1 – With this new wave of insane, complex and technical Mathcore / Tech-Metal with Progressive and Jazz influences, aren’t you scared that Light Pupil Dilate can be labelled as “just one more trying to jump into the train”? How would you say LPD differs from the rest of those bands and what do you to have to offer?
Our music isn’t too complex and technical. We focused more on writing cohesive songs for Snake Wine, rather than just playing a bunch of cool sounding parts together. Snake Wine is really just a rock record w/ some teched out drums. A lot of the bands that play techmetal type stuff are METAL dudes. Eric and I are definitely not metal dudes. A good bit of the stuff we listen to is not metal. We just get hyped and pissed and what we write ends up being heavy, and Mr. Metal Mike Green constructs metal beats for the rock songs we write. It seems to work out well that way. Both Eric and I are pretty snotty and sarcastic, and you can see that in our lyrics.
2 – Are you satisfied with this new album, the songs, the recording process, production, final product?We love this album and the songs. We can’t wait to put out the next one. The final product’s pretty awesome too, except that the distributor put a big fat ugly sticker over half of the cover art, which is pretty fucking stupid.
3 – There is a wide range of genres mixed up here and it seems that you have influences from several musical styles (Metal, Punk, Progressive, Post-Rock, etc) and bands like Sepultura, Slayer, Mastodon, King Crimson, Jesus Lizard, Fugazi, Man Or Astroman?, Dysrhythmia, Don Caballero, Converge, etc. What kind of bands do you listen and influence you to write music for LPD?
I like bands with strong bass presence, Eric likes bands with strong guitar presence, and Green likes bands with strong drum presence. We fight and play against each other to make our music. We listen to SOOOOOOOOOOOOOO many bands collectively, it’s hard to say. This week I’ve listened to Morphine, Techno Animal, Joy Division, Swervedriver, The Birthday Party, Helmet, Shiner, Seam, Arcwelder, 16 Horsepower, Mermen, Nels Cline, Godflesh, Deep Turtle, Demilich, and Wayne Shorter. I think I heard Eric listening to Schplongle, Berlin, and Panda Bear this week. Mike Green said he likes Gorillaz to me the other day. I think we’re all enamoured by the masterful songcrafting of Right Said Fred, that queen can write a song! We listen to and consume a ton of music, but it really doesn’t affect our writing very much. Songs just ooze out slowly like puss from an open wound. LPD is a big infected scabby mess of sound.
4 – Lifeforce Records is a label more focused on Thrash / Death / Metalcore, but they started to expand their catalogue signing a different array of bands like LPD. How did you ended up signing with Lifeforce?
Drew from Lifeforce America came and saw one of our arena shows in south Georgia, either in Griffin or Peachtree City. He was blown away by the huge amount of people there to see us, who were all moshing and singing all the words to all the songs… before the album was even released. He was blown away by the fact a small band like us has such a huge following with such die-hard fans and knew we’d be a cash-cow ripe for exploitation.
5 – What kind of subjects influenced you to write the lyrics for “Snake Wine”?
My lyrics half based on personal/life experiences and half abstract and weird. Eric’s are probably the same, but his lyrics tend to be a bit more abstract than mine. All the lyrics are very personal and very dark. We don’t write happy lyrics.
6 – The cover artwork for this record is quite enigmatic. Who is responsible for the front cover and what does it mean? Is it connected somehow with the lyrics?
The front cover is a snake skull was drawn up by an old roommate. The whole album has a snake motif, “Snake Wine”. Snake Wine is fucking menacing and creepy… which parallels a lot of the style of music we write and play, we thought it’d be a perfect title. And it is totally fitting. Snake Wine is liquor that Vietnamese folks cut open live snakes and bleed them into the booze, then stuff the body of the snake in the bottle.
7 – Do you have a tour prepared to promote the record?
We went on a DIY tour of the east coast/Midwest USA with another Lifeforce band Harlots, last fall. We’re working on another DIY tour for the US again this spring, and hopefully we’ll be hitting Europe this fall if everything works out right. Cross your fingers.
