Bullets and Octane Interview

with Brent and Ty

(left to right - James, Gene, Ty and Brent)

Comprising of Gene Louis (vocals), James Daniel (guitar), Brent Clawson (bass) and Ty Smith (drums) these boys from Orange County, St. Louis have a fair few gigs under their belt. Throw a few names in the ring such as Avenged Sevenfold, Social Distortion, Eagles of Death Metal and Flogging Molly - they’ve not done bad for themselves at all, but its no wonder.

The rock genre seems to be pulled and pushed in all different directions at the moment in search of something new. But there is a key factor that escapes a lot of bands breaking through at the moment, the ability to really get under your skin and take your breath away. To say that the fans reaction to Bullets and Octane is insane is an understatement. They’re high-energy, balls-to-the-wall hard rock has grabbed many a fan by the scruff of the neck and sent them into a mosh pit of a frenzy.

With songs about hatred, loss and revenge Bullets and Octane’s RCA debut release “In The Mouth Of The Young” has had some excellent production (Page Hamilton, Helmet - Ken Andrews, Failure) and is proving to be one of the most versatile albums out this year.

Nix caught up with Bullets’ bassist Brent Clawson and drummer Ty Smith before their sold out London Barfly gig for a chat about their relentless touring, how they’ve been received, what’s next and IV drips.

Nix: Let us into the world of Bullets and Octane, a little bit about both of you?
B: My name is Brent, I play bass ... my favourite colour is blue and I like flying kites and canoeing and bungee jumping!
T: I’m Ty and I play drums and I don’t like a whole lot of anything.

N: What’s your band ethos, what have you set out to do?
B: (After a long pause) Hmm, you’ll have to get back to us on that one - warm us up first!

N: Ok, what made you pick up your instruments in the first place?
B: My uncle was one of the most phenomenal musicians that played everything. We used to go and visit the relatives and stuff and for some reason he had a bunch of basses lying around. For some reason, that was the one that I was always picking up - maybe because it only had four strings or something! That’s probably the reason because by the time I thought that I wanted to play music I was already kind of familiar with that!
T: I started when I was about three years old. It was mainly from my parents, they’d always have records playing in the house. I remember this for some weird reason, I remember picking up a record and seeing on the back of it a recording studio and thinking to myself whilst looking at the drums and everything - all that fun stuff to hit and play and everything and I was like ‘Wow’ I wanna do that. So my parents not long after got me a little toy drum set with paper drum heads and stuff ... I went through that pretty quick but that’s where it all started!

N: How would you describe the music that you play?
B: I’d describe it as rock music. A lot of people for some reason categorise us as some sort of 80's revival. I’d like to say for the record that we’re not one of those kind of bands at all. I think its easy for people to say that but we’re just a straight head rock band with influences everywhere.

N: You’ve had excellent production on the album “In The Mouth Of The Young”, where have the influences for the tracks come from?
B: It was our first album so it’s a collection of everything that we’ve done so far as a band.
T: It’s interesting because James (Daniel, guitar) joined the band right before making the record so it was an interesting experience making the record.
N: Would you say that, that changed things that went onto the album - having someone new come in?
B: Of course, it changed a lot of things. Especially being as we’d not even played in the room with James before and he just kind of started playing with us. It was really all over the place, it was really a crazy experience for us!

N: You’ve been doing a UK tour for a fair few dates now, hows that gone down?
T: Manchester was good!
B: I think we’ve established some good fans with the press that we’ve gotten here and of course doing Download and the Avenged (Sevenfold) tour. I think that just to come back and put on a show just for the fans that want to see us has been great. Before Download we toured with Avenged back in November of last year, we did that for a month.
N: What was the reaction from that?
B: It was really good. Kids reacted to it really well!
N: What type of people do you think are most likely to be Bullets fans?
T: I think its all across the board. I’ve seen thirty plus, parents with children at our shows - all kinds of people and they’re coming up to us after our show and telling us how much they enjoy our music and stuff. Its totally a cross the board. We get some rock fans, some metal fans, cock rock fans - all kinds of people. I think its because the music is so broadly influenced. There’s rock, there’s a tinge of punk- there’s a bit for anyone and they latch on to what appeals to them.
B: Even though we’re not like a lot of other bands, somehow we seem to fit the bill. There’s some sort of way, some sort of element in whatever bill we’re on that a lot of the kids can relate to.

