“We’re becoming more of who we’re always meant to be” – interview with Face Yourself

Deathcore is trending at the moment, so why not take this opportunity and chat with one of the most interesting bands out there? That’s obviously Face Yourself, who have recently released their latest EP “Fury”. We chatted with bass player Kyle about their music, live shows and going viral.

Hi Kyle, welcome on Chaoszine. How are you doing at the moment?

Kyle Muenzner: Pretty good. I just got through probably some of the most hellacious New York City traffic to get to our practice space. I’m in Queens and the way it is, I have to cut through Manhattan, which is the craziest city in the world. Everyone’s trying to get home, it’s Friday, out of work, and I happen to be caught in that lovely sandwich. So, it’s good to be out of it. And when I go home, I know I’m not going to hit nearly an eighth of that. So, we’re in good shape.

Awesome. Silver linings after all. So, you just released a new single, and in “Fury”, you mentioned reaching a sound that looks like Face Yourself after two years. What was a key moment or breakthrough that helped you discover this authentic new musical identity?

Kyle Muenzner: We’ve all been in bands for a long time, Face Yourself has not been around for a long time. So, there’s a lot of experience that kind of plays into where we are now. I would say our core sound really kind of got developed around our third EP with “Tales of Death”. And then really from there, it’s been kind of just refining. Working with Joey from “Martyr” was a big jump for us as far as refining a lot of the things that we were already doing. And then with “Fury”, I feel like it is that next step for us. Definitely with the musicianship, it is much more intricate as opposed to our other stuff. Not that there’s anything wrong with anything we did before. So, it is more Face Yourself, if you will. We’re becoming more of who we’re always meant to be.

Fantastic. And we’re here for it. So, as you mentioned that you live in the United States and also, if I’m not mistaken, you have other band members that live somewhere else located in the world.

Kyle Muenzner: Jasmine’s from France; she moved here, though, in Colorado. Corey’s in Colorado; we have two members in Jersey, hence our practice spaces here. And then I’m obviously in the city. And then the band is really kind of housed in upstate New York, where Eric lives. That’s sort of our main base of operations.

How does this influence your creative process? And do you find that the distance actually enhances the chemistry?

Kyle Muenzner: We’re not very experienced, but we’re a very well-oiled machine. Everybody kind of has their role in the band. Obviously, because we’re separated, it’s a lot of remote writing. And we are heavily reliant on technology because of that. If we were the kind of band that need to be in a room and jam out ideas, I think that wouldn’t be feasible for our living situation. I think it sort of doesn’t have much of an impact with our style of music, because a lot of modern deathcore right now, is a lot of “Okay, boot up the recording software“. A lot of the members use Logic, and I’m a Logic man. So, we’ll boot up Logic, and then it’s like right to the grid. In that sense, it makes it pretty easy to work remotely. I don’t know if it enhances necessarily: the fact that we have so many people that write within the band enhances it. Where instead of being reliant, I think a lot of bands can be like one or two chefs, if you will, that are constantly whipping everything up, we have like four chefs in the band that are constantly whipping stuff up. So, you have a lot of different tastes, which can lead to disagreements. But I would say our music video that dropped today is the first song we have had 100% consensus agreement with out of all of them, which is out of a band with six people with very different tastes and opinions, that is a Herculean effort. That’s been really cool and everybody seems to really like it. “Catacombs” and “Wet Dreams“, I’ve been hearing, and “Carousel of Violence” have been like everybody’s favorite so far. But again, we’re not even at 24 hours of feedback yet so we’ll hear more as it comes in.

You mentioned that Joey, your producer, has become sort of integral to your sound. What do you think that he brings to the table that goes beyond just traditional production?

