So we’ve been talking about that in a bunch of interviews, because people are like, ‘Is that what the lyrics are really about?’ I love it.” It degenerated into, ‘Can we just drink a beer while we’re all waiting to die?’ I thought it was obvious that it was just a bunch of crap. And just rambled on about that for about two paragraphs. “I seriously made up this bullshit in five seconds about how it was a struggle for humanity asserting their will about the unpredictability and power of nature. We were really excited about it, and it felt like a new beginning.”Īfter decades of playing in professional bands (to name a few: the two moonlight as the rhythm section of the Melvins Coady used to play drums for Murder City Devils, and Jared started out playing bass for Pacific Northwest weirdo punk bands Karp, The Whip, and Tight Bros From Way Back When), they are no strangers to poking fun at the album-promotion process, either: “It’s funny-the label wanted us to write something about and what it’s about for the press release,” Coady says. “Going back to a two-piece again, it felt like we really pulled together and did something good. That might have had something to do with it.” But that doesn’t mean their signature humor-and even hopefulness-doesn’t seep into the songs. He is sitting across from me at a bar table in Portland, Oregon where they have just finished playing a set at a mini-festival at B-Side, a beloved East Burnside rock ‘n’ roll dive bar, celebrating its 10-year-anniversary. “We kind of had a rough year parting ways with our guitar player,” Coady admits, when asked about the darker elements of the album. While it certainly carries their signature upbeat heaviness, Command Your Weather features a recurring theme throughout, created with eerie percussion (moody, church bell-esque carnival sounds, which, according to the band, are created with an instrument called “blossom bells”) and lyrics that nod to perhaps deeper subject matters than they’ve delved into in the past, the band set out to create a “wiser, more atmospheric” record. These are two men who are beloved in the heavy music world for their impish grins so ubiquitously plastered on their faces, so when there’s even a hint of darkness in their sound, it’s sure to get people to sit up and notice. The new album, Command Your Weather (out July 8 via Joyful Noise Recordings), is perhaps the band’s darkest recording to date. Still a loud and proud duo, Big Business returned in 2019 with The Beast You Are.While barbershop promo photos and tongue-in-cheek song titles like “Diagnostic Front” might paint a lighthearted picture, bassist Jared Warren and drummer Coady Willis of Los Angeles two-piece Big Business have returned with a follow-up to their 2013 scorcher, Battlefields Forever, that’ll likely keep everyone on their toes. Kasai and Martin had dropped out of the group by the time Command Your Weather, the band's fourth studio long-player, dropped in 2016. The following year brought in another new player, guitarist Scott Martin, who would make his first studio appearance on 2013's Battlefields Forever. The duo's second album, 2007's Here Come the Waterworks, featured a slightly wider range of influences and instrumental dynamics, including occasional bits of synth and guitar.Īrriving in 2009, Mind the Drift saw the group morph into a trio with the addition of guitarist/keyboardist Toshi Kasai. For that release's tour, Big Business performed an opening set on their own, followed by a set backing Crover. Later that year at the invitation of fellow Pacific Northwest transplant Dale Crover, Willis and Warren became the rhythm section of Crover's long-running sludge metal act the Melvins, starting with the album A Senile Animal. After touring in support of the album, Willis and Warren relocated from Seattle to Los Angeles in early 2006. After releasing a self-titled demo in 2004 on their own Wantage USA label, Big Business signed with the indie Hydra Head Industries label for their proper debut album, Head for the Shallow, in early 2005. While Big Business added a guitarist for the albums Mind the Drift (2009) and Battlefields Forever (2013), with 2016's Command Your Weather, they were once again a duo and no less heavy for it.īig Business formed in Seattle in 2003, comprising two veterans from the local alternative metal scene: bassist and singer Jared Warren, formerly of Karp, and drummer Coady Willis, formerly of the Murder City Devils. Friends and sometimes collaborators with fellow alternative metal stalwarts the Melvins, Big Business are a bass-and-drums duo who use keyboards to carry their melodies instead of guitars, and their music has a sense of thematic grandeur that suits their monolithic approach. Big Business is a two-piece band that mixes metal, grunge, and indie rock influences into a massive, hard-hitting sound that belies the fact that only two people are responsible for their Wall of Sound.
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