By Andrew Bansal
Maryland rock n’ roll band Lionize have been in existence since 2004, portraying a musical style that can be described as stoner rock with elements of blues, funk and reggae. They are now ready to release their fifth studio album ‘Jetpack Soundtrack’ on February 18th. It will be their first album on Clutch’s label Weathermaker Music, a band with whom Lionize has shared quite a bit of touring history in the past few years. This new album is an apt representation of the eclectic nature of Lionize’s musicianship, and with 11 tracks spanning a mere 41 minutes, the band has expressed themselves more concisely than ever before. On February 3rd, they held a media-only listening party at Swinghouse Studios in Hollywood, and guitarist Nate Bergman spoke to Metal Assault about the album, among other things. Enjoy the conversation below.
Nate, how are you doing today?
I’m great, man! This is better than I expected, I think.
We’re at a listening party for your new album. You were telling me that you haven’t really done this kind of thing much.
Yeah, we go out on tour and play songs live for people, and that’s always kind of been our calling card. But I think now we’re learning that there’s whole another world of industry out there. We’re with Weathermaker now and super stoked to represent them at this kind of event.
Talking of this new album, first of all ‘Jetpack Soundtrack’ is a great name. How did you come up with that?
I think we were naming songs for the record. The record is faster, and it’s in a different direction, more towards the future. ‘Jetpack Soundtrack’ just had a ring to it. It made sense for the futuristic and science fiction themes of the record, and it kind of snaps a little bit.
It’s very Clutch-like.
Yeah, I think they’re definitely an influence on us when it comes to the way we approach songs and music. There’s a certain amount of fun we want to have with it, you know? It doesn’t have to be serious all the time, or any of the time.
Exactly. Weathermaker is a big part of what Clutch is doing. How did you get associated with that?
We’ve toured with Clutch, supporting them for almost seven years now in different forms. The way those guys conduct not only their musical presentation of it all, but the way they conduct themselves personally and business-wise, it just made a lot of sense to us to join forces with them. They are the best rock n’ roll band on the planet as far as I’m concerned. They’re the most talented guys out there. There are guys that have been doing it longer but I don’t think there’s anyone who does it better. That’s my true opinion of that band.
You’ve toured with them so much that I’m sure you’ve seen them changing their set list almost completely every night. That’s just ridiculous, but it must be an inspiration for you.
Oh yes, we’ve been doing the same thing for about six years now. I think it’s really easy in this day and age to rip people off. You can go make a record on a laptop in your room and go out on a tour for 30 days playing the same songs every night verbatim. Seven days into the tour, you’re going through the motions. Like Clutch and Lionize, there’s a handful of bands out there that strive to give the ticket buyer a unique experience every night, therefore fulfilling their dollar spent. They’re getting every last penny of it because they’re experiencing something that the band doesn’t even know. When we change up our set list and improvise, the band doesn’t know what’s coming next, even though we have an idea. I think in this day and age when there’s so much competition, money is tight, the economy sucks and people’s money needs to go further, artistically speaking you can definitely make it go further.
In this kind of a format for live shows, does it take a lot of preparation time before each tour to know just about every song in your catalog so that you can change up the set lists every show?
Yeah, but I don’t think it’s even necessarily before each tour. You kind of have to know the catalog all the time anyway. When we’re home from touring, we generally get together Monday through Friday. It’s not 9 to 5, it’s 12 to 4 (laughs). And we jam. Sometimes that requires refreshing ourselves on a lot of material. We’re working through it and staying on our chops. The more you play, the easier it is to pull something old out of the bag and put it in the set list.
You were telling me earlier that even though you’re more “rock n’ roll” as opposed to being “strictly metal”, you do a big following amongst metalheads. Tell me about that! Where have you experienced that and how do you feel about it?
Yeah, I don’t know why! I couldn’t explain to you why, because it doesn’t make sense. Even when we’re playing live we’re predominantly doing a reggae-oriented set from the beginning. May be it’s because a lot of people who’re into metal are a little bit more open-minded. The metal bands have something to do with it too. You have a band like Mastodon who from record to record is pushing the envelope from what they’re trying to do from the last record. You have a band like Clutch. These aren’t bands that are necessarily metal, but ‘progressive’ is a common thread between where metal started and where it is today and all the different factions of it. There’s a progression. Rock has kind of done the same thing, but I think a lot of that genre of music is just stale. It’s hit a stagnant point and it’s repetitive. There’s that within metal too, but I think generally people who’ve embraced Lionize that are into metal probably have a pretty eclectic palette to begin with. So, I don’t know how you want to categorize us. It’s tough to say (laughs).
It’s all heavy music at the end of the day, isn’t it?
That’s an interesting point, because I think heavy music doesn’t have to be metal, and doesn’t have anything to do with volume. There’s this reggae band called Midnite from St. Croix, and they hit this slow, droning deep bass and drums, and it’s heavy, man! Deep Purple is heavy. There’s some Dylan stuff that’s heavy. It’s not about the screaming or the lyrical content or the detuning of the instrument. It’s about the energy and what the content of it is. Fiona Apple has some heavy stuff. I don’t heavy has to do with how tough or how angry it is. Heavy and angry are two different things.
Exactly, man. But coming back to your new album ‘Jetpack Soundtrack’, how would you compare it to your previous material?
I think this is the most obvious response to the last thing that we did. On ‘Superczar’ which was our last record, we got very inside of what we wanted to do as far as pleasing ourselves, and may be meandered and were a little bit unfocussed. We took every talent that this band has, and hyper-focussed it for this new album. We cut out all the bullshit, we cut out all the fat and went right into the heart of what this band likes, which is up-tempo, funky, heavy. And we end the album with an 8-minute reggae jam, so we’re not abandoning anybody.
Finally, what do you have in store for the rest of the year?
We got some headlining dates through March. In April, we go out on tour with Umphrey’s McGee. Right from there we go to the UK, Ireland and Scotland for almost three weeks, come home and then we have a huge summer tour which will be announced soon. But it is very metal-friendly (laughs).
Sounds great. Nate, I think that’s all I have for this interview, man. Good to talk to you and all the best with everything.
Hey, thanks for even coming tonight. The sandwiches are good (laughs).
Visit Lionize on the web:
LionizeMusic.com
facebook.com/LionizeMusic
twitter.com/LionizeMusic
instagram.com/LionizeMusic