iwrestledabearonce
by Max Griffin
On November 5th iwrestledabearonce played at the Summit Music Hall with Of Mice & Men and I See Stars. The band has a unique Metal-core sound that they describe as “ADD Metal,” and perhaps most unique of all, a female vocalist who can not only sing, but also brings Death Metal screams to the stage. The vocalist, Kyrista, is one of the best-known girl-screamers in the entire Metal scene. The band refers to themselves as “Electro-Tech-Grind-Jazz-Techno-Metal.” Undoubtedly, their sound is like nothing heard before. I got an opportunity to sit down with their guitarist, Steven Bradley, and talk to him about the band’s inspiration, awful jobs, and doing whatever the hell you want.
CMB: For those who have never heard of your band, please introduce yourself and explain your music.
SB: I am Steven. I play the git-fiddle in iwrestledabearonce and we sound like … everything? ADD Metal.
CMB: Kyrista does your screams: Do you find it harder to be taken seriously as a band with a female vocalist in a Metal genre?
SB: We definitely used to, but nowadays I think not at all. Doing like DIY tour years ago we would roll up to some venue and people would be like, ‘What is this band? Good Lord.’ And then we’d play and they would be like, ‘Okay, never mind. All right, she’s got more balls than me.’ We’ve never had a problem with it. Not that we’re the best band of all time, but clearly if Kyrista is up there screaming people are , ‘Holy shit, okay that’s real. That’s a thing that’s happening and that’s scary.’ So it’s never really been an issue once people see us. When we were first starting out everyone thought it was just bullshit and there’s no way we had a girl do that live, but now we’ve been on tour for like four years and everyone’s gotten used to it.
CMB: Where does the inspiration for your songs come from?
SB: I don’t know. We’re not really trying. We’re just doing whatever the hell we want. Drinking and horror movies. What you can see in the van right now is like seven bottles of liquor. So that’s good, that’s inspirational. We’re just really not even going out of our way to be weird. We’re just going out of our way to not be limited to anything. We do whatever the hell we want. We’ll be like, ‘Hey we should put a surf part right here,’ and most bands will joke about that but then we’re like, ‘Okay, let’s actually do it!’ Or we’ll say, ‘Let’s put a car horn right here and then the crazy heavy shit.’ We do whatever seems like a good idea at the time, we never force anything.
CMB: What is your craziest tour story?
SB: I don’t even know. We’ve seen people die. We’ve seen animals die. We’ve seen people be spit on by animals. We’ve seen animals be spit on by people. Last night, the show turned into a gay bar afterwards. Like, a super-gay dance party. The show wasn’t bad, it was pretty packed at a pretty big venue and then within 15 minutes of the show being over everyone was like, ‘Get all this gear out!’ It’s snowing, so it’s the biggest mess of all time and we’re getting all the shit out in the show. None of the bands are from areas with snow so we’re all freezing. We have like 15 minutes to get all of our stuff out of the venue. Then, like five minutes later, they re-opened the doors and it turned into this dance party. So we of course go back after everything is packed up and there are cages with tranny go-go dancers and all kinds of awesome stuff. There are people on the stage that we just played on now with elaborate dance lights just raging. So me and some of the Of Mice & Men guys we’re in go-go cages humping each other at a big gay dance party. So that was pretty exciting while doing shots of tequila.
CMB: If you could do a tour with any musicians, dead or alive, who would you tour with?
SB: Us, Nirvana, Refused, Slipknot, and Deftones. I think that covers all of it.
CMB: What’s the most interesting comment you’ve ever gotten from a fan?
SB: People tell us the weirdest shit. I guess it’s because we’re polarized or whatever so some people just don’t get it and hate us. My favorite is every time people are trying to say they like us but are clearly … weird? They’re like, ‘Man, I know everybody says you guys are like faggots and they hate you and you’re so goddamn terrible but I think you’re pretty cool.’ I mean, Jesus, all right, thanks, but preface that with like 10 negative things. It happens fairly regularly.
CMB: You guys began as a band in 2007, how do you think your music has evolved since then?
SB: It’s gotten good-er-er. It makes more sense now I think. It used to be us trying to figure out how to do a million things at once. I think we’ve gotten slightly better at organizing it. The songs are more cohesive. That’s a real answer right there. That was like a serious interview question.
CMB: What would you consider your greatest accomplishment thus far in life?
SB: I don’t know. I don’t have a real job anymore. I’ve had a million shitty real jobs, now I just get to be on tour and when I’m not on tour, which is very rare, I get to hang out at the house and enjoy life. Then we go on tour and go to Japan, Russia, all of Europe multiple times. We get to visit a million places I never thought I’d go and play shows. It’s pretty sweet.
CMB: What’s the worst job you had before becoming a musician?
SB: I worked at this CD store in the mall, and in the mall there were only two open stores. Like everything else was closed. There was us and a Burlington Coat Factory. Then a church bought the mall and built a church in half of the mall. Stained glass windows and the works. We literally would probably do like 20 dollars of business a day and we stayed there for like three months before we got shut down. It was boring, yet when it wasn’t boring we were lighting the store on fire and raging. Actually I guess that’s not too shitty of a job after all. College was a pretty shitty job. Best Buy on holidays, or Best Buy on Black Friday. Those sales the day after Thanksgiving or whatever where people are psychopaths and they really want that digital camera for 89 dollars instead of 94 dollars because it’s really significant to the point were they should wait in line for like 10 hours to get this deal. Then they yell at you when there’s not any left or they’re too stupid to find it. That’s no fun.
CMB: What do you think has had the biggest role in shaping you as a person or a musician?
SB: Being raised to do whatever the hell I want and not be worried about doing a certain style of music or a certain style of anything. Just being like, ‘Yeah, you wanna do that? Why not, be a weirdo. See what happens.’ I’ve always had the mentality that I’d rather do whatever the hell I want and be original at stuff and fail miserably than do what’s normal and succeed at it. The fact that we in my eyes are very successful is just insane. Not a bad rep we’ve got going.
CMB: What is one little-known fact about your band?
SB: I think a lot of people think our band has only been around like a year or something or that we’ve put out one CD. Nope, we’ve got three. We’ve been on tour for like four or five years. I think that to me is the most surprising fact. Well, that and people think we have a girl that sings and a dude that screams. People that haven’t like seen videos or seen us live, they’ve just like heard it on XM radio or something like that. That is I guess our most little-known fact.
Category: Planet Buzz
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