SO HOW ARE YOU?
Good. We’re actually going into the studio tonight. We’re working on the record right now. Just waking up. We have a midnight-shift-type thing. Going in around 11 and get out around 7 in the morning. It sucks. [Laughs] But it’s as close to being locked down in the studio as you can, so I guess it has its plusses.
WELL, I SAW ON YOUR WEB SITE YOU HAD SOMETHING ABOUT, WHAT WAS IT, IN APRIL YOU WERE IN THE STUDIO AND THEN YOU HAD TO STOP?
Yeah. We went in and we were gonna do a full-length, but we ended up stopping and just using what we had for a demo ‘cause we were writing a bunch of songs and ended up re-writing some songs, and it just ended up that we wanted to start over basically. So we just took what we had and pieced it together for a demo just to have something. Now we actually started recording for the full-length – or what we hope to be the full-length. [Laughs]
ARE YOU USING MOST OF THE SONGS [FROM THE DEMO] FOR THE FULL-LENGTH?
Yeah, all those songs are gonna be on the full-length; they’re gonna be different recordings of them. We did all [those recordings] ourselves at that point ‘cause we went into the studio to record as I said and ended up not liking the [way] the drums came out and a lot of different things so we just decided to scrap that and use a couple of the recordings from that and then some recordings we did ourselves just to put together a quick demo. Because before that the only thing out was a split-CD that was done last year, it was released in April of ’06 and that was only like after maybe three months of being a band. I like the split-CD but it doesn’t really say what we’re doing now. [As for what we’re recording now,] we have all the instruments done; we’re just working on vocals. There’s 14 songs we’re working on. But definitely all the songs on the demo you have will actually be on the record.
GOOD. SO IT’LL HAVE THAT KIND OF DARK, MOODY FEEL?
Yeah.‘CAUSE [ON YOUR] PURE VOLUME PAGE YOU HAD TWO FROM THE DEMO AND TWO OTHER SONGS – “SORDID” AND [“AN EXCESS OF FAILURE”]. WERE THEY FROM THE SPLIT?
Yeah.THOSE WERE DEFINITELY MORE UPBEAT, YOU KNOW THAN…
What the demo is. I mean, there’s some tracks on the full-length – there’s definitely a mixture of the two: there’s still some more aggressive – not aggressive, but more like you said upbeat, in-your-face songs like “Sordid.” There’s still maybe a handful of those types of songs that are gonna be on the full-length. But a lot of them are more the darker, moodier type of a sound.
EVEN ON THE DEMO, IT’S NOT LIKE EVERY SONG SOUNDS THE SAME. “PAPER THIN” IN THE BEGINNING, THAT ROCKS, AND “CONFIDENTIAL.”
Yeah. “Confidential” and “Paper Thin” are more of the aggressive songs. And then there are the songs that are a lot slower and [have] more of an arrangement to them. But they all have the same dark mood – even the upbeat ones. Like the ones on the split are definitely – I mean, we just became a band and everything was new to us, so everything was aggressive and upbeat, didn’t really have our complete direction of where we were headed. That’s why the split hasn’t been re-pressed ‘cause I’m not completely happy with [it].
DO YOU HAVE A LABEL IT’S GONNA BE COMING OUT ON OR YOU JUST SHOPPING IT AROUND?
Just shopping it around. The split-CD we put out on this D.I.Y. label [Tragic End], I put the NIGHTBREED out on that, I put the split out, and a band called INTERFUSE from Ohio, just bands I like and these projects I’m doing. But for this full-length we’re definitely looking for a label to pick it up. But we’ll see how that goes. [Laughs] That’s always the fun part.
WHAT ACTUALLY CAUSED THE CHANGING OF THE BAND [FROM NIGHTBREED TO KILL THE FALL]? WAS IT JUST THAT ALL THE GUYS LEFT OR SOMETHING?
Basically me and the drummer split ways with the bass player after one of the tours and then he had his brother fill in on some stuff, and then me and [the drummer] parted ways and it was kinda at the point where it’s like it’s all new members with [the guys I have now] so it’s pretty much like starting fresh. And I think it’s definitely a different sound than the NIGHTBREED stuff, [which] was definitely a lot sludgier and – I wouldn’t say darker than this stuff, but it’s just a lot slower and sludgier. This stuff has more of a wider range than the NIGHTBREED stuff did. But the main reason I switched the name and started a new band was because all the band members were different. I felt it was only fair to just start over for them rather than have them come in and be new members to a band that was already in existence.
I GUESS THAT’S JUST THE CALL OF THE LONE PERSON WHO’S LEFT BECAUSE SOMETIMES YOU GET BANDS WHERE THERE IS ONLY ONE MEMBER LEFT AND HE JUST KEEPS IT GOING UNDER THE SAME BAND NAME – MAYBE ‘CAUSE THEY’VE BEEN ESTABLISHED MORE OR SOMETHING…
Yeah. A lot of bands do that, one guy is the only member left. I easily could’ve done that because I’m the sole songwriter. Really it’s just starting fresh, wanting to start over this whole thing.
