Jen interviews Greg Puciato from KILLER BE KILLED

KILLER BE KILLED, the genuine SUPERGROUP comprised of Max Cavalera (SOULFLY, ex-SEPULTURA), Greg Puciato (THE DILLINGER ESCAPE PLAN), Troy Sanders (MASTODON) and Dave Elitch (ex-THE MARS VOLTA, ANTEMASQUE), will make its live debut as part of next year’s edition of Soundwave 2015 festival, set to take place February 21-22 at Bonython Park in Adelaide and Flemington Racecourse in Melbourne and February 28- and March 1 at Olympic Park in Sydney and Brisbane Showgrounds in Brisbane.

 Their recently released critically acclaimed self-titled debut album (which will be at the top of most critics Top 10’s for 2014), came in at #47 on the Australian charts, marking the highest entry for the album. Other chart positions around the globe include: USA: 58 UK: 71 Canada: 71 Germany: 90 Switzerland: 91

 

Watch Official Videos for: ”WINGS OF FEATHER AND WAX” & ”SNAKES OF JEHOVAH”

MetalSucks placed Puciato at #1 on their list of the Top 25 Modern Metal Frontmen, but he also expresses himself through the dark electro-pop of THE BLACK QUEEN, together with NINE INCH NAILS touring guitarist Josh Eustis of TELEFON TEL AVIV and Maynard James Keenan’s PUSCIFER. Puciato made a guest appearance in 2012 with MIXHELL, the DJ project of Max’s brother, SEPULTURA co-founder Igor Cavalera.

Cavalera is no stranger to collaborations, of course, having invited multiple guests onto SEPULTURA’s genre-defining ‘Roots’ and SOULFLY’s gold-selling debut album in 1998. One such SOULFLY guest, Chino Moreno, has often joined Puciato onstage with both THE DILLINGER ESCAPE PLAN and DEFTONES. Max was one-half of the incendiary NAILBOMB, together with English record producer and FUDGE TUNNEL mastermind Alex Newport. The pair released one studio album in 1993 and performed a blistering set at the Dynamo Festival in 1995.

“We did the song on SOULFLY’s ‘Omen’ and then we started talking about doing an entire album together, the way he had with Alex Newport,” Puciato explains. “We eventually got together with some riffs we both had and wrote a bunch more material in a 72-hour blast out in the desert. We left with about 15 demos we made using the same drum machine and four track Max used working on ‘Chaos A.D.’”

Cognizant of the reputation both of them have cultivated after working with some of the world’s best drummers, Puciato called upon David Elitch, who had toured internationally with the mind-bendingly psychedelic group THE MARS VOLTA. His expertise in everything from jazz to metal has led to live and studio collaborations with a diverse range of major artists including Justin Timberlake, French electronic wizards M83 and Norwegian singer-songwriter Susanne Sundfør.

KILLER BE KILLED has come together even as their main projects hit a collective stride: Max just released his ninth studio album with SOULFLY, ‘Savages’, to many of the strongest reviews of his legendary career. THE DILLINGER ESCAPE PLAN’s ‘One Of Us Is The Killer’ debuted at #1 on Billboard’s Hard Rock Album chart earlier this year. MASTODON’s most recent album, ‘The Hunter’, was Album Of The Year in Kerrang!, Metal Hammer, Rock Sound, Classic Rock, Terrorizer and Total Guitar in 2011.

MASTODON and THE DILLINGER ESCAPE PLAN have toured together many times. During one such tour in the U.S., in late 2011, Puciato was telling Sanders about the new project. Before too long, Sanders and Cavalera were meeting at a festival in South America for the first time: “Hey, I’m Troy. And I think we’re in a band together.”

The electric chemistry was apparent the first time they all assembled. “Having met, created and recorded an album together, this experience has easily exceeded my initial expectations,” says Sanders. “The collective energy and mutual respect for one another eased the entire process and has been very therapeutic for me.”

Jen had a phone interview with Greg today.

Hi Greg, it is Jen from Music Injection how are you?

Great, how are you? Fine thanks.

You are my second of nine interviews today so I am still fresh for this interview.

Great!

First congrats on the SW announcement, your first ever live show. Was it just the right timing for your all to get together to play? I can imagine that it would be difficult to get you all in one place with all of your hectic touring and recording.

Thanks. No it was not, I don’t think that we are coming, I think we are cancelling. Horrible timing.

No way. 

Yeah I am kidding.

You are mean! (Both laughing)

We looked forever, trying to find, even a few weeks of time that we would all have off, pretty much from the time the album came out we were looking, 2 months ahead 3 months a head, then we realized oh shit it is kinda hard figuring out a couple of weeks, it was like one of us was always on tour. We would find a time when 3 of us were free then the Troy was on tour. Then when Troy was not on tour we were. It just became impossible,so we started looking into 2015. We were pretty sure that we all had the end of February and early March off so started looking at dates then. As soon as we saw that window we thought what could we do with that time! Soundwave! And so we had figured it out. And what was crazy about that was Troy from Mastodon and myself from Dillinger both played sound wave last year. On the last day in Perth last year Troy and I were at the beach and when we were saying goodbye, Troy said maybe next year we will both be at Soundwave playing in the same band as a joke. We knew that there was no way in hell that will ever going to find the time to play. We had started to accept that we will never have any time to play, but now that we have got time to play, it is exciting. What is even more exciting is that were found other windows to play together.

