Ben Cristo is a British guitarist, songwriter, and producer best known for his work with the gothic rock band, the Sisters of Mercy. where he has been a member since 2006. He’s also the front man of his own band, Diamond Black, which blends elements of rock, metal, and dark wave. In addition to his musical career, Ben hosts a podcast called Diamondcast, where he discusses various topics related to music and creativity.
His extensive career includes collaborations with several artists and contributions to numerous projects in the rock, goth, and metal scenes. Ben, it’s an honour. Welcome to the Run GPG podcast. Great to be here. And that was a wonderful, wonderful little piece. I felt, I felt quite honored. It’s you’ve really done, done, done the work there.
Very nice. Thank you so much, David. Yeah. Shout out to us. Well, you have had an extensive career and I have been looking forward to this, this interview for a while. And I am excited to talk to you as we were saying off camera, you know, you are a fellow podcaster. And I always look forward to talking to fellow podcasters, but especially if they’ve had an incredible music career with one of the most notable goth rock bands of all time.
So where do we start with Ben Cristo? That was the question I had. Like, where do we start? But it’s always good to get some context. Who is Ben Cristo? Where are you from? Where’d you grow up? And maybe you can share a little bit about your journey and how you came to join the band, Sisters of Mercy. I’m from Bristol, which is in the West country of England.
And it’s, it’s a good time. It’s a good music town. It’s, I grew up there and there wasn’t necessarily a big rock scene there. It was, it’s known a bit more for artists like Tricky, Portishead, Massive Attack, the whole trip hop genre of things. Things and when I was growing up there. There, yeah. Yeah, exactly.
Well that too. and when I was growing up, there was actually quite a vibrant but very small alternative music scene that I became a part of with my various bands. And it was great ’cause we’d have these all deo, we called them and you’d have like six or seven bands playing of the alternatives genre.
So you would have a scar punk band playing right next to like a. Grindcore band, and then there’d be like a goth band, and then a hardcore band. But it was cool, because everyone just felt part of an alternative scene. Possibly because the scene was so small, that we couldn’t be subdivided, because we really needed each other.
And I remember particularly at that time, I was dressing in, like a Hawaiian shirt, like kind of scar punk, but I had a black devil lock and black nails and black eye makeup, just like mixing it all up into one and no one really cared. It was just, we were alternative. And for a while we had a really nice scene there.
And, I’m really grateful to, to Bristol for giving me that sort of opportunity to be part of a scene without it being overwhelming as it might have been in London, or any kind of capital city. So we had a really great scene there and I was in a band, that was my first proper band. I’d done bands in school, and I’ve been very lucky that one of my first bands, if not my first band, We won a regional battle of the bands, which meant that we actually appeared on local television.
And that was a huge turning point for me because it was the first moment where I realized that the thing that I was so passionate about playing the guitar, alternative music, I must have some ability in it to have actually won a competition with my, with my band. So that kind of gave me that validation to keep trying, keep going.
then the first proper band, Proper band. ’cause we actually had a little record deal and we went on, on, on Little Tours, was called Ako, a KO Ako. it was named after a manga film called Project Ako. And we were mixing up, like eighties rock with metal core and hardcore, and I guess our contemporaries at the time were bands like Funeral for a Friend.
bullet for my valentine and we really aspired to the band event sevenfold who at that point were just coming out we even ended up playing with them in uh supporting them at one show when they were just they just released the second album and we had a couple more nice little supports like that stone sour alkaline trio afi that really made the band feel like it was going somewhere and Our album was released and, we got some great reviews in national press and, we even did a Radio 1 session, which was one of the most exciting experiences.
We went to Maydevel Studios and did this, like, live session. And, things were all really coming together. The last thing we did was, we played South by Southwest in Texas, which, for an English band, you know, from a little town in the West Country, was amazing. we, we went over there and, and it was very DIY and it was very overwhelming and things just didn’t work out.
I think at that age that we were, we were all sort of early twenties, there was a lot of egos involved. And I certainly, had, difficult ego problems of feeling like everyone, everyone must know the contributions I make to this band, but I’m not the lead singer, so no one will know. So I have to make sure everybody knows that I did this and that.
And, and I think I didn’t understand the importance of just. doing the thing you’re good at and being excited about it. I also felt like we needed to be softer than we were in terms of our musical output because I thought well we’ll never get anywhere if we’re too heavy whereas I should have recognized the thing that made us so good was that we combined the very kind of heavy caustic acerbic elements that the lead singer brought to the band um with the metalcore riffs that the and the hardcore riffs the guitarist brought and then the melody that I brought That was what made it so good, but I, I fought against it and then inevitably the other guys fought back and anyway, it fell apart, but it was a great experience.
I’m so grateful for it because it set me up to then join the Sisters of Mercy, which I did the following year, in 2006. Wow, 2006. It’s been a while. Hey, you actually hit on a couple things there. It’s interesting to talk about, you know, creatives and artists that come from like a smaller environment, you know, you could kind of get lost in the, in the sea of, of bands, you know, at that time in London, if you were London.
So coming from like, you know, Bristol in a way. I mean, one of my best friends is a street artist from Bristol. that sounds like a lot of creativity comes out of that area. Like it’s, it’s, it’s crazy. You, you named a few of the bands. So here’s the question. What was it like when you first joined the Sisters of Mercy in 2006?
Obviously an incredible history to the group, right? So what was that like? Was it intimidating? How did you adapt to the band’s already established sound and dynamic? Well, it was intimidating because I was actually a fan and it wasn’t in my top.
So I wasn’t an avid follower of everything they’d ever done, but there were certain songs that were very high up on my list of stuff I like. So I was to a degree intimidated. And the thing that really saved me was that when I went for the audition, I wasn’t told what I was auditioning for. Okay, so I got phoned up by this mysterious voice who didn’t introduce himself or say who he was, who just said, we want you to audition for our band.
