought of starting a band.
When CFM asked Justin regarding the band's status with girls, he seemed
rather puzzled. "Girls are usually scared of them," he said. "I can't recall
a girl I've ever met at the show actually coming up to me and talking to me.
Don't know what it is; if I'm too tall or what. I'm not sure what it is . .
. I'm not THAT tall. They think we look mean or something. Don't' know . . .
they just don't know us." (He is very, very tall. Losillė)
CFM: what would you like for us to know about the band?
Do you have a mission statement?
JUSTIN: Pretty much my only mission is to get people around the world to
spell the word 'abominable' correctly. That's the band mission and to get
people
to be more familiar with sloths, too.
CFM: your site (My Space) says 'Christian rap'. How
long have you been singing Christian rap?
JUSTIN: I dunno . . . I just . . . when I first signed
onto that 'My Space' thing, they didn't have any-there
weren't very many different choices for a band to
choose. I wanted to choose like 'Doom metal" or some
kind of metal. But all they had was just 'Metal' and I
didn't just want to put that. So they had all these
other kinds of silly things; Afro-beat, two-step and
stuff like that. I can't imagine any band making that
kind of music. I just saw Christian rap and stuck with
those.
CFM: How do you define metal?
JUSTIN: At this point I don't' think it's really
definable. "Music that's outside of . . . what the
average person would listen to', maybe?
CFM I noticed there's LOTS of bands on My Space that
say they're metal
JUSTIN: They call themselves 'metal' and they're just
not at all.
CFM: -and they sound so different and you consider
yourself 'doom metal/death metal?'
JUSTIN: Yeah. Yeah. Well, just anything (it) doesn't'
even really matter. I mean, those are all vague
influences, so .. . something other than just 'metal',
'cause I hate just seeing that word, not knowing what
it could mean. So many different things to different
people. I really couldn't' find anything that I
thought really fits (my music). So I picked the ones
that fit the most.
Because of the music label on their site at My
Space, Justin says the band constantly gets requests
from Christian rap bands. He regrets it for the reason
he suspects those requesting addition of 'friends' is
an assumption on the part of those who have not heard
their music.
"I never heard a Christian metal band that I thought
was ever actually changing music," he added, "they just
sound like they were copying what other non-Christian
metal bands were doing, and then just selling it to a
built-in larger Christian audience. It's just the
well-played 'this is gonna sell, so let's put in
Christian words and sell it to the Christian market.'
I'm sure there's a lot of bands that work hard on it.
It's just a whole other ball game with the Christian
music. The Christian market is a little island in the
middle of everything else.
CFM: Why did you pick metal?
JUSTIN: I don't know. It just sort of picked me. I
like the whole versatility of it. There's so many
things about it. You can sort of define your own path.
In punk rock, it's a set (style), always the same
stuff. Metal is more of a feeling than a music at this
point. There so many bands that play quiet, spacey
stuff-they call themselves metal, sort of an underlying
theme . . . dark, brooding, afraid of what is to come.
That sort of metal is a fear of the unknown.
End
T.L. Arens