thePULSEBy Katey Khaos
On September 14th, Whitechapel, along with All Shall Perish and headlining act Hatebreed, rocked The Palladium. I had the chance to sit down with Benjamin Savage of Whitechapel to talk about their latest album, their tour, and everyone’s favorite holiday ~ Halloween! 
PULSE: You guys have your fourth studio album out, what things have you added or changed ~ what’s different from this album compared to your previous?
BENJAMIN: To break it down, it’s just more going there, you know, just not being settling in to what’s already evident in our sound. It’s going somewhere else with our music. It’s just collecting riffs, and collecting ideas and then coming together and trying to make something special.
PULSE: Whitechapel has three guitarists ~ how do you guys get your sound as cohesive as you do?
BENJAMIN: Well, we just practice, we never teach our songs while we’re in the same room because that would just be a headache [laughs] but, we’ll write the songs together. I have a program on my computer that tabs everything out. I do that and then we learn it and hopefully everybody has it down, and if we don’t, then we just keep playing it until it’s tight. We don’t really practice much at all. We only practiced for about four days before this tour and we’re playing like, four new songs.
PULSE: What would you say has been your most memorable tour moment so far?
BENJAMIN: We were crossing the border from mainland Europe to the UK one time and this family of gypsies snuck into our trailer and tried to make it across into the UK. Our driver stopped at a gas station right before the crossing and opened the trailer and a whole family poured out. That was kind of crazy.
PULSE: How do you guys entertain yourselves while on the road?
BENJAMIN: With humor. We’re some funny people, there’s some funny people in the band, and they make us laugh. [laughs] That’s cool, you know, and then there’s talking to people, picking people’s brains about stuff. And, of course, the thirty minutes, forty five or the hour you get on stage, that’s the best part.
PULSE: What would you say has been your favorite childhood Halloween costume?
BENJAMIN: I dressed up as like, not anything scary. I used to have a pet iguana and I used to dress up like a safari man. I had my iguana with me walking from house to house. I think I had a snake, too ~ an iguana and a snake in one hand. [laughs] Yeah, snakes are cool. I used to have a boa constrictor, a black [rat] snake and a corn snake, and they’d always escape, too! The corn snake and black [rat] snake were both wild caught snakes, so they always knew how to escape. Wild snakes, they know to get out of everything. Even if I had a book on top of the cage, they would find a way to use their back to nudge the whole thing up and slither out. They always end up underneath the bed, you know? [laughs]
PULSE: Well, you’re clearly not afraid of snakes, but do you have any phobias or fears? For example, spiders are a really common fear for a lot of people.
BENJAMIN: Yeah, I hate spiders! I hate spiders. Well, no, I mean every time I get fearful I just tell myself that I don’t want to live in fear and then it goes away. You’ve gotta push yourself through it ~ refuse!
PULSE: Last but not least, do you have a shout out for your fans?
BENJAMIN: Keep listening to our music! No, no, that’s not a shout out, that’s more of a demand [laughs]. No, but, thank you, thank you!
And in case you missed these guys don’t worry ~ we’ve got you covered! Check out these shots from their killer performance!
