Interview

by: David Lee Wilson

Terrorists never announce their presence, they don't threaten and you only know where they have been by surveying the destruction left behind, NO ONE are sonic terrorists. Forgoing all previous formulas for sound and success the four South-side Chicago residents who comprise NO ONE are blazing their own musical trail no matter how often the advance reviews of their blindingly bright self titled debut is compared to the works of MACHINE HEAD, DISTURBED or STAIND. For every ounce of inspiration that NO ONE pulls from their pool of musical influences they add a pound of something so unique and their own that in the end it really is comparable to NO ONE and NO ONE alone. There are a half dozen tracks that are destined to cream the minds of Heavy music buyers this fall but none with as good a shot at commercial acceptance as "Chemical." "Chemical" kicks out a jam in the oldest of schooled styles but resonates like the hippest of current bands out there blurring all lines between the past present and future of Metal music. The key to this band, as it should be with all bands, is to tour relentlessly and that is exactly what NO ONE has, is and will continue to do. In fact it was on tour that David Lee caught up with vocalist Murk and drummer Billy K. who paused briefly from their day's regimen of Metal and mayhem to take some questions exclusively for BALLBUSTER Magazine.

DAVID LEE You guys are in the home stretch of Ozz-Fest and you have obviously made some fans despite the fact that your album isn't out yet, how did you do it?

MURK: I think that because we have had several street teams working for us, like Street Wise, Immortal's (Records) street team and we have our own NO ONE street team, that helped. We started working on that three or four months ago and now there is a little bit of radio trickling in for our band.

BILLY K: That and about three and a half months of touring.

MURK: Yeah, we have been touring since April so all together that would help a little bit but we are still working at it, we are not there yet.

DL: I know that I got the advance CD several months ago and now I heard that the record's release has been pushed back again. . .

MURK: Yes.

DL: Any reason for that?

MURK: Just business reasons and trying to get more retail awareness and trying to get the radio spins up a bit more before the record actually comes out.

DL: Are they experimenting with new packaging techniques or something?(laughs)

BILLY K: (Laughs, obviously getting the SPINAL TAP reference) I have got the SPINAL TAP soundtrack here actually and when everything is going bad we put it in and re-live SPINAL TAP and it is all better.

DL: It has to be frustrating that you guys have been out so long and can't tell people to go out and pick up the record yet?

MURK: We just tell 'em that it is coming out soon. . .

BILLY K: We tell them to go and ask their record stores for it. We have a lot of independent record stores that are going to be carrying it and then we have majors like Best Buy and Circuit City that will be carrying it so the more people who are asking for it at those places the better it will be for us because the stores will see that there is a demand for it.

DL: Have you lined up your touring plans for after Ozz-Fest?

MURK: I don't know what we are going to do right after Ozz-Fest but I guess that it is like 80% sure that we are going to be on this "Pledge of Allegiance Tour" that is coming up with SLIPKNOT, SYSTEM OF A DOWN, RAMMSTEIN and MUDVAYNE so that would be pretty cool. That is supposed to start on September 15th.

DL: You share a lot of the same audience with DISTURBED, who are also from your hometown of Chicago and I don't know why I would get this impression but it seems like there may be a rivalry between the two of you, true?

MURK: Naw, it is cool with those guys, we hang out with them all the time. They are great guys and a lot of fun and we were friends before we were even signed.

BILLY K: We both come from the same neighborhood.

MURK: Yeah, and we played shows with them, well with my old band, way before they were signed in small bars on the South side of Chicago. All of our friends would go to their shows and their friends would come to our shows so it is all cool.

DL: Between the music you have on this record and what DISTURBED is doing is that kind of indicative of what is happening on the Chicago scene?

MURK: I guess so but I don't know if there are any other bands out there like us. I am not sure.

BILLY K: I have always said and I will stick to my guns on this one, the South side of Chicago is where all the Metal music is coming from. In the North side, there are a few but the North side is definitely where all of the Punk kids come from, URGE OVERKILL, if you remember them, came from there. There are good bands there but there is definitely a difference in the sound. DISTURBED was definitely the first band that got a chance at it from the South side and their success has brought a lot of attention to that scene.

MURK: Yeah. The downtown clubs would never give bands like us a chance. The Metro, they wouldn't give DISTURBED or our band a chance to play there no matter what. We would be packing places on the South side and they still didn't give a shit. They were like, "No, you can't play here because you are from the South side," they totally looked down on us.

BILLY K: "Our crowd doesn't want this type of music." And then we would bring in five or six hundred people to our shows and the bar tabs would be three times what their sold out show would be and they changed, "OK, when are you coming back?"(laughs)

DL: Did you plan on expanding from Chicago or did you hop on the Internet and expose your stuff everywhere at once?

MURK: We started with the Internet and then our first tour was in April with SLAVES ON DOPE and we hit a lot of Southern States and up the East Coast with them. That was kind of a smaller tour with two or three hundred people every night, just building a foundation really. Then the next tour we went out with was FEAR FACTORY which up-scaled everything with shows in rooms with 1200 people every single show. We hit the same areas as before, Texas, Florida and the East Coast, and that increased our fans that much more. And then we went out again with SPINESHANK and hit the Mid-West and the West Coast for the first time ever. All this was going on and we had our street teams going. We are still just trying to tour as much as possible and more and more stations are adding our record every week, about fifty are playing "Chemical" right now. It is a slow build but that is good because it is building our story. Then we have a video coming out, all that and more touring.