So collaborating with songwriters of different genres is a great concept, do you think it will inspire other songwriters to mix and match band members? I would like to hear some of that!

I hope so, I mean I think that people should look and do things that are exciting and new, you should do things that make you uncomfortable rather than staying the same career. Music is such a hard career to make a living out of it and when people start to make a living they become very defensive and they start not to want to go out what they known for. They are afraid if it that if it fucks up it’s stuffs up that thing that makes them money. They have this career mindset that makes me want to walk into the Fucking Ocean. well I hope so, the scene in general would benefit and the musicians would benefit from putting themselves outside their comfort zone. It is exciting for fans, it is exciting for you as an artist you learn things about yourself and you grow. Even if the album turns out to suck, who cares, you still learnt something from the process and as an artist.

How do you describe your album, can you put into words the genre or are all songs different?

I think we touched on a lot of different things, I mean it is definitely a metal album. Killer be Killed is more of a metal band than a then like Dillinger is which is more hard-core. Killer be killed for me personally to get more my metal up bringing out, more than a punk hard-core. I don’t really think about it I just know when I write something I know where it is going to go so I know now that this part is more like this band and trying to fit things in to Dillinger does not really work.

Is there one song on the album that you connect to the most?

Let may see. Face down is cool just because that was the first one that we wrote. That was a song that Max and I before we were even really involved, that is a cool song for that reason. Wings of a feather and wax means a lot because that was the song when we all came together as a band and when we realised that we had something worthwhile pursuing, when that song came together we will Iike “that was cool we need to do more of this” that song is when things started to work as a group.

You don’t usually play the guitar for the whole set, will you have some time when you can go mad jumping around or will you play guitar the whole time?

Well, there is no fucking way I’m going to play the guitar the whole time, I won’t be able to do it, I will take it off and throw it I just won’t be able to help myself. I think four or five songs I will play the guitar, is going to be really hard for me because I played for 14 years not having a leash and you can’t just take a dog without a leash a 14 years and then suddenly give it one. (Both Laughing) I think the guys will get about four or five songs out of me on a guitar.

How is your set list choosing going? I can imagine that would be very difficult to choose to try and keep fans happy.

Well right now are playing for 40 minutes and our album is 43 minutes, so it doesn’t really give us enough time to play the whole album and everything we have. To me the thing that I’m really thinking about is to write some new stuff that is not on the record, we take part of a song and make the intro longer. That is the kind of stuff that is exciting for me because I get bored really easily. If I was listening and would not want a band just to show up and play their record front-to-back. I mean there is something cool about that but also there is something effortless about that, like not putting in any work. We might do a cover right in the middle of the set. Just something so it’s not here is the band and here is our record. I don’t want to be bored if I’m bored that means the audience is bored.

Yeah I’ve seen bands play their album from front to back and it is boring and predictable.

Because you know what’s coming next, and that’s what’s we were talking about earlier, collaborating with people and staying safe, to me a gig should be exciting. I don’t what to know what happens next. That was part of the appeal for this record label, we went into it for us and for listeners and not knowing how was going to turn out, I don’t want that to be any different when we play.

Will you have time between gigs to spend some time sightseeing?

yeah we don’t know about sidewaves yet, so we’re not really sure how much time we have, we have not been told it were actually doing a sidewave, so I guess that’s got a lot to do with how much time we have for sight seeing. I would love to though, we have been to Australia so many times but other than Melbourne I have not got to spend much time elsewhere doing anything else outside of playing. I would love to have some more time, just because the way it is structured and it’s two weekends in a row, maybe even if only doing one sidewave it leaves us four days to do stuff which is exciting.

Will you have a signing for your fans?

If it is free yeah! I don’t want to like charge for it, it depends on what they do.

Usually it’s two dollars and that money goes to charity.

Oh well that’s fine, I just don’t want to make a profit. You know how some bands charge like 100 bucks and have you can have your picture taken with me…… that sucks I can’t stand it (laughing)

I agree!

so yeah I would do a signing and definitely if it was for charity!

 Any thing that you would like to say to our readers to encourage them to support you?

we have always had an affinity for Australia and being down there with the passion you guys seem to have for music and by far it exceeds anywhere else in the world. We are really excited to have our first shows down there and we can’t wait!

Well we are pretty excited about it too.  I look forward to see you at Soundwave!

Awesome! You too have a good month and see you there.

Yep thanks for your time Greg.

No Problem Jen seeya.