After Korn’s cancellation in the Heineken Music Hall, Hatebreed still gave a show in the Melkweg. I was present there to do a little interview with guitarist Sean Martin.

How’s it going, how’s the tour been?

Good man, everything’s good.

Don’t you think that Korn and Hatebreed playing together is a bit weird combination?

Well, weird to some people maybe. But we got the opportunity to do some shows with them, couldn’t be bad. They’re a great band, they’ve achieved greatness you know. They’re huge and they’ve done a lot for heavy music. So for them to want us on the same show or however it worked out was a blessing for us. It might be weird to some people, but it still would’ve been a great show, no matter what people think.

Do you think that a lot of the hardcore kids would still show up and pay fourty euros for you guys?

I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of Hatebreed fans stayed away, because they know we’ll come back probably. You never know, I saw some kids earlier that were going anyway.

Okay, so how would you describe the new album Supremacy?

Real brutal, hahaha!

Yeah it sure is, I just heard it out there before the interview.

Oh really, what do you think?

It's darker, heavier, uhh, more brutal!?

Yeah yeah definitely! It’s like more mature, like darker and heavier, but still with the same sound as always. Just a little step up.

I hear that with every Hatebreed album, the sound gets more pumped up, while the riffs stay basically the same.

Yeah, we just kind of sonically develop in our sound, but the formula stays the same. It just keeps getting better and better.

And it's working very fine!

Yeah yeah, hehe!

So where did you get the new guitarist from?

He was in Terror, and before that he was in Ringworm, so we’ve know him for years and years. We used to sleep on his couch, back when we were in a van and touring in Cleveland. We’ve been friends with the guy forever. And we decided that we wanted two guitar players again and he was the only one we really came up with. He wanted it, it worked out and that’s that.

I have a lot of friends that were promoting you as hell back when I was just a nu-metal kid, and now that a lot of nu-metal kids are digging your stuff, they’re labelling you as ‘not true’. How do you feel about that?

People have been labelling us ‘not true’ since the Victory album, it's been going on forever. I don’t know what we did to them, but we’re just doing what we do. That’s their problem. I don’t really care what people think, if I did I probably wouldn’t be here right now. Whatever, there will always be haters. We just keep doing what we do.

For sure! What’s the worst thing you’ve ever seen happen in a moshpit?

I’ve seen some guys get hurt pretty bad, can’t really recall a certain terrible thing happening though. There probably were broken bones and knockouts and stuff.

What do you think has brought this band to the legendary status it holds now?

I think, if anybody considers us having a legendary status, we’ve been around for ten years now, only solid for six or seven years. We just grew out of work then, and regardless what people say we always stayed true to what we believe in. Stayed true to our fans and friends back home. We just stayed true to what we think Hatebreed should be, we don’t deviate from it. And I think that’s what people want. People don’t want a band to become soft, I’m not saying that it's bad, some people take that route, but we chose to keep this band a vehicle for what it is. If we wanna do something different, we do something different outside the band.

Here comes the best question; in movies, who do you prefer, Arnold Schwarzenegger or Sylvester Stallone?

Shit, I’ll say Schwarzenegger!

Yeah why is that?

I don’t know, hehehe! He has better one-liners.

That’s what got him famous, and gouvernor.

Yeah that's what got him voted for.

Last question then. What’s the nastiest thing you’ve ever seen a woman do for you?

Shit who knows. You don’t need to know!

Ah, not again! Ah well, do you have anything to add to this interview then?

Thanks to everybody who supports Hatebreed, and thanks for coming out to the show tonight, I hope you’ll enjoy that. Supremacy will be out on Roadrunner Records by the end of August.

Ok, thanks a lot!

Thank you too man!