Mongo Nation

Lloyd talks about his new film, “Poultrygeist”!

By Jeremy Azevedo

Lloyd Kaufman, president of Troma Entertainment, is one of the pioneers of the B-movie subculture, responsible for countless hit cult movies such as The Toxic Avenger, Class of Nuke ‘Em High and Sgt. Kabukiman, NYPD.

His newest film, “Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead” is perhaps his best yet, embodying the freedom of independent cinema as only Troma can.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with Troma Entertainment, they are the longest running independent film studio in the history of cinema, with over 30 years of experience. Troma has been responsible for launching the careers of such notable entertainers as Matt Stone and Trey Parker, Kevin Costner, Samuel L. Jackson, and countless other actors, directors and musicians.

In our exclusive interview with Lloyd, he talks about the making of Poultrygeist, a film described by critics as “The Citizen Kane of undead fast food revenge comedy scat porn musical horror movies”:

Tony talks about his new website, “Shred or Die”

We recently had the opportunity to talk with skate legend Tony Hawk about his new website, “Shred Or Die”. Shred Or Die combines some of the best elements of YouTube with social networking features and original content designed specifically for the burgeoning action sports community. But there’s little sense in me telling you about it, as Tony explains it much better than I ever could in the following video:

Visit Shred Or Die

Actor Nick Nolte apparently wasted at a press junket.

By Jeremy Azevedo

Nick Nolte isn’t really known to be the soberest of individuals, but getting fall-down drunk before appearing at a press junket for a children’s movie is an all time low.

You’ve all seen the mug shots, now see it again live on video!

Anybody out there want to start a rehab/reality TV/death pool on the “Prince of Tides”?

An interview with the singer/guitarist of Thrice

Dustin Kensrue of post-hardcore band “Thrice” recently spoke to us about the band’s new four-disc “Alchemy Index” project, the charity work that the band is involved in and the reason why Thrice always looks so pissed in photographs.

CraveOnline: Can you elaborate a little more on what to expect from the “Earth” and “Air” albums?

Dustin: Yeah, it’s really hard to describe the “Air” one. It’s much more open then “Water”. The “Water” one’s really dense. I don’t know how else to describe it, but it’s all over the place, there’s some really energetic stuff, there’s some heavier moments, some electronic stuff. So it’s certainly the most varied out of the four but when you listen to it, they definitely all tie together. The “Earth” one is stripped down, it’s not all acoustic in the way that you would think, like the unplugged thing. There’s stuff that’s kinda bluesy, stuff that’s kinda jazzy, creepy pianos, there’s like a funeral dirge hymn type song, so it’s kinda all over the place too.

CraveOnline: Does anything cool happen if you play all four EPs at the same time like that Flaming Lips 4-CD album, “Zaireeka”?

Dustin: No, we thought about it, but it’s ultimately kinda gimmicky. It’s been done and it’s not really the point of this, even though there are four of them so… We thought about just selling an 8 track that did that but we felt like our efforts could be better spent in other places.

Alchemy Index: Earth and Fire.

CraveOnline: What’s this business about the name “Thrice” being an inside joke amongst the band?

Dustin: Well there were three of us so… who knows if you’d call it a joke, it was just something we said at the time that kind of identified our group of friends in high school and all. I was still in high school when the band started, and Teppei and Eddie were just out of it. And we were all the same group of friends and needed a band name so… It could’ve been worse, I’ll tell you that much. It’s definitely not the worst, but it’s also not the best.

CraveOnline: Well it’s kind of late to change it now though isn’t it?

Dustin: Yeah we kinda went through that for every record for a while. You know, “Is it too late to change it?”

CraveOnline: How is it touring with “Brand New” and “Me Without You”?

Dustin: It’s been great, really fun people, great bands to watch every night and everyone gets along really well. We’ve been having acoustic sing-a-longs outside and stuff, so it’s been fun.

CraveOnline: Any crazy road stories? Fights, arrests, extreme acts of sexual depravity?

Dustin: Ummm… I don’t know. I tend to stay out of big crazy business. Usually it’s more the crews that get into the most trouble. But nothing extremely notable has happened yet. I’ve never had anyone that was out with us get arrested, but there’s been enough times when I figured people probably would.

CraveOnline: Any plans to embark on your own solo headlining tour after this one is over?

Dustin: Yeah we’ll be going out in April probably when the next two discs come out, and before that we’ll be heading up to Canada.