Kyle Muenzner: I think there’s two things. There’s his personal taste that kind of comes into it, that’s difficult to describe, it’s more contextual. When something comes up and we’re kind of trying to figure out maybe the right way to solve a particular problem with songwriting or maybe a delivery on something isn’t hitting the way we kind of thought in our head, he would insert his taste into it. A lot of times we agree with him on it. We have a very democratic process where we vote and we stick to our votes. Because there’s so many people that are writing, it kind of has to be like that where we just vote and then we honor the vote and then move on. So, that seems to be the way to go. I would say his biggest impact, from my perspective, and I think other members might have different things that stick out to them, but for me, it’s this. Dave runs a studio. I mix and master bands. We have multiple people in the band that can record and mix, and it’s not really like we have no idea what we’re doing, but there’s a level to it, right? There’s us knowing how to do it and being pretty good. And then the master coming in and taking things to a level that we couldn’t really do on our own, or maybe we wouldn’t have thought to like, “Oh, if we go through all this effort on focusing on getting the science of guitar chugs down, that’s not really going to generate this huge return for us and make the album sound so much better“. But it does, and his way of doing it is awesome. I would say it’s really a lot of little things that kind of create a synergy to make a better product overall.

So, he definitely sort of pushes everyone, like artistically?

Kyle Muenzner:  Yeah, I mean, artistically, I feel like the way we have it, like a lot of our songs are written when we come in. So, I would say it’s less on an artistic level and more on a problem-solving level in a way to, it’s almost like having a consultant come in and being like, what’s wrong with the business? Why are we not making more money? And they come in and they just like, they fix like three things. And it’s like, “Oh my God, like, how did I, like, we wouldn’t have even seen that“. Like his eyes, his eye and his ear, that’s what you’re getting. Once you’re at a certain point where you’re kind of creating music and making things that are sounding to a certain level, that’s when someone like Joey can come in and like really raise it. That’s kind of how I think of it, if that makes sense. I hope that was a good answer.

Awesome, so Face Yourself is sort of part of deathcore current resurgence with Lorna Shore and Whitechapel and is also fantastic artists like yourselves, of course. What do you think this new wave offers to the fans that sort of lacked before?

Kyle Muenzner: First, wow, to be even mentioned in the same breath as those bands, thank you, that’s really nice. I’m 35 years old and I’ve been doing this since I was 15. So to be on any wave whatsoever, to be even considered to be on a wave, I’m giddy. Sometimes I think about it and I get choked up and it’s like, I could cry. I’m so happy, so there’s that. It’s incredible, it’s so cool. For years I felt like I was always trying to get my ticket to the dance, and now it feels like I’m in, you know what I mean? I’m there and I couldn’t be happier. I’ve had my friends that are in bands and so, that are well-known and it’s so cool to, you know, potentially be able to tour with them and stuff like that. We’re all thrilled, we’re all so happy.

Since you’re with Sumerian Records, it means that you are on a good path for something, because they really do pick great artists for their roster.

Kyle Muenzner: And that was sort of what we thought. It was the kind of pinch-me moment. Obviously, when you’re getting going with that stuff, it’s like business. So you can’t get too emotionally attached to that aspect of it. But I did have to take a moment and be like, “Oh my God, that was a label that I wanted to be signed with them” when I was in a garage band with my cousin. At the time, it was like 2008. So it was like Born of Osiris and like Veil of Maya, they were like just coming up. We would always dream about it, and almost 20 years later, it happened. It’s cool.

Does you feel pressure to compete with streaming numbers and viral contents that sort of are like necessary evil nowadays?

Kyle Muenzner:  No, that’s a tough one, right? Because I think it’s difficult to be competing with art, right? More than we’re trying to compete, I think we’re trying to do our best and we’re trying to catch eyeballs. When Lorna Shore is doing really well,I’m stoked, I love that. It’s not because I listened to Lorna Shore all the time, I listened to like more death metal, but I look at it like, “Oh my God, like there’s a band in our niche that’s doing super well“. That’s awesome for everybody in the niche because that just raises the awareness. When people think Lorna Shore, they think deathcore, and when they think deathcore, they may think Face Yourself. They may think Whitechapel, Shadow of Intent, whatnot. You could go down the line and it’s just sort of like when their profile’s boosted, it’s boosted for everyone. So in that respect, it’s not so much competition for me. For me, it’s just, how do we put out content that kind of engages just folks in general? With social media, people just don’t have the attention span to like latch onto just one band. There’s always multiple. And with music, we’re all kind of relying on each other to lift each other up to a degree. So I think it’s a little bit more communal, that’s sort of how I think about it. But do I feel pressure to put it out? Yeah, especially because I suck at it. I’m terrible at social media. Other members of the band are much better than me. So I feel like that is not an area I’m able to help with as much, and I feel bad about it. I respect the people in the band that are super good at it because it’s just something I do not possess. So yeah, I feel pressure. But you know, I’m just so bad at it that I don’t really know how to do it any better than I’m doing it now.

