HardLore - Harms Way (The Full Band Episode)

Episode Date: October 19, 2023

Colin turns the tables on Bo this week and talks to 4/5 members of half of the HardLore namesake: Harms Way. Joined by Singer James Pligge, drummer Chris Mills, guitarist Nick Gauthier, and of course our very own Bo Lueders. They discuss the new album Common Suffering in depth, breaking down the writing, production, recording and release of the album, eventually talking all about the personal dynamic between the band and their first tour in 4 years (starting this week!) A true HardLore instant classic. Join the HARDLORE DISCORD: https://discord.gg/jA9rppggef This episode is brought to you by ATHLETIC GREENS! Try AG1 at athleticgreens.com/HARDLORE to receive a free 1-year supply of vitamin D and 5 travel packs of AG1. Join WHATNOT with our special little link to get $15 off your first purchase. Get ready for the first ever Hardlore live auction TOMORROW, March 24th at 8:30 PM EST: https://www.whatnot.com/invite/hardlore Get 20% OFF @manscaped + Free Shipping with promo code HARDLORE at MANSCAPED.com! #ad #manscapedpod FOLLOW HARM'S WAY: INSTAGRAM | https://www.instagram.com/harmsway13/ TWITTER | https://twitter.com/harmsxway FACEBOOK | https://www.facebook.com/harmsxway/ FOLLOW HARDLORE: INSTAGRAM | https://www.instagram.com/hardlorepod/ TWITTER | https://twitter.com/hardlorepod SPOTIFY | https://spoti.fi/3J1GIrp APPLE | https://apple.co/3IKBss2 FOLLOW COLIN: INSTAGRAM | https://www.instagram.com/colinyovng/ TWITTER | https://www.twitter.com/ColinYovng FOLLOW BO: INSTAGRAM | https://www.instagram.com/bosxe/ TWITTER | https://www.twitter.com/bosxe Check out our merch at https://knotfest.com/store/?view=hardlore Find all of our videos at https://knot1.co/3vWXsbx #HardLore #HarmsWay   HardLore: A Knotfest Series, Fueled by Monster Energy Edited by Steven Grise • Title sequence by Nicholas Marzluf Join the HARDLORE PATREON to watch every single weekly episode early and ad-free, alongside exclusive monthly episodes. Join the HARDLORE DISCORD for community discussions and to participate in our future Q&A episodes. FOLLOW HARDLORE: INSTAGRAM, TWITTER, SPOTIFY, APPLE FOLLOW COLIN: INSTAGRAM FOLLOW BO: INSTAGRAM, TWITTER   For sponsorship opportunities, email us! [e-mail] Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hello, welcome. It's Hardlore Time. How are you, Harmsway? Oh, what's up? Bo, the tables are turning today. They really are. I got so many people in my apartment. Tell me, introduce the band. Who do we got with us today? We got Nick G over here on the right. We got my main man, Chris Mills, as I punch his mic. The drum machine to my left.

And on the far left, you might say. say. James, Hammers, Pliggy. Two-time guests, James. Yeah, or repeat guests. We're doing a gold jacket club, by the way, James. Returning member here. Yeah.

Once you get to five, we'll get you a beautiful gold jacket. And in spirit, of course, is Casey, who physically could not fit here, nor do I have more than four channels on this mixer. But he very graciously volunteered not to, not to attend. He's actually literally working right now on stuff we need for the tour. He's a fucking trooper. And we will talk about him.

We'll talk about him fondly. Big time. We've also got Bo with us who, you know, normally he's the host of this program. But today he's just a guy I get to ask questions to. It's another band guy. To some extent, right? Hard Lord's Got Harm's Way today for a very special occasion. the monumental follow-up to the smash hit post-human is finally here.

It's finally out. Common suffering, guys. We all suffer. We suffer trying to put this episode together. That's very true. And that's what this record's all about. When did writing for common suffering start? Nick, you want to take that one?

Yeah, I think it was late 2019. Yeah. Late 2019. Yeah, before the pandemic and everything, we already started like the writing process a little bit. Some of the riffs, at least some I remember you like sending in demos. I remember you playing with Casey on tours.

I can't remember which. But like you were fiddling, we had that little thing and you were just like jamming and would record on Casey's like makeshift little studio. Yeah. Yeah. I think we just didn't want to like procrastinate. on it so we've already started writing and then

I don't know a lot of those ideas we didn't end up using you know but but those are the those ideas are like the spokes on the ladder that gets you to the top you know right yeah they were but see what's interesting about this

Nick is that they just threw this question to you as long as I've personally known Harm's Way the core of Harm's Way has been James Chris Boe and James Chris Boe And James Chris Boe just said, Nick, tell him when you started writing this record essentially.

So to have a newer member be the step up and say, guys, I'm going to, I'm going to try some stuff is a very rare thing. Was that daunting going into this? Not really, because honestly, like, post-human was pretty involved too. Like, definitely got to, like, write a big chunk of that with everyone. so I kind of felt like I got the formula of what kind of like made something sound like harm's way kind of and then just I don't know adding like frills to that to not make it like one note or whatever but I mean it was daunting for sure like writing in general I'm sure it always is like for everyone you know but are you how there's a lot of something that has like

become one of the like the signature things on this record is like the what Chord, you know? So, yeah, okay. The, like, open thing? Is that the Nick? That's a Nick special? That's definitely one of them. I feel like we kind of found that trying to, like, not just do the single string thing

or, like, just having shit sound like just downtuned power chords. So having, like, a melodic, kind of, like, dissonant thing over everything. I feel like. Yeah, yeah, yeah, thing. Corn, whatever. There's a little bit of it on. post-human with like the ugly the ugly machine cord and stuff like it's

definitely there but Nick Nick's got these spider hands and he plays he plays shapes that like my hands have never been in he just comes up with things that I don't know how they work but they work and he's very

good at like does every song have one every song has like a weird chord yeah they've got some there's some there's some chords where I just think what the fuck is, how did he do that? Yeah. Yeah, every song is a gimmick or we try to like make every, not a gimmick, but like every song was supposed to like have its own like thing kind of. Yeah. So you want to talk about the pedal. Oh yeah. The pitchfork. The magic sauce, dude. Yeah. That was

definitely used a lot on a lot of the ideas. We used it a little bit on post human. Was playing with Vane like in the last couple years and like they use that too. Kind of like a lot more than we did still on this new record and in a different way mostly, but Jeremy's like a psycho with like guitar shit. So like definitely playing with them helped me like, you know, I try not to be like directly influenced by what they were doing because I didn't want to like bite what they were doing. But made me kind of like look at my guitar differently or like what pedals I was using and kind of see where I could just add like flavor to shit. I mean, that's exactly that's exactly what it does is that pedal kind of elongates the neck.

You know, it makes, it makes stuff just be lower. Or if you're playing something high and you go from low and then back to normal, it makes it go, like it does lots of cool shit. And it definitely like, now there's a whole new thing that we do when we're playing some of these songs where it's like you're playing rhythmically with your right hand and with your left foot at the same time, which Chris is used to, but I'm not used to. Yeah, there's like a whole drum thing to it. Speaking of pedals.

I think it took me. five or six times all the way through to even process that the HM2 is basically gone. Yeah. Oh, yeah. We didn't use it at all. I don't even think we used one on post-human. We didn't. We used the swollen pickle.

Yeah, a little bit. A little bit, which is, which is. Yeah, you did. Which is, you know, it's like a version of an HM2. It's like a more controlled version. And then we used it live. I did. Did you use yours live?

I tried it and it sounded kind of crazy. so you weren't digging it I was just good on it but because like we play older songs that have such HM2 the swollen pickle was like easier to control so swollen pickle is unbelievable yeah what did you use for

for heads? I know the clean was bad cat oh for the new record yeah we used the bad cat for the cleans and then honestly it was just like two different EVHs with different tubes and then I think like a 6505 it was just like

all EVH shit. Shut out Fender, dude. Got out Eddie Edward Van Halen. Edward Van. Kid me? Mm-hmm. Harsway powered by Van Halen. Absolutely.

Thank God. All right. Let's get into the record a little bit. Mm. So Nick is, Nick is, Nick is, spilling sauce everywhere, right? And bringing riffs to the table. Casey was like the sauce filter.

Yeah. So that's exactly what I was going to say. Casey and Nick both live in Milwaukee. And were you guys living together? They were living together for a minute. And then over the pandemic, you didn't live together, but would like... Oh, we still did.

So they lived together. So like, Nick's playing cod, getting kill streaks, writing riffs. And Casey's... Who knows what that guy does? Every day was like, get up, take a shower, put on the hazmat suit, go to the store,

and spend like 400 bucks to the grocery store. Get home and then start playing guitar and demoing shit with Casey. And then, yeah, I don't know. I feel like it was just a summer camp thing of that. And then four years later, here's this record. Dude, we would try to do like Zoom practices when like lockdowns were real, right? So it would be the three of us individually in our homes, Nick and Casey together. And then Casey would stream on like a secret Twitch.

channel, just Ableton, and there would be like, you know, a few seconds to the lay, but we could like say like, Chris could like try to articulate drums or like whatever. And it was fucking so difficult. It was so challenging. Yeah. It was in the beginning, the demos were like really fucking funny too. Like the program drumming and shit came such a long way over like the course of doing all. Yeah. Honestly, I kind of wish I would have brought some of the old demos, but I don't I think I could like bear to show it anymore. They won't see the light of day. So Chris and James, let's talk for a second.

What's up? Because you guys have been the secret sauce this whole time. Chris, James does the one finger writing where he goes, wouldn't this be sick? Don, no, now. And then you guys translate that. And now you have a whole other language being spoken on the other guitar and bass player side. Are you guys like really? believes that you have that you can do less now i know for me uh i think like it's because we've been

a band for so long i think like you know having casey and nick come into the picture um just like opened up a whole different path of writing and um i know for you know for me personally you know i don't want to say i was like tapped out but you know i writing music before nick officially joined the band in like 2015 was becoming increasingly more difficult. And so, because I mean, he kind of really started helping us write probably about a fourth of the way in of post-human. And like that was kind of the thing that really got us to the end of post-human. And then obviously, you know, I honestly don't think any of us wrote a full riff or song

on common suffering except him. So like just I just kind of look at it as almost like him revitalizing the band in a way to make us sound like harm's way, but in a more advanced riffing riff writing way, I guess. It is advanced. And Chris, you have Casey who's very good at programming things. and Nick who's also a drummer. So what was that like for you? Because like Nick will say something to you or you'll say something to Nick

about a drum thing that's even over my head. And then Casey will just like, oh, okay, and just like do it. Chris, I feel like you're always going to do your thing regardless though because your thing is so iconic to me. Yeah. For sure. And you know, like I think like the cool, you know, like I've known Nick for like a really long time at this point, you know,

And we played in other bands together, like, kind of, like, leading up to him joining Hormsway. And, like, in a lot of ways, you know, I fucking wanted Nick in Hormsway for forever, you know. And, like, it luckily happened, you know. And I think, like, you know, Nick understands, like, my drumming in, like, a really cool way where, you know, he can kind of, like, almost, like, I don't know, even in the way, I think Nick writes riffs, he, like, writes riffs with my kind of, like, style.

in mind, you know, and there's like a shared language, so to speak, I think, like, between he and I in terms of how we, like, approach parts or what kind of drum stuff we want to hear, you know? In a lot of ways, it's like, it's like pretty, like, refreshing for me because, you know, because I think the, like, literacy both, like, Nick and Casey have for percussion, we can just, like, bounce a lot off each other. And it's definitely, like, expanded, you know, just who I am as a drummer even more, if that makes sense. So I think like that was that was a really cool component, I think, with common suffering is like, you know,

just like kind of pushing the bounds and having, you know, other people to kind of help hold me accountable to that as well. Over the years, learning harm's way songs just peripherally, you are maybe, you and like hate breed are like the number. one air drummable bands. So I'm looking forward to getting really comfortable with these songs. Silent Wolf, I could probably, I'm probably already there with, so that's good. Yeah, you're pretty quick.

James Ler. Them feet. What was that? You got them feet down for sure. Oh, I'll fucking, I got Chris's feet all day, dude. Quite literally in many different spaces, you know, whether it's fucking fluff fest and the Trek Republic for. Got your feet, hands, balls and all.

What's cool about this episode, by the way, is it will come out, like, as the tour starts. Amazing. How does that, how is that feel? Are you guys, are you guys nervous leading up to this thing? First one in five years or whatever? Yeah. A little bit. Got some, some anxiety for sure.

Like, dude, we played, we played a fest in Toronto a couple weeks ago, and the wheels damn near came off. You know, it's just kind of shaking off some rough. and stuff, really. No pun intended. Let that be the wheels. And then now put them back on. And blow some socks off. All right.

Gorgeous looking record. Look at this thing. Chris, you want to talk about the album art? Yeah, please do. Because I know this is V2, right? Oh, yeah. V2 indeed, but we won't get into V1. Yeah, yeah.

V1 was great. Yeah. beautiful. But yeah, no, I mean, the album art was done by this dude, Corn Brownley, and,

you know, we kind of came across this stuff while we were trying to kind of pivot and find work that felt, you know, pretty relatable to the lyrical themes and just like the overall vibe of the record. It's an atom bomb of bodies, right?

Kind of. I don't know. I don't know. know if it's bomb. Yeah. It seems like. It's not cloud. Yeah.

Like a, like a platform. Yeah. Like it's raining men. Yeah. Yeah. Raining, raining men.

Yeah. You know what they say. Hallelujah. No, I think it's a, it's raining genderless bodies, but I think, um,

I think, I think, uh, you know, corn actually describe it as like a brain, right? A brain. in an interview that he and I both were a part of recently.

