We Really Hit Our Teenage Angst in Our Late 30’s; An Alleyway Chat with Sean & Shawn Of Child Bite
Written by Nathan Ryall & Mel Says
If the heavy melodic rock band Mastodon were a 6-foot-3 piece of Rock & Roll man meat, punk rock sensations The Dead Kennedy’s were a sexy little red head with rockin’ tits, and the two made love in a creepy basement sex dungeon, Child Bite would be the embodiment of their love child.
The Detroit-based four piece outfit, known as Child Bite, originally started as some sort of weird pop/punk fusion but have undergone quite a musical metamorphosis over the years. “I think before, it was a little more fun-crazy music, and now it’s more like angry-crazy music, if you really had to break it down.” said frontman Shawn Knight.
Bassist Sean Clancy, who would break several sets of spectacles each evening were it not for his trusty “nerd strap,” would go on to add, “After we did the fun version of Child Bite, we really started to hit our teen angst phase…in our early thirties.”
That early thirties “teen angst” Clancy spoke of can be heard on any given night at a decibel level that is sure to leave your ears ringing deep into the next day. But this is not the kind of ear ringing that becomes an annoyance. This is the kind of ear ringing that you wear with pride, and makes you remember the night before as if the hangover wasn’t enough. It’s the ear ringing from Knight’s menacingly leery stage presence, looming over his keyboard and guitar strings; Clancy’s constant head banging like he’s trying to shake the demons out of his head kind of ringing that helps you recall through your drunken haze, the disconnect in guitarist Brandon Sczomak’s face that adds to the characterization of the act and makes you feel like Child Bite is a succubus, sent to seduce your ears and then steal your soul. It’s this ringing that forces you to remember every cymbal crash and snap of the snares as drummer Ben Moore beats the life out of his drums. A ringing that, overall, just makes you feel warm and cozy in your human skin.
The Child Bite of the current era (i.e. the last 2 years or so), recently put out their second official video with music video maestro Mitch Massie, who has worked with large acts such as Cattle Decapitation and Job for a Cowboy. And while theses Detroiters don’t exactly have the same style as the aforementioned, one watch of the video and it is easy to see that their sound sits right there on the same shelf as those larger acts. It also doesn’t hurt to have legendary frontman Phil Anselmo of Pantera give you the nod and request that you lay down some vocal tracks for him.
If you would like to see these backyard bastards in the next month or so, you are going to have to hop a plane across the pond where they are currently on an extended European tour that was justified by the fact that they have been playing music for years, but have never played shows in Europe. Sounds like a solid reason to us. Also, Child Bite is putting the finishing touches on a new EP that should be coming out “soon,” according to the guys.
We hunted these guys down like how a pride of lions stalks a herd of wild gazelle; taking us on a journey that ended several months later at Ferndale’s The Loving Touch. It was a good hunt and now that we have caught our prey, it’s an easy decision to let our ear tummies get full on this savory and delightful musical feast. For us here at BackRoads, we hope the European tour grants our Detroit ambassadors all of the forbidden fruits the Red Light District could offer (figuratively and literally), but we are bitter to have them gone for so long. While they’re gone, we highly suggest you find Child Bite on Facebook to follow the foreign journey via their illustrative tour updates, chock full of weird shit you would absolutely expect from these beautiful disasters.
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