Why SOiL's first shows in three years won't be SOiL-by-the-numbers

With an album at the pointy end of the charts right at the turn of the millennium, it’s impossible to truly gauge the influence of SOiL, but we can safely assume it’s extensive.

Bands like Godsmack, Spineshank and Mudvayne have all tipped their hat towards SOiL in one way or another and so via the process of osmosis alone, SOiL’s orbit has spread far and wide. Much of this can all be traced back to their 2001 sophomore record Scars, which laid waste to MTV in its heyday not to mention mainstream airwaves, leading to an absolute massacre that would result in award nominations and a genre and era defining album.

Though the band itself would cop the slings and arrows that come with the gig including various line up changes and conflicts but ultimately SOiL, and Scars, would stand the test of time.

To mark two years of Scars, SOiL are heading to Australia as part of the live onslaught that is the Static-X world tour, the hype of which arrived on our shores well before the band did. With mere hours to go until the tour kicks off, founding member and bassist Tim King had some important questions for BLUNT.

Tim King: The mosquitoes are the size of your head out there. Right?

Yeah, Actually-

Tim: Everything’s oversized, right?

Look. I don’t want to freak you out before you get here…These aren’t just your first Australian shows in a while, they’re your first shows back since the pandemic!

Tim: The last set of dates we did were a West Coast tour of the United States in February of 2020, and then the pandemic hit and then we just kind of went on lockdown. We recorded some new material and stuff, but we just wanted to wait it out until everything was somewhat back to normal.

We didn’t want to go out and have to wear masks and do all these protocols and stuff, so we just waited out the storm and here we are, three years later reactivating Soil. Instead of doing it locally here, we decided to do the full-on travel halfway across the globe to start playing Australia again. We’re going to shake all the rust off before we come over there.

A weird question to ask a musician with as much experience as you but, are you nervous?

Tim: It’s funny you say that because we’re going to be doing all songs off of our Scars record, which is our most popular record. Some of those songs we haven’t played live in over 20 years and some of them we haven’t even played live ever.

Last night, I sat down with the songs to start working on them and getting ready because we were going to start rehearsals this week before we go… I was really nervous. I’m like, ‘Boy, am I even going to remember any of these songs?’ It was crazy because it was like riding a bike. Some songs that I literally haven’t even thought of since the early 2000s, I just remembered. My hands remember these songs. My brain might not, but my hands remember them. I have pretty high hopes.

These things that you created all these years ago, these little sonic children of yours, was it weird suddenly being reintroduced to them?

Tim: You’re coming to me fresh with it because literally last night I sat down with it all. I’m like, “These are some really good songs.”

It’s like getting excited myself because it’s not just the same old set list that we’ve been playing time and time again. Because overall of our albums, we get to play songs like Redefine, and Pride, and Western Man, and stuff, all these singles that had come out and were successful. But this time, we’re putting everything aside and just doing these Scars songs and it’s like, “Wow, some of these songs are really cool and why didn’t we keep playing these, or this or that?” I mean, for whatever reason. But it’s really neat to revisit them. So I’m having a blast with it.

I feel kind of reinvigorated not only just for the fact that Soil’s going to be playing its first shows in three years almost to the date, but that we’re going to be playing songs that we haven’t played in a long time. We’re not going to go up there kind of doing Soil by the numbers. We’re going to be going up there doing stuff that we haven’t done in a long time.

Without putting too fine a point on it, not a lot of bands that released hit albums in 2001 are still coming to the other side of the world to tour for their fans. That must be a cool feeling. Have you had that moment yet to really accept that?

Tim: When we first got the offer to do Australia, it was like, “Wow.” We haven’t been back since Soundwave, which was nine years ago and now we got an offer to go back again, especially with all that’s happened with the pandemic and the shutdown of the world and all this, we’re very blessed to do it.

We didn’t even ask how much we were getting paid. We didn’t ask how many shows. We didn’t ask anything. We’re just like, “Go back to Australia? Sure, let’s do it.”