Frequency Overload | Matt Connarton Unleashed

0:00 Speaker 1: If that doesn't get you, move and check your pulse, you might be dead. That is called thrash king. That's the radio edit, of course, from frequency overload from New York, real New Yorkers here and let's get uh, let's see. I think we have Tom Bush on the phone with us. Tom are you there?

0:15 Speaker 2: I am. We got the whole band.

0:17 Speaker 1: Oh, you got the whole band. Welcome guys, I'm really excited to talk to you. All right, everybody in as orderly a fashion as you can. Please tell us who you are and what you do in the band. Go ahead and introduce yourselves.

0:31 Speaker 2: Kevin Deally drums.

0:33 Speaker 1: Welcome.

0:33 Speaker 2: Steve Bass. Hello, Steve Little play bass?

0:38 Speaker 1: Yes, excellent, he too.

0:43 Speaker 3: I am Corey Schaeffer. I play lead guitar and rhythm guitar.

0:45 Speaker 1: Hey, Corey, Okay, how you doing man?

0:49 Speaker 2: I am mister Bush vocals, all right.

0:51 Speaker 1: Mister Bush, Hey man, you guys? Is that everybody? It's the four of you?

0:55 Speaker 2: Yep?

0:56 Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, you guys are very very well high energy obviously it's but uh yeah, like I said, I mean that really gets the that really gets the blood pumping. And you guys are from Long Island? Is that correct?

1:09 Speaker 2: That's right. Yep.

1:10 Speaker 1: What does the scene like there? I mean, are there a lot of Is there a lot of hardcore bands there, you know, classic thrash and that kind of stuff, or you guys kind of I don't know the lay of the land there exactly. I mean, obviously you're in New York, but you know there's a lot of different kinds of music there. But what you guys are doing. Are there a lot of bands kind of doing something similar or are you guys sort of on your own in that sense what we're.

1:30 Speaker 4: Kind of on our own in the particular style that we play in. Yeah, but there is a lot of new metal, death metal, some hardcore and crossover band still around and we all play together.

1:44 Speaker 2: We're all friends basically.

1:46 Speaker 1: Yeah. Well that's good.

1:48 Speaker 2: There's there's a big local scene.

1:50 Speaker 5: The only thing the only downside is is not ah, there's not many good local venues to get ourselves out there on right.

1:58 Speaker 1: Yeah. That can be a challenge anywhere, you know, especially with what you guys are doing, because it's not like, you know, like if you're playing acoustic guitars, you know, you can do coffeehouses and stuff like that. But what you guys are doing obviously, you need a stage where you can really I mean, I would imagine, you know, you get moshpits going and all that, so you need, uh, you need places that can really kind of contain, uh, what you're doing. Have you guys, has has Frequency Overload been around for a while?

2:23 Speaker 1: Have you guys been out this a while? Or how long has the band existed?

2:27 Speaker 2: About four and a half years?

2:29 Speaker 1: Also not that long.

2:30 Speaker 2: Okay, it's been a year. Yeah, we got at.

2:40 Speaker 1: Yeah, that's excellent. That's excellent. So tell me about thrash King. Love that song. I did make a radio edit of it for for our purposes here today, But I love that track. You know, it's the kind of thing if you're listening to it in the car, you're gonna end up getting pulled over for speeding. But tell me about thrash King and the inspiration behind that. Yeah, maybe kind of like the Reage song exactly exactly.

3:04 Speaker 4: The way that most of our songs come to come to life is the guys write it and then present it to me and basically the song dictates to me. I'm more like a conduit when I write the lyrics, like the song tells me what it is.

3:22 Speaker 2: Yeah, and for whatever.

3:24 Speaker 4: Reason, when I heard that, it hit me like the good old you know, no fluff, toxic Waltz, port Namash, you.

3:35 Speaker 2: Know, into the pit by.

3:37 Speaker 4: By Testament, like a regular song, not trying to make any messaging to anybody, but slam for Slam's sake, you know.

