"Who cares if the pitch is absolutely perfect? As long as you sound angry and pissed off -that’s what works."

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Combining power, speed, adept musicianship, and youthful fervor, Age Of Evil, a fast-rising, metal-slinging foursome from Scottsdale, Arizona, is a band about to blow up. The Age Of Evil lineup is comprised of two sets of brothers between the ages of 18 and 20. Already the youngsters have shared stages with some of rock’s biggest acts, and are set to open up some U.S. dates with heavy metal supergroup Hail at the end of this month.

Get Dead, AOE’s recently released six-track EP, is “a melting pot of metal,” a descriptive coined by singer/guitarist Jeremy Goldberg. There are four bruising originals on the album, two of which are recorded live, along with two blistering covers: Skid Row’s “Slave to the Grind” and Judas Priest’s “The Hellion/Electric Eye.”

Recently I had the privilege to meet the Ziff and Goldberg brothers at the KNAC.COM studio while they were here in L.A. After a few minutes into our conversation it was obvious that they take their work seriously. Witnessing their frequent ball-busting and wisecracks, however, it was evident that this band really knows how to have a good time. They should do really well.

KNAC.COM: Okay, I’m at the KNAC.COM studio with Age Of Evil. Hello, gentlemen. Will you introduce yourselves, please?

JORDAN ZIFF: I’m Jordan Ziff, the lead guitar player.

GARRETT ZIFF: I’m Garrett Ziff, the drummer and the brains.

JACOB GOLDBERG: I’m Jacob Goldberg. I’m the bass player.

JEREMY GOLDBERG: I’m Jeremy Goldberg, the rhythm guitarist and lead singer.

JORDAN ZIFF: And Garrett’s not the brains. He’s an idiot.

GARRETT ZIFF: No, as the drummer I write all the songs.

JACOB GOLDBERG: Age Of Evil’s like one giant brain that feeds the four of us.

KNAC.COM: You’re like the Neil Peart of the band.

GARRETT ZIFF: Exactly!

JACOB GOLDBERG: No. He’s like the Tommy Lee.

KNAC.COM: He gets all the women?

JACOB GOLDBERG: Not all of them.

JORDAN ZIFF: He’s like the Tommy Lee who doesn’t do shit, but gets away because he’s talented. He’s talented, but he doesn’t practice. I’m talented, but I do practice. So, basically Garrett’s an asshole and I work my ass off. And Garrett just kinda cruises along.

KNAC.COM: As a fairly new band you’ve already toured internationally. Where have you been so far?

JACOB GOLDBERG: We’ve been through a few countries in Europe. Germany, Denmark, Holland, Switzerland, and London…London’s not a country.

KNAC.COM: You’ve toured with some major bands in your travels and have played big stadium shows. How did that happen for you in such a short time?

JACOB GOLDBERG: We got asked to do the Bang Your Head festival in Germany in 2007, right when our first album came out. We got asked to this 15-20,000 person festival with Heaven and Hell, and who else?

JEREMY GOLDBERG: Nazareth, HammerFall, Girlschool, W.A.S.P., Edguy…

JACOB GOLDBERG: We got asked to do that and it was what kind of kick-started the whole thing. From there we met the guy who would be starting the label that we’re with now. You know, everything just goes in steps. You meet someone who introduces you to someone else and that’s how it all got started.

KNAC.COM: Your music is a concoction of all this good shit. When you started off did you guys aspire to play any particular genre?

JORDAN ZIFF: I think we just do what we feel like, and hopefully people will like it.

GARRETT ZIFF: Like you said, we play concoction metal, a new genre.

JACOB GOLDBERG: We’re premium roast, just like everything combined.

JEREMY GOLDBERG: Melting pot of metal.

KNAC.COM: Fondue with meat and potatoes and all the essential condiments.

JEREMY GOLDBERG: It has the essentials, yeah. Our new album that we’re writing right now even has more things going into that melting pot.

GARRETT ZIFF: Just kind of like a metal, rock and roll smorgasbord.

JORDAN ZIFF: Fondue.

JACOB GOLDBERG: Of metal

GARRETT ZIFF: So many analogies.

JACOB GOLDBERG: We listen to anything that’s rock and roll. Anything from the 60’s to the 90’s. That’s what we grew up on.

GARRETT ZIFF: Early 90’s.

JORDAN ZIFF: Anything before Nirvana.

JACOB GOLDBERG: So that’s where we get our influence from and that’s like the styles we like. Get Dead is a heavier album, but we listen to a lot of classic rock bands and stuff like that, too.

KNAC.COM: Did your parents turn you on to the music they listen to?

JEREMY GOLDBERG: They didn’t listen to that kind of music, but we came up on it on our own.

JACOB GOLDBERG: Now I got my dad getting into Iron Maiden and Motley Crue. It’s kinda funny.

