Garza Podcast - 140 - VITRIOL | Kyle Rasmussen

Episode Date: September 2, 2024

Garza sits down in-person with Kyle Rasmussen. Singer & guitar player of extreme metal band VITRIOL. Catch them on tour w/ Goatwhore now! https://vitriol.fanlink.tv/sufferandbecome CLICK HERE TO PURCHASE FROM SWEETWATER & SUPPORT THE PODCAST: https://imp.i114863.net/rnrmVB

thing that you think you're supposed to be and you have this thing that you are. Yeah. And the more variety there are between those two, the greater the distance, worse, the mental turbulence. That fracture, that kind of falling apart

of all these pieces gives you the beautiful opportunity to pick the pieces you want and reconstruct it, you know? True, man. So just go through. The only way out is through, man. Go, if you think you're going crazy,

go fucking crazy. You know, just don't hurt. Try not to hurt anybody. How's your voice feeling, man? Fine. It's not a painful. I just get a... Usually it hangs on longer than this, but I've been talking a lot more on this tour. Why is that? I've been better about interact.

I'm trying to be better about spending more time at the merch booth and stuff like that. Okay. You know, trying to preserve my social battery. I'm trying to, you know, grow that muscle a bit more. Yeah. You know. It is a muscle. Yeah. Oh, yeah. It is due for like the longest time, I call it, you're just desensitizing your yourself

by doing something repeatedly that you're not exactly comfortable doing. Oh, yeah. And it seemed pointless. Like for me, I go to a lot of shows around here. And it wasn't exactly comfortable because now, I guess you say I'm like the face of the band. So I'm trying to like go to all the shows and the show phase for the band. And I don't know where it just after a couple years it clicked.

And now I know I enjoy doing it. It's weird. Yeah. It's where it's something that being social with people, being an introvert, now it's like I, now I seek it out. It's weird. Yeah. It's weird. My whole life, I was like, oh, you're not, you're not, you're not, that social person.

It's not you. But then after a while, it's like, it's switch. There's a fucking switch. It was nuts. Yeah. Yeah. That's why it's really important to not get too entrenched in these ideas about yourself being this or being that.

Like, I'm an introvert. I'm this. I'm not, you know, I'm not, I'm not this. you know for now that's what you are right now and i think people underestimate how significantly your relationship on things can shift if you're just willing to suffer through that it's like going to the gym it's like going into an ice bath you know what totally it's like a psychological ice bath you know for introverts going into a venue and being like what's up guys tell me about your band you know uh even though there's a big part of it's a big part of it's a big part of it's

that it wants to know those things. You know, it's not as though that, you know, I can only speak for myself that even though I have a hard time having those interactions to the extent that I have the availability to, it's not as though it's a lack of interest. Like I want to shake all the hands and I want to know all the stories about the connections to the music and stuff. Yeah.

It just gets to, it's kind of like a fatigue like at the gym. You know what I mean? You can only do so many pushups before, even if you want to do more. You know what I mean? Before your body is just like, bro, that's all we got. Yeah. And I think the social muscle is no different, you know. It is a social muscle because you especially, yeah, if you, for a period of life,

you're calling yourself introvert, yeah, you have like this social battery, I call it. Yeah. It's a and and you and you fatigue, but if you're going to the gym and working out that social muscle, it does get longer and longer. I noticed. Oh,

absolutely. Coming from someone that was literally in the house and I would not fucking talk to anybody. But now, I'll go to a show here and there. Oh, now it's like, or show a month.

Now it's like, I'm at all of them. And like being able to stay up later and the social battery has grown. Yeah. So you're right. It is that, it is that social muscle.

I didn't even think about that. It's all resistance. training, just a different part of your being, you know, whether it's your body or your brain or whatever. It's like all growth comes through that willingness to go through adversity. And I think people right now are having an interesting moment in the culture where people are awakening to the benefits of voluntary discomfort. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. Because that's to be voluntary. That's really important. It has to be voluntary. It has to be voluntary. 100%. You can't be thrown into a situation. You don't want to be in a really,

grow from it. 100% it has to come from within and the easiest way rather than focusing on making things hard for yourself for the sake of it which I think will get you pretty far um is just having a greater why and for you it was the band of course right yeah that's the thing that got you out of the house you didn't really i'm guessing you didn't realize the transformation that would occur on the other end of that you know you right so you just some greater reason forced you through something you didn't want to do. And I think a lot of, and that's, so long as you have that, something that you're targeting some North Star that's going to keep carrying you through these really uncomfortable

opportunities to challenge yourself. Totally. If you don't have that, you're going to run out of, it's just not going to be worth the pain, you know, of like reshaping who you are. You know, you've got to have that thing. And I think for us is probably our bands. Totally. Our music is like, what do I have to do to keep doing that?

Yeah. Yeah. You know? Yeah. And I think that's, that thing is becoming increasingly rare for people in society. I think having that greater why, you know, a lot of people are working at jobs that they don't, they're not connected to. And they're not, they don't see themselves in. And they lack that thing.

So I don't know why I'm going down. this road really but we just got on topic but no no no no this is on topic yeah okay yeah yeah yeah Kyle from ritual thank you for making time on your off day to uh be here oh it's you know it's an honor really thank you for having me do you get any time i sucks that uh you guys had problems with uh so the school bus finally broke down right well fine i mean it's been it's been it's been a labor of love and and uh stubbornness and uh you know it no one's gonna advise you to buy a 20-year-old school bus to tour. And so it's been our mission statement, not only for our own reasons to make it work, but to prove that it can be done.

Whose idea was it? Whose idea was it? Your idea? Yeah, Adam and I have been toying with the idea of, I mean, God, probably for eight damn years, just going back and forth about the pros and cons, talking about diesel, talking about the size, talking about, you know, I've met a few people over the years that are long-haul truckers. And his dad has actually did drove the school bus for years. Really? Like that was his thing. Oh, that's sick.

So he had some, he had some insight there to share. So we felt. And here's the thing. It's not, the bus, the issues that the bus has had aren't unique to a bus. Like the fuel supply line, the most recent thing on this tour. Was loose and ended up breaking. It's just like this little metal S. It's not, it's just this little piece.

Yeah. It broke down on a Thursday, no, excuse me, Friday afternoon. So right before the weekend, the bus parts place tells us that they can get one, but there's only two in the entire country that would fit our motor. Two in the entire country. In the entire country. That's not exactly good luck right there. It's not great luck.

No. So they were supposed to overnight the part. that's what they always say yeah you know what they do yeah and so poor adam was like all right man I mean we can't do the show without Matt can't do the show that our drummer you know we can't do the show without the guitars

so I guess I'll take the L on this and I'll stick back with the bus and then meet you guys and I don't remember what the original plan was we were going to meet in Anaheim maybe I don't remember but needless to say that didn't work out

the overnight part did not come overnight. It came on Tuesday the following day. Dude put it in. Came late. Dude put it in. Adam got about an hour down the road and it failed again. Oh, what? So he calls the dude and the guy's like, oh, I'm sorry, bro.

Like, I'll come out. I'll fucking, you know, for free. I'll make sure to get you up and running. But I can't do that until tomorrow morning. Oh, no. So there's another day. Dude fixes it for, for, free and uh as if you're listening college saint fixing it with quotation marks okay here we go big

sassy sarcastic air quotes yes um and then i think it was about two hours down the road something else fails we're we're we're on the side of the road again we call the dude we're like dude what the fuck you know he tries to claim that it's unrelated to the shit whatever okay so at this point he's like all right i can get that part but it's going to be another four day And we're like, bro, I can't, we, at this point, we're about to do our fifth show as a two-piece on this tour, just Matt and I. And we're like, dude, we can't keep doing this. We can't, you know, we can't do this to Adam. We can't do this to the fans.

So we're like, just cut, cut, let's cut our losses, rent another vehicle because we've been driving around in a two-person, U-Haul panel truck, like box truck, and a mini-sUV. and our buddies and Fante Facts at the band that plays right before us they're rolling with us as well so not only we're like fuck our bus is down but we have three dudes that are depending on us for a vehicle and for a place to sleep every night

so we're like fuck I guess we have to rent two cars and stay in hotels every night and it was wild start um anywho so we were looking at having to rent an RV, you know, spend another $8,000 to keep going. And I was like, you know what, I'm going to call this buddy of mine who's kind of a fucking maniac.

Like he's just always, like my favorite story about him is he, just like a real modern Renaissance man. He fucking like built a motorcycle from scratch. And then within like 30 minutes of it being done and tested, he wrote it 20 hours south to a hate breed show straight. went from Portland to like southern or like you know somewhere in California and then went straight to the show and then like attended the show with no rest. Wow. Like you're a psychopath. But he likes that shit. He's got that kind of David Goggins spirit in him that he's just like loves that suck.

You know what I mean? Yeah. So I hit him up. I'm like, dude, how does an adventure sound? You know? And he's a mechanic. So I'm like, how would you feel about flying from L.A. to Derry, Louisiana, fixing our bus,

then driving that bus from Louisiana to California by yourself. And he's like, yeah, dude, let's do it. That's a homie. Yeah, so he's like flying out. And this isn't a guy that doesn't have anything better to do. Like he has a kid at home, the whole nine. He's got responsibilities. And he's just like, yeah, put me on a plane at midnight.

I'll fix that shit up. I'll drive it to San Francisco. How long have you known his person? Oh, we go way back. You know, he's one of my oldest friends from, yeah, I would say since I was about 20 years. 20 years. Yeah, about 20 years. That sounds like a friend slash family member.

Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, I don't have a lot of those, but he's, he's one of the few for sure. That's awesome, man. Shout out to Josh. Josh, thank you. Oh, yeah, Josh. And so, so, Jane, that was like the first show with Adam, correct?

Yeah, first show back with Adam. My goodness. How are you feeling? I have a question after, but I want to hear the answer first. How are we feeling during that show? Very grateful. I mean, it's such a, it's a, I've never, I haven't played a show without Adam since I was 20 or something. I'm 35.

So we've been playing music together for a long time. And so it was, you know, it was a nice, the silver lining of it, it's a nice reminder, you know, of like, as much as you can abstractly appreciate the presence and contribution of your homie and your bandmate you really can't feel the absence of it

until he's good you know you don't know what you got until it's gone kind of thing right and it was a nice way to be able to feel that without it being a permanent loss you know what I mean so it's like it made me appreciate it more it made me I mean the other silver lining is Matt

our drummer is really like just my favorite drummer that's why I worked so hard to get him in the band like I hunted that dude down and to be able to play next to him as like a duo was like fun you know what I mean so I try to I mean of course if I had the option of course I would have Adam there

but in the vitrial spirit trying to make the trying to joyfully participate in eating the shit sandwich you know what I mean like that's kind of the only way you keep going. It's true. You know, you just got to be like, sick. It got this weird masochistic gas lighting.

