Maybe you've steered clear because of their name, maybe you thought the band was just a joke? Either way, you are doing yourself a disservice by not checking out TruckStop DickPill, Knoxville, TN's self-proclaimed Appalachian Boner Slam band. Yes, they are having a lot of fun, and yes, they are writing some killer music! Catch up below!
Hello and thank you for being willing to talk to me! Who do we have here? What do you do in TruckStop DickPill?
What’s good, man?! Thank you for having me. I know we’ve talked about doing this for a while so I’m stoked to make you wanna gouge your eyes out with these long ass redundant answers you’re about to read to your questions haha. My name is Corey aka Crack Burton and I am the gurgle goblin of Truckstop Dickpill. Vocalist in layman’s terms.
Can you tell the story of how you guys met, how the band started, and how you came up with the name?
So Dickpill started with my friends Chris (guitar), Kyle (guitar), Brandon (guitar), and Ryan (drums) who I’ve known for a long time. Ryan, Brandon, and I have been in projects on and off for years and have always wanted to get a full time band going and none of us would have guessed this would be the one that stuck haha. The band basically started as a side project by Chris and Ryan who were both in other bands and I was the last to join cause they needed a vocalist and the rest is pisstory.
Obviously the lineup has changed since the beginning. Our friend Toby later joined on bass, but tragically passed away back in March before playing his first show, and our boy Mikey (ex-Disarmer) joined once we found out that Kyle was leaving. Chris’s main focus is his other band, Quiescent Mantis, so that lead to him leaving as well. We are all still homies and support each other and that’s the way it should be.
Names were already being thrown around when I joined and the concept was always centered around dickpills so we kinda all piggybacked off each other’s suggestions until we landed on Truckstop Dickpill. I always search band names when spitballing ideas cause I wanna make sure it’s not taken and there were a couple of variations that were similar, but Truckstop Dickpill just sounded right. A lot of people will mention Gas Station Boner Pills to us, which is a party punk band from Atlanta, GA and they were one of the first to follow us once we got the Instagram page up and running and we immediately clicked and eventually played a house show together in Knoxville. So that was really sick. Homies 4 lyfe. We consider ourselves part of the “Dickverse” so any bands that have wiener jokes in their name we wanna do some shit with you haha.
So very sorry to hear about Toby! If you don't mind speaking a little about how he came into the band, were you guys longtime friends? It must be like losing a real brother! I'm sure he'd be pumped to see what the ol' dickpill was up to now and happy to see the 'dickverse' thick, veiny, and strong!
Let's talk influences. First off, for readers that may not know, what kind of music do you make? Then, what did you guys grow up listening to, and what bands have influenced the band?
We make Slam or Slamming Death Metal. We have called ourselves “Boner Slam” and have been referred to as “Party Slam,” so a big fat Slam sandwich either way you slice it. Slam is a sub-genre of Death Metal, but with a heavier focus on the curbstomp breakdowns that bands like Internal Bleeding and Suffocation pioneered. It’s essentially just ignorant ass music meant to channel people’s inner cave dweller and we are huge movie nerds so throwing in samples that make us laugh is always a plus. Nothing more satisfying than seeing people playfully beat the shit out of each other with a smile on their face cause they heard a Whitest Kids You Know sample that leads into a dummy riff.
We are all old so we grew up in the magazine/tape trading days before the internet was the go-to for music sharing. There were these mail order catalogues I used to get called “BMG Music” and “Columbia House” and you bought one CD and got twelve free or some shit, which was not as good as it sounded cause I remember my mom would pay an ass ton for those fucking CDs haha. You checked off the CDs you wanted and mail the list back with a check. I remember Metal Maniacs having an order form in the back for CDs also. I was a simp for magazines like Hit Parader, Circus, and Kerrang so I had an idea of what bands I wanted to listen to that I didn’t see on TV. I was an MTV kid growing up so I would stay up late to watch the Metal blocks when they played shit like Fear Factory and Exodus. They brought back Headbanger’s Ball with Jamey Jasta and that was sick. Then Fuse had the show Uranium that featured a lot of interviews with Metal bands at festivals so that’s when I really wanted to be in a band. Labels like Relapse, Metal Blade, Century Media, and Victory had compilation CDs with all their artists on it so that was another way I got into the more extreme shit like Skinless, Dying Fetus, Nile, and Exhumed. Once my brother got into heavy music too it created this bond that we still have today where we find the most crude and absurd song titles and send them to each other and laugh.
Our influences vary pretty heavily cause we all come from different musical backgrounds, but for me I would say my main influences are Cannibal Corpse, Suffocation, Terror, and Deicide. They’ve all influenced me creatively on and off the stage in so many ways. We all love the 80s Hair bands and Heavy Metal icons like Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, and Dokken, which a lot of people would refer to as “Dad Metal,” but there’s nothing wrong with that. You can’t sit here and tell me that “Metal Health” by Quiet Riot and “Balls to the Wall” by Accept doesn’t go hard. Those are THE Heavy Metal anthems and always will be. Straight hard ass meaty in your face and up your ass riffs. Nuff said.
Your discography seems extensive for such a young band! You guys seem to stay hella busy, are there plans to slow down? Or the release of a full length?
