Hailing from Rochester, NY, King Buffalo is quickly moving out of the “best-kept secret” category. Their latest album, Longing To Be The Mountain, has turned a lot of heads since its release last fall on Stickman Records.
They bring a very effective, yet laid back Heavy Psych, in its timeless and optimal 3-piece band format. Songs are slowly built on hypnotic rhythms and vocals, peppered with soaring leads and often culminate in extended power trio jams parts. They are making great use of the too often overlooked art of letting music breathe. In short, a perfect fit for a bean bag listening session.
I met the band before their most recent show in Montreal, in front of a packed and captivated crowd. Don’t sleep on them next time they hit your town! – Ben F.
What have you guys been listening to the most lately?
Scott (drums): Me, what I’ve listened to the most lately is THE BEATLES. Which is kind of silly but I have a 3 year old son and he’s been getting really into The Beatles. He’s obsessed with the Yellow submarine song. He also has a Lego Yellow Submarine. Yeah, it’s very catchy but has a lot of layers. So he’s been really getting into that. For me, personally, there’s the new KING GIZZARD that’s coming out which is pretty cool. BLACK MOUNTAIN’s got a new record coming out. ALL THEM WITCHES just released their new record in September. That’s a great record. Yeah, just a lot of that stuff and also rehashing a lot. I’ve been going really deep in PRIMUS. I’m playing a lot of drums to that. That stuff is just so cool.
What’s your favorite PRIMUS record?
Scott: Sailing the Seas of Cheese is a really great one. Hum, I don’t even know ’em. Like I just know ’em by the picture! (hahaha) There’s always the one with like the pig mask (note: Pork Soda). I just click on it and I’m like “Oh yeah, that’s the one that I want”. As far as drum tracks, Jerry was a racecar driver‘s really wonderfully played drums, Southbound pachyderm‘s like insanity; he’s doing so much. Those are just like me trying to get my chops up. Be less garbage of a drummer. (hahaha)
Dan (bass): I don’t know. I’ve been just sort of going through…it sounds kind of cheesy but trying to get out of your own wheelhouse of music you get buried inside of. I’m just going through like top 100 records of all time lists and listening to things that when I was younger, you dismiss because you’re too cool for it or something like that. And just listening to stuff that I didn’t necessarily listen to. I’d been getting into a lot of 80’s stuff for whatever reason. Like TEARS FOR FEARS and like the MEN AT WORK song Overkill is amazing and I’m not sure why I can’t stop listening to it! And then just like the PIXIES, BAUHAUS, just kind of weirder stuff that I’d never considered because, I don’t know, it just wasn’t heavy enough or something and I thought it was missing what might be cool. And then yeah, back to the BEATLES of course. And even like SIMON AND GARFUNKEl.
Scott: When you’re younger, you’re way more opinionated about, like, “that’s uncool to listen to” and as you get older, now you can appreciate somebody doing something.
Dan: Sometimes there’s nothing there but if a record’s on a top 100 list from Rolling Stone, I mean there’s probably something there! They’re not idiots. It sold millions. Sometimes it’s just poppy garbage that people can latch on too easily but a lot of time, there is something there. I’m trying to get away a little from the guitar-drum-bass sort of standard, heavy sort of bluesy kind of stuff. It’s something different for me which may not necessarily be different for other people obviously, but when you listen to our music, you don’t necessarily think of TEARS FOR FEARS or something. They’ve got some bangers.
Sean (guitar & vocals): I love TEARS OF FEARS. I think I tried talking to you about them like four years ago.
Dan: Well, that’s exactly my point! (hahaha)
Is there any classic / universally acclaimed artist or that you missed out on when they first came out and discovered way later? Any artist that you didn’t like at first and learned to appreciate over time?
Sean: Oh I would say. I’ve been getting a bigger appreciation of OASIS. We were kids when they had the mega hits of Wonderwall, Supernova and stuff. Wonderwall has kind of become a joke but that band was fucking awesome. They wrote some incredible hooks and it was really well done Pop Rock. While also still being kind of dangerous. Badass lunatics.
Scott: The one dude, I don’t remember their names, the singer released a new record…
Sean: Liam.
Scott: Yeah, he released a new record last year and it was number one in the UK for however many months or whatever. I heard the one song from it and I liked it. Sounded very OASIS. That’s all I had. (hahaha) Go back to it, thanks.
