New Zealand Hard Rockers Devilskin released their new album Red via Devilskin Ltd. this spring, and I recently had the chance to talk with bassist/songwriter Paul Martin about the record, and his background as a musician and radio personality.

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Just want to make sure, first of all, Paul, that you and your family are safe and healthy during these crazy times.

Yes, pretty crazy times, we’re all well, thank you. New Zealand’s been one of the luckiest countries over this whole COVID crisis, so far it’s pretty low. It’s been crazy, been locked up and just the way things are going, no gigs, of course – that’s a big thing for us musicians and our associated industry is that we can’t go out any play gigs.

Definitely, that’s been one of the biggest problems for musicians, I think, and of course you’ve got the release of the new album, Red, I’m excited to start talking about it, but I imagine it’s a bit bittersweet. If it were me, I know I’d be excited that it’s out, but feeling weird that you can’t promote it and tour it in the traditional way, so maybe just start with how you guys are feeling about the album being out, but also how you’re making do with what you can?

I think you pretty much nailed it, Chelsea – weird. The whole thing feels really weird, when we released the album, we still weren’t allow to mail anything over here, so we could release it digitally, on Spotify and all the digital platforms, but we couldn’t get physical copies out to people until the government legislation, which was only this week. So, we’ve been bundling up CDs and LPs and box sets. It’s a crazy time, and you know, no one saw this coming. Right now, we should be driving from Italy to Spain *laughs*, on a nice tour bus for the next gig, but we had to cancel the UK tour, European tour, and the New Zealand tour, that’s the way things have been going. 

Yeah, it’s just a waiting period for a lot of artists, but that might turn out to be a good thing, because everyone’s got all this pent-up energy of just wanting to get out there on the road, so it’ll just be like unleashing all the bands once everybody can get back out there. So, let’s dig into the Red album a little bit and I want to start off with the writing of it. Do you all contribute to the writing together, how does your system for Devilskin work?

There is no one way of writing, sometimes it’s really organic and I’ll just start playing a bass line, sometimes Nic or Nail or myself comes up with an almost-finished song and we’ll go on with it. Lyrically, it’s either Jennie or myself that writes the lyrics to the songs, and I’ve always written lyrics in songs that have got hooks and…I think we’re quite different songwriters doing lyrics, Jennie’s probably get more personal, whereas I tend to be a little bit more ambiguous with my style. But I think it all works well together and really, we write when it’s the four of us in a room together just sharing ideas.

That’s cool, that’s usually the best way is when it’s organic – in this case, you got some awesome results, because Red is a killer album.

Thank you. We’re just so happy with it, it’s been a long time coming for us, there’s a couple of songs we initially wanted on our last album a few years ago, but we sort of hung onto them and nurtured them, and we had like 30 songs for this album and had to narrow it down to 12. A few moments where it’s kind of like letting go of your children, you know? It’s like “ah, man, that song’s going to be amazing if we get to record it”. And one of the songs that almost got cut, but I pushed and pushed for it, and so did our producer Greg, a song called “Do You See Birds”, I had written the lyrics over a year ago now, but it talks about loss of freedom, looking out the window and thinking of flying away stuff, and a year later, we record the song, and as soon as Jennie came out of the vocal booth from doing her part, she goes, “I think we should probably start the album with this”. We’re all sitting there with our jaws on the ground going, “Yep, yep. Let’s do that”. It’s a bit of a throat punch, you know? But yeah, the irony is the lyrics.

Absolutely, what timing for that one!

You know, the same with “All Fall Down”, I wrote the lyrics to that about a dystopia, an Orwellian sort of theme that kind of fits as well.

It sounds like you secretly made this all happen, Paul. Or you saw it coming, how about that?

*laughs* I did nothing, I saw nothing, I swear!

Well, you just mentioned some songs that you had such a big role in writing, but is there any one particular track standing out to you that you’re really proud of?

