KILLER BE KILLED - Waking Up From a Dream Gone Bad
Pictured: Max Cavalera, Troy Sanders, Greg Puciato + Ben Koller - KILLER BE KILLED
Photo by: Greg La Fermun - Nuclear Blast
An Interview with Troy Sanders and Greg Puciato
Written by: Tom Wilson - Sense Music Media
Hours after stepping off a flight from Florida to Atlanta, Troy Sanders is in a reflective mood. “If I would’ve told myself twenty years ago that, “Hey, one day you’re going to write a song with Max Cavalera, and you’re really going to love it …”
He doesn’t quite finish that thought.
He doesn’t need to.
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Troy has just arrived at Ember City to work with his primary band, Grammy-winners MASTODON. A squat red single-story building located near Oakland Park, Ember City opened a few years ago. With multiple rehearsal rooms and a recording studio, it quickly proved popular with local bands, and was constructed, in part, by Sense’s favourite grindcore carpenter, Kevin Sharp of VENOMOUS CONCEPT (he’s also in PRIMATE with MASTODON’s Bill Kelliher). When we last spoke to Sharp, just as the Black Lives Matter protests were kicking off, things were intense, to put it mildly – Kevin had just borrowed a revolver to protect his house. Have things calmed down some?
“Yeah, it definitely calmed down. There were massive protests and violence and destruction just a matter of months ago … It’s definitely better here [in Atlanta], but it’s kinda scary, because at any moment, one horrific event could set it all back off again, which is really sad and unfortunate. I just want people to be happy, you know? Enjoy themselves!”
You guys have got an election coming up in a few days…
Troy laughs. “I’m ready for that to be over!”
Troy’s KILLER BE KILLED bandmate Greg Puciato is more direct. “We’re on the brink, you know? We’re pretty much on the brink of a civil war, so we’ll see what happens. We’ve got to get this monster out of here, and then see what happens after that.”
“I don’t know what else to do, except to create music, and be cool to people,” Troy added. “That’s all I got!”
What can Troy tell us about the direction of the new MASTODON material?
“I love it. Again, earlier this year, when all of our festivals and tours were wiped out, we just immediately shifted gears, and started ploughing into all the ideas that we’ve been collecting over the last two or three years of wild touring. I’m very attached to all of it, and I’m really, really excited about it. I’m ready to get going! I’m ready to record … We’re stepping up the intensity a little bit, so we can have an album out at some point next year.”
About five years ago, Troy and his family picked up and relocated to Florida, trading Atlanta for the beach life on the Gulf of Mexico. For a guy who spends a lot of the year on the road, how has he enjoyed all the extra family time?
“I love being at home. I have a cool little house, and a cool little family, and we live across the street from a gorgeous beach on the Gulf of Mexico. It’s warm, the sunsets are beautiful, so I totally enjoy being at home. But my livelihood is recording records and touring … As much as I want to get back out to “work”, I’ll take being at home, living the simple life. I really do love being at home, but I’m itching to get going, you know?”
A “supergroup” in the truest sense of the term, KILLER BE KILLED features the Holy Trinity of modern metal vocalists – thrash icon Max Cavalera of SEPULTURA, SOULFLY and CAVALERA CONSPIRACY, Troy Sanders of prog-metal troupe MASTODON, and Greg Puciato, the hyper-kinetic ball of muscle that fronted math-rock berserkers THE DILLINGER ESCAPE PLAN until their dissolution a few years back. Behind the kit pound the gifted limbs of percussive monster Ben Koller, best known for his work in mathcore legends CONVERGE and the caustic ALL PIGS MUST DIE.
It’s hard not to describe KILLER BE KILLED without sounding like a press release, but the truth is, collaborations of this magnitude don’t happen often, or for very long. When you consider the cosmic alignment of schedules that has to happen to get these four on stage together, it makes sense that they have toured together only once, as part of the last Soundwave Festival in 2015.
