ALBANY—Few bands had the impact on the sound, look and ethos of ’90s hardcore and metal quite like Brooklyn’s Biohazard, and that influence is still heard today. Coming up during NYC’s turbulent ’80s, Biohazard channeled that real-world perspective into gripping songs that not only made the pit erupt, but also spoke of the harsh realities of street life, racism, drug addiction and corruption, among many other evils.
Biohazard’s perfect mix of brutal riffs, frantic beats and urbanized lyrics propelled the group to a career spanning nine full-length releases—including absolute essential listening like 1990’s Self-Titled debut, 1992’s Urban Discipline and State of the World Address in 1994—multiple lineup changes and thousands of shows, but a good deal of that time was fraught with tension, and an unofficial hiatus around 2017 seemed to put the band’s future on hold. Until now.
In late 2022, Biohazard announced that the group’s classic lineup—guitarist-singer Billy Graziadei, bassist-singer Evan Seinfeld, guitarist Bobby Hambel and drummer Danny Schuler—had reunited, and were planning multiple shows in 2023 and beyond, notably a two-night return to NYC’s Irving Plaza in June 2023, while later reports emerged that the band is also working on a new album. That momentum has only continued to build, with a string of epic recent shows, leading up to the group’s forthcoming gig at Empire Live in Albany on March 2.
To learn more about Biohazard’s remarkable return, their current tour and what’s in store for the future, I chatted with Graziadei from his home in L.A., where he’d recently awoken after a late night spent producing the new album by Venice, CA crossover thrashers Beowülf. Slugging back a mug of coffee, the guitarist-singer spoke excitedly about the band’s dramatic rebirth.
BRENDAN MANLEY: Getting the band back together—the classic lineup—is obviously a huge thing for both Biohazard and your fans everywhere. Take me through how it happened.
BILLY GRAZIADEI: Well, anybody who knows a little bit of history about Biohazard knows that we’ve been through the fucking ringer, like most bands, with ups and downs. To me it’s the whole philosophy of getting knocked down nine times and standing up 10. That’s how I roll and how I’ve always pushed forward with everything that I do.
The last time we tried to put the band back together with the original guys, in 2008, we did a little bit of touring—not as much as I thought we were gonna do—and shit fell apart there. Danny, Bobby and I tried to continue and that worked for a little bit, but in the end it just fell apart.
I went on and started my solo band BillyBio, and also a band called Powerflo, which is Sen Dog [Cypress Hill], Christian Olde Wolbers from Fear Factory, and Roy [Lozano] from Downset was there for a bit at the beginning, and that was it; that was my focus.
For the first time in a long time, I enjoyed making music. It was two new bands; it was exciting. It was fun. There was no drama. No bullshit. It was just friends playing music together. Sen Dog and I worked on the Powerflo record pretty much every night after football on Sunday, for like a year. We didn’t even have a name for the band. We finished the record and then put it out [2017’s Powerflo].
When we finished that record and touring cycle with Powerflo, I dropped the BillyBio record [2018’s Feed The Fire] and then toured up until COVID. During COVID I dropped another BillyBio record when I thought COVID was over [2022’s Leaders and Liars], and then finished a new Powerflo record that we just delivered literally like yesterday [title and release date TBA].
I had so much fucking going on and I was excited about Powerflo and BillyBio… I was touring and I was having more success in an artistic way, because I’m a hands-on kind of dude. I write all my shit—my demos; all my songs that I write, I play everything. Nobody inputs their ideas into it, which I fucking really like.
If you come up with an idea bro and you say, “Hey Billy, I got this idea: What do you think?” Most of the time, when you’re in a band, someone’s gonna say, “Well you asked me, so I’m gonna tell you: I think this is cool, but that you should change, you should do this, blah blah blah…” I don’t like that, and for years I never liked it. But I’ve evolved a lot since then.
BM: You’d definitely been keeping busy. What sparked the Biohazard engines again?
