The Downbeat - 156/SILENCE | ALBUM OF THE YEAR? JACK MURRAY ON PEOPLE WATCHING…FROM A DISTANCE.

Episode Date: September 9, 2026

My guest on the podcast this week is Jack Murray, vocalist of metalcore band 156/Silence. Despite being a band for almost 10 years, 156/Silence really got people’s attention on 2024’s ‘People Watching’. We talked about why he thinks that is, and how their new album ‘From A Distance’ is truly its successor in more ways than one. I punished him for a deep dive on the record as well as talks on religion, video games, the story of the bands eerie mascot ‘Phillip’ and much more. Enjoy.

What's up, guys. Welcome back to the Downbeat Podcast. My guest on the podcast this week is Jack Murray, vocalist of metalcore band 156 Silence. Now, 156 slash silence, which is a question I wished I'd asked, and let's pretend that I did ask, is a band that got on my radar around 2024 with the release of their record, people watching. That record really blew them up, and unbeknownst to me, they had been a band for about 10 years before that. Now the band has released an unbelievable spiritual. ritual successor to that album in From a Distance, one of my albums of the year, sat down with Jack, got a real deep dive on the lyrics, on the meanings, there's a lot of anguish in there. You know, I like anguish guys. We also talked about religion. We talked about video games. We talked about

why he thinks the band got as big as they did so late in their career. And the history of the masked weirdo guy, Philip, that appears on the last two albums. Before we get started, I want to, you know, we have a Patreon. Patreon. Patreon.com forward slash the downbeat. On it, you get early access to merch. You get early access to episodes. You get ad-free episodes. Anything I do, you get it early, or you get it cheaper. And every bit of money from the Patreon goes back into this. It allows us to go to these festivals, do the beer pong, pay extra editors, camera people, all that stuff. Every little bit that you give us helps. And I couldn't do it without the help of everyone on the Patreon. If you want to join, you can go to patreon.com forward slash the downbeat and just sling us one pound.

If you don't want to do that and you do want to look good though, you want to wear a nice quality hoodie or a t-shirt or a pair of shorts or something like that, you go to www. The DownBee.E.e.orgate, so it spells downbitt and pick something up because that money, it doesn't go to the podcast. I mean, it does go to the podcast, but also goes in my pocket. As ever, this episode of the podcast is brought you by those glorious, gorgeous people at Neural DSP. Neural DSP make guitar-based plugins for your computer, guitar and bass, guitar-based, including. base plugins for your computer. All you got to do, load up one of their insane plugins like Misha Mansour's, like Tocelyn Abassi, Tim Henson, Dark Glass, Jacob and Manski, you name it, they got it. Load it up and I guarantee you that default setting is going to be the best

tone you have ever heard. I'm even learning on this episode, some bands use it through a laptop live for their actual sound. Spoiler is the Gojira plugin, which is phenomenal. Listeners of the podcast can get a whopping 30% of any neuraldSP plug in by going a neuraldisp.com and using the code Downbeat. Check it out. It's Jack Murray from 156 silence on the Downbeat podcast. Great balance. You know.

You know, you know what that is? Normally everyone's like, what the fuck did you just do? I took TV class in high school. TV class. Wait. TV is a class in America. Yeah. Hello, welcome to the Downbeat.

Hello. Jack, introduce yourself. Hi, I'm Jack from 156 Silence. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, singer vocalist. Singer vocalist. They do TV class in America. They sure do. TV production class.

And mostly you just watch Seinfeld. Are you fucking for real? I'm not even joking. That's fucking awesome. It was fine. Did you pass? Of course I passed. It was easy.

It's a fucking TV class. The reason that came up was because I was checking my color balance. And Jack knew exactly what I was doing. Yep. And most morons, that come in that chair are like, what are you doing with this camera shit? Yeah, I'm a real company guy.

Thanks for coming on the podcast. Thank you for having me, dude. It's a fucking honor. How long has this tour been? This tour's been for weeks. This is the last show today. Holy shit, last show. Yep.

How do you feel? Good. Surprisingly, I'm usually ready to really go home at this point and just do nothing for a week, which I am ready to do because we're going home for a week and then we go right back on the road for our headliner for U.S.

For U.S. headliner. Yep. What's the capacity on those? I think they're like three to 500 cap rooms. You're going to sell those out. Hopefully. That is the plan. How well would you do in Europe?

Surprisingly, we did really well. Our first one with Fit for a King. We were there with them, Memphis Mayfire, and Acres. We love Acres so much. But we did really, really well for our first time. Like, we didn't lose any money. Yeah. So that's crazy for your first time.

Yeah. And we were on a bus too, so glorious. Yeah. What are you on on this? Bandwagon. I was going to say, and I didn't want to be rude. I mean, it's not rude. It's actually complimentary. It's better than a van. No, no, because you came in here and I was like, he smells quite nice. Oh, yeah, I mean, I did shower. We dapped up earlier and I was like, this guy smells nice. Let me just check this isn't like day one or four. It's a day a million. Shower, that bandwagon shower. It's nice to have a shower for sure. It's not the best. You can't keep it running, but it is a shower that functions. If you do the military-style shower, pits,

see you later. Is there anyone in the band that takes too long in the shower? No. No. I mean, if we're in the venue, yeah. They'll take the green room forever. Oh, yeah, that's fine. But I mean, the bandwagon move.

No, we're all pretty good with that. We were all pretty good. Our photographer gape. It's always a photographer thing. Last in the bandwagon shower, and then I think in his head, was just like, well, it doesn't matter if we run out war and we're just fucking absolutely. That guy, he's got a fucking hair bun on doing what they called bonnet.

Is that what it's called? Bonnet, yeah, he's got a bonnet on. Anyway, this is a very professional intro. We will come on to talk about your new album, which by the way is fucking incredible. Thank you, dude. Thank you. I love it when I get sent the link and it's already a band I want to do on the podcast, and then it has that little annoying Horlix link.

listen to the record. It's very annoying because I have to skip every single track myself, but I love it when I pop it on and it's just like, okay, yeah, this is fucking awesome. Thank you, dude. There's nothing worse than it not being as good as the last one. Particularly with you guys, because we did, we did get pretty popular with the last album, for sure. Why do you think that is? Because you've been going, what, eight years, ten years, eight of you? Ten years, yeah, I've been in the band since 2018. It started in 2013. 13-ish, I think. And yeah, we've just been

grinding it out ever since. What happened between narratives and people watching, do you think? Narrative was written during COVID and the whole shutdown of planet Earth. So there was a lot of writing involved that wasn't performed during the writing process. Like we wrote it out before we even played it together.

Jim writes everything with guitar pro. Really? Yeah. So every instrumental is already pre-written with guitar pro, and then they'll teach themselves how to play it. That's usually a thing that's like super tech bands do that. Yeah, we're one of the only bands I know if that does it. Yeah.

But it works. He writes all the instrumentals, and I just write the lyrics and vocals to that, what he has already pre-written. What about melodies? What about the melodies? Are you making them, or has he got them on guitar? Vocal melodies?

Yeah. I'm writing those. That must be a dream to just be, like, handed. Okay, here's the song, go fucking nuts. Yeah, it is and it isn't, because it's like, I can do whatever I want. So there's like, it's like a fucking free world video game. It's like, I have all this opportunity and all this, uh, whatever I want to do I can do. So it's like I really need to focus on, I try to make every song sound different.

And then, yeah, I don't, I don't, it's, it's a different process every time with every song, I guess. Yeah, you still didn't answer my question. What? I don't know. What happened? On people watching, we definitely just wrote more structured songs with repeated choruses. Like in Better Written villain, that's our biggest song. Yeah.

None of us thought that song was going to get big. Really? It has a whole new ending than what it was originally written. Like, we completely rewrote the ending of it in the studio. So it went from something that was like a spoken word ending to having like that huge, like, huge like wall of sound ending and i think that was definitely like that the algorithm just grabbed that song and threw us across the world it was crazy because when people watching came out i thought and this is you know look bad on me but i thought you were a new band yeah like it came out and i was

like who the fuck is this band yeah most people do yeah we're like we have older albums like in those eight years, there must have been times where you thought about giving up. Absolutely. Especially after narrative, because that album didn't do well. And we did some tours off of it, some not great tours. We were going through the transition of going from tube amps to Kemper's. We were having a lot of technical difficulties. Shit just frying on stage.

Shit just like would delete all of the memory. that they had for their whole set in session right before we're about to play. The Kempers. Yeah. Oh, my God. So that was a huge, huge transition into going from two amps to all digital. And now we just said, fuck the Kemper's and we're just running through the Gojira plugin on the MacBook. Shout out Gojira.

