No Filler Music Podcast - Sidetrack: Mutoid Man

Episode Date: June 15, 2020

On this week's Sidetrack episode, we listen to Cave In frontman Stephen Brodsky's side project, Mutoid Man. Unlike the polished sound that Cave In achieved with Antenna, the music of Mutoid Man (freed from the constraints of a major label) is Brodsky unchained. An excellent blend of psychedelic and stoner rock, Mutoid Man is a crank up and tune out type of band that is unlikely to disappoint. Mutoid Man - Gnarcissist Mutoid Man - Reptilian Soul Mutoid Man - Lost In The Hive The Mercury Program - Traveling At Night Every Time I Die - Ebolarama Cave In - Shapeshifter This show is part of the Pantheon Podcast network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Winners, find fabulous for less. And welcome to No Filler, the music podcast dedicated to sharing the often overlooked hidden gyms that fill the space between the singles on our favorite records. My name is Quentin. Got my brother Travis with me as always. And we got a little sidetrack lined up today. We're going to step outside the school bus for a little bit, dude.

We've been hanging out, listening to bands that we listen to in high school. But this one's going to be a little bit different, but that's all right. We'll hop back on the bus right after this sidetrack. Travis, do you know anything about this band called Mutoid Man? I know nothing about Mutoid Man Q. But every time I hear it, or the name, every time I hear the name, I immediately get the song, 21st Century Schizoid Man in my head. Yeah, me too, actually.

Every time. Yeah, which is King Crimson. A Prague rock band, which is funny because they're kind of, these guys are kind of in the Prague rock fan. Yeah, let me tell you. So since you mentioned that we were going to cover these guys, I have not listened to them purposely, just so I could come at this fresh. But I did look at the album art, and it is very psychedelic, space rock, you know, progressive rock looking, the album art, at least. And,

you know, Cave In, I don't know if we actually used the word, the term space rock on our last episode, but Cave In was classified as a, or at least antenna, a space rock, progressive rock album. I know that the record that came out prior to Antenna was definitely Space Rocket. It was called Jupiter. They even named it after a planet, right? Yeah. But anyway, so yeah, I'm not surprised that he is involved in a similar type of project, right? Yeah, so let's backtrack a little bit.

And we're going to kind of fly through this episode. Travis has got some work stuff to do here. So this one's going to be short and sweet. I got some websites to launch, Q, as the saying goes here. That's exciting, dude. Cave-in. So that's who we covered last week. We specifically focused on their album Antenna,

which came out in 2003 on RCA Records. Lead singer of that band is named Stephen Brodsky. And the conclusion that we came to and the way that they see it as well, Antenna was, quote-unquote, corporate cave-in. So if you listen to albums of theirs that came up before Antenna, they were a lot heavier and they were a little bit more in the metal core vein, uh,

more screaming, you know, way more, uh, heavy on the distortion and much faster tempo, you know, just more intense songs. A lot more happening squirman.

A lot more hopping in squirman. Uh, and that's really like, this is what, that's what they were wanting to do the whole time, you know? And like antenna, antenna was just a,

an opportunity for them to get on RCA records and, you know, they were young and naive and they learned from it. But as soon as they got off of RCA, their very next album, they jumped back into that more heavy stuff. I mean, it's kind of a good thing that they didn't sign like a five-album contract or something like that, you know? Yeah, you know, I don't even, I wonder if they, if they broke their contract. Yeah. I bet you they didn't. You know what, dude? Because remember we mentioned last week that that album just didn't do as well as RCA thought, you know, so maybe it was a, let's see how your first album does kind of thing, and then we'll go from there. So before and after RCA records, they were assigned to a record label called Hydrahead Records.

Have you ever heard of a band called Isis? I feel like I have seen them pop up. Well, I'm asking you, because they are apparently a post-metal band. that kind of helped, like, pioneer and evolve the new, you know, like, I guess the post-metal sound in the late 90s. The owner of Hydrohead Records is a guy named Aaron Turner, who was the frontman of ISIS. The reason I bring that up is because that was one of those smaller record labels. And, you know, it allowed cave in to just go back to their roots, do what they wanted to do. and that was with their album Perfect Pitch Black, which we mentioned last week.

