Latest / The Downbeat / DEAFHEAVEN: George Clarke on Lyrics, Mental Health, Sobriety & Black Metal

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DEAFHEAVEN: George Clarke on Lyrics, Mental Health, Sobriety & Black Metal · The Downbeat

• 0:00
  What's up guys, Welcome back to the Downbeat Podcast.
• 0:02
  My very special guest this week is the Royal George Lesarge
• 0:07
  Clark the 4th. He is not a king.
• 0:10
  That is his real name. We will get into why he is the
• 0:13
  vocalist and lyricist of the band Death Heaven, One of my
• 0:17
  favorite heavy bands of all time.
• 0:19
  But you know what, 50% of their music is liked and we talk about
• 0:22
  everything to do with the band. I had previously had Dan from
• 0:27
  Death Heaven, the drummer on and we really deep dive on the album
• 0:30
  Sunbaver. This is more of a deep dive on
• 0:32
  the new album Lonely People With Power.
• 0:34
  We go into the artwork, we go into the themes.
• 0:36
  But also, I have been listening to Death Heaven for well over 10
• 0:41
  years and I've been obsessed with this man's lyrics.
• 0:43
  They are poetic and they are quite ambiguous, so I had a
• 0:47
  bunch of lines that I wanted closure on.
• 0:50
  What did they mean? Did my little emo brain
• 0:53
  interpret them in the right way? So I put all those questions to
• 0:55
  George. Unbelievable band.
• 0:57
  The new album Lonely People With Power is definitely in my top
• 1:01
  five of the year, maybe number one of the year.
• 1:05
  Before we get started, I want to let you know we have a
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  this episode is brought to you by the lovely people at neural
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  DSP. Let's set the scene.
• 2:31
  You've got a piece of wood right and it's got a longer piece of
• 2:33
  wood on it and then you've got these things like string like
• 2:37
  things right made out of metal and you've put them all on there
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  I'm not a luthier, right? Some of that would have been
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  Yes, that's right. The 30% off neuraldsp.com.
• 3:37
  The Downbeat. It's George Lesarge Clark, the
• 3:41
  4th of Death Heaven on the Dowry podcast.
• 3:57
  That's that we're in. We're in, Beautiful George.
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  George Clark. Yes, Sir.
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  Welcome to the Downbeat. Great to be here.
• 4:03
  What? What's Lesage?
• 4:05
  It's my middle name. Is it?
• 4:07
  Yeah. Yeah.
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  George Lesage Clark, the 4th. No fucking way.
• 4:11
  Yeah, God help. Me, a name as poetic as your
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  lyrics. I do what I can, you know,
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  Indebted to my father. Who I think my mom was like, you
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  know, we got to break the the curse here and name him
• 4:23
  something else, but he wouldn't allow it really.
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  I think the 4th, the 4th. What's the deal with when it's
• 4:29
  the fourth? Like is that that's not on the
• 4:31
  birth certificate. It is very much so, yeah.
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  Yeah. The 4th or like Roman numeral.
• 4:37
  Ivy, Yeah. That's so serious.
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  Yeah, it's all right. Yeah.
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  Now I think like, OK, well if I have one just for just for the
• 4:43
  goof, it should, it should be the 5th.
• 4:45
  Oh, 100%. Regardless of gender.
• 4:48
  Yeah. Yeah, I could have.
• 4:49
  You could have a girl named George Georgina.
• 4:51
  That's kind of cute. Georgina Such.
• 4:53
  A cute girl's name? Yeah.
• 4:55
  Georgie. Georgie, you see?
• 4:56
  OK. Georgie the 5th.
• 4:58
  OK, it's locked in. I actually, I was at this point
• 5:02
  very years ago, I was talking to someone who asked this the same
• 5:05
  thing. They're like, you know what's
• 5:06
  massage? And I was like, yeah, it's my
• 5:08
  middle name. And like, oh, I thought it was
• 5:10
  your stage name. That's what I thought.
• 5:12
  And I was like that I'm actually kind of mortified by the idea of
• 5:16
  having a stage name, especially the sage.
• 5:18
  Yeah, it's very. It's mystical.
• 5:21
  Yeah, I I just assumed. I just assumed mystical, man.
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  But it's a real name. And not only is a real name Mr.
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  Fourth. Yeah.
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  Do all three incarnations have all four?
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  All three? Plus you have Lesage as well.
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  The full. It's full.
• 5:37
  It's full. Yeah, yeah, you.
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  Can't stop that now. Carrie used to have a joke, too,
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  because it's all sixes. It's 6 letters each.
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  You know, he had this big theory that, you know, there's a,
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  there's a devilish presence here, You know, when we were
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  kids. Yeah.
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  Because I was really into, like, faces of death and stuff.
• 5:52
  Oh. Yeah, me too.
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  I just watched one earlier today.
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  Yeah, my uncle, when we would go, my family's from Louisiana,
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  Mississippi, when we'd be in Mississippi and there was like
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  this really small video store that had like a special
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  intersection and, and they sold all of them.
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  And so we would rent a couple movies and then he'd be like,
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  let's get a face of death and when everyone goes to sleep,
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  we'll watch it. It's.
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  Terrible uncle activity. Madison, do you know what Faces
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  of Death is? It is a old VHS of actual
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  murders. Yeah, that you could just rent.
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  You can just rent. It's just real death.
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  Or they would have the they'd have the occasional like mishap
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  where it'd be an interview with a guy that, say, tried to shoot
• 6:35
  himself with a shotgun, but he messed up and he was just like
• 6:39
  like horrifically disfigured A. Blooper.
• 6:41
  Yeah, yeah, a blooper. Yeah.
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  And they would have a nice little like, you know, grainy
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  interview with him, like sitting by a tree.
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  Yeah, yeah, man, that was that's what we grew up.
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  How old are you? A 36.
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  You know, I'm 30. Yeah.
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  Yeah, that's what we grew up with.
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  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then we had rotten.com.
• 6:56
  Yes, we did and we had Ogrish and Rotten and I don't know if
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  you maybe this was like just the states thing, but we had crime
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  news 2000. No what's?
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  That it was just like basically a Geocities website.
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  It was like white with just blue links of crime news, daily crime
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  news that was happening around the country.
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  It was like an aggregate and they would compile local
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  stories. And so you'd be like, oh, like
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  Louisville and you like click it and be like, you know, man
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  murders, family kind of thing. My mom was like obsessed with
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  it. And for, you know, my whole, you
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  know, family and they're, they have like a death obsession, I
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  think a little bit. So I got into it.
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  And so yeah, if you want to do some light reading, it'd be
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  crime news. And then if you wanted to see
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  the real thing, you'd go over to Rotten.
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  Rotten, the face of the death, rotten some of the rotten stuff.
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  Just that's probably maybe the 10th time I've mentioned it on
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  the broadcast. Like just burned into my brain.
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  Mind the gap. Remember that one?
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  That's the that's the the guy that's bisected by a train.
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  Yep. What caught in between the?
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  I think that one's head gets caught between the train and the
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  platform. Oh nice.
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  And it's nice, beautiful, and it's like fucking like a 90°
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  angle into the face and then just a stream of blood because
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  he's been dragged along. Lord, I know, but you know,
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  lovely day for it. Another one on the net today.
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  We can't fucking talk about that.
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  No, we won't and we won't. But all this does remind me of
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  the Bud Dwyer video. The won't.
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  It was like, I'm going to get this wrong probably.
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  But I think like an American politician, or maybe he was a
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  newscaster or he was, he was scandalized by something.
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  And they were giving a press conference.
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  And it's, it's on the faces of death.
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  And he takes a gun out of a paper bag and he blows him.
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  Yeah, he shits himself. And there's like, sorry to go
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  into this. There's like a river of blood.
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  I remember that one, yeah. Yeah, 'cause you know, you're,
• 9:00
  you're like, you're like a Capri Sun, you know what I mean?
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  Like all this inside us, it's very pressurized.
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  It's very pressurized, you know, gravity and such.
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  This fucking yeah. But it's, I remember being like,
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  you know, probably younger than 10 and just like fixated.
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  We'll leave the rotten.com in a second because I think I've only
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  spoke about this in the podcast once, so apologies if anyone's
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  heard it before. So when I was in my rotten.com
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  Ogrish sort of era of my life, which I think shaped me for the
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  better because I saw some horrible shit and I was like,
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  God, I don't want horrible shit to happen.
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  And by the time, like, beheading videos and stuff came out, I
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  remember being like, yeah, we're.
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  I did a couple, We're fine. I did a couple in there.
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  It's like now this is a bit too much.
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  There was a time when I found it for the first time, I was like
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  morbidly curious. And I was like, there's no way
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  this is real. It can't be real.
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  And there was a video of someone getting shot in the face and
• 9:56
  there it was like point blank range.
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  And I was like, there's no way this is real.
• 10:02
  And I like skimmed through it and like, you know, one like
• 10:06
  Winamp or whatever I was using to watch the video, whatever was
• 10:09
  embedded thing was in my browser and the frame where the bullet
• 10:14
  hits the skull like was wasn't there.
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  So it was just like shoots the gun next frame is like head
• 10:21
  exploding. So I didn't know about frame
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  rates or anything. So I was like oh this is fake.
• 10:26
  This must be fake. Mum come and see this video.
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  I called my fucking mummy. To the room.
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  Watch the video. She's like shocked.
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  And then I'm like, no, no, no, no, no.
• 10:38
  It's fake. It's fake.
• 10:38
  It's fake. Panning through, clicking
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  through the frames. Found the frame, found the frame
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  where the bullet. Enters the sky and what is she
• 10:45
  when she's just like this is. Already doing banned from the
• 10:48
  Internet for like, I want to say six weeks.
• 10:51
  Yeah, it was a whole thing. I'm sure there was conversations
• 10:55
  I don't know about where it was just like we have murderer on
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  because they didn't have that. No, no, I know.
• 11:02
  No, of course not. And like it was all.
• 11:05
  Drawn. Yeah, yeah, they had, they had
• 11:08
  comics. Comics.
• 11:09
  Yeah, not the same as a real snuff video.
• 11:11
  No, no. And it is terrible.
• 11:14
  I I remember thinking even I remember like thinking as a kid,
• 11:18
  like, like, oh, what if like, you know, like someone I loved
• 11:22
  ended up, you know, it's terrible.
• 11:24
  Yeah, but whatever it it, it's, it's just, it's part of culture,
• 11:29
  you know, it. It's what shaped us.
• 11:31
  It is, it is what Shape does. And you make very bleak music.
• 11:34
  Yeah, very, very bleak lyrics. Yeah, I've carried it on.
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  And they don't really scream rotten.com.
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  They're not no, no, but you know, I, I early, early years,
• 11:46
  you know, came from the Chris Barnes school of, of, of metal
• 11:50
  lyricism. So it's it's there's always a
• 11:52
  piece of. Did you have a band before Death
• 11:54
  Head? I did, yeah.
• 11:55
  I mean, you know, like as you do kind of growing up with.
• 11:58
  Chris Barnes Cannibal Corpse lyrics.
• 12:01
  No, no, I never, I never wrote Gore myself, but like obviously
• 12:06
  I loved it. It's so like shocking and when I
• 12:09
  was 1415131415 metal core, like where I grew up, which was I
• 12:19
  guess you could call a suburb, but basically just like a a
• 12:23
  small town in in Central California.
• 12:26
  A few of them metal core really reached those areas in a way
• 12:31
  that other types of metal just didn't seem to, you know.
• 12:35
  And I think pop probably largely because of the imagery and
• 12:39
  stuff. It was also like the aggressive
• 12:41
  music that like girls were into and.
• 12:44
  Metal core, not like death metal.
• 12:46
  Yeah, yeah, exactly. So like, even though I had at
• 12:50
  that point been listening to death metal and like, and a
• 12:54
  little bit of black metal as well, the bands that I was in
• 12:59
  were, yeah, metal core. I was in a couple metal core
• 13:03
  bands and I was like, yeah, like 1516 and then.
• 13:06
  And then when I was 1819, I was in sort of a little bit like
• 13:12
  Converge, but a little grindier maybe.
• 13:15
  You know, like we were really into like rotten sound and
• 13:17
  Phobia and stuff like that. Ronron.com sound?
• 13:20
  Yes, exactly Ron. Exactly what band?
• 13:23
  You don't hear anyone talking about them these days.
• 13:25
  You know, it's a shame, murder works.
• 13:26
  It's a shame. And then and Carrie and I were
• 13:29
  were kind of like, that's where we started.
• 13:30
  And that project started to make kind of Death Heaven music.
• 13:36
  And then when we moved to San Francisco, we started Death
• 13:40
  Heaven. And then Death Heaven just on
• 13:41
  its own kind of became a thing that we toured and stuff.
• 13:44
  But prior to that it was just playing like taquerias and, and
• 13:49
  info shops and things like that, you know?
• 13:52
  With no gore lyrics. No gore lyrics.
• 13:55
  Always been a poet. I have.
• 13:56
  So basically, we're going to we're going to do a deep.
• 13:58
  We're going to do a deep dive. Please.
• 13:59
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 14:00
  On your lyrics. But you need to tell me is it
• 14:02
  all you? That writes them.
• 14:04
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course. Fucked because I'm fucked
• 14:06
  otherwise. So I've got I've got no
• 14:07
  questions for you. Great if if that's not.
• 14:10
  No, no. Yeah.
• 14:11
  You know, fortunately, unfortunately, it it is me.
• 14:14
  It's my main contribution to, to the band.
• 14:17
  Yeah, I've always kind of been into, you know, that type of
• 14:20
  thing. I'm gonna.
• 14:21
  Gas you up for a minute for anyone that doesn't know.
• 14:23
  OK, I'm ready. So, and I think I told you this
• 14:27
  show you a festival recently like you're in my top three
• 14:33
  heavy lyricists of all time. Wow, I really appreciate.
• 14:36
  That and you've already mentioned one of the other guys
• 14:39
  that's in my top three, which is Jacob Bannon from The Verge.
• 14:44
  Similar style but different both.
• 14:46
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Very, very poetic.
• 14:49
  Yeah, very inspiring for sure. He's like crazy.
• 14:52
  And then I put Chino in there. I like, I like a bit sexy, but
• 14:55
  like, that's my top. Three, that's great, man.
• 14:57
  That's a very good company. I appreciate.
• 14:59
  That and thank you. I I have been a massive fan of
• 15:03
  your band since, I won't say since Rose to Judah, because it
• 15:07
  was somebody that was like, somebody came out and I love,
• 15:12
  love blackmail my whole life. Loved two guys separately.
• 15:17
  Loved Wolves in the Throne Room, which was the closest thing at
• 15:20
  that sort of point in my area where it's like, wait, it's
• 15:23
  blackmail, but there's nice bits.
