Modern Wisdom - Nik Nocturnal - How TikTok Hijacked the Future of Music - #1095

Episode Date: May 9, 2026

Nik Nocturnal is a musician, YouTuber, and content creator. What is happening in modern metal music? The days of thrash and hair metal dominating culture are long gone, and something entirely new has taken their place. So what defines modern metal, why does it sound so different, and how has the internet changed the music industry forever? Expect to learn how big of an impact TikTok plays in shaping the way modern metal songs are written, which songs are the most influential songs in modern metal, what Nik thinks of AI-generated music, the most overused trends in metal right now, the tension between making art and making “content” in music, the worst thing about being a YouTube musician and much more… Sponsors: See discounts for all the products I use and recommend: ⁠⁠https://chriswillx.com/deals⁠⁠ Get 160+ lab tests for just $365 and save an extra $25 at https://functionhealth.com/modernwisdom Get 10% discount on all Gymshark products at https://gym.sh/modernwisdom (use code MODERNWISDOM10) Get 15% off your first order of my favourite Non-Alcoholic Brew at https://athleticbrewing.com/modernwisdom Get 35% off your first subscription on the best supplements from Momentous at https://livemomentous.com/modernwisdom Get ChatGPT to explore ideas, solve problems, and learn faster at ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://chatgpt.com⁠⁠ Extra Stuff: Get my free reading list of 100 books to read before you die: ⁠⁠https://chriswillx.com/books⁠⁠ Try my productivity energy drink Neutonic: ⁠⁠https://neutonic.com/modernwisdom⁠⁠ Episodes You Might Enjoy: #577 - David Goggins - This Is How To Master Your Life: ⁠⁠lnkfi.re/SN-Goggins⁠⁠ #712 - Dr Jordan Peterson - How To Destroy Your Negative Beliefs: ⁠⁠lnkfi.re/SN-Peterson⁠⁠ #700 - Dr Andrew Huberman - The Secret Tools To Hack Your Brain: ⁠⁠lnkfi.re/SN-Huberman⁠⁠ - Get In Touch: Instagram: ⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx⁠⁠ Twitter: ⁠⁠https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx⁠⁠ YouTube: ⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/modernwisdompodcast⁠⁠ Email: ⁠⁠https://chriswillx.com/contact⁠⁠ - Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How big of an impact do you think TikTok has played in shaping the way that modern metal music sounds now? Oh, it has a pretty big impact because all the young kids growing up right now on TikTok. And I remember, you know, even when I started YouTube, that was like a newer thing. People were discovering music through YouTube. I discovered a lot of like the big bands I listened to growing up through YouTube. And that was like unheard of. You know, it was like no matter what it was usually all on the radio or like, I don't know, your brother gave you like a cassette or like a CD. So that was already such a new thing.

There was kids discovering music through the internet. I mean, MySpace, YouTube, I mean, Facebook to some capacity after that. So TikTok was kind of just that next generation of people scrolling and whatever they might be doing. Doom scrolling or just, you know, I don't try to find cooking recipes. And then all of a sudden, you know, if they like music in any capacity or any of, even if they don't, you know, they hear a sound. And they're like, this is cool. And a lot of things with modern metal is there's a lot of good clip moments, usually with modern metal, particularly. You know, whether it's the breakdown or the other breakdown or the crazy vocal moment or even on the guitar.

So crazy guitar moment, right? There's a lot of musicianship and, like, unique attributes that kind of go into that skill in terms of like metal as a genre. So, like, when you're able to just, like, kind of clip farm some things like that and be like, oh, like, like here's the best part and you instantly get a payoff versus most people you have to listen to the whole song or like you know in a minute and a half until the breakdown happens so tictock I think really enforces that where people will be scrolling and they'll just hear like this crazy noise or breakdown or some dude screaming and doing goblin noises and it'll be like oh i want more of this you know you instantly get hit with the punch line it's like watching a horror movie and only getting hit with the jump scares so it's you instantly get kind of intrigued and i think that has really helped push metal into it's like watching a horror movie and only getting hit with the jump skiers yeah yeah yeah yeah so it's you instantly get kind of intrigued and i think that has really helped push metal into a bigger kind of more just normalized audience. Look at the state of can you feel my heart. Look at the state of that Bring Me track, which if anybody listened to that album when it came out,

it was good, it was good song. It's one of my favorite songs in the album. It shouldn't be like 10 times better known than the next best known Bring Me track. Yeah. And then just because the internet gets a hold of it and can do, if you make a track that is good to have videos laid over the top of,

so that's my, that's what I'm thinking now. how many bands are thinking almost short form first like these are the three segments of this track that work for some reason and then can we seed a meme early I know I mean both of us know that the industry are doing exactly this yeah like they're seeding who is that fuck who is that band is it geese or something is that the band geese I swear it's I swear it's called I swear it's called geese when it comes to writing tracks I did it seems so When it comes to writing tracks, bands have to be curating that sound to go, this is a bit that everybody's going to clip to go on TikTok. Obviously, not everybody, but some non-zero number that think, hey, we've got a chance of really blowing this up. Yeah, I think bands are really aware of it. And I think a lot of bands still nowadays are like, you know, let's just write our bangers. You know what I mean?

It's also weird because there's a different process of writing. Obviously, it's not, hey, everyone, let's hang in our garage and figure it out until mom tells us to come up for dinner. you know what I mean or whatever kicks us out of the house you know it's it's some everyone's on their laptops everyone's you you know either with their one producer or with you know now AI exists too which is his own fun thing so it's like the process is also really different and capturing that very exciting live like start to finish song moment with you and your bandmates is not as common in general when songwriting so now because it's so segmented and a lot of people even are like okay well Let's start writing, let's start writing the song at the breakdown, you know, because that can, we'll start writing it at the climactic moment.

We'll write how the movie end. Yes. And then we'll work back from there. Yeah. So that's also things that have been happening. And with that, obviously, bands are more, you know, attuned with like, hey, you know, we've been a band for 10 years making heavy music. All right. Well, we've seen other bands, you know, blow up by literally just having one moment that was crazier than the other moments or like one noise, you know, literally vocal gymnastic that did it.

Knocked loose, what they've managed to do through short form as well, just by being kind of the most extreme sound that most people have ever heard. Yeah, well, that's a thing with Knocked Loose particularly is I think they, they don't care about any of that, but because their music is so intense and so well moment, like, I was the right word, it's, it's pace so well. Yeah. They naturally work in that world.

Well, that's what it's supposed to be. Yeah, social media is supposed to be something that happens that wasn't meant to Fugazi everybody into loving it on social media. being loved on social media because it's a window into something outside of it. Exactly. And the problem is if you try and make it for social media, you also have to mask over the fact that this isn't supposed to look like it was made for social media because that then completely undermines it.

Yep. And then also a lot of time, unfortunately, the song just sucks. You know, like in the end, you get like a shitty song. And that's the worst part because, sure, you'll maybe get some hype and maybe you'll get like a lot of people going like, what was that? But then you won't get replayability. You won't get that timelessness. a song and then it's again because that becomes more of the focus the focus is let's create a

moment of a song of a song instead of let's make a good song there's a lot more songs then but then there's not a lot more long lasting songs and songs that actually people like put even in their playlist other than like well here's the meme you know it's here's the meme so oh he did the thing yeah jerry can you give me can you give me uh the the screen because i want to pull up i want to pull up something that i think like i started listening to metal when i was in college Right. So do you remember that job for a cowboy moment? You know exactly the moment that I'm

going to pull up, right? What was it called? Was it in Tumen? It was in Tumen? With the girl's screen, right? Yeah. Kids today will never know. Dude, that's what's happening is there's a revival of this stuff. Bring me? Oh, dude, count your blessings. They're going to be the forefront. Listen to this. Jared, you'll have never heard

this before. So unnecessary. And then they put a base bin, like a proper electronic bass bin on that drop. I remember we were listening to that in my friend's car. I must have been 17 driving through the mean streets of the northeast of the UK. And he had a proper subwaffe in the boot of his car. You know, like the fancy head unit up front. And I remember that shook my fucking teeth when that thing dropped.

It was like, holy shit. Dude, the bass drops of that era of music were legendary, unmasked. of just these big 808 nonsense. You know what I mean? And that's a lot of those, they were just having fun, right? They were with their producer and the producer could hit the button that literally was a bass drop or a reverse snare. And everyone would just laugh. Do the thing. Do the thing.

Yeah, that was the equivalent. Do the thing. But it was a fun thing that they know no one would have cared outside of them. And then they, because they're putting out extreme music, you know, for this time, putting out that extreme music. Like death core, for example, with Job Corps. Like, Death Corps wasn't death core. There's no such thing as the word death core. Even metalcore was kind of like not necessarily a term.

You might have had post-hardcore at that time. Yeah. Coming through, like, Fight Star would have kind of been post-hardcore-y sound. Yeah, and then there was even bands that were kind of that weird in the middle where they had post-hardcore elements, but they were metal, like, under oath was a cool one because they had emo-y moments. Malarically taken back Sunday, meets the heavy, aggressive stuff. Right? So it was just a weird era where there wasn't genres. It was more of that freedom, I think, of just like, here's music.

And people that loved the extreme, extreme were a lot of times just, like, kids that were screwing around. you know, in school and we're like, that's fun, dude. Like, can you do that again? Let's do that again. And it's funny because now with the resurgence and the movement again of like the 2000s traditional death court coming back, especially with bringing me being like, let's do count your blessings again, because why not it? We can do that. It's those moments, there's so many of those moments in that music that naturally would be

the TikTok moment. I wonder. So, you know, pretty much everything has sort of come back around again. What was that video of the dude, drinking ocean spray cranberry juice? going down the street and it completely blew up a track that was 40, 50 years old. Abba has had a resurgence like that, you know, so many old tracks that have come back around again, old hip-hop that's come back around again, or pop songs that have come back around again. I haven't seen the same thing happen with metal. I haven't seen people go back

to kind of the golden era 2004 to 2010, which would have kind of been very formative for our age, and then gone, oh my God, dude, have you heard like from the first bullet for my Valentine's EP. Have you heard, or have you heard like this demo Atreu track? Everyone knows tears don't fall. That's, that's, it doesn't matter how much death metal you listen to and how much you would, you know, say words to people that like that music when you were a young kid in the 2000s, right? Like, it's like, you know tears don't fall in all those kind of class. I think what has happened is a lot of that music is starting to research because

during the tens and the 20s, like there's been a lot of cool music, a lot of cool metal and modern metal. But there hasn't been as many hits. You know, like there is, in the tens, there was, you know, a big one in the metal course scene was like Doomsday Architects. That's a massive one. But the thing is, yeah, but with bands like that and when those moments happen, what happens with the music scene tends to be like, oh, something's working. And so many bands do that. The amount of, yeah, I talked with Sam from Architects one time. And he was just like, yeah, he was quite aware how many people ripped off that riff.

It's just like, it is what it is. Even, funny enough, the intention wasn't metal, but Mick Gordon doing the Doom soundtrack is 10 years later now, oh my God, that is still one of the biggest influences on modern metal. Did they not get Mick Gordon in to do the mastering for Bring Me's album? Yeah, I'm pretty sure that Jordan got him in

to either help with something. Maybe it was one of the tracks or at least maybe. It was on post-human. I think he did, I'm not sure exactly his credits, but I think he worked maybe on one of the tracks. He might have been mastering it makes into a capacity too but it's like well that just stinks of jordan like jordan's very sort of orthogonal approach to look at stuff like he comes into a band that's very established and goes okay i'm going to add

sort of more complexity mastering the sound's going to become wider everything's going to become bigger it's more electronic but yeah dude i mean fucking architects is a great example of this somebody who's been around way longer than you think yeah those motherfuckers are old i love sam i love i love the boys but like they're looking well for their age And for how much touring they've done. I think they're on album nine or 11 now. And each album, if you track it, each album has just been linearly bigger than the last one.

The lines just kept going up steadily. How many bands that after nine albums or 11 albums or something, have that be their biggest one? That's the first number one album or the first time that they chart, the first time they're whatever. After doing it for two decades. That's really rare. It's very tricky for bands to be that consistent.

Bring Me is one of them. Architects is one of them. Obviously, the newer bands like Sleep Token, Bad Omen, the Speerick Boxes. British, dude. Dude. Do you, loath? I don't know if you listen to Loat. I do.

Yeah, yeah. That was a crazy one where that one dropped. I think it was 2020 or 2021, around COVID eras. And it was like, I remember dropping and people were like, oh, this is cool. Like, I like, I like death tones, Meshoga and Loth, like, their spice on it. Like, that's cool. And it was like, I noticed like six months a year later. I was like, okay, why is this band now big?

Like, it's like these numbers are going crazier. And they haven't done dropped anything else. you know, like they've been touring on it, but as much as they could, but there wasn't much going on. And then you start to see, oh, like these songs had something very special to them. They had a bit more of that timeless effort where they kind of like, what's going on? Is this metal? Is it shoe gaze? Yeah, yeah.

That was when also the genre fusion thing was like kind of more in its infancy, not that, you know, bands weren't doing it even in the 2000s. I mean, new metal as a whole is genre fluidity, right? Of like hip hop and mainstream stuff mixed with, you know, aggressive riffs and and grew. and stuff like that. But I think in terms of the modern sphere where you're able to in the same capacity here, like almost a near, you know, 2000 traditional death core breakdown, but then here a chorus where it's like an R&B or like a deaf-tonesy shoegaze kind of thing, that was a newer concept in the 2020s. But to do it in a way that doesn't feel too partitioned. Because, you know, if you go back to, it would be a good example of this, earlier day to remember. Yeah.

Earlier day to remember, very poppy vocals. Jeremy's working real hard on that. And I remember a plot to bomb the panhandle, right? Where they got fucking What's His Face, that pawn star in the music video. I don't remember. It was pretty funny. They were playing around with the cleanest vocals possible and the heaviest breakdown that they could get using the same tone. And it was good, but it did feel quite fragmented.

And I think if you look at even their music now, but also if you were to look at basically anything except for caramel. It's very flowy. Architects has gone from... I mean, they actually, with Doomsday, inverted it, right? And they went from heavy verse to melodic chorus,

which had almost never been heard of. To go heavy to light, as opposed to light, and then the chorus and the breakdown is what's heavy. Yeah, that's something where, like, I think bands have gotten better. Because in the tens,

there was the whole, like, rise core era where there was the electronic... Chunk, chunk, chunk. Yeah, and Ishikari. Yes, all of them. And a lot of those bands, I think, did it with a lot of fun intent. You know, they were like, well, we liked that deathcore part of the 2000s and metal core. We like the 5,78 riffs and all that.

