Ken Brzezinski of Static Multimedia recently conducted an interview with ATREYU bassist Marc McKnight. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.
Static Multimedia: Do you have any tour stories?
Marc: Well, there was this one girl in Miami that was just hammered out of her mind. And you know, semi-attractive, and she's just HAMMERED, like sloppy drunk, right? And she somehow makes her way on our bus. She wasn't, like, at the show with us. She just wanted to see the bands, you know what I mean? So she got on our bus and we kept trying to pass her off to one of our friends or one of the crew members but she was like, "No, I want one of the band!" And she was just like riding people and stuff. So she goes in the back with someone…who shall remain nameless, and they were, you know, enjoying themselves in the back, but she had left her phone up front. So one of our friends took a picture of his balls and sent it to everyone on her contact list and said, "Sorry, I'm busy being a nut!!" So yeah, that's a pretty good story!
Static Multimedia: What was the writing and recording process like for your latest album, "Congregation Of The Damned"?
Marc: Um, well we started writing for this album in like November of last year, so it's been about a year ago now. So we started writing and we had like 13 or 14 songs and we were like, "Shit." Like, on "A Death-Grip On Yesterday" we wanted 10 songs on the record so we wrote 10 songs. So it was like, "What are we gonna do? Should we just keep going or what?" And it was like, "Nah let's just keep going and see what happens." So we ended up with like 30 songs that were all amazing. I mean, the well really never ran dry, but we just had to stop because we were like, "This is getting ridiculous." Whittled that down to 18 songs, met up with Bob Marlette, our producer, and did like pre-production stuff with him, whittled those down to 16 and, uh, recorded 16 songs. We did the drums in Henson Studios out in L.A., which is like Jim Henson, like "Muppets", which was amazing. And then we did the rest at Bob's house in Woodland Hills. It was amazing, like as far as my bass, I did all the songs in two days, I think. I just muscled through them — ten songs one day and six the second. Then the guitars went and did all their things. There were some guitars done before I did all my stuff. Because I had to, like, go back home for some family stuff and then two weeks later, they had some more guitars done. And it just really started, like... I mean, because in pre-production you have an idea of what it's going to sound like, but you don't really hear what it sounds like till everything is starting to get laid out. So once I started to hear all the guitar parts being put down and the solos starting to be put in and like all of the vocal starting to get laid down, it was awesome. But we had just focused on the music in [pre-production] so then it'd be like Alex [Varkatzas, vocals] and Brandon [Saller, drums/vocals] sitting in the studio just shredding out the vocals. And they're both like, their performances are absurd. Like, Alex hasn't written better lyrics and his performance is just amazing and he's so genuine and "there."
Static Multimedia: It seems like this album is the accumulation of your life's work…
Marc: Well, yeah, I mean it's just because we HAVE been a band for 10 years and this IS our fifth record, and we experimented a lot on the last record. There were a lot of things we learned about ourselves as a band and there were a lot of things we added to our arsenal and there were a lot of things that we were like, "OK, let's not do that again." But we did it, you know? And I don't regret doing it, any of it. Because it allowed our band to write this record and anything up to writing this was worth it.
Static Multimedia: How do you allow yourself to change when you have so many fans on, especially the web that can be so critical of the music you make?
Marc: Yeah, I've been on Lambgoat, I've been on Blabbermouth, I've been on Absolute Punk, I've been on PRP. I've seen all that sh*t and I stay away from it because I'm not doing this. No offense to them, because our fans got us to where we are, and without our fans, we're f*cked, so I'm not saying we're not doing it for them. But when we write music, we write music that we want to hear and that we love because we do it because we love it. You know what I mean? So if I started to write it for kids who only listen to "The Curse" [2004] and "Suicide Notes [And Butterfly Kisses]" , that want us to write that album again, who are we being fair to?! You know what I mean? I'm not going to be 18 years old again; I'm not going to write that record again. I want to allow the band to expand and allow the band to grow."
