by Cosmo Lee

How many bands truly have their own sound? What groups turn their influences into something unique? Rarely does a band mix metal and hardcore punk without resorting to metalcore cliches. Swedish riffs? Clean/dirty vocals? Dance-friendly breakdowns? You won’t find those with The Esoteric. Featuring alumni of Coalesce, Today Is the Day, and Reggie and the Full Effect, this Kansas band mixes blastbeats, odd time signatures, and abstract melodies into a tough yet deep whole on its latest album, “With the Sureness of Sleepwalking.”

It’s no surprise the music is tough; it comes from tough circumstances. In early 2005, the band’s home burned to the ground, leaving three members homeless and destroying all the band’s equipment. If you have no home, you hit the road, and The Esoteric took their astonishing live show around America. When you see The Esoteric give it their all, whether it be to eight people or 800, remember that on the way to your town, they’ve gone through flat tires, blown wheel bearings, life-threatening blizzards, and in general more DIY mechanic work than your or I will ever do.

Modern Fix caught up with road warrior/singer Steve Cruz for insight into the mighty Eso.

You guys hit the road after your house burned down. Do you now have any place to call home?
Steve Cruz: We call Lawrence, Kansas home. However some of us are technically homeless. But it’s not like any of us don’t have a place to sleep or rock. Our van is our motherland and Lawrence is our vacation village.

You’ve had more than a few van problems on the road. How are the band’s mechanic skills, and what’s the worst repair you’ve had to do?
The worse repair we had to do ourselves was when we blew a tire in the middle of nowhere California. Our axle on our trailer broke and we were still a few hours away from the show. There was no time or place to fix it, so we loaded what gear we had to have to play the show in the van with us and left the trailer. Picked up a new axle in Bakersfield the next day drove back to the trailer and replaced it (our manager Dean Edington did most of the work . . . bless his heart) and drove to Hollywood in enough time to play. My mechanic skills don’t exist, and the most of the other dudes skills are average at best. Our drummer seems to keep things in check pretty well.

Your live show is ferocious.
Thanks!

Do you have any special pre-show rituals?
Surviving the trials and tribulations of the road provides a pretty good amount of useful energy. Pre-show rituals usually consist of some random shenanigans, stretches, and the new Riddle of Steel or any Shiner record.

The video for “Ram-Faced Boy” is amazing. How much of you is in the song, and did the video turn out the way you envisioned?
Glad you enjoy the video. We put a lot of ourselves into every song. We were very pleased with the way both videos turned out. We have a new video out now for another song off the record called “Your New Burden” and both videos were directed by Matt Bass for Factory Features. Working with those people is always fun and inspiring; they really connect with the band and with us as people.

The chord changes in “Somnambulist” are a million miles from metal or hardcore. Where do they come from?
“Somnambulist” really does have it’s own thing going on. Eric came up with the chord progressions for the verses, kind of a Billy Howerdel/Ken Andrews riff. The choruses came from Marshall’s head, reminiscent of Shiner/Molly Mcguire I guess. It came together pretty fantastically. The bridge section tied it all together with a Neurosis style drop out, that I cannot really recall from where it was derived, but the essential elements of our combined tastes are definitely contained within this song.

Ed Rose (Coalesce, The Get Up Kids, Motion City Soundtrack) helped produce the album. What was working with him like?
For most of us, working with Ed was actually a reciprocating and symbiotic relationship. Cory, Eric, and Marshall have all worked with him previously with such groups as Theta and Reggie and the Full Effect. There is a mutual respect between Ed and us where he is very encouraging and enthusiastic with being to the point about structure and arrangement. Sort of a pop sensibility to our aggressive and visceral style. Which was refreshing to make such a record with non-metal ears. Basically, we are all very anal retentive and perfectionists.

You’ve said that The Misfits have played a big part in the development of The Esoteric. How so?
We all like to listen to different music so there are only a few bands that we can all agree on like Failure, Shiner, Season to Risk, Thin Lizzy and The Misfits. So much so we have a Misfits tribute band called Last Caress. We play every Halloween. The attitude and imagery, not so much how they looked (although they looked wicked awesome) but the lyrics and artwork of their records were huge influences on us.

You handle not only vocals but also electronics for the band. What does that involve, and what’s your solo electronic stuff like?
When I first joined the group I was doing vocals and electronics. But there was a main vocalist as well. When he left the group I took on the “front man” role and we slowly phased them out of our set live. Much of this was due to the fact that my keyboard and sampler burned in the fire, as well as the places we were playing at the time did not lend themselves well to that kind of thing. The electronic stuff on ‘The Sureness’ was done by all of us and we hope to bring that element back into our live set soon. I dabble with all kinds of stuff on my own but as of late I mostly DJ. Our guitarist Eric Graves has an amazing electronic side project called “Emotron” it’s like Daft Punk and Postal Service covering 90’s rock songs. I am currently trying to put together a remix record for ‘The Sureness’ that we hope will come out this summer on picture disc through Skeleton Crew.

The Esoteric is one of the few bands that sells its own skate deck. How did this come about?
Marshall had met Brian Dorry, one of the main guys behind Hooligan Skateboards while sitting in on tour with the punk band F-Minus. After some back and forth correspondence, we came up with the idea for the Ram-Faced Boy deck. I think it turned out better than expected. Although because our limbs are worth too much now, so we don’t skate much.

You’ve been on the road for a while now. When can we expect new material from The Esoteric?
We have been home now writing for the past three weeks. As of now we have five new songs three of which we have played live. The new record will be recorded in May and we can’t wait to get it out there. We are
hoping to have it out in September via Prosthetic Records.

the-esoteric.com

2005 “With the Sureness of Sleepwalking” (Prosthetic)
2004 “1336” (Blacknoise)
2003 “Split w/Wormwood” (Interference)
2002 “A Reason to Breathe” (Self-Released)
2002 “Split w/Saved by Grace” (Crash and Bang)
2002 “Split w/Luddite Clone” (Crash and Bang)
2001 “Plagued by Visions” (Arm)
1999 “An Illusion of Scared Circumstances” (Arm)
1999 “Split w/Derailer” (Arm)
1998 “Self-Titled” (Self-Released)