CraveOnline: Do you know who you’ll be taking along on that one?

Dustin: We’ll be taking people but no, nothing definite yet.

CraveOnline: What can you tell us about the various side projects that your members are involved in?

Dustin: None of the are really serious. All that I know is that Teppei, he’s done some stuff with our friend Chris and then done some stuff on his own, but we’re all just kinda screwing around at this point.

CraveOnline: Any plans on releasing another solo album of your own?

Dustin: I do I just don’t know… I’ve just been doing some small releases on my own online and not really going the traditional route of release, you know, just experimenting a little with what’s out there. I feel like there’s new ways to release records that are a little bit more honest and cutting out some of the in-between stuff and saving the artists a little money and saving the fans some money too.

A rare photograph of Thrice looking slightly less pissed than usual.

CraveOnline: What can you tell us about the charity work Thrice has been involved with over the years? Or instance, what’s the story behind “Invisible Children”?

Dustin: Invisible Children they’ve gotten a lot bigger name for themselves these days, but they basically started out trying to help raise awareness about some of the child soldiering problems that are going on in Uganda, the displacement of tons of people from these militias. And a lot of this has changed, there’s been some good progress happening there. They’re starting to try and branch out a little more and starting to raise some awareness about things happening in Burma right now, there’s also a lot of child soldiering problems going on there on both sides of the conflict so… We just help them to get people involved, and we did some charity shows for them and various things to try to raise awareness. We’re working right now with another organization that helps in Africa, and it’s called “Blood Water Mission”. And they basically try to provide AIDS relief and clean water to the villages there. Without clean water, there are a lot of opportunistic parasites that really make it harder for people who already have HIV because they are then getting all these diseases on top of that because their immune systems are shut down. It’s kind of a two-step process, very simple and its very community empowering and sustainable. They try to just give these people the resources to do these things so they take responsibility for it and ownership. And it’s a more lasting benefit.

CraveOnline: How can our readers get involved?

Dustin: That’s one of the main reasons that we even publicize this is so that people can get involved and see these things going on. There have been a lot of people that have given their time and resources to help them, people that have done yearlong internships helping out. If people are interested in any of these organizations that we have worked with you can contact them through the various websites, and the best way to go about it is to simply ask them what they need. There’s always a bunch of things that need to be done that people don’t want to do. It’s not the glorious jobs, but the hard little things that really keep a lot of these things going.

CraveOnline: Is there any way that you can elaborate on the “differences of opinion” that resulted in your split from Island Records?

Dustin: Not a whole lot… It’s like a very nebulous thing… Ever since “The Artist in the Ambulance” we really had been drifting apart. A lot of people that were there when we signed on are gone now, most of the people really that were really behind us, and the industry has just changed so much in the last couple of years. And everyone is just scrambling to figure out what they’re going to do and how they’re going to stay afloat. And we’ve never been a big success for them really, I feel like they stopped investing in us after “Artists” and so with this record, it’s just something totally out there and different, and they felt that they weren’t going to do a good job with it and we felt like they weren’t going to do a good job with it and it was mutually beneficial for us to leave. And we got to keep the record we’d made and they got to keep some money they owed us so… We’re happy with it.

CraveOnline: Sounds like a square deal.

Dustin: I think they’re happy with it. It was really not a very messy thing.

Alchemy Index: Air and Water.

CraveOnline: How is it working with Vagrant?

Dustin: It’s going well. I mean, labels are not all that dissimilar. But we have some people that we feel like we can communicate with and get things done, and that helps a lot.

CraveOnline: “The Alchemy Index” sounds quite a bit different than your previous studio albums. What can you tell us about your recording process?

Dustin: Sounds different in what way?

CraveOnline: A little bit less cooked. This sounds a little bit more raw and true. Was that a purposeful design?

Dustin: We did this completely ourselves. Teppei engineered it and mixed it. We all produced it together. We did it at home in a very small little garage studio that we built. It’s very different, there’s no outside opinion, no fifth person… so it was just a very different process. We were at home; we weren’t gone for two months somewhere else. We did it for a longer period of time, and while did it while we were writing still so it’s more of an organic process, just trying to get things down on tape. And keep things fresh, not get bogged down by some of the things that you do over the normal course of recording, with a producer and engineer and reps from the studio. There are kinda too many cooks in the kitchen sometimes. And especially with the mixing, we kept a lot of it rawer then I think you would normally hear. There’s some kind of idea of what’s commercially viable and what people want to hear. But as musicians and as lovers of music you wanna hear things that are interesting, you don’t want to hear everything on “10” all the time and fighting for space. There are a lot of interesting mixes on the record, especially on the other two discs as well, so I’m excited for people to hear them.

