Interview with Peter Smith, drummer for Resistor

Live photos by: Ron S. of Empire Extreme
Band promo photo credit: Sean Raynor

Long Island’s Resistor have never been content to simply exist within genre lines—they’d rather bulldoze them entirely. The self-described purveyors of “knuckle dragging wika wika core” are poised to unleash their full-length debut BITE THIS on March 27 via Paid Vacation, and if the advance copies circulating are any indication, the 29-minute assault is exactly the kind of no-skip, leave-them-wanting-more experience the quintet has been perfecting since their 2023 So It Begins EP. Built from the ground up with producer Randy LeBoeuf (Kublai Khan TX, The Acacia Strain) and featuring the turntable wizardry of Manhattan’s own Anthony Arce, the album channels the cocky swagger of nu-metal’s heyday through a hardcore filter that’s equal parts brutal and self-aware—a balance that’s become the band’s signature.

Empire Extreme recently caught up with drummer Pete Smith ahead of the album’s release and the band’s upcoming Northeast run with Filth, including a April 30 stop at Pittsburgh’s Preserving Underground. Over the course of the conversation, Smith dove into the story behind the album’s striking clay sculpture artwork, the reality of playing the Gathering of the Juggalos, why cassettes hold a special place in his heart, and how a wrestling ring full of real blood became the setting for one of the band’s most memorable music videos. He also addressed the obvious elephant in the room: whether those Islander jerseys are going to cause problems when the band hits Penguin and Steeler territory.

Empire Extreme – First off to jump right into it. The new album is coming out March 27, and my first question has to be, what is the album artwork?

Pete – Long story short, we’ve been following this theme with our last couple of records. We started with our EPs, so it all began a couple of years ago. We found this cool clown design that just resonated with us. For the last couple of records, we’ve been doing different versions of this clown. For this last one we found a random clown sculpture on Instagram by a local artist. We all saw it, and we fell in love. It’s so cool, it’s off-putting, but like in the best way. We all like it and fit with the music, so we hit the guy up. Initially it wasn’t available, then came to find out he likes our music, and he’s already a fan. Then he was like, “Yeah, you guys can just totally use the artwork” He was super stoked about it. So yeah, it makes a fun story.

Empire Extreme – That’s awesome, I was going to ask you about who the artist was. Can you give us his name, and give him some props?

Pete – Yeah, I believe on Instagram it’s Clay for Brains. His name is Tim. He makes these really cool clay sculptures.

Empire Extreme – Oh, so it’s like a three-dimensional kind of art?

Pete – Yeah, it’s a real sculpture. Our singer [Anthony Grambo] does a lot of graphic design work, so he took the sculpture and made into it what it is on the record.

Empire Extreme – That’s awesome that you are hands-on with that, and plus you got a local guy.

Empire Extreme – Speaking local, you guys are from New York, whereabouts?

Pete – Yeah, so we’re pretty much all based on Long Island, New York, but our DJ [Anthony Arce] lives in Manhattan. We’re all from more western Long Island, and you know. We definitely claim New York. You’ll see us wearing New York stuff, pretty much everywhere you see us. We’re not shy about it, but yeah, Long Island boys for sure.

Empire Extreme – As you know Empire is based in Pittsburgh, and I’ve seen a couple photos of you guys wearing an Islander’s jersey. That’s just not going to go well when the tour hits Pittsburgh. This is deep Penguin and Steelers territory. LOL!

Pete – You know, good thing our singer is not here. He would have a lot of things to say about the Islander’s. For me, it’s the Mets.

Empire Extreme – How about the Jets? We stole Aaron Rodgers now, so…

Pete – Oh, God. Yeah, honestly, my whole family is Jets fans, I haven’t paid attention to football for a long time. It’s very hard as a Jets fan, so you don’t want to pay attention. It’s pretty depressing.

Empire Extreme – All right, back to music stuff. You guys are doing a handful of shows with Filth. Resistor has done some shows with them before, but you seem like kind of buddies. How did that all develop, and are you looking forward to this next handful of shows with them?