“All four of us have loads of touring experience …” Troy explained. “[The Soundwave tour] was collectively one of the top three tours that we’ve all been on, ever, for several reasons. Number one, we were excited to have had the time to play together, because we live by our calendar, and how our schedules can align with one another … Secondly, everyone who travels to Australia always comes back raving about how gorgeous it is, [how] everyone is so cool, everyone is so friendly and welcoming, and it’s a gorgeous company. And third, and probably most important, we had no idea what our reception would be. If no one was familiar with the music, we would have been OK with that, because we didn’t expect anything. From that first note that we played at the festival in Melbourne, so many people were singing the words back to us, and the energy was mind-blowing to us. When we left Australia, we all collectively vowed that this band would continue to find the time to move forward. We were going to continue writing music, we were going to put out a new record, we were going to tour when the time was right. That short and sweet tour of Australia … it was truly incredible. It was the springboard for our band to solidify our thoughts that we were going to continue. We still talk about those Australian shows all the time.”
Pictured: Max Cavalera, Troy Sanders, Ben Koller + Greg Puciato - KILLER BE KILLED
Photo by: Greg La Fermun - Nuclear Blast
KILLER BE KILLED is literally a collage of my favourite bands, all of whom have contributed albums I consider classics. MASTODON’s Leviathan, DILLINGER ESCAPE PLAN’s Miss Machine, CONVERGE’s Jane Doe, SEPULTURA’s Chaos A.D. … With all the recognition and accolades, and people lining up to kiss their arses, how do they keep their heads small?
“Remaining humble is brutally important part of longevity,” Troy offers. “Perhaps that’s why the four guys in MASTODON have been in the band for over twenty years together … Any time any positive accolade or praise comes our way, we’re very thankful and grateful. We try to keep each other in check and realise that, hey, we’re really fortunate to have found each other and be able to create a long and giant discography of music together. Once you believe that you are the shit, that’s when you cease to be it.”
Fair enough. Why not switch it up and let them kiss each other’s arses? We asked Troy what he likes most about his bandmates.
“Well, the whole reason the band started was when Greg and Max put the band together, and they said, “We want everything to be reminiscent of your very first band when you were a teenager, and you found a friend that you liked to hang out with, and create music that made you feel good. No stress, no drama, no ego, no bullshit – only good times, good vibes and fun.” That was the premise of KILLER BE KILLED being put together. It still is very much that way. I love hanging out with those guys. If I didn’t love hanging out with those guys, I would not be in this band. I really enjoy being home … For me to leave the house, it really needs to be beneficial, rewarding and therapeutic and just a wonderful adventure. Max Cavalera is just a giant teddy bear. He has such a huge heart. He’s so funny, and he’s so relaxed, and just enjoys himself. Greg Puciato is a funny, funny dude. I’ve always appreciated his camaraderie. He’s very forward-thinking, he’s very energetic, which are all great qualities to be in my small circle of friends. Our drummer Ben Koller, he is such a warm soul, with a giant heart. He’s a family man, he’s super-loving. He just wants to create music all the time, travel the world, explore and have great adventures. He’s a great dad. I really think all three of those guys are great people.”
Greg has similar praise for Max.
“For me, the foundation of the band started with Max and I. I feel like we have a cool, complimentary thing. Max is a really strong, meat-and-potatoes anchor. To me, he’s the big anchor of the band.”
This has been a year of steadily-increasing craziness, but it’s safe to say that few people saw it coming when Gloria Cavalera posted a photo on her Instagram of her standing with her husband Max, holding up over two decades of matted hair that she’d just cut off the back of his head, displaying it like a trophy. Having long ago fused into one giant dreadlock resembling a beaver’s tail, it was so big and cumbersome that, in the Dream Gone Bad video, Max can actually be seen cradling it across his chest while lying in bed. “I had a couple of people text me and say, “I thought that was a snake at first.”” Greg mentions. “I was like, “Yeah, no, that’s attached!””
