Prong’s Tommy Victor on New Album ‘Carved Into Stone’; Stream World Premiere of “Eternal Heat”

Formed in 1986 in New York City, Prong started out as a thrash band before evolving into one of the godfathers of modern groove and industrial metal.  Hugely influential with milestones such as Beg to Differ and The Cleansing to its name, Prong isn’t resting easy; even though new album Carved Into Stone is their 9^th album of originals, it’s one of the band’s thrashiest records in years.  Carved Into Stone releases April 24 on Long Branch; you can stream opening track “Eternal Heat” here. 

Metal Insider caught up with singer/guitarist Tommy Victor to talk about the new record, his thoughts on being a hired gun for Ministry and Danzig, and the possibility that he’ll be explaining “Snap Your Fingers, Snap Your Neck” to his grandchildren one day.

 

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You’re about to release Carved Into Stone, and it’s a very intense album.  Where did all the energy come from when you were writing and recording that?

Just some inner will of some sort, maybe some outside power indicating a song carved into stone. It’s like there’s some power source from beyond that wants Prong to still survive that implements its energy from the future and zaps here on Planet Earth to keep this thing going. I have no idea otherwise. You have to work at regenerating energy. It takes work from a personal standpoint, so I did it. If I had to do it again, I’d probably say, “Fuck it,” pardon the language!

What was the process like behind the studio sessions?  It sounds like you channeled something extra here.

I like that word, “channeling,” that’s good. The process was two years prior to actually going into the studio. It began with some computer stuff I worked on, some demos I made, and I started putting together some songs. Maybe one little piece of the initial six songs made it to the batch of 25 that were written over that period with Tony Campos, Alexei [Rodriguez] and Mike Doling (from Soulfly). A lot of demos, a lot of lyrics written, a lot of riffs, and a lot of complete songs were thrown in the garbage can. It’s just a process of elimination over that period until we finally get into pre-production right before we get in the studio. [Producer] Steve Evetts dialed some new parts in at the last minute, got rid of some boring ones and came up with the final 11 to do the basic tracks with. Then everything was played completely, precisely on the record. No cutting in pasting, not a hell of a lot of utilization of Pro Tools, no Melodyne or auto-tune. Just did it like we did back in the 90s. Read more »