We were like, I'm bringing on, dude. Totally. So it was, you know, trying to make the most of it in that way, feeling a nice little intimate jazz session with Matthew Kilner. It was cool. So you really made a point to like, okay, I'm going to like connect with Matt right now. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yeah.

I push him. People can tell. I push him straight to the front of the stage. Oh, sick. And so we were just side by side on World Buck and, you know, I'm interacting with him in ways that I would typically interact with Adam and stuff. Oh, wow, that's awesome, man. It was really cool. Yeah, you always like, man, I'm trying to push the drummer off the stage.

You put him up in the front. He's the show, man. I mean, Vitriol, really, I built the band sound. The whole, I just wanted this band of the craziest drummer ever. Like, I should have been a drummer. You know, if I was exposed to extreme metal when I was. developed like I started playing guitar before I found blasting but I probably would have gotten a drums and it's my favorite like any of my favorite bands it's not the guitar player it's not

the vocalist it's not the baseball it's always the drummer that's the reason why they're my favorite band wow so the drummer is like the I actually get flack from some fans that the the guitars aren't present enough in our albums and I'm like I'm listening to the drums bro I want those drums to just like fucking crush you you know and like I don't mind having to dig in a little bit, you know, find those details, find those riffs, you know, I think it's, can add to the, the immersion of it. Like, I like you having to wade through the assault of the drums to get in there and find the other stuff, you know.

So. Yeah, because, yeah, so as like a, when you were younger, like, you really connected with, like, like, the black and death metal stuff. No, not at all. No. No. No. When I was, I mean, how young. Are we talking?

Marneau, you've found other music prior to, like most of us do. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But still, I assume you're a teenager when you heard, like, you know, like the bomber or something. For sure. Yeah, I mean, yeah. Yes, I mean, I got into, I found extreme metal when I was 13. I had moved in with a family member who had the internet. I hadn't had the internet until that point. And I went on the,

I'll never forget. I get on the internet and I, I'm like, I don't know what you even do on the internet. Like, I don't know what's on here. Believe it or not, I'm ashamed,

I'm ashamed to admit to your viewers and listeners that that was not the first thing that I did. Dude, no, you could probably was. That shit is poison for your mind. You'd be proud. Well, I have since discovered it.

Okay. Yeah. Let's just say that. But my first thought was, let's uh let's look up metallica lyrics first i was just you know so i googled metallica lyrics and a website that we probably are all very familiar with darklyrics dot com oh i remember dark yeah yeah yeah i popped on there and i just saw a library of insane band names you know what i mean just like crazy and i'm like my mind is being i don't even know this shit existed and

And I'm just like a kid in a candy store just by the ideas that I'm confronting. I haven't heard the music yet. You know what I mean? And I'm like, whoa, dude, this is like a world that I'm interested in. And I wrote down a couple of names that jumped out of me. And one of them, for better or worse, was six feet under. That name, I was like, dude, that's a hard-ass fucking name. You know what I mean?

Like, I'm going to fucking check that band out. And I downloaded them. The first band, I don't know if it was the first band I heard, but it among the band that I downloaded, but it was the first one that made, when I was a first one that made, when I was, I heard Chris Barnes' vocals. It was a song of maximum violence, that album, one of their earlier albums. And his vocals on that record, it was just like, I don't know, when I hear Christian people talking about finding Jesus or something, I just felt like, this is. Like, I don't know what this is or what's going on, but I'm like, this is, this is what I'm doing.

This is what I'm doing now. Like, whatever this is, I'm a part of this. I'm going to do this. And I'm just saying it was it was that it was that record huh oh yeah well yeah I mean it was his vocals really it wasn't really the the sound because shortly thereafter I discovered emulation and I discovered suffocation and those two bands really like stole the show for the musicality but Chris Barnes was the first death metal vocalist I heard those growling that inhuman kind of like and I just fell in love with that I'm like man this is I don't know brought. brought something out of that. It changed your life. Yeah, for sure. It's funny to think that Chris Barnes' vocals changed my life, but it's true.

And I'm actually a big, you know, I think his ability has waned over the years to be very diplomatic about it. But his early work will stand the test of time. And his lyrics, I think, are really underappreciated. The art, huh? Yeah. I think he was a I mean some of that early stuff still isn't like topped in terms of like just the kind of the darkness in it

you know what I mean what what is it what what what is it about those like the definite lyrics in that time is kind of had like that special timeless like what what is that my guess my theory with a lot of these things and I think it's just the cycle of why the first wave of things tend to be really great I don't know I think think it's because when if you're part of that chances are if you were if you were one of the people that created that sound it's much more likely that came from an internal place of like something a more honest place i think chris barnes his lyrics again for better or worse probably came

from a fairly honest place i mean i think i heard an interview with him that when he wrote a lot of those lyrics he was living across the street from like an elementary school oh shit it was like super obnoxious and fucking he was just like really misanthropic at that time of just like the noise and the fucking you know whatever I don't know what I might I'm paraphrasing this but I mean

he had a real Whenever I need music gear I always Go to sweetwater.com If it's mics, headphones or studio and recording gear Sweetwater has you covered Next time you need any music gear Support the podcast by using the link in the description

and comment section below I think for the same reason, a lot of the guys that make really, really heavy, I don't mean like, jing, jen, jen heavy, but like conceptually, emotionally heavy stuff. Unfortunately, sometimes they have short stints in their career, because I think if you have access, if you're in the place psychologically where this music really comes from in an honest way, you're probably living a fairly turbulent life internally or externally. You know what I mean?

Unfortunately, yes. Yeah. Yeah. So in my experience, it tend to see a inverse correlation between the quality of someone's metal music and the stability and reliability of their psychological state. Yeah. It's very true. You know, I don't really know how we got on that subject. but I think, oh, that's right.

We were talking about why those early lyrics are great. And I think it's because simply, and I mean this in a very neutral way, that that music was being made by very people that were in a dark place, you know. And I think when that kind of music started becoming more appreciated on a larger scale, people that gives people room to be attracted to things other than that kind of essence right some of you're like well i mean how many times do you hear someone say like oh i think the riffs are sick but like i'm not in the vocals or whatever whatever so as time goes on people start pruning what they like cherry picking what they like and then that becomes the people that aren't in that really dark place can make music that sort of sounds like it but now it's less confrontational it's less scary to listen to. You know what I mean? It's it's it's it's it's Metallica not Slayer

you know and I love Metallica I mean they're one of my favorite bands over yeah but it's not the same you know when you're listening to Metallica you're having like a or Iron Maiden you know I mean you're having like a huge cinematic yeah like awesome experience you listen to Slayer and you're like oh my God is this

is a part of reality that exists like are they talking about something real like I don't I don't want to be shit I want to I want to be shit and not not white dude I'm going to live the life of slayer, you know what I'm saying? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, it's just, it's any kind of music. Sorry, Chris, that one got him.

That's good. Sorry, can I go on? I apologize. No, no, it is true, man. I think any music or any art that holds a premiere and shows you a part of yourself that you'd rather not believe exists, it's going to be a less, it's not going to be quite as popular

as something that just wants to rip and have a good time. You know what I mean? So I just think that that, as the culture expands and people get more and more into this kind of stuff, there's almost less room for that. There's almost less room for that,

the kind of music that comes from this really, I'm trying to say, There also creates, as the metal music gets, I don't know, safer sounds so like cliche, but it makes the stuff that is a little more reckless with what it tries to tackle with even more taboo. So I just think the real stuff just always gets pushed further into a more underground state. it usually takes on a different kind of musical identity. And I think that's what happened to death metal. I think early death metal was very in touch with something. And as death metal became more about the riffs and the blast beats,

a lot of those guys went into things like black metal and whatnot, you know, where it was like this is a place where people that realized that their approach to their work was more maybe philosophical or ideological, something like that, eventually felt, I think, alienated from death metal. And they moved on. And then that happened in black metal, too. And then those guys, a lot of the guys

that went to black metal for that, yeah. It's funny. That kind of ties into what you said, like you said, death metal has become a disease, you know, yeah. Yeah. They probably, like, you probably, I was going to ask a question,

but you just answered it prior to it. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, for better or worse, you know, like it's a, it's, I mean, any art is really, can be a mind virus, you know, um, I think I'm like black metal is now. It's weird. Yeah. Hey, can we agree that black money recordings suck? Black metal what? Black metal recordings kind of suck. Can we disagree on that? Well, I guess it depends on what, what you mean by suck. I think from like a point of objective fidelity, like it's low quality. But I guess it depends. It. But some people, I think you are one of these people, but you hear something in it. You know, something is there, though. Yeah, it's almost like watching a, think about it like, what am I trying to? So death metal, and I think a lot of music has conditioned us to feel like to relate, to associate the ability to hear everything clearly as being good.

The more present everything has, the more room everything has, the better the production. I could see, like, that makes sense to me. I can understand the logic behind that. But another way of approaching listening to music is trying to understand what the music is trying to make you feel and then utilizing the aesthetics of the sound of that mix or recording to make you feel that thing. So I think a lot of black metal is especially that lo-fi black metal. And this is a lot of bands. Lofi, let's go. Yeah.

A lot of bands that do this thing, I think, don't really understand why they're doing it. And I think those bands end up just like recording into a talk boy in the middle of an oak tree and just like on purpose. And they just don't. They don't understand why some of those artists like those lofi elements. But the bands that do it right, they understand. the intentionality behind the presentation of that music. There's a coldness. There's a,

there's kind of a despair, a staleness of it. That is, speaks much more of the intention of that music than something that's just like, like punishing and alive. It's not really supposed to sound alive. I mean, even back in the day,

they would call it necro, you know, the necro production. like the guys. Really? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Like the second wave stuff.

What was that era? 90, early 90s. So, you know, mayhem, of course, a band that starts would be that we can't talk about anymore, you know? There was a great band called Dot Ims Guard.

They're still doing stuff, but they're a very different style of band. You know, some of those, one of those guys, recorded an album with a a god damn it

what are they called those shitty old computer mics yeah those desk mics with like the fendable fucking thing that's just like it looks like a little piece here like he would like put that in his mouth and just like because it would overload and clip

and fucking be all blown out so the idea was just to sound very um confrontational kind of non-music, you know what I mean? It was really like, black metal was much more about the message than the music.

It's much closer to punk rock in that way than it is to death metal, I guess. Yeah. Do you still go to the gym? Yes. Okay. How old were you going to the gym and then you started to experience these stomach issues? I fortunately just started going to the gym, I think, two years. before I found out I had Crohn's and I got the perforation of my intestine.

