Getting to Know… No Skull | Interview 🎤

In the 413^th Q&A in our Getting to Know… series, we get the inside scoop from heavy psyche stoner doom jam band, No Skull. 

“We play a heavy stoner rock-influenced type of alt-rock with a big helping of melody and harmony.” Plenty of melody and harmony? That’s awesome, No Skull! No Skull was formed in 2016.  After COVID, the band was ‘reborn.’ But, I’ll allow the band to provide the inside scoop regarding their genesis, goals, musical influences, and current, and future musical endeavors. So, without further ado, and no more spoilers, let’s jump right into Getting to Know…No Skull: Interview No. 413!

For those who may not be familiar with you, what would you say makes No Skull distinct or unique? How do you rock the audience’s socks off?

We play a heavy stoner rock-influenced type of alt-rock with a big helping of melody and harmony. Live we play fairly loud most of the time.

Okay, let’s explore some juicy backstories. How did No Skull form, and what were some of your goals or visions early on?

No Skull formed in 2016 after all three members of the previous band called it quits. We played for about 4 years in that formation and released a few albums. Then the COVID lockdowns happened, and the band basically dissolved. I started working with a new rhythm section around 2021 and asked my good friend Jason to step in on second guitar. That lineup didn’t work out, but Jason and I decided to keep going, I switched over to bass and we recruited Dave to play drums. I think the main goal early on was to write music that was easily digestible for more people as some of my previous music was more challenging. The style was more focused on punk and grunge. After the lineup change, all the members had a lot more in common musically and we diversified our sound to match our influences more.

Let’s talk more about goals.  Have your goals or your perspectives changed since first starting? What do your aspirations or goals look like now?

Goals have definitely changed. At first, I was still in my old way of thinking; make an album, play shows, book a tour, sell merch. That is not as easy as it used to be it turns out. So now, we’re kind of shifting into some new territory and thinking about maybe focusing on singles and EPs for streaming, putting some of our efforts into making videos and short films, still trying to play shows but, hand making most if not all of our merch and doing really short runs of album releases. I guess focusing on more of the art side of things and not so much the grind of a normal band.

Everybody is influenced by somebody else. Whom would you consider some of your biggest musical influences and how are they influential?

That’s a big list. Pink Floyd, The Melvins, Rush, Sleep, Devo, The Wipers, The Ramones, King Crimson, Black Flag, Nirvana, Metallica, REM, Jimi Hendrix, Johnny Cash, Hank Williams, Yes, Dead Meadow, the KLF, Floor…god it goes on and on…I feel like they all had a huge impact on my life at some point either musically or conceptually or lyrically. In my youth, while learning about music both The Melvins and King Crimson have made me say, “I didn’t know you could do that in music.” I have gone through many phases growing as a person and musician, but discovering punk was a huge thing for me and the Ramones lead the charge. I grew up listening to prog rock with my parents so that is like my roots music and my Grampa got me on to Johnny Cash at a young age. When I’m trying to be cool, I say Johnny Cash was my first concert…but it was at a festival here in Lansing in the 90’s, and if I’m honest, the first band was Hootie and the Blowfish…but who wants to say that was their first show! Hahahah!!!

Ah, the fun stuff.  What’s your craziest tour story or the wackiest thing that’s happened during a performance?  Feel free to be creative.

Well, recently we played a show and there was a guy in the audience dressed in a full Ebenezer Scrooge nightgown and cap with the candlestick holder and a lit candle in the pit. That was a good show.

What is your favorite song that you’ve recorded or performed live? What makes that song special?

I think that honor would go to the first track called “Opopanax” off of our new album called Fields of None. It’s got a real fun groove and it’s one that we jam out on a lot. We’ve jammed it out for 15 – 20 minutes before.

What other awesome, cool, or left-of-center things can you tell us about No Skull? Secret talents or surprising tidbits?

Besides the louder rock, we also play a sort of slow country-inspired set we like to call doom country. We lean on the heavier side for the most part, but we book shows playing all country tunes. On recordings, we don’t limit ourselves either. We tend to do more psychedelic and experimental music when in the studio, some of which makes it on albums, and some is waiting to be utilized.

Finally, what is No Skull working on or promoting that you can share with? We love secrets, but there’s no pressure.

We have 12-15 unfinished songs from our last recording session that we might finish soon, we have some really experimental drone music we are working on, and we are planning to make some videos and films for our next batch of songs that we are slowly working on as well. We probably have another 10 songs we are still tinkering with when we get the time that will eventually be added to our live set, and we plan to record our country tunes sometime this year for some type of release. 

Thank you so much for sharing and taking the time to answer these questions, and best of luck moving forward. 

Getting to Know… No Skull: Interview No. 413 [📷: Brent Faulkner / The Musical Hype; No Skull; Clker-Free-Vector-Images, Królestwo Nauki, OpenClipart-Vectors, Pete Linforth, Tumisu from Pixabay]