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An Interview with Eric Gottesman of Everything Goes Cold
Posted: Sunday, November 08, 2009
By: Lola Babalon
Writer

Everything Goes Cold is the newest project of Eric Gottesman, previously of such acts as See Colin Slash, Deathline International, and Psyclon Nine. Combining mechanical humor, classic coldwave aggression and cutting edge electronics, the project synthesizes the best of Gottesman's work over the past decade. Recently signed to Chicago's Bit Riot Records, Everything Goes Cold are gearing up to unleash the full-length follow up to 2008's Prepare to Be Refrigerated EP later this year. Speaking to ReGen, Gottesman answers some burning questions about refrigeration, destruct-o-bots, and the inspiration behind Everything Goes Cold vs. General Failure.

Explain for us the inspiration behind the fridge robot logo.

Gottesman: He came to my house and ate my toaster. I agreed to let him be our mascot after he'd spent 10 minutes staring me down and scraping his pincers against the areas where his nipples would be. It was all very unsettling, and I'd appreciate it if you didn't bring it up again.

You threaten, 'Prepare to be refrigerated.' What exactly does refrigeration entail?

Gottesman: Well, you see, when a bag of cold cuts and an open jar of mayonnaise love each other very much, sometimes they listen to industrial music.

Did you record that dirtiest of all dirty words, a 'concept' album?

Gottesman: I thought the dirtiest of dirty words was 'Deathkey.' It's not totally a concept album, but there are things that go together. 'Abort,' 'Retry,' 'Ignore' and 'Fail' are all 'personal' songs that connect to my tangible life,and sort of help set up a solid ground for the less realistic ones. The album has a story, too, but the story is being told by crazy people, so it's not necessarily cogent. It is my hope that people will attempt to make sense of it after they hear it and go completely mad in doing so. Not the romanticized H.P. Lovecraft kind of 'going mad,' either. More like the 'paranoid about the government planting psychic bugs in my cat's vomit to spy on me when I shower in Kool-Aid' kind of going mad. Like you get from listening to Caustic.

And have you, in reality, harnessed the powers of darkness to destroy us?

Gottesman: No, it is you who has truly destroyed yourself, for you see, the real destruct-o-bot was inside you all along.

Do you have anything special planned for the full length release?

Gottesman: Yes, yes I do. The special edition will be full of fridgey goodness. So far, we've planned a comic book in the works with art by Stitchmind (who designed the fridge), a USB stick with all new music and other digital stuff and whatever else we think of to cram in to it. I'm really big on special editions in general, but in the current environment of value-added content and new digital media blah blah blah, I think the best way to put out an album is to make something really great for the people who care enough about it to pay more, which will compensate for the sales we're losing to downloads or whatever.

The EP has a secret message in the CD text. Will you continue that with the album?

Gottesman: Yes, and they will both compliment the comic. You'll probably need to do a little research and possibly download some software to read it, but if you have both the album and the EP especially, it should be interesting enough to be worth your while.

Will the album also be full of subliminal messages and backwards masking to corrupt your fans, or at least urge them to give Everything Goes Cold all of their organs and minivans?

Gottesman: The subliminal message will be 'listen to this album.' It's very meta.

Since you're by default a member of every band ever created, do you find it hard to find time to relax? What other bands are currently harnessing your madcap musical antics?

Gottesman: I've actually been doing my best to reduce the number of bands I appear in, mostly in the interests of focusing more on Everything Goes Cold. This year I think I've only been in four and a half: Everything Goes Cold, XP8, Caustic, Unter Null and then a guest appearance with Grendel at Kinetik, which, by the way, was a fantastic festival, and you should go in 2010. Maybe next year I'll just jump on stage at every show I attend and grab whatever instrument or microphone is handy. I'm sure that won't irritate anybody in the slightest!

You've recently signed to Bit Riot records. How did that come about?