But then also like, oh, since, yo, what is this? You know, what the fucks of synth, dude? Like, you know, like electronic dance breaks? What's the most rave sound that we can get from sort of the mid-90s? And I'm going to put it over the top. Yeah, and I think a lot of people initially when they started like, obviously attack attack being a big performer of that and like early, early asking Alexandria in those bands where it was like, oh, this is like so weird and out there. And I think when those bands start to adapt it initially, it's obviously

fragmented, but it's like you can tell they are having fun with it. So they didn't necessarily care for it to be like this beautiful, cohesive from start to finish work. It's just like, no, here we like breakdowns and then we liked electronics and we just shoved it. Like, whatever. And this bit's the electronics bit. This bit's the breakdown bit. And this bit's the breakdown bit and you're going to listen. And you're going to be forced to listen because you want to get to the ending, which is the other breakdown. So like, it's weird how they wrote stuff back then. And Some of those songs have like a lot of longevity. Some of them do not at all.

And oh my God, you're like, damn. That was definitely just part of the movement. But I think over time, bands start to just get better at blending. And like I said, I think Mick Gordon. Most sophisticated. Mastering's better. The production's better. It's not just some dude who happens to be okay on Pro Tools or Rayton.

Yeah, no. That's like piecing this together. Oh, no, no. We're getting the guy that made the fucking Doom soundtrack in to do this. And then as soon as that's done, everybody else can kind of, okay, what did make do to make that sound quite wide? What do you do to lay 75 cents on top of each other? There's so many cents on guitars. I joke about it every time because it just is what it is, but it's it's more sound design now. Like the guitar, so true. Obviously in a lot of sub-genres of metal,

like extreme death metal or technical death metal and that kind of stuff, it's very like a riff first, you know, like you have one or two guitars and they sit there and they make sick-ass riffs and like, you know, in audible tuning, you know, not in like drop omega-wool tuning. Like, it's, It's still like drop C or E standard, you know. There's a band psilosis who I don't know if you know them with Josh. Josh Middleton. He's super sick. He is a riff master.

They've been going since, oh my God, 2006. I'm going to get people. What the fuck happened? Big question. Yeah. We'll get back to talking in just one second. But first, tell me if this sounds familiar. You train regularly, you eat reasonably well.

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down to 340. Get the exact same blood panels that I get and save that additional $25 by going to the link in the description below. Are heading to functionhealth.com slash modern wisdom and using the code modern wisdom at checkout. That's functionhealth.com slash modern wisdom and modern wisdom at checkout. What happened in 1988 to 1991 to produce so many humans that in 2006 to 2010 would create fucking insane music for the next two decades? What was in the water?

But it's attack attack. Everybody fucking splinters off in different directions and they all rule. Like Under oath's still going fucking decades later. Dude, they're killing it. They sound very good. They sound very good nowadays. And I think a lot with all of those legacy bands too, like, I'd consider Under oath in that capacity where like they have such a good old catalog as well as their new stuff is sick. We're like they're able to embrace their old catalog and I start to see a lot of those bands, especially new metal bands.

Oh my God. Like the Lincoln Parks and the corn. G.K's about to release a track with Libisket. That's fun, man. Like, you know what I mean? It's going to be like... They kind of fit. Hot your Sarfish fucking hot dog brother, hell yeah.

Like, whatever. I don't know how they're going to combo, but like, it'll make sense. You know, and that's something... When I see stuff like that, I think it's fun. Even if the song ends up being shit, I'm like, that's fun. I'm glad that you did it. Yeah, someone went for it. You know what I mean?

Like, that's cool. And unfortunately in the metal scene, you not only don't get reward. for those efforts, you usually get shunned intensely. Or for collaborating too much outside of the genre. Yeah, if like, you get shunned if it's not like... Do a feature on your fucking next track or whatever. Yeah, it's very tricky. There's very rare occasions where like, it's like, oh, hell yeah, like this is sick.

Like there was one, I think, like, Spirit Box did something with like Megan, Megan the Stallion. And I was like, that's a big combo, you know, between those two. And I imagine that the Venn diagram of the people that listen to Spirit Box and Megan are just fucking two circles that have never intersected. Dude, it's tricky. because nowadays I think kids are growing up with like, I don't know, maybe they're going up with their parents

that they grew up in the 2000s and the 90s. So they listened to all the pop and radio stuff. But then also, I don't know, dad listened to suicide silence, you know, or mom listened to the acacia strain. Bro. We fucking,

we, I used to run nightclubs in the UK. And the venue that I was working at passed through hands a bunch while we were running the Saturday. We had this huge fuck off Saturday that shout out to everyone that came to voodoo Saturdays in Newcastle. And we were doing like 1,800 kids a week

in a venue that held a thousand and we were it was like they were pouring out the back doors. The door staff were taking back handers so that people could queue jump because it was the hottest thing for half a decade. It was really cool. It was fun to run. It passed hands a second time after about

three years, four years then and it became a live music venue because it had a big stage. It had quite quite good sound production and they started putting bands on. I said, oh this is cool like maybe some bands will come through that I really like. Not many bands came through that I liked, but there was one time where I needed to clear out the remnants of the mosh pit after every time I die.

And the same thing after suicide silence. And the fucking guys came upstairs. And the dude, I didn't realize. I can't remember who it is. One of the guys was recovering. I can't remember who it was. He came upstairs. And all of his bandmates, they're like, what's going on after this?

And I'm like, hey, it's a club night. And if you look outside, there's 500 people waiting, like, just pouring out of this car. park and I'd go outside like some, I had a big afro at the time, some huge fucking big head conductor trying to orchestrate this just chaos, this cacophony of bullshit. And they're like, oh, this sounds sick. And I remember that one of the guys, I think it was suicide silence, I hope I'm got it wrong. I remember that one of the guys was sort of thinking like, this sounds really good, but like, I probably shouldn't be in a nightclub surrounded by 1,500 British 19 year olds, given that I'm recovering. Anyway, it just, it caused this sort of crazy crossover between different worlds.

But you are right. Like, people listen to, that you can have a dad of, like, my age. Yeah. Listening to something that the kids are like teaching him about Sleep Token and he's teaching them about every time I die. That's what's happening now is, it's funny to see with like, you mentioned Sleep Token, like the bad ones, these very particular modern metal bands are like, they seem to be like going through all the generations.

So like the younger kids are finding them on TikTok and then the parents, maybe it's also because their kids are listening to them, but they're sick, but because they're so accessible in a capacity. even though they still have really heavy moments and breakdowns and all this stuff. They're still so accessible where like, you know, the parents will be like, oh wow, really, that's such a good chorus.

I love this singing. My mom grew up, did not, you know, listen to metal. She was lovely, always supportive, but definitely when I was, she told me a story one time of like, very funny. She was like, oh my goodness, you know, Nicola. Like, when you were growing up,

there was one point you told me you like, you know, this metal music and I couldn't sleep for a week. Like, you know, because she- My mom and dad got worried too. She thought I don't know, I was going to be possessed or something. My mom and dad got worried about that too. Yeah, and like I didn't grow up in her time, which I get looking back on the history, like the satanic panic and all that.

She's like, oh, okay, like I get it. Like the perception of that music was different. It was kind of like first wave the way. Yeah. Like what would have been prior to 2004? Like what's the genesis of the genre in the 90s and the 80s? The sound is so different. Like if you put a boy brush red on now and then you play.

play a sleep token afterward or you play omens or something, you're like, oh, yeah, yeah, I kind of get, I kind of get how that's like, you know, it's in the same sort of lineage or whatever. But I don't think if you did the same thing 20 years before 2006, 1986, you're not going to get the same sort of lineage that you could track throughout the sound. So maybe it's literally just that what you listen to when you're a teenager, you get locked into. And that's still the best, like for me, taking back Sunday that both of their albums from like 2004, 2006 are going to be the greatest albums that I've ever heard. But I'm happy for someone else to come along and try and have their shot.

I'm still in that. And because the music's evolved but not change necessarily, I think I'm still prepared to listen to it. Yeah, for me, it's like I go back and stuff I grew up with like Alexis on Fire and like bullet. Do Alexis on fire and he's more love? Bro, Dallas Green. Fucking happiness.

Happiness by the killer. I'm going to, Jared, give me the thing. I just want to listen. This is going to kill the fucking retention and I do not care. I do not care at all because fucking happiness by the kilowatt is just one of the fucking most insane. And a bunch of people that I know. Self-title and the Crisis as just a trilogy.

What a fucking insane run. I mean, what is this? Oh, turn it up, Jared. Dude, it's good vibes, man. Absolute retention killer. I couldn't give a fuck. I think also man with this time like it was this beautiful transition of like youthful music right.

Bro. I'm not a drummer. I don't know what I'm doing that. It's so fucking beautiful. And then this like atmospheric, this is very prescient. Like super fucking prescient. I heard I saw Dallas Green released an album recently. I haven't kept up with Dallas.

I know what I remember in like the 2000s when city of color was like massive and everyone in Canada was like, oh my God, you're like, you know, this is, because that broke through obviously. Yes. Just the metal heads. That was like, oh, this is like mainstream here. Like, this is like, you're a huge star here, which is crazy. And I would hear that on the radio all the time. And then I would always laugh when people would discover he's in Alexis on fire because that's

why I knew him. Yeah, I knew Dallas through Alexis, not the other way around. Yes. I'm like, oh, this guy's got a solo project. Cute. Dude, it's that, that era of music, I think, is my favorite. I talk about all the time when I have people kind of old our age where like we grew up in the late 90s, 2000s, and it's like such a special era where we still went outside,

but we had, we had games and we had the internet. Like, it existed, but it wasn't life. You had the distribution without the capture. Exactly. And it wasn't consuming everything you were doing. And that's something that's so beautiful. I got to, I got to bring it up. Have you heard the new fucking Sayasins?

It's sick. Oh my God. Sayison was my fucking, what? Why can I find it? It's just reaction. Fucking react. These are your fucking peers, dude. I don't want the fucking.

fucking reaction. I want to see the actual song, please. Thank you very much. Oh my god, dude. This is sickening. Yeah, they got Phil now in the band who was, um, I mean, he was in Nasley dying for the longest time and like you hear it in that riffing, dude. It's just, when I heard this guy's vocals come back in, I was like, I'm 19 again. I'm 19 again. I'm 19. I'm at my friend's house. I've got a beer hat on with two straws going into my mouth and playing Guitar Hero

Gets a dude That's how I started guitar I played I started by playing Guitar Hero That was the first thing ever My introduction But that's why that era dude Between

MTV MTV Tony Hawk Pro Skater Like all these games Were influenced so much With music The snowboarding games Oh amped

Yes Amped massive That was where I learned About static X Yep Who the fuck else Was on that soundtrack Dude there was even

There's even like The Sports game The sports, you know, the, I didn't play many of them, but like the Madden. Madden, yeah, Madden, the, I don't know. NBA. Yeah, it was always, because they wanted energy. They want energetic music. And right at that moment, that was obviously coming from the alternative and metal scene,

whether it was new metal, whether it was like melodic metal core, whether it was post-hardcore. Bro, fucking Limbiscuit did the track for a Mission Impossible movie. Yeah, dude, that's massive. And, like, it was funny because if you go back then, I was pretty young, but I can remember it being like, oh, new metal, like, this is stupid. You know, like, you're not real metalhead. Like you got to listen to it. I want proper. I want either. And that was a crazy time too because it was,

everyone was fighting of like, well, real metal at that time was still Metallica, you know, Slayer. Like that's, that is metal. That was when people had a problem with scene kids. Yes. Right. When it was like, it wasn't cool to be seen, but kind of the music's moving in that way. And everyone secretly listens to that music.

It's like, I don't want to have the fringe, but I kind of can't not have the fringe. Like, well, fucking bring me's crushing it at the moment. So like, I do want to listen to them and they are cool, but like everybody kind of wants to hate them a little bit. And like, I feel like I just feel like I should. being the Lamb of God and Megadeth, but there's no melody in there and I don't really get it. I don't really understand what's going on. It was such a tricky time, but some of the best music ever. And that's why I had a conversation with, I think it was J.C. from error or a few, someone from

one of the fucking love era, dude. Dude, era is so sick. Where I went back and I was kind of like, dude, like, I don't know if I'm just a boomer now, you know, like, or if it's nostalgia bait. But like, I go back and listens to these records, you know, that I grew up with. And I'm like, this is still the best music I think I've ever heard. What would you put up that? What do you go back to when you're listening to stuff that's from that era? Okay, Alex's on Fire, watch out, or self-titled.

And crisis. That's true. If I listen to one, I have to listen to the whole trilogy. Correct. Yeah, yeah. It's like watching the first Lord of the Rings. Yeah, I'm locked in until the end. It throws a fucking ring in Mordor.

Exactly. I'm locked in. Bullet the Poison is so classic because it just, it embodies that youthful time with, again, I don't even care about the lyrics or any of that. It's just the feeling, the vibes of these aggressive riffs, like these, these like emo British kids that are like trying to be as metal as they can, but they're still like kids at that time. But they blend it in a way that embodies that youthfulness so well.

The first architect TP. That first art. Yeah, that is, that's when they were math core. Yeah. Very different to now. Yeah. I think that Kill Switch as Daylight dies is a big one for me. Like, oh my goodness, all our remains, fall of ideals.

that was more on the guitar side. Trey you? I'd try you with the curse. Yep. Yep. That's a big one. What a fucking era, dude. It was not a stop.

Because what I've started to do, we do these vlogs for when I'm on tour. And I was like, I'm always looking. I'm going to use Sayasin. That new track is so fucking amazing. We've used sleep token. We've used omen. We've used a bunch of bands because it's cool. We have a playlist for the show that's not a podcast, which is just my music, which is just like

all of this metal cluster. But I was thinking, I want to do something a bit different. So the most recent. vlog that we just put out was taken back Sunday a decade under the influence and the used. The used is like, yeah, yeah, yeah. What that whole era as well, for me, reintroducing people now to that music, because it's, as far as I can see. And maybe this is just what my dad felt like when I was 10 and he was saying listen to White Snake. And I was like, I don't get it, dad.

I don't know if I can take someone who listens to, who's got used to the production quality of omens. and sleep token and introduce them to like dashboard confessional. It's a whole thing. It's a hard transition. And that's where I think it depends. Some of those records particularly, like I would say, like obviously bring me with them redo and count your blessings. It's funny.

I think that's going to be like they defined a generation with the- They're going to try and redefine a generation with the same songs. I think they're going to literally do that because there's already been the movement of like reintroducing 2000 Death Corps, like there's this band Reverend. Psycho Frame is probably, I would say, this band that does it the best where like, if you like the cleansing by suicide silence, you'll like that. They basically took that, that kind of sound. They're like, okay, let's do it our way in a way that's modern and just ace it. And like, that's a band that absolutely kills it. And there's a few other bands kind of revolved around there where, you know, they have the snare that sounds like

a trash can, you know, like the, the old school St. Anger snare, which Death Corps then stole They have the 808s that literally make your speakers actually explode. Not like kind of like, oh, it's clipping a little bit. No, like the intent is that it clips so hard that the rest of the 10 seconds of music following it is quiet. It is quiet because it's ducking and so compressed that it's so funny to listen to. And with just nonstop breeze and all of this. So that's something which is really exciting to see. And that's why I do think like a band like bring me who, you know, they're like,

I love that trajectory of we're death. the most extreme, you know, one of the most extreme things we could be at that time, right? Obviously, there's like death metal and tech death and black metal and stuff and all these like extreme, extreme genres that are more old school and less modern with the core, you know, at the back of it. And let's go through, all right, we did death core, we did metal core. Then we did kind of alternative rock metal and then we did literally a pop record with ammo. And then we kind of dabbled a little of new metal with post-human and then emo core. And now let's go back to death core. You know, it's like a band that's gotten that big off that trajectory.

