Latest / HEAVY Music Interviews / Sonic Toxicity With THE FLAVOR THAT KILLS

Transcript

Sonic Toxicity With THE FLAVOR THAT KILLS · HEAVY Music Interviews

• 0:00
  All right, I'm Eric. I played drums. I'm Ryan, I played
• 0:04
  Turnsting. Christian play bass, Nick guitar. Beautiful guys, thanks for joining
• 0:13
  us, Yeah, thanks for joining us. Collectively, you guys are known
• 0:22
  as the Flavor that Hills. Is that correct? Yeah? I love I
• 0:27
  love the band name. Like I don't usually ask fans where the names came
• 0:30
  from because it's such a boring, fucking question. But you got to tell
• 0:34
  me what flavor is there out there that could potentially kill you? Ryan,
• 0:37
  that's up to You're the guy who came up with the name joke, Chris.
• 0:43
  He wants to know what flavor it is? What is the I don't
• 0:49
  know, but that'll just get your kicked out of the airport. Yeah,
• 0:56
  it was just a player names really, I mean yeah, we are trying
• 1:00
  to come up with the stupidest name that we could think of, and that
• 1:03
  that ended up. Yeah, and we end with at first it's a joke,
• 1:07
  but then we just kept it because we thought it was I thought it
• 1:11
  was cool, you know, so of this song the world and anywhere in
• 1:18
  the world. I guess they're unfamiliar with the Flavor The Kills give us a
• 1:22
  bit of a grave history to run down on the band, So we've been
• 1:26
  around for a while. This is kind of a new incarnation of the band.
• 1:30
  When we first started, probably maybe ten years ago or so in Madison,
• 1:37
  we had a keyboard Rhodes piano, and then we replaced that with Nick
• 1:42
  with guitar, so we kind of went from like a guitar, bass,
• 1:47
  drums, vocals and the roads to two guitar, bass and drums. And
• 1:52
  the record that you have, the new one, is kind of the first
• 1:55
  one where we just kind of redefined the sound. Plus we're all songwriters.
• 2:00
  Nicks brought a lot into the band too with this version of it, so
• 2:05
  you know, we're kind of we we We really historically have been a lazy
• 2:07
  band until recently with this record, which was supposed to be done over the
• 2:15
  pandemic hap and so it got delayed a couple of years really, but it
• 2:19
  wouldn't have been done a long time ago. Christian and I went and started
• 2:22
  working on it, and then you know, we had masks and everything was
• 2:24
  just a whole bunch of bullshit and it was hard to like kind of get
• 2:29
  a good feel for it. So we just waited and then we did it
• 2:31
  the right way we kind of just really went in the studio and you know,
• 2:35
  we're friends with both Sorenson, who's done us some good records with like
• 2:38
  Bob Mold and Super Chunk and Death Camp for Cutie, so we've known him
• 2:45
  for a while. So he came into Madison and we kind of built a
• 2:47
  studio in an old studio here called Coney Island and we just you know,
• 2:54
  just kind of we're throwing stuff together off the cuff. But it ended up
• 2:58
  being really good. So then we started putting time into it after that,
• 3:00
  so and synthesizers and cynthesizers. It's like the last minute thing we've thought about,
• 3:07
  just setting up a bunch of stuff and just having each person kind of
• 3:08
  go through and just put lay down some tracks and uh yeah, so I
• 3:15
  album turned out really good. So this is our third one, our third
• 3:17
  full length album in the last ten years or so. But again, you
• 3:22
  know, COVID invested up a lot of crap. We're like two years,
• 3:23
  two or three years delayed from that. So h just before when you introduce
• 3:29
  yourself, no one, now one put the hand off the singer, do
• 3:31
  you been singing? Well yeah, yeah, yeah, right, we sing
• 3:38
  something but yeah, we've all we've all played in we've all played in a
• 3:46
  bunch of bands before, so and some of us are actively still playing in
• 3:50
  some bands. But so, like this has been kind of like just uh,
• 3:53
  you know, a group of a bunch of friends that started getting together
• 3:58
  and then you know, kind of started a new band and then the band's
• 4:00
  kind of just you know, formed its own thing after that. But yeah,
• 4:05
  but so locally Wisconsin and the Midwest in the United States, we've we've
• 4:12
  only played for a while, but this is it's nice to have, like
• 4:15
  being a band with a bunch of other people that can write music and played
• 4:19
  a while. So it gets a good it's a good I don't know what
• 4:24
  is it? Fun? Fun? You like a metal guy, so you
• 4:30
  all see fucking metal and that's the heavy T shirt. So that's the back
• 4:35
  of two I got. That was a metal one. Then there's there's a
• 4:39
  function up one we've got and that's cool. A f M A f M.
