Brutal Knights Interview

Here is an interview I did with Canadian party starting Hardcore band Brutal Knights. They played the best punk show I have seen all year at the Cross Kings last month. I am going to see Gorilla Biscuits tomorrow so that might soon change but for now the Knights win.

Brutal Knights

Punk gigs have got kind of depressing. You either end up at overly serious beatdown shows where no-neck goons in flat caps try and clothes-line you before you get in the door or no one turns up at all and the only people that do are there to get some tour only split 7” in eight different colours on five different labels. Brutal Knights are like a good times shot in the arm to all these harbingers of doom. If Fucked Up are Toronto’s evangelical hardcore modernisers and Haymaker are their all out destruction unit then the Knights are the loveable partying losers who turn up, puke on your carpet, wet themselves, steal your records and screw your girl but get away with it because they have all the best tunes. Last time they played London they turned up about ten minutes before they were due to play and managed to blast through 20 songs in 15 minutes ending up in lager stewed heap on the floor. It was perfect. Their guitarist is also called Katie G Warrior. If you get that reference you are as cool as she is. Brutal Knights second LP “Feast of Shame” is available now on Deranged Records.

What is a Feast of Shame? It sounds pretty scary to me.
Nick Flannagan (Vocals): You don’t need to be scared, you can embrace it. Fear does not live in the Feast of Shame.
John Power (Drums): A real Feast of Shame should involve an area where you can urinate publicly. Maybe on other people but if there is a urinal just by the bar that would be OK. The drinking and the excreting can’t be separated, that is where the shame comes in. I am yet to find a bar with a urinal right there. One day though.
Matt Carrol (Bass): Last night in Edinburgh Nick found a cheesecake in the middle of the show and got pretty naked and turned himself into this horrible beery, cheesecake, juice soup. That was pretty shameful. Especially when we all tried to get into this gay bar afterwards to go dancing.

What was the concept behind the Extreme Lifestyles series of records?
Nick: Extreme Lifestyles was a product of a whole bunch of stuff that happened in the 90’s: the X Games, the glorification of ESPN, steroid spoon-fed wrestlers and the whole fuelled by Red Bull thing. Extreme Lifestyles is essentially Red Bull Music. Energy drink music. Dog the Bounty Hunter and Arnold Schwarzenegger music. Just really over the top strong man competition theme tunes. Initially it was a spoken word thing but it works well with music. I guess the ultimate music to set it to would be nu-metal but we don’t know how to play that.

How has coming to Europe for the first time been? If I was playing a show in Guildford I would be terrified.
John: It’s been pretty good. Our driver’s German and he’s furnished us with some intense porn. We were totally ready for the worst though.
Nick: Yeah, the bratworst.

For a stand-up comedian that was one of the worst jokes I have ever heard. It’s Friday night; tell me a joke that will get me laid.
Nick: Ok. I am a Jewish guy so I love sleeping with beautiful Jewish women. The only problem is that my dick is shaped like a swastika.

Dude, that so won’t get me laid.
Nick: You just gotta freestyle. That’s my only advice with the ladies. Freestyle like the RZA.

James Not So Brutal Knight

www.myspace.com/brutalknights