Awesome. All right. Hey, everyone. Anthony Fantano here, Internet's busiest music nerd. I hope you're doing well.

It is time for an exclusive conversation, one that I have been looking forward to for a minute. We have Mr. Bryan Garris, vocalist of the Kentucky hardcore outfit, Knocked Loose. They just dropped their third full-length LP, or rather, they dropped it last year, You Won't Go Before You're Supposed To. One of my favorite records of that year was Grammy nominated for Best Metal Performance as well.

We're going to get into that and anything else that comes up in this conversation. The band also has some European tour dates coming up this spring. I don't know. Let's just start.

Anthony: First off, Bryan, thank you for taking the time.

Bryan: Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. I'm a long-time viewer, first-time caller. But yeah, big fan. I was really excited for this.

Anthony: Excited? I don't know. Let's not even get into the review because that just seems maybe a bit too psychotic and narcissistic and meta of me to do that. Let me ask you off the bat with this new record. I feel like the more time passes, the more of an interesting place, contextually and culturally this record inhabits. It's rare that an album that fits so firmly within the hardcore and metalcore archetype gets the widespread critical and artistic acclaim that your album has. Are you guys in the band getting a sense of that, that the album and the music on is transcending the hardcore scene itself in a way? Outside of the Grammy nomination and Academy attention, obviously.

Bryan: Yeah, we are definitely are acknowledging that it's this super special moment where it doesn't really make sense, but it's happening. We're trying to navigate it as best as we can. It feels like there was a turning point for our band during COVID, where when everybody was forced to sit inside, we did all we really knew how to do. We wrote a record at that time called The Tear the Fabric of Life. That was in our attempt to do something that was just fully art-driven and something that we thought would go over the heads of our fan base, to be completely honest. We were like, this is a weird niche little project that we're doing for us. And then it didn't go over people's heads. People responded to it really well. And we started noticing that we were getting press coverage from outlets that we were never cool enough for, quote, unquote. And that made us feel like if we can pull off doing the art forward, more niche stuff, let's just lean into that more. So ever since then, it's just been exaggerating that and exaggerating the things that worked in the past and expanding on those. It's led us here, which has been a very, obviously exciting time for the band.

Anthony: I agree with everything that you've just described there. But I want to get into a little bit further because I'm interested in exactly what this means from your perspective. When you say, and again, I agree with the assessment, but I want to dig into what it means to make an album that fits within the genres that you guys typically dabble in, but do it in a way that's more art-driven. What does that mean in a general sense? All music is, and hardcore and metalcore is art and so on and so forth. What you're doing is art, but what does it mean to make that style of music, but be more art-driven about it in a way?

Bryan: With that record, our approach for us was just different than anything we had ever done. It was never... Nothing that we've ever done is brand new. We've never claimed for that to be the case. We like to wear our influences on our sleeves, but we were always a very... The music videos were checking the box of every metalcore music video. You've got the rain, you've got a field, you've got a warehouse. That was a different approach. We went the animated route where we had a person animate the entire record. Then lyrically, it was a concept record, which was completely different for me because I've always written just from my perspective. So writing a story was something I had never even tried. And musically, like instrumentally and vocally, it was definitely just an expansion of previous sounds. It wasn't anything crazy on that end. But production-wise, we tried a lot of new things for the first time. Everything up until that point for us had always been very like, what you hear is is the same as what you see. Live, you see two guitar players and one vocalist. That's how everything was always recorded, very live. I didn't do a lot of vocal layering. But when it came to a Tear in the Fabric of Life, that's when we were like, 'Let's really utilize the studio as an instrument. Let's see what it sounds like if I layer my voice 10 times or if I do a bunch of effects on my voice here.' It was just zooming in on things like that, which is what we thought would be niche. We thought that people just wanted the fun breakdowns, and that was something that I was always arguing as a writer for the band. I was always fighting for people to pay attention to the lyrics. When it came time to write something that wasn't as personal, I was like, well, this is definitely not going to stick. And it did. And it's really like... It pushed us into a really cool spot creatively, I think.

Anthony: And you mentioned earlier this idea that when you were dabbling in this record, and obviously, you can extend this out to the new album that you just dropped, because obviously, these art forward ideas, as you describe, you dabbled in them further on this new record. But when you were initially dipping your toes in this stuff and you mentioned like, 'Hey, we're going to do this, and we might be going over our fans heads, describe to me what you feel like were the confines that you guys had to work within in because metalcore and hardcore, typically genres that I think have very clear, very bold, very obvious formulas to them. I feel like as an artist, did you, prior to all of this, feel like you guys were boxed in a little bit in terms of like, Well, we have to check these boxes. And if we're not checking these boxes or following these rules, we're going to be excommunicated or the music is not going to be accepted or appreciated or something. Where do these rules come from? And in your experience now with these changes and what you guys have done, did you find that this wall was imagined? Is it actually there? Are you guys stepping out of a zone that's making it difficult for you to resonate with certain music listeners, or were people actually subconsciously wanting this experimentation all along?