Dan: That stuff I mentioned, TEARS FOR FEARS, MEN AT WORK…that kind of stuff was huge back in the day. And even, I grew up listening to things from my parents and at some point maybe I heard it too much but I’d been getting into GENESIS and YES and stuff lately as well. Back in the day, I just wanted to smash your brain, so much you get sick of it. For a while, it was like “that’s dad music, I don’t like it”. Now, great. Also, PETER GABRIEL, throw that in, pretty much can’t go wrong.
Sean: I love Peter Gabriel. But I never didn’t like it.
Dan: Right. But I did. I had a hard, like, if it doesn’t have a minute long guitar solo like shredded somewhere in there, then that song’s trash and I didn’t want to listen to it.
Scott: COLOUR HAZE did that for me. I didn’t find Colour Haze until like one or two years ago and they’re amazing. I’m like, how did I not know about Color Haze before? My friend’s band got signed to the label and I still didn’t look them up. What an asshole I am. And now, they’re great and I just wish I’d got into them sooner. I’ve also been listening to more Funk cause, there’s Mike Judge’s Tales From the Tour Bus, the second season he’s going through all the different funk artists and I’ve been going down that rabbit hole. A lot of that stuff, I just didn’t listen to. It’d listen to James Brown and the hits but like, MORRIS DAY AND THE TIME, that’s some really cool stuff.
Sean: Morris Day and the Time, actually, the whole first record is all PRINCE. He played every instruments. He wrote everything. Basically he was feeling like he had too much material that he couldn’t get it all out under his own name so he had to form another band.
Scott: Morris Day and Prince, they were friends from grade school.
Dan: On the last tour, I went into the rabbit hole about Morris Day and the Time. I was like, what!? Why would he bother finding these badass musicians and then just recording it all himself. What a control freak!
Scott: Yeah he was a control freak and they had a thing in their contract that they couldn’t produce other records and two of the other members wanted to produced the other record so like Morris Day stayed there with Prince and some other guys and Prince is the one that fires them all. That’s so weird that you’re firing people in somebody else’s band. I get that you’ve helped put it together but I don’t know.
RICK JAMES, his whole story’s insane. He was friends with NEIL YOUNG. He’s the one that kinda told Neil Young you should start singing. That’s kind of bizarre. He was actually up here in Canada because he was avoiding the Vietnam draft and then he was in a band with Neil Young and founding members of BUFFALO SPRINGFIELD and STEPPENWOLF. Whoa, I didn’t know Rick James was in a band with them!
Did that band ever released anything?
Scott: I think they did but I don’t remember the name of the band (note: THE MYNAH BIRDS) but it was Neil Young with members of Buffalo Springfield and Steppenwolf. Then Rick James came back to the states – he’s from Buffalo, New York, which is like an hour from where we live – and he put his stuff together and eventually became the self-proclaimed king of Punk-Funk. But yeah, that stuff is really cool so I’ve been digging deeper into the Rick James and James Brown. He was a mad man as well. In a good way. And a bad way.
What’s are your favorite means of discovering new music? Is it live, on records? Friends’ recommendations? Dumb luck?
Sean: I usually use a little bit of everything. I’m always using Shazam on my phone like if I’m driving and listening to the radio. Back home we have a couple really great independent radio stations and they play a lot of really weird shit that you’ve never heard anywhere. It’s always on there and then I’ll hear something and think, that’s cool so I’ll pull up my phone and shazam it. Which is probably really unsafe and illegal! (hahaha) But I’ll find a bunch of weird stuff. That way or you know, stumbling across bands that we’ve seen live and be like, wow, it was really awesome that you never heard of this band. I mean, just anywhere you can find it, you know?
Dan: I mean, Apple music makes it pretty easy or you can go on YouTube to find such weird, random stuff. You can go down the rabbit hole real quick where you listen to one and then on the sides, oh what band’s that? I’ll listen to that. And it’s a weird video that 40 people watched of an obscure Psych Rock song by a band that released a song in like 1967…
Scott: …And they all spontaneously combusted…
Dan: It’s an easy time in the world to find new music that’s for sure.