• 15:25
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then someone showed me that
• 15:26
  and I was just like, every time you guys have released an album,
• 15:30
  Album of the year for me. Wow.
• 15:31
  Thank you. This is album of the year.
• 15:34
  Wow. Infinite Granite was album of
• 15:36
  the year. Really.
• 15:38
  Absolutely. Yeah.
• 15:38
  I appreciate that. Are you surprised?
• 15:40
  Because it's. They're not a heavy one.
• 15:41
  It's. Just that, yeah, it's, it's I
• 15:43
  guess of all of our catalog, it's the controversial one.
• 15:45
  Oh yeah. Love you.
• 15:46
  I absolutely loved it. And I think I said at the time I
• 15:49
  was like, I don't care if this is what they do moving forward.
• 15:52
  I don't need to miss the other stuff because it's still there
• 15:55
  and whatever. And then you come out with just
• 15:58
  an absolute banger, which I think is better than somebody
• 16:02
  though. You know, I it's it's my
• 16:05
  personal favorite. Yeah.
• 16:06
  It's phenomenal. I really appreciate that, like
• 16:09
  you. So I have, you know, long
• 16:12
  standing history with enjoying your band, but your lyrics are
• 16:17
  so poetic and quite broad in how they can be interpreted.
• 16:24
  I've required a lot a quite a long list of things I'd like to
• 16:27
  dig into, yeah. Yeah.
• 16:29
  Hey, guys, you might notice the light wasn't on.
• 16:31
  Madison, the producer has found out nine minutes in, the lights
• 16:36
  not on. So thanks very much.
• 16:38
  The lights back on. This carry on with the show.
• 16:40
  We've got, we've got a really healthy glow now.
• 16:42
  We did. Yeah, Yeah.
• 16:43
  I'm, I'm feeling invigorated. We're going to be back to life.
• 16:47
  It's fine because for the algorithm, people will have left
• 16:50
  comments by now about the light, and that's going to boost.
• 16:54
  That's going to boost working engagement.
• 16:56
  I like this. Anyway, I have quite an
• 16:59
  extensive list of even down to certain lines that I'd love to
• 17:04
  know. Really.
• 17:04
  Yeah. What was going on in your head?
• 17:06
  Cool. And I do have, like, a broader
• 17:08
  conversation to talk about. Yeah.
• 17:10
  But let's start with before I go into that because it might,
• 17:13
  might bore Everyone isn't me. And I don't care because it's my
• 17:16
  show. You came straight from band
• 17:17
  practice. I did, yeah.
• 17:19
  Yeah. So we are.
• 17:20
  We're in Nashville. We are starting a tour tomorrow
• 17:23
  in Chattanooga. We are doing kind of guess what
• 17:29
  they call secondary cities or something.
• 17:32
  Bee Market. Bee Market.
• 17:34
  But it, it feels, it feels denigrating a little bit, you
• 17:38
  know, it feels a little, you know, I don't want to call these
• 17:41
  places. Bees, you know.
• 17:42
  They are places that we go to, you know, every four or five
• 17:46
  years or something and bring bring our message to the people
• 17:51
  and we're taking out harm's way. And I promise the world, which
• 17:55
  I'm excited about, and I don't know the harm's way guys, but
• 18:01
  everyone like 100% of people I've inquired, you know, to
• 18:06
  about them have been like best guys.
• 18:09
  I know Bo and I love him and I love that band.
• 18:12
  I love the way that line up as well.
• 18:14
  Kind of just sums you guys up. By the time it comes to you,
• 18:18
  it's like, you know, there's a bit of niceness and then you've
• 18:23
  got harm's way, which is disgusting.
• 18:25
  Yeah. And then you've got you.
• 18:26
  Yeah, yeah. And I do like stacking bills
• 18:29
  that way where it's kind of like every artist, if we are
• 18:32
  headlining sort of has a piece of, of what we do in their own
• 18:36
  way that we can, you know, kind of share with them.
• 18:40
  That I I promise the world band is like sounds.
• 18:43
  They're like new, aren't they? But they sound super like this
• 18:46
  is 2000. And one, yeah, we got put on to
• 18:48
  them and I was like, I'm going to check this out.
• 18:50
  And like it's like eyeball records.
• 18:53
  It's it's wild. I checked it out and I was like
• 18:56
  let me just check when this was. Released.
• 18:58
  Yeah, Yeah, No. 2024. Yeah, yeah, which is cool.
• 19:01
  I mean, there's all this, you know, if you're in the game long
• 19:03
  enough, you, you see how things kind of come back to being in
• 19:10
  vogue and how newer artists put their touch on, on older styles.
• 19:18
  And, and we're, we're just of age now to where we can kind of
• 19:23
  have experienced both both the, the original quote and, and
• 19:28
  what's happening currently. I think you see that like kind
• 19:31
  of across genres. And for me it's, it's kind of
• 19:37
  like comforting. I don't know.
• 19:38
  I think it's really cool to see not only these bands, these
• 19:43
  newer bands excel, but by proxy the older bands get a little bit
• 19:49
  of shine, you know? But I mean, do you want to talk
• 19:53
  about acid bath? I mean that that's a huge one,
• 19:56
  no, And honestly, that's a huge one that's.
• 19:57
  The craziest thing they did? Two nights at the Palladium and
• 20:01
  I remember thinking initially, before tickets had gone on sale,
• 20:05
  being like. Wow, Like what?
• 20:08
  I'm surprised. Yeah.
• 20:09
  Like, is there really a demand for this?
• 20:11
  It it blew out, Yeah, in like, maybe like less than a day. 7000
• 20:16
  tickets. It's insane.
• 20:17
  Yeah. For a band that at the time was
• 20:19
  like, people liked them. Yeah, sure.
• 20:21
  No, no, it's great. And they disappeared.
• 20:23
  Yeah. And you were.
• 20:24
  I mean, you just mentioned Deftones.
• 20:27
  I mean, I think that's probably the biggest example for a band
• 20:34
  who has played a really fantastic long game and who has
• 20:40
  been consistent and who is just like through their own efforts
• 20:45
  of making good music and touring consistently and, and whatever
• 20:49
  else have really gained the attention of so many people.
• 20:54
  And they're easily the biggest they've ever been.
• 20:57
  You know what I mean? For me and and for us as as a
• 21:02
  band who I think is isn't it for the long haul, it is very
• 21:07
  inspiring to see. It's cool.
• 21:09
  I think with death tones they're like particularly in the UKI was
• 21:14
  felt a little bit sorry for them where it would be like always
• 21:18
  the bridesmaid, never the bride. They'd never headline like
• 21:21
  Download or any other like the big festivals.
• 21:23
  They were always just main support, main support, main
• 21:26
  support and then they just kept going and just the biggest band
• 21:30
  of love. Tik Tok's got a lot, a lot to
• 21:32
  say for both of those bands. Sure, sure.
• 21:34
  Yeah. And I think that's like, that's
• 21:37
  right. That's how it should be.
• 21:39
  I mean, if you're going to have this new exciting social
• 21:46
  platform, why not have it show you things that have deserved
• 21:53
  the light for, you know, as long as they've existed?
• 21:55
  It's funny because it's like the music being played on Tik Toks
• 22:00
  is relatively new in terms of like memes.
• 22:04
  Like the musical element of memes is only like maybe five
• 22:08
  years old. There was memes before that,
• 22:11
  sure, but it proves like whatever that song can like
• 22:15
  inspiring the person that's viewing it.
• 22:18
  If that catches on and goes viral, it's like that song made
• 22:22
  its point, even though it's like if it's 20 years later, that
• 22:25
  song can go viral for the emotion it was supposed to
• 22:28
  invoke 20 years later on a brand new platform.
• 22:31
  It transcends kind of sick, yeah.
• 22:33
  And then you sell out the Palladium.
• 22:35
  Yeah, yeah. Or, or the forum.
• 22:38
  Yeah, you know, or deaf. Tons of two nights of the forum.
• 22:41
  But what doesn't happen, guys, is when you write a song because
• 22:45
  you think it will go viral on TikTok, just don't do that.
• 22:48
  Yeah, it's, it's too hard of a moving target.
• 22:51
  Yeah, there's it. I mean, like, I'm sure there's
• 22:53
  people who probably do have TikTok kids that were like,
• 22:56
  yeah, we knew this was going to, you know, this was going to go.
• 22:58
  But yeah, I mean, just that approach, the songwriting is so
• 23:02
  funny. I can't imagine.
• 23:04
  I can't stand it. Yeah.
• 23:05
  And you, you have to release the song yesterday because The thing
• 23:08
  is already viral by the time you go to the studio and you record
• 23:11
  it. Let's jump on this trend.
• 23:13
  Trend's gone. Yeah, Yeah.
• 23:14
  No, no, you're chasing something.
• 23:15
  Yeah, No. And that's, and I think just to
• 23:18
  your earlier point, I think that's when you have something
• 23:21
  that is, is honest and and has a real genuine emotional weight
• 23:28
  that that will transcend not just through mediums, but
• 23:32
  through generations. You know it's cool.
• 23:34
  Speaking of the like stack in the line UPS thing, yeah, how
• 23:38
  was that knock loose tour? Awesome.
• 23:40
  Because it was, I think head Buster, you guys not.
• 23:45
  Loose and Head Buster and us shared a bus and I love those
• 23:49
  guys today. I don't know, I'm banned.
• 23:51
  Cool though. Great band and the sweetest guys
• 23:55
  and really smart and very funny and I can't say enough good
• 23:58
  things about them. And and of course, same with
• 24:03
  Knock Loose. Knock Loose, doing that tour and
• 24:08
  and subsequently becoming friends with them has like
• 24:12
  broadened my horizon in a way that I haven't had in a long
• 24:16
  time. You know, like we were very kind
• 24:21
  of fixed in our scene, a scene that I love and you know, you
• 24:24
  know, have a lot of good friends in and etcetera, but I just
• 24:27
  didn't really know, you know what I mean?
• 24:29
  And I and I like the band, but until we went on that tour, I
• 24:33
  was like, wow, there's like a whole world out here and I felt
• 24:37
  very privileged to be touring with people that I consider to
• 24:41
  be at the forefront of that world.
• 24:43
  And so so that tour was great. But even with them, I, I was
• 24:48
  talking with Brian and Isaac and they were like, you know, we had
• 24:52
  no idea what it would be like for you and head bus to share a
• 24:55
  bus because you probably musically in the, you know,
• 25:00
  larger aggressive world couldn't find things more opposite, you
• 25:04
  know, but awesome, you know, and, and since then, as, as we
• 25:13
  have kind of started to play with these heavier bands and
• 25:20
  bands outside of, of bands that we like historically would tour
• 25:23
  with, I found that like we get along with all these guys and we
• 25:28
  did a couple shows in the UK with pain of Truth and I love.
• 25:33
  Those guys as. Well, and at the end of it, we
• 25:35
  were like, we should do this more.
• 25:36
  And it's the same thing as head Buster.
• 25:38
  Like, I think on paper people might be like, that's a really
• 25:42
  strange combination, but no, it's awesome.
• 25:45
  But I think to bring it back to the TikTok thing, which we even
• 25:48
  can with not loose because you know, they were already big and
• 25:51
  then they popped off and TikTok huge thing.
• 25:54
  But like kids being into so many different songs because of them
• 26:01
  being on TikTok. Like you might listen like Apex
• 26:03
  Twin is having another like revival because there's people
• 26:08
  that post the sad videos and it's always something from
• 26:12
  ambient work. So you've got all these kids
• 26:17
  that are like consuming all these accidentally consuming all
• 26:21
  of these wide genres that they, I hope it's going to end up that
• 26:25
  bills like that are like the norm because I would love that.
• 26:28
  I don't want to see 5 metal bands.
• 26:31
  Neither do I want to. See 2.5.
• 26:34
  Yeah, I mean, I'm the exact same way.
• 26:35
  And, and in the same way that records have sequences where
• 26:41
  typically like, like really great records aren't kind of
• 26:45
  bludgeoning you the whole time. They're not one note, you know,
• 26:48
  they go, they ebb and they flow and you get a lot of different
• 26:51
  sides to the artist that you're listening to.
• 26:54
  I like shows to be that way. I think that like when headliner
• 26:59
  bands curate their show really well, it gives the audience an
• 27:03
  experience that is like like you said, like wide and that's cool
• 27:09
  and it and you know, that's like, you know, TikTok in real
• 27:13
  life or something, you know what I mean?
• 27:14
  Like. And they people end up wanting
• 27:16
  to watch the whole show. Like if I go to a show and it's
• 27:20
  this is hypothetical. If I go to a show and it's 5
• 27:22
  bands with insane spiky logos like oh, and I don't know any of
• 27:26
  them except the headliner. Probably after band three, I'm
• 27:29
  going to get a beer. I'm at the bar.
• 27:31
  Yeah, I'm going to get beer, probably to a pee or maybe throw
• 27:34
  down smoke and then come back. But if I'm watching like an
• 27:40
  audio movie then I'm way more likely to say yes.
• 27:45
  Yeah. And I feel the exact same way
• 27:46
  and and and again going back to Knock loose credit to them
• 27:53
  because I think that they I think that we are a band like
• 27:56
  that. I think that they are definitely
• 27:57
  a band like that. I think that they always have a
• 27:59
  really nice diverse billing and I think that our bands connected
• 28:05
  on that idea pretty early on to like knowing each other.
• 28:09
  Yeah, I just think it's it's a smart thing that a lot of people
• 28:13
  do get, which is great. And you got Europe straight
• 28:16
  after that, again, with a pretty diverse bill portrayal of guilt.
• 28:22
  Yes, You know those guys, I imagine.
• 28:24
  You know I do. We actually, we took them out in
• 28:26
  Europe. We did a Co headline with Touché
• 28:31
  Moray. And what was this in 19 maybe?
• 28:38
  Yeah, I think 19. One of the best tours we've ever
• 28:42
  done. I mean, we've been friends with
• 28:44
  those guys for a really long time and and I love them to
• 28:46
  death. Nick, their guitar player and I,
• 28:49
  I have a very close relationship.
• 28:51
  He does all the art and he's kind of like the Deaf heaven art
• 28:55
  director. He's like our 6 member in any
• 28:57
  case. We no not.
• 28:58
  Oh, you did? Yeah, he did the Sun beta cover.
• 29:01
  Oh, wow. Yeah, and we work together on on
• 29:05
  everything portrayal, opened that tour, love that band.
• 29:10
  And then we were a couple years ago playing in Birmingham and
• 29:17
  they were playing the same night.
• 29:19
  And after our show we went over to theirs to catch their set and
• 29:24
  they were always good. But something happened, you
• 29:28
  know, just years of playing, I suppose.
