Hey, everyone. Anthony Fantano here, Internet's busiest music nerd. Hope you are doing well. Today, we have an exclusive conversation, one I am very excited for, one with Mr. Sebastian Murphy, a songwriter, singer, frontman of the band Viagra Boys. Their new record, Viagr Aboys, is out now. Just reviewed it. I'm enjoying it. Many of you are enjoying it. So Sebastian has come through to allow me to pick his brain about the record and talk about anything else that comes up in the conversation.

AF: Thank sir, for coming through.

SM: Thanks for having me and thanks for listening and enjoying the record. I really appreciate it.

AF: I mean, it's... I don't know. I mean, given what I've enjoyed listening to you guys do before, I feel like it's a pretty easy album to like. And I hope everybody else is finding that to be the case, too. So I wanted to ask you about some of the central themes of the record, or at least what I read is some of them and get your thoughts on that and what was driving the creative process behind this album. I remember with our last interview, there was a bunch of discussion around the way being in this band has impacted you personally and put you on a certain track in life that you wouldn't have been on otherwise. I feel like there are themes of that also popping up in this record, most specifically on songs where, like on "Uno II" and other moments where you seem to be either hyper fixated on or making reference to, almost like the way that you're perceived by people who are listening to the records or receiving the band. The idea of how people look at you and see you through the way you're performing, the things that you write about, so on and so forth, is that something that is difficult or has become difficult in any way to tune out of your head, either when you're writing or just in everyday life?

SM: Yeah, definitely. I think just being being more and more of a public figure has its difficulties, especially... I don't know, we did this. This is the first interview I'm doing in a while because I got burnt out by it and you get so... I don't know, you just... People like to focus a lot on what they think I'm all about a lot, too. And they love focusing on drugs. They love focusing on that aspect of my life, which I'm just tired of talking about it, in a sense. And I'm tired of... It's almost as if the more interviews I do that are like that, it just keeps this whole narrative going. But at the same time, I I keep it going myself in my lyrics. But yeah, I definitely think a lot about... I don't want to say I'm insecure, but it's definitely weird to be people... I don't know. I can't speak English, but people just talking about every aspect your life or how your life is or how your life isn't. But I think a lot of the central themes of my music are about, as you said, about how I'm perceived and especially how I perceive myself. Sometimes I hate that part, that I'm a rowdy fuck up or whatever. And then the next second, I'll completely celebrate it. It's a weird balance.

AF: Everything that you just said there reflects on, in a way, "The Bog Body" video that I wanted to ask about. It seems like through what you just said there, what you're trying to get across in a way is you personally, the actual you, the real you, the you that you feel like people maybe don't fully understand. It's almost like in that video, you're in competition with a character of yourself. The character is more popular than the actual you, and it's getting more attention than the real person. Yeah.

SM: I think that must be how it is for most artists. Well, I don't know. Most artists, they have a because at the end of the day, if I'm playing live, there's some sense of playing a character as well. And that's also what makes it fun and what makes it doable. And putting yourself in this mind state that, oh, it's okay, maybe this isn't me, but it is me. I like the confusion. It is weird. But yeah, "The Bog Body", that video, it's funny that... I mean, for me, that song, the song, the video is a little bit… It had its own theme separate from the song, as you were saying, because the song really doesn't have anything to do with that. A lot of the songs on the album, I wanted them to be more just my interests. I like weird stuff. I think like that song, it's just about a bog body because I think it's funny.

AF: It literally seems to be about what it's about.

SM: Yeah. And I like that. I want to do more of that. Just funny storytelling.

AF: No, I mean, it is just on the surface about what it is about, but simultaneously, it does play into these recurring themes in the band where it does seem like you were thinking about it, and I don't know if this is an off-putting comparison, but it reminds me in a way of David Byrne or Talking Heads in terms of as a writer, he's got a lot of central things that regardless of what era he's in creatively, he's got certain topics he fixates on, people and houses and cities and so on and so forth. Meanwhile, when you listen to a series of Viagra Boys' album, you've got the shrimp, you've got the dogs, you've got whatever it is in a given moment, on this track, a certain esoteric topic that you're fixating on that really interests you and you're deep diving on it.

