Chris Bubacz (Kill 'Em All Engineer)

[Music] Popcars! Welcome to Speaking Destroy Episode 41. Speaking Destroy is a podcast about all things Metallica, and I'm your host, Ryan J. Downey. This episode I am talking to the man who recorded and mixed the first ever record from Metallica, Kill 'em All. But before we jump into that, I would just like to ask you, please, if you could leave a five-star rating in a nice little review and Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to Speaking Destroy, it is a huge help in terms of visibility and people discovering this show and hearing what we've been doing. So if you've been enjoying it, please do so. We've also got a Facebook page with a nice little Facebook community. We've been building in there, a little Facebook group. You can follow Speaking Destroy on Twitter, on Instagram. There's a YouTube channel where I've got some cool little playlists and deep cuts and originals of songs Metallica is covered and other bands covering Metallica and some other fun things I've curated there. So without any further ado, let's get into this interview. We are talking about the making of Kill 'em All. This is Speak and Destroy. [Music] Tell me a little bit about your background in upbringing and how you got into music and how that led to you getting your start as an engineer. Well, let's see if I can summarize it as quickly as possible. Yeah, I started out as a drummer back in grammar school and I studied drumming all through grammar school. And then I went to college and when I got into the college, I studied classical percussion instruments and continued my drumming. But at the same time, once I got into that school, I discovered that there was a recording studio there. And one of the first sound recording technology programs in the country at the time. And I got invited down to play on the session and I just fell in love with the idea of working in the sound booth and recording. And after my freshman year at the college changed my major and sort of all went on from there. What sort of music are you listening to back then? Yeah, well, I was really listening to like Chicago Blood Sweat and Tears, Chick-Ree-ya, Mavish and Warpest drumming. Those were my kind of my. It's a very musical progressive kind of complicated stuff with great melodies. Yes, yes. And great drummers and great guitarists and all those bands. So. Yeah, so that's what I was listening to and kind of aspiring to at the time. How did you come to work with the rods? Well, my older brother was a guitarist and he actually played in a band with the drummer from the rods, Carl Kennedy. I had to know Carl since I was a drummer and he was a drummer and we kind of became friends in a way. And when Carl discovered I was at a college and the college had a recording studio and which was the rise, was looking for some place to do their first record. I invited him up and their record actually became my senior year recording project. It was amazing. When I was in high school, the guitar player for my band at the time did a music video for us as his senior year audio visual project. It's nice how that works out. Yes, yes. So they got, you know, didn't cost them much of anything and I got a chance to really learn on the job, so to speak. And that record actually was picked up. I was originally released by primal records, which was their record label, I think at the time. That was picked up by Arista and released through that label. And that's a big deal. I mean, Arista was a big label for a long time. F time. Yeah, it was pretty big deal. Yes. How did that change things in terms of, you know, kind of getting your start, you know, doing this as a career? It really didn't. I graduated from college. I worked in the audio media department at the college for a year after I graduated. I came home to my upstate New York town of El Maira and worked as a live sound engineer at the performing arts center there for about a year. And then I got invited to be the chief engineer at a studio in Rochester called Music America. Well, at the time it was called Barrett Ali, but we changed it to Music America recording after a couple of years. And I moved to Rochester and that's how I sort of got involvement with Metallica. Yeah, it's interesting to think, you know, you were a couple of degrees of separation away from Clive Davis. And yet it's still, you know, worlds away the way that the music business works, especially back then. So how did you come into contact with Johnny Z? Was he the introduction to Metallica? He was, he had a band had come to ours to the studio. I was the chief engineer at the studio band had come to the studio called Man of War. Yes. They didn't work with me. They work with another engineer. And I guess there was, I wasn't aware of this at the time, but I guess there was some kind of friction between the rods who I had recorded and Man of War. I don't really know. But they didn't much like me. And when it came time for Johnny to find a studio to record Metallica. And they said, well, you really should come to Music America. But whatever you do, don't work with this guy named Chris Bullratch. And John couldn't remember anyone else's name at the studio, but mine. So when he got there, he asked for me. Brilliant. That's