3 THE HEAVY WAY!…
Artist To Artist Interview
The Atlas Moth:Kowloon Walled City: Batillus

Are you ready for an ultra heavy experience? Ear/Splitters & CVLT Nation presents two nights of extra mammoth riffage with three bands that are reshaping how heavy music is created. It all takes place this Thursday, Nov. 17th, and this Friday, Nov. 18th, with The Atlas Moth, Kowloon Walled City and Batillus, plus for the Los Angeles show, the line up will be joined by (16), and Pigeonwing will be on hand for the Long Beach gig. We are pretty stoked that all three of the headlining bands got together to interview each other for CVLT Nation. One reason we started the artist to artist interview series is because we thought that bands would ask questions from a whole other perspective, and this interview proves just that. So after the jump, take a journey into this mental circus!

Batillus vs. The Atlas Moth (Questions answered by Stavros Giannopoulos)

Photo By Reid Haithcock

BATILLUS: So…..you got a new album out……huh?

TAM: Totally…I still haven’t quite figured it out myself…

BATILLUS: How do you want your music to affect people?

TAM: Hopefully positively but I have a feeling we’re probably that band you put on when you want to further bum yourself out.

BATILLUS: Mr Stavros , how did you get involved in being part of Twilight? Are there any other Atlas Moth side projects we should be aware of?

TAM: Mostly drugs and booze but hanging with those dudes and it just kinda happened. Now those guys are some of my closest friends. Our drummer Tony plays in a punk band called Hawkbit. I have a project with Bob from Gates Of Slumber and Jeff WIlson from Nachtmystium called Chrome Waves, as well as an electronic thing called teeth that I do with another old friend of mine.

BATILLUS: Pirates or Ninjas?

TAM: Slayer?

Batillus vs. Kowloon Walled City (Questions answered by Ian & Scott)

Photo By Justin Tyler

BATILLUS: You recently got a new guitar player, what’s the story?

Ian: Pace was diagnosed with a rare, inoperable form of ball cancer, so we froze him until medical science comes up with a cure.

Scott: A rare, inoperable form of “stands at practice but wishes he wasn’t in a band anymore”.

Ian: fuuuuuuu–

Scott: And who can blame him, really. I met Jon when I recorded his band a year or two ago, and he’s a goddamn monster guitarist. We asked Jon, Jon was willing to join on, and that was that. Pace is actually moving to Seattle now, so the timing was good. We’re still total bros and we wish him the best. Except I hope his next band sucks.

BATILLUS: Mr. Evans: how old, in your opinion, IS too old to be schlepping gear around the country in a 15-passenger van, sleeping at bedbug-infested punk squats, and yelling at other grown men who paid 5 bucks to see your band?

Scott: You think I don’t think about that? About becoming a parody of oneself? Unknowingly turning into the equivalent of a bunch of dudes with Crate stacks playing Pantera covers at Tate o’Skins? I think about that. How young is too young to give up and start sucking at life? Is it even justifiable to do this shit at 25? Does the world need another shitty band? At what age does one decide ah yes, I’m finally ready to spend my days a) going to work and b) watching 5 hours of TV a night? What’s the Geoff Summers plan for aging gracefully?

BATILLUS: Can music be heavy without being metal? If so what is the difference?

Ian: Definitely / I have no idea. There’s tons of electronic stuff that’s absolutely brutal and completely un-metal. Also, who cares.

Scott: How much metal is actually “heavy”?

BATILLUS: Scott Evans, what do you do to relax?

Scott: Does not compute.

Ian: He goes to work.

Kowloon Walled City vs. The Atlas Moth (Questions answered by Stavros Giannopoulos)

Photo By Reid Haithcock

KWC: Which is worse: being the singer or being the band cheerleader?
TAM: As I’ve said… I am failing to see a difference between the two.

KWC: Can you ask Jesse from KEN Mode to answer my email about doing a split of Shallow North Dakota covers?
TAM: Jesse is too busy watching UFC and hating cheese.

