PureVolume

Hell yes, kiddoes, now its time for some real meat for supper, not just gravy and blood and bread... real meat for supper leads to real pudding afterwards, just ask Pink Floyd... so let us feast on some of the most creative music that Ive heard in quite some time. Let me say its fucking impressive to see in this day and age of brain cramping American Idol style pop culture, that a band of already successful guys in currently successful bands hid their identities and got together to create without capitalizing on their own marketability...

My God, they just got together to jam... rock for fucking rocks sake... & Ill be... its taking off with a life of its own...

Go figure... That Maynard guy in Tool & that Perry cat in that Janes band and that Lou Reed guy from that Velvet thing mustve been onto something...

Art and rock can get along, maybe even play in the same sandbox... hell, they might even be attracted to each other, perhaps they might even date, ending the night in some dark corner testing out the wallpaper in a prolonged grope-fest... only to wake up with kids... leading to the inevitable divorce... then theyll forget they were even married except once a month when they see a debit or a credit on their monthly bank statements... but Im getting ahead of myself, so lets get back to a perfect blend of art and rock known as: The Sound Of Animals Fighting... What the fuck kiddoes, I dig this band... a ragtag band of guys you didnt even know you knew, coming to a heightened consciousness in some random cubicle near you...



Introducing the band you already knew but didnt see coming: The Sound Of Animals Fighting...
By D. Eminizer



I began my preparation for this interview as I have most others... I found something that interested me, tracked down the subject through various channels, and did some research. What I found led to a feature quite different from all the others... In fact, I think this is our first sort of scoop here on 99burning, and I kind of dig that...

Lets begin at the beginning... As 99burning the band came back into play and has become a growing reality, I began to poke my head around to research the music scene... as Mike Boyle has pointed out to me on numerous occasions: Don, you stupid fuckhead, were old now and out of the loop... I havent even been in a club in over a decade...

Mike makes a good point, when getting ready to go back out and play the club scene after a few years off, its best to see whats out there, but I decided to search for what was different, not for the same old crap you see over and over and over again on emp-tv... I wanted to find what was on point, avant garde... a.k.a. rock and roll, and I must say, I was pleasantly surprised that theres quite a bit out there, but nothing has caught my eye, ear, and creative inner childs attention quite like The Sound Of Animals Fighting... Normally I link to a band or book or whatever at the end of the interview, but in this case I am linking to the bands sites right here, so you can check them out before you proceed, as its worth a peep...

Go on... go ahead you little bastard, I know youre skipping because youre impatient just like me, but hold onto youre antennae grasshopper, it really is worth exploring...

The Sound of Animals Fighting
...on MySpace
...on PureVolume

Ok... so I set up an interview with Rich Balling, a founding member of The Sounds Of Animals Fighting, and former lead singer of RX Bandits who left that band after two albums to... get this... finish getting an education so that he could become an English teacher... right on brother, literature is like the black plague in this day and age, we have to go deep underground on the web to explore it... it is awesome to see another rock musician interested in helping make this shithole a more literate shithole... By god perhaps we can spread the revolutionary idea that knowledge is the key to freedom, and that you dont have to buy everything youre sold on TV... wait... the founding fathers tried that and see what happened... oh well...

So after my car exploded en route to call Rich for the interview, I straggled in a day late with my tail between my legs and called the man to apologize and set up another time for the interview, and Ill be damned, he answered, was very friendly, and ready to go.

R. B. How you doing, brother? The cheery voice rang... not exactly the voice of a guy that drinks goats blood in a Wile E. Coyote mask, so there goes that theory... I apologize for my tardiness, he wishes me well with the exploding car bit,and we get to talking shop... I ask him about the upcoming House of Blues gigs... headlining the House of Blues chain is no small feat... Yeah were really excited about that... all of us are super busy which is making me nervous because I want to make it really intense with a lot of cool stuff happening on stage and its getting harder and harder to plan because theres just no time... but well make it happen...

Me-What are you all doing between now and then?


R. B. Well Im working on getting my teaching credentials to teach high school english

Me-SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEchhhh.... Say what?


R.B.- "& a lot of the other guys are busy touring with their bands?

Me- ok... Ill bite... What other bands?


R.B.- Uhhh... Dead silence... I dont know. We laugh awkwardly as if the joke is on me and I dont know it... more silence... he continues... "Ive heard that they hang out with Chiodos, Circa Survive, Rx Bandits... There is a pause and I reflect on the rumor that a member of Mars Volta is in the band... purely speculation... When we started out it was just to have fun and experiment and do whatever we wanted... but this album is more extreme than the last...

Me-Its definitely different... I wanted to ask you how you guys write? Do you come up with an idea and try to put a song around it?

R.B.- There was more of that with this album, but with the first album everybody was so busy, there was no time to get together to practice, so the way I avoided all that was to record the drummer first, and the drummer didnt even write songs... he gave us a beat and we turned them into songs and one person would come in at a time without ever hearing the other parts of the song ever... By Syd Barret, I say, that sounds like a blast... so it was total improv, they recorded over what they heard the very first time and that was it... & this time was similar in thought but it was like, I really want an opera singer or an indian singing, so I did come in with specific ideas but other than that, the songs were still improv...

Me-You dont get much more rock than that... Give me an opera singer... give me an Indian...


R.B.- Yes, its been a fun side project but thats what it is... better than the average side project because its selling and it wont go away, but who knows whats to become of it... Id say probably another recording and well see what happens with the House Of Blues... If we go off and the kids come out then we might keep playing live... otherwise, it might be the only time ever...

Me-As a part of setting a mood, with the masks and the animals and the psychedelia, do all the animal masks & symbols stand for something?

R.B.- No... kind of the way the band came about was that my girlfriend said she heard the sound of animals fighting and I thought that was the coolest phrase ever so immediately we had to form a band... I decided the world would not be complete until there was a band called that and because of the name and the fact that we were all under contract to different labels, what better thing to use than animal masks... all of the legalities have been worked out legitimately, signed off on and everything, but still, nobody was interested in using the other bands to sell albums... We didnt want featuring such and such... we wanted to see what it would do on its own...

Me-And that has gone?...


R.B. -"The response has been a lot more positive than we thought to such extreme stuff and the records are selling pretty well... were very happy with it...

Me- Its very different... one song sounded like an aural painting of a pagoda...

R.B.-Yeah, man...


Me-I gotta say that your stuff really stuck out and I think that the readers of 99burning will dig your concept... How has the music scene on the web helped you out?

R.B. -That has been everything... thats how we spread the word, man, especially since were not all out on the road together... Guerilla marketing... you take the Internet and home recording... every band has that one guy thats learning how to record...

Me-Too true, too true... or its everyone in the band to some degree...


R.B.- Yes... you record it yourself... throw it up online... hell, thats how record companies started...