Hatebreed's Jamey Jasta Questions Metal's Mainstream Disconnect

Hatebreed's Jamey Jasta continues to be one of metal's staunchest champions and during his interview with Full Metal Jackie for her weekend radio show, the singer spoke about why metal has a disconnect with the mainstream despite its sizable audience.

"We see metal artists are drawing bigger than some of the top streaming artists, and then you find out about the bots and how everything's rigged. And it's not that I wanna put on some tinfoil hat. I've lived it. I've seen it," said the Hatebreed singer, pointing to post-9/11 when acts such as Slipknot, Slayer and Drowning Pool were censored.

He also suggested that messaging may be part of the issue. "These songs empower people. They make people inspired. And an inspired, empowered population is not good for certain other aspects of society according to a small elite few," shared the singer. "I think it's important for us to say let's push those positive songs forward. Let's push songs with a message forward."

"I love country songs about beer and trucks and girls and I understand that that's what a lot of that audience likes," he continued. "But it's okay to question why those songs are pushed and not the country songs that are talking about real issues in the world or the opioid crisis or corruption in politics or corruption in other fields, right?"

He concluded, "I don't drink, but I love the idea of someone just drinking on their flatbed truck. But why do I have to walk into TJ Maxx or Marshalls and hear it 150 times? Why can't I walk in and hear the new In Flames or Trivium or whatever?"

Elsewhere in the first part of Jasta's two-part interview with Full Metal Jackie, they get into the Hatebreed's new Fatal Paradox album and having total freedom on the new album, one side effect from the YouTube success of their video for "The Carrion Choir" and some of what we can do in our everyday life to impact change for the better.

Check out more of the chat below.

It's Full Metal Jackie and I am so excited to welcome back ... in a guest capacity, longtime friend of the show, the one and only Jamey Jasta of Hatebreed. We are here to celebrate the new Hatebreed record, Fatal Paradox, and this one comes from a different approach for you. The band lived some life, maintained creative control through the process and then shopped for a label after. Do you feel having that freedom impacted the album and your ability to get exactly what you wanted from this record?

Definitely, because we would make sure that every song was as close to being what we felt like could be a video or a single, because there was no pressure to just have one. So why not try to make them all? Because then, should we shop the record and they think all of the songs have the quality of a single, then we won't have this issue when it comes down to the time where you have to basically bargain with them over how much the video budgets are gonna be and how much they wanna spend with certain directors and things like that.

And worst-case scenario, we thought even if labels hate this, we feel confident enough in the record where then we would just reinvest in ourselves and distribute it ourselves. We're one of those bands that In the last 30 years, we've outlived a lotta trends, we've outlived a lotta people in the business. We've outlived full sections of the business. So as long as you focus on a good song, a timeless song, a song that's not the first draft, they're not always gonna be the first draft, you can go back in, choose from the second draft, the third draft, elevate it.

We kept saying, "How can we elevate this song? How can we elevate this part?" And so yeah, when it came time to sign with the label and choose the singles, it was like, "Choose any of them. We don't care." We were confident in all of them. It's not to be cocky, it was just that we were happy with the way pretty much every song came out and we had even more songs. We have probably a whole other album.

Hatebreed, "The Carrion Choir"

Jamey, you mentioned that you guys actually came out of these sessions with a lot more material than what ended up on this record. So is there gonna be a Fatal Paradox Part Two?

There could be. This felt very much like Perseverance going into Rise of Brutality because so much time had passed, and then we're getting offered all these tours during that Perseverance era where we're like, "Oh, So if we put up a follow-up in a year, we're already being offered the Slayer Jägermeister tour a year later, which was our second or third Slayer tour."

It does help to have new material in the can, because then especially a band like us now, we're an older band. We're a legacy band, so if you wanna be considered by a Megadeth or a Metallica or a Korn or a Slipknot, you wanna have a new record out there and you wanna show the popularity of the newer songs and not just rest on your laurels.

I think that was a big part of us getting these stadium shows with Slipknot is the fact that the new album is coming out and then we also have a lotta hype around it.

The videos are getting a lotta views. The songs are trending on various different social media platforms and stuff, so it just really helps to then keep that momentum going if we were to drop a record another record late next year or early 2028.

Jamey, we played the track "The Carrion Choir" earlier and I wanna talk about that a little bit more. The video got a ton of views out there and it hasn't even been up that long. I know sometimes the focus can be on other things, but what does it mean to see that kind of response in numbers courtesy of your fans after this long period between albums?