If someone discovered Face Yourself in 100 years, what we want them to understand about your artistic journey and what sort of like the message of what you want to deliver?

Kyle Muenzner: Well, I think that’s one I could not speak for the band before, because I think if you asked all six of us, you’d get six different answers. For me, I would want it to be to never give up on your dreams, just never quit. I’ve been doing this for so long and I’ve never really gotten it right until now. Tthat’s been for so many reasons; a lot of them have been my own mistakes, maybe doing it wrong because I just didn’t know how to do it right. So I would just say never give up. I’ve thought it was over multiple times in my life, and maybe it’s like a sickness, like I just can’t let it go. But it finally worked out now.

So you said you use Logic as your software for demoing and recording?

Kyle Muenzner:  Yeah, I use Logic and Dave uses Logic. We actually joke we are the Logic faction in the band. And we’re trying to convert Eric right now. So, Eric, if you read this, R is for record. Space is for play and stop. Get on it. Shift Command A for new audio tracks. If you want to know some hotkeys, I know all the default hotkeys.

OK, so when you are working on your demos and recording, how do you name the initial projects that then turn out to be the songs that we listen?

Kyle Muenzner: I write the least for the band, so I get the least opportunity to do it. The names that they’ve come up with, like “Flaminade” is one that comes to mind. They’re usually incredibly stupid. One time I had this song that was sort of based on like a riff from “Where the Slime Live“. And so I called it “Morbid Angel“. It’s just the dumbest thing. I think there are opportunities for brevity. When you’re writing and it could be a variety of things, you could not be feeling so good. You could be stressed, you could be angry or whatever. And naming the demo name for a song is a moment of brevity. That’s an incredible question, no one’s ever asked me that. Not that I’ve done many podcasts, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard it. I’m around artists a lot and I’ve never heard anyone ask that. Like, where do we come? I don’t know whoever started that. It’s like the same gene that cats just constantly show their buttholes to people, too. It’s that same thing. Like, who did that? Why are we all like that? I have no idea.

Have you ever dealt with performance anxiety?

Kyle Muenzner: I’m a energy guy, I’m a adrenaline guy. So if the adrenaline’s going, I’m good, I can run through 10 brick walls. I think the hardest show we ever had was in New Orleans on this last tour. Our driver at the time, his house got hit by lightning. He had a cat die and his other one ended up dying later. He has one cat now and his whole family was there, it was a devastating thing. So we dropped him off and he had to go home and we had to play after that. And the energy was, it was tough for me to get going. I was getting choked up and whatnot. That is almost the exact opposite of performance anxiety. It’s almost like an emotional drain after that to like go on and perform. I thought we did okay, but it’s definitely not our best. And how could it be when it’s like someone that’s close to the band, it’s going through this thing? That sticks out, that was a tough show, but such is the way. I think after once we got that out of the way and we were able to kind of compartmentalize it and move on, our driver got home and we were able to kind of get back to it because there’s the rest of the tour to do. You got to clock back in and get to work. So that’s what we’re all about.

Yeah, for sure. Can you share with us your family’s reaction to Face Yourself?

Kyle Muenzner: I’ve been doing this since I was 15, so my folks are accustomed to it a bit. They are not metal folks. I think they would classify the music they listen to as soft rock. Like popular 80s music, but nothing aggressive or anything like that. There’s sort of like, “Oh, that’s Kyle being Kyle“, they’re kind of used to it. My wife is kind of the same way, just like she likes some aggressive music, like Queens of the Stone Age, Deftones. And she likes like a couple of random metal bands. But for the most part, deathcore is definitely not her thing. So you just get used to it, and it is what it is. I think my parents are super proud of me. They know how hard I’ve worked at this and how badly I’ve wanted it. And honestly, without the support of my wife and my parents, I like would never be able to do this. So I’m grateful. They’ll listen to it time and here and there just to humor me. But no, it’s not their jam. Dave’s mom is probably the goat with that, though. She’s bought like 20 hats, just something crazy.

Thank you so much for taking the time to do this interview with me. Is there anything else you’d like to add to our readers? 

Kyle Muenzner: No, thank you so much. I really appreciate it, so thank you.