.jpg)
Every Time I Die
- Story by Andrew Park
- Photo by Gordon Ball
Buffalo's brightest hope for extreme music is an accredited high school teacher, a former draftsman, a college dropout, a drummer named Ratboy, and whatever bassist happens to be in the band at the moment. Meet Every Time I Die.
Porn and ex-Philadelphia ‘76ers-owner-turned-motivational-speaker Pat Croce: the former moans and groans from three glowing PowerBooks, the latter serves up betterment bullshit on a big screen TV. Not exactly how Decibel typically begins an afternoon, but hey, we’re in the presence of Every Time I Die—the court jesters of whatever-core, known for turning interviews into standup routines.
“I’m so obsessed with Latinas right now,” explains guitarist Andy Williams, his eyes following the clouded frames of a QuickTime clip.
“I’ll send you a link to a good site for that,” says vocalist Keith Buckley, as he leans back into a decaying couch and hits send.
This goes on for quite some time—the forwarding and the “fuck me harder”’s. We’d interject with a question about fashion-core just to piss them off if the following weren’t true: since deciding they wanted to turn their hardcore hobby into a career a few years back, ETID haven’t allowed themselves any time off. In fact, the few months they spent writing and recording their new album Gutter Phenomenon at the start of 2005 was their only “vacation” since turning in their last record, Hot Damn! “It’s the only way to do it,” says Williams. So we say, let them enjoy their Pat Croce and wailing Latinas for a minute.
“I used to watch this every morning,” says Buckley, who appears genuinely interested in Croce’s self-help routine. Sure enough, Buckley remembers this particular episode—how this guy forgot how to be a family man, how Croce is going to fix everything. No wonder the group’s unofficial grownup was teaching a high school English class in 2003, the final phase in his master’s program through SUNY-Buffalo. “I look back and think, ‘How the fuck was I in charge of four classes of 30 kids who are 15 and 16 years old?’” says Buckley. “How did they not rage and rebel like a prison riot?’”
As for the rest of them, well, Williams is walking around with an acoustic and playing, chord for chord, the Jerry Springer theme.
“That isn’t it, is it?” asks ex-Nora bassist Chris Byrnes, who just joined the band after the sudden booting of ETID’s fourth bassist, Kevin Falk (the former Between the Buried and Me member lasted but three months, partly because he didn’t quite get ETID’s initiation process of placing shit in his jacket pocket). Williams winks and gives a dramatic “yeah it is” nod. “That’s pretty nu metal sounding,” says Barnes, duly impressed.
We’re impressed as well, but our day of examining ETID in their natural Buffalo, NY, habitat must begin. (We’re in Buckley’s mansion of an apartment, which he shares with several people and a nice set of stained glass windows). A suggested start is the Anchor Bar, the birthplace of the Buffalo wing—where Labatt Blue flows freely and gaudy glazed chicken wing hats can be purchased for a price. Once all laptops have been closed, we head into Decibel’s dented silver Cavalier with Buckley and ask him what he really thinks about Buffalo.
“I hate this city,” Buckley says bluntly, echoing the opening lines of ETID’s Last Night in Town LP. “Bars are half-full and have a criminal lineup of homeless people against the patio wall. There’s that, and there’s people from high school who are pregnant, drunk and smoking. It’s pretty gross.”
“What if?” questions are a crucial point of contention for ETID. Like the two that Williams introduces to liven up the dialogue of our lunch, which has devolved into a business meeting about picking the van driver for the Sounds of the Underground tour.
Question One: “What if you had to choose between punching your mom in the face and giving a blowjob in front of your dad for a million dollars?”
“Can you tell her why you hit her?” asks Byrnes.
“Nope,” says Williams, flatly. “I’d give the blowjob, personally. My dad would understand.”
After some deliberation, the rest of the mama’s boys concur. And with that comes Question Two: “What if you had to eat a piece of shit for $500 and had to choose four toppings to put on it?”
Now there’s some suitable, pre-chicken-flesh-and-special-sauce fodder. In the interest of irony, melted chocolate bars come to mind. But before we can share this definitive answer, Williams reveals he only needs one topping.
“That’s easy,” explains the jolly guitarist, clapping his hands. “Nacho cheese—cheese makes everything taste better.”
With that, our appetites are rekindled by tubs of bleu cheese and two overflowing plates of Buffalo and barbecue wings. Left to mull over the previous two questions, the air is silent except for the sound of chicken meat and Buffalo sauce sucked down as if it were the route to immortality.
The bitch slap or blowjob question hangs heavily in the air when we return to Buckley’s house and Jordan, his brother and Williams’ riff sparring partner, arrives. Nursing a hangover, he’s late and carrying a tightly wrapped burrito.