GARRETT ZIFF: My mom listened to that since she was younger, anyway. So my mom had a lot of influence to what I started listening to. It’s definitely cool being able to share those influences with our parents and stuff like that. But like I said, we listen to a lot of older stuff. We don’t really listen to anything too modern—it all just sounds the same. So, we’re being different.

KNAC.COM: What are your plans now?

JEREMY GOLDBERG: Well, we’re going on a couple of tour dates with Hail in late January in New York and in Massachusetts. And while we’re out there we’re going to be meeting with a producer, because we’re working on the new songs for the next full-length album. Right now, touring and the new album are the main focuses for us. We have a lot of demos that we’re already working on and the newer music is definitely the best stuff we’ve ever written. Before the album comes out, hopefully we can release a single or two and give everyone a taste of what it’s like. We don’t want to keep everyone waiting too long—attention spans these days (laughs).

KNAC.COM: But there aren’t people breathing down your back and throwing unrealistic deadlines at you, right?

JACOB GOLDBERG: No. That’s kinda nice. Being with a smaller label, they’re not hawking you all the time to do stuff. We were literally recording till the last day we were on tour. So we go at a pretty fast pace. We’re cool with that. We like it that way. It makes us work harder.

JEREMY GOLDBERG: And it’s important too, because you don’t want to play a live show and your album has all these layers and things that you can’t replicate live. For us, live, we play as good, or better, than the songs on the album. But we also have the entertainment with it, so it’s like live shows are really important to bands, and if you don’t have that you probably won’t be super successful

JORDAN ZIFF: Basically, it’s all about the moves (laughs).

KNAC.COM: Whipping your hair and stuff like that? If you have that down then you got it made.

JACOB GOLDBERG: That’s why we like to do everything raw. The album sounds really raw. That’s what we like, so when we play live it’s not like we have to worry about so much extra stuff, like he (Jeremy) said, like keyboards or synth stuff or whatever new things people are doing nowadays.

JEREMY GOLDBERG: Yeah, we’re not into the Pro Tools shit or the vocal tuning shit, so it’s not something that we have to worry about.

KNAC.COM: Your recordings have been all analog?

JEREMY GOLDBERG: The first album we did was analog. The Get Dead EP was digital.

JORDAN ZIFF: But it really wasn’t edited.

JACOB GOLDBERG: As long as there’s attitude there that’s all that matters. Who cares if the pitch is absolutely perfect? As long as you sound angry and pissed off--that’s what works.

KNAC.COM: A lot of bands, particularly the up-and-coming ones, don’t have that mindset.

JACOB GOLDBERG: That’s the problem.

JEREMY GOLDBERG: Since the very beginning of this band we’ve never moved on from something until we’ve nailed it, especially with Jordan and his guitar playing. The reason he’s so good, besides his raw talent and ability (laughs), is that he always practiced it until he could play it perfect, and then he moved on. So, that’s what we do. If you put a vocal tuner on your voice then how are you supposed to get better? You don’t push yourself.

GARRETT ZIFF: You’re going to do as well as your expectations are for yourself, and if you don’t set that goal high enough and you rely on auto-tuning and Pro Tools and all that shit, you got nothing.

JACOB GOLDBERG: Same with drums. We’re not into the whole “Let’s program the drum kit and use triggers on every single drum live.” We just don’t do that. I know a lot of these grindcore death metal bands do that because they have to play so fast and they can’t hit it hard enough at that speed, so they just have it all triggered. To me, it all sounds fake. I don’t know what separates that from rappers using fake drum sounds. To me it’s the same.

JEREMY GOLDBERG: If the best band in the world, The Beatles, could do it with four tracks, then why shouldn’t everyone else be able to do it?

GARRETT ZIFF: Exactly. Back in the 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s there was no Pro Tools or none of that shit, so it was either you had it or you didn’t. So we’re trying to bring back that aspect of music, being able to say, “This is us and this is what we sound like. We’re not editing shit.”

JEREMY GOLDBERG: Changing one little part isn’t going to sell ten million more records. What’s the point? And, our first producer really showed us that on out first album—that changing that little thing, making it perfect, is not going to sell any more records. If anything, it would just take away from the rawness and attitude.

KNAC.COM: Jordan, did you have any formal training or are you a self-taught guy?

JORDAN ZIFF: I’d say half and half. I took lessons, but I’d go on my own tangent and do my own thing. When I started guitar, I listened to Santana and stuff like that. I had lessons for a long time and my teacher was the one who said, “Here, man. You gotta listen to Paul Gilbert and Yngwie.” And then I just started learning that shit. So I just kinda put all my influence and shit into a big ball of Jordan Ziff guitar playing shit (laughs). I guess I play fast, but playing fast is not the most important aspect to playing guitar, because a monkey can learn to play fast after a long time.

KNAC.COM: Garrett, what’s the deal with your drum playing? Where did you come from?

