Getting Heavy With The Body And Full Of Hell
For a pair of fucked up bands, who collaborated on a super fucked up records, The Body and Full of Hell‘s respective frontmen, Chip and Dylan are surprisingly chill dudes. In an interview that was lighthearted and nowhere near as bleak as I think anyone could have anticipated we picked apart the groups collaboration and found out that there is still more to come!
How the hell are guys?
Dylan (D): Good! Tired!
Chip (C): Really good!
How was it figuring out how you were going to do this material live?
C: Pretty straightforward. We were just trying to remember things we did a few months ago!
D: We didn’t write it before recording it, we wrote it while recording it so it was nice to have that document to look back and see how it went. The rest of Full Of Hell were running over shit before we went out to Portland and that helped too.
Why did you want to do this?
D: Because The Body rule!
C: It’s awesome!
Do you want to do it with the other artists you’ve collaborated with?
C: We did a Krieg performance and that was cool. It’s pretty easy to do once you rehearse a little bit.
What attracted you guys to each other to begin with?
D: I’ve always loved The Body and they seemed like nice guys and when I hit Lee up I think they though we seemed like nice guys. It was pretty simple.
C: You guys were all so cute!
D: It was literally a text message that said “Hey Lee, My name is Dylan and I’m in a band called Full Of Hell, I got your number from Fred”
C: Then we did a tour together and decided to do it!
That’s pretty rad. Is this going to expand?
D: Yeah, we are recording another collab on Sunday in Nantucket. We will do some different stuff.
C: It might be more jazzy and softshoe!
D: I thought the first one was pretty accessible but when I started reading what people said about how harsh and crazy it was I wasn’t surprised but I thought it was amusing. I thought it was pretty palatable. This time we will go apeshit.
C: I thought it was abrasive but that’s what we wanted. But people said, “This is insane!”
D: It felt dialed in!
C: It felt kind of chill!
D: This time we will go as hard as we can.
I will admit I did anticipate pure chaos on that record…
D: We wanted it to be dialed in though.
C: We wanted it to be a good representation of something. Now we ust want to make it nasty, that’s my MO for everything now.
What was your inspiration to use Full Of Hell’s guitarist Spencer as the cover for “One day you will ache like I ache”?
C: It’s not him. It’s a woodcut from the 1800s.
D: It’s a crying woman. I don’t know who started that rumor but it was not the intention at all.
C: It does look like Spencer!
D: It’s not him though. I just thought it was funny, it doesn’t matter.
Because you are writing as you are recording I’m supposing that doesn’t impact the new The Body or Full Of Hell records right?
D: That’s what’s nice about it, your tank isn’t really tapped.
C: When we go to record alone it’s always like “God damn, this is going to make or break me as a human” but when I go with these guys I’m just fucking around and try to make them look bad.
If you are planning on putting out another record together why not just go whole hog and start a new band?
C: Because then that wouldn’t be a collaboration, that would be a new band!
D: We like our bands, we like to just chill with each other in separate bands.
C: I don’t have the energy to be in two bands. Plus when we do collaborations with anybody else there would be like ten people instead of six. That’s just too many cooks in the kitchen.
Do you feel like you have too many cooks with six?
C: No – it’s just like two kitchens we just join them up.
D: The Body is only two people anyway so for us it’s just like having auxiliary members.
C: And we get them to do all the hard work! We just get to chill and jam overtop. I get to treat Dylan like a bad nephew for four days in a row and that’s a pleasure to me. I tell him to go buy me sodas and stuff then I record vocals over his vocals.
Are you a drunkle or like a cool hip uncle?
C: I would be an alright uncle except he doesn’t drink so I can’t corrupt him like I should. I try to get him to take drinks of Uncle Chippy’s beer.
D: It tastes bad Uncle Chip!
Is there ever a tension because Dylan doesn’t drink?
D: Never. They are the most fun people to hang out with and make music with. I don’t care about anybody else, it’s awesome.
What about Merzbow?
D: That was a different beast. He’s from a different side of the planet and a different culture and doesn’t speak much English. We didn’t hang out with him for six weeks before making a record with him. This is just different. This is like when The Body did a record with the Haxencloak guy.
C: We did some skyping but that was it.
We’ve seen a lot of collaborations in heavy music lately – why do you think that is?
C: It’s fucking fun! We have people where we like what they do and its cool to see how they do what they do. It’s usually based on ideas and not other stuff. We get to be a little looser.
D: Yeah, when we are in the studio its militant style. For The Body the music has such a grand vision but at its core its so simplistic that when they collaborate with people it’s amazing. There is no limit to what I can see them doing with other musicians. It’s exciting. Imagine your best friends in another band don’t have to be in another band. You can create something with them, it’s really fun. The Body involves their friends in all of their records, it’s like JR from Wrekmeister, it’s awesome!
C: We worked with them! One of the first time we met them they asked us to play a show with them in Kansas City. The idea was that we would start off with them, then they would do their own thing then we would come back and play together for a bit then do some of their stuff. It was cool because he has played with us for a few shows, I think it was on the last tour he guested on a few of our songs, there was him and a couple of other people and it was fucking awesome, really fun. It was a lot of weirdness!
What do you love so much about music?
C: I don’t really like music.
D: I love music. I like a lot of kinds of music, I don’t know why it’s my preferred medium of art.
C: I like music because there’s a lot that is considered music.
D: I don’t know how to answer that question. I don’t know why that’s my preferred form of art that I like to consume.
C: It gives you a headspace that is different from your everyday life. For three minutes you can forget that the world is torment.
D: I don’t know where my origin point for my love of music was. It’s fun to perform, I don’t enjoy painting very much!
