Crobot: Creativity Is The Spice Of Life
For artists and the like, their creativity both plummeted and skyrocketed throughout the cursed blessing of lockdown. Free time was in abundance, and so were the deafening muffled voices to go along with it. For Pennsylvanian doom and funk rock trio CROBOT, the sticky situation was an opportunity to cash in on influential relationships priorly made from touring, and thus their latest EP Rat Child came to pass.
Speaking with the band’s guitarist Chris Bishop, it’s quickly evident that this enthusiastic Texan has creativity coming out of every available orifice. “Right now I’m prepping for tour by building all our stage sets,” informs Chris. “I do a lot of wood cuts and I’m making a whole set out of foam with a giant dragon head that blows out fog and smoke. There’s no way we could ship this to the UK, it’s 8ft by 8ft with multiple tiers and layers. I’d probably have to go a week early, build it, and then keep it there. I once built a human-sized egg out of foam that we hatched our singer out of, and I built a sword and stone that lights up.”
Taking into consideration the rungs of the ladder CROBOT have been steadily climbing, from opening up for AIRBOURNE, WOLF JAW, STEEL PANTHER, and soon enough HALESTORM, it’d be hard to imagine any band not undergoing visual, aural, sensual, professional, and personal metamorphosis. Chris worries over the pizza weight quarantine may have caused, and hopes it’s not been enough to affect his performance come stage-time. “I’ve definitely come a long way since then as a musician, songwriter, person, husband, godfather; I’ve matured a whole lot. You can see it in our songs and our sense of humour. It’s still CROBOT with that tongue-in-cheek, don’t take ourselves too seriously kind of thing but there is definite growth in the band.”
This growth is most evident in the company the band keep, constantly learning and picking up new tricks from the influences and companions that hover around and keep a watchful eye. The Rat Child EP features guest appearances from STEEL PANTHER’s Stix Zadinia, LIGHT THE TORCH’s Howard Jones, and ANTHRAX’s Frank Bello, two thirds of which CROBOT have strong bonds with already since touring alongside them. “Our management is the same management company that looks after ANTHRAX and we’d toured with them a few times in the past, and Frank was a big fan of CROBOT. He always wanted to write something so he came up with a riff for us. We got on FaceTime, jammed it out, and it was an organic bouncing back and forth of ideas. Mountain is our 80s metal song and it’s very RONNIE JAMES DIO.
Our manager Melanie knew Howard so she reached out to him and he flew down to Austin and we wrote and recorded in my buddies home studio where I was living at the time. We wrote a few songs and Kiss It Goodbye ended up being the favourite. He said ‘hey, can I walk your dog?’ and of course I said, ‘absolutely!’ So he walks my dog, and when he came back he’d had melodies and lyrics already written.
With Stix and Everyone Dies, we were on tour with STEEL PANTHER and I had been tattooing Stix before one of our last shows, and he was just letting me listen to a bunch of stuff that he’d recorded. This one was a piano piece and he’d said ‘man, you guys need a ballad’. That one was our ode to QUEEN, UFO, and WINGS.”
As any music fan would attest to, artists that have influenced and shaped you since the seeds of youthful curiosity were watered coming full circle in reaching out and offering a collaboration may sound like a cruel and unreachable dream. Clearly the case for CROBOT and their inclusion of Frank Bello, Chris states, “if you had told me this when I was 13/14 years old, I would’ve exploded. Frank Bello is a metal god and we’ve always looked up to ANTHRAX and even more so now as mature musicians. It’s the same with Howard. KILLSWITCH ENGAGE was one of our favourite bands and the Howard years were some of our favourite records. With Stix, STEEL PANTHER is everything I love about music. Don’t take yourself too seriously.”
Hanging around and touring with the infamous jesters of glam metal, it’d be hard to believe that no hilarious and inappropriate anecdotes and memories were made whilst in the company of a band like STEEL PANTHER. “Anytime we see STEEL PANTHER they bring us up on stage, and one time we had this end-of-tour prank where we all dressed up as women and got onstage in our sexy outfits when they would usually bring all the girls up,” confesses Chris. “I had fishnets on and a wig, and our drummer Dan was wearing a little dress. They asked us to play a song, and Dan wasn’t wearing any underwear. So when he was playing his legs were open and he just had to roll with it and let it all hang out.”
It isn’t just the comedic glam act that bring the party with them, as Chris also lays bare the trickster that runs through the veins of ex-MÖTERHEAD guitarist Phil Campbell. “When we were on tour with ANTHRAX and MÖTORHEAD, Phil Campbell was a big prankster. When ANTHRAX were onstage Phil took his laptop and went into their dressing room, opened it, and was acting like he was jacking off. When ANTHRAX come off-stage and walked in on him, he screamed and grabbed his laptop with his pants down.” Quite the different story compared with the chilled-out nature of watching Rick & Morty with Howard Jones.