Yeah. And I wouldn't be surprised if that exacerbated it when I was going to the gym. Like I was putting a lot of, yeah, yeah, yeah. I was going to ask you what causes Crohn's disease? It's just an autoimmune disease that you get, you're born with it, basically. You're born with it? Oh, yeah, yeah. You usually, excuse me.

not that you have it from birth, but if you get it, it's, you get it at a certain age. Typically, it usually appears. If you're going to get Crohn's, it usually appears by the time you're,

and your mid-20s, mid-late 20s, and that's when, 28 is when mine, well, I was experiencing symptoms. I didn't know it was Crohn's. What,

what were you feeling? Oh, just debilitating, um, excruciating stomach pain. Just like stabbing pain in my abdomen. And I assumed that it was due to like some food allergy that I didn't know what I was eating. I was figured I could just kind of figure it out.

Didn't have health insurance at the time. Of course not. Right. So it wasn't something I was going to see the doctor about. And then one day I woke up and it felt like, I mean, I've never been shot in the stomach. But I've been informed that it's not a dissimilar feeling. But I couldn't even, I was in so much pain. I couldn't raise my voice to shout for my roommate.

Adam was staying with me at the time and an old dear friend of mine, Melissa. And I laid there for like two hours, just like green in so much pain, just like waiting for them to wake up and see me there. And they did. And firemen carried me out of there and fucking took me to the hospital. You couldn't even walk? Oh, fuck, no, dude. It was fucking, my shit, like, my stuff inside of my intestines were leaking out into my abdomen, you know?

So it was just like all this shit, all these kind of chemical reactions are going on in your fucking stomach. It's wild. Yeah. So I went in there, they're like, you got a hole in you. We got to cut that out and sew you up. So they did that. And then that failed. Yeah.

So the first surgery failed. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And didn't the surgeon have experienced for like 20 plus years and said he, like, he never seen anything like this? Yeah. Yeah. What the hell? Yeah. So you had to go back into surgery.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. And it was, it was. Yeah. I mean, I don't want to dramatize the thing. It wasn't fun. I'll do it. It's fine.

Yeah. It was all in all. it was three months in the hospital. The craziest thing, the biggest mind fuck, was when you're healing a, oh God, what's it called? You're at heat, you're fucking, I don't know what's called. But when they reattach your intestine,

you're not allowed, that needs to rest for some time. You can't have an active bowel or intestine when you are when that is healing. So in order for that to shut down, you're not allowed to eat or drink anything until it does. So you get all your nutrition

and hydration through an IV. So for about two and a half months, I didn't eat or drink anything. No water? Nothing. I didn't swallow anything other than my own spit for two and a half months. I was fucking insane, man.

I share you, this sounds a little out there, but I really mean it. When I went to go drink water for the first time, I actually had the thought, like, am I going to remember how to swallow this? Like, am I going to fucking, I hope the muscle memory fucking kicks in because I can't, like, in my mind,

think about what it feels like to drink something because it's been so long. I almost forgot how to fucking swallow, dude. I can't even drink this water right now, dude. Yeah, it was wild. Was this the semi-beat? give you the infection? Oh, man.

There's lots of, yeah, there was, there was infection, there was a, a, God, what do they call it? I'm forgetting all the technical terms for this, but they, there's something that happens when they blow past a vein and IV. And what happens is rather than that fluid going into your vein and your bloodstream,

it starts going into your soft tissue. you, right? Because it's not actually, it's through the vein, not actually in it. You know what I mean? Oh. So what they did is they blew past my vein and didn't catch it for like two and a half days. And I'm so fucked up on the painkillers that they have me on.

I'm barely fucking conscious. And two days, about two days after I'm rigged up, I remember feeling like I went to go squeeze my hand. I'm like, I can't close my hand. Like, what's going on? It feels like I have like a, oven mid or something and I look down and I get my hand like closer to my eyes and I see that my hand is like twice the fucking size of my other hand my arm and hand were literally blowing up like a balloon like a water balloon I have uh somewhere like here do you see this little white part yep I have these all over my arm because this skin got so tight it was literally ripping open like this skin on top of my arm was like literally bursting at the seams because it was so low. full of fluid and somehow nobody caught it.

The nurse just didn't fucking see. No, no, no, no. The one nurse that ended up coming in when she found out about it was a nurse that I hadn't interacted with yet because needless to say, the nurse prior to her was dismissed from my care. Oh, wow. I don't know if she was like fired or something,

but she was a terrible look. Saw her again, but this woman was like, she actually leaned in and said, like, I'm not supposed to say this, but if this happened to me, I would sue. She was, like, encouraging me to sue the hospital. I, you know, I have my arm. I'm fine.

And actually, that's what's up. I think, uh, I think they, I think it was one of those like, all right, you survived. We, what, we fucking, let's just never say, let's just pretend this never happened. Clean slate with God right there. Amen. Yeah. And I never got a fucking bill from that hospital. Really?

Never got a bill. Oh, dude. Yeah. In the wild. That's wild, dude. And it kind of like worked out for it. Maybe like maybe like they knew. I think so.

And like, cause you, we, we can't charge this guy. I think so. And then he said, and he said he's not going to sue. Like everyone else will fucking sue us. I, I, I, what I, my, the story I tell myself is that they, they, it's very, in these situations, it's extremely dangerous. to admit fault for the hospital, to admit fault in any of those. It's extremely dangerous to allude to any of that or to apologize or anything like that.

So my theory is their way of taking accountability for that without putting them at severe legal risk. Unbelievable. Was just by not sending me a bill and hoping that I just like took the little wink and just went on with my life. And that's what I did. Wow. You know, so. Oh, that is fucking wild, dude. Yeah, I mean, that was supposed to be like quarter of a million dollars.

or something. That was like life-ending debt, you know. So I wouldn't be here with you if they had sent me that bill, that's for sure. Yeah. I'd be working in some fucking, I'd be fitting pipe with my stepdad somewhere in downtown Portland right now, you know. Yeah, but you could sue for more, though. And then they probably knew that.

I mean, it's great. That's a good point. And also we live in a crowd. We live in a world where people do kind of look for these, not handouts, but they kind of, they look for a way out. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, I mean, just not even, sometimes like just to lawyers alone,

because that's a whole business. Oh, yeah. So if a lawyer caught out or got a hold of you, oh, yeah. They're going to do everything in their power to convince me that I'm a victim. Exactly. That I need to. That's a whole business, dude.

Kyle, that takes a lot of integrity and character for you to realize what the situation was. It's rare, man. I appreciate it. I mean, rather than, I think this is actually a great way to circle back to my point about having a greater why. You know what I mean? Like rather than like my earlier example of rather than having to focus on having a hard,

making, making shit hard for yourself to grow, find something that's important and just let that pull you into uncomfortable situations. And I think for me in this situation, And maybe if I was the same person that I am now, but I had a job that I was stuck in, I didn't have the resources to do what I'm doing, whatever, whatever.

Maybe I would have sued if I didn't have anything better to do. You know what I mean? Maybe I would have done that, convinced myself that that was, uh, the thing that made me do the bigger thing, quote unquote, was my band.

I just had a bigger why. I had something to go do. I wasn't going to go miss a fucking tour because I had a court date to talk about how a nurse blew through, You know what I mean? Like, I got shit to do, man. You know, like, I'm not trying to sit around and schedule my band success around a lawsuit that'll take fucking nine years or something. Like, fuck that.

Fuck that, dude. Life is short. It's long sometimes, but it's too short for that. Yeah. So, well, essentially, you almost lost your right hand. Oh, yeah. It was very, very, very, I mean, the nurse that told me I should sue. I'll never forget.

She said there's about a 50-50 chance based on the fluids that we give people in these IVs, depending on what you needed, there's like a 50-50 chance that you would have lost your arm. You were on the right side of 50 that what the medicine you were getting was not necrotizing or whatever. Maybe that's not the. So she's like, you were very lucky that we didn't literally kill your arm and have to fucking cut it off. for an abdominal problem. You talk about bad luck, worst look, great look. What is that, dude?

Oh, that's funny. It's funny to say that. We have a thing. If you talk to Adam, I have the worst best luck. It's funny. We have never been able to understand how things that happen to the band and sometimes me tend to be unusually. unfortunate but then I somehow have this great fortune on the back end that gets me out of it alive. You know what I mean?

So it's like this weird, I don't know, the universe is giving me very confusing messages. Yeah. But I kind of, I kind of see it as, you know, with the path that I'm on and the music that I make and my personal disposition toward life, I think that maybe I've just been had been too successful at being the touring musician that gaslights himself into enjoying the suck, but I kind of see it. I'm almost grateful for it at this point of my life because it's, I know it kind of sounds like cliche and kind of like daddy, but dad-ish, not D-Y, pervert. It's all an opportunity to grow up, man. And for me, to take this band as far as I possibly can is always the goal.

And the best way to get there is to go to every gym that's available, you know, for the mind, for the body, for whatever. And I think having the universe, you know,

like with this bus shit, right, would have been great for that fuel line not to bust and us to not go fucking six grand in debt in the first week. week like that would have been great but what happened in the wake of that we proved to ourselves that we the shit can hit the fan that hard and we don't have to fall up we we we won't fall apart

we won't catastrophize in fact we'll um jump into proactive problem solving not miss a single show fucking i mean we proved a lot to ourselves through that um and when things run smooth I mean, like you asked me about the chain show. You were like, how was that having Adam Bennett? It wouldn't have felt that sweet if it weren't for all that fucking madness. You know what I mean? So in a way,

it all just kind of bounces itself out. You know what I mean? A weird way. It does. And having that, and the truth of the matter is, being kind of a man of extremes, I know that'll surprise everybody.

I'm very surprised. I actually prefer the kind of violent vacillation between like complete fucking like white knuckle fucking are we going to make it through this and like total indulgent decadence it's hard it's hard for us as creatives

and artists to have any kind of balanced middle ground you want this or you want the other side oh yeah oh yeah so you don't really want anything between this is kind of boring it's so fucking i mean that's why i can't that's why i can't do like uh mid pace, like, the music I listen to is either, like, the most extreme shit I can possibly find or, like, the most surrepy, upbeat, like, poppy shit, you know what I mean? Like, I just like those radical extremes, like, indie rock and stuff and, like, kind of stoner doom and shit.

Like, I can't get in it. Because it's just too, you know, down the middle, you know what I mean? It's down the middle. What are some poppy stuff that you're jamming? Oh, man. Gosh you boys? I'm a bad. I love me.

I'm team Backstreet over InSync for sure. Okay. They have the more talent. Of course, Justin is the standout. Of course. Yes. Don't come at me with that shit. We all know Justin's the guy.

But as far as the songs and the overall, the net amount of talent, I would say Backstreet Boys was this. I never thought about him that way. You're right. Net talent. Yeah. Huh. I think their songs were better. And I think guy to guy, they were, had stronger voices.

