Prong's Scouring Groove Calls for a "State of Emergency" (Interview)
Prong’s Tommy Victor is no stranger to the music business, seeing as Prong has been around in some form since 1986. Here we are in 2023 and the band just released their 13th album State of Emergency after a six-year gap in full-lengths and about four since the brief Age of Defiance EP. After getting back home just in time for the new album’s release from a successful tour with Danzig, Prong is ready to finish 2023 strong and enter 2024 with a renewed vigor.
Victor and I talked about what it was like to live through the Pandemic and have not one but two new kids, the evolving nature of new members in his band, and the effect that it has had on his own musicality. We talked about how Prong covered Rush in an intentionally Prong way and how that fit within the framework of what eventually became State of Emergency. Alongside these changes, Victor also relocated himself and his family to Long Island after years on the west coast and there is an homage to that on the record as well. Read on for our interview.
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Seeing as your last full-length Zero Days was released over six years ago, what has been going on with Prong since then?
Tommy Victor: The Pandemic hit and I was living in Los Angeles with everything shut down. I was wondering if I could even continue my work with Prong anymore with how the media and everyone was making us feel. I might have just become a stay-at-home dad since we had just had a son and she had to go back to work, and I stayed at home with him. I was brushing up on Danzig's Elvis songs at the time. He thought we would be able to do gigs soon and it didn’t open up. Prong got offered the tour with Black Label Society and we took that, but I didn’t really have the band together at the time, we didn’t have a record contract, then Napalm offered us a deal. Finally, I moved back to NY and had to figure out when to do this record and I wanted to do it all back in NY. We moved back February of 2022 and I wrote it in June and in August we recorded it.
As far as the lineup from Zero Days goes, you are the only member who is still there with new members in 2018 and 2022 respectively, what was that like?
The whole lineup thing has been crazy. After Art Cruz left to join Lamb of God we have gone through a few drummers and on the record myself or Chris Collier played bass. We’ve had a ragtag list of live drummers on too. Griff McCarthy came in and did the drums on this and a couple of Prong tours, but he didn’t continue because it interfered with a covers band that he is in. However, he played drums on the record and Chris played bass and we recorded it in Belleville, NJ; Wil Putney’s old studio that Steve Evans bought. We are playing Dingbatz in Clifton, NJ on October 20th as a one off. Then we go on tour with Life of Agony in Europe.
Have you been playing live dates with Danzig of late?
I just finished up with them and Atlantic City was a cool show for us. We played a Prong show down there back in the City Gardens days too.
What was the story behind putting a cover of Rush’s “Working Man” at the end of the album?
When I moved back to New York I was listening to a lot of old records, and I was exposing my young son to a lot of the music I used to listen to. He listens to Cocomelon songs and Black Sabbath Vol. 4. He is a little over 3 but by the time he was 2 he had heard the first six Sabbath albums. We kept listening to these old records and I got to the first Rush record which I got when it came out and I was fooling around with “Working Man” and tuned down to the Tony Iommi C sharp and thought it sounded pretty heavy. What if Prong did that? The lyrics align to what State of Emergency is all about, forced isolation, it is very working class, blue collar, the lyrics on the record are about manipulation of the masses, so I thought it fit in. Our producer really wanted it on the record. It kind of feels like an excellent ending to the record. I got into the later Rush records, but I liked the simplicity here as an extension of acid rock and doom metal which is different than the rest of their discography.
What kind of story does the album art tell for State of Emergency?
The guy is blindfolded by himself and doesn’t want to see anything that is going on surrounded by dystopian sludge. He is living in an Orwellian world where he is manipulated by all that is around him. A good chunk of the lyrics are concentrated around that idea, freedom of speech and certain media narratives, smart phones and their infiltration into our lives; we are completely taken over by technology. It emerges from the first song, “The Dissent” this guy is starting to get depressed with his relationship with the internet and the media and figures the world is going to end. Then on the title track it is the media’s voice and their narrative causing mass confusion and focusing on starvation, how could you have a positive attitude with all that going on? That’s why I like the “Working Man” cover so much, it isn’t really Geddy Lee saying these things, he is just showing what he feels is going on in society, kind of like Johnny Cash. He put himself into other people’s souls when he wrote music. It is great to see it through someone else’s eyes. I like country western lyrics even though some of them are goofy. There is a certain darkness to what he wrote about.