what they call an own goal these days. A cell phone. That's great. So, you know, so Johnny comes and he asks for you. And what does he tell you exactly about this band he has? Well, that's the thing. I mean, I wasn't listening. You know, I had done, you know, a few records for the ride. So I knew about having that music, but I really wasn't listening to it. I never heard of the band. I didn't know anything about him. He said he was bringing a band that he had just signed from San Francisco. The guys were great. They came into the studio, but my God, I guess they must have just come off the road, but it was, it was a mess at first. You know, guitar strings, no guitar strings, bass pickups did work. Amplifier speakers are blown. The drum heads are beat to hell. I mean, it was a real mess. We all kind of sat around and said, what do we need to do here and the guys in the band and myself and the producer at the time, this guy Paul Curcio. You know, we suggested that we needed to get some things for the recording before he could start. So we approached Johnny and said we need a budget for data, data, and he said, OK. And I mean, it wasn't a lot of money. It was guitar strings and drum heads, but in getting the amplifier speakers fixed, but it made a huge difference because when they came into the studio, all their equipment was in pretty much disarray. And we needed to spend, you know, it's their first recording. I think it was the first time they've been in a studio as a band. They're here from, I think they came from San Francisco. They're in, I mean, it was tough on them, but they really seemed to rise to the occasion. Yeah, they drove across the country in a U-Haul and then we're put up in anthrax's rehearsal room where they were rehearsing the song to that record. So your first meeting with them was actually in the studio then. Correct. What do you recollect about kind of your first impression of each of the four guys? You know, the tell you the truth, I really don't remember that much about it other than they all seemed like really nice guys. I noticed off the top that it seemed like the drummer Lars was going to be involved with the production aspects of the record. And just alongside him where behind him would be the guitarist. James was the original guitarist. The Kurt came in, just playing lead guitar. He didn't really head back with the band for very long. But they're all nice guys, very nervous. They seemed really interested in this whole thing. And I I had a pretty good feeling about the whole thing, other than I didn't know anything about their music. I didn't know what kind of sound they were looking for, but luckily, after talking with Lars and James a little bit, I mean, believe it or not, some of our musical influences were similar. - Oh, I definitely believe it. - Yeah. - Yeah, they were looking for a good representation of their sound as best we could in the studio. And we're under a lot of, I mean, the equipment wasn't very good. We had a very small selection of microphones. I mean, it was, I wouldn't call it a state of the art studio. I think we were a 16 track, if I'm not mistaken, it was an MCI console and an MCI tape machine. So it wasn't, you know, what you would be considered at the top of the line, but it all worked. - And you also had pretty considerable time constraint, right? Like, what was the total time that they were actually in their tracking, you think? - I mean, you know, it seemed like they were there for quite a period of time when I looked back at it, but I just saw something online. It looks like they were there maybe a month. - Yeah, it probably feels like a year, especially at that time in your life, and when you're living and breathing that. And yeah, and part of it, you know, and I would say not to, you know, you're obviously a very nice and modest person. I wouldn't say to yourself too short on not being that familiar with them because they weren't outside of the very niche, extremely underground scene, and they weren't really known. And as far as trying to figure out what they were going for with the record, I mean, they were unbeknownst to everyone involved, I'm sure, essentially inventing a new style of music on that record. Did you get an opportunity at any point early in that process to hear the demo they had made in their life, so another? - No, I didn't hear really anything. And the first thing I heard was what we brought up through the mics. - Oh, that's probably good, yeah, in terms of approaching it, freshen everything. Now, this might be a little bit too much minutia, so don't feel bad if you don't remember, but there's been some discussion that, you know, as you noted, Kirk was very new to the band, and Dame Mustaine, who had played on all the demos, and been on the band before that, was a big songwriter, you know, Kirk came in as the lead player, and there was some discussion about whether he should be playing Mustaine's leads, note for note, whether he should write all new leads. And my understanding from what I've read since then is that it ended up being kind of an amalgamation of the two, that it was sort of the soloist kind of started with the same phrasing that the Mustaine version's got, and then Kirk did his own thing, passed that. Do you remember