Eric Gottesman - Everything Goes Cold

A chat with Eric Gottesman of Everything Goes Cold, but Eric has been around the block, so to speak, performing with Caustic, Ayria, Psyclon Nine, and Deathline International. When he isn't doing that, he's working on video games. Catch Everything Goes Cold at Dark Force Fest 2025.

Featured Songs:
Everything Goes Cold - Nadir

Visit https://everythinggoescold.com/ for more Everything Goes Cold.
Visit https://DarkForceFest.com for more information about Dark Force Fest.

Void Signal intro courtesy of Processor. Visit https://processor2.bandcamp.com for more Processor.
Void Signal intro remix by Mortal Realm. Visit https://mortalrealm.bandcamp.com for more Mortal Realm.

Transcript

Hello again, and welcome to Void Signal. I am your host Brian Prime. I hope you are well, I wanted to make you aware that if you are going to Dark Force Fest in May, please stop by for Void Signal Live. We're going to have a chat, play some trivia (with PRIZES), and make some memories with strangers. If you miss me in New Jersey at Dark Force, you'll have another chance at the end of May in Seattle, when Void Signal Live will happen again at Mechanismus Festival. I know, I can't believe it either, these fools are going to let me do my thing in front of a bunch of people again. I hope to see you at either one!
You can also catch this week's guest performing there on Saturday. This is a chat with Eric Gottesman of Everything Goes Cold, but Eric has been around the block, so to speak, performing with Caustic, Ayria, Psyclon Nine, and Deathline International. When he isn't making music, he's working on video games. I had a chat with Eric late last year, and that's what you'll hear next.

But before our time is at an end, i will once again mention that void signal is ad free and powered by a person. for two dollars per month you can help support independent media, the void signal project, in exchange you get access to hours of series, special episodes, longer cuts, early access to episodes, access to the movie club, all kinds of perks. Visit voidsignal.net or patreon.com/voidsignal today and slip me a couple bucks for being your entertainment for the next however long you listen. Thank you for your consideration. Until next time. Stay safe, stay loud, and take care.

Eric Gottesman: [00:00:00] Hey, how you doing? Can you hear me okay? Is the level alright?

There we go. Is that better? Let me leave and come right back. 

Okay, let's try this again. Is that any better? 

Brian Prime: Yes, much better.

Yeah. You sound like a normal person again. So, which is deceiving. I know, but 

Eric Gottesman: it's, it's all an elaborate ruse. 

Brian Prime: Yeah, I figured as much. , excuse me. Okay. Let me check levels and stuff. I think you're good. Okay. I'm more or less ready if you are. 

I just got home from, running [00:01:00] errands and shopping 

Eric Gottesman: You're actually four minutes early, so. 

Brian Prime: Okay, fair enough. I try to be 15 minutes early in case people need, like, how's my levels and wanna, test stuff or whatever, but you know what you're doing, supposedly. 

Eric Gottesman: Anyway, yeah, I'm good to go. 

Brian Prime: Okay, cool. All right. we will go ahead and get started. I'm trying to do this thing where I do intros and it's all professional and people know who's talking and everything. So we'll try and do that. so welcome to Void Signal. I'm your host, Brian Prime.

I'm joined for this episode by Eric Gotsman, from a lot of things. Like you just are sort of a scene staple at this point. Like everybody's had a turn with the Gotsman, it seems. how's it going? 

Eric Gottesman: Pretty good. Pretty good. It's been a long and frustrating work day, but, I'm now not working. And now I just get to sit here and talk about myself, which is always fun.

Brian Prime: Excellent. Everybody loves that. so if somebody were to say who's Eric Gossman, what would you tell him? 

Eric Gottesman: well, assuming that we're talking about music, which we are. my band is Everything Goes Cold, and Everything Goes [00:02:00] Cold has been going since, 2008.

So it's been a while, but, a lot of people know me from other things. I've been a member of, Area almost since the beginning. And we, have been touring a lot lately, so, a lot of people may have seen me up on stage, with Jennifer. I've been with Aria since 2005 with a few breaks.

I've also been with, Caustic for a pretty good chunk of that time. And, I was in Cyclone Nine for a long time. I was one of the founding members. And, yeah, I've played in a lot of other bands, even just in the last few years. I, play a lot of shows with, DSTR with Daniel Meyer.

I got to play a couple shows with him with How Job, which was really cool. And yeah, I could go on listing bands, but those are some of the big ones, I guess. 

Brian Prime: Yeah. Glass 

Eric Gottesman: Apple Bonsai, I left out Glass Apple Bonsai, that's important. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Doing that live with Daniel Belasco, and yeah.

Brian Prime: you also did a collaboration with Kurt Larson, is that right?

Eric Gottesman: I did, yes. Kurt lives, here in the San Francisco area. I've known him for a long [00:03:00] time. And, we spent a really ridiculously long time working on that one track. But, I'm really happy with how it came out. that, came out as a single a couple of years ago.