It's true, huh? Yeah. insane. Yeah, they were like a fucking band. And I don't think they were quite as like heart-throbby to the girls as in sync was, right? I think backstreet was a little like, I think so. I remember that. Yeah, because they didn't have like a Justin where he's obviously like, we all want him.

Even I wanted him. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Without knowing. Yeah, I can't eat top ramen without getting hard. You know what I mean? True. Because it's that hair, dude. The top ramen hair.

I see that hair and I'm just like, gets me going, brother. Yeah, with the, but. You're actually boys as more like a collective look. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There wasn't a, there was true.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's true. Dude, knowing the history between you and Adam, uh, because he's, I mean,

he's been with you for such a long time. I mean, he's been with you for like so many lows and in her lives. But kind of cool to like, see that like the, like knowing his, his shitty drive he made. And then,

uh, to see you guys, you make it apparent that, okay, I'm gonna walk over here and really connect with them. And he looks at you and then, and then just that thing. Knowing that,

back my house like that that's a fucking band dude it's cool that's awesome i appreciate yeah i mean that's cool man that's something that we um the first tour we ever did a guy that was on that that tour with us came up to us on the last day and he was like man i'm like i got to say i'm really envious of what you guys are doing and this was a guy in a band that was playing over us and i was like i don't know what you mean dude you're like out here doing the same thing he's like yeah but this isn't my band he's like these are these are you and your boys that made this happen from the beginning you know what i mean like you made the dream happen together it's not just like a a group of dudes that met on the internet that you know knew how to play the shit and

we took for granted how special that was you know less so now of course but i think we also took for granted that that's just kind of how most bands were you know we came from a our backgrounds, our relationship with bands, we always assumed that that was like, I think we watched probably too many episodes behind the music by VH1. You know what I mean? Like we had this crazy romantic idea

of what being in a band was like. It would be like bunch of brothers, like living together and like making the dream happen and being broke and like doing the thing. Yeah. You know, so that's, I think we tried to foster that kind of a environment. But with intimacy comes,

turbulence. So, like, you know, I think Adams quit the band three times. He did? Oh, yeah. Three times over the course of the band. What happened at third time? That was fairly recent, actually. Well, it was more to scare.

I'm an asshole. Yeah. No, I am. I'm working on it. You know, therapy is sick. But, yeah, I, I, when I get tunnel vision, especially with a creative project, I get kind of Bridezilla. Like I don't, I get, it's easy for me, unfortunately, to feel as though the, what is best for the project is the only thing that matter.

And I'm, I'm so busy subordinating, not just other people, myself, including, not that that's I just really I can be very unkind and unaware and and lack a lot of empathy when I when

when my creative dog has the bone in his mouth you know what I mean yeah so when we were this is actually was the catalyst for Stephen Ellis one of our guitar players that we have for several tours that actually helped with the new album this is what caused him to leave the band.

It was, we had like 12 hours to submit the final, uh, mixed notes for the new album. Mm-hmm. And, uh, I was fucking like,

like, you know, on very little sleep fucking, you know, all the having eaten, you know, all those little dark things are piling up. All the fucking dark stars are aligning,

you know? Yeah. And, uh, and we're at lunch. I, I like to say that, none of this would have happened if

if I just eaten that sandwich first before. Hey dude, there's something to do that. I mean, honestly, man. I'm not just, I'm not getting off, let myself off the hook. It's just a matter of the fact. It's a fact of the matter. Excuse me. There's something to do that, man. God, eat. If there's any advice,

I can give, I don't know if this is my camera. I don't know what's going on. Yeah, yeah. Eat before you try to problem solve. Eat before diplomacy. 100%. Do not fucking try to problem solve. or conflict to any kind of conflict resolution with low blood sugar. It's a fucking, it's driving 200 miles an hour without a fucking seatbelt on.

So, anyway, we were talking about shit that didn't even have to do with the band. It was something stupid. And I just snapped at Stephen. and it was public and I yelled and it was not something you do to someone you call your friend. You know what I mean? And that was kind of it. You know, he decided to leave the band thin. And I think, I might be sorry Adam and Stephen if I'm oversharing, but it's just kind of my, you know, I have to get, I don't want to speak for Adam, but I have to assume.

because that's when Adam was going to leave as well, even though I didn't direct that toward him. But I have directed that energy toward him in the past. And I think Adam is a much more, he's so much more aware of other people's. I think he's a much more empathetic person, like naturally than I am. I think I can intellectual, like in my head, I can think about, I care about this person as well, you know,

like I have all of these, values in my head. But there's something about Adam and people like him that they don't have to think about it. It just feel, you know, it's just like feel it. And I think, I have to guess it was very difficult for him to see me do that to someone else. And it was probably much easier for him to take it himself than it is to watch someone he cares about get that from me, you know? So I think that that was like, dude, you know, I just can't. At some point you have to choose between your dignity and your life's work.

And I think that was a big wake-up call for me. I was like, I made a dude that I've called my brother for years, like throw his life's work away because he couldn't figure out a way to pursue that and maintain his dignity. And I'm the reason for that. That's not a good feeling. You know what I mean? So, you know, I tried to humble myself a lot.

And it's all a work in progress. One step at a time, I'm still an asshole. You know what I mean? I still get angry. I still have a short few. When it happens, when you have like these blowups, which I know, I know what you mean. I've done the same thing. Do you find like when it happens again, it's a little bit less because you feel the emotion?

This is the same thing. I'm being a little bit better at controlling this. And then the next, you might be a little hiccup? Yeah. I don't say hiccup. It's a little bit, a lot more than a hiccup.

But then the next time it goes, it's a little bit lower. Yeah. Yeah. I, you know, we met in, in therapy, in therapy world, you measure that and time, time between kind of that,

that intoxicated, emotional, passionate, you know, little reservoir that all that stuff comes out of. And that sobering, coming down period where the guilt starts setting it. And you're like, you know what I mean, that part.

And the whole idea is being able to make that shorter and shorter and shorter and then also get comfortable enough with the guilt that you can overcome that guilt and own your shit and take accountability and apologize. You got it. I mean, so yes, in a way, if you are moving in the right direction, if you're choosing to move in the right direction, I agree that that, that, that, that, It gets shorter and shorter. As someone who did not choose to move in that direction for many, many years, it works in the opposite direction as well.

That if you are doubling down on that, it gets worse. It gets worse. And it gets easier to hold that position. And it gets easier to live with that guilt and shame because you start interpreting it as a different thing. Yeah. And you just lose touch with that thing. You kind of, you go blind. Oh, yeah.

I mean, people really don't understand how far. way we can be from one another you know like in here you know 100% it's crazy one I think you like really drive yourself crazy oh yeah you know yeah and uh yeah that you talk about guilt when you try to fix it what that exposes you're now you are now more vulnerable to guilt and guilt to me are demons and demons come up when there's a little little little failures awake awaken that guilt demon yeah and then it makes you feel it coming up here's that demon and wants to fucking start screaming. Yeah.

So just knowing, yeah, just working. But that's another reason why it's so important to befriend your demons because they're telling you something that you need to hear. They're telling you. Your teams are telling you something. You know, they're telling you something, even though it's uncomfortable. They're not your enemy.

They're telling you that that torment is pushing you in the direction of yourself, like your wellness, right? Like they would only be truly destructed, destructive demonic presence if they were pushing you in the direction of your of your of your destruction your annihilation and i they don't do that you know they say you're you you are better than this we're not going to love you where you're at right now that's what the angels do we're not going to love you for who you are right now we're going to love you for who we know we can be and we're going to love you up there and that means we're going to give you shit right here you know what i mean

until you're up there yeah and i think that's what if you learn to listen to the demons or your anxiety anxiety is another very powerful demon 100% that is telling you that kind of restless like I should be doing something I don't know what I fucking and then people want to take meds if they want to smoke weed about it they want to do whatever I'm not against medication I'm on medication but it's not people pathologize these dark things like anxiety's bad and that's not bad it's telling you you just have to engage in dialogue with it like what is it telling you you probably should be going to do something that you're not doing doing, you know? But unfortunately, we're all just kind of trained in a society that says

sit in front of the TV, work 40 hours a week, do that, you should be fine. And if that, if you're not satisfied with that, take pills about it. Buy more stuff about it. Yeah. Whatever. Yeah. Do you find that most people don't, they, they, they treat like the, the devil and demons as things that you should ignore as opposed to be friends with? Absolutely. Yeah. That's a big reason why I do what I do. You know, the music that I make is I think we're,

we're so dangerously unwhole as a, like, it's like the psychology of our society is so arrogantly separated ourselves from like this half of what we are, that's like shadow side of what we are. Yeah. And we push it onto each other or we push it on to band member, or we push it on to a band member or push it on to, Satan already push it on to whatever, you know?

It's like these ideas are just metaphors for the stuff that's in you. You know what I mean? Satan isn't out there. He's in there. You know, God's not out there. God's in there. 100%. I feel the same way.

So it's, and because that's all within you, there's, it's all, it's like organs in your body. You might not know what that thing does, but it knows what it does. And it's there for a reason. You know what I mean? And I think our emotions are. psychology there's a reason for all of that there's nothing you know whether you believe in god or you believe in the the kind of the super intellect of nature however you want to interpret it whatever it is um he it whatever is impressive enough that there isn't we're not 50% diseased

You know what I mean? Like we're whole, perfect, exactly what we're supposed to be. And that's the viciousness and the tenderness and all of that. And if you don't find, if you don't let those things touch and communicate with one another, that darkness is going to, it's going to get up through the cracks. It's going to make you do shit that you don't know what you're doing. You're fucking wondering why you keep fucking this person that doesn't treat you well. You wonder why you can't stop, why you can't.

You can't spend 30 minutes by yourself and the silence and the voice inside your own head. You know, all these different things that people just hide from because we don't have a place in our society to talk about. Because it's not of us. You would have to admit the dark little truth that all that stuff you hate out there is the calls coming from inside the house, baby mama. True. True, man. Yeah. So you've been going to therapy since 2010, right?

Yeah. Okay. What's your big takeaway from that? Like, what is like, it seems like it seems like it kind of helps you navigate a lot. Absolutely. I think it's really important. Thank you for asking that because this is something that is really important to me, especially with men. You know, a lot of my fans are disproportionately men and men that have a particular, I think have, I like to say that we preach what we need. We preach what we need. So, for instance, vitrial preaches, resilience, self-reliance, durability, a willingness to do things that might feel physically and morally uncomfortable. And I preach that because that's what I needed. I grew up in an environment where I was a very sensitive boy.