Pictured: Max Cavalera with his dreadlock cut off
Taken from Gloria Cavalera' s Instagram
“We were all together three weeks ago in Phoenix, Arizona, filming a couple of music videos,” explained Troy. “We were hanging out one afternoon, and Max said, “I think I’m going to cut this thing off.” He was holding it, and it was very, very heavy … If I had a ten-pound [4.5kg] weight tied to the back of my skull, I’d probably want to cut it off too. He probably feels great, like the weight has been lifted off his shoulders.”
“I told Max that if you plant that thing, a riff tree comes out,” laughed Greg.
Like the legend of Samson, does this mean that Max has lost his power?
“I’m not really sure,” answered Greg. “I’m concerned, because I haven’t seen him or tried to write with him or anything since then, but I don’t know what’s going to happen without that. Maybe we’re going to have to walk up to it and touch it and try to get some of the energy out of it. I’ve got to imagine that that thing felt like a fucking leg hanging off the back of his head. I’m sure it feels pretty good to get rid of after all this time … That thing was about to gain consciousness. [Laughs] That thing was going to be like the little creature that sits on Jabba the Hutt’s arm, you know? It was going to turn into its own little monster.”
It can’t hurt his headbanging, can it?
“Well he’s got to realise now that he’s probably got the strongest neck of any man,” Greg noted. “He’s going to be headbanging at warp speed.”
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It would be a shame if a hairstyling event two decades in the making coincided with the release of a crap album. Fortunately, Reluctant Hero is the kind of record that defies the “sophomore slump” by matching the ferocity and quality of their debut. Troy took SENSE through some of his favourite tracks.
“The title track, Reluctant Hero … it was very dark and slow, very sappy. We put that together at the last day of tracking in the studio, and I really wanted to write these lyrics for the song, and I just asked those guys to bear with me and hear this idea out. We pieced the song together, and everyone really loved it, so that made me very, very happy. I told them I wanted to call that song Reluctant Hero, and they said, “That’s amazing – we need to call the album that.” So that was a very humbling moment, because we were all on the same page.”
“Dream Gone Bad was one of my favourites, in terms of how the song came together. At the end of one of our writing sessions, Max played this one riff idea he had of this melodic verse of what would be Dream Gone Bad, and he said, “Hey man, what do you think of this? It might be too simple. I don’t know.” I listened to it, and I already had a vocal idea right away that I thought would work. I also had part two and part three of riffs that I was like, “I’ve already got some parts that I think would work with that.” A few days later, we had that song assembled, and Max was like, “Yeah, those riffs kind of sound like a dream gone bad.” I was like, that’s funny, man, because last night, when I was thinking about how that song came together, if I would’ve told myself twenty years ago that, “Hey, one day you’re going to write a song with Max Cavalera, and you’re really going to love it.” His one riff that he called a “dream gone bad”, turned out, for me, to be an absolute dream come true.”
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With three renowned frontmen in the one group, KILLER BE KILLED had the potential to be an ego-saturated mess. Thankfully, as Greg explained, that couldn’t be further from the case here.
“There are so many different ways that you can feel fulfilled when you’ve got this many cooks in the kitchen. It could go one of two ways – you could end up with people who have a hard time letting go of their ego, then you’re stomping over each other … The way we all operate is just to kind of hang back. We’re all fighting to see who’s going to be in the back of the picture, you know? That makes the record a lot more fun for us to listen to.
“It’s really hard to tell who is doing what, because we all wrote a lot for this record … It’s tough for me to tell. Sometimes I forget, and when I’m listening to the songs, I’m like, “Did I write that riff? Did Max write that riff?” It’s getting harder to tell, which is kind of cool, because that makes it feel more like a band.” Not being solely responsible for all the vocals is a welcome change from his work with DILLINGER ESCAPE PLAN and THE BLACK QUEEN. “It’s nice, in this band, to be able to pivot around other people, you know? The cool thing about Max and Troy both is that they have very unique voices – very unique character voices, where they really only do one thing, but no one else sounds like them … I feel like, if you put us three together [vocally], there’s nothing we can’t do.”
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