Hey Torture, how’s it going? Thanks for doing this interview. I've been looking forward to this
I’m doing very well! I’m very excited to answer some questions, this is the first interview I’ve ever done in my life!
For the readers out there, who are you and tell them a little about yourself
My name is K.K. Music/art is my entire life. I quite literally cannot stop thinking about music every second of the day. It has been this way since I can remember. When I'm not doing something music-related, I’m usually indulging myself in the incredible art of professional wrestling. Whether that be watching RAW, NXT, Dynamite, Smackdown, Rampage, etc, or collecting action figures & t-shirts, I am completely obsessed with this incredible medium of art. I’m a complete newbie though. The first show I watched was Wrestlemania 39. But I just got sucked into the whole world so suddenly, and I’m in love. Other than that, I love collecting other stuff like diecast cars, and other types of action figures. I also love computers, graphic design, and video games. I’m also super interested in current events, politics, and critical thought. I listen to a lot of political, religious, sociological, and philosophical debates. I love gathering and learning everyone’s views on everything. It gives me a nice foundation for me to determine what is actually true about our world and complex societal & governmental structures. I know you said “a little” but I love answering questions so you’re gonna be getting some pretty long & detailed answers for all of these probably
What got you into music and wanting to play in a band? Any particular moment in your life that made you go “I want to do that”
Music has been around me since I was still inside the womb. My dad is a musician along with my brother. My dad would play music or play his bass (he’s a bassist) and my mom would feel me kicking. It’s insane. And then I came into this world, and my genes had determined that I would live my life having ADHD as well as ASD (autism spectrum disorder) (THANX DAD !!!! :D). This was far from a negative thing, however, as the latter fuels my passion, rapid growth as a musician, and tendency to stray from the norm in my musical expression. I didn’t begin seriously playing an instrument until I was 12. Before this, me and my dad were obsessed with the Rock Band & Guitar Hero games. He would always play drums, and I’d be on vocals. Eventually, I picked up the drum and got really good at it fast. Specifically, I started with The Beatles Rock Band. That would fuel both my love for music that wasn’t metal and my fundamental understanding of playing drums. To this day, I see a Rock Band drum chart in my head, and see each drum as what color they’re represented as in the game (red as the snare, yellow as hi-hat/high rack tom etc.). But either way, on my 12th birthday I got my drum kit for the first time. At the party, everyone wanted to see me play something, so I remembered what I could picture from playing Avenged Sevenfold’s “Beast and the Harlot” on Rock Band 3, and just kinda translated it in my head, and played through the entire song without even hearing it. From then on, for the next year and a half or so, I would play the same 7 or 8 Avenged Sevenfold songs I learned by ear almost every single day. It was never because I felt like I “had to practice” or anything, it just felt so good & satisfying to play drums. Eventually, I would go on to learn the entire System of a Down discography, a few Pantera albums (namely Vulgar, Far Beyond Driven, and Great Southern Trendkill), and a handful of Dream Theater songs over the next 2 or 3 years. That just about covers it for my musical beginnings.
Who are your top five influences and what drew you to their style?
That’s a tough one. There are so many artists that I love so much that influence my own style. I have a lot of trouble ranking things and picking favorites, I just love it all so much. I’m gonna pick out five eras of music, scenes of music, or genres of music that really had a deep impact on me, instead of specific artists. Forgive me for changing up the format hahahaha this is just a lot easier for me to write about. These will be unranked:
Early 2000’s to Early 2010’s Slam & Deathcore. I’m talking bands such as Abominable Putridity, Artery Eruption, Cephalotripsy, Cerebral Incubation, Devourment, Dripping, Epicardiectomy, Gorevent, Infected Malignity, Internal Bleeding, Vulvectomy, and Waking the Cadaver. I’m sure that I’m missing a few. I was a prog metal kid for so long, and that changed when I was 17 and my friend showed me “Kill the Christian” by Deicide. I immediately was drawn to the groove, brutality, and heaviness of the track. Some time after this, we would listen to Internal Bleeding’s “Perpetual Degradation” EP at first as a joke, but then very quickly it developed into a real love for the tracks. That kickstarted my love for sick riffs and incredible climactic breakdowns. What pumped more fuel into it was going to a TON of death metal and hardcore shows throughout 2017-2020. I experienced the extreme adrenaline of being in the mosh pit, the teeth-clenching experience of hearing an incredible riff live, and observing the crowd’s (and your own) reaction. Sometimes the thought of all these things together makes me tear up. It’s like they feel the sheer fucking power, passion, and energy the musicians are blasting into the audience through the most devastating, world-ending, and climactic grooves, and what they feel is literally forcing them to instantly vocally express those exact feeling, due to how overwhelmingly brutal the feeling is. It is just so beautiful to me. The fact that you can make someone feel such intense and other-worldly feelings just by expressing your emotions through art brings me to tears. The fact that you could write a riff that would make an entire room of people start losing their shit, and make them have the greatest time of their life is what I FUCKING LIVE FOR !!!!!!!!!!!!
