One of the first bands I reviewed when I got to Dying Scene was the Rad Skulls. Andy, their guitar player, cold-emailed me their demo. I was immediately blown away by the four songs and wanted more. A year later, they would send a copy of their EP Seeing Rad, containing one new song and a cover of Minor Threat’s “Seeing Red.” Progressing as many bands do, the next logical step was to release a full-length LP.

See You In Hell, Poser! is ten songs of punk rock that sounds familiar on the surface but stands on its own two feet as you dig into it more. Andy and Matt talk about the road to their first full-length record and how they balance punk rock and their families.

Dying Scene (Forrest Gaddis):  How did the Rad Skulls come to be?

Andy: Pat (drums) had put a Craigslist ad up basically saying, “I’m a middle-aged punk rock dad that plays drums, looking for other middle-aged punk rock dads to make middle-aged punk rock music with.” So, I emailed him, and we kind of went back and forth a little bit, and it almost didn’t work out. We found out we lived about an hour away. He shared some of the other bands he’d been in and some touring. It was like Latterman playing The Fest as a reunion band and some other stuff. I was like, “Hold on, I’ll make it work; I’ll come to you.”

I called Matt and said, “Dude, I’m talking to the drummer from Latterman who wants to start a punk band. We’re making dinner plans to see if it’s a good fit. We get along if somebody’s weird or whatever.” We went to a small town in the middle of nowhere that was about a 45-minute drive for each of us. I didn’t realize Pat was a vegetarian, and we ended up meeting at a barbecue place. We got together, and it was like we all had the same influences and similar musical backgrounds. Obviously, he had more musical success than Matt and I have had, but it was like we were on the same page in our lives personally and musically. It’s been a little bit of a revolving door of other characters, I suppose. For the most part, it was the three of us starting, and I think we have a pretty good lineup now.

Dying Scene: Did you two play together in a band before The Rad Skulls?

Matt: Andy and I have been playing together for seventeen or eighteen years, something like that. We crossed paths twenty-plus years ago without knowing it; both of our bands played the same house show, but we didn’t really meet then. I responded to an ad he had posted on Craigslist about forming a band. We started talking and realized we knew a ton of the same people and had been in bands with similar people. We had a band called Fortune & Glory about 15 years ago, and we released one record and an EP, playing in the area a bunch.

Andy: Got to Minnesota a couple of times.

Matt: It didn’t really catch on; we put a lot into that band. We used to practice maybe thirty hours a week. It just didn’t catch; it just didn’t stick.

Dying Scene: What kind of music was it? Same type? 

Matt: It was like hardcore-influenced pop-punk. We were a little closer to easycore, although that word gets kind of used and abused, I think. We were a little more the New Found Glory type. We had breakdowns, but we were super fast. Definitely hardcore-influenced. Our frontman had fronted hardcore bands, so it was a lot of that kind of perseverance-type stuff.

Andy: Tough guy lyrics over New Found Glory breakdowns.

Matt: There were a bunch of little projects here and there. Andy and I stuck together. We’ve been best friends the whole time. We tried to get a bunch of different ideas off the ground in between building our lives, raising our kids, and trying to advance our careers. This is the first thing since Fortune & Glory that has kind of taken off a little bit. It has just been awesome.

Dying Scene: The lineup is: It’s Pat from Latterman and you two from Fortune & Glory. Who else rounds out the lineup?

Andy: We had Joe. He was our singer, that we’ve recorded everything with. He had some personal things going on. As soon as the record was done, he bowed out; we were able to bring in Bryce on vocals, and we have Sean on bass. 

Matt: Bryce is also from a post-hardcore band called Collapse Create. Sean is just a bass player who has been around; he has been around the block in a lot of metal bands because, as a bass player, you always got a gig, right? 

Dying Scene: Is he the Wisconsin-Illinois bass player that’s like, “I’ll do it, sure.”

Andy: Pretty much; if you need a four-stringer, he’s your guy.

Matt: He rips, though; you can hear it on the record. 

Dying Scene: When you brought the new vocalist in, did anything change on those songs, or have you just kept them as close to the originals as possible?

Andy: We’ve just kept them as is to get him up to speed. We’re always trying to write and come up with new ideas. There were a couple of things that we just didn’t have fleshed out before the record was done, so we’ve been working a little bit as we ramp him up, get him caught up with the album, and make him familiar with our writing style. Once the dust settles, we’ll be able to create new songs that incorporate his style.

Dying Scene: Do you guys feel like you’ve clicked with him creatively yet, or are you still feeling him out a bit?