any of that kind of conversation? What I've read, it was Johnny Z, that was really kind of advocating more for the police do what was on the demo from the other guy. - Yeah, no, I didn't hear the demo, so I didn't really know, and no, I don't remember any specific conversation about that. All I do remember is, and this is not any knock against Kirk, but since he didn't really, he didn't have a lot of time to learn those parts, there was a lot of punching in on his guitar solos. I mean, every four to eight bars, we'd be dropping in to get those solos right. So I don't know what the story was, but it took a lot of meticulous, and that even sometimes adding different tracks of different solos together. So it was a pretty intricate time for me. - And that's with tape, that's not Pro Tools. (laughing) Blending solos together, yeah. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. All the edits we did in the mixing was on tape. We didn't do any multi-track editing as far as splicing the tape, but when we got to mixing, we did a lot of editing of different takes together in that type of thing. - Yeah, and to Kirk's credit, as you noted, he was new and it sounds like there was some pressure externally about even what exactly he was supposed to be doing. - Yeah, I didn't feel that in the studio. I think they were really good. I think Johnny was good with whatever issues he might have with that, he either discussed it with Paul Kersio, who was quote unquote the producer, or he discussed it with the band, and they didn't really get me that involved with it. So I kind of just was focused on making sure we got stuff to tape and just moving forward. And how was the workload distributed between you and Paul? 'Cause I feel like your name comes up more often, frankly, in terms of being in the room, but for people who don't really understand how that works. You're the engineer, he's the producer, but how did that boil down in this specific situation? - Yeah, I don't really want to say much about that. I mean, he was a great guy. I think he passed away while back. - Oh, that's great. - Yeah, he's a great guy. I don't think he knew much about heavy metal music and as I really didn't know that much about it either, but yeah, I mean, he sort of came in and would listen to things after we had spent a pretty good amount of time getting sounds and getting stuff down to tape. But he was definitely involved, but I think from an older type of old school producer, as opposed to what you would consider a producer today who might be a songwriter, he might be a musician, he might be several different things and perform several different functions during a project. Paul was sort of like kind of oversaw what was going on and made sure we ate our dinner and we showed up for the sessions and that kind of stuff. - Yeah, the old school producer of five and performances and arrangements maybe, or like you said, these days, even in rock, a lot of times the producer is, he's the engineer, he's the mixer, he's playing guitar. Yeah, it's exactly. - Yeah, and I was gonna ask you about the, what sort of gear they had and everything and you got into that a little bit already. Yeah, I imagine it was pretty road weathered at that point 'cause they were. - Yeah, I think they just come off the road, which is great, a while away to go, but shape and I wasn't really used to dealing with that. So when I said, okay, this is what we need to do to get to where we need to be and we need drum heads, we need guitar strings, we need the speakers on the bass amp or blown, which I says, you know, this is not, you know, tell us, or one of those bands where the bass is supposed to be all distorted, we'd like to have a really good bass sound on this if we could. So they all agree and just took us a little while to get that all sort of going. - Yeah, first. And you mentioned Lars' role, you know, on the production side, you know, right there from the very first album, he was already a much bigger part of the creative process in the behind the scenes activity than, you know, a lot of drummers that are, you know, a lot of times with rock records, especially the drummers there for a few days, cutting the drums early in the process and then that's kind of it. - No, he was, I mean, he was involved with every aspect of everything, including helping me actually physically mix the record. - Wow. - We had no automation. So to turn certain, you know, we had multiple parts on tracks, 'cause I think it was, like I said, I think it was only 16 tracks. So we might have guitar lead on a TomTom track or something that wasn't playing at the time. So he physically had to turn on and off a lot of the TomTom tracks that we had recorded where there wasn't anything going on there and other things like that. So he was very involved. And, you know, he was the only one that knew where those things needed to really come on and go off 'cause he played the parts. So he was sitting behind the desk with me almost the whole time we were actually physically mixing the tracks. - Yeah, and we've seen, you know, in later years, I'd be curious if this was the case during Killamall. So he's actually sitting in the room with Kirk as he's doing his leads and they're kind of talking through the leads and what they're going for. Lars has given him ideas and stuff like that. I'm always thought that was pretty cool. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think I don't remember if he was in the room or not to tell you the truth when we did the leads. I remember Johnny C being in there. (laughing) - Amazing. Yeah, which, you know, yeah, especially for rock and metal bands and a lot of them following the template that Metallica set down, the last thing you won in the room is the label guy. (laughing) - Exactly. - Which I would imagine is something that Metallica shut down after Killamall. - Probably so. - What do you remember about tracking the vocals? And I realize you weren't familiar with the demo, which again, I think was probably for the better for everyone in terms of getting what you captured. But his James's vocal style head was noticeably different by the time they did Killamall from prior to that. Was that something he worked on there or did he kind of come in already knowing what he wanted to do? - I think he came in already know what he wanted to do because I don't remember a tremendous amount of discussion in the studio about this data, the other thing. So. Yeah, I think he must have come in with an idea of what he wanted. We recorded if I can remember correctly recorded most of his vocals in the live studio. Oh wow It wasn't it wasn't that big big a studio where we did the yeah, so so to explain to you real quickly because I think it's it's maybe Important please. The recording studio itself was in the basement of a social club in Rochester, New York in a abandoned closed Social club in the basement and it was actually the bowling alley part of the social club which they had we had gutted and built this studio in wow and there was a live room and a small overdub booth and That was it as far as the recording area, but we could access the social club From the live room of the recording studio and the social club had two very big ball rooms with very high ceilings wood floors, plaster walls Really high ceilings and that's where we set the drums up in one of those ball rooms and we ran Audio snakes from where the drums are set up down into the control room and You don't get that sense from the recording because I'm afraid the four tracks of room ambience that I meticulously recorded To capture what I thought was one of my was one of the better drum sounds I had heard in a while Which wasn't anything to do with me or really Lars? It was just that we had these mics out in a room that sounded really really good. I was gonna say that ball room sounds awesome That's like that sounds like you know, Led Zeppelin drums But by the time we got to mix it I had to slowly and and really to my Dischargement I guess or was I had to race those tracks so by the time because we needed them for overdubs And we need them for this that way by the time we came to mix There were no tracks and at that time I didn't I didn't understand the technique of feeding The tracks back out into a live room like they do today or or I did subsequently years later in my recording career So we just lost them. They were gone and It really changed the drum sound I think and fact I remember Johnny Z Coming into the control room and and when the room mics were turned off He said that sounded like I had Might up a disco Because I was all just the close all the close mics no overheads no room ambience, but once you brought the ambience and it sounded like a really nice Pretty big drum sound You know and you mentioned the technique that you would learn later about sort of feeding the ambience the room noise back in there But but really I mean it sounds like the The biggest issue was a technical limitation that was pretty common of the day and especially for a Low-budget rock record in Rochester, New York Wow, so yeah, this is this is this is the place for these kind of details We're in it. I love it. Of course I have to ask you about Anastasia pulling teeth the Cliff Burton bass solo that's on the record aside from the fact that it's an unusual song choice within Really any genre, you know for there to be a base instrumental and it's so you know iconic It's so readily identified with clips persona his energy only in recent years has Robert Rillo the current bass player Actually even started performing that live. It was kind of like you know sacred and and untouched for a long time I'm sure there's some demystifying which is totally fine because that's also what we do here, but I'm very curious for whatever you remember about Tracking that and even sort of the conversation of it up. Yeah, we're gonna We're gonna do this song that's just the bass solo Well had to be weird It was in one way it was in that in another I had worked with a Buffalo band called talus Mm-hmm and the bass player was this guy Billy Sheen. Oh, wow, okay. I knew I knew the name talus and I couldn't connect to there Yeah, from Mr. Big and David Roth and yeah, sure His original band was was talus and they're on a buffalo and He had come into the studio of the band to come into the studio. So I had been familiar with bass solos and You know he had a very elaborate Bass set up with you know, I think we use like seven or eight mics and all kinds of direct boxes and all