Open up and hold up the gatefold. Like the whole inside. That's my personal favorite part is the tunnel of bodies. I think, dude, I think when we like got that, when we got like the various potentials or whatever, and like that was included, like, I just think that is the creepiest, coolest. Whose idea was doing sideways back cover? Ridge, Ryan did the layout, you know, with like Corrin's, you know, work, so to speak, you know,

and I think that was just kind of some brainstorming. He and I had kind of worked on together, but the execution was awesome overall, you know. I love the art, you know, to like Bow's point, you know. I think like all of it just obviously creates this like sense of panic and anxiety, like kind of looking at it. And like initially when I came across the pieces, I was like, that's it. You know, and just, like, kind of told these dudes, like, let's try to act on this. And, like, luckily, corn, corn was down.

And he's been fucking awesome to work with ever since. Yeah, I mean, a record that looks the way it sounds is obviously something as, as music fanatics is important to all of us. With post-human, I immediately, I loved the cover art, but I didn't necessarily think, like, when I first saw it, it wasn't like, that's it. This one, I did feel that way. Like the second, I grew up love post-human, and like I do think that it's the perfect cover art for that record. With this one, the second we saw it and came up with the album title, I thought like, that's perfect. Yeah, it's great vibe. Tell me about the title, James.

For the record? Yeah. Or just for the, I mean, the common suffering, I guess was more of a collective decision. There was a couple ideas. I mean, Chris could probably speak more to the. the record title than I can as far as where it came from. But I, just like Beau said,

when I heard it, I was like, that's definitely the one that I wanted to use. Just because I think, you know, after the last years of, I think, our lives and like,

what a lot of us had been through personally. And obviously, you know, I felt like we all could understand that there's a shared amount of suffering that went on in the last years and I think that that was kind of just a good way to, you know, connect with each other through the, through the album title. Agreed.

Yeah, I remember deliberating in the hotel room. What was the name of that pizza place that we kept getting that we were just crushing? It was like a lady's name, right? It was like roses or something. No. Oh, Franzones. Frantzones. Dude, Colin, great.

We were just talking about it the other day. Great sweet sauce. Oh, that's that. Yeah. Dude, just like, we were, how many slices did we each crushed like? I mean, like a whole pizza each.

Yeah, we got like six pizzas. Yeah, there was there was like one night, I think, where we all demolished our own pizza. Fuck, that didn't feel good. It's the only way to do it with the sweet sauce just goes down so smooth. Yeah, it really does. Yeah. Tell me about working with Will before we get into the songs themselves. He's the fucking man.

Yeah, he was awesome. Can't say enough good things about him. He was really a guy, I think, especially. So, like, we can say, like, pre-pro was all of us sitting in a circle. And then with Will. And we were just, like, going over the songs, going over parts and, like, demoing them with him. There was never, I don't think there was an idea that he was. wasn't willing to like try or willing to like hear out or willing to like everything is at least

during especially during that because that was like the most of my involvement until we be until you tracked it was like he was just like yeah let's try it yeah cool that sounds good like he was just very the environment is supremely creative and like open and it's very conducive i think to creating you know yeah i mean i i think I can speak for myself in, I don't think the lyrics and the cadences of the songs would have turned out the same without him. I think, like, you know,

that's one thing you really helped me with, personally. And I mean, I think we could all agree, like, I know with, like, tracking, he was just so positive. Like, even if the take sucked, like, he would, he would, like, make you feel like you could do better, but not in, like, a context.

descending way. It was, it was just like, hey, I want to get the best out of you because you're better, you know, than what you just did. And I just remember, like, after finishing a take and him just like jacking you up and like it just like, I know that sounds cheesy, but like, but it's true. It's absolutely true. He's just laughing because you said jacking you up. I mean, yeah, he's jacking me off. But you finished a take and what would jack you off right away to me? That's a hell of a producer. One. He might as well have. That's how I thought. Is Will, for this record, like you said, Nick and Casey changed the game in terms of the way you write. Is Will kind of the other puzzle piece? I would say so. He's definitely a big one, I think.

He does have like a really good constructive coach vibe, kind of like, like James is saying. But also, I know. No, no, yeah. Let's try one more. Yeah, totally. That was sick. But like, I also had so much annoying shit that I wanted to try. And he was, like, always down to, like, hear us, you know, figure it out and, like, hear it back or whatever.

And he'd either be like, yeah, that sucks or like, that's actually way better. So Nick has this unbelievable ability to come up with a riff and we play the riff altogether. and by the time I'm like grasping it he will be like now for the B like that's A and on B we're going to do this and like pre-pro and then even tracking was that times how much we changed a ton of shit at pre-pro and then we went to tracking

and we changed it like a ton more shit and then after I mean I had to go back again to track one there was still changes like in the third session and and after pre-pro that we made like before everyone was at the studio and we actually started doing drums. Well, how many of these songs can you play it right now? Four.

Because they're just up here for Nick. Well, dude, I mean, but Casey would say the same thing. Nick tracked all the stringed instruments on the record. I mean, we haven't played. I don't think. I mean, we've played. We've played three as a band. Yeah.

Thus far. I mean, I think we're just playing the ones that, you know, we're getting prepared for tour. but I think we we spent the most time like digesting the shit that was written and then kind of piecing it together so like there's a couple things in some of the songs that weren't even like organically written that way until after we were kind of like making the final changes to it and in like the

what's the fucking room with all the monitor is called the control room the control room the room with the knobs yeah but but yeah I mean, we haven't, we, we didn't, you know, Nick was really at the helm of tracking with that stuff. And even from the get-go, Will, Will kind of approached it really delicately. And he was like, how would you guys feel about one person doing all the guitars and bass? Because I prefer that as a producer. It's the way to do it.

I mean, you, I mean, it became obvious. I mean, we did it kind of in post-human. Yeah. Not 100%. But there were songs that I played all of or you played all of it. And I played bass, you played bass. Like, but can you imagine if Casey and I also tracked how long this session would have taken? They were like so many on the fly changes that like if we changed something, then I knew it on all the parts already.

So it was just like way faster to do it that way. Yeah. I want to talk about the record. Okay. And talk about the tracks. That's why we're here at the end of the day, you know? Yeah. Fucking tracks, man.

Silent Wolf, track one. Was that? I know how hard it is to pick an opener. Yeah. Dude. When did you figure out that this was the opener? I mean, the deliberation over the sequence of this record was like months. Yeah, I mean, it took months to figure it out.

Took so long. I do think this one we felt was an opener pretty soon, though. I think in pre-pro when it was done. Yeah. At least half of us were, like, leaning that way. Was this song written in the studio? No, there was, like, one riff that I had kind of, like, written at home. And then, like, Casey and I were fucking around with the riff during pre-pro, just playing guitar.

And it wasn't a song at all yet. And then during pre-pro, there was a day that you guys all went out and did something. I don't remember what you did. James and I went to a Phillies game. And we came back. And you were just in the hotel room writing this riff. And you're like, yo, you're like, yo, check it out. And I was, and I just said to myself, fuck, dude.

I heard like, I heard like the BPM of like the double bass and I was like, God, damn it. It was still way different. But damn is that sick. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Chris kept calling it the speed metal riff. Because it was like the pre-chorus and there's like this little picked out kind of like, like, you know, like at the gates picked out type thing. Even though the wrist not like that.

But that, that had a way more like main role in the idea originally. But, yeah, Chris hated it. And for the record, we weren't ditching out on recording and letting Nick figure it out. It was a weekend. It was a day off. It was a day off. Casey and I just wanted to work out. It was right.

Let's figure out one more idea for the shit. No days off for Nick. You're different, man. You just have a different grind set. That's okay. That's why you're the writer guy now. What I think was cool about that song is like, obviously it started in like one way. I'm like taking it to studio.

It ended up in a. totally different place. And, you know, initially, yeah, definitely sounded like a speed metal riff because it was like happening over and over and over again. I think the program drums were like totally different than what I ended up like writing for the track, you know? In my head, it had more of like a, almost like a deaf tones picked out like vibe. But I, but I get what you're saying. Why you like heard it that way? It was definitely not meant to be a speed metal roof. Dude, he even uses that term. Chris. Speed metal? Yeah. People over 50.

50. 50 plus. I am over 50. Did anybody not get their way when it came to the sequencing? Is there one thing that one of you guys is like, I'll concede, but you're wrong? I don't remember. It's hard. Yeah.

It's tough to say, you know. We're literally talking three months. I think song two is the biggest challenge. Yes. Yeah. And, you know, there's a beef. Yeah. Yeah, there was like, there was a B-side on the record that, you know,

that definitely took a lot of deliberation over and just like back and forth over like whether or not it should have been this one song or that song, you know. And I think where where that song would have been placed is, is kind of what we felt stuck at times. The funny part is though, I'm, I'm really happy with the sequencing, right? Yeah. I think sequencing. Yeah.

Absolutely. Awesome. Once we, because it's, it was funny because I think right away, we knew the bookends. We knew the opener, and I think we all agreed on the closer. So it was kind of like... But then there's the shit

because it's like, well, terrorizer's a weird song, we'll get there. Undertoe is a weird song, we'll get there. You gotta... There's so many, like, little moving pieces

about where to put stuff that, like, we all kind of... You don't want to put the weird songs on like a beat, on the B side of the record, which doesn't really matter anymore, but, you know,

you don't want to make it seem like a less important song on post-human we had The Gift, which was a song that Casey made and was then like kind of enhanced in the studio. That ended up being kind of a B-side song that was like a little underplayed, I would say, because I think that song's fucking awesome.

You don't want that to have. It's such a difficult thing. It's just where music is, sadly. You know, you spend all you, you spend this time and this pat on all your energy into making like an epic closer. And then most people just don't get to it. Yeah.

Yeah. And hopefully that changes. Yeah, totally. And I think that was like a little bit of a paradigm shift for us to, you know, obviously like working with Will he was, you know, we're so focused on sequencing. We're so focused on like the flow of a record. And he was just basically like, well, look, you know, maybe think about it this way in terms of like the current like attention span of like music listeners. We're very like, we're very analog vinyl minded.

Yeah. And he was very much like digital the playlist. He was like, it really, you can't think about it in the old way. Like, obviously for the vinyl itself, it matters. But the majority of people are not going to consume this record that way. I'm curious. And I'll figure out a special prize for who's closest. What do you guys think my favorite song is?

Knowing me so well. What do you think of my favorite? I have two favorites. Okay. So there can be, there's two right answers? There's two right answers. Nick, you go first. Or do you want me to go first because I know them

The first one of the back of my ass You go last, but All right, I'm gonna guess sadist goat as one of them Okay Nick guess Sadist's guilt It's a good one Do we guess some two favorites? Yeah, all right

Yeah, what are my two favorites? Undertoe. Which is it? And undertow. Undertoe, okay. I'm gonna guess Heaven's Call and undertoe.

I'm gonna go with Beau. I'm going to go with Bo on that one. I think Heaven's calling undertoe. So I also was going to say Heaven's Call, but I was going to go Devour being the second one that you liked. All right. So Heaven's Call is my favorite song. Yeah.

But Terrorizers by my other person. Lovel. So you guys playing that one? Yeah. That's on the set. Yeah, it's the goal. We're like currently in rehearsals and stuff like that. And the goal is to obviously make that work in a live setting for sure.

Okay. I can't wait to hear that. Big industrial song with Big Pit is like the thing that you guys do better than anyone to me. Fuck yeah. I really, you're good at doing both together. where a lot of bands are like, now we got to just do one at a time. I really like Terrorizer.

I really. Yeah, it's same. Great. I'm very, very pleased with it. Heaven's Call Terrorizer. That's interesting for you. It's a banger, dude. You might have to play that one after this episode comes out.

Good call. Track two, denial. We talked about how hard it was. Track two is like, that's the hardest part. place to be, because that's, if they're going to fall off after track one, you got to fucking bang them out with something

crazy here. Tell me about denial. The interesting thing about denial is your brother beef's denial. Does he? Yeah. It's the one, I think he said it's the one song he doesn't like it. Yeah. So, fuck Taylor.

We don't have to talk about that. Something that we've been talking about and deliberating about a lot is like, this is our first tour in four years, people want to hear a lot of stuff and trying to figure out

what songs off the new record not to play is like pretty challenging. So yeah, denial is not on the set list currently, but that, you know, there's lots of shows. You can bust it out. What you're describing is like you guys are a legacy band now.

You've been a band for damn near 20 years, right? Yeah, yeah. Almost 18, yeah. You've written a lot of songs that people like in that amount of time. You're facing the peril that every great legacy band faces of, okay, do we play the first record all the way through, or do we play what we want? Hollow Cry, track three.

Track three. Let's talk about it. That was like another song that we came into the studio with it, kind of sounding one way and definitely like changed over the course of like pre-production you know and I think you know obviously there's like a it's kind of a bit of like a noise rock vibe to it a melvinsey vibe to it and um you know like a heavy bass presence you know um but uh i think obviously with like refinement nick you know you ended up taking to that that song to like a really really cool place yeah initially i feel like we're going for more of like a

similar to like temptation kind of like Jesus lizardy type like bass driven things. Oh interesting. Yeah, it had a lot more of that initially. And then, but it was kind of like on the rockier side

instead of sounding like creepy like temptation. So kind of wanted to just like make it sound a little more fucked up. James, did you go to the Coles Live show this weekend? I did. I went to the Coles Live show this weekend. Do you have a good time?

It's fantastic. You watch from the crowd? Watch from the crowd? the crowd, just like, you know, a normal citizen, you know? That's right. Setless was banging or what? Oh, yeah. I mean, they played the last block of songs was like, was all the heavy hitters.

