A Wilhelm Scream

This past Sunday I had the chance to talk to Nuno and Jon from A Wilhelm Scream, and I brought Mike along for the fun. Thanks to the band and to Nancy from Nitro Records for setting this up.

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GARY: So, we’ll start off by introducing yourselves. 
NUNO: Hello, I’m Nuno Pereira (vocals) from A Wilhelm Scream. 
JON: I’m Jon (Teves) and I play bass.

GARY: You’ve recently release Mute Print, and technically this is your fourth album, you recorded two under the name Smackin’ Isaiah. What was the meaning behind that name? 
NUNO: Smackin’ Isaiah was the name of a song that we had written years ago… 
JON: It was about a little kid who had gotten revenge on his town 
NUNO: Kind of like a “Carrie” kind of story, you know what I mean? Only with plumbing instead of fire.

GARY: Your last album “Benefits of Thinking Out Loud”, you toured that one alot. What kind of reaction did you get from the crowds from touring that? 
NUNO: I’d say it was…we tour quite a bit and we try to hit up all the places that we get good reactions from, we keep trying to get back to them. And for the most part we made a lot of good friends through that, by touring that album, I mean friends that we still have to this day that come out and see us whether we’re in Barrie or Guelph or Santa Barbara or anywhere you know? So in that aspect it worked out really well for us.

GARY: This is your first album on Nitro, so you’ll have alot more exposure through them. What do you think about that? 
NUNO: I’ll let Jon handle this one. 
JON: What do you mean? 
GARY: With Nitro behind you you’ll get more exposure, be able to reach more people… 
JON: Well that’s great man. Yeah. That’s great. We’re excited to be working with Nitro, it’s all pretty new still, you know? It seems to be working out pretty well.

GARY: How’d that happen? Did you send them a demo or did they talk to you? 
NUNO: One of the A&R guys, Sean, came up to me after…we had done like two weeks on the Warped Tour a couple of years ago, and after one of our shows he came up and introduced himself and was really stoked on our set or whatever, and he was like ‘keep in touch with us’ and so that’s basically what we did. We sent him some stuff and kept in touch…we were talking to a couple labels at the time, a small handful, and when push came to shove they seemed to be the most willing to give us what we need as far as promotion and making sure that we were a priority and not just something that can be pushed to the way-side.

GARY: So before that you had changed your name to A Wilhelm Scream. What drew you to that name? 
NUNO: There were so many. (laughs) It was a pretty funny process trying to change the name because there were so many bad ones we came up with, you know? 
GARY: Any examples? 
NUNO: Haha, Jon came up with one, I think it was like Caves Of Dark or something, Caves Of Black. 
JON: It had something to do with Iron Maiden, that’s all I know. 
NUNO: No dude, it had nothing to do with Iron Maiden. 
JON: I’m telling you! Caves Of Black is like an Iron Maiden album or some shit. I’m telling you Caves Of Black is an Iron Maiden song. 
NUNO: Not true. 
JON: I’m not lying! 
NUNO: All these people reading this are gonna think you’re a wierdo.

EDITOR’S NOTE: In all my research I could not find anything related to Iron Maiden that even slightly resembled the name “Caves Of Black”. Sorry Jon.

 

NUNO: We are all really into movies and trivia and wierd things like that, and it struck as something that had a cool… 
JON: (farts) 
NUNO: Type that out! uh…it had a cool meaning behind it and it makes people think, like ‘oh, what is a wilhelm scream’? Like I had a girl come up to us the other day and was like ‘where’d you get that name from?’ She seemed kind of like, distraught. She’s like ‘well that’s my last name!” 
GARY: Oh really? 
I was like ‘well, it’s a bunch of people’s last name’ you know? Then I told her about it and her and her boyfriend thought ‘wow, that’s pretty cool.’

GARY: Same with Mute Print, it’s the copy of a film without sound. 
NUNO: Before it gets audio put onto it, right. 
GARY: When you say “this mute print lies”, what do you mean by that? 
NUNO: I think it’s kinda like watching a movie that hasn’t been scored yet, not necessarily that it doesn’t have words in it, but just doesn’t have the music in it… 
JON: It doesn’t have audio in it in general. 
NUNO: You can take just what you see, you know? You take it for what it is (without audio). If you add something to it,it could envoke a completely different meaning or feeling, you know what I mean? So in that aspect it’s kind of like take it for what it is and not necessarily…I don’t know, strike that, reverse it. DON’T take it for what it is (with audio).

