Bunker Hill Bloodbath | Episode #463

In this episode, we sat down with Bunker Hill Bloodbath. Bunker Hill is a four piece death core band from North Carolina. In this interview, you’ll hear where the name comes from, their 2024 goals and much more. You can catch them at our St. Patrick’s Day show with The Get Off, DENS, Bend the Knee and Wine & Warpaint at Garden Grove Brewing Company. For more information: https://www.victimsandvillains.net/events/9ekxwtklwm2g9gtww2kphxxsdwc8ez.

If you or someone you know is reading this right now and struggling with suicide, depression, addiction, or self-harm - please reach out. Comment, message, or tweet at us. Go to victimsandvillains.net/hope for more resources. Call the suicide lifeline at 988. Text "HELP" to 741-741. There is hope & you DO have so much value and worth!

This episode of Victims and Villains is written by Josh “Captain Nostalgia” Burkey. It is produced by Burkey. Music by Mallory Jameson (https://bit.ly/expandmal) & Purple Planet (https://bit.ly/ppcoms). Help us get mental health resources into schools and get exclusive content at the same time. Click here (http://bit.ly/vavpatreon) to support us today!

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Welcome to the Victims and Villains podcast. If you guys are new to this
podcast, we are a podcast extensionof the multimedia nonprofit Victims and Villains that
talks about mental health through pop culture. My name is Josh. Today.
The episode that you're getting ready tohear this was originally meant to be a
video on YouTube and the connection wasreally bad. So some of what you

(00:23):
guys are going to get ready tohear this interview with the band Bunker Hill
Bloodbath. What we ended up havingto do is some of it is.
I had to piece together some ofthe interview as best I could because of
the connection coming and going. Iapologize in advance, but I do hope
that you guys like what you guysare about to hear, and you guys
can catch Bunker Hill Bloodbath on ourSaint Patti's Day celebration here in Richmond at

(00:48):
Garden Grove Brewing Company. I hopeyou guys enjoyed us. I got the
entire band here, so guys wantto be so kind to introduce yourselves and
what instruments you guys play. Hi, I am Sean, I'm the vocalist,
Christian, I play bass. Gotdrums just ye slam strings on the

(01:15):
guitar. I got to ask,so it it's curious, where does the
name come from? Uh? Firstand foremost do you want to you want
to give him the rundown? Iwas kind of in between a friend of
mine who's who's really into him,and like, yeah, mutual friend,
actually we're big friends. Are thesame guy and he me and him would
would throw these names back and forth. And there was like a street in

(01:37):
Cournersville named Bunker Hill Road, andthen I just kind of threw that together
with Bloodbath because it was like usa word that was running through my head
and they just fell together. Heloved the name, and then when I
brought it to Cody and the band, they loved it too. So yeah,
it became a very unique one,just a unique name in an of

(02:00):
itself. And then you like lookedit up on a bunch of different databases
to make sure that there were noother That was a big thing of ours
too. Is like we've seen someand get a great name and then some

(02:21):
others associated with the place that you'refrom forever, which is great, but
when it's on your name always,it's it's weird. We want that.
We wanted that originality. So itworked out that way. Well sometimes that's
uh, you know, one ofthe things I thought of, I was
like, maybe it's like, uh, got some ties to like, you
know, an old like civil warlike battle that we did. Ended up

(02:46):
we ended up finding that out afterthe christ and like, and it turns
out you ever heard the quote don'tshoot and teachee the whites of their eyes?
No, okay, well it's ait's a civil war and it actually
is from that battles No, I'msorry, Revolutionary war. Revolutionary War battle,
and it's actually from the Battle ofBunker Hill. It's crazy. So

(03:08):
there's there's little connections here and there. And then of course the street is
named after the one that's in likeMassachusetts or whatever it's actually is. Yeah,
so it fell together. Yeah,funny enough. The main inspiration for
Bunker Hill was the fact that weactually tried to get a house on that

(03:30):
road and we got turned down.Yeah, we're gonna have association. Yeah,
that kind of that kind of lita fire under at a little bit.
And what you don't want to dois light a fire under them.
That's that's dangerous. That's awesome.Well, can you guys talk about the

(03:51):
you guys, uh, the thecreation of the sound of Bunker Hill.
How would you describe it? What'sthe writing process like for you guys.
I should probably start with that forsure. With like bands that I was
just really into when I first Ifirst started getting into like the heavier music
kind of when the pandemic picked up, So, like bands like Knocked Loose