Bryan: That's actually a really good way to put it. I think the rules that you speak of for us individually come from the live show. Everything that we've ever done has been for the live show. We're a band that likes to tour as much as physically possible. We started touring when we were really young, and it was so exciting, and we just haven't really stopped since. So when it comes to writing music, we lived inside the walls of, is this going to go over well live? And as the band started growing and started bringing in newer crowds, you started realizing that not everybody reacts the same. Back in the day, if we played a basement, everybody was killing each other. If we're playing a house of blues, there's going to be people that just want to sit in the balcony seat and watch. That growing pain of just looking at dead eyes being like, Are you having fun? But then you end the song and everybody laughs. It was weird. I think where we were as a band was when COVID hit, we had just toured the entire world off of our previous album, A Different Shade of Blue, and we started to really learn how to navigate those different crowds. But I really think that if COVID didn't force us to write a record that we didn't know if we would ever play live helped because we were writing... There is that formula that you can expect for loose, where every song will have the big breakdown moment. But when we were writing a Tear in the Fabric of Life, it was like, what breakdown is best for the song, not what breakdown is going to get the biggest pop Live. And then moving forward into, You won't go before you're supposed to, it was like, let's take that approach, but then try to almost bring back things that worked in the very beginning. So stuff off our demo that we saw go over really well, big vocal moments. This is funny to say, but there were pop structures on You go before you're supposed to for the first time ever for Knocked Loose, where we would have a repeating chorus. So this was our attempt at bringing in extremes from both sides, where you have songs like "Thirst" that opens the record that is like, let's start abrasive, let's start insane, but then let's give them "Don't Reach For Me". It's a little bit more palatable. It's definitely going to be the one that we push as a single. But then right after that, you juxtapose it with a song like "Moss Covers All", 48 seconds, just for the Pit, crazy. But something that I didn't expect with this record is that we wrote the songs with the A, B, A, B, Breakdown, and then we wrote the chaos. It feels like people are more drawn to the chaos, which is very like a assuring, I guess, because it just feels like people are willing to grow with the band, which has been, on a personal note, really rewarding to see because we started really young and we're all adults now, and we're lucky to catch this wave of kids that were coming into Hardcore around the time that we were touring heavily and watching them grow and their tastes change but stay with the is very rewarding.

Anthony: That new generation of listeners that you see entering in that you just talked about, in your experience as an artist who's drawing these kinds of crowds and kinds of listeners, what is the entry point for a lot of these new kids that are getting into this music? Because for me, my context for this style of music and hardcore and metalcore in general is like, New England VFW scene, hate breed, to the degree that it was internet-based, where we're talking about niche forums, where like, Loud Rock is talked about, regularly. Obviously, it's a totally new paradigm in terms of how this stuff is getting the exposure that it is now. It's no longer purely local word of mouth, weird little hardcore enclaves in different parts of the country right now. How is that shift impacting the potential exposure a band like you guys are seeing instead of those avenues, because obviously a lot of them are on or they've changed significantly. How are people stumbling across you guys instead?

Bryan: I think as much as I probably don't like saying it, it's definitely TikTok. I think that stuff like that is bringing kids in. I think that right now, something that's happening in music is people want just the most exaggerated version of whatever it is. When you look at bands that are doing well in hardcore right now, you have bands like Sunami, which clearly is an exaggerated tongue-and-cheek version of what they're going for. But it's real dudes that are familiar with the source material, so it feels genuine, but it's fun. So it feels like there's that generic, hardcore sense of you are able to be a part of it. Stuff like that is so big right now. Stuff like Drain, where it's like a frontman that's so charismatic, like the singer of Drain, that is going to make the venue feel like a VFW hall, even if it's a massive theater. People want the story to tell after the show. So a lot of our approach when it comes to writing has been, let's look at things that have worked in the past, but what's the most extreme version of that? For example, doing the reggaeton style breakdown in the song, "Suffocate". I think a lot of it is... I mean, something that's always stayed the same, I think, is just like, shirts. It's crazy how many people come up to me and want to talk about the band shirts that I wear. And it's like, if they're familiar with the band that you're wearing, they automatically see that as a connection that you two share. That brings you down to a human level, which is why everybody loves hardcore, because there's not that big, unrealistic divide between you and the artist. And then the people that don't know the shirts that you're wearing, it's like they want to know. They want to know. And not just me. It goes for everybody, even between crowd members. It's like everybody wants to know what's under the layer they're currently on. And I think that right now it's just at a point where it's so big that everybody wants a piece of it. That's why you have mainstream artists trying to do rock records. And that's why you have bands like Sunami and Pain of Truth that on paper should be a VFW hall band forever, but they're doing a thousand tickets a night selling out every House of Blues in America. Everybody just wants a piece right now, and it's awesome to be a part of it in any way.