Shout out, neural DSP. Fuck yeah. That code is downbeat. You've already watched a fucking ad. That's awesome. It's so goaded, man. It's fucking so good. It's insane.

And like, you load it up and it's just the default one. And it's just fucking ready to go. Yeah. They figured it out. It works. We don't have to carry around the cabs anymore, which rules. It's all on the MacBook, though. You don't even have the neural DSP box.

Just all MacBook. What does that rig look like? It looks like a rig, you know? It's nothing like crazy. But like, is it a full, like, how many inputs you got? Four. Guitar, guitar, bass. Something else?

Me. You. And ears, yeah. And then Kyle just runs directly and do it. through his uh but all the guitars just go into a sound card and then into a macbook yeah that is crazy as well as the guitar pro thing like that is i've never maybe that does happen but like i've i don't know of any other bands it's just right on guitar pro that's a lot of trust yeah for steve jobs tim apple yeah that's crazy it's just the way it's always been i i don't even know it any

other way at this point so when people go on tour it's just guitars and a MacBook and a rig. That's fucking awesome. Have you ever had it go wrong? Not yet. Now like, we fucked that. On our first time in Europe,

they were rough with it in the airport. Like TSA just beat the shit out of our rig. So it arrived in Europe damaged. And there was a lot of damage control and fixing that. It took like a full week of just trying to find the right fucking parts that we needed. Yeah. Because we landed in Germany and it's like, calling around German music shops.

You're going to Saturn. Yeah, and they're just like, do not want to talk to American people at all. Or they're very honest with you. You phone them up and they go, this is an inadequate setup for a low bat. Europeans are rudely honest. And it's awesome.

They will not sugarcoat shit. Yeah, it's a running bet on the podcast, which I was initially going to call neuro or euro. And I think, you know, we blue sky debt. Apparently it's not okay to say that.

But the Euro honesty is just something that transcends. It doesn't matter what band you're in. And it is sometimes it's a blessing. Sometimes it's curse. I shaved my head off yesterday. A couple of comments. I said like, oh,

I looked so much younger. And it was just like because I look like a baby fucking bird. And someone wrote a comment. And it was, you don't look younger. You look exactly your age. If anything, you look older with the other hair.

And I was like, let me just click. I'm going to click. I'm going to click that bio, and I clicked it. Boom, Germany, Frankfurt. Glorious. And that's why their cars are so good, and that's why they were responsible for one of the most horrific crimes in history.

Leave it in. I love you, Germany. Germany's the fucking best. Do you do well in Germany? We do really well in Germany. They fucking love heavy music. All of Europe, dude. We did great in London.

Norway, we did amazing. Holland was awesome. Belgium. Czech Republic like countries I never thought would even know my band they fucking came out and bought tons of shirts

it's crazy you're making me miss being in a band the minute we talk about Europe I'm not like take me back do you want to be in my band you can be in my band

I would fucking be in your band wait don't even I'm just joking don't float that wait that guy goes fucking give me that dick I'm kidding

speaking to Kyle he does love you my drummer and he has your ride symbol and he made me He wanted me to mention that. And he has a ride symbol and he loves it. He's a big fan of yours.

Did you ax him out of being here? No. Who did it? Nobody. Sometimes those two people, my favorite episodes, I get the drummer and the singer. He could have been here. He could have been here.

He could have been here. I had no idea that it was an open invite to the whole band. That's on Becky. That is on Becky. We love you, but I would have taken that. Well, it's great that he's using my ride. Yeah, he loves it. We plug neural.

We plug my ride. Let's plug your record. In fact, before we do your record, who's Philip? Philip is our guy. That's our mascot. He originated because me and Jim are huge Apex Twin fans. And that's where the art concept came from. We wanted an Apex Twin inspired creepy grin for the title People Watching. That's where his face came from. And it's become pretty much like our Jane Doe at this point. Yeah. Like I've seen more people with that stupid face tattooed on their body than I've seen most people's bands tattooed on it. But like it's becoming like fucking. a mega death tattoo at this point. Does he have law?

Did you make law or didn't go that far? So we're still working on it. On the new one, we have Sarah Phil. That's on the new album. Sarah is our new version of Phil. Oh, my God. So the front cover is Sarah Phil. Yeah.

Incredible. Yeah. So they're part of our lore at this point. Where they came from is undetermined. But they are here to stay for now. I guess. That's cool. That face is fucking, it haunts me at this point. Yeah, it's disgusting.

It's funny you say the Apex Twin because, yeah, like people watching look a bit like Richard D. James album with his face on it. And then the Sarah Phil is a bit like the window liquor when he's on. Yep. That's fucking awesome. We love Apex Twin. Shout out Apex Twin. I wonder if he likes you. I doubt it.

He doesn't really like music. Doubt it. The guy's a fucking legend. I saw that he's doing weddings, though. What? He does private weddings. I wonder how much that is. I think it's only for his good friends,

but that's a dream of mine to have Aifex Twin perform at my wedding. That's a guy who doesn't give a fuck. Never did, never will. And look at him now. Like TikTok made him huge. Yeah. Huge.

Nobody knew who Apex Twin was years ago. I used to post, I'm not being that guy, but I used to post the songs the people that are now like trending when I'd have like a little weird video of my cat or something. I'd put Phlim on it.

Yeah. And then now it's like, That's a thing. Yeah. I found out about FX Twin from Grandma's Boy with Window. Fucking great movie. Yeah. Underrated movie. Have you seen Grandma's Boy?

I think we talk about this. Oh, man. Grandma's Boy. Underrated movie. Every time we watch Avatar, I'm like, we got to watch Grandma Boy. Because he's the fucking, he's the guy. Unreal fucking movie.

I forgot he was in Avatar. That's hilarious. Yeah. He's like, two movies that I know him from is Grandma's Boy and Avatar. Are you selling Philip Mars? We are, they're sold out, but we were. That's the correct answer because you came in, you were like, oh, you got the health butt plug? And I was like, where the fuck?

Is my fucking Philip mask? We can get you one. Can you get me a Philip mask? We'll go front and fucking tenter. We'll get you one for sure. Fuck yeah. All right. I'll talk to Griffin and pure noise.

We'll get you one. Was it a tattoo eyes that designed? Yeah. He's my tattoo. He does most of our tattoos in the band. He's done a bunch of mine. Let's talk about from a distance. Let's.

As I just said. It's fucking incredible. Thank you, man. Thank you. There's a haunting, like, I think I'm getting the terminology right, like soft club, Y2K vibe to the whole thing. I get that. You've got little bits of drum and bass in there.

The aesthetic, the Resident Evil save room sounding shit. It's very Resident Evil, Twin Peaks, Silent Hill inspired. Yeah. Who's the, like, where does that come? from him. That's Jim. That's Jim. Yeah. He a fan of the soft club mistake. I think that's the right terminology. Yeah. Yeah, he's, we all are, but him being the one that primarily writes all of the instrumentals, he's the one that does all the soundscapes and the sense and everything. So he's the one that's coming up with all those, um, those ideas, the textures and everything.

Did you use the same producer as people watching? No. We went to Josh Schrader, who's done Lorna Shore, Varyols, Plotanyu, King 810. People watching, we were with Jonathan Deleese. He's in Nashville, yeah. Which is interesting, like, when you name those, you name the other bands that Josh has worked with. You don't strike me now as those type of bands. It's interesting you say that because we're not like those other bands, obviously,

but we're, I don't know, he does that level of production with those bands that we were trying to capture on this album. making it more of, I guess, a visual experience by listening to it. It really works. Yeah, it's more cinematic with him. Yeah, there's a whole vibe to it. He just gets it. He gets us and we'll probably be going to him for the rest of our careers, honestly.

Yeah, it's like a, yeah, it's cinematic. It's like a fucking Silent Hill movie. That's what we're going for. Yeah, I mean, you've fucking nailed it. Thank you. The whole thing. Even a lot of records in Metalcore, this is a glaze session now, by the way

cool because you're out of fucking a lot of a lot of metalcore records stray included like we front load

those motherfuckers because no one gets to track nine or ten and we do you know we do try and round it out with track nine and ten

yeah but you guys is like for me personally eight nine ten I don't know whatever the last three tracks I don't know

the last three tracks are on it it's written down I'm not even going to look they're like the finale of the cinematic

experience. Thank you. Thank you. Sorry for the intrusion, guys, but if you are looking for just one festival to hit this festival season, make sure it's louder than life. Louder than life is taking place this year between September 17th and 20th at the Louisville Highland Festival grounds. I went last year and it is hands down one of the best, if not the best metal festival on planet earth. Whether you are into legendary headliners like Limbiscuit, legendary headliners that also happen to be one of the best bands in the world tool more of the other best bands in the world like Gojira

smaller bands like 156 silence are going to be there or you just want to hang out with thousands of lovely friendly like minded people with an atmosphere that is like nowhere else make sure you get down to louder than life I'm going to be there make sure you let me know who you

want to see from the festival on the podcast if you see me come and say hello who knows you might be on a vlog you might be in an episode just come on down. Get your tickets and louder than knife festival.com and I will see you there. What was the single picking process like?

