Shihad - Shihad Is The New Shihad

I was quite prepared to forgive Jon Toogood for what I imagined might be a lack-lustre interview. Waiting at reception for the second-to-last interviewer of the day to emerge from Warner Music's boardroom, I mentally tallied up the 17 years, the now seven albums, the endless touring and the incalculable number of interviews like this one that Toogood, as the public face of Shihad, has had to get through. Let me tell you, I've interviewed some surly buggers in my time; I was well armed with a plethora of questions and would drag something interesting out of this young rock veteran if it killed me.

Well, talk about letting your imagination run away with you! In bounds Mr Toogood like a one-man Energizer commercial. And boy is he keen to talk about their new album 'Love is the New Hate'. With the recent name-change shenanigans (where an air of apology seemed to prevail) safely behind them, an excellent new record to plug and a triumphant NZ Music Month gig at Aotea Square to a rain-sodden 8000 happy punters just days earlier, he is obviously still relishing the role of fronting this country's premier rock band.

Along with reclaiming their rightful name, 'Love is the New Hate' also marks a discernable shift back to the way the band used to write music, before America started whispering in their ears.

"This record was purely about getting rid of all those peripheral sort of thoughts like 'We've got to hit the chorus by blah blah blah... we've got to have an intro or the vocal should come in here'. It's like 'Forget it, let's just jam.'

"It was as simple as that - we had all our gear set up in this room in the middle of nowhere (Ngamatea), it sounded great and we could walk up to our instruments any time of the day or night and not worry about pissing people off. There was no phone line there, no cellphone coverage. When we went to write, we really deconstructed it and just let it all come out."

Although Toogood has learnt to work Pro Tools over the past couple of years for the writing sessions, conducted over a three-week period that he describes to me as "... the most dense creative period in this band's history", they opted to use a good old-fashioned tape deck for its honesty, immediacy and simplicity.

"We wanted to just listen to the music off the tape and then know when it works and when it doesn't, and take it from there," he says.

At the end of each creative session, guitarist Phil Knight would work into the wee smalls, sifting through the hours of tape, cataloguing all the highlights into bite-sized chunks to be honed the next day. With the musical structures more or less in place, Toogood took the backing tracks away for a couple of months to work on lyrics and melodies, and the band were ready to 'press wax' as we say in the business.

Recorded mostly in Vancouver with major producer and possible stutterer GGGarth (Rage Against The Machine, Red Hot Chilies ('Mother's Milk'), The Jesus Lizard, The Melvins etc), the album comes across as a roaring testament to the fact that bands make better albums when they're not under commercial pressures.

Asked if they still have their eye on America, Toogood has this to say. "The eye on this one has got to be on the music - it's got to be on being proud of the record, and I think it's made for a really strong record and something we're all really proud of. If people like it in America, and I think if they're exposed to it they will, we'll go there, but if they don't like it, it's not a problem. I mean it's the first time in our career where we've actually had that attitude, and it's actually like a fucking weight off your back. It's like 'Back to the music'."

Those trademark brutal/elegant guitar riffs are very much in evidence on 'Love is the New Hate', but Toogood maintains there's very little in the way of studio mystery involved in capturing the Shihad guitar sound.

"Basically you stick up about three or four different cool mics, you might blend a couple if it needs it, but I always like the sound of a (Shure) 57."

Toogood and Knight this time avoided using tempting guitars and amps lying around The Armoury studio in Vancouver B.C (many of 'The General Electric' guitar rhythm tracks were done on a Gretsch Chet Atkins semi-acoustic!), preferring to stick to their stage setups of Maton (Toogood) and Gibson Les Paul (Knight) guitars - through Mesa Boogie Triple Rectifier amps and Boogie quads loaded with Celestion Vintage 30s. Likewise bassist Karl Kippenberger and drummer Tom Larkin stuck to their usual stage setups.

"Ultimately we discovered, really from doing the 'Pacifier Live' album, that hey, this band sounds really good when it's just miked-up on stage, and we wanted to keep that in mind when we made this record."

If you're looking to emulate the massive Shihad guitar sound, first up you better throw away those wet-noodle guitar strings. "We use big strings (12-56 gauge), we have done for years."

And a tip they picked up recording next door to AC/DC a few years back - lay off that over-saturated distortion if you really want to sound huge.

"Over the years that pre-gain has come back and back and back and the master's gone up and up and up, so it's really quite a bell-y guitar sound, a simple guitar sound. I like it when you can play clean on the same sound as when you're playing heavy, by just playing lightly."

Having recently got hitched and bought a house in Wellington (which he gets to live in for two or three months a year), I ask the Melbourne-based Toogood if the enforced separation from family and friends gets any easier over time.

"I actually think it gets harder. As you get older and you become less selfish and you realise the responsibility of having a child and the responsibility of being married, and how it affects other people and your family, it makes it way harder. But, at the same time I can't get over how good it feels to play a rock show. I just can't do it, I just can't walk away from that." 

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