DDR: I am sure you get this question asked a lot, so I’ll get it out of the way quickly. How did you come up with the name Pound Of Flesh?
Darrell: It comes from the "Merchant of Venus". Originally what I was doing in the late 90's was like pop music and stuff and I was going through a difficult time. I started writing some angry music, I guess you could call it industrial. I submitted two tracks to a battle of the bands under two different band names and they dug the Pound of Flesh stuff, so thats how I got the name and kind of went with it from there.
DDR: Pills is your third album. You had
Red and Black in 2000 and Pill in 2012, was there a particular reason for the gap in time between the two albums?
Darrell: Well after "Red and Black", I hooked up with Al and the Ministry Crew. Originally he came on board to produce the project and we worked on it for a couple of months. Eventually, he asked me if I wanted to play keys on their tour and we would record on our days off. We ended up not recording while on tour. We did a lot of work with Mike Scaccia and Lou Svitek, the guitarist. With Ministry, I wanted to use it as a launching platform. All the other
people in the business, I didn’t want to
deal with them. Al is a badass and a
total genius, but he has a bad reputation with industry people. Everyone I was approaching with the project was like "No, you are working with Al Jourgensen, so we don't think so." At the point, I was thinking "Fuck this , I don't want to deal with the business", so I just spent a couple years recording a bunch of heavy stuff with Mike Scaccia. In 2008, I started working with keyboardist Steve Mcintosh and he had a lot of really cool ideas. Another reason why I didn't go forward with Al producing was because he was taking it in a different direction and making it like noise and distortion and I wanted to keep the melodic and the dance elements to it.
DDR: So you were introduced to Al and did some tours with him. How was that whole experience?
Darrell: Man, it was wild, very cool indeed. At first we were approaching labels with our stuff and everyone was liking it, but no one was doing anything about it. My attorney, at the time, used to represent Al and she suggested that we get a producer involved She called up Al, and it’s funny because it kind of worked out well, he was in town and just got married to Angie, so they were in town celebrating their wedding. He told Linda to drop the CD off at the hotel. We went to the hotel to drop off the disk and press kit and as we walked in one door, Al, Angie and their friends walked out the other door. When my manager got back, I was like come on, let’s go find them. I wanted to make the first impression in person. We were circling around trying to find him and we thought we lost them, but when we were driving back towards the art institute, I saw him walking on the side of the road. I slammed on the breaks in the middle of the road and got out of the car and ran over to talk to him. Busses and cars were honking their horns at me, (laughing) but I did make a good impression because he did take me on. He told me later on "You know, when I first met you, I thought you were
Formed in 2000 and fronted by former Ministry Keyboardist Darrel James, Pound Of Flesh has been delivering alternative, electronic, and hard rock music. Having originally met and impressed Al Jourgensen there was no doubt that Pound Of Flesh where destined for greatness. Their latest release "PILLS" delivers with the Industrial Rock package, while not losing the danceability . Pound Of Flesh brings you back when this genre was exciting and new. It is with great enthusiasim that we look to the future and what Pound Of Flesh has in store for all of its fans. Pound of flesh is Darrell James-vocals, Steven McIntosh-keyboards, Al Stehman-Guitar, Jack Curylo-bass, and Jarek "Jerry" Lukomski-drums.