Editor’s Note: It was a great night at Lifers in Algona as Kansas City regional touring band Razorwire Halo was sharing the stage with Motograter. Razorwire Halo brings unique concepts to their music, ranging from graphic novel ideas to dystopia to cryogenic concept in their music. When I watched their live show, it reminded me of Celldweller meets mid 1990’s Marilyn Manson. Razorwire Halo has recently released their music video for “Sweat”, which you can check out after this interview. Fans can find Razorwire Halo at the following locations:
www.facebook.com/razorwirehalomusic
Madness To Creation: Just tell me who you are and what you do in the band.
Rob: My name is Rob and I’m the touring guitarist.
Darrell: My name is Darryl and I’m the guitarist.
Billy: I’m Billy and I play drums.
Skylar: I’m Skyler and I play the bass.
Tak: I’m Tak and I’m the lead singer.
Madness To Creation: Razorwire Halo is from Kansas City, tell us what the Kansas City music scene is like?
Tak: Kansas City is thriving, there is a lot out there, our style of music is kind of unique, so we don’t have anything in Kansas City that has what we have, but it’s a thriving metal scene for sure, the punk scene is thriving really well, and underground electronic rock, industrial goth scene is kind of getting up there again, I know that they kind of slipped out for awhile, but they’re coming back too. There’s quite a bit going on down there.
Madness To Creation: Tell us two local bands in Kansas City that we need to check out.
Billy: Hands down the two local bands in Kansas City are Hyborian, their biggest comparison would be old school Mastodon, so if you’re into that shit, they’re on tour with The Skull right now, we were there as well earlier, they’re probably doing the best out of KC right now, they’re kicking ass and killing it. Another band is called 34, a lot of them came from a prog band, a lot of them call them a prog band that is in comparison to David Hasselhoff on acid. I miss those dudes, they’re probably one of the coolest bands on the scene.
Tak: Kind of like a psychedelic Baywatch.
Madness To Creation: I got the most random question, what would David Hasselhoff be like if he was on acid?
Billy: Exactly what that band sounds like.
Tak: Wasn’t he on drugs while on film when he was eating hamburgers.
Darrell: Wonder if that had to do with the origin of the name?
Rob: He was allegedly on something, ALLEGEDLY.
Madness To Creation: Describe the sound of Razorwire Halo using a movie title or a comic book or a graphic novel.
Skylar: Which album? *laughs* We write our albums in stories.
Tak: In terms of the latest album, I wanted to write the album visually like the movie “Children of Men”. It was very monochromatic, and there’s a massive scene in the movie where it’s all shot in one take, and it’s insane and I really love that. We try to make our music and everything that you see on stage be visual in some weird way or a “28 Days Later” kind of thing. Everything is very dystopian, where some things are broken down in some way or another, and every album is like that. In our music, we’ve had a rebel fighting against the government, we’ve had a planet being destroyed and the government is hiding it, and it ended up being a trilogy of quite a few stuff going on there, we try to change it up but still have it fit what Razorwire Halo really is. We are having an album coming out next March, it’ll be done in the fall, but it’ll be released next March, and so we’re trying to figure out what we’re doing with that one. We’re sitting back and we’re thinking of concepts and ideas, it has to be a whole picture, sound wise what do we want, visually what do we want, so when we step into photo shoots and videos, what do we want. Right now, everything is very distorted, this new EP is about personal losses and strife. The last two tracks that we played tonight are off of our new album, so with the song “Sweat”, everything is very glitched out, so emotionally we wanted to convey that was what was going on.
Madness To Creation: Is that how you all see society, is everything is glitched out?
Darrell: Absolutely, just take a look around. All you gotta do is look around you.
Skylar: Humans are programmed for self-destruction, and that’s pretty much it. *laughs*
Tak: Absolutely, and a lot of us actually believe that, I believe that overall human nature is good, but we have this innate way of destroying ourselves, and doing the most ridiculous crap, and we can’t figure out why we do it.
Billy: If it’s not ourselves, then it’s somebody else.
Tak: Exactly, why do you think so many people resort to drinking for fun or jumping off of the side of a building for fun, there’s something about the destruction that we like, I have no idea why, but I’m like everyone else, I like the thrill of things, rollercoasters.
Darrell: I don’t think anyone thinks its going to get that bad, they don’t think about what could happen after they do that. I don’t think we can hash out the reason for human nature now.
Rob: Not with that attitude! *laughs*
Tak: We try to get out what we want to get across without being preachy for sure, it’s just a cool story, as musicians, we’re not just songwriters, we’re storytellers, and visually we’re movie makers.
Madness To Creation: Speaking of that, have you all thought about going into comic books or graphic novels?
Tak: We actually have and with the trilogy that we wrote, we attempted several times to do a graphic novel, it’s hard to get artists that are reliable, we’ve had people that have helped us put the story together, but we haven’t had an artist that can keep up with us in terms of what we’re trying to do, we would love to do that if we can get the right artist.
Madness To Creation: What artists, whether musically and visually have inspired you?
Tak: I grew up on Nine Inch Nails, Stabbing Westward, Garbage, I think everyone of us bring our own different feel on that kind of thing.
Rob: It’s hard to say, I prefer the classics like Tool, A Perfect Circle, Deftones, Smashing Pumpkins.
Billy: For me Ugly Kid Joe and Green Jelly, Chevelle is a good one.
Darrell: Smashing Pumpkins, David Bowie, The Beatles, Soul Asylum
Madness To Creation: Take us into the music video and song “Sweat”.
Tak: It was really the first song that we wrote that was meant to be sexual in the way that it turned out.
Skylar: We went with more of a simplistic theme.
Tak: Yeah, it’s pretty straightforward, it’s just a sexual type of song, we hired a great actress named Megan, we were talking about how we wanted something kind of sexy, something that’s kind of revealing, and she was like, “okay, I’ll just bring a bunch of stuff and you guys decide”, some of it was too revealing, it was kind of weird because we had to direct her and tell her if something was too sexy, it was hard getting used to, she did a great job on it.
Madness To Creation: What can fans expect from a Razorwire Halo show?
Tak: Epilepsy. A lot of flashing lights, a lot of visuals, a lot of aggressive music.
Billy: It’s just a live experience as a whole, it’s more than just your average show, we’re not just some band on stage.
Darrell: If we add epilepsy, we can add bathtubs, they can do our laundry. *laughs* Half-kidding!
Madness To Creation: What can fans expect from Razorwire Halo for the rest of the year?
Tak: Have some dates coming up, finish those in August and focus on finishing up the new album, just get ready for next year. We signed with a new management company that’s going to be pushing it out next year, and working with TAG Publicity in the future, we really like working with them. Version 1 is what you saw tonight, Version 2 will have a bunch of added stuff, LED lights, we’re just trying to step up to the next level.
Madness To Creation: Thank you all very much for your time! Where can people find you guys?
Tak: www.razorwirehalo.com on Facebook and just Google Razorwire Halo, you’ll find a lot about us!
And there you have it! Special thanks to TAG Publicity for this opportunity at Lifers in Algona.
On Saturday, June 30th, Razorwire Halo will be performing with Bane Union, Bone Spur, Beyond The Grey, Curse of Cassandra, and Grapple The Sun at Roxy Bar in Shawnee, Kansas. For tickets and further information, click here.