GARY: So you guys are big movie fans? 
NUNO: Yup. 
GARY: So if there was ever a movie made about you, who would star as you? 
NUNO: hahaha, that’ awesome. Probably, um.. Urkle from Family Matters. 
GARY: Jaleel White, I think that’s his name. 
NUNO: Jaleel, yeah. But he’s all jacked now, he’s all big and burly. Naw, maybe not Jaleel White, maybe Barry White. 
MIKE: He’s dead. 
NUNO: SHIT! Then I’m stumped, I don’t know. 
GARY: What about you? 
JON: I would hope that Steve Buscemi would be down to do the part of me.

GARY: And what would the storyline be in your movie? Would it have a tragic ending or a Cinderella happy-type… 
NUNO: Hahaha. It would probably just keep on going. It would be the worlds longest movie. Not necessarily the most interesting, but at times… 
JON: It would be semi-pornographic.

GARY: So what are your favourite movies to watch? 
JON: …Steve Buscemi fucking anyone is funny. 
NUNO: Fargo’s hillarious. Some of my favourite movies? Wow, there’s so many, you know? It’s a tough question. What movie did I just see that I liked? Crap. I just bought Big Fish. That was a pretty good movie. 
GARY: I still haven’t seen that. 
NUNO: Yeah, I bought that. It was different than what I expected but it’s really good. Um, I love Pulp Fiction and Boondock Saints and you know, the staple kind of underground punk rock scene type of movies that everyone gets to see. But at the same time I can still sit down and watch Willy Wonka or something from when we were kids and still laugh. 
JON: I can’t wait to see the new one, Tim Burton’s doing it. 
NUNO: Yeah, Johnny Depp’s playing Willy Wonka 
JON: That’s gonna be fuckin’ crazy. And uh, we just saw Fahrenheit 9/11 too, that was good. 
GARY: I just saw that last week. 
NUNO: Yeah, it’s amazing. 
GARY: So are you all big Michael Moore fans? 
NUNO: Definately. We’ve all read his books, like one person will buy the book and we’ll pass it around the van. My mom, when he was doing his university tour we were out on tour, and my mom went and got me a bumper sticker, it’s actually the only sticker we have on our trailer, it’s a “DUDE, WHERE’s MY COUNTRY?” sticker. So far we haven’t got fucked. Like no cops or anything have really messed with us too much.

GARY: I guess something draws you guys to tour life, you see to tour alot. 
NUNO: It’s the whole…you’ve got to! You know what I mean? Like that’s what it’s about. You can’t sit back and expect people to just love your album. And even if they do you still can’t sit back and rest on your morals, you gotta go out there and give it for the right reasons. 
JON: They’ll get bored with it. 
NUNO: There’s nothing better then playing for, whether it’s 5, 50 or 500 kids that are into your music or into your album. It’s just the best feeling in the world, that’s reason enough.

GARY: What are the best and worst parts about tour for you guys? What do you think? 
JON: Loading in, getting sick is the worst. 
NUNO: Playing a string of bad shows is really depressing. That’ll really bring down the whole levety level in the van. 
JON: And even when it rains. 
GARY: Yeah, today it rained pretty bad. 
NUNO: We actually, when were loading in it wasn’t so bad. But yeah, I mean, you get to hang out with four of your best friends, and all sorts of inside jokes and stuff like that. And getting to tour with and getting to meet other bands and become friends with them, that’s a huge plus. Making friends, seeing the country. 
JON: And then, the Flying Jays are fun too. 
NUNO: You get to stay at the Flying Jays, that’s fun.

GARY: So who was your favourite band to tour with so far, that you’ve had the chance to tour with? 
NUNO: I would say… 
JON: Near Miss. 
NUNO: I would say Near Miss, yeah. They’re a band from Austin Texas, they’re amazing. They’re just super good guys, everything about them. They’re hillarious. They fight all the time, so it’s fun to just sit back and just watch them! (laughs) They’re a riot dude, they’re a laugh riot.

GARY: So as of right now, what are your favourite albums to listen to on tour, in the van, at home whatever? 
NUNO: The new Bad Religion is really awesome, I love that album. I was really pleasently surprised with that. I may sound like a wiener but I bought the Postal Service album when it came out. 
GARY: I was just listening to that today, actually. 
NUNO: That album’s awesome. 
GARY: I love it. 
NUNO: Haha, good. So i’m in the company of a fellow wiener. 
GARY: They take the computer and the synthesizer to the next level. 
NUNO: Right, that album’s amazing. All sorts of stuff, I still get off listening to Master Of Puppets, you know what I mean? Like whatever it takes to stay awake sometimes will just about cut it. 
JON: We listen to alot of bands that we play with too, like we’re listening to the Near Miss stuff. We were just listening to Adair for a couple of days, we were just playing with them. Um, like Love Me Destroy we’ve been playing alot. Much The Same, Break The Silence, all those guys. 
GARY: Adair’s a good choice. 
NUNO: Yeah. 
JON: They are great.

