Ten After Two sets sights on debut EP, then the world

Words by Bobby S. Gulshan | Photo by Phill Mamula

My editor said, “I want you to interview this up-and-coming band from Roseville. Here is their demo.” I gave it a listen and thought, “Yeah, these guys can really bang it out. Let’s do it.” I asked if maybe we could arrange to meet at a bar, so I could have an excuse to do my job and drink at the same time. Turns out, not a one of them is old enough to get past the door. Coffee then?

The dilemma faced me cold and hard like the hangover I was hoping to have after the interview at the pub: How the hell am I going to interview some youngsters about the serious issues surrounding contemporary metal music, and do it sober? What are we going to talk about? Am I just getting old? What would Lester Bangs do?

Vincent Adorno (drums) and Sean Wall (vocals), of Ten After Two met me at Starbucks downtown, and they blew me away. Sure, their music kicks ass. They deftly combine elements of technical metal precision with catchy, clean and melodic hooks that are as timeless as any angst-ridden power pop chorus. Their soon-to-be-released EP, If You Don’t First, is incredibly well produced and exhibits a remarkable level of musicianship. It is at times brutally heavy, and at other times unrepentantly accessible.

Moreover, these guys are serious. Don’t let the “just out of high school” thing fool you. Ten After Two have a precocious feel for both the music and the music business. The forthcoming EP is the product of collaboration between Rise Records, Artery Management and Hot Topic. The tunes are precise and structured, and it became clear through the course of our conversation that these guys have a clear and precise vision of themselves and their creative endeavors.

Tell me how you guys got started.
Vincent Adorno: Back in the day I used to jam with my buddy Pat [Hennion, guitar], after that we had this school thing between two schools, Oakmont and Woodcreek. And we found Josh [Doty, guitar/vocals] through that. He was the singer in this guitar class. Josh and Sean were in a band together at the time called Eleanor Manor. Josh and Sean joined us and we found Danny [Clark, bass].

You are pretty young guys.
VA: Yeah, I’m 17.
Sean Wall: I’m 20.

And this is why we are having coffee and not conducting this interview at the pub. So what made you guys interested in playing metal?
VA: We were into that genre at the time, and it’s a growing genre. And I see it as something that is only getting bigger.
SW: The genre lets us do a lot of things musically and allows us to put our own thing into it. We don’t have to feel so contained into something simple.

So what are some examples of that?
SW: We can do more chord progressions. We can try something new. On the future full-length you will hear it, going out of the box and doing different sorts of harmonies and stuff.

On the EP I noticed that you guys combine the melodic, clean vocal elements with the growling heavy vocals. Is that an example?
SW: Yeah, exactly.

Other than rock and metal, what else are you listening to?
SW: When I think about it, we listen to a lot of stuff. Oldies, classics, electronica, anything that is good musically we listen to.

Let me ask a similar question. What’s the exact opposite of the kind of band that you would want to be in?
VA: I don’t want to be in a band with people who aren’t serious about it. I am trying to do this as a career, so definitely nothing that is only about fun or just a personal thing.
SW: I hate really limited bands. I wouldn’t want to be in a band where all the songs sound the same.

So you are more interested in the idea of exploration and the endless possibilities of what you could do?
SW: Exactly. The endless possibilities of music.

In terms of making it a career, what does that mean for you?
VA: There is going to be a lot of work that goes into it. We are going to be totally broke for a while, but eventually we want to be able to make a decent living and have some fans really love it. I just want to do what I love and hopefully do it for the rest of my life. And this is what we all love doing.

So the EP is coming out on Nov. 9, 2010. What is the deal with Hot Topic and the exclusive release?
SW: Our management hooked us up. They had connections with Hot Topic and wanted us to do it. It will be available through Hot Topic and iTunes.

In terms of style, I know bands don’t like to be categorized, but we writers live and die on categories. Some might call what you do metalcore or emo-core. So what do you think of these labels?
SW: We are a rock band. We have straight 4/4 time, minor key type stuff. You could call it alternative rock or whatever, but we are basically a rock band.

