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Metal To The Extreme With KYLE SCHAEFER From FALLUJAH · HEAVY Music Interviews

• 0:00
  Sure. Yes. So my name's Kyle. I do vocals for the band
• 0:03
  Fallujah, and we are about to head out to Australia and just a few
• 0:08
  days here. Actually this weekend we're flying out for a six day tour with
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  Cattle Decapitation, and then on top of that, we've added one additional Fallujah
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  headlining show at the end of that too, so basically one full week of
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  Australian shows and yeah, it's gonna be a blast awesome, Carl, thanks
• 0:25
  for joining us, did I brother? Yeah, thanks for having me pleasure
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  say as you say, pleasure were charting to a strife for running shows Cattle
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  Decapitation, starting in Perth on September twelve, before we gone through Adelaide,
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  Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra and finishing in Brazil on September twenty. As you
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  say, my, it's not long now you're packed and ready to go.
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  That's sort the person you pack earlier to the last minute. Yeah, I'll
• 0:49
  do it last minute. Yeah, yeah, probably like middle of this week
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  or something. I'll be heading out because we're going down. So I'm in
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  the Bay Area in California, like sort of San Jose, kind of by
• 1:00
  San Francisco. But I gotta go down to Los Angeles to meet up up
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  with the guys who've got like a day and a half of rehearsals and then
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  we're all flying out from there together. So you know, I got some
• 1:10
  extra travel coming up. But but now I'm not packed yet. I'll do
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  that. It's it's pretty short too, so it's like compared to compared to
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  packing for like a six week long run, you know, you gotta pack
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  more stuff and think a little bit harder about that. This is just like,
• 1:25
  yeah, if I forget so then I'll be fine. You know,
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  I've got my passport, you gotta have a couple of sets of clothes.
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  I got my wireless pack in my Moike, and I'm you know, that's
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  the real critical stuff. So I was so aside for all these sentils,
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  like you mentioned, it's a one item that you always take with you,
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  and I'm better way you get. Yeah, there's there's a couple of things
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  for sure. I uh, I definitely always bring on like a charger,
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  like rechargeable battery, like like a phone charger battery type of thing. I
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  find myself needing that a lot, especially when we're traveling by a van and
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  everything. There's just there's just so many times from you're at the venue or
• 2:00
  just out somewhere and you don't have a chance to charge your phone, and
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  then I use my phone for like merchant social media stuff. So it's just
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  that's something I always bring to a couple of those backup batteries to stay charge
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  up all the time. That's probably like the one thing that isn't like essential,
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  but I would definitely always want to happen with me. And it's like
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  if it's not that long at all, like you say, but it's still
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  a pretty crawling run of six shows in nine days on the other side of
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  the world. Bro So like mentally and physically to prepare for something like that
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  not a whole lot, honestly. All it depends on whether I have to
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  learn any new material for the set, because that's something that I spend a
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  lot more time on, is like like the memorization of the music and so
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  like, for example, if I'm if I'm filling in for a different band,
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  or if if Felusha is doing new songs that I've never performed with the
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  band before, maybe like older stuff from before I joined, then I start
• 2:57
  preparing for their in advance. But for something like this where it's it's all
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  songs that we've done many times on stage, I'm not too worried about it.
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  I'll just try to make sure my voice is in shape by you know,
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  practicing pretty consistently for a few weeks beforehand, because you know, sometimes
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  if you haven't done screaming vocals for a month or whatever, you you know,
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  you pick it up again, You're like, Okay, I've fallen off
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  a bit, you know, I got to kind of get my voice back
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  in shape. So that that's one thing I really look out for is just
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  make sure that I'm like feeling normal with my vocals, which you know,
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  I two weeks is usually plenty for me for doing that. So yeah,
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  that's that's pretty much it. I don't know that I just show up and
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  kind of go with the flow. Years since the band is pained to with
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  s try and I've said a favorite is changed minded with about three new members,
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  So can you introduce this to the new guys? Just Try and Martin
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  not the same before. Yeah, So so this is my first time going
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  to Australia with the band, so I'm one of the new guys and I
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  know last time that went was it was with kill Switch Engage. I think
• 4:00
  around twenty sixteen or twenty seventeen, I'm not sure exactly, but since then,
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  let's see our most of our guys are new now actually, so we
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  have Killian on bass and Sam on guitar, or two guys we've been touring
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  with consistently for the whole last year. That's basically the post COVID lineup is
• 4:19
  with killing and Sam, so you'll be seeing them for the first time out
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  there. And then we're also kind of between drummers right now, so we
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  have a fill in drummer we're playing with. The guy named Gabe Seeber plays
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  in a bunch of bands. He's just finishing a tour with Decryptive Birth right
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  now. I think he just got home today from that. He's coming out
