AUSTRIAN DEATH MACHINE Founder TIM LAMBESIS - "'I Just Wanted To Write Music That I Think Arnold (Schwarzenegger) Would Want To Sing Over"
June 19, 2008, 16 years ago
MTV.com's Chris Harris recently spoke to AS I LAY DYING's Tim Lambesis about his Arnold Schwarzenegger tribute act, AUSTRIAN DEATH MACHINE. The following is an excerpt from the story.
As I Lay Dying frontman Tim Lambesis isn't ashamed to admit it: He's an Arnold Schwarzenegger fan, through and through.
"I love watching his movies," the singer told Metal File last week, just as his band prepared to hit the road as part of this summer's Warped Tour. "I don't see how you could put an Arnold movie on and not be entertained. Even the lesser of his films, like [1994's] 'Junior,' the ones that were goofy and sort of out there for him, they're still pretty great."But Lambesis' unusual adulation for the Governator extends beyond his action-packed DVD collection. In fact, his appreciation runs so deep, the "Twins" thespian inspired Lambesis to strike out on his own, with a new side project inspired by Arnie, called Austrian Death Machine. Lambesis plans to release his band's forthcoming debut album, Total Brutal, on July 22.
The idea for Austrian Death Machine — which Lambesis hopes to tour with this fall — came to him during a casual conversation with some friends backstage while AILD were on the tour.
"I think an Arnold one-liner came up in the conversation, and I was saying how amazing it would be to start a band where people were actually piling up at the front of the stage to sing along to those one-liners," he said. "It was just a thought at first, but about a year later, I had some time off, and so I just made it happen. I wrote as many songs as I could, recorded them, and now, I have a full album. It actually surprised me how easily it came together, because it was something that I just did on a whim. And it sort of surpasses my own expectations.""[Austrian Death Machine] is a chance for me to show, musically, what I'm capable of," he continued. "I didn't try to write the most technical music in the world; I just wanted to write music that had a certain type of aggression that I think Arnold would want to sing over. A lot of [As I Lay Dying's] fans don't realize that, in addition to being a singer, I'm also very involved in the songwriting process."
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