https://www.high-endrolex.com/18

Megasus Interview: Harnessing the Wild Power

We live in an age where beasts and wizards and magic and metal have all come together into one steaming chaosserole. In the last decade, acts like High on Fire and Mastodon made it big on tales of giants and wildebeests, and now we can see bands from throughout the world taking on and defeating such monsters. The Providence, Rhode Island four-piece, Megasus, on their self-titled debut, gather their brave kinsmen and ride into epic metal glory, with just a hint of tongue-in-cheek good times (okay, more than a hint). What’s most important, though, is they’re heavy.

Comprised of vocalist Jason Kendall, guitarist Ryan Lesser, drummer Brian Gibson and bassist Paul Lyons, Megasus has already seen international acclaim thanks to exposure via the Guitar Hero series of videogames. Since all four members of the band work at Harmonix, the company responsible for Guitar Hero and its sundry spinoffs, it’s no big surprise that Megasus would be included, but the response their songs — over 30,000 downloads and countless videos of people trying to keep up with them on YouTube — speaks for itself, as does the fact that after catching wind of the independently released vinyl version of Megasus, respected underground label 20 Buck Spin picked up the band for the CD release.

It’s good news for Megasus, who’ve found the virtual enthusiasm shown for the band translates to the real world as well (or as real as this world is, anyway) and who continue to spread the word of swords and sorcery across the barren metalscape. Kendall and Lesser recently checked in to inform on the band’s origins, processes and proclivities for the riff. Thanks to them for taking the time and to you for reading. Interview’s after the jump.

Tell me how Megasus got together. Who came up with the name? You’ve all been in bands before. Did you just meet through working at Harmonix, or was it through the Providence scene in general?

Jason Kendall: We’ve all known each other for a long time, we were all in different bands in the Providence scene that would play with each other now and again, but more than that we’ve all been friends forever. Paul used to work at a comic store in Providence right next to the record store I used to work at so we would constantly be loaning metal CDs/records and comics to each other at work. Ryan and I have known each other for a long time (he actually married my wife and I; performed the ceremony), Brian has been around the scene for a long time too.

Ryan Lesser: After I stopped playing in my last band, I got together with different friends to screw around. Jason let me use his band’s practice space and I would show up with random dudes and dudettes. Brian and I played one night (switching drums and guitar) and had a lot of fun. Around the same time I would go to the comic shop and talk Manowar with Paul and try to get him to play too. Eventually, all of the Megasi were in place.

JK: Ah, yeah. I totally forgot about that practice space! For sure. Megasus was born there in the bowels of an old mill building in RI. As for the name Megasus, Ryan came up with it. I think he had it stored in his brain to put to use when the right band came along.

RL: Heh heh… Nah, I made Megasus up just for us. I still have the email thread that went around. Megasus was in the first mail I sent trying to get some names going. The mail was called “Mythos Magic.” Good album title no? Someday maybe we can post that thread… but not today. Too many other good names in there for all of our solo projects! Most of the good ones came from Paul, he was on fire.

I’ve seen clips of people playing your songs in Rock Band. Has being in these games helped spread the word about the band? That is, have you seen the result in your fanbase increasing?

JK: For sure. We haven’t taken Megasus out on the road yet and really without touring it’s hard to get your name around. Rock Band has totally gotten the word out, we get emails from all over the world and have sold over 30,000 downloads of our playable song in Rock Band. That may not seem like a lot but we’re psyched to be able to reach that many people without touring yet.

The Guitar Hero franchise has become a cultural phenomenon over the course of this decade. How long have you guys been involved with the company, and has being around music in such a central way in your professional lives played into Megasus at all?

JK: Six-plus years at Harmonix. For sure it affects us but we’ve all been involved and been around music since before we worked at Harmonix. I used to make my living off touring in a band, record sales and working in a record store when in between tours. I’m lucky I landed at a job where I’m still involved in music.

