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BLACK TUSK – Taking Care Of Business
Anthony Morgan
August 2018


Black Tusk (l-r): Corey Barhorst, Andrew Fidler and James May


Savannah, Georgia-based metal outfit Black Tusk began songwriting sessions in earnest for sixth full-length studio album T.C.B.T. at the end of 2017, with further sessions taking place in early 2018. Roughly a month to a month-and-a-half was spent getting the platter together, as it were. The effort emerged in August 2018. Outside personnel helped to author compositions.

“We pretty much have a few people come in and help with hitting ideas off of us in the studio,” shares James May, drummer of Black Tusk. “Some of them we turn down, and some of them we like. When you’re writing a record though, you always see the way you’re writing it. It’s always nice to have someone else that you respect come in and give it a listen, and maybe make some suggestions for it. For instance, the guy that we’ve got playing guitar – that actually ended up joining the band – was a big help on the record, and he’s been around since almost the beginning of the band.

“At this point, we were pretty much like ‘Why don’t you just show it?’ He’s been around us enough. His insight’s always pretty good and he knew how to play the tones, so we asked him to join. Also, it’s made it so that the album has become a lot more. We would have album songs that we knew we couldn’t play and pull off live, but now that we have him, we can actually do every song on the record if we felt like doing it, and it would actually sound like the record. That’s something really cool to have.”

The “big help” arrived in the form of Chris ‘Scary’ Adams, the dynamic changing from a trio to a quartet. “As much as I like being a three-piece…,” the sticksman begins. “It’s always been kind of cooler to be this powerhouse of three people. I’ve always got a lot of respect for a band that can pull it off with three members, and also be a big powerhouse of sound with just three, but it just made sense for this record to have another guitar player. Once we started writing more with him, it just meshed way too well, so that we just wanted him to stay.”

Twelve tracks emerged from sessions to comprise the track listing, the resultant slate of cuts being named T.C.B.T in their collective form. “T.C.B.T. is something that’s from way back, maybe six or seven years ago,” James divulges. “It was a play off of the Elvis and the old biker, ‘Taking Care Of Business’ thing. We just put another T on it and made it ‘Taking Care Of Black Tusk’, and we’ve had that stencil all over our equipment and everything since forever. So, we just decided that this was the album to call T.C.B.T. We were like ‘This is a perfect name for this album,’ because right now, with having to bounce back from Athon and everything, we really had to worry about taking care of this band and what we were going to do. So, the title just made sense.”

Jonathan Athon, co-founder of Black Tusk, was involved in a serious vehicular accident on November 7th, 2014, his motorcycle colliding with a SUV. Albeit placed into a medically induced coma, Jonathan’s brain injuries were too significant, him passing away two days later on the 9th. He was 32. In light of these tragic circumstances, Black Tusk’s future was temporarily thrown into doubt. “We thought about it for a minute with the Athon thing, that being the end, but if it would’ve been any of us, we would’ve wanted the band to go on,” the rhythmist reasons. “It’s what made sense. It’s very unfortunate that it happened.


Black Tusk (l-r): Andrew Fidler, James May and Corey Barhorst

“If he were alive today, he would’ve still been in the band, definitely, and we would’ve kept chugging that way. Things happen, though. It’s what we do. We like to play music and it has pretty much become our career, our lifestyle at this point, so I can’t imagine not putting out records at this point. It would be weird not to. There was a brief thought maybe about not doing it, but not for very long. Also, we had three pretty big tours lined up, so we had to pretty much make a decision pretty quick on what we were going to do.”

Having opted to forge ahead, Black Tusk employed the services of Corey Barhorst, formerly of Kylesa. “Corey was kind of like what Scary was with the band – he was at our first show,” James remembers. “He was always hanging out with the band, so it wasn’t that weird for him to join. We knew that he could do the job; we knew that he would be able to fill in. It worked well, so we figured that if anybody was the man for the job, it was him. You never know how it’s gonna go, though. We started playing, jamming with him, and ideas started coming out left and right, so we decided ‘Why not?’ It made it a lot easier to not have to audition people, and to be able to have someone that kind of was part of the family to come in and help out. It was also someone that Athon knew as well, which made it kind of easier.”

