I’ve been lucky enough to catch this energetic grunge band a couple of times this year and I’ve been rightly impressed by their impassioned performance; you can read about the gigs here. I wanted to know more about these “wolf noise and sweaty boys”- their words not mine – so I dropped frontman and bass player Jake Kardasz our Band of the Day questions.
Band members are: Jeevan Sahota (guitar) Edward Randall (guitar) Jack Rawlins (drums) and Jake Kardasz (bass)
Simple things first – where are you guys from?
At the moment, we’re split in half between Coventry and Leamington, as we all go to the University of Warwick. Individually we’re from Rugby, London, Stourbridge, and Bristol.
How did you meet?
Jack and Jeevan met in a club, at a night called Pop, and they actually met because Jack spilled Jeevan’s pint and they were about to get into a brawl about it – but Ed, who lived in the same halls as Jack, went over and broke it up and they all ended up chatting about music. Jake knew Jeevan because he was teaching a student-focused cookery class that Jeevan attended, and Jeevan introduced him to the others after they realised they were both into Sonic Youth. Jake taught him to cook spaghetti bolognese, and he quit after one class.
How long have you been playing as a band?
Since the year of our Lord, 2015.
Before you get sick of being asked… where does the band name come from?
It’s a really gruesome way to die, where workers on farms go into grain silos to fix them and fall through the crusted grain and get suffocated by it. It’s a big issue to do with labour laws on small farms, because they don’t apply there, so where they would usually have safety laws for workers, on family farms with below a certain amount of workers they just don’t apply. It’s American freedom gone mad.
What are your influences?
William Shatner, The Beatles, Neil Young, William Shatner, Fugazi.
Describe your music. What makes you unique?
There’s nothing really unique about our music, we’re just very stylish thieves. At the moment we’re mining the 90s for all they’re worth and who knows which decade Grain Death will strike next.
Do you have any particular lyrical themes?
Childhood and our parents. Low-level bodily harm. Boys wearing dresses.
What’s your live show like? How many shows have you played?
We’ve played thirty-one or thirty-three depending on whether you count the shows where a band member was absent. Bloody, snotty and sweaty is how I’d describe our live show. It’s pretty chaotic and rambunctious, but it’s a hell of a lot of fun.
What’s the wildest thing you’ve seen or done at a live show?
Seen: the wildest thing was someone doing a line of coke off of his mate’s phallus at a Deftones show, that was at Reading… 2013 I believe. At our show once whilst we were playing Jake got up on the bass drum to do some dancing and this guy (who owned the kit) barrelled him onto the floor and started swearing about how that one bass drum cost more than our whole band.
What kit do you use / guitars do you play / etc.?
We’re actually terrible, terrible thieves when it comes to gear. Many times the Good Bands of Birmingham have helped us out with amps and the like when we turn up to a show lacking something. Jake doesn’t actually own a bass, but plays one Jeevan nicked off his mate. We’re pretty scummy in that way. Jeevan plays a Fender Pawnshop Supersonic that is silver and sparkly and he is trying to sell it for the very fair price of £600 pounds. It’s a magnificent piece of kit and anyone interested should get in contact!
What are your plans for the rest of 2017?
We’ve got a single coming out soon called “Spangler” which we’re releasing with the lovely fellas at Off The Roof records. Following that, around September / October we’ll be putting out an EP, and on June 17th we’re playing in the ruins of Coventry Cathedral, which has always been a dream since Jeevan first visited there age 8 ½.
If you were second on a three-band bill, which band would you love to be supporting and which band would you choose to open for you? A chance to plug someone you’ve toured with, or a mate’s band we’ve not heard of before!
We’d love to support Ought, that’s been a dream since year one. We supported a Coventry band called FEET a few months back and that was one of the most intense gigs we’ve ever played. In terms of people we’ll be bringing out with us there is our multi-talented friend Ashley Knowle-Hirst who has some beautiful solo stylings and plays in a real sick band called Mlepnos. And of course, our family members from Leamington, Cousins.
