Recommended Aussie Tunes:Psycroptic | The new single "A Fragile Existence" | Listen

Interviews : “Working on this album was a true collaboration.” – An Interview With Greg Puciato (Killer Be Killed)

By on February 26, 2015

Killer_Be_Killed_-_Band_Photo_2014

Greg Puciato – Killer Be Killed

In what I like to call ‘The Age of Supergroups’ given the insane number of them that has been sprouting up in the past few months, there’s really only one band that so far, to me, that seem to fit the title. Killer Be Killed is the brainchild of Greg Puciato (The Dillinger Escape Plan), Troy Sanders (Mastodon), Max Cavalera (Soulfly) and Dave Elitch (Antemasque ) and one that defies all boundaries of genre categorization. Here’s a quick chat I had with the cheeky Greg Puciato about all things Killer Be Killed.

Greg being Greg kicked things off by trying to trick me into believing he was Max Cavalera followed by a quick update of what they had been upto! ” Damn I thought I had you there for a second! Things have been great man, we’ve been busy with the debut album – our other bands but yeah we’re really looking forward to touring and now getting all set to play the KBK songs live! ”

Live indeed! Killer Be Killed was confirmed last year as part of Australia’s annual Soundwave Festival and for the band’s first run of live shows. “We’re really excited that Australia will be the first to see Killer Be Killed live. We all love it there! Given our other bands and work schedules, it was just really hard to find a common time where we’d all be available but Soundwave seemed to fit in perfectly for all of us. You know the funny part though? At Soundwave last year, Troy and I were kidding around about how both of us should share a stage at Soundwave next year. Now it’s actually going to happen!”

So how did this ingenious idea for 4 of the greatest musicians, that we know and love, to collaborate come about? ” I’ve known Troy for about 12 or 13 years now, known Max Cavalera for about 6. So this one time he (Max) and I were at a show together and we started talking about different bands, especially one of of all time favourites – Bad Brains. One thing led to another and we sort of got to this point where we were talking about collaborations and why no one does a full-length album. It’s something that really got me thinking because bands these days sometimes don’t want to step out of their comfort zone and away from the band that they’ve been successful in. Eventually, we got back in contact a few weeks later and also at a time when Dillinger was on tour with Mastodon which is where Troy got on board with the whole thing. We figured out a common time when we’d all be free and you know the rest!”

The album is heavy, sludgy and got some thrash thrown in for good measure and also has three vocalists! ” Yeah, we didn’t limit ourselves with this record, we basically brought in a bit of everything we knew. To be honest there wasn’t really a plan when we were writing. Especially with Troy – he brought in this really melodic yet heavy vibe to the music and wrote the music based on a vocal melody that he had in mind. A lot of the writing, especially with the vocal parts, was spontaneous because we were writing them as we were recording. That was really fun because there are three people on vocals so it was pretty chaotic as well. But I think the best thing was that we worked with each other, bounced ideas off each other – give each other riffs and fit vocals in for it. The whole approach to this album was definitely different to what I’m used to but that’s what I love about it!”

Greg also talked about what the writing process was like for their debut album and how it was collaborating with two other musicians. “I have to say this first – working on this album it was a true collaboration. Whenever we were writing or recording, we were always together in the same room at the same time. There was no sending files back and forth, putting parts together – we did everything together. But I’ve been writing music for a while now; so has Max. Like I said we have a lot of bands in common that we like, a lot of the same influences so that really did make things easier. We’re both into bands from the early hardcore scene, a lot of 80’s thrash. Once Troy joined us, he brought in something entirely different; something we didn’t really think of putting in with the music we had – more melodic stuff. Then we figured it’d be really cool if he did vocals as well so we pretty much took apart what we had and then started piecing things back together again, only this time adding all of Troy’s parts. He pretty much made what we had solid.”

Each member being a part of their own bands, all of which are massive, Greg talked about the few challenges that popped up along the way. ” I’d say just trying to get everyone in the same place at the same time man. It was tough trying to work around our schedules but once we did everything was great from there. We were like a bunch of kids during the recording process it was hilarious. Two of us would be inside the studio tracking our parts, and the others would stand outside and watch, doing random shit. It was so much fun. And like I said, we were always together during the recording so that made things so much easier. There was a pretty tight time constraint as well because we were all getting ready to record or tour with our other bands so we had like a month to get this release done. But we did it so it was all good!”

This project started out as a one-off project but it seems like there could be a follow up to the debut release. ” We’ve talked about it and we are going to eventually start working on something. Probably sometime later in the year we’ll get together for a writing session, throw some ideas around and see what happens. We’re really excited about it – honestly we all thought this was just going to be a one-time thing, we weren’t even sure about live shows! But now all of us are definite that we want to do another record together so hopefully that’s soon!”

Absolutely stoked about playing in Australia, Greg had one last message to the fans! “All of us love Australia and we’re so excited that Killer Be Killed is playing there live for the first time! The country, the people everything is awesome and every time I’m there with Dillinger, it’s crazy. The first time I headed there with Dillinger, none of us knew what to expect, but we got such an amazing response, people were awesome, made us love the place even more. So thank you so f***ing much for having us and we can’t wait to see you guys soon!”

Catch Killer Be Killed at Soundwave in Sydney and Brisbane this weekend!

SATURDAY 28 FEBRUARY & SUNDAY 1 MARCH – SOUNDWAVE SYDNEY – Olympic Park

SATURDAY 28 FEBRUARY & SUNDAY 1 MARCH – SOUNDWAVE BRISBANE – Brisbane Showgrounds

www.soundwavefestival.com

About

Prarthana is a vegan, Indo-Aussie, heavy music addict, fluent in sarcasm and metal. Traveling is an obsession as she enjoys taking in the history of various countries and following her favorite bands. She's either eating, teaching grammar or learning an instrument, when not occupied with windmilling in the faces of other humans.