• 4:50
  That's my union, that's my Yeah. I was introduced to your music
• 4:58
  by the trek nerve. I is that song indicative of your overall salmon music?
• 5:04
  Uh? Yeah, maybe, I mean I U our process. I
• 5:10
  don't tell her the process of how our songs come about, Ryan, Well,
• 5:13
  that song, we had this Irish guy in the band and he started
• 5:15
  playing this guitar like and then he got deported after he got divorced. So
• 5:20
  that's the truth. Yeah, my acid and replaced. He quit the band
• 5:27
  for a second there, and that's how we got that song. Nice guy.
• 5:30
  I was just a guy that was on drugs and they invited me on
• 5:31
  stage and the rest of Here's a section in Craigslist and it says Irish guitar
• 5:41
  player. Yeah, yeah, we got him up there. Yeah, he
• 5:43
  need somebody. Yeah. At the time the tree comes out, I mean
• 5:48
  it's uh, you know, it's I think we we go over the map.
• 5:53
  We kind of fall over the map a little bit. You know,
• 5:56
  a lot of people compared us to like Electric six or or something and or
• 6:00
  uh, Black Keys, But honestly, some of those songs in the new
• 6:03
  record we we specifically wrote after we listen to a lot of Iron Maiden,
• 6:09
  so they have they have like certain parts that are kind of reminiscent of that
• 6:13
  too. So I don't know, I think we just kind of put things
• 6:15
  together. It's a real natural process. I don't know if any one song
• 6:20
  is like totally representative of the whole record because it's kind of a cohesive thing.
• 6:25
  It's kind of a concept record. But yeah, I say that song
• 6:27
  specifically, no because yea the group, because he didn't like it's extremely much.
• 6:31
  He kept his guitar like, so kept his guitar like. So he's
• 6:33
  a song like I stole his leg Yeah, stealing guitars from a real irishman.
• 6:41
  It's our song, but we took a tiny part of his licks.
• 6:45
  It's a great lick and he's a great yeah great, and we're yeah yeah,
• 6:54
  yeah, that's what Irish people do, ye know, time getting a
• 6:59
  job. You know he's married. Yeah, sorry, that's aside. That's
• 7:04
  all I d egois. But there's a lookdown on there from rock to punk.
• 7:09
  That's blues influencers there. So tell us about some of your influencers abandoned
• 7:13
  and how they all come to get to formula sound. Well, we'll just
• 7:17
  go through each of our influences. I grew up on you know, eighties
• 7:20
  punk rock for sure, like you know, Black Plague, Dad Kennedy's stuff
• 7:26
  like that exploited you know, the English punk. But but young before that,
• 7:30
  I was you know and I was a little a C D C stuff
• 7:34
  like that, So yeah, I mean that's my influence. I don't know,
• 7:39
  Ryan, what did you? Oh? Man, I was really into
• 7:40
  poison when I was a kid. Man I could get out of it.
• 7:43
  Seriously, I was, Hey, I grew up in the middle of nowhere,
• 7:45
  and I mean, we have a one radio station and I to get
• 7:46
  down playing every rose has a thorn and yeah, that's that's where it started
• 7:50
  and everyone. Ryan also likes a lot of Canadian music too for something actually
• 7:58
  music, Yeah, yeah, oh yeah, yeah, I'm parking eighty.
