After vocalist Craig Mabbitt left melodic post-hardcore band blessthefall in December 2007 the Phoenix-based band proceed to beef with him, security guards, and Christian metalcore troupe The Devil Wears Prada. With their second album “Witness” slated for an October 6 release and the addition of new trusty front man Beau Bokan, blessthefall – which also includes guitarist Eric Lambert, rhythm guitarist Mike Frisby, bassist Jared Warth and drummer Matt Traynor – might very well be the toughest band on the Fearless Records artist roster.
At least that’s the vibe we get from Bokan and Lambert.
FIGHT!: Obviously you guys follow MMA. With that said, who are some of your favorite fighters?
Beau Bokan: Probably Anderson Silva. “The Spider.” He’s insane, man! And I really like Vitor Belfort. I hear he’s back. That guy is insane and he disappeared for a while.
FIGHT!: Did you see Silva fight at UFC 101?
Bokan: Dude, I didn’t watch the last fight with Anderson Silva. That’s the one we missed. Didn’t he bet the crap out of Forrest Griffin?
FIGHT!: Yeah. In like three minutes.
Bokan: Alright! We like all that stuff. Like, we’ll go to a sports bar and watch the fights.
Eric Lambert: Yeah. We usually watch the fights when we can.
FIGHT!: Nice. How about you Eric? Who is your favorite fighter?
Lambert: As far as MMA goes, I like [Georges] St-Pierre a lot. He’s friggin’ insane and the Lesnar fights are always fun to watch just because he destroys everyone.
FIGHT!: It seems like GSP isn’t concerned nowadays with finishing people up, but more like he rather punish them.
Lambert: Yeah. It’s just courtesy. He doesn’t wanna absolutely kill them.
FIGHT!: Does blessthefall follow other organizations aside from the UFC?
Bokan: Yeah. Like I wouldn’t necessarily say follow them. I don’t look at everyone’s record, but I do enjoy watching the fights and I think the Affliction fights were good too. I like Fedor [Emelianenko] a lot, so I’ll watch him whenever he fights.
FIGHT!: Do any of you guys train?
Lambert: I used to box for a couple of years and that’s about as far as I went. I did a little bit of jiu-jitsu and some kickboxing. But I mostly did boxing for two years before the band started touring and everything.
FIGHT!: Where was this at? Arizona Combat Sports Club?
Eric Lambert: Nah. It was called The Box-In. It’s in downtown Phoenix. It’s just a nice little local boxing place. It’s kind of a shady area, but the train is down there, so it’s really good.
FIGHT!: Your single “God Wears Gucci” caused people to think you were beefing with The Devil Wears Prada. I know those dudes are peaceful, but if you were to throw down, who would take it? The Devil Wears Prada or blessthefall?
Bokan: Oh, we would. No question about it. All our guys are pretty tough. Like I would love to go into a boxing ring and put some gloves and do that or something at some point. But I don’t know. We got into a couple of fights on tour with like security guards. I don’t know if you heard about it, but these huge security guards tried pushing us around and we ended up getting into this big fight with them. We tried the best we could to, like, not, and then they tried to take a swing on us and push us downs steps, and we ended up getting the best of them.
FIGHT!: Which state was this in?
Bokan: This was New York. It’s in Poughkeepsie, but yeah. It was a bunch of drama. The thing is we didn’t start the fight and one of them took a swing on me, and it was basically self-defense. And this guy was 6’5” – way bigger than me – and he ended up going down, so that’s always fun. I don’t condone fighting unless you absolutely need to and at that point, it was either these guys are gonna beat the crap out of us or I’m gonna have to defend myself.
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