I think we released it as Larson Gottesman. Yes. 

Brian Prime: It is Larson Gottesman. I bring it up because as a big Information Society fan, that song was like One of my most played, the year that it came out, it has been such a great, staple, said so many poignant things, and Kurt has such a great voice, great track.

I wanted to at least mention it here, because, like, yes, you've done a lot of things, but, like, that track and working with Kurt Harland, I think, is, worth mentioning, like, sort of a peek out of our little scene a little bit. 

Eric Gottesman: Well, yeah, I, many years ago, there was a time period during which Kurt was not part of information society and, Paul and Jim were doing shows information society with, what was that guy's name?

The other singer was on synthesizer. but Kurt was asked to do a show during that time. And he was like, well, I can't [00:04:00] really do a show because I'm not part of Information Society right now. this was for a game developer conference, and Kurt and I both work in the game industry. long story short, we wound up playing a show as not Information Society.

We were called, it was a one off thing, we called ourselves 415 Sound Covenant. we had a good time working together, and we also realized that our voices work pretty nicely together. a little while later, Kurt was working on a track with, Steven Sebald from Hate Department. who, as you may know, previously did the album Don't Be Afraid by Information Society 

My favorite 

Brian Prime: NSOC album, yeah, anybody listening, you've not heard it. It is, it long tracks that, are worth your patience. great, great record. Yeah. Yeah. 

Eric Gottesman: Anyway, he started working on the track with Steven and Steven dropped off and, I wound up sort of taking over. So, yeah, 

Brian Prime: that's 

Eric Gottesman: the origin of that track.

And, yeah, like it did take us a ridiculously long time. Originally we were going to do more, but then we were like, well, if we keep trying to do more music, nothing's ever going to come out. So we better just put out a [00:05:00] single. 

Brian Prime: Yeah, sure. and a great single. 

I'm sorry. I keep changing it. I hear 

Eric Gottesman: it's, it's. It's goddess man in theory, but like, honestly, even within my own family, we don't pronounce it totally consistently, so it doesn't really matter that much. 

Brian Prime: Okay. Alright. very well. I'll just continue saying whatever I want, then, is what the sound is. okay, so what, so you've worked, you've done a bunch of stuff, like had your fingers in a lot of stuff.

but, I did see that the, you mentioned that Everything Goes Cold, has gone, has been sort of resurrected. and kind of lives again. I was listening to that just before, we went on, the single Nadir. Am I saying that right? 

Eric Gottesman: I pronounce it Nadir, which is apparently more commonly the UK pronunciation.

And in the US, Nader is an acceptable pronunciation. However, that just makes everybody think of Ralph Nader. Right. Talking about while we were, while we were recording it because I'd already, we, [00:06:00] the artwork was done like three quarters of the way through recording it. And my producer was like, wait, what is this name?

What is the name of the song? And I tell him and he's like, like Nader, like Ralph Nader. And, that was not an intended, that was not an intended impression. So I've been saying Nadier and hopefully that'll, that'll be right enough for everybody. 

Brian Prime: I mean that. Is the, I mean, that's how I would say it anyway.

it sounds better to me. It sounds right. if you say nadir, I'm going to go look, type it in on something and type in N A D E R. But if you say, nay, dear, I'm going to be like, oh, it's probably a fucking I. 

Eric Gottesman: the word doesn't actually occur in the song. So it doesn't matter that much.

Right. 

Brian Prime: Very well. aside from that, it actually is a really good song. It was great. I enjoyed my time with I listened to the whole thing. Including the, edit. it was fun. It reminded me of, Pretty Hate Machine era, kind of nailsy, kind of a sound, kind of stuff.

What prompted you to resurrect this project? Well, it was never exactly gone. [00:07:00] What happened was, we were sort of starting to work on new stuff and starting to work on a new album in, 2019.

Eric Gottesman: and then we played, I think, two shows in 2019, just locally. And we're sort of starting to sketch out how we were going to do the new album. We were trying to do it as more of, you know, all four of us in a room working together as a band rather than just me writing something and then asking other people to add stuff.

and then the pandemic hit and, we just weren't able to make the, you know, no matter how hard you tried to do stuff during the pandemic over zoom calls and things like this. even if everything was perfect, it oftentimes just didn't work out because people's brains were so, I think, addled by the situation.

And so, if you were to go to my github, I actually have a thing up there to Run a cloud instance of a piece of software that keeps musicians in sync over, multiple locations, which, was my big [00:08:00] pandemic project, we never actually used it. when things settled down again, I didn't really find myself writing, I guess it was Dark Force, festival in New Jersey earlier this year. And I ran into, Jim Simonic, who runs, Distortion Productions. And he was getting on my case to do a track for, the upcoming Electronic Saviors compilation. I don't generally at this point in my life, find myself listening to compilations.

So, you know, I know other people love this series and it does really well. And when I look at our, Spotify numbers or whatever, like the songs that we've had on electronic savers in the past are at the top. but I was just sort of like, well, I'm trying to get something done, but I don't know.