SM: Yeah, I love that. I mean, that's just how my brain works. When I'm drawing pictures, I'm always drawing the same things, the same four characters. And there's always just these things. Yeah, dogs are obviously a central part of my life, and shrimp as well. I've got a shrimp farm, or a shrimp house, so to speak, an aquarium, not a shrimp house.

AF: A shrimp domicile. It's a shrimp domicile, I believe it's called.

SM: It's a shrimp domicile. Sadly, there were a lot more shrimp about a year and a half ago. We're down to the last of their kind. There's maybe six or seven old shrimp left floating around. And so I need to go to my... A buddy of mine has some as well, so I'm going to go steal some from him and restart the gene pool and get some new shrimp going.

AF: Some old generational shrimp.

SM: An old generational shrimp will get to do the nasty with some really young shrimp.

AF: Oh, my fucking Christ. I wanted to ask you, in relation to the dogs, and maybe this is that have always been the case on previous records. I mean, on older tracks, and maybe I'm reading this wrong, it seemed like they were, again, brought up almost in the way that you're getting into "The Bog Body", just as a point of interest and something that you bring up in the track because you like it or you just find it stimulating or you find it fun to reference or get into. But on this record, I feel like the dogs, when they do come up, it feels a bit more symbolic of something. Like on "Uno II" you're making references to yourself as if you're the canine. And obviously, the "Best in Show Pt. IV" track is more centered around you or an experience that you're telling from your first-person perspective as opposed to commenting on dogs as a topic or a point of focus outside of yourself. I was wondering if on this record, are you embodying the dog in a way, or are there personal similarities you see there that's drawing to write in that fashion?

SM: Yeah, definitely. Definitely personal similarities. I do see myself a lot in my dog. And so that song, "Uno II", it's written from his perspective just because we had this period of time where he was having a lot of problems with his teeth. And we were taking them. We had to spend a shit lot of money to take them out at several different points in time. And And he's got two veterinarians. One of them is Bogdan, a guy from Croatia, I'm pretty sure. And then there's another one. I always mix them together. There's an Australian one, and then there's the... So that's all real, all those lyrics.

AF: That's crazy.

SM: But it does morph into them, me being him, especially with the I seem like such a bitch line. That's from my perspective. So I definitely do switch perspectives in that song, and I think I do. A lot of songs like "Slow Learner", or like any song that... Some of my older songs and stuff like that, it's perhaps that I'm telling a story or about something, about a character that I've made up in my head, and then it always ends up having to do a little bit about me or about my perspective of myself. Definitely with "Uno II", that song just morphs over into my own insecurities of... I don't know, just where I'm at in life and compared to other people and other people's struggles and stuff like that. Then on the topic of "Best in Show Pt. IV", I think it's more that we just wrote that song and we always want there to be a loose instrumental song in most of the records. That ended up being the one. Then I was just thinking about names for it and I'm like, oh, it's fan service to call it "Best in Show Pt. IV" as well. Yeah, I think our fans really like seeing the repetitive things.

AF: Like the continuity.

SM: Yeah, the continuity. I think there was a point in writing the record where I'm like, I haven't mentioned shrimp once. I'm like, I've got to mention a shrimp somewhere. And then I went back and I rewrote "Pyramid of Health" completely just so I could get in that line about the big shrimp in the sky. But that song, it was about some complete other shit in the beginning. I probably rewrote that song six or seven times, and then it ended up gone. Yeah, it ended up being what it is now. I think a week before, two weeks before the record, I was just... because I was so tired of... I don't know, once you've done a song over and over again, once you've done a song over and over again, 20 times, you just get so tired of it, and you just don't know if it's good or bad anymore. I was so fucking tired of that song, and I told the guys, I'm like, I do not want that song anywhere near this record. I fucking hate it. And then a week before we were going to send everything into mastering, they were like, Just listen one more time, and then I listened, Oh, my God. And now it's one of my favorite songs on the record, and very fun to play live.

