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Interview with Nevada Romo and Zain Smith of Anti-Mortem at Aftershock

11/15/2014

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Anti-Mortem at Aftershock

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Lead singer Larado Romo
I first heard wind of this up-and-coming Southern rock band back at Rocklahoma, and upon hearing their music, I couldn’t believe the treasure I had found. Take a listen to any song on their debut album New Southern, and prepare to be smacked in the face with growling vocals, booming bass lines, and angry guitar riffs.

I spoke with Zain Smith and Nevada Romo, guitarists of Anti-Mortem, at Aftershock after their amazing show on one of the main stages. If you have never seen a picture of these guys, then you can’t appreciate just how much hair they have, so talking to them in person gave me hair envy, even though my hair is pretty long and curly.
PictureGuitarist Nevada Romo
Something I was curious about is how the members of Anti-Mortem settled on a name meaning preceding death in Latin. No doubt, it’s an epic name, but Latin is just not something you come across often in rock and roll.

“We were really young, and we wanted a really metal name,” explains Romo. “It had got to the point where, we had come to a time where we talked about changing the name. It was like four or five years in, and we couldn’t imagine calling it anything else. So we just always stuck with it. It’s kind of what we are. It symbolizes and names this whole journey. Now, I feel like you can’t kill this thing.”

Smith adds, “It’s been a really long journey up to this point. Imagine in ten years where we’ll be."

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Drummer Levi Dickerson
For those who don’t know, Anti-Mortem formed in high school, and their lead singer joined when he was in middle school. They’ve been together for nine years now, and average the age of twenty-one.

When you think back to where you were nine years ago, could you even fathom playing where you just did?  I ask them.

“Nope,” Romo says definitively.

“Well, kind of, though, for me, because I always thought we were going to be the next Metallica,” laughs Smith. “I remember a promoter asked us if we wanted to do it, and we gave him this thirty minute long, superhero speech about how we’re Metallica. We can do all this! We want to tour and all that.”

Romo adds, “There’s a song on New Southern called, “I Live this Way.” We were really new to the life then, but we’ve really put our words to the test—we have to live this way, earning every day. This life is very crazy, but it’s wonderful, it’s killer.”

What is the best part about living this life?

“Seeing the world and meeting new people. Making fans everywhere,” says Romo.

“Seeing the world is definitely, in my opinion, the best part,” agrees Smith. “Most people don’t even get to leave and go to Cali, and we get to see the whole country in thirty days.”

Romo then begins to talk about what he’s learned from his experiences. “You get really good at, when things go wrong, learning how to just go with the flow and things will work themselves out. I really dig that aspect. Everyday…something comes up, but you don’t worry because you know things will work out. I feel like it’s really cool, because when you have a job and everything, it’s really hard to not stress the hell out. And I’ll say, this is a stressful job, waking up in a different place every day, not recognizing anybody, but it starts to be the familiar place, the place you don’t know."
Romo continues, talking about how Anti-Mortem sounded when they first formed. “There’s a quote from Dave Grohl…he said that in the beginning, when you get together, you just suck, but you suck as friends. And I’d say, we all sucked horribly back then.”

At this point, Smith begins to laugh, as he starts to remember the good old (and sucky) times. “We thought we were great, and that’s what kept the whole thing together, because if we had thought we sucked, we would have quit. Literally, our first show, we called the damn Ford Center, which is a forty five thousand capacity, and said, ‘Yeah, we’re trying to book a show.’ They said, ‘Yeah right, not happening.’”

“It was in Spanish class,” Romo remembers. “I think Zain called and pretended to be our fake manage and they called Zain back, in Spanish [class], and he [the promoter] asked, ‘Is this so-and-so,’ and Zain said, ‘Yeah, this is him.’ The promoter said, ‘we’re getting back to tell you how much it costs to book the Ford Center: five thousand dollars for ticketing.’ We just said, ‘Oh, we just wanted to open for Tool or something.’”    

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Guitarist Zain Smith
It says somewhere, in the depths of random information that one can find on a band, that Anti-Mortem started out playing in a barn. Obviously, that being the most stereotypical band start-up story, I wanted to hear more.

“At our old house that we lived at before the band, my dad was always—he would always collect every car he had,” explains Smith. “He had just any vehicles—Chevelles or GMZ trucks or el Caminos, whatever. He has all these vehicles and none of them work, because he’s had them over the course of twenty-five, thirty years. He just doesn’t sell anything. So the cars, needing storage, the barn and the shop are all full of vehicles, and we just cleared out half the shop and moved the vehicles in the bigger barn, and we built a stage in there and we started practicing. We didn’t buy no cars, we had to fix the ones in there first.”