BG: Our manager for years, Scott Koenig, passed away two years ago [from COVID-19]. I was on the phone with him when he was in the hospital with COVID and his health was really on the bad side. He kept talking about what I was doing with Powerflo and BillyBio. I had a new BillyBio record I was working on, and he was like, “Ah, I’m psyched to hear it. Let’s get together; the docs gave me clearance…I’m out of the woods. If I’m cool by tomorrow morning, I’ll be home by 12:00 noon.” I said, “Alright, let’s get together over the weekend when you feel up to it. We’ll have dinner.” And the last thing he said to me was, “Yo, do yourself a favor. You got to bury your bullshit with Evan [Seinfeld]. Look past all that stuff. You guys owe it to yourselves and you owe it to your fans to put the band back together.” And I’m like, “Nah dude, I’m happy where I am. I’m not into reading that book again.” So that was it.
Then Friday morning I woke up and my buddy called and told me Scott passed away that night. Those are the last words that he spoke to anybody—to me—and it fucking hit me hard. About a month later, we were at the Rainbow [in L.A.] for a memorial for Scott, and I’m walking down the street and I see a shadow: I see somebody’s walking ahead of me, and I’m like, “That’s fucking Evan.” I could see, the way his body is shaped, and I’m like, “That’s got to be fucking Evan, wearing a flight jacket.” All I could see was this dark shadow.
So I walk in, and sure enough, he’s there. I say hi to a bunch of people, then I walk up to Evan. I tapped him the shoulder and he turned around, white as a ghost. I don’t know what he thought I was gonna do, but he turned around and he’s like, “What’s up man?” I said, “Hey, I wish it was under better circumstances, but it’s great to see you.” So that was the beginning of it. It’s a personal, powerful story for me. I know in the rock and roll world it’s fucking kind of boring, but it’s real.
BM: That’s not boring at all. It’s incredible how tragedy—even just a brush with death—can make people reevaluate life; and in the case of bands, put aside their differences and reunite.
BG: Scott was a pivotal catalyst for us, not just with our career, but even in his passing. Every show I play, I have goosebumps. Every show we play, I think of him. I think of our first drummer, Anthony Meo, who passed away [from cancer in 2023]. We’d put the band back together and started talking to Anthony. He was the first drummer on the demos, and we stayed close with him over the years.
We had gone so full force with this reunion. At first it was a reunion; I was like, “Yeah cool, it’ll be fun to play Milwaukee.” We had the first step—playing Jamey Jasta’s Milwaukee Metal Fest in May and I thought, “it’ll be fun and then we got a couple shows in New York at Irving Plaza that’ll be fucking fun.” Then they booked some shows in Europe. I said, “Maybe we’ll make it through the fucking Europe shows without a shit storm,” and everything came and kicked ass and it just got more fun and we never had that blowup. We got closer and we hung out more. It was fucking not what I expected to happen and I don’t think any of us expected it to happen.
Even my manager; we just got inducted to the Metal Hall of Fame and we’re sitting in the bar. He said, “You know, I swore, these guys ain’t going to last.” It was his first time dealing with a bunch of fucking New Yorkers with big fucking mouths, big attitudes, big egos and big fucking balls. It’s the conversations.
Like I said, going solo and doing the shit with everything; like with Powerflo, I run the show. It’s an equal membership and we’re all members of the band, but especially for BillyBio, it’s all my buddies that play with me. It’s my band. It’s kind of a selfish way of saying that it’s my ball, and you play by my fucking rules or we go home [laughs], but that’s what it is.
With Biohazard, it’s not like that. We’re all equal players and we all have our strengths and stuff. But I think the expectation was far below what ended up happening for all of us, and here we are working on a new record, playing Albany and it’s fucking great, dude. We all have our jobs and our lives, and we get together when we want to, which is great, because it’s not like we do it because we have to. We do it because we want to, and it shows, in the energy and relationships.
We were in Baltimore two weeks ago watching the fucking Ravens unfortunately lose, playing in fucking Baltimore [at Disturbing the Peace 2024]. We thought it was going to be a fucking mad house. The show was great, but we all sat around this fucking apartment that we rented, watching the game. It was awesome. So that’s a blessing and I’m really thankful to be where we are. I can’t wait to fucking play for our friends in Albany, which was probably our first city outside New York that really considered us brothers.
BM: How do you think overall you guys are different when interacting with each other now, as opposed to the old Biohazard days, when it was maybe a bit more tense?