And I was being really wishy washy about it. And he kind of bullied me into it, which he's pretty good at doing. so I was like, okay, we'll get something together. in the process of doing that, we were also sort of talking about, you know, we weren't signed to Metropolis anymore.

and I didn't know how I'd release anything if I did it on my own. eventually, we hammered out, Something for me to release with distortion and I had this song that I'd been sort of [00:09:00] The earliest, file that I've got from this song is from like 2017. I've been mugging around with it for that long.

And I, one day, I pulled up the file, because I hadn't heard it in a while, and I was like, this sucks. And I completely started the whole thing over from scratch. with just sort of, just the barest ideas of it intact. You know, it's like 20 BPM faster than the original, and it's not even that fast as it is.

The original is like really slow and draggy. And, I sort of slammed it out really fast, and I got the guys to contribute a little bit of stuff to it, but at some point while I was working on it, I remembered, Matija Simovic, an old friend of mine, Has this great studio in Los Angeles at some point he'd been like, oh we should really record something together someday that was like, I don't know ten years ago and now he's kind of a big deal and he's done all this amazing stuff with boy harsher and Sacred skin, which is one of my favorite bands currently his own band in halt patriarchy one of the reasons that it had taken [00:10:00] me so long to put anything out was that I'm not listening to a lot of the music that I think of as being the generation that I Come out of these days, I'm not listening to a lot of stuff that is connected to, the sort of slightly post future pop and terror ebm era that I consider us to be most strongly part of.

Most of what I'm listening to is this new wave of dark wave and ebm stuff, it feels more present to me now and more relevant to me now and I don't really know how to write like that because I've spent my whole life writing the same kind of thing.

So, basically I went to Mattia and I was like, I want to do this song with you and I want you to figure out how it can still be us, but it can also fit at least a little bit into the culture and the music that I'm actually listening to right now. And, yeah, that's, what we came up with.

it was a great time. He's an incredible producer. Really, it was just an amazing experience being in that studio. [00:11:00] And also, we've been friends for like 20 years, so it was, definitely a more laid back experience than it might have been if it was somebody else. 

Brian Prime: great single, great track, and I do sort of find myself, like, as far as the, sort of, quick commentary, like, just a little bit of a side, because you're kind of touching on it a little bit, and it's something I'd kind of like to talk about, but, like, some more modern EBM Kind of stuff that I've heard these days like it does resonate with me a little bit harder But I mean I've seen its roots and like, you know We listened to what we had because it was all we had right like we didn't have some of these like it's like a fresh take on like a familiar thing and that's what I like and that's what I sort of hear in this and something that I like about it is that like I made the sort of Nash Nails comparison or early EBM or early whatever you want to compare it to I don't care but it is just sort of a fresh iteration on that thing and I think that fresh takes and updates in some places can go a long way and I want to point to, Hoseco's [00:12:00] latest record or singles as using some newer production techniques and it sounds really slick and I take notice of it a little bit more versus sort of what I've come to expect I guess, but it's an interesting sort of direction that things are going.

Eric Gottesman: I'm intrigued by that comment about the new Hoseco, I haven't listened to anything by them in ages. So, I really, you know, I strongly associate them with, the Terror EBM period, especially since, of course, when I was in Cyclone 9, especially in the early days, we played a bunch of shows with those guys, I think the last time I saw them, I was down in, Mexico City, playing with Grendel in 2015, I want to say that might have been a Dulce Líquido show, rather than 

Brian Prime: Josico, 

Eric Gottesman: no wait, that moment's Josico, but, I definitely associate them with that earlier period.

So I'd really like to hear what they're doing with modern production techniques. That sounds great. 

Brian Prime: I recommend it because same for me, it was just sort of a, like, I didn't kind of check in on what they were doing for a while because it was sort of, I guess when I did, it was kind of what I expected, right?

Like kind of, [00:13:00] okay, well, as, as expected, which isn't a bad thing, like, you know, just not my main flavor. but. hearing it with like some freshness and a little bit more like, better kind of production. not to speak disparagingly of their production or anything, but just some newer techniques, sounds a little more loud, more crisp.

Yeah, I'm a big fan of helping push and evolve, things. I love industrial music and I love EBM and stuff, but new directions. there's such good EDM and such good, interesting electronic genres popping up here and there and everywhere that it seems like, why would we just want to pick from this tree 

Eric Gottesman: whenever I think about 

Brian Prime: EDM 

Eric Gottesman: in the context of Industrial music. I always immediately sort of think back to that period when dubstep got really popular and people in the industrial scene reacted so negatively to it. I wasn't spending a whole lot of time listening to it, but at the same time, I was like, man, this is like harsh, aggressive electronic music that has permeated popular culture in a way [00:14:00] that industrial music hadn't managed in, you know, decades felt like something we should have all been excited about.