We’ve got a US tour coming up and we think you might not necessarily be our guy, but you might have a shot. And to be honest, it was very arrogant. And I was like, who are these guys? You just think they’re so ace, but won’t even tell me who they are. so I went along to this audition having no idea. For whom I was auditioning almost didn’t go because I just thought it was some joke and I got into the audition and I still didn’t know who I was auditioning for because there’s three guys sat around and it made me realize in hindsight the way that we recognize other people on this planet is of course to do with their physical appearance but it’s also to do with context.
If you see someone a thousand miles from home that you know from home from your job you might not recognize them instantly because your brain goes. doesn’t understand how that person could be there, so it won’t make the connection. Whereas at work, you could see someone at the corner of your eye and you’ll know who it is because you recognize just the shape of them, right?
So I walk into this room, three people don’t know who they are and no context, no expectation. The only other parallel I can give you here, David, is that I played in a band a few years ago and we played a show in Toronto and into the dressing room just walks this middle aged guy with ginger hair wearing black and I thought well who’s this guy is it just a security guy and I realized that it was James Hetfield but I hadn’t been expecting James Hetfield to walk in so I didn’t recognize it as James Hetfield so context is everything so I had no context three guys also At that point in time, I hadn’t really looked at what the band was doing for a while, and they didn’t necessarily have a photograph of that line up, that they had in 2005 6, on the website or wherever.
So the only thing that gave me an indication that it might be the Sisters of Mercy was that the songs that they were asking me to play, in terms of like the riffs The other guitarist would say, can you play this? I can’t read music, but I’m good at picking up things by ear. Would say, can you play this?
And I would play it back. And in hindsight, it was all unrecorded work, but it still had that feeling to it, that very Sisters of Mercy feeling to it. And so part of my brain went, is this the Sisters of Mercy? No, it couldn’t be because that would be insane. But I thought, what if it is? I’m going to try something.
So I played. One of their famous riffs that I already knew how to play just to see if anybody would say anything sure enough The guy one of the guys who sat on the sofa with a woolly hat on a pair of shades and a can of beer at like 2 in the afternoon goes That’s one of our songs. Oh my God, Dave. At that point, I was just, I remember, I remember it vividly.
I look down at my hands, my hands are shaking because not only am I in the presence of a band that I greatly admire, I might now be in that band. So it was just such an unreal moment. And in hindsight, I’m actually quite happy that I didn’t have the, I didn’t know who it was because rather than going in with that, Oh my God, this could change my life.
It was like. Who are these guys don’t really care, which gave me the confidence to, to just go in and actually just be myself. And, and they called me up a couple of days later and they said, yeah, you know, again, very British. Yeah. You know, we might want you to do it. So come and have some rehearsals or something.
I was like, Absolutely. but there’s one last bit to this story, which I, which I’ve always found quite entertaining is that the day after the audition, they said like, we’re going to phone you tomorrow at two o’clock. So make sure you pick up and we’ll talk about whether or not we want you to do it or whatever.
Two o’clock. I missed the call by like 30 seconds. Right. And in a panic, I phoned them back. No one’s answering. In fact, it’s making the noise of a fax machine. Like they’ve somehow like subverted the actual call to the fax machine rather than the answering machine. I was like, what am I going to do? Kept calling.
No one was picking up fax machine. I was like, right. Okay. So I went up to the local internet cafe. and sent the only fax I’ve ever sent in my entire life to that number. And it said, this fax said, Hi there, it’s Ben. I’m so sorry, Mr. Cool. I’m really interested in the job. Please give me a ring. Instantly my phone rang and what I was told later on was that because I’d sent that fax, that had saved me because they were going, well, if this guy can’t pick up the phone, then he’s probably going to miss the bus call.
He’s probably not going to be in the hotel lobby. He’s probably going to, you know, he’s unreliable. But because I had that lateral thinking and that initiative to send the fax, it’s actually saved me. So if you’re watching Writex Solutions in Kentish Town, the internet cafe, thank you so much for letting me use your fax machine because it led us to this point today.
Wow. So don’t throw out those fax machines, which leads to the question, like, why were they calling from a fax machine? That’s wild. I don’t know. I think it was a landline that somehow had a fax machine as like part of it. I never really got into that. Which maybe I should investigate it further. Yeah, yeah, no, no, that’s a, that’s a crazy story.
What a, what a breakdown, man. Like the most successful facts ever, ever sent. Wow. Fantastic. What a story. I appreciate you sharing that with us. Looking back though, I always like to ask this question, like who or what were your biggest, musical influences at that time and maybe what had the biggest impact on your career over the years?
Like, is there a group? Is there a person? Like, what were you listening to those days? Like, obviously we know the type of music you make, but sometimes, you know, we’re surprised by the answers that artists give us on what had the biggest impact on their career or what influenced their, their musical taste and their, their in, you know, what influenced them the most in terms of what they were listening to.
Well, I recognize now that what I really liked about the first music that I got into in those early years and then into teenage years, there is one consistent factor in all of it and all the different bands, whether it be Whether it be like punk or, or pop or hardcore or metal or goth or industrial or eighties hair metal or whatever it was.
This one consistent theme that ran through all of it is dark, gritty melody. Okay. That’s what I like. I like something when there’s an edge to it. I like it to be melodic and I like it to be dark. Those are the three things, and so when there are certain bands that first absolutely got me into music. Like, for example, Bon Jovi, Def Leppard, ACDC, Judas Priest, The Cult, all those bands I absolutely, like, adored.
However, it was their work that had a darker, grittier edge to it that I really liked. So, I can’t comprehensively say that I’m a Bon Jovi fan, because a lot of the stuff that they went on and did in the 90s, the late 90s, and from then on, like, Never really got it. But what I did get was the early stuff. I know it’s so cliche, but the early stuff that had this kind of dark desperation to it.
the same with the Def Leppard stuff, you know, I, I really, and, and, and one of my biggest influences was Steve Clark, who was the, the guitarist of Def Leppard for the first four records, because he encapsulated this dark gritty melody. riffs and these solos. But they were dark and melodic and angular and, and just edgy.
