I interviewed Kevin Martin of Candlebox for The Akiva Abstract and thought this would be a good fit here.
We talked about Candlebox’s self-titled debut going 4x Platinum, “Far Behind,” the Seattle rock era, fame, touring, and what it feels like to have songs from the ’90s still following people decades later.
I recently interviewed Justin Pearson from The Locust / Three One G, and one of the best parts of the conversation was about how The Locust existed inside hardcore but never really behaved like a normal hardcore band.
We got into the visual side of the band, why they looked the way they did, weirdness, presentation, gender norms, and how much of that was intentional versus just them rejecting whatever people expected hardcore to be.
Thought people here might appreciate it, especially if The Locust / Three One G / that whole San Diego weird hardcore world was part of your entry point.
I thought this would be interesting here: I did a written Q&A with Stephen Norrington, director of Blade about the film’s place before the modern superhero boom.
He talks about Wesley Snipes, David Goyer, Mike DeLuca, Deacon Frost, the Blood Rave, the costume, the music, and how a lot of what now feels like a fully coherent world may have come together more instinctively than intentionally.
This is the film that kicked off the modern superhero film industry, and I found it incredibly insightful. One line that stuck with me: he describes the movie’s coherence as possibly being an “accidental symphony.”
I interviewed Uwe Boll and thought this would fit here because, love him or hate him, he’s become one of the stranger cult figures of 2000s cinema.
His movies sit in that weird space between video game adaptation, genre chaos, internet infamy, and outsider filmmaking. In this clip, he talks about his reputation and the backlash that followed him through that era.
Still Remains were one of those bands from the 2000s metalcore era that helped define it. Mt first show seeing them was at the Masquerade in ATL with It Dies Today, Shadows Fall, Poison the Well etc. Just an incredible time for the scene.
I interviewed T.J. Miller recently and we talked about the band coming back, the new EP Spirit Breaker, Strhess Tour, and what that whole era of metalcore was actually like (especially for those who didn't come up with Myspace)
Strata always occupied one of the most interesting lanes in 2000s heavy music.
They weren’t straight-up nu metal, but they were absolutely part of that larger alt-metal / post-hardcore / emo / soundtrack-era world where heavy bands could cross into movies, video games, wrestling culture, and mainstream rock without losing their edge.
Their music had that cinematic early-2000s feel (think post-credits of all your fav action films) melodic, dark, emotional, heavy, and built for the exact era where bands lived between scenes instead of fitting neatly into one genre.
I recently interviewed Eric Victorino of Strata, and it really reinforced how much that band deserves to be talked about in the same broader conversation as the nu-metal-adjacent and alternative metal acts from that period.
Full interview here: Eric Victorino of Strata