And, you know, there are a few bands like Rabbit Junk is the big one that really grabbed, I think the stuff that was cool about that form and pulled it in. And then eventually years later, we got a lot of it, but, I'm not out there listening to EDM and the fact is that a lot of cultural things surrounding it are very much not appealing to me and I wouldn't expect to be appealing to most people.

Brian Prime: Sure. But there's also a lot of, you know, cool production, cool things to learn from that stuff. And, it would be a shame if we, you know, if we all just toss that sort of thing out, entirely. 

Yeah. A bunch of open minded people putting their head in the sand and being like, no, I like it how it is.

Eric Gottesman: I find myself really frequently in conversations with people about The nature of, industrial music no matter what you do within the scene that has that word attached to it, somebody at some point is going to ask you, well, how does this connect to throbbing gristle or something like that?

the answers to those questions have [00:15:00] changed a lot over the last, three decades, right? and also, it's been more than three decades since that answer was easy or clear. one of the reasons that people react so negatively to the more popular forms and things that they see in popular culture is that, they want to be able to answer that kind of question clearly.

They want to be able to see the clear connection to the more experimental roots of the genre. And I think that there's a mindset, which I don't think is correct, but I think that there's a mindset that I can understand that, you know, pulling too much from popular music, disconnects us even more from, you know, those experimental and more underground beginnings.

Brian Prime: Sure. And I mean, the reality is just that, Like we're never going to hear like industrial music in a fucking commercial or anything.

Eric Gottesman: We absolutely were hearing industrial music and commercials at some point, you know 1995 or whatever you were hearing. I don't know, you know gravity kills and machines of loving grace and things.

Sure. That's true. Yeah Lots of movie trailers with some Rob Zombie in it. I'll call Rob Zombie Industrial. [00:16:00] People can at me if they want. Like, I don't give a fuck. That album was produced by Charlie Klauser. Like, come on, get out of here. 

More than trailers though, you know, there was that lengthy period during which, you know, TVT was deeply involved in tons of movie soundtracks.

Yeah. All those sci fi movies from, the mid 1990s are full of stuff and there was a, time period during which things that maybe at the time, contemporaries might have thought was the poppier side of things, but we would now definitely reasonably recognize as part of industrial music, those things were all over the place in the 90s and it's cool that we are now finally, 30 years later, Getting back to that place, and I'm really excited about that, 

The fact that, Three Teeth and Health and bands like that are in, movies and all over popular culture, is really, really exciting to me. I don't like everything that I hear in popular culture that is connected to this stuff, of course, but I really like that it's there.

a few years ago, I was visiting family in Los Angeles and My little brother told me that he and his friends were going [00:17:00] to a show and he wanted to know if I wanted to come with them. my brother is not involved in industrial music at all and his friends are mostly, people that he knows from work who are involved in, finance industry stuff or whatever.

And I asked him what the show was and the show was Health. 

Brian Prime: Oh shit. And this was like, 

Eric Gottesman: yeah, this was in, this must have been 2016, somewhere in there. was right around the time that health had sort of really crossed into the industrial scene. But they were also at the same time really crossing into sort of the popular public consciousness through their work in games and through whatever else they were doing.

Yeah, 

Brian Prime: I was going to say Max Payne was around that time maybe. 

Eric Gottesman: Yep, this was, Max Payne was before that, but not by that. but yeah, and anyway. That was an amazing time. Like, I got to go, watch what, in my mind, is definitely an industrial band, and, in fact, is probably the single largest influence on my most recent track.

And I got to go watch it with a huge crowd of people who were all into it, and that crowd included people that, I was never going to see at, like, a decoded [00:18:00] feedback show or something like that. Sure. 

Brian Prime: Like, 

Eric Gottesman: the reason I thought about first is I just, I picked up this album by Dancing Plague the other day, which is excellent, they're going to be here in San Francisco at the Substance Festival in October, which I'm pretty excited about. And I was listening to it. Substance 

Brian Prime: Festival. 

Eric Gottesman: Yeah, and I was like, oh, this is giving me a vibe, and I can't quite put my finger on it.

I realized it was like, it felt to me a little bit like some of the decoded feedback stuff that really like Pulled a much more melodic, it was a much more melodic take on that electro industrial thing. And so, I felt like it was, it was a really cool 90's vibe on this thing. 

Brian Prime: Nice. Yeah, I'm into that.

I did like, Decoded Feedback a lot. Phoenix, the name of the track. amazing, but Dancing Plague. I do want to see Dancing Plague. I am looking up this Substance Festival because I am not so far.

I'm only in Sacramento. This lineup is amazing. I can definitely go to that. I will see you there. 

Eric Gottesman: the two day tickets are sold out, but last I checked, you can still get a ticket for each individual day. 

Also Substance Festival is run in part [00:19:00] by Brian Taney from Sacred Skin, who are another one of my favorite bands right now. 

Brian Prime: I did catch them. when they played Roseville, opening for health had a great time. Really enjoyed what I heard 

great performance and fun music and I say I don't use that disparagingly like I fucking like fun music it was great I had a good time with it 

Eric Gottesman: they're an LA band but they've got deep San Francisco Bay Area roots because both of the Bryans Brian Demerit and Brian Tarney are San Francisco people who moved to LA.