• 8:03
  I don't know for sure about you. Uh. I listened to just about
• 8:09
  everything. I feel like my brain is a sponge and it's like playing bass
• 8:13
  if I just get hooked on something and all of a sudden, I'm emulating
• 8:18
  it and I'm like, oh wait, that's where that came from. Because
• 8:20
  I was listening to X Y or Z. I don't know. I swear
• 8:22
  to god, I just listened to the weirdest stuff. I don't know if
• 8:26
  I've got a genre. I just I just can't not listen to just about
• 8:31
  everything. But a lot of the stuff in this band I really like,
• 8:35
  like funk music, honestly. Oh yeah, we're really funky, like a
• 8:39
  lot of the on the one. Yeah, fried ourselves in our funkiness.
• 8:43
  Yeah, I don't know. I can't can't get enough Ye Baselines in the
• 8:48
  seventies. Yeah, Funcus stores res Man, It's right, that's right,
• 8:54
  Your funk is fuck. Yeah. Yeah, so funk, so so fun.
• 9:03
  I like I I wanted to be a funk guitar player, but I
• 9:07
  also like a lot of post punk and eighties goth rock. But I also
• 9:13
  always, whenever I want to practice guitar, I try to play country.
• 9:20
  So there's there's a lot of different influences from all for you. When he
• 9:24
  comes to ride music, how do you decide how much of one person?
• 9:30
  Like, how do you do whatever? Gry No, he's a president,
• 9:35
  he plays something, he does something. Yeah, Usually Christian will have a
• 9:39
  bass lick and then I'll put a drum parts down and then I mean,
• 9:45
  Christian and I do all the heavy lifting. This. Guys don't do that.
• 9:50
  It takes guitar players too long to set up, and by the time
• 9:54
  him and me are already got the pedals break and you gotta work on that.
• 10:00
  They got a lot of it. Literally, is like that like it
• 10:05
  right after the song. It's like the first time. It is thirty minutes
• 10:09
  of practice because it's done to me, and then these guys jump in.
• 10:13
  Yeah, Ryan does all the vocals and stuff. He just comes up with
• 10:16
  that off the In fact, I don't know if Ryan ever plays the same
• 10:20
  like your vocal line sings it twice, and I think half the songs it's
• 10:24
  just the same song. I just played different things over top of it.
• 10:28
  But the first time I remember played with this band, I was I had
• 10:31
  to drink three gallons of water for reasons mentioned already, and I had to
• 10:35
  pass in the middle of the set, and I ran off stage and go
• 10:37
  to the porta John because they're playing a farm and I heard the lyrics were
• 10:43
  just like pissing out the drugs. So he just say, you know whatever
• 10:48
  you need to say, and that that's what this rock and roll band is
• 10:50
  about. A lot of fun, like you said before, a lot of
• 10:54
  fun. It's a little about this for your third album book second, so
• 11:05
  all right, so it is secrets. It's misspelled because Ryan, Well,
• 11:09
  I found a notebook in a thrift store a little kid was writing stuff in
• 11:13
  and that's how it was spelled. So that's where they left the r O.
• 11:18
  Yeah, so we then we kept that and then uh, I cite
• 11:22
  you a link to the to the band camp thing, so you have the
• 11:26
  whole album. Yeah, you could, and you could see the Uh wait,
• 11:31
  did you get it? I sent it. Oh no, I didn't
• 11:33
  get it, but I'll have a look out for this. Yeah, I
• 11:35
  have a look because I sent you a link and it has a whole record
• 11:39
  on there, so you listen to it and then it also you know,
• 11:41
  the album cover is like you know, it's it's it just got censored.
• 11:48
  Yeah, yeah, because it's a woman. Yeah, you having intimate relations
• 11:54
  with the guy in a zebru. Come I cite you. I sent you
• 12:00
  a couple of copies of that. I mean, look how beautiful they gave.
• 12:03
  Yeah, I mean we took the head off the woman. So you
• 12:07
  can't even tell us like, you know, yeah, the dry humping,
• 12:09
  it'd be fine. Yeah, she's a very talented artist. And I don't
• 12:13
  maybe it's iron said, I I don't know know where was the problem,
• 12:16
  but did we show Oh yeah, what was the problem. That's a red
• 12:22
  one. Yeah, but the so the name came from that and what and
• 12:28
  there is Uh, there's a secret in the album. There's one secret there.