And I, I loved that about the band. And then after he passed, in 1991 and the band carried on, I, I liked bits and pieces of what they did, but it never had that core. sense of Steve Clarke ness to it. And I would say that Steve Clarke is probably the key influence on me because he, the work was there so early.
I have vivid memories of playing air guitar age like six or seven to, to sort of Def, to Def Leppard and to Steve’s solos. and I still listen to his stuff now and, and as a, as an inspiration point. See, that’s a good example. I would have never guessed. Bon Jovi and Def Leppard. I never would have guessed that.
You know, I would have thought, you know, skinny puppy or, you know, I don’t know. just something like, but it’s funny you said that, like there was something about that time. I think if you weren’t, if you didn’t want to be a part of the masses or you weren’t involved in pop culture or pop music at all, you were attracted to the darker element of music.
And to this day, I still, my You know, I’m still very attracted to darker music myself personally. I don’t know if it’s just we’re a product of the, of the decade or something like that. But it’s really surprising to hear you say Bon Jovi and Def Leppard. That, that then developed, I mean, the Colton Priest had a lot of dark stuff.
ACD’s is an interesting one because a lot of people know them from, which is kind of like, Chirpy, wacky, bluesy kind of thing. Whereas the stuff that I liked by ACDC was the Back in Black for those about to rock albums, where there was a real kind of snarl, snarl, snarl to the riffs, like a gritty kind of, to the riffs that made them edgy and dark.
And a lot of the subject matters were about, Death and witches like that. It was really cool before it became a bit cartoon esque later on. But, yeah, so that sort of element of it. And then like, I think most people, or most people who, who into alternative music, their gateway is probably something that’s a bit softer.
And then as I grew into my teens, it was Nine Inch Nails. therapy, ministry, killing joke, the sisters of mercy, that that stuff gave way as well. Wow. Therapy. I haven’t heard the name therapy in years. I used to love therapy. Yeah. That was one of the most important records was there, the trouble gum album by therapy.
Cause what they did was they made Essentially, melodic hard rock relevant because it was so gritty and angry and angular and really well produced that album. It’s funny. We, we just had a Richard Patrick on a front man, a filter, he was in nine inch nails with Trent. Right. Well, I’m sure you know who he is.
Trent Reznor and nine inch nails and his early on, he’s, he named kiss and you two, which is not what I thought. but then he got into ministry and. You know, et cetera. so it’s interesting to look back and see what your influences were at that time. You are a songwriter though, right? can you describe your approach to songwriting?
Like how do you collaborate with the rest of the band on new material? Or maybe if you could describe your creative process, I’m always fascinated by this. Like, do you start with the sound or do you start with, you know, lyrics or like, where does it start for you in the process? There are different ways, that stuff happens.
There’s no one way, as I’m sure any songwriter will tell you. One that, let me run through a couple of them. One is that something will just appear from the ether, okay? It would just suddenly come into your head, whether it be a lyric or a melody or a riff, when you’re walking down the street or you’re in the gym or you’re cooking something and suddenly this thing would just happen.
And that will be the inspiration point that then drives the rest of the song. And usually those ideas are the ones that have. that have real substance because they’ve just got you excited in the moment and you want to then put it down and make it into something when you sit down and go, right, let’s write a song.
That’s when it can be more difficult because what do you do? Just go through a checklist of tried this, tried this, tried this doesn’t work. So that’s one way is the ether idea. Another way is you hear a song and you go, I’d really like to do something like that. So for example, completely random. I was in a cafe the other day and I heard, that song by Franz Ferdinand, Take Me Out, which I don’t particularly like it, but I thought it was interesting how the structure of it was very different from most pop songs.
It doesn’t have like a classic verse, chorus, verse, chorus, middle structure. It’s got a riff and then the chorus starts and then there’s another bit and then it goes back to the riff again. And so that can be your inspiration. Let’s try something that’s structured really differently. Other processes can be if you work with somebody else, which on the Diamond Black stuff, I do.
is that we had, myself and Jani, who’s the Finnish producer, who I co write a lot of the work with, we had an entire week where we just focused on songwriting, which is amazing because you don’t actually get the option to do that a lot of the time when music is your job because you’re doing admin or like sorting out politics or whatever it is.
But we were like, right, this week, we’re just gonna do songwriting. And What we did was anytime either of us has had any sort of idea that we thought was exciting, we just run with it, and we just see what happens. And there wasn’t any sense of, well, that’s not really very Diamond Black, is it? It’s like, well, you know, If we like it as a piece of music, we can figure out the trappings of it later on that make it into a Diamond Black song.
If the tune is good, if the rhythm is good, if the feel is good, let’s do that. And it was a really creative week. We came up with 10 song ideas in four days, and we were like, right, once you get to that point where you’ve got A verse and a chorus that you’re happy with move on the middle bit, how it go, what goes at the end that can all come later.
The actual lyrics that can all come later. For now, we’re just getting something that makes us feel excited. and now this week, I’m actually revisiting those ideas, fleshing them out. And then, but still not finishing them, sending them on to the other guys in Diamond Black and go, what do you think? What do you like?
What can you add? I need a middle for this. What do you think the drums should be? How should the bass go there? Is that melody good enough? And being a lot more open about the, an iterative about the process rather than this is my song and only I can work on it. So, that’s really good, but one thing that I always, like to, to talk about when anyone asks me about songwriting is the Desmond Childe approach.
Now, Desmond Childe is a, is, is a chap who wrote some of the most, prolific and famous, Rock songs like Alice Cooper’s Poison, Bon Jovi’s Living on a Prayer, and his approach was to come up with a title before you did anything else. So coming up with a title like Living on a Prayer, then build the song from there.
What, okay, Living on a Prayer, what does it mean? Okay, well it’s some people who are maybe struggling. Okay, so what does that feel like? What does that sound like on the keyboard? What does that, what does that feeling of struggle sound like on the drums, on the bass? And then you’ve got creative people around you.
