With a current headlining UK tour, two albums and a great comic book themed video under their belts, 36 Crazyfists are only just beginning to get a taste of fame. The band's second album, "Snowcapped Romance", has shown fans in America and the United Kingdom precisely how the future of screamo metal will sound, with it's moving lyrics and thunderous guitars. Songs like the current single "Bloodwork" have drawn in new fans and the recognition of many music magazines and websites, but the band still have their feet firmly on the ground, and have made the good choice of not taking themselves too seriously.
"The video's supposed to be silly" says vocalist Brock Lindow on the Kung-fu themed video for the single, "we haven't really been in that sort of situation before, so it made the whole thing a lot less stressful". All the band members are big martial art movie fans though, with the band name coming from a Jackie Chan movie back in 1993. However, you aren't going to find songs about high kicks and back flips on this band's album, "I don't write about anything I don't know about" Brock tells me, "I don't handle any instruments, I'm terrible! But I write the lyrics, I write about things that have happened in my life," and perhaps this is why the band's growing legions of fans can feel so in touch with both 36 Crazyfists albums.
The debut album "Bitterness the Star" came out in 2002 and provided the basic material for the band to tour on and learn the tricks of the trade. After touring for months as a support act, the group's live performance became increasingly powerful, despite the confinement of a 30 minute set every night. However this didn't stop the band from writing tracks for the second album with more passion and creative flow. "I hope we became a little bit more song orientated," Brock says "the songs on 'Snowcapped Romance' flow into each other better than on the 'Bitterness' record, hopefully we grew a bit and got smarter". This is undoubtedly true, and the tracks from the new album provide the listener with something intense yet melodic to listen to, with the song writing clearly coming together with great ease on Snowcapped Romance.
36 Crazyfists are currently headlining a tour across the United Kingdom, putting on a exciting and often mesmerising live performance. "This is our first real headlining tour, we're a support band and that's what we're used to in the States, but over here we play songs from both records, we get a little nervous, but when we see the kids out there we know it's going to be awesome," Brock says enthusiastically. The band have played shows up and down the country in the last year, one of the most memorable shows being their performance at this year's Download festival which Brock describes as "the single most amazing day of my life, I'll never forget it" and neither will the packed tent of music fans that assembled to watch 36 Crazyfists; it's almost a guarantee they will have walked away from the tent taking note to watch out for 36 Crazyfists in the future.
Such success from a quartet from Alaska may be unheard of to some people, but Brock assures me that we should expect great things from Alaska; "It's a really cool music scene, it's really really small but there's a lot of cool bands up there, no one thinks of Alaska as the musical hot bed of the world, but we're trying to bring awareness to the place". Sure enough, 36 Crazyfists are the biggest thing out of Alaska right now, but as with all great bands just starting out, there's a fear they'll go Guns N Roses on us. Brock tells me how they never thought they'd ever be playing in London, and how there's a definite reality to playing music professionally because so few people manage to succeed at it. When asked about the growth of the fan base and prescene in the rock music fan's psyche, Brock says "becoming bigger, I would welcome it. We're pretty personable people, so we wouldn't be much different, I'd just have more money in my pocket".
Of course, by having a wider fan base 36 Crazyfists would have the chance to play with whomever they'd like. At the beginning of next year the band will be writing a recording a new album to be released in the summer. When they tour the new album you might think they'd prefer to play with bands that have a similar sound to theirs, such as The Bled, but the reality is quite the opposite. 36 Crazyfists wish to tour with rock bands, or emo bands like The Used and Taking Back Sunday, just so they could be the heaviest band performing on that tour. 36 Crazyfists want to broaden the listening of people across the world by performing to crowds that wouldn't usually give a band like theirs a second glance, this action is highly commendable and shows how genuine the intentions of 36 Crazyfists really are. The sincerity and unique sound of 36 Crazyfists is something most music fans have been waiting for, and I can only predict that this band is going to be huge in the future.