3:45 Speaker 1: Yep, yep, I'd say it accomplishes that certainly. Is that must be a crowd favorite?

3:50 Speaker 2: Right?

3:50 Speaker 1: Do you guys play out a lot? Are you playing a lot of shows?

3:53 Speaker 2: Uh? We play.

3:55 Speaker 4: We kind of took a little bit of a hiatus to record the second album.

3:59 Speaker 2: Yeah, so we played.

4:03 Speaker 4: I guess it was a month ago. Spring Slaughter two we played. Is that a place called Shakers over in Oakdale?

4:10 Speaker 2: By us?

4:11 Speaker 4: We're playing the two weeks from today. Yeah, we're playing two weeks from today at a record store okay called record stop. Yeah, we play a record store. I talked to our video guy this morning. He might be down there and do a live stream on our Facebook page.

4:27 Speaker 2: We're trying to figure that out.

4:29 Speaker 4: And then we have another book, another gig booked for October twenty third, which is at one of the biggest stages around here called Stereo Garden, And that's with some other bigger bands, including a band called Anika that's kind of making a name for themselves in the city.

4:49 Speaker 1: Okay, excellent, excellent. It's cool that you're going to play a record store. I mean, are there a lot of those there still or because I know, you know, here in New Hampshire, there's a surprising you'd be surprised at how many of there still are.

5:03 Speaker 4: Yeah, we have a couple of pretty good ones on Long Island. This one actually it's a new location. It's in Patchog, But when it was in a place called ron Kankama.

5:15 Speaker 2: We're talking about the eighties.

5:16 Speaker 4: I bought my first Mayhem album, now, my first Player album. Now. The name record Stop has been around forever, and when the two owners, Bruce and his partner sold out, somebody bought the name, you know, they bought the name as the franchise.

5:30 Speaker 2: And moved it to Patchog.

5:33 Speaker 3: Yeah, most of my collection is from that store.

5:38 Speaker 1: Oh, that's so cool.

5:40 Speaker 2: Yeah, the place was awesome back in the day.

5:42 Speaker 4: Bootlegs, you know, live Slayer albums that someone like recorded on a a I don't know, handheld radio and then put onto a record you know, like an LP.

5:54 Speaker 2: Yeah, it was crazy stuff. They had that. Yeah, this is Corey.

5:57 Speaker 3: I also like the fact that the b is start to come back a little bit. I me and my son will buying some vinyls and we play them. That's pretty cool.

6:05 Speaker 2: I like doing that, you know.

6:07 Speaker 1: Yeah. Oh yeah, Well, vinyl, I mean never really went away, but I think it was what was it twenty It was either twenty twenty four or twenty twenty three, was like the first year since the inception of CDs that vinyl actually outsold CDs. More people were buying vinyl than CDs.

6:23 Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's fun.

6:25 Speaker 1: Nothing sounds better than vinyl, you know, the warmth of it and everything.

6:28 Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's great.

6:30 Speaker 4: Not only that, it's a it's a process. It's a chance to unplug, put it on. You're going to listen to the whole side now.

6:37 Speaker 2: Right, and then whip it. It takes away that.

6:41 Speaker 4: That digital you know, I need immediate satisfaction and onto the next It takes that away, which is great.

6:48 Speaker 3: And you can also look at the artwork and read the lyrics again and all that other stuff.

6:52 Speaker 2: So that's that's kind of cool too.

6:53 Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, that's one of the great things about physical media is you know, you know, when I was a kid. You know, I'm sure you guys were the same way. I mean, I loved, uh, just looking at if I was really into an artist, I would buy everything that they put out, and I would look at even just like stuff like you know who their management company was, and you know, just any little, any teeny tiny speck of information I could find within the liner notes of the album or the cassette or the CD or whatever it was.

7:20 Speaker 1: I was, uh, you know, that's that's how obsessive I could be with that stuff. And it's good. It's good that it's never gone away. You know, it's still even CDs. I would say, you know, five or six years ago, a lot of the guests that I would interview, they were like, CDs now, that's that's a dead medium. And now everybody's everybody's putting out CDs and and and a lot of artists, you know, major label artists of course, always released on vinyl. But but even though a lot of independent artists now you know, it's expensive, but they're putting out vinyl.

