Veil of Maya’s Marc Okubo Shares the Real Story Behind Vocalist Switch, Explains Decision to Introduce Clean Singing
Veil of Maya guitarist Marc Okubo was the special guest on this week’s edition of The MetalSucks Podcast, and boy was it a doozy: Okubo had a bit of a late one the night before so Chuck and Godless ended up being his wake up call, but once Marc got with it he was more than willing to share all sorts of details about what’s been going on with the band lately: their new album Matriarch, some hijinks that took place on last summer’s Mayhem Festival, the filming of their Breaking Bad spoof music video and more.
Okubo also got into the details behind the split with former vocalist Brandon “Stage Voice” Butler, the full story of which hadn’t been told in full to date. Here’s an excerpt on what really went down when Butler left the band:
It kind of happened while we were on the Mayhem tour. I was asleep — I slept through all of this — I guess it was a drunken argument that got out of control. I think it was about cleaning the bus, actually. I think there were a bunch of soda cans everywhere. I was asleep when it happened, so I’m probably the worst person to ask. But I know there was a bad argument, it was about cleaning the bus, and then he made some Tweet saying that he wasn’t going to be in the band, or, at least, something that meant it to us. It was right when Mayhem was ending so we just went home and started working on the CD [Matriarch] and he was just out of the band.
We had one more show. We played it. We just went into writing mode. I was already supposed to fly out to go to the studio immediately after the tour was over so I just stayed in that mind-set.
I think when he switched jobs on Facebook, that’s when everybody noticed he was out of the band. Then he came out with a statement and that was before we even knew what to do. We were gonna get a new singer before announcing that Brandon wasn’t in the band. We were planning on just putting new music out and having that be the big surprise like, “Oh! There’s a new singer!”’ So when that got out it was a lot more Internet drama.
We were planning on not working with him [before he changed his job on Facebook]. [Before that] we sent an email saying we were gonna take him seriously when he said he was gonna quit the band and that we would look for a new vocalist. Eventually he changed his job on Facebook and then that triggered everything.
On new vocalist Lukas Magyar and the decision to introduce clean singing to the band’s sound:
The music was all written before Lukas joined so that aspect didn’t really change. He has a lot more ideas. It’s like having another instrument – being able to have melodic singing as well as the screaming.
We were going to just use a guest vocalist before but we found a dude who could do both. It worked out really well. I’m stoked to actually start working with him to see what we both can come up with.
Check out the podcast below. The interview with Marc starts around the 18:00 mark.