Matt: Bryce is great. He has a serious set of pipes. Secondly, he has the experience and the stage presence. We already have some demos cooking for new material. I can’t wait to start doing pre-production with him to hear him put his stamp on it because he is doing an awesome job of stepping in and singing the record as is. He just says the record is a record; it was recorded that way, and it is a record of the songs, so we will just do them like that.

Moving forward, he’s going to have his stamp on everything, and it’s going to be, I’m stoked. I can’t wait to hear what he brings to the table. And we’ve already got some demos done, and it’s, yeah, I’m hoping to get probably this winter. We’ll start, pre-production for stuff I’m thinking and we’ll do that ourselves.

Dying Scene: Has he been able to match Joe’s vocals pretty well? 

Andy: Yeah, I would say he, he’s probably got more of, probably a little more grit. He’s got a little more gravel to his voice, or maybe rasp. 

Matt: He’s got all the range.

Andy: You know, talking in sports terms, it feels a little bit like we went from Joe Montana to Steve Young. Like we went from one Hall of Fame quarterback to another Hall of Fame quarterback. 

Matt: You mean Brett Favre to Aaron Rodgers, I believe. 

Andy: Well, you know, there’s, I feel like you alienate or invite a certain set of audiences, and you start dropping those two names. So I was avoiding them. 

Matt: Spoken like a true Bears fan. 

Dying Scene: How collaborative is the band when it comes to songwriting?

Andy: I think it really depends on where we’re at in our lives. We’re all an hour away from each other. We don’t get an opportunity to get together in a basement and write for four hours. We’re doing a lot of our own work and sharing ideas virtually. We’ve got a Google Drive. Matt or I will have an idea like, “Hey, this is 90% of where I hear the song. What do you guys think? I kind of hear this as a verse. Do you have a part that you think would come after that?”

“Dotted Lines” is a song that we’ve been sitting on for probably two years. Pat wrote the drums and structure. He sent the drums. We’re trying to put guitars to a drum beat. I’ve never tried to put a puzzle together like that before. I think there’s a lot of self-critique when something gets presented to the group. 

Matt: What generally winds up happening is Andy and I will write all the songs at home in our offices. We’ll program the drums how we hear them in our heads, but we’re not drummers. We’ll polish them, show them to the guys. They might be like, “That’s cool, but the bridge sucks.” You rewrite the bridge or whatever.

Once we’re rounding third on them, we’ll take them to band practice, learn them together, and then flesh out anything that’s not there yet. When Pat wrote “Dotted Lines’ drums first, it was a wild thing to do. It’s always whatever’s best for the song. If there’s something that needs to change for the betterment of the song, anybody can bring it to the table.

Andy: Poor Sean, he’s had a couple of bass lines that got cut. The joke is always, ” Let’s take it for a walk and then it’ll go crazy, but not that. You tried a little lead lick, or you put a little sizzle on the steak, and everyone’s like, “nah, that, that ain’t quite it.” Something that you hear in your head, you get together in a room, and it transitions a little rough or doesn’t quite sound as cool. 

Matt: I’ve written some stuff that I thought was pretty cool, but I’ll show it to the guys. Sometimes we’re not doing that.

Dying Scene: Is there a way to tell who wrote what song, or does everything just kind of go through the Rad Skulls’ voice and end up being an everybody type of thing?

Matt: It’s pretty easy as far as this record goes; Andy wrote like 95% of it. He was on a heater, and we went with the hot hand. He was just cranking out song after song. I added my own parts over it. Sean added his parts his way as well, but the basic concepts of the songs and most of the guitars and arrangements and stuff that you hear are Andy’s. Joe wrote the lyrics and the melodies. 

Andy: I want to say there was a lot of group effort. Between Matt and I, Matt is the more technical and skilled guitarist. There were times where I would try to come up with a little lead lick. I’m like, “Do you want to play it since you’re better than me? He would say, you wrote it, you play it. I still think even for Matt to say, I wrote 95%, I’ll argue that day and night. This was a Rad Skulls effort through and through. I just happened to have a few ideas that everybody liked, and we ran with them at the time.

Matt: Stuff went through a ton of iterations. Some stuff we pretty much did almost verbatim, like how Andy cooked it up in his beat lab. “They Seem Cool” is one of my favorite tracks on the record. It was brutal coming together. We could not figure it out. We couldn’t play it for the longest time; something didn’t click. I don’t know what it was. It just felt clunky the whole time. When we finished it, it’s actually one of my favorite songs now. I thought we were going to cut it.

