POWERMAN 5000 – Lights, Camera, Rock!
Words by: Tom Wilson @thetomwilsonexperiment - Sense Music Media | Thursday 12th January 2023
Haircuts, Horror Movies and Rob Zombie with Spider One
Lumped in with nu metal at the turn of the century and remembered for his signature hair as much as he is for being ROB ZOMBIE’s younger brother, Spider One isn’t bothered by comparisons to his sibling … which is good, because he’s also ventured into making horror movies. The voice and sole original member of POWERMAN 5000, Spider recently released his feature film debut Allegoria, and is now set to bring POWERMAN down under for the first time ever …
You’re still rocking the very contemporary haircut … contemporary for the late 90s, early 2000s, but god bless, you’ve picked your style and you went with it.
Hey listen, I fear that if I cut it, let it grow, dye it, no one will know who I am. [Laughs] Remember that one year Billy Idol grew dreads, and no one [recognised him], and he was like, “Fuck that! I’m going back!” [Laughs] I feel like it’s my one identifying visual in the band that has been consistent since the beginning … Honestly, I swear to you … this is what it looks like when I wake up in the morning, because I’ve had it like this for so long, people ask me, “How do you get your hair like that?” I wake up, and this is what it fucking looks like. I’ll go with it. One day I’ll retire, and I’ll probably still keep it the same way, I don’t know.
Well, you could retire and go into filmmaking, because I noticed that you released Allegoria this year.
Yeah, for sure. Filmmaking has become … when I’m not on tour, I’m planning. I’ve already shot the second film, which comes out next year, so I’ve got two under my belt. It was really the COVID shit. Music just shut down, and for about six months it was the greatest time of my life, because I had an excuse to do absolutely fucking nothing but sit around, and I was like, “This is amazing!” But after that, I started to go crazy, and there was no end in sight for music … I always wanted to. Film and TV was as equal a passion as music, but I started to strategise over that time, and figure out how to shoot with limited characters, limited locations, small crew … those films became Allegoria, so it was great. It was the best thing to happen, because it really lit a fire for me to do something new, and now that’s become … music, I’ve done it for so long, that I guess I always know what to expect, but with film, it’s a whole new adventure of triumphs and disasters along the way.
The limitations of budgets can create some incredible things. Two that come to mind are Pi – Darren Aronofsky’s first movie about the mathematician – and Cube, both from the 90s, made for an absolute shoestring.
I agree. In a lot of modern film, younger people … there are a lot of people who appreciate that, but a lot of them don’t, because they’ve only grown up on $200 million-dollar budget superhero movies, so then they see something that isn’t that, and it confuses them. They think it’s wrong … I grew up watching Jim Jarmusch films, with one camera and a couple of people having a conversation. I loved that shit growing up. I love low-budget horror movies. I think, you’re right, there is something … everything isn’t at your disposal, so you have to be really creative, and you have to find other ways to communicate ideas and emotion or whatever by doing things without the budget. But I enjoy it, I really do. I mean, not to say that I would never do, if it got offered to me, some big budget movie, but there is something about doing something small and intimate and DIY vibe that really appeals to me. I mean, I think that’s just how I’ve always felt about everything in music. I was a punk rock kid. DIY, man. You make your own records, you make your own artwork, you go down to Kinko’s and you xerox the covers and you put it together. That makes sense to me, still to this day. I just enjoy that mentality more than, “Well, let’s hire a bunch of guys to do shit.” I never was that guy.
I noticed when I was looking at your film stuff, and I smiled to myself and I said, “Man, was he one day just sitting there thinking, “Man, I don’t get compared to my brother enough in interviews. You know what I’ll do? I’ll start making horror movies!”” [Laughs]
[Laughs] I just want to get some more shit online! Nah, you know, it’s funny … of course, it’s always part of the conversation in my life, right? But I guess it confuses me as to why people would assume that that wouldn’t be the case. We’re two years apart in age, we grew up in the same household, we grew up watching the same movies, reading the same comic books, loving the same shit, you know? I think it would be stranger if one of us was an accountant. To me, it makes perfect sense. We very much have a lot of the same sensibilities. [We’re] different people for certain, but we grew up loving all the same things. In fact, I started being in bands before he did, but because of the success of WHITE ZOMBIE, it seemed like I was following along. We were always working on our own things all [though] the years. But yeah, I mean, you either come to accept that those conversations are going to happen – and it’s fine with me, it doesn’t bother me … To me, it doesn’t make sense to not do something that you love to do because of that.
Honestly, when you consider how there are so many siblings in bands, I’m shocked you guys didn’t end up in a band together, you know?
It almost happened! Oddly enough, and I don’t know if Rob remembers this, but when he was very first starting WHITE ZOMBIE in the early days in New York … I don’t know if you’ve ever heard any of the really early stuff, but it’s basically like noise rock. No one could play their instruments, and he asked me, “Do you want to play guitar for WHITE?” I’m like, “I don’t play guitar.” He’s like, “Doesn’t matter! Just pretend!” [Laughs] So there was an opening there! Maybe I should’ve taken advantage of that. [Laughs] I probably would’ve been fired!
POWERMAN are coming to Australia for the first time. Why do you think this hasn’t happened until now?
Good question! You know, it’s funny. We’ve done Europe, we’ve done Japan, we’ve done China, South Korea … we’ve done a lot of international stuff, but quite honestly, 99% of our touring is in the States, you know? So we don’t go out of the States very often … and the Australia opportunities had never come up. We never necessarily pursued it either, so when it came up, I guess it was three years ago – this was supposed to happen in 2019, for the 20th anniversary of Tonight the Stars Revolt!, and here we are … So yeah, I don’t know why this hasn’t happened before. It’s not an easy trip, you know? It’s certainly not right around the corner. But I think that’s what’s going to be really fun about it, is that … it’s been a very long time since we’ve played in front of an audience that, I assume, probably everyone in the crowd will have never seen us before. I know what to expect when I’m playing in Dallas, Texas. I know what to expect in Los Angeles. But I have no idea what to expect. Are there going to be ten people there? Are there going to be a hundred people there? I don’t know! Are they going to love it? Are they going to hate it? That, thirty years into a band … it’s pretty rare that you’re going to get a new experience, you know? So I think that we’re all pretty excited about that.
You mentioned before that you toured in China. What was that like?
It was exactly the opposite of what I thought it was going to be. We all have preconceived ideas about other places, and I thought … first of all, I was nervous about going there because – I guess I can say this now because it’s already happened and we didn’t get arrested – but the promoter didn’t have the proper visas, so they put us on tourist visas, and I was like, “We’re going to get arrested!” And they just waved us through like, “Come on in!” And I was like, “Well, that was easy!” I remember we were playing this festival, and we were going to be the first western band to ever play in this city, so for us, it was kind of a cool thing. And in marches the security for the festival, and it’s like hundreds of guys in military outfits, and it seemed very imposing from the distance. I’m like, “Holy shit! This is some serious shit going down.” And then as they approach, I start seeing … these are like kids. They’re like eighteen, nineteen years old, and they’re waving at me … That’s when I started to see that there was a real … when I started to hang out with fans or whatever, they’re exactly the same as anywhere else, you know what I mean? I remember asking, “What do you think about when you think of America?” And they were like, “We think everybody’s rich!” And I was like, “Wow, yeah, you are so wrong!” [Laughs] So I think that was exciting to be able to go to a culture that is presented as so different to your own, and then you realise, “No, it’s not. It’s the same. They just want to fucking rock out and have fun.”
POWERMAN 5000’s Australian tour starts tonight in Brisbane at The Zoo. Tickets available below!