Progressive & Avant-Garde Music: This encompasses a wide array of artists, but I feel as though they all influence me equally as intensely. I’ll start with prog rock: Currently, I absolutely love prog rock artists from the late 60s, to the mid 80s. The main, most known bands are awesome: Genesis, Yes, King Crimson, Caravan, Zappa, etc. But what I’m really most drawn to is the more obscure bands, mainly anything labeled “Rock in Opposition”, like Henry Cow, Univers Zero, Samla Mammas Manna, Art Bears, etc. They’re very influenced by all types of avant-garde music that was incredibly modern at the time, such as free jazz, modernist classical music and its various “subgenres”, and other artists within the “fluxus” movement, whereas more popular prog bands signed to major labels at the time were influenced by older periods of classical music. That definitely is not a bad thing, but I just love the avant-garde & experimental stuff that the rock in opposition guys love. Which is a great segway to the next genre I’ll talk about: free jazz. Free jazz was a much bigger influence on my first three records, being that they’re like a fusion of free jazz, gorenoise, and brutal death metal (known more frequently as “free death”). But nonetheless, the intensity, emotion, and passion required to make that sort of music, and to then have all those emotions blasted back at the listener, is astounding. Older records are the ones that really move me emotionally, namely John Coltrane’s “Concert in Japan”. The way the musicians express their innermost pains by releasing them through their instrument by way of wailing, agonizing cries and screams, shows how connected the musicians are to their instruments. They humanize their instruments, because in those moments that are captured on recording forever, they are their instruments. The track “Afro Blue” makes me sob uncontrollably. The next genre I’ll talk about is what is most commonly known as classical music. Beginning in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, classical music started to evolve to be incredibly experimental and increasingly avant-garde. Composers started to explore atonality, unconventional structures of composition, and other boundaries not yet broken yet. Composers from the 1920’s specifically such as Arnold Schoenberg, Anton Webern, Alban Berg, etc. are a direct influence on “4 - “Enduring Freedom””. They developed a compositional technique called 12 tone serialism. Instead of using a traditional key signature, the technique aimed to prioritize and give equal exposure to each of the 12 notes of the traditional western octave. There’s a lot more to explain, if you’re interested I highly suggest reading stuff about serialism, the Second Viennese School, and what came after that. But I directly used this technique on the tracks “Legacy of Devastation”, as well as “...Nourishing Adversity”. I think that covers all my avant-garde & progressive influences.
Personal childhood metal influences: I owe so much to the band System of a Down. I started listening to them before I can even remember my earliest memory. My dad was/still is OBSESSED with them, and the obsession just carried on over to me. I’ve listened to and played their music so much. I still love them equally as much today. Another band like that for me is Avenged Sevenfold. My dad exposed me to tons more bands growing up: The Beatles, Rush, Stone Temple Pilots, Pantera, Dream Theater, Metallica, The Beach Boys, etc. I owe a lot to him.
