Interviews
Ruach – Interview By: JJ Ulizio.
Ruach – Interview By: JJ Ulizio.
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Ruach – Interview
By: JJ Ulizio
By random chance a few years ago I was driving in my car and listening to SiriusXM Liquid Metal and a song came on that I quickly found myself head banging to, hard. To the point where I’m quite sure that people in other cars were starting to stare. I hit the “info” button on my radios head unit and it told me that it was “American Chaos” by Ruach. Once I arrived at my destination I proceeded to look them up on my phone, and found some music on iTunes. I added them on Facebook and left a message about how much I dug their music and if they ever needed a gig in the Pittsburgh area to let me know. Their guitarist added me immediately and we started chatting.
Now, they are in the process of wrapping up a video shoot, and putting the finishing touches on their first full length album, and through the magic of Skype on my tablet and an audio recorder on my phone I had the extreme pleasure of sitting down and having a chat with them.
Ruach is: Jonathon Rockwell on drums, Robert Wainwright: Vocals/Rhythm Guitar, Christian “Chea” Cueva: Lead Guitar/Backup Vocals, and Harry Scannell: Bass/Backup Vocals.
How did you guys first get together and start writing?
Jonathon Rockwell: I was living in San Francisco at the time and going to art school and decided that I wanted to pursue music, always have. I didn’t play an instrument at all, so I called up Rob, my best friend, who always played guitar and I told him “Hey I’m quitting school and moving back down to L.A. Let’s start a band” and that’s what we have been doing ever since April of ’06. Not only were we starting a band but I was learning an instrument at the same time as well as writing songs. That was pretty much the beginning of it. The rest has a pretty nice timeline up until the present point.
Robert Wainwright: It took us a few years to even play a show; we didn’t play our first show until 2009. It really took us a few years to try and understand what we were even trying to get ourselves into. Correct me if I’m wrong but Jon even felt he didn’t take to becoming a musician until a little late in life. So it was kind of a lot for us to try and decided what we want to do, are we even too old to do this, did we miss our time? It always seems like something you do when you’re like 16 and quit when you’re 20.
So you feel like it took you a little bit to find your groove?
Jon: Oh absolutely, like I mentioned I still had to learn how to even play the instrument. I didn’t start playing drums ‘till I was 21. I quit going to art school and started playing drums and the band. There were multiple things going on at once you know?
When I hear your sound I can hear some flavors of your various influences, but it comes together into something of its own. Who would you say are your biggest influences and how do they affect your writing process?
Christian Cueva: I Listen to a lot of Revocation so I try to, not emulate, but I get inspired off of what they do as a band musically because the incorporate a lot of melody and transitions and a lot of movements through their songs. Not like a default thrash band that writes one fast song and that’s it, theirs actually flavor to it so I look up to them a lot. So when it comes to writing I try emulating those kinds of structures, where I try to incorporate clean parts into a song, fast riffy parts, slow melodic parts, especially when it comes to my leads and solos. So that’s where that, or if you hear anything like that, it’s me adding that into it.
Rob: I personally like a lot of that; you know I started out listening to mostly acoustic rock until Jon wanted to start a metal band. I am a big fan of 90’s rock like Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains, you know like a lot of those really good bands from the 90’s that came out. But recently I’ve been getting into a lot of early 70s rock, like that kind of stuff, anything with a good melody. I think the thing I listen to the most with like screaming in it would be Slipknot and after that it’s all heavy with the melodic stuff I enjoy.
Jon: Robs very influenced on Alice in Chains Vocal harmonies, he loves vocal harmonies.
Harry Scrannel: I listen to all sorts of music but the biggest influences I bring into this band would be a lot of classical influences, I listen to a lot of classical music. I try to pick notes to play that a lot of other bass players might not play because they’re not the root or something. But my favorite metal band is definitely Dream Theatre, so I like to put a lot of the noodly stuff in places, holding to groove when it needs to be held.
