A little interview I did with Katon and Gary from Hirax. I can’t remember where this was done. The timeline on dates seem a little suspect though. I doubt I would’ve gotten this date wrong, especially the year, but this interview was done after the original lineup (i.e. the lineup on their first album) had gotten back together. After Katon had quit, was replaced by Paul Baloff, and then later rejoined. Wiki says that this happened in 1988, but I think it happened earlier, like 1987. Then again I interviewed Paul Baloff earlier in the month and would like to have thought that I would’ve brought Hirax up in our conversation. So I don’t know. I’m pretty sure the year is 1988 though.
I don’t have any real memories of doing this interview. I just wish I asked better questions. lol. It was hard to juggle all these interviews, my radio show and all that while trying to pass my midterms.
Transcript below.
Ted: Okay, this is Ted from KSDT. We’re speaking to Gary and Katon from Hirax. How are you guys?
Katon: Yeah! Kinda tired. Good. Need a beer.
Ted: Okay, yeah, I do too. Joanna, can you drive us to a liquor store, please?
Gary: Oh no.
Katon: We gotta hurry up, because everybody’s like crying.
Ted: Okay, so what’s been going on for the past few years?
Katon: Oh, God.
Ted: Okay, I guess we’ll start with you, Katon. Leaving. Or something happened. What happened?
Katon: Well, yeah, it happened that way. Left but…
Ted: Did you leave voluntarily or did like…
Katon: Pretty much, yeah. It was just that we were having a lot of problems, you know, it’s… This is the old saying, but it’s like, you know, having a girlfriend, that’s the way it was, but… Everybody started getting real moody on each other, and that’s why I left the band pretty much. Plus, you and I had personal problems at the time too, but now everything seems to be okay.
Gary: Don’t want to blame anyone personally, but… Eric Brecht.
Katon: The drummer who played on the EP kind of made everybody just want to get the hell out of the band, and that’s pretty much what happened.
Ted: Did the band split up for a little while?
Katon: Everybody went their separate ways, except for Scott tried to keep it alive. But me and Gary and Johnny left, all of us left. Scott had different people playing with him.
Ted: Now, was Scott the one who reformed and had Paul Baloff take your place?
Katon: Well, Gary was still in the band, weren’t you?
Gary: Yeah.
Katon: Gary was still in the band.
Ted: What happened with Paul Bailoff? How come he didn’t fit in? Sorry, Katon, I didn’t mean to…
Katon: That’s cool. That’s fine.
Gary: I don’t know, son of a bitch. You know what, I don’t think he wanted to relocate, and I didn’t want to either.
Katon: Because they wanted him to move to LA and he didn’t want to. But he, you know, it’s…
Gary: He probably didn’t like Eric either.
Katon: I didn’t even mind that question because Paul’s a good friend of mine.
Ted: Oh, okay. Sorry.
Katon: That’s cool.
Ted: Yeah, you seem to be good friends with a lot of people around here. You’ve been on more “thank you” lists from my albums in the past couple years.
Katon: I used to penpal a lot, so that kind of added to it. You used to write to a lot of bands.
Ted: So did you do a lot of promotions or anything, or are you just friends?
Katon: Just friends, pretty much, you know.
Ted: So why did you decide to join back with Hirax and how did Hirax reform?
Katon: Well, everybody seemed to have their heads more into it this time. Everybody seemed really gung-ho on doing it. And everybody’s more into fighting to do it. You know, everybody wants to put in the time this time. So everybody’s a lot more into it. Let’s just put it that way.
Ted: So now you have just the same members except for the drummer who’s a new guy now.
Gary: No, he’s the first drummer, originally.
Ted: So it’s the original Hirax all together.
Katon: From the album, “Raging Violence”, the first one.
Ted: Now you guys are off Metal blade, what happened with that?
Katon: Fuck.
Gary: We didn’t like them.
Katon: Yeah, it was kind of like that. We didn’t like them, and they knew it. They tried to…
Ted: But why? Why kind of slag them in magazines?
Katon: Well, we slagged them, but the reason we slagged them is because we wanted off the label because we didn’t feel like they were doing enough for the band.
Ted: Promoting it and stuff?