And, yeah, I always love seeing them. They were one of my favorite finds of the pandemic period. So, yeah, that's, I will go travel to see that band. So I'm very excited to be seeing them on Halloween. 

Brian Prime: Yeah, for sure. Oh, shit. That's Halloween. Yeah. Awesome.

Yeah. this looks like a great lineup. not only Contra Void and, Dancing Plague against Sacred Skin. plaque Plague as well. Yep. which I always feel like I'm saying wrong. Ritual. Hows, I would be super excited to see as well patriarchy, black marble.

This is a great lineup. awesome. I will see you there. is there anything else that you're sort of, super jazzed about as [00:20:00] far as, not just for other bands or people, but, yourself? what is next on the horizon for you? 

Eric Gottesman: Well, I just got back from, in fact, so I saw you at Mechanismus where I was playing with Tawasuk, right?

So, it's been a real crazy couple of months. I left Mechanismus and then immediately went down to L. A. to record the single, Nadir. And then, the day after I got out of the studio, I was heading out to Calgary for Terminus Festival to play with Class Apple Bonsai. I got back from that, and then I was only back for a couple days before I had to haul out to the UK, to tour, do the UK tour with Aria and Inertia.

So what's next? well, there's some Glass Apple Bonsai shows coming up. I do not think they're announced yet, so I don't wanna, I don't know how confirmed they are, so I don't wanna say, when and where those are. as I mentioned earlier, the recent work sort of started with Jim asking me to do a song for, What do you call it?

For the upcoming Electronic Saviors, so Yeah. That's definitely the next recorded thing that I'm gonna be working on. 

Brian Prime: Gotcha. 

Eric Gottesman: And, yeah, I, [00:21:00] We have sort of a medium term plan for the band and it's nothing is set in stone yet. although I've I've discussed this with Jim and and he's into the idea but you know, I was having a real hard time getting an album written because writing an album is really intimidating and I realized that it is not intimidating to write an individual song and in the current environment, it's possible to just go release an individual song and so.

The current plan is we're going to do a few more of these, probably in a similar format. I'll get some more of my favorite, current bands to do remixes. I've definitely have some people in mind and, I might work with, Mattia for the rest of them. I might do some of them with him, some with some other people.

We'll see how it goes. But, you know, we're going to do a few more singles one way or the other. And the plan is to then do a sort of, not exactly a best of, but a summary, where, we're gonna feature the new singles in one package with, some of the songs that, we've released previously that we really like.

So, you know, the big obvious singles like, I've [00:22:00] sold your organs on the black market to finance the purchase of a used minivan.

The Iron Fist of Just Destruction, those are probably our two, biggest quote unquote hits for some values of hits. But then I want to go back and take some songs, like there's a song on the first EP called, I Will Harness the Powers of Darkness to Destroy You, where the production didn't age that well, and I still really like the song, and the way that we played it, have been playing it live.

Since, 2012 or so is a lot different than, the only recorded version that there is. So I want to take that and totally redo it. there are songs all throughout our catalog that are like that. Where, maybe they were on some weird obscure thing, or they just aged funny.

And I feel like we could, or we've altered them live or something. we want to do alternate versions of them. there's a structural problem with the song, when the sky rips in two, you are free from our last album that has been bugging me for 10 years now. And I'm like, you know, it's my song, I can just go fix it.

Brian Prime: Yeah. 

Eric Gottesman: Nothing's stopping me. So, so yeah, so the hope is to put out a really, hopefully with deluxe [00:23:00] packaging and all sorts of fancy bells and whistles, a nice full summary of the band that'll be. You know, if you only ever buy one thing by us, this is the thing to buy. But also, if you've been a long time listener, there's tons of new stuff to get and tons of reason to have it.

And, you know, that's the plan. Originally, I was saying that that was going to close out the band, but, the single's been doing really well. I've been having a lot of energy around it. And so I'm no longer really thinking of it that way. I think it'll at least be a good bridge into whatever we do next.

the next stuff we do will not sound a whole lot like the last album. The last album, Black Out the Sun about my discovery of chiptune and getting really involved in that scene.

And that stuff's great, but It's not really where I'm at right now. I haven't really been going to a lot of Chiptune shows. I go to some, but I'm not as, you know, I'm not as suddenly like, Oh my God, I can put a Nintendo in everything. Like, that's not where my energy is right now.

So, you know, the next stuff will definitely sound different from that and probably sound more like I've been listening [00:24:00] to all of this new stuff that we've been discussing. 

Brian Prime: So, 

Eric Gottesman: yeah, this should, this will hopefully serve to bridge that gap to an extent. 

Brian Prime: Understandable. That sounds, pleasant. and yeah, chiptune stuff is like fun for a bit.

I like some of it. 