Did you pick obvious singles or did you try and think outside the box with it? Pure Noise had a bit of a say. They definitely wanted from a distance to be a single. We didn't know how we were going to do that though because it has the feature on it and we would have to make a music video too but we were able to get her in the music video.

which I mean Alex is just such an amazing singer just completely elevates that song entirely and that's going to be the last single that comes out but to answer that question no arms was the first single that we decided on and we chose that one because it's an electronic sounding song to start with but it's upbeat and has really catchy choruses in it that I think is a good foreshadowing of of what the whole album is going to be like, because there's a lot more structured songs with repeated choruses that I really focused. For this album, I really just wanted to write songs that were catchy as hell, but meaningful and got stuck in your head.

Like, that was my main goal. On people watching, I definitely started to do that with, like, the repeated choruses and writing my own melodies that I was, happy with myself as well as my bandmates were happy with because then on previous albums like narrative and even our EP don't hold your breath I was just not writing courses just ranting on and on putting way too many lyrics way too many words and a song and that was just not it either and people

ask for songs off of our EP all the time and I'm just like I don't want to do that it's not how I want to write song it's not how I feel like our music is anymore speaking to the German honesty yeah another one that they think is going to be the biggest compliment ever. Yeah. And it's actually just a slap. Like, I really prefer the old stuff. Thanks.

I was designing it to get worse. Yeah. I wanted it to get worse. So thank you for being. I mean, it's a two-sided compliment because it's like I've been there from the start. Yeah. And it's also like,

you don't make music I like anymore. Like that fucking. Yeah. This guy in France, he was mad at us because we didn't play anything off our first album. It's like, dude, off that album. This is our first time in Europe. We're playing the new stuff.

And we got us popular to go to Europe. And also we probably don't even like that album anymore. Nobody even knows the words. Like, we play the new songs off people watching and you see that people know those songs. Like, they are familiar with how, even just how they go, even if they don't know the words, they're mush-mouthing it in the right fucking way. Like, the old songs will play and they're just stare at us. They're like, well, what's the point of even playing these songs? Nobody even cares about them. Yeah. And then straight on Reddit, they didn't play any old stuff. Yeah. You weren't even there. You weren't even at the fucking show.

No-Arms, first single. What about it? Track two. Yeah. This nine-inch nailsy thing. This comment on. Yeah. Like, who's that?

That's Jim. Why isn't he fucking here as well? He should be. He should be here. Next time, we'll get him here. There's a lot of points on the album, No Arms, collateral. Yeah. That are like industrial tingees.

Yeah. You got that in you? You like a bit of industrial music? Yeah, absolutely. Big nine-inch nails fan, for sure. Comes off. It really fucking comes off. And the second thing I wanted to say,

you mentioned from a distance, and I, in a roundabout way, asked you about the singles and didn't finish off what I was going to say. Because to me, I'm so glad you said from a distance was going to be a single. Because for me,

if I was making an album and I was like, okay, this is going to be the fucking catchy one, I would have been like, bang, drop that one first. Yeah. But I don't think

your fan base would have been ready for it. That's exactly how we felt. Yeah, that's exactly what happened. And I'm going to tell you something. Madison doesn't even know this. From a distance yesterday when I was listening to the album. I cried.

Oh, boy. I don't know why. Good. I have no idea why. That rocks. And I listened to it four times in a row. Nice. I did the whole album.

There were songs that I skipped back to it. And that one, I listened to it. I cried the first time. And then I repeated it. listen to that song and then on the way here i said to manison you got to hear this fucking song hell yeah i need to know what the story is with the song so it's very twin peaks inspired just um the pianos especially you can tell where that came from but it's based on like love and loss and um being far apart from each other and how you know detrimental that can be to

oneself and one's relationship with whatever is going on their life, whether it be with a person, whether it be with, you know, their work or whatever. Did it come from a personal place? Yeah. Yeah, I can see you. Yeah, it's not nice to talk about. Yeah, it's, you know, it's a sad song. It's like, like you said, you cried.

It's so sad. And that was its intention. This whole album is very sad themed. You know, we went through a lot during it. And there's just, it's, it's what, where, where we were at that point and how we're just going to keep going, you know, it's not going to, nothing's going to stop us. Was it a musical choice to get a woman singing those parts? Because you have an insane range. Yeah, we wanted a girl for that.

So, and you wrote the lines for her. Yeah, because it, it listens like, listens like, let's go with it. it. It listens like two people talking. Yeah. Why Alex? Well, Alex, we met on that Fit for a King tour with them. Make Them Suffer was doing direct support. It was us, Spite, Make Them Suffer, and Fit for a King. And we just hit it off with Make Them Suffer.

The fucking best. Just awesome, awesome Aussies, dude. Everybody we've met from Australia is fucking awesome. but they uh she's just so such a great singer it's unbelievable um and we just asked her if we we wanted a fucking girl feature and we knew that you know she was available and willing to do features at that time so we just i think we asked jaya to ask her and um she said yeah so you asked the mouth yeah the mouth of the operations yeah and such a good fucking song. Thank you so much, man. It's my favorite one for sure. It's mine as well.

Collateral is probably number two for me. See, that's the thing. Well, all the features are all my favorite songs. Tony did an amazing job on collateral. Cripling alcoholism is my favorite band. Same with Jim and Ryan. We love that band. I don't know if you're familiar with them. I don't know anything about this band. Oh, man, you need a deep dive crippling alcoholism. They just record a new album. It's not out yet, but they sent it to us. They are the best, like, Goth, rock industrial. Oh, okay. Spoken word stuff.

Very daughters inspired. I'm in. It's so good, dude. I'm in. Yeah, you got some mad, mad fucking. You got Mike from Parder. He's from Monroeville, where's like,

that's where I'm from in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. So he's like a hometown hero for me. Did you write his part, Mike's parts? Yeah. This is the thing that people often don't realize why I like to talk about on the podcast. Most features,

unless it's just like a rapper we write in their parts yeah the vision is there and it's like no but it needs to be you yeah I'll give them whatever freedom they want to do change up whatever they want they have absolutely whatever liberties they want to do but I give them my vision for it

and hope that they like it and so far they've all just done what I wrote devil wears Prada has been one of my favorite band since I was in literally sixth grade so having him on a A song is still surreal to me. And we're going on tour with them, which is I'm going to be fan girl in him every day. Do you know those guys?

I have never met them now. Oh, they are the best. I can't wait. If you were asking me, like, out of lists of bands who are the best people on Earth, Prada is top three. Hell yeah. They are. I'm so excited. I didn't know if you, like, knew them.

No, I don't. You're going to Australia soon. Yeah, with Throne and Boundaries. Is that your first time? Yep. How old are you? I am 29. You're a little baby.

I know. Little baby going to Australia for the first time? That's a crazy tour. I'm very, very excited. Boundaries thrown. You guys volatile ways. First time in Australia. When are you going again, sorry?

February. You get the weather as well? The worst thing about stray. Disregarding the music or the lyric. No, the worst thing about Australia is we got put on the Australia cycle. you know, like every year or every two years in summer over here. So it's fucking winter over there. Oh.

The best thing on earth is that February, February and fucking Pittsburgh? That's cold as fuck. You know, it's brutal. Yeah, we get all seasons in Pittsburgh for sure and winter hits us hard. You are going to go to the best place on Earth. Fuck yeah. Are you a coffee guy? Yeah.

Jealous. Every time someone like you comes in here, I'm like, I could join a band again. I could do it. I like my comforts. I got questions on collateral. What is the noise in the little breaks? That's just some like random bell that they got. It's a bell synth.

Oh, it's a synth. Yeah. Because the notes change. Because the first time I heard it, it's very creepy. Again, on that sort of cinematic thing. Yeah. It sounds like it could be like movie effects. Yeah.

It's from one of those weird plugins that they have. I forget which one it is, but it's just some random bell. Yeah, I thought it was like, they changed the pitch too on the other. The drama hitting a symbol, and then the pitch changes, and I was like, oh, no.