Although the pair knew one another well, Corey and Athon bore more individualistic traits. “Athon definitely was more of the heavy, Mesa Boogie, thick sound, and Corey is definitely more of the punk metal sound,” the sometimes vocalist critiques. “If you had heard them play side by side, you could definitely hear and tell the difference in the way that they write and the way that the bass sounds, but they both fit. It’s always going to sound like Black Tusk, no matter what. The way Corey plays bass works in the band, even though it’s not necessarily the way Athon would’ve approached it. That’s pretty much the difference between them.”

Sounding like Black Tusk, no matter what, involves being “energetic, powerful,” James cites. “Always with the three vocals – definitely trading vocals. We’ve always had albums where there wasn’t just one singer, which I think… We’re not the only band that does it, but I think that it’s definitely a signature sound of the band, and the way that things go with the music at this point. I know that there’s parts that we run into in songs that we just know ‘This is definitely a signature Black Tusk riff.’ Every album needs to get better, and you might change up some sounds or change the way things are going with it, but our biggest thing is not to exploit the audience and just become something completely different. That’s what I would say the Black Tusk sound is.”

Selecting whom vocals are traded with happens to be a simple process within the Black Tusk camp. “Pretty much at this point, it’s pretty easy for us to decide,” the musician reckons. “When we write lyrics, we definitely write for everyone. If something is said a little bit faster, or it’s on a higher riff or something, I’ll usually choose Andrew for it. If it’s like slower, sludgier, heavier, either I’ll choose my voice or Corey’s – or Athon’s in the past. Pretty much we have always chosen the vocals as instruments, by listening to how the riffs go. That’s pretty much how we decide who’s gonna sing what.”

Generally speaking, Black Tusk’s revised line-up caused T.C.B.T. to tread down a slightly different path. “I would say that it’s definitely got a lot more punk, kind of hardcore metal roots to it than what we’d been used to doing, and that’s just the way the record ended up coming out,” James reflects. “We didn’t mean to necessarily do that, but with us, we just like to kind of let the album take a life of its own. It’s always been the Black Tusk way. It ended up coming out very, very energetic, to say the least.”

In discussing T.C.B.T, Black Tusk stated: ‘When you listen, you will hear Black Tusk, not the old as was, but a new Black Tusk keeping tour roots and carving a new path.’ Such comments suggest Black Tusk see a definite difference between T.C.B.T. and previous records, like the beginning of a new chapter almost. “I’d definitely say that it sounds like a new chapter, and it should,” the performer argues. “We have two new members. I think that if it sounded like the same old Black Tusk and it sounded exactly the same, then there really wouldn’t be any reason to add two new members.

“We could’ve just had hired hands that would play what Andrew and I wanted them to play, but I think the whole reason to get any new people into the band is to have their input. Anyone that’s in the band, they have to have some sort of creative input and be able to express themselves musically as much as Andrew and I, because it’s music. You want them to have fun to a certain point as well as feel like they’re not pigeon-holed in the corner to where it’s like ‘This is what was written previously, and what has to be.’ For some bands that works, but with us, we like to get together in a room and collaborate on it together.”

The penning of lyrical fare was shared among several. “The way that we usually do vocal approaches is that one person will take a song and one of the other guys will take a song, and we usually kind of glam them up like after we’re done playing,” James describes. “We always write the music first. One of the guys will be like ‘Well, I’m feeling strongly about trying some lyrics to this,’ and then they’ll bring them to practice. From there, we might tweak them a little bit and find another spark. The guys that we have with us now are pretty much good enough to where there’s usually not that many changes.”

Among the several to pen lyrical fare was the drummer himself. “‘Lab Rat’, the very beginning talking thing I wrote,” he lists. “‘A Perfect View Of Absolutely Nothing’, I did that. Let me see what else… It’s hard to see without a song list right in front of me… ‘Closed Eye’ is one that I got the lyrics for and ‘Orange Red Dead’, I did that one. I think there’s about five or six on there that I did the lyrics for.