Eric Gottesman: Yeah, there's, there are albums from that genre that I deeply, deeply love and that I will still listen to all the way through at any time, and some of them are super poppy, like Onomataguchi, and some of them are super weird, like Corn Beast or Glomag and things like that.

I definitely understand people who feel like, Hey, I can listen to this for like five minutes and I'm kind of done. 

Brian Prime: Same. but I mean, there's a lot of genres I feel that way about, like, and even then five minutes is pushing out with some things, before I want to tap out. 

Well, what is, so that is sort of the short to medium term, I guess, is like doing this thing. what is the long term? Goatsman, look like, Gotsman, Gots, Gottiesman, Gotsman, yeah. 

Eric Gottesman: Look, I gotta come up with like a weirder and more confusing pronunciation. 

Brian Prime: Yeah, [00:25:00] you do. I was trying to, but I got nothing else beyond just like, what's there and what's not, you know.

Eric Gottesman: It's pronounced Eric Cardboardbox. It's Everything is silent. 

Brian Prime: It's all silent. 

Eric Gottesman: that's a good question. you know, A thing that I've been saying a lot lately, especially, and it was a thing that came up a lot, when we did the full U. S. tour with Aria last year was, I didn't really expect to be doing this anymore at this age.

you know, I'm in my 40s, and I sort of thought that I was going to be done by now. the fact that I'm not, 

Brian Prime: I 

Eric Gottesman: want to make sure that I'm not doing things that are not fun because I am old and out of it. And when I say fun, I mean fun for an audience. I really never want to be in a position where I'm asking people to listen to my music or asking people to come to my shows if they don't already want to listen to the music or come to the shows at this point.

And, you know, as we get older, you know, it is hard as, when you're older [00:26:00] to, To stay involved with new music. I applaud anybody who's anywhere close to my age that is still going out and discovering new music and going to shows on the regular. It is hard. And it is nearly impossible to ever find anything that you're going to connect with as much as the stuff you connected with when you were a teenager.

So, I want to make sure that, you know, anything that I'm delivering is not something that's just pushing people to do something they don't want to do. It seems that we do still have an audience. People are happy about the single. That area tour, especially the U. S. tour, well, honestly all the shows we've played in the area have been great.

There have been great turnouts, in almost every city. the fans are really great. We've had really good conversations. We're meeting people that we like, that we don't already know. I've had great shows with all the bands that I play with and, we haven't had an Everything Goes Cold show in five years now.

So, we'll see how that goes, but, my hope is that it still connects with people and, that we can continue to do this for a while. In the long term, you'll probably see more from me than things [00:27:00] like, the Terminus Isolation tracks that I did with, our guitarist, Jamie, over COVID, which were acoustic covers of, one song by Frontline and one song by Kite.

that's something that I sort of have a long history of doing, like, genre bent renditions of industrial songs, that I used to do with The band that I was in, the band that I played in in college, which was called C Col and Slash. And I think I'm probably gonna find myself taking on a lot more projects that take less, creative energy and are more about, sort of digging into the things that I really care about, in terms of existing work.

I'm sure I'll do a lot more of that because That is always something that I've enjoyed doing. And, so long term, I think that's probably going to happen, but also, the reason I'm in so many bands, aside from the fact that, I'd like to think that I have some technical and musical ability is that when these opportunities present themselves to me, I almost always say, yes, if it's a band that I really like, and I love all the bands that I'm in, they're bands that I love to [00:28:00] listen to.

And so. As long as that keeps on happening, I'll probably keep on winding up in more bands. Yeah, so, you know, I've, gotten to play with so many of my favorite bands over the years, and, it's really, an amazing experience every time.

Brian Prime: Yeah, because I saw you at Dark Force Fest, this year, and I was like, that's Eric Gotsman. And then my brain was like, no, it isn't. So I didn't say anything. plus, you know, I don't know, we've sort of been in each other's orbit on Facebook for a little while. So it was like, I know who that guy is, but I'm not going to just like, now's not the time.

But when I saw you Mechanismus, I was like, okay, now's the time. And yeah, I caught you at Dark Horse Fest playing with somebody, right? You 

Eric Gottesman: Oh, it was Aria this year. 

Brian Prime: Yeah, and then I saw you at Mechanismus with Caustic, and what a blast! that was my first time seeing Caustic, and just fucking, what a fantastic, performance, and man, that mat finale, really just brings something special to the stage.[00:29:00] 

Eric Gottesman: Yeah. caustic is always, always super, super, super fun to play with. And, they are some of my favorite people, even Matt, I guess , we've all been friends for a long time and every time we get together it is just an absolute blast. 

Brian Prime: Yeah. And mechanisms was, was such a blast.

so many like. Everybody knows everybody, and if you don't, like, you know enough of everybody else that it just feels like a big, sort of, party that, like, all the cool kids are at, and everybody's getting along. It's pretty great. well, I don't want to keep you too long, so I will, go ahead and put the last question of the podcast to you.