Steven refers to that as the grave marker of the death of corporate cave-in. That was in 2005. Same year, he starts doing stuff under Mutoid Man. Actually, no, I'm sorry, dude. I'm way off on that. I'll get back to that year later. but Stephen was playing with a guy named Ben Kohler who was in Kaven around 2005

and this guy later jumps back in and plays alongside him with Mutoid Man several years later. Mutoid Man, their first album was in 2012 so not that long ago. Did you do any sort of research, Q? No, dude. Come and kind of.

You know what? I'm reading the Wikipedia page today. Trying to keep it short and sweet, dude. The whole point I'm trying to make is I feel like this is the kind of stuff. When we jam out just a mutoid man a little bit, I think this is what Steven's been wanting to do since day one. When you listen to old cave-in and you listen to post-antana cave-in, it is in this vein, but mutoid man just kind of cranks it up even more. It's really fast-paced, more technical, almost like math rock kind of stuff, really crazy time signatures and stuff like that.

So anyways, dude. I'm rambling like Led Zeppelin here. That's a good reference. Let's play some tunes, dude. I only got one song to play. So they have three full-length albums. Well, their first album is technically an EP. It was only like five or six songs.

So the song that we introed in was from their first EP, Helium Head. That song was called Narcissist. We're going to jump a couple years to their first full-length studio album. called Bleeder, and we're going to play a song called Reptillion Soul. You asked me when the mics are off if I was reminded of somebody, right? Lay it on me. Queens of the Stone Age. Fuck yeah, dude.

That's why I wanted to play this song. Big time. I love it, man. I love that kind of shit. Yeah. So, I mean, as far as genres go, I mean, that's desert rock, sonar rock, right? Yeah. This one, but so this, this song's a little bit different than a lot of the,

stuff that you'll hear through the rest of their records. There is some heavy screamage on a lot of these songs. But yeah, I just like, I just love that. It's got those Josh Hami vibes, you know? The, uh, yeah, definitely. I have always loved that kind of stuff. Yeah, it's cool to hear, you know, because I think we kind of mentioned this last week, but antenna is like kind of the beginning and end of my knowledge of cave-in.

Like, I never listened to any of their older stuff, never listened to any of their newer stuff. So it was nice to hear what he's up to, what Steve's up to, right? Yeah. And, you know, if you look on, according to Wikipedia, KVin is still active as a band. Well, they're not relatively new material. Yeah, so he's doing stuff in both bands. So I think I mentioned to you earlier, Trev, and this is very telling. I found Kavn's official.

Bandcamp page, if you go to their discography on band camp, antenna's not even listed on there. So they would like to just pretend like that never even happened. And when you listen to this Mutoid Man stuff, the outro song I'm going to play is another cave-in song. It's obvious that, you know, as much as we love Antenna, that was a totally different thing. You know, it was Stephen flexing his songwriting skills, I think. is more like structured. I don't want to use the word pop,

but you know, it works like pop songs in, you know, in the radio format kind of way. And he was just doing it for RCA just to please the record company. Well, this is what he's all about.

It's interesting to ponder that question, Q, of why did they do it? Because like, obviously if they, you know, the idea is when you sign to a major record label, your intent in doing that

is to get more successful and sell more records and do more touring and stuff like that. I mean, with some of the interviews that I watched, they admit that, like, we were naive. You know, they shined a bunch of nice looking stuff at us. Like, here's all the stuff we can do for you. It was very enticing to them, I guess, you know. So they took the bait. Every band has, it seems like every band has their horror story dealing with a major record label. you know what I mean and then yeah what happens next is kind of differs right because I mean

the reason I mentioned the RCA and the record the record like the contract is the strokes were signed to RCA right and they had a long time yeah I think they had a five record deal and so like that fifth record come down machine which came out in 2013 that's why they put the giant RCA logo on the front of the cover because they were like I thought that was a cool cover yeah They made it kind of look like a generic label cover, right? Yeah. If I remember. But they purposely made the RCA logo bigger than their own name for that very reason of like, you know.