Andy: I will say, when I was writing “Bronko,” I kind of got in the zone and was like, “Oh man, this is going to be a really good song.” Then as I kept going, it was like 11:30 at night, and it was a weekday. I was supposed to get up and go to work. I’m fired up. I sent that out to the guys and went to bed. My wife, Lacey, asked if I was alright. I told her, I think I just wrote one of the best songs I’ve written in a really long time. I was on high for a minute.

Dying Scene: Between the release of the demo and the LP, were there any new influences that influenced the new record?

Matt: That’s when we got a solid lineup. This all happened because we found the right guys. It took a while to find Sean. We did not have a solid bass player right away. That period of time you’re talking about is when Sean came in and clicked. That piece of the puzzle was settled. We’re locked in there. 

Finding a good frontman is not easy. We got really lucky. The transition happened after the record, but I think it’s more the sum of the parts. For a long time, it was mostly just Pat, Andy, and I trying to make it work. Then all of a sudden we had five dudes in the room bringing all their stuff to the table. There were a lot of different influences coming in as far as melody and stuff.  If Andy and I had written all of the melodies and lyrics for the record, they would have been different. It would have been considerably different. I don’t know exactly what they would have been. What you’re hearing is a lot of different influences coming to the table and mixing on the record. Sean’s had different backgrounds too. He’s a big thrash guy too.

Andy: Joe was about ten years younger than us. He knew some of the bands that we grew up listening to. In a historical sense, he was more of a pop-punk, kind of emo sort of guy. So a lot of the melodies that he wrote came out of left field for me. As a hardcore punk, a lot of the songs that we have recorded up to that point, the demo and the Seeing Rad EP, some of those songs were either completely written or were at varying degrees of finish before Joe was even in the band. We were trying to write for a singer. By the time we got to recording and writing for the album, we had an idea of who Joe was as a vocalist and what his strengths were.  We had a singer that was so good and a bass player that could fill the space, that maybe we didn’t need to try to do as much with guitar, and we could let those other things kind of take over and shine.

Matt: That’s a good point. We’re kind of starting to understand what’s getting brought to the table vocally here. We can cater to that a little bit. We can write to instead of just writing. You know, Matt and Pat and Andy back and forth in a triangle. We can write to Joe’s strengths, and now we’re going to be able to write to Bryce’s strengths. Sean is there as a backbone for it all.

Andy: I think a guitarist’s best friend is a good bass player because you’re just like, I’m going to let this note ring, and you do something cool on the bass.

Dying Scene: What do you feel is the emotional center of the record for you guys?

Matt: For me, I don’t know. As far as the theme of the lyrics, that was in Joe’s mind. Making this record, the emotional connection with us, for sure, is that we tackled it. We’re all a little older, and we all got jobs and families and stuff. We set kind of a ridiculous goal for ourselves to put out a full-length. We did not give ourselves a lot of time once we solidified the lineup. Once we solidified the lineup, it was like five months. 

Personally, the connection is just that we climbed that mountain, and we did it with everything else that we all have going on in our lives. That’s what it’s always going to sound like to me: the mad dash to the finish line. We actually pulled it off together is definitely my takeaway personally. As far as lyrical content, you’d have to crawl deep inside Joe’s mind for that one. A lot of it is just relationship stuff. 

Andy: Joe would come back from tour, and he would take some of those lived experiences, and they would find their way into rad cool songs. Like in “123 Kid,” he talks about a girl at Subway getting cussed out by a customer. He came back from being on a tour with his other band and told us that story. I think he had a lot of personal stuff going on in his life. He was in a newer relationship. He was around guys who were a little bit older and at different points in their lives. He had a little bit of a window into just what other people had going on.

To echo Matt, I think this record is going to be a little bit of defiance. In the words of Jerry Reid, “We got a long way to go and a short time to get there.” I think maybe part of being a dad is doing this stuff now in our life. We have kids that are older and may be able to recognize our dads have hobbies and they’re passionate about something. Like, my girls think it’s cool that I’m in a band.

The hope is maybe when they get older to reflect and be like, “My dad was in a band and still raising a family and going to work. He was able to hold on to what made him, him” a little bit. So, and then, so I’m going to flip this on you for us. When you listen to it, what are you getting out of it?

Dying Scene: I liked that it has those pop-punk melodies to it, but it’s a rocking record. It’s tough. Like you kind of were saying with Fortune and Glory. You guys are kind of doing the opposite. It’s good, fast punk rock in the background. It’s not 100% pop-punk-y lyrics, but there’s that influence of pop-punk on it. You can definitely hear it. It’s a good balance.

