Culture
Matt Bryne of Hatebreed talks about the struggles of touring, new music, and fulfilling a career goal at Sonic Temple 2025
By: Nicholas Kobe
Posted on:
COLUMBUS, Ohio (WOUB) – Hailing from Connecticut, Hatebreed is an instrumental piece of the ever-evolving relationship between metal and punk.
Formed in 1994, the band gradually rose to prominence, especially on 2002’s Persistence. From there, they continued to deliver that same unrelenting brutality as the band continued to write massive hits, like Looking Down the Barrel of Today, Destroy Everything, and A.D.
Eight albums deep into their career, Hatebreed is still steadily churning along. With an upcoming EU/UK tour and festival dates in America, the band is upping the ante on their stage set and new music on the horizon, Hatebreed shows no signs of slowing down. The band plays the Sonic Temple Art & Music Festival this weekend in Columbus.
Matt Bryne of Hatebreed spoke with WOUB Culture’s Nicholas Kobe. Find a transcript of their conversation, edited for length and clarity, below.
Nicholas Kobe: How would you describe Hatebreed in one sentence?
Matt Byrne: I would say it’s a very positive, yet loud, fast, and aggressive band. We summarize perfectly heavy metal and hardcore crossover music. Boring description. I know, but it’s very straightforward.
What about Hatebreed conveys positivity?
Byrne: You have to describe to people where it comes from. It’s a Misfit song, hate breeders. So right off the bat, it will resonate with fans of old school, punk, and hardcore music. Then the subject of positivity obviously comes up through the lyrics; if you read the lyrical content, it’s very much self-motivating, turning negatives into positives in your life. Go against the grain, pick yourself up, dust yourself off, take life by the balls type subject matter.
I’m talking to you ahead of your performance at Sonic Temple. What’s something about that festival that you’re really excited to play at?
Byrne: To play with Metallica. We’re fortunate enough to be on one of the days that Metallica is playing. I have been very fortunate to tour with a lot of our heroes and influences from bands, old school, thrash, and old school hardcore. Metallica is the big fish that every kid in a heavy metal band wants to tour with. We’ve never done it on an official tour, but just to say that we crossed paths on the road and played festivals with them, it’s just as good.
It’ll be five years at the end of November since the release of your last studio album. How do you feel about it now that you’ve had all this time to get acquainted with the rest of the Hatebreed discography?
Byrne: Well, talking about that album, it really sucks because it came out during Covid and it comes out and it just went into a vacuum. With a lot of albums that came out at that time, it just kind of is out there somewhere, but it didn’t get the attention that it really deserves. It’s a great record. We do play some songs off it live. Fans love it, but it just sucks that it didn’t get the attention that it deserved at the time because of the state of the world.I think that whole situation is what causes a five-year gap between that and your next album, which we are currently working on new music, it’s coming, it sounds great, it’s on its way, but it seems to get a little bit longer in between records.
What was the process like as you’re starting the recording of this next record? Have there been any changes in terms of where you’re coming from when writing that record?
Byrne: No. Personally, I love to play. So I think a lot of that stuff is in my headset. I itched to get in the studio and just deliver a kick-ass album. I try to strive to do something different that I didn’t do on the last record drum-wise, try some new things, but not go too far out of the box. I think there’s no rush this time. It doesn’t feel like we’re rushed to get a record out. I mean, I know it’s been five years, but it’s not feeling rushed to be under some kind of timeline to get a record out by a certain date allows you to kind of stretch your legs a little bit and try new things and just kind of marinate in the music and make sure it’s the best it can be, for lack of a better term.
As you were mentioning a little bit about going out on the road, in the last 30 years, have there been any notable changes in the way Hatebreed goes about touring, or the way that live shows feel to play?
Byrne: Well, everything’s a lot more expensive, and I think it just keeps getting more expensive year after year since COVID. Buses are more expensive, tickets are more expensive, and the road cost in general is more expensive. So you have to be a little more thrifty as you go. You have to be creative in your marketing and your promotion to have solid gigs to get people out to the gigs. We’re stepping up production, concentrating on a bigger and better live show, and more production in Europe. Last summer, we were doing pyro and CO2. We have an addition to our live set called “The Ball of Death”. If you’ve seen that, if you’ve been to a hate breed show, you see that. You can know exactly what that is. If you don’t know what that is, I urge you to get to a show soon.
If someone sees you at Sonic Temple and wants to dig deeper, are there any underrated songs or albums you’d love them to check out?
Byrne: It’s hard to say because Hatebreed is rarely a set list band. We typically know what we’ll start out with, and then we know what we’ll finish with; that’s discussed pre-show. A lot of the stuff in between, I mean, you’re pulling stuff out. Jamie’s calling out the songs. You don’t know what you’re going to get hit with. It could be something off the EP Under the Knife, which was released in ‘95, or it could be something off The Concrete Confessional, which was 2016. It could be anything in between. You have a lot of leeway when you’re not married to a set list.
What’s next for Hatebreed?
Byrne: A lot of touring. We’re basically out on the road all summer, starting in June, soon after Sonic Temple. We are working on a new record, as I said, no release date yet for that. I’m sure it won’t be out until next year, sometime in 2026.