There's not, I don't see another band that says, hey, we started Death Corps, made a pop record, and now we're making Death Corps music again. Like, that does not happen, you know, because that's- Ollie's the fucking man, dude. I've been, I've been friends with him for maybe like 12 years now. Jordan joined the band. He had a problem with Ableton. I tweeted him about it. They needed to go out in Newcastle when they were playing a gig.

So I saw them play Newcastle University and it must have been to 750 people. Right. And this was pretty, after Jordan. joined. So not that, like, early in the band's trajectory, but still they were just about playing, they played the O2 Academy the next time they came back around. Did they drop San Paternal yet? No, this would have been before that. Okay. Because that, that I know, that was like the, whoa. When was that's the spirit? Was that before San paternal? After. That was 2015. But so, uh, it would have been, um, count your blessings. Then what was the one

that they did the dub step remix of with the girl holding her guts? Uh, there, there was counting your blessings. That was suicide season. Suicide season. And then, then there is a was after that. Right. Okay. So it was around about that time. Anyway, so I go out and I'd hang out with the boys.

And I've just like kept in touch with them throughout all of the stuff that they've gone through. And like during COVID, Matt had a fucking shoulder issue. So I'm on FaceTime to him like trying to explain how to do external rotations. Like just little cute things. But to see, see guys that you know just be really fucking brave at following,

we're going to not be constrained by what is even popular. What was that? They did a low. five release. All of the songs were like, just file names, like stupid file names and stuff. Like, we literally don't care. We'll do a collaboration with MGK.

Yeah, yeah. And Travis Barker. Like, there's no limits at all. I think that's really cool. Yeah, well, they're one of those bands which everyone, you know, not everyone, but a lot of people in the modern metal scene are like, oh, what did they just do? Okay, let's do that. You know, and it's just, they kind of did the trend setting for a long time, especially, I think, after sent paternal, that was the big one of like, okay, wow, every band now

has production and since and the weird eight. The only nerdy-ass guitarists will understand this, but like 8503-8-8-504 chord progressions kind of get integrated into this stuff now where you hear that like very major sound but it's dark and frigging and all that shit. And you're like, oh, okay, like, thank you bring me. You know what I mean?

Again, not the first band to do these things, but the band that made it massive so all these other bands could come along and be like, oh, you made it work. Because like this wasn't supposed to work. Just because you can do it doesn't mean that you put it in a record. Yeah.

Because the point isn't to be able to do it. The point is for it to be done and it be popular. Yeah. And it takes someone, so I was listening to, you know, Cody Rhodes is the WWE guy with the blonde hair? I don't, I know. Okay, so I don't watch WWE much. But I was listening to this part.

It was really fucking interesting. And he was saying that it doesn't matter who did it first. It matters who did it best and who popularized it. So he was talking about Hulk Hogan and he said, Hulk Hogan did the power up thing. So he's kind of losing a fight and then someone hits him and he's, shakes it off and then they hit him again and he shakes it off and he hit him again and then he turns to fight around and he wins.

Nine wrestlers had done that. Okay, got it. Before Hulk Hogan. Also, the finger thing, like the finger point that was kind of classically owned by Hulk Hogan, he stole that from a ton of other people that had done it before. But they hadn't done it to the point

where they'd got saturation and popularity and owned it. And it's kind of not too dissimilar with this because architects with Doomsday, there's a fucking wonderful line I love, which is originality is just undetected plagiarism. Oh, dude, nothing is new anymore. Sam will say himself.

He's, oh, well, yeah, dude, you know, he's listening to this thing or that. I mean, listen to Jordan Fish, like Jordan's fucking inspo for so much of the shit that he did is that coming from weird video games and watching cyberpunk stuff and all, you know, real crazy out there stuff. And you go, okay, so it wasn't original, but you were the first one to do that thing well popularly in this genre. And once that's done, like how many people are trying to recreate the command? metal, like rap.

That should never have been a type thing. I think come metal is a perfect descriptor for what bad omens and token are. Baddycore. What is it? Baddycore. It's more sophisticated. It's, yeah, there you go. What's the sound of this?

It's vibes. It's night drive vibes, dude. Correct. There you go. With the windows down, the easy breeze. You're just like chilling. But, yeah, that one is, oh, it's, nothing is new. And that's the crazy thing with music because I think a lot of bands try, you know, I think have accepted that to a capacity.

And, you know, you can't do a new chord. You're going to be. An A, B, be a. Like a non-alcoholic beer. Cheers, dude. Cheers, dude. Like, you can't do a new chord progression. I don't think you physically can.

I think in terms of music, every single one has ever been done is done. You know what I mean? In terms of a sequence of notes, you can't technically create a new sequence. they've all been done in the history of music. Can you do them at a specific sequence in a specific key and a specific BPM with a specific chord progression under, with a specific groove under that? These are the differentiators that make it more unique. This episode is brought to you by Jim Shark. I have tried pretty much every brand of Jimware over the years. Most of it looks good on the website, but very little of it survives real world training, which is why I'm such a massive fan of Jim Shark.

They're hybrid shorts, especially in Onyx Gray and Navy. Basically, my uniform in the gym at this point. They move properly. They don't bunch. They're super lightweight. You can wash and dry them in an afternoon. The Geo Seameless T-shirt is what I train in almost every single session. Breathe's properly, holds its shape after you wash it.

Everything that Gym Shark makes is lightweight and sweat wicking and easy to wash and drives fast. And if you're still on the fence, they offer a 30-day free return. So you can buy it and try it for 29 days. If you don't like it, just send it back. Plus, they ship internationally. Now you can get 10% off everything sitewide by going to the link in the description below or heading to jim.sh slash modern wisdom and using the code modern wisdom 10 at checkout. That's jim.sh slash modern wisdom and modern wisdom 10 a checkout. Does that not mean then if that's the case would that not suggest that vocals, lyrics, the kind of things that are most front and center, the songwriting in the lyric should be the biggest differentiator that people still have. now. Is that not the case?

I don't, I mean, it could be, but also, I, and this is way out of my realm of understanding, you know, I, that would probably tend more to like understanding human psychology more, because a lot of the lyrics, particularly in metal too, are very, you know, like, damn, shit sucks, you know, and like, why does shit suck? Life's hard, and I wish it wasn't, and I'm alone, but maybe there's a bit of hope, but there's probably not. Yeah, or, and, I mean, or telling stories, right? Which, I mean, then that's, that probably takes more of a, history degree again than my dumbass on the internet figuring that out of like understanding like I'm sure in history stories have been retold and retold in different ways and new masks of it you know what I mean

where that's why it's like yes and no uh when it comes to lyrics because I think they're still running into that same problem you can only use so many words um you can also saturate words like uh the undertow my god ban stop using that fucking word right like you know I'm stuck in the undertow like there's or callouts and shit like this where like there's so many cliche cliche lines exactly that like yeah we can avoid that but in terms of thematically you know or using the particular words to describe a feeling and emotion that's the theme of the song i mean that's something that's so tricky and hard to find again uniquely um but that's why because there's so many elements of a song right there's there's lyrics there's the vocals there's the types of cadence you know you can have a a song that everything is the same um in terms of the lyrics the concept of the theme uh the the the groove the bpm the melody is And you can have one do a Death Corps version and one do a country version. You know what I mean? And technically that would be a cover because they're so similar, right?

But at the same time, to a listener, a lot of people would not even know they're the same songs. Sonically, they don't sound anything like. Exactly, right? Even though conceptually on paper, you have all the things written down. And that's why I see things happening in the scenes sometimes of like, this band, copy, this man, this man, this man. I'm like, yeah, you know, but like under what factors? You know what I mean? Like there's so many elements and variables.

Like what defines that? I'm not making the copyright laws, that's for sure. My YouTube channel says I'm not. You know what I mean? With how many claims I get? So it's like in terms of making music and how similar it is to something else and it being considered like new, at what point? Like if the melody is the same and the lyrics are almost like 90% based on fucking

chat, GPT are the same or this. But like your three BPM faster, like is this a, you know what I mean? How different enough is different? enough. Yeah, and that's something that's really tricky. And when we start to get the grassroots of that, that's when it's just like... Well, Ed Sheeran had that big pullup, right? A few years ago where he's like, look, I can play every big hit from the last 50 years. Yeah, with these few chords. Yes. And yeah, I don't know. I haven't seen much, at least coming out of metalcore, I haven't seen much by the way of beef from this band, took from this

band, took from this band, I think maybe because it's so small. The scene is sufficiently small that The likelihood of you encountering them at Rockville or at fucking download or something is there's not enough bands to go around. You know, so it's like podcast partners with what we do. If you get to a certain level, there's only a handful of partners that have the money to be able to sponsor shows of a certain size. That means that you can't piss them off. You can't because either word will get around and or you need them at some point. I'm going to be the equivalent of a supporting band or headlining with a part. I'm going to be at some fucking conference somewhere or whatever,

like need someone to loop me in with the guy from 8th sleep or the dude that does fucking better help or whatever. Like, it's the same thing. Yeah, it's, the scene is very big and small at the same time. And that's kind of from me, again, a person,

like I'm not in a touring band. I'm not part of that specific segment of that world. Even though I work with all the bands, I, you know, in terms of the label industry side, like I work with them the back end in terms of like, hey, you know, at least back then, they would be like, hey, we got this coming out, you know, so I was very in tuned always with like

PR and and like then being like, hey, we got these releases coming up. Hey, do you want this person on your on your show to shoot the shit or you know, you mean, do you want to do some kind of content and whatnot. So that's my knowledge base of that. But in terms of even just that circle and talking to people, like everyone kind of knows everybody. So if you're a dick, it's really obvious. Just don't be a dick to people.

And then you'll usually be fine. And obviously part of that is you're trying. not to copy paste someone's song session because it can be very like super obvious. The other way, the other way through that is to almost make being a dick your brand, which is what Ronnie Radke does. There's a few people that I think have done that so successfully. And mad kudos.

They do it to a point where it's like, damn, like to be consistent at doing that is like exhausting. So if you can pull that off, holy shit. Do you know what it is? And I think he's fucking fascinating. Ronnie's going to come on the show soon,

which is going to be cool. Like, it's basically like being the heel in wrestling a little bit. Like the heel can have the belt. You can be the best in the world at a thing. But also it's kind of happy to be the person. What's your job? Oh, my job is to piss everyone off.

My job is to give zero fucks and to just piss everybody off. Yeah. Yeah, that's a few bands. I think particularly during like the MySpace slash like Warp Tour days, that was like a thing to do. Like let's go try like be the extreme band. Like let's go piss people. love like fuck you were rock stars you know what i mean have you ever seen the video of when uh bring

me did was it the brit awards and ollie stood on cold play chris martin's table and kicked his like champagne off and stuff and that was huge beef and i remember thinking at the time never in my life did i assume that i would be seeing ollie sykes and chris fucking martin from cold play yeah having beef with each other every yeah a lot of people know each and that's why it's like I think it is somewhat segmented in terms of like, okay, you're a metal band or you're a poppers. But like a lot of it, there's so much overlap. I mean, a lot of people have the same, I mean, you know, labels to a capacity. The metal ones are usually like on the smaller ones, you know, subsets.

But like, you know, PR, a lot of them have similar booking agents and stuff like that. So like there's overlap always. And it's and a lot of also the top 50 of the metal, the, you know, even country artists are like, they're metalheads. They grew up listening to. All of their band are made up of metalheads. Yes. All the touring musicians are always. Seen kids. And that's really funny. I had, I chat with Johnny from Bill Murray. And,

because I was like, how, you know, I've never been in Nashville. Like, how was it in Nashville? I know that's the country place. But also a lot of metalheads are there. And he was also mentioning like, dude, yeah, like, everyone's a metalhead. Like, even if they write country, doesn't matter this or that. Like, everyone just is, they're hardcore dudes. They're from the scene. They're seeing kids. Like, whatever it might be. They all love that music. Which is really cool. It's cool to see. Because again, if you were to listen to the music, you're like, that's, that is different. Then breeze and native. Yeah. Like technically proficient, which I think that lineage allows you to then become really successful. Yeah. Like if you can play good metal, you can probably end up playing most other things because most of the things are going to be, not derivative, but at least like less complex than most of them. Especially nowadays because modern metal is so focused on production and songwriting, I guess, to a capacity, depending on which subset, because there's a subset of obviously, like I said, death metal tech, death, all that's.

stuff, that's still death metal. That's riff first, you know, figure everything else out. Like the drummer is going 500 BPM or however fucking fast he wants to go on the double kicks. And they're figuring that out, right? And it's super sick and it creates this very extreme, brutal, intense music, which doesn't have necessarily a lot of production. You know, there's not a synth player in the background. And that's like, whoa, what? You know, meanwhile, now with a particular modern metal bands, it's like, you record guitar and you have the MIDI ready to put the synth to it. Like there's no question if you're going to have synth layered in.

The producer is going to just do it for you if you didn't think of it. Yeah. Anyways. And then there's going to be usually quad tracks. It's going to be four guitar tracks. Just deal with it. You know what I mean? The drums, you want those raw drums, buddy?

Okay, sure. Go record the raw drums. Yeah, it's all raw. Okay. You know, we'll figure it out later. Meanwhile, you know, the producer was like, yeah, okay, obviously you guys. Molesting everything. Yeah, because like.

Can you explain to me? I heard this story about, uh, The drummer from Slipknot just got a relatively new drummer to Slipknot, which is kind of given them a fresh breeze of light. What's the story, because I only know half of it. I don't know the back end story. I just know they, I mean, obviously they had Joey way back when, legendary, and then they had Jay for quite some time. And then, I don't know, falling out or something. It's the usual PR stuff of like, creative differences.

Yeah, man. And that's why when you see that, you're just like, okay. You know, and you kind of move along. And I don't know any of those guys personally, so that's why I just just, and same thing. Most fans just go, oh, that sucks. And then they got Eloy, who was super sick. He was in a sepulchre, if I'm not mistaken.

And yeah, he's a badass drummer. And then, you know, people are stoked on that. And I don't think they've released music with him yet or anything. I've seen some of the videos of it happening live, though, which is, he's a beast. Some of the most insane shit. He's a beast. And that's why, like, that music back then,

it's so aggressive and primal, that, do that 2000s era, because there was so much happening. You know, we're talking obviously about like the, the emo stuff and then the metal core stuff, but that new metal phase that broke through the barrier, I think, bigger than any of the other kind of metal bands at that time, like the Slip Nost, the Lincoln Parks, the system of a downs. You know, the fact that kids grow up now and they're like, I don't know, 10 or whatever, and you see, like, my favorite song's chop suey. It's like, first of all, you're probably too young to that to be your favorite song, you know, for the lyrical context of that.

