It’s hard to believe that it’s been over 25 years since I first heard Prong’s now legendary, genre bending album Beg To Differ. When I first heard Prong I just loved the fact that they were taking elements of punk and metal and infusing it with a classic NYC kind of sound that just seemed to cut through the muck and rear its ugly head at us all. It was honest, it was gritty, and it was something totally different. Like many other bands I loved from that era, Prong fell off my radar for many years only to be put back on my radar with their latest album Prong X: No Absolutes.
I was psyched to have the opportunity to have a phone call with Prong mastermind Tommy Victor. Tommy is a really funny, really laid back guy and it was so great picking his brain about his other gig with Danzig, the current state of metal, and all else in between. This was a really fun and interesting interview that totally rekindled my interest in this truly great band. I hope you all will dig getting inside of the mind of Prong’s Tommy Victor as much as I did. Enjoy!
Tommy, thanks so much for taking the time to talk today.
No problem, Don. The Great Southern Brainfart huh? Am I one of the bands you hate [laughs]?
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Not at all. Prong is definitely a band that I don’t hate.
Actually, to be honest with you, I wouldn’t mind to do an interview with someone who really hates me. Eh, not really [laughs].
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In all honesty, I’ve had some of my favorite interviews with bands that I wasn’t a really big fan of. I interviewed the singer for Watain and while I’m definitely not a huge fan by any stretch, it was a really great interview.
Oh, nice. Well, I’m going to be honest. If you talk to that guy from Watain, obviously he never heard of Prong or knew about us because they stole our logo so they’re not my favorite people in the music business.
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Before we get started, what is one question you get asked so much that if you get asked it one more time you’ll scream?
Probably what I thought about the CBGB movie. Well, I used to work there. In order to answer it, I would have to go into a half hour monologue about the whole thing and I always feel compelled to do that because the movie is so annoying. It’s not so much that I hate the question. It’s just that it would take me a really long time to answer it in completion.
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I still remember running out to buy Beg To Differ after hearing the music for “Lost and Found” on the Headbanger’s Ball commercial breaks. Was that a big introduction to you guys for a lot fans?
Yeah, I think so. I mean, it didn’t affect my pocket book in a beneficial way too much yeah, it was a weird thing. Most people heard that and thought it was Slayer. Even at shows, we’d get people come up to us and say, “That riff from “Lost and Found”, I didn’t know it was you guys.” Back then, anything like that helped.
Beg to Differ was such a genre bending album when it was released. It’s hard to believe that was over 25 years ago. Did you realize at the time what a mark this album was going to make?
The fact that we were coming from a place that nobody else came from, and whether that was to be recognized back then or later on is the identity of Prong being different from most bands. I didn’t know at the time. We just had to have something infused into the band. The whole idea sort of came together on that third record, Beg to Differ. We could’ve just been an average thrash band and a very mediocre one at that. It was just who we were. A lot people’s careers, although they don’t like to admit it too much, is all by accident. A lot of it is.
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It’s that mentality of, “Why do one thing really good when you can do three things pretty good but put it all together and make that something really good?”
Well, we really couldn’t one thing great and I still can’t so that much hasn’t changed [laughs]. It’s really just where we were coming from. We were lower east side scene kids who got into metal late. We were into early metal but we are also sort of art rockers and then with the wave of Euro thrash like Kreator and Destruction and Celtic Frost, we were like, “These bands are cool. Let’s throw this into this New York post punk hardcore thing. We just got excited about all that was going on back then. It was constant record and tape trading and then I worked at CBGBs. Working there I was always exposed to so much stuff that we were really on top of what was going on. That helped a lot.
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I have to say, I just gave the new album a listen and I really dug it. I haven’t listened to a Prong album since like ’93 or so. There’s a significant growth there to the playing and the songwriting with an almost back to basics kind of vibe to it.
There’s always that element in there that you want to make it a Prong record that reflects a lot of the back catalog. Having a large catalog like we do, there is some subliminal internal reference to the old stuff. It’s just there. Although, we are always infusing some new stuff into it. At this point in time, how much more are we going to do? This new record has some more classic sounding songs and that makes it more different than some of the other recent releases.
