INSIDE THE SUN have been starting to come up in Fresno a bit opening for some big acts like HIGH ON FIRE, WEEDEATER, MACHINE HEAD, and BLACK COBRA a couple of times. Their approach is an aggregate of many already validated rock practices, and quality tricks insired by Jimi Hendrix, psychodelic rock, stoner, sludge, and doom metal. “True heaviness IS psychedelic. We hold that our metal should be both heavy and trippy”, they say, and there is very little confusion about about it. 5 lengthy tracks, a perfect dose for a first trip, are available below. Dive into it and read my interview with INSIDE THE SUN below.
Hi there buddies! What’s up? How are you? How’s Fresno? :)
Hey man, what’s up, we’re doing good thanks. Fresno’s not to bad, finally starting to cool down a little after summer.
Oh man, I can’t wait to finally drag my ass to California. Ok, but we’ll get to that later :) Let’s break down basic information about the band. How did you guys settle on the name INSIDE THE SUN? Are you space buffs?
We got the name INSIDE THE SUN from the SLEEP song, off of their Holy Mountain album. When we first started playing it was just Nick and me and we had a couple different names in mind, but it was just us two playing around in his garage so we didn’t really need a band name yet. SLEEP is such an influence on our band, and the songs we write so we thought that it would be fitting to name our selves after them. Also if you don’t know where it comes from it sounds kind of trippy, and thats one thing that we are trying to do with our music, so we figured it worked.
Is this your only project or are there more bands with the members of ITS involved? How did that experience advance your musicianship?
All three of us are in another project together called MOONTRAIL with two more of our friends. When we met our bass player Greg this was his band. We needed people and they needed people, and it’s not easy finding people to play this style of music in Fresno, so it worked our really well. Playing with other people is always going to help your musicianship. Whether it’s from learning new techniques or different ideas on songwriting. Even if it’t not in another project I always enjoy going and just jamming with different people. It’s one of the funnest parts of playing music.
I really like the psycholedic and freestyle vibe of your riffs. Do you remember when you first considered improvisation an art form?
Thanks, we’ve always liked a lot of stuff with that same kind of feel to it, and one thing that we wanted to do from the start was have a psychedelic sound to our songs. A lot of it came from just messing around and having fun. Before we really started trying to write songs or get shows or anything we would just sit there in Nick’s garage for hours just trying to see how long we can make a jam last for, and eventually we got better at it. I really like effects and pedals a lot too so experimenting with different pedals for weird noises and stuff goes right along with all that.
Who were the important improvisers for you? Tell us more about your inspirations.
Theres so much stuff that has influenced us spread across so many different genres of music thats kind of a tricky question, but a lot of classics are are pretty big influences for us like HenDRIX, SABBATH, CREAM, BLUE CHEER, ZEPPELIN. So much other stuff too like SLEEP, HIGH ON FIRE, ELECTRIC WIZARD, EARTHLESS, SLAYER, BATHORY and so much more. We also draw a lot of inspiration from things we do in our everyday lives. We all really enjoy hiking and camping, and draw a lot of inspiration from those kind of things.
What do you write about? Is there a concept to your recent record, or are you just capturing moments out of your daily life?
We don’t have main concept or anything for the record, most of the songs are about different things. We usually write all the music for a song first and don’t worry about the lyrics until later, and when it gets time for lyrics we’ll write about what ever the song makes us think about. A lot of our songs are about or inspired by the Sierra Nevada mountains.
Do you write a lot? How prolific is the band?
We try and keep busy with writing new material. I wouldn’t say that we write songs really quick or anything, but we will write a song and get it down and usually move onto another one and try to write as much as we can.
Can you describe the experience of being a part of your local music scene? How vital is metal scene in Fresno?
Honesty there isn’t really too much of a good metal scene in Fresno. Especially for the type of stuff that we’re doing. There’s a lot more punk and hardcore shows than metal shows where we are. We used to play a lot of those shows at first, but a band like us is kind of weird for the crowd to be thrown into the middle of a show like that. The scene that we do have here is pretty small, but there are definitely a some good bands here that we enjoy playing with.
Ok, so in what ways does your local scene stand out in the US? :)
It sucks, but our local scene doesn’t really stand out. As of late there has been getting some better shows coming through, but nothing really too much. We are pretty close to a few places that have really good scenes though, so right now we’re trying to get our album and our name out there and start playing shows in other places besides Fresno.
How about Europe? What do you associate it with?
Europe sounds awesome. There’s a lot of good bands and a lot of good festivals out there. It would be great to visit some time.
Any chances to ove your asses here and please some filthy metalheads around?
We would love to go over there and play for some European metalheads, but Europe is pretty far from Fresno. Hopefully someday.
Considering the future of this band, what are your insecurities?
There’s always stuff we can work on and get better at, but we don’t really having any insecurities as of right now. We’re just staying busy working on new song and playing show having fun.
Ok, so let’s wrap it up. What recordings and tour dates do you have coming up in the coming months?
Nothing planned as of right now. We’re always writing new songs so maybe some more recording in the future. As for touring goes, we would love to but we don’t have anything planned. We’ve been talking about trying to do a small, maybe week long, tour across through California or the west coast, but we will see. We gotta take it one step at a time.
Anything else you’d like to add?
Thanks a lot for doing this interview with us and hope to see you at a show sometime.
Thanks for your time! Good luck!