• 29:32
  Phenomenal. We did a small tour with them,
• 29:34
  I'm pretty sure, and I was blown away.
• 29:36
  Or we did like, maybe like a weekend.
• 29:38
  Yeah, James. James is, I love this guy,
• 29:42
  phenomenal drummer. He actually has been getting
• 29:46
  into like posting videos. Yeah, and he's so good.
• 29:49
  And so they're popping off and. They're doing great.
• 29:52
  To bring it back to the middle names thing, when I met James,
• 29:56
  James is surname. He's Beverage, right?
• 30:00
  And he's never met another Beverage in his life because
• 30:03
  he's a Scottish surname. My middle name is beverage.
• 30:06
  Really spelt the same. So we like bonded over that.
• 30:10
  He was like, oh, James, blah, blah, blah.
• 30:12
  I think we followed the HR when I was like, wait a fucking
• 30:14
  minute, your name is Beverage? And he was like, yeah, it's
• 30:16
  Scottish. And I was like, brother, I know
• 30:18
  it's my middle name. I'm the first though.
• 30:20
  Craig Bever Adrenaline the first first of his kind.
• 30:23
  You know, there's like, there's always time for that, for that
• 30:25
  junior, you know, for that second marathon.
• 30:29
  She is my girlfriend guys, OK. All right, all right.
• 30:32
  Yeah. So cancel.
• 30:33
  All clear. Cancel twice in a week, Jesus.
• 30:37
  Christ, what's going on? Let.
• 30:38
  Me, go to my fucking notes. Oh my God, I have so many notes
• 30:40
  that we need to. I've never got notes, by the
• 30:43
  way. I'm going to sweat you.
• 30:45
  Great. Let's go straight into the lyric
• 30:46
  thing. Sure.
• 30:48
  I don't. I don't know how I'm going to
• 30:51
  compartmentalize all of this into, like, what's supposed to
• 30:54
  be my job. So it's entertaining, yeah.
• 30:56
  I'll try not to be super dry. No, it's me.
• 30:58
  I have too much I want to ask and I have to make it
• 31:01
  entertaining for everyone else and like, have some sort of, you
• 31:04
  know, scope to it. So I'll be as wide as possible
• 31:08
  with the first question. Where'd you get your inspiration
• 31:11
  for lyrics? God, you know, it changes a lot.
• 31:16
  I guess I do a fair amount of reading.
• 31:20
  See this on your Instagram. I it's like the only thing I
• 31:23
  post. Yeah.
• 31:23
  And I'm just like, here's a book.
• 31:25
  I really don't know what to do with Instagram anymore.
• 31:26
  I used to be great. At you got the name, you got the
• 31:29
  books on the Instagram, you are the.
• 31:32
  You are the fault I'm doing all right.
• 31:33
  I felt like I used to be a lot more fun.
• 31:36
  But in any case, yeah, there's certain poets I I really love
• 31:43
  Dolce Maria Loinez is like one of my favorite poets.
• 31:47
  I, I, I like a lot of sort of like images writing.
• 31:51
  I like things that, you know, kind of paint a, a picture and
• 31:56
  sometimes it's surreal and sometimes it's very barren.
• 32:00
  And I, I find both appealing. I think that really simple
• 32:05
  writing is very appealing. Really verbose writing can be
• 32:08
  very appealing. You know what they call like
• 32:10
  purple, which is like, just like kind of overwrought and well.
• 32:15
  I don't know that so. It's come on, it's like.
• 32:18
  You love a colour as well, don't you?
• 32:20
  I do. Love, I love colours, yeah.
• 32:23
  And that's The thing is, is I, I have found over time, especially
• 32:25
  with lyrics, I, I do tend to kind of like repeat certain
• 32:31
  images or, or themes. Oh, I know.
• 32:33
  There's a big one. Flowers is a big one.
• 32:35
  Oh, I got questions and I got don't spoil it.
• 32:37
  Tree trees. Lots of trees, trees, but a lot
• 32:41
  of that, a lot of that is like it's it just shows to me.
• 32:45
  It's it's really funny because sometimes I'll I'll see like a
• 32:48
  fan theory about how yeah, like the last song is, is trees,
• 32:52
  right? I've got that written down right
• 32:54
  here. And I'm gonna I'm gonna totally
• 32:55
  disappoint you because like, it just is what it is.
• 32:59
  It what it what it really shows me is that I need to be.
• 33:02
  More. Creative.
• 33:04
  No, Pretend you have. A theory.
• 33:06
  Pretend you have a I'll conjure of a theory.
• 33:08
  Should have done it before, yeah.
• 33:11
  Yeah, the thing about the tree is.
• 33:12
  Yeah, I was hoping I was getting that.
• 33:13
  I'm fucking. But there's there's different.
• 33:16
  Each has their own thing. So I suppose that when when
• 33:22
  events happen or when I'm kind of in an emotional state, one
• 33:27
  thing that I do tend to notice in my surrounding are trees and,
• 33:34
  and, and I kind of I think maybe stick to them for for, for a
• 33:40
  comfort image or something. Yeah, I mean, and I mean, well,
• 33:44
  we'll get into that. You know, tunnel of trees is
• 33:49
  when you're driving on a road that has a a lot of trees on
• 33:52
  both sides and they kind of create a canopy over it.
• 33:54
  And I was driving on the Central Coast and it was a kind of a
• 34:00
  grey sort of marine layered type of day.
• 34:06
  And and I think that always kind of makes you feel a certain way.
• 34:09
  And, and that's what I was driving under.
• 34:11
  And so I was like, oh, tunnel of trees, like it's just evocative.
• 34:14
  Pecan Tree is written directly about my grandmother, who is
• 34:24
  talked about both on Sunbather and on lonely people with power,
• 34:28
  who had a really large pecan tree in her backyard that she
• 34:31
  harvested every year and made pies from.
• 34:34
  And and it was just a thing that we did when we visited.
• 34:38
  And so like, I've always kind of but held it in a certain, you
• 34:42
  know, reverence. Is the line in see, I would say
• 34:45
  pecan tree, but I'm going to say pecan just in case it becomes a
• 34:49
  clip and everyone goes he said pecan pecan.
• 34:52
  Funny the line about a watch me do this without a note I laid
• 34:57
  drunk on the concrete on the day of your birth in.
• 35:04
  Celebration. Celebration of all of your work.
• 35:07
  Is that about her? I yeah, yeah, it was that song.
• 35:13
  And then the way that like my writing tends to go, which,
• 35:18
  which I've tried to kind of reel in a little bit, but especially
• 35:22
  at that time, it, it, it appears abstract because it's honestly
• 35:28
  rather scattered. And I have so many different
• 35:32
  feelings and thoughts that I want to kind of put into one
• 35:34
  thing. And that song kind of talk.
• 35:38
  It's, it's, it's talking about family, how I relate to family.
• 35:41
  It's talking about my grandmother and my, who's my
• 35:45
  father's mother and my dad and, and, and, and me being a, a
• 35:51
  drunk and how, you know, there were, there were a lot of times
• 35:56
  when I was younger, before I quit drinking that I was very
• 36:01
  aware of, of the problem that I had with it because I would
• 36:07
  react, I would react to, to certain ideas with it really
• 36:14
  negatively. Case in point, like like I would
• 36:17
  like, there were often times where I would get bad news or,
• 36:21
  or I would realize that there was an important date and I'm
• 36:25
  like hammered, you know, and I'd be like God, like I'm getting
• 36:29
  this, this kind of poignant life thing is happening and I'm all
• 36:33
  fucked up when it's happening and so.
• 36:35
  You're not getting fucked up as a result of it happening.
• 36:37
  No, it's happening. I'm fucked up so often that
• 36:41
  anytime I get, you know, when she died, I was drunk.
• 36:48
  When my uncle died, I was drunk. There was all these kind of
• 36:52
  things and, and, and alcoholism and stuff runs very deep in my
• 36:57
  family. And so at those points there
• 37:03
  would be like this immediate self examination, you know, I'd
• 37:07
  be like, Oh my God, I'm just like them and what am I doing
• 37:10
  and this kind of thing. So anyway, so that that line and
• 37:14
  lines like that come from that feeling where there is this sort
• 37:20
  of self loathing and frankly A directionless self loathing,
• 37:27
  which is why a lot of the lyrics kind of come off as, you know,
• 37:31
  like I said, quote, abstract. But like, they're really
• 37:34
  actually just like the scattered thoughts of someone that doesn't
• 37:37
  know how to interpret very clearly what it is that they're
• 37:43
  feeling because they're feeling so many things at the same time.
• 37:45
  But a very well read person. Yeah, well, yeah.
• 37:49
  And I like, I don't think I would connect with your band so
• 37:52
  much if they weren't so scattered and vague because
• 37:57
  we'll come on to it later. You have one song in particular,
• 37:59
  right? Which at a point in my life, I
• 38:01
  was like, this song is about me. Yeah.
• 38:03
  And it's obviously not. But it's later on in the
• 38:06
  podcast, I want to tell you what was happening to me at that
• 38:10
  time. And I want you to tell me what
• 38:12
  you would think, what the actual thing is and ruin the song and.
• 38:16
  Ruin the song for you. Yeah, exactly.
• 38:18
  I think that that was kind of like the really positive outcome
• 38:21
  to this sort of scatteredness was that there, there should be
• 38:29
  at times, enough open endedness in lyricism that you do find
• 38:35
  your own meaning into it. Like I I like storytelling
• 38:39
  lyricists who are very much giving you, like, their
• 38:42
  perspective of a certain event. There's no ambiguity.
• 38:44
  Chris Barnes Exactly. Yeah.
• 38:48
  Yeah. Oh, this person's being
• 38:50
  strangled and tortured. That's great.
• 38:53
  Sorry I couldn't not make the judge.
• 38:54
  No, no, no, no, but but that is true.
• 38:57
  I mean like, say, say like Leonard Cohen, often he's
• 39:03
  telling a he, I mean beautiful lyricist and one of my
• 39:08
  favourites and and he's often telling a very kind of direct
• 39:11
  thing. There's, there's no like real
• 39:13
  interpretation there. Or like Kris Kristofferson's the
• 39:16
  same way, like a lot of kind of country and folk and stuff is,
• 39:20
  is very direct and, and I, and I like that stuff a lot.
• 39:25
  But I think that it is, it has benefited our band to have this
• 39:30
  kind of open endedness, to have enough space for people to
• 39:34
  invite themselves in. And I, I do think that's very
• 39:37
  important. It almost matches the music as
• 39:40
  well, like it's open-ended music where the emotions can go one
• 39:44
  way or the other. Totally, totally.
• 39:46
  And and I think that Carrie and I have always had that kind of
• 39:51
  psychic connection where where often the things that he's
• 39:57
  writing and the things that I'm writing, I mean they're done
• 40:00
  separately and there's not a whole lot of communication, you
• 40:06
  know, during the process. Obviously I'm I'm I'm there for
• 40:10
  much of of the. The riffing and and stuff and
• 40:14
  and the guys jamming and so, like, I do have an idea, but
• 40:17
  from the lyrical end, there's not.
• 40:21
  And. And it just kind of works out,
• 40:24
  you know? And he's always just like, man,
• 40:26
  like this. This is perfect for what it is
• 40:29
  that we're making. Yeah.
• 40:31
  At what? Point in the discography.
• 40:32
  Do you quit drinking? Because there's no real shift in
• 40:36
  my in my. In, in the, in the morose tone
• 40:39
  of everything. Yeah, we quit.
• 40:43
  We. Everyone, much of us, we.
• 40:46
  Yeah, the. Dan still drinks.
• 40:48
  He does, and so does Chris, But but Shiv stopped and then Carrie
• 40:54
  and I again separately quit five days apart from each other.
• 41:01
  Oh, you are psychic? And yeah, yeah.
• 41:03
  And I remember he called me and was like, you know, we we were
• 41:07
  both in bad in our own ways. And he and we hadn't maybe
• 41:11
  spoken in a week or so, which is very rare.
• 41:13
  We talk like everyday. And he was like, hey, this is
• 41:17
  what I'm doing. You know, I've been doing it for
• 41:20
  like a week now. And yeah, yeah.
• 41:22
  And I was like, dude, me too. That was cool.
• 41:24
  Yeah. And I was like, let's where is
• 41:28
  this in the discography? So yeah, yeah, sorry.
• 41:30
  This is like in the middle of ordinary corrupt.
• 41:33
  OK, so we were going up to the Bay Area.
• 41:36
  We're going up to Oakland. And we were having various
• 41:38
  writing sessions before we began recording.
• 41:41
  And I want to say literally, like the first two blocks were
• 41:47
  parting and then the last two blocks were not.
• 41:50
  And the lyrics are written in both states.
• 41:55
  And then by like infinite I'm, I'm sober for what like a couple
• 42:03
  of years at that point. So you without end on ordinary,
• 42:07
  corrupt, sober or drunk. Track.
• 42:09
  Track one. Yeah, I know, I know, I know, I
• 42:13
  know. More I know more about you
• 42:15
  because it's kind of happy. That's kind of lovely.
• 42:17
  That's hard to say. I've, I'm.
• 42:19
  Oh, no, no, no, that's not hard to say.
• 42:21
  I'm sober. It's not, it's not a lovely
• 42:24
  song. It is.
• 42:25
  Yeah. Well, I appreciate that.
• 42:26
  Thank you. Yeah, that record, we were, I
• 42:29
  think we really kind of doing a lot.
• 42:32
  We were the the thing about sobriety for us is that it
• 42:37
  really gave us this creative boost which we kind of
• 42:42
  collectively felt like we were lacking on New Bermuda.
• 42:45
  And so we're like, I like this and this and this and this so
• 42:48
  that it like so you without N has this almost like Elton
• 42:50
  Johnny kind of like, you know, so yeah.
• 42:54
  And when I hear it back now, I'm like, that's, that's funny.
• 42:56
  It's nice. Though it is nice.
• 42:58
  I mean, look, I, I, I stand by it, but like that.
• 43:02
  And then we did like night people with Chelsea Wolf.
• 43:04
  And that's like a totally different track than stuff that
• 43:06
  we've ever done before. And we were just kind of very
• 43:09
  excited, I think again. And so we were like, let's let's
• 43:12
  try everything. I want to touch on a few things
• 43:14
  you said, one of them deeper than the other one.
• 43:16
  So let's go to the one that's fresher in my brain.
• 43:19
  Cool, did you have difficult second album even though it
• 43:22
  wasn't your second album but difficult second album syndrome
• 43:26
  with New Bermuda after the success of Sunbatha?
• 43:29
  You know, I think the only thing in our head at that point was we
• 43:33
  didn't want to make Sunbatha Part 2.