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I really did dig this album quite a bit and it made me want to go back and see what all I missed over the years.
Since the initial break up, it was a while after that and then there was a release called Scorpio Rising that I got a pretty good deal for. I wasn’t doing anything and I was completely disgusted with music. We threw that record together and for some reason now, among our fans, there’s a lot of people that really like that album even though it’s not that great [laughs]. After that, I started playing with Ministry for a while and then we put out Power of the Damager which came out on Al’s (Jourgensen) label. I think there’s some good stuff on there but the production is terrible. Then we finally got the deal with SPV and this whole run of records came about where I’m definitely more focused on Prong which we had Carved Into Stone, Ruining Lives, and the covers record Songs From the Black Hole and now Prong X: No Absolutes which has all been in the last four years.
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Another thing I loved about Prong X was that in listening to it, it seemed like no time had passed for me. It reminded me just why dug Prong in the first place 25 or so years ago. You totally nailed it on this album.
Oh, cool. Thanks, Don. I like the fact that you were referencing back to Beg to Differ because I compare them a little bit. After all the touring we’ve been doing over the last four years, I have all those old songs that are just still hardwired into me.
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With 11 Prong albums under your belt, how hard is it for you to put a setlist together for shows?
I don’t think we’re going to make too many changes to the setlist on this upcoming tour. I mean, obviously we’ll have to do a couple off of the new record and then we like to cover Ruining Lives and Carved Into Stone and then for the most part we’ll cover the more classic stuff from Cleansing, Prove You Wrong, and Beg to Differ. I’d like to do a couple of really old ones and throw those in. It’s not that difficult. The sequencing of the setlist is sometimes really hard. What song should we open with? Obviously you want to close the set with something like “Snap Your Fingers Snap Your Neck” or “Prove You Wrong” or one of the other classics.
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What is one Prong song that you never get tired of playing?
Any of the songs that get the better response which is usually “Snap Your Fingers Snap Your Neck.” I never get tired of playing that song because I’m just an ego starved person [laughs]. The song that gets the best response is the song that I love to play. Playing a song that no matter how shitty you play it the people are going to be into it. Let’s just be honest here.
What’s is one Prong song that hasn’t been played in a while, if ever, that you’d love to see played live?
I guess something like “Inner Truth” off of Scorpio Rising. That song would be cool to play. If I could just get away with doing the hit songs that would be great. We were playing “Ultimate Authority” from the new record on the Danzig tour and that got a great response. I like playing the old tunes to be honest.
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It’s crazy to think that you have been in Danzig now nearly twice as long as John Christ yet people still think of you as “the new guy.”
Yeah, but let’s not bullshit anybody. That classic Danzig lineup is Danzig. That line up with Chuck, Eerie, and Jon. Anything after that, Glenn just took the name and we’re just these hired guns. I would never try to even compete with John Christ for any kind of role in Danzig because he’s really Danzig’s guitar player. It’s like with The Who. They’ll always have guys playing drums with them but Keith Moon will always be the drummer for The Who.
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Has being a member of Danzig for so long infiltrated your songwriting and playing style when it comes to approaching Prong?
Not as far as the songwriting goes. Glenn has a whole different method of operation. It’s very interesting. I don’t know that I’ve applied it to what I do or if I could. Al is a totally different person. Al’s even less of a musician than Glenn. These guys are artists and personas even more so than musicians. I think I’ve noticed that in myself a bit recently. I don’t really care how proficient the guitar solos are as long as they’re cool. That’s how Al is. Everything just sort of needs to be cool.
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But that’s also that old school punk and metal mentality where everything doesn’t need to be proficient and perfect. If you don’t have the feel and that raw emotion it’s not there. Iron Maiden for instance. Those guys play with so much more feel and less technical proficiency than say that dude from Dream Theater.
Exactly. I can’t listen to Dream Theater. I think those Maiden solos are pretty crazily good. They’re catchy and they’ve got a lot going for them. All this shit since we’ve had YouTube and all of this digital technology and all these guys are learning all this shit on the guitar. That’s fine but I’ve seen a lot of djent bands live and they suck. I just don’t get it. It’s like, “Hey, look at me. I’m playing a lot of notes!” It’s just boring. They can’t even get their sound together. That’s what is so great about AC/DC. That guitar sound. There’s not a hell of a lot going on but that sound has impact. These guys get up there and they’ve got shit on tape and the guitars are so distorted and tuned down that you can’t even hear anything.