kinds of weird things So when I came time for this although I wasn't Prepared exactly for what was gonna happen. I kind of got an idea you know I had experienced something like that before so I wasn't to Surprise by I guess it's a yeah, that's a nice bit of serendipity, you know, Billy Sheen, you know being right one of the most legendary rock basis That yeah to have had that experience before Cliff Burton walks in your door But one more thing I want to say about Cliff his bass his bass pickups did not work And or at least one of them was was was not working when we first came in because when he first plugged him in I was like whoa I mean there was I couldn't get any low end I couldn't get anything out of the bass and we started to look at what the problems could be we found blown speakers We found is the pickups were not working properly so we had to get the bass fixed and working properly before we could do any recording and that was the Rick and Bach Yes, do you remember sort of and again? Don't don't feel bad because I know it was a long time ago, but do you remember you know what your impression was of of Cliff with the bell bottoms and the You know he was such a unique Non-conforming sort of individual even within a group of unique individuals Yeah, you know, I don't I have to say I'm sorry, but I don't I mean they all I don't remember anything That unique about Cliff as far as being different from the other guys You know he seemed very Excited to be in the studio and interested about doing the recording and very Involved making sure you know he was playing the parts correctly Don't remember either the LAR interacted with most pretty new heads on the house constantly and he's the most the most talkative I think all three of those other guys were pretty shy Especially when we played tennis with him. Why it was there. You know his father was a tennis pro Yeah, I was very interested so I can tennis why I was there But that's who I've and and then of course James after that. I mean that seemed to be the way things flowed and Yeah, yeah, I've seen interviews where Lars has said You know, he was a highly ranked tennis this and that in Denmark and then they moved to California And he's like I wasn't even in the top 10 on my blog That's so cool. I mean that had to be awesome and So the mixing stage which you've talked about a little bit already so that was was really you and Lars and I imagine Johnny Z probably Barged in there a few times He barged in at the end of the mixes to hear them and make sure They were what everyone wanted but yeah Lars and And James were around for the most of it. Lars being the one that was you know pretty hands-on This is skipping ahead just a little bit, but The following year they put out whip lash as a 12-inch single and there's a remix on there the special neck brick remix Do you remember anything about that or it being different or I don't think I I Mean I tie the truth. I don't think I did that remix almost wonder if it's actually even remixed Or if it's just something they slapped on there. I don't know I mean I certainly wasn't Done at the at our studio or with me involved that I remember unless we did it Yeah, unless we did it during the actual sessions. Yeah, that's what I was gonna say Maybe it was an alternate mix that was From I think that's probably because you're credited with it. Yeah, yeah, interesting So the record comes out, you know, obviously that you know the band leaves the studio and and as legend has it Johnny Z takes out a second mortgage to finance printing up 1500 copies Yeah, at what point did it come across your radar? That this was something special in terms of the impact that it that it went on to have because obviously it was a slow build and You know record distributors didn't want to carry it and her metal was dominating the airwaves and you know When did you start to get a sense that? Wow people are you know this records growing and this band is growing You know I have to be honest with you Ryan I was So involved with my career at that time it was like the guys came in we did a record They left I did go see them a couple of times when they came back into the area to perform with I think they were opening for Raven yeah, the kill them all for one tour. Yeah, yeah and that was About it. I wish I had something more interesting or exciting to say that was about it and then I didn't really went on to do You know several other records for Johnny Z at that point he kind of have made That studio his base for his other bands and I don't remember the names of them all but there was several that came in and You know kind of got involved with doing all that and then a couple years later I moved to the New York City area and got involved with a studio called Bear Tracks Recording and really got into a whole different realm of music. I worked with Lou Graham and Ace Freely and David Clayton Thomas, Yain E. Those things. Oh yeah you worked on the Freely's Comet record, right? Yeah and so I kind of and then you know Johnny was still kind of involved because he was involved with Ace as band obviously and he had come into the studio and the last I remember him saying at one point in time is you know we're probably gonna do another at some point in time we'd like you