Long Island natives have had quite a ride over the last few years. My first introduction to their music was after Tim Howley of Fit for an Autopsy, posted the video for ‘Igneous.’ The first guitar riff got me hooked, the band took elements of Metal, Prog, playing technique, and fused them with Rock to put together something original sounding. The band released earlier this year Crux, a follow up to 2016’s Chromoparagon. Crux is a polished and more refined Moon Tooth, the songs still have that hard rock edge but seem to of had more attention in the approach than the previous album. I was able to speak with Nick Lee, and Ray Marte to learn more about the band. 

GA: Can you tell me how the band started?

RM: To go back in history, Nick and I were in a bandExemption, back in middle school. We had a small career; did some tours and after that, the band broke up. The singer left to pursue other musical endeavors. We started Moon Tooth right after that, that was late 2012. We met John and Vin early on, we knew John for a while but never had a chance to play with him. Vin was playing in another band during the 2008/2009 era and we met him through that. Vin’s first show ever was when we were opening for the Misfits and he saw us.  Ever since then, he had to meet us, and play with us. Eventually that came to fruition which is cool. 

NL: John also played drums in a band I was in (prior to Moon Tooth), and he gave me a solo ep of him singing, which I didn’t know he could sing. It had these layered vocals, and it was well done; I was blown away. He was coming to our old band’s shows, and when that broke up, he was the first person to hit me up. He was like, ‘I know you are going to want to take your time with looking for someone, but I am your guy.’

GA: The band recently released Crux the follow up to Chromaparagon, what was the process like writing this album?

NM: The writing process for Chromoparagon was a lot of Nick and I in the beginning trying to get guitar and drums together. We would write parts here and there, and jam on them. We already had some songs written, then everyone else joined, then tried to piece things together where they would fit. At the time we were impatient to get a full record out, because we already had the Freaks ep out. We started recording music before it was completed and able to be performed in a room. 

Crux is the opposite of that, where we did a lot of work together in the jam room. Songs were pieced together beforehand, put together as whole before the recording process. We did a lot of demoes and restructured things around vocals, which is something we didn’t do for Chromoparagon. We basically just wrote crazy music, then gave it to John for him to fit vocals in. Crux is a bit more vocal centric, and we put in more work on the songwriting for this album. We worked with Machine and Mark Morton for production. We already had that mindset before working with them. 

GA: The band is known for throwing in several elements of music into your songs, from rock to metal to even prog. When writing for a song, do you have a road map of where you want to go when writing or is it more about the feel? 

NL: It can go either way. We usually start off writing riffs, sometimes that riff will develop into a song quickly, or I will give that part to John to get a vocal melody which will help shape where we go from there. Sometimes the music is just there, and John will write to it, other times we are piecing things together. That is what has been happening more over the recent years. I have found it is more fun to piece things together, rather than be like my music, ray’s music, everyone has their own distinct music. Our music is becoming more of a group effort from the ground up, then saying hey I have this song put your parts on it. We ask more questions now, like what do you want here, or how long should we do this before the chords change. Even for John, we can say things like, I love these lines you wrote but what if the last line did this instead? We became very open to each other’s creative criticism. I think this makes everyone happy; instead of it being one guy does the lion’s share of the writing, and everyone else can kind of do a bit. Those kinds of bands tend to go through multiple lineup changes. At a certain point if you are not having fun and don’t get to express yourself; you got to dig down for a reason to stay, especiallysince we don’t make a lot of money doing this. 

RM: The whole point is to get what you think is in your soul out to the world. 

GA:  The band also has a knack for balancing aggression and emotion, when you write how do you find this balance? Is it something that comes naturally or is there someone in the band who is like hey we must ring that back a bit or push harder here? How does that work for you all?

RM: I think it comes naturally for us. Everyone in this band likes the juxtaposition of heavy and beautiful together in our songwriting. We play a lot of with the dynamics, but never go to far one way or the other. 

NL: I look at it like this: when you listen to old Sabbath records, there is always one or two songs that Tony will do this cool instrumental. I remember sometimes those songs would become my favorite songs on the record. It would be that one weird clean song on an otherwise heavy record. Mastodon is a big influence on me, they kind of took from Neurosis, that clean but heavy writing style. Emotion wise it is very heavy, but guitar tone wise it is just clean guitar. You can make an acoustic guitar sound heavy in that style of writing. 

GA: One of my favorite songs off the album is ‘Through Ash’, it has a very prog feel to it with a bit of an 80’s metal feel to me, the song just flows throughout. What would you say is your favorite song off the album to perform?

RM: For me it would be the song ‘Trust.’

NL: For me this is a hard one, I have had a lot of fun playing ‘Rhythm and Roar’ lately. We have been fitting it into our set more. It is one of our more rock songs, and I love playing the solo in it. I also have to say the title song ‘Crux’ has been a challenge. I go from super quiet finger picking to aggressive playing along with the scream at the end of the song; I got topull it off every night. We have been closing with it every night, so after an hour set it makes it challenging. It is a song that I look forward to playing during the set, but it is also the most intimidating as well. When you play slow and quiet, if you make a mistake it is very noticeable, as opposed to playing distorted heavy guitar where if you hit an off note it can sometimes be hidden in the mix,

GA: I first heard about the band through Tim of Fit for an Autopsy, which you also toured with, can you tell me more about how that relationship began with FFAA?

