Yob Make Sure It’s Family First, Doom Second

Last year, when doom veterans Yob announced they would reform, heading into the studio and returning to the stage, the legions of fans old and new squealed, hoping the band would end up on tour. But this is highly doubtful, since Yob was never a band to live on the road the majority of the time in the first place. "This style of music doesn't support a lifestyle of having children and being able to pay your rent if your gonna be on the road a bunch," vocalist/guitarist Mike Scheidt told Noisecreep. "Even as a band that is more known than some it's still hit or miss, and you really have to not care about a home life to make it work."

Since getting back into the metal swing of things Yob have mostly been playing single shows and the occasional festival -- like next year's Roadburn Festival and the most recent Planet Caravan. But odd as it can feel to be a doom band getting plane tickets to play one show, this all fits into the design of the band -- since it's the only way the band could work.

"It's weird. It really fits where we're at, because we're really not a touring band right now," Scheidt says. "We wanna do one-off shows and stuff on the West Coast, but there hasn't been a day of Yob where I didn't have my kids. My kids were born before I started the band in '95, and I started working on the band in '96. So that's always been a kind of done deal."

There was never really a point in the history of the band where they slugged it out on the road, struggling to just gain one fan in each town and nab enough gas money for the overnight drive. "We didn't have to go through the B.S. that bands have to go through to make a name for themselves," admitted Scheidt.

"We were already getting known, so there was a demand that we had to look at and say, 'Are we going to step up and do this?' vs. 'We need to get out there and do this so we can try and get well known, and try to get a deal.'" Scheidt laughed, "That stuff, that's the pie in the sky, the carrot that dangles in front of you, that even when you get that stuff your still not really there. It's not what you think it would be.

"I'm not down talking it," Scheidt comments. "But I see it for what it is and what it isn't, having been on a really big label -- so what. It sounds cool, but at the end of the day it didn't radically change our lives."