You guys love the breakdowns, don’t you?
VA: It’s what kids can relate to. I don’t know why, but these days the kids love it, and we love it too, so yeah. It’s heavy, and it’s what everyone feels. They can feel the heaviness.

You guys show a certain level of musical sophistication. The songs are well structured and well put together. You mentioned theory earlier, but what about technique? There seems to be an emphasis on technical ability in the songs.
SW: We like to be guitar-driven and very musical. I think our songs tell the story through the guitars.

There was one track, “Behind Locked Doors,” where that acoustic guitar comes in near the end, and I was blown away by how clean the production was on that.
SW: Yeah, Colby [Wedgeworth, producer] does some amazing stuff out of his house and at Hollywood North off of Douglas. It was a great time and the end result was killer.

What are some of the themes you guys are exploring with the music?
VA: So far it’s stuff about girls, I guess. Some of it is about this reoccurring theme about home. It makes sense if you listen to it.
SW: It’s like taking the time to be introspective and knowing within you what home is. When do you know that you are completely comfortable? How well do you know yourself to know that you are at home?

Is it that where you are from isn’t necessarily where you are at home?
VA: It’s like a personal feeling, feeling whole and home in the universe.
SW: Like you are your own universe.

Does this relate at all to being from Roseville, which is nice but it’s still the suburbs, and it’s not that open-minded a place?
VA: Well we all want to get out of there.
SW: Suburban scum.
VA: We don’t like the way the kids act out here. People are really egotistical, even though they don’t have much to show for it.
SW: These themes get brought up. People have stuff, but don’t know happiness. They have material things but not much else. They don’t know themselves.
VA: And the world has gone to shit.

I feel you on that. So what do you guys have coming up?
SW: We are going to Florida in December, be there for a month.
VA: Yeah, we are going to go out there and record our full-length.

Touring?
VA: Yeah definitely, after the full length gets done.
SW: We are hoping to tour all next year, starting in the spring.

So what are the ingredients for future success?
SW: The fans, connecting with our fans.
VA: Fans and keeping up with the writing. We can’t overthink it. We can’t lose what we know. We lose the feeling if we think too much about it.
SW: Like Vinny is saying, we want our fans to be a big part of it. But if we try too hard to write for others, we are not going to be able to write it how we feel it, and in the end the people listening are going to be able to hear that.

Aside from the music, how else can you connect with fans?
VA: We want to try everything–contests and charity events. Basically anything to connect with people on a real human level is really important.

Ten After Two’s debut EP will be available at Hot Topic starting Nov. 9, 2010. The album will also be sold on iTunes.

The New Humans’ Avalanche Drops, Finally
Words by Vincent Girimonte | Photo by Raoul Ortega

Don’t broach the time before The New Humans with The New Humans; it’s akin to rehashing a saga and you’ve missed the first couple of installments where some real heavy shit went down. Sitting in front of Temple Coffee on 10th, that savory little nook of downtown Sacramento that feels like a downtown, Cole Cuchna and “new” singer Scott Simpson gingerly sidestep their previous selves as if they were officers in some cult; Simpson speaks briefly on his days with Sacramento rock outfit Still Life Projector while Cuchna is less forthcoming.

“I’m going to drop [Cuchna] out right now too–Cole was in a band called Red Top Road that was kind of big around the same time,” says Simpson. Once you’ve jumped from the ‘burbs, all that noise must be like Calvin Klein to Mark Wahlberg.

But nobody likes the then, especially when the now has finally shown up. The New Humans release their first EP, Avalanche, Aug. 21 with a Korg shakedown of sorts at The Townhouse, supported by Dusty Brown side project Little Foxes and those plucky FAVORS kids making their live debut. And yes, this is The New Humans’ first EP, which is no doubt a little surprising given the all the buzz The New Humans have created over the past few years, playing as an instrumental band nonetheless.