Have you ever gone back home to play in the barn again? I inquire.

“We practice in there!” exclaim Romo and Smith in unison.

Smith says, “It’s hot as hell, but we practice there.”

“It’s cold as hell, too,” adds Romo.

“It’s the conditioning of tour,” says Smith. “In the winter our fingers are freezing off and we can barely play guitar or play drums. Summer, we’re on stage at Aftershock at noon.”


On a slight tangent, Romo says, “When you’re first starting out, you either have a van or you have something that should have been a van. There’s no comfort at the beginning… We got through that. We were uncomfortable, so we’re uncomfortable here. It’s okay. WE LIVE THIS WAY!”
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Larado Romo
Have you ever been out of the country touring before?

“Once,” says Smith. “We played Canada once. We were supposed to go on a tour with Holy Grail and be on a tour in Canada for weeks, but that didn’t work out for us. We’ve played Canada once, and then [we play] the UK in November.”

All of a sudden, lead singer Larado Romo bursts into the interview. Of course, him starting in middle school, I had to ask how he dealt with his voice cracking.

“Well, he hit puberty when he was five,” explains his brother Nevada.

Larado interrupts the teasing fest that ensued to answer the question. “I’ve been at least six foot since they all met me when I was in like sixth or seventh grade. My voice isn’t really that deep, so it’s kind of like my voice developed when I was young and just stayed that way. I worked on my voice for so long that it kind of forced it into development. The best way to deal with it, though, is called warming up and being very careful about the way you do it.”

“Which he didn’t do for the first six years of our band,” laughs Nevada.

“I sounded so manly when I was twelve, because I totally just growled my voice,” laughs Larado. “My favorite type of vocals is like you can actually feel your throat and it doesn’t hurt. I’m so over having a sore throat, because when you actually warm up and you do shit right, it does not hurt at all. You can sing for days. And that’s the best thing in the world, when you go out there and it does not hurt and it feels great.”

My last question, just to wrap everything up, was…random, to say the least. I had noticed that on stage Nevada had abstained from wearing shoes, and had continued to not wear them while making his rounds of the media tent. 

Do you have a problem with shoes? I ask.

“No! I just didn’t wear them because it was so hot,” laughs Nevada. “Honestly, at the end of the day, it’s not about wanting to look super poor because I am super poor, it just makes me a little more approachable, I guess. And it’s hot.”

“He just gave me this long spiel about how when you walk barefooted on the Earth, you get its energy,” teases Smith.

“Hey!” exclaims Nevada. “You gave away my hippie-dippie secret. Nobody’s supposed to know that!”
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Bassist Corey Henderson (with Dickerson in the background)
If you haven't heard or heard of Anti-Mortem, now is the time to watch these YouTube videos below and then buy their album New Southern, featuring awesome songs like "100% Pure American Rage" and "Stagnant Water."

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Zoe Adler is a music journalist from Long Beach, California. Besides her website, which is her pride and joy, she works with the GRAMMY Foundation and the Long Beach Independent. Additionally, Ms. Adler is a musician, spending half of her time playing the flute, piccolo, trombone, and marching baritone. She has been with TeenView Music since the very start and hopes to make something of it in the future.
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Q & A with Los Angeles Metal Band KYNG

11/10/2014

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Interview with Tony Castaneda
of KYNG at Aftershock

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Tony Castaneda
It has been a solid two months since Monster Energy’s Aftershock Festival, but I’ve still got some interviews coming your way. High school these days…don’t these teachers realize that concert-going is more important than learning the circumference of a circle and the definition “vicissitude?”

Anyways, when I spoke with Tony Castaneda, bassist of heavy metal band KYNG, they were just finishing up an extensive tour. However, now they are starting their first European tour, and are super excited.

PictureEddie Veliz
How do you feel about your show today?

Today’s show was a bit weird. We played kind of early and it was really hot, and there were some technical issues, but we pulled through.  My main thing, why I didn’t enjoy myself too much, was because I was sliding all over the place. My feet were just slipping and sliding… I had to stand still, just standing there. I felt like one of the Beatles--not as cool of course-- but just standing there, bopping and playing and weaving, so it was real awkward in a sense.

Why was it slippery?

I think it might have been all the dust and the fact that my Van’s are wearing out. It was a combination of the two, and I could not get a good grip for the life of me.

What did you think of the crowd?

The crowd was good, the crowd’s always good. It didn’t seem like too many people knew who we are, but we tend to suck them in after a few songs. We did our job, that’s what we thrive for, that’s what we’re there for.  I think it was a good mission accomplished.