Jon: For myself, I grew up heavily on thrash metal and like 80s skate punk and so there is always that fast pace, like Dave Lombardo from Slayer is my number one favorite drummer, so there’s that power and intensity. But I’m also big on song structures, I can structure out a song as easy as rob can come up with a riff. I was also raised on 70s prog rock and a lot of classic rock from my dad, so I see a lot of structure as far being epic and seeing the beginning, end, intro, verse, chorus, I see those things really clear and these guys just fill in the pieces and I think we do a pretty decent job giving each other respect like “hey that’s your riff, I’m going to play drums how I want to play to that riff and this guy he’s going to solo how he wants to play” and we kind of do whatever we get inspired by from each other.
So you guys were working on a new album, you already have an e.p. and a single both currently available on iTunes, and you’re currently building up towards your first full length. Tell us about the writing process of that album and how the recording process has been going.
Rob: In a nutshell dude, this album was really awesome because we… Well number one, quickly, we lost our bass player, our original bass player, we’re all on good terms and still friends and everything but we gained an amazing new member, Harry, he was also a big part of our vocals so that kind of did some damage, made us realize “Oh Shit we better start stepping up our vocal game”. Harry is one of the best people I’ve ever worked with as far as explaining music and understanding it, so it’s been awesome. But the process we did a little different than last time was that we weren’t going to drop fifty, twenty, or ten thousand on a record every time, we want to do it ourselves, we want to record ourselves. With technology nowadays it’s dumb for us to not even try. We spent a good six months researching how to record, researching mic’s, asking people, and interviewing people just like you. Christian took a big role of the engineering, originally it was going to be him and I but he just killed it and really understood it. With this album, we tracked everything direct in here at the studio and then we reamped it, later on. In case you don’t know so you have a better idea. Normally you put a microphone up to a speaker and you track it. So if you mess something up you can go and track that whole thing again or go back and fix that one part. BUT if we track clean, so pretty much were plugging into an interface and the interface goes into the computer, and that just tracks the clean guitar signal so everything that’s being tracked is just clean. Then we resend it through the computer through our amp, and then we dial in the exact tone that we want. Then as we add more instruments we can go “oh you know, that doesn’t sound too good, why don’t we try and do that again, without having to stress on the performance again. So it’s been really great and you can really notice a huge difference as far as the quality and the sound. I think this album lyrically we have stuff to say, we intellectually put our minds together and made some points that I think could really relate to people much more. I think this was the hardest art project that I’ve ever worked on but it’s also the most proud art project that I’ve ever been on.
Jon: For you JJ, what to expect from this album, it was actually a three year process, because when we lost our bass player, things shut down for a bit. We were down a member, each member struggled with some personal issues and we were in the process of, actually the room that we’re in right now; we built our own studio to record the album with. That took a while to get together. We were out a member; we finally got a member, so it took quite a process. All the lyrics that you hear are true to the highs and lows that we were going through these past three years. The struggles and what we got out of it. It was pretty sketchy for a while but we pulled through and we just completed the first single off the album that’s soon to be released, and the album is almost finished too.
Rob: We can literally say that blood, sweat, and tears went into this album!
Jon & Christian: Absolutely.
That’s awesome, it’s always cool to see that when you go through personal adversities and tribulations, or even as a band, when you can go through all that stuff and then come out the other side of it stronger.
Jon: Actually, I want to mention something, it’s the first time I’m going to say it In front of these guys, but we rented our van out, our band van to another band this week. I had never met the guy before and he told me “Yeah we’re going out on the road” and was asking about the band. He goes “It’s been a while since you guys released music, but I want to give you guys credit, cause you know most bands break up when they are at their lowest and after two years you guys remained the same and you pulled through and that tells a lot of your integrity as a band” I just wanted to let you guys know that (Christian, Rob, & Harry). I was just told that the other day, and it was a proud moment, especially when you’ve been struggling yourself. But now we can see some light at the end of the tunnel as we’re finishing up the record.
I agree with that 110% because if you look at all the bands that get together, whether it’s in Pittsburgh, New York, or LA, and I’m sure you’ve seen and played with bands that got together and were awesome, good writing, good stage show, and then a year later, that’s it, you never hear from them again. If you’ve gone through that adversity and come out the other side still making music and still playing shows, that’s definitely a triumph. There are so many good bands that go by the wayside that can’t get past, sometimes simple problems, sometimes complex problems. So that is a triumph, I would be proud of that, absolutely.