BILLY K: There are a lot of new Metal bands out there and it is hard not to be terrified if your band doesn't hit right away but just to have a fair chance to sell a decent amount of records, we are prepared to work it and work it and work it. Everywhere we have played, knock on wood, we haven't had any horror stories of people throwing stuff at us!(laughs)

DL: I have actually seen that happen too!(laughs)

BILLY K: Yeah, that was our fear with the FEAR FACTORY tour, they have hard-core fans and I have seen a couple of FEAR FACTORY shows where they really hate the opening band and get rude with them and that never happened to us, it all went really well.

DL: Have you noticed a particular area outside of Chicago that has kind of adopted you?

MURK: I would say that Texas is pretty good because we toured there three times and Michigan seems to be responding well.

BILLY K: Orlando, Florida, when we played there it felt like our show almost. We were the first band on and the place was going nuts for us. There and Myrtle Beach it was the same type of reaction. Atlanta had a really good reaction. It seems like no matter where we play we can't please every single person but we are seeing a definite increase in people coming out to specifically see us and for not having our record out, it is great. To come back to a club where there might have been fifty or a hundred people and the very next time there is two hundred all going nuts for you, it is very cool. As of right now, we are confident because everything has been going so smooth.

DL: The record itself, was this something that represented a lifetime's worth of work or was it written right in the moment specifically for this release?

MURK: Some of the songs are a little bit older, "Breath" and "Falling" and "Hype" are like three years old and was from material that me and B Larz had. Then some of the songs are brand new and were actually written in the studio, "Shedding" and "Down on Me." Some of the songs were written before NO ONE , we had some riffs and some rough structures going for "Cut" and "Chemical" with a drum machine on a four track machine but then when we had the entire band together we worked things out and finished them. When we went into the studio with Johnny K he helped us out with structuring and tweaking the songs.

DL: What was it that hooked Immortal Records? Was it those early songs?

MURK: I think that it was just like a couple of the songs and just the overall attitude of the band. They saw that we had a single in "Chemical" and I think that they just liked the overall sound. I think that they thought that we would appeal to Metal fans and they just believed in it from the beginning.

BILLY K: That was the most important thing, having someone to believe in you. If a hundred people say no it is only the hundred and first who says yes that really matters. We had a couple of different people talking to us and their track record with our type of music wasn't so good but Immortal has a really good track record with our type of music and we felt confident right from the get-go. To this day anyone in the band can look at each other or in the mirror and say, "No, we didn't make the wrong decision here." We are still very confident that we are going to do very well and they are very much behind us. We would see other bands coming to us and saying , "Why have they (NO ONE) got all these posters out there and people wearing their shirts?" You need that as a new band and if you don't have that it is that much harder to make it because not every band is going to have a big radio hit. A lot of bands go to radio and if it doesn't hit, "Goodbye" but with us we have already established a small fan base and the label is ready to work the record.

DL: I have to tell you I was thrilled to see that there was a band here, of all these bands on Ozz-Fest you were the only ones who broke the rules and brought out the staple guns and postered the telephone poles on the way in and I dig that!

(Everyone laughs)

DL: This isn't very politic to say but most of the bands on this Ozz-Fest had to buy their way on, you had to pay to be here, was the investment worth it?

MURK: It was definitely an incredible opportunity. The money isn't even the issue, it is a little bit of money to get on the tour, but damn, to be on Ozz-Fest and all of the shit that goes with it. There is tons of radio talk about it constantly. There are twenty thousand people at every single show, you are in all of those programs and you get to meet all of these other bands!(laughs)

BILLY K: The exposure is priceless.

MURK: If you only play in front of 2000 people your name is out there more than it would be. Everyone has got one of those program things so that is all priceless. We are on the Ozz-Fest t-shirts, Ozz-Fest.Com. . .

BILLY K: The Ozz-Fest sampler. . .

MURK: So many people will buy the record just because you are on the Ozz-Fest so it is well worth it.

DL: Is there any band that you can say that you have gone out consistently to see?

BILLY K: I watch every band. I am up at like 8:00 every morning and I walk three laps around the entire place everyday and I stake the place out and then from the time that the first band plays until the time that we are supposed to go on I make it a point to watch. Whoever is playing after us I don't get to see because I like to unwind after the set but I watch all the other bands to see what they are doing and to see the reaction to what they are doing. I think, "Our reaction was good but was it good for every band?" I am a fan of every band that is on this tour. My hat is off to every band that is here because we are all doing the same thing and have the same goals though some are a bit more successful than others on that big stage over there, right now.(laughs)

DL: With that said could you see yourself still playing in thirty years like BLACK SABBATH is tonight?

BILLY K: If my liver is still alive, yeah!(laughs and takes another swig of vodka before passing the bottle around the group's Winnebago)

MURK: Yeah but maybe we will be on with another drummer by then!(everyone laughs)