• 43:35
  And I'm sure there was some stress, you know, but the real,
• 43:39
  the real thing about that record is in the years that we toured
• 43:44
  between Sunbather and New Bermuda, we were just getting
• 43:47
  fucked up. I mean, like the most and, and
• 43:51
  having a great time and, and whatever, you know, I don't, I
• 43:54
  don't regret those years. By the time we had gotten into
• 43:57
  the writing phase, we hadn't let go of the tour behavior and
• 44:07
  honestly, we couldn't. And we had, and, and this is
• 44:10
  like when we were getting into like, you know, like hard drugs.
• 44:14
  And so a lot of it is just kind of phoned in.
• 44:18
  I mean, you know, we, I think it was a, it was a time in the band
• 44:22
  that we had other priorities. I don't think it's bad, by the
• 44:26
  way. No, no, no, and, and that's
• 44:28
  funny too. I mean, I've talked to people
• 44:30
  all the time. Like noob room is my favorite
• 44:31
  one, which I think is great. And and I, you know, I've, I
• 44:35
  still every album I listen to and it, it puts me in a in a
• 44:38
  time and a place and, and, and I like that.
• 44:42
  And I have, you know, I've loved for, for all of it.
• 44:44
  And especially because it's, you know, it's, it's, it's these
• 44:48
  guys who I love as well. But yeah, I can also just
• 44:53
  confidently say like, we weren't at our best, you know?
• 44:57
  I wasn't saying that, I just wanted to know because some
• 45:00
  labour was like the biggest thing that year.
• 45:02
  Totally, totally, no, but I, I guess I'm all I'm saying is that
• 45:05
  that was the difficult part of that, right?
• 45:08
  Not necessarily like external pressure.
• 45:11
  It was totally like the fact that we had like internalized
• 45:15
  every bad habit that we had kind of developed of the, you know,
• 45:19
  previous years. OK, so the next question, and
• 45:22
  it's if this is too personal or too loaded or not at all, you
• 45:26
  can you can Simon's the other, by the way.
• 45:28
  Hi, Simon. You, you can just cut it.
• 45:31
  It's going to be like therapy. This is going to sound like a
• 45:33
  therapist right now because I'm going to say one thing.
• 45:36
  I want your immediate response and then I'll go into why.
• 45:39
  OK, How's your relationship with your dad?
• 45:41
  It's great. It's great.
• 45:42
  It's fantastic. Doesn't fucking sound.
• 45:43
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I know, I know, I know, I
• 45:47
  know. You know him and I talk about
• 45:49
  that. He's like, gosh, you know, and
• 45:51
  I'm like, I know it's just, it's more, I mean, so much of, of our
• 45:55
  records are just self reconciliation.
• 45:58
  You know, it's, it's really about me and, and him and I have
• 46:04
  spent a lot of time together and, and I know him very well
• 46:09
  and, and I see a lot of myself in him.
• 46:15
  And, and that used to include resentments and, and, and it, it
• 46:23
  doesn't anymore. But I do still think that those
• 46:27
  themes are worth exploring, especially like on the new
• 46:31
  record, like, you know, like he's one of like my best
• 46:34
  friends. And I told him after the record
• 46:39
  was done. Just just so you know.
• 46:41
  Yeah, I was like, you know, like, like the song, the song
• 46:43
  Amethyst is, is a, is as plain spoken as as I'll kind of allow
• 46:51
  myself to be in our records. Is, is about him and I and, and
• 46:58
  this very specific situation that we had gone through
• 47:01
  together. And when I play in the song and
• 47:03
  I show him the lyrics and then I showed him the artwork, which is
• 47:07
  a visual representation largely of that song, You know, he was
• 47:12
  like pretty, pretty moved by it. And he was like God, you know,
• 47:19
  like, I think like, like any father son relationship, you go
• 47:24
  through patches. I think that him and I went
• 47:28
  through a fairly extreme patch. I think to kind of lay it out
• 47:34
  there for him was was a little startling.
• 47:40
  But, you know, I think he was also like kind of appreciated
• 47:45
  the fact that like, I thought about it so in depthly.
• 47:50
  Is it too private to go into here?
• 47:53
  It's fine if it is. Yeah, yeah.
• 47:55
  I mean, it's it, it kind of it. I'll talk about it.
• 48:01
  I was going to say because. It's not a holy, it's not really
• 48:03
  a negative thing. And and much of the record has
• 48:07
  to do with people who don't maybe in the moment, understand
• 48:16
  their position. And I think that he's always
• 48:23
  been someone who wanted to guide me in the correct ways.
• 48:30
  But you know, he'd never been a dad before.
• 48:33
  And so I think he was just kind of like his his life lessons and
• 48:37
  stuff are always just kind of like his own style, you know,
• 48:40
  which I, I really genuinely believe like I'm a better person
• 48:44
  for, but that I still find the need to reflect on anyway.
• 48:50
  And so I'll, I'll just, I'll talk about, I'll talk about the
• 48:53
  cover, which is we had like, you know, some sort of like touch
• 48:58
  and go like years apart. And when we got back to seeing
• 49:05
  each other a lot more regularly, he was going through a lot of
• 49:10
  personal change and a lot of like sort of personal
• 49:15
  transformation and, and, and what have you.
• 49:17
  And, and I think that this was times that he was kind of trying
• 49:21
  to teach me some like, you know, lessons of the world.
• 49:25
  And, and I was, I was a very young teenager and, and preteen.
• 49:30
  He was in this sort of like halfway house situation.
• 49:33
  I was visiting him. We were driving around one
• 49:38
  night, one of one of his good friends and a very sweet guy
• 49:45
  named Mike, who was a bad drug addict would get lost.
• 49:55
  And he would go into kind of Skid Row type areas or he would
• 50:01
  go onto like tracks, like areas where there's a lot of sex work
• 50:10
  and you know, alleys and streets and stuff like that.
• 50:13
  And where he could find women and he could find drugs and
• 50:16
  things like that. And, and when he would go
• 50:20
  missing, we would, you know, go find him.
• 50:24
  And my dad was kind of in a way, and my father's been this way
• 50:28
  for like a lot of his friends who are in recovery and, and,
• 50:32
  and such is, is he's sort of like their keeper.
• 50:34
  And he really, he's like a, you know, gives you the shirt off
• 50:39
  his back kind of guy. So when Mike would go missing,
• 50:43
  we would go out and find him, and these searches would take
• 50:48
  you into, you know, kind of seedier areas of the city.
• 50:51
  How old are you at this? Point like 12-12, maybe 13.
• 50:57
  And so we were driving down an alley, a track, and there's
• 51:03
  various women on, on the on the sidewalk and, and he pulls over
• 51:12
  to 1 and he's like, you know, like maybe we're just going to
• 51:17
  ask anyone if they've, if they've seen a guy that's like
• 51:19
  this or whatever. But I'm like, terrified.
• 51:22
  The only thing I know about any of this world truly is that like
• 51:24
  it's illegal or I've seen them cops.
• 51:26
  You're a you're a child. Yeah, yeah.
• 51:28
  And I'm very inexperienced. And so we we pull over and he
• 51:33
  and I'm in the passenger seat and so he rolls my window down
• 51:36
  and. And the woman comes up to the
• 51:37
  window and totally fine, super nice.
• 51:41
  And she was older. She was much older.
• 51:43
  And I remember she had like some back missing molars and you
• 51:49
  know, she'd been on the on the street a while.
• 51:51
  It was a fine interaction. You know, where are you from?
• 51:56
  Asking me like how old I am, things like that.
• 51:59
  And and I'm like, you know, like frozen in fear kind of thing.
• 52:05
  And then we, and then we made our way and it really stuck with
• 52:09
  me. And, and I remember at the time
• 52:13
  him being like, this is just a person who's going through
• 52:16
  something. And this is, these are just
• 52:20
  people. And there's nothing here that
• 52:22
  makes them better or worse than anyone else.
• 52:26
  And you need to know that, you know, and you need to like, you
• 52:30
  know, he had like he he has and I don't even think he would even
• 52:35
  self register this or whatever, but he has like extraordinary
• 52:38
  empathy. And that kind of thing always
• 52:40
  stuck with me. And both both in his especially
• 52:47
  at the time profound point of view on on you know what, what
• 52:54
  we kind of consider like forgotten people of society or
• 52:57
  disowned people of society, but also that with the juxtaposition
• 53:02
  of like, maybe you shouldn't be taking a kid to these things.
• 53:07
  Then I started kind of thinking in a broader way about like how
• 53:11
  men teach lessons to boys and how impressionable young people
• 53:19
  learn about the world through their elders and how someone's
• 53:28
  worldview gets imprinted on you at a certain age.
• 53:33
  And you always keep that with you.
• 53:36
  And there's conflicting feelings about that.
• 53:40
  And sometimes you feel like, oh, that could have been handled
• 53:44
  better maybe. And other times you feel really
• 53:46
  grateful for the experience. And so that is the cover of of
• 53:50
  the record. It's a woman, she's at the
• 53:53
  window. There's clearly an uncomfortable
• 53:55
  boy in the seat. And then you just see the arm of
• 53:59
  the other figure. And is that the lonely person
• 54:03
  with power is? Lonely people with power Just
• 54:06
  the the, the title, the title I I came up with earlier on, it
• 54:10
  was it was actually the it's the earliest I've ever had a an
• 54:14
  album title. I didn't want to derail you from
• 54:16
  that story. No, I mean, that's the whole
• 54:17
  story. And I I don't, I don't want to
• 54:19
  keep, I don't need to keep going on about it.
• 54:20
  But anyway, when I showed him that.
• 54:23
  And he remember. Oh, clearly, yeah, yeah.
• 54:25
  I mean, and it's funny too, because his life now is so.
• 54:30
  I mean, this is a very long time ago, you know, It's so.
• 54:33
  And did he struggle with addiction?
• 54:35
  He did, yeah. Yeah, I.
• 54:36
  Get that from your lyrics. I didn't mean earlier when I was
• 54:39
  like, it doesn't sound like you like him.
• 54:40
  It's like I can tell you harbor some resentment for maybe some
• 54:46
  of that was passed down to you. Yeah, it's, it's, it's not even
• 54:49
  at this point, it's not even really.
• 54:50
  It's not resentment, it's just acknowledgement and anything
• 54:54
  that comes off as being like damning or depressing or
• 54:58
  whatever. It's really just self
• 54:59
  reflection. Yeah.
• 55:00
  And, and me trying to like kind of come to terms with why I am,
• 55:04
  why I am the way I am. Yeah, no, he's, he's great.
• 55:07
  And even still, it's crazy. Like again, he he, you.
• 55:11
  If you met him, you'd never guess this at all.
• 55:13
  He doesn't look like a hard guy, you know.
• 55:16
  He's a straight laces that come. He's the third.
• 55:19
  He is. He's he's.
• 55:20
  Well, and the band is Big Three and he and he, the other thing
• 55:24
  about him is he has seen more of our shows than anyone.
• 55:27
  He flies all over the world and he is wearing a different Death
• 55:32
  Heaven shirt everyday. My dad is the same with like,
• 55:35
  he'll come to so many straight shows and he's always wearing a
• 55:36
  downbeat. It's amazing.
• 55:38
  It's amazing. And like I, I feel extremely
• 55:40
  grateful. But he still does like outreach
• 55:44
  and man, he and he doesn't need to, you know, like guys that are
• 55:49
  like like fresh out who are in halfway house facilities or
• 55:55
  whatever. He goes to them and he meets
• 55:57
  with them and and he does the thing he's kind of always done.
• 56:03
  You know, he's he kind of shepherds people that are in
• 56:05
  need. So he's great.
• 56:08
  I love him to death, but but you know, I mean, you got to
• 56:13
  sometimes you got to mind personal trauma for.
• 56:16
  For money, no. No, when I was telling that,
• 56:21
  that actually reminds me anytime I ask someone asks what I do, I
• 56:24
  got you know I yell at strangers for a living.
• 56:26
  Until they buy a T-shirt. Until they buy a T-shirt.
• 56:28
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a it's a glorified life.
• 56:30
  Yeah, I'm glad I brought that up.
• 56:31
  I think I I could tell there was something in there and that's
• 56:35
  great to hear about the artwork. Yeah, that's the most I've ever.
• 56:38
  It's a it's. It's the most I've ever
• 56:39
  explained it. Man, well, I appreciate you.
• 56:41
  And if for some reason after this you're like, I don't want
• 56:44
  that out there, I can call. It I think that's fine It
• 56:47
  there's nothing nothing to be embarrassed about as.
• 56:50
  You didn't say any. Slurs.
• 56:52
  No slurs. Yeah, I hell, I bit my tongue.
• 56:55
  There's a joke, guys. Joke still exists.
• 56:57
  Fuck off. The last point on the father
• 57:00
  thing, can you tell me if this lyric is about your father?
• 57:04
  Yes. And if so, well, I'll tell you
• 57:07
  what I think about it. Sure.
• 57:08
  There is a lyric on Winona on lonely people with power.
• 57:13
  I'm reliving Saturn eating his flesh, everything of mine.
• 57:18
  You took it all and left me nothing.
• 57:19
  Laid me in a hole for death to feed on.
• 57:22
  What's that about? Again, it's it's the it's the
• 57:24
  specter of of addiction. That thing is, that thing is
• 57:33
  alcoholism. That thing is depression.
• 57:35
  That thing is, is is addiction that has laid me in this hole.
• 57:41
  Obviously the Saturn allusion is to the Goya painting and and
• 57:46
  again, it just touches on that. It's just it's, it's the
• 57:49
  hereditary aspect of it. Yeah, that's what that's what I
• 57:52
  loved you. If you'd have told me what you
• 57:55
  just did. And you did tell me it's the
• 57:57
  best lyric of all time. Oh man.
• 57:59
  Because it's so poetic, right? Yeah.
• 58:02
  But I understood everything you just told me about it.
• 58:05
  From that there, like from the lyric, it takes a deep dive.
• 58:09
  You need to know the Goya painting.
• 58:10
  You need to know that stuff. I read it and I'm like, man,
• 58:14
  this guy's going through something inherited from his
• 58:17
  father specifically. Yeah, Yeah.
• 58:20
  Appreciate that. Fucking love this guy.
• 58:22
  Anyway, that's the lad Dad beats over.
• 58:25
  Fuck. Yeah.
• 58:26
  What a line. You ever seen the movies?
• 58:27
  Now? Of course.
• 58:28
  Do you like dogs? Do you like dogs?
• 58:31
  There's a lot of dog lyrics. Yeah.
• 58:34
  Yeah, that's me asking a question.
• 58:36
  Yeah. No, no, that's great.