All: Thanks man!
Rob: So I will definitely say that we are a band and that’s why we do it that is our outlet. Genuinely we were never like “oh we want to get rich and famous!” Even though that is kind of our goal, in a sense. Our goal is to do it to where it’s our outlet, as long as we’re stoaked and we’re able to get our aggression out and that’s like the most important thing.
Jon: We are generally very happy when we are around each other, it’s like a getaway from everything, we all share the same sense of humor and even if we are not playing music we all confide in each other and we are able to recharge, just hanging out with each other. We are very blessed and fortunate, and we all know that it’s worth hanging onto, no matter what.
I always tell people, my music is angry so I don’t have to be.
ALL: (laughter ensues)
I’ve noticed lyrically and even prior to that in some of your artwork that there are a lot of war themes, like in the one image from iTunes, the tail gunner, and the new song you sent me, Wargasser, where does the inspiration for the war, military, and combat themes come from and how does that affect you lyrically on the new album?
Jon: Its symbolism of the personal war that you go through with yourself, with others, whether it’s a spiritual battle or with depression or anything.
Rob: I can give you the backline of the actual art in a sense too. But I would say metaphorically it is that if you can imagine that internal war going on inside your body. It’s really like a battle between yourself and yourself and it’s really about trying to shine light on the world when on the inside you have these visuals going on in a sense. That’s to me how I feel connected to it and that’s exactly how I feel. As far as the art, a man named Mike D, a fucking amazing artist; Jon met him when he was welding bikes.
Jon: I’ve known him for like 13 years now.
Rob: He literally created his own world, called Wargasser, and the god of that world is called Wargasser and for somebody that was in aviation, or boats, or cars, or anything with engines, people into high speed, or adrenaline. Instead of going to heaven or hell you kind of relive your last moments at the moment of death, kind of in this weird purgatory, but that’s kind of what they liked because that’s what they lived for. Most of his artwork is that last moment of death in a sense. He really just showered us with it, he just gave us art and he told us, that we could use as much of his art as we want. We just told him, absolutely, yes! We’ve kind of written a lot around it, just because it’s been around us.
Jon: I’ve known him for a long time and he’s mentored me and Rob a lot when we were growing up, as far as how to be an individual and being an artist and how to express yourself through everything, so we’ve always given him credit, to anything we do, we’ve always given credit to him as well.
Rob: We call him the godfather of Ruach.
Jon: Our band logo, you know the font, he also came up with that as well.
When is the album due out? Do you have a release date yet? Where will people be able to pick it up?
Rob: That is still tentative but I would definitely say this summer, were going to have the full album and it will be out, as far as productions we still have about another month yet to do, so it’s still kind of hard for us to give an exact date. As far as the single, that should be due out within the next month.
Jon: Were in the process, filling out the paperwork and everything to release the single. Hey let me ask you something, did you ever hear that Metallica cover that we did?
I have it saved on my you tube favorites, but I haven’t listened to it yet. But I’ll definitely be checking it out soon.
Rob: I’m excited for you to hear it
Jon: We didn’t sell that one, because we didn’t want to get in trouble
Christian: It’s complicated when you try to sell someone else’s work.
Jon: We played that live for years, and everybody was always like “dude when are you going to record that, so I can listen to it in my car and stuff?” So we did a recording when Harry first joined the band to kind of feel him out and see how he records and whatnot, it was a lot of fun, I hope you listen to it.
I definitely plan on it, Metallica was my favorite band for a very long time, they eventually got dethroned but I loved Metallica for a long time, so I’ll definitely be checking it out.
Jon: Who replaced Metallica for you?
Actually it’s a….
Christian: Ruach
Yeah! Ruach!
ALL (Laughter)
I walked right into that one. (More laughter)
Rob: No but really, who was it?
You ever heard of Jimmies Chicken Shack?