Yeah, like, bong, bong, ball. Yeah. Another thing that I love, again, it's not even the questions as the glaze. Your choice, your vocal choices, and in general, the band's choices on where to take a note are so,

non-conventional and now you're telling me this the Twin Peaks thing the A-Fix twin thing I see where it comes from Yeah There is like the obvious

you know fifth or something Where something could go And you guys just like Often just go one semitone And I'm like Where's that going? Oh evil Yeah

I fucking love it It just adds to that spookiness Yeah Weird it is Has that sinister vibe to it Just just a sametone Yeah Same note

same note, same note, same note. I'm like, oh, evil. Speaking of your choices of notes and stuff, who inspires you vocally? Oh, I have a bunch of inspirations vocally. I say some of my favorite bands, I'll just name off the top of my head, Bring Me the Horizon, Incubis,

corn, emir, fucking, I think corn are going to come for that riff back? We'll see. You know what's funny is I didn't even hear it until people called it out. They were calling it a cornhill. There's no arms? Yeah. It's a fucking...

Yeah. Yeah. Boom. Yep. It's old corn, though. You get away with it. True. Musically, I hear corn.

Vocally, I don't hear corn. Yeah, maybe not vocally, but it's definitely... Thematically, I'd say... Do you know who I do here? And I don't know if... it's even on your radar is 2016 Sam Carter. And it's not like a lot of bands do the 2016 Architects thing, and you guys don't do that at all.

But there's moments of your vocals where I'm like, that sounds just like Sam. That rocks. That's a compliment. You were either going to have two reactions, which is going to be like, yeah. He's a great vocalist. I have nothing bad to say about that at all.

I was expecting it to be in that list. Not to say that you sound like him, but there's just, there's flourishes of it. And I'm like, I was never really into architects, honestly. I was more into like the contortionist. Contortionists in there. Contortionists. The contortionist is in your voice. I see it.

Where the fuck is that band? That's a good fucking question, dude. I miss that. I've seen that band probably more than any other band, probably other than Devil Wars Prada. I've seen them a lot, too. But that band just fell off the fucking face. They released an amazing album and then just, stopped.

Another great... Come back. Please. Please. And another great example of the band that were like super super... Because you guys were pretty fucking mathy technical. And then went... Experimentally for sure.

Yeah. And then went into songwriting with the chops they'd learned there and fucking pulled it off. And then they fucking disappeared. Where'd they go? They're fucking that last record. Oh, bliss. Unreal. Is there an overarching theme of the record?

The overarching theme of the record. of the record is a continuation of people watching. So it's people watching from a distance. It's the sequel to the last album. It links up. Yeah. You just saw on camera my mind got blown. Yeah. So it's, it's not entirely thematically a sequel, but it is a deeper dive into what we were going for on people watching just with the more structured songwriting as opposed to just chaotic, fight riff, artsy-fartsy spoken word stuff. We really tried to make, take people watching,

but go even further with it. Speaking of spoken word stuff, what's the sample on the first track? That's from severance. They haven't seen it. I haven't seen it either. Guilty, but everybody else in my band has seen it.

So I got outvoted. They were like, we're putting it in. I was like, all right, I guess I'll watch it eventually. It sounds gray. Yeah. Did you have to get that cleared?

I haven't. That's not my business. That's the suits. That's for my dear, That's for my dear pure noise guys to deal with. I mean, pure noises, they're on it with that stuff. They would have to clear it. I remember Knock Luce had some shit.

Yeah, we have a, the same sample in the beginning of character development Poppy used in one of her songs. It's like, oh shit. It's from ex Machina. Great fucking movie. Yeah. Wait, so who newsed it first? You or her?

Ours came out first. Boom. We had one. We've had two. Sampling's great. I love sampling. I'm doing a new band at the moment. It's just a three-piece.

They don't do enough of sampling anymore. It's coming back. I'm going to bring it back. I'm going to bring it back. I'm bringing it back. Poppy's bringing it back. We're all going to use the same sample. I'm doing like a three-piece band at the moment.

Like just fucking prog shit. We're going to have no vocalist. Nice. No offense. I don't want to fucking deal with them. But I'm thinking to add in a load of fucking samples in. But Strays had a couple. We took one from Barney.

We had a song that was about police. brutality and there was a Barney clip about the police and we put it in and right at the last minute couldn't get cleared so we had fucking we had someone build it from scratch exactly the same thing but it just didn't happen to be Barney yeah and then we redid it and then we had another one same thing that you were saying with Poppy but we called it at the last minute the beginning of the song clock worked on the last stray record We add, you know what it's like you're in the studio, royalty-free sample database that all these producers have.

And we're going through, right, we're just looking for something creepy. You find this old woman that sounds like she's saying, don't think, don't fucking question it, right? And we're like, that's awesome. Right. Put it in. It gets, like, almost ready to go. Tom is showing it to some random old school friend of his.

And the guy goes, oh, in flames. Oh, no. Tom's like, what do you mean in flames? Oh, fuck. He's like, that's not an inflame song. I don't know what the song is. The guy puts on this fucking Scandinavian fucking mellow death record. Boom, there it is.

I had to get Marissa Putney, Will Putney's wife, to just recreate the same sentence in the studio last minute. Hey, at least you had somebody to do it. I quite like to get into like, I watch a lot of, like, TikTok videos when people re-sound design something. Yeah. And you see them going like, like it's link, open.

a thing in Majora's mask. Right. They go. Yeah. And then they go. And then they fucking, they put it all together. I'm like, that'd be such a cool job. Yeah, we got samples from fucking crazy taxi.

Whoa. A snare sample off crazy taxi. We got a shotgun from fucking cyberpunk. I'm sorry. Where are these? Con collateral, there's a shotgun. Right at the end breakdown. It's like,

is from cyberpunk. Yeah. What's the crazy taxi snare? I forget where it's at, but it is in the record? It's in the record, yeah. And is it a snare from a song on Crazy Taxi? It's just from the loading menu. That's so sick.

Are you like big gamers? Oh, yeah. And that's another reason why we love Josh so much, because Josh is just like the father of all gamers. He's got every gaming system you could ever imagine at his house. He's got like 13 pinball machines. I don't know if you're into pinball. I am quite into play.

Oh, my God. We're so. to pinball now just because of him. So he has like a leaderboard downstairs like in the studio with a Godzilla pinball machine. Everybody that's on in the studio has a leaderboard and it's like the whole time

you're there for six a week. It's just like who can who can be number one. So you know this is a weird law drop. You probably already know this because Josh is a producer. If he doesn't you can extend the law. So Stern Pimble the guy that may so they make the Godzilla one. They may

the Metallical one. I think it's like the only real pinball company still going. Yeah, they have like the app you download. Yeah, the actual shit. Connect your phone. The guy that runs Stern is the guy that made crank amps. If you remember crank amps, the fucking dime bag used

to use. That's insane. He left to make pinball machines. He sold crank to then go work at Stone, which is how there's a lot of like the metal band crossover ones. Like they do the Metallica one. I don't think he works there anymore, but they're was a point when he was going to give me one to put in here of the Metallica one

because it's my favorite Pimble game of all time. Yeah, dude. That one, the James Bond one and the Jaws one are so sick. The Godzilla one. Godzilla one is still my favorite. Have you seen, I hate to talk about movies, but we always talk about movies. Have you seen Godzilla minus one? I have not.

The last Godzilla I saw was with fucking Ferris Bueller in it. Oh, yeah. What, 2003? Yeah. I haven't seen any of the ones. Bang a soundtrack on 2003 Godzilla. 2001 godzilla that movie's good underground jimiroquai banger yeah p ditty

r ib r i ditty um b b b b b okay so small law drop again we're gonna we're talking about the album shut the fuck up leave a comment um so there's two studios that own much like spider man there's two studios that own godzilla so there's whatever one of them is fucking Sony or Universal Lionscape, I think it's Lionsgate, one of those, that made the 2000 Godzilla, and then they make all the King of the Monsters and stuff, that's that one.

And then there's the Japanese studio that made it in the 50s. And they got the rights back to start making Godzilla movies at the same time as these other ones are coming out. So every four years, there's a Godzilla movie, and it goes Lionsgate, Japan. Lionsgate Japan. So it's a very hard timeline, because they don't sink up.

Yeah. How many are there at this point? Fucking millions. Yeah, it's like, how many times he's going to fight King Kong? He just comes back. It just keeps coming back. But the Japanese studio made one.