Scott: It’s definitely easier to find it just because everybody can put stuff on the internet but it also makes it tougher to find stuff that you like, because before, whether it was good or bad, you had people on the radio allowing you to listen to certain things. But I guess for me live is always my favorite. To see a band live and…if they make me melt, then I’ll dig into their entire catalog and I want to hear everything they’ve done and I want to see how things translated to the studio. But yeah, if I can catch a band live, especially by luck like you were saying, that’s the ultimate goal. “How did I never know about this! It’s the greatest! I need to know everything about you guys like. Tell me. Tell me everything!” That’s the best for me.
Are you mostly inclined to listen to something constantly, on repeat or are you always looking to listen to something different?
Sean: I go through phases. I’ll be like, ok, this week all I’m listening to is this one record and I will play it into the ground and listen to it a million times and then, the next week, I’ll find something else. I’m like a little kid with something shiny. Ohhhh. I’ll play with it for a little bit and I’ll go, oh something else that’s shiny.
Dan: Yeah the same. Like I said I’ve been trying to force myself to listen to different things just to make money and now this is going to get difficult.
Let’s dig into some of the harder questions a bit. We typically ask for a list of five perfect songs but maybe we can do one each?
Sean: I know my number one and it’s easy, it’s PINK FLOYD’s Time. Everything about it. Songwriting. The recording. Techniques. They were pioneering new ways of capturing a band. It’s just incredible. The lyrics. Everyone involved was at the top of their game at that one moment. And it also has the best guitar solo of all time.
That’s a big statement!
Sean: Hands down. Every time it comes on. Seems like…(getting interrupted for about a minute by soundcheck)
Scott: This song!
Dan: Jesus Christ. I’m far too indecisive for this question…
Sean: Teardrop by MASSIVE ATTACK
Scott: Dance choice: Eddie Murphy – Party all the time. (hahaha) Nah, It will be a BEATLES song because I’ve been listening to a lot of Beatles with the tiny person. Let’s see, Norwegian woods is up there. I’ve been going with the acoustic but all the other stuff is really good. We’ll go with A day in the life. I just love like all the changes. I wasn’t alive then but I feel like at the time it was quite revolutionary. I mean, they’re the fucking Beatles, you know. They kind of get that anyway. They don’t need it from me. It’s just something that’s always stuck with you and all the dynamics of it. It’s like multiple songs into one but it’s a story that you can still follow.
Sean: It was actually two separate songs. John wrote the first half, Paul wrote the second half and slammed it together via tape edit because they all hated each other at the time. Seriously, none of them were in the same room ever when they made that song.
Scott: That makes even more sense why it has those two different sections and it somehow coexist in harmony. I enjoy it very much.
Dan: We’ll go with In the Aeroplane Over the Sea by NEUTRAL MILK HOTEL. I mean, that whole record really, it’s hard to break it up in parts because it flows so well. The emotional content of it is just kind of absurd, it’s oozing out… (interrupted by soundcheck again)
What are some of your favorite song lyrics? Lyrics that have been important to you or that had an impact on you? It can be a specific line or verse, or the general work of a particular lyricist
Scott: BOB DYLAN or BOWIE. Both have amazing lyrics.
Sean: My favorite lyricist would be ROGER WATERS. He’d be up there. NEIL YOUNG would be up there. (interrupted once again) (hahaha)
Dan: We’ll go with somebody in the hip hop world. AESOP ROCK. His ability to stitch together words in a way that both makes sense and simultaneously, when you try to read it on paper, makes your brain want to explode. It’s just hard to read but when he speaks the words it just sounds beautiful even if you can’t fully understand. How it sounds and just the breath of his vocabulary is insane. There was this chart online with unique words that a hip hop artist uses. They had somebody request to add Aesop Rock on the lists and they had to add like a whole foot to the chart to fit him onto it because he just uses so many words. He thinks really hard about you know, what word will sound best here and simultaneously still make sense. How he does that and releases as many songs as he does with as many words is impressive. I mean, we’re in rock bands. You look at a lyric sheet and it’s typically pretty short. You got the verses and choruses and it repeats. They might be great lyrics but there’s not a lot to it usually. You look at a good underground hip hop artist or even some of the bigger ones now. I just don’t know how they go on stage or remember the words to like 20 songs that they got to perform that day. It’s insane to me.
Let’s do a top ten favourite albums of all time. Or maybe three each?
Scott: This is EXACTLY why I didn’t answer that on paper! (hahaha) (note: Scott had tried to answer by email and got bugged down. Then handed it to Sean who also got obsessively lost in it.)