7:48 Speaker 1: It's it's really amazing.

7:49 Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, I still think that there's a lot of people out there now that really.

7:53 Speaker 5: Want to have that that that physical piece of you know, music in the hand that they can take with them everywhere instead of you know, just to this digital.

8:01 Speaker 2: Copy right right.

8:04 Speaker 4: Absolutely, we managed to find a really cool company, so we we have our first album, Fate Anthropic on vinyl at a place.

8:17 Speaker 2: Called Elastic Stage.

8:20 Speaker 4: So if you go on our website, frequency of a little dot com.

8:23 Speaker 2: You go down, you'll see.

8:24 Speaker 4: Off site merchandise and then merchandise directly from us. But you can you can link to Elastic Stage and they will make one off. You got to wait a few weeks. Oh my god, it doesn't cost us. We don't got to lay it all out. So you order it and it comes from in royal mail from England in a few weeks and you get a copy of our album.

8:45 Speaker 1: Oh that's really cool. I love that.

8:49 Speaker 4: And then for us, because you know we have the account, I can get four or five at a discounted price for the merch table.

8:56 Speaker 2: Yeah, that's it's a great, great idea.

9:00 Speaker 1: That is a great concept. I'm looking at the website too. By the way, the website's really cool. I'm a website nerd. This is a very cool site and I love the video. Can you tell me about we didn't talk about this yet the video for Thrashking. Circling back to thrash King because I'm looking at it now and you know's what's interesting about this. It reminds me of something I was having a conversation with someone about this recently. How when I was a kid, you know, you'd see these videos on MTV and sometimes artists who are like really super famous, they would have these videos that look like they cost millions of dollars, you know, to make.

9:31 Speaker 1: But now with the technology that we have, because I'm looking at the video for Thrashking, and this would have been very expensive to do back in the day, but this looks like I mean, tell me about this video the making of it.

9:46 Speaker 2: So we're on Soday Records from Canada.

9:52 Speaker 1: Yep, love them.

9:53 Speaker 4: And so Sam said, listen, we're going to do the release this and that you really should to have something visual for YouTube. We could get like an AI video done quick and release it at the same time. So we're gonna cross reference the lyrics with give me a couple of sentences, a couple of ideas what the song is about.

10:15 Speaker 2: Now, I said, all right, all the people that.

10:18 Speaker 4: Are upset, they're doing their day job, you know, like the rest of us. They're in the mud, and then they go out to a frequency overload show and they're happy and they're in the pit and they're losing you know that they're they're losing their inhibitions and they're having a good time. Yeah, and about two hours later, really like by the next morning, there's the video. Don Yeah, glorious, And the cost of it was seventy five hours.

10:43 Speaker 1: Oh my god, that's incredible. Wow, that's amazing.

10:50 Speaker 2: Zero to that a few years ago.

10:52 Speaker 1: Oh yeah.

10:54 Speaker 6: I think it's cool when the guys turn into like warriors, when the guys comes up with a sword and he's like.

10:59 Speaker 2: A superhero because the lyrics they raising your swords.

11:02 Speaker 4: So whatever program they use all that and and translate the lyrics.

11:06 Speaker 2: It's amazing what they can do.

11:08 Speaker 1: Yeah, it's really cool because I'm looking at it now and it's it's like, you know, the people in the video who are who are in the pit, like you don't they don't look like people that you would expect to see in the pit. So so it's cool. So the whole concept is cool. You know, they're just regular people who they go to the show and Uh. Oh, they've even got thrash King on the on the back of their their phones. Oh that's really cool. Yeah, the video is awesome. I love this, absolutely love this.

11:34 Speaker 5: It kind of shows, you know, like everyday people that you wouldn't think would be friends in their in their regular everyday life, but then once they get together it come to over those shows, we're all friends and we're all in a pit and we're all there for one thing that we love.

