vLES

Shock Cinema's sonic violence fits snugly between murderous and sexy. Singer Destiny Montague's haunting voice careens down a dirty alley of noise provided by the throbbing guitar and drums of Autry Fulbright and Miyuki Furtado.

After shifting residence from Atlanta to New York, Destiny, and Autry linked up with Miyuki and immediately recorded the songs that would become Our Way Is Revenge. The 2006 EP can swerve from paranoia to beauty to noir, but just as often mashes them all together. This of course is not surprising from a band that cites filmmakers like notorious mind-fucker David Lynch and Italian horror legend Dario Argento as primary influences.

Just prior to finishing recording their next album, Shock Cinema sat down with vLES to talk about cults, impending doom, and the most sinister evil of all, YouTube.

vLES: You've said you wanted to prove yourselves to everyone who doubted your decision to move to New York. Was that energy funneled into making Our Way Is Revenge?

Autry Fulbright (guitar): The title Our Way Is Revenge is not at all a reference to New York, or succeeding in our move. The record was the revenge, but the revenge wasn't the record. Us being able to do this record and play shows and work as a band wasn't fueled by, "Oh, we need to show this person."

Destiny Montague (vocals): No, not at all.

Autry: The fact that we did this record, and we were able to succeed, and we didn't
come back with our tails between our legs and quietly move back. We showed ourselves that we can do it. That Our Way Is Revenge record, it was literally, we met Miyuki, he agreed to play with us, we sent him a few demos, we came up here, saw him once, ran through the songs. We rearranged the songs basically that first practice. The next week we recorded the whole record.

Destiny: In one-and-a-half days. With two mics. In Miyuki's apartment.

Autry: So that record, for better or worse, whether people love it or hate it, or think we're amateurs or amazing, hope it's somewhere in between. Literally, that was our first time getting together.

So there wasn't any learning curve with learning to play with Miyuki?

Destiny: It was actually pretty amazing. It was one of those things where it was obviously meant to happen. Our whole meeting and move up here and him understanding what we were going for… it could have so easily been another way, with months of practicing and rearranging. It was just one of those magical moments where you’re like, "This person gets this, this is amazing."

Has the speed at which you recorded the last record helped your approach this go-round?

Autry: Yeah, definitely. These are songs that we've created with each other from the ground up, sometimes just writing in the studio. It's a privilege and a joy and a rarity to be able to do that. Basically we were individual musicians when Our Way Is Revenge was recorded. This time we're a band.

What music or films or art have been inspiring the new record?

Autry: I really like the Peoples Temple documentary [Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple]. That's pretty influential to the new record.

I remember hearing something about Jim Jones being a musician

Autry: Yeah, yeah. It's funny that a lot of people that are deemed as cult figures are great musicians. Charles Manson had amazing songs, and Jim Jones. Devendra Banhart, hahaha. Just all these very influential and charismatic people did these amazing songs. And we're gonna actually do an EP tribute to bands like that.

How did you guys get your hands on stuff like that?

Destiny: We tried hard to find them.

Autry: We're pretty into it. She and I are always scouring stuff on those figures.

Did you go into some weird, dark places to try and find that stuff?

Destiny: Yeah, it's called YouTube.

Autry: Yeah, that's pretty dark. MySpace and YouTube, to me, are the darkest places you can go.

Destiny: Sometimes you'll get lost for hours and you won't realize how much time has gone by. The Manson videos are really interesting to watch, because up until a certain point in your life, everybody's like, "Oh, these are the famous serial killers, and this is what happened around them." But if you just take a moment and just actually watch the person talk, you start to understand their mind–not to justify any of the craziness or weird things that went on–but you start to understand that they're human beings. But I'd hear these songs and think,"this is pretty amazing."I'd want to take it and snip it, sample it into something. You know, where he's just taken a garbage pail from the corner of the room and started banging on this thing. What if he had had the ability to just do music, what if his life had gone down that road instead of the other way? It's just interesting. And I think there's a little bit of that in everybody.

I know you guys are into David Lynch and I can see some of the dark paranoia from his films in your music. Do you draw on films in terms of tone or atmosphere?

Destiny: Yeah, it's more about the mood. Just the tone and the feeling that you get in your gut from taking in something like that. I think that film is the highest form of art, and I'll always feel like that. What we can strive for in this band is to have a film-like and cinematic feel to all the sounds that we create. I feel like we're pretty successful. Everything should be as epic as that.

So do you feel like there's not enough of a visual side to bands and their music these days, or at least making their sound cinematic or epic?

Destiny: In one way I completely agree with that. In another way I think that there are too many people doing it in the wrong way right now. People will just have projections behind them of skateboarding videos, or just somebody puking

Not really integrating it well

Destiny: Yeah. We in our society are just so ADD when it comes to stuff that music sometimes isn't enough if it's not engaging. And I also feel like people use it as a crutch, if their music isn't that compelling, like, "Oh, watch this shit behind me, too."You know, it's a good trick. We had projections in our early days, that we ended up dumping, because A) our projectionist moved away, and B) that we didn't need it any more. That we could stand alone as a band and still get that same feeling.

Autry: I know that because I can't read music, and I don't know theory or anything like that, when I write it's more like telling a story. To create musically what I'm imaging visually. So usually when I'm writing, I'm trying to imagine, what does a hangman's noose sound like, or what does a dog biting something sound like? Those are both really terrible examples, haha. But yeah, doing that rather than figuring out theory.

INTERVIEW BY JOE AUSTIN

When is the new record going to be finished?

Destiny: We're shooting for the end of this year, but I think realistically, maybe in January.