It's a fair question for any band that makes a point of playing shirtless even in 40-degree weather, uses pentagrams and toy dinosaurs in its artwork and describes its music as "Motörhead inside of a gravity bong": How serious a band are you?
As the roaring sludge-metalists in Nightosaur ate through 90 minutes of digital tape during an interview at their rehearsal space this week, I never got the chance to ask about their sincerity. Nor did I need to.
You have to be pretty serious about your metal to go on and on about which Mastodon and Judas Priest albums are best, and which Iron Maiden and Alice Cooper show to drive to this summer. You have to be even more serious to build your own guitars, which red-bearded guitarist Andy Webber has done for himself, and for bespectacled, long-haired bassist John Henry.
"It's cheaper than buying one, and I can make it look the way I want it to," bragged Webber, who has started his own custom shop, Whale Hazard Unlimited.
Henry wholeheartedly endorses its product: "I didn't realize how much my old bass tone sucked until I started using [Webber's]. Too bad that was a year into the band playing gigs."
What really proved to me that these guys aren't kidding around, however, was their lengthy, track-by-track breakdown of their second album, "Spaceaxers," which they're promoting with a release party Thursday at the Triple Rock.
They described in detail -- and with no hint of irony -- which of their new songs is about a vengeful barbarian ("Warrior Bride") and a future being warning of Earth's destruction ("Porchburner") and an Antarctic mission gone amuck ("Too Far South for Mutiny"). The latter song might also be about their rather dismal tour of Texas last year, which was when former guitarist Max Clark started a slow, amicable exit from the band. He stayed through the making of "Spaceaxers."
"We tried auditioning a few other guitarists, and may still add one," Webber said, "but for now, we're having too much fun as a trio. There's more space for us to [mess] around."