“I started a ‘pubes are in’ chant last night when a girl was peeing outside,” says the younger Buckley, as he tears into his tortilla. “I’m going to get my pubes dyed.”
Often the provider of punch lines, he’s a welcome addition to our meeting. Before he can properly enjoy his burrito and a mini-can of Pizza Pringles, though, Williams pops the “What if?” predicament.
“I’d kill myself,” says Buckley, wiping cheddar cheese confetti from his lips.
“Suicide is not an option,” retorts Williams, as though expecting that response.
“Suicide is always an option.”
Sensing this is going nowhere, Williams smiles and retreats to a spot in front of the TV. As he pops in a Playstation 2 Ultimate Fighting Championship game, Byrnes sits next to him and the two spend the next half hour trading blows onscreen. The leisure time doesn’t last too long, though. We’re out of the house and off in the band van before you know it, on the way to a local car dealership to trade in ETID’s equipment trailer for a newer model. We’ll catch up with him a week later, but the Buckley brother named Keith kindly says, “Thank you for the interview” as he walks off to his girlfriend’s car for an overnight trip to Cedar Point.
As for the rest of us, we spend an hour waiting inside the van while someone with way too much hair gel looks over the trailer and appraises its worth at about $600. Buckley’s response: “Here’s my credit card and shit.” It’s too late to trade the thing in today, so ETID heads inside to fill out the necessary paperwork and gawk at a tan woman in her late 30s who’s wearing a ridiculous neon shirt.
“She definitely fucks,” says Williams, as a woman sitting across from us in runny stockings stares horrified. It’s 3 o’clock, but everyone’s still tired, so Byrnes and Williams head straight for the hot plates. Unfortunately, the free coffee is decaffeinated, so Byrnes drops a hot chocolate packet in some semi-boiling water and dips a Butterfinger wafer bar into it. Soon enough, everyone else is following suit, while leafing through issues of The New Yorker and Rolling Stone. In case you’re wondering, drummer Michael Novak Jr., better known as Ratboy, has been with us the whole time but you wouldn’t know it since he’s quieter than a mouse.
Once the deal is sealed, we return to the van and Buckley discusses, of all things, a recent Revolver feature on Avenged Sevenfold. The band spent the story bragging about its coke intake and revolving door of full-service groupies. This annoys Buckley, apparently.
“My favorite after-party was when I drank funnels with my aunt and uncle and we tried tipping over a car,” he explains. “That’s our idea of a good time—starting things on fire. We’d prefer [if] girls weren’t there.”
Williams collapses on the floor in front of us and continues: “We’re into explosions. The first time I saw coke was on tour two years ago, and it was the weirdest thing to me: two crusty punks doing lines and shooting up.”
To further reinforce ETID’s surprising preference of blow-shit-up debauchery over defiling women, Williams describes their stint on Ozzfest, which was spent hosting cookouts and classic metal listening parties.
“The night I hosted a Pantera party, some girl wanted to hang out with me, but I was too busy playing air guitar,” explains Williams. “And she left. Fucking priorities, dude. That was one of the greatest nights of my life, until the Metallica party—when we played the first four Metallica albums and Mike Schank from American Movie was there. I could have died after that night. Seriously: there could have been three hot chicks around me that night and Metallica would have reigned over everything.”
At this point, we’re about to pass out from a lack of coffee, so a unanimous decision is made to drive over to Buffalo’s most popular chain, the Spot, and finally start talking about ETID’s eagerly-anticipated new album and how far they’ve come since the Dillinger Escape Plan train-wreck Burial Plot Bidding War.
“If you start taking yourself too seriously, you don’t realize how stupid you look,” explains Buckley.
“Like Avenged Sevenfold, a perfect example,” adds Williams, slamming his cup down for emphasis. “For real, though. Every time you open a magazine, someone is doing the metal horns or a smug face. Fuck that. That’s for bitches. All of those bands are pussies. Basically, it’s this, man: if you come to one of our shows, you’ll leave with a smile.”
As popular as ETID have become in the two years since Hot Damn!, some scenesters have actually snickered at the band, labeling them a “fashion-core” band concerned solely with faux-hawks (Buckley still has one, complete with an ugly MC Hammer fade, by the way) and the next line of Diesel Jeans—despite the fact that Williams and Buckley are one of the most mind-boggling guitarist pairings in modern metal.
“I’m wearing a Mike Tyson T-shirt right now and my hair is missing,” says Williams, who honestly does not look fashionable at all. “I look like I’m 48 years old. I’m actually 27. How is that fashionable? Hey, look older! That’s cool!”
“And I have zippers on my jeans [pockets],” adds Buckley. “People aren’t creative, so we have things like fashion-core, metalcore and screamo. This new record is going to be a problem for people to review because it’s so original. That was my mission, for us to create our own genre.”