Oh, really? Yeah. Whoa. Yeah. So it was like, it was like, who holds the truth? Yep. Then cold is life. Then they end it with Little from the World, which like, you know, that's probably the top

three. Yeah. I think my personal favorite Cole's Life song is actually Terror Zone, though. They played that, right? No, they did. But I think they played like earlier on second, but. I saw an awesome video of Freddie fixing Jeff's mic stand. Do you see that video?

That's cool. They're just like a cool little moment when even he's like looking up like, they're like laughing at each other. It's just cool stuff like that. That's respect. Yeah. Yeah, no. James, James, I would fix your.

mic stand any fucking day. I think you have, actually. I think probably more so, more so Chris's drums you fixed more than anything. Whenever that China falls, you know damn well, I'm gonna be there. Yeah, yeah.

My informal drum tech, Colin Young. Is Beau overshed the picture where Chris's Tom fell off the drum riser and I'm holding it like and laughing and laughing

literally yeah it's a very funny picture I'll send it to you Colin gunk yeah we dude one time

we played uh guadalahara in Mexico and Chris sat down at the drum set and literally went like and every piece fell apart

like a fucking Lego drum set Literally like a Lego drum set and all of us just laughed. Like even Chris was just like, fuck. Yeah, and O to the set. And I'm pretty sure I was like on like a drum riser too. And like this like this tom just fell and just bounced and bounced and bounced. And you know, we just had one of those moments where we were just.

Did you pause or did you just keep going? I don't remember. Well, I think we actually had had to pause because at that point. I think multiple drums were no longer in the set. they had fallen off to stage. Just unplayable. But, you know, it's like one of those moments you're like, dude,

we're in fucking Guadalajara. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What's the worst thing that's happened to one of you on, like,

who has the worst single incident on stage? Is it that? Is it James breaking his arm? That was bad. That was not good. But that didn't actually do anything to the set. Yeah. That was song one, too.

He's a trooper. He didn't even. finish the set. Dude, one of the craziest things that James will tell you was that after all of that, he drove home from the city back to Naperville with one arm, with the bad arm to prove that it was okay. With the bad one?

I mean, so I didn't want to admit that it was broken. So I drove home with my broken arm to prove to myself that it was good enough to but I fell asleep and I woke up and when I say I was in the most pain I've probably ever been in that was like I just moved my arm just like a little bit and I like just drove myself to the hospital

because I knew it was broken. Was it like purple? Oh yeah dude my it was like a an arm wrestler's forearm. It was just fucking so pop-by. What's basically? Dude that was a crazy day because that was

you know, John had just quit the band, right? And both John's. And Hofacker. Yeah. And you broke your arm. Two members quit the band and we were supposed to leave for tour in what, five days? Yeah, that weekend. Yep.

Well, James, did you hear Caution's response? I mean, I haven't watched the full video, but I've talked to him about it. And he says he talks shit on me. Is that, is that true? I wouldn't. There's a little bit of, you know, fuck James. You know. As much as I would say you threw at him

100% When we did the episode I mean I personally don't care Yeah but very friendly What's the worst thing that's happened to you? Like stuff has definitely fallen You've bled a couple times One time Colin is right

His hand My hands dude One time We're in Ohio I think Your right pedal broke And you played scrambled with only your left foot That's happened That was pretty cool

I mean, dude, like, my shit just breaks all the goddamn time. Colin, you've seen it time and time again. You fixed it. I fixed it every time. I mean, the amount of times my kick pedals just come off or the kick drum is just slid away. Dude, remember the one time in Toronto? How, you know, we played this like United Steelworkers,

like Union Hall or whatever. And I'm on like a drum rug and we're just playing on a tile floor. But the problem was you were 100% on the drum rug. Yeah. None of the feet of any of the drum hardware were on the tile. Yeah. Okay. So he's on an island.

Yeah. And I'm just, and, you know, by the middle of the set, like, I had just moved. And I was, like, in the, I was essentially, like, in the middle of the, it's like a magic carpet. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Everything moved together. Dude.

Everything moved together. He's on a rectangle that every time he hits something, it's vibrating. And literally by the end of the set, he was in front of all of us. That was the first time we ever played. And the only time. You ever played front of lobe? Yeah, front of lobe altogether. Yep.

You've broken, you've broken... At least it's moved together. Yeah. The worst, I think, in my opinion, is you breaking a snare. That's happened a lot. Yeah. That's happened a lot.

Just the bottom snare, just snapping. I mean, like... Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You're just playing... Yeah, you're essentially just playing the bongo at that point. Yeah.

Like, you know, obviously, like, the one thing that comes to mind, like, in terms of, like, the hardest set we've played was, you know, playing Averill, you know, and in, oh, God. It's like a hundred plus degree. And I, like, just threw up. Anchors up, yeah. You know, threw up on stage while playing because that was just straight up

heat exhaustion. That's a guy. That set was insane. Because that was also the set that save a string. Dude, he used to keep his legs. He used to not cut the extra ends off of his strings. And he used to say if my, if I have long hair, so does my guitar. Okay, cool.

He bent. He bent down. Only a saber. He bent down at one point. Like, he crouched to grab something. And the high e-string went into an outlet, like, into one of the prongs of the outlet. And got white-hot, burnt his hand in a straight line, and then melted the nut down to the, to the fret. So, like, his high E was useless.

And then during the set, during the breeding grounds, like, noise part at the end of the song. grabbed someone else's guitar and used it like a slide on his own guitar. Like turned strings to strings and went and just made noise. All the meanwhile, Chris is like having a stroke. There's a garbage can next to what, like. Shout out Virgos though. Oh, yeah. The Virgo's record fucking rift.

What's the worst thing that's happened to you? You've never like fallen or anything. Dude. Two worse things. Okay. The first one was getting sick before F.Y. Oh, I got a picture for that. I have a picture of Nick on an airplane.

Unaltered. He's literally green. Green man. He looks like a cartoon person. Dude, in the line for TSA, I had to leave to like puke in a garbage can. And then no one let me back in my spot in the line. Everyone just looked at me like puking. He had to fucking wipe his mouth with his own extra underwear.

Yeah. Poor bastard threw away. And, dude, yeah, that was fucking awful. And then, dude, and then you, we got to the gate and you're like, all right, I'm going to go to the bathroom. And they were literally like the ticket counter people were like, if you guys aren't on the jetway in the next 60 seconds, it's leaving without you. So I had to run and grab this poor bastard who's like sick and be like, Nick, whatever is going on, you have to get up and leave right now. and we got to the gate and the person was like

looking at their watch like counting down for us like a fucking cop that that was fucked up and then he slept for like 14 hours in a rental car in Florida oh nice and did backup vocals

like that's set and every time I like felt like I was about to fucking puke again that was I don't know how you did that I don't actually I do because I also did that once in Perth yeah that's right I had food poisoning

um you're saying With food poisoning? Dude. It's the worst I've ever felt my life. Yeah, I don't know if I've ever done that. I was throwing up all day, like, literal, probably should have went to the hospital because it was so dehydrated.

Yeah. And, like, I was just sleeping at this person's house. Sorry, I don't know the person's name that we were. Josh, I think. Was it Josh? Josh, I think. It was not, not housey, a different Josh. Joshua Clayton, I believe.

And then, no, no, no, different Josh. No, what's a sea dog? What was his name? John Hatfield. He was in the band, the others. Yeah. Not Josh. Well, anyway.

Speed, Josh. Our, our tour manager, Claire, picked me up about 20 minutes before our set and took me there. And I wish there was a video because I literally just stood there, did not move once and just saying. Like a statue, basically. That was a six show. How was the set?

How was the show? It was good. Dude, it was like ladies night at this club in Perth. And it was like, it was sold out. It was insane. They were there for us necessarily. But they were there. Until I walked off stage and vomited, I think.

That was, I felt. That's literal. That's what happens in Detroit Rock City. It's the same thing. I never felt worse. What's the other one, Nick? The other one was, uh, fuck, what tour was this? I feel like it was our headliner.

No, it was before the Black Dali Murder tour. And I don't know why this happened. We played this venue. on our headliner. I think it was like the second post human headline show was at the same place, but dude, the first show of Black Dahlia,

I broke a string on stage. Something wasn't set up with like my other guitar and there were no extra strings for whatever reason. Had to like leave the stage to get a different guitar. The strap locks on that guitar were like a different brand

than it was on my other shit. And there wasn't even a strap for it. Lost Horizon. in Syracuse. Yeah. So there wasn't even a strap for this guitar. So I had to play

the rest of the set with a guitar that was meant to be in C, tuned down to B, so everything was really loose, no guitar strap. So I was sitting on a crate of water as water like side stage

playing the rest of the set sitting down on a fucking case of water. But, uh, so that was kind of crazy. I don't know. I don't know what that looks to everyone else. I'm sure fucking insane. It felt really bad.

And that was, and that was one of your first like, few tours with us. Yeah, maybe like the third one. I remember. So Casey, he's not here to represent himself, but there's a thing called Casey's luck that is truly

unbelievable. Some examples include the thing that made us realize was he bought like a, it was not white, it was like a light beige hoodie in near, what's the venue in the Middle East?

Near the Middle East near the there's like a shoe store around the corner. He bought like a nice like either Nike or Adidas like a good, you know, like a heavy duty hoodie. And like 30 seconds into the drive after we left because he just bought it. Like I remember turning around and looking and he was just looking down like shaking his head with coffee all over the front of this brand new hoodie that he had just spent however much on. And it was it was I think it was that at that moment where you're like, I'm making an Instagram called Casey's luck. Yeah, I mean, what's funny is, I mean, here's just some of the things have happened. His car, I gave him a car when I got a new one.

Well, you sold him for $200. Okay. Basically gave you gave a car. That's gave. That's good. I retract. You gave him a car. It got stolen within a couple months.

He, the same, in the same day that he bought that hoodie, he bought. a pair of shoes that he later just was like, yo, these shoes suck. He bought like these neon orange Nike's, remember? He also lost his wallet before buying the hoodie. Oh yeah. But he got it back.

Very lucky. He got it back. But he lost his fucking wallet. He's lost his wallet like three times since I've known him. What else, Nick? I don't, I don't want to throw out of the bus. This is a joke. He bought those shoes, did not return them.

knew he didn't like him right away, and it was for a retail store. Like, you definitely couldn't return him, probably. Yeah, yeah. The car that got stolen, there was like this, this fuse was fucked up under the hood, and like the key would not come out of the ignition. So there was always a key just like locked and loaded, ready to rip. So you can't really say it got stolen. It got.

Well, no, hold on. He had an extra key to lock the doors, but he didn't lock the doors all the time. The doors were not locked. And the other thing is that the hood could be opened. The fuse could be removed. And then the key would come out of the ignition. But that was just annoying to do. So the key was just left in the ignition.

Well, here's the thing. I had the car obviously first. I told him to take the fuse out. It was very easy. It took less than 10 seconds. And then it was unstealable. Right. But he obviously didn't do that.

But couldn't the other, the key thing be fixed? It was, it was, there was no fix. You had, uh, there's, I mentioned you need a new alternator, right? I think,

I literally think, like, I brought it to a mechanic and he was like, you have to replace the whole electrical system. Because for whatever reason, it triggered something to lock the key in place. It was very strange. So it was either that or just take the fuse out.

Hey, it was $200 car. You got a fucking, that $200 for that is like highway robbery. I feel like I want to, I want to pull up the Instagram to look at the other things that you posted on it really quick. Because it truly is like, should we talk about the harm's way fucking curse? I mean, now that I think about it, maybe it's Casey's fault that our trailer got stolen. Heading up into the band. Oh, are all these things post Casey being in the band? Well, no, no.

We have a weird thing, dude, where every three years something shitty happens to the band. And it's not just like, oh, my, like a tour fell through or something. It's like the first one was when the two Johns quit and James broke his arm was 2009, eight. 09, I think. Oh, nine, that makes sense because then 2012 our van got stolen. 2015 our van got broken into in Dallas. We got lost all our passports and backpacks and computers. 2018

the trailer got stolen 2021 our practice space flooded Oh shit guys You need to chill next year Don't do that next year We're fucked 24

Well dude Yeah fuck It's gonna be a hard Don't go anywhere All right Stay home Let's see We got he broke his ears

In Helsinki Or his earbuds He was in his earbuds I missed a word there one time we took a flight I don't remember where but all of us had an extra space in between us so we were sitting on a plane

next to each other with the middle seat empty. So Crystal James Nicky Casey and then Casey was sat in the middle in another row surrounded by people. No no no the guy that was sat next to him there was an open seat to his right and he chose to sit

next to Casey he wouldn't move what? He wouldn't move What happened there? At what point do you just say, dude, move? A poster. It's open.

It was, uh, it was, it was to, it was to Paris. That was where the flight was to. Oh, and here's one with where he's wearing an or a yellow hoodie and he has stains all over. He's just, he's chronically spills on himself. He's just got bad luck. He's just one of those guys. The, the, the 2018 trailer thefts, we all got most of our stuff back. Casey got nothing back.

We, we got, we got, we got two guitars and you got your head back. Yeah, yeah. And it was way later down the line. And I got drum hardware. And Chris got drum hardware. A year and a half way or something like that. Yeah. But Casey never got a trace of this shit.

No. Not one thing. Because what that means is whoever got it was like, I play a little bass. Yeah, yeah. So Chris, your kit is still just somewhere else? Well, dude, luckily I was using a backline kit for that tour. Oh. So, yeah.

So, you know, but I lost the snare. I lost double bass puddles. I lost symbols, you know. Some fuckers got those. Yeah, but, but and yeah, like, luckily, like, I got all my hardware back because, like, they, like, ditched the trailer next door to, I think, in Mandalay Bay. And they just found, like, this, this, like, brutally open trailer. And for whatever reason, my Stan's case was still in there.

