Will Putney is one of metal’s most consummate workaholics. This year alone, the always-in-demand producer has been on a prolific tear working on records from the likes of Night Verses, Northlane and Foreign Hands — not to mention Body Count’s upcoming and much-anticipated Merciless, his fourth full-length partnership with Ice-T and Co. The iconic rapper, metal vocalist and actor is one of many who deem Putney “the greatest producer” the heavy music scene’s got going right now.
Of course, Putney is also a creative heavyweight on guitar, having just released not one but two impeccably riffy albums that feature his frenetic fretboard handiwork: Highly Irresponsible, the fiery debut LP from irreverent post-hardcore supergroup Better Lovers, and The Nothing That Is, a bleak but bombastic opus from his long-running deathcore sextet Fit for an Autopsy.
All told, Putney admits that his 2024 has been “pretty chaotic.” On top of writing-and-recording with his two main projects, a revolving door of talented acts is forever spinning into the Graphic Nature Audio facility he maintains in Kinnelon, New Jersey. Add to this, Better Lovers’ current heavy touring schedule is putting Putney on the road in a major way for the first time since he exited FFAA’s live lineup about a decade ago.
Revolver catches Putney during a brief reprieve as he cruises across the desert plains of Joshua Tree, California, (“I just had a couple days off… my first mini vacation in six years”), and while he’s enjoying a temporary breather, he’s plenty grateful to be on an otherwise nonstop grind.
“I love doing bands, and I love producing records. I’m lucky I have this lane to do both things, now, and it’s great,” he says. “I just have to remind myself that I don’t have to be working 20 hours a day every day, all the time.”
Despite having his attention split by myriad projects, Putney put his all into Fit for an Autopsy’s The Nothing That Is. It’s the band’s first full-length since 2022’s Oh What the Future Holds, a game-changing release that leaned into the multiversal metal approach they’ve honed since 2008 while also yielding the act their biggest chart success yet (reaching No. 23 on the Billboard 200). To be sure, broaching the mainstream hasn’t dulled Fit for an Autopsy’s attack.
Lyrically, the bulk of The Nothing That Is has Putney painting humanity as a bunch of “ruinous roaches” serving up misery and violence at every turn, and its apparently only going to get worse from here. The band — Putney, vocalist Joe Bad, guitarists Pat Sheridan and Tim Howley, bassist Peter Spinazola and drummer Josean Orta — compound that grimness through hard-hearted, skull-collapsing moshers (“Hostage”), skin-peeling melodeath severity (“Savior of All / Ashes of None”) and eerily gorgeous, sung-and-screamed post-metal texturing (“Lurch”). It’s an ever-adventurous Pollock-splatter of contrasting styles, though Putney posits that Fit for an Autopsy’s polymodal pound is paradoxically it’s defining feature.
“Fit obviously get pulled into this deathcore scene frequently, but we come from so many different places, musically,” he notes. “We have so many influences. I think being able to put dynamics into aggressive music that can take you from one place to another — and doesn’t just live in one trick — has been our strong suit.”
He continues: “If you’re a hardcore kid, or you’re into melodeath, or you like grind, or you like moody post-metal stuff, there’s something on this record that can be appealing. Trying to pull all of our influences into one cohesive thing sounds tricky, but we’ve been able to do it. I think that’s partially why people are interested in us, because we give you things that keep you interested.”
Speaking with Revolver, Putney provides a few details on the clubhouse vibes of his home studio, getting bit by the touring bug again, and how Fit for an Autopsy continue to shine despite having just delivered their darkest record yet.
Cameron Nunez
Taking the album titles at face value, The Nothing That Is seems bleaker that Oh What the Future Holds. What was the broader mindscape within the band as you were making this one?
WILL PUTNEY Obviously we don’t write positive music. It’s supposed to be an outlet for things that are frustrating. Oh What the Future Holds was written in COVID time. There was a lot of “What the hell is happening next?” energy in the world, and a lot more unpredictability. That record was more from a perspective of looking ahead and saying “Is anything going to get better?”