• 12:33
  It's a good one. Does anyone know that secret? No, No,
• 12:39
  there's there, we know it, but I could tell you. I
• 12:41
  remember I forgot it. Yeah, it's a secret, and and the person
• 12:46
  who figures it out will be rewarded. Yes, a clossness. That's all
• 12:54
  we're given, because I mean you got to figure it out when you buy
• 12:56
  the records, which sent you'll see look at National Treasure Ship cage man.
• 13:07
  Uh no, we had, we had. Uh. The artist who did
• 13:11
  the cover is this great artist, clear Castle Kells Big. Yeah, but
• 13:16
  she's phenomenal artist. She's done a great job here. It's like it's just
• 13:20
  too bad that, you know, these chat bots are telling everybody that he
• 13:24
  can't have stuff like this. And I mean, what's where do you draw
• 13:26
  the line between art and pornography? I mean, what's the where's the line?
• 13:31
  Well? The line? Yeah, I don't know. I'm not proble
• 13:35
  to see two women, two women? The women. Yeah, but she
• 13:43
  it was a it was a we don't discriminate, but she did. We
• 13:46
  didn't do it. She did. She was maybe. Yeah, was the
• 13:56
  problem The problem was the zebra, you know, the guy whatever you know
• 14:01
  you came. You can't even make it out. That's bob Ma. You
• 14:03
  know what is that? You know? I need America to strike you before.
• 14:07
  I guess yeah, a little Yeah, you can tell. You have
• 14:13
  to put your eyes really close to it. Whatever. Well, so you
• 14:16
  guys have had three albums out now, I'll say, picked one song off
• 14:20
  each album, but pay for listening to get to know the band big better.
• 14:26
  Okay. Uh so the three albums are Pablo's Hippos and never Mind the
• 14:33
  Aforms, which was really a misspelling of Archons, and then the book is
• 14:37
  Secret. So going backwards to front, I guess my three would be I
• 14:41
  think on this one, testical, testicalpy number one. Okay, well for
• 14:46
  Eric though for me it would the Snakes. For Ryan it would be testical
• 14:52
  on the new one kind of Richard Richard, Yeah, rich because I played
• 14:58
  Bungle. Yeah, we all you imagine being a band with freaking four people
• 15:05
  and everybody has a different fun thing all that's our band all the time.
• 15:09
  It sounds like fun We just ca Yeah, you just bet the best of
• 15:13
  album? Then you got me that many songs that we've got your next album,
• 15:16
  But it's the best of Yeah, and then for the album before this
• 15:22
  that we did, there's a couple of good songs. But there's a song
• 15:24
  called Harder that I like that we still play a lot, which is a
• 15:28
  harder Yes, Harder Richard. Yeah. And then on on Pabos Hippos,
• 15:37
  what's even on I don't know. Yeah, it's got goats on it.
• 15:43
  Uh yeah, you know econom Yeah, yeah, hip got a song called
• 15:52
  glory Hole on there. That's just a fun song. We used to play
• 15:56
  that all the time. It's the nice it's kind of a relaxed yeah,
• 16:00
  what we got there? Obviously remember hammer? Yeah you hammer, but we
• 16:04
  don't, you know, we don't. It's it's interesting because when we play
• 16:08
  live, we we have a lot of songs to choose, so like sometimes
• 16:12
  right now we're playing a lot of songs off the new record. But yeah,
• 16:17
  you know, I don't know. It's a very fluent band. It's
• 16:18
  the live shows are really you know, energetic, and we never know what's
• 16:25
  really going to happen, especially with Ryan. Yeah, it make us play
• 16:27
  late. We didn't you wore chaps, that's right? Yeah, yeah,
• 16:36
  I mean it's storage auctions. You can like go to this ox the site
• 16:38
  you can buy people's stuff on the internet, and I got a bunch of
• 16:42
  like leathers like chaps and it's great. I got extra ones and they all
• 16:48
  wore them and wet like yeah yeah, right, it's like twenty ten,
• 16:56
  like a little outfit there in a big big spot. Right, that's how
• 17:03
  many meters is that? Probably? Like what four meters by tens? You
• 17:07
  got use the metric system over there, but I can't even cap to ten.