Buckley’s mission turned especially serious in 2003 when he dropped out of college for good, Williams quit a $17-an-hour drafting job, and brother Buckley stopped teaching. Though the title alludes to another fate, ETID won’t be on the streets anytime soon. Gutter Phenomenon is a fine record—not only ETID’s best, but a contender for record of the year in the category of popcorn metal. Buckley’s vocals have gone from muddled to multi-faceted—he’s capable of aping ex-Refused vocalist Dennis Lyxzén, refining unforced melodies and screaming better than any former Shakespeare instructor we’ve ever heard. And though Daryl Palumbo (ex-Glassjaw) guests on “Champing at the Bit,” Buckley doesn’t sound like him anymore.
Turns out he’s been taking classes with Melissa Cross, creator of The Zen of Screaming DVD. In the past, she’s worked with God Forbid, Lamb of God and many other Ozzfest second-stagers. Cross essentially taught Buckley how to control his breathing, so his vocal chords wouldn’t constantly collapse. And in doing so, he was able to really stretch his range, right along with the hook-producing, head-twisting guitars, which might as well be credited as co-vocalists.
“We’re not trying to reinvent the wheel,” explains Buckley. “We’re just trying to do our thing, which might reinvent the wheel. Hopefully, when someone asks ‘what does it sound like?’ they’ll say, ‘I don’t fucking know, man, but it kicks ass.’”
Everyone’s about done with their caffeinated beverages, but before we turn the tape off, Buckley has one more “What if?” question to offer …
BUCKLEY: Here’s a question our old roadie used to ask: If aliens landed—not CGI aliens, but real aliens—do you go to work the next day?
WILLIAMS: If you had to go to a factory and weren’t an interview dude.
DECIBEL: No one would go to work.
BUCKLEY: Right. Because the whole world would be different. That’s going to happen with this record.
DECIBEL: Everyone’s going to quit their jobs and listen to it?
BUCKLEY: Yeah, or the complete opposite. If people don’t like it, I’m going to be like, “I belong on another planet, where kicking ass is more acceptable.”
Keith Buckley is beaming when Decibel hooks up with him a week after his Cedar Point trip. Though ETID leaves for the Sounds of the Underground tour tomorrow, he’s happy that his school sweetheart is nearby and that the band got a bus as of yesterday. So all that trailer business last week? Eh, a waste of time.
“We found a driver, hired him and fired him,” says Buckley, who just ended a 5-year relationship and returned to his old girlfriend. “I am happier than I have been in a long time. I finally realized I’m 25-years-old and have to start thinking about being responsible. I can’t just be a goofball that goes on tour and gets drunk every night.”
Huh? Seriousness in ETID, the band with girl-on-girl-action artwork and a drummer named Ratboy? He could be saying this simply because she’s nearby, but we doubt it. Since Buckley stopped teaching and took on ETID full-time, he’s become obsessed with challenging himself and developing as a vocalist. Thing is, he never planned on doing this. But something has changed in him since completing Gutter Phenomenon. Part of it is from working with Cross, and part of it is from ETID’s songwriting method, which keeps Buckley out of the booth at all times. According to the band, he’s never asked for changes in a song to complement his vocals. The unwritten rule is he isn’t allowed to. Or as Williams says, “He’s just the singer.”
“If I had a vocal pattern I got stuck into and wanted them to work around it, it’d become repetitive,” explains Buckley. “Having too much freedom is inhibiting.”
Despite having no part in the songwriting process, he’s still pleased with the final product.
“It’s not even a departure,” admits Buckley. “The tech parts are still there; the brutal mosh breakdowns are still there. The focus of the record was to give a voice to the guitars. Like with Led Zeppelin or even Queens of the Stone Age, you know them by the guitar parts. I’m extremely proud of what Andy and Jordan did. They established themselves as musicians on this record.”
Let’s end not with a “What if?” but our own equally clichéd yet compelling question: “What was your most surreal moment of the past few years?” His response: receiving random text messages from Slipknot vocalist Corey Taylor. “I know people say Slipknot is nu metal, but they fucking slay. So hearing from him all the time is quite surreal.”
Surreal and unbelievable, considering Buffalo’s musical legacy consists almost solely of the Goo Goo Dolls, Ani DiFranco, and, um, Vincent Gallo. “The multitude of bands in Buffalo that have sprung up and died immediately is hysterical,” explains Buckley. “Buffalo is not that stifling to overcome, though, because there isn’t much blocking you from leaving. It’s not like New York, where everyone’s a model, actor or musician. In Buffalo, everyone’s an alcoholic or a Buffalo Bills fan.”