11:47 Speaker 1: Yeah right, yeah, I love it. I love it. I love the whole I love that whole concept. That's that's amazing. So the first album, So thrash King is on the first album, correct.

11:58 Speaker 4: It is not this The Fresh is the first release of what's going to be the second album.

12:04 Speaker 1: Oh gotcha? Okay.

12:05 Speaker 2: Yeah.

12:06 Speaker 4: What we did was we went in and we recorded ten more songs, okay, Threshking being the first one of those. We mixed all drums and bass to completion, and now as we can we go back.

12:21 Speaker 2: Guitars, vocals, guitars, vocals.

12:24 Speaker 4: Our recording engineer is Joey Z from Life of Agony.

12:28 Speaker 1: Nice.

12:29 Speaker 4: Yeah, So if you look at his schedule, he was on the tour with Keith Camputo playing bass for two months. Then they're going back in August to play I Guess Walking and the rest of that. So he's you know, he we got to kind of jump to Joey's studio and then back again as much as we can.

12:47 Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, so that's a that's a process. He's obviously a very busy guy. We also have Love and Bullets. Is that also going to be on the new album?

12:56 Speaker 2: That's on the first album?

12:57 Speaker 1: That's on the first album? Okay, because that's the propic. Yeah, gotcha, gotcha? Yeah, because that's a great track too. We're actually going to play that in a few minutes at the end of our conversation. I made a radio edit for that too, and that's that's another really great track. Is the process for recording the new album? Has it been much different than doing the first one?

13:17 Speaker 2: It has been the first one.

13:20 Speaker 4: We intended on doing a three song demo, okay, and we went through a marketing agency and we came to him said, look, we have this three song demo, and he's like, great, A lot of our college stations are still album format.

13:33 Speaker 2: You need a full album. Yeah, So you.

13:36 Speaker 4: Got about five songs on there that we did at a studio and the other ones we did at Corey's house on Reaper and then had Joey mix it and master at his best that he could to get it to the level.

13:49 Speaker 2: Of the other songs. Okay, so you'll see that on the liner notes.

13:54 Speaker 4: But yeah, it was a real process to get a full album together. After we went there, so proud of ourselves for getting three done, we rented Voodoo Studios in Port jeff for two full days whole weekend.

14:07 Speaker 2: Yeah.

14:08 Speaker 1: Yeah, that's intense trying to get all that done in one weekend though. That's uh, I mean, what was that? I mean, was that challenging or did it flow pretty well?

14:17 Speaker 2: Or this is Kevin the drummer, and yeah it was challenging.

14:21 Speaker 1: Yeah, no doubt, no doubt.

14:25 Speaker 2: But we got it done.

14:26 Speaker 6: And everybody's real cool, you know, try to keep it light and yep, you know, joking around and uh, you know, we got it done. The first day we tried to we were thinking we were going to get like five or six done, and we only got like two done. So the next day we came in, I came in with a great attitude and just went in and we.

14:49 Speaker 2: Just crushed it. We crushed the rest of them.

14:51 Speaker 5: Yeah, definitely a challenging process, but we also had a great fun time doing it too, because Joe is just a great engineer to work with and he makes the prize. It's just smooth and uh and really really fun to.

15:04 Speaker 2: Motivated, really fun to do.

15:06 Speaker 1: He motivates us ten Yeah, excellent, excellent. Do you have a title.

15:09 Speaker 4: Another thing that he did that that adds that that thickness and warmth to it is they ran the digital signals from the drums and the two direct bass ends through the old tape reel to reel machine really, of course, not in the tape, just running the signals through those old handmade capacities and the wound ceramics and all of that then into pro tools.

15:38 Speaker 1: Really yeah, that's interesting.

15:43 Speaker 2: And then it's Kevin again.

15:44 Speaker 6: Whenever I would get a little stressed, I'd look up into the recording booth and Tomas Sanger is dancing with a life size.

15:50 Speaker 2: Skeleton, you know. Yeah, yeah, I get right back on it. Yeah, Yeah, it's all good.