Anything like that? Well, I was in Vancouver last week, and I had lunch with Alex Kennedy from I Die, You Die, so, you know, most of those things that I just really had to get off my chest, he already had to deal with. Gotcha. but, well, I did want to say that, I am doing my best to get Everything Goes Cold on some festival lineups for next year.

Eric Gottesman: I've been playing at the festivals that have been going on, especially since the [00:30:00] pandemic. it really feels like it's a great way to see bands. because you can, you know, it draws in people from a large region, you see a lot of bands all at once, and it just seems like it's more practical for so many bands than touring right now, and that's definitely the case for us, I'm trying to get us on to at least a few of the festivals that I really enjoy going to, but there's also a bunch of really cool regional festivals that I haven't gone to just because I don't know. I haven't been there. I know there's some good ones in like, there's one in Detroit that looks really great.

There's a couple in Florida and, all over the country that I haven't gotten a chance to check out. So, if you have a regional festival that you would like to see us at, please mention us. we're hoping to get in there. We try to be easy to work with, but, you know, we sometimes need that solid gold dressing room, so we'll see how it goes. 

Brian Prime: Understandable. that's, yeah, and sort of on that note, you and I are both sort of near the Bay Area. I missed the World Goth Day Festival this year, like Covenant was playing on a decommissioned aircraft carrier. 

OK, 

Eric Gottesman: I will say that one really great local band played that event. The band [00:31:00] that I'm talking about, by the way, is Vague Lanes, and if you have not heard them, you absolutely must check them out. It is Mike Cadoux from Gridlock, like THAT Gridlock. And, my friend Badger, who's been in a ton of incredible, Gotham Industrial bands in the Bay Area over the last 30 years.

it's Vague Lanes is the band, and I just, I was really frustrated seeing these guys. I thought they were not giving the slot they should have been, and then I was like, Ah, this should be better. So they're going to be back here in, I think, two weeks.

They're a great band. My friends, Ashes Fallen, who you're a Sacramento person. So I'm sure you know them. Yes. They play there. Yeah, that's James. He used to play with me in Death Planet International and his wife, Michelle, and our friend Jason, they're an incredible goth band, and so it's good to see them.

Brian Prime: I caught them, not that long ago playing for boot blocks in San Francisco and, fantastic performance, great show. Also with Holy Water, it was also really great. I 

Eric Gottesman: had just gotten back from Terminus and I was so fucking tired and [00:32:00] I had just seen boot blacks and I was like, I got it.

I can't drag myself out. 

Brian Prime: Yeah. 

Eric Gottesman: the boot blacks guys are hilarious. We've got some great pictures of. Barrett running around one of our hot dog costumes, from Terminus this year. I have not posted to social media yet, but, I absolutely love that band. They've got a new single album.

Yes, me too. that is absolutely killer, by the way. It really stretched what I expected from them genre wise. Is the single. Yeah. Really cool shit. 

Brian Prime: Really fucking great. and what a performance, the live iteration of them is, a great thing to witness, like really great energy, great songs, and the new stuff is got such a great vibe to it.

I agree. That's a great band. A hundred percent. okay, very well, we shall, put the last question of the podcast to you. What is something that you have been enjoying recently? And your answer can be anything, book, movie, TV show, your dog, whatever, just what's something that you've been jazzed about?

Eric Gottesman: I'm a big comics guy and, I read a lot of like just big two superhero comics. The five year [00:33:00] long Krakoa era of X Men just ended, and if you were ever looking to get into X Men comics, go back to the beginning of that called House of X, Powers of X.

It just ended, but it was five years of just some of the best superhero comics ever written. Really, really amazing stuff. the Energon Universe Transformers and G. I. Joe comics that are coming out right now. the guy who runs my comic shop, Fantastic Comics in Berkeley, shout out to them, suggested it to me, and I don't normally read those books, but they've been really great, really fun, like deep dives into classic characters, but they don't feel, dated or like it's Overly tied to, pre existing lore in a way that makes it not fun.

Brian Prime: Right. 

Eric Gottesman: So that's what I've been reading. 

Yeah, it's been really good. Jim Simonic is a huge Transformers guy, and he was really involved in the IDW comics. This is a new publisher, it's a totally new thing, but, yeah, I'm really enjoying it so far. for video games, I just finished this game called Chained Echoes, which is absolutely incredible. It's a, sort of a tribute to classic Super Nintendo era JRPGs. [00:34:00] And, it was, the whole thing was written by one guy, and it is enormous and sprawling. It took me a million hours. I played it on the Switch.

but yeah, it's, it's sort of that 16 bit style turn based JRPG that is just a real joy to play. great storyline, great, great mechanics. for music, we've been talking about music this whole time, but I guess the one band that immediately comes to mind that I haven't mentioned is Dark Chisme.

Who I just saw at, Terminus, they were one of the highlights of the whole festival. I had not heard them before, they are brand new, they've been around for less than a year. And they've got one album out, it's fantastic. so definitely listen to them, and definitely listen to the new, GenCab EP.