GARY: So for people who don’t know you since you’re not played on radio and tv all the time, what would you like to say to them? 
NUNO: I’d like them to check out our music, and come and check out our live show and try to come out and have some fun with us. 
JON: It’s really not that hard, seriously! Like there’s free music all over the freakin’ internet. And how much is it to get into this show? $7.00 CANADIAN! Which is like $2.00 American, right? 
GARY: It’s about $5.00 or something. (NOTE: It’s actually $5.30 right now if you’re curious) 
JON: Yeah, it’s like, you know. 
GARY: The Canadian dollar is doing pretty good these days. 
NUNO: Yeah, it is. 
JON: We don’t get paid much, so you don’t have to pay alot to come see us. Come support us, buy our album… 
NUNO: Support your scene in general, you know what I mean? Like alot of scenes go to shit because kids get so cliquey and then like, some kids will actually pay their five, or seven dollars or ten dollars sometimes to go to a show and just sit in a booth at the back and hob-nob with their friends and make fun of other peoples clothes. 
JON: Yeah, don’t be a pompous son of a bitch. 
NUNO: Just come out and have fun. For the same reason you came to your very first show come out to see our show, you know what I mean? For the fun of it.

GARY: How do you guys write your songs? How do they develop? 
NUNO: Diagonally. 
JON: With the guitar. 
NUNO: Then we work diagonally from there. 
GARY: So do you write your lyrics afterwards, or while you’re writing the song? 
NUNO: It all depends. I suppose, like certain…we don’t really write as much as Trevor (Reilly – Guitar and Vocals) does. 
JON: Ask him about that.

GARY: So the artwork on this album… 
NUNO: It’s not photoshop. It’s an actually TV on our boy Carson’s head. He’s from Germany. 
GARY: Where’d this idea come from? 
JON: It was Trevor’s idea. 
NUNO: Yeah, it was Trevor’s idea, and then Trevor, Jon and Nick (Angelini – drums) went to work in the garage and started hollowing out tvs and radios… 
JON: Trevor was just like ‘hey dude, I got this idea for like, this guy with a tv’ and I was like ‘oh!’. I had gotten an idea the same day to cut the insert like that, you know what I mean. It was an idea with a man there, and when he told me about the TV guy we just sort of put our ideas together. And that’s how this concept with the guy came together. It’s kind of a funny insert, but the whole thing about Mute Print is you can’t tell if it’s funny or if it’s tragic. You know what I mean? It’s kind of weird. 
NUNO: That first picture to this day still cracks me up dude, I think it’s the funniest shit. 
JON: That whole photo shoot was, we just had a bunch of beers and we were just drinking… 
GARY: So you guys were all there when these photos were taken? 
JON: We’re in some of them! (laughs) 
NUNO: Yeah, we’re extras. There’s Nick right there, there’s Trevor. There’s our creepy Chris head in the back there. 
JON: If you look at the record shop, boombox girl is buying an old Smackin’ Isaiah cd. 
NUNO: That’s pretty funny. 
GARY: Little things to pick up on. 
JON: Yeah, little things we thought were funny at the time.

GARY: I’ve got a little game here. Where will you guys be in an hour? 
JON: Inside Ces Le Vie. 
NUNO: Yeah, inside Ces Le Vie waiting to play, saying hi and hanging out with the guys from the FullBlast. 
GARY: Where will you be in a day? 
JON: Tomorrow we’re in Toronto, getting SARS. 
NUNO: Spreading SARS. Yeah we know it’s gone dude, we’re bringing it back. 
GARY: Where will you be in a month? 
NUNO: We’ll be in the states, I think. 
JON: Yeah, after this we’re going on tour with Lawrence Arms for a little while, then we’re going back home and coming to do some Warped Tour dates in the middle of August. After that I don’t know. 
NUNO: We’ll actually be at the Buffalo date in upstate New York, so if any of your readers or whatever are nearby, come on down and enjoy the festivities. 
GARY: And finally, where will you be in a year and ten years. 
NUNO: Next year we’ll be in the studio recording a new album. 
JON: In ten years we’ll be touring with Bad Religion while they’re all in wheel chairs. 
NUNO: Haha, we’ll finally get out shot. 
JON: Yeah, they’ll put out their like, what? 35th album or something like that. And we’ll help Greg put his teeth in.

