Wow. I cannot believe I am typing this! Will the world see another Short Bus Pile Up release a mere 15 years after Repulsive Display? I sure fucking hope so!
It may be annoying, but best, to start with a brief recap and history of the band if you don’t mind? I mean in a way you guys will have a whole new generation listening!
TYLER SHARPES (Songwriting, Guitar, backing vocals) :
Thanks for hitting us up man! We absolutely love doing interviews. The world will definitely be hearing much more from Short Bus Pile Up. We have plenty planned, but for now let's do a little recap for the newbies who might be finding out about us for the first time!
We originally started as a little fun project on Myspace back in like 2005 between me (Tyler) and my cousin Elijah. We loved the whole cybergrind era that popped up overnight on the platform and figured we'd try our hand at it. I had been making hip hop beats with
FL Studio for years and so I decided to program some elementary style drums and record guitar and vocals over it. Very primitive stuff. For roughly 2 years we made some deathcore influenced cybergrind tracks and uploaded a few EPs and it surprisingly did pretty well for what it was.
Then randomly one day at work, a friend of mine through other bands (Sidney) came in and asked if I had plans to make it a real band. I told him I didn't know anyone who'd be interested and he seemed extremely interested in playing live drums for the project. At that exact moment my
coworker Elliott, told me he played metal guitar and would be down to help. At that moment the core project was born. We recruited my sister's boyfriend at the time Logan, to do vocals, and then his friend from work Chris to hop on bass. Long story short, no pun intended, the band was formed.
We took about a year to write our Putrid Pelvic Prolapse EP and did a DIY release of it, selling a minimal amount of copies. With this we were able to get the ball rolling on playing shows and
pressing merch. Some time passed, Logan and Chris left and we decided to move some members around Devourment style, and got a new bassist named Ryan. I'd say this was the core lineup of the band for a large chunk of band's existence. We booked a mini east coast tour with the band Gutted Out, threw together a DIY promo of a few tracks with this lineup, and hit the road. On the final date we played New England Death Fest where we met Barrett from Sevared Records and upon seeing us live he signed us on the spot, lining us up for our first full length album release "Repulsive Display of Human Upholstery."
From that release in 2010 and the time of the hiatus in 2016, we had a couple more changes to the lineup where Tyler moved back to guitar, Elliott moved to bass, and we recruited Bill Foster on vocals. With this lineup we had started writing for a new release but sadly, our tour vehicle crapped out on us, we lost our practice spot, and all our careers were moving forward, so time became less frequent for dedication to the band.
However, earlier this year we all had a little reunion get together at a Peeling Flesh show and that spark just sorta hit us again. Life had settled down and things seemed to be lining up to make this project possible again. So now the lineup of Bill, Tyler, Elliott, and Sidney are
back together and writing new material and reworking old material that we had written before the break. That leads us to current day! Whew...
Short Bus pretty much started as a joke, no? I am curious about how serious you guys took it in the very beginning - then around the time of the RDoHA - then a hiatus? And now? With recently recording? What has it been like?
Correct. The original project was fully a joke that I had no intention of making more than an internet project. Each song took about 10 minutes to write and even less time to record, so you can imagine I was pumping out junk like clockwork that for some reason people still enjoyed haha.
Once the band became a live act we started taking it much more seriously, tho we still kept the fun aspect at the forefront. Once we released RDoHA, we noticed a huge influx of new fans and with that, a huge influx of critics. While we didn't overthink it too much we did decided to take things
a bit more serious with the writing process for a lot of the newer material that we were pumping out before the hiatus. Now that we're back together with those songs sitting in our muscle memory we've been able to fine tune them to sort of fit what we feel is the best sounding version of
ourselves as we put together these new releases that we have planned. It's been fairly easy to move at a good pace since the reformation and I'd say we're very happy in the current state. High productivity with a good mix of seriousness and fun.
How serious did talks of a name change ever get? Can we hear a couple options that were possible?
I would say the idea of a name change only really surfaced a few times. For a period of time brutal death metal was king and slam was sorta just an offshoot of it according to a large portion of the metal scene. We felt like maybe we were too silly for a lot of people to take seriously,
but that feeling left as quickly as it came. We never even really came up with any other ideas for a change because at the end of the day, we are Short Bus Pile Up. It oddly enough became a familiar name because of how different it really is.
Have there been any changes to the pile-up-line-up?
First lineup was me and Elijah. Elijah was more of socials and management than a true member but I viewed him as a band member. He pressed the spacebar on samples during live sets for a bit haha. First full lineup was Logan on vocals, Tyler and Elliott on guitar, Sidney on drums and Chris on bass.
Logan and Chris left the band after the PPP EP and Tyler moved to vocals, and we got Ryan as a bassist. Eventually Ryan had to split and so Tyler moved back to guitar, Elliott moved to bass, and we recruited Bill for vocals. This lineup is the current lineup and in my opinion, the strongest as we all feel very comfortable in these roles. Bill is an incredible vocalist and his style is very similar to mine which is why we got him in the first place. I'd say humbly that he is like a better version of what I'm capable of.
I’d imagine the journey of recording and releasing a new album, so long after the band had been active, must be quite the journey!! Were all the band members pretty much on-board, or did anyone need to be convinced? You all have families of your own now?
It was much more difficult back when we decided to take the break. Now things just sorta fell into place nicely. Elliott has the perfect spot for practice with a nice PA he acquired while we were away. I have my own home studio where we do the recording for everything and while we were on hiatus
I actually became a music producer and audio engineer which makes things super simple and affordable for getting music recorded and released in a timely manner. It was practically a yes from everyone when we found out we all had the same day off from work which we use for practice.