Then fast forward to the present day, and I think The Nothing That Is puts us right where it’s like, “Well, nope… everything’s probably worse off. Our little timeout didn’t really do much.” I mean, I’d like to think all the records are darker than the previous ones, but there’s definitely no happy takeaway on this. I think, if anything, it’s [about being] frustrated and angry at what’s going on with the world.
This is in reference to a line on “Hostage,” but did you or the band come to any new realizations about the “wretched world that we’ve built” through the making of this album?
To me, “Hostage” is kind of a bridge between the two records, that’s why it’s the first track. Lyrically, a lot of where that song goes is sort of like, you can’t escape your past and you can’t escape your future. So, the imagery you’re referencing is almost like, “OK, where did we come from and where are we headed?”
Do you write any of the lyrics together with Joe?
I’m pretty heavy-handed on all this stuff. I love working with Joe because he’ll take what I have, interpret it, and come up with a pattern that’s a little different than what I was thinking. Lyrically, usually it’s stuff that’s coming from me, and then Joe is really good at sticking it in a song in a way that translates really well.
Can you give us a sense of what it’s like to make a record at your Graphic Nature studio? We did an interview with Ice-T earlier in the year, and he said that it’s kind of a clubhouse vibe when Body Count’s recording there — people just popping in and out of the studio all the time, which is how Joe hopped on their “Psychopath.”
It’s definitely got a bit of that. I mean, obviously I’m invested in a lot of bands’ music and careers. One band could be recording an album, but this [other] guy has got to pop by and pick up some gear. Or a band’s got to rehearse, or these dudes are on tour and they need to crash for a night. Or we’ve got to film this thing. Or I’ve got to get an edit done… day to day, there’s just so much chaos at any given time.
I think everyone that I work with kind of knows, “Hey, there might be some dudes walking in once or twice [during your recording session].” But it applies for them, too, where it’s like, “Hey, if you need some shit in a month and we’ve got to whip something up real quick, I would do the same for you.” It’s just part of it.
It’s cool, because with a lot of the bands that I work with, everyone’s friends. We have a pretty cool circle of bands and buddies, so everybody kind of knows each other. It leads to cool stuff sometimes. I’ll have bands do gang vocals on the next band’s record, it’s like pay it forward kind of stuff. You get these accidental collab things that happen sometimes.
Did anyone hop in the mix unexpectedly on this Fit record?
On the Fit records lately… I guess I would say I’m not as into doing features. We’re trying to establish who we are still.
I do love the guest vocal. I think it could be super useful and cool, and obviously it gets kids excited — you can cross streams with fan bases. The past few Fit records, we had a lot of extra vocalists and features. We’ve had great dudes come in and do their thing. It’s just that where I’m at now, I want the band to just stand on its own. I want people to see the band as it is, with these dudes.
Slightly rewinding to something else that Ice told us, he called you the Dr. Dre of metal production. What does that mean, to you?
It’s a very flattering comparison that pops up every couple of years in the press, and then it gets a funny bump for me. I think he just looks at Dre as a pinnacle producer in the hip-hop world, and likens me to [Dre] for what we do, which is obviously an awesome compliment. I’m a huge Dr. Dre fan.
You’re now back in the swing of touring and producing, after having taken a step back from playing concerts with Fit a decade ago. What led you towards fully embracing the idea of playing live again?
I never thought I would do this again. I had done a little bit of touring with Fit, but then when the band turned full-time, we added another guitarist because I was like, “I’m a record producer. This is what I want to do.” I love the band, but I couldn’t say no to [getting] the opportunity to be a part of everybody’s band [as a producer]. I needed more than just [Fit for an Autopsy] as a creative outlet.
