Between seeing Lamb of God for the first time since high school and this unexpected Pantera reunion/tribute/whatever you wanna call it, 2022 was the year I gave groove metal a second chance. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still pickier than a child with a plate of broccoli in front of their face, so not just any run of the mill, tough guy, chug riff metal band will do. No, sometimes a band like Savage Existence will come along, whose blend of industrial strength groove metal with raging thrash and hardcore, as well as surprising moments of melody and doom, demanded my attention. I sat down with founding guitarist Daniel Cleland to discuss the band’s unexpected history, their plan for global domination, and of course, Pantera.
Greetings Daniel and welcome to Defenders of the Faith! How are you doing today?
Daniel Cleland: I’m doing very well. Thanks Joe. I appreciate you having me on.
Thank you for coming on here and giving some insight into yourself and Savage Existence. Hopping right into things, could you give us some background on yourself and how Savage Existence came to be?
DC: Sure. I grew up in Canada, Walkerton, Ontario. I didn’t have a very notable upbringing. I got into tourism in my 20s, went around the world, and ended up in Costa Rica. I’m trying to make a long story very short, but basically I became an entrepreneur. I’ve been an entrepreneur for about 12 years in the tourism sector. I run a healing center that has 3 operational locations right now. I live in Costa Rica. Here’s the view from my house *flips camera*.
During the pandemic, me and Jesse (Radford), the drummer from Savage Existence, we’ve been friends since we were very young in Canada. He’s now down here working with me and actually dating my business partner Melissa. We started playing again during the pandemic lockdowns because we had nothing to do and it just seemed to be the perfect time. We used to play back in the say. We started playing together again, pulled up all of our old songs that we used to play. We wrote our own music back in the day as well, so we modernized everything and got Logan Mader to come down to Costa Rica and record a demo for us. Logan Mader of course from Machine Head and Soulfly and Once Human, and producer of all kinds of great bands like Five Finger Death Punch, Gojira, Cavalera Conspiracy, etc. I think he’s on 80 something albums.
He came down, we produced a demo, and it was an awesome process. We needed some other bandmates of course because you don’t just have 2 people in a band. We got 3 local guys from Costa Rica. We got Anton Darusso, who’s the lead singer. He’s actually Russian, but he’s been in Costa Rica for 20 years. Andres Castro, who’s Costa Rician, is a really great guitarist. He’s our lead guitarist. And then there’s Danny Ramkas, who plays bass. He’s also a kickass guitarist, but he’s playing bass for us right now, so we’ve got a 5 piece band.
We recorded our second album this year. We’re just about to drop some new music. Actually on the 9th, which would be next Monday, we are going live with the new single, “Steady Blows to the Head”. It’s awesome. We’re working on new tour dates coming up, and I just wrote a book about entrepreneurship which describes the business I built here and also getting the band started. That’s pretty much a business too.
Of course. Who were your biggest guitar influences and favorite bands growing up?
DC: I think the first real interest I had was probably…I don’t remember how old I would’ve been, probably 11 or 12, but it was after watching Wayne’s World and getting the accompanying soundtrack cassette tape. It had Jimi Hendrix’s “Foxy Lady”, which is a really great song on guitar. It has a great riff. It also had “Feed My Frankenstein” by Alice Cooper. I remember being in my room and playing air guitar with a broomstick. That was really the first real interest. I also really liked Lenny Kravitz back in the day as well.
When I really started picking up a guitar, it was Nirvana all the way. It was easy music to learn, so that’s really how I learned. I bought some tablature. Living in a small town in the mid 90s, everybody was picking up a guitar and playing something or another, so there was a lot of, even in a small town, a lot of cover bands. My one friend, his brother was in a band. His dad was also in a band, so they had a very musical household. He knew what tablature was. He bought the tablature books and shared them with me. We all just learned how to play Nirvana.
Then it very quickly morphed into metal with Sepultura. There was a dramatic shift between everybody playing grunge to everybody playing metal in probably ’96, ’97. Sepultura was the first on that list. I got the cassette tape for Roots and my buddy Jesse started picking up the drums, learning after my other buddy’s older brother, who I previously mentioned. Then the 3 of us were always together with a rotation of other guys that would do the singing or the other guitar or bass or what have you.
You mentioned the band is currently based in Costa Rica. What is the metal scene like down there? How does it differ in Central America as opposed to here in the States or Canada?