But number two, how the fuck did you find that song? Because I found that when I was 10. You know what I mean? That's crazy. Let's watch some of those videos, Jerry. Can I have the screen? Nostalgia, let's go here. I want to watch some of the live stuff of the new slip knot.

This is eight months ago. This is about right. Yeah. He's also built like an absolute fucking brick shit house. Yeah, I think for extreme drumming, like that should be a requirement nowadays. It's such a physical thing. You know, guitarists we sit there, you fucking strum a chord, you strum breakdowns. You can be as weenie as you want.

You can be as weenie as you want, exactly. But like drums, I mean, unless it's all a backtrack, you can't be weenie. You got some beef to it. Yeah, that's probably. Imagine taking a drumstick to the face from that guy, man. Holy shit. Dude, if only I could be that snare. I know.

Oh, yeah. No, thank you. But even with this, that's some sequencing going down the bottom A, like some pads, some something here. Yeah, I'd imagine, I mean, most bands, probably, they have usually the laptop because with the sand or whatever or something. But there's something, maybe like drum pads, whatever this is right in front of us. Yeah. Yeah, just freakish, dude, it's, I don't know, it's just cool that you've got someone who, uh, has kind of brought new eyes to a band that's been around for so long. They do, slip-honts, oh, man, it's, is it 30 years? No, okay, 99 was

self-titled. I don't know when the EP was Eat, Mate, Made, Feed, repeat, whatever the fuck the EP was called with the first singer. They've been a band for like 30 years. That is psycho. How long is Killswitch being around? Oh my goodness.

I don't know when they technically, because it's always weird the album is not when the band's usually start. Usually they grind for five years in local shows and like their parents' garage. So like when they four. Alive and just breathing was 2000 oh my god

two one either two either one two three or four no end of heartache was 2004 as daylight dies 2006 I think it was 2002

around there old old when they're consistent they've been going out and they're timeless when you make bangers like that it's something that's so special Tanya West dude

if you make bangers you can keep on doing it you can keep on doing it metals sort of becoming increasingly self-aware and ironic I think, especially in its positioning, the way the sort of people put it across. Why do you think that's happening? What's that say about the audience, the industry, the music?

I think it has to do with a lot of things we actually talked about so far. It's like, there's a lot of nostalgia built in with the new modern age and people going back and being like excited about that. So when they also look back, I think that's part of the irony and somewhat of the joke because back then a lot of the metal was so like random and like kids in their garage, like job for a cowboy or like especially during the MySpace days when like the song titles were like tell Jimmy to get the fuck out of the garage or like whatever it is you know what I mean like they're just such random names back then where that for that you know these bands weren't

thinking I think a lot of these bands also were like well we're not going to be a big band you know people don't have to remember these names they don't have to remember these these breakdown melodies these these sound clips these you know vocal moments like who's you know we're going to be playing to our few fans that like us and we're happy with that so I think part of that modern day of embracing that is revisiting that era because it was so raw like that and kind of making the joke about it again in a very odd way. You almost parody yourself. You kind of parodying yourself. But then also how the industry has evolved in a way where there's a lot of particular ways to do modern music.

Even though, funny enough, it's more genre fluid than ever, I would say in terms of like, again, you listen to like a sleep token and they have a black metal part with like a pop song. Like, that's cool. That's crazy. But it still comes down to you got to have good songwriting or like no one's going to care after the first initial like TikTok that goes. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah. That's different.

Yeah. Oh, that's cool. Okay. Like not, if you don't add it to the playlist, no one is gone. Right. Like it's in the abyss. And then it's like, okay. Before we continue, as you're probably aware, I'm not a massive drinker, at least not anymore.

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The summoning is their most played track. Oh yeah, I remember that moment. But that breaking through, like what makes a song, especially a metal song, break through to that kind of a level versus this is a fucking awesome song. Like caramel is one of the most catchy songs that I've ever heard. But it's not going to, it doesn't look like it's going to get to the level of the summoning. Okay, what is that? Is it the distribution?

Is it the repeat listenability? Is it constantly bringing in new people? Or is it just rinsing the living shit out of the playlist of the ones that let you know what I mean? I always look at the top songs of a band and think, huh, why that one? What about that one? I think because I was around for that moment particularly because I felt, you know, I listen to Sleep Token when they were the underground band because this always happens with these bands.

They're the underground band that you see in like Reddit. you know, subredits of like, you guys hear this band or see this band lively, just played to like 50 people. They're really sick. You know, I really like this record. You know what I mean? Like, oh, that's cool. You listen to like the offering. You heard the offering, dude, this is so cool and like different.

It's got piano. And like, you know, you can tell like it's kind of pop mixed with like mushogo and shit. And like, that's sick, right? And then there reaches this point. And I see this has happened with multiple of these modern metal bands where they have a really good catalog. And that's the smartest thing I've seen those bands do with up to that point. Like they just, they're consistent. Make bangers. Don't, don't just chase a trend or do this. Like for every song's a bangers, even though there's not that many people listening, those people

are very, very happy. Right. So these bands nowadays making a good catalog of bangers, grinding, and then there's a moment. And then that moment has to coincide usually with another huge bangor, one of their best bangers. So that's a band where they're, having the momentum for when I saw again I didn't get into them when they did the EP but I started to get into them when they did like the the offering that album and then the album after that something about tomb is where you fucking this place will be coming a tune thank you yeah this place will become your tomb and something even alkaline and I actually I actually thought they were about to explode with that song because I heard that was like this it's got everything it's got

everything this is sick like okay do the thing yeah because the offering I already saw all that stuff happening and then alkaline I was like oh cool but there wasn't a moment around it it was just oh another sick banger. Now this band's a little bit more hype, kind of like grinding their, I'm going to use you know, nerdy-ass gaming terms, like your ELO, like, you're ranking like really slowly, but consistently, you're not losing any matches, but the rate at which you're gaining points and MMR is kind of like at a particular pace. You're not going to all of a sudden shoot up unless something happens. So they had all this built up hype with the underground, I think, kind of like, this is great. And that's where the band was, you know, underground. And then they dropped the summoning.

and because it had a moment in it and the song was really good and the band had this massive catalog and then the internet took notice it was just a it was the perfect storm how much do you think that can be engineered? I think it can be pretty engineered it's something where

I don't think you can engineer making the bangers part of it right that's be good don't don't fucking suck and that's something a lot of bands I think are starting to take a lot more seriously and not just be like well let's just chase the trend and whatever works with the gimmicks, right? Make a banger. And that's I love that. That's number one, right? That you can

engineer. Make a bangor. Don't suck. The other stuff, I think you can engineer to a point, especially in modern day, with the internet. You know, you again, I haven't seen it happen myself. You're giving me the eyes of someone that fucking knows way too much. This is the

thing. I know enough not to a point of talking with a bunch of people and someone being like, yeah, I did this. Yeah, we caused this exact way, but in terms of seeing it from the sidelines of a music listener, and understanding it and also understanding the industry and how social media works as a content creator. How come so many of these different accounts seeded that rumor

about that record coming out at that time on different, I wonder if these are... Again, where I don't actually have zero back-end knowledge of that, but you see that and you're like, I see what you're doing. Something's happening. Like that's cool. But this is before it was cool to do maybe something like that too, right? Like it's now it's like, you know, Reddit is something taken seriously

by the scene. You know, like, I'm not surprised if people post Reddit posts of their brand new band and it's like the label actually getting a new account or something where they're posting a bunch of, or clip farming with that. You know what I mean? And trying to find clips that make that big where it's just some random clip guy they found in, you know, Europe that they paid like 20 20 bucks. It's just an army of Vietnamese repurposes. Yes, right? And that's something where I that's going to happen more and more. That happens a lot in content. Jared, give me the screen. I want to show you, keep going. I want to show you this geese thing while you're talking about it. Oh, dude, I forgot about the quack, dude.

Let's go. I know. Have you heard of geese? No. I hadn't, but I'd heard that there was a band called geese. And I thought, oh, that's a knock, knocked goose, is it? Knocked goose, dude. You could imagine that?

I want to use whatever that AI thing is to do. Sooner, yeah. Take the band knocked loose. Yeah. And replace all of the members with geese and tell me what that sounds. See, that's what AI should have been used for. I that's that that is the best use of it for fun but it's it has changed okay the fanfare around the band geese was actually a sciop TLDR a tech company that has learned how to compute the algorithm created the momentum that made geese go viral

record industry has always done things like this and everything on the internet this was it so it's this wide article the brooklyn band geese was labeled as an industry plant by by those who questioned its sudden ubiquity maybe it was. Brooklyn indie rockers geese shot to the heights of rock and roll fame at the end of 2025. Released in late September dominated the top 10 lists. Explosion on the scenes seemingly out of nowhere led to inevitable backlash. It's called them a sigh out some questioned the seemingly sudden rise to star them, call them an industry plant, others while acknowledging their talent attributed their fame to savvy marketing.

The band blows up. In late March, the co-founders of the digital marketing company chaotic good projects who provide per its Instagram. Digital experiments and musical mayhem appeared on the billboards on the record podcast. In the episode, South by Southwest, he explained how viral marketing methods work. Wow. The firm creates networks of social media pages on TikTok and use of them and drive the band's music into the recommendation algorithm. Songs are dropped into the backgrounds of videos. Live clips are shared. Sometimes burner accounts, comments and whole ecosystems of interactions can be fabricated out of digital cloth stoking and sometimes completely manufacturing discourse around an artist. These

ginned up interactions push the songs and the discussion around them higher up platforms, algorithm rankings, social media platforms increasingly where real fans discover new music. We can drive impressions on anything at this point, Spellman told Billboard. We know how to go viral. We have thousands of pages. Spellman has dubbed the process, trend simulation. The campaigns themselves are referred to by chaotic good as narrative or UGC. So confirmed the engineered campaigns for both geese and camera and winter. I don't know who that is. We helped distribute clips of them performing and doing some interviews on TikTok,

he said via email. I understand industry plant discourse is inevitable. We've had the pleasure of being geese fans since 2021. Yeah, dude. I mean, this kind of marketing seems to be what it takes to cut through the algorithmic noise. But the problem with this is that you end up with kind of a race to the bottom. It gamifies it. If no matter how good the track is,

I can't win unless I do that. That now becomes not a performance enhancer or even a cheeky kind of exploit. It becomes the minimum level of marketing in order for me to get something good out of my track. Yeah, it's, I think the scene, like that, there's such a gamification of it because, again, the metal scenes a little behind, usually the content scene, like the more mainstream scene, like that stuff happens in the, you know, in YouTube and like the, content creator scene for a while. You know, like, that's something where it's like, okay, that's, that's not necessarily new, like people using clips or there's like people doing burner accounts and stuff like that and promoting.

Like, that's, that's the game. You know, you see these people on these Twitch streamers with like 20,000 live concurrent and you're like, who are you? What is? Well, the guy on the CEO of Kick said pretty much every big creator's view botting. You saw that clip a little while ago. Yeah, that's, uh, I mean, I did not know how prevalent that was until now it's like, like a thing to talk about and it's like oh shit you know what i mean um but like yeah obviously in like

the content scene that's something it's like all right dude i don't know i grew up in like good old 2014 youtube where like puty pie you know was doing dumb shit in sweden and stuff and like watching that and getting inspired by like the o gs and it's like the now all of the stuff has been gamified so much because there's so much weight like monetization um ways and there's some of you like just reasons that these bands you know want to figure it out, break through the mold. Right.

Incentives. And with stuff like that, again, I haven't noticed that's the, that's so funny, the band's name is Geese, that's one where it's like, yeah, that can happen. You know what I mean? Where if, again, a label just, like, knows what they're doing in a particular way and they just want to, like, push it. Like, look, I fucking adore them. They're probably my favorite band of the last 12 or 18 months.

But President had an unusually large launch off the back of being on future history. and riding the anonymous pseudonymous mask, sleep token thing in a not too dissimilar sound that's really of the moment and is fucking great. And their songs are straight bangers. I don't know. I haven't listened to Noct Goose. Locked goose.

I haven't listened to it. With President, though, that's the thing. And they're like the epitome of you go on Twitter now and you're like, you'll see a new president song and you'll see people say industry plant. And that's where it's tricky because stuff like the geese thing maybe happen and it's like, oh, okay, shit. like I guess that's going if that's what happened, right?

But a band like president, if you bring it down, okay, it's a guy who wasn't other really big band. Lots of other really big bands. For a long time. For a long time, you know, they, it's, I use gaming references a decent amount to kind explain stuff. It's like, okay, so he has max characters, maybe they're going to have the best gear, and he rolled an alt and knew exactly how to get all the gear.

Yeah. Okay. Like, when I see that, I'm like, the guy, they know what they're doing. You know what I mean? Well, think about exactly what we're talking about here. I don't know how good geese's music is. It's still strange referring to those geese. I don't know how good their music is, but that was their fourth album.

And like this one is the one that said, you're an industry plant. You go, well, is it that or is it just really fucking good guerrilla marketing on a ground floor? What's the difference between doing that and a flyer campaign? Where you're giving out an interesting fly? Or fake $1 bills that have got the band's QR code on them or something that you can redeem. Like, you know, a classic old school marketing campaign. And that just seems like, people are always going to feel slightly uncertain and a bit icky about somebody getting something that they don't feel is deserved. Yeah.

Right. I think in the metal scene is particularly tricky because the metal fans are hardcore. Like they are, they support, I think, harder than majority of any other scenes. And that's amazing. That's really cool to see in a scene where like if you're a metal fan of a band and they're smaller, most of the time, if they're in your town, you will go take the trip to the show. you will go buy merch, you will actually buy the CD even though you have Spotify or iTunes. You know what I mean? Like it's something that's cool to see in that scene.

So I think a lot of metal fans are more are more invested in like the actual band. And it means a lot more to them than just like, oh, another like, you know, pop record or rap record. This is going to be a part of my life. I'm going to personally invest yourself into this band and their journey and I'm going to buy their merch and tickets. Which is amazing, but also has the weird off, you know, the bad part of it. of, okay, well, now if this band does something maybe shifts their style you don't like, metal heads will be the loudest to say this sucks ass now. They'll also be...

Well, it feels like a personal insult. Yes, exactly, because I think you're much more attached to these bands. I'm sure that some people are very attached to Megan D. Stallion. But something tells me less so if she takes a pivot and does acoustic country than if if Sleep Token would do this thing. That would be hard. She should do BadiCore. That would be good.

She already kind of is BadiCore in a way. She's BadiCore with a... Just put the fucking guitars, dude. Why do you reach out to Megan D. Stalin, get her on stream. Okay. And you can do, hey, tell me about this new fast songwriting thing. Oh, dude, yeah. You're launching a new channel.

So not a new channel. So basically, I, a thing I used to do was, like, I did this series called Hallad and Metal. It was like writing song. It was, how do I wear this per? I would do shorts of like, because a lot of people loved a lot of these bands. And I love a lot of these bands. I grew up, like I said, listening to a bunch of bands. And I'm like, at this point, I've written enough music.