“It was never planned,” says Cuchna of the band’s instrumental phase. “We always thought the songs sounded incomplete. It was never really what we wanted to do.” Simpson took over the vocals after an arduous search for that elusive frontman, futile as they often seem to be. “We got tired of it. Trying out a bunch of people, no one was really going to grasp what we were going for besides one of us,” Simpson admits, though the group maintains that perhaps it was for the better.

The New Humans were conceived on a laptop, initially with a fairly direct “screw the guitar” mentality stemming from their previous ventures. Simpson and Cuchna, childhood friends from their days growing up in Elk Grove, wrote dozens of songs before picking up bassist Robert LaCasse and later adding current drummer, Mike Steez.

“When we started we were a lot more excited about it. I almost forget about it now,” recalls Cuchna. “Our intention was never to be like, ‘Oh check out this band, they don’t have guitars.’ I guess that would be one cool thing about us now.”

No guitars in today’s Midtown doesn’t turn any heads. It’s not uncommon to see a show with the MPC 1000 or something of the like running things on the floor, people kneeling over it awkwardly like some Ouija board. The New Humans occupy a very different side of this trend, though. Sugary, glam-y, coked-out even; it’s glitzy–not janky–in the way K Street is trying to be. “Fever” is the punchy single that predates the EP by what seems like eons, but it’s “All the Kids,” the EP’s opener, that does well to outline the album’s general framework: catchy synth melodies, live drums with percussion loops on top and a piano underneath trying to tether it all down.

“[Not having guitars] lets in the stylistic, bluesy or jazzy undertones–there’s a song on the EP with a Latin-y undertone. It lets all that color come through,” says Simpson, the pipes of this sassy “disco generation.” Some opening falsettos belie his trepidation over taking the lead vocals, and I wasn’t the first to mention that his inner diva was beginning to surface.

“I feel like every show we play, it’s coming out a little more, and in another year I’ll be a complete fucking monster.”

If there’s a sense of relief following the completion of any project, The New Humans are the divorcee who finds love again after Dad packs up and leaves. Six months were spent recording in a Sacramento studio (names are omitted per band’s request), and though both parties remain cordial, those six months were scrapped due to artistic disputes and “fake promises.”

“He wanted to produce it, so we were like, ‘OK, produce it,’ not knowing how far the producing would go,” Simpson says. “It’s a lot of trust to put in someone when you’ve never heard anything they’ve produced before. I don’t trust anybody with my band that way, unless maybe you like, produce fucking Radiohead.”

Cuchna adds, “I think that it was probably our fault for not really setting ground rules.”

Cuchna cites differences in process rather than the actual material being recorded; Simpson recollects on an uncomfortable foray into “L.A. bullshit,” where the band was allegedly being pushed into a deal with a sheisty label.

“It was a commercialized process, which could work for us, but it was an over-commercialized process,” says Simpson. “All the bands, they were trying to get them on The Hills, shit like that.”

The group self-produced with some guidance from Ira Skinner, using his studio space essentially for their own devices–“[Skinner] put in advice where we needed it and where we asked for it,” says Simpson. The New Humans purport to be in the “electric piano rock” vein, and though we can’t derive too much from that, the production doesn’t always speak to the band’s live panache–some tracks lack articulation, components grind together, coming up a little short in the “pop” factor that one generally demands with any electronic project under the umbrella of “dance-y.” But it’s their first production, more of a “demo” according to Cuchna, and he stresses the fact that they were past due on getting the EP released.

“That’s my only thing with the EP–it’s kind of all over the place…not all over the place, but we’re kind of treating it more as a demo,” he says. “At this point, we just needed to get the songs out.”

A mini-tour is planned for the fall, hopefully with a label supporting it. At this point the band is eager to get the EP “in the hands of the right people,” whomever they might be. Suffice it to say they’re in no particular hurry.