Fortunately we were able to get close enough to these maniacs to ask them a few questions. This interview was done by Mike with both Nate and Jeff on march 15th before a terrifying set at abc no rio.
Hodgepodge: Ok, introduce yourselves
please...
Nate: I'm Nate and i play guitar, and there's John who sings and Devon is
on bass.
Jeff: I'm Jeff and I play drums.
Hodgepodge: Ok, can you tell all the
Hodgepodge readers how you crazy cats got started...
Nate: About 4 years ago, Devon and I had an idea for a joke band, like a
straight edge band in the vein of Youth of Today and stuff like that. We thought the
ultimate name would be a band called Monster X. So, we started off doing that and it just
kind of progressed...Well once we got John on vocals, it progressed into grindier stuff.
Jeff's our third drummer so we've been through a lot of line up changes. We're on our
third second guitar player now and basically that's it.
Hodgepodge: There really aren't any straight
edge grind bands out there. In fact, it is something that is almost unheard of. Was your
progression into this a conscious one or did it just sort of happen?
Nate: It wasn't like a conscious decision, it was something that kind of
grew I think. John couldn't really sing like we wanted. We wanted a vocalist like Dan O'
Mahoney or someone that sounded really awesome like that but John just really sucked as a
singer (laughs). So basically, we used our other influences like Citizens Arrest, Napalm
Death. As much as we're into Youth of Today, Side by Side, and No for an Answer, and youth
crew stuff like that, we're also into the whole other side of music like Napalm Death,
Suffocation, and a lot of death metal bands, Citizens Arrest, Rorschach, and stuff like
that.
Hodgepodge: Do you ever play with death
metal bands?
Nate: Uh, yeah, we have. We played this one death metal show with Morgue
and Afterlife. They were kinda weird ya know. It was all right even though I'm not into
too much death metal anymore.
Hodgepodge: How did the crowd react to you
guys?
Nate: Good, it was cool I guess. It was kinda embarrassing though because
John came out with a...Were you at that show (directed towards Jeff)?
Jeff: Which one?
Nate: The one with Morgue and Afterlife...
Jeff: Oh yeah, when he wore that hat.
Nate: Yeah, John came out with this big cowboy hat wich had a upside down
cross on the cowboy hat. It was kind of embarrassing. Yah know, death metal people didn't
know what the fuck to make of us. I think they thought we were a total joke but when
Johns' vocals kicked in, they started getting into it.
Hodgepodge: I know that you have numerous
releases out, but do you have any future plans as far as recordins go?
Nate: Jeff lives up in north, like two hours north of us. So we wanna
write a lp/cd for Hater of God records wich is John's label. So it's been kinda slow with
the geographic loacation of Jeff goes. We wanna get like 30 songs on that. Another thing
that we wanna do before that is uh, a covers comp; well not a comp...but a 7" of us
doing like 80's posi youth songs. Ya know, one side east coast, one side west coast. Youth
of Today and stuff like that on one side and on the other, No for an Answer, Uniform
Choice, bands like that. So that's all we have planned for the future at the moment.