I'm still a very sensitive man. And I grew up in an environment where there was a lot of profound emotional pain that I could not escape from. You know, when you're a kid, you can't really decide where you are, you know? So when you're in a situation where you can't leave, you, let me see me. My way of surviving that environment was to give myself, permission to hate people that I very desperately wanted to love. You know, there are people in your life that when you're young, you just have this natural, you know, instinctive love for.

And if those people aren't loving you, like, you have a choice to be, to kind of have your light swallowed up by those people because you can't stop expecting. something from them that's not coming or you try to protect that by hardening yourself to the circumstances you know and it's not it's not ideal you know there's no life is full of lesser evils you know what i mean but learning to let those demons protect me in a way letting a kind of indignation, almost like a self-righteousness in the face of people that were like failing me, that saved my life. You know, it kept me strong enough to walk away from people that the angels in me never would have allowed me to walk away from.

You know, and in that way, like, my devil's earned my loyalty through that. You know what I mean? And it's not that I don't value the other stuff. It's just it's not hard to value that. We live in a world that puts too much emphasis on valuing all of that stuff. I think we, as a corrective measure, getting more into that, befriending the wolf. You know what I mean? In you.

And to use wolf as an example, I think a dog is a great, a great, poster child for what nature is supposed to be. I mean, a dog is, when the time is right, it's perfectly tender and innocent and playful and loving. And in the right instance,

it's extremely vicious, very defensive, has its boundaries. We'll let you know if it does, you know what I mean? And that's perfect. That's a perfect creature living in its wholeness. And it balance. and we have just muzzled

ourselves and put you know just pulled all the claws out of her paws and ripped the fucking canines out of her mouth you know what I mean? It's like I understand that that makes building a company

and filling cubicles with people easier because there'd be more conflict if people had, I don't know, a fucking spine. You know what I mean? Like it would be hard to run things if people had strong values. I understand that.

But, oh, that's why maybe we shouldn't be running things this way. Anyway. Thank you for sharing that, man. Yeah, thanks for the opportunity. Oh, sorry,

I wanted to say something about the therapy. I think it somehow got off track, but a point that I want to make about the therapy is that even guys that I have close relationships with the really thoughtful, like, uh, in, touch with their feelings kind of guys. I, that aren't that are, I guess, against therapy.

Um, and I think it stems from a fundamental misunderstanding of what therapy is supposed to be. You know, I, I've heard the same account from a few people where they're like, man, I saw a therapist for a little bit and they didn't tell me shit. Like they didn't give me, they didn't tell me what I should be doing or what I shouldn't be doing. Da, da, da, da, da, da. They just were like asked me fucking questions.

And I'm like, well, you're looking for a life coach. I'm looking for a therapist. A therapist. And it's funny that the same guys that are usually talking shit about therapy because it's like, oh, I don't fucking need someone to tell me. Probably the ones I need to go. Yeah. And there are whole things, I don't need people to tell me what to do. And then they go and they're mad that someone's not telling them what to do.

You know what I mean? It's like, come on. dude. So therapy, a good therapist is going to be like a really great partner in Marco Polo. You know, that game in the pool, Marco, Polo. They should very gently kind of shepherd you in the right direction. But the problem is, nobody knows what's right for you other than you. And a good therapist knows that.

I would say if a therapist, if the first, the thing that I would get from a therapist that would make me run as fast as I can in the opposite direction is if they tried to give me like actionable advice on like how to solve a complex problem. Like, oh, you should tell this person that and you should do. No, no, no, no.

You don't know that person. You don't know me. You don't know the dentist. So a good, wise therapist is going to basically be a, maybe a referee and a internal dialogue, right? They're basically helping you have a very effective conversation with yourself. And they help you get around walls that are uncomfortable, right?

That you wouldn't allow yourself to go because you've built all of these things in your ego, all these protective walls that prevent you from getting through. They have the ability sometimes, if they're good, to, and compatible. It's not just a matter of quality. to help you get closer and closer that voice that polo from behind that wall is going to help you find your way out of the corn maze, so to speak. But you, they don't know where you are. They don't know where you are. They don't know where you're stuck.

They have an idea, but they're just going to give you the right environment to come to that conclusion yourself. And if you approach therapy from that, standpoint and you do it with intention people it's not just an issue with therapy just people are to fix it you know what I mean people just come to

to professionally say this hurts fix it fix this for me no one's saving your ass dude no one's fixing you fucking trust me I spent three months in a hospital even even medical doctors ain't fucking saving you every time you know what I mean it's it's

if you're unhappy with therapy It's probably because you don't know what therapy should be. Or you have a shitty therapist. Shitty therapists exist. Shitty girlfriends exist. Shitty girlfriends exist. Shitty mechanics exist. shitty presidents exist.

shitty fucking airline pilots. Shitty guitar players. I'm right here, baby. Come on. You know, we all. So it is what, you know, you can't glorify qualifications too much. You know, we're all fallible.

But, again, just like a great partner in life. is very powerful and real. A good therapist is powerful and real. You know, I went through. This is my third one. I'm on. Third. Yeah.

Yeah. So I've, I've overheard. I've seen two therapists. I've overheard like you need to keep like, you kind of keep, sometimes you don't have the first thing kind of keep to keep looking.

And it's not exactly uncommon to skip the first, the second, even the third and keep this. Yeah, yeah, not at all. It's the same thing with dating, man. You wouldn't expect to just see one girl.

Oh, here we go. I'm getting married. Yeah, exactly. That's insane. Like, when you think of it that way, that sounds insane. Totally. But people just have this bizarre programmed idea of a therapist being like a doctor that they can like put an x-ray on you and be like, oh, this is. That's no. That's not what it is, you know.

But it is, it's good news that it is because you know what that says about the human mind is no one can really, no one's in charge. of you. No one can get in there and tell you what to do and fucking make you do. That's a beautiful thing. We can't be controlled, you know. They can help you. We can let ourselves be controlled, but we have to give someone that power. You know what I mean? And a good therapist will give you the, we'll have that respect for the individual experience that they're not going to want to insert themselves into it. A good therapist should be invisible. A good therapist.

should almost just be like a really great voice in your head that says that will ask again, ask the right questions, you know, they not really provide answers because the answers come from you. They ask the right question. And that's half of the battle, you know, it's just finding the right question. And if you can chew on that enough, if that question makes you feel shitty, that's a good sign. Yeah. You know, like if the shitty or the question makes you feel that shame and guilt you're talking

about. Yeah. Go there. Go into that place. Find the shittiest, most uncomfortable thing. And the more you can, it releases you. Go there and write. Go to go to that place. I don't want to go and write a record. Exactly. Yeah. So when you were, so you were in the hospital, but even when you got there, like the EP was already written and the first record was already written too, right? Most of it. Okay. Yes. I wrote three. songs, I believe. Yes. Yeah, I wrote three songs after the hospital.

So it was already kind of done. So you really couldn't put in your experience and what, and what happened to you until the record that just came out. Yeah. Correct? Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. Yeah.

And, you know, the more I make music, the more I create, the more I appreciate that I'm not really in charge of what I put into the music. You know what I mean? It's like, you know, I could come home to the music. the odds people will be like, I'm going to write a song about that. But it's, it's, I don't want to get too, like, wooey. Let's get wooey. I think music, good, I think good art in general is like, you know, I was talking about the demons earlier that love you where you're, where you can be, not where you're at.

I think art, this is why art is kind of almost like borderline blasphemous throughout religious history. Of course, not if it's devotive. emotional art, but because there's something hedonistic about it. You know, there's something, um, almost self-aggrandizing about it because if you're doing it well, it's almost like your future self pulling you. It's like when I, when I make music, I feel like I understand it more after a bit of time. It's almost like it was something from the future that was almost like looking to a crystal ball or something and it gives you sign you're like oh I'm gonna move toward that and you'd

fucking pop another crystal ball way down the road I'm gonna move toward that you know and it's like and because it's kind of subconscious and from the feel like I try not to get too heady that sounds weird because our music sounds really like you know complex but I have a dual layered approach when writing our music because I want to make sure everything's coming from a really like almost meditative and subconscious place. So it's really like, I don't know, real. I want the limbic system of my brain to make my music.

I don't want like the frontal cortex to be making it. Yeah. Or the frontal lobe do you make it? And so when I write foundations to songs, it's just very like, I'm not in my head. I'm just kind of like trying to feel the things that I feel and just get them down there.

And then when the vibe is like saying the right thing, that's when I go in. put all the like me stuff in there you know i get all front lobe on it and fucking do all the fucking okay i'm gonna make this note do that yeah so it's like this layer of something like really primal like something very like not understood with a bunch of like understood stuff on top of it kind of um that's sick dude thank you and so in that way i don't really um i don't have control over what i feel you know what i mean uh to to an extent you know what i mean we can choose what to do in response to those feelings, but I don't think we can really choose in the moment,

oh, am I going to be happy about this? Try to be happy about something you're not happy about, you know, good luck. So in that way, I can't really decide what I put into the records because I always want the records to be coming from an honest place. If they're coming from an honest place, they have to be what I'm feeling in the moment, and I can't control what I'm feeling. So all roads lead to a complete lack of control. No, totally, man.

Speaking of out of control, your pedal board is out of control. Was it your demons or your therapist that helped you make this board? I think they would all discourage again. I don't think anyone would have encouraged me to do it. Anyone that cares about me would not have encouraged this. But this thing, okay, so for those of you, listening on Spotify or Apple, this thing is bigger than me. It's 43 inches by 16.5.

It has 33 total pedals on it. 33. It has three power. supplies. Okay. It has, man, it has two

reorderable loopers. So this guy here, is this cool? Should I just, like, run it down a little bit? Is it cool?

Yeah, sure. Let's do it. So this is this boss ES8. It's a loop switcher and a MIDI controller. So in this device,

there's eight separate loops, six mono loops, and two stereo loops. The first six monolubes, are completely reorderable by patch. So if you want to, let's say, for instance, put a chorus in front of your delay, you can have that in one patch.

And if you want to hit another patch and the delays in front of your chorus, you can do that. So it'll reorder the pedals within the thing. I also have... So this has eight... Sorry, pedals housed in it. This ends up talking to this,

which is... The Morningstar ML10X. It is a fully reorderable, a stereo loop switcher. So I have five stereo pedals in there. Again, order them however you want. I have my preamps, like my main amp tone. Yeah. In there.

And what's really cool is I have my flanger. I have my chorus. Excuse me stereo flanger. My stereo chorus. My EQ, stereo EQ. We got, what else we got in there? the effects loop on my even tied to H90. So what I'm what I can do with this is put my preamp, right?

So if you're running effects into the preamp, it's kind of like running straight into a head, right? And if you run them after your preamp, it's the same as running them in the effects loop. Okay. So just by programming this, I can decide to run any of my effects in front of the amp or in the effects loop. That's fucking sick. Yeah. So I can switch it. If I want that really abrasive, like, chorus straight in or a flander straight in, like, an Eddie Van Halen kind of thing, I can do that.