They can interpret that feeling into an actual piece of music. Whereas if you just go write a good riff, what does that even mean? It’s so abstract. So the Desmond Child title first approach is really brilliant. I would recommend it to anybody. and there was a good one that came up that I was watching a movie once called Trans Siberian, which is a sort of a murder mystery set on a, on a train.
And there was this line in it where one of the characters said, If you kill my demons, my angels might die too. I thought, wow, how cool is that? And that was the start of a Diamond Black song called If You Kill My Demons, built purely off this thing somebody said. And you then get a feeling of what do those words actually sound like as music?
What does that notion sound like as music? so that’s, That’s some, some processes that come with songwriting. When it comes to lyrics, I tend to come up with things that sound right, rhythmically, and in terms of there are certain words that just fit, and then I’ll come back later and rework them into something I’m happier with when I’ve got more time to really think about what I want the words to be.
but what will often happen when you have that guide session of, sticking some words down. Even though they’re not the right words, they’re the right word sounds. So that can really help you to then hone in on what am I actually going to write here? Because you’ve got the word sounds but not necessarily the words.
Very interesting. You know, it’s almost like you’re describing like a mind mapping process from that perspective, where you come up with the theme and everything branches off from the theme. I always find that I, I’m always very curious about the creative process of artists, like yourself. So thank you for breaking that down.
You talked about Diamond Black and collaboration, Sisters of Mercy, obviously. A lot of moving parts over the years. Like, how do you maintain the chemistry with the band, especially given its long history and the evolving lineup? Like, how do you maintain chemistry when you bring in, let’s say, a different guitar player or, you know, drummer or something like that?
It doesn’t have to be the Sisters of Mercy specifically, but if you have a project you’ve been working on for years, and you have a few moving parts, how do you maintain chemistry? You say, this is ours, or we don’t, you know, you’re just playing a role here, or how does that work? I think with something like the Sisters or ACDC, for example, they’ve got a very clear brand identity and template that they, it’s probably quite an extreme example, they don’t really waver from it too much because they know what their fans like, and they’ve established something.
Sisters to some degree. Is the same. There’s a certain feel that a sister song should have, and that’s proved by the fact that when I sat in that room, I was like, this sounds like the sisters because there is a sound. So having fidelity to that sound whilst keeping an open mind about how do we expand on that?
How do we not just write something that we’ve written before, or write something that I know the sisters has had a lot of bands that have. Perhaps copied the style. how do we end up not sounding like one of the bands that copies the band? and a lot of that is to do with Andrew Eldridge has taught me a lot about rhythm and how to fit.
phrases and notes within the bar in an interesting and different way, which makes it a bit more of a sister song. when I first joined the band, he made me listen to a lot of the Atlantic, records artists like Booker T and Sam and Dave and a lot of this old sort of, you know, stuff because he said to me about how every instrument has its place within the the music it’s like a machine and even if you just have to do the same thing for three and a half minutes that’s your job you don’t have to go off on one to impress anyone it’s like that’s your job in the song and His, his sort of ethos that’s really helped me is make it simpler, but do it in an interesting way.
And if you can come up with a really amazing melody, that’s two, three notes, because of how you place it within the bar, how you play the notes, what you back those notes up with, maybe that note is backed up with another guitar or a keyboard or the bass does something, trying to keep it as simple as possible.
whilst making it still nuanced and interesting and different is the challenge. so whenever I sit down to do assist, work on a sister song, it’s a lot harder than it is for any other band that I work with, because there’s this very high standards and there’s this, to make the cut, to make, to make the cut so that Andrew likes it, it has to be a bit different and it has to be exciting and dynamic and and sort of unique while still retaining those elements that make it quite sistersy.
And I guess the fact that none of my ideas were taken on for the first 15 years I was in the band or so is testament to that because I just wasn’t, I wasn’t writing stuff that was right. Then in 2019, there was just this sudden prolific period that we had where we wrote 15 to 20 songs. and a lot of those are still in the set now.
So, yeah, it was, definitely that there’s a template and a blueprint and there’s a vibe. There’s a brand whilst there is room to push the envelope. Yeah, that actually brings up a good point. You know, like the sisters have always been labeled as a goth rock band, right? Do you embrace that description or do you see the, the, the band’s music is broader than just that?
I think it’s broader. I think The one thing that I’m always, always say to people when they say, Oh, Sisters is a goth band. I said, but it’s gothic music is generally quite sad or depressing, right? The Sisters is not depressing. The music is uplifting. It’s powerful. It’s more like think about the songs like Temple of Love and Alice.
It’s like you’re walking down the street in your leather jacket and you’re like, yeah, this is me. I feel like me. It’s not like, Oh, I’m really sad. It’s powerful. It’s uplifting. And the music that we make is very It’s about the personal and the political. It’s about empowering people. It’s about those who have been marginalized, giving power to people who have been marginalized by society.
And most of the people who turn up to the shows, whether they be 16 years old or 60 years old, at some point in their life, they felt like an outsider. This is a band for outsiders, this is a band that brings people together, this is a band that is joyful and about a celebration and about just a bit more of a snarl, a bit more of a leather jacket kind of rebel band rather than a sad black wedding dress kind of a band.
So I think because The first record, certainly the band at that point was running with other bands who did do that sort of thing, who were a bit more kind of sad, like The Cure and Suzie and stuff, that did have a more kind of depressing element to them, that the band got thrown in with those and never really recovered.
Because if you look at 1987, they release the Floodland albSisters, and you’ve got the Dominion video, Eldridge comes out with short hair, a beard, and a white suit, and he’s in the desert. You can’t really get any less goth than that. and I think it’s important to, to remember that, you know, Of course the band has ballads, of course the band has songs that are a little bit more, that illustrate a bit more fragility and a bit more sadness, like any band.
