With each release your band seems to evolve a bit into a different sound. For example, The Voyeur EP and Black Coffee split had more of a screaming-noise post hardcore sound. Then The Safe Word EP has a more rocking sound with distinct gothic-like baritone vocals. I am a fan of your varied releases, but is your goal to keep your listeners in suspense of what is coming next?
No, not really. Although I like the idea that people wouldn't know what to
expect from us with each release, but it's not something we have really done on
purpose. The person who actually got the band going as far as picking members
and setting dates for practice was Jaron Sayers. He's no longer playing with us
but he played with me for years in Fight Pretty and had always been real into
fast raw punk rock. He was singing in the band Guilt Party and wanted something
he could play guitar in, so he asked me to do vocals in his fast punk band. I
didn't really have any input into the style or writing of the music at the time
but when I heard what he was doing it sounded fast and mean and had alot of
weird youth crew vibes going on but at the same time it was heavy and noisey, so
that's just how I sang as well. I already knew what kind of aesthetic and theme
I wanted the band to have and that hasn't changed much still. I just screamed
when the music would lend itself to screaming and sang when that became more
fitting with the next record.
The lyrics have a thoughtful dark aura
to them. I like how you don’t use the boring, straightforward approach to
writing. Take us deeper into the words. What auditory picture are you trying to
paint for the listener? I have always liked story telling lyrics and song writers that would mention a strange detail or describe something in a overly exaggerated, dramatic way and in Forced Fem I wanted to tell stories from a woman's point of view instead of the standard guy singing about how he's hurt his woman and feels bad but still manages to make himself look cool in the process. I also wanted to write from the perspective of a man singing about a woman without it being sappy love songs. I have always found the psyche of a lot of men to be pretty scary and disturbing and I include my own at various times in that. So sometimes the lyrics will be inspired by something I read or heard about and sometimes it's about something or someone in my own life, or about myself. A lot of times I write a song and it's a situation from my own life and I will just tell it the way it should have happened. I think the best lyrics are the ones that are vague and can mean many things but still sound honest and real at the same time.
I also want to bring up your personal
discography. All your previous projects have been all over the spectrum as far
as styles, but upon listening one can definitely decipher your personal touch.
Give us some reflections of your past groups….No Visible Trauma, Fight Pretty,
Peloton, etc.I love a lot of different genres of underground music and I am not really the kind of person that feels the need to completely stick with one style of music and attach myself to it until I get tired of it and then abandon it completely and move on to the next thing I discover. I pretty much have just kept loving everything I have loved to listen to since I first discovered punk and all of its sub genres. So I think that's why when I sing in a band regardless of the genre, people can hear me in it because I bring a little bit of everything I've done already into the next thing I do.
You also have a great hand for video editing. I really liked the promos you created for Peloton "My Life as a Sleep Study" (Which I believe you directed) and also Black Coffee’s “The Critic.” They all have a very art oriented vibe. What goes into the thought process of creating a concept and what programs do you use?
Thanks a lot, I have had an obsession with video cameras and photography and movies since I was four years old. My dad made weird movies with his friends and when I was a kid and I was just as obsessed with them as I was real studio made films and watched them constantly for many many years. He would make a movie with a cast of friends and family and whatever props were laying around and make copies for people and they would get passed around for years and I think that's where the DIY movie making thing started with me. I had access to video camera's my entire life and made lots of little short films that were mostly completely stupid but also pretty creative. So once digital camera's, editing software and online videos came became a
thing it became so
much easier to make things look pretty good and actually make something look
the way you want it to. As far as concepts and how they come to me, I just get
really inspired by certain movie I love sometimes and sometimes someone will
tell me just to make their video something simple and I will shoot them playing
live and then add my style to it. That was the sort of thing I did with the
Black Coffee video and the Knights of the kingdom video and same with Omotai
''Throat of snakes'' and a few others. I just shot them live and tried to get
them doing what they would usually do live and then take it home and focus more
on my style of editing. The videos I did for Peloton are probably my favorites.
The first one ''Of hoses and horses'' had no concept. I just wanted to show a
day in our lives hanging out and playing a show but show it in what I saw as a
romantic way with a little sadness in the focus and lighting and such because
to me that's what parties and things like that always feel like. You are having
a good time but you look around and someone is pathetic and someone is throwing
up and someone is getting old 
and someone is young and confused and someone is
doing drugs and someone is there you'll never see again. So I guess the concept
was that parties are kind of sad haha. With ''My life as a sleep study'' I
wanted to recreate one of my favorite movies ''Don't look now'' but make it DIY
and more punk looking instead of trying to do something huge and over the top
that I couldn't pull off. That one was a lot of fun to shoot and it is
definitely my own ''November Rain'' haha. ''Black metal shirt'' is based on a
short story ''cruising'' that also inspired Brian de Palma's Dressed to Kill so
that one is basically just an homage to one of my favorite film makers. As far
as programs I have used just about everything from sony vegas to after effects
. I really don't rely much on the program or software as much as I try and shoot
things the way I want it to look as I'm shooting it. The most important thing
about a editing program for me is it's ability to not freeze up and crash.While on a creative topic, you also use the design moniker of Imbalance Arts. Over the years you have designed numerous show flyers and album covers. Your art is very abstract and I totally dig it! As with the previous question, tell us about your process in putting it all together. Also do you use programs such as Illustrator or Photoshop?
When I'm working on a poster or record cover or just design in general I try
and show the feeling of what the image is trying to promote. I call it
imbalancearts because it's non balanced work. It is art and it's not. A lot of
what I do is hand drawn or painted and a lot of what I do is collage work or
photo manipulation. It really all depends on what the outcome calls for as far
as how I go about creating it. I have hundreds of magazines and books that I
will thumb through until I find an image that fits to me and then I will
sometimes recreate it by drawing it and then perfecting it with photoshop and
sometimes I will just create something new with photos I've taken. Sometimes I
make things digitally and sometimes I use glue and scissors. I really just try
and get an image from the band or product or company or whatever I am creating
for in my head and start trying all the methods I work with to create it until
I feel like it represents what it needs to.Back to the band, I heard that recently at a gig you almost lost your vocal duties to an intoxicated fellow that stumbled on the stage singing “People are Strange” haha. How did that go down?
HAHAHA I'm not sure how that went down but it was at a place where I noticed at least half of the people there looked like they had not seen a band before that was weird or different in any way and when I notice that at a show I usually try and make it as weird of a performance as possible because when I was younger and would see a band play that confused me it would really get me excited. I tend to go to a different place mentally when I am performing live and I usually can't remember much of it afterwards so all I can remember about that at this point is arguing back and forth with a random guy about covering ''People are Strange'' and then shouting at him to ''grow up'' so he got up on stage and started trying to prove to me that he was grown up and somehow he got his hands on the microphone so I walked off stage and turned around to see him trying to take Lance, our guitarist's guitar off of him.
What is next on the horizon for the band? More shows, new releases….potential tours?
We have a new guitarist Lance that has been writing new songs along with Nick and Darrell and we have been demoing those for an E.P. we will be recording soon and then we have another E.P. we wrote before he joined all written and ready to record and we should be recording our first proper LP in Oakland California sometime this year if all works out. Our first seven inch '' the safe word'' is out now and available through the great Agro Wax records.
Present your last words…
Thanks for the interview, keep up the good work with the site.
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