Maylene And The Sons Of Disaster - Interview - 2007

“My fiancé dumped me on Valentine’s Day while on tour.” Maylene And The Sons Of Disaster’s 27 year-old-singer is starting to explain how he was ‘ejected’ from metalcore stalwarts, Underoath in 2003. “I was only 22 and nearly married – and I’d been on tour for a long time, so I was a mess.” The scruffy southern gentleman holds the vowel in ‘long’ for a few beats and throws a look of that invites sympathy. “I’m OCD too so I reacted over the top about it.” It’s not hard to believe. Even in Houston’s soporific heat – 91 degrees with 85% humidity – Dallas Taylor is animated: a tangential rollercoaster of conversation, a narrative that flips between tenses and in and out of the second person.

“It was hard for the guys [in Underoath] to deal with seeing me up and down,” he continues, barely pausing to take a warm moist breath of Texan air. “They were all 19 and didn’t know how to deal with it on tour. So they asked me to leave.”

Jesus. You must have been gutted. And then some.

“Yeah,” he acquiesces, “but they were young and they were tired of seeing me hurting. They thought they were doing me a favour. To start off with they were bitter, I was bitter.”

No shit. And as Dallas admits, that bitterness came out in the first Maylene And The Sons Of Disaster album, the band Dallas joined a year later: “When the oath that bound us was more than words/Heretics claiming the saviour as their own… And you think hurting me really helped.”

It was in fact Dallas' confessional and cathartic use of lyrics that inspired many rumours surrounding his departure. One being that Dallas was kicked out because he had killed his fiancé in a car crash. But as he explains, the song only sounds autobiographical, and the lyrics were in fact inspired by an incident from his teenage years. 

“It's time you see these scars a true friend takes/stronger and better without you.”

“I grew up in a little redneck town,” he says. “My buddy fell asleep at the wheel of an open-top jeep, so when it turned there was gas pouring out of it. It almost blew up but his fiancé dragged him out, and the doctor said he was going to die because he had some sort of brain trouble. It’s also based on a local story about a guy who was rushing his wife to the hospital because she’s in labour. He crashes and kills his wife and the unborn baby but he survives. It made me think ‘how can someone live with that?’.”

“Even the guys in Maylene had heard that I had a fiancé who died in a car accident before I joined the band,” he adds. “I got kicked out of Underoath four years ago but there are still rumours that my girlfriend was pregnant or I killed her and that’s why I left. It keeps people amused on the internet, I guess.”

Without warning or preface, and with a glibness that only the clinically hyperactive can pull off, Dallas returns back to the previous conversation topic.

“We’re all friends again now though,” he says. 

That’s very Christian of you.

“Yeah,” he laughs before admitting that “it was hard though. A lot of times you don’t even want to try to heal the wounds, but you know you have to.”

Remaining philosophical, the bearded frontman explains that if he hadn’t been given the boot from Underoath, he would never have moved to Alabama, met his wife, had his 18 month old son or formed Maylene And The Sons Of Disaster with his best friends – bassist Roman Havaland, guitarists Scott Collum, Josh Cornutt, Josh Williams and drummer Lee Turner. The Lord moves in mysterious ways his wonders to perform. Ain’t that the truth.

“I'm soaring home to Alabama/I’ll always be a son of The South.”

In the last few years, the export of rock and metal from the Southern States has enjoyed a resurgence. Ten – or even five - years ago you might have been hard pushed to think of many more Southern bands than Down, Pantera and Corrosion Of Conformity. Now there is a wave of swaggering heavy and dirty metallic rock including the likes of Emanuel, Black Stone Cherry, The Showdown, Artimus Pyledriver, Norma Jean, The Chariot, Sanctity, Valient Thorr, and Maylene tour buddies He Is Legend – all updating the ‘southern’ sound in their own ways.

While not all of these bands may sound archetypically ‘southern’ per se, more and more bands are employing southern influences. But as loquacious guitarist Josh Cornutt explains, the new sound isn’t as simple as sounding like a heavy Lynyrd Skynyrd or metal Allman Brothers.

“The sound has come from all over,” he says lighting a cigarette and pulling on a beer in the muggy Southern heat. “It’s not just from Skynyrd: it’s from AC/DC, Black Label Society and Motorhead as well – none of which is classed as southern rock.” He smiles at his five band mates who sit on a redundant sofa in the sweltering car park of the Meridian venue, Houston, Texas. “I guess it’s an attitude,” he says wryly.

These six perceptive Alabamans are far from the straw-chewing stereotypes of a million books, movies and jokes. The band concede that while the rising media/industry interest in The South and its ‘new music’ is doubtless just another passing focus interest of a cynical industry/media with short attention spans, the insist that good music will always survive the ever-shifting fashion focus. They group also states that fads aside, The South has always held a certain romance and mystery to the rest of the nation. Whether because of Alabama’s part in the civil rights movement or the implications of the Confederacy during the Civil War, people are fascinated with The South (Alabama was Dr Martin Luther King’s first ecclesiastical placement and home of Rosa Parks, the black woman who refused to give up her seat on the bus to a white man).  

“Also,” says Dallas. “There aren’t usually that many bands that come out of Alabama, so people are intrigued”. 

“And the people in the south are the nicest,” says Josh receiving self-conscious looks from his band. “I don’t care. I really do think they are the nicest. People stop and say ‘hello’ whether you know them or not. The coasts think that we’re all rednecks, hicks, backwards, no education, got no teeth in our heads. It’s a different upbringing down here.”

