King 810: "You don’t flinch at gunfire. You get used to it..."

“I was in a house that got shot up,” says King 810’s David Gunn, “I was on the second floor, and the first floor got shot up, so it was okay, but yeah, I was a kid, I was seven. It wasn’t really significant.

“It was crazy at first, but then when you see it ten, twelve, fifteen, twenty, fifty, one hundred more times after that, you know, in the next few years, it’s not really crazy, you’re just a part of it and it doesn’t affect you to see things like that. You don’t jitter or anything, you don’t flinch at guns or shots, or anything like that. You get used to it after a few hundred of them.”

Early last year, as Slipknot’s Prepare For Hell tour rolled into Wembley Arena in London with Korn and King 810 in support, Alexander Milas and the Metal Hammer Magazine Show sat down with Gunn to talk about his upbringing in Flint, Michigan, the rumours surrounding his band (not least about their genesis), their recent arrest and why the band won’t be leaving the city any time soon even if Gunn’s parents did.

“My family left Flint when I was a kid and I stayed by myself, so I just got a lot of friends and it’s the same, business as usual.” He says, “The only difference is we have to leave sometimes to go on these tours, but when we come home it’s like we didn’t miss a beat. We still come home to the same crew and sometimes when you come home someone’s dead, or someone is in jail.

“Like last tour six of us got arrested and are still in jail, so it sucks that, when you leave for a month and come home, those things have changed as far as who’s free and who’s not free – but other than that, you come back and it’s the same thing as it was when you left it. There’s no rapid changing there. In a way it’s good.”

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The new version of Devil Don’t Cry comes from the band’s vinyl EP, That Place Where Pain Lives and is accompanied by a duet with British singer/songwriter Rosie May called Bad Man.

“Last year we recorded some twenty-five songs for the Memoirs Of A Murderer sessions.” Says Gunn, “Some of the pieces I’m most proud of didn’t make the album, Bad Man is one of those songs. I’d written the song with a female part in mind. We were lucky enough to meet Rosie May and ultimately record together.“

To hear more from the straight talking Dave Gunn, not least this rousing call to arms, then click the link below.

The New Testament: King 810 On Why We Should Listen Without Prejudice

Philip Wilding is a novelist, journalist, scriptwriter, biographer and radio producer. As a young journalist he criss-crossed most of the United States with bands like Motley Crue, Kiss and Poison (think the Almost Famous movie but with more hairspray). More latterly, he’s sat down to chat with bands like the slightly more erudite Manic Street Preachers, Afghan Whigs, Rush and Marillion.