Hardcore, Metalcore, and Punk in general: When I was 15/16 (2015-2016), one of my best friends was really into hardcore and got me super into Code Orange. Then I started going to a bunch of shows a year or so later and the rest is history. I loved and still love bands like Candy, Never Ending Game, Chamber, Kublai Khan, Scowl, I Am, Drain, Pain of Truth, Sanction, Gulch, God’s Hate, Mindforce, SYSC, Vein, Turnstile, Snuffed on Sight, ETC. ETC. I could list so many. I love this new generation of riff smiths and crowd-movers, and I’m so glad that I can be a part of that generation. I already talked about how much live music has had an impact on me. A majority of those shows involved most of the bands I just listed. The main reason why I love all these bands is because of the live experience I already explained. I also love early punk. I love proto-punk like New York Dolls, The Stooges, etc. I have also become obsessed with early Danzig-era Misfits in the past year or so. My Spotify wrapped this year had Misfits songs as every top song hahahaha !!!! I just really, really love major key-oriented bands like that. Another favorite in that category is Blink 182’s Dude Ranch. I love every single song on that record. I’ve got two more bands in that category for ya: Fang Island is such an underrated band. They started playing on Spotify’s algorithm after another song had ended, and I immediately listened to the full self-titled album and fell in love. It’s like Imagine Dragons if it was cool and well-written. The last one is Andrew W.K.. His music is INSANELY good. It’s like the most intense, well-written pop-punk of all time. Except it’s not pop punk, it’s more metal. I’ve always called it “Pop Metal”. But his albums are fantastic, I highly recommend his first two albums.
Hip-Hop & Trap Music: I feel as though we are entering a renaissance of this category of music. More and more new artists continue to blow me away more and more often. Trap specifically is evolving into all these really interesting sub-genres, whether it be Plugg and its various sub-sub genres, Rage, Regalia, etc. etc. The energy and passion of these young artists is astounding, and really inspiring. On the more traditional/”boom bap” side of hip hop, artists that align themselves with less experimental stylings are perfecting the style, meanwhile those that experiment, are doing so on such a grand and incredible scale. I’m thinking of artists like Armand Hammer (including anything Billy Woods and/or Elucid puts out), MIKE, $ilkMoney, Cities Aviv, Moor Mother, Earl Sweatshirt, etc. Again, it’s so inspiring to see these artists prosper and find their true artistic voice.
BONUS !!!! Professional Wrestling: During a majority of the writing/compositional process of “4 - “Enduring Freedom””, I was watching a weekly wrestling show, an old PPV, or some documentary about wrestling. The moves and brutal nature of what happens in the ring are really inspiring for writing sick riffs. Watching wrestling is a lot like listening to slam for me - a good riff hits my soul in the same way a well-executed DDT or German Suplex hits my soul. Plus, the moves are always built up to a very satisfying climax, given a talented wrestler, just like how a talented slam composer will build up to a slam well. They just go hand in hand for me very well hahahaha.
You’re the brains behind one of the sickest slam bands to come out in a while, could you tell us a bit about how Torture came to be
This is a really funny story. In 2022, I was listening to a lot of Gorenoise, free death, and lots of other avant-garde metal projects. This is also when I was diagnosed with the things I mentioned earlier. I was given proper medication (Adderall) that really worked for me. I was never able to have the motivation to do my project like this, and my meds gave that to me. In June of that year, I discovered some of the photographs and the story behind the Abu Ghraib prison, and almost instantly I saw the War Crime cover in my head. I saw the American flag fading into the picture you see now, and the “military stencil” font with white glow behind it. It’s pretty insane. I thought of that, and then subsequently designed the cover, a week before July 4th, when it was released haha. I decided to say “fuck it” and recorded, mixed, and mastered it in like 3 or 4 days. But I love it. I spent A LOT more time on the other records.
Now, you play everything in Torture, how long have you played each instrument?
I did indeed record everything you hear on all the albums. I am, however, in the process of bringing “Enduring Freedom” to the stage. I’m working with my best friends & some of the best musicians I know to bring you unmatched energy & maximum intensity in the live setting. But I’ve been playing drums for more than 12 years, guitar & bass for 10 years, and I started understanding the mixing/mastering process around six years ago.
Have you played in any other bands before or is Torture your first project that really took off?
Yes! But I’ve never released recorded music with any project until Torture. I was in an alt-rock/metalcore hybrid band with two of my best friends when I was 14-16. These same two friends are now going to perform in Torture with me !!! We also did a death metal band in 2019/2020. After that ended, we started a project named C.P.R. that’s like the most insane metalcore/hardcore/deathcore/whatever else band ever. We’re still doing that project, you should expect to see something from that project in the next few years I would say!