DC: Well there’s a fairly established metal scene here. There’s one venue in San Jose. First of all, Costa Rica is a small country. There’s a couple of smaller cities, but the only real big city is San Jose. So you’re not gonna really see concerts anywhere else except for San Jose. There’s one venue that holds about 2 or 3,000 people. At any time there’s a big international act, that fills up. Whether it’s Exodus or Cavalera or Suffocation, they were just here. Things like Arch Enemy, Behemoth, those bands will always come and fill up that venue, but you see the same people going to every one of those shows.
There’s one production company, so you see the same production company and the same people. It’s not a thriving metal scene, but it’s an established metal scene. There’s at least 2 or 3,000 people that go to these shows. Now if you had Slipknot come through here or Pantera, they’re playing in the bigger outdoor park with thousands of people, 10 or 15,000 people, but they’re much bigger. How does it differ? I don’t know. I think every country has its own vibe, but a metalhead is a metalhead pretty much.
Right on. It’s that tightknit sense of community, whether it be here or down there or Japan or Europe. There’s always that bond over this music, and I love hearing different perspectives from around the globe.
DC: Yeah it’s cool!
Are there any recurring themes in Savage Existence’s music, whether the be musical or lyrical?
DC: A lot of it is very masculine music. It’s somewhat…I won’t say politically oriented, but it portrays our life philosophies. You know…strength, willpower, resilience, and persistence. All these kinds of traits that we need to affectively get through life, along with some other stuff about the world and the current way of things. For example, “Dumpster Water” off our new album is an aggressive thrashing of the collusion between big pharma, big tech, big government, big media. All the narratives and lies that were perpetrated in the whole lockdown season, which really pissed me off because I have a business to run and I couldn’t run it when the fucking border was closed. There’s that.
The song “Cull”, these are both available now on our Spotify channel, is about the impending doom that we face from artificial technology, military domination, 8 billion humans fighting with each other over power and resources. As we’re seeing now, all this drone warfare that’s going on in Ukraine and Russia right now. We’re almost there. We’re not far away from having these fucking armies of robots going to war with each other. And with this ChatGPT thing with AI, it’s going that way. So yeah, there’s things like that. It’s not just all about personal struggles. It’s about the world as well.
In that regard, is Savage Existence a natural musical reaction to the current state of the planet?
DC: Yeah, there’s certainly some of that.
While many groove metal bands tend to fall into certain musical trappings, Savage Existence keeps things interesting by throwing in tinges of thrash, hardcore, and even hard rock. Would you say this is a conscious effort on the band’s behalf, or rather an amalgamation of all your influences?
DC: I think the first couple of albums came together fairly naturally, just based on our interests. Certainly in my case, playing music that we like to play and like to hear. You can definitely hear some 90s groove metal influences there and also some more modern metal influences. There’s drop tuning in some songs. There’s standard tuning in others. The leads had somewhat of an intent to be a little more on the bluesy side in some of the songs. For example, “Turrent on the Bunker”. Anton wrote some of the leads on the first album and the second album that were meant to have a little bit of a southern rock feel to them as well, just to keep the blues in the music. Other than that, most of the music is just me sitting in front of my amp and ripping it up with some riffs, then recording it and putting it together. It’s not so much intentional as it is natural.
That’s how the best songs come together.
DC: Hopefully *laughs*!
This April, Savage Existence will be releasing a brand new self titled album. What does the band set out to achieve with this album and how does it differ from Animals?
DC: Well, we hope to achieve penetration with this album. We want to go touring. We want to play live. We want to go around the world. We want to just grow our exposure and our numbers. Generally speaking, it’s world domination *laughs*. How does it differ from Animals? Well Animals, as I explained, was mostly written 15-20 years ago. Its got a different base of music, just to begin with. Also, when we wrote Animals, Jesse did all the drums. Me and Jesse had the songs. It was just the 2 of us in a garage basically playing the songs, so we had all the rhythm done before any of the other guys came in. There’s just a certain vibe with Animals. Anton threw some leads on top of it and Logan actually played the leads in the studio.
The self titled album, we already had some momentum when we wrote that album. We were already playing in Mexico. We had gotten better. We had a vibe with the other guys in the band. Anton wrote a few songs on that. He wrote 3 songs for the self titled album. Then when we got in the studio, we had Andreas. He added his flavor on some of the leads. He threw a couple solos in. We also have a few solos from Gary Holt of Exodus and Slayer. He came in to lay down some solos for us, which is awesome. There’s just a lot more that went into the second album. It was a lot more of a typical recording process with professional musicians rather than just me and Jesse doing a demo and going, “Oh, let’s publish this.” I think that explains it, and you can hear it in the sound. The whole process was different and it’s evident in the sound. It’s just, in my opinion, a much better album.
