Interviews

Opiate For The Masses

Interview with Band on Aug 26, 2005 by Archive Bot

Opiate For The Masses stole the show at this years’ Warped Tour.  Hailing from Arizona, this quartet is really something special. Katie Ellsweig got a chance to hang in their tour bus and talk to Ron, Seven and Ryan about everything from playing with Manson, to Karl Marx, Ron’s pants and Jagermeister. These four musicians display a passion for music and for knowledge that is completely unparalleled and this interview is a must read for every single person out there.
 
Katie: The Volcom Stage this year features a bunch of different types of bands. How does OFM fit into that picture?
 
Seven: We just sort of do our thing and just kind of play. The stage is everything from old school punk rock to heavy metal, punk rock. We just like playing with other bands, and it’s awesome.
 
Ron: I think being on the warped tour, people are expecting more of a punk delivery and we definitely have elements of that but we bring in something different also. We’ve always been kind of used to not quite fitting in because we have such a wide range. We’ve toured with Marilyn Manson and stuff like that and we weren’t like this Industrial or Goth band either. But we were enough of this and enough of that where we were always going to gain new fans from their fan base. That’s why we’re on this tour, not to be the black sheep for no reason but to be the black sheep so we’re allowed to stand out in a way.
 
Katie: How did you get asked to do the warped tour and were you hesitant about it before saying yes?
 
Ron: Actually last year, it was one of our first big tours and we wanted to do it just to give it a look.
 
Ryan: We’ve got a lot of friends to fall back on this year, like The Bled and Avenged Sevenfold of course. So we were just like fuck yeah.
 
Katie: Yeah, I remember you saying you were going to kick a lot of warped tour ass. Did you?
 
Ron: Yeah. We definitely have. We’ve blazed a trail; at least for ourselves. It was definitely a lot of work but I think in the end, it’s done a lot for us; more than you’d realize at the time. You kind of have to look back and realize it.
 
Katie: Do you think that people are more coming to your shows because they planned to be there or because they just kind of walked by and heard it?
 
Seven: I think it’s a mix. We do have our diehard fans though, people coming to see us saying they saw us with Ministry or with Drowning Pool or Taste of Chaos.
 
Ron: Yeah, I’d say the majority of people on the warped tour have no clue who we are until our set is done and then they kind of have that lasting impression of us. Definitely people are coming again and again to see us. I would say the majority of people that are coming to warped tour have never even heard of us, or maybe have heard of us but had no prior knowledge other than the name but now they’re digging us. That’s the whole point of touring.
 
Katie: Touring with Marilyn Manson must have been incredible.
 
Ron: Actually we didn’t tour with him, we just played one Halloween show with him back home. But it was a huge show and we were the only other band playing that night.
 
Seven: It was my first show. [Laughs] It was good.
 
Ron: Yeah, it was his first show with us so it was a good first impression for him. It was really a cool milestone for us, having been fans of his for so long and the idea of trying to play with him, we just kind of threw it out there. We weren’t even sure if he was actually going to do the show. We just went about our business as though it was going to happen and somehow it just worked out that way. We were so headstrong about it that we were playing with Manson on a two-band bill. It was in Phoenix at the Dodge Theater. It was like a big-ass place. It was also the first time we’d played our hometown in a little while. It was kind of like a family thing in a way too.
 
Katie: Does your mom like your music? Does she like your pants?
 
Ron: Oh yeah. I don’t know how she feels about the pants.
 
Ryan: Especially now, with the crotch hanging out.
 
Ron: Yeah, with the broken balls. I have maybe three pairs of pants. They all have the crotch blown out. It’s because I do the monitor stand, you know? We are dirty bastards!
 
Ryan: These are my only pair of pants. There’s only four days left, who cares.
 
Katie: Ron, I heard that you get naked a lot on warped tour…what’s the deal with that?
 
Ron: I’m trying to actually keep it together keeping in mind that there’s little kids around. We’re more involved now with the guy who runs the show, because he’s one of the guys running Warcon Records which is who is distributing our record so I’ve got to see that guy more often. Last year at an after party in Camden I kind of got naked and starting terrorizing people. One of the main security guard is a good friend of ours and he sees on the security camera this naked guy and he’s like “I think I recognize that blonde hair!” [Laughs] So he called all the other security guys off but he still has the tape and he’s holding it for ransom.
 
Katie: The Tennessee Daily Times mentioned that you like to talk about your reading habits. What are some good reads as of lately?
 
Ryan: Right now we’ve been reading a lot of Thompson. Hunter S. Thompson. He’s brilliant. You can pretty much just pick up in one of his books wherever because he’s just so scatterbrained that it makes. He’s just cracked fuckin’ out of his mind.
 
Ron: The last book I got was actually while we were on this tour. It was the day we saw Rob Zombie’s new movie. I went to the mall and picked it up, it’s called “Natual Cures They Don’t Want You To Know About.” It talks about how the FDA and the drug companies pretty much run everything these days and try to keep everyone under their belts. It’s a really good book.
 
Katie: Are you interested in Karl Marx and Marxism?
 
Ryan: That’s where the band name comes from. In the Communist Manifesto he talks about how religion is “the opiate for the masses.”
 
Ron: His view on revolution and stuff like that was really relevant at his time. He was idealizing something that’s not ideal. That’s the problem of how it was set up by the soviets back in the day. We’re just into anything that makes you think.  But even just the statement, “religion is the opiate for the masses” is important especially nowadays with the fact that every single war is caused by some kind of religion whether it’s Islam or not. Or they’ll say that it’s about religion to get people interested in it when it’s really for their own political gain.  It’s being used as a tool to control people. Churches do the same thing.
 