Anthony: This is, again, a true assessment of all of this, and I'm seeing it as you're describing it, but also simultaneously, what you described earlier is also true, where you guys at one time and other bands are similar and striped stylistically. You have these passionate audiences, people are buying tickets to your shows. You have these fan bases who are truly into what you do. But simultaneously, depending on what you're doing as a band in this lane, stylistically or esthetically, you could just be deemed, even if you have a massive audience, as too uncool to review or take seriously as far as covering your music. In your experience, what do you feel separates you guys or any band from coolness to uncoolness in terms of this coverage in the wider music sphere when it comes to hardcore, because as you know, you have Chris Motionless on this record, for example. There are bands in the hardcore scene that are way bigger than you guys, but would never be taken seriously for the coverage that you guys have because for whatever reason, they're not cool enough or they're not fitting within a certain archetype or not maybe perceived as adventurous enough or something, or maybe what you described earlier, art forward. I don't know what the separation is there, and maybe you can tell me, but there does seem to be, weirdly, a dividing line where some of the bands in the scene are cooler, more acceptable to talk about, while others are more niche and confined to the scene in terms of people's awareness of them.

Bryan: Yeah, I think that for us, we started touring in a time where it was so trendy to lean into what is true hardcore. It was literally just about who you know. You saw bands. There were bands that you'd probably put in the same sub-genre as Knocked Loose, but they were cool and we weren't because of who they knew. It never was something that we really paid attention to. We just liked to tour, so we toured as much as possible. Coming up, we would tour with any band. We would do pop punk, metalcore, hardcore, anything that we could really get our name on because our thought process was it doesn't change what we are. It just changes the bill that we're on. We thought that that would be a way to cast a wider net. But to the quote unquote cool, that wasn't cool because we were doing stuff outside of hardcore. Whereas a lot of the time you'll see a lot of hardcore bands will be cool until they hit that ceiling. And then once they break through that ceiling, they're no longer cool. And that's why a lot of hardcore bands have a demo and maybe a good full length, and then they just fizzle out. We just saw bands like Terror, and Every Time I Die, they were so unapologetically themselves and they did any tour that they could. I remember when Terror toured with The Ghost Inside, it was this massive thing in the hardcore scene. How could they do this? How could they betray hardcore by doing this lame tour?

Anthony: Right, exactly.

Bryan: And then now you look at it and you're like, Terror has been a consistent hardcore band for over 20 years, one of the best of all time. And it doesn't matter if you put them on a hip hop stage, there's still Terror. And so we just wanted that approach from the very beginning. Something that's funny with us is instead of having a cool demo and then fizzling out, we worked backwards, where once we got big enough to take Terror on tour under us, all these people that spent years not on board started to come back around. They're like, 'Oh, I get it now'. Then it was just, now, every time we go on tour, we take bands that we like on tour, and it always results in people coming back around that used to hate on it, which is fine. I mean, I don't care. None of that has ever driven this band at all. It's always just been about playing good shows. On the press side of things, that never really concerned us either because we would see bands that are getting all of these cool outlets, covering them and reviewing them. But then that band wouldn't sell 50 tickets in their hometown. We just liked to tour, and we were on tour, and it kept getting better and better. It was definitely rewarding once that stuff started to pop up. It was like, 'Oh, now we can have the best of both worlds'. We get the cool coverage and the cool festivals, but we know that we can hold our own when it comes to touring. But yeah, it's always weird when that stuff happens because there's bands right now that you'd never see on the cover of a magazine that are out drawing every single band on the magazine. It's amazing. You know what I mean?

Anthony: Right. No, it's true. You talk about it changing in terms of some people coming back around in your own case. Do you feel like, generally speaking, some of those stringent scene politics that I may have grown up with have softened a little bit or changed in any way? Do you feel like people hold to them as strongly as they used to, the younger generation?

Bryan: No, I don't think they do hold to them as strong as they used to. I think I think the generation below me, I have two younger brothers who are also involved in hardcore. Watching their generation is cool because I feel like my generation was just about being haters. It was just so you either were cool or you weren't. It was lame to like anything. That's really not genuinely, I can't stress this enough that I'm not just saying this for the interview, I'm not like that at all. I'm a fan of everything. And Knocked Loose as individuals are very much like that as well. And I feel like with the younger generation below me, it's cool to be a fan again. I was at a hardcore fest last weekend in Tacoma, Washington, because I played bass in another band and we got the opportunity to play. I was talking to a younger band on the fest that was a really cool band. One of their members was talking to me about how nervous they were to meet a mutual friend of ours because they were in a cool band. I was like, 'That's awesome to hear'. You know what I mean? It's cool that you care. It's cool that you're excited to meet people in this world because there was so long where it was I'm an island, and nothing is cool enough to be on this island. I think that shit is so lame.