I was trying to sell people on this and they never accept it, but I feel like A-Fex twin, survival horror, you're going to love it. Godzilla minus one, they made. Because obviously the first Godzilla movies, this is a Godzilla podcast now, first Godzilla movies were an allegory

for Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And the fucking 2000, they didn't, you know, adhere to that. So they came back with one called Godzilla minus one that's set in like 1944 or 1945, ended World War II, and directly made it, you know, back to what it used to be,

unreal movie. All right. I'll definitely check it out. It's fucking great. And I'm going to say the most wanky thing ever. Watch it in black and white. All right. They released two versions.

That rules. I dig that a lot. The producer was like producer fucking Hollywood. It's got to be in color. Right. And then the Japanese guy was like, let me release it in black and white as well. Because that's how they should have been done. And in black and white is, again, much like your song, made me fucking cry.

Because there's a love story in it. Like, not Godzilla, obviously. Mothra isn't in there. Mothra. Sorry, it's a fucking Godzilla podcast. All right. Some subtle mentions on the record that. I'd just like to know, having seen the lyrics now.

A couple subtle little references to God. Are you religious, man? I personally am. I got it from the lyrics. So I don't believe in organized religion. I'm not like a traditional Christian or whatever you want to say, but I do have a relationship with God myself. I feel like it's a lot lonelier without it.

And it's just it makes things easier. for me personally. And I don't speak for my band mates as well. I myself am a believer in something bigger than myself. But not Christianity or Christianity but not organized. Like I don't believe in the church, but I believe in Jesus. Interesting. Yeah, I got that from the lyrics.

Does anyone ever ask you that before? Yeah. I mean, I'm not very public with like, you know, my beliefs. Is it making you uncomfortable? No, I'm, you know, I'll talk about whatever you want, dude. Does this make you uncomfortable? I'm sorry. Is this is you kidding me?

I'm like, I'm like, I used to be diehard Atheist. So what was I? And then I seen some shit, man. And I'm like, there is something. There's something. I don't know what it is. I'd rather root for the good guys. I think I'm agnostic now.

But I've seen so much shit where I'm like, there's something after this. And I don't know who made it. So there's, this is what really does it for me is like, there's just so much actual pure evil in the world. Like there's no other way to describe what's going on as other than just pure evil. And for there to be something so pure and so evil, there has to be something opposite of that. When do we get to see it? At the end. We'll see.

That's not our decision. You think there's a head look? I'd like to believe that there's not just an end. Me too. But would you, what would it be like, though? It's not for me to say what it is, you know? It's bigger than anything that we could ever comprehend. I just hope, you know, I really hope it isn't.

No, I hope what isn't? Like, the afterlife. Yeah. I hope it isn't reincarnation. Who the fuck would want to do this again? That's the thing. I feel like you might be a reincarnation person. I, in a sense, I don't think that it's like we're remembering our past lives and we're

going through all the traumas again, but I do think the energy that is within us gets passed on to something. This energy has to go somewhere. That is true. I mean, yeah, but like, yeah. But, like, I don't want to, even if I can't remember going through all again, I don't want to go through it again. Yeah. I want a dessert at the end of my fucking meal.

Yeah. I don't want to go for all that shit again. It's an interesting fucking, I'm just having my own little. It certainly is interesting. What was the turning point then from atheist to God for you? I had some extremely bad back pain. I got a really bad back injury. I had a herniated disc in my spine, and it gave me horrible sciatica for all of the

people watching. It was just the recording, the whole process was hell, like having to scream with that pain just running down my leg and into my heel. Every day I was like, please God, make this stop every fucking day. And like I had to go to therapy and stuff, physical therapy. And that's what mainly did it was getting back into a schedule of just having to better myself. Yeah.

Because sitting around was like touring and everything, dude. it's hard on your body, you know. And like being in the van having to drive like nights and shit, like sitting down, my leg was just killing me. And I'm like, dude, there has, like, I need something. And I started praying every day. I never stopped. And I've gotten better.

And ever since people watching came out, we blew up. I've never stopped praying. That's fucking interesting. There's like, um, I mean, it's not even like a debunking thing because it's just a separate, a separate amount of things that couldn't be true, which is like the will of manifestation is something that makes me believe in something else.

I don't know. I don't call it God, but you would probably call it God, which is like, because I've seen it myself, I want this thing to happen and I just fucking think about it so much. Every single fucking time it happens.

Like every single time. It's crazy what happens when you literally think about something so much that it happens. It's fucking, and who knows if it's a fucking entity doing it or if it's just the mind's ability to just bend. We will never be able to comprehend that. That's the thing. And that's why, like, it's faith-based.

You just have to have faith. I just want to know, though. We don't get that, though. But when we die, do we know? That's what I just want someone to go. That's when we'll figure it out. I want to die and then whatever happens happens, and someone goes, oh, you know that thing.

Check this out. This is what actually happened. I'll be like, oh, fuck. See, that was you? That's fucking crazy. I went to a, like, have you seen Interstellar?

Yeah. I went to go see Interstellar live at Royal Albert Hall. And it was hands in as orchestra. Yeah. Doing the thing while they took out all the audio. They kept the dialogue in. They took out all the soundtrack and they played it live. But before it,

there was a chat and it was Kip Thorne. who was the physicist that they based all the stuff on. Christopher Nolan, Stephen Hawking, a bunch of fucking crazy people. R-I-P, Stephen Hawking. Oh, wait, he was on Epstein Island. Mm,

all right. So he, I've got a fucking pop. But anyway, so they're like having this chat before, and Kip Thorne is like this crazy physicist guy. He basically, I'm going to butcher it if I say it,

but like, he basically admits that in making the movie, in having to change he basically to make the black holes and stuff be scientifically fucking accurate for the movie he had to do a bunch more research

on like quantum physics and all this stuff and he came to the realization making the physics for that movie that something has to have created everything and this is like a fucking scientist who was like devout atheist

and he came across while making a fucking movie he's like damn it Yeah, calculations that, and it was just like calculations that everything is predetermined, which is fucking insane. More than a couple of references to deliberately referencing how you should be dead. What's the story there? Is this the uncomfortable one? Why not?

Yeah, sure, let's get into it. I write a lot of self-deprecating lyrics. I've gone through a lot of depression in my life. addiction, self-destruction. My dad, when I was really young, committed suicide. So like, fucking death has just always been in my direct life. So it's like something that's, I don't know, it's on my mind. So I put it in my lyrics.

It's not exactly something that I'm always constantly feeling, but it's something that, you know, it's part of who I was. at the time of writing at least. You didn't write these that long ago. Some of them were written longer than others. Oh, okay. Yeah. I've had the whole album instrumentally.

It was pretty much finished since we recorded people watching. Like, Jim does, Jim's got so many songs written. He's already fucking got almost a whole album done. It's not even, we haven't even released from a distance yet. And he's already. That's perfect. It is and it isn't because like, like, oh, God, now. I have to get back to work.

Fuck. Give me a fucking break. Yeah. This music isn't exactly happy music. I don't make it because I'm a happy person. I don't perform metal because I am trying to have a good time up there. It's definitely a release. I need to do it now at this point to get this negative energy out.

And I've found a way to channel it into this. I think that's why I resonate with it so much. And I don't like, would you call yourselves metalcore? Technically, yes. I would say I don't like 90% of metalcore. I will agree with that. And it's because... It sucks.

It's because it sucks. It's specifically, normally the lyrical content is... Souless. Yeah, and it's, I read it and I hear it. And I'm like, you don't think that. Yeah. You don't feel like that right now. You just know that the line about the undertow works great before the breakdown.

And with you guys, and with, you know, a select few the other metal cord bands I like, I read it and I listen to it and I'm like, this poor fucking guy. Like, and I get it. And that resonates with me because I'm like, okay, this person is fucking hurting. Yeah. And it's not nice to be like, fuck yeah, this guy's hurting.

But you relate to it and that's more of a compliment because you feel that. Which would be why I cried during the song. Yeah. It all makes fucking sense now. That's what's intent, you know. Yeah. Writing with intent, you can tell when a band is performing with intention and when somebody's just going through the fucking motions.

Do you worry you'd run out of things to write about it? Every song. Yeah. Every time I write a song or finish the song, I'm like, all right, how the fuck am I going to, what am I going to do now? So if this record's been written since people watching came out, have you been working on these lyrics and melodies since then? On and off, yeah. Two years, yeah. You need a fucking break.

Yeah. Damn. Makes cook music though. Suffering. I appreciate it. Suffering for the art. It is suffering for sure. And it's not fun writing at all.

