What’s up folks? Klownz here again with another Empire Interview with Johnny McBee the lead singer and writer for the band The Browning. So peep your eyes on this and see what we chatted about.

EE: So Growing up in Kansas how was the music scene? And what were your influences?

JM: Originally my step dad got me into metal, like into Metallica and crap like that then my older brother got me into the more harder stuff like Hatebreed and Amon Amarth. But the scene in KC used to be so sick like a church would let us book shows and whenever we were like 14 and back then it was like, we would just say that there would be like five local bands playing and 250 people would show up. So twice a month we would put on these shows at this church and we got so many people coming to shows that the church decided to let us put on bigger shows and we were 15 or 16 and we built a scene around ourselves. Just doing these random shows in a church in Missouri. I remember specifically when me and my friends started playing metal we didn’t know what break downs were we never been to tour shows or anything like that. Because we were just trying to sound like as I lay dying basically. I remember our first show we went into our very first song we went into was a breakdown and we saw fist and arms flying and we were like what the fuck so we went and started just writing breakdowns.

EE: would you say that your parents were supportive off the bat then?

JM: Oh yeah, I come from not a very well off family so they don’t give a crap and they don’t have expectations, I’ve seen so many people that come from rich families and get ruined in the scene because they were expected to go to college and expected to get a job. My family doesn’t have jobs and never went to college so whatever I do is fine. The hardest part I decided when I was like 17 my whole life was Baseball and music. I played in like the super little league series.so when I was 17 I decided that I was going to a music school. And music school doesn’t have a baseball team so I was like its kind of a waste of time for me to play baseball, if I’m going to music college. When I quit baseball my mom was kind of freaking out because that was my whole life up until that point and she was expecting me to go to college playing baseball at that point.

EE:So the new single the new single Carnage just came out how are the fans reacting to it an what the feedback?

JM: overall everyone is loving it, this is sick and this is perfect. Obviously there is a few people that talk about the rap, and the funny thing is we have had a few people say that im an original fan and the rap just ruins everything and remember I started this in 2005 as a solo project, but from 2008 to 2010 it was all rap metal that’s all I wrote so if you are an original fan you should know that 10 years ago that what The Browning was.

EE: you heard it here folks!

EE: with Geist being released in less than 5 weeks are you nervous?

JM: its going to be interesting because, one of my favorite comments on carnage somebody said I wasn’t really digging the rap but at least you guys did go dad rock! My thought was wait till you hear the next single….. this album is our hardest and softest album we ever made. So just wait till you hear the album

EE: So what is your favorite track on the new record?

JM: Ummm it’s a toss up between a song called Skybreaker or a song called awaken the omega its because those songs are so vastly different from The Browning has ever done.

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Anthony Bernardi

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