So, over the years, that’s shown its face in a variety of ways. End [the blackened hardcore supergroup Putney formed in 2017 with members of Counterparts, Shai Hulud and the Acacia Strain] was a side project that I started with some friends because that’s a preferred style of aggressive music that wasn’t really scratching that itch anymore [with Fit for an Autopsy]. End was created almost [so] I could stop trying to force this stuff into a band where it didn’t make sense. We played some shows, so I got a taste for it again. I was like, “I do like this. It is nice to get out of the studio.”
Then obviously COVID hit and everybody was very, very inside. During those couple of years, I reevaluated what I was doing, because I was just working. Through COVID, all I did was produce records, nonstop. It was one of the busiest runs of record production we had — everybody wanted to make a record because there was no touring. So, I just grinded away at the studio. Then when the world opened back up and everybody went on tour and had all this fun, I’m still sitting in my studio like, “Fuck, I am never going to leave here, huh?”
I didn’t want to jump back in on Fit, because that ship is running so smooth as it is. End did some world touring — I went to Australia, Japan and Europe, and we did some touring in America. [But] End is just a part-time band, on purpose. Everybody’s got their own projects. It’s not meant to be a thing that we do 365 days a year.
So, I was like, “It is what it is. This is the life I’ve built.” Then Better Lovers happened. Here are these guys that I look at as top-tier musicians in this world, and obviously I’ve worked closely with a bunch of them before. We were in the trenches trying to figure out what the new project was going to be, post-Every Time I Die, and [started] writing songs, recording and looking for singers. I wasn’t even in a band [at that point], but I was obviously part of their internal team trying to make shit happen. Then the opportunity to work with Greg [Puciato] popped up, and I was like, “All right man, if I’m ever doing a band for real, these are the dudes I’d want to do it with.” That’s not throwing shade at any other project I have, but these are the people that I grew up listening to. These are the guys that I consider to be on the top of the food chain in the genres that they were in. I saw what [Better Lovers] could be.
[Better Lovers] got me out of the house again, and it’s been awesome, man. We’re probably 90 shows in already. We have an EP out. We have an album. It’s just been really, really good for me to get these experiences and get out of the house again. I feel like it’s going to add years to my life, at this point. If I just sat in a [producer’s] chair for the next 10 years, I don’t think I’d end up as satisfied.
Would you get back onstage with Fit, as a three-guitar lineup?
No, I don’t tour with Fit. Tim’s been in Fit for about 10 years. He joined the band to solve this problem of, “Hey, I might not always be able to go on tour. We’re going to need somebody who’s around.”
Instead of doing the fill-in thing, we just added a guitarist to the band so we could treat him like a proper band member. Because he is, obviously, and he’s fucking great. He’s way better than me. So, you’re not missing anything — that dude shreds on guitar. It just worked so well that I’m like, “What am I getting on stage for… just to play more guitar that’s not as well done as Tim?” I don’t want to throw a wrench into what’s going on with Fit [live] because it’s going great. The dynamic of the band [is] I’m the guy at home. I handle a lot of creative stuff; they just smash it on tour.
Even though you won’t be playing it live yourself, what’s the song off The Nothing That Is that you’re either most excited to see the band play, or for a fan to see in-concert?
There’s one called “Red Horizon” that they’ll be playing on this tour. That one’s great. It’s such a good picture of [the] different styles that make up Fit.
It’s obviously great to have a producer-engineer in the band, but it’s also pretty cool to have a barber in the lineup. Considering Joe’s currently working out of a shop in Charlotte when he’s not on the road, does he keep your shit crisp?
I feel like he used to, [but] he doesn’t bring the tools out as much [outside of the shop]. I’m stoked that Joe’s got a thing that he can do that’s fulfilling, aside from the band. Pat’s a tattoo artist, also. Tim runs some of his own custom leather work. Everyone has decent passions outside of the band that they now have as side gigs, and it’s made life really easy.
Has Joe ever given you an old-school shave, like a full-on straight razor to the throat?
No, I just get the haircuts. Never got the razor from him. I love the guy, but don’t know if I’m ready for that. [Laughs]
This interview has been edited and condensed for flow and clarity.