Anthony: Yeah. I mean, I wouldn't even say just in the context of hardcore. I don't know if this is also your experience as well, but I feel like we broadly, in a cultural sense, I feel like we live in a time where audiences and people are really drawn to sincerity when it's there and they see it and they recognize it and it's delivered well and with conviction. But simultaneously, I feel like a lot of people are still afraid to be sincere because they're afraid of sometimes the mockery or the judgment or whatever that can come along with that, especially on the internet, where anybody will hate on you for just liking a thing. You'll be attacked for liking this or that for whatever reason because, again, you're sincerely showing the world, I'm really into this. I'm passionate about this. And a certain type of person who maybe they're miserable, maybe they're having their own problems, who the hell knows? They'll jump down your throat for it just to keep you in line or whatever they do it for.

Bryan: Yeah. It's so lame. I think that you're right. I think people really gravitate towards sincerity. And I think that a lot of people just get really caught up and feeling like they have to portray the character they are on stage while they're off stage. For us, that's never been the case or the approach. I think that we've always just wanted to remain approachable because we've noticed that we are lucky enough to have these opportunities to play on stages that we probably should have never been on. We always... I just want to make sure that we're remaining the same people, the same people that you can find at the merch table, and we can sit there and chat. But I think that being a fan is coming back in style, which is really exciting because I think that when everybody is like that, it makes everything bigger because there is room for everybody. The generic like a rising tide raises all ships. I do believe that to be true, and I'm a fan first. Absolutely.

Anthony: Let me ask you about some details on the album that I've been curious about, how far you want to dig into them is for you to decide. But one thing I definitely wanted to ask about is the production on the album. You're making some references earlier to some experiments that you guys were doing up until this point in terms of layering and what happens if we do this and what happens if we do that. One thing that still to this day floors me about this album when I put it on is just how goddamn thick and heavy it is. I feel like, whether we want to be or not, all rock bands, all loud rock bands and loud rock fans are all collectively locked into this loudness arms race, where wherever the loudest fucking thing is. People gravitate toward that or it'll be like, 'Oh, man, this is brutal'. Regardless of what the content is. If it's somehow managed to reach a new level of loudness, which with compression and technology and everything, how could things get any louder? But in a way, it feels like you guys have achieved in your own way a bit of a new peak here. Is that something that you really set out to do with this album? I'm not talking about literally the science sense of it. I don't know what the decibels on the record are, how much compression was used literally on any one thing, but at least in terms of the experience. And I love a lot of loud shit. This just feels just a smidge louder than anything else I've heard in a long time.

Bryan: Well, first of all, thank you. I appreciate that. That was definitely intentional. I would say that Isaac, our guitar player, is to an extent the mastermind behind that. I think that it was a combination of a couple of things. One, bringing in a new producer for the first time, someone like Drew Fulk, that has this mainstream sensibility to him with the bands that he works on a lot of mainstream rock music, which is an ear that when it comes to the wide umbrella of influence that we live under, that is one that we probably just don't have any experience in. So bringing that in was important. But at the same time, Drew Fulk has the background, has a similar background as all of us as individuals. He grew up booking hardcore shows in North Carolina. His favorite band is Turmoil. So It was important to have somebody that can push us outside of our comfort zone but understood the reference. Something that I hear a lot of bands nowadays do is they're influenced by... Bands are doing era bands, but they're influenced by bands that were ripping off the era, not bands that are from the era.

Anthony: No. There's so many things I review these days that fall exactly into that category, regardless of genre, but I know exactly what you're talking about.

Bryan: Which is fine. It's weird that I've been around long enough to hear bands rip off bands that were ripping off.

Anthony: Yeah, I think if you get to enjoy being a certain age, I feel like you start noticing that. You start hearing an echo of an echo like, 'Oh, this sounds like this thing, but it doesn't sound like the thing, it sounds like this other guy who copied it 10 years later'.

Bryan: Yeah. So I think that every now and then you'll get one that's like, 'Oh, you know the source material'. And I feel like you can hear that. It was important for us to work with somebody that understood that. We did a lot of, going into this record, we talked about doing a different producer for the first time ever, and we had a lot of meetings with a lot of people that just didn't get it. I want somebody that I can joke around with and be like, I want that dissonant cord to sound like Martyr A.D., and I need the guy to be like, 'Yeah, I know what that is'. You know what I mean? Then also us coming in and intentionally getting that producer to break some of their own rules. Let some things peak, let some things drown other things out so that that moment can be more extreme. That was something that we did with a Tear in the Fabric of Life, and it's something that we took into, You Won't Go Before You're Supposed To. It's like, let the guitar be so crazy that maybe some of the drum nuances drowned out, but when it hits, it hits harder. And when you're supposed to hear it, you hear it. And that was interesting because this album was like... It was us being like, we're in a position as a band now where we can make whatever album we want for as long as we want. There's no rush or demand. We did the thing of having a full-blown auxiliary percussion day, 12 hours of random drum instruments, something that our drummer has always talked about doing. But nowadays, you get to a studio and a producer is like, I have that plug in. I can make a concert bass drum in 30 seconds on my computer. We don't have to mic it and blah, blah, blah. We were like, 'No, we're going to do that. We're going to mic it'. We were lucky enough to record at Studio 606, which is owned by Dave Grohl, and he has this massive, beautiful live room. We hit up a friend of ours that is a professional percussionist, and we were like, 'Bring everything that you have'. And just listening to the album and being like, 'Let's put this there and let's put this there'. That was another example of getting them to break their rules. We did for the song "Blinding Faith" and the song "Take Me Home". There's these massive tom drum moments. We did a drum circle where we put the mic in the middle of the room and we had six or seven floor toms around it, all of us banging. The engineer, a good friend of ours, Zach Tuch, who was engineering the record, he immediately went to start moving all the tom hits. Isaac, our guitar player, was just like, 'Don't edit them because then it sounds like one big drum, leave them barely off, make it feel human'. Then you can feel like it's a room full of drums rather than one drum that you edited perfectly. So getting producers and engineers to bend their rules and hear something that they don't like, but we're like, 'Trust me, that'll make the hit harder'. And Isaac just really pushing himself when it comes to guitar. There's a lot of guitar stuff on that record that we have this joke where when they do guitar layers, there's always a layer called hell tone, where it's just no longer a guitar. It just sounds like gravel, but it has that impact for the breakdowns, and it just adds this layer of almost low-end static. We started doing that, and that's something that Isaac has kept building on, building the hell tone. So by the time it came to this record, it was a very obnoxious guitar tracking day, but it made for a really cool effect.

