Stream: Midnight “Black Rock ‘n’ Roll”

(from Farewell To Hell out now on Nuclear War Now)

Satan’s favorite party band is Midnight from Cleveland, who match the best parts of Venom and Motorhead with the sleazy visuals of the Mentors. They’re true members of the new black trash generation of bands—keeping the faith of rock ‘n’ roll metal and forsaking the trappings of over-technical playing and production. These guys serve up beer- and blood-soaked blasphemous anthems with the best of them and yes, your flesh shall burn as you enter the flaming pentagram. This interview by John Henry.

I was recently down in New Orleans with some friends of mine that do a metal DJ night called Hades Night and they played your new record. I was immediately sold on that Venom/Motorhead trash metal sound you guys do. Is there a scene of other bands in Cleveland doing this kind of music? Have you done other bands like this before?
Athenar (guitar/vocals): Maybe—I guess? NunSlaughter is from here. They’ve been around since the eighties. They’re more death metal-style. I was in a band called Boulder. Some people would call it like between Thin Lizzy, Black Sabbath and Motorhead—I don’t know, hard rockin’ metal? We did like three albums. We started in the early ‘90s and went all the way to the beginning of the 2000s. 2002 was, I think, when the last album came out. I’ve always been a fan of heavy metal but in the case of most of my favorite bands anyway their musical tastes doesn’t necessarily reflect their fan base. You wouldn’t guess the stuff that I listen to by what I play. I don’t consider myself part of any metal scene or punker scene. I just like good music. I like songs. I’m not much of a free-form jazz type guy. I like some or whatever, but a good song is a good song whether it’s done by Love or Twisted Sister, you know? Distorted rock guitars and bass and drums­­—that’s all it is. The lyrics and the singing is maybe all that differentiates it.
The first thing I thought when I heard you guys is that you obviously get the joke. You’re not some guy living with his mom and using her credit card to buy spiked gauntlets and thinking he’s evil.
That would be even funnier, I think. Again it’s just whatever you like, I guess. You look back at Venom obviously—they’re just playing songs. They were fans of Kiss, you know, and so am I. Most music you want to have a good time with. You don’t want to just put it on and then pretend you’re depressed and wear razorblades on your wrists. That’s more humorous than anything else, I would think.
You fool with fascist imagery but you’re obviously not skinheads.
We’re bald but that’s not by choice. It’s just our age—but you know, it’s just imagery. It looks sort of Star Wars. If you look at Star Wars, what was Darth Vader and all the imperial guards? What were the Stormtroopers, you know? It’s the same kind of shit but who made it? George Lucas. It’s imagery. It looks cool.
So the reason you guys wear executioner hoods is not to hide your identities from the cops or that you’re really ugly?
Yeah, I would say the latter!
How did you get the band started?
Originally it wasn’t necessarily supposed to be a band. I do all the crap on the records and stuff. That’s just all me doing everything like the drums and guitars, the bass. The guys I’m playing with just forced me to have a band. They called up and said, ‘Hey, we’re going to have a band.’ I said, ‘Nah, it was just meant to record the stuff.’ Then they came over and knew all the songs and forced me to have a band, which is cool because in the end it turned out all right.
A lot of black metal guys do that—record by themselves and get guys to play it later. It’s just one idiot with an idea and it works out from there.
That’s kind of what I was doing. I was saying, ‘Well, if Prince can do it and Quorthon can do it…’ Those were the only people at the time that I knew that did that kind of stuff, you know—recorded everything by themselves.
Do you do the band artwork as well?
That back patch was ripped off from an old Venom design—Cronos standing in the fire like that. People that know it would think it was funny and people that didn’t know would think it was generically cool. I have no idea how to do that kind of stuff. I have the idea and say, ‘Hey, do this or that’ and let people with tech skills do that part.
How did you hook up with Nuclear War Now Records?
My friend Omid. He does a label called Outlaw Records and I’ve been friends with him for years and I’m the worst at self-promotion which he’s always been good at. I just make it till it’s recorded and I’m done with it. He’s good at actually taking stuff and getting it to people who might be into it. So he gave it to Yosuke at Nuclear War Now and he liked it and he said he’d put out a reissue of everything that’s already been out. Like I said—the way the band started out is I just wanted to record like a mini LP and that was intended to be it, but then my other friend who had some bands booked at a studio and the band ditched said, ‘Hey, can you come to the studio tomorrow and record a few songs? Whatever you want to record.’ So I said, ‘Oh, maybe I’ll make up two more Midnight songs.’ I made up two more Midnight songs that night and then recorded them the next day and that was the 7-inch. Then I was like, ‘OK, that’s it—there’s no more.’ Then Yosuke at Nuclear War Now wanted to put out a compilation and he said, ‘Oh, will you do one song?’ and I said, ‘OK, I’ll just make up one more song.’ So I got all the bases covered—a 12-inch, a 7-inch and a comp track. Now there’s Farewell To Hell which is the newer one that just came out in September. We actually have two CDs worth of crap.
Which has ‘Black Rock ‘n’ Roll’? I fucking love that song.
It’s on Farewell To Hell. That was a tune that when I made it up I thought it was going to be too simple and retarded. I didn’t know if it was going to be too dumb.
What about the live shows? Is it violent or more of a party?
It just depends on the mood, you know. They’re not all the same. There have been full-scale bloodbaths and then there are parties. There’s been some snooze fests, too, you know—we were supposed to be billed before the puppet show.
At the end of your tour this May you end up at the Chaos in Tejas fest—how’d you hook up with that?
There were a couple of people from Cleveland that moved to Texas a few years ago and I guess they turned us on to some other people and that’s where that guys from. It just kind of started from there. We’ve already played Texas and it’ll be our third time playing there. I don’t know what any of these gigs are going to be like. I have zero idea. That’s the way I usually go into it. I’m like, ‘We’ll find out when we get there.’ That might be kind of bad but it’s less to worry about. Just worry about it when you get there. What’s that place like that we’re playing at in East L.A.? Gang members out here are only into rap and shit but you talk about the west coast and they’re into crazy metal—that’s pretty cool. We played Mexico once in Nuevo Laredo—I don’t know, I guess it’s a drug cartel border town? It was pretty shady. They were a lot of people saying, ‘All right, hurry up—go over and play and get back over to the states.’ When we were there some Mexican biker gang wanted us to play for a biker rally coming up in a couple months. I was like, ‘Uh, what?’ But I guess it would be cool as long as we played the right tunes.