I think for a band like us, it means maybe the grip that the censorship and the algorithms have had, not just on music as a whole but as a platform on YouTube, but on the words, right? You have 'hate' in the name. You have 'kill' or 'fatal' in the album title. 'Kill' in the other video. We were already at a disadvantage just because of the rampant censorship.

We don't get it as much as say a band like Cannibal Corpse or Suicidal Tendencies or even a band like Terror, but I think the changing of the guard at certain platforms has loosened up that just unbelievably tight censorship grip that they had, because it was too wide of a web that they were casting.

I even dealt with it with my Jasta record, where the word Jasta, I guess, was also used as an acronym, which was Justice Against Sponsored Terrorism Act and that word is blocked and it can't trend.

Then the song was called "Suicidality,"which has suicide, so then if you searched it, you would get a, a warning like, "Hey, are you having a problem? Call this number." And that's what happens when I wanna just go to Suicidal Tendencies' Instagram.and see if they're coming to Worcester or Hartford or whatever.

I remember when I first tried to follow Terror, it was like, "Do you really wanna follow this account that could be posting misleading...." and you're like, "Whoa, whoa, this web that they're casting is too much." And so when people would send me screenshots of like, "Hey, this could be a hate group," or whatever, or, "This account posts these terms," a lot of that's been lifted because they see this is a legit band that's been on major labels. They're Grammy nominated.

So I think that's a really promising thing. I hope it continues like that. We need to not have algorithms making these arbitrary weird rules for thee and not for me. There's certain channels that can talk about anything they want and can say any words and then there's others that are demonetized and maybe that's a whole other topic for a different interview.

But I do appreciate people searching it out and actually subscribing and hitting the bell and letting us know when, "Hey, we don't see your notifications. We don't get your posts on the community page," or whatever, and that's because of censorship.

It's Full Metal Jackie. Jamey Jasta of Hatebreed on the show with us. We're celebrating the new record, Fatal Paradox, and we were talking earlier about "The Carrion Choir." The song doesn't hold back. It feels like a challenge to take a stand for yourself and it's just a, a hard-hitting tune that makes you wanna run through a wall. We're in a time where every move or even a non-move seems to get analyzed. People can take from it what they will, but what led you down the path of calling out the more passive behavior in people?

Just the fact that we're in a community, whether you call it punk rock or hardcore or thrash metal or metal, we're in a community where we don't need to be in competition with each other. We don't need to be so judgmental of each other. It was originally, such a small thing that when it starts to become popular and maybe we're somewhat to blame for this having been one of the bands that crossed over into metal and started doing bigger mainstream tours and had videos, later on in our career on some of the bigger channels and stuff.

But when you do that, you wanna be welcoming of the people who are willing to look at this music and not instantly say, "This is crazy. This is dangerous. This is a thought crime," or whatever they will say. And we're in a music business that is also rewarding of the songs that are either the most kind of vapid or the most vague or the most degenerate.

You'll see Cardi B can have a song about whatever she wants because she has the major label machine behind her. She has the power to have graphic content. But if any metal artist did that, they'd be censored up the wazoo. They'd be banned.

Absolutely.

They'd be kicked off shows. And that's what I mean by "The Carrion Choir." We have to not listen to the people who are saying this music is not marketable, it's not palatable, it's not accessible because we know it is.

Jamey, you were talking earlier about heavy music not always getting the same kind of support or platform as other genres. When you look at how big this community actually is, do you feel like there's still a disconnect between the real world audience for metal and the way it's represented in the mainstream?

We see metal artists are drawing bigger than some of the top streaming artists, and then you find out about the bots and how everything's rigged. And it's not that I wanna put on some tinfoil hat. I've lived it. I've seen it.

I have proof of it where you can just look at the, the lists that came out after 9/11, where "Bodies" and "I Will Be Heard" and Slipknot and Slayer, we were all censored to the max because why? Because these songs empower people. They make people inspired. And an inspired, empowered population is not good for certain other aspects of society according to a small elite few. We don't have to get into all that, but I think it's important for us to say let's push those positive songs forward. Let's push songs with a message forward.

I love country songs about beer and trucks and girls and I understand that that's what a lot of that audience likes. But it's okay to question why those songs are pushed and not the country songs that are talking about real issues in the world or the opioid crisis or corruption in politics or corruption in other fields, right?