Yeah so other than the “Hard as Fuck EP” and “Buc-eeverse Beatdown” I wrote those other EPs and shit myself. I’m not much of a guitar player, but once we had momentum, I got inspired and didn’t want to stop. I had so many ideas and just ran with it so that lead to doing the split with Fupa Goddess, the single with Buttholectomy, and the holiday EPs. I’m definitely not a producer either so they don’t sound the best, but Death Metal doesn’t have to sound super clean and professional to get the point across, necessarily. I just wanted to stay consistent and really establish what Dickpill was all about while maintaining the hype we were getting. So releasing over 20 songs in a year without dropping a full-length is nothing new, I still think it’s rad and it kept us busy.
With that being said, we took a short break after tour to sort out our home lives and everything, but we got a couple of shows coming up in August and have big things planned for our show at Smiley’s in Raphine, VA on the 23rd, which is an actual truck stop. So be on the lookout for that. Once we’ve concluded these shows we will be writing our next couple of EPs before we focus on a full length. I’m currently working on our tour video that will be released very soon exclusively on Patreon or something like that. All the footage was recorded on cellphones so that’s the best way to watch it cause it’s all at a vertical angle. I think it provides a unique viewing experience cause most people watch shit on their phones anyways and this way you don’t have to flip your phone landscape mode to watch it.
Reflecting on our tour, we definitely want to get on a label and possibly a management company so everything goes much smoother from here on out. We put everything we had and beyond into that tour and we made it work without a hitch, but now that we’ve accomplished our first successful DIY 2 week run, we want the next one to be bigger and better without any additional stress and uncertainty. That’s the main goal for us. So we aren’t slowing down by any means. We are just getting started.
Can we hear a crazy story of something that happened while on tour?
Oh man, the whole tour was crazy! Haha. A crazy story though was our last show at Joybomb in Indiana. We were driving through the piss pouring rain and we got word that the power went out at the venue and the show might be cancelled. Luckily we had our sound engineer homie Morgan with us cause he’s a licensed electrician so I was like, “if anyone can make something happen…he’s that dude.” So his idea was to use the generator from our RV to power the necessary equipment and salvage the show. Once Morgan and their sound guy Ben combined noggins, they made the shit happen. Everyone who came out stuck around and threw down and the bands all killed. Gotta give a huge shoutout to Adversary Enfleshed cause they worked their asses off to get that show booked and we didn’t wanna let them down. The power company showed up and worked on the lines and the lights came on right before our set. Everyone went nuts in excitement and it was a sick moment. It was crazy to see a scene like that work together and really deliver. The result was something special and a hell of a last show before we headed back to Knoxville.
Who are some of your favorite vocalists?
I have a lot haha. Frank Mullen of Suffocation is definitely my biggest influence, both vocally and performatively. He’s truly the GOAT of Death Metal. Obviously Corpsegrinder cause he not only has the best stage presence, but he’s a genuine ass dude. Glen Benton of Deicide. I call him “Death Metal Elvis” haha. He has the meanest sounding vocals straight from fucking Hell. Nergal of Behemoth. Love his range and lyrical abilities. He has such a way of enunciating words and emotion and is a great story teller. Very theatrical. Ross Dolan of Immolation for sure cause off stage he’s actually shorter than he looks haha. Cause on stage, he’s like 7ft tall the way he performs and not many can do that.
Who are the other 'weiner' bands in the dickverse with you?
Well I wouldn’t wanna say the dickverse is official haha, it’s more of a joke if we play shows with bands that have a dick reference in their name. Weiner reference sounds better haha. We played a house show here in Knoxville with Gas Station Boner Pills and Donkey Dick, who are also members of Pissrot and On My Life, so to us, they are members of the dickverse. We played a show with Putrid Smegma in Kansas City while on tour so they are definitely in, no question haha.
Alright, tour is done. what is next? new music? pump out a promo to the labels? or just sit back and take dickpills?
I feel like we’ve been sitting back and taking dickpills cause we’ve been taking a break since we got back from tour, but we are ready to get back at it. We wrote a new track before tour and are fine-tuning it now so be on the lookout for that. The new track will be apart of our next EP, which we will be taking the time to write that as well as another EP to follow it.
We have been shopping labels, but that’s a bit harder nowadays, because of streaming apps and digital music, a lot of labels don’t even have ways to submit music. Basically, if they are interested, they will contact you directly versus wanting us to send them an EPK and a demo and all of that. Hasn’t stopped us from sending shit out anyways, but the market is just different now so you just have to put yourselves out there and make yourselves known. It certainly helps to have well produced music, a decent social media following, touring experience, and some hype around you so, sources like what you do with Cerebral Reviewment really helps us out and we greatly appreciate that.
I’ve been a fan of your shit for a while now, so it’s awesome to get the opportunity to blab about Dickpill. I can’t thank you enough for having me and we are super stoked for everyone to hear what we got swimming in our balls. We are super grateful for all the crazy Mothertruckers that have supported us and all the bands that fuck with us. We will see yall soon. Toby Hurt forever. Thank you for your time, dude!
Toby Hurt forever indeed. Thank you crack for your time and honesty and thoughtfulness with these answers. Really cool to read about the a vibrant community and scene that is still thriving, despite the world of the internet seeming like haters rule the world. You guys are awesome, and I can't wait for more!
LINKS
Support TruckStop DickPill:
Donate to Toby's daughter's fund HERE
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