MIDNIGHT WITH D.A.F. AND MORE ON MON., MAY 18, AT THE BLVD, 2631 WHITTIER BLVD., BOYLE HEIGHTS. 8 PM / $8 / 18+. THEBLVDCAFEANDBAR.COM. AND WITH SUMERIAN AXE, BASTARD, MUNDO MUERTO AND BROKEN PATTERN ON TUE., MAY 19, AT DIPIAZZA’S, 5205 E. PACIFIC COAST HWY., LONG BEACH. 9 PM / CONTACT VENUE FOR COVER / 21+. DIPIAZZAS.COM. VISIT MIDNIGHT AT NWNPROD.COM OR MYSPACE.COM/ATHENARSMIDNIGHT.

Download: 60 Watt Kid “2012″

(from the self-titled full-length on Absolutely Kosher)

60 Watt Kid is a three-piece that has no laptops, 80-odd effects pedals, no bass, and a helluva lot of creative energy. Dan Collins interviews them after a grueling practice, on a hot night in his yard, around a smoky chiminea. A lhasa poo stands guard.

So you’re wearing shorts! Is your practice space hot?
Dylan Wood ( drums and tazers): It does get pretty hot in the practice space.
And you guys are working on an album?
Derek Thomas (guitars, analog synth, samples and electronic soundscaping devices): Yeah, we just finished recording, so we got to get it turned in, in probably like four months.
Dylan: And we’re playing Murufest on Friday! It’s the biggest Long Beach house party! Every year. It’s like free beer, free barbeque, like everything.
Long Beach has a pretty happening little scene nowadays. Did you ever play on the boat?
Derek: The Queen Mary?
Kevin Litrow (guitars, analog synth, vocals, harmonica, samples): No, they had a boat where they did punk shows. We were still in San Francisco at that time.
And now you’re based here. Dylan, you weren’t part of the San Francisco chapter of 60 Watt Kid?
Dylan: No, I just joined the band six months ago or something. This guy I know told me about them back when I was still in high school, so I went and saw them at this house party, and it was like the best thing. I was so stoked on them! And they told me they didn’t have a drummer anymore, because they were moving down here, and I was like, ‘Dude, here’s a CD I made you guys.’
Derek: He drew this really nice drawing on the CD—on paper that he’d folded—and after all the effort he put into making it, I felt like I should check it out. I put it in, and I was like ‘Oh, this is a 60 Watt Kid CD.’ Cuz he like did a five minute loop of ambient shit right before he came to the show. I thought it might have been some of our shit, and then I was like, ‘Oh, this is Dylan’s shit!’
Kevin: We love Dylan. He’s so great.
Right now Dylan’s petting my dog, Ozzy, so I have no complaints.
Dylan: He just sat at my foot and was ready to receive!
I’ve found he likes certain types of music, like Joni Mitchell, and The Point soundtrack too. Nilsson. Have you guys been down to the Silent Movie Theater to see bands score live soundtracks? Would you consider performing something like that?
Kevin: Totally. I already did a couple shows at Echo Curio that were just soundtracks to some films, a film I did by myself and did a live soundtrack to it.
I interviewed ADULT. a few months back, and they made their own Suspiria-esque film and toured doing that as a live score.
Kevin: The Books, too! They blew me away. Because they made all their own film and edited it. They had the headphones, and were in sync with the cellos and everything. It made me cry.
Let’s talk about phones for a second. I saw you at Fuck Yeah Fest last year, and you had all kinds of phones on stage. You don’t do the phone thing anymore?
Kevin: We are going to get the phone thing back.
Derek: The phone thing is ‘on hold,’ ha ha!
When I saw you that one time, you literally called somebody, for reals, during the song, right?
Kevin: I called somebody. And Derek projected a call to the audience. The song is called ‘Every Day There’s Something Special,’ and in parentheses, ‘Hold on, I gotta take this call.’ It’s kind of like, we can recognize all the special things in the world, but everybody’s always on their cell phone and they’re not recognizing that because they’re taking time out to get on the phone. There could be a shooting star and they’re missing it, or some guy driving off a cliff!
Was there ever a time when people thought the show was over because you were all on the phone?
Derek: Our old drummer once got up and went and ordered nachos at the food stand while we were in the middle of that section. It started going into a comedy thing, where it was going away from music.
Kevin: It was starting to get corny.
It seemed like you have all kinds of instrumentation: lots of keyboards, guitar, effect boxes. It looked like you had 80 different little things up there.