That's telling as well. Yeah, we're done. Finally, man. Yeah, we're done here. This is our last record under RCA. And then the very first record, I'm sorry, the very first track on the record is called tap out. Right. Yeah.

that's that's what they're that's what they're so i i just didn't know if that was like standard with rca when they signed bands you know but either way cabin was like they they they were one and done basically you know they're like yeah this is not for us and i bet you that's true for so many bands man where it's like i need more autonomy you know yeah well uh jrav do you have you got time i want to play let me just play a little bit more of another another mutoid man song just real quick I've always got time. Q. All right.

All right. Good, good, good, good. Let's see. I'm going to try and find one with some screaming. Some screaming screams. I think. All right, so let's try Lost in the Hive. Fuck yeah.

There it is. Love it. So yeah, you know what this album is, Q? This is a, or I guess I should say what this band is. This is a jam band, dude. Yeah. This is a, let's just get into a room. and just crank it up and see what happens.

Like I would love to see these guys live if we're going to get an opportunity to see bands live again, which we will. I have hope. I'm holding out of hope for that. This kind of like super fast-paced technical kind of heavy stuff kind of reminds me of Mars Volta or maybe more specifically at the drive-in. Do you ever get into those guys? At the driving?

Well, I guess I mean specifically, the brothers. The Lopez boys. I think that's her last name. Well, the Mars Volta came from at the drive-in, and it was started from Omar and Marcel, their brothers. Anyways, dude. Fast-paced, heavy kind of Prague experimental stuff.

If you like Mutoid, man, you would probably dig some Mars Volta and or at the drive-in. Anyways, dude. So, yeah, that's all I got for you, man. Short and sweet today. Nice. Yeah. But hey, before we jump into our Watcher Heard's, let's take a quick break.

And we're back. All right, dude. It's the beloved Watcher Heard segment. I'm going to let you go first this time, dude. So, what you got for us, man? What you've been heard in lately? All right, Q. I'm curious to know if this popped up on your radar as well.

Because we are both mega fans of this group. We did an episode on them. talked about their album, Adida Learned the Language. Oh shit, dude. I have no news on this band. All right. Well, strap in, dude. So, the Mercury program is a...

Speaking of Math Rock. Yeah, speaking of Math Rock. Good timing, right? Mostly instrumental Math Rock band, which, you know, Math Rock gets kind of thrown around. I've learned over, over the years of kind of looking into math. rock and whatnot, that the term is usually reserved for something very specific that I would say Mercury program doesn't really fit into. But I think we call them, we call them math rock because of their, you know, complex.

Yeah, the complexity to their their song structures and like the crazy time signatures and stuff. Exactly. But like you were saying, like think of them and then think of a band like Foles, who we've also covered. Right. Also math rock. Yes. Yeah, totally different vibes for sure.

But math rock can get the full like spectrum to like crazy town with like time signatures and shit. Anyway, Mercury program for the most part is an instrumental post rock group. And so last week they released on streaming services their self-titled debut record, which came out 21 years ago in 1999. 9. If you're a diehard Mercury program fan, I consider myself a diehard Mercury program fan, but I didn't realize that there was a record that came out. I probably could have if I tried hard enough. I'm sure it's been out there. But now it's more readily available. It's on

bank camp. It's on Spotify. And man, it's great, dude. What I like about it is, you know, by the time you get to data learn the language, a data learn the language, it's hard to say. you know they are they are very much kind of a a jazz oriented instrumental rock band if that makes any sense you know if you go back and listen to our episode on that I think you'll see what I mean I mean they've got a xylophone they've got the xylophone stuff like that right but on this self-title record it's a little bit heavier which is really great cool so it's a mercury program but it sounds like a record that came out in the 90s so anyway we're going to listen to the second track and I did this last week and I'm going to have to insist that we do it. I'm going to have to insist that we do it again, Kube.

We got to listen to the whole track because the best part of this track is the very last moments in the song. So, all right. Strap in. This is a three-minute ditty by the Mercury program. It came out in 1999. This album or this song is called Traveling at Night. Told you. That would have been a fun of Mercury program to see live, dude.

