Gene Hoglan says the run from Symbolic to City to Demonic taught him restraint, and names the album that pushed him hardest.
Gene Hoglan made three records in roughly two years that sound nothing like one another. The middle one is still the one people argue about.
Asked by Czech’s “Metal & Rock Zone” to name the hardest thing he has ever played, Hoglan reached past the albums most people would expect and landed on an obscure one.
He replied (as transcribed by Blabbermouth): “I’ve always referred to this certain album by the band Mechanism. The album is called Inspired Horrific. It was one of my many bands, but it was a band that I featured on my first DVD. But that band had the most challenging drums I had done up to that point, and I don’t think I’ve done much that’s more challenging since. I always do try to challenge myself with all the projects that I do, but some music just lends itself to more insane things. So, the Mechanism album Inspired Horrific was… Definitely it was my Human [by Death] sort of thing, doing some crazy odd-time things… Learning an Opeth set in an afternoon to play with them, that was a challenge. And playing with Forbidden, that’s a killer challenge — playing not only Mr. [Paul] Bostaph‘s stuff, but Mr. [Steve] Jacobs‘s stuff as well. I’m always up for any kind of challenge. And the Strapping [Young Lad] material, like City, that was a pretty crazy record. And that was pretty much my next album after [Death’s] Symbolic. I remember when we put out City, a lot of people were complaining about my drumming on it, just going, ‘What happened? His drumming on Symbolic was killer, and now it’s not a million notes at all times.’ It’s a different approach. You have to serve the song, and I understand how people don’t quite understand about serving a song. They just want you to show off at all points of everything. But if you check out City, there’s no lack of intensity on that record, man. That’s a punch to the face a thousand times. So, there you go there. And then the next album was Demonic from Testament. That was me learning how to really serve a song. [Testament guitarist and main songwriter] Eric Peterson was not looking for Symbolic drums or Strapping drums. He wanted drums for his project. So those are three different-sounding records that sound different from the drum approach, and that’s where I was just learning, like, you gotta really serve the song. You don’t have to show off, but make sure that what you’re doing makes sense within the parameters of the song. So that’s what I tried to do with those.”
The sequence he is describing runs Death‘s Symbolic in 1995, Strapping Young Lad‘s City in 1997 and Testament‘s Demonic later the same year, three bands, three completely different jobs, back to back.
Told he had become something of a generalist, Hoglan said that suits him fine.
“That would be something that I would much prefer to be known as, like, just a well-rounded drummer,” he added. “Like, ‘He could play some really soft, nice, beautiful little passages or the brutal, brutal stuff.’ But that, to me, that’s more of a compliment than, ‘Wow, he’s the fastest,’ or, ‘He’s got this or that.’ I’ve always tried to bring new concepts to drumming back from the Dark Angel days, from the Death days, from the Strapping days, just all the way, even in approaches live and things like that, and on record.”
He then explained the rule he says he has always worked to.
“I’ve mentioned this before, that drummers are supposed to steal,” Hoglan continued. “There’s not a lot you can do on the drums in the concept of songs. So we all steal, but I’ve always felt like if I’m gonna steal something, then I’m gonna have to put two things back into that pot. So, whether it be beats that nobody’s heard. I always tried to do that with Dark Angel, tried to write beats that nobody’s played before. With Death, with Individual Thought Patterns to start, tried to play some beats that nobody’s done. And along with Symbolic, and then Strapping as well, just keep going with that sort of approach, the two rides and that sort of thing, just always trying to elevate just myself, really, and if it elevates everybody else, then kick-a**. But I’m just, like, ‘Hey, let me try some things that I’ve never seen before. It works for me,’ kind of thing. So that was really just my approach. I wasn’t trying to make a big sea change in the drumming community, but I just tried to bring changes to what I could do and place myself out there in certain parameters where, ‘Hey, nobody’s tried this. Nobody’s tried that. Nobody’s tried that.’ Like the double-bass pattern that goes along with the riff. I started that back in, like, 1987 or something, ’86, when I was writing riffs. And I could write guitar riffs. I could write patterns on the drums. So combine both of those… And I was, like, ‘Hey, that’s something I’ve never heard anybody do before.’ I mean, it could be somewhere, but I’m not familiar with it, so try that. And so I did a lot of that. And now that’s kind of a trope in metal. A lot of folks do that, and that was me, was just, like, ‘Hey, maybe this could be Dark Angel‘s little, like, add a little something into the pot. Hey, they brought this style. Nobody’s doing this. But it seems to have caught on, so there you go.”
Hoglan was born in Dallas in 1967 and taught himself on a kit he got as a teenager, playing along to Kiss and Rush records. In 1984 he was working lights for Slayer and getting behind the drums at soundchecks; by the end of that year Dark Angel had him, and he wrote most of the lyrics across their next three albums as well as playing on them. Death followed in 1993 for Individual Thought Patterns and Symbolic. Work with Devin Townsend in Strapping Young Lad and under Townsend‘s own name came next, along with the double-kick approach that earned him the nicknames “The Atomic Clock” and “Human Drum Machine“.
His current work is with Dethklok, the band from Brendon Small‘s animated series “Metalocalypse“, which he has drummed for since the 2007 debut The Dethalbum, nearly two decades, not the decade and a half often quoted. Their most recent record, Dethalbum IV, arrived in August 2023, and they toured North America this year alongside Amon Amarth. He also plays with Dark Angel, Pitch Black Forecast and Tenet.
Two long-running associations have ended. Hoglan left Testament in January 2022 after a decade and several albums, the band citing scheduling conflicts between his outside commitments and their rescheduled post-pandemic dates, Chris Dovas has held the seat since. He was Fear Factory‘s drummer from 2009, playing on 2010’s Mechanize and 2012’s The Industrialist, and is no longer part of that band either.