Gottesman: Magic! Well, I've known Sean Payne from Cyanotic for a long time, and he's been a very forceful figure in getting guitars back in to industrial music the way that we remember them, so when it came time to look for a label, my immediate thought was 'I should go where Cyanotic is.' They also put out the fantastic full-length by Left Spine Down, Fighting for Voltage, and after I hung out with them in Chicago last year, I was really impressed with their ideas about how things should be done right now. The bigger guys, and of course I'm really talking about Metropolis here, have a pretty mechanical way of operating that works fabulously for some bands, especially those doing more club-oriented stuff, but I didn't think they were well equipped to help me do the unusual things I want to do with the special edition and our various world domination schemes. OK, and they didn't want us, but that's neither here nor there. And many of the smaller guys don't put enough value on traditional marketing outlets and media. Even if traditional media ignores us 99.99 percent of the time, I think ignoring them is like admitting defeat, and the .01 percent may mean a lucrative licensing deal or a great tour opportunity that pays for the rest of the effort. Also, I like being able to say I'm signed to a label that's materially associated with a label that theoretically represents a continuation of a label that had a bunch of my favorite bands signed to it in the '80s. When I started working on the label deal, I had a lot of people from all corners asking why I was bothering with a label at all, and why I didn't just self-release like the 16 trillion teenage garage bands that they'd apparently listened to on the MySpace that week. I buy self-released music all the time, and it's great that the opportunity to put out your own music looms larger than it ever has before, but I don't feel the need to invest my time calling pressing plants and putting together press contact lists and mailing out promos. While we have a generous and fair royalty rate with Bit Riot, obviously our profit margins would be much, much higher with a self-release, If our time had no value and if we didn't care about the quality of the promotional legwork. Labels definitely don't play the same role that they once did in music, especially independent music, but for me they still play a key role. As an artist, I no longer need a label to act like my employer, but I do need them to act like a contractor that I hire to take care of all the business garbage that I don't want to deal with, and I'm more than happy to pay them a substantial per-album-sold sum of money to do so. And from the consumer standpoint, my friend Christian at COP International is quick to point out that labels provide an essential filtering mechanism. With the proliferation of cheap and easy access to music-making tools and free digital distribution and even advertising by way of social networking sites, I could find and listen to hundreds of new industrial bands every day to find the one worthwhile album each week, but I don't have the time or patience to do that, so I look to labels I trust to find the best music and make it available.

Are you collaborating with anyone on the album?

Gottesman: Indeed we are. Daniel Myer does guest vocals for a section of 'Don't Quit Your Day Job' that my voice just sounded silly on, thus finally making up for never giving me that remix he was going to do like seven years ago. My old bandmate James Perry from Deathline International – who I might add just put out a fabulous solo rock album called Now You're Gone – plays guitar on 'Ignore,' Conan Neutron of Replicator and Mount Vicious – who was also our keyboardist for quite a while – does some extra synths on 'Bitch Stole My Time Machine,' and there's also a 'crowd vocal' section on 'Ice Brigade' that's chock full of people you might care about, screaming incoherently. There are also going to be some sweet guest appearances on the special edition; I just got the first round of vocals back from darkNES of The Gothsicles for one track, which will be announced soon. The idea for the track came about when I was hanging out with the Gothsicles and DJ Pathogen in Chicago for an Unter Null show, and Erica and I tried to sing MC Hammer's '2 Legit 2 Quit' at a karaoke bar filled with very unhappy old people and failed miserably. Ted Phelps from Imperative Reaction is also a major collaborator on the disc, but in a somewhat less conventional way. He and I mixed the album together, and he totally reinvigorated the tracks. The two weakest songs going in to the mixing were, without a doubt, 'Ignore' and 'Ice Brigade,' and now they're probably my favorites. Seibold from Hate Dept. did the mastering, and he definitely improved the flavor of the disc a lot, too. If there's one thing I love about this business, it's being able to strong-arm difficult work out of my favorite artists for my own personal benefit. Hooray!

Do you have anyone in mind for remixes?

Gottesman: Yes, well, kind of, but I'm a little concerned that I've bombarded people with remixes enough as it is with the EP, which had a whopping 11 remixes, plus the bonus mix from Out Out (which is free on the Web site, and you should go download it), plus an XP8 mix of 'Abort' on the Bit Riot Gears Gone Wild compilation, plus a new remix of 'I've Sold Your Organs on the Black Market to Finance the Purchase of a Used Minivan' by our former keyboardist Josh Zero on Jim Semonik's upcoming Electronic Saviors compilation. I love remixes – well, good ones at least – but I think we all know that doing these 'celebrity' mix things is basically a marketing tool that distracts to some extent from the album tracks, which are supposed to be the actual content. I suspect that if none of the remixers we've gotten so far were enough to grab someone's attention, getting Combichrist to remix their six trillionth track this month (the man works hard!) for us probably won't, either. That said, a few artists I really like have actually asked to do remixes, and far be it from me to avoid performing minimal work and getting most of the credit to hear my own voice on top of music written by somebody more talented than myself. One of those that I'm excited about is Left Side Neighbour, whom I met at Kinetik this year and is totally awesome. He asked to do a mix of 'Monsters of the Modern Age,' so that will probably materialize, if nothing else. Also, Shania Twain.

When will Everything Goes Cold vs. General Failure be unleashed on the unsuspecting masses?

Gottesman: You know, if you people did your job, maybe the masses wouldn't be so unsuspecting. Jerk. Also, the official release date is December 15. It will be a cold, bleak and delicious day. We have a Bay Area release party show – and I believe a release party club night, as well – happening right around then, and possibly a couple in other parts of the country as well, so watch out, Bismarck, North Dakota! We would actually play in Bismarck, North Dakota if somebody wanted to book us. Also, I just Googled for 'Bismarck goth' to see if it looked like there was actually a promoter out there, and found out that there is a man with the first name 'Gaylord' and last name 'Goth' apparently living in Bismarck. There is a man in this world whose proper name is 'Gay Goth,' and he is probably neither. That is depressing and awesome.