Katon: Yeah, exactly. So we slagged them and it worked out for the best. We got off the label, but it was kind of heavy. They’re still kind of bitter about it, but we don’t care.
Ted: So what kind of label are you looking for now? Major label?
Katon: No, not really. All these other fucking bands are looking for majors. I don’t think that’s the answer myself. I never have been into major bands anyways. I mean, bands on major labels, to me, a lot of them conform, and I don’t like that shit. In fact, most of the bands we listen to aren’t even on major labels.
Ted: What’s the new stuff going to sound like?
Katon: Raunchier. Just heavier. We haven’t given up our beliefs. It’s got a lot more to it. The lyrics have a lot more to say.
Gary: Longer songs.
Katon: We have a lot more to say this time.
Ted: Yeah, that’s good. I notice that from the new songs. I like that. That’s really cool. So you started off as just like a normal metal band, or kind of like rockin’ metal band. What made you change the thrash?
Katon: We just started getting more into it. Bands, we started getting turned on to, were like that. We started listening to bands from everything like Bad Brains, early Bad Brains, to Metallica and Motorhead. Misfits. Minor Threat. Shit like that.
Ted: Do you still play the songs from the first demo now?
Katon: Nah. We hate it.
Ted: Aw. They’re not that bad.
Katon: I mean, people say that’s classic stuff, but we just moved on. It’s like if you listen to early Misfits to whatever Glenn Danzig’s doing now, it’s totally different.
Ted: Have you heard the new Glenn Danzig stuff?
Katon: Yeah, it’s like Elvis.
Ted: Well, I just heard one song from the Less Than Zero album, but that’s not like…
Katon: Yeah, it’s rockabelly more style.
Gary: Another reason we split up, I think, is that Johnny always played fast.
Katon: Yeah, now we’re just more into tempo choices.
Gary: He was never really into playing slow and we moved along with that. I’ve never really played slow on that kind of music. We’ve been long back.
Katon: Even though we jumped out of the question real quick, I still like it (Danzig). He’s still cool, but I like the early stuff a lot. You can’t beat shit like (unintelligible)
Ted: Yeah, I like “Walk Among Us” a lot.
Katon: Samhain stuff was good too, it was more adult, but it was really good.
Joanna: You know what Glenn is doing now?
Katon: huh? I think he’s recording a new record for Def Jam.
Ted: James Heffield did three songs on it. Did three background vocals and three songs.
Katon: Yeah, they’re gonna…I think he’s doing something with Def Jam, that’s what I’ve been hearing a lot.
Ted: Yeah, Rick Rubin produced it too.
Katon: But he’s, you know, Rick Rubin’s smart, he don’t go with anybody unless he knows something’s gonna work out and Glenn Danzig’s a good person to pick up, you know? He’s smart. He’s very smart.
Ted: So are you guys on tour right now?
Katon: Not really, just trying to play out of town and stuff. LA is cool, we like it a lot but we always like going out and playing other places. One thing I have noticed though about Los Angeles compared to San Diego is that the kids are… I mean even though it’s still violent too, there’s a lot of fights and shit but the kids up there do help each other out a lot more like if somebody falls, everybody helps them up. People dive, people try to catch them instead of letting them hit cement.
Ted: I’ve seen a few people hit cement tonight.
Katon: Yeah, it’s too bad, I mean because I like to do that shit too and I hate hitting cement and I don’t do it to anybody like that.
Ted: How was the deal with the new album right now? You got stuff coming out? You don’t have a label yet, right?
Katon: Not yet, we’re talking about labels, we’re negotiating right now but we’re also at the same time writing songs and taking them out on the road and seeing how they go.
Ted: Do you have enough material for a new album?
Katon: We do but we want to try to write a few more so we’ll have overabundance so we can pick from them.
Gary: Get the best ones.
Ted: So what are some song titles and what are they about?