AF: Was there anything specific? Because I'm sure you're listening to a lot of these tracks over and over before you're finalizing, whether or not you put them on the record or not. Was there anything about this song, specifically, that initially or after being over exposed to it, maybe to an extent, that made you feel so sour on it, as opposed to anything else on the album that you were preparing?

SM: For "Pyramid of Health", do you mean?

AF: Yeah, "Pyramid of Health".

SM: Yeah. I think it was just like... because I wanted to make a '90s... it was a risk. I don't know, making a song that's just three chords and a bit poppy in a sense. But I was really inspired by "Pepper" from Butthole Surfers.

AF: I was going to say there have been a lot of Marcy Playground comparisons, but Butthole Surfers to me seemed the stronger vibe.

SM: Yeah, but definitely Marcy Playground, too. Just hanging around, that whole thing. But it's more of a homage than that. But I wanted to get into that '90s grungey world. And it's hard. It's really hard because if you do it wrong, you just sound like some stupid fucking cover band. I don't know. If you do it wrong, you just sound like a really cheesy rock band. It's little nuances that'll make it a little bit psychedelic or if you're going to make it a bit... you got to... yeah, it's just a very delicate thing. You could just end up sounding like Nickelback or something.

AF: No, it's true.

SM: So Yeah, but I like how it ended up.

AF: I mean, not to be overly complementary or anything, but I feel like you guys are, at least on this song or with this record, a perfect band to carry that torch because you're right. That is a very big influential hit that a lot of people like and a lot of people enjoy. But I mean, that song has a life of its own beyond even like, Butthole Surfers and the rest of their catalog. When you dig into the Butthole Surfers catalog, they're very genuinely experimental, noisy, difficult to appreciate and enjoy band that have written a lot of very subversive and odd stuff. And obviously, they were trying to write something that was a little bit more hit oriented on that song, but it's like a fluke in their discography. I feel like you guys simultaneously come from a genuinely subversive place in the way that they do, whereas I think a lot of people borrowing from that sound, hearing it casually, aren't necessarily from the same place that they did. So they're missing the mark a little bit as a result of that.

SM: Yeah. And I think, yeah, exactly. We do have this past that's more noisy, psychedelic, drug-infused. But yeah. And then another, the funny thing is, because I noticed, it's a bit similar to the Marcy Playground song, or just the first line. But no one in Sweden has ever heard that song. I'm not surprised about that. I'm like, Oh, this is a... this sounds like this song. And the guys in the band were like, what is that? Never heard of it. Because it's never played on the radio here.

AF: I mean, there was a time when you couldn't escape it back in the day.

SM: Yeah. And it's weird how certain songs are just huge hits in Europe and some are just hits in America. It's weird. But I I definitely couldn't escape it when I was a kid growing up in California. I couldn't escape that. And they were playing Butthole Surfs on Live 105, just the normal rock radio, which yeah, it's wild to think about.

AF: I mean, like on "Uno II", the way you described that track and the inspiration for it, I also wanted to ask if there were personal parallels going on health-wise that caused you to dive deeper into that as a topic on this album? Because there do seem to be a lot of lines and themes that focus on not just personal, physical, and mental health, but doing it from an angle, almost in the same way that you were on Cave World, where you're exploring these themes of social politics, but doing it through the mindset of almost this crazy Q-Anon guy. In this instance, we have a general topic, but you're diving into it from the standpoint, I don't know, a crazy health nut who's in all of these alternative, maybe psychedelic, maybe like, I don't know, snake oil, MedBed type shit. I don't know. It's like I wanted to ask where that was coming from.