YOU SAYING NIGHTBREED WAS SLUDGIER BUT IT STILL HAD THAT – I LOVE THAT THE DARK, MOODY FEEL THAT’S ALL OVER KILL THE FALL. IT’S GREAT BECAUSE IT GOES WITH THE LYRICS AND EVEN THE ARTWORK. IT’S THE WHOLE AUDIO/VISUAL/LITERARY-TYPE THING. IT ALL FITS.
I could’ve switched the artwork over, but with NIGHTBREED we had the image with the logo and everything, and with KILL THE FALL, a friend of mine does a lot of artwork so I wanted to have him just completely start over and do a whole new look. With KILL THE FALL, I like the whole art of it – it’s a lot better than what we had with NIGHTBREED. It wasn’t anything that I didn’t like what I was doing with NIGHTBREED because I definitely did. A lot of the same dark, moody vibe is still with KILL THE FALL too. I just felt it was time for a change.
A LOT OF THE LYRICS, THEY’RE I DON’T KNOW IF THE WORD WOULD BE INTROSPECTIVE – I’M NOT SAYING IT’S BLATANTLY BIOGRAPHICAL, BUT IT IS MORE PERSONAL… I FOUND IT TO BE PRETTY POETIC. HOW DO YOU GO ABOUT WRITING LYRICS?
It’s gonna sound kinda cliché, but I really just write from what I’m feeling, what I’m going through, what I have gone through, things that are happening around me whether it be personal or socially or whatever the case may be. But I also try to write I guess the way is kinda vague. I don’t wanna really come out and say what I’m trying to say. I write a lot of personal stuff, but at the same time I don’t wanna just throw my whole life out there, so I keep things a little vague and [use] a lot of metaphors and that type of thing. That way the whole world doesn’t know every detail of everything. [Laughter] And then it also [allows for] interpretation to whatever the listener’s taking from it.
BUT IS IT CATHARTIC ‘CAUSE IT’S PAINFUL IN A WAY.
[LAUGHS]
Yeah, well. [Laughs] It’s definitely a way to get a lot of demons or emotions that are troubling me out and once they’re on paper and once they’re in the songs and I’m actually singing them, every time I play it the emotion of what I’d written is still there. It’s like re-releasing it every time. It’s definitely a good release of anger or sadness or whatever the writing is about. …If it got to the point where it didn’t have that feeling, then I don’t think I’d wanna play that song. And there have been songs in the past where sometimes, for whatever reason, even when you go into record like we had that problem with some of the songs going into the first recording you talked about in April, and if you feel something’s not right about it, you end up just getting rid of the song. And the ones that make it to the live show or the record are the ones that we’ve been playing over and over and you know it continuously has that same feeling and that same power to them. At least for us. [Laughs]
EVERYWHERE THE OTHER GUYS IN THE BAND ARE MENTIONED IT’S ALWAYS AS “THE DUDE” AND “THE GUY”… DO THEY HAVE NAMES? [LAUGHTER]
That just kinda went back to what I was talking about earlier. With NIGHTBREED there were a couple different drummers and bass players before the final line-up and I split ways with those guys. So when these guys got into the band, it was just a funny joke – “I won’t even give names…”
‘CAUSE THEY MIGHT BE GONE NEXT MONTH!
Yeah. “I won’t even give you a name ‘cause you could be gone in a month and I’ll just give the new guy who replaces you – it’ll still be ‘The Guy.’” Chris Wheeler is the bass player and Dustin Hamilton is the drummer. They’ve been around since the beginning and I don’t really see them going anywhere. It’s just one of those things that stuck and a lot of people just call them that anyway now.
WELL, JUST TALKING ABOUT BEFORE THE OVERALL MOOD OF THE STUFF YOU WRITE, WHEN YOU LISTEN TO BANDS ARE YOU MORE DRAWN TO THOSE TYPES OF BANDS THAT ARE DARKER OR ARE YOU INTO EVERYTHING?
I’m drawn to the moodier, darker stuff, but at the same time I’m drawn to stuff that’s a lot more upbeat. That really depends on my mood. But if it’s bands I’m really into, the darker, more moody, and more emotional feel to the bands are the ones I’m more drawn to. But, I’m not just stuck on that type of music.
USING THE TERM “EMOTIONAL,” NOW IT HAS THAT DEROGATORY LIKE YOU THINK OF THE WHINY [SO-CALLED] “POP-PUNK” BANDS…
I definitely agree ‘cause even as I was saying it, I was like, ohhh. [Laughter] I can just imagine what people are gonna interpret from that! But the bands that they call “emo,” everything’s really whiny.
PRE-PACKAGED.
It really is. It’s cookie-cutter. If you don’t sound like that band, nobody wants to listen to it. It’s just what’s being forced down kids throats these days. Somehow kids have to dig a little deeper and get into what’s going on in the underground.