“‘Orange Red Dead’ is pretty much about… I always like to write about apocalyptic, kind of end of the world stuff. That’s basically just that type of apocalyptic, end of the world thing but with a tongue-in-cheek, humorous twist to it. ‘Lab Rat’ is pretty much about just waking up every day, feeling like you do the same thing over and over. Every morning, you get up, go to work, and do the same old stuff all the time, and the beginning of the album is kind of just a theory about the whole album as a story. It pretty much just lays down where the setting is going to be for this album. If you listen to some of the stuff, it’s about judgements that come and how when this is all over, will any of it matter? Everything seems to matter now, but in the scheme of life, does it really matter? I always seem to write lyrics that are a little grim in the end, to say the least (laughs).”

Recording sessions for T.C.B.T. at The Garage in Savannah, Georgia. “It was great,” James enthuses. “We really enjoyed it, because we’ve never been able to record, come home, and work on ideas. It was the first time that we had recorded at home. Usually when you get into the studio, you’re at the studio, and you’re rushing to get a lot of things done. As you’re still writing but in the studio, pretty much the things that you’re writing about and your outside influences are gone all of a sudden. So, it was nice to be able to just still continue to come out of your comfort zone in the studio every day, and us being on less of a schedule was a nice thing. We usually always fly somewhere or drive somewhere and do it, but we had a good resource here, so we figured ‘Why not?’ and tried a different way. It was a lot more relaxing than usual; it was a different experience recording. It’s always cool to do something different, because it’s always going to come out different. It affects the record.

“I think for the first time… I’m a night owl; I like to do everything at night. For the first time, I actually got to lay down my drums at night time. Usually, I have to do them during the day, and I am not a day person at all. So, it was nice to be able to work at home… Not at home, but in our city, to where I had someone who could do the drum tracks with me all night long. We could start at like ten or 11 o’clock and go until five or six in the morning, if need be. That was a really, really big deal to me, to be able to do that.”


Black Tusk (l-r): James May, Corey Barhost and Andrew Fidler

The punk influence lends itself to the drumming department. “The drums on this one are definitely way less sludgy, and have way more of a punk-type feel to them I would say,” the sticksman judges. “There’s a lot of stuff that just reminds me somewhat of the old school punk stuff I grew up listening to. That was what the music came out to be, and so I put the drumming to it.”

T.C.B.T.’s cover artwork is simplistic in approach. “Usually, the covers are so intricate, but we figured that this was a different album and was going in bit of a different direction,” James explains. “It ended up being way more… I don’t want to say punk-influenced, but yes, punk-influenced, than the albums have been in a long time. It reminded me of some stuff that we had played earlier; way earlier, like when we started, but better obviously. We just wanted to make it seem like an old school punk record. It would be weird to have this intricate, nice artwork on an album that sounded like this. A spray-painted stencil in the old school, hardcore punk way just seemed the right way to go with it.”

T.C.B.T. marks the first Black Tusk full-length to be released through Season Of Mist, the band’s album contract with the label being revealed on March 14th, 2018. “They’ve been treating us great,” the rhythmist praises. “There’ve been no problems so far. It kind of feels, like I said, like a different band. We’re not a different band, but there are different members and different gears going into the band nowadays, so it was good to keep options open. We’ve known Gordon (Conrad, label manager) from the days of working with Relapse, and figured it would be nice to work with him again – get some fresh ideas, and a fresh team. If we were going to do a fresh record, then it felt like we should do it with a fresh team. It’s not like Relapse did us wrong in any way, shape or form; they were great guys. I have nothing bad to say about Relapse whatsoever, Relapse were great, but it was just time to move on and try something else, really.”

T.C.B.T. was released on August 17th, 2018 via Season Of Mist.

Interview published in August 2018. All promotional photographs by Geoff L. Johnson.

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