SM: Yeah, there's definitely this theme of health in general, because I do worry about my health a lot. I'm not the best at...I've put my mind and body through the ringer, just bulldozing it since I was a teenager. I was thinking a lot about that while writing this album and I was going to the doctor. I did have a camera shoved down my throat, and then I had a camera shoved up my ass, and I went through all this different stuff because I've had stomach problems. And then I was thinking about how I used to go at this type of stuff. And when I was in my 20s, I did a shit little ayahuasca. I would go to some ayahuasca ceremony, and then I would feel the healthiest person alive right after that, just because I talk to myself on a trip or whatever, and everything's all sorted out now. And that's how I experience that community as well, that it was a lot of people that should probably go to therapy for a few years, but they would instead just go meet a shaman. And then they thought that everything was solved after that, and they knew all the secrets of the universe. And I'm also taking this theme from Cave World, where I criticize a lot of these hippies that would have been more on the left wing years ago, but now they're so distrustful of the government and of science and of doctors that it's gone full circle and they're all right wing nuts now. And I just fucking can't stand these people that they won't listen to someone that went to school for something for 20 years, but then they'll Google some shit and it's like, oh, yeah, all you have to do is take this fucking rock and rub it on your titties and you're going to be cancer free or whatever. I criticize that a bit both in "Pyramid of Health" and a bit in "Best in Show Pt. IV" as well. So, yeah, there's a bit of that. But, yeah, definitely health and mental health, I think, is just a subject I was thinking about a lot while writing this. And I still think about and the balance. I like having a good time, but I do want to live past my 40s.

AF: There was a lot to process there. But with all that being said, where do you feel like...you just kind of mentioned there being an element of your past where you were ingrained into that a little bit. Where do you feel like you sit with it now? Is there some validity to the sorts of experiences or things you can learn or alternative health remedies in that world, or are you totally skeptical?

SM: No, I'm not totally skeptical. Yeah, not at all. I love that shit, and it was really cool at the time of doing it. And I think everyone should experiment with all sorts of shit. But I just don't... I don't... I don't know. I don't swear by it. Or I don't swear by any one thing. I think I'm always open for new truths, all sorts of stuff. And I love conspiracies. I love taking some weird, whatever, vitamins or some shit that someone recommends me and says, oh, this is going to make you feel great. And I'm like, all right, well, if it does, fuck it. I'll give it a try. But there's a lot of crazy shit going on these days with people like RFK Jr. I draw a line where people think that vaccines cause autisms or autism or some shit like that, which is total bullshit. And I can have a conversation with some spiritual people. When they start going down that line, I'm like, All right, just fuck off. And I think there's some cool stuff to be learned from tripping balls, of course, but I don't think it's not something I do very often anymore. And people that are into that are just this whole... I don't know. I'm into other stuff.

AF: There's also some themes on this record about just feeling, I guess, out of sorts in a way with the context or time period that you're in. "Man Made of Meat", you have that song or rather that line about the job that you'd be doing if you were in 1970 or that other line on "Medicine for Horses", where you're asking to be recreated in a different time period when everybody is dead or something. Do you often think or are those lines coming from a place where you personally feel like you would just fare better in a different time period or something or just live or lead a more peaceful or functional life?

SM: Maybe a bit of romanticism about that, but I think I would fare much worse, especially with that line in "Man Made of Meat". I think that it's almost like a I think that line is me expressing gratefulness for where I am today, where I'm like, fuck, yeah, dude. Sometimes it feels bizarre, like I'm some weird jester who goes and shakes his ass on a stage and gets paid for it. But at the end of the day, I'm unemploymentable, or I would have been unemployed otherwise. So I'm really grateful for this lifestyle that I've gotten from my fans and that I get to live. And I get to go stand on stage and just make a total buffoon out of myself. And a lot of people love it. And it beats working in a fucking factory. And then there's a lot of things that when it comes to maybe when I talk about other historical things, like the Great Plains of North America, America, and World War II, and stuff like that. Those are just big interests of mine. I love history. I've read a few... I love reading about the 1700, 1800s, '40s. It really interests me. It's just an interest in general. If it was 1970, I would posit that there still could be, specifically in that time period, I would posit that there would still be a great chance that you could be in a weird band. You could be an Arthur Brown of your time or something like that. Captain Beefheart or something.

AF: Right, exactly. I still think the potential for that during that time period is very much there. I wanted to ask because I feel like, inadvertently, that air of music feels like it could have been a low-key influence on a track like "Store Policy", for example, because there is this weird grungy, droning, psychedelic quality to the song that's really just mind-blowing to me. It feels almost like maybe even a little The 13th Floor Elevators to an extent, with the droning bass in the background. It's got a jaggy quality to it. What drove the inspiration for that sound? Because it's a crazy fucking sounding track.