to do another record with Metallica and that was we never talked about it again and then they went on to work with like Bob Rock and all these you know he's really big-time producers that I knew they were never gonna come back to yeah well and they did and they did those next few in Denmark they went back to you know the Lars' homeland you know I actually did a little bit of homework on some of your credits and yeah I saw Lou Graham from Forner in there and I remember seeing the Freely's Comet up gotten to interview Ace a couple times over the years he's always funny fun yeah and then yeah some of the trash bands know why I actually you may already know this you may not but I have on my desk I literally just got it in the mail yesterday the new issue of decibel magazine it's a easily the best metal magazine out there and they do a Hall of Fame every month where they take a classic metal record and they interview you know everyone who performed on it and you know and Justice for all was in there and Slayer Rain and Blood and this month the Hall of Fame entry is Fisuala Metal congrats yeah that's I mean you know yeah that's you know they call them the Big Fourth Rache and that's that's literally you were involved in half of the Big Forest debuts that's pretty awesome they were they were another great bunch of guys who was equipment didn't work and he did the same thing with them of course recorded them at pyramid recording in Ithaca New York which was another studio that I was working out of along with the one in Rochester and and that was that was quite the producer this Carl Kennedy the drummer from the rods had asked me to do the record with him and that's sort of how that all got got started about three years ago now Metallica reissue Killamall in a big collector's box you know they own all their all their masters now and they're reissuing every record one by one actually sent me a copy of that was my next question I hope they gave you one they were very they've been really yes they they sent me a nice copy that's correct that's awesome what what did you think crack them at open and go into all that's pretty amazing even my wife was like wow that's you know that's that's pretty nice I mean all that stuff they included and the different recordings and it's all on LP I mean it was a nicely done I thought it was really really nicely done I was impressed with it yeah I've loved each of those that they've done thus far I mean it's really a treasure trove for super fans to take a deep dive into yeah charge of all all that but whoever did it did a really nice nice job I would guess that Lars probably overseas at all I know that he's the the archivist in the band he's the guy that's got the the you know a figurative or literal vault full of flyers and tour programs and itineraries and all that sort of stuff and you mentioned this but yeah you did several records with the rods back in the day and then where did things kind of ped for you you know after that like you know as you said you went into Graham and ace and all that stuff and then what are you doing these days well these days I'm I own my own company it's called Kazowski Swiss audio systems we build monitor studio loudspeakers for producers engineers and recording artists in the film broadcast industries and pretty much all over the world in this what I've focused on since really probably night let's see when one would I that I start that probably 2010 2011 I formed that company with two other industry people Mikazowski and Larry Swiss and that's what I do I make sure that that is this phase a flow and we've just expanded our product line from one model to four and we've got products all over the world except in Russia there's the only place we don't have our products at this point in time but we're trying and that kind of takes some most of my my efforts to tell you the truth I got married back in 1992 we don't have any kids but I've got a wife and a household and all the girls with that and that's really kind of sounds kind of boring but that's no way it sounds excellent and I'll be sure to include some links to your company in the great yeah yeah that that was a real I mean kind of I'm probably a natural outgrowth of what I was doing you know once I got married I didn't really want to spend too much more time in the recording studio I have to be honest with you I started to think there was maybe a life outside of the studio since up to that point I had really immersed myself in that pretty much only that and so that's what changed for me and I'm glad I did it to tie the truth and you know I went on to manage a couple other studios sound on sound recording in New York legacy recording in New York I mean there were all pretty big New York studios at the time there's they're not in existence any longer because as you know the recording scene in New York City kind of dried up yeah how the recording scene everywhere everyone everyone's making their record on the laptop and their you know bass players living room I have a I have a semi funny story for you you know I know you worked with the bands no white yeah so I was gosh I guess it's been ten almost fifteen years ago but I was speaking on a panel once at a music industry conference in Indianapolis which I