I've also listened to enough music. and I understand how it kind of works kind of describing factors we were talking about like particular types of BPM or these intricacies of like metal Rick Biotto. Yeah, metal Rick Biotto. Respect to Rick Biotto, he's sick by the way. He's a man.

I used to do these how to in 30 seconds. So I would kind of do a short of like, okay, I grew up loving under oath. So like, okay, I want to, here's how to under oath in 30 seconds. You know what I mean? Because I also was having fun of like understanding short content. I'm again, I come from the old YouTube world of make a video, not make a clip.

I was like, what the fuck's a clip, right? How am I supposed to make something, especially because I didn't grow up with like Vine on my end? It was like, how do I, you know, how do I bring something of value to someone for like in like 10, 30 seconds? This is weird. Like I need to do more.

So I kind of tried with this and I was like, so for Andreuth example, I'd be like, you know, how to under oath in 30 seconds? You know, dissonant cords, you know, teradactal screech, you know, like you do stereotypical things. Sometimes they're more funny meme attributes and sometimes they're more.

like musician knowledge attributes and you kind of combine those. And like at the end of 30 seconds, I'd play a kind of like an eight second riff of that kind of outlines that sound and try to get as close as I can to that style while not actually taking any of their songs, obviously, because that defeats the purpose. So I did that for so many bands. And when there, I saw people were like, yo, this is sick. Like full version when?

When are you doing the full? I'm like, you really? Like, you want the full version? It's like, okay. So I would go on stream. and I would write the whole thing in two and a half hours, two to three hours, live, because I thought it was fun. I'm like, all right, well, I already have the hardest part to write,

the riff and the vibe, so like I kind of got commit. Anyways, I would do that, and then I put it on DSPs and kind of make it a whole rollout on YouTube. So I did that, and that was probably the peak of when I was doing YouTube and, like, going hard and doing a lot of crazy shit. Now I'll do that once a week, release a song once a week, do one of those once a week. It was a little psychotic, but it was fun. And then fast forward kind of a year later, I took a break. for many reasons, but, you know, especially burnout and doing that for a while. And then when I came

back, I noticed, you know, hey, you know, when I was gone, all, you know, I was taking care of myself, I was going outside and like, you know, working out, caring about like under learning. I missed learning so much about macros, microz. And I was like, oh my God, like, what the fuck is this world? I never, I haven't taken time to learn new things, right? And with that also learning production, learning more songwriting, learning a lot of that. And I noticed I spent most days just also writing music, hanging with my wife and feeding squirrels, like going to the park, and going to Costco. Like, that was my life.

And coming back, I came back with a song, which was really sick, a nocturnal track that I was like, you know, let's combine like these really obscure references, like dance, electronic music and funk and fall music like Valjarta and Mara and all this stuff. And see what happens. And Karen and made that a new project. And as I came back, the focus of me wanting to write, I started to get a little distracted of like, oh like this is fun like YouTube yeah I guess let's make you like videos and stuff and like I had a lot of fun doing that but very quickly to avoid going back to you know the cycle of oh shit I call myself very quickly because again that time off I never had time off I did YouTube for 11 years at that point yeah 11 years straight I don't think I ever did not upload for a week and again best job in the world it's it's it's hard work but in a different capacity you know it's very mental exhausting there is no such thing as clock out. It is you think about it. It's all you do is all you think about,

right? Forever. But obviously, in terms of like versus a real job, you know, it's much easier. Like I much prefer to do that, right? But yeah, I came back and I was starting to do these things and I'm like, oh, this is fun too. Like, yeah, I kind of want to explore. Like, I want to test the grounds. Like, what do I feel? Like this is, you know, I left the internet and took my break and have this new perspective on life to a capacity, but particularly about what I want to do with my life, day and with what I want to give to people and share with people and what I want to spend my time doing. And it's been a bit of a trial period until kind of a few months ago. I was like, okay, like, I understand. I tried a little of this. I tried a little that again. Like, that's definitely

not for me. I definitely don't want to be the reaction guy because like I feel like I can offer the world more than watching a song, you know? And it's really tricky because particularly with what I've done with the channel and what I've done with myself is I love sharing music. That's what it came down to. I started, when I started my channel, I would do guitar covers because I didn't know how to talk, really. You know, I was just an awkward kid, you know, at just finishing high school. And I didn't really know how to talk to people. I didn't really, I didn't know what being a YouTuber was. I just played guitar and I had a lot of cool music on guitar that I wanted to share with people.

So the channel has always kind of been revolved around sharing new music in different capacities, whether later on its reactions, whether it's through memes, et cetera, et cetera. and then again nowadays it's like okay well how do I do that while still not going back to kind of old ways of like oh well here's the news let's talk about it but like the news is kind of always fucked up you know there's not unfortunately in the metal scene there are really good things that happen and really amazing like hell yeah like that's a big feat you know like knock loose playing kimmel or like spirit box playing like the grammies like that's amazing right um but there's also a lot of like oh this guy got canceled and like that guy texted someone at her age and you're like okay this is not you know I don't want to go live and

talk about this with people this is not what I want to bring energy into my life first of all I don't want to absorb this you're kind of obliged to because you're in the scene and this is news in the scene exactly hey when are you going to talk about such and such dude when I was gone and Ozzie died that shit was so sad and like the only thing I was like fuck man like I grew up you know one of the first metal songs I ever heard was crazy train in general And like, fuck, man, this sucks. And I was gone from the internet. So the only thing I had was like, thank fuck I do not have to talk about this because this is like, this is not my place.

This is not something I want to go live and discuss and like share it. You know what I mean? Like this is, it's really tricky. Because you also want to with a community and you build a community for so long, you know, just like you celebrate the wins, you have to celebrate the else and the sad parts, right? And when there's some things too when it's like, I. I don't add value to this conversation beside maybe slightly consoling a few people. But it's also like I'm not in the right space to do that anyway. So I'm not going to bring any positive energy to this by doing anything with this.

So like a lot of things like that happen. And it really sucks. And that's something, again, I was in a space of what I was doing before, which I had fun. It was great. And I feel like community wise, like it became something really strong. And a lot of people would go and look forward and like, hey, there's news, this, this, this, that. but when it came down to it, it still was like, it was too much of like a slippery slope of like,

hey, this really cool thing happened. Great, yeah. This really shitties thing happened. Oh. Guess I need to talk about that as well. Yeah, and it's ironic because obviously in the content space, the negative stuff will do better. And a lot of people get really excited.

Dude, Fontana versus Radke was like the heavyweight battle of 2025. There's, the scene's lovely, Chris. It's a crazy place where like from the sidelines I see and I'm like, I'm kind of like, I'm happy I can just chill on the sidelines. You are aware that this is the same in like every industry though, right? Like in podcasting, it's just as tight. There's entire ecosystems dedicated to reporting on the drama that's going on. Not reporting on what they're reporting on.

Yes. Reporting on what's happening between the people who do the report. Yes, between who do the report and then reacting to the video. What I can't wait for is when people react to the people who do the reaction. I want derivative content all the way up. I want to be able to have, what were those fucking, what was the reason that the entire financial crisis happened? What were they? CFDs or whatever they were called? Like the, those like fucking derivative things where people were bundling together a ton of debt. I want the bundled together debt of the bundle together debt of the bundle together. Like all of the gossip of the gossip and I want to be like fucking two guys at the top. Yeah. I feel, I feel, yeah, that goes on a lot in the content space for sure. And I think in the metal scene too, like it has bled through a lot. And that's why it's like, if I'm going to like when I left, I was like, I'm content with my legacy, and I genuinely am. I'm like, if I actually never come.

You're happy to just leave it forever? I am so, I am, I'm proud of what we did and the thing I brought to the internet for those years. You know what I mean? Like, I look back on it. And sure, I screwed up and did dump shit, you know what I mean? Like, so does everybody. It's one of those where it's like, I am proud that I feel like over those years I was a net positive to the space in terms of which I, which I worked and ended things with. You know what I mean? And that, I was like, I'm cool with this. Like, if this is actually it, that's great. You know what I mean? Like, I'm going to take a break. But like, I'm not going to pressure myself of like, I need to come back because I need to be at peace. And I was like, if I leave at all, I need to actually be at peace that I'm gone. Like. And leaving, not taking a break.

Yeah. Like, I need to have that mentality. However, I don't, I also don't want to always close things, you know? So I don't want to just be like definitive like, because I know I love it. Right. So that's something really tricky. I love the space and I love this. And even if I do something in a different capacity. it's like, okay, I want, like, I'm going to, let's take a break. Because I need to figure out my, I need to take a break anyways, but I need to still at this point be content if that's not just a break. You know what I mean? And like, especially because I've never taken a break. So doing that, you learn a lot of shit about yourself and you learn a lot of things about what's priorities in life and just like what matters.

What was that like? A lot of people, even if they don't make videos on the internet, can relate to being hard charging. You've said, I've never actually taken the time to not just burn. Right. This always on candle at both ends thing. Talk to me about the deceleration of attention, progress, even your habits. You wake up and research what's going on on rock sound or whatever.

And then that would be part of the thing. And your girlfriend, wife, you're like, well, fucking, you know, like she does the same thing as me or similar thing to me. And like maybe because I'm not doing this thing anymore, but who's my identity? Who am I after this? Can you just explain the suite of challenges? and how you dealt with them as you went through your hiatus? That's a big chat, probably with the psychologist for like two hours, but I'll dump it down to more like, yeah, it's one of the big things you mentioned too.

Like my wife does the same thing I do, which is awesome. Like she's a musician. She produces. She and she used to also play guitar and do guitar concept too. And like that's so cool. And one of those things of just being like, I'm so lucky doing what I do and especially what I did at that time. and I'm so grateful for it.

And that's why it's so tricky to be so grateful for something and want to also show that, you know, because I don't want people to also be like, hey, dude, like, you're not feeling like what you get to be a YouTuber and what you're sad? Like, what's your fucking problem? You know what I mean? And it's like, yeah, because life can happen. You know, there's other aspects of life. But also it being a thing of like, you know, like my wife is here.

And like, she also does the same thing. However, I'm still playing like single player in my career because of how I set it for the past 12 years. You know, my career is based around me doing this, this and this and this, and this and this. I mean, while my wife's there also doing her own thing, which she's never complained about. She's the most supportive, amazing woman ever. But it's still one of those things of like, I remember I would, you know, something would happen in the scene or like a comment. Like I'd be like, oh, I got to go do this video and do this thing. Which again, less job, but it's one of those of like, and I see my wife there like writing music there by herself.

And I'm like, I just want to write music with you. Why the fuck am I doing this? Well, you're living like, this is one of the problems when you have two people who have big lives, especially lives that start to get separated, the most meaningful things that you do in your work life occur separately. Yes. Like you have the highest highs of your career and you're not sharing them with your person at all. Yeah. And I'm so, I am so fortunate that my person does all those things. So that's why at least she can speak the language even if she's not there when it happens. Exactly. And she's always, she's always been so support. Like do you're saying? And that's something I'm so grateful for. And, you know, that was something I noticed when I took a break and just spending time us

doing like just writing dumb music having fun writing not even metal shit we wrote like funk beats and like Brazilian funk shit and like electronic music and dance stuff and it was like so fun we're like there was no one around it was just us the brush yeah writing music we would turn on like the strobe light just for the vibe for us you know there's no cameras we didn't care right it's something so special but like that was a big thing of like this is so special you know what I mean and I want I want to make every day like this if I can you know I'm fortunate enough to have a career around this so why Why not spend time figuring out what life can be now that I'm like an adult? Because when I started this, I was 17, 18.

Your brain is not fucking fully formed until like you're like 30. I don't know. Like, you know, like as especially as a metalhead. You know, like it takes a while. And that's something where you grow so much and you become just a different, not a fully different person, but you just evolve as a human, obviously, as you get older. and, you know, that's something where all I ever knew was this. Like, I went to school.

I even finished my degree. I have a shitty accounting degree that I can use a toilet paper because it didn't do fuck all for me in my life. But, like, actually, when I was going to school, it gave me the contrast and context to actually appreciate what I did even more, which is something kind of funny. So I think going to school, but also, like, it didn't itself do anything for me other than provide something that was a distraction for, you know, me just wanting then the thing I wanted to do more.

but that made me want to do this even more because I saw the other side I was like oh my goodness like that's that life like I'm so unhappy doing that like I can do it but it's not that's not how I want to live my life right so I put so much emphasis of not trying to make it because even back then you know I was making 50 cents on YouTube adsense a year like it was hilarious because all my stuff was covers so copyright claims but I was doing it because I loved it I just didn't care I was like, I'll figure it out. I'll teach lessons. I'll do this.

I'll figure it out, right? But I had so much fun, especially during that time, of just figuring it out and putting my whole life into this. And then when you start to actually, like a year goes by or two years go by, and you're like, oh, I, I'm paying rent at my own place.

Like, I wrote a track with this person that I looked up with. Like, I looked up to, you know what I mean? Like when I was a young kid, like, oh, I got to chat with this person. person. Oh, like, you know what I mean? Like, it just becomes your whole life and you're like, whoa, like this is overwhelming because there was no expectations of me going into what I do with my life, you know, in terms of content creation, writing music, that whole world. And for it to actually, for me to somewhat manifest things without having the intent of, you know, it's almost like a delusion in a way of like I was delusionally like, oh yeah, we'll make it. We'll get the million subs, you know, like we'll write music and pretend we won't be homeless. But it was delusional me talking. that somehow manifested it to happen. And then when it does happen, you're like, oh my God, I need to give more of me now and more and more and more and more because I'm never going to go back to that kid that stared in class writing polymeters and polyrhyrhythms on my fucking, you know, sheets and in accounting expense class. Like, I'm not going to do that.

That's not going to be me. So there's so many like emotions and elements that get embedded. And then my brain particularly basically evolved and grew up with that. Just this is it. Bring the most value to the space. Be the most productive. Don't be fucking lazy. Give it your all.

Fuck going to Jake's party on Friday or whatever. Like, why is, you know, that's not important. You know, go, go be something. Go be someone with your life. And that was the end all be all. Which I'm very happy I did with my life because my life is what it is now. but at the same time, it's such a tricky thing, which I had no balance in life. I never understood balance of like, like, there's days I didn't go outside, which, you know,

like is, again, you get to work at home and make music, shut the fuck up. You know, you don't have to go outside. But at the same time, it's like, no, dude, like, I didn't go, I didn't get sun. Like, you need that for your, like, that's why the sun's there to absorb. You know, like, you need that for your help. So, like, it was really tricky for me to learn work, life balance. my life was, you know, work. It was my passion.

And it was so embedded. And because it was such a self-rewarding circuit, almost of like, I do get to do what I love. And it's my job and it's everything I care about in my life. Why would I do anything else? And you quickly realize how unstable you can, like, your life can become because then you've, your self-worth is basically only this. This is all you are as a human is. what you know your your YouTube channel or the song you write or the video you make that's who

you are as a human so if it does poorly you're a shitty person too you know so that's a lot to unpack yeah but that's kind of like what taking that break like I needed to get that balance I needed to be a human I need to be like I'm an adult like I basically haven't had this moment of clarity of doing anything other than this in my life like who am I you know like I still love breakdowns and breeze and, you know, 808s that explode my speakers, right? Like, do I? Like, I think so, right? I still love playing guitar. I still love this. And that moment and that space brought me a lot closer to the things of all of those things and made me realize, like, I'd fucking live for this. You know, it's not just because I'm in the cycle. Like, I live for this, but I need balance. That was a big thing.