• 58:39
  Yeah, you can tell. You can tell My brain is
• 58:41
  slowing. That's fine, It's fine.
• 58:43
  It's a long day. You've probably got 30 minutes.
• 58:45
  Don't worry. No, I'm, I'm no seriously, no
• 58:48
  rush dogs. I do.
• 58:50
  I do love dogs. I have a dog she's never written
• 58:54
  about. You can't really write about a
• 58:57
  Shih tzu. They don't work as well as.
• 59:00
  Dobermans. They don't work as well as
• 59:02
  Dobermans. So what's the what's the
• 59:04
  Doberman thing? Because you mentioned them maybe
• 59:06
  three times, including a song title.
• 59:08
  Yeah, it's, it was my, my grandparents dog, my dad's
• 59:11
  parents had a big Doberman. Her name was Goldie.
• 59:14
  And originally I was going to call the song Goldie.
• 59:17
  But Doberman, the word is cool. It's a great word.
• 59:22
  Yeah. And it's very evocative.
• 59:25
  Yeah, that's, that's kind of long short of it.
• 59:30
  I it's a dog I grew up with who is like twice my size until a
• 59:33
  certain age. Very sweet.
• 59:34
  And just again, when you're when I think a lot of the time when
• 59:39
  I'm writing about family stuff, it's born from looking through
• 59:45
  photos or just kind of being reminiscent or nostalgic.
• 59:48
  And and she's in a lot of them, you know.
• 59:50
  So it's kind of become like this little piece of, of something I
• 59:57
  carry, yeah. What about Rottweiler?
• 59:59
  Just sounds good. Yeah.
• 1:00:01
  Common the Rottweiler line got it written down.
• 1:00:04
  I've got a Mombasa lyric. What song?
• 1:00:07
  Love the fact that you just stuck in a blast beat at the end
• 1:00:10
  of the of the Of the Light album just like everyone's like.
• 1:00:14
  Obviously we should do it. Yeah, we should do it.
• 1:00:16
  It's great. Yeah.
• 1:00:17
  Doberman visions. You're undressing mute and
• 1:00:19
  blurry hillside castles baking down to sand.
• 1:00:24
  Yeah, you want to go into that? This is like it's like a
• 1:00:26
  Rorschach. Sure, I was thinking about other
• 1:00:30
  other different planes of existence.
• 1:00:33
  I was thinking about an idea of heaven or, or or whatever.
• 1:00:37
  My grandfather lived with me for two years towards the end of his
• 1:00:44
  life and I helped take care of him.
• 1:00:51
  And yeah, that song is, is about is about him and just imagining,
• 1:01:03
  imagining him somewhere else. And, and I kind of wanted to
• 1:01:07
  paint a picture of that. Yeah.
• 1:01:10
  And, and. Yeah.
• 1:01:10
  And and he loved Golding. So the.
• 1:01:13
  Visions, you know he sees. I, I'm, I, I hope everyone else
• 1:01:16
  is having a good time because this is fun.
• 1:01:18
  I feel like I won a competition. Like I sit down with with the
• 1:01:22
  guy and be like, what did you mean?
• 1:01:23
  You tell me? I'm like, oh cool.
• 1:01:25
  Yeah, yeah, I love that song. I mean, I really, really do.
• 1:01:28
  It's it's great to play. It has a blast beat.
• 1:01:31
  Thank God. You know, it's man was so
• 1:01:34
  relieved. It's an amazing yeah.
• 1:01:36
  And then he fucked the wreck on this record.
• 1:01:39
  I know it's not a damn podcast, but like lonely people with
• 1:01:41
  power. Like he popped his pussy.
• 1:01:45
  I'm, I'm, I'm Dan's biggest fan. I mean, I'm like.
• 1:01:48
  Unreal. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:01:49
  I couldn't believe everything prior was no click.
• 1:01:52
  Dude, dude, you want to talk about new Bermuda?
• 1:01:56
  Dude, dude, track 2 Luna. I've got a whole thing on Luna.
• 1:02:01
  Single tag. Absolutely not.
• 1:02:03
  That makes it even better because I got a whole thing
• 1:02:05
  about Luna. It was, I'm pretty sure it was
• 1:02:08
  the take to get levels. Oh.
• 1:02:11
  My God, he. Did it all the way through Jack
• 1:02:14
  Shirley, phenomenal producer, engineer, friend was like, I
• 1:02:24
  don't know, like that might be it.
• 1:02:26
  And then Dan came in and Dan, the thing the one of the best
• 1:02:30
  parts about Dan is he has when he knows something is right, he
• 1:02:35
  has unwavering confidence. He's so like doesn't think
• 1:02:40
  twice, you know, I'm over here like, you know, rolling in my
• 1:02:43
  grave and. And he's so he just went into
• 1:02:47
  the control room and he's like, yeah, sick.
• 1:02:49
  It's good. And I was like, dude, that's
• 1:02:52
  fucking crazy. I.
• 1:02:53
  Love Dan so much and I can see him just go, yeah.
• 1:02:56
  Yeah, yeah, that's cool. Yeah.
• 1:02:58
  Like as mellow as can be. And he did it with with stitches
• 1:03:03
  in his hand. He had he had cut his hand on
• 1:03:07
  accident like the night before and we were going to cancel
• 1:03:11
  recording and be like, you can't fucking drum.
• 1:03:14
  And he was like, I can do it. And he just, I mean, not only he
• 1:03:17
  did it, he like wrecked it. And, you know, and then and then
• 1:03:22
  and then this is the last thing I'll say about Dan.
• 1:03:24
  But with like infinite granite and and lonely people, I think
• 1:03:31
  also, like his style really comes out.
• 1:03:33
  Yeah, he's very stylish drummer. Very, very stylish.
• 1:03:36
  It's funny. The stitches in the hand thing
• 1:03:39
  again. I'm like, I'm such a woo woo
• 1:03:41
  person. Yeah, and everything's about me
• 1:03:44
  again. I'm possibly schizophrenic.
• 1:03:48
  The amount that this song, I'm like, no, this is about me.
• 1:03:51
  This is about me. They're watching me.
• 1:03:53
  OK, so Luna on New New Bermuda is probably, I think
• 1:03:59
  emotionally, you know, when you've got some songs that you
• 1:04:03
  say it's your favorite song of the band, sure, but because of
• 1:04:05
  the emotional connection, sure. And like maybe even now I listen
• 1:04:09
  to it the least for that reason because of the time.
• 1:04:14
  So whenever that song came out, I was going through it.
• 1:04:19
  I had an ex partner who was my partner partner at that time.
• 1:04:24
  If people at home want to pause and read the lyrics to that song
• 1:04:28
  and then come back or I'm sure we'll go into it.
• 1:04:31
  So my ex partner, we had moved to where she was from because I
• 1:04:40
  was on tour a lot. Yeah.
• 1:04:41
  And I had found out something that she'd done.
• 1:04:47
  I didn't do anything about it, and I just kept it with me.
• 1:04:51
  And we moved to a place where I didn't know anyone.
• 1:04:54
  And it happened shortly after that and it was middle of
• 1:05:00
  nowhere in a old house. And I harboured what had
• 1:05:09
  happened instead of addressing it and gradually declined
• 1:05:15
  mentally because of it. Couldn't think.
• 1:05:17
  I thought I couldn't get out of the situation.
• 1:05:20
  I was just like locked in there and we had I'll get to that.
• 1:05:28
  I'll get to that bit. So I was just in that world,
• 1:05:31
  probably the most depressed I've ever been in my life.
• 1:05:33
  I was like, what am I going to do?
• 1:05:35
  I'll just kill myself. I was like, I'm just going to do
• 1:05:37
  that. I'll figure out when to do it.
• 1:05:39
  And just was just the most depressed I've ever been in my
• 1:05:43
  fucking life. I couldn't get away.
• 1:05:47
  I was stuck there. I I became very ill as a result
• 1:05:54
  of what I now know is like I just should have went to fucking
• 1:05:58
  therapy. I should have fucking dealt with
• 1:06:00
  it. But I came like physically I'll
• 1:06:03
  to the point where I think at some point I had my parents live
• 1:06:07
  like 4 hours away. I had to phone my mum and be
• 1:06:10
  like hey mum bit weird. Pretty sure I'm going to kill
• 1:06:14
  myself tomorrow. Would you mind coming up to hang
• 1:06:18
  out with me? So for anyone that didn't read
• 1:06:20
  the lyrics to Luna, there's there's so many lyrics in it.
• 1:06:23
  I think that record came out at that time.
• 1:06:25
  OK, and there's already a fan, but like another thing.
• 1:06:30
  So, and this is not like some patriarchy shit, but they she I
• 1:06:38
  want to go so personal, but like she she did certain things
• 1:06:42
  around the house that well, I would go on tour and I would
• 1:06:46
  come back and the house would be like disgusting, OK, like I'm
• 1:06:51
  talking mud everywhere, OK, and dog shit.
• 1:06:55
  And it was like revolting. You know, I'd come home from
• 1:06:58
  tour. You know what's up?
• 1:06:59
  When you come home from tour, you've been in a scabby fucking
• 1:07:02
  door bus for however long. It's the I wanted.
• 1:07:04
  That's the worst. I want to deep clean my fucking
• 1:07:06
  house. I need to be in somewhere clean.
• 1:07:08
  Yes, So I would come, come back and the first thing I'd have to
• 1:07:12
  do be clean up literal mud and out of my own fucking house.
• 1:07:15
  Ohio. I was insane, got physically
• 1:07:19
  unwell because of it and to the point I was convinced I had some
• 1:07:25
  sinus problems at the time from how old the house was, there was
• 1:07:29
  damp and all this stuff. But it like fucked me and I was
• 1:07:34
  just convinced I was dying to the point of like but like
• 1:07:37
  borderline schizophrenic, like there's fucking things in my
• 1:07:41
  brain like from these fumes. Like I was, I was a nuts like
• 1:07:46
  absolutely a fucking nut job. And there were so many lyrics in
• 1:07:50
  that song that I was like, motherfucker, this song is about
• 1:07:54
  me like chained together, chained forever confined to a
• 1:07:57
  house that never remains clean, like literally on the fucking
• 1:08:00
  nose to a bed where the ill never get well.
• 1:08:03
  Like I was just, I was convinced that I was dying.
• 1:08:06
  I coughed ceaselessly into the night.
• 1:08:09
  I had a cough from the fucking science problems sitting quietly
• 1:08:13
  in scorching reimagined suburbia, right?
• 1:08:16
  Had moved out of the city into Oh yeah, somewhere else.
• 1:08:22
  To top it all off, cherry on the top, the dog we had together was
• 1:08:25
  called Luna. Really.
• 1:08:26
  Yeah, that all off with what you just told me at some point
• 1:08:31
  during that, I, the only thing that kept me happy was I had my
• 1:08:34
  drum room and I had the gym and I would go to the gym, I'd come
• 1:08:40
  home, go to the drum room, and I'd come back at like 10:00 PM
• 1:08:43
  and I just got to sleep. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:08:45
  I cut my hand open really badly and needed stitches and couldn't
• 1:08:53
  do either of those things so when it was at the the worst
• 1:08:56
  that it was possibly out. Like I didn't even know that
• 1:08:58
  stitches damn thing. And obviously this is me just
• 1:09:00
  being schizophrenic, no? No, no, no.
• 1:09:02
  But like, it's all connecting, yeah.
• 1:09:03
  It was at its worst then because I didn't have my 2 coping
• 1:09:05
  mechanisms and it was just such so on the notes and I know it's
• 1:09:11
  not about that, but I'd like to know what the song is about.
• 1:09:15
  Yeah, yeah. I mean, it kind of is about
• 1:09:19
  that. How are you with that?
• 1:09:23
  I mean, it's it, it's, it's, it's funny, not to, not to
• 1:09:27
  diminish it at all, but when I, when I think about like times
• 1:09:33
  that I've written sort of immaturely or had sort of like a
• 1:09:38
  more a shallow take on, on something, that song comes up to
• 1:09:45
  me. It's I just moved to Los
• 1:09:47
  Angeles. It's, it's like a song about
• 1:09:49
  kind of hating where you live. And for LA specifically, it took
• 1:09:55
  me like 3 or 4 years to really kind of find my place in it, I
• 1:09:58
  think. But yeah.
• 1:10:02
  And I come from San Francisco, which felt very urban and very
• 1:10:06
  much like a city and people called Laa City.
• 1:10:09
  But, you know, this is just suburbia reimagined, you know,
• 1:10:14
  actually one of my favorite lyrics.
• 1:10:16
  And it's like something talks over common interests or
• 1:10:21
  something like that, you know, it's just really cynical.
• 1:10:23
  It's about being at parties and about being bored and about
• 1:10:26
  everyone you meet you disliking and about coming home to a place
• 1:10:32
  that's dishevelled. And and my girlfriend at the
• 1:10:36
  time and and I had moved in together.
• 1:10:40
  And she didn't do the fucking dishes.
• 1:10:42
  It's a joke. It's a joke.
• 1:10:45
  This is why I think it's shallow or I find it to be immature is
• 1:10:49
  because like I wasn't looking inward whatsoever and I was
• 1:10:55
  again, because this is new Bermuda Times.
• 1:10:57
  I was a fucking animal. And I was making myself sick.
• 1:11:02
  And it was that I was, I was constantly for different
• 1:11:07
  reasons, but I had constant sinus issues.
• 1:11:10
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:11:12
  And my immune system was just depleted because I was just
• 1:11:16
  treating myself so poorly. And when you treat yourself
• 1:11:20
  poorly, you treat your space poorly.
• 1:11:22
  You have no or very little regard for anything around you.
• 1:11:28
  And I was disliking where I was so much that I think I was
• 1:11:36
  trying to prove that in a way through these actions where I
• 1:11:40
  was like, no, like, fuck this place.
• 1:11:42
  You're going to see how much I don't like it.
• 1:11:44
  I'm going to treat everything like around me like shit.
• 1:11:47
  And and then I'm going to be really like, I'm going to be
• 1:11:51
  kind of like, I don't know, I guess like if arrogant about it
• 1:11:55
  or something. And, and that, and that is Luna.
• 1:12:00
  Luna is like just a deep unhappiness that at the time was
• 1:12:10
  intentionally written to place blame on the things around me
• 1:12:17
  that were causing that unhappiness.
• 1:12:19
  And upon further reflection, as a, you know, as an as a real
• 1:12:25
  adult, I see now like, oh, like I had the biggest part to play
• 1:12:31
  in this. And so yeah, yeah, it.
• 1:12:34
  But but to your point, it does have all those things and those
• 1:12:39
  things are accurate. It's more that I think I was
• 1:12:45
  kind of the cause for all the pain, whereas maybe you we're
• 1:12:51
  just unable to deal with receiving.