Katon: We have a new song called “Horror Dream”. It’s about street people. People live on the streets because that’s something I’ve come close to dealing with. Plus it’s something that I think needs to be dealt with. I mean especially where we live in Los Angeles, you see a lot of bag people which I think is pretty sad. I mean they’re human too. They don’t need to be treated like shit. You have fucking young kids, spoiled young kids who fuck with them and beat them up and shit like that. I think that’s crap. I live in Orange County which is like by Huntington Beach, I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of that place. One day I was down there hanging out and I was walking and these kids were like skateboarding and there was a bum and he was sitting like, he had milk. I’m sure he had to scrounge up his quarters to get the milk but he’s drinking. Just kicking back, minding his own business and these kids were skateboarding. The thing I couldn’t understand is why they wouldn’t skateboard somewhere else where he was sitting there like throwing truck scrapers or whatever the hell they call that shit where you scrape on your face? They were hitting him and shit. I got really pissed off so I went over and told them that’s not too cool. I go, this guy’s a human too, you know. That shit just pisses me off because I mean these people go through hell every day of their lives and other people are so well off they don’t realize how good they have it.
Ted: Yeah, I think that’s pretty cool. I think the thing that sets you apart from other bands are your lyrics. What do you call Hirax a Christian thrash band or something? Yyou’re not really heavy on that stuff though.
Katon: That’s just something we went through at one time, but see the thing I was dealing with there, which a lot of people took kind of weird, is that I was dealing with… I really don’t like TV evangelists and shit like that.
Ted: I don’t think anybody does.
Katon: So that’s what we were dealing with but I don’t know, especially a lot of the new stuff just has a lot to say. I mean everything from “Horror Dream” to “Same Judgement”, what you know… because our band we all look pretty much different than each other and people always judge just by just when they look at a picture of the band and then when they hear the music they see something different. But you know we just deal with a lot of the topics that bother the shit out of us and I think that’s the best stuff to write about because I think you’re going to write more from the heart.
Ted: Do you have any plans for videos?
Katon: If we did I would deal with probably like what we were talking about. The concept I would like to show is, it bums a lot of people out, but I think you have to get that in people’s faces so they’ll do something about it. Showing street life. Because where we live you can like video all this stuff that’s such a drag. I mean there’s parks full of people just laying and sleeping on the ground.
Gary: (I got to run)
Katon: Gary’s gotta get going cause it’s getting late and we don’t like that.
Ted: Okay well I’m almost done anyway.
Katon: I’ll meet you over there. (to Gary) Hey tell, this is not in the interview but tell Ray and then not to leave yet. I know you want them to but tell them not to. I gotta tell them to give somebody a ride home. Thanks.
Gary: Alright man (leaves)
Ted: Okay now let’s see what else. What do you see in the future for Hirax?
Katon: Hopefully recording and then a lot of touring because I want to get on the road. Tour and stuff like that. I like traveling because you meet a lot of cool people and you learn a lot of different lifestyles. Traveling’s always been fun.
Ted: Yeah so where have you traveled though with Hirax? I mean earlier. Have you been all over the country?
Katon: We went on a tour and like halfway through the tour that’s when I quit the band. But I had done everything from say Arizona Tuscon, Phoenix. San Francisco’s always fun. It’s cool hanging out on Hate Street in Ashbury you know. Sacramento. It’s places like that. I never really got any farther because I left the band. We did like Seattle, Portland and all that stuff but that’s when I left the band. So this time I’m going to hang in there and hopefully get back to the east coast because I have a lot of friends in other bands.
Ted: It got that bad that you had to leave in the middle of a tour?
Katon: Yeah well I was just you know I don’t know I just felt that I was fighting for something that everybody else wasn’t you know? But I’ve come to believe that’s wrong now. But I don’t know sometimes you just got to step back and evaluate things you know?
Ted: Okay well what’s your favorite AC/DC album?
Katon: AC/DC album “Let There Be Rock”. And “If You Want Blood, You’ve Got It”. That’s good.
Ted: Well they’re all good.
Katon: Early shit with Bon Scott is all I need.
Ted: Yeah exactly.
Katon: It’s too bad Bon passed away. He was great. Well you know it’s really weird he’s like one of my early influences. So when he died I like sprayed painted my whole school with “AC/DC” and “Bon Scott”.
Ted: Wow. That’s cool.
Katon: I went off. I lost control. It was great though the next day… Because like a lot of my friends… I didn’t tell nobody that I did it and everybody’s going that’s great somebody did a shrine. I just went off. That old paint on that brown building stands out you know. Never got caught. Fucking great.
Ted: Okay well thanks a lot.
Katon: Bon still lives.
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