That is, I mean, I'm a huge GenCab fan, so that won't be a surprise to anybody that I love that. 

Brian Prime: Yeah, I agree. Shout out, David Dutton. GenCab is great. and he's, a great person. if you get a chance to say hello to him, please do so. He's fucking wonderful.

Eric Gottesman: Yeah, he's alright. 

Brian Prime: Yeah, he's whatever. 

Eric Gottesman: Yeah, no, he's, of course, he is a good friend of [00:35:00] mine. And, I'm, I'm hoping, you know, I've got, I'm, I'm planning to do a lot of Sort of collaboration y kinds of things, with Everything Goes Cold and in the next year. So, he's definitely on my list of people that I'm hoping to do something with.

And hopefully that'll work out. 

Brian Prime: What else do you have for me? 

Eric Gottesman: I do love my dog, who is not exactly my dog. he's like my ex's dog, who I still go visit all the time. 

Brian Prime: what is the dog's name? 

Eric Gottesman: His name is Hoyt. He's all over my social media whenever I go to see him.

Okay. Yeah, he's in Sacramento, so you may have seen him. 

Brian Prime: Oh, excellent. Okay, he lives here as well. I will look him up. I might catch him at the local goth night or something. 

Eric Gottesman: Yeah, you might. he's deaf. So he could go to the local goth night and would probably just be happy to see everybody.

Brian Prime: Yeah, see, he'd have a great time. 

Eric Gottesman: Okay. Yeah, we had a sweet 16 party for him recently. Wow. Which was super fun. Excellent. 

Brian Prime: Happy birthday, Hoyt. he won't hear that though, so, 

Eric Gottesman: He won't. You'll just have to 

Brian Prime: tell him for me, I guess. 

Eric Gottesman: He's deaf and he doesn't speak English, Oh.

It's really a one two punch there. Okay. 

Alright, 

Brian Prime: well I always [00:36:00] answer the question myself. So the thing I've been enjoying recently, I've been getting ready to go to Wasteland Weekend and putting together costume parts and watching videos about here's how you wasteland up a thing and make it look shitty and, not shitty, you know, appropriate, post apocalyptic and all.

So I've been doing a lot of that and I'm pretty fucking excited. I've been aware of Wasteland for forever, like a long time, but it was the thing that I just sort of stopped paying attention to because the assumption was I'll never go to that. So, but the opportunity has arisen and, this is the year of saying yes to things and, vindicating myself for almost dying a couple of times.

So we're going out and we're doing things while we can. so I'm going, 

Eric Gottesman: You almost died a couple of times. Yeah. And your response to that is you're going to go to Wasteland Weekend. Yeah. An experience that everybody has always described to me as a good opportunity to almost die.

Brian Prime: Yeah. 

Eric Gottesman: Yeah. Yeah. All right. 

Brian Prime: We're making sure we're alive. [00:37:00] Okay, like that's, we're gonna, So, my, you know, I love Ben Max, love music, love this whole thing. I'm so excited. But, did find out, it is tarantula mating season. I'm mortified of spiders.

a lot of first times for a bunch of things and, you know, we'll see. good times to be had, or the end of Void Signal, one or the other, we'll see. 

Eric Gottesman: Well, maybe you'll, you know, you'll meet a very nice tarantula, and you'll, and one thing will lead to another, and then you'll have, like, really freaky half tarantula kids.

Brian Prime: That's true. there's also desert tortoises out there, but you're not supposed to fuck with those. Like you got to report like, cause they're endangered and shit. So, 

Eric Gottesman: Oh, yeah. 

Brian Prime: You 

Eric Gottesman: probably shouldn't fuck the tarantulas either, but I mean, I'm, I'm, you know, What am I, a cop?

Like, go for it. What am I, a cop? 

Brian Prime: I mean, it's the desert, like, you know. What happens in the desert during tarantula mating season stays in the desert. Music wise, I rediscovered my love for Zeal Ardor, recently. amazing band. If you've not heard them, [00:38:00] just such a great mix. I mean, outside the genre, like, not the usual flavor, but a great mix of southern, African American, sort of slave songs mixed with metal and a satanic sort of a coat of paint slapped over all of it.

The the album Stranger Fruit is fucking fantastic. Yeah. Amazing band. Worth looking up. The other thing, aside from that Mortal Realm, I've been enjoying that a lot. Adam Jones. Yeah, I love that guy. Adam's great. I've been eyeballing that Space Marine 2 game, and that looks real cool, but we're a little busy right now, so we'll wait for a sale on that, I think.

Eric Gottesman: Yeah, my game backlog is, 

Brian Prime: Mm 

Eric Gottesman: hmm. 

Brian Prime: Yeah, same. I'm stuck in that mode of like, oh wait. cause everything new and [00:39:00] shiny takes up time that I could be spent doing productive things or whatever. okay. that is it. Thank you so much for your time for making this work, coming in and having a chat.

yeah, thank you for having me. Yeah, much appreciated.