Hey there Chris, thank you for taking the time to answer these and congratulations on the release of your sixth full-length album, “Boomers,Zoomers,Desperate Coomers”!
The Sound That Ends Creation is an aptly fitting name given how extremely disorientating and chaotic the music you make is.
I’m curious to know whether it has a story attached to it?
Nope haha! I think I took it from Society 1’s (nu-metal band) album “The Sound That Ends Creation”.
I’ve never heard the band or anything. Just thought it was a cool name.
As I mentioned in my first question, your music is extremely frantic and disorientating and it’s not always easy to find something to latch onto in the midst of all the chaos in these songs.
Could you give us a little insight into your songwriting process and how you manage to not get lost within the madness of your own compositions?
For this album I got all of my inspiration from playing swing jazz records at 2 times the normal speed, then tried to recreate the main rhythms with my guitar in a mathcore/grindcore setting.
I first record the guitars and bass to a very simple drum track. I do that for all of the songs.
Then I go back and do the drums for all of the songs, cutting the bad songs as I go along.
Then repeat that for piano, horns, and finally vocals.
There would be about 2-3 weeks in between working on the same song and I’d only work on that song for a day or two at a time.
This would let me forget what the song sounds like in between working on it, so I could approach it with an open mind and get a better understanding as to whether it’s a good song or not.
In the past, I’d listen to all of the songs so much that they would stick in my head, and I would think “oh this is a good song, since it’s stuck in my head” only to go back to the record post release and realize that I could have done so much better.
Social and political satire, tongue-in-cheek humour as well as meme culture are quite a big part of The Sound That Ends Creation, whether it’s in the lyrics themselves, the one-liner song titles or the colourful album titles.
What made you want to incorporate that aspect to your project in the first place and could you tell us more about the thought process behind some of it?
I always wanted to do “themes” with my albums. It really started with “Music Designed…” which is all about The Twilight Zone.
But, I think I found more of my niche with “Memes, Dreams, And Flying Machines” which is essentially a bunch of Rick and Morty references, and dumb jokes about existentialism.
I wanted to make the lyrics just as ridiculous as the music itself.
This time around I’ve been consuming a lot of political content, which is pretty insane right now haha! So all of the songs are about politics in some way, whether that’s climate change, corporate centrists, or the lunacy of the right, but it’s all done in a dark humorous way.
Just like the music I want people to be able to read the lyrics with a confused smile on their face.
Why did you choose to name your newest record “Boomers, Zoomers, Desperate Coomers”?
Mainly because it’s funny and it rhymes haha!
After doing a few other interviews I came up with a “real answer” though.
It could represent the different ways of thinking in our society, there’s people that either don’t want anything to change or can’t handle change (Boomers), people that want to tear it all down and start over (Zoomers), and people that just want to netflix and chill (Coomers).
Another important part of your band is the visual identity you’ve built around it.
Especially since you started collaborating with visual artist SESIUS on your previous album last year on both the album artwork and the music videos, which perfectly encapsulate both the deranged zaniness and violent chaos of your music.
Could you tell us more about how your collaboration with SESIUS came to be?
I always liked the look of collages, and he does a great job!
The first thing he did for me actually was my video for “The Human Race Makes Mistakes, You’re The Worst I’ve Seen” from “Music Designed..”. The way his art looks is perfect for this sound.
While we’re on the subject of collaborations :
“Boomers, Zoomers, Desperate Coomers” is your first album to include guest features and you’ve gathered quite the mathcore cast with vocal performances from Cameron McBride (Methwitch), Carson Pace (The Callous Daoboys) and Kate Davies (Pupil Slicer).
How did you go about adding these guest spots to your album and how was it working with them?
These are all people I’ve had on my podcast, The Cast That Ends Creation (selfish plug haha!). These are also people at the top of their game, and it’s a no brainer to try to get them involved. I can’t believe they said yes if I’m being honest.
You recently came back from your first tour as The Sound That Ends Creation alongside
The God Awful Truth.
How was the experience? Any fun tour stories?
It went way better than I thought it would.
Just driving out to our first gig, I was second guessing myself the whole way.
Here I am, a one man band, travelling with guys I’ve only met in person for a few hours before. Not knowing if I had an audience that was willing to come out, and fully expecting to lose money.
Turns out I do have an audience willing to come out!
There was at least one person at every gig that knew who I was, and came out specifically to see me. I was blown away! I haven’t been more excited about The Sound That Ends Creation than I am now to be honest. I’m looking forward to going out again as soon as possible.
I don’t have any stories that really come to mind, but everything went way better than I could have imagined.
Playing live as a one-man band has to have its challenges.
Could you talk us through your live setup a little and what was the most difficult part of it for you?
I have a laptop with my backing track on it that goes through an audio interface, which goes into the PA of the venue, I have a wireless headset that also goes through the PA, and I was using Ben’s amp for guitar (guitarist of TGAT).
At first I tried to mix everything myself and have everything go through my interface into the PA, but about halfway through the tour we figured out it worked better doing it that way.
The thing that is hardest is being able to hear the backing track (and the right frequencies from it) through the stage monitors so I don’t lose my place haha!
Would you consider adding backup musicians for live shows in the future?
A : I’m definitely interested.
If there’s any trumpet or sax players that dig this shit, hit me up haha!
That’s going to be the hardest people to find for this.
When you’re not writing, recording, producing (or touring now) for The Sound That Ends Creation, you host the podcast The Cast That Ends Creation where you interview a lot of artists and figures from the mathcore community.
How do you manage to make time for all your projects and would you have any advice for musicians struggling to juggle their side-hustles or day-jobs with what they do artistically?
I don’t have a traditional full time job.
I do gig work in the morning (Instacart specifically) for about 4 hours, which gets me enough to pay bills and such and frees me up to work on music and the podcast, which I feel like is more likely to get me to the point or financial stability and happiness I want to achieve rather than some kind of backbreaking soulsucking labor at a retail job.
As far as advice goes; If you’re serious about being a musician or content creator in general, focus on making moves to get you to where you want to be in that regard.
Obviously you need to take care of your living situation and such, but make sure your priorities are getting you closer to a place where you can be happy and proud of your accomplishments.
What have been your favourite album releases this year so far?
A : So far Frontierer’s “Oxidized” and Death Goals’ “The Horrible And The Miserable” are vying for my AOTY.
Other cool releases are:
Juan Bond “Womb” Pacmanthemovie “Eat Lives”
Cara Neir “Phase Out”
Hiraki “Stumbling Through The Walls” Suffocate For Fuck Sake “Fyra”
fallfiftyfeet “Twisted World Perspective”
Under The Pier “An Exercise In Discontent”
Temenigru “Terminal”
Pupil Slicer “Mirrors”
Capra “In Transmission”
Rat Punch “It’s A Drink”
Thanks again for taking the time to answer these, all the best!
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