Interviews

Interviews: Fall Silent

Fall Silent are one of the newer signings to Revelation Records, and with "Six Years in the Desert", an album of past EPs and 7"s, they stake their claim as one of the best new hardcore groups out there. With Intensity and intelligence, Fall Silent will remain silent no longer. Smother contributor LochNessPimPster got the chance to speak with Fall Silent's vocalist, Levi Watson. Read on to find out more about the band, why Watson hates playing shows, and what he'd do if he met a man named Carbomb.

Smother: How did the band form?

Levi Watson: Damon, Dan, and I met a few years before Fall Silent started through the Reno skateboarding scene in around 1990. Dan was one of the best skaters in town and we really looked up to him. He was older than all of us and much better at skating. Usually, people of this description are fucking assholes to younger/suckier skaters, but Dan was really nice and slowly we became friends. We got in and out of bands and finally we were all out of bands and we decided to get together and start our own band. That is the story. Damon, Dan, and I are the ones who started the group and we are still in it. Other members come and go, but it is us 3 that make up Fall Silent and without the 3 of us we are nothing.

Smother: What inspires you to make such intense music?

Levi: Basic rock and roll. The Beatles, Heart, Journey, whatever. We listen to everything and we hardly ever listen to hardcore. Crowbar, old Malevolent Creation, Solstice, DRI, Kool Keith, Public Enemy, Stravinsky, Beethoven, and movie soundtracks are some things which have influenced us as well. People around us, jobs, parents, our city, and just plain life influence us every day. Sadness, anger, beauty, happiness, loss, are all influences to our songs. We don't sit down and say, OK, lets write a song that sounds like Gehenna. We just write and all of our influences combine to create the music that you hear on our CD's. The newer stuff that we have written is a bit more concise in it's sound and I think that we are coming in to our own finally with a style. About 75% of the "Six Years..." CD is really confusing in it's sounds as far as influence and style. We have been flopping around like fish out of water with style for so long and that has jumbled up our sound a lot in the past. It pisses me off sometimes, but it makes for an interesting listen.

Smother: What does the title Six Years in the Desert relate to?

Levi: Reno, Nevada is in a desert. The concept for the new album art was that of the desert. We live in a desert and we thought that it would be cool to make our big label debut sort of a tribute to our home state and town. The photographs throughout the CD are from a ghost town in Nevada called Bodie. We were a band for about six years before Revelation Records contacted us for some help, and since we live in a desert we decided to name the album the way we did. We got the photo on the back done in an old mining town called Virginia City and I think that it came out pretty good. Revelation did a great job with the package.

Smother: Fall Silent cover some very unexpected songs on Six Years... including Pat Benetar's "Heartbreaker" and even the Sesame Street theme. How'd you come upon picking those to cover?

Levi: We liked the songs and we thought that it would be a good idea to cover them for our albums. All Fall Silent releases have a cover song on them because it is good to break up an album with a song that isn't like the rest of our songs. We do covers to show that you can be in a serious band with serious ideas and still have a good time with it. There are too many serious/angry bands out there who need to lighten up, and that is what we are trying to do when we do the cover songs. We have never really had any good stories about choosing the cover songs. Someone in the group thought of them and then we covered it. They are good songs and we felt that we could make them better. Plus, we try to cover the easiest songs. We don't want to spend too much time learning covers so that is another factor in the decision to do a certain cover.

Smother: Six Years... is an album that shines with intelligence. Is it important to the band to keep the intelligence an integral part to Fall Silent's music?

Levi: Yes. We are always trying to come up with original sounding material while keeping it as powerful as possible. Originality takes a lot of intelligence so we try to keep that at the center of our music. Lyrically, I try to come up with ideas and lyrics that are somewhat intelligent without losing the interest or the listener. My band members haven't really liked what I have written in the past, but I am slowly finding ways to please them as time goes on. The lyrics on the upcoming album are some of the best that I have written. They are a bit more clever and poetic while keeping the angst and message intact. I am really excited to show the world our new album

Smother: Musically, Fall Silent has an amazing technical edge, similar to Meshuggah and Dillenger Escape Plan in it's complexity. How does the sound carry over live, as I can imagine it must be hard to convey the same detail in a live enviroment...?

Levi: Some of our songs go over really well live and some don't. Some of the best albums on our records don't translate well at all in a live setting. It all depends on the tricks that we use in our songwriting to get the maximum crowd response and participation. The worst songs to play live are the ones that are too technical. We are not trained professionals, so when a difficult part comes up in our songs we have to really concentrate on what we are doing or we will fuck up. In this deep concentration, sometimes we are not paying attention to our performance and we lose the crowd. The songs on the new album have cut out all of the DEP/Meshuggah type parts cause we have all realized that kids don't go to a show to count, they come to rock and feel.

Smother: Now that FS are signed to Revelation, you'll have the chance to play with some much bigger names across the US. What would be your "dream show" to have the chance to play at?

Levi: I hate playing shows, so there aren't too many bands that I would like to play with. But my dream show would be with Gehenna, Nostromo, and Kool Keith at Koo's Cafe in Orange, California

Smother: While Six Years... is a collection of previously released material, it does give listeners a chance to hear the band grow. What one song do you think is the strongest on the album?

Levi: The second song on the album is my favorite and I think it demonstrates what we can do and the direction that we are headed. The name of the track is "Never Before, Never Again." Some other songs worth mentioning are "Playing House", "The Rulers", "Looking In", and "No Strength to Suffer."

Smother: What is currently in your cd player?

Levi: The new Weezer album.

Smother: If you met a guy named "Carbomb" what would you think/say/do?

Levi: I would ask him why he is named that, and depending on his answer, I would pull down his pants.