(laughs)

GARRETT ZIFF: Well, I started playing in elementary school when I was about seven, eight years old. I took lessons for my first couple of years, but for the most part I’m self-taught. I took a couple of lessons from a guy named Rikard Stjernquist. He plays drums in a band called Jag Panzer, and he showed me a couple of things. But, for the most part, I’m self-taught. That’s where I’m at. I’m just naturally amazing (laughs).

JORDAN ZIFF: I was always telling him, “Hey man, you’re hitting like a pussy. Hit harder.” Garrett, when you see him play live--he hits harder than 99 percent of the drummers, probably.

JACOB GOLDBERG: Sometimes we’ll be in the practice room and he’ll hit a cracked cymbal and a chunk of it will fly at our faces.

GARRETT ZIFF: I almost decapitated Jacob a couple of times from flying cymbal shards.

JACOB GOLDBERG: No, dude. It’s dangerous.

JEREMY GOLDBERG: I made Jacob’s head bleed from my guitar one time. I was playing…

JACOB GOLDBERG: He swung his guitar at my face.

JORDAN ZIFF: Me and Jacob smack each other at almost every show.

JACOB GOLDBERG: No, that was only one show, man. This one show we ran into each other, like, five times.

JORDAN ZIFF: We just don’t pay attention onstage. We’re in our own tangent of playing music.

JACOB GOLDBERG: That makes no sense (laughs). You totally used tangent out of context. Stop trying to sound smart.

JORDAN ZIFF: I know. I’m allowed to do that. I failed English class. That’s why I use words that don’t make sense.

KNAC.COM: I’m sure you’re the envy of many of your peers, going out on the road and becoming successful at such a young age. What’s your vision now?

JACOB GOLDBERG: I don’t know. It’s just crazy. If someone told me five years ago, “Hey Marty Friedman’s gonna play on your album.” I’d be like, “Shut up, man. No way.” It’s just really cool that stuff like that actually gets to happen…just four guys wanting to play music growing up. That’s all we ever wanted to do. And how far it’s gone and how far, hopefully, it’s going to go…

GARRETT ZIFF: No. It’s not hopefully how far it’s going to go. It’s definitely how far it’s going to go.

JACOB GOLDBERG: How far it will go.

JORDAN ZIFF: Definitely!

JEREMY GOLDBERG: It’s just a matter of time.

JORDAN ZIFF: It’s in the blood.

www.ageofevil.com

Purchase your copy of Get Dead in the KNAC.COM More Store. Click here now.

The_Space_Lord - 2/22/2010 7:48:30 PM
I'm not gravitating much towards the vocals either. Mind you, I said the same thing about Nevermore a decade ago so from this point on anything can happen......

4skin - 2/18/2010 3:38:29 AM
I think the lead guitarist is trying to look like Mustaine down to the guitar he's playing. Still, he's pretty good. Vocals are a bit tepid, but I would encourage any band that doesn't engage in shitty cookie monster hacking--I'd rather listen to these guys than, say, Lamb of God.

poobutt - 2/14/2010 2:30:48 PM
Are we not men? D-E-V-O...

usedtobeblob - 2/12/2010 1:17:09 PM
Are they homo?

CIVILPSYCHO - 2/12/2010 10:05:35 AM
Who cares if the pitch is absolutely perfect?... KIDS THESE DAYS... sheesh

kindblobber - 2/6/2010 12:27:08 PM
Are they emo?

fizzgig - 2/4/2010 10:38:57 AM
The vocals are the weak link. The kid's a product of his environment, though, like a lot of other young bands that are generally pretty decent, but whose singers have grown up in the days of Nirvana, Creed and the like, as their generation's "classic rock."

HvyMetalBarbie - 2/2/2010 5:49:43 PM
they sound like Black Tide with a shitty vocalist. The guitar player has some cool hair and riffs, but that's about it.......next!

JDWheels - 1/27/2010 9:11:13 AM
Love their humour and their love of the music... but I hope that they can back all of this up. Hearing too many new bands that are all hype, and not enough real metal. ***JD Wheels, Writer for Metalbite.com***

knaclistener - 1/26/2010 4:52:50 PM
A penis of denial would blurt an unblog. More of a novelty act if it knocked someone up.

theunablobber - 1/26/2010 11:49:47 AM
Their tune "Penis of Denial" is pretty funny. Novelty act, though.

knaclistener - 1/25/2010 7:25:22 AM
I first saw these guys on the 2007 Bang Your Head Festival DVD. Main stage and club.

cannabeast - 1/24/2010 9:05:14 AM
Well...to answer your question, I care. If you can't sing on key...that means you are worthless as a singer. In fact, your band sucks green donkey dicks. Go back to Walmart.

metalFACE17 - 1/23/2010 5:52:34 PM
finally a young band with a sense of humor. These guys are hilarious, cant wait to see them live!

krankit - 1/23/2010 5:06:59 PM
Definitely not blink 182...sounds like Avenged Sevenfold, Pantera and Metallica made some metal babies....they seem to have the chops to be huge!! Gonna see em next time they play!!!

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