Which brings us neatly to the topic of religion. 

“I grew up in church,” says Josh. “And I know that has a lot to do with it. In my house when I was growing up my parents raised me to be nice to everybody; whatever you do will come back at you in return, and usually two times worse if you do something bad.”

With a legacy of Christian metal pap like POD, Creed and Stryper it’s no wonder that the Maylene boys are happy to distance themselves from the tag ‘Christian metal’. Dallas himself is quoted as saying, ‘I feel like so much of music today, especially those who come from a Christian background, spend so much time hiding who they really are, or being ashamed of their beliefs, trying to be 'scene' or to sell records’.

“I’m straight up about my beliefs,” states Dallas frankly, “but I don’t ram them down peoples’ throats. I think we all learned along time ago that if you’re not confident in who you are people will see right through you as a weak individual. Also we know that people come to a concert to be entertained, not to be preached to. We haven’t been pigeon-holed as a Christian band, even though we’re open about what we do and who we are. It’s just our lifestyle.”

And because ‘Christian metal’ bands are always rubbish.

“Well… yeah.”

“Momma didn’t raise no fool.”

Earlier that night, as we smoked and drank the long intercontinental flight out of our minds, Josh told us a story. The slender and bearded guitarist hung on the fire escape railing and explained that while they were in Paris, a strip club hawker grabbed his arm and forcefully suggested that the guys all ‘enjoy’ some female entertainment. Politely turning down the offer wasn’t enough to dispense with the tout who started yelling American slurs, and cursing them g in French. A heated exchange ensued in which Josh and the whole band nearly came to blows with the man and his cronies. Luckily the altercation remained only verbal and the Christians walked away the better men.

“I didn’t enjoy Europe much,” Josh admits.

What you realise is that despite the group’s impeccable manners, these six young men are from small town Alabama where honour and respect stands taller than cowardly self-preservation. When strangers in a strange land, Maylene stick together: they’re a crew, a brotherhood, a gang. 

Is it this fraternal bond and sense of outsidership that inspired the band to base their second album, ‘II’ (the follow up to 2005’s eponymous debut), around the life of legendary gangster Ma Barker and her four delinquent outlaw sons?

“Sure there’s a bit of that,” admits Dallas, clearly thinking about the parallel for the first time. “Probably more than we think there is actually. But it’s more than that.”

At the turn of the century Ma Barker and her sons - Herman, Lloyd, Arthur, and Fred - started a forty year crime spree across the American south and Midwest: killing, maiming, stealing and kidnapping. Ma Barker herself was finally gunned down by the FBI, aged 58, with her youngest son in Dallas’ home town in Ocklawaha, Florida after a 40 year criminal career.

“When they’d shot them, they brought the bodies downtown,” explains Dallas. “My grandfather went to see them. He was five years old and he got to touch the bodies. So when I was a kid I would go and watch the re-enactments of her killing. I would eat cotton candy and watch her get shot – it was weird. There’s a lot of history with that story and us.” 

But a concept album is often the writing on the wall; a last ditched attempt at inspiration when a band has drawn the well of personal disclosure dry.

“There are probably three songs that tie directly into the concept,” explains Dallas. “The rest are more personal, but still tie into the concept. Even though they were bad and corrupt they went through what any family goes through as well. It sounds bad but I can sometimes see both sides of the story. Sometimes I go down the wrong path.”

‘The Day Hell Broke Loose At Sicard Hollow’ hints at that sympathy: “Just some wanna be heroes who got tired of our ways, and got their chance at fame/It was like shooting fish in a barrel, and we sure didn't hear any angels singing.”

We should all be thankful that Maylene are the open-minded and questioning faithful they are. If they had walked the self-righteous, pious, pompous and evangelical path of so many other close-minded soapbox Christian bands, would they have produced two of this decades most essential metal albums? It’s their flawed, explorative and humanist angles that make the band so gripping. That and massive fuck off riffs.

“I don’t believe anyone on earth can be perfect,” concludes Josh in his endearing southern drawl. “But I’m gonna try.”

Top 10 southern clichés:

BARBEcUE

Lee: “People think we always eat barbecue.”

SWEET TEA

Josh Cornutt: “Y’all have hot tea with milk in England right? Well we have it cold – ain’t no milk – ice cubes and lot of sugar.”

CONFEDERATE ‘BATTLE FLAG’

Dallas: “We get loads of rebel flags thrown onto stage. Then when we leave kids will jump up and get them.”

THE ACCENT

Roman: “People think we say ‘y’all’ and ‘ain’t gunna’.”

RACISM

Josh Cornutt: “People think we’re racist. We’re not.”

OUTDOORS

Dallas: “That we go and play in the woods. That’s true though.”

GUNS & HUNTING

Dallas: “We all have guns. I have a shotgun that they stopped making parts for in 1910.”

Josh Williams: “We hunt. I went hunting deer with my dad. I’ve killed like 11 deer.”

TRUCKS

Dallas: “People think we all drive trucks. I used to but now I cycle.”

NASCAR

All: “Oh yeah, absolutely.”

Lee: “I go every year man!”

COLLEGE FOOTBALL

Roman: “There are two teams in Alabama and people are so into it that families divorce and have real fights over it – 90,000 people turn up for the practise games where the team play themselves – and fights break out. It’s ridiculous.”