• 17:11
  I'm fucking iypeless, Okay, I exactly what to hear about the metrics.
• 17:18
  I don't tell you how big it is. It was like it was
• 17:22
  like four four, go long and three. That's where all the leather came
• 17:27
  from. Yeah, so we made a vinyl it's about a quarter meter yeah
• 17:32
  in diameter. Yeah. And now I'm ill getting the metro picture. Yeah,
• 17:38
  because he got big of hands. So you've mentioned before, guys,
• 17:44
  if you go to any coming up that you want to fight, if they
• 17:47
  belonged to March. Yeah. So well in America, you know we're playing
• 17:51
  over here. We're just uh, we just got done doing a bunch of
• 17:53
  shows and now we're gonna do a big release show in March. And then
• 17:57
  we were just talking about like like a Midwest tour in like Chicago and Milwaukee,
• 18:03
  Minneapolis, those are cities in the US. And then what I said,
• 18:10
  I couldn't. If I didn't say, I was fucking stupid, Honestly,
• 18:17
  Like when I say Milwaukee and Minneapolis, I a lot of I don't
• 18:21
  know if a lot of people know that. Everybody knows Chicago, you know,
• 18:23
  but like not everybody in America fucking knows Milwaukee, you know. Market
• 18:30
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, so yeah, we're the stupid ones. Obviously
• 18:37
  I had to look up. I didn't know her, h Brisbane. And
• 18:41
  then he said Queensland. I didn't know, like is Queensland Australia or is
• 18:47
  Australia Queensland or is it like Canada where you have different like provinces. Australia
• 18:52
  is the whole country and playing things about seven different stites, so they just
• 18:55
  different stites like one of these sort of stike. Yeah, yeah, Queensland
• 19:02
  is the is really tropical, right it is? Yeah, especially out the
• 19:04
  chalk clock. You got pans and your ray for things. All that's it's
• 19:08
  hot as fun, but it's good. It's kind of like know like Midguard,
• 19:12
  like we would totally come to Australia him, let me know, you
• 19:18
  get some shows. Yeah, just we just need a big record label deal
• 19:23
  and stuff. We have to take a boat there though, No, you
• 19:26
  know, he's fy man fe Okay, it's a long way. But it's
• 19:30
  warm over there. I mean we Yeah, it's cold right now here.
• 19:33
  Even when it's raining, it's all that rare. It's right that rain.
• 19:37
  I just got your flu shot especially. That's how they do the flu shots
• 19:41
  because you guys have the opposite flu season from us, so they take whatever
• 19:45
  flu you guys have, they come up with a vaccine for it, and
• 19:48
  then that's our flu's just like we spit in each other's mouths and pass it
• 19:51
  around. You go, that are probably call what's the best place for people
• 20:02
  to to keep up with the band? I guess and then get your music
• 20:04
  and stuff dot com? So we yeah, Ryan is only fans page,
• 20:17
  just kidding. I'll send you the link to our our band camp page,
• 20:22
  which well that's probably the best place to get it. But I you know,
• 20:25
  we'll be online and all the online places that every listens to Spotify,
• 20:30
  Spotify and iq is and YouTube and all that crap. But but our band
• 20:33
  camp page will be it's updated now, or you can google our band name
• 20:37
  and you get the Georgetown massacre right away. Short Wave Records, Yeah yeah,
• 20:44
  so we started our We had a label called Shortwave Records I did a
• 20:48
  while ago. Uh that was a pretty good indie label. We had pretty
• 20:52
  big distributor and stuff with Red Eye Distribution and worldwide and then uh it kind
• 20:59
  of you know whatever, just because of whatever reasons. But I'm starting that
• 21:03
  back up again. So we're just putting this out on our own label right
• 21:07
  now. So oh yeah, yeah, go for you pleasure a gett to
• 21:18
  know you guys. I'm actually keep in contact of fucking Diggy music to pay
• 21:22
  in contact for sure. Yeah, thank you, thanks a lot for you
• 21:26
  know, giving us the time, and I'll send you an updated link to everything.