Considering all we do is talk about math rock, music theory, gear, and videogames, there’s little debating it – we are pretty nerdy. But that doesn’t mean we don’t like to get heavy every now and again. Hell, a lot of math rockers actually got their start in things like mathcore and metal, they just eventually chilled out.
But today we’re shocked and delighted to present something that we think checks all the boxes – it’s technical, it’s bizarre, it’s brutal and fantasy adjacent to boot. Indeed, we’re talking about See You Next Tuesday and Chop Chop Chop Chop Chop Chop Chop‘s impending split Brothers, inspired by The Brothers’ War by Jeff Grub.
For the uninitiated, The Brothers’ War is the first book of the Artifacts Cycle, which actually comes from one of the most revered card games of all time, Magic: The Gathering. We have seen blades drawn in tournaments and matches, even within our own bands in the day. In fact, after one of these rumbles we ended up with a mousepad created for the tournament that displayed drummer for Muscle Beach Petting Zoo‘s face superimposed over Emma Watson’s in Harry Potter, with the text “tap your mana if you want me.”
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Truly, it was brother against brother. Regardless, Brothers is out now in its entirety via Sundown Records, and the radical video above was shot by Mike Hartley at Evolution Games in Lansing, MI. While we never made it past the entry stage of MTG, we did get heavily into grindcore, so we’re really excited to have See You Next Tuesday and CHOPx7 fill in the gaps below.
FB: What’s the connection between CHOPX7 and See You Next Tuesday? How did you guys meet?
Drew: I am actually the only one in our band that has had any interaction with Chop actually.
Back in 2020 I just randomly stumbled across his music and immediately fell in love. The whole no guitars, just bass drums and harsh noise thing just got me hooked. That and he crams 188 songs into one album.
After becoming a fan of his music I started seeing his music suggestion videos come up on my tiktok for you page. And the dude has a great taste in bands. I started commenting on his videos and next thing you know we were chatting about music from time to time. We became internet friends to some degree, but yet to offically meet in person.
CHOP: We still haven’t actually met in person, but we’ve been friendly online for a little while now. We both popped up on a Japanese website’s top 10 grind albums of the year and have talked back and forth through social media a bit since then. Myself and Drew got to talking about different collabs and different artists we both like and the timing just sort of happened to work out.
FB: At what point did you become familiar with Magic: The Gathering? What about The Brothers’ War by Jeff Grubb?
Fox: Rick (Woods) actually got me into MTG right after Double Masters 2022 got released. I know compared to a lot of players out there 4 years isn’t a ton of time playing MTG, but I became obsessed immediately. After Rick and I’s first time playing I can remember saying, “Give me a year and I will know all I can about this”. I by no means hit that mark due to how expansive this world is and how complicated game interactions can be. Especially since everything is constantly evolving with every new mechanic that gets released in each set. But I have immersed myself in it since then to an unhealthy degree and I do consider myself fairly knowledgeable.
The first actual set after Double Masters 2022 that came out was The Brothers War set, or at least that is how I remember it. It resonated with me in the same way that like how the first album I hear from a band usually ends up being my favorite or go to album from that group. That set was really my first introduction to the MTG landscape. So when I wanted to start diving into the lore, the Artifacts Cycle was the first set of books I ended up scoring so I could read The Brothers War. And I did pick the set up with the intent of using the content for a theme for a SYNT album.
CHOP: I played Magic the Gathering from Tempest to Time Spiral before I fell off, but The Brothers War was like the catalyst of the big major story at that time. I read all of those books back in high school. The Brothers War all the way up through the Weatherlight Saga and the Phyrexian Invasion.
FB: The world of MTG is vast – what attracted you to the Artifacts Cycle in particular?
Fox: I may have just slam dunked two questions in one answer with the previous answer.
CHOP: Well it was sort of a pragmatic decision. We knew we were each going to do vocals on one side of the EP so this story made sense. This is also sort of where it all starts, right? The Brothers War is an event in the MTG timeline that affects absolutely everything going forward. Personally I also just really like Phyrexia as an antagonistic force. I requested to do the Mishra side so I could touch on the weirdo body horror stuff that goes on through that.
FB: How did you decide who would portray which of the brothers, Urza and Mishra?
Fox: It was actually pretty easy. Even though I do think Mishra’s storyline is a bit more exciting, I ran cEDH Urza for a while so I wanted to take on Urza’s point of view. Then Drew informed me that Chop wanted to take on Mishra. So, that was that. Plus it gave me a reason to put the list back together.