After a brief silence, they responded with no.
I loved the look on your face, it’s the reaction I usually get, they were a hard rock band that kind of hit their peak in the 90s. Real talented guys, they just stopped touring a couple of years ago. They were a hard rock band with some funk elements, and when they would play live they would get kind of jam bandy. If you want to check them out…
All: Yeah we do
I recommend the album Pushing the Salmonella envelope.
More laughter
Jon: Ill check them out tomorrow while I’m welding.
Yeah, they’re a lot of fun. Now, moving on, I Initially discovered you guys while listening to SiriusXM Liquid Metal since we all know what it’s like trying to get music on terrestrial radio during hours when people are actually listening to it. How did you get your music on there (XM) and how did it affect you as a band, did you notice an increase in fan base on social media or in other ways?
Jon: Well, we defiantly gained a lot of outside followers, such as yourself, and people around the world. It was a quick thing; we wrote that song in 5 days and recorded it on the 6th day I believe. It was actually for a favor, we had a friend who worked for Affliction. She’s a photographer and she said that Affliction doing this clothing line called American Chaos and said it would be cool if we did a song for them. You know she’s always helped us out with photography, so we wrote the song really quick and we let them use it for their look book for their new clothing. Well the owner of it really liked the song and started shopping it out to different people and it made its way to Jose Mangin and he was like “Dude I’ll put this on, this is rad!” once it got on, we started getting a lot of outside followers such as yourself. I don’t know if personally that, American Chaos, is the bands favorite song but it’s definitely helped us gain a lot of attention and bring people to the band where they have started to follow, and have deep followers, who like a lot of our older stuff and it’s been really cool because we’ve been meeting and talking to people from all over the world from that radio airplay.
Rob: Ill add to that as well. It’s truly amazing when I realized “Holy shit we’re being played across the United States right now. We have a friend literally; he sent me a video of himself getting out of a car and like pitting in the middle of the street. It’s cool, it’s really awesome but it was also an eye opener like “Alright we can go there to play!!” Only were broke as shit. Hahaha. It really cool and it shows if you set your mind to something you can get it done, it just isn’t going to be the way you imagined it. It was really cool and we got a lot of friends and fans and were still getting some to this day.
Jon: Yeah, it’s been a couple of years already and they’re still playing it.
Are you planning on getting the new material on XM?
Jon: Of course man, were planning on getting our music out as far as we can, like we say, we want to play on the moon someday, that way we can conquer Earth.
Rob: This time we’re also prepping and planning correctly. We are really, seriously, crossing every T and dotting every i, we are doing everything that we can; we are assigning tasks to each member. You do design, you do merch booth, you take care of the legal shit, you do this, and you do that. All of us are doing our best to make sure shits in line, cause we want to do our best because the most and best thing we are giving is our time. We have really put so many hours into all this we really want to make sure we don’t waste our time as we practice. We are trying to make sure we develop a really cool online presence that’s not fake and really, personally, talking and networking our album. That being said we are really going to try and have somebody in here twice a week, just talking and emailing DJ’s throughout the states and just say “hey check out this music.” That’s something we’ve never really gotten to do but I know that, from past experience, that it will most likely help out, and you, you know, you outreaching to us is helping. You are actually one of the first ones of the whole herd.
Jon: It’s been a while since we’ve done any interviews man
Rob: We should do a follow up interview so you can see if we stuck to our word.
Anything you want to promote, you get ahold of me and we will do something that is not an issue. I saw on your Facebook, and you guys briefly mentioned it that you are working on a music video. Can you talk about the process of filming a video and let us know when it will be released?
Rob: I’m doing all the production, we’ve had some help from some friends, some really good friends. Pretty much, it is actually our very first, official music video in the sense that were setting everything up and trying to have a theme, in a sense. The first time were setting up and playing and lip syncing. We’ve never really done that. We did it once with Throne I guess, that was really more of a behind the scenes thing. So we filmed ourselves, we pretty much tried to get as many cameras as we can to get as many angles as we can and record and do what you can before you break your neck . I’m in the process now of putting that baseline down and we are building a story off of it. Our idea is kind of, showing the things we all love aside from music as well.
