Taste Of Chaos interview with Bradley Bell of Chiodos
If you're planning on going to Taste Of Chaos this year, you will definitely want to get there early enough to see Chiodos. While posessing a sound similiar enough to what you'd expect from TOC, their talent and diverity seperate them from the pack. Quite simply, Chiodos has a more textured sound than most bands in their genre because they showcase a wider selection of influences and are creative enough to reach beyond sounding like every other band on the scene. their live show is often chaotic, and always entertaining. They damn near steal the show on a tour featuring heavyweights like the Used and 30 Seconds To Mars. Our first interview with keyboardist/vocalist Bradley Bell was a big hit, and he is a cool dude that I enjoy hanging with, so when TOC was in Duluth, GA I hung out with Brad for a bit to get the latest on the tour and the band.
Anarchy Music: hey, there's our Keyboardist Of The Year!
Bradley Bell: That's awesome. I’m not even that good.
Anarchy: You won the readers poll by a pretty big margin, dude.
Bradley: Well, I’m trying to do something different in this genre to brighten things up a little bit, so I appreciate it if people notice it. Who else was in the running?
Anarchy: Sebastian Davin of Dropping Daylight got a bunch of votes...
Brad: He's incredible!
Anarchy: Absolutely!. So, tell me how this tour’s going, man.
Bradley: It’s really cool. There’s 8 bands every night. I’m not used to getting done playing so early, with so much of the night left to do whatever. It’s been an awesome tour. There’s been good turnouts everywhere and all the bands are really cool. Everybody’s been real nice to each other.
Anarchy: I think bands like The Used and 30 Seconds To Mars have a crossover appeal because maybe people saw Jared’s movies or Bert on The Osbournes, are the fans that are coming in from that angle been receptive to you guys?
Bradley: Sure, a lot of them are open-minded. Some nights we get the stubborn ones with their arms cross and it kind of kills our buzz while we’re on stage. As long as most of them are walking away with an idea of who we are and we’re leaving our name in their heads, then that’s all were here to do.
Anarchy: I think that this is just about the best line-up you can imagine from this genre. Compare this to one of the massive, 50 band tours that go around. I hate to specify Warped Tour, but is it better being one of 8 as opposed to one of 50?
Bradley: Well with Warped Tour, like I was saying with people that have been waiting all day up front for their favorite band who goes on last. With Warped Tour they can walk away and come back in an hour or two and still catch their band because bands are spread out all across the place. So that’s one advantage of Warped Tour. This tour is very similar in a lot of ways in the organization of it. It’s run by the same production company so they try to have a lot of similarities. This way you get to play to a lot more people who weren’t expecting to see you play, opposed to Warped Tour where people just go to see whichever bands they want to.
Anarchy: I read somewhere that the stage set-up is such that there’s really no wasted time between bands, it’s just one right after another…
Bradley: No, there’s 4 minutes between each band. There’s a rotating stage that has all the gear on it. So while one band is playing, the next band sets up their stuff on the other side of the stage and quietly soundchecks on the other side. So, as soon as the stage is done rotating there’s one minute before the next band starts playing. I’ve never seen anything like it, it’s pretty cool.
Anarchy: We talked about people just coming for the headliners, but I know of people who are driving 8 hours just to see Chiodos…
Bradley: We see our fans there every night. It’s awesome. We’ve gotten tons of support from our fans. A lot of times they’ll be further back and there’ll be stubborn people flipping us off in the front row. Hey, we’re just trying to have a good time, you know? Nothing against you guys. We’re not trying torture you or anything. Yeah, there’s been a great turn-out of our fans. I was surprised because we’ve never done a tour with such high priced tickets, like an arena tour, so I wasn’t sure if our fans would come out and pay that but they have and that shows a lot to us and we really love that about them.
Anarchy: This show the fans get a little something extra though because you’re jacked up on Rockstar, right?
Bradley: Yeah, for sure. It’s awesome. We do our signings at the Rockstar tent every night and they just keep handing us Rockstars.
Anarchy: The last time I talked to you, you said you were going to work on some new material. What’s the progress on that?
Bradley: It’s going good. We’ve got at least half of our album written and we’re going to go home after this and finish up writing the rest of it. Hopefully we’ll start recording it by May.
Anarchy: Any concepts or song titles you can reveal?
Bradley: We just have some working project titles, nothing’s set at all. We’ll play one new one to start off the set tonight.
Anarchy: What’s that one called?
Bradley: Right now we’re just calling it “The $3,000 Song”. Our label rented a place for us for 8 days to work on new material and this was the only song we wrote, so it cost them $3,000.
Anarchy: Is it still going in the same direction as before? I mean, that’s kind of directionless anyway with you guys since you never know what could happen in the confines of a Chiodos song.
Bradley: What were trying to do is more of that, even more epic on some parts and more technical on some parts, even catchier melodies. It’s coming along real well and we’re real proud of what’s been coming out.
Anarchy: What’s the plan for touring after this is over?
Bradley: We’ll be touring throughout the summer as well.
Anarchy: Just like doing Warped Tour or something?
Bradley: Something like that, we’re not allowed to announce it yet. Right after this tour we’ll go home, write, record it and then we’ll hit the road about a week later.
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The news should have hit by now that, yes Chiodos will be doing the Warped Tour this year. So, with TOC and warped both doing full tours, there's no reason why you guys won't be within reach of a Chiodos gig. I want to thank Brad once again for his time, and for giving us the scoop on the band. Check these guys out at Chiodos.net. They really are among the very best of the entire emo/hardcore genre.