Read the entire interview from Static Multimedia.
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Static Multimedia: Do you have any tour stories?
Marc: Well, there was this one girl in Miami that was just hammered out of her mind. And you know, semi-attractive, and she's just HAMMERED, like sloppy drunk, right? And she somehow makes her way on our bus. She wasn't, like, at the show with us. She just wanted to see the bands, you know what I mean? So she got on our bus and we kept trying to pass her off to one of our friends or one of the crew members but she was like, "No, I want one of the band!" And she was just like riding people and stuff. So she goes in the back with someone…who shall remain nameless, and they were, you know, enjoying themselves in the back, but she had left her phone up front. So one of our friends took a picture of his balls and sent it to everyone on her contact list and said, "Sorry, I'm busy being a nut!!" So yeah, that's a pretty good story!
Static Multimedia: What was the writing and recording process like for your latest album, "Congregation Of The Damned"?
Marc: Um, well we started writing for this album in like November of last year, so it's been about a year ago now. So we started writing and we had like 13 or 14 songs and we were like, "Shit." Like, on "A Death-Grip On Yesterday" we wanted 10 songs on the record so we wrote 10 songs. So it was like, "What are we gonna do? Should we just keep going or what?" And it was like, "Nah let's just keep going and see what happens." So we ended up with like 30 songs that were all amazing. I mean, the well really never ran dry, but we just had to stop because we were like, "This is getting ridiculous." Whittled that down to 18 songs, met up with Bob Marlette, our producer, and did like pre-production stuff with him, whittled those down to 16 and, uh, recorded 16 songs. We did the drums in Henson Studios out in L.A., which is like Jim Henson, like "Muppets", which was amazing. And then we did the rest at Bob's house in Woodland Hills. It was amazing, like as far as my bass, I did all the songs in two days, I think. I just muscled through them — ten songs one day and six the second. Then the guitars went and did all their things. There were some guitars done before I did all my stuff. Because I had to, like, go back home for some family stuff and then two weeks later, they had some more guitars done. And it just really started, like... I mean, because in pre-production you have an idea of what it's going to sound like, but you don't really hear what it sounds like till everything is starting to get laid out. So once I started to hear all the guitar parts being put down and the solos starting to be put in and like all of the vocal starting to get laid down, it was awesome. But we had just focused on the music in [pre-production] so then it'd be like Alex [Varkatzas, vocals] and Brandon [Saller, drums/vocals] sitting in the studio just shredding out the vocals. And they're both like, their performances are absurd. Like, Alex hasn't written better lyrics and his performance is just amazing and he's so genuine and "there."
Static Multimedia: It seems like this album is the accumulation of your life's work…
Marc: Well, yeah, I mean it's just because we HAVE been a band for 10 years and this IS our fifth record, and we experimented a lot on the last record. There were a lot of things we learned about ourselves as a band and there were a lot of things we added to our arsenal and there were a lot of things that we were like, "OK, let's not do that again." But we did it, you know? And I don't regret doing it, any of it. Because it allowed our band to write this record and anything up to writing this was worth it.
Static Multimedia: How do you allow yourself to change when you have so many fans on, especially the web that can be so critical of the music you make?
Marc: Yeah, I've been on Lambgoat, I've been on Blabbermouth, I've been on Absolute Punk, I've been on PRP. I've seen all that sh*t and I stay away from it because I'm not doing this. No offense to them, because our fans got us to where we are, and without our fans, we're f*cked, so I'm not saying we're not doing it for them. But when we write music, we write music that we want to hear and that we love because we do it because we love it. You know what I mean? So if I started to write it for kids who only listen to "The Curse" [2004] and "Suicide Notes [And Butterfly Kisses]" , that want us to write that album again, who are we being fair to?! You know what I mean? I'm not going to be 18 years old again; I'm not going to write that record again. I want to allow the band to expand and allow the band to grow."
Read the entire interview from Static Multimedia.
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