was actually my hometown but I didn't I've lived in California for the last 20 years but I've been anyway I was back there and I was on this panel and you know it was all it was me and four or five other people that worked specifically in sort of a metal area of the business and we're talking about the future of metal and this and that and I got on some tangent about how you know the thrash movement in the 80s was so exciting and major labels got interested and all of a sudden all these bands are getting signed and it was really great and really healthy but then it becomes too much and there's an over abundance of bands and let you know it's more quantity than quality and everybody's getting a major deal and just off the top of my head I said you know all the sudden bands like snow white are getting signed to major labels and after the panel is over and you know people are coming and talking to us and you know kids are giving me their demo and things like that this larger gentleman approaches me and says hey my name's Ian I was in snow white I was like what are the chances in that room of like 50 people that one of them was gonna be the guitarist of snow white but then he just but then he just started laughing and he was like hey man I totally agree with you and and then we had like a really awesome pleasant conversation for 10 or 15 minutes but it's just like what what are the chances man like did I just that I just conjured this guy by his little juice did they do anything else besides that album I know that they yeah I know they did a couple records I know that at one point they were on roadrunner okay at one point they were on enigma oh Jesus yeah yeah so yeah they they were kicking around for a bit and they were they were a cool band it was just they literally just came to mind because I was like thinking of kind of that middle tier of thrash metal bands that started getting picked up by bigger labels and where it was like okay this is this is gonna you know the bubbles gonna burst here for everyone well Johnny certainly had a lot of them I know it was that band TT quick yeah yeah yeah he had he had he definitely had a lot of them and yeah you know I'm actually in touch with Johnny I need to have them on the podcast he stole my list well dude this has been awesome I can't thank enough and it certainly doesn't hurt that you're well spoken in polite not always the case in the world of rock well I appreciate it I really do have brought back some some good memories yeah and I would say as a as a last question to sort of wrap up what do you think it is a about Killamall, where it still holds up today. You know, I mean, there's still playing, seeking destroy and whiplash and hit the lights and all these songs are still part of their life set as they're out there, one of the biggest rock bands in the world if not the biggest. And then that record is still, it still sells every week, even at a time when records aren't selling. - Yeah, I know. It's really interesting and I really can't put my finger on it. I guess, you know, it captured a time and a place well enough to, you know, keep it alive for people in the future. And, but certainly, I mean, the guys were certainly very emphatic about what they were doing. So, you know, maybe that was almost impossible not to capture, you know, because the recording itself is not very, very good, you know, the actual recording quality. But the playing was, I guess, something different and whatever we did to capture that, translated well enough through vinyl for people to get the idea. I mean, you know, they always say that's a rather see a van live that I'm record and that's even the case with Mattel. But maybe for some reason that recording captured something that was part of what they do live. I don't know. - I think it really did. I think it energy and density and yeah, it's, you know, a lot of important seminal influential records and multiple genres fit that same description of, you know, well, it wasn't the best studio. We didn't have enough time with the right gear or enough money, but it just, you know, the magic's in the grooves. It just everything came together and right place, right time, lighting in a bottle and everyone who was involved ended up making something great unbeknownst to themselves at the time. - To most of them. - That's true. - Yeah. And then think about how many records that had every advantage in everything going for it that no one remembers, you know? - Yeah, it's strange. I mean, I believe it or not, I still have, I still have certain people that I meet that still say to me, you know, the Kill and Ball. When they find out I was involved with the record that it was important to them. And so I, that's good. That's a good thing. - Absolutely, it's good. It's fantastic. - I appreciate you thinking of me and giving me a call, Ryan. I really do. It's great. - Yeah, likewise. (upbeat music) - That does it for this episode of Speaking Destroy. You can check out the show notes to learn more about Chris and his company. You can follow me on Twitter @RyanDowney on Instagram @superheroHQ. You can also find me on Facebook at RyanJDowney. Speaking Destroy is part of the PopCurse podcast network. As always, you guys have been great. And I've been RyanJDowney.