And then for the next patch, if I want to go to a clean and have a chorus, like, after, so it's really, like, saturated and, like, I can do that. So it just gives me a world of flexibility. You wanted everything. I wanted everything. Well, a big mission statement was in a world of. Well, that's always great. That's a given. then. But, no, it's definitely for me. Not, but, but it's, you know, I, rather than it being like a protest against, like, the all in ones, like, I think the neural quad cortex is a great product. I think the Axebex is a great product. I think the Kemper's a great product. I like pedals a lot. I have, there are reasons for liking pedals. And what I want to do just kind of as a passion project was build a pedal board that can do everything, one of the ones.

of those all in one boxes can do and more. So, um, you know, I'm almost there. I don't have a looper on here and I don't have an IR loader on here yet, but that will come. And then once I'm there, this, this board can do everything. Um, another board can do. So what's your, what's your main, even like you explaining your main rhythm tone. Like what, like, what is that? So that Chess, you're fucking, is it this the main tone? I'm playing. Yeah.

I'm not doing anything else. The core tone, again, it's a, I'm not sure if I mentioned this yet, but it's a full stereo pedal board. And I even made my amp set up stereo. So, for the listeners or viewers that aren't familiar with my band or are familiar with my band and haven't seen us on this tour, we have, for several years, been a four piece with another guitar player.

And we have recently gone back to the beginning stages of itrial. We've always been a three piece creatively in the studio, all that. And after the last guitar player we worked with, he was great. It just wasn't a great fit. It was amicable. We both felt similarly. After that, you know, Matt and Adam and myself, got together and kind of had a powwow and we're like,

they brought it up doing a three piece. And I'm like, man, you know what? I haven't really thought about that. And while I was committed to the idea for another guitar player because I knew the interplay between the two guitars were so important to our music. And I didn't have either the funds or the technological know-how to make that work, you know, like somehow create that dimension of a guitar player. So I was like, man, you know, I'm much more proficient with that.

stuff now, I wonder what I could do. And so I started thinking about a big giant stereo pedal board and what I could do to make the most out of that stereo field. And hopefully, with the end result of actually sounding larger than we did as a four piece, that was my ambitious goal. I want to sound even more full as one guitar player than I did than we did with two. So the first step for me was creating, effectively running two amps, two separate amps, one on stage left, one on stage right. Yes. So the heart core of my tone, on stage right, we have the Natas distortion by Fortin.

They're my favorite amp company. I'm fortunate enough to work with them. That thing, you get that, and the Seymour Duncan Power Stage or anything like that, you're good to go, man. That thing is fucking rips. For the other side, just to, you know, some people might. wonder why not just run two natos or or one uh i've been run at mona into your stereo chain again i just wanted the variety i wanted that did you know i want to sound like two guitar players with their own rigs

you know what i mean because most of the time when you're playing in a band your two guitar players aren't running the same exact year they're not running the same exact pedals not running the same exact amps sure so i wanted to create that sense um so on stage left we have this freedman pedal which is fucking awesome. It's called the IRX. I'm a big, I just like high gain, modern British, like marshaly kind of sounds. Yeah. And Fortin and Friedman are both very

good at that. The Friedman isn't quite as modern and high gain, but it gets plenty there, especially with a boost. This thing's cool. It has two 12AX7 pre-empt tubes in it. So it's... There's tubes in that pedal. Yes, tubes in the pedal, yeah.

It has two channels, uh, individual boost settings for each channel. It has IRs built into it. You can, you can, I'm bypassing them for running just straight into a power amp, but there's even a headphone out on that thing. So you can use it as like a practice

amp. Oh, cool. It's wild. It's such a cool pedal. That's dope. And it sounds sick. So that's like, those are my, you can think of those, my two heads, right? And then in front of those, this is my, this is the boost that I swear by. This is called the burning spirit by a company called Lone Wolf Audio. They're called Void Manufacturing now. But this is a really interesting pedal,

and I have a difficult time describing it to people because Joe at Lonewolf is always innovating, and he observed something that metal guys have been doing forever, which is putting up like a tube screamer in front of your high-gain amp. Right. You crank that level. You bring the gain down. Keep the kind of what I'm doing here with a screamer.

You know, max level, drive down, tone kind of at noon. This gives you that little bit of like, that compression that kind of fills in the gaps, makes it more saturated, gives you a low end cut, all that. But the reality is that's not what these things were intended to do. You know, that's not what an overdrive pedal is designed to do. Oh, yeah. So why have people been using a pedal

outside of its application for 30 fucking years when no one has tried to build something specifically to do that job. Oh, wow. So Joe designed this pedal. And I think, you know, I've had people actually reach out to me that have tried it and be like,

oh, what am I supposed to do with it? Because it's a unique thing. It doesn't have drive in it like an overdrive would. But most metal players don't want that. they're turning the gain all the way down. All they're trying to do is give it that kind of harmonic excitement, you know, when you turn on a tube screamer and your squeals are way squealier, you know what I mean? Like that's what you want.

You want those gaps filled in, but you don't want to lose the dynamic. You don't want all of that low end cut off. A little bit's nice for a metal guy, a little bit of low and cut, but not fucking like, put an Ibanez tube screamer in front of a mesa, excuse me. They were kind of mesa because mesas have huge ass ends on them. So the cut is actually kind of tasteful on those. But if you put a tube screen in front of like a J.CM800, it's true.

Yeah, it's not. It turns into a box of bees, you know what I mean? You don't want that. So the burning spirit, what it does is it is that provides that harmonic excitement. You get those squeals, but it doesn't add noise. It doesn't cut your low end off at all. And it has this grip, knob, which if anybody's ever used

the B-E-O-D by Friedman, it has a tightness knob on it. That's a secret weapon. And it just fucking, for metal guys, those chunks, you know, like it just makes us so tight. And that's what these do. You'll notice my grip is pretty high on both of these. And when we get to fucking showin some tones, I can demonstrate them on and off. But

it's, they're subtle, but they're supposed to be subtle. You know what I mean? Like, you should be getting most of the tone you're happy with from your amps, right? Yeah, that's true. I just kind of think of these as like, I don't know, like it just kind of pre-masters your guitar signal or something. It just gives it more fidelity and more responsive. Nice.

So that's, oh, actually, and the main, this year, the mimic. The doubler, dude. The doubler, that, it plays a huge role in my live tone. Um, that's what, that's the difference between making it sound like, um, uh, you know, one guitar player playing through two amps and sounding like two guitar players. Wow. It's crazy. Uh, it's a very underappreciated pedal. I think it's because it's application is fairly niche. Like if you're not a one guitar, if you're not the only guitar player in your band, it's kind of useless. You know what I mean? Like the only, it's not going to be cool with another guitar. harpler, it doesn't sound, it does something when you're running up mono. Like if you run it mono in your rig, like

maybe in the, like right in front of the amp for like a solo or something, it'll add a little bit of like dimension. But this thing really shines when you run a mono signal into it and you split it stereo out to two other things because then it sends the main

unaffected signal to one side and then the affected signal to the other side. So what really gives you these two independent. Like what's like a, what, what do you hear when it's? It's hard to describe. You know, when you're like, I would compare it to like, it's, it's the difference between I keep trying to find words that aren't stereo because there's like, of course,

if you have a stereo signal, it's stereo, but it still feels and sounds almost like a dual mono you know what I mean when you have one guitar player going and still just kind of even even if the textures are slightly different just feels like the same image coming through okay and when you turn that on it completely carves out the stereo dynamic like it feels like it's in the center and just explodes out on either side um but it doesn't add any kind of like it doesn't add any color or tone it's not like a delay it's not um yeah Very subtle. I can might plug down. Yeah, I can show you.

Is it time to hear this thing, dude? We can, yeah. You just, oh yeah, there it is. Oh, sweet. It goes under your asshole. Yeah, always. That's where I keep it. That's a good place for.

That's where I keep them. Okay, so this is, this is without the mimic on. Right, this is with the mimic on. Wow. Off. Whoa. On. That's sick.

I'm going to kick out Mark. Yeah. I'm going to kick out Mark. Sorry, Mark. Love you, brother. Yeah, dude. I mean, it's insane. It makes such a shocking difference.

It sounds like the two guitar players. Right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it doesn't sound artificial at all. Oh, dude. It's really cool because, yeah, obviously we're both bringing headphones. So it's going in stereo in our head. Yeah. So you we could really hear it. Yeah. Yeah. And think about that translated through two full stacks like like you know 30 feet away from each other on stage, you know, so it makes a really big difference in a live setting for sure. So what are you doing here? Because I want to this riff, dude. Oh, I hope I know. Oh, cool. This sounds like you were really high and like. I was very high when I was writing this album. We were.

Really? Oh, yeah. Oh, wow. Okay. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Because the next part that, that, uh, comes in, you're like, what is he doing, dude? Yeah, what, yeah, what, yeah, what? Yeah, so, so when it kicks in, what are you doing there? So, I am, um, have the volume kind of low. Because it's, because you're doing, like, the way, like, you're, it looks like you're tapping and you have, like, the whammy bar going. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I'm, it's these notes. Okay. Let's, uh, let's get a sick. That's sick. It's on there.

It's basically. I'm just doing this while working the whammy bar so for the intro I just did that slightly rolled off in the volume so it kind of has that frail kind of you know not

fully gassed sound and then I'm using a what did I use to get that kind of bro? I told I think Dave maybe found the filter for that but I uh Dave Otero who did our record I was like I wanted to sound like an old broken jewelry box

that was the idea you know like a little ballerina twirling around the fucking you know that's a good a good analogy that was kind of the vibe

what's up what's the open part uh which open part uh like uh what's like what's like Adam ringing out on oh shit dude it's like

it's like so it sounds like deep flat It's whatever you want. Whatever you live. That sounds like, that part is really cool. Yeah, it's fun. It was nerve wrecking because I'm like, man.

Were you just like... Hitting those notes while fucking rocking this. Because I thought you were initially tapping because you were like way up on like the neck. But it makes sense good because you're on the bar. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I do a little like pull off, hammer on pull up and nothing, nothing tapy until I get to the, you know, the really noodley section at the end. Wow.

that is nuts dude thank you okay I got two more riffs dude yes this three minutes in dude this part is I'm like what is he playing here this is where it starts there dude it's funny you picked one of the only songs

we haven't learned like learned oh yeah from the new record because that whole section is by like a minute long where it's it just sounds like a it's not a whammy it's not like a like the higher stuff like this like this fucking K.R

So a reoccurring theme on this record, I used a lot of, like, drone notes. So like, so I'm letting that B stay open while I'm like, so this is the same note. This is the same B. Different strings. Yeah. So I keep this being rocking. And it just gives you this cool, like, bed to create dissonant shit off of, to create, like, tension, um, rather than doing it on two sides.

