Q & A: 3 Inches of Blood's Cam Pipes swears he isn't joking, talks Dio, and has an awesome answering machine message

by Tyler Munro

April 26, 2012

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3 Inches of Blood have always had a not so quiet confidence about themselves. They genuinely think they’re a great metal band, and with the release of their fifth album, Long Live Heavy Metal, the rest of the metal community is right there with them. But it wasn’t always like this, and it definitely wasn’t an easy rise to the top. 2002’s Battlecry Under a Wintersun was released to lukewarm reviews, but worse, heavy criticism from the community the band so passionately tries to support. Rumours circulated that they were a parody; that the distinct wails of vocalist Cam Pipes were cries of mockery, not passion. Those rumours were wrong, and eventually, in spite of the adversity of record label pressure and line-up changes, Pipes and the rest of his band of heavy metal misfits persevered, first breaking out with 2004’s Advance and Vanquish—which brought such fan favourites as “Deadly Sinners” and “Destroy the Orcs”—and later with Fire Up the Blades. From there the band found consistency, and Long Live Heavy Metal, which follows 2009’s Here Waits Thy Doom might be their most cohesive, definitive album yet.

If you’re wondering why we’ve told you such a story, it’s because it mirrors the interview process we went through to get in touch with Cam Pipes. It started with a phone call. We dialled, it rang and… voicemail. No big deal, it happens. Plus Pipes has one of the cooler answering messages we’ve heard.

“You’ve reached the voicemail of THE VOICE of Canadian metal,” it said. “Cam Pipes, lead vocalist of heavy metal superstars 3 Inches of Blood… please leave a message.”

And so we called again. He answered, we talked and then, two minutes later… the call dropped. For the next twenty minutes we’d try dialling one another, neither of us having any real luck. A busy signal here, an answering machine there. But then, exactly one week later, we had our Advance and Vanquish, and by the end of the interview, we’d not only found our footing, but we left the conversation celebrating what unites us. As their fifth album so confidently proclaims: Long Live Heavy Metal.

AUX: So you’re still on the Metal Alliance tour with DevilDriver and those guys. How does it feel to be on a tour so diverse around the time of your album release?

Cam Pipes: It’s nothing new to us, we’re usually on tours that are pretty diverse. I think we stand out on the bill and people remember us. You always want to be memorable in people’s heads.

Do you think that’s a product of you guys being a pretty unique band in metal’s current landscape?

I think so. We tend to be on these tours with a lot of death metal or metalcore or whatever bands. Not a lot of traditional metal seems to be touring. There’s not too many bands stateside or in Canada that are at the level where they’re touring a lot like we are, so these are the tours we end up on. Europe’s a bit different, the festival thing or what have you. It’s usually worked out pretty well for us. We gain a lot of fans by playing to other crowds.

[Call drops]

So we were talking last week before our call dropped about the difficulties of being in a traditional metal band in a scene with a ton of subgenres. Do these difficulties actually exist, or am I just imagining them?

Yeah. I’m sure they do. It’s not like we encounter any particular difficulties being a particular type of metal band. We’re still out there doing what we do best and people seem to like it, so that’s what we do. Maybe sometimes we don’t get the respect we deserve, but that just makes us more resilient, I think.

Do you find that by now, with your fifth album, that people are finally understanding where you’re coming from? I remember when you guys first came out and, while I don’t want to call it a controversy, there was this belief that you guys might have been strictly having fun instead of being serious. Do you think people have gotten over that by now?

For the most part, yeah. We’re still having fun. Anyone who’s playing music and aren’t having fun shouldn’t be playing music. I think people didn’t take us seriously, or thought we were a parody—and some people still do—but that’s their problem that they don’t get it. In my opinion they’re just not real metal fans. They don’t understand where we’re coming from. In general, people are taking us more seriously. They understand a little bit and I think we’re showing a little more maturity with each passing record. The message, the mission is still the same.

That’s pretty clear, I’d say, with this album being called Long Live Heavy Metal. Obviously “Look Out” is a tribute to Dio, but are there any other homages on the album that people might not see as obviously?

Not really. I mean, we’ve never been afraid to show our influences, so maybe in that way people may be able to pick out certain things about us. Other than that, the only real glaring one is the Dio tribute, and we did that with a purpose. It’s something, an idea, that we kind of tossed around for a while. We wanted to do some sort of a tribute. It’s not something we’ve never tackled before.

What was it about Dio that’s made him resonate still so long after his death?

It’s how much time he spent in the scene and how influential he was, not just in a metal perspective but towards rock and roll in general, going way way back even before the early days of when he was in Elf or Rainbow. Go back even further and you’ll discover a lot of stuff he did back in the 50s. He sang in an almost… I don’t want to say Motown, but four crooner young dudes just singing. He just had so much impact wherever he went. He had such a unique voice, a unique presence. Even though he was small in stature, on stage he was larger than life.

