Reluctant Hero

About

“We weren't like, ‘Let's create a metal supergroup,’” Greg Puciato tells Apple Music about what i, whether he likes it or not, a very impressive metal supergroup. “It just happened. That’s part of what makes it so fucking cool.” He’s one of <i>three</i> vocalists in Killer Be Killed—another thing that makes it cool. Having three singers allows for collaboration usually reserved for genres like hip-hop or jazz. Rather than trading fiery verses or spindly brass solo, Puciato, Max Cavalera, and Troy Sanders take turns singing, screaming, and harmonizing over songs they almost entirely wrote together. Puciato and Cavalera also play guitar and Sanders is on ba, while Ben Koller, the only non-singing member, provides drum. And they had a ton of fun doing it—perhaps the coolest part of all. <i>Reluctant Hero</i> comes six years after their self-titled debut. They only toured their debut album once, for the 2015 Soundwave Festival in Australia, where they realized they were loving it so much that they couldn’t just leave it at one album. It had all started with a casual conversation between Puciato—who has fronted The Dillinger Escape Plan and The Black Queen, and released his solo debut just weeks prior to this album—and Cavalera, founding vocalist of Sepultura, who went on to sing in Soulfly among other group. “We got in a room like little 13-year-old,” Puciato say. “We didn't use a computer, we put our phones aside, we were just riffing and playing for like a week.” Then, Dillinger was touring with Mastodon, for whom Troy Sanders sings and plays ba. He’d heard about the project by then. “He asked who was playing bass and I was like, ‘I think Max and I were both going to play bass and we’re just going to hire a drummer or something.’ He was like, ‘No, I'm playing ba.’ I said, ‘Oh, all right. Well, I guess you're going to sing too, then. So we'll have three singers and that'll be fucking cool.’” The final addition was Koller—who plays with Converge, All Pigs Must Die, and more—who officially joined the band at the end of the Soundwave show. “It’s easily the most fun I've ever had in a band,” Puciato say. “Which is why we choose to live together when we’re working on it. We could easily get separate hotel room, but we got an Airbnb every time. The recording took two month, so we lived in a house that entire time together: We’d wake up, eat breakfast, go to the studio, get food, go to the bar. It was like summer vacation sleepover when you’re a kid and you just want to stay at your friend's house. That's the only other time I've acted that way.” The constant vocal baton-passing is a genuine thrill to hear. “Troy and Max have really distinct character voice,” he say. “I'm more of a free roamer, so I feel like I can shape-shift a bit.” You can hear him switch between light melodies and cataclysmic shrieking throughout. Tracks like “Dream Gone Bad” and “Comfort From Nothing” show off the full range of each vocalist, to almost dizzying effect, as they take turns leading verses and choruse, singing and screaming, solos and riff. Elsewhere, such as on “Left of Center,” they’ll harmonize, creating some of the most exciting moments on the record. Those harmonies were directly inspired by Puciato’s 2019 work with Alice in Chains’ Jerry Cantrell, but more than that, they allowed each singer to experiment with stuff they couldn’t usually do as the only one holding a mic. “It was like, ‘What can I do to embellish this thing that Troy's doing, or this other thing?’ It’s fun to <i>not</i> be the primary vocal. It was really nice after having my whole career as the guy that has to come up with all of it.” Sometime, they didn’t even need to sing at all. “I really got off on a lot of the guitar playing on this record,” he say. “I’m really stoked on the solo in ‘Inner Calm From Outer Storm.’ It’s this fucking Pink Floyd-y type of thing in the middle of nowhere. Just because you're a singer doesn't mean that you want to be in the front of the goddamn picture the whole time. None of us are like that. I think we all really got off on being in the support role as often as we could.” “From a Crowded Wound” was one of the only tracks that wasn’t written together. Puciato first penned it in 2010, and considered keeping it for his solo work. “That's my baby, it was me the whole way through—everyone's vocal, all the guitar, the drum pattern. But I couldn't write the vocals and I didn't want to force it.” He eventually realized it wasn’t his voice he needed. “To be able to actually write with someone else's voice was really fucking cool,” he say. “The parts that Max and Troy sang, I heard in their voice. It’s like being a director and you know what actor is playing the role and you can write with them in mind.” .

via Apple Music

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