Anthony: No. Thank you for going into what you did with the drum portions of the record. One of the things about the album that as you describe, make these very loud, aggressive songs sound so nuanced and so interesting a lot of the times is that the guitars and the drums and the various things in the mix, the way they're oriented, it never sounds the same from the start to the end of a certain track, or it certainly sounds a little different from track to track. So it's like the drums are never totally in the same place all the time. The guitars are never totally in the same place all the time. And there are a variety of different production tone, drum percussion tones throughout the record in a weird way, it does almost have a similarity to some of Slipknot's earliest best stuff because you did have those weird breakdown bits where you would hear that steel drum thing, or you'd hear some other crazy shit get whacked for some other weird percussive touch-up or whatever. Those little nuances, those little differences, when you're talking about riffs that are so brutal and straightforward and simple, you have to break it up and change it up somehow. It's like those little differences separated that band massively from any other band that was just like, 'Yeah, let's just do a normal rock kit and just leave it at that'.

Bryan: Yeah, absolutely. I think a lot of that we're all very different musically. Creating space for all of our influences to shine is important. Again, with the drums, our drummer, it has turned into a joke now, but before it was just this coincidence where every single time we would go to record, he would have a new piece to his drum set. When he started, he was like, one crash, snare, floor time, hi-hat. It was just a very simple kit. Now it's just this big thing where going into this album, we were like, 'What are you adding to your kit?' He was like, 'I think I want to add a side snare'. He was in marching band when he was in high school. So he incorporated this really small 10-inch marching band snare that definitely has its moments on the record. But then that opens us up to... We're all so hands-on when it comes to writing that now I'm trying to think of where he can put the side snare. It's like, I've never thought about that in my life, but I'm throwing out ideas. This is something that I should say definitely, and I don't know if I've ever said it, but every single good, Knocked Loose idea that we've ever had has made us laugh. It's all just about what is stupid. You know what I mean? The moment in thirst where it's just this build up, build up, build up, build up, then you get two snare hits. It's like, 'Do that on the little bitty marching band snare. It sounds ridiculous'. And then it just makes the kick in right after that just sound that much more abrasive. So just these almost jokes that were just like, 'Wait a minute, this would actually be sick'. That's how you got the reggaeton breakdown and the side snare and just stuff like that. I think those are my favorite moments in Knocked Loose is when all of us are laughing because an idea is so stupid that it might work.

Anthony: No, I get exactly what you're saying. To me, those sorts of ideas in those moments are even a callback from the era of hardcore that I grew up with. Because when you think about hardcore and metalcore, at their base, they're such ridiculous, audacious genres. There used to be very popular bands in the scene back then, like Folly, for example, this pretty legendary old-school metalcore outfit that did ska breakdowns in their songs. Even they're touring again behind some of their old stuff. Me and my friends that used to listen to this stuff back in the day, we'd be like, Yo, listen to this. This is crazy. This band doesn't fucking ska. You know when they came up with that shit, they were like, 'Oh, it would be hilarious'. But when you actually implement it, it's this really cool idea, and it's refreshing, and it's interesting, and it's totally nuts. I feel like there's been almost a lack of that with a lot of bands to come since who are more like, 'No, we need to fit into this really serious, rigid weird, aggressive structure, and there can't be anything weird or fun about it'. When, honestly, when you think about what hardcore is at its base, it's so ridiculous. Why not have fun with it? It seems like being over the top is the fucking point. So let loose and just do something absolutely crazy.

Bryan: Absolutely. Yeah. And that's the stuff that you see work in a live setting. At the end of the day, you want to play a dope show. So it's like, write something that's going to make the show dope. And you have your opportunity to be... Like, "Suffocate" is like is such a talking point because of the reggaeton breakdown and because of the Poppy feature. But lyrically, it was the same approach as it always is. It comes from a personal dark place. So you're always going to have your opportunity to be as serious as you want to be, being able to loosen the boundaries in other areas to bring in more influence, I think, is what been important for a band like Knocked Loose in the past to not just release the same music over and over again.