Because if you're doing something and you've never stopped, momentum can carry you through. And you don't actually take a moment to go, don't have. want to do this? Yeah. This is actually my thing. It was it's also really tricky when again there's I'm very grateful for what I've had and the channel and everything and the people that support me over all these years like I still see people from when I started and I like dude I remember the guitar covers and I'm like dude I haven't done that in 10 years you're you're OG that's so cool right and like you I know I'm very fortunate in that capacity so that's another thing of like again who are you to complain. Like, tough it out, you know, and that's something I would tell myself in a very unhealthy

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How many bands or comedians do you know of that have suffered with creation? a burnout or something similar. Oh, I think majority of them in a capacity, no matter what. To the point that they've had to take a break from doing the band at all? A few of them, yeah. Some. Yeah, yeah, some. How many creators that make YouTube videos do you know that have done the same thing?

I'm stepping away from YouTube. I need to take a break. Ryan Trahan just fired his entire team. I saw him and his wife walking down the street the other day and he was like, yeah, man, it's just me and my iPhone and I'm going to be doing 12-hour days, like log in all of this thing because I didn't want to manage people. anymore. Here's my point. Creator burnout happens to YouTubers and podcasters and Instagram people at a rate so much

higher than you'd anticipate if you just heard what their jobs were. So you go, okay, so on one side of the table, you've got bands that have to be on tour all the time. They're away from their families. They miss their kids growing up. They don't spend time with their partner. They're in sweaty tour buses. Sometimes they're nice. Sometimes they're not nice. They've got places to be. They have to travel the world, the time zones, the sleep deprivation, all of this shit, the pressure, the highs, the lows, the pull back, all that, the unpredictability of whether the band's going to make it, all the rest of it. Like, if you look at that as a lifestyle, if you just say what it's like, it doesn't sound, the same for comedians, the same for DJs, DJs is a little

bit different, but the same for comedians. You go, you're on the road all the time. You're with one other person who's your support and maybe a tour manager, if you're lucky, you go to these random places and say these things and you've got the pressure of whether or not you're going to perform. And what do you do if you're a content creator? What you do it from the comfort of your home. You get to have dinner delivered to your house every single day. You've got Uber eats. You can go to the gym on the morning if you want to. Yeah, sure. Maybe you don't get to see sunlight that much or whatever. But like you're doing what you love from the comfort of your home. You don't even need to put pants on. This is the dream. The objective difficulty of your job and my job way lower than it is of

something like comedy or being in a band. So why is it the case then that content creators, people that do YouTube and podcasting, burn out at a way higher clip than bands and comedians. It's my opinion that that's because of the speed and the amplitude of the feedback. Bands get screaming fans immediately. You do something cool, sing a good note. You immediately see the positive reinforcement

of the people in the front row and the back, hundreds, thousands of rows beyond that. You get to see it happening. You are a comedian. You tell a joke. Immediately you get that feedback. Dopamine. Da-da-da-da-da.

we do a video. I mean, for you, you're live streaming, so it's a little bit different. The speed is quick, but the amplitude is so small. It's just bleeps and bloops on a screen. It's emotes. Long kick,

correct, thank you, good. Very good. Well done. Thank you. And then you hit a million subs. And you go, wow, that was just a bigger number on a screen. That was a crazy moment. But still, if you were to do the equivalent in a band,

whatever that would be, to sell out your first arena, let's say. Yeah, yeah. Right? Because I think that that's probably comparable in terms of like where you get to in your career versus where you get to as a band. Like it wouldn't be a stadium. A stadium would probably be 10 mil. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So I've played my first sort of 7,000, 8,000 cap show. Yeah. Wow. I sold it out in advance. That's my million play something. Yeah. How different is the experience of playing in front of 7,000 people sold out in an arena for you versus this like moment that you.

do something that's really meaningful to you and thank you so much to the community for being here. But like it's so much smaller and quieter comparatively. And this is why I think they create a burnout. There's a long-winded way of my bro signs theory that probably isn't true of me saying, I think creators burn out because they don't have sufficiently loud and sufficiently quick feedback mechanisms to give them the positive reinforcement that bands and comedians and DJs get when they go on the road. I think also the creator lifestyle is more naturally encouraging of being a bit of a Jen, you know, like in a fun way. It's like, not seeing sun. Yeah, like, yeah, literally not seeing son, like doing nothing.

Being on your own. Being, yeah, very, it is a very isolating thing. You know, I think a lot of people attribute to it. It's like, oh, you see the big YouTubers. They're all in their party houses and shit. I'm like, come on, I guess. You know, like, that's, no, no, you know, you know what the YouTuber is doing. He's editing at 5 a.m.

And going to the local grocery store to get, like, some like, Doritos. Yeah, exactly. And then coming back. And that's, that's, that's the equivalent, you know, of that. of that and then going back to the room while, you know, their fam and, you know, friends are asleep or something or like their partners, you know, have been in bed since 12, you know, like a normal human and then has to wake up. You're missing as much life as you would on tour without the benefit of the experiences and the memories. Well, it's true. I think particularly

the mental aspect of it. It's also so weird of like physically you are at home, you are there, right? Which is a gift. It is much easier, of course, than being on a road. Holy shit, right? That's, that's intense. I'm surprised there's so many people that tour that are able to mentally deal with. I understand what you mean that the objective level of comfort is greater when you're at home. But I think that although it's true, it kind of misses what comfort feels like and what satisfaction and where meaning and satisfaction come from, which is going through something hard and coming out the other side, okay, with people. Yes. Right. That's what it is. Yeah. There's always people around. Even if it's like, even if it's like, even if, your whole band's busy.

I don't know, your photographer is there, your front of hell together. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. The LD's there. The TM's there. Like,

you can go for dinner with somebody. You get to share in the failures and in the successes, both at the same time. It's not the same. It's just, it's simply not the same. So again, like,

I understand the like throat clearing land acknowledgement you've got to do of saying, I understand I'm in a privileged position and I don't need to leave the house and who am I to complain and da-da-da-da-da. And that is true, but I think it just missed, people who have,

a problem with that and say, well, there's no reason that creator should be getting burned out. They just simply don't understand where meaning and motivation come from. And they don't come from comfort. It's not what you want. It's what you need. And sometimes what you need isn't always what you want. For instance, I'm friends with a bunch of people in bands that are at the transitionary period from where they've just been on a bus, sleep a bus, to now being able to afford hotels each night.

Right. They want the hotel room each night. they need to be on the bus with the band. Because they finish a show, they go back to a hotel, and now they're on their own. And even though that's what they want, it's not what they need. And I think that mental health will decline in line with how separated the members of a band get. You know, there's duos that have separate tour buses. Yeah.

Oh, yeah. You know what I mean? And they're touring together. Foy, Homeboy's conglining their way from like Atlanta to Pittsburgh or whatever. And you go, well, why is that happening? You go, well, because we can afford it. And I want that. You go, yeah, but are you happier?

Or were you happier when you and Homeboy were bunking on top of each other? Yeah. Because I reckon that you actually were more, anyway, all of that is to say that, like, just because what you want might be to sit in your comfortable seat at home and have your eye conditioning and your rubriets come here and you need to put pants on, that doesn't mean, that doesn't mean that it's the highest level of motivation and reinforcement that you want. And this is where, I mean, it's never going to work. It's me and you, no matter how much we try to warn people, it's never ever going to work.

But what is it? The number one job that young kids want is YouTuber and the second one is influencer. That's great. Dude, back in my day, dude, it was still fucking doctor and astronaut. So I don't know what the hell is happening. Like, if everybody, you know, if someone gets like, I don't know a big cut now if they're just fucked because it's just a YouTuber coming to save them. Like, I don't know what's going to happen with that. I really wanted to be a creator, but I couldn't cut it on YouTube.

So I'm here. I think we put some. pull some of this beer on, it'll be fine. Yeah, biopolisporin fixes everything. Don't worry about. You know what I mean? Like, fuck it. But it's, that's where it's, it's tricky because I grew up in that era.

YouTube was in the job still in the early 2010s, right? There was like some of the bigger YouTubers like the Pewty Pies and the marketplace. I think market player was around mid, mid tens. And those guys doing stuff. And that's, that's great. But you could tell, again, it's a different vibe too. Like, they're just being dumbasses and having fun. Like, they're having fun.

They're already Even Pewdy's fucking done his retreat from the internet though Yeah dude I love his new vibe He's just like I got my fam

I'm living my life And I'm doing Linus shit Like I'm vibing dude Like he's just doing his own thing And I'm like good for you I wrote this essay a couple of weeks ago The Fuck You Family So there's three different stages

That people can say fuck you at Fuck you money Okay Don't need to Ever worry about what something costs You're not even that beholden to the limitations of going to work. You don't need to have a boss. Wonderful. Fuck you freedom, which is maybe you're on a ranch somewhere out here in Texas. You kind of don't even

need to adhere to the laws if you keep yourself quiet enough. It's usually facilitated by fucky money, but it's a little bit different too. Sometimes you can get it in a different sort of a way. You could imagine the van life people have got fuck you freedom without fuck you money. But there's a third level, which is fuck you family. And fuck you family is realizing that all of the games that you played to try and get acclaim and respect and recognition from the people in your industry, admiration from the people you admire, all that stuff, kind of doesn't matter anymore because the only people that I need to care about are in the bed next to me or in the room across the hall. And they think that I'm the coolest, richest, smartest, most heroic person

on the planet. So as long as my wife and my babies love me and think that I'm awesome, fuck you and that I think explains this you could call it just the dad pivot that a lot of guys go through and it's sick to see Pewdie do it too

someone who really was sending the living shit out of it like at the top of his game to just be like I'm good man I'm out I can't wait for that I'm so ready to do this from a place of

peace I'm out yeah it's it's so tricky it's dude when when people people make it like that and kind of go somewhat unscathed because no matter what like you can't escape with a little beauty fucking skate the entire industry considering considering the situation that happened right

now out essentially with not a scratch on him that yes so like that's that's why like and i think other people one of my fucking um filthy frank being one of those ogy YouTubers too where it's like that dude quitting at the perfect time is be it's he knew he knew what was selling bitcoin at the top of the market Yeah, dude, it's better than that. And then being able to also do exactly what he wants with Joji is like, whoa, that's like a different kind of fuck you. That's like a, that's like a fucking transcendal. Escape velocity.

Yeah, man, I'm like, how'd you? Yeah, we're like, especially when, especially now it's like, it's crazy when you have a cataloger like that, you're just uncancelable. I love that. That's why, like, because you're out, what's someone going to do? What's someone going to do? Sorry, take me down. I'm not making any.

Yeah, I'm JoG. I love that. I would love to see the, like, residuals that somebody like a PewDie Pye is getting if he just doesn't upload anything else. You know what I mean? It depends how many limited ads you got on those videos. Dude, that's a tricky thing. And when it comes to YouTube, and also part of the reason I had a lot of trouble because I drive so much of my worth and value of YouTube, not necessarily always because of the numbers. Like, you know, if a video didn't do so well, I wouldn't be like, oh, I'm going to go like, end everything now. It's, it was just tricky.

It's like your baby, a thing you really care about. And it feels like it's not growing. When I was younger, that would hit me a lot. And then over time, start to diversify, right? As the thing with YouTube,

or just one particular platform, and I would always advise this to, like, other content people, and as well as even musicians of just like, please God do not just trust this one thing. Because, like, YouTube can sit there and just be like, uh, here's a new policy.

Yeah, you know, that edgy content you did? like with all those guys. It's all limited ads now. You make 10% of what you made before. Because advertisers are, you know, the better advertisers are not shown on it.

And now it's only like the whatever gamble crazy shit that that's on there. Sorry. It's, sorry. And you just have to stare at it. To be like, okay, so I have 5% of my income now.

Like, that's how it goes. Right. And that's a tricky thing. Unless you diversify of being like, okay, well, oh,

okay, like YouTube fucked me, but whatever. I'm streaming on Twitch. Oh, I got Patreon supporters too. Oh, I also,

I have signature this. I have signature that. I have affiliate links. You know what I mean? Like, it's just, if you diversify yourself, you're also much less of a, like, uh,

susceptible to like, just, just a platform, which does not, does any of these platforms don't deserve, I think, any particular loyalty to, you know,

the, the kind of, the country is no loyalty from them to you. Yeah, exactly. So it's, it's like, why the fuck,

you know, if one day, like I said, a Spotify or an Apple music just wants to be like, yeah, man, I don't know, dude, like, Soono's kind of lit.

So fuck it. Like, All our money's there. Like, real musicians are only getting like 10% now. Like, that's hilarious and extreme, but you know what I mean? What do you think is happening with the state of Spotify streaming stuff at the moment? Because there was a long time, it still is, of artists being quite disgruntled with a variety of different streaming services. Title seemed to be pretty good in the eyes of at least artists.

But who the fuck uses title. I don't know. I don't know the single person in my life who used to. You know what I mean? So what's the sort of overview of how artists and streaming platforms are relating at the moment? I mean, everyone always is pissed. And, you know, I've been like, that's just, that's just a summary of the world. Yeah, particularly with the music, like, that is one of probably the biggest complaints in the music industry of, like, streaming doesn't pay enough.

And it's tricky because, yeah, Spotify pay more, what the fuck? But at the same time, a lot of bands also are on contracts. And a lot of those contracts, they're not realizing maybe, hey, they didn't, they signed off like all of their royalties or all of their, you know, streaming revenue. Or, you know, hey, you still have like your $5 million like a loan you got to pay back before you actually get any streaming revenue. So like, I think a lot of those stories get pushed extremely hard with those bands. And they're like, you know, there'll be a band that's like, I have like 50 million streams and I made like 20 bucks on my song. And it's like, okay, well, yeah, Spotify should pay more, but there's other stuff involved. Who paid for that record?

Yeah, yeah. Who paid for the promo? Uh-huh. Yeah. Who paid for the video. Who paid for your shoot? Who fronted the money? Who fronted the tool?

I think bands are now becoming more aware of deals because, you know, back in the day, it's like, oh, I signed to a record label. Oh, my God. We made it. we did it, we signed whatever piece of paper, oh my God, $200,000. We're all rich, let's go drink. You know what I mean? Let's go buy a car instead of realizing like, oh, we, we owe a lot. Like, we have to pay this back guys, you know, like the capacity.

Do you remember that documentary that was done about 30 seconds to Mars when they had to make their album? Bro, I have to. So this, I only ever saw it once. It might actually be a fucking fever dream. It might not exist. So, but let me see if I can find it. 30 seconds to Mars, documentary Sony. So it was when they were in,

A artifact is a 2012 award-winning documentary by Jared Leto that follows 30 seconds to Mars during their 2008 legal battle against EMI. The film documents the band's $30 million lawsuit while they recorded the album This Is War. Oh shit. Provides an intimate luck into the music business and the fight for creative freedom.

