By John Vidiadakis

Back in time..."Piece of time" album...which were the motives that led you in creating such a unique combination of death metal and progressive elements, when typical, ordinary death metal was selling like hot cakes?

Well we were into alot of different kinds of music, other than death metal, but we had that young angst that led us to combine the many aspects of say "rush, watchtower, king crimson etc. with early slayer, and metallica, and it was never really a consious decision, its just the way we ended up creating.

In all your career, you had a wide open attitude against music. Which are your favourite artists in any genre, and why do you think people tend to be so close-minded and mentally abstracted in few genres and specific styles of music?

People will always like what they like for whatever reason, and there is nothing anybody can do to sway them into liking anything, but i think people do not like what they do not understand, such as politics, not many people realy like it, and thats mainly due to the fact that they do not understand it, and they don't really want to either. i love sounds, and it really matters very little what the origin is, you know what i mean, i like the way a 2 liter bottle sounds when you tap on it, and if you tap it cleverly, I really like it hahaha.

"Unquestionable presence" was an even more progressive (with the real meaning of the term) album, and "Elements" showed a band that had gone far beyond any border...what do you think of these albums now?

I love them all dearly, they represent some prolific thoughts i had when we were creating it, i think they are just now starting to make sense to a lot of people. unquestionable was created with roger right before the us tour w/ candle mass, and of course his untimely death, so there is alot of roger on
that album, and thats why it will always have a place in my disc player. elements was written rehearsed, recorded, and mixed in 40 days top to bottom, we were under extreme pressure, and it made for a very interesting album, i
wrote all the lyrics in 10 days, and in my opinion its the coolest shit i ever wrote, mainly cause the subject matter did not leave me alot of directions to go in, i mean i sat down and had to write a song about "mineral" so i was like hmmmm and all of this great stuff came to mind, where i would write the song from the eyes of the dirt of the earth, and it came out really cool, there were some great moments on that record musically, alot of stuff is going on in there.

Which was the acceptance Atheist faced from the press and the audience, in every era? Did you have any contacts with other musicians, and what was their opinion on your works?

Well the press was always kind to "atheist" except in the end, I remember kerrang's review of elements, saying " they sound like grown
men caught in there own guitar strings, and they said, "we were so technical we were up our own ass, and i thought that was really uncalled for, we actually tried to make "elements" a little less technical, i wanted to make a heavy record w/o using double bass, and i think we did that, there is only one spot of double bass on the whole record. but early on the press was all we had, cause a lot of kids were confused by what we were doing at the time, we were always really good friends with the cynic boys, and we always knew that everyone would get it sooner or later, but paul masvidal and myself would talk for hours about what we were both doing and how hard it was for us to tour with anyone, we both had to tour with cannibal corpse, and let me tell you there fans were very confused hahaha, but we always recieved a great deal of respect from other musicians.

Your lyrics were also quite different from the "evil, gore, evil, gore and even more evil" lyrics of the death metal bands. Which are the things that inspire you for writing lyrics and how much important do you think they are for the song?

Lyrics to me are equally as important as the music, it is the voice of the creation, I have been inspired by many different topics, from life to love, to unexplained, things, but mainly i write from a very abstract point of view, so it leaves room for interpretation

(Question by Penelope Vlachopoulou:) In your early days you were named R.A.V.A.G.E. , did these initials mean something specific?

Well yes its not very clever, but hey we were young hahaha, it meant "Raging Atheists Vowing A Gory End", and the only reason it meant that was due to another band in detroit that had the moniker "ravage", so we had to make it mean something, so we could record as ravage, but in the end we decided to keep just "atheist"

If there's a Big Heaven's Band, Roger Patterson plays now bass with them...What are your memories from him? Could you maybe define the exact conditions of the fatal accident?

Well it was early in the morning and our one roadie had driven for about 29 hours straight and he let our other roadie drive, we were all sleeping and he went to pass another car, and when he came back into his lane he lostcontrol and we flipped abouyt 6 times, and it through roger out of the van, he was alive for a short time at the scene, I was all cut up and in shock, they took
us both to the hospital, and that's when i found out that he was dead, and we were just totally blown away. I still visit him often and he is still a very big part of me, he was so talented.

I can recall a poster of 1990 of a Candlemass tour in U.S. I think, that contained Atheist and Solitude Aeturnus as special guests. You have also made a tour with Nocturnus and Confessor. What are your memories from the live gigs with all these four magnificent bands?

Oh yes well we had many good times thats for sure, Candlemass was very good to us, we were 2 very different bands, but we lived together on a bus and found a mutual respect for each other, it was an interesting bill, but in most places it went over well together, they had a real good following, so we benifited greatly from that tour. the Nocturnus boys were always cool, but we never toured together, we did play many shows in florida together.

What comes in your mind when you hear the word...

...Watchtower?

brilliant visionaries

...Nocturnus?

creative

...Cynic?

the most talented death metal band ever!

...Coroner?

skillful, but slightly over rated (sorry)

...Rush?

the fathers of all that is prog

...Morbid Angel?

Garbage, if speed were skill, they may serve a purpouse, but i do not think that is the case, i do not mean to be disrespectful, but pete is the only talented guy in that band, he is one of the fastest drummers in the world, but i am basing this opinion on what i have heard, i have not heard formulas yet! i am only being honest sorry!!

Now, let's go to Neurotica...there's not many things known about your new band, so it would be really nice if you gave us a history of it along with its discography and line-up. Also, how would you describe its musical style?

Neurotica is a very very different band than Atheist thats for sure, it is full of melody instead of technicality, although it is far from basic, there are many little clever things that we have placed in the music, along with undeniable melodies, its very aggressive, and beautiful at the same time, our first album was produced by "Brian Johnson" (AC/DC) it is called "seed", its a bit of a metal record, with intersting twists and turns, but with alot of melody as well, our new album is called "living in dog years" it is the best album i have ever been a part of, it is so catchy and heavy and all of things that i love about music, from beginning to end it flows with great continuity, I am very proud of it, I hope kids that were into atheist will check it out, it has alot of power and agression, but my singing style is just that, singing, with screams thrown in where they are needed, it has alot of dynamics, very listenable!

What are your current musical preferences? What do you think on the progressive metal scene in general?

Currently i am listening to alot of different music, from the new Chris Cornell, to the new Cannibal Corpse record(which is so heavy) and i enjoy all points in between. I think prog music is a little to light right now, i would like to see more albums like the new "gorguts", those guys progressed so much since we toured together, I enjoy prog music that is very heavy, i do not like the keyboard type prog as much ala "Dream Theatre", "Fates Warning", i
want it to be mean and pissed off but with mind blowing technicality. i actually like what Chuck has done on the new death record, he has come along way.

And the psychic dreamer saw... (question by Penelope Vlachopoulou:) in the cyclone of reunions, could we hope for an Atheist reunion?

Anything is possible, although it will never be a true reunion, w/o roger, but i think that there is a real possibility that myself, Rand Burkey and Steve Flynn, could get together again to make a record.