15:59 Speaker 6: It's a siding, and I think the songs are sounding great and look forward to getting some more out there, you know.

16:05 Speaker 1: Excellent. Yeah, do you have a title for the album?

16:10 Speaker 4: Most likely it's going to be one of two Relapsed into Rage okay or This Metal Life okay, flip a coin on that one.

16:21 Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, those are both good. I like Relapse into Rage though that one kind of something a little provocative about it, which I like. But did you have any kind of an ETA on the new album or I know you don't want to put a hard, hard date on it, but.

16:36 Speaker 2: Definitely by the end of the year.

16:37 Speaker 4: I mean, we're I'm going back to do vocal tracks on one, possibly.

16:42 Speaker 2: Two tomorrow, so okay.

16:45 Speaker 4: Yeah, so we'll have at least the next one done vocally and he'll be able to mix and master it after tomorrow.

16:54 Speaker 1: Oh excellent, Okay, all right, that's good. That's great. And then do you intend to keep her you've seen singles until you know, like when when the next one is ready? I mean, are you going to uh or are you going to hold out for the for the album at this point?

17:08 Speaker 2: No?

17:09 Speaker 4: No, According to our label and everybody else, really they want this constant gratification. They want singles, single singles, and then what we're going to do is we're going to do the singles, then put it all together and offer it as a full download, full CD, full LP on vinyl the end of the year.

17:31 Speaker 1: Okay, okay, oh, very good, very good. Yeah, Soday Records. They're sending us a lot of like really good artists. That's that's how we met you guys. And uh yeah, that's that's quite a label they've got. They've got some real talent there. So it's great that your work. How did you come to work with them? How did that come about?

17:50 Speaker 2: You don't even know, Corey doesn't even know. We have.

17:57 Speaker 4: We have a local school teacher on Long Island, Okay, and he has a streaming station called l I n L Long Island night Light.

18:05 Speaker 1: Okay.

18:06 Speaker 4: They started sending stuff to him, and he contacted me and said, hey, this is some of this stuff is going to go on that Hammer and Anvil metal show that we were talking about that we kind of made up around frequency overload at the time, and uh so I was like, oh, that's crazy, that's cool. So then I started listening to some of this stuff and I said, holy crap, I got to send this guy an email and I said, listen, we we'd love to have representation and would you listen to Alice stuff and and give us an idea and that's how it happened.

18:39 Speaker 1: Oh well, very cool. Well yeah, I mean, like I said, uh, you know, they they clearly know what they're doing and they're doing right by you guys, and that's that's wonderful. So what what's kind of the next uh like, do you guys have any are you playing any shows this weekend? Or when's when's your next show?

18:57 Speaker 4: Not this weekend, it's two weekends, yeah, two weeks can so June sixth Saturday, Patchog, New York. The doors open at six point thirty. It's at a record store called Record Stop, okay, and we're playing with a couple of other bands, including Out Close and Dear Friends in Idiot Box and uh, we're looking to have a good time.

19:16 Speaker 2: It's a free show, all ages.

19:18 Speaker 1: Oh very good. That's outstanding. There aren't that many opportunities, at least around here. I don't know what it's like there for even all ages shows anymore. I mean, what's it like there? I mean, obviously, because you want to get in front of a young crowd right when you can. You want to get those you want to get those young fans because they're the ones who you know they're going to be sticking with you for for a long time if you, you know, if you can get them to see you alive. I mean, are there a lot of opportunities to do all ages shows?

19:43 Speaker 4: There?

19:45 Speaker 2: There isn't a whole lot of opportunities.

19:47 Speaker 4: But Kevin and Steve came up with this great idea that we used last year which we started booking our own shows. So we did in all ages what we call Pappy Palooza.

19:59 Speaker 2: Oh a in Riverhead.

20:01 Speaker 4: Yeah, each year we do this, uh, Pappy Palooza. The first one was on my driveway and we ended up going to a brewery and they served food there, et cetera. So it was all ages and it turned out to be a fabulous time.