Andy: I was talking with Joe about this when we were recording, and I said, “I don’t know if this is just because it’s our project and I’m biased, and I think we’re good. Or are we good?” We’re able to draw on a lot of different influences, to where what we listen to and what we like maybe isn’t as obvious. You and I talk a lot about music, and you’re like, “If you like this band, you’ll like the band that they came from.” I like Saves the Day; then you’ll like Lifetime. Cause there’s very obvious direct lineages. I hope when people listen to us, they just know the sound, what we’re doing, but it’s a little bit different than maybe what’s out there. I don’t know if that’s just personal bias and pushing on stars.

Dying Scene: It works out well. So you mentioned that you guys in the band are in two different states, mostly. Wisconsin and Illinois. What are the logistics of that?

Matt:  Andy and I live in Madison, Wisconsin. We practice at Pat’s house in Rockford. Shout-out to Pat’s wife for letting us practice in the basement. Thanks, Erica. Andy and I carpool down there once a week. Sean also lives in the DeKalb area. So, he’s like an hour in another direction. If he plays shows in Madison, it’s like a two-hour drive for him. Bryce is in the area. He’s in Rockford. So he’s only 15 minutes from Pat’s house. 

That’s why we do a lot of writing at home and share online because we just don’t have the time to do it the old way. Where we lock ourselves in a room and just throw out riffs until a song comes out. To be honest, it’s probably more productive doing it this way, where we have the bones of a song done before we even step in the room together.

Andy: I would say it’s been tough too. Within the band, Sean went back to school. So he’s got night school that he’s doing on top of a day job. Matt, you took a new position at work and traveling sometimes. We all have kids. There are times where we’re trying to scramble. 

“Can we practice on Wednesday night this week?” Or, at the last minute, “I lost my babysitter. I can’t make it.” You’ve got to coach basketball. I think we’ve all done our best, to the degree that we can, to make this a priority and something that we try to do.

Dying Scene: Does it ever feel like it’s fragile? Like if something happens to one member, it can kind of like collapse, not because of in-band tension, but because of outside circumstances.

Matt: Not anymore. I think we’re in a good spot. We’re in a real good spot right now. Like I said, the Matt, Pat, and Andy tripod started this thing like three years ago now. It’s been a walk. It was a long, long, hard road to get to the lineup we have now, but we’ve been locked in. We played one show with Bryce so far; he’s newer to the pool, but he’s, he’s our guy. When Joel bowed out of the band, he recommended Bryce for the role because Joe fronts his own band called Clementine. He’s the brains behind it; he plays, he’s the main songwriter, he plays guitar in it, and fronts the band. That’s his baby. They were going on like a long tour, and I didn’t have time for both, but he recommended Bryce for the gig.

He is so enthusiastic and brought a great amount of energy to the band. I can’t wait to start just demoing stuff with him. We got like one demo with him on it. It’s a shorter, more hardcore song that may or may not ever see the light of day, but he just ripped on it. I think we’re more poised to take over the world than we have ever been; that’s for sure.

Andy: I’m trying to, trying to do the math in my head. Sixteen months ago my wife was diagnosed with breast cancer. With her understanding and our safety net of friends and family, I was still able to meet, practice, and write songs. From a personal perspective, if we can survive that, I think we’ll be okay. 

Matt: Pat blew his knee out at one point. We’re like, “Well, you don’t need a closed hi-hat anyway; you’re in a punk band, you’ll be fine.” If the drummer from Def Leppard can do it with one arm, you can do it with a bum knee.

Dying Scene: Punk Rock feels like it’s being played more and more by people our age, give or take five to ten years either way. It feels a little more limited now because of responsibilities and geography, and members not being able to tour as much. That has to be a hurdle when you are trying to build a fan base.

Matt: That’s our one big drawback because we can’t hit the road and live out of a van. It’s logistically impossible for us to do that, raise our kids, and provide for our families. We will do as much as we can for shows, and get out there as much as we can. Hopefully, some good opportunities come by that we can say yes to, but we’re not at that point in our lives where we can be road dogs anymore.

Dying Scene: How many members of the band are experiencing some of these things for the first time, like making a music video or recording?

Matt: Andy and I have had some studio experience before. We made, I would say, one proper record. I’ve made one proper record before, and a bunch of dude has a studio in his basement EPs. I got a mess of those, but nobody ever heard them. I think this might have been the most proper recording experience that Sean ever had. Joe had; his stuff was DIY. 