BG: In many different ways. I think that just being older and having things in our lives that are way more fucking important, way more valuable, way more complicated…like kids, families, businesses. I own a fucking tequila company [Billy’s Tequila]. I run a recording studio [Firewater Studios in L.A.]. Evan lives in Mexico, doing this Mantorship thing he does. Danny’s got five amazing children—three of them are phenomenal musicians—and they’re all great kids. Bob’s running his amphibian and reptile house in Florida.
So, we all have things that are going on in our lives and I think what it did was it shed light on how trivial and stupid the shit was that used to bust us up inside when we were younger. You’re like, really? That’s what caused that breakup? Or caused that fight that led to a breakup? You kind of look at things in perspective and realize, and I think that’s what’s going on.
We talk pretty much every day. There are text messages going back and forth. We set up a group call, because we’re all in different parts of the world, but today I talked to the guys around four o’clock my time [PST]. So I think that’s the secret to this success: We let go of the past and embraced the present and we’re super fucking psyched for the future.
BM: That’s great to hear. And you even mentioned writing a new album. Where are the new songs heading right now?
BG: Like always, we have this thing called the Biohazard meat grinder. We all write, and we all have our ideas, and we put it through this—however they come in—they go through this meat grinder process. My solo stuff is material that’s a little bit more punk and more melodic than Biohazard, but it’s still got the roots of what Biohazard is for me; my side of it. But I think any individual song that we write doesn’t become a Biohazard song until we all piss in the fucking bucket, you know what I mean? It’s got to have our blood, sweat, tears, piss and fucking DNA in it. And that goes through this meat grinder and we jam on it and it starts to grow and it starts to become this entity that’s separate and different from how it was originally created and crafted.
I remember when we did the first record [1990’s Self-Titled], we did a lot of touring and then we wrote four songs that ended up being on Urban Discipline [1992]. It was “Punishment,” “Black and White and Red All Over,” “Shades of Grey,” and the title track. We wrote them and played them on tour: We did this awesome U.S. tour with the Exploited and we’d play them every night, and they would change. The songs would evolve.
Every night we’d be like, “Yeah that part was fucking cool.” “The pit went crazy for that part.” “Yeah, let’s try breaking this part down.” “Let’s try doing this.” “Let’s try shuffling these two parts around.” And those songs grew, because we played them every night. And when we came home from that tour, we went right back in the studio, finished writing for the record and recorded Urban Discipline, then went right back on tour. That whole process made those songs and kept the live energy pumping through our veins, which has always been the essence of Biohazard that we love, and I think a lot of other people also love.
We were never able really to capture the energy of us live on a record, in my opinion, to a full 100 percent. I think the only record that really came close was ironically the last record we did together, called Reborn in Defiance [2012], but on that record we went through some turmoil and it kind of shines on that one too. So, where we’re at is keeping that energy alive and working our knowledge, our experience, our inspiration into that, bundled up with that energy, and putting that on vinyl, or digital.
BM: On those early recordings, there was so much in those lyrics about street life in NYC in the ‘80s and a bunch of things that have changed greatly since then. You even live in California now. What do you find yourself writing about these days?
BG: Well, you’ll see when the record’s done, but the inspiration comes from everywhere. I can’t write about things I don’t know. None of us do. But a lot of Biohazard lyrics deal with the reality of our surroundings and those realities are reality for many other people. It always seems to be the underlying theme of survival. Like I mentioned at the beginning of the call: getting knocked down nine times, but standing up 10. That’s always been an underlying theme of the band; kind of a credo.
But what is great about it all is we have so much experience in age and time on this fucking planet that we can see things in a way… Bobby and I were talking backstage in Baltimore during the football game about how poignant some of our lyrics were and still are, like “Black and White and Red All Over.” There’s shit… We didn’t talk about cancelling, but it’s about that. Or “Shades of Grey,” about judging people, for just being not like you. They’re very timely and poignant lyrics that are still relevant today, so that is something that is important to me as a writer and as an artist, to fucking keep alive.
I won’t release something that I’m not proud of. I’m willing to die by what I write and sing about. It’s me. I remember working on the first BillyBio record, but it was my wife who said to me on the second BillyBio record, “This is you. Everything you sing about is everything you talk about. It’s how you believe and how you live.” I’m like, “Yeah, of course.” But I think what she saw was that it was just boiled down and purified me. She sees elements of me in Biohazard, but it’s all four of us.