But it’s not every single song, most of the big songs, Corrosion, Dominion, Temple, these are powerful songs, these are songs that make you raise your fist and dance. Yeah, it’s funny. I never really agreed with the, the, the goth label on there, myself. I mean, I, I truly listened to goth music and, you know, you had, you had a lot of bands that were grouped into that goth, genre just because of the lyrics in some cases, right?
it was depressing or dark or whatever. You mentioned the cure and Susie, et cetera. I, I, I do appreciate your breakdown there of that. So, which brings up another, well, first of all, how would The diamond black sound, like, can you put a label on it or not? yeah, I’d say that it’s dark in, certainly a dark wave element to it, but it’s very powerful.
The riffs are powerful. The melodies are powerful and the music has a really positive message. So a lot of the songs deal with things to do with like anxiety and addiction and depression and isolation. But the message that we’re bringing is one to overcome these things so that with music community and with connection, and with all us outsiders kind of joining together, we can help each other to move forward.
Someone described us recently as the happiest dark rock band in the world, and when you watch Our podcast, that really comes across, we’re always joking around and there’s always like ongoing banter and in jokes about things whilst we do have a message and that sort of transformation in terms of the band simply being when we started, you know, it was a cool rock band that was a bit dark and to something that’s become a bit more.
about self empowerment and about inclusivity has happened very organically over the last few years. And I think one of the things that kickstarted it certainly for me was the, I am a recovering alcoholic, so I’ve not had a drink now for something like 1017 days or something like that. Congratulations.
Thank you very much. but the last almost three years of coming out of that has influenced me so much in terms of. recovery, reading, studying, understanding a lot more about myself and why I was drinking and all the, all the negative reasons behind why I had an addiction and probably still have an addiction if I was to go back to it, really helped to infuse Diamond Black’s work with this positive message.
And one of the most amazing things that happened that I never dreamed could have happened three years ago was that we finished a tour in March and we played the London show It’s about 600 people there. we were on tour with this fantastic, Japanese metal band called Esprit d’Air. And, essentially it was, it was their crowd, it was their show.
So there was 600 people there. And, I hadn’t exactly planned to say it, but essentially on stage I said, this was a song that’s written about, recovering from alcoholism. I am very proud to say that I’m now at that point 889 days sober. And the message here is if you want to change something about your life, you can.
And they just took the roof off, man, with the applause. And I never thought I’d have the courage to Be so honest about my flaws and my vulnerability in front of hundreds of people and it’d be so positive and I came off stage after that and I was, I was in tears because it was such an emotional moment of showing the world that I really f ed my life up, but I think I could, I think I’ve turned it around.
I think I’m certainly in a, in, in a really positive place now. And so Diamond Black has become synonymous now for me. for this journey of recovery. And we want to be able to inspire others to have that, that belief in themselves. And one of the things that I say, I’ve often said at the end of the show is before the last song, as I’ve said, Anybody here who didn’t think they were going to be able to come out tonight because they felt too anxious about this sort of a social space, the fact that you’ve come here tonight is a really big deal and this song is going out to you.
And I’ve had people come up to me after the show saying what you said was so powerful. People in tears who’ve never even seen this before. And that to me is what music is. is one of the things that music should be. It’s a healer. It brings people together. It makes people not feel so alone. And I’m sure the reason why you and I both like alternative music is that when we were growing up, we had troubles, we had to strive, but music was the thing we could turn to that would help us.
That would make us feel like us again. That would also connect us. With like minded people you probably go and hang out at the local record independent record store or the club Just because there might be some people there that you kind of get when they get you Because of the music that would bring you together to those spaces That’s I love that
You know, sometimes we dive deep on the show and, you know, we talk about the legacy that people leave behind and we’re not doing that as much now as we’re talking about purpose, you know, and when you share an experience like that, you think about that’s just the legacy of Ben Cristo and all that you’ve done musically, but the, the purpose you have in terms of like, it drives you in a different way because now you’re sharing your experience, your story of recovery and things like that.
And now it helps other people when people are vulnerable. to, you know, and they share, you know, their issues, the problems they’ve had, and they hear that story. It empowers others to kind of make those changes to keep going, whatever it might be to really powerful stuff. which brings up an interesting question, you know, when we’re talking about the, you know, genres and things like that, I, I like to ask this question, depending on who I’m talking to, what’s your take on the current state of goth rock and industrial music right now?
What’s your take on it? Is there anybody you’re listening to? Is there any new ideas you like? Is there anything you’re seeing out there that you know, is, is, inspiring you? Well, I am quite guilty of not listening to a lot of new music and I, I was told whether or not this is true is that your average person who likes music.
Once they hit 30, they stop listening to new music. Yeah, that’s probably true. That’s probably true. However, I have been listening to a really great band, a French band recently called Sang Freud. I think Freud means cold. I’m not sure what Sang means. and It was just a friend of a friend that I was recently over in France and playing with Diamond Black at Hellfest and, this band was recommended to me and they’re great.
And they got the 2022 albSang Freud, S A N G, Freud. And it sounds like a mixture of, they obviously listen to The Cure, but they’ve made it heavier, they’ve made it darker, and It’s really musically interesting as well. So I would recommend that it’s a, it’s a great band. And, and, what I really like about music in 2024 is that people have just got the freedom to do what the they want because they’re not beholden to record labels going, Oh, that’s not cool anymore.
So you can’t put that music out. everybody can put out whatever they want. And because there’s like five, you know, there’s like, because there’s so many people who like music on earth. The chances are people are going to like what you do. Some people are going to like what you do. And I think that’s really liberating.
Rather than it being as it would have been right up until the early 2000s. The gatekeepers. You can’t, you’re not cool anymore. So you can’t make music. Whether or not that be your musical style or you’re too old or you’re too, You’re too English or you’re too not English or you’re too, whatever it is, those barriers that someone else gets to decide whether or not you can release and distribute music are now gone.
So when people still complain about, oh, you know, it’s not, you can’t make, you can’t make a career of this anymore. I think in some ways, It’s even easier, it’s not easier, but it’s even more possible to make a career. And I bring up the example again of the other guitarist in the Sisters, Kai, whose band is Spreader Air, the Japanese metal band.