RL: I have been at Harmonix for almost 11 years now. The music influence goes both ways, but I think that my work at Harmonix is more influenced by my personal musical experiences than vice versa.

Talk about writing the songs for the album. They seem to hit all the epic metal marks in the lyrics. Hell, even Odin shows up.

JK: Odin does show up, as he should on any good metal album! When we started out writing music for this album we wanted the songs to fit together and spin the tale of the Megasus. As the music started taking shape we would talk about what it sounded like, what certain songs should be about subject wise. Then I would either write the lyrics there or go home and listen to it over and over until it was in my head and I could spend some time fashioning lyrics to it that fit the subject. We all grew up on metal and punk, one of the best things about getting a new album was taking it home and listening to it while reading the lyric sheet… It just made the experience that much more immersive and added to the world the band was creating. We wanted to do the same thing with these songs and connect them on a full length to tell a story of sorts.

RL: Yeah…the music, art, lyrics…it all syncs together.

How did signing with 20 Buck Spin come about? Will you be working with them going forward?

JK: 20 Buck Spin reached out to us after picking up the vinyl. We actually had no plans to release on CD (we were just going to do the vinyl), but after talking to them it made sense to release the CD on 20 Buck Spin. They’ve got wide distribution, work with great bands and are cool so we’re into it. Dave (runs the label) is our type of dude. Just wants to put out the bands he’s into and is doing this for the same reason we are, for the love of the music. We’re up for anything going forward.

RL: I think White Mice had something to do with it too. Dave has been super cool and we are definitely talking about future plans.

The vinyl version of the album comes with a free download, and obviously you guys know better than most about how technology has affected music. What do you think about the divide between the analog and digital means through which people listen to and discover bands?

JK: the record store I worked at for a long time went out of business, a victim of the changing ways that people get their music, the culture of going to a record store and spending a couple hours changed right along with the technology. I try to support independent record stores by actually going through the stacks and talking to the people that work there. I get turned on to a lot of amazing music that way. We always talk about how digital distribution has affected the enjoyment of album artwork. I remember getting the Celtic Frost Morbid Tales album when I was a kid and just staring at the back cover and reading the lyrics over and over as I played them at top volume in my room, then getting the back of my jean jacket painted with the Morbid Tales album cover. I don’t think I would have had such a strong deep reaction to the band if all I had to listen to and look at were some mp3s and small jpegs.

RL: Music formats have gotten worse and worse every generation and mp3s are by far the crappiest. CDs were bad enough! The best thing about digital versions of music is that it is easily shared and portable. Those two traits make discovering bands way easier for sure. It would be nice if things reversed and super high quality digital audio became the norm and replaced mp3s. Regardless…there is nothing that compares to the acts of flipping through LPs at a store, going home and throwing the record on, putting on headphones and staring at the album art and lyrics while digging the metal.

Whose concept was the album cover?

RL: Since there is a theme throughout the album, we shot around tons of concepts linked to these ideas. Brian, Paul and I all sat down at Julian’s (local Providence haunt) and started sketching things out. We had die cuts, triple-folds…crazy stuff. By the end of the night, we decided that we really wanted to do the Maiden/SOD/Voivod classic metal thing and just focus on THE Megasus ascending, from the title track. After many rounds… Paul had a good sketch and we went with it. For the inside cover, I wanted to support some of the Necromancer themes from the lyrics since that were inspiration for us when writing riffs/words.

How often do you guys play out? Is Megasus more of a studio project, or would you want to tour in the future?

RL: We play out regularly and are currently planning some mini-tours. We spent a lot of time finishing the LP since we did everything ourselves and that occupied most of our focus.

JK: We’ll go anywhere to play with Electric Wizard, a reunited Karp (Scott Jernigan RIP) or ‘70s-era Hawkwind. Can you make that happen? [Sadly, no, I can’t. – ed.]

Any closing words or other plans you want to mention?

JK: Wild Power!

RL: Wild Power!

Megasus’ website

20 Buck Spin

Tags: , , ,

Leave a Reply