I guess they saw it and it's like, oh, this is too fucking heavy. Yeah, let's leave it, you know? The biggest thing, some random shit. The funniest part about that is the merch being gone. Yeah, well, some of it. Remember, Emma sent us some? Yeah, but only records, though. We had like $8,000 worth of shirts.

They were just gone or in a dumpster. It's somewhere. They're either on a landfill or on, or people are wearing them somewhere. The whole grip of them were in someone's RV. Yeah. It was in a high speed chase in the northwest. Really?

I mean, the story of the trailer was like truly insane. Yeah, we could buy you a Netflix special. Yeah, a nice true crime podcast on the 100%. Have you guys seen any pictures pop up of like dudes in the wild wearing the shirts that were stolen? I don't think so. Because it was like the first become a machine. Or is the Morrissey one? Yeah.

It was the Morrisy one. Oh, that's a good one. I don't remember other stuff that we had in that. I think there's those those green hoodies, the post-human, PSTHMN, green and white hoodies. So if you are in Vegas and you see that hoodie. Dude, also like, like my guitar head never seen a... That was like the most expensive one. A Dean Costello.

Dean's one of Dean's head that he led to us just to try, gone. It was like an early version of it. Well, actually that head, you know, like the craziest thing about all this is like stuff was popping up all over like the western half of the United States. Right. Like, like actually Dean's head ended up in like the Pacific Northwestern. Northwest at some shots. Yeah, but for some reason. Oh, yeah.

You know, like the dude reached out to me because he had, he had seen, you know, our post about being robbed and, like, I think saw the gear list. And, you know, I got into communication with them and then he just like ghosted me, unfortunately, you know? And then like the merch was in like fucking Texas or something like that, you know, that was, Oregon. Yeah, that was found this high speed chase, you know.

I mean, dude, it was, it was crazy, but, you know, like, clearly, you know, was obviously part of some larger elaborate kind of ring, it seems, you know, and our stuff was just fucking everywhere. One of my favorite moments, though, to reflect upon James is James and I were like ahead of the group walking to go to the van. And where we parked the van, there was, there was, they're like, like palm trees, like skinny ass fucking trees. And I literally remember walking with James being like, man, trailer must be behind that tree.

Like just I was I was in such denial that in my brain The entire trailer was hiding behind a fucking palm tree because it was so what an unbelievable angle I've got right yeah This is one's the last time. This is crazy exactly dude Yeah I mean we got five uh buffet vouchers two two two two two The fucking parking lot attendant guy who doesn't work for the luxur he works for their own thing took our police report or whatever I have an amazing picture of Nick with him that I'll send to you. Literally was like, look, man, I can't offer you guys much.

But the funniest part about that, it was two vouchers. I used both. Good for you. Oh, bastards. Hey, I was hungry. Yeah. Something I want to ask about. You have your manager, best in the biz, some would say.

Tell me about, because talking about Vital, such a unique experience every time. Like management wise? Or just in general? Like as like management wise and just as a guy. I mean, dude, it's so hard because like we've been close with Vitalis since what?

2008? Yeah. 2009. Yeah. It's like shit. We've, we've known that dude for for so long, you know?

So I mean, like the stories are fucking endless. But I guess in the context of him. Yeah. Yeah. Seriously. In the context of him being our manager, I don't know.

What do you guys? I think. I will say before he was manager to the stars, he did fucking life and death and we did the first one. And I remember him

going from like just a brunette guy to a silver fox by the end of that tour. Because it was so fucking stressful and so just like up and down and constant, like there's never a dull moment. And he

did it, he kept doing it, and look where he is now. I just fondly think of like his work ethic and like his drive and just like the vision that he had and like it had to start somewhere. And it was just like. Yeah. And I mean, I think if we want to talk about like him in general, I think he's really, you know, helped us, you know, make some decisions that we are really unsure of as a band. You know, for example, you know, when the ghost main tour had been proposed. to us, I think a lot of us were a little hesitant on how well we would do on something like that.

He was kind of the one to really, you know, convince us to take the risk. And what was crazy was like, I mean, we had a great reaction. We were well received in that, in that, you know, in that genre of music, which I wasn't entirely expecting. But there's other examples like that. And I think that he's really helped us kind of expand into other genres.

and he's obviously, you know, like Chris said, long, long time friend. And, you know, obviously it's always good to work with, you know, someone you're close with and trust. And, you know, obviously, I think he's also a big part of like why we've been able to be where we're at at this point as well. So yeah, there's a, there's a couple key things I think that have happened during our, you know, whatever, our time being a band career. that I think if they didn't happen, we probably would have stopped being a ban. Nick and Casey. Yeah, definitely.

I think Vitalo and moving into like, you know, just the opportunities that were, that came along as they're in. And you, having your picture taken at this is for you fest with your shirt off. Yeah, that was a changing moment.

It's a big one. But, I mean, we've come a long way since then. That's for sure. What's the coolest about Vitello is like, I know that if there's time, like we can go and play catch or something. Yeah. Yeah.

Like he's still like the same. Yeah. I mean, that's, Vitello is, I mean, obviously when it's time for business, it's, it's, you know, it's definitely, you know, he can, he can separate friendship and business pretty well, which is, which is good. But it's nice to not really ever take anything too personal and be, be real. Let's go back to common. suffering a bit. Yeah. That was a nice.

Track four. Break. Track four. Devour. Oh, yeah. Second single? Second single. Devour.

I feel like there's always got to be like a fast one. We write a few and then kind of, they all get filtered out, but one that we like really like. And that was the one. The, the beginning riff was really shitty when we wrote it. And that changed a lot. The big pit part.

is one of the most unique single parts on the record. What was that was there like a certain band or song that inspired that? Bown and bound out. There definitely was Nick. Just say it. I mean, there's a much sugar. Oh, yeah. I was listening to like.

Yeah. Yeah. Like in the very late stage is like writing the record. I like got back into that record chaos fear. I don't know if that is like if that riff, was influenced by that that much for me, but like, I feel like all the, all the single string stuff on the record, like I don't naturally just like, tend to write stuff like that. So, so anytime it's there, it's kind of like a deliberate choice. And I feel like that was more of a thing where we had the whole song, didn't have a breakdown for it yet.

Casey and I were like in the lab again, you know, trying to try to like sort some ideas out. And I was just like, let's try like a single string breakdown. And so we did that. There's like a bend like above like the nut of the guitar or whatever. So like, yeah, bending the open note or whatever. I feel like that. That was like one of the gimmicks on like post-human that we like used a few times. And I think that's the only time.

The negative one. The negative one for it. Yeah. Moments are important on a big piece of music. And this is this is one of the bigger moments on the record, I feel like is when it opens up to that. Because this is kind of the first time where it feels like those. single string harms way signature moments are used more sparingly. I think that also has a lot to do with the fact that when I would write songs,

a lot of them had single string aspects to it. And Nick, that's is the complete opposite. So. Yeah. Nick, Nick uses fucking six strings. Can you believe this guy? Yeah.

I mean, there is single string shit. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, like, The fast parts and shit have like single string, like all that stuff.

Like writing dbeat stuff is really natural for me. Like I feel like I like writing fast parts, but I know that people generally don't want to like listen to that much fast shit. Like Chris and I used to play in like a dbeat band. And I feel like that's just kind of like kind of baked into what I make all the time already. So I don't know. I feel like that's kind of just something that gets like stripped away after layers and layers of like going through the idea. is and shit. And same with like the single string stuff.

It's like, uh, I don't know. Just trying to make those moments of having that shit more special than just like doing it all the time, I guess is kind of, this is the song where that really shows. And it sounds like a single. So this was a good, good pick. Yeah. Right into the third single. Yep.

This, this block of like boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Now we're not on the B side yet, but we'll talk about the B side. the whole side B of the album. Tell me about undertow, because this is a special song. You got Kingwoman rocking both verses all the way through. Is that the first time, like guest vocalist has done bit like the entire song

other than the hook? Yeah, I think so. There was a strict, not strict, but there was like a, maybe an unspoken rule that like no one else would sing on anything but us until Colin, I think.

Yeah. Yeah. John was definitely the first. Yeah. Well, I mean, Rust had Emily. Had Emily on it. So it was Rust, yeah. There was like two guest vocal parts on that.

But I think like for undertow, I mean, this was, you know, this was like a almost like a full length feature of kind of Chris on that song, you know, which was obviously something we had, we had never done before. Talk about how you guys had to wrangle her and where you went and all that shit that day. Oh, yeah. So, I mean, basically, I mean, just long story short, Justin Loudon, you know, he basically got us, you know, in contact. And, you know, definitely, I don't want to say convinced her to do it, but definitely really helped influence her doing that. Because I don't think she does a lot of stuff like that. And, you know, she said, was familiar with Herm's way? I think she was familiar, but not like, didn't dive.

super into it, you know, until like... She's never been in the breeding grounds pit like me? No, I don't think so. I don't think so. But she will be soon. After that, she's going to be in the next pit for sure. Yeah. No, absolutely.

But what was cool is, is King Woman was playing Chicago. And she kind of hit me up maybe three hours before the show was going to start and was like, hey, like, I'm in town. I can record the song if we can get to. someone to do it. And I hit up Andy like on the fly and said, hey, are you free? Andy from Bricktop and weekend nachos. Yep. And, uh, and so, uh, basically she had Uber to the studio. And Nick met me there. Yeah, met up with them. And, uh, we kind of just explained to her how we want her to sing. And it was kind of crazy because like after everything was set up, I mean, she basically was going to play. And,

in an hour and a half. Yeah. And so she had to knock it out pretty quickly. And she did, thankfully. And then Nick and I drove her back to the show. We got her food. Yeah, we got sweet green and- Yeah, dude.

So she ate and then performed within 45 minutes after recording the vocal part. Dude, she's a trooper. When it came to the music video, she's a trooper. Yeah, I mean. She was like, down.

I mean, I, because that's the thing. I mean, it's when you're bringing someone, obviously that you haven't worked with before, it's sometimes a toss up how it's going to go. But,

I mean, skirt. Yeah, but Chris is awesome. Was, you know, obviously we can't thank her enough for, you know,

being involved in the song. And then, like, the music video was even, you know, we thought was a further reach of if she would even do it. But, but she was down.

And I think, obviously, it made the music video what it is for sure. So, yeah. It's very special to have the special guests be in the video, like actually features. That's like a thing that only really happens in major label, the major label budget's going on. How difficult was that logistically to make happen?

It honestly wasn't. I mean, it was kind of just like a conversation. I'm the one who's mainly in contact with her. And, you know, she was definitely just, it was basically, hey, would you, would you be down to be involved in the music video and she was like yeah absolutely wow um you know and it was you know obviously finn i think also helped play a role in that because we i showed her an example of a video that fin had done prior to our music videos and it was a style in which she liked and appreciated and i think that kind of also helped make her more comfortable with the idea um

because obviously like any artist, you know, she's, you know, wants, wants her to be represented in, you know, the way that her art is going to be represented when she's on her own, not just with us. So I think, of course, we were able to kind of match those things. That's cool. Yeah, it really seems that way. It's like both feels like both of you in the coolest way. Sure. In a way that, like, both your fan base would hear that and be like, I got to check her out. and maybe vice versa as well.

Which is that's kind of the point of guest vocals, isn't it? Of course. Of course. Yeah. Just make it a big event so that both sides go, oh, shit, I got to check this out. Yeah. What was it like deciding to make that a single was an ambitious move? Being Harm's Way, being the running man, hardcore band. Yeah.

When you're listening to the album for the first time, say you're driving at night and you're like, oh, New Harm's Way is out. you get to that one, you're like, oh, shit, they're experimenting. So I kind of, I personally envy everybody who didn't hear it as a single. Ah. Because so they got to have that whole, like mid-album moment. But that happened to me with Heaven's Call. We'll get to that in a second.

Because that might be my favorite single minute on the album, is the undertow into Heaven's Call. side A, side B transition. I think you were particularly in favor of that being a single. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And, you know, I think that song, it captures so many different elements

of the record from like the experimental components to the melodic components, the kind of like the ambition of the record, but also like, dude, like song has maybe one of the heaviest riffs on the record on it too, you know? Um, you know, it didn't, it didn't feel like, I guess, I don't know, it, it just felt right, you know, because again, how it captured every single element of the record. And, and, and I think just like the ethos of who we are as a band, which it's like, we're not the running man. You know, we are. This is, this band is so much more, you know, this band is so much more than that. And anybody who is kind of interacted with our discography in a meaningful way kind of knows that, right? And anyone who knows us as people knows that, right? I think in, general, harm's ways, influences are more out of the box from what you actually sound like than they are things that you sound like.

There's probably like five core bands that we all have always liked since the beginning. Sure. And then all that, yeah, a bunch of random shit. And then you add in this fucking wizard and his, his concubine up in Milwaukee. and, you know, it further complicates things in like... Is Casey his concubine? Casey's his concubine, for sure.

Yo, I've learned tonight. One thing, one tidbit about undertow that I really like, that also is like very harm's way is the drum part. We were like, we'll come up with something. This is just like a filler kind of like temporary placement drum part.

And then by the end of, by the time it was time for tracking, it was like, I kind of like it. Yeah. Yeah. It was just the drum part. Yeah. No, yeah, it was literally all just being like, hey, you know, like, fucking, you know, Godflesh, like, kind of drum loop.