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  with us. He's played with Subskira a bunch of other bands, so he's
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  just filling in for us on this tour. But yeah, he'll be a
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  new face with the bands too, very good and yourself might tell us a
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  bit about yourself paper in this try and mind not be too familiar with here
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  all that. Yeah, so you know I've been in Fallujah for about a
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  year now, a little bit longer than that. I also have a solo
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  project sometimes band type of thing called Archaeologists, where in that I do guitar
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  and vocals and a bunch of other stuff. And that's that's pretty much it
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  nowadays. Between you know, all the scheduled stuff with Foluja as far as
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  the tours and working on the music and everything, I just try to fill
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  in as much time as I can with my solo Archaeologist stuff. And yeah,
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  that's a that's the bulk of it. So well, what sorts of
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  things do you bring to the band? Bright, what's going to be different
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  about seeing Felujia live now while you're there? And what there was last time
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  you? Yeah? Yeah, so you know, all all the vocalists have
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  been a little bit different. I'm the third official vocalist in the band,
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  and I believe last time they came to Australia, I'm sure it was still
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  with the original vocalist Alex, so there's been another guy in between there and
• 5:48
  another guy that was filling in for a while. So you know, I
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  try not to compare myself too directly to them, because everybody has their strengths
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  and weaknesses and all that. But yeah, I guess. I guess one
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  thing that I do a little bit differently is I started clean singing before I
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  got into the screaming vocals, so I have a longer background and that even
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  though I've been doing screaming vocals for a long time now too, it's like
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  clean vocals are sort of my, you know, way I originally got into
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  vocals in the first place. So I've been doing a lot more clean vocals
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  in the set and the other guys typically would do. So there's there's some
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  parts on the songs where there's like vocal guests features, especially like female vocal
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  parts have been pretty prevalent in older Falluja releases, So I try to sing
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  those parts when I can, because I'd rather sing it, even if I
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  have to do it an octave down or change the melody or something a little
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  bit. I'd I'd rather sing all the clean vocal parts than just like stand
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  there, you know, on mouth the words or whatever. Let a plane
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  backing. Okay, I just feel more awkward not singing it. So I
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  guess that's one thing you'll see, you know, I do as many clean
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  vocal parts as I can manage to squeeze in, but got like, have
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  you got a box a boy angry pills or something? The MICUs look at
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  it. You now, you look like you're too you know, you got
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  to get up there and just smash it. Yeah, maybe I need to
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  get something. I need to have some prescribe or something. I don't know
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  if they do angry pills over the counter or how you get those. You
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  know, I get that a lot. Actually, It's it's funny to you
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  going from like basically customer service mode at the Merge tables to like metal front
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  man mode on stage. I don't know. I just try to be authentic
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  with it, and like, you know, when the music is heavy and
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  aggressive, like I definitely feel that, and I love heavy, aggressive music,
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  you know, So I expressed that. However, I naturally kind of
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  do on stage, which is probably you know, angrier than my typical demeanor.
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  But you know, I'm not like going to pretend to be some I
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  don't know, somebody totally different either, So I don't know, I just
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  got kind of find the balance in there. Just just feel the music,
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  and you know, just I don't it's not even like angry necessarily but just
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  you know, the intensity of the music, I just try to channel that.
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  I guess you turn it on the back of your most recent album,
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  Imperium. So how much of that are you going to be playing live?
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  We're going to be doing a lot. I think. I think more than
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  half of the set list will be new stuff from Imperium. Yeah. Yeah,
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  we've got a couple of old das in there too, but yeah,
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  a lot of Imperium. Yeah, that album actually contains a lot of atmospheric
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  soundscapes at a moment, so I think difficult to replicate live. So some
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  of it is backing track, like the synths and all that. We don't
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  have a keyboard player, you know, so any of the like synth or
• 8:39
  keyboard tracks on the album or just backing tracks live. But apart from that,
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  you know, it's we keep the two guitarists pretty much busy at full
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  time, you know. But I'm just the nature of the music too,
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  is there's a lot of layers in it. There are many parts where you
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  would need to have three guitarists on stage to actually replicate everything you're hearing.
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  So anything that requires more hands than we have, you know, we'll put
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  in backing tracks, but we try to keep it minimal. But you know,
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  like Scott ends up doing a lot of the atmospheric lead kind of stuff.
