Interview with Ryan McCombs

Credit: allabouttherock.co.uk

There’s a saying. Never meet your heroes. Well, I’m breaking that rule here. I’ve been listening to Soil since was young. I don’t think I’m alone in saying their album, Scars was such an impactful record of the early 2000s. The band have been around since the mid-90s and has made a lot of great music in that time. On August 26th, Soil release their new album, Play It Forward. A collection of covers that the band have mixed together to create a really great playlist to help cheer us up after the horror of the COVID-19 pandemic (amongst all the other shit in the world right now). I reviewed the album on Valkyrian Music (click here for the review).

I was very grateful to have the opportunity to talk to frontman, Ryan McCombs. A voice that I heard a lot while developing my music taste. As he was also the vocalist for a spell in, Drowning Pool. In this interview, we talk about the new covers album, writing during the pandemic, the love of live music and the experiences of one of my childhood icons.



You could say that the artists you cover on the new album are eclectic, to say the least. Could you explain some of the choices of the covers you have added to the new album Play It Forward? As you go from Halsey to Neil Young to White Zombie on the same record.

Are you saying that those are 3 artists that you wouldn’t expect to hear back to back on the radio?

I’m saying it’s not a combination that Spotify would put in a mixed playlist.

Yeah, I guess it’s not something that you would put on a mixtape together. Again, I’m going to be showing my age here.

However, you do bring up a good point. I guess the explanation I got is, that this is the kind of mix you get when you’re in a band that has a democratic way of putting an album together. So, all the members of Soil can look at that tracklist and each member can say, “I’m glad that song got in”. On the other hand, the other member will say “I can’t believe that one is on there”. At the end of the day, we ended up with what you might say is an odd mix of songs. Yet, I like it as it shows the individuality of each member of the band. A band is a collective of individuals, I think the only time you get a cover album where every song is so similar, is when it’s only coming from one mind.

Yeah, It’s an odd mix, but it’s a mix that really reflects the personalities with the psycho-ward that is Soil.


I noticed that one of the covers in that mix is “Monkey Wrench” by Foo Fighters. Did you ever get the chance to meet Taylor Hawkins before he passed away?

When we were recording the album Redefine, we record most of that album in Chicago with our producer Johnny K. Although, two of the songs we recorded out in California with Nick Raskulinecz. While we were there Dave (Grohl) and Taylor would just come in from time to time and we would just hang out. Nick had worked with the Foo Fighters a lot, so that’s why the connection was there but we got to know them during that time. I think meeting both of them added a lot to that experience and we were really grateful for the time they spent there as they really livened things up. They acted as a connecting point, as we didn’t really know Nick.


I think what most fans want to know is, where are the new Soil songs?

Yeah, I understand that question because I’ve been asking that of myself for a long time now.

In all seriousness, during the whole COVID-19 thing, we really focussed on. Adam (Zadel), Tim (King) and I were throwing ideas about. When I say ideas, I mean riffs and basic song ideas. However, Cleopatra Records came to the table and asked if would we think about doing a covers album. Anyone who’s ever been in an employer-employee relationship will know the term “what do you think about” really means “You coming in on Saturday and working, right?”. So, the covers album wasn’t even on our radar. We were completely focused on the material we were writing. Yet, we all like to work, we want to pay our bills, so we definitely listened to the suggestion. I’m glad we did because we had a blast doing it.

It might have taken some time away from making the original stuff, but it was needed.

So, how did writing sessions go during the pandemic?

Oh man, life was kinda turned upside down, for everybody. Making the covers album was a really unexpected getaway. You see I’m a singer, I’m a lyricist and I write about what I’m experiencing. I found myself writing during this weird time. I wish I was like Bruce Dickinson or James Hetfield. You know, guys like that can read a book or take a social subject and just write a song about it. Whereas, I’m a singer that writes about his own personal experiences. So during covid, I found myself writing thirteen songs about political bullshit and how society deals with crap. I just found myself writing about the same two or three viewpoints of dealing with the world. I loved the material we were coming up with, but doing the covers album ended up being a good escape from my own head.

I had written so many songs about what was going on at that point because I couldn’t get away from it. So when the label asked us to do the covers album it was almost perfect timing as we needed to get away from writing our own stuff.


Yeah, that sounds rough. I mean Covid did a number of the music industry in general, as it made live shows impossible. Since we’ve had the all-clear to do in-person gigs again, have you had the opportunity to play live or are there any plans to get back out there?

Some issues came up within the band, I’m in no place to really talk about that stuff. I’m glad to say that we are now beyond that. Things are going great again so we are looking right now to getting back out there. We’ve got a booking agency in place and they’re on top of it. Now that we know we can move forward, we are definitely going to start trying. We are working on getting out there again. It was nice to be in the studio and do some recording.

If lockdown and the last two years have taught me anything, it’s that I don’t care how old I am, I’m not ready to be done yet. When I started music I was an ex-bass player and I couldn’t have imagined being forced into being a frontman, I had to talk to people, and even I didn’t give a shit what I had to say. So, I didn’t expect anyone else to give a shit either. I went from being that guy who didn’t care to now, 25 years later where I miss that time on stage. It isn’t the vanity, look at me, aspect. It’s just that fucking feeling when you look out into the crowd and you experience life together. I just miss that feeling so fucking much. I’m not ready to be done with that feeling yet. I want as much of it as I can possibly get.