Your new music will, undoubtedly, be under a microscope by new and old fans alike. Is your newer material vastly different from your old?
In my opinion, I don't think it's too far from the core sound we were aiming for with the RDoHA release. That album was honestly a bit rushed and we didn't have time to fine tune everything before hitting the studio. We recorded it in 3 days during a blizzard in some guys basement, so the production on this will be substatially better.
However, it is all real instruments, no drum programming, and fine tuned to sound much tighter than what we pushed out with our first full length. I'm very excited with little scepticism as to how it will be received if I'm being completely honest.
You guys were known for a pretty great live show, and often! Any plan for a couple small tours?
That is honestly our only concern for the band. We do plan on playing shows, and if time away from work allows for it, a tour or two may be possible. But that is further down the pipeline. We have a couple major shows booked further down the road and plan to do a release show when we drop this first little thing we've been working on, and then the rest will be something we will work towards as time goes on.
Times are so different now with how music is distributed and digested! These kids got no attention span!!! Is the structure of the album any different with this in mind? I had an idea, maybe just release the album via tiktok and people have to swipe song to song!
Without getting too into specifics, we have accounted for this. I know many people are expecting a massive return with a full length on some major label or something. However, we don't really see that as something we should be working towards at first. Imagine our upcoming releases as small
bursts of quality music that keeps the listener engaged while not over-saturating them with 13 songs of slam that most likely won't get played nearly as much as our first album did. While the metal scene is still very into hard copy and albums, we have also thought about ways to make this work
for the newer generations to ingest without losing the interest of the old heads. I've been apart of many music scenes over the years and have done my research with the business side of how a band needs to market themselves, so I think this wave of new music will be just fine in that regard.
For real though, assuming there will be a physical release, what kind will it be? CD? Vinyl? Cassette?
We have plans for both digital and hard copy on mutiple formats with what we are working on. We love putting music in not only the listeners ears but also in their hands. Nothing beats the feeling of owning a sick bands merch.
Assuming you guys have a better and better understanding, as time goes on, of how influential SBPU really was. (and is)
For a lot of your following, “Repulsive Display of Human Upholstery” ranks WAY up there in all-time-favorite slam/brutal death metal albums. I am curious what albums were that way for you guys when you were coming up?
It still feels weird accepting that we are considered one of the OGs of slam. We were really just writing what we felt was the most brutal death metal we were capable of writing, while trying to be unique amongst the growing underground metal scene at the time.
Only years later did the term slam come about and the fact that it's such a household name makes us feel good about the way the band is perceived.
Our influences came from all over which is why I think people felt like we were worth listening to, but if I had to pick a core group of albums we really pulled influences from, I'd say Devourment - Molesting the Decapitated, Condemned - Desecrate the Vile, Abominable Putridity - In the End of Human Existence, Dying Fetus - Destroy the Opposition, Magrudergrind - Self Titled, and a bunch of goregrind and japanese slam bands that were crushing at that time (ie, Disconformity, Gorevent,
Glossectomy, Vomit Remnants)
Can you speak a little about if, and how, production has changed for you? Are we keeping things raw, or going in super-polished?
I'd say it's a nice blend of both. I don't think the new generation of metal heads quite vibe with the rawest of the raw production, tho we didn't want to lose that feeling of "realness" so to speak. We kept the drums live, snare pingy, guitars crunchy, upped the bass volume and tone, and made sure to tune the guitars and play to a click this time around haha. I don't think a single song on RDoHA was in tune properly!
Is there a title yet for the new work? Artwork?
Yes, and yes. This first release will be titled, Volumes of Dismal Manifestations Book I. I won't go too in depth on what the underlying meaning behind the book numbering is about because we kinda wanna keep that a mystery until we start leading up to that, but the artwork is done and we are really happy
with the outcome of it. Shoutout Gruesome Graphx on the cover work!
Speaking of, how new really are these songs?
Welllll, the foundation of these songs were written. We were happy with them when we started the break, but we fine tuned them and reworked them to feel more up to speed when it comes to the evolution of the sound in its current state. We got a couple features which we're stoked on and have been making a lot of progress on fresh new songs for the future.
Will Tyler be on vocals? Will there be lyrics? Will they be nasty, childish pody-humor and porn OR sophisticated medical jargon?
As stated before, the lineup change has Bill on vocals now. His range and ability to fit into the core sound that is Short Bus Pile Up is flawless. I think everyone will be excited with the change if they even notice much of a difference at all. I will be doing backing vocals on some layering but that's it for the most part. There are lyrics and as times have changed, so have the way we write. I'd consider it sophisticated in a way its not childish, but I promise you won't need a medical dictionary to understand whats going on haha. Misogyny and ill fitting topics will not be on these songs as we feel like society is evolving for the better. We will be talking about killing, but in a way thats tasteful and with substance.
Any weird new cover songs you guys have been preparing for some encores??
We've rolled the idea around of some new encore covers, but I truly think we'll be sticking with old faithful depending on the crowd we play for. That may change in the future since we're constantly throwing ideas around in our band group chat.
Thanks again for taking the time to answer some questions! Anything else you’d like to say to your fans??
Thank YOU for allowing us to get on this. We look forward to bringing everyone some new stuff very soon! Make sure to follow us on all our socials (IG, Tiktok, Youtube, Facebook) all with the username "shortbuspileupvadm". We upload content often and will be teasing the music from here on out until the drop.
We also do a series called "Pile of Slam Picks" every week where one of the members picks 3 slam albums we've been jamming for the week. Be sure to check that out if you're looking for new music! We love sharing what we love with our little community. We love you all!
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