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Regardless of whether or not you believe that the members of Valient Thorr came from the planet Venus and are unstuck in time, this is a band with a thoughtful message of a potential fate of Earth, and they tell this message in such a creative way that it can take on a life of its own. Their music is so fucking good, bringing rock and roll back to where it should be, and don't even get me started on their insane live show. This interview took place with Valient Himself
PL: State something interesting about yourself.
VT: I'm not a good judge of what is interesting to most people. I guess a lot of people don't believe that we're from space. They think its satirical humor, but I'm from another-actually, here's something. Here's a true fact that someone might find interesting: all humans are descended from Venusian babies that were seeded here on the Earth after the dinosaurs died. Ponder that.
PL: I've been reading a lot of webzines claiming that you guys are the band not to be missed on this tour. How do you feel about that?
VT: Thats radical. Tell 'em all, man, tell 'em all. I believe Metallica said "Kill 'Em All." I just say tell 'em all. Its less violent and, I guess it can spread bullshit too, but whatever; this ain't bullshit. That makes me happy. I'm glad you read that.
PL: How did this tour compare to the expectations you had coming into it?
VT: Its part of the plan. This was definitely three times bigger than last year, and I expect it to be three times bigger than that the next time around. Its just getting wild from the beginning to the end. Right now, we're in the middle. Its crazy. The middle is the best part.
PL: Do you ever worry about forgetting something before going on tour.
VT: No, because we don't go on tour anymore. We just live on the road. I've been on tour for 18 months. Whats really awesome is that we're gonna take three weeks off because we're starting to go insane. 18 months next week. Thats pretty radical. I don't worry about forgetting anything on tour, but I worry about forgetting stuff that I'm supposed to do in my real life, like paying bills and all this crazy shit thats hard to do when you're in a different city every day. I think I am a crazy person because I haven't related to life in a good long spell, and its gonna be a culture shock when I have to go back and do those things.
PL: How does Earth differ from Venus?
VT: Oh, wow. Venus was a great place. Venus is sort of similar to Earth in a lot of respects before the planet started dying. Earth is a baby planet. Venus was an old old planet, and by the time I lived there, all people had moved to the inside of it because it was so bad that you couldn't live outside anymore. You couldn't breathe the air that was there. We lived unnderground where the ice deposits were. There were three ice rivers that ran sort of like a city that reminds me of Pittsburgh. It was beautiful. It was cold as hell, but it was livable at least, but they said that the planet wasn't gonna last, so they sent us out on different time streams. They put those babies on Earth to see how they could live and what the weather would do to them, because the weather had already destroyed everything else. We just kind of got stuck. We crashed our ship and couldn't get out. Right now, I'm not sure if Venus even is still around. That was so many eons ago, or it could be so many eons in the future. When you become unstuck in time when you get lost, its hard to figure out where you are once you're in a place where you can't go anywhere else. It kind of makes you a better person because you have to learn from your mistakes. Thats where we've been for the last five years: learning how to live in this world and learning how to figure out why these people treat the world like they treat it. Its heavy.
PL: Are you digging Earth so far?
VT: I've always dug Earth. People don't treat Earth like they should. I love Earth. Its our home, but it'll be just like Venus. It'll be just another dying planet if people that are in charge keep treating it the way they treat it and trick all the people who live on into thinking that the world is one way. All the things I'm saying sound crazy, but if they tell you the real shit that goes on in the world, you'd think thats crazy too. Do you want an example?
PL: Yeah, sure.
VT: If a guy in the military gets killed, they don't call his family up and tell them that their child is dead. They wait eight, nine or ten months before they tell them. Thats pretty heavy shit if you think about it. You hear crazy shit every day, and you don't know what to believe because they want to keep things from people because it seems heavy to think about, but what they should do is not keep anything from people. They shouldn't put people in those situations. They shouldn't have to deal with that. They shouldn't treat people like that. We all need protectors and we all need people looking out for us, but when those things are compromised, I don't know. I'm getting heavy, but the world's heavy. We just think about these things all the time. We're so glad to be out here to help kids understand that they don't have to live in these terrible times. But, you've got to put your mind to it, and you've got to do it. You can't sit back and watch it, because the people who sit back and think they know all this stuff, all they do is know it. They use it for entertainment. All they do is go home and watch CNN or they watch Fox News. The left watches CNN and the right watches Fox News and claim to be the right ones, when thats not doing anything. They're just watching TV and getting entertained by stuff thats terrible. It just perpetuates and keeps going and nothing happens to prevent it. Its heavy. Its ridiculous.
PL: Name one album, besides your own, that you think all kids should have in their collection.
VT: Can I name two?
PL: Yeah.
VT: Frank Black Teenager of the Year. Its The Pixies front man's second solo album, and it came out in 1992. Its 22 tracks, and every single one of them is totally amazing. The second one would be Metallica's Master of Puppets. Thats just a classic. There's albums that last through time. There's things that last through history, and all the music that comes out now is so digestable. Eat it. Swallow it. Shit it out. Then whats the next thing, whats next week, whats the next jam? Give me that new album. But nothing lasts and everything gets thrown away. There's people out here, a lot of these kids who are hyped on some of these bands, that probably listened to Good Charlotte a couple years ago. And now they're probably saying that Good Charlotte is terrible and that they would never listen to that. But they did listen to them, and thats why they're big in the first place. We knew they were terrible back when they were popular, but you can't listen and be influenced by what the flavor of the month is; you look for something thats classic. When you think about classic albums of the 70s, Sabbath albums and stuff, and I think Master of Puppets is going to be one of those albums. Then what of the fucking 90s sticks out as a classic album? Its very hard to say.
PL: Grunge: Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden.
VT: There you go. Pearl Jam, Soundgarden Badmotorfinger; those are classic albums. And then, whats gonna be in the 2000s? Whats gonna be in the 10s? Its heavy. And thats a good call on the 90s ones. Thats radical.
PL: Is there anything else you want to say?
VT: No, I guess I've rambled on enough. Thats what happens when you're hungover, hot as hell and dehydrated.