(04:15):
were like our first kind of forayinto super heavy hardcore stuff, and uh,
we were kind of emmulating that atfirst, but I wanted to bring
in more influences from other bands aswell, so you know, we were
we were listening to a lot ofstuff and body Masher stuff at the time
and just kind of seeing what wecould pick up from these guys and kind

(04:41):
of mensh something together for our music, and it just kind of turned to
this really cool, groovy, youknow, death death groove type sort of
sound. And when it comes towrite and the stuff, it's almost always
starts with an idea between uh,you know, with somebody in the band,
but like probably it's between me andmy brother Cody, the drummer here,

(05:04):
who shines on guitar as well,so he writes a lot of the
songs, especially some of the lateststuff has been mostly under his writing.
So but like we'll come up withsomething and kind of throw the ideas back
and forth like lyrically and musically,until we've got something. The whole band

(05:26):
kind of lives with I got thatway and I think you know, I
played bass, but being a guitaristmyself, we will never run out of
riffs, like it's just filtering throughthem at this point to what is worth
going to release? Three be incredibleguitarists in the band. I have the

(05:50):
least instrumental talent out of all ofus, and all of them can play
at least bass minimum drums and thenguitar and bass is they're they're all savants
at it. They just don't wantto admit it. I'll say it,
but they're all savants. It's ridiculous. Like, seriously, I've watched this
man dissect a song just listening toit and then he copies him without him

(06:14):
even showing him how to do it, and I'm like, what, I
don't even understand what the progression is. And they're over here like, oh
wait, you got that, andI'm gonna just I'm gonna Okay, I
got it. It's ridiculous. They'rejust humble. They're humble. They're humble
for sure, and that's good becauseif I'm the one with the biggest ego
in this band, I think it'sit's up you do keep yours contained,

(06:43):
for sure. One of the thingsthat fascinates me about the current landscape of
music is the fact that when Iwas growing up in the scene, you've
released EPs and full lengths, youknow, every six months to a year
or two, whereas now with streaminghas kind of changed the game and every

(07:06):
single was kind of like this event, and you guys definitely fall within that
trend. Can you guys talk aboutthe how you guys decide what gets to
see the light of day when theyget to see the light of day,
you know, just kind of talkingabout some of the more recent releases from
You Guys with Thieves and Nightmare RitualNightmares. What's the process like when you

(07:30):
guys are considering releasing the content thatyou guys do. The band started with
a lot of demos and stuff,so they've had banks of music for years
at this point that they'll just pullfrom, change, interact, move things
here, and there, and sowhen we've all hit the demo, we

(07:55):
really like how the lyrics are soundingand coming together, and we all can
get in there and do the finalrecording for the vocals and stuff. There
are a couple songs that we've workedon but not finished, and then some
songs that we've just been so gungho about that we're like, oh,
we got to push this through.It's dope, we got it. It's

(08:15):
our next thing. It's the nextthing that we want to We want people
to know that we sound like.So it's really not any pick and choose
of like, all right, we'regonna put this song out, then this
song out. Then we've gotten likean amalgamation of songs, and then we'll
trickle them out. And that's somethingthat we've heard from a couple other people

(08:37):
that are are a little more popularthan us, that have released stuff and
got some really big pop on them, friends of ours. They've said a
big thing a lot with streaming nowis like the trickle effect or like the
waterfall effect. So with an EP, you might have three or four songs,
You have that first one set forrelease, and then you compound those

(09:01):
next releases on that original. Sothat they all get like passive listens on
the streaming service and stuff like that. So that is another thing that we
have to balance, where before itwas just you drop an EP, you
drop an album, and then youjust kind of hope that the grouping of
those songs will get somewhere rather thanhoping that one song is going to carry

(09:26):
you until you're ready to release thenext one and so on. Yeah,
then that's the biggest thing is people'sattention spans. For sure, TikTok has
kind of ruined us for the worst. I guess definitely. Definitely, Well,
you guys are getting ready with thisMarch sixteenth show with us to make

(09:46):
your guys's Virginia debut, which we'resuper excited about. What can we expect,
Like, what is a live showwith you guys? Are we expecting
to like people getting hurt? Ourshows are are violent, but I think
the most violence is on stage.Probably. We have had some crazy pits,