So this is available, it's available on net. Netflix apparently. Everyone should go and watch this. I remember seeing this pretty much just after it came out and it fucking ruled. And Jared Letto is using like war dogs money or whatever the fuck that movie was in that he was, they was in with a, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, Nick Cage. Or a suicide squad? No, it was where he was, he was the like second in command to a dude. Anyway, like, he's using money from acting to fund the band recording the record, recording the record. because the deal that they've got is it's, fuck 360, it's like

720. They've got like a 720 deal and they just eat everything for the rest of time, the rest of time, the rest of time and it is gnarly. This, I can't believe that it kind of, maybe because of when it came out, like 2012, who would have done a reaction to it? I reckon your audience would

eat this shit up, especially if you did a breakdown. I think it's fucking fantastic. So, yeah, basically eight stars on IMDB out of 5,000. thousand reviews. Jeez. So, yeah, it ripped. But yeah, these big 360 deals.

I mean, I saw the top line of one of these deals the day. And the first thing of a 12-page record deal contract is something along the lines of, this is a longstanding and completely binding legal document. It is crucial that you fully understand this because it involves the rest of your life. It is highly advisable to get legal advice to do, do, do, do. Like up top it is, but I guess if you're in a band that's been grinding for so long and so much, it's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, fuck the small print. Where's the, where's the, where's the, where's the, oh, 750 grand. Yeah.

I mean, I think nowadays a lot of those deals have become better because artists have become more aware. And also labels have become more, I think the right word might be accommodating. I'm not sure of like, oh, okay, like, we need to be a bit more creative instead of it just be like these classic, like, I need to fuck you in an inventive way. In an inventive way. Like, yeah, where it's, and also I remember, I mean, I would see, I would talk with bands, right, and understand a bit and talk with labels too. I'd be like, I learned a lot of that knowledge more working within the scene from my perspective, which was different. Again, I'm not, I wasn't in a signed band. I wasn't with that.

I was working with a lot of labels. I was working with a lot of signed bands and a lot of friends with a lot of signed bands and a lot of friends, you know, with the A&Rs and labels and stuff. And working as a, again, content creator, YouTuber space, right? But my space is usually not as coincided with that world. It's like, you are content, DIY, random figure it the fuck out guy. You make, you do Photoshop and you go make memes, right? Good luck. And here you go, these people make the real music, right?

And actually deal the real business. Like that's, that was kind of the relationship. Maybe, you know, I wish less years ago, but, you know, like quite a few years ago. And that's something where I've seen over the years, I remember talking to someone and being like, oh, so what, like the industry standard for like how many, how many records you own? And it's like, you know, someone would say like, yeah, we all like, we, we still all our label like five records. And I'm like, I would sit there and I'd be like, what do you mean? Because I, it's as a, again, as a concept for, especially as a person.

You mean singles or albums? No, albums. Albums. Albums. I owe them like 60 tracks. Yeah. And I just, okay, so math. If we do the two year cycle of most majority of bands of release schedule, you signed away 10 years of your life.

I don't know when you plan on. dying, brother, but that's more than 10% of your life. And I, especially with a lot of these musicians, they seem to want to be musicians because they love music and come to into the space to not be conventional and not want a normal job and not have someone tell them what, what they can and can't do. And I would see a lot of musicians. And it would be very sad of like, that seems more of a lock-in corporate bullshit than just going to work at, you know, the bookkeeping firm.

True, because it's taking what was your passion and turning it in. into an engine. Yeah, which to the credit of some labels that are able to do it very well and successfully, obviously there's sometimes big bands that otherwise maybe, especially in the 2000s, like they didn't have a label. Maybe there's a lot of musicians that do not have the best business side of things. You know, they just want to play music. You know, they grow up.

They fucking love Nirvana. They love Metallica and they just want to make that. I want to do that. I want to do it now. I don't give a fuck about business. I don't care. They don't want to look at my bank account, right? Like none of this.

And kudos to them, right? they want that, but then they do need that business person. They do need that label to or manager at the very least, right, to figure shit out for them. And yeah, they're going to get taken advantage of because that's how the industry works, right? If you know, you're kind of just going with the flow. Unless you find someone that's just, I don't know, the very rare person that has, you know, is a bit more empathetic and is like, hey, dude, you know what? Like, I know I can fuck you for this, but I'm only going to fuck you for this.

because you're cool and I want to see you succeed. You know what I mean? And that's a tricky line to go ahead with where like five years, it's like, bro, like, what? Or even, I mean, three years left. Or not three years, three albums. And I'm like, that's six years of your life at least. Like, that's, dude, you're a different person in six years. Like, you, you even going to like this type of music in six years?

Like, that's such a long commitment. It's like a marriage to the business entity, which would, be a label. And then you're also married, you're in a band, so you're married to all your band members. You're trying to make, how many marriages are you trying to work out there, bro? Yeah. Like, you know, a lot of people have tricky with one. And you want to make, you know, your five band members, you're married to them. You see them more than your family. You eat together. You know all your habits. You know to piss each other off. You know what I mean? You, you guys earn income together. You lose income together. And you have the corporate entity over you and

management and whatever else that's attached to that, which again, some musicians fucking need this because they need to, they need guidance in a capacity. But for some of those deals, especially that like 2000s were way back when, it's like, holy shit, bro, how do you, like, that's, that's too much commitment, man. How are you doing that? Given that nobody doesn't listen to music. Yeah. No one.

Everybody has some music. Some people are more into music than others. Some people are more into some music than others. But everybody listens to some sort of music. Yeah. I can't believe how retarded the music industry is. it's it is fucking wild dude when i when i found out about how distribution works but like disrocade and and if you want to put if i want to put a podcast on the internet i've got

even a decade ago when i started researching doing the podcast it's like eight and a half years old i used old school rssss on libsin four and the only reason that i used that is because it was what rogan used back back in the day is like an old school rssss feed converter that you manually plug in to all of these different things and then after a while it gets a little bit more. I remember I was uploading it to like, J.B., what's that, what's that Garnayan streaming service?

It's called like Adana or something. There's like, there was, like, we were putting it on DZoo. We were putting it on SoundCloud. We were putting on all of these different things. There's like, there's a one, the only one that you can get in all of Africa at the time. I'm like manually going in and adding the RSS feed to all of this stuff. Every episode?

No, just once, but then sometimes it would like time out or shit would change on the back end and I'd need to go. go in and check link health. And I did that for five or six years and then we moved to Megaphone. Megaphone got bought by Spotify and now everything, it's plug-in play.

It's like fucking Squarespace. Right? For making a website. So I don't need to learn to code anymore. I just drag and drop and everything happens. Yeah. Not the same apparently if I want to put a song on both Apple music and title and Spotify

at the same time. You can use like a district kid now or like a CD baby. I forget the name of the movie. But you still have to jump through a fucking shit, like way more hoops, right, in order to coordinate that kind of a release? More than the podcast.

So I, and so funny, before I left, I would chat with people and I'd have to still use like pod farm or something. So I had to use the RSS. But it was still a bit more like conjoined. So it wasn't what you were talking about. It was like the next gen of much easier.

And now it's literally just like, oh, I upload it on like creative spot. Oh, I guess it's there. Like it's done. That's cool. That's the district kit stuff.

And like the music side, it's still, it's not that. bad, but it's, it could be more ideal. You know, like, it's basically, okay, title, artwork, date, record label. And if you don't have one, you have to just put, you know, that's why you see some fun, like, you know, bands that are independent. They say, like, whatever the fuck record is that.

Like, I hate you, brother. Like, whatever. They make up some random age just to put something in there. And then you have to make sure you have the right audio. You have to make sure, you know, you, uh, you check if it's like explicit and all this shit. It's basically a checklist of, oh my God, I've done it enough times at this point, probably of like five to ten things. Every song, unless it's an album, so every release is maybe better wording for that, that you have to do. And then after it's the setup,

you've got to add the lyrics, you got to add this and that. It's starting to become a bit more automated, so it is a bit easier. But also considering how before you just needed a record label, as far as I knew, maybe there was also specific just distribution companies. I'm sure there was, right, that just did that and you didn't need to be like signed to the label. But then again, mistake me wrong, you probably still have to be signed to the distribution company the capacity. So that's why when this stuff came out, I think a lot of independent musicians became very happy because again, we don't ask, don't ask for much. So it's just, I want to bypass the bullshit. Yeah, that because that made, I saw a lot of bands

and you can always tell when they're in a defendant, like I said, because the default is like at just DK number number number number as your record label. So when you see that as an upload, you're like, oh, these are kids that just like just uploaded, just figured it out. You know what I mean? And that's something really funny. And then you see them get like signed later. So now it's like, oh, so a lot of these independent artists have more of a say of at least how they can do it. Even SoundCloud, that was a pretty big one.

And even the, not the metal scene as much. I know there was like literally a genre SoundCloud rap. So I know in the rap scene, it was like big. In the metal scene, it wasn't as popular. But some musicians used it, particularly content. musicians use that back in the day. So it's better than before. That's why.

But in comparison to how easy I see it is to use like the Spotify podcast thing now, I'm like, you guys got to up your fucking technology music scene because like it's taken a bit. Have you seen song DNA on Spotify yet? No, it's on DNA. So I've only just seen this for the first time. Okay. So I decided to do it on Can You Feel My Heart?

Okay, yeah, yeah. So if you go into the track and then at the like below the lyrics and about the song and all the rest of it is song DNA. Okay. So if I click explore, this is all of the different people. So this is like Ted Jensen, the mastering engineer.

On the songwriter. Dan Graziano, the editor, Annie Skates, a contractor. And then like Matt Nichols, drums. And then how many collaborators

and how many songs he's on? Like Matt Nichols. So like, if I open up, like, Jordan Fish, composer, three roles.

So like, and now I can go into worked with two, 275 artists recorded 473 songs, top songs with, like, and now I can go in there, and this is all of his stuff. So this is kind of like a matrix or a web where you can explore how all of the different people are associated with different stuff. Because before, yeah, before it was just, you would right click and it would say song credits. And they were, they were, they updated it now. Before it was so pathetic. It was just performer, writer, and producer. And most of the time, it would be glitched and not always super accurate anyways. But like, If you were a co-producer, for example, it wouldn't even show. So it was just the main producer. It was just the performers and whoever else has primary if you want to, you know, get some extra Spotify plays with you. Go for it.

Right. And then the songwriters. But it wouldn't say mixer. It wouldn't say, fuck all. Even though when you distribute, you have the option to put all of it. To tag everything. So all that metadata is usually in there if you take the time to input it, right? If you go to, what's the website that lists like every single person that's involved in a record?

It's like the legal requirement for it. Oh, like the like public like like like like like actual publishing like BMI. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that seems to be a little bit more that's granular. They don't screw around. Well, that's how a lot of artists who are anonymous get leaked.

Yes. Because you know, it comes to publishing and like they're like, you know, yeah, cute. Cute that you're supposed to not know who you are. Put your fucking legal name on this website, dude. Yeah. That happens really quickly. And it's like, but I, you know, hey, we, you know, we're anonymous.

And it's like, okay, so I don't give a fuck about your stage name. I need your legal. name or you're not getting published. So like it's kind of that, you know, that's why like... Yeah, nice one, dark Danny. We'll have your full fucking Daniel

Robertson. We'll have that down. It's way more lame if they had to go dark Danny. It's going to, yeah. What is the worst thing do you think about? Oh, actually, what's your prediction for the sort of next five years or so of alternative music?

Are you, what are you worried about? and what are you positive about? Oh, that's a big question, man. It's, okay, what I'm positive about is I think the scene is becoming more and more genreless, which I get excited about because then the focus is not, hey, can we make a death core or a metal core or a pop, you know, pop core, whatever the fuck banger? Is can we just make a good song, you know, like, and, you know, I love that because then there's going to be a higher quantity of good music.

I think that's always kind of my, my end goal with it. It's just like, whatever route leads to, like, can we just get more actual good shit that doesn't suck? Like, that's all I really care. So I feel like the scene is going that way in a, in a healthy way. The bad side of that is, I think, also because metal is, the good and the bad, metal is becoming more popular than ever, but now it's also almost like cool to like it. So it's being more gamified.

it's becoming more of like a specific structure of how to write like an octane core song, right? And that's no shun at octin because octane being metal radio or rock radio, actually it has breakdowns now. That's sick. You know, it has heavy parts. It has screaming, right? Like that's something where I'm like, that's cool now that people would go there before and just listen to like, hell yeah, brother, you know what I mean? And like have a good time with like respect to nickel back, but with nickelback or with like creed or with like classic rock.

Now you're hearing like the bad omens, the sort of sleep. tokens the spirit box and stuff like that on there, right? And that's really good to see. But also it becoming much bigger, meaning that there's more industry and labels and monetization in this space that maybe didn't exist as much. So there's more of an incentive for people to do fuckery. To do fuckery and to be like, oh, well, this style is big. So just create, you know, create seven bands. That's just that style. You know what I mean? Like Octane core is legitimately a. What is Octane core? Who would be in that? And again, this isn't a derogatory of like, oh, your octa.

The people who are derivative of this might be, it might be derogatory. Yes, exactly. But like Bad Wolves is a big one. Five finger death punch for sure. That is the best description of that one. But it also lewis, again, like you'll see bad omens in there. You'll see a spearbook. You'll see like Bill Murray even to a point, right?

And he's kind of more extreme and fun, right? But it's basically music that is it's radio-friendly, active rock. or slash alternative metal. And the boundaries is what makes it interesting now is that now you can have double kick. Now you can have screaming. Now you can tune down your guitars. Get away with more.

And you can get away with more. Exactly. So that's what is cool about what octane core is. But because of that, it is very formulaic. And a lot of bands see that and see the success and be like, wait, my band can make breakdowns and get on radio. What the that's the root to the thing? that's the root to money.

Yeah, you know. And definitely fame to a capacity where it's like, oh, sick. So that's something where it comes with the good and bad. Again, heavy music is getting more popular. Great. And that's getting injected in a way where bands are becoming more creative with it. But then also bands are becoming more sterile with it and being like, this is, oh, well, let's just do this.

Samey copycat. Samey copycat. Just write the same chorus every time, use the exact same melody, use the same lyrics with slight differentials so we don't get sued, you know, by the other band. like let's all try to be Lincoln Park again you know because like Lincoln it's it's so crazy to me that took so long for everyone to copy paste Lincoln Park again considering how massive they were in 2000s but like yeah that's that's the epitome of like the most successful sound i think in the modern metal sphere if you can pull off a good hybrid theory you're you're eating you're gonna eat well

yeah you know so yeah again it's always tricky because I'm excited for bands to get heavier and that be more things that young kids get into but I'm also like fuck It's going to dilute down the sound. It's going to, yeah, it's going to make it a little diluted, which is, it is what it is. But also, I hear a lot of bands within that making very weird shit, because there's no genres. Like I, there's these, I don't know if you listen to much of these smaller bands like, Marr or a like disembodied tyrant.