Yeah, at the moment, it’s a song called “Sweet Release”. It’s number 10 on the album, that’s a real soft ballad, and I wrote the lyrics about a young man who was 21 here in our hometown of Hamilton, New Zealand. And he was on mental health care, and they let him outside for a cigarette when they shouldn’t have, he was supposed to be on suicide watch, and he took his own life at the river. And that was 5 years ago now, and it’s been in the papers almost every day or every week, and his poor parents are trying to get some sort of closure and try to get the hospital to own up to it, and to change the policies and stuff like that. His poor parents are being tormented, it’s such a really sad story, and this poor young boy, only 21 and took his own life. It hit us and we basically wrote the song on the spot, rehearsed only once and kept it pretty much organic. Every time I hear it now, I get chills and I get a little sad about this young man, you know?

Absolutely, that’s an awful story and so sad. And it’s interesting how you guys channeled that into music, sometimes that’s where the best things come from in terms of music is when it’s something that’s from real life that you or somebody else really connects with.

Oh, definitely. There’s another song on the album, called “The Victor”, we’d just been away for a songwriting retreat, and we’d written the music for that but we didn’t have lyrics to it, and we were driving back home and out in the middle of nowhere we came across this really, really bad car accident. We went to provide support to these people before the ambulances could come, and there’s children, and man, the whole lot of us were all traumatized by it. And we wrote the song on it because it helps us process it, and we can sort of pay our tribute to the people that were in the accident, thankfully no one was killed, but it was just such an ugly thing to come across. And there are people who see that all day, every day. There’s so much tragedy going on, and when they happen to you, it’s really close to home, and we’re lucky that we can write songs about it, people can pick up on the same feelings and vibes and we address them, you know? 

It’s that connection, yeah, whether it’s a tragedy, or it’s something inspiring, whatever it may be, there’s something to connect with that makes it really important.

Exactly, and these songs are real to us. And the four of us in the band, we’re all huge music collectors as well, so we’ve got our favorites and we’ve climbed inside our favorite songs and get as close to them as we can, so for us to be able to evoke feelings in other people, it’s pretty special.

That’s what it’s all about. Now, Paul, you’ve always had a lot going on outside of the band as well – you have a background in radio, which is awesome, and you’ve started a record label, you’ve done DJing…what was first for you, was it radio or playing in bands?

Playing in bands. I lied my way into a band when I was 17, I told them I could play bass and I couldn’t *laughs*! I was like, learning on the spot, but I really wanted to be in a band. It’s freaky because my very first band, we were good buddies for years, and we were doing our own versions of Judas Priest and Black Sabbath songs, we had so much fun – and it’s weird, because the singer has just written a book, and I’m reading the book and there’s all these things that I’ve forgotten that we did. We rehearsed five days a week for four years, and we worked really hard – it was all rubbish, but I’ve just always been this into it, it’s just what I’ve always wanted to do. The DJ thing, I was being interviewed on a student radio here in Hamilton, and I got on really well with the DJ who just happened to have a metal show, so he and I got together, and he left and I carried on his metal show, and now it’s been 33 years. *laughs*

You know, that’s how it starts! It starts for so many people with college radio, it sparks an interest, sparks opportunities – that’s where I started, too, was college radio – and that’s cool. Do you have a favorite interview you’ve done for radio?

That’d probably have to be Dimebag.

Nice!

I was privileged enough to get to hang with him on a number of occasions. Probably one of the worst interviews I ever did was Ozzy Osbourne. It was a phone interview and he was eating an apple, and it was really hard work, but there’s been some I’ve really enjoyed – Ronnie James Dio, Rob Halford, Geezer Butler, Tony Iommi, and yeah, I’ve been privileged to speak to some of my biggest heroes. 

Total icons you’ve got on your list, that’s awesome!

Yeah! The last interview I did was David Coverdale, they were going to do a tour here a month ago but obviously that got canceled, too. But he’s a sweetheart to talk to, such a nice guy, really funny.