• 1:12:55
  Yeah, a similar pain, yeah. But yeah, that's that's what's
• 1:12:57
  about, yeah. So eye opening and it hasn't
• 1:13:00
  ruined the song from that. OK.
• 1:13:01
  Good. Maybe it?
• 1:13:02
  Was like cosmically Co writing with the hand stitches.
• 1:13:06
  I mean, I mean, there's a lot. It's a lot.
• 1:13:08
  It's very serendipitous. Yeah.
• 1:13:10
  There's a lot of coincidence there.
• 1:13:11
  And I just listened to he are so depressed.
• 1:13:14
  Yeah, I mean kind of same, you know, there was a lot on that
• 1:13:18
  record, a lot of all on all of our records that is very much
• 1:13:24
  like living through a kind of exorcism.
• 1:13:26
  You know, we're like, yeah, I've I've, I take it for.
• 1:13:30
  Pain as well. How?
• 1:13:31
  How is your mental health? You're right.
• 1:13:33
  I'm great. I'm great.
• 1:13:35
  Yeah. Yeah, I really AM.
• 1:13:40
  Yeah, life's good. I'm very grateful for so much
• 1:13:45
  like it to do. Good, that's good to hear.
• 1:13:46
  Especially because there hasn't been like a shift in your
• 1:13:48
  lyrics. I still think you're depressed.
• 1:13:50
  Yeah, yeah, sure. It's not like you did James
• 1:13:53
  Hatfield. Yeah, well, there there has to
• 1:13:56
  be that, you know, this is funny and this is actually an
• 1:14:00
  interesting thing to to touch on is that Death Heaven has at this
• 1:14:05
  point, we've been in band for 15 years.
• 1:14:09
  It has its own identity and it has its own, it has its own
• 1:14:16
  tenants of, of what makes it it. And I think that I to serve its
• 1:14:25
  purpose, go into a state that that is required to write in a
• 1:14:31
  way like this, like it wouldn't, it just wouldn't be, is that
• 1:14:35
  taxing? Now I talk about this with with,
• 1:14:38
  with friends. I was actually talking about
• 1:14:39
  with a friend recently that it can't, it's not necessarily
• 1:14:45
  taxing, but it can feel a bit disembodied.
• 1:14:50
  It can like these the things I'm I'm talking about are real and I
• 1:14:56
  really do feel them. But to know me from day-to-day
• 1:15:03
  is, is not to know the person that's written.
• 1:15:06
  Yeah, Deaf heaven lyrics, you know, And if it you know, you,
• 1:15:09
  you'd be like this guy's fucking lame, you know, frankly, or
• 1:15:12
  like, or, you know, like, yeah, it'd be like your sad friend in
• 1:15:15
  the corner. Yeah.
• 1:15:16
  So I, I, they kind of in the moment, it, it, they, they have
• 1:15:24
  their, their genuine moment. They're written from the heart.
• 1:15:28
  And then from there on, like upon release, they're not really
• 1:15:34
  for me anymore. They're for whomever they're for
• 1:15:38
  you. No, for real.
• 1:15:39
  Like when I'm on stage, I don't go into that dark place.
• 1:15:44
  I'm more go into a place of connectivity or a place of
• 1:15:51
  connection with the audience who is like really, really receiving
• 1:15:59
  these things in, in a, in a real way.
• 1:16:01
  And so like, I kind of again, like talking about gratitude,
• 1:16:05
  Like I, I, these things transform for me.
• 1:16:08
  And what becomes these kind of dark places of thought are now
• 1:16:15
  this sort of emotional bond that really kind of like, I don't
• 1:16:20
  know, makes the whole thing really worth doing more than any
• 1:16:25
  other part of it. You do talk about illness quite
• 1:16:29
  a lot as well, and I'm guessing in a quite an ambiguous way.
• 1:16:34
  Sometimes it feels like you're referring to a person.
• 1:16:37
  Yeah, as an illness, is there any like, let me give you an
• 1:16:42
  example, please. We do this living with this
• 1:16:44
  illness, showing shivering skin with you, my endless illness.
• 1:16:49
  Who's the endless illness? That's depression.
• 1:16:51
  Yeah. Yeah, that's.
• 1:16:53
  Also, that's quite literal. It is.
• 1:16:55
  I actually took it as a person. But again, I think I'm thinking
• 1:16:58
  about my ex again. Yeah, living with my with my
• 1:17:01
  endless. Yeah, but.
• 1:17:03
  That's good, but I want you to, I like it's up to you to fill in
• 1:17:08
  the blanks and and I love that No.
• 1:17:10
  So would you consider yourself still having depression from?
• 1:17:14
  Day-to-day, No, I, I don't think so.
• 1:17:17
  But it's something that I have to work on.
• 1:17:20
  Yeah. I think it's like, I think
• 1:17:22
  again, we, we go back to hereditary and, and, and
• 1:17:27
  lifelong and, and these kinds of terms and like, I think it's a
• 1:17:31
  facet of my personality that is very enduring.
• 1:17:37
  I think that there is always a potential for a quote lapse, you
• 1:17:41
  know, to, to find myself feeling the ways that I used to feel all
• 1:17:50
  the time again. And writing songs like that is a
• 1:17:58
  reminder to myself that you're never quite out of the woods.
• 1:18:03
  And that's OK. And, and, and you just got to
• 1:18:07
  keep an eye on it. And that means like taking bad
• 1:18:11
  news with grace, that means. How did you used to react to bad
• 1:18:16
  news? That's the second time you
• 1:18:17
  mentioned that. Yeah, just like drinking with
• 1:18:20
  morose, with just feeling with, you know.
• 1:18:23
  I mean, it's bad news bro. True, true, you know, with no,
• 1:18:28
  no stoicism at all, you know, real and, and especially,
• 1:18:35
  especially drinking. Yeah, it'd be, yeah, sloppy and
• 1:18:39
  sad, you know, may yesterday. Well, it, you know, and that's
• 1:18:43
  The thing is like, look, if if you don't take it to, to to the
• 1:18:48
  brink, you know, if you don't take it to the very edge every
• 1:18:51
  time, which is something that I'd like to do, it's a totally
• 1:18:56
  reasonable response. Yeah, I process things poorly.
• 1:19:01
  And whereas now, you know, deep breaths go a long way and like,
• 1:19:07
  realizing, you know, corny, but like, don't sweat the small
• 1:19:12
  stuff and shit like that. And just like, taking life with
• 1:19:16
  ease, you know, everything. When I was in my 20s, everything
• 1:19:21
  had so much weight to it, and you couldn't see the future.
• 1:19:26
  I thought about suicide so much. I write about suicide a ton On
• 1:19:33
  every record. There's a suicide song.
• 1:19:35
  There's, there's always that feeling of like, you know, I, I,
• 1:19:40
  I don't care about tomorrow. And I think I'm just at the age
• 1:19:44
  I'm far enough along now where I can, you know, look, look into
• 1:19:48
  the past that I know there is a future, you know, But yeah, it
• 1:19:54
  like it. But I, I don't want to run away
• 1:19:59
  completely. I think that those things should
• 1:20:01
  be acknowledged. I think that like, if I do
• 1:20:04
  believe that, that they, that suicidal ideation or, or
• 1:20:08
  depression no longer exists, like, that's when it's going to
• 1:20:10
  get me. Yeah.
• 1:20:12
  And so it's just, it's just part of the way I am, you know, and
• 1:20:15
  I, I, I'm so much more like level headed now and is.
• 1:20:19
  This because of not drinking or like therapy or.
• 1:20:23
  Yeah, I. Meant.
• 1:20:25
  I teach me, teach me. No, no.
• 1:20:27
  For me it was stopping drinking and drugs and it was being
• 1:20:33
  around people who did also and learning from their sense of
• 1:20:39
  calm and learning from how they behave and react and, and and
• 1:20:46
  filling myself with that perspective.
• 1:20:48
  Whereas like, you know, when you're partying and seven,
• 1:20:53
  you're in your mid 20s and everyone around you is doing the
• 1:20:55
  same thing, like none of you fucking know what to do.
• 1:20:58
  You know what I mean? Like everyone has their shit and
• 1:21:01
  you think like this is all that life is.
• 1:21:03
  It's like crazy good highs and good times and then like deep
• 1:21:08
  lows. And when you kind of, you know,
• 1:21:12
  get away from that, you see that like most people in the world
• 1:21:17
  navigate their highs and lows with a really a really calm sort
• 1:21:23
  of middle groundedness. And that was just huge for me.
• 1:21:26
  I had like a weird, not positive like I've I've dealt with
• 1:21:31
  suicidal ideation my whole life. Sure.
• 1:21:34
  I've had quite a weird, like almost annoyingly more
• 1:21:40
  depressing experience once beating, thinking of doing it so
• 1:21:47
  much, which is like my get out would always be if something was
• 1:21:53
  going, like reacting to bad news, I would just go, oh, I'll
• 1:21:56
  just kill myself. Like, and it would give me a
• 1:21:59
  weird sense of relief, like everything's not, it's fine.
• 1:22:03
  I'll just kill myself. Yeah, it doesn't matter.
• 1:22:05
  And then I wouldn't fixate on it.
• 1:22:07
  And now I don't want to kill myself when something bad
• 1:22:11
  happens. My brain now doesn't go, oh,
• 1:22:15
  I'll just kill myself. It goes, well, you can't kill
• 1:22:17
  yourself so well, you're gonna have to fucking figure this out.
• 1:22:20
  And then I have about it. And then now I'm.
• 1:22:22
  Yeah. And they're getting more pent
• 1:22:24
  up. It's like, it's like a set.
• 1:22:26
  Like I obviously don't want the ideation.
• 1:22:28
  Yes. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:22:29
  But it's. Like, oh great, now I have to
• 1:22:31
  deal with you. Gotta find a solution.
• 1:22:33
  Yeah. And how how fucking annoying is
• 1:22:34
  that, right? Yeah, No, I absolutely agree.
• 1:22:36
  I dude, it's wet. Like, I mean, you go to the gym.
• 1:22:40
  That was another huge part was fitness.
• 1:22:43
  I mean, like when I stopped drinking, I hover around like
• 1:22:50
  usually I'm not in shape right now.
• 1:22:52
  In fact, thank God that we're on tour because tours when I get in
• 1:22:55
  shape, but I usually. Oh, absolutely.
• 1:22:57
  Oh, I I dial it in. Yeah, crazy.
• 1:23:00
  Yeah, because like, you can't be fucking burnt out on stage.
• 1:23:04
  It's dude. So you need calories for energy.
• 1:23:06
  I do the opposite. I dial it in kind of when I'm at
• 1:23:09
  home and when I'm on tour, I eat.
• 1:23:10
  I eat like disgusting. Yeah, no, it's it when I'm at
• 1:23:14
  home, I'm like, I'm this is I'm relaxed and like I like to go
• 1:23:19
  out to dinners and stuff like that and I don't like to calorie
• 1:23:21
  count and, and and what have you.
• 1:23:23
  Like, you know, but like on on tour, I got AI got a 90, you
• 1:23:29
  know, 8090 minutes set and like, I don't want to be like, you
• 1:23:34
  know. I'm the opposite though, like
• 1:23:35
  when I'm on tour if I don't have like 3-4 thousand calories a day
• 1:23:40
  like that set, I play badly because I really don't have the
• 1:23:43
  energy. But you're like a big dude.
• 1:23:45
  You'd be more like 9 foot tall. You know it's true.
• 1:23:47
  I am. I'm pushing that.
• 1:23:48
  How? Much you, how much you weigh.
• 1:23:49
  Yeah, like, like I say, right now I'm at like 198 exactly.
• 1:23:52
  However you don't like. That's all height.
• 1:23:56
  But typically I'm around like 185 to 195.
• 1:23:58
  I know it's only a few pounds, but, you know, I mean, like, it,
• 1:24:01
  it, it counts anyway. But when I stopped, when I was
• 1:24:04
  stopped drinking, I was like 220, you know?
• 1:24:08
  Yeah. But like when I look at old
• 1:24:09
  photos, you know, I'm like, oh, geez.
• 1:24:12
  And like, I'd like on stage, I was just like, out of breath and
• 1:24:16
  the whole thing. And when my point is, is that
• 1:24:19
  that was another thing that really was instrumental and like
• 1:24:23
  getting my head right is fitness.
• 1:24:25
  If I don't go, it's literally my mental health.
• 1:24:29
  Education it's actually right it's the same thing my my my
• 1:24:32
  girlfriend would be like you know if I'm all if I'm if I seem
• 1:24:35
  kind of bent, you know she like once you know you should go to
• 1:24:37
  the gym and it's true and or if I.
• 1:24:40
  Works 99.5 it's. Crazy or I go for runs.
• 1:24:44
  I mean that I got into that. That's funny.
• 1:24:46
  That's like a real big like sobriety thing is like hell of
• 1:24:50
  people get into running, but but I did.
• 1:24:52
  Every single person I know. Yeah, every single and I get it
• 1:24:56
  because you need for me, when I first stopped, I remember
• 1:25:00
  thinking how my, my almost my biggest anxiety was how am I
• 1:25:03
  going to sleep? It's it's what put me to sleep.
• 1:25:07
  And we're talking like, you know, especially on the road.
• 1:25:10
  I mean, we, it got to a point where I would have, we had to
• 1:25:14
  add to the writer and I'd have my own 5th of, of Jameson.
• 1:25:17
  And I'd do, I'd do half before the set and half after.
• 1:25:21
  And it was like every single day.
• 1:25:22
  And there's so much sugar and shit like that.
• 1:25:24
  But like, anyway, that's how I slept.
• 1:25:26
  And so I was like, I got to make myself tired, you know, and I'll
• 1:25:29
  go for a run, Miles. And then you get a high after
• 1:25:32
  it. And you feel great and you're
• 1:25:33
  like, I should, you know, I'm just going to keep doing this.
• 1:25:35
  And it kind of, it's a really good habit anyway, that that's,
• 1:25:38
  that's another thing. So I I I am sort of like you
• 1:25:42
  where I'm like, oh, no, I got to find solutions for this now.
• 1:25:46
  But that's a big one. Yeah.
• 1:25:47
  Yeah. Very helpful.
• 1:25:48
  Heathen. The singing of the star.
• 1:25:50
  Yeah, who is it? The the sample you mean.
• 1:25:53
  It's just yeah, it's a sample from something I want.
• 1:25:56
  To know it is Yeah, Fuck me. This is a a question for Carrie.
• 1:26:00
  I can't remember it. It's a it's, it's a French pop
• 1:26:04
  song from the 60s that he kind of like back masked and and, or
• 1:26:11
  slowed down or. Enough to get away with it or
• 1:26:13
  did you still need clearance? We cleared it.