CraveOnline: Here’s kind of a funny question… Why do you guys always look so pissed in photographs?

Dustin: Ha ha ha! Uh we’re not like mean or even very serious people, we’re just all introverts. So we don’t naturally play around on camera. We basically hate photos being taken of any of us, so we generally try to just stand there and be presentable or whatever. I don’t know. The first time we ever had a photo shoot for AP a super long time ago, they tried to make us like jump on each other and stuff, and we were trying to be nice and cooperative and in the end of it we just felt like we’d been raped or something and very uncomfortable. So we decided never to let someone tell us to do something we didn’t want to do. It’s kind of weird, but you know.

CraveOnline: I understand that you guys are altruists and all of that, but our readers love drama. So who’s your least favorite band out there and why?

Dustin: I don’t know… We don’t like drama so; we’ll stay out of that question.

CraveOnline: My least favorite is Tila Tequila, if that counts. Now you go…

Dustin: I don’t even know who that is.

CraveOnline: Oh good lord you’re lucky then.

Dustin: Oh is she that MySpace girl? I couldn’t pick her out of a crowd. I don’t know. I still don’t want to answer that.

Either Thrice is watching an invisible movie, or they’re too pissed to look at the camera.

CraveOnline: Fair enough. Who are you guys listening to right now then? And you can’t say either of the bands you’re currently touring with, that’d be too easy.

Dustin: Um… I’d say collectively between the four of us Radiohead is probably our favorite. We all kind of listen to a bunch of different things but that’s something we can all agree on a lot. Other than that the main things I’ve been listening to are Josh Ritter, Marina Taylor and 11-11.

CraveOnline: We’ve heard rumors that The Alchemy Index will be the final album by Thrice as a band. Is this true? And if so, why?

Dustin: At this point I think we all feel pretty strongly that we’re excited to make other records. I never know where those rumors originate. It’s definitely not the plan right now. I feel like we’re in a really positive state of mind, very tight as a unit right now. The only time we ever have any tension is in the middle of recordings, which is understandable. When you have a creative process that you share between four people equally you’re gonna have hard times. But we’re all really proud of this project and excited to be touring on it, and excited to make some more music. And I feel like I’m really excited for the next record because I feel like this is the first time in my career that we have a completely clean slate to do whatever we want.

CraveOnline: What’s the next step for Thrice as a band? How do you follow up something as ambitious as this?

Dustin: Well it is all pretty separated so I don’t know; it’s probably going to be some kind of amalgamation of these things. But at the same time trying not to have it completely chaotic. I really have no idea.

Get involved:

http://www.bloodwatermission.com/

http://www.invisiblechildren.com/theMovement/

An interview with Chris Dangerous, outspoken drummer for The Hives!

CraveOnline had a chance to speak with Chris Dangerous of the Hives about their new “Black and White Album”, touring with Maroon 5, disco rock and The Hives’ recording process…

Chris Dangerous: Well the thing is, that he sort of started the band… We’ve answered this question about 8 billion times I think, but he’s sort of the brains behind the band so to speak. He’s very involved in the songwriting and stuff, he just doesn’t want to go on tour and be in the pictures and all that. But he’s sort of the sixth member.

CraveOnline: Is it true that you had recorded 20-30 songs for “The Black and White Album”?

Chris Dangerous: Yeah we had a lot of songs this time. We never had this many before. But I mean, we could have recorded and released the album a year ago, but since we didn’t want to do it the same way, like the other 3 albums, we decided to work with a producer… and we couldn’t really agree on just one. So we traveled the world and found some great people to work with. Some were in projects at the time so we had to wait for like 5 months for some of them, and while waiting we couldn’t just sit around doing nothing, so we just wrote songs, pretty much, and recorded in a lot of different places.

CraveOnline: See, now I heard that you recorded most of the album in Mississippi…

Chris Dangerous: Oh yeah, mostly, like 50% of the album was recorded in oxford Mississippi by Dennis Harry.

CraveOnline: What made you choose that particular place?