Derek: I got an old vocal robot pedal, that was used in the original Star Wars, and Brian Eno used it a lot, and I used to play my guitars out of that sometimes. And it makes it sound like rhino-sauruses and elephants having wars in the jungle and screaming and screeching. I tend to trade out and buy a bunch of stuff. We try to take our equipment and use it in one way for a couple months, and then we’ll switch it around and trade pedals, and put them in different orders, and have totally different sounds. Because you can do so much with only a few pedals. I’ll trade If it’s really expensive, and I don’t use it, then I’ll just sell it back.
What’s something where you thought ‘This is going to be the most amazing thing! It’s going to make our band turn a corner and do this new thing,’ and then it sucked!
Derek: I got the new analog Prophet that was like $2000, and I never plugged it in, and it was too much, I think.
[At this point, the old wooden folding chair I had left in the rain collapsed and nearly snapped Kevin’s finger off when he tried to save himself from the ground. A lawsuit against Ikea is pending.]
Oh shit, did your finger get cut?
Kevin: It got crushed… and cut. Actually, do you have some ice? It’s like burning from… being smashed. I’m sorry, it’s just that I play guitar with this finger.
Oh, no problem! I’m frequently injured by friends and neighbors, so I’m prepared. One sec. [Our interviewer runs to get an ice pack, then returns.] Sorry about that. Is this the worst injury you’ve received with this line-up?
Dylan: Last time we toured, first stop, I slammed Kevin’s hand in the door, and he yelled out a belting scream!
And now I hurt his hand, too! Do you think in a past life, you stole something in a bazaar in Marrakesh and had your hands cut off or something?
Kevin: You know, what’s really weird is that my friend had a dream that I put my hand in the blender and cut off all my fingers!
Oh my God! It’s almost like the reality is worse, because it’s slowly but surely happening instead of all at once!
Kevin: She looked it up, and supposedly the blender means you’re blending a mix of stuff into your fingers, so it doesn’t mean all bad.
Dylan: I got totally owned in Oakland because I didn’t pay for this bag of chips in this grocery store, and when we got back my favorite sweater was missing! It’s like, karma was owning me!
You guys are telling me about committing crimes, on the record even! Have you ever been involved with Scientology?
Kevin: I’ve walked over there once, but I didn’t go in. You can get detoxes, ha ha!
Dylan: My best friend Sean went over there, and the lady was like ‘Now you can know the truth about Scientology, and it doesn’t involve aliens!’ And he just walked in there, and the first thing he saw was a huge statue of an alien playing chess with a caveman.
Kevin: That should be the cover of our album! Actually, we have a cover. A painting that my mom did of these three little flowers with a blue sky behind it.
What’s the meaning behind the title ‘We Come From the Bright Side?’
Kevin: You know, the good side of the force. Luke Skywalker.
Mark Hamill?
Kevin: Yeah, Mark Hamill. Not the new shit.
Do you think there’ll come a point in your career where you have a trilogy of albums that suck, and then a trilogy of albums that are awesome?
Kevin: I hope that doesn’t happen.
Dylan: That has to happen!
Do you think there’s safeguards you can put in place to prevent a slide into mediocrity?
Kevin: It’s weird. There’s bands like Radiohead, that slowly progress in their own sound. And there’re bands like the Pixies that just wouldn’t do that. They keep their sound like forever.
I’ve got to crack more into the alchemy of your sound! There’s a really solid way that you guys do songs. But from an outsider perspective, looking at all the gear that’s lying on the floor, I don’t know how to describe it! How do you guys start writing songs? Do you start with a riff on the keyboard, or do you build songs around the drums, or what?
Dylan: We’ll just start something, one of us, and it just progresses.
Kevin: …or Derek writes a guitar part at home, or I write a keyboard progression, and show them. Every song is different. We’re open-minded and free to do what we want.
Has anyone ever brought in a song where the other two are like ‘That’s not a 60 Watt Kid song?’
Derek: There are songs sometimes. We tried to work with Ableton Live, a program that bands try to use to do live looping. It was not our sound. It was obvious. We’re kind of glad we don’t have computers. We don’t have anything pre-looped except a few things. It’s just better that we use real instruments.
