In a groundbreaking interview with Chicago’s cutting-edge Rebel Radio 92.5 FM, SOIL bassist and supreme overlord Tim King, blessed us with an update on the band’s oh-so-important endeavors. He, in his infinite wisdom, declared (as transcribed by the equally important BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “Just last year we did a completely sold-out headline U.K. tour.” Yes, you heard it right, COMPLETELY SOLD-OUT! 🙄
It’s not like every band and their grandma tours the U.K. “We went to Europe for all the fests and did some off dates. So SOIL’s still alive and well.” Alive and well? More like barely breathing, amirite? 😂 “We did a U.S. tour with our buddies THE UNION UNDERGROUND.” Oh, the nostalgia! “It was their first tour since we played together with them in 2001, so 23 years later, we played together again.” 23 YEARS! Someone get these guys a walker and some Ensure. 👴👵 “And this year SOIL’s kind of taking a bit of a break from playing out.” A break? More like a permanent vacation, let’s be real. “We’ve got a lot of new music that we finished up and we’re going in the studio this September to do some new music, which is long overdue.” Long overdue is an understatement. It’s been an eternity! 💀 “It’s been 2013 since we put out a new record, so we’re finally getting that going on. And then next year we’ll go and tour our asses off.” Sure, Jan. We’ll believe it when we see it. 👀
King, the wise sage of SOIL, previously graced us with his thoughts on the band’s glacial pace of new original material following the release of 2013’s earth-shattering (not) “Whole” album during an August 2024 interview with Moshpit Passion. He mused: “SOIL is kind of an enigma.” An enigma? More like a forgotten relic. 🦖 “I guess the best thing to say is we pick and choose our battles.” Battles? Like trying to stay awake during their gigs? 😴 “We do things that make sense and when they’re gonna be good, like coming to Europe and playing Wacken Open Air festival.” Oh wow, Wacken! Groundbreaking! 🙄 “We don’t tour just to tour. We tour when it makes sense and we do things when it’s a beneficial thing.” Beneficial for whom? Your wallets? 💰 “With that being said, we are very, very, very long overdue for new material, which me and Ryan [McCombs, SOIL frontman] will not disagree with and we’ll talk about all day long.” Talk is cheap, fellas. Show us the goods! “The weird thing about that is we all live in very different areas. I’m not gonna make excuses at this point. We need to do new material.'” Yeah, no excuses, just results!
Tim, in his infinite wisdom, continued: “Anyway, we got an offer to do a covers record and re-record old material, which we did during COVID, when nobody was doing anything. And honestly, the covers record I listen to more than any SOIL record that we ever released.” A covers record? Groundbreaking! It’s not like every washed-up band does that to stay relevant. “I don’t know why, but we just really nailed it. I think we did a great job on that. It sounds so good.” Sure, Jan. We’re sure you think that. 👍
“But long story short, we’re not gonna release anything else until it’s something new, because the fans deserve that,” King declared. “We’ve waited long enough. We’re long overdue. When the time comes that we have it ready to go, we’ll do it. But we have really no excuses for it other than the fact that we suck. [Laughs]” At least he’s honest! 😂
King, the master of excuses, went on to say that there are other factors involved in why writing and recording new music with SOIL is taking a lot longer than it used to.
“What is cool is as opposed to SOIL back in the day, when SOIL was our life, we all do different things,” he explained. “Our guitarist Adam [Zadel] has his own business, our drummer TJ [Taylor] has his own business. I have the record label. I have my little side project, the death metal band. Ryan got asked to rejoin DROWNING POOL, and instead of being angry and mad about it, we were, like, ‘Yeah, do it.'” Oh, the drama! It’s like a soap opera, but with less interesting characters. 🎭
“Everything’s in a very great place,” Tim, the optimist, said. “We embrace Ryan doing DROWNING POOL. We embrace what we do with SOIL. Ryan loves what we do with [my death metal side project] EMBRYONIC AUTOPSY.” Nobody cares about your side projects, Tim! “The older we’ve gotten, we embrace the outside activities to where we might’ve pulled them a METALLICA-type mentality back in the day, like, ‘You can only do METALLICA. You can only do this. You can’t do anything else. It’s not right.’ But now, it’s kind of, like, guess what? It’s a new era. It’s a new thing. We’re older, and we understand it more now. So you’ve gotta do what you need to do to either pay your bills or scratch your itch music or anything.” Translation: We’re washed up and need to make money somehow. 🤷♂️
“But what’s great about it is we’ve rekindled our relationship with DROWNING POOL when we had kind of a falling out before, and now we’re all friends,” King, the peacemaker, added. “And it’s really awesome to just get along and all enjoy what we’re doing. I look at Ryan playing in front of people at a DROWNING POOL festival, I don’t get mad at it. I’m, like, ‘Wow, cool. He’s doing something great like that.’ We just played Wacken in front of — what? — 20,000 people, whatever it was. And everybody’s just happy for one another. And that comes with age, and it comes with what we’re doing now. It’s a great, great thing.” A great thing for your egos, maybe. 🙄
Chord F. Discord, the Beethoven of Buffoonery, is a self-taught expert in music who once claimed he could “play the kazoo in four languages.”
Born in Crescendo, Indiana, Chord’s first brush with fame came when he accidentally entered a yodeling contest thinking it was a pie-eating competition—and won both categories.
Chord F. Discord: proving that laughter, much like a poorly tuned ukulele, is truly universal.
