3 Inches of Blood vocalist Cam Pipes is best known for his unsurpassable octave range that he belts out while relaying like Homer a long scroll’s worth of non-ironic tales of fantastical creatures who roamed the earth and the mighty warriors who sought to vanish them. Those unfamiliar with the recently reunited death-metal band might still get the gist of them, at least in part, because the fantasy game described above is Dungeons & Dragons, another 3IOB obsession.
New Noise touched base with Pipes three weeks ago to him glow about reunion shows and how psyched the band is to play later this month in Los Angeles (Jan. 24) and San Francisco (Jan. 25). Lead guitarist Shane Clark, rhythm guitarist/screaming vocalist Justin Hagberg, drummer Ash Pearson (also of Revocation), and bassist Nick Cates round out 3IOB. After finally succumbing to year of increased demand for reuniting, 3 Inches of Blood announced in September 2023 that their reunion was imminent. The band whose members hail from British Columbia and Washington State made good on the 10 shows they’ve played thus far.
Given that 3 Inches of Blood are, in Pipes’ words, effectively “picking up where we left off” upon disbanding in late November 2015, we asked if that meant a new album could be on the way.
“Some of the guys do have ideas, we haven’t had a chance to really sit down and go through them together, but that is the plan,” he divulges.
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“We haven’t had a chance to really sit down and go through
(new song ideas) together, but that is the plan.”
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We here at New Noise pride ourselves from not badgering musicians with all the same rote, clichéd questions that other people ask them all the time. Here, however, we gave in to temptation and asked Pipes if we could share a few more juicy facts to savor on possible new material. The result: He spilled more details about the discussions as they are now than any other article on the possibility of new 3 Inches of Blood material.
His reply: “I think early next year we’ll start working on that, set aside some time to get everybody together when we don’t need to be rehearsing for a show, and just sit down and say, ‘OK, let’s see what we got, because there’s obviously a desire for people to want to hear new music from us.’ And so, yes, there is a possibility of us writing new music, and there are ideas, and we do want to see what we got, and see what we can come up with. Hopefully we’ll have something done next year. But it’s really too early to say how much will get done before summertime and what we can release.”
It’s not just appeasing 3 Inches of Blood fans in Canada and the U.S. that are lighting an extra large torch under the collective bottoms of the bandmates: Pipes said he and the band want to hit up summer festivals galore in Europe next summer. While their confirmed prominent slot at France’s Hellfest on June 20 appears to be the only set in stone as of yet, Pipes alluded that 3 Inches of Blood plan or at least hopes to grace many more of them.
“Hopefully we’ll have (some new material) we can preview before we go over to Europe and play some of the festivals over there,” Pipes says. “Maybe we’ll have something to play for crowds by then, we’ll see.”
Indeed, today’s Pipes is a way more laid-back, socially adjusted, and pleasant-natured dude than when 3 Inches of Blood were riding pretty damn high on their early material. But he hasn’t changed all that much, at the end of the day (or at the end of an eight-year hiatus, perhaps more properly stated).
Pipes is using the same careful and patient approach that he taps into when trying to kill a Mind Flayer. In controlling armies of dragons and other battle-hungry fantastical warmongers, he knows how to bring joy to his hordes, real and not-so-real. Am impressively professional crew despite not breaking through to hire as many crew as they probably would’ve liked, 3 Inches of Blood don’t miss shows. Keeping the spirit of the short-lived resurgence of interest in the New Wave of British Heavy Metal alive, all the band members engage with fans in every conceivable communication medium, and give it their all with every show (at least the four that this writer attended).
Stay tuned for plenty more to come from our interview with Cam Pipes of 3 Inches of Blood, especially as the band plans a flurry of additional live performances next year—and who knows, maybe even further into the great beyond.
Get more familiar and lots of resources of other goodies from 3 Inches of Blood on their website.
Photos provided by Looters.