Chris Dangerous: Mainly actually because there is this Buddy Guy record called “Sweet Tea”, that we just thought sounded fucking amazing. And Dennis Harry recorded it in Oxford Mississippi so….you know, that’s how it went.

CraveOnline: Where did you (or Randy Fitzsimmons) find the inspiration to do so many songs in so many different styles? The new album sounds like a decade’s worth of material for most bands…

Chris Dangerous: Yeah, well that was sort of the plan, to make sort of a greatest hits record of a band that didn’t really exist… I mean we’ve always done some weird stuff but this time we figured, we’re not gonna release anything we’ve already recorded and done. I mean we’ve even got one or two great songs that aren’t on the record. As I said, we made the songs over like a year, so a lot can happen in that time.

CraveOnline: What are you going to do with the rest of them?

Chris Dangerous: We don’t know really. I mean we could release like EP sort of singles here and there… But I don’t know really, this record isn’t even released in America yet so you gotta take one thing at a time. But yeah I mean there’s a lot of stuff that’s good that eventually will go on another record.

CraveOnline: I notice that there are more than a couple of disco rock songs on your new album. What was your (or Randy Fitzsimmons’) inspiration for those songs?

Chris Dangerous: If you listen to the song, “I Miss You” by the Stones, it’s like one of the best songs we’ve ever heard. And then we also like AC/DC songs so we could do like “Hey Little World” but sort of like a disco AC/DC kind of thing.

CraveOnline: Funny you should mention “Miss You”, I was just thinking that your new album reminded me a bit of that same Rolling Stones album, “Some Girls”.

Chris Dangerous: Ah yeah, we love the Stones of course.

CraveOnline: Do you often get compared to the Stones by rock critics?

Chris Dangerous: Not really. It’s mostly Pelle, because people think he looks like Mick. That’s usually the Rolling Stones connection we get.

CraveOnline: What’s it like touring with Maroon 5? Do 12-year old girls enjoy the Hives as much as the rest of us do?

Chris Dangerous: It’s great, its so much better than we’d ever imagined it to be… We haven’t done the tour stuff in a long time, and when we were asked to do this, we were like “I don’t know why should we do that, we can tour America by ourselves”… But then when we started to think about it, we were like, wait a minute, we’ve had some great times opening up for other bands, and that’s how we started, we used to play with anyone. Even though they hated us, it was so much fun, you know, just to get a reaction out of people. But on this tour, I mean its amazing, we’re playing at arenas that are big as hell and there’s like 10,000 people who have never heard of us before we start playing. And you know, fifteen minutes into it we’ve got them all standing up, and half an hour after we’ve started, at the end of the set, we’ve got 10,000 new Hives fans. That’s what we’re trying to do here. We’re trying to gain new fans man.

CraveOnline: What new bands are the Hives into these days?

Chris Dangerous: We like our new record a lot! And me personally, I’m a Springstein fan, so I listen to his new record quite a bit. And the new White Stripes record we listen to a lot, we listen to pretty much anything. Usually before we go on stage we’re sorta into 70’s disco music right now. Great warm up music man. “Another One Bites the Dust” by Queen is probably the best song to get warmed up. Yeah, that song works really, really well.

CraveOnline: Here’s another one you probably get asked a lot: What’s with the matching outfits?

Chris Dangerous: It looks fucking good! We started with the black and white thing back in ’96… We always sort of looked up to those kinds of bands who sorta went the extra mile like the Ramones and Devo or AC/DC and we just figured, okay, lets just do black and white. We didn’t have any money at the time so we just went to thrift stores and bought everything black and white, and then when the cash started rolling in, the first thing we did was we bought ourselves suits. You’re supposed to dress up if you’re gonna perform to people you know, we’re showmen, we’re supposed to look good. It’s the gang mentality thing. It’s really fucking cool.

CraveOnline: You guys are known for your crazy stage dives and onstage antics… Ever suffered any injuries as a result?

Chris Dangerous: Oh yeah loads and loads and loads of injuries. I mean everything from bruises to… I got an inflamed arm right now! We’ve got bruises all over and stuff like that. And then you know how it is when you sing and you get the microphone in the mouth, and have to get the teeth switched out.

CraveOnline: What is the craziest place you’ve ever been to on tour?