Now Kai is a paragon of doing your own thing and then being successful. So Kai’s got a really strong brand identity, Kai does everything themselves. in terms of the writing, the recording, and even like to a certain degree, the visuals and the website. And Kai then has gone on tour and turned up to cities that he’s never played before.
And there’s 300 people there because he knows how to use the internet and he knows how to brand his band and how to market it. He’s put the work in, he’s studied it. So for most of us who go out and like, right, I’m going to go and play some seat I’ve never played. You’re lucky if the support band watches you and you go, okay, well, it was like a free rehearsal or whatever.
but Kai’s turning up to these places all over Europe and like Hungary and stuff. And this sold out because he’s, he’s been able to build his brand on, on the internet. And it’s really powerful and he’s not had anybody say to him, you can’t do that because Japanese metal isn’t cool or whatever, because he really believes in it and he does it really well.
So therefore he builds a fan base. Branding and marketing. Absolutely. Yeah. Branding and marketing. have you, do you know Mono? Mono is a Japanese group that I discovered a few years ago. I went to a live show here and I, it was, it was almost, it was almost spiritual. The experience of it, it was unbelievable and it was because a friend told a friend told a friend and I ended up at the show and it was, it was incredible.
And I’ve been listening to them ever since and they only played a few hundred people. To me, it should have been a lot bigger than that, just based on the, knowing the band now. Here’s a question though. Technology and music, artificial intelligence, AI, this is something that comes up a lot now when we’re talking about music.
How do you feel about the role of technology in music production and performance today? Has it influenced your work at all? Such an interesting, such an interesting concept because as always, there’s all this scaremongering about no one’s going to be able to make music anymore because a machine will just do it.
However, I think the counterpoint to this is, firstly, and this may or may not be relevant, but possibly there might be some kind of legislation. That comes in, that creates a, some sort of a ceiling on that so that people in all walks of life don’t lose their jobs to machines, right? Rise of the machines, Terminator, Skynet, but more importantly, and this was not my idea.
This is what someone, the same person who actually suggested this French brand to me, a girl called Jen Sarah, who’s a really cool singer and very, very mindful. She said that What people like about music in 2024 is of course, to some degree, the music. But it’s more about the people that are making the music.
They, what they get invested in is you and your personality, and your belief system, and your ethics, and your character. that’s what they really like. And your music is sort of a byproduct of that. And I think there’s something in that. And she said that’s actually the case for any product out there, is that people aren’t necessarily looking for the best toothbrush anymore.
It’s more like, How, how is that toothbrush presented to them and by whom, what does the company make them feel, what’s their emotional response to it. And those things generally I think can only be done by human beings having that connection with another human being. Maybe it’s because of the proliferation of technology has now made the human element more sacred again.
In the same way that a lot of younger fans say between the ages of like, I don’t know, 18 and 30, really have any physical artifacts of music when they were growing up. So suddenly they want a vinyl, they want some handwritten lyrics. They’re like, Oh, we want something physical. So intangible that’s real because we’ve grown up without really anything that’s real.
Cause it’s all online. and so I think people will always want to have connections with other human beings. And that’s, the saving grace, I think, of, as an artist, if you can put your personality into what you do, which is much more the case in 2024 than it was in 1984, or 1994, where it was actually better to be mysterious and distant, and you never really see the artist, you don’t know anything about them, and, you’d write to the fan club and you’d get some template reply three weeks later through the post to be all excited.
now it’s like, Like it or not, fans will want to connect with the human element of their artist, unless it’s an artist that’s been established ages ago and they already like the artist for being mysterious. which, you know, Andrew Eldridge is a perfect example of someone who doesn’t have a social media presence and yet still goes out and plays to two to four, five thousand people all over the world because he’s established his identity in a time when it was It was much, it was, it was really beneficial to be distant and mysterious.
And, I watched this really great, piece by Justin Hawkins of the darkness when he talks about the Lucretia, my reflection video. and he does like an analysis of it and he says, no, it’s in this, how Andrew Eldridge, rather than most stars who just leap out and go, I’m here. Look at me. I’m awesome.
He’s sort of disappearing behind things all the time. He’s eluding you. He’s, he’s creating that sense of distance and, and abstraction and being, obscured by things, which is very much in the vibe of the band’s lyrics and the, and the themes of the band. That’s just sort of being, being sort of quite elusive.
Whereas most artists in 1987, as Justin said, would be like straight like into the camera, hey everybody notice me! so it does work. It obviously works for Andrew because he’s still going out and playing to thousands of people. A new artist, possibly not so much. Possibly new artists like myself, you have to build a rapport with the audience to create that human connection.
Yeah, I’d agree with that. I mean, when I hear some of the music that’s being made by ai, it doesn’t, it doesn’t affect you the same way. Like, oh, okay. It’s catchy, but it’s not the same. And it’s very by because, because it’s ’cause you know as well, because you know, it’s not real. You can’t, that’s it. You can’t, you can’t invest in it because, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s done by a machine.
whether or not there’ll be a point where people pretend that the music they’ve made, they did it, but AI did it. I don’t know. But, It’ll be like 0, but you know what, what’s next for you and Diamond Black? Like what, what is Diamond Black, doing right now? What, what, what current projects do you have on the go?
So what we’re currently, we’re currently doing, we just played at Hellfest in France, which is a amazing festival. And that was a really great milestone for us. I think, When we were on stage, certainly when I was on stage for that one, I felt like this is a transition point. This is now moving into the next stage of the band and what I’m actually working on at the moment is, I mentioned that songwriting that I did a few weeks ago, I’m now collating that work and sending it on.
So I’ve got 10 songs, I’ve already sent two of them on to the, to Vinnie and Adam to work on and put their ideas into. And I, today, just before we had this chat, I was working on the third one. And that’s my focus at the moment is that we’re going to get these songs done. So we’ve got an album’s worth of stuff.
