A few weeks back we did an article about fantasy replacements for the vocalist slot in Better Lovers, and we still think Joseph Spiller would make a ton of sense. He’s got an insane range and all the characteristic vitriol one could need on tap, but today we’re actually here to present a chat with the mad man himself.
Caricature(feat. members of Six Feet Under, Colepitz, and Black Heart Sutra) just loosed another terrorizing metallic single in the form of “Let the Devil In,” which writhes and bubbles in stereo like hot tar. But the song’s heaviness isn’t just in its nasty, industrial-tinged instrumental – Spiller went for the American jugular with the lyrics as well, and it’s always a special thing when a song manages to spell out what many are grappling with on a daily basis.
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While last year’s “Smile Harder” saw the band use compound-levels of irony both visually and thematically, “Let the Devil In” stands in stark contrast as more of a direct indictment. Allegedly, the original video was going to follow a similar path, but we’ll let Joseph do the talking. Don’t forget to check out the rest of the Caricature discography here while you listen.
FB: Since the inception of Caricature it seems like, in addition to blending heavy music with catchy-ness, it’s been a vehicle for real emotional outlet. Is it still cathartic to express what’s on your mind in a musical manner?
Joseph: I appreciate that you picked up on that. Looking back at the old stuff after such a gap is kinda disorienting, but overall, I know it’s an authentic expression of what was going on. As a kid, as a teen I had all these interests and heard “if you do what you love, you will never work a day in your life” so I pushed cooking and went to school for it, took jobs in kitchens and after a few years realized one of my greatest interests and one of the things that brought me the most peace wasn’t peaceful anymore. It only felt like work no matter where I did it. So though music was always my biggest dream to pursue, I have always tried to make sure that I keep it as authentic expression and a place where I can relieve the weight of the world. Though I am still producing other people’s music, I even keep that mostly to projects where I feel there is some room to work with the artist on visions we really share rather than taking on just anyone. I ruined one of my biggest passions and refuse to do that to another.
Even Bionatops, despite the intentional absurdity, is about expressing things on my mind and trying to come out the other side lighter than when I went in on a more profound level than it probably sounds to anyone who hears it.
FB: As a listener, words like metalcore and math rock change definition at a constant rate – has the meaning of being in a progressive metal band changed over time for you? Is genre in general as important to you as it was, if it ever was?
Joseph: The whole genre thing is weird. There have been times when people around me pushed so hard to have a definitive genre “box” to place Caricature that I would attempt to do it after the fact to appease that. There’s been more “close calls” with getting signed than i’d like to even face since none worked out, but there would always be the conversation of “what is this? What genre?” and they (as well as collaborators over the years) really harp on subgenres as identity. I’ve never ascribed to the idea of crafting music to fit a scene or genre. I think of genres as colors in the pallet in which to craft the picture I feel compelled to paint at that time.
FB: Caricature just released one of the year’s most unflinching singles with “Smile Harder” – can you talk a little bit about the background of the song and video? Is it true the song had to be re-written thanks to, shall we say, an ‘elevated political climate?’
Joseph: Thank you for saying that. That song took a few years to finish recording and things in my life changed quite a bit. I moved four times in 3 years. When i first wrote the main riff and hook, my divorce had just finalized and I was working for a university that wasn’t paying me and denying it. Meanwhile I am speaking at conferences every other month and they want their name attached and telling me I’m “lucky” to be there. Then around that layer is all of what is going on with the culture and socio-political climate. So as im going back to this song and working on it, a lot subjects pooled into it with that common thread of “put on a happy face” and “grit n bear it” but doing that is killing me.