Chris Dangerous: Our first time in Japan was fucked up. It was so different from anything else. Now it’s getting more normal, you know, by western standards. But it was really weird, just the fact that you go on stage, and you play a song and as soon as you end it… it’s dead silence. Like when Pelle talks, he wants the reaction out of people… but they’re like standing completely still, and not clapping, not screaming, not anything. It’s weird, yeah, so that has to be sort of… the weirdest place.

CraveOnline: It’s not that way anywhere else?

Chris Dangerous: No not really. I mean its not that anymore in Japan either. Now they’re sort of getting familiar with how a rock audience is supposed to act or whatever, I don’t know. It’s just culturally very, very different. They’re so polite, they don’t want to be in your way, and they definitely don’t want to scream when someone else has the microphone and talks.

CraveOnline: Ever gone back home and played in Fagersta?

Chris Dangerous: No we haven’t played our hom town in a very long time because it’s a really small place. I mean the town, 12,000 people live in the city. The last time we did, we played at this lake, and but we put a big fucking raft on the lake and we played on that. We had about 5000 people show up for that one.

CraveOnline: Half the population!

Chris Dangerous: Yeah it was a big happening. But we’re going back. We finish the European leg of the tour in Stockholm on Dec. 4th, so if we play Sweden we want to play all the summer festivals going on at that time.
CraveOnline: Will you be coming back to the US after that?

Chris Dangerous: Definitely, we’re gonna be back in February, on our own headlining tour.

CraveOnline: Do you know who you’re going to be playing with?

Chris Dangerous: I might know but I’m not telling you!

CraveOnline: It’s still a secret?

Chris Dangerous: Mm-hmm.

CraveOnline: Allright, fair enough. Okay, if you had to pick just one favorite song off of your new album, what would it be?

Chris Dangerous: Right now for me it would be “Wont Be Long”. Yeah. I can’t really explain why, we just play really, really well on it, and Pelle sings like a god on that one. I sort of get the same feeling listening to “Won’t Be Long” as I do listening to “Pet Cemetary” by the Ramones. You know, it’s one of those songs that the hardcore fans are not supposed to like, because it’s a bit slower and it’s got some melodies and stuff, but hey, I love “Pet Cemetary”.

CraveOnline: Where there any songs that you were really disappoined didn’t make it onto the final album?

Chris Dangerous: Yeah there’s a few. But you know we can’t really agree on 14 songs out of 25 0r 30 or however many we have. It’s impossible. It was sort of a long fucking voting kind of thing and the songs that are on the record are the ones that finally made everyone’s final list, blah, blah, blah, that’s how we did it. But the new “Black and White Album” is the best one we’ve done, you should buy it, and check us out on tour when we come back on tour in February. It’s by far the best one. There’s no point making one that’s worse than the previous one. It’s same thing when we perform songs. It has to be the best song you ever heard, otherwise there’s no point in doing it.

CraveOnline: How does Randy Fitzsimmons do it?

Chris Dangerous: Do it? Hey, he’s a genius. He’s our genius. And you cannot rent him at any cost!

The final chapter of a rock opera 10 years in the making.

Rare is the band that can pull of a concept album without coming off as pretentious and overconfident. Rarer still is the band that can pull off five such albums. With their excellent new album, “No World For Tomorrow”, progressive rock band Coheed and Cambria has accomplished exactly that.

“No World For Tomorrow” illustrates the final chapter in an overarching science fiction fantasy story that has served as the foundation of all of Coheed’s albums to date. For those who have been following the band since their first album, “The Second Stage Turbine Blade”, this adds a whole new element of enjoyment to the experience. This is not to say that first time listeners will be disappointed, though. The entire album, lyrical content aside has all the shredding and rock and roll swagger that one would expect, and then some.

There isn’t really much here of interest to the hardcore hipster; Coheed and Cambria obviously have no intention of servicing the finicky tastes of the new wave disco rock scenester kids of the moment. While “No World For Tomorrow” definitely has somewhat of an emo flavor, this is definitely an album that speaks more to the Guitar Heroes out there, the fans of pure, classic rock that depends on skillful musicianship more than skillful marketing. The five-part finisher of the album, in particular, is an epic undertaking that may challenge the attention span of some, but at the same time evokes some of the best work by Coheed influences Pink Floyd, Queen and of course Rush.

“No World For Tomorrow” is available in a basic and also a deluxe edition. Normally I would not advocate this, but in this case I highly suggest you pick up the deluxe edition for the 16 page lyric booklet, that includes images from the story painted by legendary fantasy artist Ken Kelly.