There's a lot to unpack there, but I think we're onto something and I think people are interested in songs that are just more than entertainment and more than drinking a beer on the flatbed of the truck. Not that there isn't a place for that.

I don't drink, but I love the idea of someone just drinking on their flatbed truck. But why do I have to walk into TJ Maxx or Marshalls and hear it 150 times? Why can't I walk in and hear the new In Flames or Trivium or whatever?

Jamey, the Fatal Paradox title track clues us in a bit, speaking to the adage of those who don't learn from the past are doomed to repeat it. It feels there are several wake-up calls on this record. It can be a bit daunting looking at the world these days, but are there things that we can be doing in our everyday life that you wish you saw more out of people that could change things for the better?

Absolutely. It all starts with yourself just trying to be better than yesterday and trying to emote as if whatever you want to happen is already happening. I've talked about this a lot and I've seen the memes and the people that poke fun at these ideas, but I wouldn't be out there suggesting it if I thought it didn't work.

I haven't actually seen examples in real life, especially at the meet and greets every day on tour where people say, "I applied this thinking," or, "I looked into this writer," or, "I looked into this inspiration behind this song."

With the title of this record being Fatal Paradox, one of the paradoxes that comes to mind was this Ship of Theseus where basically the question is if every wooden plank on a ship is replaced by one over time, is it still the same ship? And you can apply that to our bodies. You can apply that to our brains, right? We're not the same cells. We regenerate our cells every seven years. So you're literally not the same person you were seven years ago, so why are you still holding up the limiting beliefs that you had?

We all know someone who their only fight in life is their weight and we've seen it. We've seen friends, family, people who their weight is a constant problem, right? And they're being marketed all day every day the worst food, booze. It's not just when you go to the airport, you only have access to crappy fried food all made by one or two companies. It goes beyond that.

Jamey, earlier we were talking about all these things that can work against us and when you really start thinking about all of it, it can feel pretty overwhelming. So how do you keep that from becoming an excuse to just throw your hands up and say, "What can I really do about any of this?"

That's a lot for people to handle. That's a lot for people to go, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. It's hard enough for me to just pay to fill my truck with diesel or pay my rent. Now I gotta think about I'm also being poisoned and being given diabetes." I'm not trying to say tackle all this right now, but I am saying there is hope and that you don't have to be wearing the 4XL shirt if you don't want to.

We sell them. We're here. We have them up. We're selling Crowbar 5XL shirts all day every day. But when we send them out, we hope that they'll also maybe try to go down a size. If that's all you can handle right now, that's something you can handle right now.

And I've seen it every night where people come to the Hatebreed meet and greet and they're like, "I heard you talking about this on the podcast. I listen to your songs when I go to the gym." And that's one tiny way that you can apply it because, like I said, you're not even the same cells you were.

You're not even the same person you were seven years ago or whatever. So you can literally start today and if you emote as if what you want has already happened, trust me, I've seen it happen. I looked every day at the poster of Slayer from age, like, 12 to whatever and I said, "Imagine how would feel if I was friends with Slayer. Imagine how it would feel if I was on tour with Slayer." And I did that until I was on tour and friends with Slayer. It's not as crazy as it sounds when you start to see it.

Just like when people said you'll never outsell your favorite hardcore band. No hardcore band has ever sold more than, say, whatever, 30,000 records, right? I remember being in a meeting where I was talking up Ramones at a record label and they're like, "Ramones? That record hasn't even sound-scanned 30,000 records." And they have a song in Pet Sematary, a huge Stephen King movie, and nobody cares.

Ramones is a flop. So when Perseverance came out and we sold 300,000 copies, that's 10 times the amount of that. Until you do it and you see evidence of it, then yeah, I get why this guy thought it was crazy to think that we could outsell The Ramones. Nothing against The Ramones. I love The Ramones. They're one of my favorite bands. I was just using them as an example as a naïve kid of what I thought would be a great success and they looked at that as, "Well, you're crazy." But why is it crazy? Look at what's happening now.

Bands that were inspired by Hatebreed that we put the ladder down are now selling out huge venues, bigger venues than some of the platinum and gold acts are selling out. And so I just think the more you give examples of applying the positive emotions to the thinking and then the action with intent, the more you're gonna have those results.

Thanks to Hatebreed's Jamey Jasta for the interview. The 'Fatal Paradox' album is available now. Stay up to date with the band through their website, Facebook, X and Instagram accounts. Find out where you can hear Full Metal Jackie's weekend radio show here.

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