RC: Rock Circus is down here at Metropol to hang out with these
wild mf'ers Ill Nino. This is Jardel and Ahrue, the new
guitarist.
Ahrue: Yeah, I'm the new guitar player.
RC: How's that working out? I guess you pretty much gotta do what
he says, he's the boss.
Jardel: Nah, we don't work like that, it's like a team, you know
what I'm saying. Everybody's got a say. I did a tour with
Machinehead before so I've known him for a while so I don't
see him as a new guy.
RC: Like a seasoned veteran.
Jardel: Even the percussion player, I don't see him as a new guy
cuz I've been jamming with him for like five years. It's just
a family dude. There's no new guy, old guy, boss, nothing
like that with us.
RC: There's just kind of an idea of the music, you wanna contribute
and amalgamate with that as a band.
Jardel: That's all it is.
RC: How many years were you with Machinehead Ahrue?
Ahrue: I played with Machinehead for about four years. The way that
I met these guys was we did the Road Rage tour about two years
ago, it was Fear Factory, Machinehead, Ill Nino, and Camara.
Right after that Machinehead went to Europe and we called up
Ill Nino and asked them if they wanted to go. Between the two
tours I've never had more fun or enjoyed touring with any
other band than Ill Nino, and all the guys were the coolest
guys. It was the first band that I was ever sorry to see leave
at the end of a tour or felt sad. So when they were looking
for a guitar player I was one of the first people that they
called. I actually packed up enough clothes for about five
days to come out and they kept me for about four months. I
haven't left yet.
RC: You came in during the preproduction for the new CD,
Confessions?
Jardel: He came in while we were still recording the album, it was
like half way through the recording process, that's when he
came in.
RC: So you already had a lot of this written, was this written
during the Revolution Revolucion tour slash promotion of that
CD?
Jardel: Actually some of that stuff we started writing through the
Revolution Revolucion tour, but a lot of the stuff just came
out during preproduction. We did some of the stuff during the
tour but most of it in preproduction.
RC: Do you all sit down together or do you kind of bounce ideas off
of eachother. Like hey I wrote this down while I was jamming
the other day.
Jardel: Yeah, sometimes. Let's say I come out with an idea or
whatever. I got all this stuff that I have done and I show it
to the band, so Chris does the same thing, and Laz and
everybody did the same way. We all put the ideas down, this
is what we have, let's see what we can do with what we have
on the table right now. And we start jamming on everybodies
ideas and stuff just came out like that, on the spot. It's not
like we planned anything, it happened naturally, you know what
I'm saying.
RC: All I've really heard off of it, since the album's not out
while we're taping this but it will be out as you view it, was
the Freddy vs. Jason soundtrack. You guys are the lead off
track on the CD, which is kind of cool cuz it gives you kind
of a segway or preclude to the new CD coming out Confessions.
Jardel: Yeah, that's definately a cool thing. The Freddy vs. Jason
soundtrack came out in August and that's like you can have a
taste of the new Ill Nino, what is about to come.
RC: Yeah, it seems like you have a fresher idea, seems like you're
adding a lot more fills and what not in to the music,
incorporating things. Where as in the first album it was kind
of just like straight ahead, heavy, but it had dimension. It
seems like you're almost pulling back a little bit on some of
the hardness and filling it in with other elements of sound.
Jardel: By that song yeah I agree, but there's some songs on the
record, like Lifeless Life, to me that's the heaviest song
that Ill Nino ever did.
RC: Is that one of you're favorites?
Jardel: Actually I love the whole record man.
RC: Really proud of it.
Jardel: Yeah definately, and it was like the main reason for the
album coming out like that cuz it was a team effort. It was
like six guys writing songs together as a team. Everybody had
a chance to throw there little flavor in there. Like I said
it's a team, there's no boss, I'm not the guy who writes
everything.
RC: That's cool, that's a good relationship.
Jardel: Yeah, we wanna be like a real band man. I think a band that
has a guy doing everything, to me that's not a band.
RC: How did you come up with the title? I'm kind of curious cuz the
first CD was titled Revolution Revolucion, it seems like a
complete switch to Confessions.
Jardel: Yeah, but comparing to Revolution Revolucion confession is
also in Spanish confession, it's the same. So we're like yeah
that works for both, it's Spanish and English. I think Chris
came out with the name. I'm not sure who even came out with
the name. He writes all the lyrics.
RC: He's the lyricist. He's the man that gets all the trim first
right?
Jardel: HE's the guy singing, you know what I'm saying.
RC: How is it to get up behind him every night? Do you feel real
solid when it connects with the whole audience and it comes
back at you and you're out selling 350,000 CD's. The first
one with no airplay and very little videoplay. That's a great
accomplishment in this big industry that we're in.
Jardel: I mean yeah, we're happy that we can be on tour right now,
and we made it to the second record. Even though we went
through some of the bullshit, the line-up change, and all
that. But still man, we're just going strong.
RC: What kind of guitars do you guys like, do you have a specific
one?
Ahrue: Yeah, we're sponsored by ESP, all three, Jardel, myself, and
Laz. My guitar is a custom made viper. It's kind of like the
original viper but I had them make the body a little thinner
than the regular one because it makes the low end a little bit
tighter. I think the normal viper when you do a chug it goes
vroommm and mine goes like chunk. Jardel why don't you tell
them about your guitar.
JArdel: Oh my guitar, I just got a new one, it's the Ultratone. I
have a prototype, they're probably gonna release that next
year sometime. I love the way it sounds.
RC: How many of them do you go through? Do you smash them up?
Jardel: No I treat my guitars like babies dude. I don't like doing
anything stupid with my guitar, I need it for the next day.
RC: You got the sponsorship. You could say hey man we're having
problems out here, these guitars are falling apart everywhere.
Ahrue: I think the way that we play on stage we do kind of abuse
our instruments. Not because we don't like them or anything.
RC: There an extension of what your emotion is and a lot of the
time the hardware is not meant to substain that sometimes.
Ahrue: I would say we're a little rougher on our instruments than
a lot of bands because of how much energy we put in to the
show. But I would say that ESP stands up to the abuse better
than any other guitar.
RC: I'm a Gibson man myself. I like hurting my back that's what it
is, they're heavy guitars. How did Roadrunner pick up on you?
You're from Jersey right?
Jardel: Yeah, you know Mike right, you know the guy that signed us,
we did three shows..
RC: Three shows out?
Jardel: Yeah, we did three shows and he heard about the band and
came down and he saw us play. And he was like yo I gotta sign
you guys man, and we got signed after the fourth show.
RC: That's pretty cool. That's like Cinderella story. Roadrunner's
obviously a good label to be on when you have your type of
genre of music.
Jardel: It's like most of my favorite bands when I was growing up
we're from Roadrunner and when they saw us play they were
like I gotta sign these guys, and they've been treating us
good since then. They had us on tour for like two years for
the first album.
RC: Oh they'll do that, they have the power.
Jardel: Hopefully for this album we're gonna stay on tour for
another two years.
RC: They think that you look at it as all fun but they're like
we're getting their name out there. It goes by quick doesn't
it?
Jardel: Yeah, real quick.
RC: Well thanks, here's the video now, on Rock Circus.
For More Info Go To www.illnino.com
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