Interview - Tim Lucier of The Kingsmen speaks with Mark Derricutt - May 2020

By: Mark Derricutt

It now seems like a lifetime ago that I sat down to talk with Tim Lucier, guitarist for Rhode Island newcomers Kingsmen to discuss the release of their debut album “Revenge. Forgiveness. Recovery”, an album that's still getting regular rotation around the house.

I’m not normally one for metalcore, so it was with an open mind that I first sat down, donned the headphones, lowered the lights, cleansed my aural pallet with a moment of silence - then pressed play… then with no form of intro, build up, or fanfare; “Until I Departed” kicks in holding no punches as it dives straight into the action. To both my surprise and delight there's a far more progressive/death metal vibe already going on, followed by a melodic chorus full of hooks that reminds me of Demon Hunter - and that's something that's kept pulling me back into the album for repeat listens - a fine balance between brutality and beauty.

Hey Tim! How's it going?

Good man. How are you doing? How are you doing?

Oh, disasters.

Living through it, you know?

Living through it. Working from home and we've just had a production, not production, but a database IT issue go explode. So I'm like got chat windows open between different people and going, "Yep, I've got to go and talk to a rockstar.”

That's crazy. That's crazy. Well, it looks safe over there, so that's good. At least you guys are safe. Things are going smooth.

I think we've had two days running currently with no new infections. It looks like we might be moving to our level two next week, which means my barber is opening and can come and give me a bit of a cleanup.

I feel you, man. Yeah, I'm waiting for mine to open up to you. I need a good, new beard trim.

Now, I don't really know anything about you. It's weird because I'm not much of a metal-core person. I'm progressive death metal, black metal. I go all the extremes, but metal-core is something I've never really kind of got into. And I think in part the sound has just never really appealed to me. I find the vocals a too on the shouty side, but you guys are so different to that. And from what little I have found on the internet about the Kingsmen, apart from having that great, great, wonderful song Louie Louie, you're looking good for a band from the '70s and stuff.

Thank you. Thank you. I know, I age like a fine wine, you know? I age like a fine wine.

So there doesn't seem to be too much information that I could find on the web about you guys. And there was an EP version of it that came out before, and I came across a couple of reviews and about one or two interviews, but nothing really out there about you guys. So are you just like the hidden gem? Because this album is... I've been listening to it pretty much back to back all yesterday and this morning, and each time I listen to it, there's like elements of progressive djent with a bit of death metal with melodic hardcore in there, and there's just like styles all over. So have you just been hiding?

Yeah, a little bit of hiding. A little bit of hiding and working on it. Our biggest thing with this record is we took a lot of influences that we all have. Me myself, I've been listening to metalcore but I'm big into death metal, melodic death core and stuff like that. So taking from all those things was big for me. It was big.

One thing I saw mentioned was that the album was written during a "dark time" for the band. We are actually going through dark times now with the global pandemic and stuff, so I think I was just going to say, my first question is how you guys actually going? Are you guys in lockdown? Are you being let out again? How's the band actually coping and dealing with stuff?

Yeah, I mean, we're just trying to truck along. We're doing a lot of writing, a lot of preparing for the future mentally, physically, and just here on lockdown. We're slowly opening up here in America. We've got some plans for the fall here in America and some plans for overseas in early 2021, so we're hoping that things calm down so we can get back out there.

So my understanding, and I really also don't know U.S. geography that well, but Rhode Island seems to be, I believe it's the smallest state, but it's one of the most highly densely populated.

Yes. Yes, you're correct. Yep.

So I'm assuming also with that then, the actual local music scene is possibly relatively small or small but densely populated as well. And I was talking to some musician friends of mine who had been in metalcore bands and they kind of mentioned that Rhode Island is not necessarily known for its metalcore scene.

No.

So where did you guys come from and how did you form? What was the local scene like growing up? And now that you've signed to SharpTone records. How did that come about? Just talk us through it.

Yeah, we started off jamming in garages, jamming in basements, playing crappy shows just like any other band. Killswitch Engage was huge. There was a lot of big metalcore bands, Vital Remains. That kind of sparked everything in mass and it kind of trickled it around. I mean, Rhode Island has a big death metal scene here. I mean, we've got Vital Remains, which is a big death metal band here. So we were the only bands... That's kind of, I feel like where we get some of our sound from is we all grew up listening to so much death metal and melodic hardcore from Vital Remains and all these... We have a lot of doom metal here, a lot of weird prog metal that comes out of here.