I don't have fun writing music. I like the outcome. And when it's done, I feel fulfilled. But the process of writing it is fucking hell. It always has been for me. Because you have to go back. And I'm just so critical. Like, I just, when anything is fake or phony or Johnson,

and I'm like, this is, if it's not good enough for me, then it has to be at least good enough for my bandmates. And usually it'll be good enough for them. But I'm just really critical on just my own lyrics. Because they have to be better than the last. And I know it's not a competition with myself. I know that. But for me it is.

Yeah, that's how great art is made. And again, that's why I hope there is something after death that I can at least take a deep breath, seconds before I die and go, I was pretty good. Yeah. Because I don't ever have that. I don't ever go like, that's good enough.

It's like, okay, what's next? I got to beat it. I got to beat it. It's the same way. I want my dessert at the end. Or even someone else. Just go, good job, bro.

Yeah. You say good job, pal, which is very American. And I went, brough. That was sick. Can I have a monster? Yeah. Boy, what do you want? This one?

Did I have this one? What is it? A whitey. You can have a whitey. White boy can get a little motion. Thanks, Monster. It's a great fucking little pick-me-up. We got these on the rider, Monster.

Thank you. White ones. Yep. My go-to at the moment, I don't have been in here. The Lando Norris flavor. You ever tasted that one? No. I think he's a Formula One racer or something.

What color can is it? Yellow. I tend to play it safe with the colors. Neutral palette. Yeah, I don't like the juices. Here's the thing. The Lando one. next time you can get it.

It's a zero sugar. Uzu flavor. Ooh. It doesn't look. And I'll tell you, because I know you're watching, redesign that fucking redesign that thing. I think they let the F1 drive.

He might be a fucking rally driver. I don't know. I think they let them design the cans. Guy's good at racing. Don't let him design a can. But like, the flavor is like, it might be number one for me.

All right, I'll check it out. I need more. I just drink. more. It's fucking, it's too bad. Monster, he needs more. So you've come in here. You've had carbonated drinks. Most vocalists come in here.

They have room temp war. I would say nine out of ten. I go, do you want to war? And they go, is it room temp? That's so lame. Showtime, during the set, room temp. But afterwards, cold as hell. I love cold drinks. Do you warm up?

Yeah. Now I do. Have you got the proper... Zah, thaw. Well, I recently took my first vocal lesson off Marcus from Invent Animate. Your first vocal lesson? Yeah. That's crazy. You have a crazy voice.

I appreciate that. It's a lot of hard work. Yeah. But I took my first vocal lesson off of him, and I've learned so, so much just about the anatomy of screaming and just how warming up is... completely different from activating your voice. Because you can warm up as soon as you wake up and now it'll last you all day. But activating your voice,

once you start to activate it, it's like you have to do that until you perform. Really? Yeah. I didn't know that. That's what he taught me. Interesting. So like,

do you mean you're walking around backstage shouting at people? I get annoying. I find a corner and fuck off in it. Yep. Oh, yeah. That one? Yep. You know what?

The one time I did that, I got some, I can't remember it was on tour. to like, I was like, oh, I'm going to be annoying. Let me just do your vocal warm up with you. And then I did it. And then I went back to the stray wrestling room. And I was like, I was fucking sick.

Yeah, dude. I was like, I could do that. You got to warm up. Especially if you're singing. The screaming is easy. Fucking babies can scream. The singing is hard. Yeah, singing is like real people shit.

When did you start singing? I was in chorus class in middle school. I don't know what that is. Is that like TV class? Yeah. It's like just chorus. Except singing. Just choruses.

No bridge, no fucking anything. Like choir class. Oh, really? That's where I like learned posture and how to use my diaphragm to project my voice. Screaming is completely self-taught. The transitioning from screaming to singing is what I really needed help with. And that's what I went to Marcus for. And he's taught me so much, dude.

But you didn't really bring in like bang of choruses until people watching. Yeah. That was a new thing. So you had it in the tank the whole time. Yeah, and I'm still catching shit about it. In what way? My band mates are like, you could have been singing this whole time. Oh, okay.

I didn't know if it was the other way around. No. You were like, let me get a, and they were like, no, you can't do that. No, they didn't even know you could do it. Until I recorded product placement, the demo for that at Jim's house, they were like, what are you, you can sing like this? Really?

Yeah. And then you were like, yeah, choir school. You need your TV looked at? I got that as well. Yeah. And then so I never sung like that during a live performance, though. Like, so I had to teach myself how to be able to sing like that during our set for like a 30 to 45 minute span. And that's what's really hard.

Yeah. Because I can sing in a studio all day. That's take a break, take a sip of water. It's at my own pace. During a set, dude, you, It's a lot harder. So control your breath and to time things out the way that it's still like I'm being energetic but I'm able to control myself and not feel like I'm going to fucking throw up.

Do you have to build the set around that to give yourself braces? Yeah. Forward like high singing stuff comes first. Like no arms. That chorus is pretty high up there. That'll be the first song we play followed by product placement. That's the second highest song that I can do. But then you're going to have to end. Yeah.

You got to end with some bangers as well. We finish with better and villain. Yeah, which you probably will be forever. And then into character development, yeah. What do you think you're going to do with, from a distance, with Alex's part? I'll probably be seeing in Alex's part.

Fucking pipes on this guy. Gender bending pipes. That's fine. I mean, that's going to be tough. Yeah. It's sick, though. It's not. That's why my question earlier,

because when I was listening to it, I was like, this is in your range. Yeah, her verse definitely sits lower in that, in my range for sure. The choruses are what's fucking up there. But it's all practice. Because it's too many words to put on track. Yeah. It's two full fucking verses.

It is. She'd join you for a fucking onstage thing. She's going out where Ice Nine kills. That's crazy. Doing some shit. I don't know what. I just saw it. With them or the make them suffer is?

No. Oh, she is. She's going out with ice nine. I guess to just sing. Yeah, she's blowing up. She was just on Boundary's new song too. One girl. She was on the Downbeat podcast.

She's fucking killed. She rules. We had a great episode. We got fucking drunk. Nice. Yeah, they love drinking. This girl came in and was like, she worked at the backstage bar at Sonic Temple.

And she was like, I heard you were doing a podcast. I wanted to come in. I'm a big fan. And she brought these tequilas. that were like this big. Oh, yeah. It was, it was a riot. I love those fucking guys.

Okay, so you got the headliner coming up. Are you playing Nashville on the headliner? No, sadly not. I wish. But we'll probably be back next year with, uh, that's cool. Yeah. Is there any bucket list bands for you to tour with?

Deftones in, uh, Bringing the Horizon. Death Tones is one that you didn't mention on your vocal influences. He's also a huge influence for sure. He's fucking in there. That's a, deaf tones in general is just a huge, huge inspiration on the songwriting of 156 for sure. Yeah. I mean, Jim's got fucking, the dudes could guitar, Stephen Carpenter's guitar, like. The 7th Street.

Yeah. They're full Deftones fans. Yeah. Everybody in the band. It comes out. But we're not like trying to directly rip them off by any means. We definitely just rip off like little bits. Yeah, you guys, any of your influences, other than the corn one.

That one's pretty bad. I can hear, the corn one's the only one where I'm like, damn, that's the riff. All of the other ones, I can hear like, oh, that's inspired by this or whatever, which is, I think that's what Stray did a lot of the time. Mostly Gojira and my sugar. It was just like, let me just take this. That rocks. Take this fucking thing. I worked.

And change it enough. That's how you should do it. But yeah, the death tones one I heard, in the drums, there's some A, B. finder sections and then you've definitely got some, I could hear Chino doing this, but you don't do the like deaf tone shoegaze rip-off thing that's happening now. Some of those bands I fucking love.

Yeah, but like, I don't know, you got and extend, I mean, it's on the internet now, extend my, I was going to say congratulations, but just fucking round of applause. Thank you. Just pulling all those influences and making something new and not being like, I explained it actually to Dan from architects yesterday

I was like do you know this one five six Simon's bang and he was like I've heard of them but I haven't heard them what's the vibe and I was like I can't even explain the vibe but like that's good it reminds me and not in any way that you sound like it it reminds me of how in 2016 architects took all of their influences and they made it into this new type of metal core which is now the type of metalcore. And it's like that again,

but like completely different, but it's just like all these new things into one new metal core. And I'm like, I think I like metalcore again. I think maybe I like fucking metalcore again. No, it's great. It's great.

It's a dirty word because there's a lot, I don't know. There's a popification of metal core, which I don't dislike. It's definitely got the biggest market it's ever had right now. Like fucking plot news selling out huge,

Yeah. Rooms, motionless and white, doing red rocks. It's like, what are we talking about? Motionless is one of those ones where I'm like,

people be bored because I talk about this all the time. But like, I didn't know what they sounded like. I just knew how big they were. And then I talked with them. Expecting it to be like real fucking radio-friendly email. I'm like,

what the fuck? This is like fast and fucking heavy. And I was like, wow, good for them. What is now radio-friendly is, Leaps and bounds from what was radio friendly like fucking. I know.

