Savage Remains from Fredericksburg, USA, play melodic but also rough horrorpunk and the minute I heard them, I fell in love with their music. That was the reason to talk with Matt about the band, the scene, movies and many other themes…Check em out!
HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE SAVAGE REMAINS TO THE PEOPLE THAT READ THIS ZINE AND DID NOT HEAR ABOUT YOUR BAND YET?
Our songs have a ton of horror elements as well as what we consider apocalyptic /Doomsday references. We play with a lot of energy live. Our songs average about 1:40 in length. Everything is played at a frantic pace. We love playing live! Every performance, whether it’s in front of 10 people, or 100 people is performed at the same intensity. I’ve always believed that if you look bored on stage (standing still, staring at your fingers while you’re playing) the crowd will be bored as well. It’s not just the singer’s job to entertain. EVERYONE should be into the performance. Let it be a visual onslaught as well!!
IT SEEMS TO ME THAT YOU PLAY MELODIC BUT ALSO A LITTLE BIT ROUGHER VERSION OF HORRORPUNK. I MEAN THIS IN A COMPLIMENT WAY, TO ME YOU SOUND A LITTLE BIT LIKE AMERICAN WEREWOLVES. WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT ALL THOSE MISFITS CLONES AND DANZIG VOCAL CLONES? DO THEY SOMEHOW SPOIL THE SCENE?
Thank you for the compliment! We love melodic punk and the thrashy side of the genre as well. We really just write songs in the vein that we grew up listening to and loving. I personally love melodic songs that have chant-a-long choruses that gets the entire crowd involved. It’s fun live when members of the audience know your songs and are happily singing along.
None of this horror punk would exist without the Misfits. HOWEVER, I’ve always thought it makes zero sense to try to be their clone. Write your own songs, do your own thing. Add to the genre!!!
YOU CALL YOUR STYLE DOOMSDAY PUNK. WHERE DO YOU DRAW LYRICAL INSPIRATIONS FROM?
Our lyrical inspirations come from movies, other stories that we imagine, and also real life analogies. Sometimes it’s one line of a song that we all just build around.
HOW ARE THE THINGS WITH THE NEW ALBUM? IS IT COMING SOON? HOW WAS THE FEEDBACK FOR THE FIRST RECORD?
Everything has been recorded for the new album!!! We are planning having it in hand by February 2017 if not earlier. We’re just touching up a few things and working with our producer, Curtis Price, on the overall mixes of each song. It’s 16 songs in 26 minutes…right around 1:40 per song. Ha!
The first album was received very well. We released everything on digital formats and it got noticed by a few people….then it spread. We were all very pleased. This time last year, while it was a goal of ours, we had no idea that it would receive enough attention to allow us to play across the country throughout 2016.
HOW ARE THINGS IN FREDERICKSBURG GOING? WHAT KIND OF CITY IS YOUR HOMETOWN? DO YOU HAVE A SCENE, BANDS, VENUES?
Fredericksburg is very good to us. It’s in between Washington DC, and Richmond (Virginia) which are two great music cities. I always felt that Fredericksburg, with it’s downtown bar scene, college crowd, as well as punk fans around there in general, was not being utilized as it should be for bands. Some of the bars have your typical cover bands which don’t cater to punk bands, but we started organizing monthly punk rock shows at one bar, the Bourbon Room, that have been successful. We love to get bands from out of town to play to spread the word that our scene is growing. It’s a lot of fun right now!
WHAT IS LIFE IN THE USA NOW THAT DONALD TRUMP WON THE ELECTION? IS IT REALLY THAT SCARY THAT SOME OF THE MEDIA HERE IN EUROPE TRY TO PRESENT? DO YOU REALLY HAVE PROBLEMS WITH ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS LIKE TRUMP SAYS? ALMOST EVERY RIGHT WING FASCIST PARTY HERE IN EUROPE WAS VERY GLAD THAT TRUMP IS THE PRESIDENT NOW.
It’s definitely divided here now, but the day after the election, the sun came up and everyone went about their day. The world did not end. It’s really hard to tell what it’s going to be like until after the Presidential Inauguration on 20January2017 when Trump officially takes office. We do have a lot of immigrants in the country, but I personally have not observed an overwhelming detrimental effect on the country because of it. I’m sure all the right wing fascists across the world are happy that Trump won due to the amount of lip service/propaganda he said during his campaign. However, that’s politics in general. Politicians, especially in democracy, will say anything to get elected and rarely have the chance to fulfill their promises…or threats in Trump’s case, due to the other branches of our government. We’ll see.
I KNOW THAT YOU LOVE SF AND HORROR MOVIES. WHAT DID YOU THINK ABOUT THE NEW MAD MAX? MOST OF THE PEOPLE THAT I KNOW HATED IT, BUT I LOVED IT ALTHOUGH TO ME, ROAD WARRIOR IS THE BEST, THEN THE FIRST ONE, THAT ONE WITH TINA TURNER SUCKED KINDA. WHAT IS YOUR FAVOURITE HORROR SUBGENRE? MINE IS SLASHER AND FOUND FOOTAGE, BUT ALSO VINTAGE HAMMER HORROR FLICKS.
I loved FURY ROAD! Our guitarist wrote a song, that quickly became one of our favorites, called “War Boys” about it. It’s going to be on our new album.
We are almost spot on with the Mad Max rankings. I’d say Road Warrior, Fury Road, Mad Max, and a distant last place is Thunderdome.
My favorite horror sub genre growing up was definitely zombies. I used to watch the original Dawn of the Dead, Fulci’s Zombie and Let Sleeping Corpses Lie repeatedly. I still love zombie movies, but I’m definitely into the slasher genre right now. I really love it all though…monsters, vampires, new movies, the classics (Universal and Hammer).
DO YOU HAVE ANY MOVIES/BOOKS/BANDS THAT YOU SAW/READ/LISTENED LATELY TO RECOMMEND?
They’re not really new anymore but the last new movies I saw and loved were the Babadook and Last Phase.
Bands that we’ve met along the way that we’ve met/played with and grown to absolutely love are the Jasons (from Camp Crystal Lake, NJ…or West Virginia, depending on who you talk to), the Knockin’ Bones (from Texas) and Damnation (from Massachusetts).
WHAT IS THE FUTURE HOLDING IN STORE FOR SAVAGE REMAINS?
Everything. We’re finishing up the new record, ‘Brand New Disease,’ pursuing a vinyl release of the new record and MAYBE releasing ‘Resistance Is Futile!’ on vinyl as well if everything goes great with the new release. We have a few 7″ vinyls coming out from our good friend Jason Po who runs 8up Records. We’ll have those details soon. We have some mini-tours coming up across the U.S. and one day we would love to hit Europe and Mexico. Put us in contact with some European booking agents if you know anyone!!!
INTERVIEW COMES TO AN END. DO YOU HAVE SOMETHING TO ADD AND WOULD LIKE TO SAY AND I DIDNT ASK YOU?
We’d all like to thank you for reaching out! Great questions and it still blows my mind personally that the world is so small now, thanks to the internet, that we can talk to someone in Croatia about Savage Remains. Thank you, Vlad. Keep in touch.
Check us out at savageremains.com andfacebook.com/savageremains!!
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