Kissing Judas

(continued from previous page) of different ages and backgrounds, so we really put our own versions of each part into each song in it. I don’t think any of them really sound the same as the next one, which is hard to hear that all that much these days. There’s a lot of bands out there that release an album and you play track one, track two, track three, and they all sound the same, but you play ours and there’s one song where it’s kicks in real hard and heavy and then breaks down into more atmospheric sounds. And then the next song is straight double kick the whole time. And then next song is 80s Hair Metal, next song is acoustic, next song, you know... It’s a good blend of different sounds, so you can listen through it and not get bored of anything.

Morgan Sullivan: Yeah, what would you say, Brett? What would you say?

Bret Gyrich: I would pretty much just piggyback off of what Corey was saying. Yeah, we just kind of... we just kind of write what’s out there at the moment. I’ve submitted songs to the guys and that took shape the way it did, and there’s never really any concern of ‘Oh that’s not a Kissing Judas sound.’ That, that’s not our style. And our style is music. You know, I mean, rockers we may be, but we have a love for all sorts of music. And we, we put it into the songs.

Dave Sullivan: Yeah, I was told last night from my friend who listened to it and this is like a really cool thing to hear from him. He had said that he finally listened to it and every song sounds like it flows together, the whole album, all front to back. He said, Listen, you know, he’s got hundreds and hundreds of CDs, and a lot albums sound like it’s just a mixed match of songs that were all written differently. Like every member wrote something different and brought it together, and none of it sounds like it flows together, but our album actually sounds like it flows front to back and everything just kind of tells a story and fits, which I thought was one of the best complements.

Corey Sullivan: The thing is we sit and play the songs 1000 times before we go and record it so it better sound meshing together by then.

Music News: Well, they all sounded pretty radio friendly to me.

Bret Gyrich: Absolutely.

Music News: I didn’t hear anything on there that sounded like ‘well, this will never be able to make it.’ It all sounds like it would work on one station or another. Well, let’s talk about the individual songs. I know you have some guest artists on here also, so when we get to the song that they’re on, you can tell me a little bit about their involvement, how they got on there and what you think their participation lent to that particular song. And, we’ll discuss also what saw the meaning of the songs if there is a meaning to the song or if it was just some little thing that just popped out of your head, and it sounded good at the moment.

Bret Gyrich: Dave Morgan, you guys wrote the vast majority of the songs on there, you want to start that off?

Music News: Well, we’ll start out with the first song, it’s going to be easier that way. “Not today”. What about “Not Today”?

Morgan Sullivan: It’s the Marigold song (laughs).

Music News: The Marigold song?

Dave Sullivan: When she wrote it out it had the topic is that ‘not today’. And that’s what the repeating chorus is. So I always call it “Not Today”. She’s like, well, it’s a marigold.

Corey Sullivan: He called it “Not Today”, so everybody says, yeah, so yeah, we’ll fight about that until the end of our days.

Morgan Sullivan: Absolutely.

Dave Sullivan: Actually, Morgan had written the lyrics, and it was based upon somebody that we knew who had. Well, I’ll let you tell that part.

Morgan Sullivan: Yeah. It’s about people that have chosen to take their own lives basically. Okay, and kind of like the pain that it leaves behind for the rest of us when they do that. And then if they would just have waited one day, you know, not, not today, just not, Not today. It has a double meaning kind of, I guess, depending on if you’re hopeful or sad when you’re listening to it. So it’s a little deeper, I guess, then. continued on next page

Dave Sullivan: Yeah, battling the demons that go on when you’re, when you’re having those thoughts that run through your head and you’re fighting that urge and that you know, because a lot of people let that take over. And you just gotta, you know, not today, not gonna let it happen. I’m gonna let it take me over and she had written these lyrics and I came downstairs... We were working with Matt Vu, who was our bass player at the time. And Corey and I, you know... Corey had this really cool like guitar riff and he’s our drummer, my son, but he had this really cool guitar riff. And I was like, wait, I kind of liked that. Hold on. If we take this part, and then I add this here and Matt started playing this baseline.

Corey Sullivan: What it was... so I had the guitar riff ready to go and I kind of had a vocal melody in my head, but I was like, ‘I don’t know what to do with this, but I liked this riff’. And I had an arrangement for the way... like the dynamics of the song would move. And so we did the guitar riff to open it up and then I wanted it to break down to absolutely nothing but just atmosphere. And like, I don’t know, I’m not a guitarist, I don’t know what to do in this part creatively, I can write riffs, but I can’t like, do all the cool stuff. And essentially I just played the drum part that I had in my head and was like, this is how it’s going to start, it’s going to have atmosphere in this spot, and then I’m going to kick in with a simple beat, and we’ll build into the chorus. And so we played that riff and then the space hit and Matt came up with this part that just, it sounds so nice, the harmonics on the bass and it’s such an important part of the sound of that song, and it was really impressive that he pretty much came up with that on the spot.

Morgan Sullivan: Shout out to Matte Vu.

Corey Sullivan: And then from that we built on top of that, the rest of the guitar and background noises.

Dave Sullivan: Yeah, I’ve really got into a real under watery kind of effect on the guitar to bring in the atmosphere of what Matt was doing, because he didn’t play just a... he’s not a bass player that just plays the root note and stuff. He was doing harmonics and slides and all this stuff that doesn’t sound like your typical bass. And the whole song being the mood that we want to pull you in, it all just took shape. And it was like holy crap when we got done writing it, and we wrote it literally probably about 20 minutes.

Corey Sullivan: I think that was one of the... that was the first song we all wrote together. We had music that we were playing, a lot of covers, and you know other people’s stuff that was pre written and recorded. That was the first one that we wrote.

Dave Sullivan: It was Corey, Morgan... Well, Morgan wrote the lyrics and then Corey, Matt and I wrote the music to it and put it all together and worked on the melody and everything came together.

Morgan Sullivan: Quick shout out... Chris Salinas, our bassist has had to play that and he does such a great job with it. And playing after the VU. I’m really impressed with him, so I just want to shout to him.

Bret Gyrich: We need to make mention of how badass Chris has done with all the songs.