Nope. There's this, there's these new subsets of bands that are so extreme that they basically can't be extreme anymore in just that subgenre of the metal sphere they're in. So like, Death Corps. Okay, you're already as extreme you can be. Like, Lorna did it. You know, like, okay. And like Whitechapel exists, suicide silence, and like there's all these new bands, right?

So a band like Disabwey Tyrant is like, well, we're doing that, but now we're also going to have like dubstep moments. So we're going to take, we're going to the heaviest thing of a different heavy genre and put it into our heavy genre. Exactly. So like I'm like, that's sick. Or Mara, which is this smaller thaw band. Like bands like Valjarta, Humay's Last Breath. I don't know if you know a buster. He also has Throne. Throne. Yeah, I know Throne. Okay. He's the drummer and songwriter also with that band. And his like more progressive bands are Humay's Last Breath and Valjarta. And Fall is this genre Which is like super gent It's okay

I man I'm gonna be such a fucking weird I'm gonna be such a fucking weirdo trying to explain this of like That's what we're hit for I do I will explain it thall on your podcast show I got you So gent was da da da da da da da da da da mishugger Okay cool Then after time kids got bored of da da da da da da da da da and became Da da da da da da da da da da da da da da

Periphery No because periphery da da da da da da da da da da da da Okay it's more of a rhythmic group thing where that genre thall kind of took all those elements added more of an atmospheric element dialed down the polyrhythmic confusing rhythms

and made it more of just... Less mathy. Exactly. More of like groove. Funny enough more extreme yet more accessible which is ironic I would say. So there's bands that do that. I've been doing that for a while and then there's a band like this small band Maraar which they took that and they're like oh Dupsted's sick. Oh I love like Beethoven

and so they infuse you know what I mean so they infuse that with the sound and it's like a whole other world of like music and not just as a music fan but as a musician and a guitarist I sit there like dumbfounded of like it's fucking cool this is so sick so that aspect excites me because music is so heavy now bands are literally trying to find you know more excitement and heaviness in weird places which will make more unique music as at the same time it's becoming more sterile and streamlined for yeah that's a that's a great point dude A fucking fantastic answer.

I think it's kind of surprising because everybody can reach the market freely. There are no, if you don't, you don't even need a record label. You can just put, same as me with the podcast. I've never been a part of the network.

Yeah, exactly. Just put it up. And that would suggest that things would get more weird and more niched. But as people sort of take their eyes off the ball of mainstream, what that means is the people who can get there have even more prestige.

Yeah. Because I always say this about mainstream TV. People think that it's like, lame stream, it's old school, no one gives a fuck about CBS or 60 minutes or whatever. And you go, hey, there is an unlimited amount of YouTube that gets uploaded every single day. There are only 24 hours a day on MSNBC or CNBC or Fox or whatever. If you take up 15 of those minutes, that's 15 minutes, not going to something or someone else. That means that you have value in a way that simply uploading a YouTube video doesn't. It's cool and subversive and rebellious man. And I'm,

There's no fucking person telling me what to say, and that's sick about the YouTube thing. But it's low prestige for precisely the same reason. Anyone can do it, so anyone can do it. And I think that this is sort of the bifurcation of what you're seeing here. It's like, who is going to be placed on the new Madden game? Like who's going to be in that? Yeah. For sure.

Of course. Who is going to get to play the Grammys? Who is going to get to play the Bafters? Who's going to get to play these different, you know, these different. award ceremonies and who's going to get put on radio. And if you managed to do that, because so many people are looking toward the independent side, that is going to create an incentive. So I think you're right that you're going to end up with sort of two scenes splintering off in additional directions. Yeah. And I hope the metal scene embraces it too when it comes to

those smaller bands because there's so much smaller music now and smaller underground bands. And what happens with the metal scene, and it happens with bands like Sleep token, with bands like Spirit Box, even with bad omens, anytime these bands, when they're kind of small and underground, they have that moment, like Sleep Token had the summoning, right? All of a sudden, yo, this band's like, oh, you know, who's, they're not that good. They sold out. It was cool to hate. The fact that it's fucking cool to hate Sleep Token fucking blows my mind. Give me a break. Well, it's, it's funny particularly because their discography is not even, is not metal really, right? it is they are a they're more of a pop leaning band with metal elements which is great so i think because

metal heads almost like we're like you're ours you know what i mean like you're this is ours like this is sick you know we this we can listen to pop with it too that when they do the pop stuff particularly like with their new record right there even arcadia definitely more pop leaning that was great had like top 50 bangers but then also had some of the most i'm going to use the word extreme instead of heavy extreme moments right um and because of that correlates between those two things and like the scene being like well well no you're you're you're you're we made you big you know you did that thing and then we all we're in on service what we want yeah so like no you're you're you're not allowed to now like like be it just like a band you

you're your your our metal band or you're not you know what I mean or we hate you and you're just some shitty pop band to I also think a lot of criticism came from the mainstream of saying this is shitty mainstream music I can't remember who the guy was maybe in the times it was a British reporter who did a review of the album. It was album of the year, but he said it was like the worst thing he's ever heard. Yeah. Like, dude, I it just, it made me, it made me sad.

Especially, we can cut this if this isn't known. Do people know that Sleep token are from the UK? Do they know that they're British? They have to. Yeah. They're definitely British. Fine. You said it. I said it. Sleep token, they're British, probably. Like, oh, fuck, I'm Canadian.

Broff's fine. Yeah. I'll give you license to be able to say that word. That's our word. You can culturally appropriate for the topic. Okay, I got you. Like, hey, we're not exactly fucking sharring ourselves in glory as a country at the moment. You know what I mean? But we should take every Grammy nomination that we can get. Take the dove, dude.

We should take every single Grammy nominate. We should take all of the, because it would be good. Well, you guys have tons of sick metal bands, which is fucking crazy. We're punching above our weight. You have this one of some, I mean, okay, loath, sleep token. I mean, if you're classics, I mean, like, a bullet, obviously is, is, it. is massive architects. Architects.

Bring me. President. Yeah, exactly. So we're ripping. You guys are ripping and that's where it's like, that's sick. You know, Canada. Now, I'm always proud of Kant because Lexus is on fire. Are they Canadian?

Is Dallas Green Canadian? Yeah, yeah. I think they fucking from Hamilton. I might just get so roasted by all my family. I'm pretty sure they're from fucking Hamilton. Idiot, dude. Yeah. Bitzburg.

Dude, you're so fucking. No, they're, well, I know that, I know that, too, because you know why when I live in Canada my whole life. Canadians, you'll go like, it's just a very particular scene in Toronto with metalheads. And it's always fun. And when you go to shows, for some reason, the metalheads in Toronto, lean Prague and like,

and post-hardcore out of all the things. So who do they listen to? So protest the hero. Okay. Fucking hell, that is an insane refresh ball. Jesus Christ. I've listened to protest the hero in like a decade and a half. Any musician I ever met that literally said I like heavy music or anything to play guitar, I was like, what's your favorite protest year?

No matter what. Without a doubt. That's very proggy. It's that. And then it was Alexis on fire. Okay, fine. Good. And then it was like intervals and like kind of like the jazz gent dudes from like the 2010s.

You know, like that whole like sit through a plenty intervals. Polyphia came from that scene, but they're not that really sound anymore. So like that sound. And then like Billy Talent, which is not metal at all. fucking love Billy Talent's sick. Billy Talent rules. Yes. All right.

I remember I did a media studies assignment in, uh, when I was 16, 17 in sixth form college and I did it to a Billy Talent song. So, so cool. Dude, I used to jam like the river and like, what was it? I think it was Billy Talent to, I forgot the fucking numbers. I did those albums like all together. Non-stop bangers, man. Give me, uh, let's listen to a couple of tracks from bands that you think that people need

to know more about. Like just whatever cool. I've got a, I've got a couple that I want. to show you. Oh shit. I mean, Alex, you did Alexis. So like, I'm, I'm happy. That's fucking cool. That's nice to be able to throw that back. Yeah. But yeah, who else? What else should we look at? I mean, Billy

Talent has some bangers. And I don't think in America, they're very well known, which is always weird to me, because they're a big band, but anytime you talk to someone from, try on a season, I think probably Fallen Leaves is probably like their like a little edgier banger. Yeah. This sound, dude. So cool Dude dude

Dude dude dude The guitarist is so sick In this fucking band You can tell that's like a death Like a death metal dude That was like you know what I just want to play like punk shit instead That's a fucking hell of a head of photo

Yeah Oh dude I'm back in middle school In the fucking frozen north Hey there bud Going to Timmy's for lunch break Dude All right

All right You gotta hit me with one All right Are you not going to get like a thousand copyright claims? I don't care. I don't care. Dude, respect, man. Holy Water.

Are you familiar with Holy Water? No, I don't know Holy Water. Oh! So they just released their album. Is this a new band? On Friday. They supported architects, bro. Fucking three quarters of a mill.

Now, what do I like from this? So this is the new album. And the most interesting track, probably give me a show. I'll show you this because it goes pretty hard. But then I will listen to a bit of nightmares. Okay, okay. Yeah, I've never heard of this bad. So they supported architects.

Were they, they were second support. So fucking error were first support. Oh, yeah. And I saw them in Houston. And these guys are really fucking cool. So like that progressive metalcorey space. It's just, I don't know, they did a... Yeah, so this came out, April 17th.

This is why I asked you whether or not you'd... How much you listened to over the weekend. I was like, fuck, I hope he hasn't listened to the new... No, I haven't listened to this. Oh shit, dude, we back in the 2000s. Fuck yeah. That is a kid that grew up. I don't know who the fucking guitarist is.

He grew up with singing Nondero. Chasing safety. 100%. It's got a bit of shoegaze in it, which is cool. Yeah. And then... Yeah. Dude.

Fucking fire. So that's my first one for you. And the second one, I'm so glad that you've never heard of them. That's like, to be able to slipstream you with an unknown band, I feel like I've just fucking... Like, I feel like I've just fucking... like I've head shutted someone from across the map. Dude, I have, that's it.

I've just fired a bullet randomly and it's gone, punk. No scope, bro. Say six. I know say six. Oh, I thought I got two for two. Yeah, I do Thal and B-core. Fuck. So, okay, the guitar types of style that they have,

that's particularly the metal aspect, that's Thal. Right. That shit. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. What do I like from this? So I think the devotions just so. I mean, what would you call this?

genre because this is very like really or moderate this is a thing there's so many stupid genre names that's all modern metal basically but like yeah fall and b because it's thall with rn b it's like is how token inspired is all of this stuff or is it before that it's the token did did many coins bro so cool all right give me one more from you okay i have to show you marr now because this is how do i spell it m i r a r i got to show you these guys they're fucking okay Right, yeah. So, classical, dubstep thaw. Okay, I like this cover on.

They literally take like old school paintings and shit. I don't know if they draw it or they just take it from the internet because it's no longer copyright. 50K, 50K Monthly's is a fucking good poll. Yeah. Oh, dude. They're so sick. It's just two dudes. Two dudes.

No vocals. Oh, okay. Oh. That's a guitar. He's making that noise of the fucking guitar. It's fucking nutty. Alright, that's sick. Alright.

What else? You have to go to the drop. What is it? It's a little... 130. 130. You... One 30.

How they have to play. Okay. It's one of those where it is one of the coolest moments I've heard in music in the past like 10 years. That like, it's simple, but you'll hear the electronic element to it. But it's so fucking extreme. It's just two nerdy kids. What a nationality of there? I think Leo is French and Marius is, oh God, Swedish or Finn Norway?

One of the Scandinavian, I think, I think sweet. Right here. This will get you the extra pump at the gym. I don't give a fuck how heavy it is. A guitar. Yeah, that's crazy. That's fucking insane. Yeah.

All right, what else? One more. Oh, shit. Okay, do you know boundaries? No. Okay. I got to show you bad. So it's there are a mix of kind of like that 2000 nostalgic stuff with a very modern heavy edge. You want something more melodic or heavy? Let's go melodic. Easily erased. Second one. Very melodic. Yes. It has a chorus at least. He goes for it, dude. Two singers? Yeah. The drummer is clean singing and then the vocals is screaming.

Right. Yeah. You got the ambience, you get like the melodic kind of hardcore metalcore vibes, and then you get screaming. It's, it's very that. And then breakdowns all that shit, dude. Very good. Very good. The scene continues to live on as fucking old as we get.

Hell yeah, dude. Bro, I think you fucking roll. I love your stuff. I'm so glad that you're back. I'm glad you took a break. Thank you. But I'm also glad that you're back. So where should people go to check out all the shit that you've got going on?

you'll probably be forced to see my face if you listen to breakdown somewhere unfortunately on the internet my dumbass face will pop up going ooh um but yeah at nick nocturnal on everything and i'm gonna i don't know when you guys drop these but like in a in a week or two we're just getting the studio ready and we're going to be doing this crazy concept of time actually what i was saying earlier um when it was doing the how to metal thing that's right we're going to be writing songs every day on stream from start to finish with crazy rave lights controlled with the actual songs and basically that is going to be just content right, entire banger every single day, live.

No bullshit, no, that's why there's no anything in the background. It's just write the banger right there from certain to fish. And you're going to release them? If people want them enough. So it's going to be based fully on demand. So I'll probably put them on like, I don't know if someone wants to go get on the, like I'll put the demos, whatever, on a Patreon. Someone, hey, go, there you go, listen to them if you really like them.

But like, if it's a song, you know, again, that people are like, yo, full right now, like, go right now. Full campaign, I'll do the music video in a fucking room. or like in, you know, in the swamp in Florida, we'll figure it out, dude. It's the best idea, I really think, because I would love to see what goes into making a track from start to finish and the fact that you can do, you're doing it with your misses. Some of them I will.

I told them, because my wife, she used to do the concrete creation stuff a lot more, but she used to do it in Brazil because she speaks mainly Portuguese. She speaks English very well, though, but like, you know, she just wants to make music. She's not a talker in terms of like the kind. Bring her in. Hey, she can be the fucking workhorse. Yeah.

Come up with some nice riffs, do some, do some of that stuff for me. I'll explain what's going on. Well, she's going to be producing and doing her all stuff. So I told her, I was like, so you're going to make beats in this shit and do shorts or whatever you want to do, right? Because she wants to like also do it. She writes.

We both write. I'm like, great, right thing. And then when something goes crazy and you want to do it together, let's go. We'll do it together on stream. And yeah, it'll be crazy. Dude, I'm really happy for you.

I'm really happy for you. When you left the world of metal and the scene, you basically got eulogies from some of the biggest guys in all of metal, which was pretty hilarious. It was like you died, kind of. Yeah, they never talked to me while I was there. But yeah, exactly.

That's how it goes, man. Well, you're back. You're back, and I'm glad that you're back, and you're fucking awesome, dude. So let's do this again. Of course, you're thinking for having me. Love what you do. Oh, you do, bro. I'm up.

Goodbye, everybody. Goodbye. Oh, bro.