Title tracks have a lot to live up to, and in the case of Ratchild, strong AEROSMITH vibes are around every corner ready to jump out like a hyperactive and flamboyant Steven Tyler. “That song didn’t make Motherbrain because of that, as it wasn’t as grungy as the others. It’s a bluesier AEROSMITH vibe for sure, especially in the attitude with the way Brandon sings in the chorus and the little rat noises he does, those are my favourite. We went back to the mix so many times saying ‘you gotta turn the rat noises up!’ Those are very important.”
Lyrics are just as important as quirky sound effects and vocalisations, as Bishop explains which is his personal favourite line that appears throughout the EP. “I think it’s in the bridge of Mountain, where Brandon sings ‘I bit the snake that bit me, yeah’. It’s so DIO, even in his reflections when he’s singing it and I love that he’s dipping into old school power metal. The whole bridge is my favourite part.”
It’s never all fun and games, as the EP features a sparkling diamond in the hard-rocking rough in the form of Stix Zadinia’s offering, Everyone Dies. The piano-led ballad is unlike anything CROBOT have released to date, as the morbid and melancholic lyrics are set ablaze against the coronavirus pandemic narrative with the music video’s opening dedication: ‘in memory of Rick Yeagley.’ “It was definitely a time sensitive thing and we wanted to release it sooner, but it was hard to get people on board with regards to releasing something that essentially pokes fun at death. It started off with really dark lyrics. Brandon only had the first verse and chorus, and we said ‘look dude, we gotta add some positivity to this’. Rick Yeagley was obviously Brandon’s dad and he was like a father to me too, and he died of cancer a year before. It was rough on us all but he would’ve loved this song, the spirit of Rick will live on in everything we do. This lightheartedness on death is how he lived, even when he was dying he was still the happiest and most positive person around.”
The change in direction diverts away from CROBOT‘s initial material that was centred around wizards and dragons. When Motherbrain saw a more realistic and relatable approach to songwriting, this was only heightened further by the Rat Child EP and the evolution process continues still. “This one we self-produced and had our good friend Alberto engineer it, who worked on Something Supernatural. We had fun and ran with it; it was whatever direction we and whoever we were writing the song with wanted it to go in. Motherbrain was more of a modern release, a shinier and American rock radio-directed venture. Not necessarily for Mascot, but to utilise what Mascot can do for us like with Lowlife, as that was our radio song.”
The new material will be a welcomed breath of foggy-dragon air to play in front of a live audience, and the moment Chris is looking forward to most is “with Everyone Dies. Brandon plays piano and sings and it’s a moment in a set that people will takeaway and say, ‘that was awesome’. It shows the musicianship of Brandon who’s already a phenomenal performer, a phenomenal live singer, and can play piano like that too.”
For a creative, the grind and hunger for a creative outlet never lets up. When he’s not touring and creating funk-fuelled metal, Chris is exercising his flair for DIY, arts and crafts, design, and tattooing. “It helps me to fight burn-out with music and fight burn-out with art, which I’ve seen on both sides working with musicians and artists alongside myself. I feel lucky enough to be able to drop it for a couple of weeks and come back to it, and it helps things stay fresh for me. Sometimes I spread myself a little thin but I’m very thankful for how I’ve structured my life because at the end of the day, I’ve been able to survive on art.” Decorated and adorned with tattoos himself, Chris’ wife also shares the trade of tattooing and is currently in the process of giving Chris a giant full sleeve coverup of a biker skull and flames. “I can’t really show you this one but it’s a Namakubi, a Japanese severed head by Deseo at Dovetail where I work, and that’s on the whole side of my thigh with lots of blood and lots of gore.”
Art and design inspirations are in every corner of the sensory universe, unavoidable in both their subtleties and obviousness. Chris praises “one of the new artists I love, Skinner, who does awesome gory fantasy art in new-school style. There’s a lot of worlds where I gain inspiration from; tattoo art, fantasy art, art nouveau, and I pull from many different things. It’s whatever I’m feeling and whatever suits the song. The Rat Child art is very Rat Fink-esque, sort of scummy, that whole redneck rat rod vibe. It has elements of ANTHRAX’s Not Man with the flipped around hat as well, so a few elements of everything.” Obtaining and maintaining creative freedom in the arts industry is no easy feat and there’ll be many artists who will be able to offer confirmation of the industries cut-throat nature, but Chris has been lucky enough to have not fought such battles. “I’ve always done the art and they love it because it’s something they don’t have to pay for. I like to do it in the studio so I can pick up on the vibe and see how everything is coming out. Labels appreciate that as it’s not something they have to necessarily guess with artistically. You want to make sure the vibe is right because if it’s represented differently then people will get the wrong impression of your music.”
It’s all-hands-on-deck for the CROBOT camp and with all the Rat Children, Alpha Dogs, Wizards and Spaceborne Killers offering their expertise and lending a helping hand, future tours may see the band with a dragon head in tow and the Rat Child EP at their heels, with a few guest spots in tattoo studios along the way.
Rat Child is out now via Mascot Records.
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