That, that's, that's kind of sick, you know, maybe let's, let's just, like, put that in there for a placeholder now. And then, like, I just, like, made it happen with real drums, you know? And then Casey did, like, the production for it, my bad to cut it off. But, Casey did, like, the production for it, too and all the scents and shit. And there's, like, you can hear in the snare, there's, like, a trail that's cut in the middle by, like, the next snare placement, like, cuts the trail of that snare or whatever. It's like a high hat clamp almost on like the snare reverb. And all that shit kind of like made it feel way vibeier and like totally.

For sure. Totally. There's like a lot of really cool I think textures on that on that song. That really like kind of make it what it is for sure. Yeah. That was a single. Single worthy. Written in studio also off off the back of a different scrap song.

Right. Yeah. So we kind of just like used one component of a different idea we had and then just like wrote that in pre-pro. And it's funny, man, that's the thing that you and Casey, I think really brought to us was the idea of like you can cannibalize of your own material. You can let go of these parts and make them work in better ways, which I think the three of us struggled with. No, I mean, you know, you have a part that you love and you just want to like, hang. on to it. Yeah.

And you two and Will are just very good at being like, we'll find a place for that. We're going to use this better part for a more fitting part of this song or whatever. Yeah. I mean, traditionally, like, you know, in the early Harmsway material, we just wrote full songs. And if, like, a part didn't work, we scrapped the whole song, a lot of times. Wow. Yeah, sometimes. There was no pre-production ever.

It was, all right. We wrote the song, we go in the studio, we play the song, you know? Yeah. And if you don't like one part, the song's gone. Or just like, well, the rest of the song is cool. It's just that part. Yeah. Yeah.

But there was no like kind of like kind of thinking big picture, you know, with like a collection of songs or like kind of critical thinking about parts, you know. Or I shouldn't say there's none of that right. But like we just weren't used to that methodology, if that makes sense. And I think obviously working with, you know, working with, yeah, working with like Will Putney, you know, on post-human and then Will Yip on, you know, common suffering. You know, we just got like more and more comfortable with that. And then obviously like, you know, Nick and Casey, you know, just helped flesh that out even more in terms of like how we worked, worked through that as a collective. And I guess one funny tidbit as well is like vocally, I mean, on all the records up until post-human, I just went into the.

studio and sing without ever talking to anybody about the cadences. I would just, I would, and not even practicing the songs, right? I mean, a lot of times I would just go and we would just sing the songs and there would be very little,

you know, interaction. The vocals were almost an afterthought. Yeah. I mean, with all due respect, it just wasn't, you know,

the kind of music we were making wasn't. Yeah. I mean, literally through up until. rust, right. Like up until rust, essentially. Yeah. You know.

But I mean, I don't think I could. They get what they get. Motherfucker. Yeah. Yeah. They get what they get. I think I don't think, I don't think I honestly don't think I could ever record now without pre-production.

It was the, I mean, we got a taste of it with Putney. We did, what, two days, three days? Very, very little. With Yip, what do we do? Two weeks? Yeah. Yeah. And then probably more.

Dude, two weeks where we would like work on a song or two every day and then demo it. And then he would send us, he would send us the demos by the time we were in the van going back to the hotel. That's unbelievable. Like we would listen to them immediately and just kind of like talk about. It was awesome. Yeah. And I mean, even like before we started session two, I think there was like two, three days of like additional pre-production because, you know, we had we had went home and just like kind of sat with those songs. And like, you know, Nick, I think, you know, you can hyper fixate on things.

The album art is a brain and it's my fucking anxiety. And that's what the album is. But yeah, at home, we're picking apart the songs and shit. And then, like, for session two, Bo and Casey and I got to the studio maybe two days before Chris and James were able to show up for tracking. So, like, we drove the van. Casey brought his like desktop computer. Yeah, full PC on it.

Like his like his like RGB like gaming rig and and we like set it up in the control room and we're like pre-proing again. We like programmed shit and we're like trying new ideas for songs that we thought were done

from pre-pro but then we're like splicing that shit with kind of the demos and like dude I feel bad because like Chris showed up at the studio and then we're like what do you think about these drum parts like for this part or like this part, for like new sections that were added to the song that he didn't even like ever hear yet.

Yeah, you know, and I just spent like six weeks, you know, or however long, just learning the songs that I thought. We was going to play, you know, and,

you know, but, you know, to be fair, like everything was better, you know. Well, that's the thing.

If it, if it's serving the greater good of the song and the record, it's like you got to drop. Yeah, what can you do? Yeah, you got to drop any kind of preconceived shit. Yeah.

go with it. Yeah. I mean, like, honestly, like, yeah. I mean, without those first couple days, you know, it's hard. You know, I think the breakdown in your favorite song, Heaven's Call, like, wouldn't have been there, right? Yeah, that was really different in that. Sinaiide.

Sinai wouldn't have been sign. Oh, yeah. You know, there was, there was, I mean, it was definitely like much needed. And to Bo's point, like, just helped the overall record, you know. Yeah. Oh, before I forget, the last thing I wanted to say about undertow that I think is cool is, I feel like Harmsway obviously is known for like the godflesh influence and all that stuff. And I feel like a lot of that is because of like the presence of like electronics and a lot of the songs or some of like the riffing styles of like having like a like repetitive like chromatic phrase or whatever.

But I feel like under toe is the first time that we've kind of like used the melodic like godflesh stuff as like an influence a little bit. Because that was like a big thing I was kind of shooting four with like kind of the the chord voicings and like the clean parts and stuff like that. And the way that those like layered. So it's awesome. Yeah.

Good point. Kicks ass. Great point. Heaven's call. Track six. This is your track? You pitting? Fucking banger.

Banger, dude. I'm in the pit every night. This, I remember Nick. I don't remember necessarily when you brought it to practice, but I remember, like, watching what you were doing

and watching the riff and being like, okay. Just like, oh, no. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, this was a riff, too, that was demoed in Milwaukee, you know, because we played this for a while, you know? Oh, the chorus, right?

The chorus, and I mean, even the intro. And kind of the chug part. Yeah. It was different, but we had the other thing. Again, like, yeah, there was there was kind of Frankenstein stuff in there from, you know, that ended up just kind of working. But yeah. Biggest pit on the record. You think so?

100%. Yeah, I've heard from many. Have you? Yeah, I've heard. I've heard from many. I think cyanide has it. Many whom I respect, you know, in terms of their pit. Pit proud.

Yeah, exactly. You know, they know, they know. They know. thing or two about pitting and writing pit riffs. Let me tell you, I got a pit HD. And I think this is the hardest part on the record. Dude, pit HD. Like the ending of the song?

Is that the part you're talking about? Yeah, the big end. Of course. I think it's kind of pit to pit. It is. It is kind of pit to pit to pit. Pardon this interruption. We've got to take a break for a second.

I'm just so thirsty. What do you got? Oh, my goodness. That could not be the foundational nutrition beverage. agee 1. It sure is. It's my foundational nutritional supplement, Beau. And let me tell you, my gut health was in shambles. Lord knows. I was lacking in every vitamin in the world. Life was hard. Age 1 made me harder. So we've got a AG1 sponsor, the gracious, gorgeous

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That's actually a really good selling point. I think I would too. I've just grown so accustomed to taking it. I take it every day. I don't take my multivitamin. It's got everything I need. We don't need a multivitamin. This is like my pre-coffee morning.

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I guarantee you that you, the listener, are missing that. So you should get on it right now. Right now. It's also Manscape Time. Wow. You know. When is it not Manscape Time really?

I mean, every single, it's Manscape Day, week, month, as far as I'm concerned. I got, we got, I just happen to keep this, the body wash right here next to my couch. Foot duster. The smell, the scent that the foot, it's, the scent is refined, which is also, I think, some of the other, yeah, it's the body washers. A delight. It's so pleasant. You can rest assured if you have this stuff, if you got the reviver, that you don't even need cologne.

If you run out of cologne, you can just spray some ball spray on your face and hands. And you'll smell so good. People will be like, dude. What is that? What is that? And I'll be like, it's supposed to be my balls, but it's my whole body. Oh. Code hardlour, 20% off for shipping.

We love Man's Gate. 20% off in free shipping is the craziest to me. Why wouldn't you do it? Yeah, it's really. 20% of, again, there ain't nothing that 20% off would stop me from buying. You know, like if I see a 20% off coupon for anything, the trigger's being pulled. And it's also whatnot of time.

And it's especially important this week as it's set in stone. It's happening. We just figured it out. We just figured it out Saturday, October 21st. 2.30 Pacific 530 Eastern. That's it. Bo and I for the pit is a bit. The pit benefit, whatnot stream.

Yeah. We got, I got heat, man. Yeah, he pulled out some big guns. I flew with a bunch of stuff, so I didn't want to like, I couldn't bring that much. No. He's got some big, he's got some guns coming. I got some stuff. And then Taylor, of course, like, I pulled some stuff from his like yard sale thing just to be like, no, no, this needs to be.

This is special. So, so. He didn't know what he had. you know what he's got. The watcher wants what he's got and you're going to get it. So you join us on What Not. You click the link in the description. You get 15 bucks off your first purchase.

And for those of you who don't know, whatnot is basically eBay meets like Twitch and meets Hardlore. So we're live. We're talking. We're chatting. We're talking with people in the chat who are also bidding on items when they go up. And it only happens one time. It's not recorded.

It's a live thing. When you miss it, you miss it. It's like a little live episode where you can buy a, things. That's right. What's better than buying things? Literally nothing on earth. Literally my number one hobby. Dude, this seat could not be more uncomfortable. I'm sorry, do you? I have benches in the kitchen. Yeah, you can stand up. Yeah, you can stand up. It's going to look really awkward. Yeah, James gonna stand because he's uncomfortable. Oh, okay.

You're still in frame. It's good. It looks like we're just in trouble. It's so awesome. Sorry. You want to switch with me? I got a chair coming tomorrow. That'll be so much better. Yeah. I'm just going to stand for like one minute.

You're fine. You're fine. Were you about to ask me about cyanide, Bo? I was just saying, while Heaven's call, I think, does have a very heavy pit part. I think when it, when cyanide after the full-time part finally opens up, that's what, that for me is the. So here's my, here's my, here's my point to that. Yes, sir. B of this record is unbelievable.

1 through 5 is like classic harm's way, you know? It's like you guys are, you're, that's the appetizer. And then the real motherfuckers, 6 through 10 is where you go, fuck you.

What fucking angel is bitch. And like that this is this, this is like two journeys. One through five, you've got a whole record basically. It's like an opener, a follow up. up a weird hard song with some

allusions to the weirdness a hard song and then big finish and then like the second story begins with Heaven's Call tell me about writing cyanide yeah how did you fucking do that how did you do

so cyanide and a B-side on the record used to like share some parts in common we had two songs written with like a couple like really similar things going on in both. We did record the B-side obviously and it ended up being like very different from cyanide, but but it was kind of two different ideas based on the same thing.

And that one changed a lot. Like in pre-pro, we kind of like structured it more like a like a whole song or whatever. But when we went home from pre-pro, I kind of thought the transitions were just like really shitty. And that was like one of the things that like when we got back to doing tracking, like that's that's one of the things we worked on. And that was like one of the Chris surprises where we had to be like, what do you think of this part? But but like luckily I think everyone thought this was like way better. Um, even dude, Will was like a trooper about my like annoying fucking like last minute changes because like I feel like I can picture like his reaction. He's reaction.

now when we got there for tracking and I told him that I like wanted to change like this or that part. We call that the next day test. We have this thing called the next day test where you write a thing and you record it. If it's still good the next day, it's ready to go. Yeah. Most

times it isn't. You record something you go, holy shit, that's what we fucking did. That sucks. Yeah. Yeah. I just, I also have like a fucking next two days test and like a next week test and then like next month test. So. And a post-release test.

Post-release test. Yeah. That's the best one. How's the post-release test treating you? I can answer that. You came to, you were at practicing the other video and you're like, yo, we were listening to some of the demos. I like some of the performances better.

No, no, no. Not as generally as that. I was saying there was something about vocally the demo version of Wanderer that I liked more. But as a song, I like how it turned out. Are you talking about the stuff that you guys are doing on this? there or the yeah yeah yeah no not not james stuff it was it was mostly like the main take but yeah that's right i i'm very uh present on that one i feel like so i'm i'm maybe just like more critical of like how that how that turned out you know he was he was sick he was a little sick and a little stuffly

and you think you can hear that well yeah a little compared to the demo at least but like i i guess no one else's comparison. No, I never didn't catch my ear. Nobody will ever hear it. Ever. Terrorizer. The big, epic industrial banger, dude.

I feel like this was, this was Casey's like mission. Yeah. He had done the gift and it kind of got overlooked. He's very good at what he does. It's actually really crazy. And I think, you know, he wanted to really like,

not the gift part two, but just be like, how's this, you know, and like just kind of bring something. Yeah, yeah. Big old fingers. And this song is two big fingers up to me. Yeah. I love.

I love. Yeah, me too. Good. So you playing it. I'm glad you're playing it so that people go, what the fuck was that one? Because then I hope this episode makes people go, damn, I got to really fixate on that one. And heaven's goal. But that's putting a song, a song this good being track eight means the record must fucking.

and rock, you know? There's, there's, there's, there's gifts, no pun intended, hidden throughout the entire thing. Yeah, that was a tough one to place, I feel like. We didn't know, like, where to put it. Because it kind of happened again, kind of. Well, those are just tough because you don't know, you don't want to put them too early. If you, if you make this song track to, then people might get a totally different, uh, opinion or taste of what they think the record's going to be.

It's a tricky. It's hard. It's tricky. What's funny is before this conversation, I was like, damn, the sequence of this is crazy. And now talking to it, I'm like, this is the only way this thing could have been sequenced. Yeah. In hindsight, I'm really happy with the sequencing that we chose for sure. Absolutely.

