Metal, Hardcore, Indie, Rock
Suck This Punch: Classic hard rock through a modern lens
Limeira-based band Suck This Punch conquer us at first listen. Catchy riffs and a dirty hard rock sound dialogue with soaring vocals bringing a sound reminiscent of AC/DC and Motörhead. Their second full-length album, “The Evil On All Of Us” leaves us wanting more with every song as powerful as the next. Tadeu Bon Scott (vocals), Phil Seven (guitar), Matheus Bonon (bass, vocals), and Giacomo Bianchi (drums) are a diverse bunch that brings us a heavy sound reflecting its complex aesthetic project complete with cover art designs and music videos.
Chaoszine had the opportunity to chat with Tadeu Bon Scott about their latest releases, their influences, and the impact of the pandemic on artists, as well as the lack of space for rock and metal on the mainstream media.
Hello, and thank you for talking to Chaoszine. How have you guys been during the pandemic?
Scott: Hello and thank you for reaching out to us. The pandemic affected us during the production of our album “The Evil On All Of Us”: we were just starting out having recorded only one single. We were a bit lost for the first couple of weeks but then we had the chance to do an online festival, which we got through our new PR agency, then we realized we could work during the pandemic. We made a music video, then another single, “Shout It Out”. We finished recording the album, joined other online festivals, did a couple of live stream full concerts… After that first moment of pandemic, once we found ourselves and the right direction to move forward, we just made things happen.
Can you briefly tell us about the beginning of your band? And why did you call yourselves Suck This Punch?
Scott: It all began with an invitation from Marcos Nock, who is our current producer, when he founded the band: he wanted me to do vocals. He showed me some of the music he had written and recorded with no vocals. I’ve always enjoyed writing a lot because I’ve always been into literature, like H. P. Lovecraft, Stephen King, Edgar Allan Poe. And on that day he showed me some of the songs he had, I pulled something I had written and started singing it to his music. It really worked out so we wrote five tracks for our debut album “Fire, Cold and Steel”. We then called the other musicians and made five more tracks together so we had a record! But until then we had the songs produced but no band name. The second track of that album, “Blood Bastard”, a Motörhead-like tune, made Marcos Nock react by saying “suck this punch!” So we called ourselves that! At first it was this “in your face” kind of meaning that this name held for us but today I get something different from it: more like a punch to the system, like a reality shock for people.
Since you like to write, can we expect any works of literature from you?
Scott: Well, I actually started writing a novel, it has 270 pages until now, but it’s not finished. As a movie buff, and someone who is hyperactive, when I had a moment in my life where I was idle I started writing. But now I have no more time for that!
What are your main influences, and how do they inform your sound?
Scott: There is a great mix of everything. For me it’s more like Black Sabbath, Motörhead, Pantera, Judas Priest, DIO and I also love AC/DC since I was a kid. One of my brothers was a headbanger, the other one was more punk rock influenced. So I was also into The Clash, Sex Pistols, which made it an interesting mix: everyone else my age was into Guns N’ Roses or glam metal, like Mötley Crüe, but I was starting to listen to thrash metal and a lot of hard rock. Phil, our guitar player, loves Black Sabbath, also Zakk Wylde’s style, which makes for interesting riffs. Bonon, our bass player, has a lot of groove in his sound with bass lines that have a dialog with the guitar. Giacomo, who was our drummer for “The Evil On All Of Us”, had a classical orchestra background. So he brought us lots of different musical ideas based upon musical theory, which made our sound even more different. All of that put together made our sound possible, which has been described as hard rock by some but as modern thrash metal by others! Laughs.
Let’s talk about your creative process. How does it take place? And what about the lyrics?
Scott: I write some of the lyrics, and so does Phil. As for the music, Phil brings lots of riffs, lots of ideas, Bonon brings lots of ideas, too, like the bass solo on “Just Follows”, the more tense bass lines of “Sons Of War” were also his. And we give ourselves a lot of freedom in terms of song duration. We don’t impose a limit of minutes to any songs, we just let our creativity flow. The same with our videos: they should last about as long as we feel like it.
