Miscellaneous - Interview

  by Andy Vincent

published: 22 / 5 / 2006

intro

Massachusetts-based punk metal band A Wilhelm Scream talk to Andy Vincent at a gig at the London Astoria supporting Anti Flag about touring the UK and recent changes in their personnel

A Wilhelm Scream are a punk metal band from New Bedford in Massachusetts. The group currently consists of Nuno Pereira (vocals), Trevor Reilly (guitar, vocals), Chris Levesque (guitar), Nick Angelini (drums) and new recruit Brian Robinson (bass, vocals) and has to date released two albums, 'Mute Print'and this year's 'Ruiner'. The group has now toured Europe twice, firstly with Lagwagon and recently with Anti Flag. Pennyblackmusic met Chris Levesque and Brian Robinson on the Anti-flag tour at a London date at the Astoria to talk about the UK, Myspace, and changse in the band's line-up. PB : Can you introduce yourself and what you do ? BR : I play bass and sing backing vocals in a Wilhelm Scream CL : I'm Chris and I play guitar. I don't sing for shit. Not into a microphone anyway. BR : He's like crowd control. He goes up to the crowd. He's the rabble rouser CL : Best way PB : This is your second time to the UK. Do you feel like the crowds are more into it and know it a bit more? CL: You can't answer this Brian as you have only just joined the group... BR : No.... CL : I better answer it then. On the last tour, on the Lagwagon tour, the fans were more receptive. Lagwagon fans are more accepting. Anti-Flag fans are difficult, It's getting better through the tour though, but the two tours are totally seperate, Lagwagon and Anti Flag have totally different agendas and have had totally different crowds. PB : Do you build up for the shows in anyway? CL : Nahhhhh ! BR : I stretch! CL : I stretch, so I don't pull a hamstring...have a drink, maybe two, just to loosen up maybe. BR : Yeah, sometimes, just stretch and shit. CL : I don't touch my guitar for hours, can't be fucked. PB : Any tour stories to tell? CL : Man...how long do you have? Well what do you mean? PB : Bad stories ? Good stories ? Something that sticks out in your head? CL : The time we got into a brawl with a bunch of straightedge kids in Salt Lake City... or the time we almost got killed by a tornado comign into Denver. BR : In my old band we stayed in a seedy hotel in Saskatchewan. We split one room between two bands. We could bring booze up from the bar to our rooms, so we were sat on the fire escape and these guys turn up and start running in and out robbing the back of the bar. Cold shots... 8 percent beer, about the size of a red bull can... We ran down, stole like... 7 cases of this stuff and then waited for them to come up...They never came. After a show with my old band we went to an abandoned school. These jocks came up with bats and started pushing us around. My old drummer got smashed in the face, broken jaw, two black eyes... worst night of my life... you've got cricket bats though...worse than baseball bats. PB : Are there any bands you've toured with that you epecially like? BR : The Down and Outs are fucking awesome. CL : We've just come off tour with a band called Protest The Hero and another called the Fully Down from Ottawa, Ontario, Great dudes, work so fucking hard... PB : Have you enjoyed seeing Europe ? Have you had much of a chance? CL : More this time. We played with Lagwagon and I just had to watch every night... BR : We had a day off in Amsterdam... I don't smoke or fuck hookers so I went and looked at loads of fucking cool museums! PB : Do you feel like you're rising in the UK scene a lot more... bigger shows, more sales? BR : I don't know... kind of the same... it's cooler now as people know all the songs... CL : It's weird being recognised, cool, but weird. In the US they don't give a fuck, especially in the UK... It's nice...but makes me feel awkward... we're just 5 regular dudes BR : We don't go off and look like Robert Smith or anything. We play in the clothes we wear. It's awkward being mobbed...it's cool, flattering but something you never get used to... We're regular people, doing a slightly irregular thing... if someone came up to you and (impression of screaming girls asking for pictures) you'd feel pretty weird, right? PB : I can't even imagine how awkward it would be... BR : Yeah, so imagine that, in a different country... it's fucked... PB : I've read an interview recently about your views on scene kids... CL : Fuck all those kids... seriously, fuck them with their girls jeans... those kids don't like us. BR : Fashioncore, It's stupid! You want to know something? I know some fashioncore bands. They know this shit's going toend in a few years... they'll move on to whatever's next, synth pop, rockabilly whatever... CL : You know to me, I can't stand it. It's total bullshit. I hate the fashion end of it. Why do Dudes spend time doing their hair and makeup ?... It goes back to something the great Bill Stevenson said to me once. I quote it a lot.. "If you can't get up and play a show in your street clothes, if you can't pull that off, then your music has no merit whatsoever.." BR : Couldn't agree more... CL : I mean, That 80's did it, and GWAR do it now... but if they took that makeup off, they'd love it. The bottom line for me is if you rely so heavily on an image, then your band is shit. PB : What do you think of MySpace ? CL : MySpace...I had an account for a while but people got crazy and stalkerish... I never check it anymore, not even the band account... BR : Fucking good for bands though... I see the internet as a good thing for bands, at least through MySpace you can see pictures, videos, all the rest... but I hate it, Just need to keep up with my friends through it, no emails, just MySpace. My old band is on MySpace. The singer of Silverstein he sent a message out through their site and then we had 4,000 requests. It's fucking stupid, all through the Silverstein page. PB: Do you get the same questions in every interview? BR: No, always "what's your band name from?" "What are your influences?" PBM: On that note... do you have a message in your music? CL : No, we're not religious. We're not political. We just play cathartic music for us! It's 5 dudes having fun. PB : You get linked to heavyweights like Strungout. How does that feel? CL : It's pretty flattering. They're amazing. It's like being mentioned in the same sentence as Bad Religion. To me, that's how it is. BR: They're like the bands we got into... CL : We ran as Smacking Isaiah for a long time and it's so different now. We've progressed. Maybe that's a similar kind of link...although they've released seven or eight records... BR: If we made it to seven or eight records..I don't know what we'd sound like if we made it.. PB : So Brian you've just joined full time..how's it going? BR : I fucking love it. It's similar to my last band. It's still intense and live, but vocally I now back up almost every vocal on stage... I'm still getting used to playing and singing. But as far as the band goes, we've been friends for ages and have stayed in contact for absolutely ages. We played shows with each others bands PB : Why did you make the swap? CL: Our old bassist left five days into our tour. We had a friend from the Swellers fill in, after we called everyone. We don't talk to our old bassist anymore. He never really fitted in. It feels like we are more of a cohesive unit now. When he left, we were kind of glad. He apparently just didn't like us... we went through a period of adversity and it brought the four of us remaining even closer. BR : I got a list of sixteen songs and told I was singing all the low harmonies...so I did...what the fuck else would I do ? I'd rather do this than some crappy Screamo or pop punk band. PB : Any news on a new album? CL : We've got a few ideas, riffs, chord progressions, some quite well structured sections that will probably make it, but no serious news yet. PB : Thank you.

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