3 Mile Scream
Posted on November 06, 2007 at 8:00 am by admin
Some of you who’ve been reading this site for awhile may be wondering while I’m interviewing 3 Mile Scream even though I gave their album a not so good review. The first thing I have to say, if perhaps you may have missed it is that I feel that anything that appears on my site is worthy of attention and money. I don’t rate albums a zero, they just don’t make it. The other reason is that an album review doesn’t talk about the effort a band has put forth, or what kind of guys they really are. The guys in 3 Mile Scream are incredibly sociable, and I don’t think I’ve ever spent more time in a bands touring vehicle just shooting the breeze. In fact, the interview sort of trailed off at the end, becoming a hilarious chat about all things metal, so read up on these 3 Mile Scream guys who had even heard the name of my hometown!
I should note that all the band members were there, but vocalist Matt McGachy did most of the talking, with guitarist Kyle Kozlan adding some things in, and other guitarist Alex Delis coming and going from the van.
Way Too Loud: I’ve read a lot of references from Lamb Of God, Unearth and God Forbid mentioning you guys. How did that come about?
Matt McGachy: We basically played a lot of shows with God Forbid, and we played a show and got to chill with Unearth. Then we just kept in contact with them so when they came back to town, and then we’d go and drop off our material to them, and get some feedback and see what they think about it. Arch Enemy, same sort of thing. We would get to know people, and trade off the material to get their point of view.
WTL: Do you have any close ties with some of the larger bands from Quebec? It seems pretty tight knit with Despised Icon, Ion Dissonance…
Matt: We all jam at the same place. Montreal has this place, THE jam room for all the metal bands, which is called Cite 2000.
WTL: I thought it was just a general jam room.
Matt: It’s open to everyone, but a lot of the metal bands do jam there. Cryptopsy and Despised Icon jams there, and a whole bunch of other bands jam there too. We all get to see each other there and communicate to each other. There’s a lot of interchanging jamming, which is cool.
WTL: How far out have you made it on tour? I’ve heard about you playing in Quebec, and a lot of Ontario shows.
Matt: We’re just working really hard. We need that booking agent that can take us and pull us out of what we’re doing. We’re working as far out as we can, going from Quebec, to Ontario to New Brunswick, and we’re trying to do as many weekends as possible just to get ourselves out there up until the point where we can get a booking agent to get us on the road to go everywhere. We went down to Milwaukee to play the Milwaukee Metalfest, which was a pretty cool experience, even though it was a bit of a disaster.
WTL: You’ve got to tell me about that!
Matt: The show was a disaster! We showed up, and all the bands were there, and they all had these attitudes, the band ego going on, until they realized that no one was coming, and then all of the sudden the bands were really nice to each other, and that was it. We played for bands, and that was it! It was a good experience. We played at the right time on the right stage, so we had a good crowd response. We lucked out.
WTL: So the whole crowd was just other guys in bands?
Matt: Basically.
WTL: The best festival I’ve been to was the New England Metal And Hardcore Fest.
Matt: We’re hoping to get on that one too. We’ll see what happens this year. We’ve just got to find the right ties.
WTL: Do you feel like you’re facing some stiff competition in an indirect sense? There’s a lot of bands out there, especially now.
Matt: Especially in the metal genre. We don’t feel competitive as winning financially, we just like to get up there and play, and get to know people, get a lot of connections. We’re very social people, we like to party really, and then go up and share the moment on stage with people. I always try to weasel my way on stage just to share an experience with them.
Kyle Kozlan: Once you’re out on the road, you’re not really thinking about the other bands. We’re excited to just get out there and play. We come into town to do our job!
WTL: Some bands have noticed some bad things going on lately. One band I talked to said it’s getting tougher and tougher when things like three shows in one night in a big city, all sorts of MySpace bands.
Matt: We’re at the point where we’re doing weekends. I don’t try to blow what we are up into the oblivion of thinking we’re the epitome of the next thing in music, I’m not saying we’re not good, we do well, but I am realistic, we don’t have a draw in cities on a Monday or Tuesday or Wednesday. We’ll go into a city and try and get onto the right bill. If it’s a huge city, we shouldn’t headline because in a big room, we wouldn’t have enough people to make it work, or to make it feasible for the promoter to want to bring us back. We always try to look for positive experiences.
WTL: I think I read where you had exactly that experience. You were playing ad Killswitch Engage was just down the road.