Jon: We don’t have much money right now, so we have to get creative. We are just trying to be as real as possible and show our true colors. All our other videos, if you’ve seen them, have been a lot of B roll footage that friends have put together for us and made something out of it.
Rob: As far as a release date too, were working that right now, but tentatively two weeks after we’ve released the single.
You guys aren’t far from Los Angeles; I would assume that you play there often. What’s the music scene like there compared to other places? I have known a few bands to have played out that way to some mixed reviews. I’m interested to see what a band actually from that coast has to say about it.
Jon: Interestingly enough, we haven’t played in Hollywood yet, on purpose, in the LA area it’s a little too fake for us. They want you to pay them to play at their place. Hey, you wanna play at the whiskey? It’s going to cost you this much to play and we also take a big percentage of your shirts and we were just not going to do that. We have always gone on the outskirts, where we could put on our own show, or some places where people can just come in for free and just have a good time. For us it’s about music, and it’s about people, and it’s about having a good time and those Los Angeles places, a lot of it is just too fake for us man. We will probably start venturing out there after the release of this just because we think it’s time to, but in the past we just had no interest. What they wanted to take from the bands, we’d rather have a party at our studio and just play for 5 hours all night and get drunk than to have to load gear up and give all of our money away.
Rob: and also parking is a pain in the ass too. Nobody wants to go out there.
Since you took some time off to work on the album and whatnot, do you have any shows currently booked or coming up to kind of get back into the groove of playing again, or maybe any west coast tours or making your way out east towards Pittsburgh?
Christian: We’ve been hit up a lot to do certain shows, or a festival here and there, and the timing hasn’t always been right. Then we got hit up by some good friends. One of our favorite places to play at, The Slidebar in Fullerton, they’ve always treated us really well; they treat us like family when we go down there. It was far enough in advance that we were thinking that we can have at least the single released to try and create a buzz and draw people to that venue. Other than that show, we haven’t really booked anything after that because we’re still not sure how busy were going to be with the album. It going to be good to get out there again and get our feet wet again, and I’m excited because it’s been too long since we’ve played a show. As far as a national tour goes, that probably won’t happen for a little bit because I feel like we are starting over again from ground zero. So we are probably going to be playing a lot of local shows, neighboring counties…
Rob: Unless someone can pay us to get out there, hahaha
Christian: Unless something amazing happens where we can jump on a tour package that will take us along with them, for whatever reason, that would be rad, but as far as ourselves going out on our own, out of our own pocket, that probably won’t be this year.
Jon: Unless nice things happen with the album release, and there’s money in our pocket, believe me man all we want to do go as far as we can and play our music live, we love people and we love playing music so it works well for us.
Christian: We would rather be stuck in a hot sweaty van with a busted AC driving hours at a time than being stuck in a shitty ass job going nowhere.
All right, that’s pretty much all I got, you guys got anything plug like the usual social media and things of that nature for people to check you out?
Rob: Everything you can find on us you can look up with ruachtheworld except our youtube with is ruactheband which we are working on changing. Keep an eye out on our website here pretty soon. We are going to really create a hub for the underground metal scene in LA, not just us, as far as our community as well so a lot of people are going to be putting out a lot of great stuff on our website. We just really can’t wait to get out there and hit the road man, that what my blood pumps for.
Jon: The only thing I can add is to stay in close contact with us and us personally because we would love to get out to Pittsburgh and get out to that area, if you can help out in anyway, just let them know we are coming and if you ever come out this way you got a place to stay man, it’ll be cool to meet up with you.
Awesome guys, thanks. I’ll definitely be in touch. Thanks again!
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EMPIRE EXTREME GOT TO INTERVIEW KURT DEIMER ABOUT THE NEW ALBUM “A GROG IS BORN” HIM WORKING WITH GEOFF TATE AND JOSH TODD AND BEING KILLED BY MICHAEL MEYERS AND HORROR MOVIES
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by Josh Drespling
I was at Preserving Underground to cover Filth and Resistor. I was all set with my photo pass and cameras at the ready. And then this young band exploded onto the stage. No grand entrance, no intro music, no flashy lights—just a wall of noise from the first guitar chord and a guttural growl that seemed to come from somewhere below the floorboards. I was blown away. Thoroughly impressed.