Pete – We are all super excited about these shows. We met the guys in Filth. I believe it was summer 2024. That was when we were first gaining any bit of traction. We had finally released our new EP. We were really stoked when we got the first offer with them and it was like an instant connection. We became great friends, and since then, it’s history.

This is going to be our third run together, and this one might be the best one. It has so many good bands on it, a lot of good shows. It’s going to be really awesome.

Empire Extreme – Filth has been one of my favorites in the last couple years. Resistor kind of came onto my radar because of them, plus you were all over my socials. I think it was because of Filth or whatever, but yeah.

Pete – On our second tour together, I actually filled in with Filth on drums, so there’s a bit of it. We’re connected in more ways than one, for sure.

Empire Extreme – Well, your singer, Grambo is a big Limp Bizkit fan. With Filth redoing “Rolling”, is there any chance that you might knock out some type of collaboration or do something silly live?

Pete – We’ve always thrown up the idea of doing some kind of collab, but I’ll leave it at that. I won’t spoil it if we will or we won’t. If it happens, if it happens.

Empire Extreme – All right. Please explain “knuckle dragging wika wika core”.

Pete – “Knuckle dragging wika wika core” at its core, no pun intended is the best way that we can describe what we do. We feel like we’re doing something familiar, but it’s also something that is hard to place into a specific genre because we feel like it can kind of fall under a couple of things. So, we’re like, we got to start thinking of our own thing to call it. And what we landed on was “knuckle dragging wika wika core”. It’s just about crazy, heavy riffs. You know, stuff that makes you want to drag your knuckles across the ground and then you hear the wika, wika, wika, in the background. So, we just put them together.

Empire Extreme – When I first saw that, I just kind of laughed inside. I was like, that nails it right there.

Pete – Yeah, exactly. You know, we’re like, while we are super heavy, with a the “fuck you” [attitude] we also try to be a little goofy and self-aware of where we are. And we’re not taking ourselves too seriously. We are having fun.

Empire Extreme – Can you tell us about working with Randy LeBoeuf (Acacia Stain, Misery Signals, Counterparts, Thy Art is Murder, Every Time I Die, Unity TX, Kublai Khan TX)?

Pete – Randy, I cannot say enough positive things about him? Because he truly is like one of the best at what he does. But yeah, we went to the studio around mid-August last year. And I think up until November, we were writing and recording. We did have a month-long tour in between. But otherwise, we were literally at the studio writing, recording, almost the whole second half of last year. We feel like once it comes out, this record is really going to let people see why we’re taking so long.

Empire Extreme – We got an advance copy here at Empire and I have listened to it probably, I don’t know maybe 10 or 12 times. Just the heaviness of the whole album and it has that groove and a real hip-hop sensibility to it.

Pete – That’s awesome. Do you have a favorite song by any chance? Not to you on the spot first. The one that sticks out to you.

Empire Extreme – I don’t know the names off the top of my head. They all kind of still blend together in my head. But obviously the two singles you put out the videos for. I mean, both of those are slammin’.

Pete – I’m only asking because we are at a weird point where the album’s coming out in two weeks and obviously, we’re going to start playing live and we’re going to start releasing more music videos. So, I just wanted to kind-of get a vibe of what people are enjoying right off the bat.

Empire Extreme – I know exactly what you mean. Let me say this, you know, people say back in the day it used to be albums. How it is now with singles and streaming. We would listen to the whole album without skipping a single track.

Pete – Exactly. That was our main goal with this for sure. We wanted a no skip album. You know, a full listening experience.

Empire Extreme – Yes, it is. Plus, with the entire album clocking in at 29 or 30 minutes long? It’s like, oh, it’s over already.

Pete – Exactly. That’s another thing that we always preached that you never want to overstay your welcome. When it comes to live sets, but also with albums too. We very much want to leave them wanting more. You don’t want to get to the end of an album or a live set and be like, all right, we’ll I wish they were done 10 minutes ago. So, yeah, that’s like our number one thing. We always want to leave people wanting more. That’s a big thing for us.

