The last three Flotsam and Jetsam albums have been perfect examples of how fresh and relevant a band that has been around since the eighties can still sound. Guitarist Michael Gilbert is proud of what the band’s current line-up has accomplished on their new album ‘I Am the Weapon’ and is optimistic about the future of the band.

“We are very comfortable where we’re at”, says Gilbert. “And we’re very grateful to still be relevant after all these years. Especially with all the stuff that’s been happening with Flotsam: the line-up changes, weird logos… And also, we’ve lived under (former bassist Jason) Newsted’s shadow for so many years. Everybody was always saying: oh, that’s Newsted’s band. I think that after thirty years, we’ve proven that it’s not entirely, haha!

This line-up is stellar as far as how well we get along and the songwriting goes. There’s one thing there’s definitely an abundance of: Steve (Conley, guitarist) and I can definitely write riffs all day long. Also, we’ve got a guy in the band right now who is a world-class producer, Ken Mary (drummer). Having a guy like that in the band is such an asset. It’s so valuable.

As long as we can keep feeding that riff fuel to A.K. (singer Eric A.K. Knutson) and Ken to do some vocal and production stuff on it, then I think we’re good to go. That’s where our big choruses come from: from those two guys collaborating. We’ve latched onto a pretty good system.”

Re-Identifying Ourselves

“We were all really proud of ‘Blood in the Water’ (2021). And then trying to write another record, the first thought is: holy shit, can we top this? We always say: we’ll use the leftovers and we’ll do that for the next record. But we never do that. We always start fresh.

When we finally sent ‘I Am the Weapon’ to mix, and we got it back, we all listened to it and thought: it’s at least on par with it. I don’t think there’s any filler songs on this record. It’s got the huge choruses, and pretty great verses as well.

On a lot of the older records, we were still trying to find ourselves. We’re all over the map on ‘Drift’ (1995). We’ve got thrash songs, we’ve got rock songs, we’ve got just metal… I don’t think we’ve really found our niche until the self-titled record (2016). That’s when we started re-identifying ourselves, who we were, and what we’re doing.

Right now, we’re appealing to not just thrash metal fans, but we’re getting the power metal fans coming in as well, because they’re digging some of the bigger choruses and stuff like that.”

Like an Old-Day Film

Both the album credits and Gilbert himself are adamant to point out that the songwriting is a group process in Flotsam and Jetsam. “It has to be”, Gilbert states. “There’s no dictatorship or anything like that. And there’s no egos in our band. Which is cool, because if I write something and I dig it, and I ship it over to the guys, and they’re not sure about it, I’m not going to be angry about it. That’s not going to happen. There’s another one right behind that.

Like I said: Steve and I can come up with riffs all day long. And some of the ones I didn’t think were going to be any good ended up pretty kick-ass. When it finally gets developed, it’s like an old-day film. You don’t know what you’ve got until you develop the picture. This is kind of the same thing. It’s actually an asset to have people disagreeing with you on things. And agreeing with you too, of course.”

This is also reflected in how the guitar parts are divided. “That’s kind of based on who writes the song”, Gilbert explains. “If you write the song, you get the solo. But we both try to make room for each other. He’ll record the rhythm guitars on his songs, and I record all the rhythms on my songs. I think that contrasts a little bit. It helps the record to kind of show a little bit of diversity in the sound.

But then if he needs another guitar solo in one of his songs, he’s going to call me up. And that is great. Steve is a great guitar player, and he’s a legato guy. He uses legato all the time. I don’t ever use that. I try to pick everything. But I know what he’s going to do, and I know it’s going to be over the top. When he sends his work to me, I’m always going to have to re-do my solos to keep up with that shit, haha!”

Newer Instead of Classic

“What’s weird about it now is that we want to be playing our newer music instead of our classic material all the time. Everybody wants to hear the classic stuff, and there are a lot of our old fans that don’t even know that we have new music out there. So I think this upcoming year, we’re going to try to gear everything towards the new stuff, and try to reinvent the wheel, and keep the classic stuff for encores and maybe special sets.