Yeah. And so what's interesting about it, I kept saying that they're instrumental. There's a couple tracks on here where he's doing almost like a spoken word thing. I'm not sure which member of the band is doing that. Yeah, I didn't want to freaking drag on this for too long, but I was going to ask you, because you kept saying mostly instrumental, band, I'm like, I haven't heard them sing in any song.

Right. So it's really only on this first one. I mean, I admit, I haven't listened to their record that came out prior to, like, I haven't listened to All Suits began to fall off. Oh, actually, you know what? There might be some. There may be some of that in there too. But I know on the self-titled record, he's doing like a spoken word thing that's really interesting.

Cool. Yeah. So anyway, it's one of those. I mean, if you're a Mercury program fan, you have to listen to it. I've been a fan of everything they've ever done. So they're, I mean, they're kind of like, I feel kind of like spoon, the way I feel about spoon just to throw them in there. Because we try to, I'm going to try to reference them every episode. now, dude, if I can.

All right. I think we can do that. They can do no wrong in my eyes, right? Yeah. Anyway. No matter how much their sound evolves. Yeah. Exactly.

No wrong. Same with Mercury program. All right, cool. That's awesome, dude. I'm excited to give that a listen. Yep. It's good stuff. All right, man.

What have you been heard in? All right. So, you know, this is our back-to-school segment. We're still hanging out on the school bus. We started a few weeks back with Blinkinquent 182, trying to stay in the early O's era of tunage, bands that we used to listen to in high school, right? I really wanted to play some Utoid man, so this sidetrack is specific to Kavan, but I was very

close to doing a sidetrack on a band called Every Time I Die. So I was paying a little picture, dude. Get that pressure. Little emo K-boy. There is visual photographic evidence of you from this era

where you look at that and you just say, God, look at that little emo kid right there. I know, man. And you know what? I'm far enough removed from it now. I can admit. I mean, you didn't.

Listen, man. I started dating a girl. You know, I got to tell me that. I know, man. And so... I was there. I remember it. But let me just say this.

You didn't go full-blown. I didn't go full-blown. But you dipped your toe in it, you know. There are some pictures that are pretty damn cringy. But yeah, dude, I started like freaking straightening my hair so that it could be, you know, classic combed over my eye, spiked it in the back and like wore freaking like girl jeans. Dude, we've all done, we've all done stupid stuff for love, you know. well look the style like clothing style and all that stuff I admit it was kind of peer pressure I started

hanging out with people that dressed like that but I really did get into that kind of music sure and it was because I was shown these bands from my girlfriend at the time and her friends and then I kind of stopped listening to it so it was a very small window of time in my life where I was into really hardcore screamo bands. And every time I die was one of them, I can remember writing on the CDR in Sharpie every time I die with the album name Hot Damn, which came out in, I want to say 2002, yeah. So this is the one album of theirs that I know. I think this is kind of a good transition because next week we're going full-allel

on like one of the saddest breakup, like, emo albums that I've ever heard. We're going to cover Emory next week, but we'll dive into that a little bit. Let's play a quick song from Hot Damn. And I just want to warn you, dude, there's going to be some screaming, okay? Nothing but screaming. I think this is a good, a good primer for what's coming next week. I think you're going to like it, dude. So this song is called Ebola-rama.

Ebola-rama That's right So here's the thing And we're gonna You know We're gonna dive into this next week That's not nearly as angsty as

The band we're talking about next week No But what that is is It's just metal and punk rock Like fuse together At least that is You know Yeah

That's kind of That's metal core dude That's what metal core is There you go Punk and metal And it's good shit, dude. I'm getting back. I'm kind of getting back into it, man. So anyways, yeah, that was a song called

Ebola by a band called Every Time I Die. All right, Travis, you want to tee us up for next week? Okay. So next week, we are talking about a little band called Emery and their debut record, The Weeks End, as in W-E-A-K, the week, the week's end. and like he was saying

it is possibly the most emo that this podcast it's definitely the most emo we've gone so far and we may never get this emo again but we're going to have to like talk about this again because you know

all this and lots of different flavors and different waves of email but yeah I think this album the week's end is that I think it's the emo that most people think of when they think of that genre.