But my lyrics with my solo stuff is just me, and so I draw from my experiences and my beliefs and everything that’s going on in my world and through my eyes. Sometimes it’s things that go on in your world that I might relate to, but in the end, I think that what does the most for me is writing something that is from the heart. I have to; if it doesn’t click inside, it doesn’t even make it. I don’t even show it to the other guys, or I just throw it out in my solo stuff, or not even: It just ends up on a hard drive somewhere at the studio that has thrown away songs.
BM: A lot of records at the moment have been inspired by the COVID years. Do you touch on that time with the new Biohazard material?
BG: No, I covered that. My second BillyBio record is called Leaders and Liars. Unfortunately, I had like seven tours canceled because of fucking COVID. It sucked all the wind out of my sails. I haven’t had a chance to play any of those songs live unfortunately, but that record is…you fucking jump to that record. Put a fucking pair of headphones on and that’s all my vibe and energy and angst and frustration of what I was seeing in the world, and after that I was like, “I’m done. It’s over, you know? Move on.”
I wouldn’t say I wrote about it in a way that was pointing fingers; it was more introspective, like how it was affecting me. The first video for the record [“One Life to Live”], I did this one-camera shoot and we threw a party at my buddy’s pad. It’s a one-camera shoot shot with my iPhone and it’s a party, with a bunch of kids having a great fucking time. They were sharing drinks, kissing, tattooing…everything that you weren’t supposed to do during COVID, and they didn’t give a fuck. That was how I looked at it and still how I look at it.
It’s the past, it’s done, we moved on, but the underlying theme is in reality we all had people—we all lost people to COVID—and it was a horrible thing, but there’s going to be something else. Without going political and deep on all that shit, it’s a virus. We’re a bunch of rats in a cage. If one person gets sick, somebody else is going to catch it, and if it just seems to sync up at the right time, then everybody gets sick in the household, and then in the city, and then the country, and that’s just inevitable.
BM: On the upside, once everything opened back up again, it was like a shot in the arm for the music business. That’s been really nice to see.
BG: Yeah, I love it dude. It’s like it never went away. We were just playing in Baltimore two weeks ago and we’ll be in Albany soon, like it never happened. If you stop and remember how it was… I produce a lot of young bands, and I remember saying to a few of the bands, “When the fucking smoke clears, it’s gonna be like the Wild West. Everybody’s gonna be out celebrating and super psyched that the fucking world opened back up again.”
I dropped my Leaders and Liars record—the BillyBio record—based on that idea; just the timing was bad, because it was when that scumbag Putin invaded Ukraine and shit was blowing up and everybody was just like, “Yeah things aren’t going to work good.” The economy was going to shit. Everything was fucked when the record dropped. I don’t even remember the date when it came out; that’s how powerful that whole impact was. But that aside, it is great. It is like the Wild West again. It’s almost like the ’90s all over again.
BM: Is all of the Biohazard recording and production stuff happening out there at your studio in L.A.?
BG: We don’t know yet. We’re still in the writing phase. I would love to do it there; it’s logically, economically a smart move, I think.
BM: Do you do all your own production now too, or would you take somebody on to help?
BG: We did a few records on our own…but I like having someone else involved. It just makes it like another set of ears; an outside point of view. It just works better, so we’ll probably partner up with somebody for sure.
BM: What can fans expect about the upcoming Albany show? I watched the live stream of the Irving Plaza show and that was a great set, packed with all the classics. Are there any surprises planned?
BG: Yeah, we keep adding more and more songs to the set and there’s a few that we’re adding for Albany that we’re psyched about, that we haven’t played yet. I’m looking forward to it. In Albany, we used to play Northern Lights [Clifton Park] and before that, Saratoga Winners [Cohoes]… That was some wild shit back in the day. And then downtown there was a club we used to play [Lark Street].
I remember one show, going up there and bringing a PA. We played at some gym somewhere, and we brought these huge, giant speakers in our van. We used those to supplement speakers for the fucking show, and it was awesome. That was the first show there, and we were like, “Holy shit, Albany’s got a fucking killer scene.”
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Biohazard will make their long-awaited Albany return at Empire Live on March 2, with special guests Brick By Brick, Concrete Ties, Violent By Design, and Torn Out. Tickets can be purchased online here.
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