GARY: If you could have one thing right now, one thing that’s dead that you want to bring back what would it be? Anything like a fashion trend or a person or a thing what would you bring back? 
NUNO: Good question…anything? Could I kill a fashion trend instead? 
GARY: Well that was my next question. 
NUNO: Haha, well we’ll wait then. 
JON: You’ve killed his next question! 
NUNO: I would have to say, I, Nuno Pereira would like to bring back…uhh, hahaha it’s so hard not to be a jerk about this. I’d like to bring back fast, punk rock music. Cause it seems to be going the way of the dodo these days. Maybe like…Kid Dynamite, put it that way. I’ll bring back Kid Dynamite. 
JON: Yeah, bring back Kid Dynamite. People want to be on the radio now. Hey, uh I would bring back Ted Williams though. 
NUNO: The greatest hitter in baseball. 
JON: Well he’s chriogenically frozen now. Poor guy, I’d like to bring back Ted Williams. The Red Sox need him. 
GARY: So if you could have one thing living here right now what would you have? Anything at all, like a cake. 
NUNO: Geez. Probably my friends from back home. My mom and my grandmother and maybe a table full of Portugese food. 
JON: Yeah we should have a bus with girlfriends, and family and friends… 
NUNO: …and Portugese food. 
GARY: Are you guys Portugese? 
NUNO: I am. 
GARY: Did you watch the soccer game today? 
NUNO: I caught the first 25 minutes. 
GARY: So you missed the end? Do you know how it ends? 
NUNO: I know how to ends. I’m a Boston Red Sox fan, we’re used to getting there and then falling apart. No, it was an awesome match congratulations to all you Greecians. 
GARY: So here it is, anything alive right now that you want to kill, what do you want to kill? 
NUNO: I want to kill all the kids who come to shows wearing their sister’s pants with fruity bandanas hanging out of their pockets like the whole scene’s got a cold they’re gonna catch. What is up with the bandanas? I’m not feeling it. 
JON: Yeah, I don’t know. Guys with girls pants man. I don’t know what the fuck happened, how that came about but you know, guys wearing girls pants. We saw like, how many yesterday dude? 
NUNO: Tons. It’s aweful. 
JON: I mean, it’s just not yesterday it’s everyday. 
NUNO: Just for the record, fashion in the 80’s was never cool, ever. Leave that shit alone. 
JON: You can’t even fit things in your pockets, why have pockets there? 
NUNO: The only thing they can fit are those fruity ass bandanas. 
GARY: Maybe it’s tied to their wallet or something. 
NUNO: I don’t know man. 
JON: The only thing it does is show off how small their dick is, you know what I mean. Hey man, you gotta have some serious balls to be wearing jeans that tight. 
NUNO: Or lack there of. 
JON: I mean when they’re tight on your knees? I mean COME ON dude. 
NUNO: You can’t even fit your foot through sometimes, like the bottom hole’s like this big. 
JON: I can’t even…I mean they look good on girls, they look great on girls. Girls should wear wicked-tight jeans. And they do. 
NUNO: It’s weird though, girls are wearing dickies and boys are wearing their sister’s pants. 
GARY: I guess the girls can’t wear their pants cause their brothers have them. 
NUNO: That’s a very good observation, very good observation.

GARY: So where do you guys want this band to go? What level of success do you want? 
NUNO: I think they should play our video 24 hours straight, one day just to get it over with. No, I admire alot of bands that have been around, like Lagwagon, though I guess they’re broken up now, but NOFX who never really had to settle, you know, one way or the other. 
JON: Lagwagon’s not broken up. 
NUNO: I think so. 
GARY: I don’t think so. 
NUNO: I thought that’s why Joey Cape put out that acoustic album. 
JON: NOOO! He did that with Tony Sly man. 
NUNO: Whatever man. 
JON: It was a split, him and Tony Sly. It was just two guys that were just like ‘hey, wanna do an acoustic album?’ ‘SURE!’ And they were drunk one day and they said ‘hey remember we said we were gonna do that acoustic album? Let’s do it!’ Cause they haven’t done shit in a while, you know? Just dancing around with the Gimme Gimmes for a while and just getting bored. 
NUNO: SO ANYWAY! I definately think bands like that are admirable. You know, bands like Rise Against and Hot Water Music that put in their time on the road and you know, have slept in their van. And i’m sure if you ask them to sleep, not that they’d be in a van now, but they wouldn’t piss and moan about doing it right now becuase that’s the way punk rock goes. We’re not KISS you know what I mean?