(10:09):
don't get me wrong, but there'sno There hasn't been chairs yet.
We'll say that there has been atraffic cone which was which was pretty cool,
but but no weapons or anything likethat. If you keep your face
covered, you're gonna be fine.That's really what it boils down. As
Jesse said earlier. Yeah, we'resuper heavy and hard, but it's really

(10:31):
groovy. So even if you're notgetting in the pit, you will be
moving your head like it's really it'sreally accessible. Actually, my wife doesn't
listen to metal like that, buthe likes Bunker Hill to metal in that
sense. But they get out thereand dance and move and groove to to
all of our stuff too. That'sthe big thing that we like seeing or

(10:52):
anything else Like, Yeah, throwingon fists and mashing is great, but
if we can get you to bangyour head like grew around and dance and
stuff and actually let yourself go duringour set, that's that's all we care
about. It's about that experience firstand foremost than anything else. Is that
experience. Yeah, and specifically likeHARKing on the Groove. It's one of

(11:15):
the reasons that I really like youguys, is because when you have a
band that has that heaviness to it, there's I believe personally being raised also
on not only like the Emo andthe scream O generation, but also like
music like Britney Spears and Syk youknow, a lot of those got stuck

(11:37):
in your head, and it wasthe hooks, it was the grooves.
So when you guys are taking somethingthat is traditionally something as very heavy,
how do you guys kind of combatthat with the hooks and the process for
writing those hooks? No, Imean, and when it comes to groove

(12:01):
stuff, we also take a lotof influence. You know, me and
Cody grown up on on. Youknow, rap was some of the first
things that we were even listening toor big rap artists, and his first
show was a big rap show inlike two thousand and five. Oh yeah,
So so you know, going onthat, we we've had a lot
of influence from stuff outside of metalfor a long time. You know,

(12:24):
so that stuff, like you said, it kind of just sits in your
brain. You've got it, You'vegot it kind of uh, you know,
you want to you want to workwith those grooves, but you don't
necessarily know how how you want toput them in there. But bands like
we've we've said, like Kooblai Khanand other other groove metal bands have kind
of shown that you can you cankind of just like hit the right uh,

(12:46):
you know, a bit of heavinessat the right moment. You get
a scream at the at the rightspot and people will groove and vibe to
that the same way they would ifyou were, you know, doing a
dance song or something. And Ijust when we put him in our music,
don't want to. I wouldn't sayto put them too many too many
times, but a break down partor a groovy part, and they're too
much people. People get over saturatedfrom that kind of thing. Like the

(13:11):
Sean always calls out the two stepand Darren thieves that's like that is for
sure for me. The hook ofthe song. Yeah, and people love
that too because you just hitting them. You're hitting them, you're hitting them
and hitting and then dancing. Asa traditional you don't think of it as
a traditional type of hook, Likeyou know, the hook in a song
is usually something that comes in andrepeats all over and over again. But

(13:33):
sometimes with a hardcore so on,that hook can just be that one big
groove part that you've been building tothe whole song. So I think something
that I learned with and we've talkedabout it a lot, with playing not
only on the sounds that we're making, but playing with the space in between
the sounds because you can't have thegroove without that separation of the note and

(13:56):
everything right. Otherwise just a bigball sound. So, like he said,
where it was you placed in thevocals in the right spot. You
get that riff in the right spot. The drum hits just in the perfect
and you get that groove when it'scaught right. It's caught right because of
that space before it. It's caughtright because of the space after it,

(14:18):
and your body recognizes that pattern andand really picks up on them. Otherwise,
I've seen riffs get thrown in songswhere the crash is back there overriding
the whole thing. So you can'thear the groove for anything because there's no
separation. You have to have sometype of like there's a there's a flow,

(14:41):
and if there's no silence, there'sno ebb and flow. So absolutely,
yeah, it's just one big wallof noise. Well, speaking of
thieves on that topic, Thieves andConsume were recently featured on our Lace episode
of Abyscazing. Coach covered the LovedOnes for our Valentine's Day episode, and

(15:03):
THEWS is a new release for youguys this year. We're still a few
weeks into this year. What doyou guys have planned for twenty twenty four
where some of the goals? Whatcan people expect from you guys? Well,
right now, fus is our mostrecent release. We're trying and really
hit media overall social media as awhole with that pretty hard. Might be

(15:28):
working on some music video stuff atsome point, but right now we're in
the middle of really hungering down pushingthese new shows for the year, and
then hopefully getting out some more musicwithin the middle year, maybe just fall
something like that. We're just gettingmore aggressive and more groovy and more in

(15:50):
your face and break downs and stuff, more rap influence and call outs and
shot like different things like that.Yeah, we've only got almost one song
written I think completely, But likeI said, we have to filter through.