Anthony: Let's talk about the lyrics a bit since you touched down on them. There are a lot of tracks off this record that obviously come from and go to some pretty dark places. Speaking of "Don't Reach For Me", for example, which obviously, big single off the record, there are so many angry fed up lines on that song that seemed to even have a particular person in mind when writing about them. Was the perspective on that totally personal, or were you, as you were saying earlier, writing from a different point of view when putting that song together?

Bryan: 100 % personal. And it's the first time... I'm not a very confrontational person, but I wrote that song from a point of view of, if the person I'm talking about listens to this, they'll know. And I wanted that. It's funny. Up until You Won't Go Before You're Supposed To, every record that we've done has been with Will Putney, who's an amazing producer. A lot of people were wondering why we didn't go back to him. It 1,000% wasn't personal. It was just taking influence from, again, bands like Every Time I Die, who a different record with a different producer every time. Anyways, when I write lyrics, it always goes sad is what comes the most naturally to me. It's very therapeutic. And when we would work with Will Putney, there'd be times when he'd be like, 'Let's throw a mean one in there. We've got the sad ones. Let's throw a mean one in there'. So I heard his voice telling me, let's throw a mean one in there. When I started, write "Don't Reach For Me". But what I wanted to do is "Don't Reach For Me" was written with the massive vocal break in mind, and I didn't have lyrics, but it was just like, every course is going to end with a vocal break coming out of a Tear in the Fabric of Life, where I tried to be so poetic and so dark and so a specific vibe, it was challenging for me to then take a step back and be like, a vocal break has to be dumbed down. Nobody's going to latch on to a vocal moment that's really smart. It just doesn't really happen. So it's finding this middle ground of challenging myself as a writer, but also writing something that people are going to latch on to. So it was a different approach to writing an angry song versus the way that I've done it in the past, where I wanted the person listening to know that it was about them. I wanted it to be meaner than anything that we had ever written. And then I had to find that balance between simple and challenging, which at the end of the day, some people would argue that simple is the most challenging, which I could definitely agree to because I feel accomplished when I've written something that's really smart. You know what I mean? So to see "Don't Reach For Me" as a lyric be such a massive moment in our set. I'm like, 'Yeah, I get it'. But yeah, if that makes sense.

Anthony: No, it does. And I think there's another balance going on with that track that I was wondering if you could speak to because you do seem to write from such an angry place on that song. And when acting or writing out of anger, you're not always in your most rational mind. So how do you channel that in a way to where you're writing something that to the listener who's not obviously feeling the same feelings that you're feeling, what you're saying still comes across as thoughtful, or it still manages to be something that when you come back to it and you're obviously in a different place, you're not feeling that anger immediately in the sense that you may have when you wrote it, you're not looking back at it and thinking like, 'Man, what the fuck is wrong with me?' It's like you don't feel like you're doing too much or flying off the handle. How do you balance that between, I'm feeling my feelings, I'm going crazy with them in the way that anger can make you, but simultaneously it's coming out like, poetic and there's a message to it, and it's speaking to something bigger.

Bryan: Yeah. I think remaining somewhat vague helps that. I think that if you look at... That's the first ever Knocked Loose, angry song that isn't as vague. Usually, things are just like, 'Yeah, he's pissed off. I can relate to this'. That's what I feel keeps me from looking back on it and being like, 'Damn, I went too far'. I used that song as an opportunity to take it a little bit further with certain lyrics tracks. And again, that was me being like, the person will know. You know what I mean? But for the most part, there's still a lot of just vague approaches to that song lyrically, which is why I think other people are allowed to... What allows other people to relate to it without knowing exactly what I'm talking about? Because I'm sure everybody has at least one person that they hate. Sure. So I can latch onto that. But again, it's so therapeutic for me to write lyrics that I've noticed when performing that song, it has hit a little bit harder with the chances that I took being a little bit more direct. So when stuff like that happens in my head, I'm like, okay, maybe I'll lean into that. Maybe on the next record, there's a meaner song that's a little bit more direct. What does that look like? You know what I mean? Not saying to expect that, but that's a huge example of the Knocked Loose thought process when it comes to anything. It's like, 'Oh, that worked. How do we lean into that a little bit more?'

Anthony: What's the thought process behind really stand out more poetic images and what you're writing on that track, the reference to a cleansing wave for example. First off, before you dig into that, is there biblical intent behind that reference, a godly flood, or is it some other frame of reference for a wave?

Bryan: I think just the metaphor of something strong enough to wash away the hate and anger that I'm feeling so that I can move on from the situation that I'm talking about. Somebody that I hate so much that it would take this cleansing wave for me to move on. Not necessarily biblical, although there is a lot of religious imagery hidden throughout all of our lyrics. I mean, obviously, the album art is a giant glowing cross, but I wanted to really paint the picture that this isn't something I'm going to get over soon. It would take something like that to push me past this.