Absolutely. Me too. The part where Terrorizer goes into the full-time thing and you get the chorus, it's one of my favorite moments on the record, I think, where it just like, like, we, a lot on this record you'll eventually get to the part you know but there's a lot of like you gotta get there

you gotta earn it you know as like the listener or whatever on his record that's my favorite music you're right exactly I love earning it guys and I think because of the the drumbeat of the second verse I guess is the do do do do got do do do do like you hit a snare where the

full time part is but it's not a full time part yet you're still like the Tom thing, you get this little taste of what's coming. And once it gets there, too. I mean, I remember when I went to Casey's house to work on shit and then he had the idea for Terrorizer and I was just like, oh, this is crazy. Because like the main riff, like the verse and shit, like, he like pretty much entirely made it, like, wrote the riff and all the production and stuff was, I mean, I think that

was used in the actual song. Yeah. And what we did in the studio was like layer the real drums like over it and add layers to it. but like Casey's like initial project for that song is like in the track. But then, but it was it was like the only part he had at the time. And then like the chorus like, I mean,

I like didn't write that. I just, I helped him come up with it by just adding a stop. It's like the same riff with like a chunk cut out. So that's like why there's like the stop and the riff. And then we added the bridge and like that was like the like the demo version of that is the structure we ended up going with like in the song too. That's rare.

kind of didn't we cut one thing we cut one of the choruses so in pre-pro the melodic part that happens later in the song yeah we had that earlier in the song as well we added that in pre-pro but then after that oh i see i see and we took that yeah the extra one out yeah that's one of my favorite things about the the the song too is is kind of like the synthy kind of like bridge yeah yeah yeah what's going to the snare on the pit is it have like a big reverb tail or something? I think it's like a hyper-compressed snare. Fucking bad ass.

Yeah, I mean, like, you know, to like kind of what Nick was saying, there's a mix of like natural drums on there. And then a couple samples, too, you know, that they kind of make, make him sound as crazy as they are. Yeah. And then like, you know, 40 plus bass tracks too.

Yeah. I think he, yeah. There's like, there's like two, it's like two parallel bass tracks. And then guitar are playing with the drop tuner thing on it too, with the pitch shifter. Yeah, there's like, there is guitar on it. We'll see how you decide to do it because I'm not sure if, I don't know. I don't, that's like the thing. It's like I'm not sure how to split it up.

Yeah, so if you're listening to this and you've seen us play it, tell us how you liked it. Because by the time this episode comes out, we played a couple shows. Like, subscribe, share. Drop in the comments below. He's a natural, this guy. Have you guys, have you guys been, are you still tweaking this song at practice or is that? Is it, are you almost done? They got together when I was out by you and worked on stuff.

But we're going to, we're going to be in the lab quite a bit before we leave. The bass and the drums is glued, basically, and, like, the rest of the, like, figuring out what, what Bo and I should do during this song instead of just standing there and waiting to go, darn, or not. Like, you know what I mean? It's, uh, that's the hard part. We might take a little break. You could just drop, dude, drop and do extra bass. We could. It could be crazy.

That was a real fucking low. That was attempted, and we will see how that sounds in, uh, in a real room. Yeah. Yeah. In a, in a practice space with no. Nothing miced up. It was not great. Okay.

You just need bodies, dude. Yeah. Yeah. Dude, sound totally changes once we get some bodies. Just wait until you get bodies. It's all. It'll be fine.

Sadist guilt. Which was a working title for the record. It was. Ah. Ah. Who's the safest? I forgot about that. It's James, dude.

Yeah. Look at them. I'm just kidding. Yeah. Dude. Tell me about this one. The song used to be connected to denial. Like, it was, like, one song into another.

So, like, the, like, little Matthew breakdown at the end of denial. It's like, it does two key changes at the end of that song. And then it's in the key that Deni, or that Sadist Guild is in. So there was no intro written for it. It went straight from that, like, pitch-shifty, mathy thing into, straight into the verse of sadist guilt and it was like a mega song and then the breakdown of sadist guilt

was also that same part again. Right. Fuck, that's right. Which I thought I thought it was really cool and so did Casey and we were like kind of married to the idea of that but then Will was basically like yeah it's kind of crazy

and kind of convinced us to Yeah, he didn't fuck with it for sure but I don't know I feel like at first we weren't sure if we like agreed or not but like I think after splitting them up and like making all the changes to him

I feel like I agree it was a better idea to like break them apart. Yeah. Yeah, no for sure. Something that's important to point out that we literally never did until Nick joined the band and started writing

was a lot of these songs are in like they start in the key of C sharp some of them are in C-sharp. Some of them are in C and some are C sharp on here. Because like instead of starting open, which like when you go back to talking about how James would come with the single finger riff, nine times out of 10, he would be like, yo, I got this riff. And it would start on an open. Just because of the nature of writing heavy riffs.

Nick starts writing on for laymen's like myself on the second fret so that you can go down. and let me tell you something. I love A going down like that. Yeah. And then you guys are in drop, but hitting the six. Yeah. Yeah. With the negative one, the real.

Yeah. That's the shit, dude. It's smart. Because a lot of the time you'll be stuck. You'll be like, what do I do with this song? Yeah. Yeah. And then you do it two notes higher.

So you can do something there. Yeah, you just got to play on the second fret where it's like, it's like the key you play in if you're in like a like a butt rock band that's in drop tuning. You can do like the 202 thing. You know what I mean? Yeah, right.

202 is crazy. They just write your normal shit like that. Only the real riffers know, like Nick. Yeah. That's right. And ain't nobody doing 202 right now, dude. It's a bad. Say this guilt is,

you have to put something like for lack of a better word, big and hard before the closer. Yeah. Because the epic closer is that's the last, that's how you sum up everything. The song of a forward is almost more important because it's like,

hey, this is who we are. And then we're going to step out of our comfort zone for this big last one. But this is the last chance to kind of remind you that fucking, the thing we do better than everybody else. It's a good way to put it. But Wanderer is,

Maybe the best harm's way closer, period. It's funny. I feel like it thematically, maybe peripherally, I don't really know, has similarities to Dead Space. I don't, key wise, I feel. But not even, like, musically, just in, like, like, the spirit of what the song is. Because that was kind of, like, an ambitious closer, I would say,

dead space. Big time. Yeah. I mean, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's got a big, a big intro. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. And I think Wanderer does too, but, uh, with a different vibe. I think I truly like, after having heard the record a billion times and then like, when we're getting ready for this listening to it, I've been listening to it like every day,

you know, to get ready for tour. Uh-huh. The ending of Wanderer is like, like, I love the melodies. I love washed out James. I love the weird little like the weird guitar shit you do. When it goes into the like the very ending

is one of the heavier things I think as a band we've ever put out. And I'm like, good job, Nick. So, so happy with that part. And one thing about this song, that's a fucker. I want to clear the air.

because I've seen a lot of people say that it's me singing on that song, but it's a combination of Nick and Bo. Yeah. And so it's not me. It's not my beautiful voice on there. You know, I can't get to the, you know, I only have the famous growl. Do you think we could do that live? Yeah.

I feel like it sounds really like you can hear like who is who, like on the track and everything. I feel like it would be similar. We would just need like real good. Beau had to point it out for me, but now I can't unhear. Yeah, it sounds like so, like, distinctly like, Bo, I think his, is, like, register in the part. His is, yeah, but it was like, I just didn't, couldn't tell. I don't know you like that yet, Nick. You know, I'm not.

You never sang to me personally, so I wasn't, wasn't prepared. Yeah, true. I really like that song. I think that song is, like, ambient and cool and just, like, I don't know, makes me think of, sand and desert. See, that's the thing. So here's something about Dead Space and Wanderer.

I only know this because of Casey because he's kind of like a theory dude. And I don't really know anything about that. But like Dead Space in the before the chorus, the pre-chorus is like kind of melodic. And both Wanderer and Dead Space have like Phrygian and like harmonic minor shit in it. They're not in the same key.

But that's why they got the desert vibe. The desert vibe. I see. Okay. Okay. I got you. I got you. It is in both songs for sure.

Yeah. Yeah. I got that. It's very, very dune. I mean, I actually, I think that turned out to be one of my favorite songs on the record, actually. Because it's almost like Converged Neurosis. Very neurosis. I can see that.

Yeah. It's like when Converge does the neurosis songs on the other. Yeah. Where they go, hey, this is the neurosis. Marosis one on this one, which, which like I like that you, in the age of nobody making it to closers, kept the closer epic. Like this sounds like you wrote it like, this is the last song. I don't, I don't know if it was ever specifically written that way, but I feel like as soon as we, as soon as we got the like unmixed on master shit, it was like, wow. in my mind at least I felt like it had to be the closer.

Especially the melodic guitar part. Like that to me just felt like that would be the conclusion of like something, you know, whether it was a side or whether it was the record. But yeah, it's definitely one of my favorite songs on the record. And it's funny too because like you look at, if you look at, I don't think you can really see it on normal Spotify, but on like the artist Spotify, I can look at a release, right, and see. Which songs are like the most popular?

Dead Space is not last. Oh. Which is like, oh, okay. You know? That's huge, honestly. It might be third to last, but that's just kind of like de facto, of course. Yeah.

But still, I mean, all of our last songs are like in a row on the bottom. And we realized this the other day of practice when we were making the set list for this is like all of our most popular songs are openers. It's like the first song of every record is kind of the, the banger for that record.

But that's what they are. That's why they're that for a reason. You know, they're opening the record because they could open the set. Absolutely. Silent Wolf is another one of those. Like you could easily open the set with that.

We might do that. So that's common suffering. I'm proud of you guys. We haven't, I wanted to wait to talk about it until this. I think you guys have done an incredible job. I think I don't want to play favorites here, but you know,

this one's up there in terms of the harm's way discography to me. I think it is like cohesively start to finish probably the easiest one to just blow straight through. You know? Yeah. Like putting this on at the gym, I'm probably going to listen to it twice and then I'm going to go home. Whereas pretty much any other band,

I'm not going to finish the album. I'm going to skip it. Let's do some standard hard lore stuff. Let's get into it. This is Chris's first time. We talk about him damn near once a week here. Hello, everybody. Chris, tell me about growing up with Bo.

Oh, fuck. Oh, man. It's crazy. Do you got to tell the one story? No, but it's crazy because I've actually had this like this conversation with a couple people over the last few weeks about like just about like harm's way and the members of the band and like obviously like these two guys are like two of like my oldest friends you know like in you know in in in in many ways but beau is like shit i've known this dude since i was 12 12

you know you know like 12 13 you know and uh you know we definitely started as like mortal enemies oh dude you got to i've never i've never told the story Great story. You know, like kind of definitely, I mean, which one? Like, where do we start? So Chris and I grew up in a town called Roselle, Illinois. Roselle's like, like, just like a nice suburb. Behind where I lived and, like, behind a street, there's this huge, like, it's, I say huge,

but I bet that's just my memory. There's a pond, just like a pond on the way that we would walk past to go to the grade school or to, like, skateboard at the grade school, basically. And I was friends with this one dude. Should I say his name? It don't matter, right? His last name was Minzara. And he was a good friend of mine.

Chris is a year older than me. So like fifth grade and then he was in sixth grade, Chris is at another school. Big jump. So we, yeah, and we hadn't. Yeah, I was a big middle school. We hadn't interfaced yet at all. Big time.

We had a couple of friends in common. But basically one day, me and another, a mutual friend of mine and Chris is eventually. And then this Manzara guy, we're walking past. And across the pond is this Chris's house, Chris Mills' house. So his back patio faces the pond, which then faces the path. Manzara, for some reason, moons Chris's house because they had a beef over something. So he like bends over full on Moons Chris's house.

And we're just like, ha, and like keep walking. Five seconds later, Chris Mills is running into his young. and screaming at us from across this pond saying like, just being like, hey, motherfucker, I'm gonna fucking kill you. Just like, you don't move by, I don't, you know. Dude, agro-christ. Very agro-christ.

My parents were not home or else. I would have got my ass beat for speaking and saying the things I said. Dude, you never moon a man at his home. No, no, no. No, that's a sacred bond. There was like a, like a dance or something coming up. And he was like, Oh shit, he might be there.

And what's funny is like, Chris and I are pretty much the same height. Chris Manzara, this other guy, was like six foot. He was fucking huge. Fucking giant. He was a massive man. And it would like, like honestly. Yes.

You know. No fear. No fear in this guy. I remember on the way back from Burger King one time, you and Brad? Chris and I, our first band was called Double Cross. Chris played drums. I played guitar. This guy, Brad, played bass in double.

across it and there used to be a Burger King right by my house. We would go to the Burger King and then walk to my garage and play and practice. You and Brad got into like a fist fight, but you like stopped it. Like like, and this is, wait, this is a pattern because caution didn't bring up this story and I've been waiting. You and Brad like got into a fight and you just like held Brad down and Brad down. And Brad was kind of bigger than both you and I too. He was lanky, but he was bigger. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And you were like, stop, stop, stop. and he did. Are you Italian, Chris? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. You bet your fucking ass he is. Chris likes to say,

Mozarel. Yeah, that's what Chris likes to say. Hey, uh, wait, what about it? What about the other story? Hold on. Yeah, I'll, oh, the mens are a god's story. Yeah. Okay.

Well, there's that. And I also drew on your Blinkwin 82 poster. Oh, cardboard cut out. My mom's going to be so upset when she hears this. Everybody's straight. All right. So Tower Records used to have display, like huge foam board displays of, like, album art and shit. I don't know if you remember.