Sean: I think Dark Side Of The Moon is the best record ever made. Start to finish. It’s just incredible. Same thing I was saying about Time, everyone involved was at the top of their craft at that moment. The tape loop stuff they did, the songwriting, the performances…it’s just flawless and it changed the way records are made and sound forever.
Dan: We’ll throw OK Computer in there, RADIOHEAD. Then AESOP ROCK, None Shall Pass. Really phenomenal record. Hum, there’s so much.
Scott: I’ll say DAVID BOWIE’s Hunky Dory. That record’s just phenomenal. He decided to make that recording more piano driven. And to tag the lyricist thing over, all the lyrics on the record are phenomenal. And the arrangements. It’s crazy ’cause he gave away probably one of his best songs, All the young dudes, to MOTT AND THE HOOPLE. It still blows my mind. The whole song, he’s just talking about how young kids are still at home with like, the Beatles and the Stones and that’s the past, music is transforming down from that. It’s one of the coolest songs ever and he’s like “Hey, other band, take this, I don’t need it”. Fuck. dude. It’s so crazy to me. Hold on to that gold. Keep all the gold! Soooo, that one record! (hahaha) I’m just trying to think of all music ever. No pressure, no pressure.
Sean: As far as records that had a huge impact on my life, I would say LED ZEPPELIN IV. To this day, it might not be one of my favorite records but when I was 12 and I started playing guitar, I was really getting into it and it had a huge impact on the way I looked at music from there on out in my life. So I would say, put it in the tops category just for impact and BLACK SABBATH’s Paranoid were probably the same thing: it changed the way I thought about music and what it did for me.
Dan: Yeah, I’d say also THE STOOGES’ Raw Power, MC5’s Kick Out The Jams live record. 13TH FLOOR ELEVATORS’ Psychedelic Sounds Of. I think arguably very important records but more so to me at that moment. Especially then, when I was terrible, realizing that maybe you can keep it simple a little bit and just have a little bit of gusto in it, a nice little two-note song and have people still dig it.
You talked about a live record there. How do you appreciate live records, compared to studio records?
Dan: I think they both have their place.
Scott: If you listen to a well done live record, I think it can destroy any studio record because vibe, I think, is everything. I think it’s huge for musicians. On stage, if there’s zero vibe, you’re not as excited to be there obviously. But when people are going crazy and they’re into it, you feed off of that.
Dan: Some bands are very different live. Or a little less so now maybe? It depends. I mean like THE WHO, their live stuff were outrageously different than their studio material.
Different but better?
Dan: Better, yeah. Their studio records just felt a little neutered almost but then they played live, you can tell they would just turn the amps all the way up and just went for it. ZEPPELIN too was fucking outrageous. I mean sometimes they fell off their feet a little bit, too much booze perhaps, but they got a little out there with the guitar and the bow and the craziness. But for the time it was perfect.
Scott: Hendrix and the Band of Gypsys is a phenomenal live record.
Dan: Yeah, that’s tough to say because there’s no studio records to compare it to.
Scott: Yes, I get it but it’s still phenomenal.
Sean: But I think that’s what I want out of a live record. I want it to be completely different.
Scott: You don’t want everything to sound the same.
Sean: Yeah, and that’s the thing. There’s a lot of bands I won’t care too much about a live record if it’s just that, a live record. But any band that tends to be more of a jam band, then I’ll be more intrigued, more into it.
Scott: I guess that’s why Deadheads are so big on like “hey, this is from this day, this place, at this time”. They’re so obsessed to listen to certain shows on a certain date because they jammed a lot and their stuff was all different. It’s not like you’re going to hear the same thing, even if they are playing the same song. One of my goals for this band is…obviously I wanna get a couple more studio records but I want us to do a live album. I think that’ll be the coolest thing. If we’d play well enough and stuff! (haha) But it’s something I’ve always wanted. Like I said before, my favorite way to find bands is live. Live has always been my favorite.
You touched on it a bit earlier with the BEATLES and your son but what music do you share and equally love with either your parents or children?
Dan: Parents, I think I mentioned it before. You grow up with what your parents listen to. My mom didn’t listen to a heck of a lot of music. She likes Soul music but that was never a focus in her life. But my dad was listening to the BEATLES, PINK FLOYD, GENESIS, YES.
Scott: He was into Prog, right?
