Ben Ward (Orange Goblin)

Sojo, 06/16/2004

Orange Goblin is undoubtedly one of the best and hardest-rocking bands in the scene that England ever spawned. A restless bunch that never released the same album twice, they proved that a return to basics doesn’t have to result in mediocrity. They’d just returned from an American tour supporting Thieving from the House of God, which seems to become their most successful album so far, and immediately embarked on another European tour with label mates Witchcraft and Grand Magus. Because of the practise, the Orange Goblin-show was one huge kick under the butt, an assault of hard-hitting grooves and kick-ass macho anthems that was very enthusiastically received. Still one of the most recognizable vocalists of the genre, Ben Ward gave his all, as usual. After a 90-minute show/work-out session, not even an interview could bring him down:

Man, I thought you played a swell, hard-rocking gig tonight…

Thank you very much.

It rocked really hard and of course you started off with my favorite Orange Goblin-song…

“Your World Will Hate This,” cool.

Yeah. I saw on your website that you’ve been touring like a month or so in the United States.

Yeah, five weeks.

How was it? Is it comparable to this here?

It’s a lot different, because … the way things work in America … everything is done pretty much the hard way. So we went over there, had to take a band out with us…

Lamont?

Yeah, Lamont from Boston. Great guys, great band, we had a really good time with ‘em, but … you know, it ends up being six of us in a van smaller than that (points at a small one) and with those big, long drives in America... So, you know, we had to drive from Seattle to Denver, which is a 25-hour drive. It’s hard work, and the hospitality in America … you get three beer tickets, you don’t get food…

You’re shitting me.

No, that’s just the way it goes, unless you’re lucky. But we knew what to expect, so we went out there fully prepared for it being a lot of hard work, but it was fun of course, we had a good time and the five weeks flew by. We also had good crowds, good responses, sold a lot of merchandise, I think it was a real success.

What was it like to play at Emissions from the Monolith?

That was great. It’s a four-day stoner rock-festival pretty much, just heavy rock and doom and there were a lot of great people there. You walk in on a Saturday and there’s Wino over there, and Vic Griffin from Pentagram, Ron Holzner from Trouble and Dave Chandler from Saint Vitus, everyone’s hanging out and there’s just a really good atmosphere, really good people, plus the beer … we had some good times.

If you like beer, today must’ve been special, playing half a mile from the Stella Artois-brewery…

Yeah yeah, that was nice. (laughs)

I check out some sites on a regular basis, one of them being Stonerrock.com, and people on the message board were so enthusiastic about The Hidden Hand playing there and most people said you guys delivered the goods as well…

Yeah, it was good. We were lucky enough to have a day off on a Saturday at Emissions. When we got there, The Hidden Hand played, Debris Inc. played, which is Dave Chandler and Ron Holzner, and they got Wino up and did a couple of Saint Vitus songs, that was really cool. We was lucky enough, we played five shows with Debris Inc., and Jimmy Bower from Eyehategod played drums and hanging out with those guys for five days, that’s just awesome.

Uh, about the last album – Thieving from the House of God - … how’s the reception been this far?

It’s been amazing! I haven’t seen a bad review yet, it’s been really good, you know, and it’s cool, because the last album sort of split our fan base down the middle a bit. A lot of people liked it and a lot of people didn’t.

Well, I thought it was a good album, but a lot of people seemed to prefer the stuff you did on The Big Black.

Yeah, we just tried to do something different, and in hindsight, we made the mistake to try and distance ourselves too much from the stoner rock-scene.

On purpose?

Yeah, I think we wanted to show people there’s a lot more to this band than just, like, the obvious influences. We wanted to show them we were also into punk rock, New Wave of British Heavy Metal and stuff like that. It confused a lot of people, so with Thieving from the House of God, we just said “Let’s go back and do this how we did it in the first place” you know, and enjoy ourselves and it was great. I think that’s the reason that this album is so successful at the moment. It’s got a little bit of everything of Orange Goblin, it’s the first four albums rolled into one.

Yeah indeed. You recorded the album with Billy Anderson (Clutch, High on Fire, Neurosis, Sleep)…

Yeah that was our second time, he did The Big Black as well. That was the thing with this album … we’d written all the songs and we wanted to do something with the best sound we could get, and everybody says The Big Black has the best sound of our albums, so the obvious thing to do was Billy Anderson to get to work with us again. He came over and did a fucking great job, as he always does.