You know, it's pretty heavy. There's quite a lot of screaming. And the lyrics are mostly about heartbreak, you know, and angsty shit that you go through when you're a kid. Or, you know, when you're a teenager, when you're coming of age. But there is something about this album, dude. It's another one of those examples, kind of like what we said with Cave In. And this is not an album that I revisit simply for nostalgia. It is up there for me.

One of my favorite albums of all time. Something about it, dude. Yeah, this will be an interesting conversation about this type of music because I think it's really easy to to poke fun at it and be like, it is. Look at it. It's not corny that is. And, you know, if you don't appreciate it for what it is, then, yeah, it is pretty corny. right but if you look at it as a as a piece of artwork cue if i may be that bold or whatever you

you may you may sir as far as like the story that's being told the emotions that are genuinely being conveyed then i think you can appreciate it for how effective it is and now we're jumping the gun we should save all this conversation for next week but yeah i'm really this is another one of those albums, dude, that from the beginning of the idea to do this podcast, this was on there for albums that we absolutely have to cover. Yeah. And I think there's moments in multiple songs, probably the songs we're going to talk about, that do the same sort of thing that, that Breath of Water did for us last week with Kavan,

where it's a... Goose bombs, yeah. Yes, it's a moment that is pulled off in such an effective way. that you actually feel something, or at least you should. If you're... If you're a music fan, then my guess is music moves you in that way. Yeah. So, yeah, dude, I can't wait to listen to these tunes, man.

Yeah. All right. So that's it, dude. Let's wrap it up. All right. So, as we always say, you can find us on our website, no filler podcast.com, where you can find all of our previous episodes,

Going back to episode one, every episode has track listing and sources cited. So you can kind of dig in a little bit deeper. You can see all the tracks we played, including our What You Heard's. If you want to listen to every What You Heard that we've ever talked about on this podcast, we now have a Spotify playlist that we are throwing these tracks onto every week. So if you subscribe to that, well, I guess it's not subscribe. If you follow that playlist on Spotify, then you will get to hear the What You Heard choice before the episode drops, right? Because we put it on, like I'm watching Quentin do it right now.

He's putting that Mercury program track right under that playlist. That's right, dude. Thanks for reminding me. Yeah, yeah. You'll get a sneak peek of our What You Heard's before the episode drops. And, yeah, kind of in the spirit of What You Heard, it's very random. We bounce all around genre-wise on this segment that we do. So it's a good playlist for just random music, just hit shuffle and let it ride, basically.

And you can also find us on our podcast network that we are a part of, Pantheonpodcast.com, where you will find plenty of other great music content, music podcast content. Yeah, lots of great stuff on that. If you follow the Pantheon feed, basically you'll get all of our episodes, plus every other show that's on the network. It's sort of a way of just hitting play and then going from show to show episode to episode. It's a great way to really kind of see what the network has to offer. So Q, you got an outro lineup for us. I do.

So remember I said we would circle back to the year 2005. when Kaven got dropped from RCA or when they left, whatever the case was, and they started writing material for perfect pitch black, they released a Kasingle, which I honestly, the only reason I did this for the outro is because I love that word, and I just discovered it. Kasingle. It's a single on a cassette tape. And they released A and B kind of cassette.

with two songs. And he mentions, um, when talking about kind of the origins of mutoid man, uh, so I had mentioned that, that they had a guy named Ben Kohler, uh,

and Kavan at the time, who plays drums. He later joined Mutoid man. And Stephen Braski says, the material picks up from where we left off with the Kaven shape shifter dead already, a single. So basically,

he gave Ben Kuller a call and he said, hey, remember that awesome little KSingle? Remember those vibes we were jamming to and during those cave-in years? Let's fucking try that again, you know? So we're going to play a song from that cave-in Kasingle that again came out in 2005. It's a little bit more on the heavy mutoid man kind of side. So we're going to close us out with that. It's a song called Shapeshifter. And that's going to do it for us today.

thank you so much as always for listening my name is quentin my name is Travis y'all take care