KWC: What are your favorite 80’s MIJ guitars? How about 70’s prog? 90’s recording engineer?
TAM: Teisco are by far my favorite MIJ guitars…i still have my first electric which was a Del Ray which I tried to use on our record but I got the veto. 90s recording engineer, Albini. I am from Chicago….70s prog…definitely YES.

KWC: Does Throat Coat tea do a goddamn thing?
TAM: I wouldn’t know, I smoke cigarettes and drink whiskey instead.

KWC: Any tips on getting a Kuma’s burger named after us? Did you get to pick what went on yours, or is it just kind of random?
TAM: I suppose sitting at the bar for countless years had something to do with it. We got asked what we wanted on it but they had just done a biscuits and gravy burger so I jokingly threw out the chicken and waffles burger and they got a wild hair in their asses to actually do it. It was fucking delicious, by the way.

KWC: Can any Megadeth records touch Rust In Peace? Cite your sources. (The answer is no.)
TAM: Absolutely not. Although RIP is a perfect thrash record, most of the ‘deth catalog is comprised of awesome songs and so-so albums in my opinion.

KWC: Cubs or White Sox? Is it bleak to like baseball?
TAM: Cubs. And I think you know just how bleak it feels to like baseball in this city. It’s basically a kick in the sack every single year. Also, fuck the White Sox.

Kowloon Walled City vs. Batillus

Photo By Samantha Marble

KWC: Why is writing good songs so hard?

Greg Peterson: We want to write songs that are at least as good if not better than the songs that influence us, which takes time and a lot of self-criticism. Usually we get one good riff for every ten throwaways.

KWC: Willi: do any of your custom amps currently work? Do they actually sound better than classic production amps like an SVT or a Model T?

Willi Stabenau: I sold one of them and am still using the other. For what we do, the quality of the amp unfortunately does not really come through in a live situation. Had I perhaps been guided by the wisdom of a bitter old dad, I might have avoided this youthful folly.

KWC: An Invisible Oranges post I read last week said “atavism is in vogue right now” in heavy music. I had to look up “atavism” — it basically means “throwback”. I’m not sure if the IO author meant “retro” or “shitty” or both, but what’s your take on this “atavism”?

Fade Kainer: I don’t know, we don’t play Grandpa’s guitars.

KWC: That Greg Peterson is something of a renaissance man. He’s got his grg ptrsn music and his What Happened? blog. I guess there’s no question, I just wanted to say that.

Greg: Yes, these things are true.

KWC: Okay, here’s a question about Greg Peterson. Peterson, give us a tone lesson. Seriously. Tell us some things about guitar tone.

Greg: Gibson through Orange and use your ears. It’s always better to whittle the tone down to what sounds good instead of trying to add frequencies that aren’t there to begin with. Make sure the guitar sits well with the bass and that the details are clearly stratified. Also, play in time–if you’re not tight then even the best tone can lose its impact. I thought this shit was obvious.

KWC: Yankees or Mets? Is baseball epic?

Fade: Epically boring.

The Atlas Moth vs. Kowloon Walled City (Questions answered by Ian & Scott)

Photo By Justin Tyler

TAM: Your band name is very long. First, why did you choose it? Cause it certainly wasn’t cause it would fit nicely on a t-shirt. Do any of you have a past in the Hong Kong drug, prostitution, or gambling underground? Second, top 3 obstacles of having such a long name?

Scott: We couldn’t think of a good name in the noun-verber format.

Ian: Also, Jean-Claude Van Damme in Bloodsport.

Scott: Main obstacles: as much as one might like the GODFLESH or UNSANE type treatments, those are off-limits. Also, when you tell somebody the name, there’s no hope of them remembering it, but who wants to remember another shitty band anyway.

TAM: Scott, you recorded all the Kowloon material, what do you find to be the advantages/disadvantages of not only performing but also engineering?

Scott: Recording is my first love, I’d actually take it over playing in a band on most days. Having me engineer works well for us. I can work on sonics that I know make sense for the band. We don’t have to explain ourselves to somebody else in terms we hope they’ll understand, and hope for the best. We never look at the clock and say shit, we’re running out of budget. We’re all really comfortable working together, and by now everybody trusts me to do our band justice. It’s good. So to me, there are almost no disadvantages, save for added personal stress leading up to sessions.