So on that, that, that's, that's somewhere, it's that technique somewhere. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Fuck, where is it? I fucking. I don't know. I was too high.

I do you use that for the next record. Do you think you like that? I'm kind of embarrassed to show it to you. It might be hit, dude. I was a little unsure, but. If we're If we're doing that, can I,

I want your opinion on one more here. Okay. There's a, okay, one. Okay. What do you think? Is that the most

wrong played riff of all time? Yeah, I mean, I'm sure I'm doing it. Because I heard, I heard of Richard Blackmore talk about it, how he,

he plucks. I mean, you could find the interview somewhere if you want, you want to question to me, but I find an interview where he talks about it. Like,

no one plays it right. He like, he like, plucks, it. I think he did like this. Oh, cool. That makes sense. And he said because he was lazy.

So he plucked it. Yeah, that explains why he got that cool, like, explosive fuzzy, like that fuzz tone on it. That actually makes sense. That's awesome. I learned something new today. Yeah, see. I was like, oh, you plucked that riff and everyone plays it wrong? I love smoke on the water lore. Oh, dude, totally, yeah.

Totally. And one more, like, there was, there's a riff on the new, record where it's it comes in clean and then the blast comes in and you're so playing and clean your riff but what like what is that? Thank you. Um, that is, I love that part. Um, that was a big, that was a tough sell kind of for the guys. They weren't sure about that one.

Yeah. How do you, because you have, you kind of have to play it first. Yeah. It's hard to kind of imagine. Oh, hey, hey, hey, imagine this item. I'm going to do a clean part and then mouse going to blast. Yeah. And you know what, do you just fucking accept it?

Yeah. That's it. Yeah, it has a... It's a hard sell. Yeah, it's a hard sell. Yeah, I think you really have to it. But once, you know, once it came, the idea came to fruition, everyone was really excited about it. So, yeah, I just had a...

Blastbeats have a really... Strong potential to be really, like, beautiful, in my opinion. Like, there's something very meditative and driving and almost, like, can be soothing about a blast beat. not necessarily aggressive, almost like a, just kind of like a metronome, a musical one. And, yeah, I just had that idea to be able to try to create a, this almost like heavenly, like, to try to make blast beats sound beautiful.

That was my goal, basically. So I have, and in terms of what's going on with the pedal board, we now bypass the Fortin and the Friedman, and I'm getting my claims out of this pedal called the ACS1 by Walrus Audio. Walrus is one of my absolute favorite companies. This is a amp modeler, IR loader, all in one. I got it because two of the three amp models,

One is a Vox AC30. They don't call it that, of course, but it's based on that. And then the other is I think a Finder Princeton, if not a deluxe reverb, one of them. So really nice cleans. So I got that. What's cool about this pedal is you can run these amps in stereo. So I can have my AC30 on one side and my fender on the other side. So I'm basically doing the same thing I'm doing with my high-gain preamps.

and that runs into the D1 and the R1 pedals again by Walrus. This is a delay box as five different delay algorithms. The R1, same but reverb. And that with my Klein, my compressor by Michael Klein. Michael Klein, shout out. A wizard.

He's the fucking man, dude. Thank you, Michael. Pedal Ninja for sure, dude. We've been talking about doing shit, building something together for a couple of years. and I think, you know, just inspiration didn't strike for either of us for anything. And then when I knew I was putting this thing together, I was like, I went hit at Michael for something. So what's a blind spot?

What's one thing that I'm having a hard time filling? Compressor. They don't really make compressors with metal guys in mind. Traditionally, how compressors work. They operate by raising the noise floor. So they're making the quiet stuff louder. but the quiet stuff in a metal amp is also a lot of noise, right? A lot of like gain and like distortion.

So a lot of times what happens, if you want to run a compressor in the effects loop or in front of your, always in front of your amp, you go put one of these in front of a fucking 50150 and it's like a kill my ears button. You push it and just goes like, because it takes all of that low.

almost subharmonic noise and just fucking throws it up and it just makes it noisy anyway so i came to michael klein and i was like hey man can you design me a really nice open sounding compressor that that can work with really high gain you know and he's like yeah i'm on it so it uh great it's it's working out incredibly i'm using it for my solos on this tour and very very happy with it anyway That's the chain for the clean. And this sounds great. And then the next one engages a boost on the ACS one. Part gets super like, it kind of has like this, like, oh, I'm, we're, like, we're here.

This is actually a really good example of the drone note, like what I'm using to create that kind of, like, manic. Like, I'm having a panic attack kind of vibe. I'm having a panic attack right now here. I'm ripping. When you do those, like, chaos chords. It sounds When you listen to your record It sounds like you have like a pedal in front of it

I was like Is he has an effect Every time he does those high fucking crazy Like chaos chords Or no No I just You know

Fortunate enough to be able to make those noises But I had a I had a really cool comp A guy at one of my shows The other day What was it? I have a solo On the record

on the first record on a song called I Drown Nightly and it ends with this thing that goes like you know that kind of stuff and he was like it reminds me of what I don't know what their name is but there's like there's a Gomorra or something

like the three-headed dragon from Godzilla they're like whenever they're like that's what that sounds like to me I'm sick as fuck Yeah, if a... Holy crap, dude, if a cool guitar technique can sound like a giant fictional three-headed dragon, I'm stoked. Dude, it sounds like something.

Sounds like someone's like about... If someone's about to kill me, that's probably what my... That's probably what's going to happen is on my body. That's awesome. You know, it's probably it. Yeah. And then I do a lot of pitch shifting on the new record, so I have the G-sharp. And then I have the main.

Oh, shit. And I have different EQ settings for those. So when you see like on that pedal, you know, it's when I go to this, you see more of a scooped. It's like whenever you open that thing up, it feels like you're opening up their fridge to get a snack. I need to get a little, you know what's funny that you say that? Because when you made a little snack real quick. Adam and I have been joking about how we can make this more of like a cartoon. And I'm like, yeah, I need to put like a coffee maker on this thing.

I need to fucking get a little mini fridge where we can put a single can of soda on this thing or something. Something, dude. And that would be really funny. Duke, Kyle, thank you for playing for us. I was just like, I'm like, how is this going to turn out? You know, but hearing this in my headphones and it's a, it's honor to be in front of you actually, you know, playing. Thank you. Yeah.

I mean, you know, you get what you get. I didn't have a lot of time to warm up. But it was, yeah, it was fine. No, no warm up. All soul. Thank you, man. Oh, what's up? I have a heavy question for you.

What's like, what was it like because you were addicted to pills, right? Oh, yeah. Opiates. Big time, baby. So you were, not to call you a cliche, but it's very common with someone who has surgery. Oh, yeah. And they get hooked on the opiates. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

How did you kick that? Just extreme dissatisfaction. Listen to my demons. You know, my demons were like. You know, call me every name in the book. Oh, yeah. Well, yeah. I mean, there are those, those petty demons, but they're better demons that say,

that are telling you all the things that are difficult to hear, but that are true. Like, you are fucking failing yourself. You were failing everybody who's ever cared about you. You're failing. And it's easy to, I don't know, especially when you're feeling sorry for yourself, or you got a good reason. It feels, whatever, whatever. You know, it's hard to listen to those things.

For me, for better or worse, I've always had a very easy, like a direct line to that voice that's saying, you're not doing what you should be fucking do. And so that, it was interesting, man. When I started getting addicted, I knew it was happening. Like, I knew, I saw it coming. And I'm like, I'm slipping into this. I'm in a situation where I can't really function without the pills because I was in such severe pain. was no way to manage the pain of the surgery or that post whatever post-op stuff. So I'm like, okay, these are kind of with me for the moment and this is going in a direction.

It's a whole thing. We're going to see how this works out. You know, and I made a rule to myself right then and there. It's funny that you say sell your guitars. I made a rule to myself that no matter what happens, I would not sell my guitars. would not lose my house. Those are my two rules to myself. You can't get rid of your guitars for drugs.

And you can't lose your house. And then, you know, about three months, six, four months, five maybe of active every day, 300, 350 milligrams oxy a day, like a lot. It finally got to that point where it was like, okay, you either sell your shit and keep this going. Or you fucking say it was fun. Let's go back to brutal grinding sobriety. So it was that, man. It was a wild fucking.

It was, I didn't want to cold turkey the thing. But I went to the woman that I was the pain specialist that I was seeing. And I was very open with my surgeon and my pain specialist. I'm like, I'm getting addicted to these. These are becoming a problem. Like we need to fucking, you know, figure something out. Unfortunately, in this day and age, addiction is such a liability for health providers because they can have their license taken away if it's deemed that they were in any way

contributed to the addictive status of the person. So I noticed something, probably the most heartbreaking thing, the most alienating experience was the second you become an addict, People won't even look you in the eyes anymore. They won't listen to you. They don't like, and I was a guy who did, who was stone cold sober until I was 28 years old. I fucked around with shit when I was really young

because that's just the environment I grew up in. But that's also kind of what led me to sobriety. It was like very early experimentation with this stuff and seeing what it did to my family, you know, Boots killed my dad, who's killed his dad, pills killed my mama, you know, the whole thing.

It's like, and to be addicted to pills almost at 30 after seeing it take my mom out was tough. Like talk about self-loaf. thing, you know what I mean? You know, so anyway, I digress. Going back into the story of it, I went in and I was like, you know, I'm done. I scored the last bit. I'm going to score on street.

Like, I don't even have any more money to buy it. I'm out of methadone. I'm out of my methadone prescription. I was like near the end of it, I was double fisting oxyamethone to stretch it out. and she was like, we just don't have a bed for you. You know, it's going to be at least until next week.

And I'm like, I can't do this for another week. I can't be addicted. I can't be putting it. I was so done. It's hard to describe. I was just at a place where I was just like, fucking,

I'm either going to die or I'm going to get sober. Like, there's no other. Like, I'm fucking done, you know. And so I'm like, I'm going to go,

I had my fucking, one of the most humbling experience in my life. At that point, I felt like I was a kind of person that could, kind of do anything and uh man nothing makes you feel five inches tall like coming down off of an opiate addiction man i was crying for my mother like literally just like i was like thought i was in hell it was like i didn't sleep for eight days when i when i say don't sleep i don't mean like i nodded off a couple times nothing not one minute of rim just pure fucking

violent consciousness for like eight days straight. My sister's a nurse. She's begging me to go to the hospital. She's like, you're going to go crazy. Like psychosis sits in after like three days. And I started, I should, you know, I was seeing like race cars driving around the walls and stuff. The last day, I was, I was like, right.