CHOP: I asked if I could do Mishra. Gix is my favorite character in Magic the Gathering and he plays a heavy hand on Mishra’s side of the story. Phyrexia in general is more present on the Mishra side of things and that was a sandbox I wanted to play in.
FB: If you could make a signature or custom card that represents the band somehow in Magic The Gathering, what would that be like?
Fox: Oh I have no idea. I’m really not good at this. I would have to say just with how goofy we are in person it would probably end up being some sort of Un card. How about this:
“SYNT, Disgusting Bungdungus. 2BR.
Legendary Creature – Goblin Mutant, 4/1
“When SYNT enters the battlefield, choose one or all-
-Target opponent orders wings
-Target opponent orders pizza
-Target opponent gets you a beverage
For every time you burb this turn SYNT gets +1/+1 until end of turn.
Any opponent can counter SYNT’s abilities if they can fart longer than 3 seconds.”
I can’t believe I’m in my 40’s and this is what I’m doing with my life. That could probably be the lore text.
CHOP: So with a tape that I did through a small label a few years ago we actually included a CHOP CHOP CHOP CHOP CHOP CHOP CHOP card. It was red and had a septuple strike. It does first strike damage, regular damage, and then does damage another 5 times. If I were to redo it I might just make it a 7/7 with protection from blue or something to simplify it. I don’t play Magic anymore so I have no idea if the card would actually be good.
FB: Both sides of the record are of course harsh as fuck, but also have surprsing moments of introspection or beauty – were there any expectations of the record’s sound going into it?
Drew: Actually the “sound” and the musical direction was very much planned ahead, which honestly really worked well for me as a writer. One night Chop and I were just texting about how much we hate AI artwork and we randomly pivoted to discussing what Chop7times meets CVNT would sound like.
We decided there would be no guitars, just nasty stereo bass, harsh noise, and of course loads of blast beats. The beautiful stuff kind of came together as a nod to Parasite and Intervals, our 1st two albums. They both have interlude tracks that really give the listener a break from chaos, like a palette cleanser if you will. And since none of the heavy stuff had actual guitars, I thought I’d might as well make the interlude tracks with my acoustic guitar. The one thing that wasn’t planned going into this was the layering of real drums, played by our drummer James Watson, with the programmed drums that Chop did.
CHOP: I think there were some, but it evolved as we went along. It started with myself and Drew talking about how much we both love goregrind and bass/drums powerviolence, so those were the major influences going in. We wanted to include that classic goregrind “ping” snare and Sulfuric Cautery style hyperblasts. The drums that I programmed had that snare sound but I wrote basically what I would consider powerviolence drums. Really punky, single bass, tempo changes. Then when I handed them to Drew he was NOT writing powerviolence riffs, he’s way more technical than that. I remember there was one beat I wrote out that I had almost an Iron Lung riff in my head for and then he was in a completely different direction.
Since I’m a noise guy I laid noise over everything, but that was very collaborative. On my own stuff I like to have a bit more of a wall over everything but me and Drew went back and forth where I’d record something, he’d give feedback, I’d add more or change things until it was right. Late in the equation their drummer got involved as well. We ended up having both my programmed drums and his live drums on everything. The final form this all took ended up being pretty surprising to even us from where we started.
FB: With so much in the subject matter to be inspired by, how do you pair things down and keep it short / grind-y?
Fox: Lyric wise it was really hard to figure out how to make this work. Even just for half of the story, I was only realistically working with 4ish minutes of music to try and tell Urza’s point of view. I originally planned on having a full length to flush this all out. But what I did for Urza was just take some key moments in the story that stuck out to me and tried to write the songs as Urza. It will really only make sense if someone has read the book. But it’s not like anyone ever reads my lyrics anyway.
CHOP: I looked at how many songs I had and how much story I had to tell and started with bullet points of things to touch on. I landed on the first three songs on my side being about different characters and how Mishra feels about them. Starting with Urza made sense, that’s the major conflict. Then I did one about Ashnod and focused on Mishra’s feelings of betrayal as he slips into paranoia. Then we get the six song, or more loosely the one about Mishra giving himself to Phyrexia. The final track I wanted to center around the final battle and it’s sort of a song about Mishra from Mishra’s perspective. It’s about how far he’s fallen and what he’s become. Now, grindcore songs are short as hell so a lot of this was just trying to sum it up as best as possible in the time we had. You definitely aren’t going to get the whole story from just listening to the album or from reading the lyrics, but I hope we hit all the major beats.
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