WITH: KYLE SEVERN, MATT SORG
Art: J. Meyers
HMA: What are your lyrics generally about?
Chuck: Evil, or what one would interpret as evil, without the boundaries or opinions/ethics of faith. Over the centuries, less-spoken topics of occultism, demonology, and folklore/mythology were found worldwide. I’ll discover through research certain peoples and practices that are so bizarre they deserve to be told lyrically through the talent that only Shed the Skin can create musically.
HMA: How did you start your metal journey?
Matt: I got started with music as a fan of Alice Cooper and KISS at a young age. I saw Alice in concert a few weeks before my 4th birthday. My parents took me because I was constantly spinning their Alice records over and over. From that starting point, I followed hard rock and heavy metal music as it progressed. Metallica was the band that got me started down the heavier path, and from there, I got into Slayer, Voivod, Sodom and all those great thrash bands, and then when Death came out, I became obsessed with all things death metal. When I’m writing the music, I always eat edibles. It helps get the creativity flowing. I come up with riffs and changes that I probably wouldn’t think of normally.
As a guitarist, I have a lot of non-metal idols. Jeff Beck, Jimi Hendrix, Rory Gallagher, Joe Walsh, and Alex Lifeson are a few that come to mind as well as my hard rock heroes, Michael Schenker, Uli Jon Roth, Ace Frehley, and so many others.
Music definitely way deeper than just mere entertainment to me. It’s a lifestyle that keeps me sane or close to it.
Matt: I already talked about many of my non-metal guitar heroes, but I’m also a big fan of many 70’s bands that don’t fall into the metal category, like Cheap Trick and Triumph; I listen to ABBA. I’m all over the map with my tastes. Also, not that it’s surprising, but we’re all huge fans of horror movies and film in general, and that’s something that we all collect and spend time with.
Kyle: Like Matt (because we are both in our 50’s), Heavy Music was life-changing from a very young age. I started with Hard Rock in the 70s, and it just progressed over the years. I realised very young that I wanted to be a part of creating this style of music of my own, and well, since I can’t play guitar worth a shit, I soon realised that I could easily just beat the shit out of the drums, and the rest was history. We love and create death metal music from our black hearts.
Most all my influences are Hard Rock drummers that I love and still listen to today. I’m sure most “Metal” drummers feel the same… Bill Ward, Gil Moore, Cozy Powell, Nick Mason, and Clive Burr are a few. Then there’s Frank Beard, Carmine Appice, Ian Paice, Lee Kerslake, Herman Rarebell, Andy Parker, and so on. The list goes on and on. All with their own styles.
Kyle: I mentioned drummers from many Hard Rock bands that I still enjoy. Triumph, Pink Floyd, ZZ Top, and AC/DC are the most notable. I don’t venture too far from hard rock or heavy metal. I enjoy Styx, Foreigner, Journey, and Free, mainly their 70s era when they just got in a room and “Jammed”, and some Southern Rock like Blackfoot and Skynyrd.
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