Background music they ain’t – Body Count are here to be heard. New album ‘Merciless’ is a scathing spree of bile, ferocity, disgust, lessons to learn, lyrics to cut and hardcore, hard-hitting tunes to make you think, make you question and make you turn this record UP. Decades in the industry, combined with experiences of the extremes life sends to be endured mean Body Count are currently utterly unstoppable. Jo Wright was the lucky girl to get granted a chat with bassist and nicest guy ever Vincent Price, who drops not only the most amazing names but also the bombshell that ‘Merciless’ is not actually Body Count’s best album…
Sat by the pool in Majorca, emboldened by a few too many glasses of alcohol, Jo Wright sent a little email wondering if she could maybe get an interview with Body Count. A week later, on a drizzly grey day back in the UK (Halloween actually), Henry the Labrador jumps on the sofa, Vincent Price appears on her laptop and she kinda can’t believe her luck. This guy plays bass for one of the most ground-breaking bands of all time – fronted by Ice muthafkn T. He’s a guitar tech who has worked with names most people on the planet know. So what highly considered in-depth question does yer girl ask him? To do her job for her, that’s what. To describe Body Count. Happily Vince, who is actually doing this interview from his car, is lovely.
‘Body Count’s Body Count! That’s the whole thing about the band!’ he smiles. ‘It’s always been different from all the other bands – and not because everyone in the band’s black. It’s because Ice doesn’t sing. I’m going to think of a new term for what Ice does! You can understand what he’s saying. You can hear every word. It’s not falsetto, it’s not this, it’s not that, he’s not doing all the screams. You can hear every word he says loud and clear. Every word is considered, and nobody else sings – or vibes! – like that. That’s why Body Count stands out. Musically we don’t try to sound like any other band. We have a style that we just keep making better and better.’
Does Vince have a favourite track on ‘Merciless’, Body Count’s eighth studio album? ‘It’s hard to say because every song has something going on! I was working on the album since 2021. It was a lot of my life! We missed a few deadlines with the record label; there was so much stuff that went on with that album. But every song has its own little thing. I would say all the songs on ‘Merciless’ are my favourite songs!’
How to make a Body Count album even better? A few heavy duty guest spots should help, including Joe Bad (Fit For An Autopsy) George ‘Corpsegrinder’ Fisher (Cannibal Corpse) and … Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour. Yep, you read that right. David Gilmour dug Ice-T’s take on ‘Comfortably Numb’ so much he actually played guitar on it.
Ice-T set his band a challenge with this album – to write music so good he didn’t need to sing over it. Was that something Vince relished? ‘It’s easy!’ he laughs. ‘It was easy to do. Basically Ice says, ‘Ok, I like that part, so we’ll go with that part. We’ll get rid of this part…’ It’s easy because it makes the songs develop faster, because he knows what he wants. The hardest thing when you’re dealing with a singer is when they have a hard time coming up with lyrics and writing to the music because it’s not a part of them. What Ice does, he makes it a part of him so he can write to it. It’s a vibe. If he’s not into it he’s not going to write it.’
Body Count has been going for 35 plus years, with Vince joining in 2001. He knows the music world well – in its past and present state. Does he prefer it how it was or how it is? ‘The world’s constantly changing,’ Vince says. ‘You really can’t go back and rewind, and wish things were a certain way. You’ve just got to evolve with it. There’s so much stuff in today’s world, as far as the music industry is concerned, that has changed. Social media and all that stuff for example. It’s a lot! I just go for whatever’s going on! I’m just doing music and that’s it!’
Music in many different forms to be fair; Vince is a guitar tech too, and has previously worked with Queens Of The Stone Age, Ariana Grande and Prince. Prince? PRINCE!!! Vince tells a very excited Jo, ‘What Prince did when I worked for him, was not so much the crazy stories or the crazy antics – although there was a lot of that! But I learned a lot from him in the time of being in his presence. He was a workaholic. He was always in the studio, he was always writing songs, and that’s what I took from him – to keep writing, doing the music, jamming with a bunch of different people – which he did. I was with Chris Cornell too, and in the time I spent with him, he was the same.’
Vince adds, ‘The thing about being a guitar tech, doing what I do – it keeps me in touch with everybody out there. I hear the music with a different kind of ear, I see the venues, the staging, so when it’s time for Body Count to play I already know what’s going on!’
Pretend you can choose only one Vince – teching or performing. Which one would you go for? He picks teching. Cool. Are your Body Count techs terrified of getting things wrong in front of your expert eye? ‘With me, I understand what a guitar tech goes through, because I am one,’ he explains. ‘So what I do is I make them feel easy. I say, ‘Don’t worry about it. Just hand me something that works and we’re fine!’’
His day job also gives him a heads up as to the sorts of venues Body Count will play – or won’t as the case may be – if they tour ‘Merciless’. Vince explains, ‘[In the States] we’d just be playing a bunch of little clubs and stuff like that. It doesn’t really make sense for us. I do this for a living as a tech, so I’ve seen the places that we’d be playing. I was out there with Marilyn Manson, Five Finger Death Punch and Slaughter To Prevail – that was the last tour I was on – and I saw that they were playing just outdoor sheds! Would I want to do that with Body Count? Not really, no. We have played some arenas, but mostly… it was sheds!’
Vince is super happy ‘Merciless’ will soon be in the hands of the band’s many fans, but despite having almost 400,000 monthly listeners on Spotify, he tells Jo that Ice-T and his finest men are not as well known as you might think. ‘A lot of people really don’t know who the band is, which is surprising,’ he says. ‘I don’t want to over-saturate, but I do want people to actually know who Body Count is, because this band – we’re up there with just about everybody.’
‘Merciless’ is everything Body Count fans will want it to be. The album title says it all, to be fair. The beast is unleashed on November 22 – is this Body Count’s best LP Vince? ‘For today, and for this year, and until we have to do another one, I’d say yes! It’s the best one, but it’s not the best one because we haven’t written it yet!’ Whaaaaatttt? Not only will Vince have to invent a new term to describe Ice-T’s vocals, he’ll have to come up with a brand new superlative. Because if Body Count can top ‘Merciless’ yer girl certainly has no words.
Interview by Jo Wright
Photo by Alessandro Solca