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  There's a lot of you have all the tone changes built in to the
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  set, so it's going like the super reverted out clean guitars and leads like
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  that at the appropriate times with cattle decapitation, right, Like it's gonna be
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  a brittle, brittle chee bands at the chalky, but what changes the airmostoric
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  bounds. Have you ch old with them before? No, yeah, we
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  haven't. So they this is their tour that they set up and they just
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  invited us to support them, and we accepted the offer pretty much immediately when
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  they reached out. Yeah, we haven't played with them before, but there's
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  been some interactions there, Like I know our guitarists, Scott has met and
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  hung out with their singer Travis, and you know, I think there's been
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  some other interactions over the years. But you know, we were sort of
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  not like close friends or anything, but just sort of acquaintances with, you
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  know, some of the guys in the band, and I guess they just
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  yeah, I decided to invite us, and of course we were down and
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  you're joined for most of the shows except the Melbourne one I believe by Australian
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  band Melancholy. Have you heard much about them? Not until we got this
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  tour actually, so now I'm more familiar with them, you know, I've
• 10:16
  looked them up and check them out. Yeah, so that they should be
• 10:18
  cool. And we've talked to some of the guys now too. Yeah,
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  I didn't know them before we got invited to do this tour, but looking
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  forward to meeting all the guys. And then you've got Psychroptic with you at
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  the Sydney show, like you would have heard of them for sure, right,
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  Yeah, so Psycroptic I do know because we did a full six week
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  US and Canada tour with them last year. So those those are our old
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  buddies by this point. So it'll be cool to see all them again.
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  It's going to be a brutal night of music, like you want, you
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  want to take you battle armor with you all And it's right right. That's
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  toll finishes on September the twentieth. So what's the next rest flows you're after
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  that? Have you got plans? Yeah? So again, we do have
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  one extra show at the end of it. On the twenty first, we're
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  doing an additional show in Melbourne with Folujjah headlining. Melancholy is on that too,
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  and another band called Zealolite is opening, so we've got that one extra
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  show then we fly home and I think the next thing on the agenda is
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  just working on the next album, working on new music. We've got some
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  stuff in the works that we've you know, met up to work on a
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  few times here and there and throwing some ideas back and forth. But I
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  think as soon as we get back, we're gonna fully dive into that and
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  have that become really the main focus for everything we're doing, because we're gonna
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  have more tours you know, of course kind up for next year, but
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  it's it seems like now is the time for us to really dig in and
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  get as much of the album done as we can before we let you go.
• 11:43
  Bro. We started up three new Spotify lists based on songs from people
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  we speak to you, so using your own songs. They can be from
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  many other band that you're in. They don't have to be Fallujah, but
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  we got give us a song for a playlist to get the party started.
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  One for a playlistic gonna save your marriage and wanted a play potentially end your
• 12:03
  marriage. Oh wow, but what kind of music saves your marriage? Is
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  it? Like? Whatever? I don't know if I'm I wonder how how
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  many marriages collud It has saved over yours, Like I gotta think about this,
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  let's see. So to get the party started, I'm gonna say soul
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  Breaker from our latest Albuman period. I'm obviously going to be biased towards the
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  newer stuff, stuff that I'm honestly I let's say soul Breaker for that,
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  they're saving your marriage, ending your marriage? Right, let's see, you
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  know, to save your marriage, I'll pick something from from my other project.
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  I'll do an archaeologist song. Let's say, uh, let's say Winter's
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  Wake Part one, which I also has our guitar at Scott on it.
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  That's a I can't explain why, but that song will save your marriage.
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  Just give it a shot. How are we gonna end it? And then
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  I like the of this too. It's like you're saving your marriage and then
• 13:03
  ending it. You would think you would think you would end it and then
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  have to save it, But I guess maybe you regret saving it. So
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  I played my bride by the murder Dolls of the song that we Walk down
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  the Aisle two. Oh nice, that's the sort of person I am.
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  The marriage was over? Why a PM that night we broke up. Yeah,
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  well, let's let's see to andrew marriage. I'll say Mindless Omnipotent Master
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  from again from the latest Fallujah album, Just a real angry song. You
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  know, I'm just trying to figure out how I'm going to spell that.
• 13:39
  It's it's a it's mom mom for short. Mom is the acronym. Yeah,
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  my Mindless Omnipotent Master. Beautiful. Thanks for joining us, say brother.
• 13:50
  I shall add those to the playlists directly, and we'll see out here
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  later this month. I'll probably pople onto the Bridgbane show, so hopefully get
• 13:56
  to catch up and over bre awesome sounds good man, Yeah, I'll see
• 14:00
  you there. I'll be I'll be doing merch, so no where to find
• 14:03
  me. I'm coming to say Hi. Sounds good man. Good? You
• 14:07
  two have a good one, yeah,