3 Inches of Blood’s Cam Pipes Talks New Album, the Band’s Evolution + More

3 Inches of Blood singer Cam Pipes was the guest on Full Metal Jackie's radio show over the weekend. Pipes talked about the band's upcoming album 'Long Live Heavy Metal' (due March 26), the group's revolving door of band members and more. If you missed Full Metal Jackie's interview with Cam Pipes, read the full Q&A below:

It sounds like ‘Long Live Heavy Metal’ seems to be a rallying cry for heavy metal; why does metal need someone to wave that flag right now?

I think it always has, we’ve always been the kind of band that has been very proud to represent true metal and so this was our way of just continuing on with that but maybe making it a bit more of a bolder statement with the title itself.

Cam, vocally what’s your proudest moment on ‘Long Live Heavy Metal’?

Wow, well never really thought about it. I couldn’t really pick one but I think overall, all of us, me and the other guys vocally and everything we’re just obviously really proud of the record. But there’s something about this one that leading up to the release feels like there’s something intangible about it that you can’t quite put your finger on that just makes the whole thing feel really special, everything from the way it seemed to come together so quickly. We didn’t really spend a whole lot of time writing, we set a deadline for ourselves but we never felt any pressure like “Hurry up and get things done” or write filler just so we could get into the studio, none of that really ever came up.

Everything that we wrote just felt really good and really natural and the whole studio experience was really good, really relaxed and everything was just really productive. So far with the music that we have previewed for people online, there seems to be a unanimous appreciation for it and everyone’s really liking it so that’s a good sign already and the record’s not even out. We’re anticipating a nice awesome reaction and I’m sure everyone’s going to be real proud of it.

Including touring members, there have been quite a few members in 3 Inches of Blood over the years; what’s the trick to maintaining musical consistency with so many different players and personalities?

I think the drive to actually play music for a living and be out there on the road and slug it out is really the first quality that you gotta have but it helps to have people that you already are familiar with as musicians and just people who you know. We’ve had people come in that we didn’t necessarily know all that well before they started playing with us and that might have hurt the longevity of themselves in the band and maybe made us question their desire just because we didn’t know so much about them and vice versa and so maybe we would have made a more informed decision about certain people if we’d known more about them ahead of time.

But those of us that have stuck around we’ve known about each other in the case of myself and Justin [Hagberg] we actually played in a band together about 10 years before Justin joined 3 Inches of Blood, so the familiarity with what are musical backgrounds are really helps and knowing what each other brings to the table in terms of their musicianship and the kind of stuff that they listen to and even down to the sense of humor that people have, that really makes it easier to write music together and maintain the spirit of what this band has been about since the beginning.

Byron Stroud of Fear Factory / Strapping Young Lad is part of the band. So far, what’s been the biggest impact Byron has made on 3 Inches of Blood?

We’ve played with Byron before actually, he filled in on a tour before the last record came out on a tour we were doing with Slipknot. We were doing a short run of dates and our previous bass player left a few months earlier and we were in the middle of writing and we had this tour so Byron filled in and he’s been a buddy of ours for so many years. Byron brings in a lot of experience, in fact I think between the lot of us Byron himself may even bring more years on the road and more shows played than the rest of us combined, he’s a little bit older than the rest of us but like I said he’s been a close friend of the band’s for many many years and so again coming back to that familiarity with somebody he brings that, he brings obviously his playing as a bass player that’s kind of the most important thing. He’s like the complete package in terms of the bass player he is an awesome bass player and a juggernaut of a human being as well but he’s someone that we all like and we all get along, he just brings it all.

This coming weekend, Full Metal Jackie will talk to Tomas Haake of Meshuggah. Full Metal Jackie can be heard on radio stations around the country — for a full list of stations, go to fullmetaljackieradio.com.