Mudvayne’s Chad Gray Discusses 16-Year Break, New Music + More

“When we came back, the ground was shaking.”

Chad Gray joined Loudwire Nights on Thursday (Sept. 11) to dive into Mudvayne‘s return to the stage a few years ago and now, their return to the studio with the brand-new song, “Sticks and Stones.”

Listen to the full conversation in the player near the end of this article.

“The more you tour and do it with no new music, you just start to feel the ground not shake,” Gray admitted to Loudwire Nights‘ Chuck Armstrong.

“It was like, what can we do to make the ground shake? This is what you do to make the ground shake. You release new music when you haven’t released anything for 16 years — and that’s what happened.”

Not surprisingly, Gray said he’s really excited to have “Hurt People Hurt People” and “Sticks and Stones” out in the world, but he wasn’t ready to commit to sharing news about Mudvayne’s next album.

“I don’t know, we’ll see, you know what I mean,” he said about releasing a new full-length record.

“Being an artist and being a writer and writing songs is not easy, it’s really not easy. I’m not like the bad guy in Se7en where I’ve just got notebooks stacked up all around me full of lyrics. I’m about that connection that I have with my fans. I want to build a connection with the song.”

Part of the hesitation for Gray came from sharing how much time it takes him to write a song and the process that goes into perfecting it.

“I bash my head off the table sometimes for two or three days because I’m trying to get the song to talk to me,” he said.

“There’s many rough drafts. I get through it, but writing songs is hard.”

Why Chad Gray Is Excited About Mudvayne

As Gray discussed Mudvayne’s new songs, he added that this moment feels like a major milestone for the band.

“It’s unbelievable,” he admitted.

“I haven’t felt this way in this band for a very, very, very long time.”

“‘Hurt People Hurt People,’ that thing hit, man. It was so cool to see everybody’s response … It’s a slamming track. I cannot wait to get onstage and play these new songs for the fans. I’m really, really, really excited about it because I know that they’re both going to be played well and there’s a lot of emotion in both of these tracks for me.”

Gray said that when Mudvayne first got back together, they wanted to work on new songs, but they weren’t ready at the time.

“We tried this a couple of years ago and it just didn’t pan out the way we wanted to,” he said.

As time went on and they were ready to make the ground shake again, Gray went to his bandmate, guitarist Greg Tribett, and said they needed to figure it out.

“We got Nick Raskulinecz, who is a phenomenal, such a great producer. What a lineage he has, a resume — it’s phenomenal. I saw that and I was like, ‘Holy hell.'”

Gray said teaming up with Raskulinecz was exactly what Mudvayne needed.

“Working with him was incredible,” he shared.

“He really did what a producer is supposed to do. You’re inviting someone into your band … I love having someone outside of the nucleus as a sounding board.”

What Else Did Mudvayne’s Chad Gray Discuss on Loudwire Nights?

What the writing process was like for L.D. 50: “We were four dudes in a basement for four years, just writing [songs] that didn’t make L.D. 50. And then we had a moment where the band changed and we just went from, ‘We’re in a band,’ to, ‘Now we’re in a driven brand. We’re going to get signed.’ We just made a decision, we’re going to do this. And then we got in a studio and just fleshed it out. We recorded everything that we had written.”
The first song he heard from Ozzy Osbourne that made him a fan: “‘Crazy Train,’ bro. That’s everybody’s first, right? He loved Randy [Rhoads] so much, to the end. He had something really special with him and he really, really loved that dude. That kind of makes me smile. You’ve got to find the positive in the darkness.”
The power of Ozzfest and Ozzy’s legacy: “There were these really monster bands that were on the second stage. And it’s just like, that’s a gift from Ozzy. He took young bands and he put them on an Ozzy-sized stage. He broke Metallica, dude. He took them out, put them on an Ozzy-sized stage and it was on after that. His gifts to us are insurmountable.”