I was checking out your website a while ago, reading the tour diaries and stuff, and I also saw you’ve been touring with bands ranging from the Queens of the Stone Age, to Nebula, Alice Cooper and Danzig. Is there any band in particular you got a kick out of?

Obviously the Alice Cooper-tour was great. He’s a legend, you know, and we all grew up listening to him, so that was great.

Did you get the chance to meet him?

Yeah, yeah, he invited us to his dress room the last night, to hang out and have a couple of beers with him, which was nice. But Danzig’s cool as well… We’ve been lucky, as we’ve never played or toured with bands we didn’t get along with… everybody’s been super cool. This tour at the moment, with Grand Magus and Witchcraft, is perfect. We know Grand Magus from when we toured two years ago, we only met the Witchcraft guys yesterday, but they’re also super cool and nice guys to hang out with. I think it’s gonna be a good tour this time, it seems that it works out really well, because Witchcraft just got a new album out, we also have a new album out, the Grand Magus album hasn’t been out too long. So, three bands like these on one bus, goin’ around Europe, it’s great.

Last time you played here, you were a 5-piece band…

Yeah, Pete O’Malley is no longer with the band.

Isn’t it difficult to start over again, if you’re used to having two guitar players? Did it change the way you wrote songs?

We thought it may do. Pete is still one of our best friends, but when he left the band, I think it was the most natural progression we could’ve taken as a band. It sort of breathed new life into us and we never ever considered getting another guitar player again. As a four-piece it seems to work so well, it sounds exactly the way we always wanted to sound. It’s perfect at the moment. It’s a progression, because it gives Joe (Hoare) a little bit more freedom with his guitar, it gives Martyn (Millard) more freedom with the bass and, you know, everyone we see says “actually you guys sound better with a four-piece.”

You’ve been touring in the US for five weeks, and now you’re doing a month of gigs in Europe… has Orange Goblin become profitable in the meantime?

No, we all has to quit our jobs before we went to America, we were working shitty jobs like driving vans and delivering upholstery supplies…

So you gotta look for a new job when you get back then…

Yeah, when we go home, we gotta find a new one. None of us is getting any younger and we all got our responsibilities at home, so…. Chris (Turner) is getting married in September, I’ve got a girlfriend and a child at home and I’ve got mortgage to pay. Unfortunately, Orange Goblin doesn’t pay for us to sort of live off it, but we do alright out of it, we get some royalty checks now and then and we get as much support from Rise Above as possible, which is great. So, I can’t complain.

What about the future plans? What’s going to happen to Orange Goblin after the 15th of July?

We got some shows in England booked, doing like a big Hell’s Angels festival at Stratford-Upon-Avon… and uh, playing with Chuck Berry, which is gonna be cool.

Really?

Yeah, and there are a lot of other things in the pipeline, but we take it as it comes and we’re not gonna make plans to do some extensive touring again before the end of this year. We got our jobs to do and we’ll sit down and regroup and have a think about our plans. We’re under no obligations from any record label anymore…

Was this the last one for Rise Above?

This one wasn’t even officially… we never even signed a contract. Our contract was up after Coup de Grace, but we wrote these songs, Rise Above liked ‘em, so they put it out. So, it’s like, the better the devil you know. It all worked out pretty good.

Uh, I read somewhere you guys are soccer fans…

Yeah!

Did you see the match, France-England (England was ahead 0-1 for more than fifty minutes, but then Zidane scored twice in added time)?

Yeah I did. (laughs)

And?

Actually, a few years ago I would’ve gotten violent over something like that, but the other night, I sat there and I watched it and all I could do was laugh. It was so typical England. They played so well for ninety minutes and at the end I was thinking “Two minutes ago, we were that far removed from beating France, probably the best team in the world” and ninety seconds later were 2-1 down. So, it got wrong, I’m still confident that England will qualify for that group. We got Switzerland tomorrow (they won 3-0) and then we play Croatia and I think we’ll beat both of those and go on to the next stage.

Let’s stay optimistic!

Exactly, yeah.

Hey, thanks for your time, I hope you had a great night here…

Yeah, it’s been great coming back to Belgium, we had a great time when we were here last time, we’ve always had a good time in Belgium, no matter where it is … and tonight, there was an awesome response. It’s been two years since the last time and people turned up and were enthusiastic, so I’m grateful that they still support Orange Goblin.

Thanks.

No problem.