Blinded Black were making their debut in Hollywood, in support of their brand new Side Cho effort entitled Under The Sunrise. Prior to their Knitting Factory show, we spoke with two of the members about their tour, the music scene in their hometown of St. Louis, groupies, and other darkly interesting topics...

Introduce yourself, tell me what you do in Blinded Black, and how long the band has been together.

Jeff: I’m Jeff from Blinded Black, and my favorite heavy metal song – probably Sabbath’s Iron Man.

Nick: I’m Nick, I play guitar in Blinded Black, and my favorite heavy metal song – I don’t think I have one to be honest because I’m not a heavy metal guy. I like Killswitch Engage.

How has the tour been going so far?

Jeff: It’s been going awesome so far. We are making our way to New York, so we’re just wrapping around the United States. It’s kind of cool though – it started from Texas – we’re from St. Louis – and then we went up here to the West Coast and it’s going all the way as far as Maine. And it ends in St. Louis – so then we can go straight home and all the other bands have like 25 hour drives and Morella has to fly back to Ireland. But they’re gonna crash at my house for a night.

So you guys are touring in a van?

Jeff: Yeah, we’ve got a 12 passenger 2005 Ford and a big trailer.

Does your band have a name?

Jeff: It’s named after Carl Winslow off of Family Matters.

I saw you guys were involved in a horror movie recently.

Nick: Yea, our director Steven Miller, who also did our video recently here in LA – we shot it where Fight Club was filmed – he put us in a movie – he liked our song. He put us as a title track to a new horror movie coming out on Dimension Films. It’s called Automaton Transfusion and it’s a zombie movie. It’s pretty sweet. We got to see some of it and it’s really cool. It’s pretty much the opening scene kicks in with our music blaring through a high school. It’s really cool.

Jeff: We kind of got good in with him and kind of worked out a deal where he did our music video and then he put us in his movie.

Nick: We used Set In Stone for that. It was going to be our release for our single, but we decided on Can You Hear Me Now – so at least we’ve two songs up and coming.

What is the music scene like in St. Louis and how do you guys fit in to the scheme of things?

Nick: It’s good. Out here it’s really weird, because kids don’t really travel that far to go to shows. We played a show last night a half hour away. In St. Louis, people will drive 45 minutes to see a show. Whereas it seems like people here don’t like to go far.

Jeff: In St. Louis, we have such a minimum supply of rock music of our style, so all the kids go out to see our emo-rock whatever you want to call it. We did 1,200 recently in a venue in St. Louis. The small towns up the Midwest – it’s just like our hometown – we do 400-500 in some cities in the Midwest. It’s really different in LA. It’s hit or miss.

Is there any story behind the CD name Under The Sunrise?

Jeff: It’s kind of like the lyrics. Whereas the lyrics aren’t normal lyrics – a lot of them are about girls and murder and all that stuff. At the same time, the lyrics don’t come off like that. They come off as like a pop/punk band. And that’s kind of where we wanted to go with Under The Sunrise – like a dark but at the same time mysterious title.

Nick: It’s the best of both. You’re got your pop and your harder side. It’s trying to like collaborate the two.

Jeff: In a nutshell, it definitely fits the lyrics. It’s whatever way you want to interpret it really.

Any interested road stories?

Nick: Sure! Our merch guy Nub actually has his own little fan base. Everywhere we bring him – everyone knows Nub. He’ll talk to everyone.

Jeff: We have a lot of stories. We’re wacky kids. Like last night we tried to sneak into a one-room hotel. We got caught and had to buy two rooms.

Nick: There’s not too many appropriate stories that we could say.

What is the best and worst part about being on the road and touring?

Nick: I’d say the people. I love meeting new people. I love visiting all the places like LA and seeing everywhere in the United States. It’s cool to see everything at such a young age. I’m only 20 years old and I’ve pretty much been to everywhere in the States.

Jeff: Our drummer used to be a senior in high school. How many seniors could say that they’ve toured the US and hang out in Hollywood? But not being able to see our families – that’s the only bad part. Then again, you gotta do what you gotta do.

Are there any Blinded Black groupies?

Jeff: Oh my God! Yeah, there’s a lot of Blinded Black groupies. I hate to say it – my girlfriend is probably going to kick my ass if she reads this. I mean, I’m damn sexy, I know that. (Laughter) But yeah, it’s cool to see dedicated people. It’s not so much that it’s embarrassing or anything – it’s just really cool. And that’s all I’m going to say about that.

Do you have any messages for your fans here in the LA/OC area?

Jeff: You can check us out on myspace.com/blindedblack and we’ll have a music video up there soon.

Nick: And go to aol.com – on their radio, they’re starting to play our single Can You Hear Me Now. If that starts doing well, they’re going to have us go into the studio and do an acoustic set, so everyone check that out. (Kenneth Morton)

Blinded Black links

Blinded Black on Myspace: Their Official Myspace Page!
Side Cho Records: Blinded Black's record label!
The Highwire Daze Home Page: Return to the Main Page!

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