RM: We have known Tim for a very long time.

NL: We met him when were fifteen. He is from Long Island where we are from. He had a metal band before FFAA at the same time as our former band, so we did a lot of shows together. This was the old Myspace days, of house parties and DIY shows. We stayed close this whole time, also Joe their singer, is from Long Island as well. When Tim joined FFAA we were all very excited for him. It has been amazing to watch how far they have come. They took a heavy style of music and are doing some serious shit with it. Traveling the world and playing with some very notable bands. 

RM: We are making a pastime of smelling their old unshowered butts. We have their old van. 

NL: We got the offer for that tour, Fit for An Autopsy and Tombs, which is a heavy tour for us. We can get heavy, but it is not the same crowd. I was super excited for the challenge of that. To be like we are kind of the weirdos opening the show, we wanted to see how many people we could convert by the end of the show. 

RM: We were ready for people to not accept us. Maybe I was, I was prepared for people to not dig it at all. 

GA: Those are the types of shows I enjoy. It is refreshing to see a band play on a bill where they may not actually fit with the other acts. 

RM: I feel that people tend to like shows that are more diverse in their line ups. I don’t want to see five death metal bands in a row, mix it up; throw in a grind band, or a thrash band. Those usually make for the best shows. 

GA: What equipment are you using for your live set up, if you have any endorsements please mention.

RM: I have an endorsement through Sabian cymbals. I play with Vic Firth sticks. I also use Remo, and Acrylic Drums.

NL: I use Vigier Guitars, I have been with them a couple of years now. I also use Ernie Ball strings, and Empress Effects, I have a huge board with a bunch of effects. I also use Electro – Harmonix. I use the Freidman overdrive through an old 1974 Hiwatt DR103. Fryette just lent me an attenuator, the Powerstation 2, which is my newest toy.   For years I have been to loud on stage, because it is an all tube head, so working with Fryette they lent me the attenuator. This is the first tour with it. It is making playing fun because sometimes I use it to make myself sound even louder. It sweetens up the saturation in a way that sounds really cool. I am still dialing it in. When we were out with Animals as Leaders, you would think you would want to be louder for a bigger room, nope. The sound guys were like let the PA do the work. Now I can turn down my volume without sacrificing the tone. 

RM: Our bassist is with Spector Basses, Ernie Ball strings, and he is using an Aguilar Tone Hammer for his amp. 

GA: So, what was your inspiration for learning how to play music, what got you into wanting to play instruments? 

RM: My parents were very musical. My mom played guitar and piano, my dad and sister also played guitar. When I was younger, I wanted to be able to jam with my sister, and there were enough guitar players in the house. I picked up the guitar a little bit, but mostly started on drums when I was about 8 years old. I started dabbling with guitar and bass when I was around 14, but mainly stuck with drums. My early influences were Weird Al, Led Zeppelin, Pantera, System of a Down, Slayer and many more. 

NL: My direct family didn’t play music, but a bunch of their friends played in cover bands. So, I was always around music when I was young. When I was 6, I heard ‘Enter Sandman’, and was obsessed with metal ever since. I asked for a guitar, and my parents were very into it, they have been very supportive. I remember trying to choose another instrument in school, in 4^thgrade and my mom was like, ‘nope you stick with guitar.’ At the time I didn’t understand because all the other kids were picking instruments to learn. 

RM: She was like ‘don’t be a loser, fuck trombone’. 

NL: She pushed me to practice and I got really into metal. I got into all the classics at first then, worked myself to a point where I was trying to find the most extreme and grossest thing I can find. Then I went the other direction, getting into The Allman Brothers Band, The Beatles, Bob Dylan and Jeff Buckley, everything but metal. I just circle through all of it now. 

GA: What is next for Moon Tooth after this show?

RM: We have Chicago tomorrow; we are in the middle of the Light the Torch run which is spread out different kind of tour. Where we are doing a few dates with them, then go off on our own and do a few head liner shows, then link back up with them. After that we will be writing again. We are always trying to come up with new music when we can. We are also going to get some touring plans set up for the fall. 

NL: We haven’t gotten the packages together yet for fall, but we are hoping to get back out to the west coast and possibly head to Europe for the first time. 

GA: If someone was to want to follow the band online or purchase merch where can they find the band and your merch store?

NL: Moontooth.org, which will direct you to our Bandcamp and you can get merch through there. We are on all the major social media platforms; Facebook, Instagram, Twitter etc. Our music is available on Spotify and Apple Music. 

RM: We still do everything by hand, so when you order something; it is the band members packaging the items and shipping them to you. 

GA: Anything else you would like to add? 

NL: Come on out to a show, the music is better live. 

For all things Moon Tooth related please visit Moontooth.org

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George Archibald

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