Earl Maneein and SEVEN)SUNS were working on their next record with me, we had just released their version of Dillinger Escape Plan‘s One of Us Is the Killer and were nice enough to jump on this song and build it out more to what I heard in my head while Earl added his unique sense of melody to it. At that point the song is a collaboration between people and with how things are right now in the US… with the US… it’s not fair for me to full send how I feel about the factors that were making my reality over the last 4 years, so I narrowed the lyrics down to things less political and that is at least not throwing anyone on the fire. We actually have a second collaboration track that I couldn’t keep any of the lyrics and had to scrap a video that was shot for it because of how things progressed here. We all have to go international, Earl and I have a session at what some might say is the most famous studio in the world, and Im not trying to create any genre or leave any room for misinterpretation that would blow back on anyone.
The video was a fun arts and crafts project for making the “monster” which is my dude Marty McMarrow from the band Sparks the Rescue along with our buddy Lucas Walton being an absolute hero with the cameras, know how, and talent in cinematography and Kara taking the time to lend her cinematic eye and time to this thing. We did a bunch of trespassing in central Maine for that. I will leave most of it up for interpretation on what it means, but the broken, crooked teeth, the backpack with ninja turtles skulls hanging off it, the figure traveling quite a distance to eventually hit that moment, all is just another way to out myself. There is a slightly alternate cut of it that we are going to release with the album.
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FB: It must have been difficult to have strong feelings, express them, and then have to amend them in some way. Were you able to use or channel that frustration somehow?
Joseph: There is a lot of “hurry up and wait” with this whole music thing and business/finding an audience. My most immediate feelings are more “Fuck this. Fuck you. Fuck that. Fucking burn it to the ground so something of actual societal benefit can be built without being corrupted by a horrific past” but I also hope to spin yarns about things that have at least some nuance to them even when the overal message is primal. I knew I had to think about what I am doing and all those involved, so I took a few weeks weighing it out and trying alternates until something felt right and still captured what I was trying to express and I think, overall, that was accomplished with the bi-product of making room for the other new songs to have more separated themes.
FB: In the same breath, for so much in the music business, you have to travel, sometimes even internationally – do you think artists that speak their mind will have more trouble with customs as political / social tensions continue to rise?
Joseph: We have friends in a lot of different spaces–political sphere, music, the science community, visual arts–and over the past year going both ways in and out, those who make larger statements, not just extreme ones, have been held up in their travels and outright denied visas/entry. Right now, we have some business and projects that are taking us overseas. It would be unfair to jeopardize projects and travel mates at this point. It’s not even censoring anything, it’s about being strategic and leaving the opportunity to make it in the right way. If anyone is still under the misconception that “free speech” is still a thing over here, at best, they are confused by the ability to say whatever they want without repercussion and simply saying things that government officials and law enforcement don’t actually care about. If you want to make an argument for change, you need to make a convincing one rather than merely being inflammatory.
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FB: It’s interesting to think about how the nightmares of punk and hardcore records from the 70’s, 80’s, and beyond don’t feel as metaphorical now. Do you think more extreme music is best for extreme sentiment, or do you think the same emotions can be as effectively channeled in other genres?
I think that, in an ideal situation, genres of music should have all topics and viewpoints on the table. These sounds that come out of instruments, voices, bodies, shouldn’t be relegated to only one topic of use. Certain sounds, certain harmonic and melodic hallmarks of genres are often great at adding a certain emotion if done honestly and earnestly. Black Metal has a super dramatic intense sound, why only use it to talk about how you think you’re a wizard destined to spread white nationalism? Inversely, that midwest emo sound: take out the Dawson’s Creek sample and use that vibe to create a sense of calm before a song gets intense again or to use it to sonically illustrate calm of desolate plot points? Heck maybe the most angry sounding thing could be done over shoegaze, most heartbroken over old school death sounds.
Sometimes an artist sticking to a general motif and set of messages/sounds is great. Necrophagist created and ended the Tech-Death genre in just two albums and every band since has been trying to copy Mohammad’s homework for the last 20 years with or without a fretless bass to lesser results. I would not want Necrophagist to be anything other than what it was because it had a set of boundaries that made it the well oiled, highly refined machine it was, but would I absolutely love to see elements of that used in other genres to express other ideas and emotions? could it do so? Absolutely.