SM: Yeah, that's funny because the first iteration of the song was called "Sleng Teng", which is a reference to "Sleng Teng Riddim". This reggae joint. It's just like, and I was really worried that would show through. To me, it still sounds like a reggae song, the whole track. And there was a version before it as well where it was much more of a just straight-up punk song. And then our producer fucked around with it a little more and brought. And he's like, No, Oscar, our saxophone player. He's like, wanted it to be this like a dub song or like a reggae song. I'm like, well, I don't want it to fucking be a reggae song. And he's like, well, we can meet in the middle. And it ended up being what it is today. I don't think it's a reggae song at all, but It's definitely difficult to categorize. Or not reggae, but dub. So there is some dub in there, especially with the boom, boom, boom, boom, boom And then, yeah, I just... But I do like the way it just got wilder and wilder with every version that we made. But hopefully, I want to release the demos of it in the Deluxe version because they're completely different. It'll be fun for people to hear, I think.

AF: Yeah, you guys have done, obviously been pretty consistent with the Deluxe versions of the album so far. How is that, maybe without spoiling too much, shaping up so far? Is it looking like it would be like skewed more in the demo direction, or are there like some loose, fully-finished studio tracks, like "It Ain't Enough", for example, that you guys have written and put out when you do eventually do that Deluxe?

SM: There are a few loose. There are definitely some loose. There's one track that's like one of my favorite songs we've ever made, but it's got some pretty raunchy lyrics to it. It's of sex-themed. I remember this was back years ago. It's when our old guitarist was playing in as well, who passed away. I really want to release it just out of respect for him, too, because I think it's a fucking awesome song. I don't know if that's going to come on the Deluxe version or if it's coming on. We've done this. We made this whole radio, theater thing. And so I want to release that where it's like... And in this, I'm like the DJ, and I'm the guy interviewing people, and I'm the guy being interviewed, and I do all these voices, and I do a bunch of commercial edits for products that Shrimp Tech is releasing.

AF: So it's like a whole skit?

SM: It's a whole skit. It's an hour long. And I think I want to release the Deluxe version like that, where it's just this super long skit, and then you hear the songs in between. But yeah, radio Shrimp Tech. But yeah, I think people are going to love it. It's good. It's really funny.

AF: That would probably be one of the most Deluxe album edition extensions of all time to turn your whole deluxe side into a skit with multiple songs. And it's just what? Like one unbroken track?

SM: Yeah. Well, first, and then maybe digitally, you can break it up or something. So people don't have to listen to my commercials about chicken water and stuff like that.

AF: I would say force them, force them to. Give them no choice. It's like an old CD when you used to buy a CD and you had to skip through to the 200 minutes and then you heard some bonus track or some stupid little thing.

SM: But yeah, But in those days, they don't do too much of that anymore. So I'd be sorry.

AF: No, they don't. You'd be bringing it back. Yeah. Another theme that I think continues to be pretty central to the band's vibe, and I think you were like, I was talking about this earlier in terms of the way people perceive you, your character, and the drugs, and the bad behavior, and so on and so forth. But you play into that, too. And I wanted to know where that sits for you creatively currently, because I feel like a song like "Dirty Boyz" definitely sits pretty squarely in that lane in terms of you creating a situation where it seems like narratively you're putting yourself in, I guess, a context where there's this outside force that's influencing you, and this gang of boys is turning people bad. And simultaneously, you've made it clear from yourself as a writer that there's this temptation in you as well, even without the "Dirty Boyz" there. Is the "Dirty Boyz", is that a mode of being able to write about giving yourself an excuse, like, oh, this has been forced upon me or something. Is it because there's this gang of people influencing me. Is it a way of exploring the way sometimes people can fall into a certain lifestyle or the gateway to it? It's often maybe other groups of people doing something bad, and you want to go do it, too, or they make you do it.