We’ve got an EP that’s pretty much ready to go of four other songs that we’d like to release this year. It’s just a question of how to do it, with whom to do it, and when to do it, but that’s ready to go. So that EP is going to come out, it’s got a remix on it by, by a band that we really love in the kind of dark rock metal genre.
which I can’t reveal right now. And so it’ll be a five track thing, and then a full album. will come out ideally next year. So we’ll spend the rest of this year doing the demos, then the recording, and then, wanting to release it in, 2025, and then that to be accompanied with a lot more touring and, and shows and stuff.
I can’t wait to hear it. Can’t wait to hear it. Thanks dude. Yeah, just, you know, based on your, your, your history and your influences, et cetera. I’m really looking forward to it. Pilling Hellfest is not a small thing either. You know, that’s a, that’s a big deal. speaking of branding though, the diamond cast podcast is something we like, you know, this podcast obviously branded to our company, but the diamond cast podcast, what inspired you to start?
The Diamondcast podcast and what types of topics guests do you feature? Like what, what, what do your listeners take away from listening to the show? Well, it wasn’t my idea. It was the idea of Adam and Natalie and Natalie is essentially part of the band. She does all the social media stuff. and she’s very creative and very positive and really uplifting and just really inspiring.
So those two came up with the idea of doing this podcast. Which I was like, yeah, sounds great, but I didn’t realize exactly how great it was going to be because it really creates a connection, not only between us as a band checking in every week and having this sort of fun chat for an hour or so, but the fan community is building and becoming more connected as well.
And this really kind of connects with what I was saying before about. how fostering that relationship with your fans is so important now, to, to, to create that connection between people. So not just at a live show, but people can connect with each other through the band. via the internet. So maybe there are people who come to the podcast something and they connect with someone, one of the fans, and then they make a friendship there and that’s something that helps them.
So, in the podcast itself, we mostly just talk about questions that. the actual fans send in, or if there’s something specific happening, like we just did Hellfest or we’re just about to go into the studio, we’ll talk about that. But things often go off piste. And there’s lots of running jokes and sort of camaraderie and stuff.
And it’s, it’s a really, it’s a really good experience. And it’s really, as I said, it’s giving us as a band a real sense of momentbecause every week we’re kind of checking in and feeling part of something. The combination of the podcast and the touring that we’ve done this year, we’ve been quite, done a lot of touring, has brought me so much closer to the other two, two, two guys, Adam and Vincent in the band.
and I think it’s really helped me to be a lot more open with songwriting. In the early days I was a lot more closed, like I really want to write everything and I don’t want anyone to change anything, to my detriment. Now I feel like we all get it, we’re all part of the same team and everybody’s contributions are really important.
Those guys are incredible musicians, so why would I ever want to close myself off to that ability? Let’s just make everything as good as it can be, doesn’t matter who did it, let’s just make it for Diamond Black and make it the best possible. Interesting. Okay. I always like to ask that question about, podcasting created a community.
It sounds like it’s somewhat cathartic for you. talking about balancing projects in the wrap up here, this is some personal development stuff. This is fun, Ben. This is fun. How do you balance your time effectively? Like between the sisters, mercy, diamond black, your podcast, like, Do these different projects influence each other in a way?
I’m sure they do, but like, do you have a daily routine? You know, you talked about your recovery. Like what is your, daily routine look like, or, you know, is there, is there certain non negotiables in a day for you? Yes, absolutely. Yes. So I now get up, between six and seven every day. Okay. I can’t recommend that enough.
If you, if you want to be proactive and you want to get things done. Something about our brains makes us more productive in the mornings. It just does. Okay. So I’ll always get up between sort of six and seven. my routine is I’ll do 10 minutes of meditation. I do some yoga, very relaxing. I’ll have a cold shower, which is something that I, I, again, I heartily recommend, but build it up, do like 10 seconds, 20 seconds.
you come out of that feeling like really, really revitalized and your body’s like activated. Then I’ll spend 20 minutes, writing. I do like a timed writing exercise where I talk about, I write down with a timer, three to four minutes for each section. I look back on the day before and I go, what did I do well?
What was I pleased with? What could I have done better? What am I grateful for? What am I looking forward to? And so that little 20 minutes at the start of the day, when I’m doing that writing, really sets me up to start thinking, how can I approach this day in a way that’s slightly better than yesterday and keep going and going.
And the more you do it, the more that when situations come up, But our anxiety inducing or confusing or upsetting your brain goes, Hang on, we know this because we talked about it this morning in the writing session of what we did yesterday. And you recognize those repeat patterns, you recognize those same behaviors, and it almost becomes funny of like, your brain goes, Oh my God, we’re freaking out about this email.
And then it’s like, but hang on. We freaked out about the one last week and nothing happened because most of the time, 99 percent of the time, nothing happens. So that first part of the day, which takes, let’s say an hour and a half to two hours, is, is really important to me. And I recognize that I’ve got the luxury to do that because the nature of my job is that my work is My time is quite flexible.
Whereas for people who have to go into a nine to five, it’s probably more difficult to just like clutch on to five hours sleep and then go straight into work. but another important thing I really want to say in terms of how I help my time management is my relationship to my mobile phone is very important.
is improved so much in the last few years. So that phone doesn’t turn on until I’ve done everything I just told you about. Only then, when even I’ve made a plan for the day and I’m not going to, I don’t have to stick to it strictly, but it’s a good sort of template of the sort of things that maybe there are certain engagements in there like this that are definitely happening, other things that I’d like to do.
And then does the phone go on? Because if you turn your phone on or you look at your phone, as soon as you wake up, usually bombarded with seven new problems and you haven’t even got out of bed yet. not only that you go on social media, oh, they’re doing better than me. Why haven’t they responded to me?
Why is that so good? Why am I so bad? Why am I so s**t? Why is everyone else awesome? And you haven’t even gone vertical yet. Right. So it’s like, I would just recommend to anybody. Give yourself some space before you look at your phone in the morning. Just give yourself half an hour to get up and have some breakfast before you start bombarding your brain with all these danger messages.
that we, when we wake up, we naturally are in a state of, I think from a primal level, a state of feeling, wary of our surroundings because in primitive state, we’d have to look out for predators. So when you wake up, Often the reason you feel s**t is because your brain is telling you, right, look out for danger.