GARY: So you guys just shot a video for Mute Print, how’d that video shoot go? 
NUNO: I was really hung over. 
JON: That video shoot was crazy. We were pounding Gaterade trying to rehydrate ourselves. And it snowed like a son of a bitch. We came into New Jersey, we drove straight from Iowa! Oh no, we went into State College and partied with the guys from Jumpstart Records, who put out Benefits (Of Thinking Out Loud) you know? So we became really good friends with them, so we always stop at State College to drink old Germans, and disgusting beer like that like.

GARY: Is there a reason why you chose that song over the rest? Because it’s a really short song compared to the rest of the album. 
NUNO: I started, we were just talking about videos and ideas and stuff before we even knew were gonna do one. And I think I just got stoned one day and started story-boarding the first song on the album. And i’m not a very good artist and I run out of my ideas fairly quickly so when I brought what I had to the band you know, I showed the guys and we mulling talking over different ideas, and then Trevor took my concept and created sort of a little bit more of a script for it, like a plot. 
JON: We completely cut it out in the end, there was no storyline at all. It was completely cut out. 
NUNO: In OUR copy there’s a storyline. 
JON: Yeah in our copy there’s a storyline but… 
NUNO: I haven’t seen the other one. 
GARY: I haven’t seen the one with a storyline. 
JON: I guess you know, they decided that the performance edit was better. Cause they couldn’t tell what the hell was going on in the storyline, but WE knew! We knew what was going on. 
GARY: For anyone who hasn’t seen that version, what was going on? 
JON: We’ll post it some day, i’m sure. But we’re actually filming a video for “Famous Friends (and Fashion Drunks)“, we’re doing that one in like two and a half weeks or something. 
NUNO: Two weeks? 
JON: Yeah we’re doing that while we’re in California. And we’re doing that with the Low Brow Brothers, they’re gonna hook that up. It has something to do, I think we’re gonna get hurt. 
NUNO: Yeah I’m pretty sure we’re gonna get hurt. 
JON: We read the treatment and i’m pretty sure we’re gonna get pretty hurt. And so I definately told the guys at Nitro they’re gonna have to bring seven cases of beer to the shoot. 
GARY: Why is it that singers are always out of the loop with these things? You don’t even have your fancy bracelet today. 
NUNO: I was in there, then we went to eat and I never got the bracelet. Where’s your glow-stick bracelet? 
GARY: I’m not important enough to get one. 
NUNO: No, don’t say that. You’re a nice person. We just got side tracked by Hooters, the restaraunt. 
GARY: Just down the street. They shouldn’t put it near the bands, they get sidetracked! 
NUNO: We actually had probably the most hideous, naw I shouldn’t say that. 
JON: No, you should fuckin say that it was bullshit. 
NUNO: She was pretty haggard. I mean I was sitting next to my girlfriend so I had much better things to look at, but seriously. 
JON: She got beat down with the fuckin ugly stick. 
NUNO: She fell out of the tree and hit every branch on the way down. 
JON: Bang, bang, bang, bang. She doesn’t go to ThePunkSite.com 
GARY: But about the video… 
JON: We should send you the storyline one. Cause then you’ll have a choice of whether you want to be confused or you just wanna see us dance around. 
GARY: What’s the storyline? 
NUNO: All right. It’s kind of a mystery, we didn’t want it to be completely blatent, you know? 
JON: You have to figure it out for yourself. 
NUNO: It basically has to do with this man who may or may not be a contract killer who’s only fault is that he wears a hearing aid. 
JON: He’s deaf! 
NUNO: Yeah, he’s a deaf hitman. I guess, maybe. And he starts hearing our song come through, and he takes out his hearing aid and he can’t figure out what the problem is. And while he’s walking away from where he just finished his business he hears it again, it starts freaking him out, he tries to find out where it’s coming from. He finds a reel to reel, he goes up into a warehouse space and finds a suitcase with a reel to reel, and it’s basically him trying to destroy it to get the song out of his head or whatever. 
JON: It’s like us in the warehouse, and when he smashes the shit I guess the lights go out on us. It’s all cool. It was fun. To me it makes sense! 
NUNO: It makes sense to us, maybe because I came up with the idea. I thought the acting in it was really awesome. 
JON: Oh man, the guy they got to act in it is hillarious, hillarious. He’s like this, I don’t know, we never met him. 
NUNO: That was kind of the fun part, we just went in there and did our live stuff, and weeks later got the copy with that stuff and, I don’t know I thought it was really cool. My mom liked it. 
GARY: The version I saw was just you guys singing, playing the song. 
JON: My mouth is huge. 
NUNO: I don’t know man, you made some pretty wacky faces. 
JON: I do, that’s how I…I do that all the time, I don’t do it on purpose.

GARY: And that’s all I got. Thanks for doing this. 
NUNO: Thank you very much!