Anthony: Well, you speak to the anger for a particular person on that track that fueled you. Let's get into the cover and some of the more religious themes that pop up here and there on the record? Because I was curious, like in the way that whatever occurred to make you angry at that person who you bring up in the song, what for you personally was driving some of the more, I guess, religious and spiritual angles that you were exploring on this track. I feel like I grew up in a time where very vocally and loudly expressing that you had criticisms of or were even just very blatantly anti-religious. It's not shocking to me, and it's not new. Again, I grew up in a time where Marilyn Manson was popular. It's not anything new to me in concept. But after him, I do feel like the idea of that and working that into your art fell out of favor, and there wasn't really quite as much cultural currency in doing it. As we were talking about earlier, it's something that I feel like even in a way, you would get mocked for, for being so loud about it or in people's faces about it. But I feel like you guys have done it and achieved it here on this record in such a way to where it goes over well and it's not being categorized as Reddit atheism or something like that. Is that a concern that you had in your mind when writing about this topic in the way that you did? And is there a certain experience that you had that made this an important topic for you to engage with on this album?

Bryan: Yeah. So I didn't think that... Well, first and foremost, I didn't think that religion would be such a massive talking point following this record. Looking back, I realized that we put the ball on the tee for people to ask me about it, but it's always been something that I've written about. I think that every record has had one song about it, about religion, specifically. Every record, it's been just pushed harder as far as how dark the lyrics are and how far they go. This one definitely being the most extreme case of that. It being paired with the album art is more of a coincidence than a connection. I think that for the art, specifically, I'm very, very hands-on with all of our art. We work with this guy named Ridge Rhine. I have to shout him out. He's in a band called New World Man and a band called Life's Question. I think that he is just an amazing artist. He does every single thing that you see our band name on, Ridge has done it, our websites, our album art, merch, everything. There's been times in the past when I've been inspired by other artists, and I've brought up to him the idea of using someone else, and he's always like, 'Let me just take a stab at that style before you move on.' And it always works. So this was a similar situation where I was very drawn and inspired to this photographer named Brisco Park, based out of Louisiana, who does very, very beautiful dark, like some of gothic, Catholic-style photography. I saw a picture by Brisco Park that just really moved me. I reached out to them and asked, Basically, can we use this photo? And Brisco was super excited about the idea, but told me, 'Honestly, I've sold prints of this photo. This photo has been out in my catalog for a long time. If you were to use it, people are already familiar with it'. And I was like, Okay, interesting. Definitely don't want that. So Ridge, basically took that photo and did a digital art version and sent it to me. And I was like, 'This is cool, but it's not what I want'. So I lucked out and got the absolute best of both worlds, in my opinion, where I had Brisco Park fly to Ridge, and Ridge and his friends created the cross on farmland that his friend created and had the model. And they basically just created the... Ridge created the scene, Brisco shot the photo, Ridge laid out the album. I got to use this new artist that I'm a massive fan of, and then someone that I trust with the band's image, and I think that it turned out amazing. But the cross is supposed to be like, symbolism for anything towering over you. And I think that it's like that with a cross in general, being from the South, at least anywhere I go in a three mile radius of where I'm at right now, I could probably get to five churches, two of them being these massive, historic, beautiful buildings. It is something that follows you. On the record, it's supposed to just mean, whether it be religion, whether it be somebody that you hate, whether it be loss, which is something that I talk about very frequently in Knocked Loose music. But our first single was "Blinding Faith". It was the religious song on the record. It was announcing the record with the album art. It did get turned as this massive statement to sum up my relationship with religion is that I tried when I was a kid very hard to be the person that I thought God wanted me to be. I do believe in God. I don't follow any organized religion, and I don't really like a lot of the things that come with religious extremists and the things that they push. There was a lot when I was heavily involved in the church that I never agreed with, and I was like, something's wrong with me because everybody's on this page except for me. Yeah, I'm rambling, but it really just comes from a place of feeling like there's something else out there, but not liking any of my options to look into that, really, if that makes sense.

Anthony: Building on that theme of feeling like certain things are towering over you, I feel like you guys do engage in that same concept on "Slaughterhouse 2"but more from a class politics angle. Is that something for you guys, either among yourselves or those you work with or your fans or some of the coverage that you guys have seen broadly that's come up as far as you guys dipping your toes your toes into that because, I don't know, in terms of directly calling out the richest and most powerful among us who run society and the fact that they impact in a negative way every decision and aspect in your life. Not a lot of bands on your level or in your lane are directly addressing that topic these days in a lot of songs, which to me is funny because I feel like the hardcore scenes where I first learned to be skeptical of corporations and the cops and so on and so forth. And nowadays you have this wave of like, 'Yeah, we're a Christian metalcore band' or other random loud rock outfits that have very odd QAnon-type politics or something. I don't exactly know what the fuck the pipeline is or why it's so easy for some groups randomly who maybe you grew up with just all of a sudden be posting about how they support the Jan 6th rioters getting out of jail. I don't know. I don't know what the common thread is between all of it, but it seems like you guys have totally sidestepped it in your own way or going against that grain. I mean, is that an aspect of the music scene and it's weird, unpredictable politics that you have to navigate and then in your own way, you're pushing against?