But if you pick up your phone, you’ll probably see danger in everything you look at, even if it’s just a text from like a family member going, Oh, I was thinking about coming around next week. And why are they coming around next week? Do they hate me? Do they like just start spiraling? Whereas if you look at it an hour later, when you’ve had your breakfast and you maybe had a little walk, you’re like, Oh, they’re coming over next week.
That’d be nice. so those are my kind of non negotiables in terms of. phone discipline. And again, it happens at the other end. I go to bed, there’ll be a good sort of two hours that I, I’ll turn my phone off before bed, watch TV. I’m not going to look at my phone again. so I don’t want to go to bed thinking about those kinds of stressful things or, or having work conversations at like 9, 17 PM.
and having the bravery that I didn’t used to have to go. I’m not going to miss something. I’m not going to upset somebody by not being online at 9 17 pm. Nothing’s going to go wrong because that’s the fear we have is we might miss something. whether that be an opportunity or whether that be some kind of disaster, we could have averted if we’d only just been available at all times.
Yeah, I, I love that. And you know, You know, a couple of things. One is I firmly believe in cold water therapy as well. We talk a lot about it on the show. Actually, I think it gives you that dopamine hit for the rest of the day. it really does. But, you know, the most successful people I talk to have some sort of daily gratitude practice, which you touched on.
Yeah. Right. And, and I don’t know if it’s something that comes as we get older, like you look younger than me. but as we get older, we, we, you know, we truly look around and, and look at what life is and start to appreciate these little things in life. And that just leads to a happier life overall, as opposed to always thinking about the negatives as you, as you pointed out.
But like I said, the most successful people I know have a daily gratitude practice. final two questions. First one. This is a fun one, but this might be the hardest question. If you could have dinner with any three people in history past or present, who would they be? Oh, wow. that’s so hard. That’s so hard.
I think, because naturally you start thinking about musicians you like or film stars you like, whatever, but they say don’t beat your heroes. And I think there’s some truth in that, that you, you like the person’s work, but you don’t necessarily going to like the person. I think, Dale Carnegie, who was the guy who wrote a great book called How To Stop Worrying And Start, start Living is one of my favorite books of all time.
I would love to have chatted with him ’cause the things that I learned from his books are with me on a daily basis. Definitely. and, there’s the, the chap that wrote The Obstacle is the Way, Ryan and I can’t remember his name. Oh, Ryan Holiday. Yes! again, Ryan Holiday, his work has, has really helped me and I refer to it and he’s been an inspiration and one of the things that always stuck with me that, that he said was that in an interview he was asked, how do, what would you say is the secret to your success?
And he said, I just removed toxic people from my life, whereas most of us feel beholden to toxic presences in our life, and we feel like we have to help them, or save them, or, or they’re our responsibility, or we’re too scared to remove them, or whatever. Whereas he just, I got rid of them, and then everything got really good.
so him, and then finally, Alan Gordon. Alan Gordon is the writer of a book called The Way Out. And the way out is a book that massively changed, changed my life. It’s about something called chronic pain or neuroplastic pain, which is when people experience pain in their body, but don’t have any structural symptoms or they’ve had structural symptoms, but they should have healed by now.
In the last eight years, I’ve been experiencing neuroplastic and chronic pain, which some people know as like fibromyalgia. I couldn’t find any way of getting past it. All the kind of usual Western doctors, Eastern doctors, Reiki, acupuncture, changing my diet, allergy tests, whatever. It was only when I read his book and listened to his podcast that I suddenly had a major shift in, in progress.
Which essentially, just to put it in a nutshell, what it is, is that A lot of us experience pain. Things like psoriasis and eczema are forms of chronic pain and neuroplastic pain because there’s no particular reason for them, but it’s the autoimmune system overworking because it feels like you’re in danger.
So this sense of being in danger all the time is what can give people migraines or make them feel randomly sick all the time. or psoriasis or in my case I was getting this like terrible burning itching sensation on my skin whenever I felt stressed out or I went into a situation that my brain had learned was stressful so it gave me this pain and it really started to quite frankly f up my life until I looked at his book and suddenly my recovery within the course of a couple of weeks was, was, was making major progress so I would love to meet Alan Gordon and thank him for essentially saving my life.
Well, your body stores trauma and it manifests itself in different ways, right? It comes out in different ways. Ryan Holiday is actually supposed to be coming on the show. I can’t remember when, with the talk about his new book. Yeah, yeah. Well, we talk a lot about the Stoics on the show quite a bit. He’s heavily influenced by the Stoics.
we talk a lot about it on the show, actually. so interesting. That’s a really fascinating breakdown. okay. Final question. Final question. Ben Cristo, you’re opening a bottle of champagne one year from now. Sparkling cider . You’re opening a bottle of good save. Good save. Non-alcoholic, no secco. You’re, you’re opening a, a bottle of sparkling cider one year from now celebrating something you’ve accomplished.
What would that be? It would be the release of. The Diamond Black album with a whole bunch of great touring that’s happened. so where would we be, July? Yeah, a whole bunch of great touring and maybe some cool festival appearances that happened. But mainly just getting that album out and being really happy with it and, getting some good testimonials and response from people I admire.
Because I’ve always said that I haven’t always said, but more recently I’ve recognized that success isn’t about fame or money. It’s about helping people and it’s about people who you admire, who got you on the journey in the first place, saying to you, you know, I think it’s pretty good, or I’d quite like to work with you on something.
That’s success, I think, in my, in my opinion. Fantastic. Very well said. where do you want the people to find you, follow you, connect with Diamond Black, et cetera? Where can we go to do that? Best place is my, first is my Instagram, which is Ben Christo Music, which is all one word, then Diamond Black Official, all one word, is the Instagram for Diamond Black, and there you can find all the links to, all the other online stuff and the website, etc.
So, those are the best, those are the best places. Take the rest of the day off, Ben. Alright, ready. Okay, see you later. David. Thank you.