When I was your age. 10 fucking years ago. Damn, grandpa. I know, right? Sheesh. Fucking. I caught my hair cut and then I started. She said, you look so young.

And I started doing all the cool things that the kids do. Six, seven, all that. I like to say that. I like to say that because even that one, like I've got nieces and nephews, even they're like, that's old now. Yeah. And now I'm being. chopped unk by doing it often. I'm going to ask you something kind of lame.

Do it. What is that lovely bracelet? Oh, a fan made me this. A fan made you that. Yeah. Made out stainless steel. Can I see you? Yeah.

It's fucking awesome. Yeah. The fan made me this necklace too. Same fan or two different fans? Two different jewelry fans. Yeah. Are you a jewelry connoisseur? I do like jewelry.

I like accessories and such. A bit of an accessory. And they just know that, so they bring it to you? Yeah, that was made by a fan as well. This, I know. Yeah, this one was for our basis Lucas who passed away. Oh. This is my girlfriends.

That's cute. Yeah, you were an accessory. Go on, put your plug in. Go, go, go, go, go, go. Yeah, clocks and colors. What's up? I love you. I'll see you later.

Are they coming to the show today? Yeah. People ask me a lot. And in the Patreon Discord channel, someone I actually asked what jewelry I wear. And I said, clocks and colors. That guy's from Nashville. He lives here, I guess. Yes.

Same Shane. Give me more shit, bro. I'm head to toe. Are you doing louder than night? We're headlining one of the stages. Oh, yeah. I'll be there. Sick.

We will be there with the fucking podcast. Sounds good. You could have taken... No, worse to do it at a festival. Yeah. I appreciate you doing this on a show day as a singer. Dude, I'm fucking honored to be here. I never thought that you would ask us to be on it.

It's fucking awesome. What? Are you for real? This is like the first real podcast I've been asked to do. And it's fucking, it's an honor, man. I think I tried a while ago. I think I tried on people watching. And it went nowhere.

Maybe, I don't know, schedules were messed up. I don't remember. Something like that. I mean, I appreciate that you do it on a show day as a vocalist, that you want to do it. Also, these days I have a strict clause,

which is, I said to Becky, it was like, they're not doing a podcast the week before, the week of, or the week after mine. She was like, yeah, I was like, okay, you get them in. Yeah.

Because the amount of times I do one, and it's not like, In fact, I will dunk on everyone else except for Colin from Hardlaw. Me and Colin have a little chat. We talk to each other about who we got on. So we don't ever cross each other's. We space things out. There's only so many hours.

Someone can listen to something about a band. So we'll either like liaise and have a different member or whatever. Some of these other motherfuckers don't do that. And I've got an episode coming out. And then it's like day before, exactly the same guy. Exactly the same questions. But it's on a fucking Zoom camera. Great.

And then... Everybody loves watching those. Why do that? I don't. This is, yeah, thanks here. I sure shit don't. This is why I make this TV show. Yeah, I mean, unless they're like overseas, like Steve O.G., I don't know if you're not familiar with that.

I like that guy. He's cool. I'll do any interview that he wants to do. Just because he actually gives a fuck about the band that he's interviewing and gives specific details of what he likes about them. I'll do anything with people like that. No, you did. Absolutely. I cried.

Yeah. Steve G didn't cry. I just, I like, when some random guys like, so how long have you been in the band? It's like, all right, dude, come on. How did you get the band, man? I didn't even, that's a question for Mike, the basest. That is a fake question based on bad press.

Yeah. So we get that question for almost every interview. Yeah, of course you did. And that's why I haven't fucking done it. And guess what? Go watch a Zoom one if you want that. Because I don't give a fuck about, unless the band comes in here and they're called like huge dick, donkey.

Yeah, 9-11. It's just a name. Then I want to know what made you call your band Huge Dick Donkey 9-11. That would be an interesting band name. Definitely a grind band. Have you got any... It's all in.

It stays in. Have you got any, like, vocal influences or even musical influences disregarding A-Fix twin that people might be surprised by? I'm from Pittsburgh, so I'm a big Mac Miller, Wiz Khalifa fan.

They were, like, huge. for me growing up. Like they were gods in Pittsburgh. And everybody was bumping Taylor gang and Mac Miller. So definitely huge MacMiller. Do you ever think about doing a little spitting a couple of bars? No. I respect rap too much to ever try rap.

Just a flat, no. Nope. Yeah. Not having. I keep getting called Eminem again now. Oh my God. If I had a dollar, for every time somebody fucking called me Eminem,

it would be, I'd have a nice video game by now. You get Eminem? Yeah. Why? Are you kidding me? Take the fucking hat off. I got fucking fro right now. Wait, you get Eminem?

Yeah, when I'm wearing a beanie for sure. Yeah, but that's just the white guy in a beanie. The jaw structure maybe. Yeah, that's it. I'm a white guy in a beanie. Is the nose me as well? Why do I get Eminem? I mean, I've got it with the blonde hair.

I would not have guessed Eminem, for you. More of a Justin Timberlake. There you go. Secretly gay. It all checks out. Officer, this is going to ruin the world tour. Okay, Wiz Khalifa. What about others? What's your hobbies? What did you get up to when you're off tour? And now I'm just getting into you. We're, I mean, everybody in my band's big into video games. We're usually, if we're on the bus, we're gaming. I recently got into kayaking. That's pretty fun. Crazy pull. My day job was pouring concrete for 10 years. I was just finally able to quit that to do music full-time.

Pouring concrete. That's very M&M. Construction. I can imagine him doing that. I wouldn't call that a hobby, though. That was just to pay my bills. And when did the man go full-time? Just recently, we were able to quit our jobs last year.

We did an 80-day tour with counterparts and fit for a king back-to-back. Yep. In a van with seven guys for 82 days. no hotels in the van. We did that and that was, that was, we made a lot of money. So we're like, I'm, this is it. So does that all go in a bank account and then you pay yourselves monthly? It all goes into the bank account and we pay ourselves after every tour.

And then you just live off that, but it's enough to live off. Yeah, it's a lot of budgeting. We used to do that in Stray. In Stray we would pay ourselves $1,000 a week to be on tour. And then after Eurocours. That's nice. after Euro tours, we would, and we didn't do very well in America,

but we did very well in Europe. After Euro tours, we'd do that. It's just like to split the money. You can not have a job if you want. Yeah, we run our own merch. So we collect all the tips, and we evenly distribute those weekly for when we're on tour.

So it'll be like, it's 500, 600, 600 bucks a week. Each of us, and then at the end of the tour, we'll get the lump sum. I mean, that's even better. Yeah. Yeah, that's fucking. That's awesome. Yeah.

No side hustles? No, not right now. I'm just, uh, we do the, jewelry. Yeah, jewelry, but, uh, we're streaming on Twitch with the games and stuff. We stream every, uh, set as well. Wait, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, what are you streaming on Twitch? Video games. Yeah, what games?

What are you playing? Everything, dude. We play friend slop games. We play. Wait, what's a friend slop game? You know, those bullshit, $10 games that are gone in a week. Oh, the one where, like, peak or. What's the one where you?

you hide, you paint yourself like the... A mecha chameleon, that's a friend's lop game, yeah. We played that a lot. That game... See, like shit like that. People love watching... I need to get on the friends to play. So we're trying to, when we're home,

set up like a weekly gaming thing with other bands. So we'll have other bands on our Twitch. And I think that that would be awesome. People would love to see fucking, let's say, the guys from Spite play Arc Raiders with us or whatever. guys. Yeah, dude. Fucking...

Wait, reel me off all the games you're playing because I want to come. Right now, me and Kyle have been playing Hell Let Lose Vietnam, which is fun. You're like,

these are all niche. Yeah, it's a war game. It's a war game. We play... Shit, we play everything, dude,

fucking Fortnite, Rocket League. Mostly we'll... You're missing one. You're missing one from... I need. What do you play? Rivals.

I don't play that. Did you have... But, Overwatch. Rivals, Marvel? Marvel? Oh, yeah, we, I've brought that up multiple times, but they're, it's not like on the high watch list on like shit that's trending on Twitch. We try to play what, you know, it's trending.

That's why my streams. So I streamed drums on Twitch. I still stream drums on Twitch. But I've recently got into streaming games. Yeah. I'm not very good. It doesn't matter. People will still watch and pay to watch you.