Dan: Oh yeah. Not the super obscure stuff necessarily. I mean, back in the day, you just found what you found. He wasn’t exactly like a dude that’s scouring records. But yeah, you know, he used to smoke the pots a little bit back in the day. (Scott and Sean: hahaha)
Scott: I can’t imagine your dad…
Dan: I know, me neither!
Scott: It’s so foreign to me.
Dan: Yeah. You know, I rebelled against all of that for some reason and now he listens to ROD STEWART for some reason.
Scott: Rod Stewart’s great. A great sandpaper voice.
Dan: Ahhh, THE FACES are great.
Scott: Even his early solo stuff.
Dan: Yeah, it’s all right.
Scott: I mean, it obviously got terrible but that kind of happens.
Sean: One of the first albums I remember listening to…My mom had a CROSBY, STILLS, NASH AND YOUNG cassette tape that I was kinda stealing from her. I was like five. And one of the first songs ever that I knew the words to sing along to was Ohio. (Scott and Dan: hahaha) That’s one of the first things that I really remembered. I played the crap out of that cassette tape. It’s just really funny for me to imagine myself as a five year old singing along to Southern man. All of these really heavy, kind of violent protest songs. Knowing the way I am now that’s pretty funny.
When I got older, maybe in fourth grade, I remember my stepdad gave me his copy of PINK FLOYD’s Animals and his sets of good headphones, which we weren’t allowed to touch, and was like “you’re gonna sit and listen to this whole thing, start to finish, with my headphones.” At the time, I had a great appreciation of it but I didn’t really comprehend what was happening and I kinda put away Pink Floyd for a little bit and then when I got a few years older, it would be all I’d listen it.
Scott: I definitely started in a different place. My mom didn’t really listen to anything great. I love my mom but you know, SELENA and SPICE GIRLS and like 70’s Disco era. So I didn’t really pick up much musically from her but my dad was super big into Cock Rock so I was always listening to DEF LEPPARD and SCORPIONS and that’s the stuff that I was raised on. And he loves newer AEROSMITH for some reason. Hurts my brain. But he also got me into some cool stuff. He got me into ALICE COOPER who’s, you know, when they were a band was some of the best stuff ever. He dragged me to a lot of Classic Rock shows…I saw BAD COMPANY and Paul Rodgers throws his mike stand 40 feet in the air and then he catches it. That’s pretty cool. You know, when you’re 12! But yeah, a lot of Cock Rock.
What’s the most memorable show you’ve seen in your life?
Dan: I’m gonna have to go with…was it the best one? I don’t know, that’s pretty damn good…I saw MUSE in this pretty small venue in Rochester NY, where we’re from. Maybe a 800 cap room and they play million people sports venues now exclusively, so that was special. First big show I’ve ever seen. The lighting effect they had in that small place. The drummer kicked over his drum set at the end and the guitar player flipped over an amp and stood on it and just feedback solo for like two minutes and I was like “wow”. The level of absurdity. I still like their songs from back then. But yeah, just the whole spectacle thing that I hadn’t seen in real life before and it was in a small compact venue. So that, and then I guess probably also, I saw ARCADE FIRE at the Bug Jar which is a 150 cap room, that was insane! With like, eight of them on stage, that was probably the most energetic show. Even though they’re not heavy music, it was still maybe the heaviest thing I’ve ever seen in my life? They were blasting their energy at you in this tiny place and then, it was also one of the biggest disappointments of going home and looking up the records? (hahaha)
There’s a good example of records not being as good as the live show. There’s so many of them on stage and they were smashing drums and you’re like “what’s happening? It’s amazing” and then you listen to the record and it’s some sort of Pop Indie songs. It’s alright I guess but it’s weird to see them win Grammy awards years later and go “Oh I saw them in this tiny place”.
Around what year were these two?
Dan: Probably 2003 for both of them, around when I started going to shows more or less. Yeah pretty much. VICTOR WOOTEN also was pretty phenomenal. He made me really want to play bass and now makes me still feel bad about how terrible I am at it!
Scott: That’s the worst rabbit hole to go into. I just keep seeing all these three year old drummers that can play me under the table. I’m like, what am I doing with my life?
Dan: A good energetic act in a small or midsize venue is phenomenal. You see some really cool acts, like SABBATH or MAIDEN, I’ve seen but it’s in a big open air place and it loses something there, you know? It’s like “oh they’re down there, I see them. I guess this is cool. I don’t know.” I know the song but you don’t feel the force, which is kind of strange. So definitely, the little venues with the up and coming acts that become super famous is pretty cool to see.