Kevin: It’s organic. We try to bring music into it so it’s not electronic music. It’s not robotic. That’s fine for that type of music, but for us, we want to bring an essence of some energy and feeling into it, where it goes out to the crowd, bounces around the walls.
It sounds like if I were to take a list of what 60-Watt Kid is not, one thing would be ‘robotic,’ another would be ‘preset…’
Derek: Being robotic is okay…
Kevin: We haven’t found a laptop program that we’re gonna use live, is what we’re trying to say.
Derek: A lot of bands that we like are moving in the direction of that. And the definition and quality is really good. But at the same time, you want to watch people perform. They sync up the loops, but… we use pedals, but none of them sync up, so matter how in time they are, they go out of time. So we like to do ambient loops against stuff.
Dylan: I’m really glad we don’t use the laptop. It’s just fun to loop live.
But you guys use samples, though.
Derek: I have some vocal samples from an old record, a child’s story book record.
Kevin: It’s called ‘The Story of Growing Up.’
Dylan: I sample my bells live, before every show, and then during the show manipulate them.
Have you ever thought a three-piece wasn’t big enough?
Dylan: Kevin will only let us be a three-piece.
Derek: We were thinking about bass and low end, but some songs Kevin’s the bass, some songs I’m the bass. I don’t think you miss the bass. For the album, we didn’t have anybody play bass.
Kevin: I’ll loop a keyboard drone, and it’ll be bassy, and we’ll play two guitars through it, or whatever. I think it makes our sound, actually.
Do you have a mental shortlist of bands who don’t have bassists, who you feel a kinship with?
Kevin: I think the Doors—Ray Manzarek is classically amazing. There’s so many bands that don’t have bass, which are like guitar and drums, like the White Stripes, more like noise rock or garage rock. I don’t relate us to that, because there’s more orchestration going on.
Dylan: We try to make it sound really pretty.
But have you ever done a song where you’re trying to sound like demons?
Kevin: We have a song, ‘Pressure,’ that’s kind of demonic. Sounds like complete hell.
I feel like all your songs are about the grander things. Do you have any songs about girls?
Kevin: I like to write about stuff that’s more about catching the time and the moment, what I see around me. I don’t like to write songs about breakups, unless I’m going through a breakup. The reason half those songs are about my mom is that she just passed away, and she was dying for the last two years.
Dylan: I really like the way Kevin writes lyrics, because he’s really good at capturing, and in performing too, the state of things when they were happening.
Is there a certain type of girl that’s like the 60 Watt Kid groupie?
Derek: We haven’t met her!
Good! A herpes outbreak could really curtail your tour plans, and we wouldn’t want that!
Kevin: We could write some songs about it.
It seems really sucky for artists right now! It’s because everything has to be given to the public for free! It’s liberating, but at the same time, it’s scary. In 1979, you could be in a punk band and still sell 700,000 albums. What do you think are the pitfalls of the times we are in?
Dylan: It’s a bummer to not be able to create all the time, if you’re going to give it all out.
Derek: That’s the downside—that you’re not going to make money, which is bad! But you can get your music out there, and be noticed.
Dylan: Also, with music, and technology, and the media, the sound doesn’t come out of one place. Now a more mainstream band is… killing the genre before it gets born in a way.
Do you think as musicians, you’re like, ‘Fuck, we need to get a more level playing field as far as radio is concerned,’ or are you like, ‘Fuck it, radio is dead’?
Derek: I think everybody’s dead right now. But I think it’s a cleansing time right now, with the economy, and the swine flu…
Kevin: We all have to shit out the toxins, and then we all start out fresh and new. We’ve all got morals again, and there’s love in the air, you know what I mean? People start realizing, ‘Oh shit, we ARE starting to lose money,’ and family starts getting more important. Working together and helping people out. People start to get a heart a little more… or not!
I can’t wait for that to come true. Is there anything else I didn’t ask that you wanted to answer that I didn’t ask?
Kevin: You could ask us if aliens do exist.
Do aliens really exist?
Dylan: They play fucking chess with cavemen!