Empire Extreme – I’ve been in lots of different bands in my life and that was always one of my things. Leave them wanting more because then they’re going to buy the CD, then they’re going to check us out online and even come to another show. We didn’t want to go there and play for an hour and bore them after half an hour.

Pete – I can’t tell you how many bands I’ve watched for the first 20 minutes of the show. Like, this is awesome. I’m so stoked. Even though it could be my favorite band on the planet, I’m watching it for 20, 30 minutes. This is awesome. This rules. And then, you know, minute by minute, you start to feel like, ah, I just wanna go home, this going to go all night.
Empire Extreme – Yeah, you’re looking at your phone and your watch.

Pete – Yes, exactly. I’ve got to speak about it from a showgoer’s perspective or a listener’s perspective, you know? Yeah, that’s a thing that is important to us.

Empire Extreme – You mentioned the videos. Currently there’s the “Dead Soul” and “Petty Fuck” videos. You kind of mentioned there’s more in the works. What’s the story?

Pete – Yeah, I won’t spoil what song it’s for. We did just shoot a video yesterday. That should be coming out the day of the record. It’s going to be really cool. It’s a really funny video. It’s not like the ones we’ve done before. It’s pretty much all a story. It’s very juicy. It’s so ridiculous that you’ll laugh when you see it. It’s not like any video you’ve ever seen before. I can promise you that.

Empire Extreme – I’m looking forward to it.

You guys played the Gathering of the Juggalos this past summer. I’m very familiar with the Juggalo family and have been involved with Psychopathic off and on over the year. It can be intimidating going in knowing that some bands get up there and they are pelted with bottles and booed off stage.

Pete – I want to be as positive as possible, but I’m not going to lie. It wasn’t a great experience. It’s one of those things where I’m happy, we did it. I’m glad to say that we did it. The community, we love the community. The people that were there to see us were super stoked. We love the community and the fans. The time was just weird. We just had to play early, and we also were in the middle of the studio. So, we had to drive from New York to Ohio for one day at a festival and then we drove right back. And things just didn’t line up for us.

Empire Extreme – So it was more of a logistics thing?

Pete – Yeah, I don’t want to say it was a totally bad experience. Just walking around the festival was crazy. You know what I mean? It is certainly site to see. It was a lot of fun. Everybody there was super cool and super nice. I love all the fans. Everyone who we talked to were the coolest people ever. I highly recommend that if you could go you should go once in your life. I would recommend going because it’s so ridiculous. It’s awesome.

Empire Extreme – That moment you walk in the gates of the Gathering. You’re just like, Oh my.

Pete – You know, it’s unlike anything you could truly do on the planet. So, in that sense, it rules. Our guitar player [Anthony Conti] did a Faygo launch competition, which is pretty funny. That probably was the highlight for me. I wish I could say it was like the best thing ever. And there were 5,000 people watching us, but yeah, we can’t win them all.

Empire Extreme – Well, the way they have it set up with the multiple stages and some of them are playing at four o’clock in the morning or whatever.

Pete – That’s the thing. The stage that we played was the second stage out of three. We thought it was like it’s like this big stage near everybody. It was a pretty big stage, but the problem is it’s not near anybody or anything. It was a 10-minute walk away from the main stage and then down a huge hill. If you weren’t near the hill, you couldn’t even see the stage at all. So, no one even knew where we were playing.

Empire Extreme – How was the load into that stage?

Pete – Surprisingly that was the easiest part. I think the only real issue was how early we had to play. Our set time was around four o’clock. We were like “Oh, that’s perfect.” We are right in the middle of day, everyone’s going to be like hanging out. But I think the reality is with the Gathering people aren’t really getting active until a bit later, you know what I mean? It takes until six or seven o’clock and then people start to come out and party. We realized that after the fact, but you know, you live and learn.

That’s why I said it’s like a lot of, a lot of little things. But overall, it was a fun experience, something I’m glad that we did for sure. We just had a couple little of hiccups.