Seven: I was raised as a Greek Orthodox Catholic. Once I became old enough, my folks gave me the choice. They said “you don’t have to do this but this is how are family is.” It’s very traditional, Greek families, What that movie [My Big Fat Greek Wedding] has in it is all true. It’s all very real, and I married a Swedish girl too, you know, just to break the mold.
 
Ron: My Big Fat Greek Vagina!! You’ve got to play this game sometime. This is a little off topic but okay, you take a movie title and you replace one word in it with the word “Vagina.” “A Series Of Unfortunate Vaginas,” is a good one you should check out.
 
Ryan: Vagina II: The Reckoning. [Laughing]
 
Ron: I’m sorry, I ruined everything. [Looks at me] You’re a journalist goddamnit! Where’s your game face!?
 
Katie: [Trying to keep a straight face] In that same interview with the Tennessee Daily Times, you guys said that you have an authenticity that makes you special. What is that?
 
Ron; I would say it probably has to do with how broad all of our listening is. If you were you look on his ipod [points to Ryan] you wouldn’t believe it. Or any one of us, for instance, he’s got like Frank Sinatra and then Poison The Well, Pantera and Billee Holiday. It’s the fact that we bleed and burn and live in music. We don’t just play it and it’s done. We want to be happy with the music that we make. It’s not like we’re trying to think about what’s cool at the moment. The most important thing is does it move you or does it not move you as a writer. We’ve had a lot of problems with that sometimes because a lot of people on the business end will say they don’t think it’s marketable so we’ve had to sacrifice a lot of the help we could have had if we’d folded under that kind of pressure. Once you get passed a certain point, your momentum is undeniable and you no longer need those people, those people end up needing you. It’s been a long six years.
 
Katie: It seems like so many bands out there have basically discovered eye liner and black t-shirts and went for it. You guys seem to have skipped that whole image things and kind of created your own image.
 
Ryan: We’ve always just done our own thing. I’ve always bought the same kind of pants.
 
Ron: We’ve always been sort of caricatures of ourselves. We never really saw a scene rise and decided to go with that. We just stuck with that we personally idealize ourselves to be.  I mean look at this dangle feather earring! I don’t know one other person who is rocking the dangle feather earring.
 
Seven: It just seems now that everyone’s got black t-shirts and tattoos. I’ve been getting tattooed and wearing black for years and years and I’ve been doing my eyes like this since I saw Motley Crue when I was nine years old.  Just for the record I’m not a fan of the dangle feather earring.
 
Ron: But I’m not swayed by that! Really none of us four in the band felt like we ever saw a scene rise and said “Oh yeah this is speaking for me,” we see things for what it is and what they’re worth. If you rely too heavily upon a scene as an artist then you’re going to rise and fall with it rather than rise and fall at your own pace. But we’re always going to be artists and we’re always going to be doing what we’re doing. It’s our contribution. It’s not like one thing is better than the other, but this is what’s better for us, just doing things at our own pace. It’s taken a long time to get the recognition, but in the long run I think we’re able to hold people’s interests.
 
Katie: Now that we’ve sort of covered everything I wanted to talk about, is there anything you want to talk about?
 
Ryan: I definitely want to put in a plug for the new album, “The Spore,” it’s in stores everywhere, you can buy it online and check out our website at opiateforthemasses.com, we’re on purevolume and myspace and also Warcon’s site.  Or you can just look up Warcon Records or any of our shit.  We have a lot of touring plans coming up. We’re always on tour. This is the first time in like two years that we’re going to go home for more than a couple days.
 
Katie: What do you do when you go home?
 
Ron: Relax, watch TV, and turn the phone off. Barbecue with my mom and dad.
 
Seven: Hang out with my lady. Try to keep relationships together; I don’t want to get fuckin’ divorced. [Ron laughs]
Ron: Something that’s going on this tour for us, our guitar player Jim whose not doing the interview, is producing multiple tracks for the Taste of Christmas album. Skindred is on the bus right now and he’s just having a big hand in all those songs. 
 
Katie: Are you guys friends with Skindred?
 
Ron: Yeah! We’re really getting to know them.
 
Seven: They’re right there. [To Skindred:] She wants to know if we’re friends with you!
 
[Skindred laughs and says hello]
 
Ron: As far as the bands on this tour, we like The Bled, Bleeding Through, Skindred. A lot of meeting people is just pure chance. Just the other day, our bus was having problems so we all had to find other rides and I ended up on a bus with The Fight and I’d never met any of those guys but they were so fun and so cool and ever since that day they’ve been really cool. 
 
Ryan: The My Chem guys are pretty cool too.
 
Katie: There’s this one band on the tour, Yesterdays’ Rising, and some of them aren’t even out of high school yet. I met them today, they’re such interesting people. I wonder what their parents must think.
 
Seven: Yeah, that’s awesome.
 
Ron: When I was younger, it was hard for me to convince my parents that I was going to do something. How can you tell until you start achieving certain things that they in their mind think are valid. It could be any parent with any thing that you choose. Everyone’s always on your ass but our parents have always been really supportive. It took my parents like a moment to realize it. They had to see me in action to know that I had something going.
 
Katie: Awesome, thank you so much, guys.
 
 [Hammer Enters Bus]
 
Ron: That’s the world famous Hammer. And we love Jager! If anyone ever wants to make us happy, just bring us Jager. We will get you backstage. Or The Hammer will beat you into a bloody fucking pulp!