Most Slam bands these days sound the same but what makes Torture stand out is the production, grooves and strong hardcore influences. What were your thoughts when writing this album?
I really appreciate the kind words. It means a lot! But to answer your question, in 2023 I became addicted to Cephalotripsy’s debut album. I love it so fucking much, from the odd-time signature
slams to the sparse yet unique & super-creative drumming, to the apocalyptic gurgles and growls from Angel Ochoa. Listening to it is like guaranteeing having fun while also feeling a grating, extreme intensity for the next 40 minutes of your life. I also became the most addicted I’ve ever been to Devourment’s “Molesting the
Decapitated”, “Impaled” demo, and the “1.3.8.” compilation in 2023. The sheer impact of these band’s riffs is absolutely unparalleled. Being addicted to these bands put things in perspective for me. It’s like… the most prominent representations of the evolution of slam I would say is like this: Suffocation invented the slam (or maybe Uncle Slam lol), Internal Bleeding took that and invented “Slam Metal”, then Devourment evolved Slam, and then Cephalotripsy perfected Slam. There are so many amazing bands in between, but I feel like these specific bands are the most influential/groundbreaking for their time. mid-2010’sI’m always looking forward to the future. Around the mid 2010’s slam started to become sorta “culturally cringe”, as in it was viewed as “cringe” by the general population. There've been many, many amazing records and bands since then, but I feel like the spirit of 2000’s bedroom slam bands, dry-ass production and all, kinda died out because of this cultural shift. I just really, really wanted to bring this back, and evolve it into a completely new thing. In doing this, I can pay tribute to all the amazing artists who’ve impacted my life so positively, while also evolving what they did, and having my own completely new sound/style. The ultimate goal is to be a stepping stone for the NEXT evolution of slam. Whether I achieve that or not doesn’t really matter, the support and amazing things people have said about my music make it worth it already. I’m so grateful for everyone who listens, even if you hate it !!! I just appreciate everyone checking out my stuff in the first place. But I seek to achieve my goal by putting as much information out about the music as possible, you can find the Guitar Pro files I composed the entire “Enduring Freedom” album in on Songsterr, Ultimate Guitar, and on my webstore: dagmarrecords.myshopify.com. And I hope this interview A). satisfies questions people might have about the project, and how it was created, so that they can be inspired to make their own stuff. I hate when I love a project so much but can’t find any information on it. and B). directly find the influences/roots of the project, so that, once again, they can be inspired by that to make their own stuff. I just want to share the joy that I experience consuming and creating music with everyone in the world.
Now for a fun question. What’s an album by a band you like that everyone else thinks sucks?
AWESOME QUESTION! The first album that pops into my head is “Perverse Recollections of a Necromangler” by Waking the Cadaver. It has such bad reviews everywhere you go, but oh my god do some of the riffs sink my soul into the ground. Another one is Vulvectomy’s debut. Idk if people hate that one as much as Waking the Cadaver but omfg do I love that album. I just thought of the grand finale album: Bring Me the Horizon’s debut album. That thing packs some riffs. Classic 2000s deathcore.
Thanks for doing the interview! What can we expect from you in the future and anything you wanna say before we go?
Absolutely. I love sitting and writing about this sort of stuff so thank you for giving me an outlet to tell my story !!!! What to expect from Torture in 2024: SHOWS SHOWS SHOWS !!!!! WE WANT TO PLAY AS MANY SHOWS AS POSSIBLE !!!! Expect some new releases as well. Torture has officially entered a new era of riffs and compositions, rather than free improvisation. But again, most importantly, WE WANT TO PLAY SHOWS VERY BAD !!!!! We are preparing for the stage as I type this. Also, expect more merch & more physicals in 2024 !!!! I’d just like to shout out some cool people and bands to finish it off: Thank you Internal Bleeding for kickstarting all this sudden growth! I wouldn’t have written the album without your guys’ influence. Thank you to so many sick bands who have shown support, and make sick ass music. God’s Hate, Pain of Truth, Knocked Loose, Sunami, Volcano, Year of the Knife, Daze Records, Sanction, and probably a few others I can’t think of right now. Shouts out to Alice Simard and all of her awesome projects. Also, thank you Meshuggah. That is all.
댓글