Empire Extreme – To rewind back to the album, I forgot to ask you about the blue vinyl version coming out.

Pete – Yeah, this is our first time doing a vinyl for a full record. We have vinyl up for pre-order now on our website; weareresistor.com. If anyone wants a pre-order vinyl, we got them there. It’s a pretty short run. I think it’s only 300 copies. Once they’re gone, they’re gone. And we will also have them on tour too.

If anyone sees us in person, we’ll have tour vinyls as well.

Empire Extreme – You guys have a date here in Pittsburgh, I think it’s at the end of April or something like that? (Thursday, April 30 at Preserving Underground with Filth, Monochromatic Black, and Inferious)

Pete – Yeah. We’re hitting the Northeast towards the end of the month.

Empire Extreme – What does this band mean to you? I mean, is it a release or therapy, an escape, or a way to pick up chicks or an attempt to get rich?

Pete – Well, I would say if getting rich was my main priority I would have been out of this a long, long time ago. The real reason I’m here is just to make really, really cool music.

My parents are musicians. They’re lifelong musicians. So, it’s something I felt that I was meant to do from a very young age. It’s literally in my blood. My dad is a drummer and my mom’s a singer. That happens to be the two things that I do. You know, it’s a predictable path I went down. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Empire Extreme – Did you start out playing drums when you were a kid or did you start out on another instrument?

Pete – My first real instrument was upright bass. I played that all through elementary, middle, and high school. I played drums here and there as a kid, but I didn’t really have a passion for it. Until maybe when I was starting high school. I joined the band. Well, the original reason was because of this girl. I guess you could say that. It was like she was in the band, and I liked her, so I started playing drums more, and then it all went from there.

Empire Extreme – That’s funny and cool. So, who was your drum idol?

Pete – That’s a tough one. I have a few of them. Do you know the band called Periphery?

Empire Extreme – Yeah, I’m familiar with them.

Pete – Their drummer, his name is Matt Halpern. He was a big, big inspiration. I mean, just his style of playing. It’s a very progressive, very smooth style, very loose, and a lot of ghost notes and cymbals. You know cool little flourishes here and there. I really love that. And the obvious one Joey Jordison of Slipknot. They are one of my favorite bands of all time and hearing his drumming in the band. He had some of the first crazy drumming I’ve heard in my life. That’s an easy one. So, yeah, those two would be the ones if I had to [give] credit to me starting

Empire Extreme – Those are two very prolific drummers. You mentioned Slipknot, and I can hear some of that influence in the new album. The Slipknot rhythm kind of thing. I have it right here in my notes. Limp Bizkit mixed with Slipknot and some punk rock and some newer bands too.

Pete – Yeah, I kind of bring a modern style mixed with some old school style, you know what I mean?

Empire Extreme – Yeah, not to say that it’s all over the place, but it’s pulling from lots of different areas.

Pete – For what it’s worth, it is kind of is all over the place, but in a good way. We wanted it to be a little all over the place. We wanted to be something that, while it’s familiar, it’s something that people haven’t heard before.

Empire Extreme – I have kind of a handful of oddball weird questions, and you can answer them as you like.

Pete – Yeah, sure.

Empire Extreme – When you guys are driving in the van from show to show, who controls the music in the vehicle?

Pete – My personal rule is whoever is driving. When I’m driving, I will not break that rule. Otherwise, it depends on who’s driving. Some of the people in the van are more anal about their music being played. For me I won’t have it any other way. I gotta focus, you know what I mean? I need to have my own music or a podcast or something like that to keep me focused on the road, you know.

Empire Extreme – OK next one. Are you prepared for a zombie apocalypse or AI becoming aware? And is there a difference between the two?

Pete – I think I would take a zombie apocalypse over AI to be honest. But I think the second one is unfortunately way more likely one that happens. I’m probably not prepared for that. I don’t think any of us are. I think I’m probably completely fucked when that drops. At least with AI, I’m kind of already mentally prepared for that one.