We get a lot of requests to do like the ‘Doomsday’ album (debut album ‘Doomsday for the Deceiver’, 1986) in its entirety. But moving forward, we want people to hear the new stuff. At the same time, we can’t forget our roots. Even Ken said that. He called me up when we were writing this one: we need something that’s like ‘Doomsday’, try to write something like that. He gave me some homework.

That’s what eventually became ‘Running Through the Fire’. I don’t know if it really was successful. I don’t think it was. And actually, ‘A New Kind of Hero’ is based on a riff from a song that I wrote off ‘No Place for Disgrace’ (1988), which was ‘P.A.A.B.’. So it’s almost the same riff, but I play it backwards. That’ll be our secret, right?”

Re-Entry into the Metal World

Gilbert and Knutson are the only remaining members of the line-up that recorded ‘Doomsday for the Deceiver’, though Gilbert took a lengthy leave of absence between 1997 and 2010. “I didn’t even think I was going to come back to the band”, he admits. “I quit due to some personal reasons, and then we had some management issues too. I didn’t agree with the manager. And then after I left, they ended up firing the manager because he stole a bunch of money.

So when they asked me to come back, I was like: alright, yeah, sure! I had a ten-year hiatus, recharged the batteries a little bit, wrote ‘Ugly Noise’ after that, that was kind of our re-entry into the global metal world. Newsted was actually thinking about coming back for that record. The planets didn’t line up for that, but that’s okay. It was meant to be like that.”

At that time, the full line-up that recorded ‘No Place for Disgrace’ was back in the band, though that did not last long. Having to continue the band after that did not come with as much pressure as one might think. “As long as it was A.K. and I, I felt pretty confident about it”, he says. “But if you’re locked onto a player like the current line-up is… If one of the guys in the band left right now, it would be devastating, like losing a family member.

We’re all so close, and we write so tightly together. I don’t really want to start over again. And I don’t think any of the other guys would want to do that either.”

Bottled-Up Double Bass

The way Ken Mary’s drums move Flotsam and Jetsam’s new music forward is notable, given that he has a history with bands that required him to generally play at considerably slower tempos. “That guy’s double bass is just out of this world”, Gilbert smiles. “He’s the nicest guy, you would never believe it. When you see him play drums, he turns into  a freaking monster.

I think in this band, Ken gets to release a little bit of his anger. He couldn’t do the double bass with Alice Cooper or any of those artists. So I think it’s just bottled-up double bass that’s been in his body for so long. He’s finally releasing it all, haha!

He has been friends with Steve for a long time. And when (Jason) Bittner went to OverKill, Steve said: hey, I’ve got a guy in mind, Ken Mary. I told him: he played with Alice Cooper and Fifth Angel… Is he ready? You think he can do this stuff? And Steve says: I’ll get him to send a video.

So Ken sent a video of him playing ‘Hammerhead’ and I thought it was pretty cool. And then we did a rehearsal with him after Jason had left and we came home from touring. We set up a time with Ken, and I knew within fifteen seconds of playing with him: you are the guy, the job is yours, do whatever you want.”

A Little Washy

While there appears to be some consensus about Flotsam and Jetsam sounding reinvigorated with their current line-up, opinions vary on the quality of some of their earlier albums. Even Gilbert has doubts about some of them. “There are a couple that don’t live up to our standards”, he admits. “Like the third record, ‘When the Storm Comes Down’ (1990). That one is in desperate need of a remix. If you listen to that record, it doesn’t even sound like we are playing together. Everything is so different.

But even ‘No Place for Disgrace’ has got some production issues. We had Michael Wagener doing the production on it, and the mix. And he’s great at what he does, but I don’t know if he’s a thrash producer. There are some things that could have been a little different on it. The guitars sound a little washy, as opposed to the demos, where we didn’t have any effects on them. They were just dry, and I kind of liked that. But the guitars on that record had all kinds of stuff on them.