TAM: Kowloon gets to curate a day of a festival, who’s playing?

Scott: Is that like “curating” a mix tape? Or “curating” lunch?

Ian: Tigon opens day one at 11 am. Gates open at 12.

Scott: ahahaha shit.

Ian: Cave In, Spiritualized, Converge, Wooden Shjips, Futur Skullz, Low.

Scott: My festival is at a 50-person venue, and every band plays 25 minute sets. Akimbo. Kaki King. Harvey Milk playing that last record straight through. They get a few extra minutes. Madraso reunion. 2 Foot Yard. Young Widows. Portishead, with the orchestra. Richard Stallman spoken word. PJ Harvey. Shallow North Dakota reunion.

TAM: How does it feel being in a city for World Series champions? I don’t consider the Sox winners as I am eternally scarred by the Cubs.

Ian: Even more than a year later, it still doesn’t feel real. That whole playoff/WS run, the parade, Brian Wilson’ Taco Bell commercial… it all seems like some kind of crazy fever dream. Long-time Giants fans have no frame of reference for something like that. But yeah, it was fucking awesome.

Scott: It IS fucking awesome. I watched about 10 outs of the World Series, mostly in the last few games, then I bought a Giants hat. Fuck yeah local sports franchise!

TAM: It’s 1979, do you take Ozzy or Sabbath’s side? May I remind you, there hasn’t been any Ozzy solo material yet and the last Sabbath record we got was Never Say Die… which was better than Technical Ecstasy….

Scott: By then they had all lost the plot. It happens. In 1979, I take Van Halen’s side.

Ian: By ’79, Ozzy was completely incapacitated by drugs, even by Ozzy standards, so I’d be firmly in the pro-Sabbath camp. (Full disclosure, I really love the Dio stuff, and even some of Born Again.) But even the two worst Ozzy-era Sabs albums are light-years better than 99% of everything else that’s ever been recorded. OK, maybe 97%. But the main point stands.

Scott: Ugh, I can’t listen to Dio-era Sabbath. It’s so stiff and gainy and bland. Actually, I don’t much like the Ozzy solo records either. In 1979, I take 1974’s side.

TAM: We are living in a post St. Anger/Lulu world… have you accepted Load, some songs off of Reload and No Leaf Clover into your heart yet?

Ian: I honestly have never really listened to anything after MoP. As far as I’m concerned, that band died with Cliff.

Scott: I’ve never heard any of those records. Why would I listen to those records? But I like that video where the dude redid a St. Anger song and banged a spoon on a metal chair for the snare sound.

TAM: Kill one, fight one, fuck one: Winston Churchill, Ryan Gosling, Ghandi.

Scott: That’s a half-ass question. You’re better than that.

Ian: Kill and fight Ryan Gosling, then fuck him once he’s dead.

The Atlas Moth vs. Batillus

TAM: Mr. Batillus, you have a record out on Seventh Rule records, Scott is a good friend of ours. Do you think his hair is naturally that curly or do you think he has some sort of finger-in-electrical-socket regimen each morning? Second, you have dreadlocks, what kind of care goes into keeping that manageable on tour? I once had a pretty high maintenance mustache, that thing was a nightmare to keep up with on the road.

BATILLUS: Natural I guess, but I’ve only seen him in the dark. No care only prevention of possibly contracting lice or scabies at the many gnarly places we crash at. You know the ones where you awaken with cat litter and bottle tops embedded in your forehead.

TAM: We always count on Brooklyn shows being good on tour, what do you think makes Brooklyn such an awesome market for what we do? Or, am I wrong and just have really good luck?

BATILLUS: Brooklyn has a strong music and art scene , it also helps that there are a ton of people living there and a lot of tourism.

TAM: Batillus get to asked to put together a tribute record for a band of their choice, who is it, what song do you cover, and what band(s) would you like to see on there (you can also say which songs you like them to play)

BATILLUS: A Depeche Mode tribute album featuring:
Wold
Whitehorse
Lurker of chalice
Ufomammut
Ministry
Jesu
Wovenhand