Empire Extreme – Here is another silly one. If a cartoon character was to join Resistor, what cartoon character would it be?

Pete – Oh, that’s, a really good question. Mm-hmm. Maybe Beavis and Butt-Head, well one of those two.

Empire Extreme – That’s a great answer.

Pete – I feel like they would like sitting in our van, I feel like it would work. You know? The conversations are all over the place.

Empire Extreme – They’d fit right in, is what you’re saying?

Pete – Yeah, exactly.

Empire Extreme – Here’s another stupid one. Every time you walk into a room and a song plays, what would that song be?

Pete – It’s probably The Rock theme song. That is completely it. Or something really goofy or cheesy. I can’t take myself too seriously, to be honest, something along those lines.

Empire Extreme – You mentioned The Rock. One of my questions that I kind of skipped over was I’ve seen several of your social media posts and whoever is responding from your band has used wrestler memes several times. There was Stone Cold one and a Rock one. So, are you guys wrestling fans and who, what, why, where?

Pete – I would say our singer. He was the most into it out of any of us. I know he was into the old-school early 2000s era. We have a Resistor 3:16 shirt, like the classic Stone Cold shirt. I don’t know if you’ve seen the Come Mierda video, but we literally did it inside a wrestling ring with the real wrestlers. They were just beating the shit out of each other while we’re playing. There is a scene where one of the guys breaks a full light tube over to the other guy’s head and there’s blood everywhere. It’s all real. Nothing was faked. Its all real blood. We had to tarp off the whole thing, it was ridiculous, but a lot of fun. It is my favorite music video we have shot. The actual act of shooting it was so fun because we had a bunch of people literally pretending it was an actual wrestling event. The wrestlers had to do their walk-ins while we were playing and beat the shit out of each other. I also didn’t realize how bouncy a wrestling ring is. When you’re trying to play drums, you bounce and it is all over the place while smashing each other on the floor. It’s no wonder they are jumping from 10 feet off the ground. Makes sense. It was literally like going into a bounce house, but it had a metal floor.

Empire Extreme – I got a couple more stupid ones here. Have you ever gone to spring break?

Pete – No no. I’m not a party person. I’m very much more of a sit at home and play video games guy.

Empire Extreme – Last one, and I’ll get out of here and let you get back to your life. What is your preference. Vinyl, cassette, CDs, 8-tracks, download, stream?

Pete – Okay, so for obvious convenience’s sake streaming is great. But I don’t think it’s the best way to listen to music by any means. Nor do I think it’s good for artists, you know, Spotify and all that. You know the problems in the streaming industry. But honestly, I would love to go back to more cassettes. There’s a certain nostalgia that comes with listening to a tape. Listening to a CD still feels modern. But there is just something I like about it. I remember riding around in the car with my dad as a kid, and he’d always listen to cassettes, and he’d put me onto different bands. He had Rage Against The Machine tapes, and all these different bands. So, I think cassettes would probably be my number one, just for nostalgia purposes.

Empire Extreme – With the cassettes it kind of forces you to listen to the whole album. Skipping was kinda difficult trying to figure out where the next song starts.

Pete – Yeah, exactly. And similar, at least with vinyl you can lift it, but you’re more encouraged to listen to it from front to back, rather than just skipping through.

Empire Extreme – To wrap up is there anything you want to add? Any self-promotion?

Pete – Well, I’ll just end it by shouting out the band.

WeAreResistor on all platforms. Our new album, Bite This, drops on March 27, which I believe is less than two weeks away now, so that’s pretty crazy. But yeah, we’re streaming on all the platforms. We’ve got pre-orders on our website, weareresistor.com.

Empire Extreme – Awesome, great. Thank you for your time. Hopefully I get to check you guys out when you come through Pittsburgh here next month.

Pete – Yeah, I’m so looking forward to it.

Resistor is:
Anthony Grambo [vocals]

Anthony Conti [guitar]

Ian Schneider [bass]

Anthony Arce [turntables]

Peter Smith [drums]

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