Which brings me to your videos. “Machines” is a music video with an interesting concept of portraying different decades through your costumes and acting and ends with a speech from Charlie Chaplin’s film “The Great Dictator”…
Scott: Yes, well, we came to a discussion because it runs 10 minutes with the speech. And if someone wants to pause it before, when the music ends, they will have got the concept from that part. But no one who saw it has complained to us that it was too long, or that we should’ve cut the speech or anything. Everyone has told us they like it! So the video begins with a comical tone, then moves to a more tense part, when people are turned into machines, then it becomes really dramatic, when the speech comes along. It shows that mankind is being dominated, people have become machine-like. And the speech at the end could not be more current: it could apply to the world today. The wheel keeps on turning, and it’s like we go through these cycles within some sort of Matrix. People work their entire lives at jobs they don’t like, and then they retire like machines that get rusty and go out of commission. The video is like a reality shock.
What inspires you besides music and literature?
Scott: I try to change people’s reality. If my music reaches out to one person’s ideas, if it makes them think about stuff differently, then I think I made it, I’ve reached my goal. “You are the best gun against the system” we say in one of our songs. Everyone should learn from history and evolve. And we strive for that, we try to bring some evolution into perspective, and that is what inspired “The Evil On All Of Us”.
What has been the audience’s reception to your music over time?
Scott: People are enjoying it, especially the live concerts. We got to do a couple of those during the times the lockdown was lifted over the past year, and it was great. We use projected images synced with our music through a click track so the audience really responds to that. They see a lot more than just the music. And we also use backing tracks so our sound doesn’t sound too thin, too meagre when compared to our studio album. But we do that in a way that still feels organic, we’re not robotic, we trade energy with the audience, we interact with them. And the sound needs to fill the room, that is really important: delivering a good show makes people want to keep coming back to see your band again, and again.
How is the rock and metal club scene now in and around Limeira? And how has it been affected by the pandemic?
Scott: Before the pandemic we had a very good field for cover bands. There were fewer people looking for new bands, but as people got stuck at home during the lockdowns they started looking for new music, and now there is a scene of bands that support each other not only locally but all over the country. And now everyone is starting to get into these original, underground bands: we are breaking the algorithms, and we can see the scene growing on the Internet. Besides, we were always very receptive to rock n’ roll out here in Limeira. This pandemic has affected the scene, many clubs and pubs have closed, but there is now space for new bands.
What are your thoughts on rock and metal not having as much space on the mainstream media in Brazil as it used to up to the 1990s?
Scott: Just the other day I was saying this to a friend of mine: what is better for the system? Is it a rock band singing about what is wrong with the world, making music that makes people think and want to fight the system, or putting their money on pop/funk songs that don’t speak of anything important? Rock n’ roll has always had a liberating element, visceral, a shock to society, and it affected young people, turned them into revolutionaries, which imposed a problem to the establishment. And you can see that younger people nowadays don’t really care about what’s going on around them; there are some who do, of course, but not the majority, not anymore. And the way things are going has reached a point where people believe the Earth is flat or that vaccines don’t work… To me it makes no sense that the same person who thinks vaccines were developed too fast to be trusted believes that in the same amount of time a super nanotechnology was invented to be inserted inside of people through the vaccinations… I mean, it is laughable, but at the same time very worrying.
What about government incentives for arts and culture in Brazil? You guys got an incentive through the Aldir Blanc Law of support for culture.
Scott: Yeah, we got it. It made the recording of our album possible but there is a lot of bureaucracy involved. The application of this money into culture, it’s great, and it returns to society in the form of cultural endeavours. So I think that the great amount of bureaucracy involved doesn’t help. But people in bands have to start thinking about their bands as a business, they need to market themselves without “selling out”. They need to have capital and planning, otherwise they don’t survive. And they need to do this with transparency. Bureaucracy gets in the way, for real. And for the most part, when incentives and grants are given, they go to artists that are already big that don’t really need it as much as underground bands do…
What Brazilian bands do you recommend to our readers?
Scott: There are so many great bands, and I can mention some of my friends right away like Traíra and Síndrome K, Aneurose… There is Free Some, also HellgardeN, Kamala, Container Blue, Ugly Truth… Besides, we are part of a collective of bands called Nova Era do Rock: look for their playlist on Spotify!
Thank you so much for doing this interview!
Scott: We thank you for this opportunity and for reaching out to us, this conversation has been great. It is really important that there are websites such as Chaoszine to divulge rock and metal bands out there!
Check Suck This Punch out on social platforms:
https://www.facebook.com/Suckthispunch