Bryan: Yeah. So I never... Politics is something that I've never really written about or I've tried my best... I feel like I've tried my best to use my platform when I can. But lyrically, it's just not the writer that I am. I was invited to be on the Motionless In White "Slaughterhouse, which is eat the rich, that song, a song that I've never written. We had to joke to do a part two. And as soon as I made the joke, everybody was like, 'Oh, we have to do that.'

Anthony: Again, another amazing moment that starts off as a joke.

Bryan: Yeah, exactly. But then I had the realization like, 'Oh, now I have to write a part two to what he wrote about. And I was like, how do I do this and have it feel genuine? And the only way to do that was to speak from my experience, and I did grow up very lower class. I did grow up very... Both my parents worked very hard for everything that they gave me and my brothers, and they still both worked very hard. They'll never be able to retire. Where the Motionless In White song is a lot more like, broad, like eat the rich style song, ours is very more zoomed into just my personal experience, what it was like growing up being the one that didn't have, and then just how that affected me growing up.

Anthony: Moving on from the record, where do you see things if you want to give us any peek before you have to head out? Where do you see things for the band, creatively or commercially, going forward from here? Because obviously, we've talked a lot about the ways that you guys have pushed boundaries with your sound, with your lyrics, and the way that you present the band. And simultaneously, you've had these really big moments, like the Grammy nomination, as well as the recent Jimmy Kimmel performance. Obviously, while these were amazing moments for the band in terms of exposure and proof of how far you've come and how hard you've worked. Simultaneously, things like that exposed tons of people who've never heard about you guys before to first-time listeners who were like, 'What is this? My child was scared when they play it on the TV. It's weird'. I'd like you to speak to this if you can. It's, again, obviously proof of how far a band like you guys can take it if you're doing X or Y or Z or playing it a certain way. But simultaneously, it also functions as a reminder of not everybody's going to be into this, regardless of how we portray it. Considering that, how much further do you guys feel like you can push the band from here, artistically, and also in terms of the audience and exposure that you're getting?

Bryan: Yeah, I think that the last couple of years has just been so crazy. It just feels like every... Honestly, ever since we got offered Coachella, it feels like everything after that has been uncharted territory, all these moments and opportunities that were never on the radar. Like, Kimmel. I've had so many conversations with my dad, of my dad being like, 'Well, Turnstile is on late night. Why can't you be on late night?' And me just being like, 'They're a different band'. It's more palatable for that audience.

Anthony: Right. Explaining to your dad the differences between Knocked Loose and turned style is a conversation that I wouldn't even want to have.

Bryan: Yeah. Both my parents are surprisingly, to give them their props, musically hip, I would say. They're the reason that I have such a deep love for music. I was raised solely on hip hop music until I found heavy music on my own. But I had so many conversations with him like, 'Yeah, it's just we're not that band, and that's okay'. Then we get the call to do Kimmel, it was never even on my radar. It was such an amazing opportunity. So all those things, what we do when those things happen, when we're at the Grammys and we're here because of the stupidest song we've written heaviness-wise, we're just like, 'How far can that go then?' Because I don't know what the next step is. I don't know what the next opportunity is or what the next year looks like. But we're just trying our best to navigate it as it comes. So it's like, I want to see how mainstream we can get without changing what the band is at all. You know what I mean? Let's be the most famous psycho band. I feel like there is a level of the people that are coming in from Kimmel that are like, 'This is weird, and nobody likes this'. That's how you get people to come in, and that's how heavy music can change a person's life, because they see it on Kimmel, but then they dive in a little bit further, and then they just fall down the rabbit hole. So I think right now the mission statement is to just keep doing what we're doing, leaning into the things that work, and seeing and just taking each moment as it comes and trying to remain mentally aware of the moments. That's something that the last year I did a lot of... Because last year was the 10-year anniversary of our first demo. So we had all these amazing opportunities. At the same time, we're internally celebrating being a touring band for 10 years. So there was a lot of reflecting last year, and a lot of... Sometimes things can go so fast that you look back on it and you're like, 'Man, the Grammys were crazy. That was amazing'. I was very, very honest with myself the entire year that when these things were happening, I was taking it for what it is. I was sitting at the Grammys, and I was looking around, and I was like, this might be one of the best days of my life. This is something that I never thought I would do, a stage I never thought I'd be on. So, yeah, I really don't know what's next, but we've navigated the best that we can.

Anthony: Bryan Garris, front man of soon to be the most famous psycho band, Knocked Loose, coming through for a great conversation. I appreciate you taking the time, man. Thank you.

Bryan: Yeah. Thank you so much, man. I really enjoyed this.