And, yeah. So my mom, I was a huge Blinkman 82 fan in eighth grade. Yeah, probably seventh grade, eighth grade. Yeah, seventh eighth around then. And we were friends by that time. and we were friends with another dude who I got this apartment with. It just ties in. And my mom had got me a take off your pants and jacket, like foam thing.

It was huge. It was like four foot tall, six foot wide. Like it covered the whole head of my bed. And I just had it in my room. And like, to be honest, I was a little overblink at that point. I was starting to get into punk because we were hanging out. But that's sentimental. It's from Wendy.

Exactly. It's from Wendy. And what you write on it when I was in the bathroom, Chris? I think I wrote Bo loves Tom on it. He really did. Just in like that big a space. Like literally, I could have.

Yeah. Hey, there's one thing that people need to know is that Chris is a bully. He doesn't appear to be one, but he's, he's really a bully. But you know what's fun? So like another, another thing that I didn't bring up with caution here because I think it's funnier, because I think it's funnier if you're here. Yeah. It's one time at a harm's way practice when caution was still in the band.

Band. The bond. Fuck. I don't remember what the argument was over, but Chris said something along the lines of like, I don't know what you're doing. You're acting like an idiot right now. And John said,

did you just call me an idiot? And Chris went, yes. And John, with his bass on, leapt over the high hat, into Chris and tried to, like, fight him with his. So the bass is going, br-hmm. and like making noise.

Yeah. And again, to Chris's credit, he like kind of just like, of course he did because John had a base and like couldn't get around. Grabbed like John and a headlock and literally like, we're friends. We're friends. And just like stopped the fight. And we all laughed about it. Like I remember you and I had to turn around because we were laughing so hard about it. All three of you turned around because I remember like once I let him go.

Like John finally chilled out and he was like, okay, okay. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I turn around and everyone's just like, backs turn to us. And I could just like see John Hofacker's body like visually shaking, holding in a laugh, you know. It was so fucking good. I mean, instead of, you know, breaking up our friends fighting,

we just laughed and stuff. Yeah. Yeah, that's about right. But yeah, Chris and I would, we would, he had a drum set in his garage. Yeah, my parents garage. I would learn AFI songs and we would play AFI songs. Yeah.

It was pretty much how it started. Yeah, like Bo and I. That's how long as I'm sorry. I mean, you could say it's the first domino. Yeah, in so many ways. Like, I mean, like, we were both in middle school. I was in eighth grade. You were in seventh grade.

And, you know, Bo was playing in a band that was like, they were just doing like kind of like pop punk covers and stuff. And like, you know, you need a drummer. And like, you know. Oh, yeah. This is like young Chris at this point. Like nobody else I know likes punk, you know. So I'm just like craving friends, craving people like put, you know, you know, just, yeah, to like play music with. And, you know, I think I eventually joined

Kick Me. Kick me. Yeah. It was a lot of blink. It was called Kick Me. It was called Kick Me, dude. It was a lot of blink. It was a lot of blink.

I think. We did, I think we did MXPX. And or, or, dude, we did fucking lit. Oh my God. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Kids today don't know how hard the kick me sign on the back used to go. Oh, dude. Forget it. You get your ass kicked all the fucking day. What's going on?

But then it was like AFI Yeah Rise Against Or like the first Rise Against record was big Yeah if you know I mean after that like Yeah like we all just started hanging out And you know I think I mean

I kind of introduced you guys to like Other stuff you you By way of AFI It was like misfits minor threat Yeah And then it was like the floodgates open American nightmare like a lot of that shit at the time Yeah I talk about you often because you're my old head

Yeah you were my I didn't have an older brother Chris was my old brother and that's how I got into music. And then, like, all the first shows I went to were with Chris. My grandma bought us tickets to see American Nothing at the Metro that we're now have a sold-out headliner at and near the end of the next month, which is fucking dope. You know, we went to the fireside together.

My dad dropped us off. That's when I asked Jared Alexander if he was related to Jason Alexander and then asked to use his cell phone to call my dad. Yeah. Also in America. Yeah. Also an American nightmare show. Also American Nightmare show.

that James was at. And then the first time we met James or you saw James was together. And then the first time we hung out with James was at your house on your birthday? Yeah. Like a little while late. Yeah, it was my 18th birthday.

What did you think of James when you saw him? Dude. I mean, that's actually really funny because John introduced us to James. You know, we ended up going to see stand and fighting down to nothing at the Dary and Sportsplex. Yeah.

And, you know, John was fucking awesome. at that time because... Not now. Well, John, John's incredible. He can't not. We're friends. We're friends.

But like at that time, like, you know, I started talking with John over like the Chicago hardcore, like, message board and then like over AOL instant messenger and stuff. And John's like, yo, come to this show, you know, so me, you and a couple of our friends, you know, kind of drove out. And John was just like this like liaison, you know, in a lot of ways and introduced us to so many people. And actually, like, James is at that show. And John introduced us to James. And he's like, oh, yeah, we call, this is youth crew James. We also call him Little Wrench. And like, you know,

he definitely looked like the singer's 10-yard fight who was, you know, performing that night with fucking stand-and fight, you know. But you were wearing a gray war zone shirt. There's a picture. Didn't you send a picture to me recently? Tanned, like cargo shorts or whatever. Like, I remember it vividly. How jacked were you already, James? Jacked. He was jacked. It wasn't, wasn't like you, you were starting to really go.

Yeah, I mean, jacked. I was 19 at the time, right? So, full it, full it. Great, great era of hardcore, though. That's for sure. Yeah. Incredible. It was.

Yeah. Well, bam. So in terms of touring, in harm's way, who's the fucker? Who's the absolute, who's the little fucker? But we just go, come on, man. I know it's Chris. I'm told me.

So just tell me it's Chris. I mean, you're, I mean, define little fucker. You know what I'm talking about. You know exactly what I mean. I'll define it. Okay. Who's always the last in a van? Chris.

Who goes and grabs something when we're about to leave? Chris. Okay. I mean, who's always, Who is the longest shower? The best move is stopping for gas, all of us getting back to the van. Yeah.

And he stayed, he stayed sleeping. He's like, oh, I got to get something to eat. That's classic. Dude, one time we were like legitimately late for a show and Chris was hungry. And instead of like just getting a snack, he went to the Denny's in order to go platter. Denny's? Dude, that's four minutes, man. 20, 30 minutes for this guy to eat eggs and some toast.

Let's see, who's the easiest? The easiest on tour is you and Casey, for sure. Yeah. You two are pretty good with the flow. Yeah. We've moved into a new model where we have to get separate rooms because me, James, and Casey snore. James actually does less. I'm suddenly the worst snorer in the world.

Casey's bad, too. Casey's bad too. But we also like the room really cold. These guys just happen to like it a little warmer. So it actually works out and they don't, they don't storm. So it actually works out. And you get your own fucking bed. Chris, you were famous for being frigid on that tour we did together.

Dude, fucking frigid, man. I was not an ice box boy. Put some layers on. He does. Oh, Lord knows he does. I think the thing too, like, you know, me and Chris or me and Bo, sometimes butt heads because it's like we're basically like brothers. You know what I mean?

And like, no matter what, like, I feel like at some point in tour, I mean, you obviously, you know with Taylor, right? Like, you just get to a point where like you've been around each other so much. Like, you're bound to butt butt heads. But it's, it's never been to like a real bad point. No, we've never laid hands on each other. No, no. You and I almost did in Cannibal Corpse. But, but it's never, it's always like, I got to get out of here.

I just got to, you know, because like we're fucking adults. And it's over something dumbed, too. Always. No, totally. I mean, like, you, you kind of hit a breaking point, you know, and like, luckily, or not even a breaking point, but like, you know, like, you kind of reach a limit. And I mean, like, luckily, like, everyone is calm enough and cool head or enough to, like, I think, catch themselves when they're being ridiculous, you know. What was it going to end? Plus, 2018, dude, we toured for like eight months out of the year. That was, that was a crazy year.

It was, it was a lot. And you're about to maybe do that. again right now. Maybe. Ask, ask four of these, who's the blank on tour, because that's a really funny. Who's the stinky guy? Nick, am I? Is the stinky guy?

Am I the fucker, Nick? In the ways that they're talking about, for sure. Like, Chris, I asked rhetorically. I've been in a van with you for a long time. And you're a fucker. You are kidding.

Not in a way that's like offensive. You know? I'm not like fucking Chris And like the way that I am about kale Yeah, it's not like that. But in a unique Chris Mills type way, you know? Stinky guy, I think you could say is James But not, you don't like smell.

It's more so like You did ruin a bunch of Chris's books. It's after the set. My gig clothes and like sweating is obviously not great. James hygiene is fine. But it's after the set. It can be bad. I think it's directly correlated to high testosterone.

High tea for sure. High tea for sure. I wouldn't know. God, who's the sleepiest is Casey? Casey. I mean, he gets up two minutes before we have to leave every day. Quite literally. Dude, that's sometimes the worst.

Another one of his bad luck things was having his identity stolen a day before Warpedor started. So I forgot about that. That was fucking insane. Like literally. Someone logged into his bank account and sent themselves like a Zell payment for like all of his money. All of his money. And then something happened with his phone too.

He like got locked out of his phone. He was getting notifications on his phone. His SIM card got hacked and his bank account number. It was like this whole like multi-layered thing. Unbelievable. And the person who sent themselves money like sent it to their real account with their real name. God. That was smart.

I have to think Casey is in some way responsible for. how poor our connection has been this entire episode. Probably. It figures. It's probably hacked. It's the Casey case. It figures. The guy that hacked his SIM card hacked my fucking internet.

Yeah. Probably. We get this. Yeah, let's talk food because you guys are the namesake of the show. You guys are half the show. You know, people don't think about that. But harm's way is fucking right there when it comes to hard door. So food-wise.

Yeah. You know, I've talked to James at length about this. It's true. But what do you guys as a unit get fired up about? Four out of five of us love Taco Bell. James does not love Taco Bell. That is true. So we kind of, I think we compromise with Chipotle a lot,

which I know Colin doesn't back. But it is, you know, pound for pound, it's a pretty good deal. But Chris and I are starting... The amount of food you get is like uneniable. Yeah. Protein. Chris and I are starting a revolution, though. The sweet green revolution.

We're starting the sweet green revolution. Oh, dude. Love sweet cream. I really think in this day and age, like what you get for how much you pay and how widely available it is, it can be like a new stable. Is it widely available? I think they're everywhere. Yeah.

I mean, but like middle of America. Yeah, middle American now. We're like you're going to find your Chipotle. Obviously not so much. but like I think sweet green is not cheap. Yes, it is. It's not. I don't think it's cheap.

It's less than 15. It's no, no, no. If you sign up for the thing, it's less than 13. What's the thing? It's the sweet green pass. Do you have that? What? It's 10 bucks a month.

It's 10 bucks a month. But it gets you $3 off every 12 hours. So you can use it every 12 hours. So your fucking $14 whatever salad is $11. Dude, I think my order there is like $23. $3.24 bucks. Are you getting

like double protein? What are you getting? Chicken, avocado, the hot sweet potato. I just get the hot sweet potato. Subtract one thing, add lentils and chickpeas.

It's a major strike. No soda. That is true. I don't just mean that's but I do not disagree. What's it called? The olipop bullshit. Olipop and then they have what's that seltzer with a little bit of sugar in it. It's,

oh, that bubbly or spin drift. Spindrift. Not super. Spindrift is whatever. What do we like? as a band. I mean,

what is the band like? I mean, like, we, like, we try to, like, some cool places when we're in, like, major cities.

Chris is king of, like, to, you know, checking the phone and being like, this place has got good reviews. Yeah,

he's the king of Yelp. King of Yelp. King of Yelp. Dude, you leave reviews on Yelp, Chris, you're a reviewer? No,

no, no, no, no, you got to get into it. It's fun. Yeah, I mean, I,

I've, I've maybe left one or two Yelp reviews out of spite. You know? Okay. What do we eat? What's a place where all of us go?

Oh, shit. I think we're, we get excited about good pizza spots. Like, I mean, like, obviously, like, if we're going through like, you know, Wilkes Bar or whatever, I mean, we go to. We go to Angelo's. We definitely like. In and out. Chris can't partake.

But we collectively like it. And I have a video of Nick eating his first. in and out burger. I'm a big Del Taco fan too. We do like Del. We love Del. Maybe that's it. That's probably the one.

That's probably the one. If we're talking Cali, you know, Del Taco is pretty sick. I would say collectively, like probably the place we've eaten at the most is Chipotle, though, honestly. Absolutely. I mean, there are weeks where we do it five days out of seven.

But like, the thing is, it's, if you're lifting and stuff on tour, it's, I mean, you can get 50 grams of protein with the chicken bowl. I think that's like why I like it the most. Yeah. And they're mostly everywhere and mostly consistent.

And they have Coke. And they have Coke, which is huge. No argument. So is that your Taco Bell criticism, James? Is it the Pepsi? I mean, I just don't think, I mean, I don't think Taco Bell is that great tasting. And it also completely destroys my stomach. That is true.

That is true. We have all suffered. I mean, you're to talk. That is also true. You're the fart guy, right? Chris? No, no, no. Chris, Chris, it's far. It's smell like garbage. Oh, man.

Nick does, Nick does your gimmick, Colin where he'll let one go and he'll be like, it's fucking ducks. Yeah, what the hell? What was that? That was great. Hey, I mean, that's good. How's Casey? He's just sleepy? Yeah, he's mostly

just sleepy and mostly spills a lot. Yeah. He's just easy. He's really, he's really very truly easy. I'm trying to think, well,

what's funny is he like, back in the day, he had a MacBook that didn't have a working audio jack. So if he wanted to listen to it, he had to bring an audio interface with him everywhere, connected via USB,

and then have headphones plugged into that. And then also the battery was dead. So if you wanted to use it, it had to be plugged in. So he would just be like, like in venues, like carrying around his little gremlin tools to go set up and work on beats. He's just like...