I’m so sorry man, I’m just rambling the fuck on here…

No worries dude love hearing stories like this. Believe it or not, you aren't as much of a rambler as Vinnie Paul (Patera, Hellyeah).

Yeah, I can believe that I used to talk to Vinnie for hours when I was in Drowning Pool. So yeah you can just imagine how long those conversations would have been.

Speaking of Drowning Pool for a moment. I just want to say how much the album Full Circle meant to me growing up. I still hold that album very much in high regard. Is there any album you can think of where you can listen to it, start to finish, and it’s still just as good as the first time you heard it?


Man, there are so many. I still remember being a kid and hearing Soundgarden’s, Loud Love at Headbangers Ball. It was one of those records and I looked for it everywhere. I found it in a record store near my great-grandmother’s house in Indianapolis. I remember just putting that cassette in my walkman and laying on the floor of my great-grandmother's living room. I just listened to that one the other day and still have that same memory of just loving it.

I will always love the stuff I found as a kid. I was lucky enough to be raised in a house filled with music. Between my dad and my brother, there was always music in the house. My dad loved everything from Bob Dylan, Pink Floyd, and The Grateful Dead to Aerosmith and ACDC. You name it he was into it. He took me to my first Metallica show, and then without me, he went to like five more on his own. My brother was into all of the 80s hair metal.

When you say albums that you can listen to over and over. I couldn’t think of a better one than, The Greatest Hits of Creedence Clearwater Revival. You can’t go wrong, it’s just track after track of classic rock songs.

I couldn’t say you’re wrong. The great thing about CCR was that their songs sound like they’ve always existed, they just happened to play a version of those classic songs.

That is a really great way to put it. Yeah.

It’s really interesting when I speak to you, and most people would know you as a metal guy in a heavy metal band. But you have so much variety in your music taste. It almost makes no sense when you see metal elitists online, who think you can only listen to metal to be classed as a metal fan.

Yeah, I know the type. I’ve met a few in my time. The best thing about music is that there is so much of it, it’s to a point where everyone can have their own opinion. That whole “what is good vs what is bad music” debate can be broken down in so many different ways. You can ask ten different people and get ten different answers and there’s nothing wrong with that.

In fact, the bass player I’ve got, for the acoustic shows that I’m doing here in the UK, he’s a massive metal head. He’s into the kind of metal where you can’t read the band's name in the logo for the band. I’m not making fun in a mean way dammit, it just looks like a tumbleweed. When we’re in rehearsal I always try to clock the shirt he has on so I can poke fun. It’s right up there with what you’re saying. We’re doing this acoustic set together, but our backgrounds and personal tastes in music are so different. Like, it doesn’t matter. We still respect music as a whole.


So just on that are there any bands/artists you particularly listen to or want to shout out as they might not get the attention you think they should have?

There are so many. In fact, in the case of “not getting the attention”, I would have to go back and talk about bands that needed the attention in the past and I think they could have been something.

However, if you’re talking about the here and now. I would say the Wales-based band, Florence Black. I would definitely throw them out there as far as a new band I think everybody should check out.

I think it’s been really hard for bands to have longevity in the last 15 years. Like, ten years ago or so, I was talking to my radio DJ friend of mine and she would talk a band up, like hype them to the moon on the radio. I texted them and said, “isn’t that the exact same thing you said about another artist?”. They said that the station told them what bands to really push and they would hear other artists that were really good but the station didn’t want to so they couldn’t. I’m not saying it’s the same all over but that particular place had a new list of artists every few months. So yeah, there’re so many bands that might never break through and so many bands over the last 20 years that I wish could have had a shot. But then the industry changed and there are so many that I would have loved to have heard a sophomore effort that was pushed with the same vigour as the first.


I think I just want to end on this question. You have been pretty successful in two major artists, Soil and Drowning Pool. Even after the dust settles on that, I think many fans would still see you as someone who made it in the industry. Is there anything that you still want to do in the music industry, that you have not had the opportunity to do before?

If the fans have that opinion of me, I really appreciate it. I’ve always been just a guy from Indiana. It’s always weird when I hear a fan say something to me and it’s a glowing opinion of myself or something that I’ve done. I still feel as lucky today to have had those experiences as I did the moment I was having them. There’s probably a handful of musicians out there, that over the 25 years of touring, I’ve gotten to know and really respect beyond the music. I would just love to collaborate with them on a record. To be able to sit down and see what comes out. Like this is a complete dreamworld fantasy because it’s not going to happen. But it would be so awesome to get those people in a room, just one time.

Other than that. It comes back to what I was saying before. I just want to do shows, I want some more time to experience that give and take that a concert is. I want it now, I wanna do it tonight, I wanna do it five minutes from now. I got the acoustic shows coming up and I’m hyped. I’ve got a show coming up, as due to the problems I said before, we can’t play as Soil. However, we’re putting together a show on the 26th of August and we’re doing an old-school album release party at The Waiting Room in Swindon. It’s free entry and a reason for Soil fans to get together again and just have a good night.