We took from a lot that and kind of were like, "Yeah, we're going to put our own twist on it and take that mass hardcore metalcore vibe with this death metal vibe and put it together." And we kind of stood out from what was going on and we had a message that we wanted to deliver to the world, and we're here now. A lot of people helped us get here. We wouldn't be here if it wasn't for a lot of the help that we got, which is great.

So you mentioned you've got a message to send. What kind of message is that? When I hear people who say, "We've got a message to send," it's either they're coming from a religious kind of angle or like a PETA animal rights or veganism. What is the message of the Kingsmen?

Definitely the message of Revenge, Forgiveness, Recovery was that everything's a cycle. Life is a cycle. The thought process is a cycle. Feelings are a cycle. And you go through this cycle, knowing that revenge, you're mad at someone, you're mad at something, you're mad at yourself. Forgiveness, you learn to forgive yourself, you learn to forgive someone. And you always recover. Our message was there's a lot of people that go through different stuff, and no matter what dark stuff you go through there's always a lighter outcome. We want to make sure that people know that. People that could be going through anything. Financial hardship, mental hardship, sickness, disease, anything. That's the message we want to get out is that things will be okay.

I guess that's kind of actually timely then for the state of the world currently - in that we are all going through different things and we're all handling it differently. But we will get through. I guess it's just a matter of how we get through.

Exactly.

I guess in a lot of cases that's with your peers, your friends. I know I'm counting down the days till we get some more gigs so I can get out and do some more photography, catch some gigs and see some other people, and actual people.

Yep. Yeah, I totally feel you, man. I'm feeling the same way. I love the quarantine to write and do all this cool stuff, but I just miss being with my friends, playing on stage and sleeping in a dirty van just doing dumb stuff. I miss my friends.

Okay, so with that in mind and the whole kind of lockdown vibe and whatever, I'm seeing a lot of people doing the online streams and the, "We're in lockdown, let's do a Zoom thing and we'll just jam out." I've been really digging what Devin Townsend has been doing and just-

I've seen that. Yeah.

His set up, even though it's like the most insane put together thing, it's still Devy. It's just awesome. But also seeing things like Sammy Hagar and those guys. And even the electronic rock kind of people and pop people doing this as well at clutch. Have you guys thought of doing any kind of live kind of…

Yeah, we thought about it. We're going to see how the next month goes with things kind of starting to loosen up, and if things still stay tight we're probably going to do a nice livestream concert. We have a local venue here that we can use and go to anytime we want and do like a full blown livestream show, which would be cool. But right now, we've just been trying to personally connect with people online and create more of like a personal face-to-face thing with fans or friends or people we just jam in the record.

I suppose that's, in some respects there's the jumping on the bandwagon of everyone's doing it so we have to do it. And then it's like, well, no, you don't have to.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Just tell us that you're okay and that we'll be seeing you soon. And I think that's probably for a lot of people, that's more real and that's going to actually help some cement a bond between band and fans.

Yeah. I mean, I know a lot of bands are going live, which is cool. I think it's awesome. There's a lot of people doing it right now, so it's so hard. It's like a saturated market with that stuff, man. And I think a lot of people are just scared of losing traction and everything. And we're just out here, we put out a record that we hope people will listen to and pay attention to so that when things do loosen up we can hit all the places in the world that we want to hit.

Yeah. So the record came out middle of April, so just before lockdown, didn't it?

Yep. Yeah, April 10th it hit.

Right. Do you know what the response has been as far as sales or reception has been?

I personally think it's been way more than we thought we would get from it. We weren't expecting too much off the first record because we're a newer band out there. But we hit the billboards here in America, which was insane. Crazy. We get updated on sales and everything else like that. The response has been a lot more than we ever expected. So I'm super grateful and thankful for that for sure.

The worldwide response has been, between Australia and the U.K. and Europe have been incredibly responsive to the record, which is incredibly awesome.

Are you seeing more of a trend between physical sales or online sales at all?

Actually physical sales, which was cool. Which I love because I'm a huge CD and vinyl fan, so I just think that's awesome.

I was thinking the other day that the whole lockdown is probably going to be like the... I'm not sure what the right word is. It's the day of online streaming. It's the period where online purchases kind of is the king because we don't have mail delivery.