That’s cool. Now, since you started with the band stuff first and then went into radio, was it weird for you to go from the band member being interviewed, to the radio guy doing the interview? You kind of switched roles there. 

Yeah, it was – I mean, don’t get me wrong, Chelsea, but I just never wanted to be a radio person, because I used to watch WKRP in Cincinnati, and it was like “radio folk are a little bit funny, aren’t they? They’re a little bit weird”. So my whole thing was, I’m a musician and I’m just playing my favorite songs. Obviously, over the years, I’ve become this DJ – I’m starting to get the hang of it now. *laughs* But you know what it’s like, just playing great music to people, and then you’re introducing these bands, “I love them so much, they changed my life”, and it’s a great feeling when you’ve turned people on to a really cool band. 

That is funny you have that dual role of playing stuff on the radio and being in a band yourself, because then you can turn people on to your own band – just be like, “Oh hey, I heard this really great band called Devilskin the other day, you guys should check ‘em out!”, right?

*laughs* That’s the hardest part of the job – because I’ve heard DJs pushing their own stuff and it sounds awful, you know? – so I’ve always just talked about the band in the third person, and I probably don’t give us as much attention as I do other bands, just because I don’t want to be “that guy”. 

Well, that’s good then. *laughs* So you said when you started with your first band, you told them you knew how to play bass even though you didn’t, so how did you end up learning? Just along the way, you were winging it and just got the hang of it, or did you take actual, formal lessons?

I didn’t take lessons, I was too embarrassed, I just worked my ass off at home, playing along to AC/DC songs, and then the band was playing Iron Maiden songs and I thought to myself, “I’m mad”, but then yeah, I just watched and learned and practiced my ass off because I wanted to be good at it. And I’m still in that situation now, I’m trying to practice as much as I can, and I just love the instruments, I love playing guitar and I’ve got another band I play in called World War Four, and we just released a video and single. That keeps me busy, too, I play guitar and sing in that one. 

Oh, that’s awesome, tell us more about World War Four then!

I’ve had the band going for about 15 years or so, different lineups, different bass player and it’s always been a three-piece with myself on vocals and guitar. We’ve made different recordings of various qualities over the years, and it actually got cohesive enough to release an album, and I’ve just put them all together, and you can check them out online, Spotify and Youtube and all that. It’s a side project that’s a little bit heavier than Devilskin and it’s the classic power trio so I’m definitely very wary of my vocals after playing in a band with Jennie. *laughs* But it’s more about attitude and all that in that band, but it’s a lot of fun playing the guitar, which I love.

So you’re doing vocals and guitar? If you were doing vocals and bass, I would have said you’ve pulling a Lemmy there with that power trio.

*laughs* I wish!

I’m definitely going to check that out when we get off the phone. Devilskin, you’ve got great stuff going on, and you’ve got World War Four, still have your radio work, so it sounds like you’re still finding ways to keep busy even while the world’s on lockdown. 

Definitely, and I’m a motorcycle fanatic, too, so I make time each day to go for a ride on my bike. 

Cool way to pass the time. I know it’s kind of hard to project the future for any band right now, especially with everything that’s going on, but let’s think beyond the lockdown, when the world’s back open, what should we be expecting from Devilskin?

Well, we want to get to America. We’ve played in Hollywood twice and that was a few years ago, so we desperately want to get to America, get a decent tour and have a good look around, meet you folks, and have a good time playing rock and roll. For us, a couple of years ago, when we came to Hollywood, we got to play the Whisky a Go Go, bucket list stuff there, but now we need to get to the rest of the country. 

Well, America wants to see you guys, you’ve got this killer new record, you’re an awesome band, and we definitely want to see you in the near future. 

Definitely, thanks so much Chelsea, thank you for the support and I’m really glad that you like the album. 

Thanks so much for your time, Paul!

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Find Red on all digital platforms and physical formats here, and keep up with Devilskin via: https://devilskin.co.nz.