James "Munky" Shaffer: The first time I heard Black Sabbath was through my older brother. He was playing records. I actually think he was trying to play some shit backwards. He was forcing the motor on the turntable backwards. There was one part on "Sabbath Bloody Sabbath" was the scariest thing I'd ever heard in my entire life. It probably still is! Listening to a Black Sabbath record backwards is the most evil shit [Laughs]. Tony Iommi's amazing.
"We're doing a lot of old songs and songs written without him and he's totally cool with that," Shaffer says. "I think that reflects on our maturity."
Shaffer says it took some reconfiguring and readjustment going over songs with Welch. He admits relearning parts made him realize he was playing some things incorrectly.
"I had kind of gone through and cherry-picked all the cool parts to play," Shaffer says. "The hired guys were always in the back. A lot of the parts that Brian wrote, I played and so now that he's back with us, he's playing his parts. Now I'm scratching head, going 'What am I going to play?'"
He continues, "The main, heavy riffs, we're both playing the same thing. We're sorting through the sounds, I'm still doing all the cool, creepy stuff in the verses. A lot of the songs, as we sorted through them, I'd go 'Oh yeah, that's what you did.' I realized I was playing a lot of things wrong."
Loudwire interviewed Munky and Head on the Golden Gods Black Carpet.
It was at least several months back, you were just getting the seeds of ideas for the new album. Munky, can you talk about how much involvement Head has had in the creative process so far?
Munky: He had a huge role in everything. This guy is the melody-chorus master. He’s the best. He can come up with melodies and choruses all day long and that was a huge help for me, cause for a long time I was trying to come up with choruses and verses and wrangle the whole thing. It’s been so much work and for him to come in and have these fresh ideas, It’s just been so refreshing.
Head: And it goes both ways, because I came in and then we started, but it was like, my favorite song on the album is one that he came up with. I’m a fan of his writing, he’s a fan of my writing and it all just works great.
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