20:15 Speaker 1: Oh that's excellent, very good.

20:18 Speaker 2: Yeah, we packed the house. The fire marshal came. Actually, yeah, it was packed the file.

20:24 Speaker 1: Did the fire marshall give you our time or what? What? What was the result of that?

20:29 Speaker 4: He said, listen, guys, is not enough exits. Oh you gotta do this, We gotta you gotta do it upstairs. Oh, we broke down, sent everybody upstairs and did like a Chinese fire drill with all.

20:42 Speaker 2: The equipment running up and down and.

20:45 Speaker 4: Set up in the bat room facing out into the restaurant.

20:49 Speaker 2: Okay, it was out of control.

20:52 Speaker 5: Wow, But but it went off like it like it was meant to be. And uh we finished that day out strong and it was great.

21:01 Speaker 7: Yeah, and is gaining traction like it's it's becoming like a Long Island music festival that people are looking forward to and bands want to get on the bill.

21:12 Speaker 2: And play with us. Yeah, and uh, it's really fun. It's really cool.

21:16 Speaker 1: Oh that's excellent. You guys are all four of you, You all New Yorkers, like y'all grew.

21:21 Speaker 2: Up there, born and raised. Yeah.

21:24 Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a great place to be for a musician, that's for sure.

21:27 Speaker 2: Oh yeah, but right on the island.

21:31 Speaker 1: Oh that's excellent. Yeah, good, good, well guys, Oh go ahead.

21:36 Speaker 6: From Nasau. I'm Kevin the Drama. I was from Nassau County, Okay, Long Island. These guys are in Suffolk County, So this was like the country to me when I grew up. But I moved out to Suffolk and uh, I met Corey and we started this band and it's been it's been kicking ass for the last four years, four and a half years.

21:56 Speaker 1: That's great. Well, I look forward to seeing what you guys do and hearing what you guys do and when the album comes out and everything, and we'll definitely have to have you back on, you know, as soon as you got as soon as you got something new, we will have you back on. Absolutely. And where's the best place to go online for everybody to keep up with what what you guys are doing, what frequency overload is up to.

22:16 Speaker 4: Definitely Frequency overload dot com because you can link out to all the socials and everything from there.

22:22 Speaker 2: But that's the basis.

22:24 Speaker 4: And if you go on there, you can join the mailing list and I always send out email blasts to let everybody know what we're up to, what we're doing. There's a blog page and we started adding what the new songs are about.

22:39 Speaker 2: One at a time.

22:40 Speaker 4: Oh interesting, so you'll be able to, you know, get an idea of what's coming next.

22:45 Speaker 1: In other words, that's a cool idea. I've never really seen anyone do that. Oh okay, yeah, I'm looking at this. Uh, I'm looking at the blog page now. Yeah, so you got you know, boy and seed turn Okay, I see, yeah, that's a that's a cool concept like that. That's a really good idea. That's a really good idea. And they and like I said.

23:06 Speaker 5: Let's go to get us out there, getting ourselves out there and just try to really you know, engage with crowd and and and the and the public and just get the word out.

23:15 Speaker 1: Right right absolutely well, in a moment, we're going to play the track Love and Bullets, of course from the first album. But I want to thank you guys, all four of you for being here today. Corey, Kevin, Steve, mister Bush, thank you all. And uh, like I said, I'm I became a as soon as I listen to you guys, I became an instant fan. I love this stuff. And of course the track that we're going to play, Love and Bullets, as you said, that's from the first album, Fate Anthropic, and uh, I can't wait to hear what's next.

23:38 Speaker 1: But uh, we'll let you go and we'll hit that track. But guys, Frequency Overload, thank you guys so much for being here today. This has been wonderful.

23:45 Speaker 2: Thanks for having us.

23:48 Speaker 1: Appreciate it absolutely. We'll do it again in the future. All right, take care, guys, Bye bye bye. All right, all four members of Frequency Overload and let's give this a spin uh. This is called a cuve and bullets. This is from the first album Fate Anthropic from Frequency Overload