As the name would suggest, Mr. Phlyzzz (pronounced Flyzzz) are not your average entertainment machine.
More like an amalgamation of every musical genre that your Mother warned you about – and some she should have – Mr. Phylzzz is best described as a noise rock duo, but even that doesn’t do their sound justice.
Comprised of guitarist/vocalist Clinton Jacob and drummer Danny Sein, Mr. Phylzzz is a musical entity unto itself, shedding every ounce of expectation and instead dousing the sonic flame with a devastating wall of noise that simply has to be heard to be understood.
“I don’t ever like to stay stagnant with anything.”
Clinton Jacob
And heard it shall be in the form of their recently released album Fat Chance.
An album the band has proclaimed is “definitely a bit different than the previous album, especially tonally” and their “most straightforward and focussed record yet“, what Fat Chance is, is a breath of fresh air on a musical landscape that is becoming increasingly mundane and predictable. It is an unrelenting, dynamically charged assortment of tunes that challenges all music conventions and dares to experiment on a scale few bands these days even contemplate, let alone commit to recording.
With Fat Chance landing on the HEAVY desk last week amid more than a couple of cries of WTF, when the opportunity to become better acquainted with the men behind the sonic trail of destruction came up we jumped at the chance.
“It’s a lot heavier than what has gone in the past,” Jacob offered. “It’s a lot more of a straightforward record. We put that together at Electrical Audio in Chicago, Illinois, which is right down the road from our practice space. “We’ve been playing these songs live for a year coming off the last release Cancer Culture Club. That’s enough time for me. I work really quick and Dan works really quick. We felt good about the songs – I’m not about fillers, I’m about killers – so it’s a short record for a reason. I don’t put fillers out. I just put what I believe in.”
Going back to the band’s statement about being different from previous releases, we ask the boys in what way.
“On the last record Cancer Culture Club, Clinton wrote all the tracks himself and produced them in his apartment,” Sein replied. “That had a much more noisy, chaotic feel to it. He left things in, like his cat would be meowing in the room, and he would leave that in the song. So it’s got a different atmosphere to it. With Fat Chance it’s a lot more straightforward. When you listen to it, it’s kind of like how we play the songs live. Normally when we play there aren’t really any chances to breathe in a sense because it’s just Bam, Bam, Bam and in your face. It’s short and sweet, and it’s got a big, huge drum sound. It’s a lot more like… hi-fi. But we’re using that beautiful studio space, so there’s fancy mikes, fancy equipment and all that.”
In the full interview, the boys talk more about the sound on Fat Chance, the more polished way it was recorded and what effect that had on the finished product, their creative process, the title and where it comes from, their perception of how many songs constitutes an album and how many for an LP, a history of the band, their sound and how it works, heading out on the road with The Melvins and Boris and more.
