You Wanna See Me Fail, You Won't Get Your Chance: An Interview with Jamey Jasta (Hatebreed)

Failure has never really been an option for Jamey Jasta.  He started out in the music business in his early teens during the mid-1990s and he has yet to look back. When interviewed about his initial impressions of meeting Jamey as a teenager, Brian Fair of Shadows Fall had this to say:

Jamey was the hardest working man in hardcore.   He saw a possibility of making a career out of this long before anyone else I knew did.  But he knew that meant multitasking and having a million irons in the fire.  He booked shows, he had a zine, he started a small record label, he had a band.  We were all like, who is this kid running the Connecticut hardcore scene?

Now over thirty years later, not much about that description has changed, though the scope of his influence has increased exponentially.  The hustle and drive that he showed as a teenager in that Northeast scene has continued, but on a much broader stage.  He’s toured the world with Hatebreed with every metal act you can name, hosted MTV’s Headbanger’s Ball and interviewed metal royalty from Dio to Lemmy to Iron Maiden, recorded over 700 episodes of his podcast The Jasta Show, produced and distributed records for Dee Snider and countless others, and resurrected the Milwaukee Metalfest.   Jasta has been an ambassador for metal and the metal community, while championing and showcasing up-and-coming bands as much as he’s paid tribute to the legends of the genre with the countless shows he’s organized and the collaborations he’s created.

I had a chance to speak with Jamey about his wide spectrum of achievements in so many facets of music, including: 

• Hatebreed celebrating its 30^th anniversary as a band, releasing a Bay-area thrash-inspired solo album called …and Jasta for All, and the story behind resurrecting Milwaukee Metalfest.
• the writing process of the new Hatebreed record, touring plans for 2025, the upcoming Thrash Thursday shows in the leadup to Milwaukee Metalfest, and updates on the March Metal Meltdown and March Metal Matinee.
• how he overcomes writer’s block, a special gift he received from Testament, how he came to produce albums for Many Eyes and Dee Snider, and his dedication to discovering new music.
• his dream guests for The Jasta Show, interview opportunities that he’s turned down, an unfortunate experience with Tool’s Fear Inoculum, and reflections on what’s made him so successful in the music business.

You can view the entire interview HERE:

For as much as Jamey’s achieved in over three decades in the music business, it seems like the journey is far from over.  When speaking with him about his accomplishments, it feels as though with each new goal achieved, there are two or three more ideas that are spawned from their completion.  The overarching theme is that each of these tasks is undertaken with integrity to advance metal, hardcore, and any other genre he engages with in order to promote and elevate those bands to give them that same chance he was looking for back in his early teens.   

With a work ethic like few others in the metal world,  Jasta has proven to be perhaps the most prolific man in metal today.  Jamey may have declared it to the world best himself on the opening track of Perseverance – “You wanna see me fail? You’ll never get your chance.”

Follow Jamey on his social media accounts, martyrstore.net, and JameyJasta.com for information on all of the various projects he's involved with and much more!