So it will be interesting to see whether trends, after lockdown whether LP sales pick up or whether there was actually any dip at all or whether it was just largely constant. That will be interesting to see.

Yeah. I mean, we've been doing better on physicals than the streaming actually, which is pretty crazy. But, I mean, someone broke it down for me saying people aren't at work anymore. They aren't driving to work. They're not working out at the gym. They're not going outside with their friends or at the beach, listening to music. So people aren't streaming as much as they were. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people are sitting at home, popping in a CD or popping on a vinyl. And I think that's cool, man. I love bringing it back.

Who does the primary songwriting with you guys? Is it you?

Yep. Yeah, I write all the songs. Yeah.

Cool. So one of the questions that my one of my friends had was asking you how you feel about... I guess not really how you feel, but what's your opinion of people kind of always jumping on the djenty sound or lower tuning and eight strings and going as many strings as you can on guitar and just almost going... It's kind of like the alternate angle to the Yngwie Malmsteen pretentious prog to, "We'll just add as many strings and down tune and have as many effects units as we can." As a songwriter and a guitarist, what are your thoughts on the production side of that?

Yeah, I mean, it's kind of funny. I think it's cool that people are experimenting, but there's like a point where you hit, you're just like, "All right, well, that's a little crazy." I've personally never in my life, have never written a song because it's heavy or because it's djenty or because it's... I don't ever write a riff and I'm like, "Oh yeah, I want it to be this way because it's heavy." I want it to be a certain way because it makes me feel a certain way.

Like with the Kingsmen album, you see there's a lot of emotion that comes out in the melody and we try to really emphasize on that. There's been parts in our records, in our songs where I'm writing and I'm like, I don't really need to do this noodley thing over this verse. It doesn't do anything for me. It doesn't make me say, "Oh wow." I'm all about feeling, man. It's kind of just how it is. I dig that people want to be heavy, and that's cool and everything but it's never really been my vibe, you know?

So not going for Origin or the completely insane technical side of stuff.

I mean, don't get me wrong, I do enjoy listening to it every once in a while because it is pretty crazy. But it's never been something that I've looked to for inspiration, you know?

It always kind of reminds me of watching guitar videos and stuff where it's like, "This is a training exercise in how to actually exercise your fingers rather than actually necessarily play a song or write a good song.”

Yeah. That's kind of how I feel with some of the stuff is like there's guitar parts I hear in other songs by other artists and I'm like, "Oh, that sounds like a guitar exercise." It doesn't really sound collectively to me like it... The melody shows emotion, it makes someone feel something. Everyone knows those iconic melodies, man. And I'm all about trying to create those. Like the Wherever I May Roam by Metallica, that first guitar riff, people are just like, "Man." That's the kind of stuff I live for.

I guess talking about live shows, and once we actually get out of here, did you actually have any shows lined up before we kind of went down to lockdown?

Yeah. Yeah, we had a lot of tours actually lined up. Unfortunately, the live concert collective is run by Ticketmaster and Live Nation here in the U.S. and they're not doing any shows till 2021, so a lot of our stuff has been pushed back. We do have something planned for September if things...

Everything's 50/50 right now. It'll get booked. If it happens, it happens. If it doesn't, it gets pushed back to another month. But a lot of the bigger plans that we had are getting pushed back till next year just because a lot of the bigger bands, they tend to run their stuff with bigger ticketing companies, and those ticketing companies are kind of sitting back saying, "Hey, let's just wait till everything is completely clear."

I think the good thing that we have over here is a lot of our metal comes through either some of the smaller promoters or through Nuclear Blast who aren't necessarily going through Live Nation, which is great because we actually get quite a few good bands down here, although a lot of them are now being pushed out to next year and stuff. So it'll be good to get back into the swing of things.

Yes, I can't wait. I cannot wait.

Have looked into any projections for tours down in New Zealand, Australia, in our-

Yeah, there's been some talks about going down there hopefully in 2021. I know that we have some goals to hit when it comes to touring in places in the world that we want to hit in 2021, and Australia and New Zealand have always been the top rank for me because I love those places.

Awesome. Well, from what I've heard of the album, I think we'll definitely be looking forward to hearing and seeing you guys down here as well.

Yeah, man. Yeah, I would really love that. Really love that.

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