16Volt Talks New Album, Single And More

Jul 26, 2025 | Interviews

Words by Glenn Sargeant

Feature Image Photo Credit: Molly Powell

With roots dating back to the early days of the industrial rock scene, the US band 16Volt also crossed over into related genres as soon as group founder Eric Powell signed his first record deal in 1991 while still in his teens. ‘More Of Less’ (out now) is the band’s first full-length record since 2017 and we were fortunate enough to talk to him:

Who is in 16Volt, how did you meet and what do you play?

16volt is primarily myself, Eric Powell with a rotating cast of friends and musicians to collaborate and play live with. John “Serv-o” DeSalvo has been our drummer since around 1998, and we’ve had a bunch of great people with us over the years, Steve White from KMFDM/PiG has played guitars for us for years, recently Jason Novak from Acumen Nation, Sean Payne from Cyanotic have been on board for live shows and for the new album I collaborated with Abel Autopsy from “Eyes of Your Eyes”, and Galen Waling from “Lords of Acid”, Julien-K, and more. In the past we’ve have Paul Raven from “Killing Joke” and “Ministry”, William Tucker from “Ministry”, and great guys like that. I’ve been blessed to stand on the shoulders of giants.

What is your earliest musical memory?

I got grounded when I was young for standing on top of my Mom’s Chrysler Cordova in the garage pretending I was in Cheap Trick “performing” “Live at Budokan”.

When did you begin songwriting?

I want to say I was pretty young. Somewhere around 16, but that was also not truly songwriting. I think real songwriting came a bit later, the first music and band stuff I did was mostly emulation. I think when I started to pay more attention to what songs actually were and meant was when I was writing songs for our first album “Wisdom” in 1990 or so.

You have released your latest single ‘White Noise’. What was the story/inspiration behind the track?

Yeah that was a fun track to work on. Lot’s of layers, it’s best to listen to it on headphones, a lot going on beneath the surface. The song is mostly about not being heard. The idea of white noise just being this background noise that gets drowned out and you almost forget it’s there. A lot of people use white noise to go to sleep! So that is an awful thing to feel like you are that. I wanted the track to have an underlying layer of electronics and a big beat with parts of heavy guitars.

You have your new album ‘More Of Less’ also out now. How did you want to approach the making of the album?

I didn’t really have a plan. I knew I just wanted to take my time and not rush anything and just create and write when I felt compelled to. I worked a lot with Abel in the early days of it. We’ve collaborated a bunch and work really well together just coming up with cool parts, melodies, etc. It was a lot of that going on, passing pro tools sessions back and forth, the earlier iterations of most of the songs were a lot more mellow, slower, soundtrack style. It evolved over time of course. Really the main thing was just try and do cool songs that resonated with us. And really wanted to get back to the earlier 16volt sounds.

Where did you record the album and who produced it?

Most of the album was recorded in my studio in Portland, Oregon. The drums were recorded in the Los Angeles area. The album is produced, recorded, and mixed by myself with Mastering by Ryan Foster. Most of the albums I have at least co-produced and been a part of mixing and recording so this is something I felt completely comfortable with and it was really a part of the whole process, the mix was happening as we wrote with final passes happening of course at the end.

Do you have any interesting, funny or memorable stories from the recording sessions?

It’s funny now but at the time it was like “Duh. of course this was going to happen”. I lost a complete recording session. Months of work. Gone. I don’t even know how it happened. But like most things, technology is only so reliable. We try and always have redundant processes and systems and these things happen to everyone. We should have expected it. So I panicked for a few hours and sent an email to Abel praying he might have a copy of the session. Thankfully he did have an older version so we didn’t have to start over. The re-work we did actually turned out better than what we had so in the end, it worked out perfectly!

Did you use any particular instruments, microphones, recording equipment to help you get a particular sound/tone for the record?

I guess one of the things is that everything was pretty much done “in the box” with the exception of some modular synth work by Abel, drums by Galen and guitars by myself. The brunt of the overall processing is SSL (Solid State Logic) and Slate for dynamics processing, lot’s of different fx plugins of course, really love the Sound Toys stuff as well as some of the Infected Mushroom stuff, and software synths like ANA2 and Serum. Vocals were a mixture of a Shure SM7b for the heavier stuff and the Slate ML-1 to get that beautiful Nuemann sound without having to rent one or shell out thousands of dollars! Bass processing I usually focus on Ampeg and SansAmp sounds and with Guitar it’s all Schecter Guitars ran through Neural DSP stuff. All in all we just tried to keep things simple and transferable while maintaining what we would consider gold standards of recording and mixing.

