Vital Vinyl: Wilson’s Chad Nicefield Talks ‘Full Blast F–kery’ LP

Hailing from Detroit, Wilson are a force to be reckoned with. From their in-your-face modern thrash metal to their out-of-this-world extreme live performances, they do everything at full speed. It makes sense then that their debut studio album is titled 'Full Blast F--kery.' Having been available on CD and digital formats for the last year, Wilson have finally been able to go all out and press the record on vinyl. In true Wilson form, they made sure the release was an experience in and of itself.

First, the disc is a neon translucent green; it almost seems like it could glow in the dark. Second, the cover art has been completely redesigned and features an erupting volcano with two ... well ... "mounds" at the base. Finally, packed with the vinyl is a fold-out poster of a busty woman wearing a Wilson t-shirt, similar to what you see on the band's official website.

Vinyl collector, Wilson frontman and all around rock star Chad Nicefield took a few moments to chat with Loudwire about the new vinyl edition of 'Full Blast F--kery,' the redesigned cover art and even told us all about the band's latest music video, 'If You Ever Leave Me, I Will Find You.'

You're gearing up for the one-year anniversary of the initial release of 'Full Blast F--kery.' How does it feel?

Honestly, I was just talking about this at our release party for the vinyl in Detroit. I can’t believe the amount of reception we’ve gotten from the record in the past year. It’s astonishing that these crummy dudes from Detroit have been able to do what we have. We pretty much released the record independently. It’s magical and now on top of that, we get to essentially re-release it on vinyl. I’m a big vinyl fan. If you go to my house, in the basement it’s just walls and walls of vinyl. I spend my weekends and nights when I’m not browsing around my local bars in my basement listening to records and drinking with buddies. At first we just didn’t have the option to release the album on vinyl, but we always wanted to. After six months of it being out, we were just like, f--k it, let’s do it. We’ll put it out ourselves. It’s all been mind-blowing.

Whose idea was it to press it on neon green?

Mine and one of our managers. I wanted to do more of a solid color, like snot nose green. And he told me that I have to see this see-through lime green. I saw it and thought it was f--king rad, totally different, you know?. So when we did the record’s artwork, I wanted to do something completely different from the CD version, too. That artwork is a whole other story. We created these characters for that CD cover, it was supposed to be this whole thing about these two mutated things here in Detroit that get morphed into party animals. There’s a whole story about that and I just said let’s not do anything on those characters because, well, we didn’t really do much with them anyway. I had this idea that we just redo the whole artwork and make this image that stands the test of time. On top of it, I wanted to connect the artwork so that it makes sense to the record’s title.

I'm intrigued. What's the connection?

Well, even the see-through green comes together with everything. I tied it all together with a story. If you’re looking at it, you see all of the volcano explosions being the same kind of green color. It’s erupting. When you pull out the poster and place the jacket on top of the poster and you line the things up, what you’ll see is the volcano pressed in between the t-tties on the poster, t-tty-f--king the girl. The volcano is exploding like a phallic penis shooting its radioactive sperm all over the place and that sperm is actually the color of her shirt and the shirt matches the color of the record. The record is essentially you listening to our orgasm.

[Silence] Wow.

I wanted to do something different, you know? Not just regular artwork. Everyone said we needed something classy and I knew exactly what to do. [Laughs] It matches the record’s name and the band’s ethos. It just looks like classic imagery separate, but when you put it all together it’s just totally f--king awesome.

Well, now I have to line everything up to see this.

Nobody really got it until they saw it and they were just like, “Holy s--t.”

So it’s the same artist who did the CD cover?

Yeah, his name is Erin Kraepel.

The art for the CD and the art for the vinyl look significantly different. The vinyl cover looks like an epic psychedelic piece of art. Did Erin have any issues doing such a different album cover for the vinyl edition?

So Erin would come to where I work and we’d go over the details. He’d bring me his ideas and we’d go back and forth. I was able to explain it clear enough that we could go back and forth and make it exactly how we wanted. You know, he oil painted the whole thing. He didn’t have a problem with it. He’s a really great artist.