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So what do you think of this trend in metal over the last decade or so where bands are tuning down so low that it just sounds like death itself.
Other than Fudgetunnel, as far as I know, I did that drop C tuning. I don’t know anybody that was going as low as Prong when we did that on Cleansing. The lowest people went was drop D. When we went in with Terry Date (producer) with the drop C tuning, he was freaking out saying, “I can’t record this! It’s too low!” and I was like well we gotta do it. When we started going down into A# on Scorpio Rising I thought it was too low and that it sounded like dog shit. For vocal range, if someone’s voice is within that realm that can help them, that’s fine. To me, like, Reign in Blood and South of Heaven, that’s in like Eb and that sounds heavier than any other records I’ve ever heard.
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Tuning down low doesn’t necessarily make it heavier.
Exactly. Tuning down low and using 8-string guitars doesn’t make you heavy. It just means that you’re trying to impress other guitar players so you guys can have little circle jerks and wank off to each other.
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What is a trend in music that you would like to see go away forever?
There’s only a couple of bands that can still pull off the emo part with the technical metal part and then the break down formula which is Killswitch Engage. They’re the only band that can still do that. If a new band comes out now and does that it just sounds so dated. It sounds more dated than Prong [laughs]. We don’t sound dated now because we’re not doing that shit [laughs].
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What is your take on the current state of metal these days?
As far as metal goes, I think people have to stop listening to In Flames and get other reference points. That’s why I’m not so excited about metal anymore because it’s really got to the point where it’s not cool anymore. I almost think if I was putting a band together now, I think it should sound like Bark at the Moon style Ozzy or something like that with another twist on it. As far as the doom rock, that stuff has got really boring. If I want to listen to that shit I’ll put on my Volume 4 record and I’m happy. I don’t need to hear the countless bearded bands with high waters that are coming out of Silverlake and Williamsburg to get my doom rock on. I’ll listen to Sabbath Vol 4.
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Of all of them, which Prong album do you feel best represents everything that Prong is about?
Of all of them, I would have to say one of the more recent ones. Like I said, with having such a large catalog, a lot of the records go into some different places. Rude Awakening was kind of like industrial metal and then there’s Beg to Differ which is like a thrash/hardcore record and then there’s Cleansing that you could almost call an alternative metal record. The recent ones have tried to put all of those things together and add some other things to it so I’d have to say either Ruining Lives or the new album. I would lean more towards the new record to be honest.
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Tommy, is there any particular band or style of music that we’d be surprised that you were a fan of?
Probably not. I don’t think it would be a stretch of the imagination for people to find out that I’m really into the Doors. I’ll listen to anything if it’s good. I like new wave music and a lot of post punk stuff. I even listen to some Top 40 music just see what’s going on out there.
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In your opinion what is the greatest metal album of all time?
Deep Purple Machine Head. Man, back when I was a kid, metal was Black Sabbath and Deep Purple. Even though I like Vol. 4 better, I would have to say Sabbath Bloody Sabbath.
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If you could play in any band for just one night who would it be and why?
Killing Joke. I don’t wish any hurt upon Geordie Walker but if that guitar position ever opens up in that band I would love to play in Killing Joke. That’s the only band I’d be interested in playing in. I’d be completely happy doing that.
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Finally, what’s in store for Prong for the rest of 2016?
We have like three tours coming up. It’s this never ending thing [laughs]. We go to Europe, we come back and do America for two months then do a couple of festivals and then we go back to Europe to do a long European tour.
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Well I’m totally looking forward to seeing Prong here in Atlanta in May. I’m looking forward to meeting you in person.
That would be cool. Maybe there will be more people there next time. We played there with Superjoint Ritual and there was like five people there.
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Thanks so much for taking the time to talk today. This was fun.
Thanks, Don. This was a good interview. I appreciate it and good luck with everything!
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