SM: Yeah, I really like that. I like that take. But no. I think, or maybe, maybe subconsciously, that's what it's about. But no, that song "Dirty Boyz" is like... So I grew up in San Rafael, California, and I was there visiting a few years ago, and I was outside of my buddy's house, my buddy Jake, I was outside of his house with a couple of other of my buddies smoking cigarettes and this whole gang of, I think, meth heads just biked past. And it was 12 of them, and some of them had bikes on their backs and stuff like that. And my buddy Moose was like, Oh, dude, that's the "Dirty Boyz". And I'm like, What? Who are the "Dirty Boyz"? And he's like, yeah, man, it's his gang, man. And they steal all this shit. And it's like, yeah, I bought a bike off of them. And I just love that. I just always love the gutter of society. I feel so much for that hidden part of society. And I just love the idea of these guys. They've got all this shit strapped to them and all this shit that they've stolen, and they're just biking around, and then they're hanging out under the bridge just smoking meth and living the best life. And I just wanted to do a song about it. So, yeah, shout out to Moose, my friend, who taught me about the biker gang called the "Dirty Boyz". And it just reminded me a lot of them back when I was a tweaker and the people I hung out with back then. And they were all just interested in electronics and bicycles. That's about it.

AF: And we talked in our last conversation about the way that your life has changed and evolved since that time period. And you're talking about the gutter of society being a point of inspiration writing-wise for you. As you've continued in this band, and it's continued to your relation to that world and keep you further away from it, presumably. Has that altered or made difficult in any way, your ability to draw inspiration from it or write about it now that you're maybe further out of it or your reference points are different at this point?

SM: In some ways, yeah. It was so easy to be obsessive over something as well or manic back when I was on a lot a lot of amphetamines, not sleeping at all. So things would come easy in that sense, but just finishing something was impossible. So there's a lot of things that are much easier now. But then, yeah, of course, I have to, yeah, I could probably have to dig a little bit more to find topics that interest me. But yeah, I wouldn't trade it for anything. Just because the other side of things are easier, it's so much easier to me to be productive these days. We have this new space in Stockholm, and at the time we were writing the album, we were there every day from 10:00 till 2:00, and sometimes not even... Sometimes just talking about what we're doing and then maybe recording for 10 minutes, and then we're like, all right, we'll come back tomorrow and see. But just having routines and stuff has just made life so much easier. And yeah, I think it's... But yeah, there's definitely a little bit of truth. I have to dig a little bit more to find some of these topics, but most of it's hardwired into my brain and has been there since the start.

AF: A few more things I wanted to ask you before you have to go. Another sound on the record that I know talking to other people about the album has taken fans a back is not just "Medicine for Horses", but moments like the closing track, too, where people are like, oh, man, I haven't heard him sing like this before, where he just doesn't really seem to be putting on a gritty voice or anything like that. Was that a challenge or a risk in your head to put yourself out there in a way, where it seemed like you were being a bit more vulnerable and singing in a fashion? That it seemed like your guard was down a bit or displaying that there is an emotional pain there that maybe people aren't realizing when in certain interviews, they're asking you about, oh, what about the drugs you're doing? Or something like that, and getting to the emotional heart of it?

SM: Yeah, I think it's about just evolving. The more music you make, you want to make more, newer music and try out newer things. And yeah, I ended up for "Medicine for Horses", I think that... it's funny. I've seen people online that were like, who's singing on "Medicine for Horses"? They think it's someone else. I think it also had to do with what key it was played in. I tried to find a different part of my voice, and then I ended up having to sing that way. Then when we're practicing the song, and I'm like, well, this is nice. I get feedback from the guys and they're like, yeah, we really like that. You should try it. Then I think I just want to evolve and I want to try out new styles. I think that's one of the strong suits of our band is that we don't have to make an album that sounded like the one before it. I like that we're very diverse in our style as well. So, yeah. I think that's it.

AF: Speaking of different sounds, alternative lanes, maybe not in the most recent past, but still in the past, as Viagra Boys has been a thing, you've also put out some side project material, like Grismask, for example, if I'm knowing how to pronounce that correctly. Have you been at all working on or cooking up anything along those lines? Not sounding specifically like that, but any side project stuff, or is Viagra Boys pretty the focus right now, musically?