You’ve obviously got a different singing style than Dio

I think his influence on us is probably pretty understated. We don’t share that similarity vocally, but he definitely was still a big influence as a singer. Not just from a lyrical standpoint, but the subtle things. His approach to how he’d use certain melodies. It’s something that maybe you don’t always notice, that maybe I don’t always notice at times when I’m writing. Anything in his catalogue can be spinning on our iPods at any given time. I usually just put my shit on shuffle and something will come up, and there’s always something Dio related not too far away. His legacy lives on just with what he has done and what he still does, teaching young kids who are just getting into heavy metal now or just discovering it for the first time. He’ll still teach even though he’s not with us anymore.

Long Live Heavy Metal is your fifth album, and at this point you’re the only guy still around from the first full-length. What’s made you want to keep going in spite of the line-up changes or troubles that have faced the band?

I like playing this music, and everyone who’s in the band does too. I like touring, I like going out and seeing the world and I like playing in front of people every night. I don’t want to work construction, I don’t want to work at a fuckin’ cashiers job. All due respect to those people who do that, someone has to, but I want to be playing my music for a living. I’m an entertainer and people always want to be entertained.

Has it ever really sunk in that that’s what you do for a living? It’s got to be surreal. Did you ever think you’d be here?

Not really, no. It’s always something that I’d wanted to do, and I think anyone who starts playing music and has these aspirations of rock and roll stardom always thinks, “Oh man, wouldn’t that be cool to play music for a living?” It’s something everyone I’m sure dreams of as soon as they pick up a guitar, but it’s very realistic to say “it’s probably not going to happen.” And it’s not going to happen for 99% of people who start bands, but lucky for us we’re doing it and that’s fucking awesome. There’s a lot that goes into it. You’ve got to have a lot of passion, desire and it may sound kind of cheesy, but you know… follow your dreams, I guess. There’s also a lot of luck. You’ve got to get the right break, meet the right people. In the music business it is a lot about who you know, who can do things for you as well as playing your music well and being able to convey, to show that willingness. People at record labels are going to want to see that willingness to get out there and tour, to promote your music. It’s still a business after all. But first and foremost, it’s about having fun and doing it because you love it, and if you can make a living out of it, great.

Does it ever feel like work?

It’s still fun. It is work, but it’s not just a hobby. Work puts it in a negative connotation. It’s our job, this is our livelihood. Work makes it sound like it’s a hassle, that we have to do it just to make money. We could be doing other stuff if we wanted to, but this is what we want to do. This is our choice. It does take its toll, physically and mentally, but in the end it’s something we enjoy.

Just to go back real quick to the new album, what was the idea behind the title?

Justin [Hagberg, guitarist] thought of after thinking about Rainbow’s Long Live Rock ‘n’ Roll and he just said, “hey, why don’t we name it Long Live Heavy Metal?” We weren’t sure about it at first, it seemed maybe that we were being presumptuous. We thought that maybe it was a bit too bold of a title. The more we sat on it over a few months… we couldn’t think of anything better and then we just kind of grew to like that title a lot. Yeah, it is bold, but that’s fucking good. It should be memorable. I don’t think it’s an arrogant title. It’s not like we’re saying we’re the Kings of Metal. It’s not like we’re calling our album “the best heavy metal band ever”. It’s more of a statement about what we do, not about us thinking we’re greater than we are. We’re confident, we think we’re a fucking great metal band.

Do you think that kind of confidence is lost these days? That you’re a metal band and proud of it?

We’ve never been ashamed of what we’ve done. We might not be the band of the moment. We may not have the haircuts that the record industry likes or play the same generic three chords or whatever is popular with the 14 year old girls these days. We’re not trying to be Mötley Crüe clones. It’s about the music. We’ve always played what we like, and we’re not going to change that. We don’t care what X-Y-Z record labels think about what sells records. It’s not what we’re about. We started playing this because nobody was playing music that we wanted to hear, so we just started playing it ourselves.

Has that helped you stay around as long as you have?

I’m sure it has. We’re all about sticking to our guns, and maybe in the long run it’ll help sustain our careers with this slow and steady ride. I think we’re getting more and more fans with each passing tour, year and album. I’ve seen it happen to lots of bands where they get really popular all of a sudden and then they fizzle out because they don’t know what to do with themselves with their next record. They’re trying to duplicate something that was popular at the time but doesn’t have the staying power that I think we have, or that we will have for years to come.

Tags: Music, Interviews, News, 3 Inches of Blood

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