(16:10):
Yeah, it's so much music,and sometimes they yeah, it won't
it won't match. Like maybe we'relike, oh, man, this song
is just absolutely sick and it's gonnapunch people in the face. But then
you play it with the other songsthat you might want to put on something
you're like, oh, it kindof doesn't fit with that. What would
be that album? EP? Yeah, and uh a little behind the scenes,

(16:34):
but we do plan on at somepoint this year working on getting a
shuttle bus to try and really getsome actual pouring going because we're all we're
all just itching because we've we've playedall of our local areas. We we
love all of our local our localvenues and stuff. They've been amazing to

(16:55):
us. But we want to getdown to like Florida. We got a
couple of bands down there we wantto play with, and we also,
yeah, we want to get outto Texas as well. We played,
uh, we played with this amazingband called Disowned from Texas back when we
first started, and uh, theyreally put a fire under us to like
want to travel out because they threeguys just in a in a rent a

(17:15):
bus or whatever, rent a van, and I was like, damn,
dude, y'all really went out anddid the thing. And we actually ended
up meeting them because somebody dropped offof our show. They had a last
minute cancelation and so they came throughand we were like, dude, these
guys are amazing, and so thatreally was like we got to we have

(17:37):
to tour and we started meeting otherbands from like Georgia, South Carolina,
Florida. We were like, oh, whenever we're ready to, we just
got to hit them up and belike, we'd love to play some shows
with you guys, and we're tryingto plant those seeds there nice. All
right, Well, where can peoplefind you guys online to actually follow those

(17:57):
endeavors on all social media that Ithink we just got rid of our ex
because we don't really join the club. But yeah, everything on bunk On,
everything under Bunker Hill blood Bath supereasy to find. If you one
thing that we're very, very proudof, if you just google us,

(18:18):
everything comes up. If you typein Bunker Hill blood Bath, all of
our ship comes up. It is. It is one of the cleanest Google
searches I've ever seen for a localband. It's ridiculous. So that's something
that we're pretty happy about. ButFacebook, Instagram, we're on TikTok of
course, we're really trying to buildthe TikTok up because that, of course,

(18:40):
even though it's the devil, itgets it gets the views. It's
ridiculous, it does not make sense, but it gets the views for sure.
All Right, Well, I thankyou guys so much. You guys
can catch a Bunker Hill Blood Bathwith the Get Off, then the Knee
Dens, and wine and war Paintat Garden Grove Brewing Company here in Richmond,
Virginia, beginning six pm on Marchsixteenth. Come out and celebrate Saint

(19:06):
Patrick's Day with us. Support theband, support the bar, support the
cause, and hit that subscribe buttonbelow. Check out all of Bunker Hill
Bloodbeath stuff in the show notes below. You guys, Thank you guys for
watching. If you were someone youknow is listening to this podcast right now
and you're struggling with suicide, addiction, self harm, or depression, we

(19:29):
encourage you guys to please reach out. This is the heartbeat or why we
do what we do. Suicide iscurrently the tenth leading cause of death in
the United States, and as ofthis recording, there are one hundred and
thirty two suicides that take place eachand every day on American soil, and
when you scale back internationally, thereare eight hundred thousand successful suicides. That

(19:52):
is one death roughly every forty seconds. So if you were someone you know
is struggling, you guys can goto Victims and Villains I met Forward Slash
Hope that resource is going to beright in the description wherever you guys are
currently listening or streaming this. Thereyou'll find resources that include the National Suicide
Lifeline, which is one eight hundredtwo seven three eighty two fifty five.

(20:15):
You can also text help to sevenfour one seven four one. Also have
a plethora of other resources including churches, getting connected with counselors, LGBT resources
like the Trevor Project, and alsoa veteran the hotline as well. Please,
if you hear nothing else in theshow, understand that you, yes,

(20:38):
you listening to this right now,have value and worth. We get
it. Suicide, depression, mentalhealth. These are hard topics and this
stigma around them doesn't make it anyeasier. But please consider the resources right
in the descriptions below wherever you guysare listening, because once again, you

(20:59):
have value and worth, so pleasestay with us.