SM: Grismask is... Yeah, there's another record coming out. I think it was supposed to come out. I don't know when it's coming out, but it's coming out. And I recorded it a while ago. So, yeah, and I still do shows with them, play for 10 people at a jazz club or whatever. So I enjoy doing that. Other than that, we've got a few... Not so much me, but the other guys in the band have a few side projects as well.

AF: Please list them and hip us to it. We'll look out for it.

SM: Well, we don't have any links yet, but that's the thing with our new... We're releasing this record on our own record label, Shrimp Tech. And so hopefully in the near future, we'll be releasing music that we've made that's maybe in a different style completely. Or Oscar, in my band, he's got a relaxing flute record where he plays the shakuhachi, which is a Japanese flute. And then I definitely want to make my country album at some point.

AF: And this, again, will presumably be like Shrimp Tech releases?

SM: Hopefully, yeah. And maybe under different names as well. But, yeah, I think, yeah, I really want to... Hopefully, Our future holds much more of that experimentation and releasing stuff that we're just fucking around with.

AF: Was there, outside of just wanting to put out more stuff and experiment with different sounds, was there anything else that drove you guys to go in more of an independent direction? Because obviously, going out on a limb with your own label is a responsibility and ambition that not all artists take upon themselves on the independent circuit. It's definitely interesting to see you guys make that jump.

SM: Yeah, I think for us, it's just wanting to have more creative control over everything. And also, I think it's an important part of the Viagra Boys' world building, in a sense, that we've always alluded to this company, Shrimp Tech Enterprises, as this capitalistic force that is forcing us to make music and forcing us to do all these things and just wanted to make it real.

AF: Before you head out, a couple more things. A few people are asking about that Magic shirt that you're wearing. What's the origin of this shirt? Is this some legit love for the card game, or is this a bit of a spoof, a bit of a goof?

SM: No, I'm a huge Magic dude. So I play Magic twice a week when I'm at home.

AF: Holy shit.

SM: This is a shirt It says Most Hated on it for the GG Allen record. And then it's got a card called Mana Crypt that got banned because everyone hated it. Then on the back is another card called Dockside Extortionist that's also banned. So all the Magic heads will know the reference. And it's made by a buddy of mine who's a really good tattooer. His name is Indy Voet, and he works in Brussels. So check him out. If you want to buy his shirts, he makes really cool shirts.

AF: Okay, nice. I've been getting into Pokémon as of late, so it's cool to talk to a fellow trading card game enthusiast. No way, man. It's not cringe at all. It's not cringe at all. Leave me alone.

SM: No, I respect it.

AF: It's great to have a hobby. I'll admit it. Magic is the more badass of the two trading card games. I'll be real about it. It's the edgier of the two. There's an edge factor.

SM: It's true here. It's got pictures of skeletons and stuff.

AF: Right, exactly. There's edgier, darker, more mystical lore around it.

SM: Yeah. But there's more money in Pokémon, so maybe that's what you're after.

AF: Yeah, exactly. I'm a capitalist pig. That's why I'm more into Pokémon. Those who are really punk and underground.

SM: All that YouTube money is going to a Charizard.

AF: Yeah, exactly. Magic is more underground and everything like that. And finally, I know this was mostly played up, but what's the current status of the beef with The Hives? Are you guys going to get into it again anytime soon? Do you feel like you guys came away from the beef? We'll see. Definitively as winners, did you win the beef?

SM: We won it, but they keep running their mouth, we might have to get it going again. But as of now, I don't have time to talk about it.

AF: All right. Sounds good. Thank you for talking about everything else, though. I appreciate you coming through.

SM: Thank you, Anthony. I appreciate it. And thank you, everyone, for watching. All right.

AF: Good luck on the shows. We're looking forward to the-

SM: Come to our shows.

AF: I'm definitely going to be coming to one. We're looking forward to the Deluxe edition and all of the Shrimp Tech output. And yeah, that's it. Thanks again, man. I appreciate it. Thank you so much.

SM: Yeah. Have a good one.