Andy: I think most of us, never made a music video. We just DIY’d the hell out of that. We got one Saturday afternoon to bang the sucker out; let’s just figure it out. You’re gonna have to look through this through the lens of six dads that got four hours of free time on a Saturday.  It was definitely my first time recording a full-length album, doing a music video, getting something pressed, released, type of thing. For me, there’s a little bit of some bucket list things. I’ll send the group text every once, a screenshot of the pre-order being up online on the Sell the Heart website, and I was like, “Oh, hey guys, just check this out.” I’m taking a minute to reflect, and I kind of have a moment, and subjecting them to it. But I would say for the most part, we’re all kind of experiencing this stuff for the first time together. 

Pat’s obviously had a ton more experience writing, recording, and touring. We’re all just trying to play catch-up to Pat, and he’s, like, the one who’s really driving the band. He was the one who was like We need to record a full-length. We’re booking this date.  He’s kind of the guy behind the runaway train. He’s the conductor here a little bit.

Dying Scene: Do you guys have a guiding philosophy or rule that you guys follow when you guys make decisions?

Matt: Family first, pretty much. As far as opportunities that come by, we’ve got to consider that first. Otherwise, it’s punk rock DIY ethics, right? We’ve mostly just been doing it all ourselves. So it’s approved by us by nature. I don’t know; that’s a good question. I guess we’ll see. Hopefully, a lot more stuff comes up that we have to make decisions on. 

Andy: This whole thing just sort of feels like it snowballed a little bit. When we got together, it was like, “Oh, it’d be cool to hang out with your friends and make music.” Then it was Let’s record a demo. Then it was “Let’s show people the demo.” Then, “Let’s record more songs. Let’s tell more people about our band; let’s book shows.” Now here we are, being interviewed by you for a full-length album that we recorded.

Dying Scene: “See You In Hell, Poser!” Is being released on Sell The Heart Records; you’re in a good group of bands to be lumped in with. They put out a lot of great records.

Andy: Just a quick shout-out to Sell the Heart Records, Engineer Records, High End Denim, Scene Police out of Germany, and Waterslide Records out of Japan. They’re the ones that came together and made all this happen. It was originally Engineer Records that we reached out to. They liked the record and wanted to work with us and were able to bring in the other four people. We got really lucky. I feel like we’re really lucky there. We’ll see where the world takes us next.

Dying Scene You said you were working on other demos. Are you guys going to start working on those in the wintertime?

Matt: There’s no definitive timeline, but we have a good start on whatever we do next. There’s been talk of themed EPs, but there’s been talk of another full-length as well. Who knows what we’re going to cook up. We have a handful of demos that are done, and we’re starting to work on the songs together as soon as we have them down. We don’t want to jump the gun. As the record sounds, that’s us playing. It is as close to a live record as you can get nowadays without actually recording a live record in some huge library or whatever. Minimal takes, minimal editing. Jeff Dean was like, “I make records that just sound like you guys playing in a room together.” 

So, we only have, like, computer-sounding demos. Once we learn the song together, we’ll do the pre-production ourselves, and they’ll sound raw, like they should. Then Bryce will be on those, and it’ll be really sick. I can’t wait for that. I would think we’d be tackling that in a few months, probably.

Dying Scene: You mentioned earlier in the interview that you guys had one that was kind of a hardcore-type song that you weren’t sure was going to make it out of the studio. Is it one of those “we’re not sure if that’s what a Rad Skulls song should sound like type of things?

Matt: A little, yeah. But I mean, Rad Skulls can do whatever Rad Skulls wants to do.

Dying Scene: You guys do a fantastic “Seeing Red” (Minor Threat) cover.

Matt: At this point in time, I don’t see why we would put any limitations on what we can do.

Andy: “Loud As Shit” is a hardcore song.

Matt: We have other stuff like that because we have a few different personalities as far as shades or whatever. Sometimes we’re Kid Dynamite leaning. We all love Kid Dynamite. Being adjacent to that is cool. At the same time, there’s a Strung Out influence. I was always a big New Found Glory fan.  A little bit of that sneaks in there at times. Andy loves Terror. I also love Terror, but Andy really loves Terror.

We have some stuff that’s got flavors, essence, a little bit more of that stuff. We’ve kicked around the idea of maybe doing like a self-produced DIY EP that would be a little more hardcore-leaning or short songs even. We have no formal plans. Maybe I’m spilling the beans here a little bit. We don’t know what direction we’re going to go, but we’re throwing seven different kinds of smoke right now.

See You In Hell, Poser is out now on Sell The Heart Records. You can catch The Rad Skulls at a pair of record release shows:

10/2 – 5 Bar – Beloit, Wi

10/25 – Gamma Ray Bar – Madison, Wi