How’s it been being away from your family for so long?

It’s been really hard, but you’ve got to make the best of it because you’re doing a job. It’s not just a regular job, it’s something that we’ve always wanted to do, as kids, and so it’s not something you can take for granted or complain about. There are a million other bands that would love to be in the position we’re in, so it’s just part of the process of it all. You’re going to miss your family, you’re going to miss your friends, but there’s Face Time now, a lot of stuff you can do that you couldn’t 10 years ago.  We make the best of it and it is what it is. 


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Castaneda
Before you tour, how do you prep yourself? What goes through your head?

It’s kind of a process, because I get bummed out a week before I leave. I’m leaving and I’m going to miss everyone—Emily [my sister] and [my] girlfriend and friends, and so I go through this phase….  Then once we’re on the highway it’s cool; you have no choice [because] I’m on the road... Beside from that, I’m making sure I [have] got all my equipment, and my guitars are all prepped and ready to go, so yeah its making sure you have enough underwear. That’s always a good thing.  I guess that’s what I go through.

So when you’re not touring, how often does KYNG get together and practice, and how often do you practice on your own?

It all depends. If we have tours coming up, we play so much on the road [that] we don’t really get together as much as we used to… I hear other bands get together four [or] five times a week to tighten up and stuff, but we have known each other so long musically, it just kind of happens [in] two [or] three practices. We’ll probably practice like four times before we hit the road, and as the shows go on, we get tighter and tighter. So, that’s how we work

Before a show, how do you get ready?

Basically, I put on my stage clothes, the same T-shirt and jeans that I wear for every show.  So it’s usually kind of stinky until I can go in to a Laundromat and wash it.  Aside from that, I do vocal warm-ups for about half an hour before I go on stage.  I maybe drink a beer or 2--ok kids don’t drink until your 21! I have this spritzer bottle that all my friends make fun of, that I use to spritz my hair because if I don’t spritz my hair before I go on stage, it literally looks like a poofy fricken bear, like an afro times three, and I’ve made the mistake of not leaving enough time to spritz my hair. It’s got a mind of its own-- my head turns right and my fro follows. It’s pretty intense, so you’ll catch me 10 minutes before the show…with my spritzer, making sure my hair is maintained

So have you guys – I know your new album is out recently – have you started thinking about new stuff?

More so about the direction we might be taking on that next album. We haven’t been home for enough time to write new music, but it is always in the back of our minds. We always have riffs in our heads that we record on our phone… when we get some down time, maybe in December, we’ll get in the studio and start hashing some stuff out and see what we can come up with

Lyrically, “Electric Halo” is fantastic.  The video really reflects what you say. When did you guys decide to put out such a political musical piece?

That song was written and recorded when the entire album was done.  Our record label, Razor and Tie, wanted us. They loved the album, but we want that one song for radio that will kick the door down for the album, so we got together for the first time ever with this cold writer. We were on the fence with it, but when we signed with them we said we wouldn’t be against it, and we are men of our word. We stuck with our word, and we got together with this guy, I think his name is Johnny Andrews, and Eddie started messing with the guitar, and he thought, “What would Iommi from Black Sabbath do?” and he just came up with that lick (sings it) and I said that’s really a cool riff. Lyrically, he started digging deep into random stuff… It’s about fake people--whether it’s people, whether it’s organizations or religion, that’s for the listener to interpret themselves--I always find that music speaks more volumes if you let the listener decide what its about. That’s why people ask, “Is that political [or] is that about religion? Is that about politics, or is that just about a back-stabbing person?”  So it’s about all three.  It’s just worked out that way. 

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Pepe Clark Magana
What are you hoping will come out of your tour?

A fan base [and] an appreciation.  It seems in the states we’re all spoiled.  Everything has got to be better… People are just standing still with their hands crossed.  You don’t know how to take it: do they like you, do they hate you?  It’s just not very expressive.  I hear in Europe it’s much different, they’re very physically expressive

California is notorious for that.

Being from Los Angeles, that’s all we want to do is get the hell out of there… It’s so much different than everywhere else.  You go to the mid-west and people are more expressive and its gotten to the point that even in the mid-west it feels like Los Angeles.

 


Having just started their European tour, you can head over to KYNG’s Facebook page and read the updates on their first impressions of Europe! 

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Zoe Adler is a music journalist from Long Beach, California. Besides her website, which is her pride and joy, she works with the GRAMMY Foundation and the Long Beach Independent. Additionally, Ms. Adler is a musician, spending half of her time playing the flute, piccolo, trombone, and marching baritone. She has been with TeenView Music since the very start and hopes to make something of it in the future.

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