60-WATT KID WITH AVI BUFFALO AND TIME OF WOLVES ON TUE., MAY 5, AT THE ECHO, 1822 SUNSET BLVD., ECHO PARK. 8:30 PM / FREE FOR 21+ / $7 FOR UNDER 21 / ALL AGES. VISIT 60-WATT KID AT MYSPACE.COM/60WATTKID.

Pinback “From Nothing to Nowhere”

MC Chris was an odd little opener for Pinback, but I’m not complaining.
I downloaded his life over a year ago and have been itching to pay him
back, so I picked up a couple of his self-released CDs and a hoodie to
show the love. Not only did I feel satisfied having accomplished at
least one of my new year’s goals, but I also got to see a great
performance from one of the funniest rappers on the planet. How
can you not fall in love with songs that feature lyrics about Star Wars
and nerd girlfriends? Surprisingly, a very large portion of the crowd
was there simply to see Chris, which is something he kept mentioning
with excitement. After finishing up his set, it was time for indie
darlings Pinback to waltz on-stage. Even with numerous projects such as
Goblin Cock, The Ladies, and a slew of other great albums under his own
name, Pinback is arguably Rob Crow’s brightest musical adventure. Early
in their set we came to find out that Mr. Crow had turned 37 that day,
and that his only birthday wish was that everyone who was drinking got
home safe in a cab. Furthermore, MC Chris hit the stage once again and
got everyone in the audience to sing the happy birthday song to the
jolly, bearded vocalist. Much of the night consisted of material off
their newest accomplishment, Autumn of the Seraphs.  Luckily for fanboys
like me, that didn’t take too much time away from favorites such as “Boo,”
“Loro,” or “Fortress” which featured dueling vocals from Rob and Zach Smith, the second voice of the band. Advertised as their last show in the U.S.
for quite some time, this was definitely a memorable and fun event.

– Jon Hughes