• 1:26:15
  Yeah, yeah, I think yeah. No, no, I mean, we definitely
• 1:26:17
  did. I was just wondering like if if
• 1:26:20
  you even needed to. But yes, I, I do believe that
• 1:26:23
  we, we did need to and we did that was so a really early idea
• 1:26:29
  for the record was to have a kind of DJ Shadow thing about it
• 1:26:37
  where all the interludes were going to be like really sample
• 1:26:39
  heavy. And we were going to try and fit
• 1:26:44
  samples into all the clean sections and things like that.
• 1:26:46
  And, and we got a couple authors, one in body behavior as
• 1:26:48
  well. But you know, it's it's like
• 1:26:50
  anything else, like the the moment you have all these kind
• 1:26:53
  of preconceived notions of what something's going to be and then
• 1:26:56
  you start working on it and it ends up totally different.
• 1:26:58
  But yeah, that was the impetus for that was we were we're going
• 1:27:01
  to be in our DJ Shadow. Show weirdly the photo on the
• 1:27:05
  front, even though it's nothing like it.
• 1:27:07
  It's kind of like introducing. Yeah, I see that.
• 1:27:10
  Yeah, Yeah, that's a great album.
• 1:27:12
  Great album. Yeah, great album.
• 1:27:13
  And and Carrie is, I mean, again, it is a question for him.
• 1:27:17
  He, but he's. Kind of I want him on as well.
• 1:27:20
  Like next time we roll I. Will I will.
• 1:27:22
  I will. Yeah.
• 1:27:23
  He's he's great to talk to. But we haven't really talked
• 1:27:26
  about Danny Filth. About the the new shit.
• 1:27:28
  About all of it. The thing about him, I think I
• 1:27:31
  think this is a thing that he is a huge influence.
• 1:27:36
  One of my And I know that I know that you rock with Cradle.
• 1:27:39
  Yeah, big time, big time. And so do I.
• 1:27:42
  Are we talking? About the current, the current
• 1:27:44
  situation, we just going to talk about Danny Phelps.
• 1:27:46
  I just wanted to make a note that that he is an all time
• 1:27:49
  lyricist. Oh, 100%.
• 1:27:51
  Like he's in my top three. Like like like metal lyricist.
• 1:27:55
  It's it's the storytelling is insane.
• 1:28:00
  There's so much going on all the time.
• 1:28:04
  He's such a good vocalist. I think his episode is maybe the
• 1:28:07
  last time I gassed up a guest this much sick.
• 1:28:11
  Yeah. I'm in good company.
• 1:28:12
  Yeah, he is again, more like a storyteller.
• 1:28:19
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:28:19
  No, like Edgar Allan Poe level. Yes.
• 1:28:22
  I learned I would when I was a kid.
• 1:28:25
  I would like look up the things I didn't understand that he was
• 1:28:29
  talking about, like Gilda Ray, the French serial killer who
• 1:28:35
  served under Joan of Arc and who like trap children and his
• 1:28:39
  dungeon and all this shit. And like it's like pretty sure
• 1:28:42
  it's Lord abortion. Midian is, my is.
• 1:28:45
  Is the one Midian is the. One, I'm glad.
• 1:28:47
  I'm glad that we feel the same. Yeah.
• 1:28:49
  And I would just sit with lyric books and like, anything I
• 1:28:52
  didn't get, I would look up and I'd be like that.
• 1:28:54
  This guy is like, crazy. Yeah.
• 1:28:57
  So sick. Cruelty and the Beast the the
• 1:29:00
  remix. Have you heard Cruelty?
• 1:29:02
  The Beast is like up there for me but then they remixed it
• 1:29:04
  recently. I'm not usually A1 for remix.
• 1:29:06
  You feeling it? In fact, you did a remix as
• 1:29:08
  well, didn't you? Guess what?
• 1:29:09
  I don't listen to it, I listen to the OG.
• 1:29:11
  The Oh yeah. Yeah, we did, yeah.
• 1:29:16
  But the remix of Cruelty and the Beast is like, like what?
• 1:29:21
  Amazing. And I spoke to him about it and
• 1:29:23
  I was like, I love the mix on Midian, but I would also take a
• 1:29:27
  remix of Midian just. Yeah.
• 1:29:29
  Then he was like, I don't think we've got the master, but yeah,
• 1:29:31
  yeah, yeah. I was thinking about Midian
• 1:29:33
  today actually, because I, I watched an interview with
• 1:29:36
  Pinhead. I don't remember his name.
• 1:29:38
  The guy that does the talking at the beginning of Midian.
• 1:29:42
  Oh yeah? Hell right.
• 1:29:42
  Yeah. He's fucking a Scouser, he's
• 1:29:45
  from Liverpool. He's from Liverpool, Yeah,
• 1:29:47
  there's a. He's talking.
• 1:29:49
  He's like, yeah, fucking yeah. There's.
• 1:29:51
  This funny bit where I saw an interview with him and the woman
• 1:29:54
  was like what if what if Pinhead was from Liverpool and they like
• 1:29:59
  and he did like a a bit. Wait, so he's not from there?
• 1:30:02
  Maybe I watched the same video. No, no, no, no.
• 1:30:04
  He is from there. But like, he did pin headlines
• 1:30:08
  in his. I watched the same you watched
• 1:30:10
  today. OK, great.
• 1:30:11
  It's pretty recent. Yeah.
• 1:30:13
  Yeah. That's hilarious.
• 1:30:14
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:30:15
  And I had no, I had no fucking idea.
• 1:30:17
  I was like, wow, that's awesome. Because he's properly like,
• 1:30:22
  you're suffering. Yeah, really.
• 1:30:24
  He's like, you're right mate. Fucking.
• 1:30:27
  Cool. So fucking cool.
• 1:30:28
  Yeah. You haven't met Danny.
• 1:30:30
  No, actually, you know, I, I, I I hate being this way.
• 1:30:34
  OK, not to have this whole thing be about like the.
• 1:30:37
  End of the podcast is about Kayla Phil for now, so it
• 1:30:39
  doesn't. Matter Yeah, yeah, if you if you
• 1:30:42
  don't like him, I don't have to I don't have to do about that.
• 1:30:45
  And I, and I don't mean for this whole thing to be like when I
• 1:30:47
  used to party, but when I used to party, I was way better at
• 1:30:50
  meeting people like that because I had no shame about going in
• 1:30:54
  someone's backstage, you know, and, and like being super
• 1:30:57
  obnoxious. And these days I'm so tepid
• 1:31:00
  about it. But we were playing God, I can't
• 1:31:05
  even remember that it was, it was a festival over the summer,
• 1:31:08
  like maybe a week and a half, two weeks after I'd seen you, I
• 1:31:11
  caught the set and it was them and Linkin Park.
• 1:31:18
  And it was, those are the only two people playing.
• 1:31:20
  And Linkin Park just had like, like basically everyone at
• 1:31:24
  Cradle Field was like a dedicated head.
• 1:31:26
  Wait, was it that Polish festival?
• 1:31:32
  Was it Mystic? No.
• 1:31:34
  No. I think it must have been on
• 1:31:35
  this last circuit because we did whatever day it Mystic the both
• 1:31:37
  of those. OK, OK.
• 1:31:39
  So I was like, like, like, I don't, I don't want, I don't
• 1:31:43
  care about Linkin Park. I'm going to go watch Cradle.
• 1:31:45
  And so like with a, with a dedicated group of, of cradle
• 1:31:50
  heads, I watched the set. Great set.
• 1:31:54
  Dan and I, you know, just like loving it.
• 1:31:58
  Dan's also the the cradle guy in our band.
• 1:32:01
  Everything had cleared out because they were the last two
• 1:32:03
  people playing in the night. And so Dan was like, I, you
• 1:32:06
  know, I bet that if we just hang around enough, we'll be able to
• 1:32:09
  meet him. And we ended up meeting the
• 1:32:15
  guitar players and we're kind of hanging with them and very
• 1:32:20
  lovely. And that alone was great, but I
• 1:32:24
  was kind of trying to be like, OK, like, but where's Danny?
• 1:32:27
  You know what I mean? And he has a separate room.
• 1:32:29
  Yeah. Fuck, man.
• 1:32:30
  He just. He he could tell, you know, he
• 1:32:33
  could tell. We were just kind of like,
• 1:32:36
  basically just hanging on, you know, kind of like walking in
• 1:32:39
  circles. Yeah.
• 1:32:40
  Yeah. And like, he would peek his head
• 1:32:41
  out and I'd be like, I'm still here, you know what I mean?
• 1:32:44
  And and he, you know, I think just part was probably just like
• 1:32:47
  fuck. Off.
• 1:32:48
  He probably likes your band. He's, I mean, I think.
• 1:32:51
  If he doesn't know you're banned, he would.
• 1:32:53
  Love it. I think he does.
• 1:32:54
  That's what we were told. And that's neither here nor
• 1:32:57
  there. I know what it's like.
• 1:32:58
  Sometimes it'd be off stages at the end of the night and you're
• 1:33:00
  like, look, I just, I don't. I don't really.
• 1:33:02
  Have you got to take his makeup off?
• 1:33:03
  Yeah. That's true.
• 1:33:06
  You know, I had an opposite experience because I did the
• 1:33:09
  podcast with him and I had to pick him up.
• 1:33:13
  So I drove to the venue and they were running late.
• 1:33:15
  The sound check. And he's really so British.
• 1:33:20
  Like I would say even more British than me.
• 1:33:23
  Amazing. Like.
• 1:33:24
  I want that from. Him it Oh my God, it was like a
• 1:33:28
  caricature because I've only ever seen him in character,
• 1:33:31
  really. I'd seen the odd interview, but
• 1:33:33
  yeah, get to the backstage and then the TMS like, oh, this is
• 1:33:37
  great from the downbeat. Don't be doing anything later.
• 1:33:40
  And he's like, oh, all right, mate, you, you want a cup of
• 1:33:42
  tea? And I was like, I'm all right,
• 1:33:45
  thanks, Danny Filth. And then he's like, soundtrack
• 1:33:49
  is running a bit late, but so but if you stay here or
• 1:33:51
  whatever, you can come back and pick me up or whatever.
• 1:33:53
  So watch the soundtrack. Nailed it in soundtrack Killer.
• 1:33:55
  I ended up leaving because it went over a lot.
• 1:33:57
  Came back, picked him up. And then we get in traffic on
• 1:34:01
  the way to go to the podcast and we're just talking.
• 1:34:05
  We're just talking about like he's how he's like, yeah, I'm
• 1:34:09
  leaving. I was telling him I was moving
• 1:34:10
  to Nashville and he was like, yeah, I'm moving, but I've got
• 1:34:14
  quite a lot of stuff. And I was like, what kind of
• 1:34:17
  stuff is? Well, my house is kind of like a
• 1:34:19
  museum. And I was like, oh, OK, go.
• 1:34:21
  And he just like telling me about all the mad stuff in his
• 1:34:24
  house. And he's like, I'm very pretty.
• 1:34:27
  I'm moving in my girlfriend. I'm very particular.
• 1:34:30
  Like I've I'm just really have to check myself with, you know,
• 1:34:34
  having someone with me. It was just really like just
• 1:34:36
  normal gums. Yeah, yeah, I you are the Lord
• 1:34:40
  of darkness in my head and you're just offered me a cup of
• 1:34:43
  tea and all this stuff. It was super nice.
• 1:34:45
  It's incredible. Yeah.
• 1:34:46
  No, I I have no doubt. I'm sure he's he's very sweet.
• 1:34:49
  It was just like, it was just a kind of awkward timing, but.
• 1:34:51
  I have heard the contrary though as well, which is why I was a
• 1:34:54
  little bit like apprehensive oh this guy going to be a Dick.
• 1:34:57
  Like growing up in London, you've heard stories of like,
• 1:35:00
  but it's probably like someone drunk as fuck. me and I.
• 1:35:04
  Yeah, he's, I mean he's. Been a normal human to someone
• 1:35:07
  doing that and then whatever. Yeah, yeah, I and I and I get
• 1:35:11
  that. And you know what?
• 1:35:12
  Good for him because I would have fucking punished him.
• 1:35:14
  I was. Sober, you wouldn't have
• 1:35:16
  punished. You can't punish Sober.
• 1:35:17
  Yeah, it's impossible. But I would have like, I would
• 1:35:20
  have for sure brought up like Cradle of Fear, you know?
• 1:35:22
  Yeah, I have. You have it have it on DVD.
• 1:35:25
  On DVD. Yeah.
• 1:35:27
  Yeah. Well, because fuck me.
• 1:35:29
  The last track on Bittersweet to suck you by I'm.
• 1:35:31
  Not going to be able to reel that off the top of my.
• 1:35:33
  Head well it features the music video is them performing and
• 1:35:37
  it's cut with cradle of fear so when I was like like 13 because
• 1:35:43
  that was I didn't even know what black metal was and I'd see and
• 1:35:46
  I'd. There was gateway drug
• 1:35:47
  blackmail. Yeah.
• 1:35:48
  And I was just like, oh, this is just like a crazy band.
• 1:35:50
  And I saw that and I was like, I need to know what this other
• 1:35:55
  thing is. Is that how you got into it
• 1:35:57
  seeing that video? I got into it.
• 1:35:59
  So when we when we when I was young, you could as part of like
• 1:36:08
  major cable packages have MTVX included and MTVX was a short
• 1:36:17
  lived metal and rock focused, just 24 hours of music videos,
• 1:36:22
  MTV channel. It'd be like MTV MTV2 and then
• 1:36:25
  whatever this is before they had brought back headbands ball.
• 1:36:30
  It was the only way you could see metal videos.
• 1:36:33
  And so I would just be up to like 3-4 in the morning watch
• 1:36:36
  and her ghost in the fog. Yeah, that was that was the one
• 1:36:40
  thing. I was like, I was like, this is
• 1:36:42
  so sick. Yeah, so.
• 1:36:44
  And I got Midian right afterward and, you know, fucking Cthulhu
• 1:36:50
  Dawn and Saffron's Curse and the whole thing.
• 1:36:53
  I mean, I was just like, obsessed with.
• 1:36:55
  And that same year, Bittersweet Sasakibai came out, which is
• 1:37:00
  more like a collection, you know, not like a like a formal
• 1:37:03
  album and that. Doesn't that also have some
• 1:37:05
  remixes on it? They they do a thing where they,
• 1:37:07
  they, they remix a lot of the older stuff.
• 1:37:10
  They will, yeah, yeah, stuff off like, 'cause it has Black
• 1:37:13
  Goddess Rises Part 2, which I think like maybe black is was
• 1:37:18
  Black Gods Rises off like total fucking darkness or something.