I mean, Casey's definitely the easiest person to be on with on tour. I mean, he will eat like... What are those things called? Torpedoes? No, the tornadoes. Tornadoes. From fucking loves, dude, the Buffalo tornado. Yeah, that was a great.

There was a point in time when we started touring where he would eat those in Recy's sticks every single day. Every stop. He gets some fucking... sticks. The van was just littered with garbage. Recy's sticks as a like consistent snack is inhuman.

That's his guts. He just got the other day at practice. He ate him every day for like two years. They're fucking good. Oh my God. He's not wrong. He's the king size too. It's October, you know. Tis the season. You guys believe in ghosts or what?

James, I feel like we talked about it already. Did we? I mean, I can't remember if I did or not. I mean, I love the idea of all supernatural things, like aliens, ghosts, you know, all, you know, different dimensions, whatever. But I have not had an experience. So it's really hard to say if I believe or not. But I'm not denying the existence, I must say. Okay.

Yeah. Chris? I, uh, I've had an experience. Um, in Roselle, Illinois, you know. Play it off, my brother. So, I mean, you know, it's, so it's hard to deny. But yeah, you know, I, I had an experience, and this is when I was in high school.

I want to say, I want to say junior year. Yeah, I was a sophomore. It's not a happy story. No, no, no. It's kind of sad, you know, a part, like part of it, right? But anyway, long story short, you know, it was around. kind of like the Thanksgiving holiday. I think it was the first day of winter break,

like school let out. Yeah, so it was like the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. And it was the first snowfall of the year, right? And, you know, right by my house, you know, Beau referenced like the pond, and next to the pond is like this street called like Brinmar, which is like one of the main thoroughfares through Roselle. But anyway, long story short, like these kids guys guys guys

got into a significant car accident and, like, ran into a light pole, pretty much in my, in my backyard. So I could see it from, like, my parents' back porch, right? And unfortunately, like, one of the kids ended up, like, passing away due to the accident. And, you know, it was maybe, like, a day or two later. And, you know, I was, I was coming home, like, late one night. and and I was just, you know, I was, like, having some ice cream before bed and I was just, like, looking outside where the accident had taken place. And there was, like, investigators or detectives or, you know, somebody was like documenting. Yeah, forensics, maybe, yeah, yeah.

And they were, like, kind of taking photos and, like, kind of just, like, surveying the area. And I was just kind of watching them do it, you know, just, like, kind of curiously looking on. and they snapped a photo and then out of nowhere, right, I start to see this like shadow start running down the street. And I'm like looking closer and I was like, is there a person there or something going on? And there's no person. All I can see is this shadow running down the street that is like,

you know, and because there were street lights, right? So it just looks like there's this body shadow running down the street until, you know, it kind of, I kind of lose it in my vision because, you know, trees are in the way and stuff. But I got to say, like, it scared, scared the hell out of me. I remember you telling me about it. I remember he's consistently, I will say, as a skeptic, he has consistently told this story the same way ever since it happened. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, and I, you know, it was, it spooked me so much that, like, I ended up going and, like, waking up my dad, you know?

And I was like, dude, I just saw something. And, you know, to this day, like, my dad remembers that vividly because he was like, man, I never saw you that, that spooked before, you know. But it was, you know, since then on, you know, it's like for me personally, yeah, it's, it's hard to deny the possibility, I guess, of kind of something outside ourselves. My man. Yeah. Thank you, Chris.

That was beautiful. Yeah. You ever seen anything, Nick? No, and I wish I believed in it kind of because it's cool, I think, and like fascinating about it. I think I don't really, you know. Thanks, Nick. I mean, I wish I believed Chris, but I'm saying, like, I don't know, no, no, no, I'm saying, like, I don't doubt, like, the validity of, like, people's experiences or they experienced, you know. You believe that.

They experience their reality and what happened or what, I don't know. You believe that people believe what they saw. You know what I mean? Like you're not saying to someone, no, you didn't experience that. You're saying what you think you experienced maybe with something else. Totally that. And I think potentially, even if they did experience what they're, like what they're interpreting, what they're explaining. Like, I think that maybe there's like an explanation for it usually.

Yeah. But, um. Colin, I'll give you, I'll give you the explanation. Okay. Goals Goals The one The one experience

Colin had Was actually in K80's house in Nashville Just by Oh yeah I've heard this story From you Yeah Isn't that crazy

We all We grew up with that girl Crazy Why don't you ask her about it? I did I never I met her for the first time That night

I met she hit me Did you see her My ball's damn near Exploded out of my head. That's crazy. Is this story documented somewhere? Yeah, many times on here, I feel like.

Yeah, I'm gonna have to. I could, I mean, it's October. I could tell it one more time. You might as well. Give me the chills. Let's hear it. Hit the classic. He's turning off the lights.

So, what happened was. So Alpha Omega was my very first U.S. tour ever, right? we were staying at KAD's house, KD, her house in Nashville's very old place. There was like a party going on while we were staying there. So it was kind of just like, yeah, you can stay here, but like there's a billion people here.

Yeah. So Walter Delgado and I, our goal was go in there, find the quietest place, go to sleep. Now he's fast. He's so fast. So he got the best spot before. I did, which was in a kind of like nice insulated attic. It was like a nice attic with like a bookcase and a bed in the back of the room.

He literally full speed runs in this house and runs up the attic. So I'm like, okay, well, I'm fucked now. And I was, I asked Katie like, okay, is there anywhere else I can sleep? She's like, you should try the attic. Like maybe you can fit too. So I go to walk up there. The staircase, let's say I'm in the staircase. The room is like around a little banister back there with the bed at the end of the room.

I walk up the staircase. When you walk up the staircase, all you see is a wall because you have to turn to get to the room. When I turn, I move aside for a girl who is trying to get by me. I say, excuse me. And then like one second later, my heart just sinks because I realized there was not actually a person there. So it was a small woman with long black hair and a white dress. Classic haunting. Of course.

Fit, you know, in the OG haunting kit. So I go downstairs. Talk to Katie. And I'm like, Katie, is your house haunted?

And she just looks at me like full emotion in her eyes and asks, did you see her? Holy shit. Who? Her. dude. But I guess she's like, she was super benevolent, super cool, totally down with them, loved the parties. Maybe she was just trying to get some sleep in the attic. It's crazy.

I have a question for you, though, as someone who's toured quite a bit because I'm surprised that Harms Way has never seen anything strange like, you know, in the sky, if you will, as we're driving at night. But have you guys ever been? ever seen anything strange. I wish, man. And, you know, who knows if you would remember. Right. Well, sure.

Dude, what I will say one time on the Black Dahlia tour, we were driving, the tour kind of went from Montreal to fucking Vancouver. And when we were out in the middle of nowhere at one point, I think I was driving or you were driving. And we like looked and the fucking, at first we thought it was like a concrete plant or something, like something with huge lights, like just a major. you know, just like a major like manufacturing kind of thing.

Yeah, yeah. And then the lights we were seeing were moving and we got freaked out. We pulled over and it was just the Aurora Borealis. But it was still just like, you could see that shit moving. And that's, when you actually see it,

it looked really cool. It's really cool. And it's also really, really easy to think like, I wonder why ancient whatever's thought that there were gods dancing. It's like, well, that's why because that shit's fucking crazy.

It's like moving in front of your eyes. For sure. I would have been like, I worship. Whatever that is, I'm kneeling. Exactly. I'm on my evening. And I will, I remember when we were in Reno on the Acacia strain on the Knocked Loose tour. Yeah.

And we were hanging out with the locals. And when we talked about Skinwalkers, when that came up, they, they didn't, they don't talk about it. Yeah, they weren't into. They were like, yeah, we're not going to. Yeah. Like they don't, they don't, they're not down. I don't even think it's just in case. I think it's like.

because don't don't bring that here yeah yeah i i i heard of some bands trying to go to that one the ranch yeah the ranch that supposedly is like where people witness a lot of strange things yeah and i don't know which what band this was but i can't remember who told me um but basically they had gone and they went into the it's like a huge body of water where people get to see you know, or try to see stuff, I should say. And then I guess as they were leaving, they said they saw a man walking on the side of the road and it transformed into a goat and started running after the van. That's what they claim. Yeah.

Yeah. Now, obviously. Would you do that if you could transform into a goat? Oh, my God. I would. I'd fuck with everybody. But like, couldn't be me. I mean, obviously, that sounds a little far-fetched.

Yeah. But like I said, we've never seen, we've never seen anything, any flying sauce or nothing like that. No, I mean, the alien stuff, I definitely believe in aliens. Maybe not the way that they're portrayed. But yeah, they got to be real. Yeah. For sure. For sure.

They're among us for 100%. Yeah. One of them's at home at home in Milwaukee working on songs right now. Let me ask one final question to everybody. And you can think about. it for a second. Okay. I want to know each of your

top four hardcore records of all time. Hardcore and adjacent. Just hardcore? Keep it as core. Keep it core. Yeah. You guys think about it.

I'm sure I've answered this before, so I'll go first just because I got it. Let's hear it. I'm going to go, Age of Quarrel, Master Killer, satisfaction, and then for like a more modern one lowest of the low.

That's a great answer. I just think it's like for what I'm into, it just has to be it. It covers all bases. James. I mean, what's funny, I think two of yours are mine. I would obviously

master killer, age of quarrel, I'd probably go with can't close my eyes as being great. One of my favorite seven inches of all time. honestly, the band I listen to the most, probably, like it's, I guess, post late 90s, 2000s is all at war. So I would probably say for those who are crucified would be probably,

probably my top four, if not top five. Honorable mention, for those who fear tomorrow, integrity, I think is one of the best records ever written as well. We just did an episode over the weekend. Do you realize that Can't Close My Eyes was 1985? I did know that. A year before age of coral. That's crazy.

Like just when I think about it, it's crazy to me. The context is crazy. Yeah, the context, yeah. Chris? Nick, go ahead. Nick? I feel like this is going to be a whole different wheelhouse. Nick's into different kinds of core.

I feel like the closest adjacent to what you guys are going to say is probably like birth is pain. But, okay. You fail me. Good answer. Damn, it's like all going to be like metal core. It doesn't matter. It's okay.

You got the brain. Hit him with it. I got to think about it more, yeah. Chris? That counts. Yeah, I'll probably, you know, it's funny because I think we're going to, we're all the same on this one. But age of coral and master killer for sure. And then I'm going to deviate a little bit.

you know and I'm going to pick a converge record as well I'm gonna pick Jane Doe and then I'm probably gonna go with man it's either between you know I'm like a big youth crew fan too so and I mean I immediately go to youth today and it's gonna either be between break down the walls and can't close my eyes yeah

for me as well two more buddy boy close me off Nick okay for a core record I'm also going to say Master Killer. I'm going to say the dude, like the tragedy self-titled,

really? And I don't know if this counts, but animosity empires. Oh, it counts here, brother. Those are great answers. This was a great conversation. Listen, man. Whatever you do.

You turn this episode off. You buy this fucking thing. you listen to it you go see them they're on tour right now where are you today uh where are we on thursday of next week st louis st louis st louis thank god you get some barbecue slather up real quick and then play an incredible set harm's way common suffering out now thank you guys so much for joining us any last words to leave the people with um yeah actually I've been thinking about this for a minute. Give me just one second.

I have it written up here. I'm going to leave him with St. Louis on October 19th at Blueberry Hill, Louisville, on October 20th at Portal, Columbus. Go see us on tour because it's our first one back and Lord knows it would be nice to see everybody. So true. This is a special one, I think, for all of us, man. You know, it's been kind of four years in the making. And, you know, it's crazy to think that we have the opportunity to do this again, you know, after all the ups and downs of like the past few years.

So come check it out, you know. And obviously, thanks to you and Bo for inviting us on to do this thing and give the record a proper in-depth analysis. There it is again. A fun anecdote When Colin went to Amiba to buy one Sold out I love that

James anything you want to leave him with Honestly I just You know I want to say Thanks to everyone who supported us You know through the The time we've been a band Thanks to Will Yip

Thanks to Vitalo And obviously thanks to these guys And Casey All the way up in Milwaukee It's been a long Four years for me Been through a lot of shit And

this record was really important to me. So I'm glad that we're finally, you know, going to be able to tour on it. And hopefully, you know, this will just be the start of touring again for a long time. Nick? I hope so. Kind of just echoing that, honestly.

Yeah. Yeah. Nick, can you do the face real quick? There's more than one. Small mouth, dude. You're small mouth. We need, hold on. Do I need to get, like, closer?

No. Nick, get up, get right up here and show me small mouth. And that's how this episode's going to add. Nick's got a myriad of faces, small mouth, big tongue. Tape face. Hold on. Hold on. Oh, yeah, the tape face.

But do small mouth. Small mouth. It's the best thing. Yeah, I got to see small mouth. There you go. All right. Here he comes. Ready?

Yeah. All right. Bring it in. Here it comes. Boom. It's so small. How does he do it? I don't know.

The smallest mouth. Dude, I was showing, I was showing, like the inclination guys that photo the other day and they're like, that's photoshopped. That's edited.

And I was like, no, that's real. No, he gets that small. It gets that small. It gets that small. Smallest mouth in the game.

Next time, next time we'll get big tongue and things are going to go up. I got to have big tongue next time. But now we've seen him do it live. So it's obviously for it. Thank you all for watching. Thank you all for listening.

Harvestway, common suffering out now. See you next week. Bye. Bye. Thank you.