Which of your new album tracks hear you at your a) happiest, b) angriest and c) most reflective?

I think the last song on the album is probably the most reflective “Down Here” is very personal, intimate, and authentic.

Do you have any visualisers planned to accompany the album release?

Nothing planned at this moment but I would expect it. We are terrible at doing videos. I don’t enjoy doing them and never have the time or means to create what we would want to! We are looking for someone to help out at the moment though so who knows.

Was it a difficult album to write?

No, it was really fun. Just being in the studio, being creative, I mean, it’s the best. I kind of had a policy where if it felt difficult, or we weren’t having fun, it was time to take a break and not let it ever get to that place where it felt like a chore.

Who designed the album artwork?

A great artist I’ve known for years named Grete “Stitch” Laus. She’s from Estonia and does a lot of digital art as well as costuming and such for TV and music videos. She was a fan of 16volt back in the day and I just liked her art and asked if she would someday be interested in doing something together. The new album was the perfect chance. Her work is just great.

Where is your hometown and could you please describe it in five words?

I feel like I don’t really have one. I was born in Miami Florida. Moved to Southern California when I was 3. Moved to Nevada (Lake Tahoe) in my early high school years. Then to Florida for Recording Engineering school. Then to Los Angeles, Then to Portland, Oregon, the back to Los Angeles. Then back to Portland, Oregon. I guess mostly I feel like I grew up in my youth in California and I grew up as an adult in Portland. Five words might be “moved around quite a bit”!

How do you look after your voice?

I don’t really do anything special. Cigarettes and whisky! I am on the side of all you really need is hydration. The teas, herbs, elixirs, I don’t think any of that actually does anything. Good rest and stay hydrated!

Do you have any live dates planned in the UK/Europe in 2025/2026?

We hope to. I guess it all comes down to demand – if the people want to see us, we will come! I would love to!

What two things do you hope to have achieved once you have left the stage?

In a lot of ways I feel like I’ve already got that. I wanted to leave a mark, to have something I created have an impact on someone. And I wanted to do something that would outlive me.

Do you have any favoured stage instruments, effects, pedals, microphones etc?

I love playing guitar live, I am a huge fan of the more “metal” shaped guitars, i feel like the attitude and sound of the instrument is just really fun to perform with. Schecter has been my go to for years. The VP of Schecter actually used to be in 16volt and he ended up working there when we first got endorsed. I keep things pretty simple. I really latched onto the Mesa Boogie Rectifier sound live, I used to only play through a Mesa Dual Rectifier with a Mesa 4×12 cabinet. I’ve made the switch to mostly using direct guitar now, but with that I am using a Mesa Recto Emulator and a Mesa Cab simulator, other than that it’s really simple, noise gate and a tuner. I’ve never really done a lot with FX with guitars. For vocals it’s always the Shure SM58. Keep it simple. A new thing we are running in our setup is the M.Live B-Beat. We aren’t using any laptops for our playback setup anymore, the B.Beat runs all of our backing stuff as well as video and midi, all in one unit. My favorite new piece of live gear.

You are given the opportunity to write the score for a film adaptation of a novel that you enjoy. Which novel is it and why?

That’s a really tough question. I would have loved to do the score for Blade Runner which is of course based on the 1968 Philip K. Dick novel, “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?”. Anything with tense atmospheric soundscapes. I also really loved “Under The Skin” and the movie came out amazing. That would have been awesome to do. I think my favorite writer right now is Alex Garland. Would love to do something for any of his works.

Who are some of your musical influences? Do you have any recommendations?

I have a ton from all kinds of different genres! Of course there’s Ministry, and most of the Wax Trax! Era stuff. But a lot of early new wave and punk as well, The Cure, New Order, Minor Threat, RKL, DRI. Metal stuff like Iron Maiden, Metallica, Judas Priest, and electronic stuff of course, Massive Attack, The Prodigy. I mean there’s so much, Liz Phair, Queens of the Stone Age, Failure, School of Seven Bells, Teddybears, k.Flay, Helmet, Lamb, I could really go on and on here.

What makes 16Volt happy and what makes you unhappy?

16volt is happy when we get the gift of return energy. When we play a show and the audience is into it and are singing lyrics back to us and jumping around and dancing with us, when we get feedback that something we created resonated with someone. It’s what makes it all worthwhile. I think what makes me personally unhappy is when I feel stagnant, or when I lose my sense of purpose or self. I tend to be empathic as well, so sometimes if I am around unhappy people or situations, I absorb that and feel it. Traffic also makes me unhappy.