And the art looks perfect on a 12-inch jacket.

Exactly.

So you’re a big vinyl collector, right? Is everybody in the band into it?

There are a few of us who have always been into it, like our drummer Matt [Puhy] and Jason [Spencer] our guitar player. It’s not like it was far out of the reach for the other guys. One of our dudes is a little younger but he grew up on things like Van Halen and s--t like that so he is really well-versed with ‘80s hair metal. With the vinyl explosion over the last few years, it’s just been obvious that the fans want to buy something tangible. Everybody is on board.

Why do you think vinyl has had this resurgence?

Everybody will say that things sound better on wax, you know? Obviously that depends on what you’re playing the music through. You can have a piece of s--t turntable and speakers and it’ll sound worse than any other medium. Do I think that vinyl is the best way to listen to music now that we’re in a digital age? My heart says yes and my mind says no. I feel like there’s something magical about putting on earbuds. That’s how people are mixing records. They’re mixing records for people who are on their iPods on jogs or at the f--king beach. It depends on the band that you’re listening to. You could put a Meshuggah record on a turntable and there’s no way you’re going to feel the same intensity as if you listened to it through an iPod and put earbuds in and blasted it straight into your brain-hole.

When I received the vinyl of 'Full Blast F--kery,' it was packaged with a Labatt Blue bottle cap. A friend of mine who is a big Wilson fan got his and it included some potato chips. Another one said he received some, um, pubes.

Yes he did. [Laughs]

So everybody gets something special?

In every merch order that we send out as a band, we send something additional. It could be a picture of one of our middle school ex-girlfriends or something like that. When we were packing the vinyl, we were all drinking and eating so we just gave everybody a taste of what we were doing. As long as we didn’t run out of beer or goldfish, we were good. When we did, we started doing other things like shaving off our pubes and putting them in bags. Everybody got something, whether they know it or not. Some of the tape that was put around the package has a beard hair of mine in it or something.

You did the big release party in Detroit and the vinyl is out to the masses. What’s next for Wilson? Have you already thought about album number two?

Yeah. We’re about 15 demos deep into the new record. By the time we get home from touring we’ll have a bunch more ideas. Basically after the Motorhead cruise, we’ll have a few more ideas. Our goal was to have 15 songs demoed and choose 11 of those or so, but I’m sure we’ll have closer to 20 songs to pick from.

That’s a good problem to have.

Yeah, though someone told us we should shoot to write like 30 songs. I’m just like, “Why?” What are we going to do with all the s--t we don’t use? I mean, I plan to put out every piece of music that we write completely because it means something to us and it’ll probably mean something to someone who is into the band. It doesn’t have to show up on the full-length, but I don’t want to write 30 songs for a 10-song record and 20 of these songs disappear forever. People like to say just write, write, write and I don’t totally agree with that.

If you’re going to write 30 songs, you might as well write 50 or 100. Why stop?

Yeah, and then I won’t have to write songs for the next 10 years! [Laughs]

Thanks for the time, Chad. I'm a big fan and I dig the vinyl edition of the album. Congrats on everything -- including your latest music video for 'If You Ever Leave Me, I Will Find You.' It's insane.

Yes it is. We're really into the s----y B-level horror movies. We went with a theme from ‘Cop Maniac,’ a series of movies. They’re all s----y. The idea is that we’re doing all these bad things that we should be getting in trouble for, but the cop is going to go above and beyond and prove that he’s a gigantic piece of s--t just like all of us. The ending turns out different than initially planned. The original ending was way more brutal. I was going to go back and hold his pregnant wife hostage for my money and drugs and then maybe, um, kill her. So then we just decided to have the maniac cop eat the s--t out of me. So, I kind of ended up being the good guy, you know, rather than killing a pregnant woman. [Laughs]

Watch Wilson's 'If You Ever Leave Me, I Will Find You'

If you want to get your hands on the first pressing of Wilson's debut studio album, get all the information you need right here. We decided not to take photos of the poster, that way there will still be a surprise waiting for you when you crack the seal.

Wilson, 'Full Blast F---ery'