Matt: In Ottawa! That did happen! That did suck! (Laughs) We went and chilled with them afterwards, so it was ok.
WTL: now I’ve got to ask the standard metalcore question, but I don’t want all the same answers that everyone else gives about it.
Matt: It’s bringing metal to the masses. It’s like any fad. I find that labels will find something that’s selling, and something that could be marketable, then they take and pump a whole bunch of money into a few big bands to make that big, and then all these smaller labels will start signing all these bands, and then these labels pop out of everywhere. There’s a label in everyone’s basement! “I’ve got a label! I’ve got 20 bands on my roster! I gave them distribution through some distribution company.”
As long as there’s something else out there for someone to listen to in the radio or the mainstream that is not a bunch of prefabricated pop, that makes me happy. I feel that metalcore has brought metal back to the masses a little bit, like with Lamb Of God in the states. But it’s going to die, and there will be something else. That’s why our first CD was very metalcore. We wrote it in 2005, and it was released a year and a half after we recorded it. Our second CD was finished a year ago. We’re waiting to drop it. It’s not metalcore at all, it’s way more European metal.
WTL: I’ve noticed that. I’ve got a term I use at my site, it hasn’t caught on or anything, I use it more for my own point of reference. Post-metalcore for those bands that are ditching the cliches and sticking with everything else.
Matt: Like As I Lay Dying, with their new CD there. It’s not as hardcore, but they’re still basically doing the same thing
Alex Delis: My opinion on that is that just because there’s a breakdown doesn’t mean its metalcore. Pantera had breakdowns.
Matt: Or singing, because I always get pegged as a metalcore singer because I scream and then I sing in the chorus. That’s also power metal, but I don’t get coined that very often, you know? It’s strange.
WTL: Actually, going to the breakdown, is your definition of a breakdown having a single note or -
Matt: No, just the rhythm of the drums.
WTL: Can you tell me about your new album?
Matt: It’s good! We’re very happy about how it turned out. We worked very hard writing for a whole year, and then we recorded it, and now we’ve been sitting on it for a year waiting to drop it. We’re just waiting for our label to say they’re ready. It’s way more melodic, and much more aggression the choruses are much more sing along. Everything just evolved. It’s the same but more evolved. [to Alex] What would you say about it?
Alex: I just think that it’s more of everything to the extreme on this new one. We’re even trying some live now, and’s going over really well actually. We’re having fun with it.
WTL: Who would you like to tour with that’s feasible, but not obvious?
Matt: [To Alex] What’s a good band?
Alex: I want to say the obvious… we always say it. I want to do a reunion tour with The Offspring.
Kyle: They never went away! They’re still around!
Matt: Skinless would be nice. We’ve already played with them. We played with them in Toronto. I like their chicken fight mosh pits! Those are intense! They get people up on their shoulders, and they fight each other, and people are circle pitting around them.
WTL: Bands get the name question all the time -
Matt: I’ve hated the name forever! Our bassist who used to be in the band, he coined the name, he was taking a dump, and it came to him, and that’s it! There’s no story, there’s nothing! To be honest, when we started, we were a nu-metal band, and I sang most of the time, so the scream part makes no sense.
WTL: Actually, that wasn’t what I was going to ask! [Everyone laughs]
Alex: You gave it away for nothing!
WTL: So many bands get asked about their name, and one band started lying about their name, and when I stated asking bands to lie about their name, that turned out really well.
Matt: So we’ve got to lie about our band name now? [Calls Alex over] Alex! Come make up a fake reason for how we came up with our name!
Alex: There is no reason behind our name!
Matt: Yeah, but he wants us to lie.
Alex: Well how about we say that you screamed one night somewhere, and someone said that sounded like a 3 mile scream?
Matt: That’s not that good! (Laughs)
Alex: but the only reason we came up with this name is because our old bass player was taking a shit! (Laughs) That’s a funny fucking reason! I don’t know… a 3 mile shit! (Laughs)
Matt: he was taking a dump, and he was screaming like crazy, and all you could hear was this blood curdling scream, and then his mother came in and she was so surprised at the size of the fecal depository that came out of him, that she uncurled the spiral fecal matter, and it measured out to 3 miles, so she coined the term “a 3 mile scream”!
Kyle: I don’t know if I can write that anywhere!
WTL: Send an e-mail to your promo guy. Once you get going, it’ll become a thing at every show!
Matt: I hate this interview!
3 Mile Scream at MySpace
3 Mile Scream at Corporate Punishment Records
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