Aside from your musical work with Savage Existence, you just authored a book entitled 12 Laws of the Jungle: How to Become a Lethal Entrepreneur. What inspired you to write this book and what should readers takeaway from it?
DC: What inspired me to write the book was wanting to share some of the knowledge that I gained from building a couple of different companies. This is my second book. My first book was called Pulse of the Jungle. I wrote that book for the 25 year old me, the guy who needed to hear that it’s possible to just completely break away and go on your own and take risk. Go on this grand adventure and wind up having a business in a different country. The first book was not so much instructional. The second book, this is after I’ve built my second and third company to success. As a more mature entrepreneur, this book was for the 35 year old me and is literally a manual about the 12 laws of entrepreneurship.
If you’re going to build a business, read this book. It really covers everything that I found to be important about being a wartime startup entrepreneur. There’s also a different face of entrepreneurship when you get to a certain point in business. Your company is established, you’ve got your team in place, there’s lots of resources in the bank. You reach a point of peacetime where you’re not a startup anymore. The company is 5 years old. It’s doing well. That’s kind of the phase we’re getting into, which is a different stage of entrepreneurship. Then you’re worried about completely different things, like scaling and investing and all kinds of other stuff. But when you’re growing your company in the startup phase, it’s its own kind of can of worms. That’s what this book is about.
How can rock and metal bands apply these lessons to better their careers in a climate where their music is not supported by major labels, radio airplay, etc.?
DC: Well, I think you’re right. These days, every band is a business. It has to be. Every band does have to go through some startup war. It involves investment. It involves a masterful tribe of musicians. It involves knowing the rules of entrepreneurship because you have to apply them to grow your band. You gotta build your team of people around you: Your manager, tour manager, marketing team, etc. And on our end, we gotta manage all these people. You’ve got the digital marketing side, the PR side, YouTube, Spotify, Instagram, Facebook.
It’s literally just like any other business. You’ve got a product to sell, which is your music and your merchandise and your brand. You have to build a brand as a band and then you have to sell your product. You have to get people into the stadium. You have to get people to come to the show and spend their $50 on a ticket. That’s the only way you’re gonna recover your investment and make any money doing what you’re doing.
I’d be remiss to not mention what is shaping up to be the biggest metal event of 2023, and that is the return of/tribute to Pantera that’s hitting the road this year. What are your thoughts on it as a fan? I’m sure this is a band who influenced you.
DC: I like it. Of course you’re not gonna get…Pantera’s never gonna be the Pantera it was in 2001 when I saw them, before they broke up. You’re never gonna be able to replace Dimebag and Vinnie Paul. The other guys are a lot older now too. Rex is having some health problems. Phil is not jumping around and thrashing onstage. They’re not the same guys, but it’s better than nothing. Zakk Wylde is awesome. He’s a crazy shredder. He’s earned his stripes and is at least respectful enough to fill in for Dimebag. I’m not super familiar with Charlie Benante, but I’m sure he’s fine for the job. He was also a friend of the band back in the day. I think it’s better than nothing. The shows are gonna be big, but I sense a bit of…it says “Pantera”, it sounds like Pantera, but it’s not really Pantera.
Right, I couldn’t agree more. The perspective I’m coming from is I’m turning 24 in a few weeks.
DC: You’ve never even seen Pantera live.
Exactly. I never got that experience. Is it, like you said, the Pantera of 2001? Absolutely not. In the same breath, do I want to hear those songs played live in an arena setting by half of the band who recorded them and experience something resembling that? Absolutely, I’m all onboard.
DC: Yeah, exactly. Their audio is gonna be awesome. They know music. They know the music business. They know how to engineer a concert so it fucking smashes people. I’m confident that the concerts are gonna be awesome regardless.
In closing, what are Savage Existence’s plans going forward into 2023? Can we expect some tour dates and other surprises?
DC: Absolutely yes. We’re finalizing dates for this year. We have some plans for South America and the United States and Europe, at least for the first half of this year. We’re trying to line up some stuff for the second half of this year as well.
Savage Existence’s new self titled album comes out on Thursday, April 27. For more information on Savage Existence, visit www.savageexistence.com. For more information on Daniel Cleland, visit www.danielcleland.com.