The Showdown interview with Erik Koruschak
by Amber Hartman – 2008
What’s been the response to your new album, “Back Breaker”?
It’s been awesome. It’s been really, really good. Sales wise it’s been pretty good. Pretty inline or a little bit above the last record. We’ve been playing three of the songs live. It’s been going really, really well. I think it’s the most focused thing we’ve done. So it seems like people are getting it a lot quicker.
What about your new album is different from previous ones?
I think it’s just more focused. It’s the first time we’ve ever not had a super involved producer. We produced it ourselves and just hired an engineer that we knew. It was great. Every person got to do exactly what they wanted to do. And I also think that it fits the best as a unit. All the songs fit really well together. They’re all different enough that it keeps it exciting, but similar enough that the whole record sounds like one band.
What’s the story behind your band name?
There’s really not a story behind it. It’s the only thing that we could all agree on. Someone had suggested it and it was the only thing that at least one person didn’t hate. So we’re just kibda stuck with it now.
I read that you guys were a punk band before….?
Yeah, me and David, the singer and Josh the guitar player. We’ve all been playing in different bands together since when we were in high school, so like 10 years.
So why the transition to metal?
We all kinda grew up on 80’s metal, like Metallica and more hair metal, like Ratt and Poison. I think it just happened as we got older and continued writing stuff that’s where it led us. We always just try to let it go where it’s gonna go.
Who or what have also influenced your music?
Just the things that happen to us, on the road and stuff. I think we all try to take advantage of any kind of situation we’re in. Different things that have happened to us all personally, definitely come out in the music and stuff that’s happened to us as a band. We just try to draw from everything that’s going on in our lives.
Who does the writing for the band?
Josh, the guitar player writes the lyrics and he writes the bulk of the riffs and then him, myself and A.J. kinda a put everything together into a song.
What’s the story behind the song, “Fanatics and Whores,” and did it create any controversy in the Christian market?
Definitely…definitely, which is kinda what we expected. We’re all Christian dudes and we know who we are and we know what’s right and what’s wrong for us. Especially being on EMI and a Christian sub-label of it. There were so many things with our first record and so many things we started to see in the industry that we completely didn’t agree with and there’s so many bands that are marketed just because they’re Christian bands. There’s so many tours that do well because they only play churches or tours where ticket prices are $10 more because they’re gonna play at churches. For us, that’s something that we really don’t want to be a part of and it kinda pisses us off, because that’s not what we’re trying to do. We just wanna be who we are and relate to people on a personal level. Our band is really about getting up on stage and preaching to people, we’re more about just hanging out and meeting people we’re they’re at. We’re not perfect dudes. We all do questionable things all the time…I’m sure. But for us its more about personal experiences we can have with other people…our band as a unit. The Christian market stores actually took that song off the record , so we were like…don’t sell the record in Christian stores, but the label was like, “oh no.” On the new record, the general market label has the regular album cover and the Christian market cover has a black sticker over it. So to me it kinda reinforces our whole point about it….how messed up is it that you don’t care that people make it home with that record you just don’t want anyone to get mad or not buy it in the stores. As long as they buy it and as long as you get their $13…that’s those stores saying, “we don’t really care as long as we don’t have to show a dude with no shirt on the cover on our shelves.”
Have you found any difficulty in being termed a Christian metalcore band?
Honestly, we really haven’t.
