An Interview With John Kevill and John Laux!
You guys are on tour with Soilwork, Darkane, and Swallow the Sun; their styles aren’t exactly like yours. Does that make it difficult to perform on this tour?John Kevill: No, we kind of do exactly- we’ve played on a bunch of weird bills, this one I mean, sometimes like- I guess like- some Soilwork fans or whatever won’t get as much into as what we’re doing because it’s very different, but then some of them do, and um, it’s been a really successful tour actually. John Laux: Yeah, and Darkane is actually a pretty old school band. JK: And Darkane’s a pretty [demonstrates thrash/drum sounds] “tukah tukah tukah” fast. JL: And honestly we’ve made really good friends with everyone. These are all great people we’re touring with; everyone in every band. It’s a good tour. JK: On stage regardless how the crowd is, we pretty much do the exact same thing; try to represent to our music as best we can. People watching are people watching, we do what we do, if they like it, they like it. You guys get to tour with all of these legendary bands like Exodus, Kreator, and Obituary… What are your feelings towards that?JK: Hell yeah! JL: Yeah, it’s an honor. We got to hang out with like Napalm Death and Suffocation every day. JK: Yeah we lived on a bus with those guys. JL: And since I basically grew up listening to em and you’re like trying to (?) on the stage, you know. It’s fun. JK: It’s like… In the case of Kreator and Exodus, especially and for myself, like a huge Kreator fan, we pretty much like, one of the reasons we’re a thrash band is because John Laux and I here, heard Coma of Souls, so, that kind of was one of the things. Oh and now we’re on tour with them, which still leaves me scratching my head sometimes how that happened.
Is there any type of ritual you guys do before you go on stage?JL: We, uh, sacrifice nine pigs, seven sheep, and three virgins. [laughs] We drink some beer, fuckin shout, [laughs] jump up and down. JK: My only ritual is I yell at walls for a couple of seconds to make sure everything’s working and then I go and do it.
When you’re on stage, what is your approach to get the fans to go absolutely crazy?JL: 110%, going bat-shit. JK: Yep, said it right there. You got to be more excited about your music than anybody, because if you’re not, then why the hell are you playing it? JL: That’s what our band’s about. We’re a performance based band, like, when people pay to see you live, you better perform. That’s how we feel about it. JK: We definitely consider like the music we write and everything, it’s very, it’s thrash, it’s fuckin good for live shows. That’s where we feel we have to deliver the most and pretty much we headbang 16ths the whole night, every night. Being a part of the Los Angeles metal scene which features tons of metalcore artists and not so many thrash–JL: [laughs] Did you write these questions?
Yes…JK: Well, there is a thrash scene in the LA that actually. When we started out, we’re more/less a part of, now we’ve been on tour everywhere, so we’re not so active in the scene anymore. Kind of has it own, as with any scene, its own politics. JL: There’s a thrash revival everywhere. I wouldn’t even call it a revival. Just there’s kids playing thrash metal all over the fuckin globe, every country, every city. JK: It’s stupid to call it a revival, I mean you don’t call kids playing death metal a revival. Even though I mean, death metal kind of stopped around then, 94-95. JL: Using the word, “metalcore” it’s just like I think a lot of kids got sick of it and they’re just kind of going back, it’s pretty much what metalcore’s ripping off, the oldschool shit. I think kids everywhere are getting into it. JK: Keep the riffy parts and leave out the [demonstrates metalcore sound] “chunchunchun, chunchunchun” JL: Yeah, that’s a matter of opinion.
There was actually more to my question. It was “Do you think that could be why you guys were signed before–JL: We stuck out. JK: I think it’s because… Um… Well you see all, like all the metal labels like Metal Blade, Century Media, Earache, especially; Nuclear Blast, a little bit all tried like signing thrash bands because labels jump on the next thing and I guess we were Century Media’s attempt to jump on the trash thing and we’ve pretty much just like, I don’t think the whole, as it was built by the media, trash revival thing ahs really sold because it’s not a very commercial thing. But I think we’ve toured enough just like through sheer playing a fuck-ton of gigs that enough to know about that have been reasonably successful.
What did you guys do before you started Warbringer?JL: Worked some pretty shitty jobs, went to high school. JK: Yeah, basically. I met this guy, I was a senior and he was a bit younger and we were just doing it as a hobby for a couple of years and tried our best to make it as good as we could for – JL: And then we kicked out our friends and turned this into a business. [laughs] JK: Yeah, then we kicked out all of our friends because of whatever problems they may have had and we got, pretty much we’re like, we’re gonna be serious about it, try to be the best band we can. And then unexpectedly us, we got signed and now we’re touring. JL: There was Zombie. JK: There was also Zombie, there was actually two bands running at once that contained – there’s another band that contained myself, Adam, our guitar player, who was also Warbringers original drummer and then Ryan, who was our previous drummer for Warbringer also played drums for Zombie. And for a time, Zombie was doing better than Warbringer. [laughs] And then, Zombie disintegrated and parts of it went into Warbringer and kind of finished the lineup.
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