This band was Inferious, out of Dayton, Ohio. If you look up the word “inferious,” most dictionaries will tell you it means something low-status, submissive, or fit for sacrifice. But this Ohio metalcore outfit Inferious has spent the last several years proving that definition couldn’t be more wrong. Tonight in the basement of a converted church, Inferious delivered raw, sweat-soaked fury to all who were smart enough to show up early.
Before their set was even half over, I made up my mind that I had to talk to them and let our readers know about this band. Here is how it went:
Empire: This was the first time I have ever seen you guys. I’ve heard your name before but never had the chance to listen. The show tonight was freaking awesome. I loved it from the first few notes. The vocals and the guitar tone just hit ya right in the chest.
Since I am a new fan, can you give me the nickel tour of how you came together and I understand you are from Dayton, Ohio.
Shaun O’Shaughnessy – Guitarist: I live in Dayton, and the original band members all formed in Dayton, but it was kind of a collage of multiple band folks. People from the southwest Ohio area. Gabe [McQueen – vocals] and I were there at the beginning, and then through some line-up changes, this is our current and most solid touring line-up so far with Cody and Kyle. They also are from the area and have been in several bands. So they were always in the same circles, at the same shows, talking to the same people. It all worked out one day.
Empire: Given that, it seems like there is a healthy music scene in Dayton. Are there any good clubs, any fields to play in?
Shaun: It’s hard to say Dayton, Ohio, specifically so much as just southwest Ohio because of the way that Dayton, Columbus, and Cincinnati form like a little triangle. You’re only an hour apart from each other. So we can get into that larger music scene pretty easily. So Dayton itself has venues, but the whole collective area has stuff. There’s some house venues, like Gnome House, there’s Bob’s, but then Cincinnati has Madison Live, and Design Collective [DSGN CLLCTV] was doing shows for a while, but I think they got in trouble.
Cody: Yeah, it some code stuff.
Empire: I think there are a couple decent places in Akron, and even across the border is Huntington, WV?
Shaun: Yeah, that area still does have sick stuff. It’s just farther away from our personal local scene. Cleveland is kind of separate from us too.
Cody: That’s not necessarily our scene, but there is such a good underground local scene from the Huntington / Athens / Charleston area. Shout to Feverwar.
Shaun: We were just at the Grog Shop [outside Cleveland].
Cody: We were at the New Foundry not too long ago.
Empire: Oh, yeah, like upstairs?
Shaun: No, it is Foundry’s new location.
Empire: I’ve not been there.
Shaun: It looks basically like the old one, but it’s new.
Empire: You mentioned the Grog Shop. Were you guys there with Filth and Resistor?
Shaun: Yeah, we’ve been on tour with Filth and Resistor. The first half of the tour had Two-Piece on it; we missed them, but now Mono’s [Monochromatic Black] on for the second half, and they’re homies.
Gabe and I toured with them in Inferious a couple years ago with band called AMTAE, and Monochromatic Black. So, those are long-time homies as well. So, we’ve known Tanya [Elizabeth (Beickert) – Vocals] and Eddie [DeCesare – Drums] for a long time, and Pierce [Akers – Guitar] is our new best friend as well.
Empire: So, it’s just like a big hang for you guys.
Shaun: Yeah, all the homies are back. We’ve toured with Filth before too; we were out with them on the Oceano tour, and then actually a year ago, I think like right now, like today a year ago, we toured with Filth also. So, it’s Filth and Oceano, and then Filth again.
So, it’s been fun to have a full circle of friend hangs, and every night’s been sick. The show turnouts have been amazing, and then just hanging out with all our friends has been amazing.
Empire: That’s part of what makes it fun. Whether you have 50 people or 1000, you have that camaraderie and shared experience.
Empire: So do you currently have an album out? Where do you guys stand with that?
