Dean Mason: Just wanted to get a sense of the early days, the beginnings of Carnivore–you mention in your email that you saw Fallout open up for Twisted Sister is that right?

Keith Alexander: Yeah that’s right, at a club called 2001 Odyssey, the place where they filmed Saturday Night Fever.

How did you happen to get involved with Peter Steele and this new band Carnivore?

The best I can recall is that, I was working at a record store on Nassau Street in Manhattan, called the “Record Explosion” and, I knew Pete from, like…I knew him from Fallout that’s for sure…um…and I knew…I knew of the band and the sort of thing he was doing from….just like local shit, Red Hook… the part of Brooklyn they’re from isn’t that close to where I’m from, but the music scene at that point was small enough that, I definitely knew of him. Now I remember, I think I saw an add for the band in the “Aquarian”, um, I could totally be wrong about that, but I’m almost definite that I saw an add for them, and the name “Carnivore” was there and I really remember saying—knowing– that it was him for some reason. I distinctly remember knowing just from the text that I read that this has to be that guy. And I don’t really recall like auditioning or anything like that you know. I remember going down, and playing a little bit but I don’t really recall the circumstances…like… “how I got in to the band” per se.

When you guys first got together, how did you approach working together, I mean did Steele come up and say “here’s the kind of material I want” type thing? What?

Yeah well, I mean, it was his music right?! So I mean, there was never any doubt of how the song was written …….they were his songs. But at the time, from what I can remember, I mean this is a while ago now, he was open to other ideas, you know, so he definitely set the chord changes down and the lyrics, and 80 to 90 % of the structure and then we would just kind of go over it in his mom’s basement, and hash it out. We didn’t rehearse all that much from what I can remember, but he would definitely present the skeleton of the tune, if not completely done. He was very prolific. He writes allot.

One thing I really remember is, that I always really enjoyed his lyrics. His lyrics to me were the strongest…like the music…was anh…you know…it was what it was; some of it was better than others…all of it was interesting…but the lyrics were always um (pause… change of direction suddenly) one thing I really remember is that at first I kind of fought the whole shoulder pad bullshit…I was like… “oh…this is lame”…you know, because I really wanted to be seen as a legitimate musician and you know, as a guitar player, you know, my dad’s a guitar player…it’s in my blood…I mean I’ve just always been a guitar player….and I wanted to be seen as serious and do serious stuff you know….and so at first I fought it. I remember being like… “Ah, FUCK THIS!” Over time, I don’t even remember what it was……. but I got into it. All of the sudden, I went and I bought some shotgun shells, and I remember like taking out the buck shot…and, you know, I was like, “well o.k…. fuck it…if we’re going to do it, let’s really do it!” Everybody else is wearing bullet belts, “I’m gonna wear a shot gun belt”…and I remember making wrist bands with like you know…like steel shark fins or something and at one point I totally got right into it. I remember coming down with the costume that I had built and I remember Louie saying “ah…you’re into it, you got it, that’s exactly what we were going for.” So, you know, that was fun for a while.

I must admit, I didn’t think at first that Steele was someone that was into the “image” (my perception that is) but I have come to find out he is.

One thing you have to know about, well him (Peter) in particular and all musicians I think in general is that image is critical. Anybody that tells you that they don’t have an image is lying, because THAT’S the image. He was very much into the image, I mean the whole band was based, at least back then you know—that first album that I was a part of—was based on science-fiction/Mad Max. I remember watching “Quest For Fire” and “Mad Max” and looking at those films as inspiration for costuming. “Mad Max” and Quest For Fire” were big movies for us to watch.

I remember Gary Numan’s “Warriors” album, obviously influenced by Mad Max.

It influenced hundreds of bands—absolutely.

What sort of music, what bands influenced Carnivore. I remember “Agnostic Front” being mentioned somewhere along the line in my research.

Yeah, I remember distinctly when we started to get into, you know, what at the time was being called ‘thrash’. I remember me going out and buying a couple of Slayer albums, you know, the whole “Metal Blade” thing. The influences were pretty diverse, cuz like Pete…Agnostic Front was not an influence of ours. They were around before us that was for sure, but, they didn’t influence us until Pete got into his hard core thing and shaved his head, but prior to that, it was more like, Black Sabbath, St. Vitus, you know the sludgier type…. like Trouble–Trouble was a big one….you know, bands like that—for the band as a whole. Me…definitely Metallica, Megadeath, Slayer, you know. At that time it wasn’t main stream but, like what turned out to be more of a main stream thrash. Plus, being a guitar player, you know, and my dad being one as well I’ve been exposed to…you know one my favorite guitar player was David Gilmour of Pink Floyd and I brought that to it. At times, the greatest compliment I ever got, and this was post Carnivore, was some of the tones that I was getting on the Primal Scream record, was reminiscent of David Gilmour from Pink Floyd. So, I think I brought those kinds of influences.

Louie was certainly into…well I don’t want to speak for him…but you know he was into all these double bass guys…I remember we were totally into Accept, certainly Priest and Sabbath….I mean they were big Sabbath fans. I was never really a huge Sabbath fan but they were.