Metal Monday: His Name Was Iron Q&A

posted in: Features • Rock

In the greater scheme of things, metal is often times known as a niche genre, but within the genre of metal there are even more sub-genres that epitomize “niche market””His Name Was Iron being a perfect example. With a sound similar to that of Every Time I Die and Maylene and the Sons of Disaster, you don’t find many bands like His Name Was Iron. A unique mix of down home attitude and pure metal fury, the band is simply looking to make music that kicks ass and takes names. Check our Q&A with the band:

OS: What music would you say has influenced your band’s sound the most?

HNWI: Hard to say really. Everyone in the band brings something unique to the table. We all grew up on your standard punk rock fair, but there’s certainly a lot of metal from Ryan, classic & southern rock from Shaun, etc. It’s pretty safe to say that we all like music way too much so if we can draw an influence from something, no matter how abstract, we just use it.

OS: Do you generally like or dislike the comparisons of your band to Every Time I Die and Maylene and the Sons of Disaster?

HNWI: We love comments like that. There’s no hiding the fact that we’re fans of bands like that, so why would that bother us? There’s definitely worse things to sound like. If someone said you guys sound like “my little brother’s pop band,” sure THAT would bother us, but ETID & Maylene… we’ll take that all day long.

OS: Last May you had a MySpace blog post exchanging donations for spots in your album’s “Thanks” section”did you end up with a lot of people to thank?

HNWI: Yeah we did actually. It was a means of survival at the time. We were booked for Warped Tour and had a new record coming out, but didn’t have any money or tour support so we just told everybody what was going on. We basically put it out there that if the fans wanted us to grow, they’d have to put some skin in the game. And the response was beyond moving. There were a few people who really came through for us. I mean we checked our account one morning and it was like “Holy crap! We better not let these guys down.” It got us through that summer. We play as hard as humanly possible for them every night.

OS: The Chariots For Hire came out in August. How has the reception been so far?

HNWI: To be honest, it’s been a little slow, but we’re a live band. I mean we feel we put out an awesome record and the reviews have been great, but it’s our first record, we haven’t had as many touring opportunities as we would have liked so far, and that’s just how it goes sometimes for a new band. We’ve just hooked up with a new booking agent (Andrew Goodfriend from TKO) and we’ve got some big things on the horizon now. In regards to record sales with a band like us, it’s all about live shows. Give us a crowd, we’ll give you new fans who buy records, every time. It’s that simple, and I’m pleased to say we’re getting there.

OS: How was your experience on the southeast leg of Warped Tour this summer? Do you think you’ll do more dates next summer?

HNWI: It was awesome. We met a lot of cool bands and gained a load of respect from tour managers, agents, etc. As a matter of fact, we’re on tour right now with Ice Nine Kills. They’re one of the bands we made friends with on Warped Tour. Go check ’em out. I do want to offer you one piece of advice though if your band is going to play any dates on Warped Tour… “Make sure the air conditioning in your van works before you leave”. We did the whole east coast in record highs with no A/C. Miserable, but this band will make it happen. Given the chance, hell yeah we’ll do more dates next year.

OS: How and when did you get signed to Masquerade Recordings?

HNWI: They contacted us in late ’09. They had just broke Motionless In White, and promised us some touring opportunities, so long story short it looked like a good prospect and we signed with them in early 2010. We’re coming up on the one year mark of our contract pretty soon here so we can’t wait to see what 2011 has in store for us.