• 1:37:22
  And then they do assisted immersive mercy cover on there.
• 1:37:27
  Yeah, it's just like, I'm pretty sure that's just kind of how how
• 1:37:30
  it. I was like reversed engineered
• 1:37:33
  into blackmail, which was massive Metallica head.
• 1:37:38
  Metallica had did S&M. Yeah.
• 1:37:43
  Yeah. It was the first time I had met
• 1:37:45
  with orchestra. Yeah.
• 1:37:46
  And then I was like, Oh my God, it's amazing.
• 1:37:47
  I wonder if there's any other bands met with orchestra.
• 1:37:50
  And I went like, and then Demi Borg and then huge of that and
• 1:37:55
  then Cradle. Yeah.
• 1:37:56
  And then I was like, oh, this is this is it.
• 1:37:59
  Yeah, yeah. And I did theatre as as a of
• 1:38:03
  course I did yeah of course as a young person and like I was
• 1:38:06
  obsessed with and I guess still kind of am with fan of the
• 1:38:09
  opera. Yeah.
• 1:38:11
  And so I when I saw this, I was like, this is like metal fan of
• 1:38:14
  the opera and it's still in. What school Fan of the opera?
• 1:38:18
  Oh, I mean, I could. If it was on right now, I would
• 1:38:21
  know every word. It's actually.
• 1:38:23
  Embarrassing. It like reverse engineered my
• 1:38:26
  goth phase as well because I kind of went from black metal to
• 1:38:30
  more goth music. Me too.
• 1:38:32
  Like yeah me too. It was not the other way around.
• 1:38:34
  Which? No, in fact, I remember when I
• 1:38:36
  first heard and saw the cure, I was confused.
• 1:38:40
  That like sounded like that, which is so funny.
• 1:38:43
  I was like, I was like, but they, they look, they're
• 1:38:45
  supposed to be scary, supposed to be Batman.
• 1:38:47
  Yeah, it was the same thing. A reverse ghost?
• 1:38:50
  Yeah, yeah. And I was like, whoa.
• 1:38:52
  I was like, oh, this is kind of cool, though.
• 1:38:53
  Yeah. Anyway, it's an old timer for
• 1:38:55
  me. I had one more great old thing,
• 1:38:57
  Simon Cut. I really could talk about black.
• 1:39:01
  We didn't talk about blackmail once.
• 1:39:03
  No, it's good. It's good.
• 1:39:06
  It's good that we didn't or it's good, yeah, I mean.
• 1:39:09
  It's good music, but it's yeah. I mean, we won't.
• 1:39:12
  This is still a cut summer. We won't get into Danny.
• 1:39:15
  Danny's. His his new.
• 1:39:17
  His new thing, which, you know, I like.
• 1:39:19
  What a mess. I'm on his side, to be honest
• 1:39:22
  with you with it. I, I certainly, I certainly get
• 1:39:28
  and probably identify more with his side because like, I am kind
• 1:39:32
  of the hymn of us, you know what I mean?
• 1:39:35
  Not the same practices. All off the record.
• 1:39:37
  Yeah, but like, but like, you know, like I've, I've, we have
• 1:39:41
  management, but I'm like I'm the manager.
• 1:39:43
  Also like read your fucking contract, you don't sign it,
• 1:39:47
  give it to a lawyer. That's literally everything you
• 1:39:49
  do. It's very very true.
• 1:39:54
  You think you could rank Cradle? Top five?
• 1:39:57
  Cradle for me. Was that too much?
• 1:39:59
  Top three? Yeah.
• 1:40:02
  Yeah, because I'm looking right now.
• 1:40:03
  Oh, no, actually, sorry. This is still a cut, Simon.
• 1:40:06
  The one thing I wanted to say. So also what Cradle Of Filth did
• 1:40:10
  to me, And I wonder if it will if it did it to you.
• 1:40:13
  Cradle was how I got into HP Lovecraft.
• 1:40:17
  You ever read any Lovecraft? I've read a little bit of
• 1:40:19
  Lovecraft, yeah. And yes, that makes total sense
• 1:40:22
  and I've been the same way. Cthulhu Dawn.
• 1:40:25
  What's that? Exactly.
• 1:40:26
  Oh, exactly. Like there's so much about that
• 1:40:29
  band that is like that that you can, you can Google, you know,
• 1:40:33
  to, to know more about like lyrically, it's just it's so
• 1:40:38
  dense with like fun gothic. I kind of I wish so much that I
• 1:40:43
  could do like early a goth band or like, but The thing is I
• 1:40:46
  would want to write the lyrics, but I Can't Sing, Can't Sing at
• 1:40:49
  all. I could maybe pop out of Pete's
• 1:40:51
  steel like super she's. Got a bellow yes.
• 1:40:57
  Forgive her. Yeah, I looked, I absolutely
• 1:41:01
  looked slutty at Madison there. She's dressed for the part, but
• 1:41:06
  you've got it. Toy power.
• 1:41:07
  I got into satellite as well. I got into it.
• 1:41:09
  I was already into my black metal.
• 1:41:12
  And then he died and I bought a Carang magazine that came out
• 1:41:16
  after he died. And I was like, I guess I'll
• 1:41:17
  check this out. And I was like, oh for fuck's
• 1:41:19
  sake, it's awesome. Yeah, yeah, too late.
• 1:41:22
  It's yeah. There are still like friends of
• 1:41:24
  mine that I I will occasionally try to like who who aren't, who
• 1:41:30
  aren't converts, who I'll I'll be like no like of.
• 1:41:32
  Of typo, yeah, yeah. Like you have to listen, you
• 1:41:35
  have to understand the context in in which it's, you know, in
• 1:41:40
  which it's being made like like, Oh no, like it's just this kind
• 1:41:43
  of band doing this or, or whatever.
• 1:41:45
  Because it is it is such a unique sound and you can
• 1:41:49
  approach it from all these different.
• 1:41:52
  Yeah, if you get the wrong first song for the person, they're
• 1:41:55
  never going to give another one. Like some type typos.
• 1:41:59
  So all over the place if you get the wrong first lyric, people
• 1:42:03
  can just be like Nope. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:42:05
  I mean like what I always tell people I was like, look, if you
• 1:42:07
  like this is maybe crazy, but if you like Jesus, like Silver EP
• 1:42:11
  and I mean like and you don't like typo like.
• 1:42:14
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Something you're there's a
• 1:42:16
  connection here you're missing. You know what I mean?
• 1:42:18
  Like it cause like it, it travels in that way.
• 1:42:21
  I think yeah, it's it's it's great tunes.
• 1:42:25
  But yeah, ranking my cradle, though.
• 1:42:28
  Yeah, you could rank your cradle.
• 1:42:29
  I mean, you know Midian, my name's my number one desk, and
• 1:42:35
  her embrace is my #2. #2. Yeah, I really love it.
• 1:42:38
  Yeah. Malice to the looking glass.
• 1:42:40
  That's the other thing, is the puns.
• 1:42:43
  Yeah, yeah. There's no one better.
• 1:42:45
  Yeah, and it's the British. It's the British.
• 1:42:47
  Totally, Yeah. And it's fun, yeah.
• 1:42:49
  You know so many. There's so many.
• 1:42:51
  Nymphetamine. Nymphetamine might be the
• 1:42:54
  fucking best. I mean, nymphetamine is maybe
• 1:42:57
  my, there's my #2 number two, yeah #2.
• 1:43:00
  Yeah, OK. I like that.
• 1:43:02
  And the the video, the viral video of the two girls singing
• 1:43:06
  nymphetamine, I don't know. This.
• 1:43:08
  Oh my God, you must have seen it.
• 1:43:09
  I need to see it there's. 2 Madison, do you know the video
• 1:43:13
  I'm talking about? It's 2 girls.
• 1:43:14
  Then they're going, oh, nymphetamine nymph.
• 1:43:20
  It's just these two girls. And it's acapella.
• 1:43:22
  It's like, yeah, but it's like a meme because it's like, not
• 1:43:24
  great, but yeah, yeah, yeah. It lives in my head.
• 1:43:27
  Fucking. Like a free time, this is this
• 1:43:29
  is the first thing I'm like. Gilded, Gilded C Word.
• 1:43:32
  I know the. Only one I can't say on YouTube,
• 1:43:34
  really. Yeah, I got demonetised for it
• 1:43:37
  twice. Twice.
• 1:43:38
  Because it was like hate speech against women.
• 1:43:40
  I was like wow, the. Gilded is actually more hate.
• 1:43:44
  People don't know their history. That's so American pill.
• 1:43:49
  Yeah, it really is. It really is.
• 1:43:51
  Yeah. It's discrimination.
• 1:43:52
  Friends that still hate that word.
• 1:43:53
  I mean, I get, I get it in America as a book, a booksman.
• 1:43:58
  Right. No one even says it in America.
• 1:44:00
  That's right. That's like like, you've never
• 1:44:02
  heard that growing up. But that's what I mean, so maybe
• 1:44:04
  that's why I get it. But also, if you go to the
• 1:44:06
  Merriam Webster, Yeah. Is that your one?
• 1:44:09
  Right. And Oxford is ours.
• 1:44:12
  And you look up the C word, ours, I think #1 is vulgar slang
• 1:44:21
  for an idiot, and yours is vulgar slang for women's
• 1:44:25
  genitals. So you know the the papers are
• 1:44:30
  actually correct in doing OK, but let's take the word back.
• 1:44:35
  Let's take it. Back we can.
• 1:44:37
  People have taken it back. I can't even say I just want to
• 1:44:39
  say it, so let's just stop. I've been really good at people.
• 1:44:42
  Do to it's it's considered like it's serving.
• 1:44:45
  It's serving. Yeah.
• 1:44:46
  It's. Yeah, and and good on them.
• 1:44:52
  That's what I say. You haven't finished, you
• 1:44:55
  haven't finished ranking. Finish it and we're done.
• 1:44:57
  Cruelting the beast. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:44:59
  Have you done the remix? I haven't bro, I know I usually
• 1:45:02
  don't go into remixes. And guess what?
• 1:45:04
  It's called Cruelty and the Beast.
• 1:45:06
  Remistressed. Fuck yeah.
• 1:45:08
  It's not a remix remix. This is.
• 1:45:12
  I honestly, it's I don't. I hate a remix.
• 1:45:16
  I hate it. Especially if it's something
• 1:45:17
  that was like formative for me. But Cruelty and the Beast never
• 1:45:21
  sat that well with me because it was quite low FI recording,
• 1:45:27
  which is normally I like, I like a lot.
• 1:45:29
  Yeah, but but there's there's good, there's bad version.
• 1:45:31
  I know it was like it had enough digital on it that it was like,
• 1:45:36
  it doesn't sound like it's recorded in one microphone in a
• 1:45:40
  church bag. It's like all over the shop.
• 1:45:43
  And then they remixed it with Scott Atkins that did it in the
• 1:45:45
  first place, who did the latest Cradle record as well, which
• 1:45:48
  also rips. Yeah.
• 1:45:50
  And it's so sick, but I don't even know they did remix it.
• 1:45:55
  I was going to say, I think they re recorded, but that was one of
• 1:45:58
  the, like, collection things. They like re recorded songs.
• 1:46:01
  Do yourself a favour, throw in the base remix.
• 1:46:05
  Stress I will, I will do that and I want to just a quick add.
• 1:46:09
  I think that if they could, I would like them to remix
• 1:46:13
  damnation in a day, which I'm a damnation head yeah and I feel
• 1:46:17
  like it's not really celebrating their catalog, but they signed
• 1:46:20
  to Sony. It was the first time that they
• 1:46:22
  got a full orchestra to the orchestral parts.
• 1:46:25
  The video for so glad for the madness, dude.
• 1:46:28
  It is top three videos. It's it's it's their.
• 1:46:32
  It's their actual. Best videos.
• 1:46:33
  That's Sony money. That's what I'm saying.
• 1:46:35
  I want to know good if they got you ever hear the caucus story
• 1:46:39
  about Sony? I'm pretty sure it was Sony, No.
• 1:46:41
  So this is well, it's fine. It's fine.
• 1:46:43
  We're going way over. Yeah, it's fine.
• 1:46:46
  So I think it's I think it was Sony, maybe it was Warner, but
• 1:46:50
  like just before hard work came out, I'm just say Sony forsake
• 1:46:55
  of argument or whatever hard work is going to come out or
• 1:46:59
  like it hasn't been recorded yet, but death metal was big
• 1:47:02
  Chris Barnes, like yes, 9192 great time Cannibal Corpse and
• 1:47:08
  Sony's like, oh, death metal is going to be the next big thing.
• 1:47:12
  So they offer Carcass and then my figures might be wrong but
• 1:47:19
  they offer Carcass £1,000,000 for a record the day in CDs
• 1:47:23
  where the labels just had blank checks.
• 1:47:26
  They'll make it back, yeah. They record hard work.
• 1:47:29
  It doesn't cost a million, of course.
• 1:47:30
  And then Sony, in the time it takes to record it, Sony goes,
• 1:47:36
  they're not really sure if death metal was going to be that big,
• 1:47:39
  you could just keep the masters, keep the money, and then they
• 1:47:44
  put that money in investment, which apparently they still live
• 1:47:51
  off. What?
• 1:47:52
  And then Earache signed them for 300 grand for hardware, which
• 1:47:56
  was already recorded. So they didn't have to do
• 1:47:58
  anything for that, stacked it. So they just stacked all that.
• 1:48:02
  And then it's like the great, that's the great unknown.
• 1:48:06
  That's. Fucking awesome, right?
• 1:48:07
  And it might just be an urban myth.
• 1:48:09
  Even if it is, it's a great urban myth, and when I would, I
• 1:48:11
  would gladly accept if I were. It's like the the great grind
• 1:48:15
  core, like Rock'n'roll Swindle. That's so fucking cool.
• 1:48:19
  And the rumor is that they invested all that very cleverly
• 1:48:22
  and they could just live off it. That's amazing.
• 1:48:25
  God good for them. That's why you know.
• 1:48:27
  It might have been a dream, but I'm pretty sure that's real.
• 1:48:30
  I've I accept it, I think it's great.
• 1:48:33
  We're over time OK? There's no truth. 2 truths on a
• 1:48:36
  lie. Thank you for coming on.
• 1:48:37
  Make sure you check out Death Heaven in the UK and Europe and
• 1:48:41
  maybe the tail end of the US tour if that's still going on by
• 1:48:44
  this point. Or check out Lonely People with
• 1:48:46
  Power. Check out everything.
• 1:48:48
  If you've got this far, you know that I'm gassing it up because
• 1:48:52
  it's fucking sick, so just check everything out.
• 1:48:55
  Thank you so much for coming out.
• 1:48:56
  Thank you, had a great time. Nice one.