Traveling on tour with Intronuat and Entheos for a solid month, Moon Tooth recently wrapped up the trek at Santa Ana's Constellation Room with a bang. As they gave it their all on the set closer "Offered Blood," their tourmates stormed the stage in a gorilla suit protesting the murder of the virally beloved primate, Harambe (RIP). The Long Island based group proudly finished their performance with some amp climbing and a stumbley stage dive like true gentleman before we followed them backstage.
Covered in sweat and all that is holy, we spoke to vocalist John Carbone and guitarist Nick Lee about the tour, the recent Chromaparagon album, and the nitty gritty of being weirdo musicians amongst the metal community. You can view both Moon Tooth members' answers in our interview below.
Just wanted to start off by asking are you okay? It looks like you had a pretty hard tumble off the stage during your performance.
John Carbone (vocals): Oh, it’s all part of the act. I’ve been having fun with that this whole tour. There was this one time where I landed right in between this guy’s legs. We also had this one night where this guy started doing CPR on me. And it was crazy tonight, there was Justin [Chancellor] from Tool in the audience and I had a little bit of a shit-your-pants moment.
You’ve been touring with Intronaut and Entheos for a month now. What’s your current relationship with these bands?
Nick Lee (guitar): We’ve been listening to Intronaut even before we started this band, so we were really excited to tour with them. And Vin [Romanelli], our bass player turned me on to Entheos. We knew Navene [Koperweis] and Evan [Brewer] from their past bands. So, we were really nervous and excited, but they took us in right away and we’ve been able watch the highest caliber of musicians every night. Now I'm a lifelong fan of both bands.
John: We showed up the first day of the tour just zonked out of our brains because we drove fifteen hours through the night. We were meeting these people for the first time all nervous. It felt like the first day of camp.
Being the opening act on this package, what are some lessons you’ve learned from the two other bands you’re with?
Nick: I had a conversation with Joe [Lester] from Intronaut and he basically spoke about how you never want to show a mistake on stage. Even if you fuck something up, don’t show it. If shit is not going our way, you just have to put that frustration into the show in a good way and go a little crazier.
Jon: These guys have been doing touring and the whole music aspect for so long, so it’s been cool to pick their brains about the background stuff like maintaining sanity and how to afford all this.
I have to admit, I have some difficulty describing your unconventional sound to other people. It's like half progressive metal and half alternative rock with a lot of Mastodon and Dillinger Escape Plan comparisons. Do you have a genre, style, or name for the music you make?
Nick: We always say “aggressive progressive” as a quick way to pin it. We’re not trying to be prog, sludge, doom, or alternative metal. We’re just trying to put on a good old school crazy rock show because I think there’s a lack of that overall right now. That’s where the Dillinger comparisons might come from though. Not that we come close to what they do, but we just try to be entertaining to watch as well as listen to.
I'm not sure if it's the time signatures you use or your unique vocal delivery, but there certainly is a weird factor to your music. Where do you think this weird factor comes from whether it be specific band members or particular influences?
Nick: We all come from different places musically. Of course, we agree on certain bands, but we have our own influences as well. That’s why our genre is hard to pin down. It’s not like we all just listen to Slayer. Jon loves a lot soul and blues music, so we let him express himself in that style on vocals.
Do you think the current metal community needs more ‘weird’ in it?
Nick: I think so. I’m not trying to throw shade at anyone in particular, but there is a lot of cookie cutter stuff. All my favorite bands are ones who aren’t afraid to let their weird come out. Anyone from Buzz from the Melvins or Tom Waits. Those people are not afraid to do whatever they want. The weirdness is really just the freedom to do whatever you want without being worried how someone will perceive it.
Jon: I think it’s also a question of honesty and being genuine to yourself. And that applies to any creative endeavor. Art calls for honesty. All the good shit that people remember, it doesn’t come from an artist just trying to do something. It comes from an artist who truly has to do what their doing because their art just has to come out of them. We try to have our music be as real as it can be.
Speaking of weird, the new album Chromaparagon is quite an interesting word that I’ve never heard before. From Moon Tooth language to English, what does the title mean?
Nick: ‘Chroma’ is the purest form of a color. And ‘paragon’ is the truest example of something. So, what it is supposed to represent is us showing our true colors and in a way that is direct and not watered down. We also think our music is pretty colorful.
And even further, you have a lot of peculiar song titles in the LP such as "Queen Wolf," "Forgive Me Snake Ryder," or "Belt Squeezer." Any specific significance behind the eccentric lyrical content or odd titles?
Jon: All of them come from a different place. There’s a good mixture of fiction in there, but all the fiction ties into real concepts that we all think about or deal with. Initially, we didn’t set out to make a concept record, but there are strong themes that are prevalent throughout the whole album.
As a whole, do you think your band or this album has a message?
Jon: Honestly, it comes down to being yourself unabashedly and unapologetically even if it’s considered weird or different. On a large scale, the world we live in doesn’t always greet that with open arms. A lot of times if someone is showing their freak flag, walls go up around them. So, we’re just saying you should hop over the walls. Hopefully our music and performances can encourage people to be themselves and don’t hold back.
What direction do you foresee the future of Moon Tooth’s music going? Weirder? More melodic? Heavier?
Nick: Oh, all of it. We have some songs together now that are like what we have done, but better. When we did our EP, we were just starting to understand our style. With Chromaparagon, our ideas were beginning to melt together. And now with the new stuff, it is much easier and more organic. We’ve played hundreds of shows, so we can answer each other’s sentences musically a lot easier than we could two years ago. It’s coming out a lot more naturally, but it is weird and more dynamic. We have songs that are all clean guitar, songs that sound like Motorhead, and there’s one that’s the poppiest song we’ve ever written.
Jon: The ripples that were made from our first EP are now expanding. The hooks are hookier and the weird parts are weirder. And I’m lucky to still get excited when I hear demos from other members.