This sounds very dramatic, but it is what it is. It's just the truth. I was, you know, writing a whole suicide note in my head because I really, I honestly, I honestly did not think I. ever sleep again. I honestly thought I fried that part of my brain that could sleep and I was never going to sleep again and that was so terrifying being up for eight days not being able to sleep. Oh my God, dude. And something very strange happened on that eighth day. I got this bizarre surge of energy and I guess it was kind of wigging my girlfriend out of the time because I

I guess there's this phenomenon where you shortly before someone dies, this can happen. They get this like big burst of optimism and energy and stuff. And she's like, this is freaking me out. You shouldn't be this energetic. And I'm like, fucking, I'm going to capitalize on this. We're going to do this shit. So we're like, went to Dave and Busters. I should have.

I'm on eight days and I'm sleeping. I'm like, let's go to Dave and Busters. Great idea, man. So we go to Dave and Busters, of course. And I'm driving, we're driving back from Dave and Busters after spending a couple hours there. and I have a I have an old I drive an old Trans Am at home and a guy in a Harley pulled up next to the Tranzaam

and was like you guys going to see Allison Chains tonight Allison Chains was like was my mom's favorite fucking band and it's like a big favorite of mine I'm like what are the fucking odds dude I was like feeling real close to my mother at that time because I was like flirting with death you know what I mean?

So I was like that was almost like a sign to me you know what I mean? I'm like I'm going to that fucking show and my girlfriend had to work that night so she didn't get to go but I drop her off I drive out to Washington to go see all's and chains I pull up my credit card

because I you know at this point I'm not even thinking about having to pay shit off so I'm just like give me the sick as fucking seat that you have I want front row like I want as close to the front as you can I don't give a fuck how much cost just put it on there and man I went in there my mom was a big Pepsi head so I like

bought like six cans of Pepsi and I just sat by myself the front road. I like slammed Pepsi and watched Alice and Shains on eight days of no sleep. And it was like, it was religious experience. You know, I was like, I was so fucking out of my head. I was almost in like a fucking, it was almost like an out of body experience, man. Even thinking back to it almost feels like a dream. And I was going to drive back home.

I was living in Seattle at the time. I was like, I got to get back up there. I don't know why. That was in my head And my girlfriend was begging me Just fucking don't Please don't drive to Washington Please come back to Portland

I'm like no I'm gonna go And I drive I'm going north For a minute And then I look at the exit signs And I'm going south Like I swore I was going north And I ended up going south

And I took that as a sign I was like There's no Something whether it's my subconscious Or whatever I was like Something was saying Don't go to Washington

Go home So I did and I slept that night for the first time in eight days and that's kind of when it all turn around it didn't get easy but that's when

you know that's when I knew I was going to survive it you know but I would say I've said I've told people you know even with three months in the hospital

no food no water I would do that eight more times before I did that one more time those eight days there's never been, man, I, that was a situation that made me feel like, you know, maybe, maybe it's not always the case that what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Because if this is making me stronger, it's far down the road. You know what I mean?

Because that, that took chunks out of me. That took fucking, I still, I'm still fucked up from like PTSD from that shit, the fucking weird ghouls and goblins and anxieties and fucking weird fucking, like, like, like animal shit, you know, just like, it's just not, it changed you. It changes you. Oh, yeah. Some things for the bad. I mean, I think in a way, I'm, I'm grateful. There are silver linings of drug addiction.

And I think if you make it through, you tell yourself something very, very powerful when you choose your own vitality over bliss. You know what I mean? And I think that takes a, I think you get to learn how much you love yourself. if you can make it through that. I think people are asleep to how much they care about themselves and drug addiction.

Kind of like you hear people say tragically, you know, it's like someone jumping off a bridge and realizing halfway down that they want to live. Drug addiction is like that in a way, but you get the chance to choose again. You know what I mean?

Unlike the person that jumps off the bridge. You get so close to your own mortality and being so removed from yourself that you start to not take for granted. what you are and what you have access to. So in a way, I feel much more attached to life. I feel much more responsible for myself after I went through that brutal act of self-love

by getting off of the thing that, you know, there's a line, there's a pop band from the UK called the 1975. And I got into them, it was perfect timing. Their vocalist had got out of rehab from a heroin addiction and wrote an album about it. And he has a song called It's Not Living if It's Not With You. And it's about heroin.

And he says, every day I might be ruining this. So don't get on me any big fans of the band, but it's something like this. Every day I have to live with the terrible truth that it's just not living if it's not with you. And it's such a powerful line. I think anyone who's recovering understands what that is

is that you have to live every day knowing how good life could be if you were stoned. You know what I mean? Because no one wants to talk about it, but yeah, drugs feel fucking great. That's why people get addicted to them. They don't feel great for very long.

That's the thing. You're going to have the best three weeks of your life and then it's hell. And then it's going to be the worst five years of your life. You know what I mean? So it's like it's powerful. but it is fleeting and it is it takes so much more than it is you know and that's the wisdom it's not that drugs aren't fulc cool or whatever they are they're just not worth what they take from

it's just that simple like it's just the current it doesn't add up you know um thank you for sharing that man yeah yeah i was just curious because like anyone that's that is able to kick opiates I'm just like, wow, how did they do it? Stubberness. Stubborn? Stubborn. Fuck, yeah. Agree.

Like, this is why I'm such a proponent of like the dark part. People always want to, want you to harness your light to make it through things. Find love, find the positive thing. That doesn't work for me. I'm sorry. It might work for other people. I have to get mad. I have to be like, you're not fucking doing this.

You're not going out like this, you piece of shit. You know what I mean? Like, I have that conversation with myself. therapists might not approve of that method. I get that. But for me, it works. And for me, it feels like it's coming from a place of love. It doesn't feel like I'm tearing myself down. It feels like by telling myself, I am better than this, that's love to me.

I was like, oh, it's okay. I understand you have reasons to throw your life away. I understand, like, that's not love. Like, I don't want to make someone feel comfortable disintegrating. You know what I mean? Like, that's not, like, I want to fucking dig my claws to them and pull them out and throw them into the field you know what i mean so they're not fucking like to me that's love you know even if they're kicking and screaming all the way through you know

so i tried to do that for myself you know it was just like if you're not gonna if you're not going to be happy do it to not be a fucking coward exactly yeah it takes someone that's not gonna be a coward to i to do that it's essentially because i mean even dying it's just the coward way out yeah yeah yeah man i mean you got work to do You know, and so it's a lot of hard work to find out what that work is. It takes a lot of self-inquiry and shit, but I think a lot of people that kill themselves, they do it because they don't know what else to do. I get it.

This modern world doesn't give us a lot of purpose. It almost feel like it's engineered to strip us of purpose, you know, to keep us from knowing that we're meant to be doing something else. And don't, my encouragement, to any. youth and not even just youth, but if you feel like you struggle with a death urge, I'd encourage you to consider that that might be, like we were talking about, listening to your demons, that it might be telling you something true, but it might, it's likely not asking you to experience a physical death,

but like a spiritual death or an intellectual death or some kind of death of your programming, whether it be from your community or your parents or the television, saying you're not what you're supposed to be. You know what I mean? You need to kill something. You need to destroy something in yourself. So the real thing, so there's room for the real thing. Totally.

And for me, that was my big revelation, was like, I've struggled with the death urge my whole life. I mean, I've struggled with suicidal ideation, homicidal ideation, all the ideations. And, you know, my big, the thing that freed me from that, you know, really freed me from that was, finally realizing that that suicidal urge was not the physical end of my life. You know what I mean?

It was to finally let other parts of myself go so the right things can emerge. Yeah, yeah, they say that, huh? Like a part of you that has to die for the other part of yourself to come out. And I could manifest into temper tantrums or mental breakdowns. Because you're trying to change and there's a part of you inside that wants you to stay the same. So you have like this freak out moment. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, that's why I think psychological breaks can be the best thing that ever happened.

Going crazy could be the best thing that's ever happened to somebody. Because that's the reckoning, right? That's the two. You have this thing that you think you're supposed to be and you have this thing that you are. Yeah. And the more variety there are between those two, the greater the distance, the worse, the men turbulence. So as that reaches a fever pitch, when that cognitive dissonance gets so bad when you're

living a way that is misaligned with your values, there's not enough, what was that? There ain't enough room in this town for the both of us, partner. 100% that. It's like that. So it's like, they're going to just shatter you eventually. Something's just going to go push. And your whole notion of what you are and what's real and fucking, whether you're a good person or a bad person or doing what you put whatever uh that fracture that kind of falling apart of

all these pieces gives you the beautiful opportunity to pick the pieces you want to reconstruct it you know through man so just go through the only way out is through man go if you think you're going crazy go fucking crazy you know just don't try not to hurt anybody but you know like just fucking get like your bad things can lead to good things very true man you know pain things can lead to freedom. That's very true. They often do. Yeah, thank you for sharing that, man. When did the record come out?

I believe it was January 24th. Anywhere. Cool. Everyone needs to check it out, man. Thank you very much. Yeah, well, Kyle, we're going on two hours here. Yeah. Let's up. Cap it off. Any closing thoughts? Anything that I might have missed? Dude, I don't think you missed. Really. It was a fantastic interview. Thank you for the really.

Anytime. It's a great opportunity. I mean, as much as I like talking about gear and I do and death metal and all that stuff, I mean, it's my favorite shit in the world. But this stuff is the most important stuff for me to talk about publicly, you know, because. Especially on a day off. I'm sorry. You on your band, and your team was here helping us up, like helping us all the show. I feel so bad.

I feel fucking bad Oh no Dude Gino loves that shit No it's all Don't feel bad man I'm glad that we had That's cool If it wasn't a day off

We probably I wouldn't have been as relaxed And probably Probably the conversation Wouldn't have flowed as well Because I'm nervous about The fucking making the show and stuff True man

True Really worked out Where get people find you And the band Oh geez Everywhere Uh fucking Do you mean like

On tour Or like Yeah Audio audio tour What do you want We got it We got it

What do you want We got the Facebook We got the Instagram We got the fucking website Over here We got fucking We're on tour We travel around the country

Playing our rock and roll tunes We're on the road right now With goat whore And the anti-faxath Necrifire is going to be jumping on In a week or two And we got ten shows in We got like 35 to fucking go

It's a big one I know it's a long time It's crazy Yeah So if you want to come mount see the spaceship see all the buttons see the the the the Las Vegas of pedal boards at my feet or come come check out some new songs hang out you know we'll be sick come check it out uh i said all the other stuff right apple and spotify and fucking if you can find music on it vitriol

is probably on it you're there cool Kyle is great hang out with you man I'm honored I very much likewise honestly you know hell yeah all right everyone that's it bitrille later Thank you.