Sean: I honestly started going to shows pretty late. I did go to that same Victor Wooten show. We didn’t know each other at the time. That was probably my first real show that I had been to when I was maybe 16 or 17. My mom took me. And I had never seen anything like it. It was bizarre. I guess they’re some of the best musicians in the world so it was mind blowing to me. But I think the best concert I’ve ever seen was KING GIZZARD AND THE LIZARD WIZARD who played that same room that he was talking about with ARCADE FIRE, the Bug Jar in Rochester. This is maybe four years ago, before they became huge and it was insane. It was an incredible show. That band just fucking kicks ass.
Scott: Did they all fit onstage?
Sean: Yeah. It was so packed I couldn’t even tell if there was two drum sets up there until after the show and people cleared out of the room. Holy shit there’s two fucking drummers!
Scott: So bummed I didn’t go to that show.
Sean: That’s probably the best show I’ve ever seen. Another one of my favorites would be the first time I’ve seen PRIMUS. They’ve been touring for a long time and many people have seen many times but the first time I saw them, probably about four years ago, they played a free show in Buffalo. It was the original lineup…or was it? I think it was Brain on drums and I can’t remember…I think it was the lineup that did like the Brown Album.
Scott: They were touring with Jay Lane, the drummer who did a bunch of stuff for the DEAD for a while. But I don’t know if it was the same time period. I feel like that might have been a year after you saw them.
Sean: Yeah, so it was a free show, sponsored by the local government. (haha) Way more people showed up than they anticipated and it was packed. It was right near Niagara Falls and a beautiful summer day…huge crowd…And the band was really like jamming like. You know, My name is mud was like 10 minutes instead of four. They were stretching everything. Southbound pachyderm was like 15. It was amazing. Incredible. I’ve seen them a couple times since then and it was ok but that one show was just incredible.
Scott: To tag off of him, the first time I saw PRIMUS, I was amazed at how they develop a lot of the songs which are four or five minutes into like ten minutes epics. I loved it. It was very confusing and you know, they do two sets and then, in between the two sets, they were playing Popeye cartoons. What? What is this!? Why?
But the show that I really remember is ALICE COOPER with my dad as a kid. I didn’t really know too much, I knew a couple of the hits but he’s chopping up babies onstage and getting his head cut off and then his henchmen picks up his severed head, kisses it and spits blood into the crowd. It went all over my face and I was like “this is the greatest day of my life!!” I’ve been a big fan since, I love Alice Cooper. And then, to go to Sean, because I think with almost every question he’s mentioned something about PINK FLOYD…I saw ROGER WATERS. I must’ve been ten or eleven and it was at Darien Lake, which is also an amusement park. I remember we went there just for the show and we’re walking through the gates and I remember being so small and I was just like wading through bottles and cans of beer up to my knees! I’m like, “am I going to make it to the other side?” So we get through and we had only lawn seats and I remember when the machine started playing (humming the intro to Welcome to the machine) and just all the visuals, even from far away. I remember seeing these two people, stoned out of their gourd singing to each other Wish you were here and I’m like, I’ll never forget the song for the rest of my life! This is like a weird moment I’m having in my life. I’m not on drugs cause I’m so young. I’m not drinking and I’m seeing all these crazy people and I go to get a drink at the water fountain and there’s a tower of beer cans, towering over the water fountain, and I can’t even get a drink, I can’t get away from these things. It left such an impression on me, like wow, these people really love to get fucked up and see Pink Floyd! Then, I obviously went down a Pink Floyd hole but yeah, I’ll never forget being afraid to walk through a sea of beer cans.
Since we have all three of you, do you have any unpopular music opinion between yourselves? Maybe stuff that you’ve been arguing about for years in the van?
Sean: Oh, I do for sure! I bring it up all the time.
Dan and Scott, sighing: Of course…
Sean: LIMP BIZKIT is fuckin’ awesome! That band rules! KORN also rules. Nu Metal is cool.
Scott: Yeah, that’s something we’ve been hearing…
Sean: That’s it. Yeah, it’s fucking great. I’m serious. I’m not even saying this for show.
Scott: He really loves it…
Sean: The riffs are so good. The song arrangements are so good. Yeah, Fred Durst is a character…
Dan: Even Jonathan Davis too…
Sean: Yeah but man, the bands? Those two bands, their fucking rhythm sections are in-fucking-credible. I put them up against any rhythm section of all time.
