Chelsea Grin, a 6 piece hardcore band from Utah, is on the Vans Warped Tour this year. I set up an interview with them, which ended up getting pushed back an hour, and had to wait another thirty minutes to only to be greeted with Alex Koehler, frontman, who was “sick” and reeking of alcohol. Unpleasant right from the start.
He didn’t sound too good, to be fair, and said “I’m glad there’s a day off tomorrow.” He didn’t apologize for being late, either, just made the excuse that he kept trying to get other guys in the band to come to the interview instead, but none would. Furthermore, the press contact of Warped couldn’t even get a response from the guy for about twenty minutes. First impressions are the most important, and this guy already blew it.
However, I decided to get on with the questions so I could at least try and get some good answers outta this guy. I began with talking about their latest album, Ashes to Ashes, and the cover art. “My tattoo artist was the one that designed it,” Alex explained. “His name is Ryan Johnson. It’s funny cos he started drawing the artwork before he even knew the name and when I told him what it was called, and he freaked out. Cos, like, the girl’s face, is blown away into ashes. We just had a brain wavelength thing.”
The music video for their song “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” is pretty graphic, and filmed in an absolutely beautiful location. “The video was something I’d been wanting to do for a long time. The area is in Utah, where I live, so I had always wanted to shoot a video there. I guess you could call us visual artists, too, like when you write music you usually have an image in your head for every song, at least I do.”
Jokingly saying that Slipknot looks up to them, and Corey Taylor really wants to go on tour with them, Alex said he’d want to tour with Volumes because they’re really good friends.
Chelsea grin is a torture method; Alex is “a big fan of horror flicks. I love scary movies. It definitely ties into it. When I was 16 trying to find a name (that’s how we got Chelsea Grin).”
He wasn’t talking much, seeming kind of reserved or shut off, so I decided to cut the awkward interview a bit short and finish things up. Alex wasn’t really receptive to any of my questions, being quite flat and frankly, boring and completely disengaged.
I asked him to use three words to describe himself. His response? “Horny. Sick. Tall.” I wanted to just end it right there because to be honest, I was disgusted, but asked what his guilty pleasure music was. “Lana Del Rey,” he said. With that, I thanked him for his time and walked away.
I don’t know what was worse. The fact that he made me wait half an hour, or the fact that he basically just provided me a six minute crappy interview. Maybe it was how I waited half an hour for a six minute crappy interview.
Regardless, I was disappointed and turned off completely which is a shame, because the band’s been gaining serious popularity and I really wanted to like them.