And then, I would not recommend re-recording an album to any band. Especially a classic record. We dodged a bullet with that when we did ‘No Place for Disgrace 2014’. We re-recorded it to try and heavy up the guitars, and make the songs have a little more clarity. There were also some rights issues that I don’t remember the details of.

People were telling us: don’t do it! And we did. And when it came out, most of them were like: meh, it’s alright. You can do a lot of damage trying to reproduce a classic record.”

A Time and a Place

“What might be one of our difficulties too is the fact that we have a singer who actually sings. I think we have one of the best singers in metal. In some people’s eyes, it doesn’t always work with thrash, but I disagree. I think it works great. Having said that, I’m glad he’s moving away from the high screams and stuff like that. He can still belt them out, but I don’t know if there’s necessarily a need for it anymore.

Personally, I’m on the fence about my guitar solos too. There are so many good players. And I’m so minor compared to some of the players out there. Guys like Teemu Mäntysaari or Andy James. These guys are just freaking monsters.

The other day, I went and saw Guthrie Govan, and I just wanted to throw my guitar in the trash: nah, I’m not going to play anymore. I definitely still love soloing, and guitar solos in our music can’t go away. We have to do them. I just don’t do them all over the place anymore like I used to. There’s a time and a place to do it.”

Emotionally Attached Again

“I used to be a Les Paul guy. I have a Les Paul Standard, a 1960’s reissue. I love that guitar. And it was my main guitar forever. But we were in Greece a couple of years ago, and I saw them try to throw it onto the luggage… It went right over, and it landed right on the headstock part of the case. I was horrified. Luckily, nothing happened to it, it just got a bent tuning key, and I retired it after that.

After that, I thought: you know what? I’m going to start using cheaper guitars. I always liked ESP, so I called them up, they sent me a couple of guitars, and guess what? I’m emotionally attached again. Great guitars. Total workhorses for what I do. I beat guitars up when I play. My picking hand is like a freaking hammer. The ESP’s fit perfectly for me.

There are EMG’s in my main ESP. They’re both MH models. One’s an M-1000, the other one’s an MH-1000. My red guitar is a Deluxe, and it’s got Seymour Duncan Sentient pick-ups in it. I’m not a huge fan of those. I want to put EMG’s in that guitar too, but I’m lazy at the moment, haha! It still sounds good, and it plays really good. I’m not going to mess with it until I’ve got some free time. Then I’ll break out the soldering iron and put some new pick-ups in it.”

Favorite Key

“I’m a Kemper guy all the way. I used to use Mesa Boogie all the time, so I modelled one of those. But right now, my rig is a 6505. One of the pre-sets actually; I use one of the STL pre-sets in there. And it’s very clean. You’d be horrified if you played my set-up. Steve won’t play through my amp, because I don’t use very much gain. Most of my sound comes from my picking hand anyway. Like I said: I beat the shit out of my strings.”

Despite that fairly modern set-up, Flotsam and Jetsam rarely tune down. “My favorite key is F#”, Gilbert says. “I love that. I think it’s the heaviest, best tone for a guitar right there. If you’re tuned to A440, and you hit that F#… Man, that just rules to me. We’re guitar players, our job is the mid-range.

There’s a song off the last record called ‘Reaggression’, which we’ve ended up throwing into our set for the next tour, but that’s tuned down half a step, and it’s for seven-string guitar. So that’s extremely difficult; it’s like a sound man’s nightmare to try and get all the chunky guitars to come out and have a lot of clarity.”

So what’s next for Flotsam and Jetsam? “We’re actually thinking of putting together some live footage from all these festivals we’ve done recently”, Gilbert says. “Maybe the next record might include some of that stuff. I know you can get it on YouTube, but it’s always cool to have it in front of you on a DVD or something.”