But the friend slot might be what I need to get into. Yeah. I'm inviting myself on this. Do it. We would fucking do. You're invited any time. Because I only play rivals or cod. That's it.

But we just got the cod beta codes. So we were playing that. That's what I'll be doing all of tomorrow. Yeah. All fucking day tomorrow. Did you play it last weekend? I did. I've been playing it on and off this week too.

Playing it last night a little bit. This is super. No one goes a fuck. What did you think about the changes from last week to this week? I don't really notice much of much change. Time to kill. I think that the Call of Duty itself is just going downhill for me. I just not having as much fun as I used to.

Is that because you're like a Battle Royale guy over? No. Because I hate Battle Royale. Yeah, I can't fucking... I'm just more into the big maps, Battlefield-esque style. Did you play Battlefield 6? Yeah, I love it. Okay.

That's all I need to be told, because Battlefield 4 is my favorite game of all. Yeah, dude. Fuck yeah. Fucking Shanghai. Bad Company 2 is my... Yeah, yeah. Battlefield 5 and Battlefield 1, they were fine. Yeah, and then the fucking World War II once sucked.

2042, or whatever the sci-fi ones sucked. Driving tanks up buildings. That was dumb. And then I never played Battlefield 6 because that one pissed me off so much. But if it's... I like it's... I like it's... I like...

And it's like, what, 64 versus 64 or something you can do? Like, crazy shit. Because we run into trouble because we got so many people playing. there's like at least fucking eight or nine of us sometimes and we're playing that six v six. Yeah. I want to play a full fucking stack. That out of fields next.

Anyway, that wasn't completely pointless because I like games and we both get the codes for free and we can send this to the people that give us the codes for free. That's right. And we can get more codes free. Thanks, Tim. Tim!

It's the same guy! Let's fucking go. Big up, Tim. Yeah, let me get those fucking battle pass. Let me get this shit. That's my way, pal. I don't know if you're the same. same as me.

But like, when I was, I guess as a vocalist, maybe it's different or the same. Hurry up and get to the question. Okay. So if you'd have told me when I was a kid, when I was playing drums, I was going to get drums for free. I was going to get symbols for free. I'd have been like, yeah, I'd fucking hope so. If you'd have told me if I was a kid, I was going to get video games for fucking free.

For just doing your job. That would have been the number one thing. made me be like, you are lying. It's crazy. You're going to play in Japan. Yeah, I think so. I'm going to be a drummer. But you're going to get free video games.

And you're going to get them early. For everybody. It's fucking insane. It's like low-key, top five coolest things about being in the bad. But what does suck, and I don't know if you know it, because I'm not that good at video games, I just like them. When you play that closed beta,

and it is almost exclusively the most exclusively, the most professional gamers in the world and then musicians that got the games from free. I'm getting run down. Yeah. And then just pro athletes. Yeah. Every day I'm getting my fucking ass kick.

It is. And it's just unemployed lobbies, just kicking your ass or nine-year-old kids. Yeah. But like... Telling you to kill yourself. We had it last weekend. First fucking game we play.

Some guy goes, as in Renlord from Stray. And I was like, oh, fuck, fuck. Fuck, fuck. And then. I'm bottom of the leaderboard. I was fucking dog shit. Absolute all shit.

And then another time, one of our streams came up on some pro-girl gamer. Yeah. And our friend Andrew that we play with, who were, I've just remembered, 3D printed backs for this with the logo on it. And I forgot to fucking bring him again. Anyway, he was, this pro gamer was like calling him out for hacking. Obviously not hacking, but this whole reporting him on stream and stuff with like thousands of people watching.

and then he found the clip and had sent it. It's like all I was playing, like, running it down. Video games are sick. Watch his Twitch. Watch my Twitch. Hell yeah. What's your Twitch channel? Is it banned or you?

Just one, five, six silence. Yeah, we stream every set, too, every night. Every night? Mm-hmm. Did you start this? Sound check, too. Did you start listening to pandemic? No.

It was after that. That was definitely, like, the turning point, like bands like Code Orange. they did streaming shows during those times. That was pretty fucking big back then. Like when there was nothing anybody could do other than sit on your fucking thumbs and wait for the world to open back up. That was definitely like the turning point of like when

so live music isn't always going to be live. We got to figure something out. And we just started doing the video game streams because when we're home, we don't really fucking do anything and it's a good way to keep any kind of income coming in while you're just waiting to go back on tour again so and it's therapeutic that's too i fucking love like popping a stream on and just talking to people yeah and they're like how's your day going it's like oh she's been out or whatever no one's asked me that i'll tell you random stranger who

then becomes not a stranger exactly and like we have a discord too with like hundreds of people in it now at this point they'll come to shows and like bring us gifts and stuff, like the fucking bracelets and like... I'm interested to know... So was this pre-people watching? No, this came out after people watching. I wonder if, because I really saw it for myself personally and for stray, because we started streaming in a pandemic.

Also, I don't know if you know this, like, bore drop, number three of the episode. Twitch was paying us to be on Twitch in the pandemic. Yeah? Like an hourly rate on the show. top of the subs. So like that's why everyone went over and it was fucking good. But like I personally found my own, the downbeat, stray, since we started streaming, the connection to the fan base was just fucking a thousand fault. It's a community. Yeah. It's it's so much more because

they feel like you're accessible. Like you're not some fucking rock star. You're easy to talk. They can, they can reach you, they can talk to you. Like, they know who you are and like you feel like you know them because, like, you see them, they're like, hey, I'm this from the Discord. And it's like, oh, shit, you're a person. That's what I was going to say, if you didn't touch on that there, because there is that, there's a parissocial thing from, from like a audience side where they don't think you're attainable or any of this stuff.

We're all just guys. We're all just guys. Especially, like, you run across these people. that they're fucking rock stars. And you're just a dude, bro. And you would have no money. You'd have no money if it wasn't with these people. Exactly.

But on the flip side of it, you know, it can be hard for us on the music side to remember these people really love what they do. They're not just a face in the crowd or any of that stuff. Yeah.

So when, like what you said, when, you know, you've recognized someone's name from their stupid fucking Twitch name or whatever big dog bollocks 303. Yeah. And then,

At a show, they're like, hey, I'm Big Dog Bullocks 303. And the reaction... You're already connected with this. Yeah, is not just... Oh, hi. How are you? It's like, oh, my fucking God, it's you. Exactly. God, I miss that.

I need to stream more. You should. Dude, it's like so many people can't go to shows, too. And they just, that's all they have. That's their way of... I don't watch streaming, honestly. I'm not a big streamer guy, but I will do it myself. because like people fucking they're into it.

Like that's the time of the day it is. That took me a while because I wasn't a consumer of it. I was like, well, why would I do it? Exactly. And it's like, no, you're doing what you do. And then that goes out, which is fucking awesome. So when you live stream these shows, is it the same MacBook?

Like you're live streaming the shows. We're streaming from a phone. Oh, it's just from the phone. But what's the audio? Just fucking from the PA. Listen, my brother in literally cross. There is such a quick way to get that mix to that phone Yeah for the people just do it

That's above my pay grade Hey I'm just behind the microphone man I'm gonna tell you all you need to do here And this is I want to thank you if this actually happens Roadmaker Wireless mic Madison's wearing one right now But they have a 3.5 millimeter in Okay

All you need to do is run something from the MacBook or from the front house into that receiver and then put the other end of receiver on the phone. What is it called? Road wireless go. There might be a wireless micro. It might be even easier.

And then you can just, all you need is a 3.5, like a fucking, remember the orcs chord kids? One of those into there and then the other side of it goes on the phone. And then, because I used to, when I stream drums, super low-fi with a phone,

that's what I used to do. I would have a mixing desk and that would just go into the thing. But then when Stray did it live, a couple of times we took the front house mix and we put it wirelessly just into and then they get like almost the show mix. Yeah, I mean, that's definitely one of the biggest complaints

is like the fucking chat's like, hey, I love drums, it's all drums. There's a thing though. There is a thing as a performer. you're like, there's more pressure that way. However, for a fan, it's fucking awesome.

Yeah, I mean, I'm not. The pressure's there no matter what, so. Double it. Yeah. Double it, give it to the next guy. Yeah. I think we're done. Sure.

I thought it was great. I had a great time. Hell yeah. It was a pleasure to meet you. We just met, by the way. We did. No, we go way back. We go way back.

Not that far back because I'm 10 years older than him. Not that far. Not that far. Not did he. Not like weird far or anything like that. Not Stephen walking far. Did he far? Leave it all in, something.

This is the end of the podcast. Thank you, mate. Thank you so much, bro. Bye. Appreciate you.