Was there an overall linked narrative for State of Emergency?
“Light Turns Black” is outside the umbrella of the album content. It is kind of like the fact that so many people still smoke cigarettes, why do people still do that, the evidence is there to tell you why not to, but you can’t do anything about it, like a shared desperation and it makes it kind of a dark song. Then there is “Non-Existence” which is a more positive outlook on things. You have a choice, either existence or non-existence. What is better? I try to say that existence is better. Look at Manhattan and you see what people are capable of, 150 years ago that might still have been farmland. There was nothing there above 42nd Street and Harlem was farmland and now it is built up so incredibly through man’s ability to prosper; everybody has something to bring to table. “Who Told Me”, is about word of mouth and the evolving stories that become comical when you think about it. “Breaking Point” is about mass insanity and confusion; it acts like an “enough is enough” anthem. Now looking back on some of that, maybe hanging with your family really is enough to be happy, maybe the excesses of life aren’t needed.
“Disconnected” is kind of a b-side in a way, like we sounded more like Interpol than Prong. I was a little nervous about it, but I am happy we did, not much heavy guitar at all.
Looking at the last Prong song on the record “Back (NYC)”, is that all about being back here?
It is pretty straightforward. Some lyrics have the most basic origins and can be interpreted differently by others. This one is about coming back here and things like the sky look completely different than it does on the west coast. I feel like I did when I was a kid. There is no adjective to describe how you feel when you are back at home again. It was my chance to reflect on all of this. I really wanted to plan it all this way and it was my first idea for a song for this record. Now I have to look forward to maybe doing another record.
If you weren’t thinking about that, then maybe you really are done with this? Maybe you would have called it quits if you had decided to release an album at a different time, but with everything being out of your life for an extended period of time, did it make you want it more? If you had to stop it again, would you be able to handle coming back from that?
That’s a good point, now I feel like I am prepared for whatever. I’m pretty stubborn and I don’t know when to throw in the towel anyway; it’s as simple as that. We never had our big record like some of these other bands like an Appetite for Destruction or a River Runs Red; these guys have these records and they have been life changing for people. We have always had to keep going. This is the path I was chosen to be on.
Speaking of big records while I was spinning your new one, I was listening to Cleansing again and I realize that is coming up on its 30 year anniversary in January of 2024.
I should probably do some kind of tribute to that this year. That record could have been bigger for us and we could have stayed out on the road with that one for a while, but the record label kind of screwed us over there. We decided to put out another record instead. Meanwhile White Zombie stayed out there on the road for La Sexorcisto instead and it turned out huge for them. Epic wanted us to rush into Rude Awakening which was kind of the end there.
What does the rest of the year look like, show wise?
We have the Dingbatz date coming up and then we head to Europe and we have a North American tour lined up for next year but we can’t say who it is with just yet.
You had a great run there with an album a year from 2014-2017 and even with the changing of members it feels like you are still able to keep the heaviness here. What is it like to have all these new members around?
There are certain new bands I listen to since I have young guys around me a lot. It is hard to avoid some of this stuff. Some of the bands are insanely heavy now. I won’t mention who because people will feel like we ripped them off, haha. We see bands at festivals and they are insane. Prong started out as a heavy riff band and that element will always stay, we aren’t a mosh band. We are always a groove and song and hook band. I will try for something modern on a song if I feel it will work. We always want to be able to tie back into things from Primitive Origins to Rude Awakening because that is the Prong framework.
Anything else to add?
Order the record through Napalm Records’ site, buy merch, and check out the “State of Emergency” lyric video.
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State of Emergency is out today via Steamhammer.