Scott: Yeah, I don’t even care about this conversation. (hahahaha) I’ve heard it so many times. He’s really good at being convincing but this is something I will never be behind him.
Dan: Yeah, I mean, I meet him halfway now. (hahahaha).
Sean: Well, it’s true!
Dan: Lyrics to me and the singer himself is very important. You can ruin a song or project immediately if it’s a kind of singing I don’t like.
Scott: Are you trying to say that you’re not like a motherfucking chainsaw? Whaaat!?
Dan: Yeah exactly.
Sean: That song is dope. (Scott: hahaha) Seriously, try to listen to that song and not get pissed off. You just go arghhhhh.
Dan: Yeah but I don’t like doing that!
Sean: It doesn’t matter that you like it or not, it’s the fact that it makes you do it every time. It’s like watching a gross horror film, you’re supposed to be grossed out, it’s doing its job.
Dan: Yeah it’s definitely effective.
Scott: How the fuck did I know that KORN and LIMP BIZKIT would come up? How did I know? It always does. What a perfect way to end this!
Dan: It was kind of the last ever big money behind rock bands. It sounds like there’s millions of dollars put into every second of those tracks and you don’t hear that on Rock ‘N’ Roll productions any more.
Scott: Production was very good. I’ll give it that. That’s what I’ll give it. I can hear everything crystal clear, hurray!
Sean: They were also extremely unique. It didn’t exist at the time. Since then – and we would fall into this category- everything is retro. Everyone’s just trying to sound like bands from the 70’s.
Scott: There’s been a million retro movements, you know?
Sean: No but it was the last era of charting rock music trying to be different. Trying to push the envelope.
Dan: You got NINE INCH NAILS and all this weird stuff and since then, there’s good stuff but you don’t listen to it and go, “what?!?”
Sean: You have to look harder for it. It hasn’t taken over MTV again you know, everything is kind of more fringe now.
Scott: Everything’s top 40 now. It’s all Pop. I agree with your point, Rock has moved underground. Like you said, that period of time was the apex but then, right after, Rock music just kind of went into hiding. I mean, it exists but like you’re saying you have to dig into trying to find it. Find out the shit you care about.
Maybe a segue into one last question, is there any up and coming bands that you’d like to recommend?
Scott: DEAD NOW from Atlanta. They’re fucking awesome. The guitarist used to be in TORCHE. They’re great.
Sean: ATSUKO CHIBA from Montreal. They’re awesome.
Scott: TEKE::TEKE, are they from here too?.
Sean: Yeah, we played with them. HANDSOME JACK, out of Buffalo, is the best Rock band in the world.
Scott: They’re a great band. Yeah, I hope you guys read this article. Get your fucking shit together and start touring, you fucks.
Any final thoughts? Anything you’d like to promote for the band?
Sean: We’re touring this spring and we’ll be back in Montreal on June 8th, as part of a tattoo convention (note: Tattoo Nouvelle Ère).
Scott: We’re going to be playing a pretty long set too, like an hour and a half. This is just a one-off. We’re doing March and April to the west coast. We get some weekend dates, we’re going to New York City and Boston, Philly, Baltimore…Lots of touring. More dates in the fall and it looks like we have some plans for Europe as well in June and July.
Just supporting the latest record.
Scott: Yeah it came out in October. We might put something out, we’ll see, we’re working on stuff. Oh and we’ve been announced on Stoned and Dusted, the secret generator party in the desert. (Note: near Joshua Tree, California. Check it out) BLACK MOUNTAIN’s playing, RADIO MOSCOW, ACID KING-we’re really good friends with those guys- and YAWNING MAN’s playing so I’m stoked to see that. The Alchemist light show guy is going to be there too.
I know in the original emails, when we were talking back and forth, my friends in SASQUATCH played it last year and the guy is like “oh man, you talked with him about that show? Well, I promise the sound guy this year won’t be on acid. We fired that guy.” (hahaha) Oh God! That’s how we’re starting this off? Will be an interesting show I guess! On the poster, it says sound guy on acid.
Dan: I think it’s a joke.
Scott: I think it’s a joke thing now because that’s kind of become its own thing.
Dan: I’m assuming they’re not forcing their sound guys to be on acid. (hahaha)
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