Gabe: We have music out everywhere, on all music platforms: Apple Music, Spotify, Google Play, and YouTube Music. Shit, if you even got to rip that shit, YouTube to MP4, do it, man!
Shaun: We got your back. We got three full lengths and an EP. We are working on a new EP with a label we’re signed to that we’ll announce here soon, but that’s going to be really exciting stuff, and just stoked to be able to get that out soon.
Empire: Cool. So don’t say the label name, but your deal is in place, and then the new album in the fall, winter, spring?
Shaun: Yeah, the EP should be coming out sometime this year, if all the schedules align and everything, but that’s in the works.
Empire: Cool. Filth tour, what’s after that?
Shaun: Finishing up the EP. Record release cycle, and then hopefully touring in support of that. Whether it’s co-headlining with somebody or doing some more support stuff, we’re down for whatever. Hopefully we can fill up the rest of the year.
You know, touring is hard financially, so while we’re able to still make ends meet on the road, it’s hard to pay all the bills, so we’ve got to go home, stack our bread back up, and then be ready to go back out again.
Empire: I understand. Is this your first time in Pittsburgh?
Shaun: We’ve actually played Preserving. This is at least the fifth time.
We played the DIY room, we played this room, this orientation, we played this room when it was facing the other direction. AJ, the owner, has been good to us. He is a rad dude.
Empire: AJ is great.
Shaun: The record shop and merch store upstairs is sick, I just bought a shirt, a Never Ending Game shirt, because we have to do a laundry soon, and I bought a shirt to extend one more day to get through.
Empire: Anything you guys want to add, anything going on? Shameless plugs?
Shaun: This has been a kind of sick tour, because I think we’ve all got to see family members. Gabe’s dad dropped him off, so we got to see Gabe’s dad. We got to go get breakfast with my mom and some family, I saw my aunt. Cody’s mom let us stay at her crib, and we got to hang out with her and his family. Kyle’s family came out last night and hung out, and that was pretty sick, so it’s been a good time.
Empire: Kyle hasn’t said anything, so tell me about your family coming out and seeing the show.
Kyle: I mean, it was my sister’s first time seeing us live.
Empire: What did she have to say? I mean, I’m sure she knew the style.
Kyle: Oh, yeah, she’s conditioned to it.
Empire: She’s not like a Britney Spears fan at a hardcore show?
Kyle: No, no, she’s by far not a normie, but close to it.
Empire: Thank you, gentlemen. That’s all I have today. Appreciate it, and thanks for the show. It was great; loved it.
Shaun: See you next time.
Before that night at Preserving Underground, I’ll be honest: Inferious was just a name on a show flyer. Another opening band before the acts I actually came to see.
That’s the thing about this level of heavy music. The headliners get the lights, the longer set, and the crowd that’s already warmed up. But the openers? They get twenty-five minutes, a soundcheck that barely counts, and a room full of people who are mostly looking at their phones. Inferious didn’t just overcome that. They incinerated it.
What struck me most, sitting down with Shaun, Gabe, Cody, and Kyle after the show, was how unpretentious they were. No egos. No rock-star posturing. Just four guys from southwest Ohio who’ve been grinding in the same circles, playing the same basement venues, and slowly building something real. They talked about the small venues with the same reverence other bands reserve for stadiums. They shouted out Feverwar. They bought merch from the shop upstairs to make it through one more day on the road.
That’s the part you don’t see from the crowd. The financial grind. The van trouble. The “stack our bread back up” reality of modern touring. And yet, here they were—genuinely stoked to have seen family members at shows, genuinely grateful for AJ at Preserving keeping the doors open for underground bands, and genuinely excited about an upcoming EP they couldn’t even name the label for yet.
Inferious may have a name that suggests something low-status, something sacrificial. But after watching them level a converted church in New Kensington, and after listening to them talk about their scene with the easy confidence of people who have nothing to prove, I think the definition needs an update.
Check them out on all the streaming platforms. Catch them when they roll through your town on the next tour. And for the love of God, show up early.
You never know which opening band is going to blow your doors off.
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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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