FB: You have the pretty awesome distinction of working with both SEVEN)SUNS and Billy from TDEP, both extreme acts in their own ways. How did you guys find each other? What made those collaborations the right fit?
Joseph: Very full circle moment/situation. So i connected with Earl and SEVEN)SUNS over their cover of 43% they put on facebook years ago. The shot the video at a kid’s birthday party with the balloons and all that. I thought it was genius. I reached out, we hit it off with nerding out about NYHC, Dillinger, Blood Has Been Shed and the Ninja Turtles. Years later Suns was working on their version of One of Us is the Killer and after going back and forth with Earl on concept ideas of how to translate DEP into a quartet, I ended up mixing, mastering, and doing the art for that record. During that time we started talking about the next SEVEN)SUNS original album and we came up with this wild idea that Billy is part of. He tracked it before DEP got back together and shortly after, I was looking to do more Bionatops stuff and Earl was a legend and took it upon himself to send Billy some of the songs I had written and less than a month later we were at Vudu Studios in Port Jeff with Frank Mitaratonna engineering the session for a full length that will be out very shortly or at least a waterfall of the tracks coming out.
For Bionatops, though it strays far from the territory, Dillinger Escape Plan was baked into the main influences from day one. Its supposed to have spastic moments mixed with driving parts, just a bit more wacky. I have always thought what Billy brought to DEP was incredible. He took the language set by Penne and Gil, then took it to the next level with his own swag that at times almost feels like he’s just leaning back and chillin even though the part might sound busy.
With SUNS and Caricature, I know Earl well enough now so i had a few small notes but I wanted it to be a true collaboration. I think, more times than not, if artists just allow each other to do what they do and have faith without some concrete vision or list of demands… the end result is way more interesting. We were able to go back and forth and make edits on each side plus do a few retakes to incorporate each others ideas to come out with this sound that *i think* still sounds true to both of us.
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FB: Both Caricature and Bionaptops have distinctly organic, original qualities to them – would you say there were any strong influences on either of the projects, whether musically or conceptually?
Again, Thank you so much for saying that. I almost don’t know how to take someone actually paying attention to these sort of details. Caricature is the mostly in your face but always direct about dealing with heavy emotions and topics. Bionatops exists to put a little whimsy and pure fun into the world. Some heavy concepts VERY abstractly seep into Bionatops, but it stays PG13 to G rated at all times. I outright refuse to quantize or over edit anything. That’s for other artists to do. Even if CARICATURE gets super orchestrated, I still want it all to be music that we can play at the drop of a hat without ever overreaching on where we are ability wise. Both evolve over time based on what I am listening to and how the world feels, but that’s the core of each.
Influences, I can’t get away from are buttrock/bbq rock. There will always be elements of Meshuggah, Dillinger Escape Plan, Metallica, and the more rock songs of Sleepytime Gorilla Museum. Bionatops sits heavy within the next gen world of Primus, Tom Waits, Buckethead, Tomahawk (who put out two of my favorite albums EVER) and sort of jumps off the deep end of that be it in more pop ways or more extreme ways all to support the stories being told. CARICATURE is currently in this phase of showing decay, dystopia, and how things in life are devolving so I am often looking towards stuff like A Life Once Lost, Blood Has Been Shed, Whitechapel, Ulcerate, Type O Negative, Car Bomb, and this wild french jazzmetal band CKRAFT.
FB: Lastly, here’s a classic interview closer question and you can answer however you’d like – where do you see yourself in five years? More music? More madness? Probably lots of both?
Joseph: If I am still alive, I hope that the mission is accomplished. Less madness, more stability. All I have ever wanted to do… the biggest dream of all… its not to be rich or a celebrity, but to be far enough along that I can make music and do some travelling with my friends without going broke in the process and to have a home to go back to.