N: What’s been your biggest challenge so far?
B: I think the biggest challenge has been trying to do something that’s somehow melodic but yet different at the same time. When you’re writing music you want it to be interesting, you want it to have something that ears are attracted to and it’s the biggest challenge to do that without feeling like you’re copying somebody. There’s so many bands these days that all sound the same and there’s so many emo bands and there’s so many straight up metal bands and stuff, we want to be different from anyone else.

N: What’s your favourite song that you perform?
B: Hmm, I don’t have a favourite to be honest - I really don’t.
T: I like playing ‘Caving In’ a lot. ‘Save Me Sorrow’ is always one that’s fun. It’s the one that sets everything off.

N: There’s kind kick with the hard rock ‘scene’ worldwide at the moment, it’s becoming quite popular - where do you see that going?
B: It’s tough to say. There seems to have been a lot of bands coming out that seem like they’re bringing the rock back but it never completely happens. It’s never going to be as big as it was. The bands that look like they’re pulling so many people if you compare it to what was going on 20 or 30 years ago, it’s nothing. It’s tough to say where this kind of ‘scene’ is going, I don’t know if it’ll ever completely take off the way it was but it’s definitely good that people are accepting rock n’ roll music again.

N: You’ve mentioned Download (06) and Avenged Sevenfold, what would you say has been your best support slot or gig over the past year or so?
T: Avenged was really good and Social Distortion was probably one of my favourites as well because those guys were like idols for me. I’ve liked that band for a really long while and you have as well.
B: They’re a big influential band. They’re a band that gets up on stage and they can all play without having to be all super flashy. They’re just amazing and they sound great. They can make the biggest place in the world sound amazing which is really difficult to do. Every one of their songs is amazing too, great songs, great musicians.

N: Have you got a worst gig in memory?
B: We’ve had a lot of those (laughs)
T: Mine was when I’d gone out the night before - this was on the Family Values tour.
B: Ah, this is a good one!
T: It was me, Roy from Stone Sour, Rita who was Dimebag Darrell’s girlfriend and a few others and we went out to a pub that night. Rita was buying shots for everyone and food and it was just like shot after shot of Crown Royal and that was about the point where I lost all memory of what happened that night. People were saying I was going in peoples buses and hanging out and I don’t remember any of that. I woke up in the morning on someones bus and I was thinking ‘where the f*** am I?! How the f*** did I get here?!’. These guys were already there and were loading out, I wobbled out and I was still drunk -
B: Basically the next day when I saw him he was passed out on the ground, everyone was standing around him like what the hell is wrong with this guy. The paramedics were saying ‘we strongly advise you not to play’ and he went ahead anyway and played away with an IV drip in his leg!
N: That’s actually pretty rock n’ roll!
T: Yeah, that was my worst gig! (Laughs) That was horrible! Yeah, I mean Keith Moon eat your heart out but it was pretty horrible.

N: I was going to say did you have any Spinal Tap moments, but I think that kind of covered it. Is there any bands in the UK that you’ve had on tour with you or that you’ve seen that have caught your eye?
B: To be honest, I don’t think we’ve seen any real UK bands. There are bands from the UK that we love. I mean on this tour, we’ve seen a lot of the local bands to each area that we’ve played in so apart from that - that’s it really.

N: What are the plans for the rest of this year and into next year?
B: Well, after this tour we fly back to the States and do a tour with Bullet for My Valentine for two weeks. Then we come back over here and do a week with Stone Sour and then we fly back to the States and do a tour with Papa Roach and that’s right up until Christmas!
N: You’ve got your work cut out for you there. Anything else in the pipeline, anything else that you’re working on?
B: We’ve been talking about trying to get back into the studio sometime fairly soon. Nothind definitely planned or anything but we’re working out new songs and stuff. It’s going to be really exciting to get back into the studio whenever that is, hopefully really soon.

N: Is there anything I’ve not asked you that you think I may of left out?
T: Our web address is! (Laughs) ah yes, the ethos one from earlier!
B: What’s that like?
T: It’s like words to live by dude. Like “Live fast, die young”
B: Can I steal one? “Have a good time, all the time!” (Laughs)

Catch Bullets and Octane on tour with Stone Sour in the UK in November. Their RCA debut album “In The Mouth of The Young” is out now and available from major music retailers. To sample some of their tracks, check their MySpace www.myspace.com/bulletsandoctane or their official site www.bulletsandoctane.com.

Promotional photo courtesy of the Bullets and Octane MySpace, live photos by Nix and interview photos by Dan Telander.

© Pure Rawk 2006