MM: "Bad time to be Having a Good Time" is a total balls out punk record... As Punk as anything that I've ever understood as Punk. But, what is punk rock today? I googled "punk rock. " All I found were pictures of emo girls behind hideous sun glasses wearing black and pink Jolly Roger shirts trying hard to make you feel bad because they want to slit their wrists and bleed all over their pink and black diaries. Have emo kids destroyed Punk?

Gary: "Emo" is basically a bullshit term. It's meant to have derived from the (equally bullshit) label "emotionally hardcore". You know what? Beethoven and Wagner were emotionally hardcore, but you don't get teenagers with stupid bangs/fringes and suicidal tendencies (another good band) blogging about those two Germans. I think, however, that you raise an interesting point about the marketing and promotion of music – punk has become a horrible comedy pastiche of itself as far as the mainstream media and retail are concerned. The whole idea about punk, as I understand it, is to go against the grain of mainstream society (whatever the hell that is…) – maybe the Eruptors do that, but certainly what MTV are telling us that punk is, does not. Although I don't think our band even has those kind of quasi-political pretensions that the original punks had. We're just about having some fun and being very noisy at the same time... And playing drum solos.

Alex: We didn't set out to be a straight-up punk band, we have all kinds of other influences. But I'd say that we are very similar in spirit and in approach (as well as sound) to the original punk bands. Certainly more so than any of these new 'mall-punk' bands will ever be. Unfortunately, emo kids are the mainstream these days, but it's a fad like anything else and it will pass. However, Rock n' Roll will adapt and survive through the trends. If emo kids want to listen to us too, then cool, that's great. But take us as we are, we wouldn't change our music style or image just to fit in with what is fashionable. We have our own sound, if anything, we thrive on being the subversive, outsider band.

Jeff: I love emo kids. All you have to do is tell them some crap like 'I feel your pain' or whatever and then you're totally in there. And because they're such losers they're really easy to exploit for anything. Like goths but with the option of wearing other colours basically.

MM: This album is noisy, gritty, and good for the exfoliation of just about anything. I'm hearing a lot from your following that you've almost resurrected the Misfits sound, but taken it a step further even. Is that a good thing?

Jeff: Resurrecting the Misfits? Awesome! Imagine the misfits as zombie slaves. That would be a wicked gig. I'd go see that.

Alex: The Misfits are great and I'm pleased if people mention us in the same breath. I hadn't even heard their music when we first started out. I think we just had similar ideas to them but 20 years later, so we had a bunch more influences in the mix. It was then mentioned to me that we sounded a bit like them at times, so I checked out their music and it's true to say that now they are an influence. A couple of years ago I was at a Misfits show in Durham, England. Afterwards, a group of us including the bands, crew, and promoters, went to a nearby hotel for a bit of socialising. At the end of the night, Jerry Only from The Misfits and I were walking back from the hotel, to where we were parked. Just making conversation and minding our own business, no hellraising horror-punk antics, honest! Anyway, I noticed how HUGE our shadows looked (I'm 6 foot 6 tall and Jerry is not far off, and in terms of mass, he is bigger than me). It was the middle of the night and it got me thinking if anyone had seen us lumbering up that dimly lit street towards them, it must have looked fairly intimidating! Not what you'd want walking towards you in a dark street late at night.

M.M. : Does that have anything to do with when Glen was knocked off of the "My Penis is Bigger Than Your Penis" platform by getting cold cocked, ahem? (Sorry, I'm really good at very bad puns).

Jeff: Yes, you really are bad at puns. Try this. What did the talking horse say to the one legged jockey? How ya getting on...(you might need someone from Cork to explain that one actually…)

Gary: I am totally lost here. But I like the pun.

This is all hearsay, all though it's all over Youtube...Here recently on a U.S. tour, a fan got a little jostly with Glen and he, as we all know, has a major Napoleon complex. I think in fact he and I the same shoe size and I am 5' exactly. Well I heard that Glen turned around and called him a motherfucker, the guy then cold cocked him and Glen was down like a dead horse...Shouldn't pick fights with number one, someone who paid to get into your show and number two, someone obviously better than you. Of course this is only a story I heard. but I watched that video of the guy's punch and saw Glen just disappear, ha ha. Good times.

Where is the band actually based? The U. K. or the land of the River Dance, or Sweden?

Alex: Eruptors HQ (the top secret location where we record our albums) is somewhere in the wild Irish countryside. Jeff Pepsii (bass/vocals) lives there. I live in northern England, whilst Flamin' Gary de Niro lives in London, Southern England. The Sweden thing was because Myspace doesn't allow you to pick two countries, so for the sake of argument and stirring up hundreds of years worth of war and politics, we picked somewhere neutral, so we went for Sweden because that's where so many awesome bands come from.

Jeff: All three. Although our spiritual home is mid-eighties L.A.

Gary: You'll notice from our album's lucidly presented lyrical content that the Earth was recently destroyed by humans not wishing to witness the total destruction of their home planet by aliens with big guns. So we now all reside slightly west-north-west of the constellation Alpha Centauri. We even get free wi-fi here from the downstairs neighbors who forgot to set up a password. Call me before you come over and I'll put the kettle on!

Ha ha ha. Okay... Earl Grey, please! Your spiritual home is in mid-eighties L.A., so you're down with wearing women's clothing and work hard to do enough drugs to cause vital organ failure?? Awesome...

Alex: Ha! Not exactly but we enjoy the good-time vibe of some of the music from that era. Once, for my birthday, Jeff bought me ten albums purely on the strength of their cover art and about eight of them were 1980's metal albums. And when we all lived in London, we spent many a Saturday night at a clubnight in London called “Decadence” which played a lot of music from that era. So, although I don't wear women's clothing or take drugs, I do own a lot of albums by bands such as WASP!!! In fact, Jeff and I went to see them in London a few years ago and I remember Chris Holmes played a totally low down and smokin' guitar solo during the song “Sleeping In The Fire.” It was a club gig but that guitar solo would have filled stadiums. In fact it inspired me a bit for the outro of our track “1000% Rock…Baby.” As for L.A., I've never been, although my fiancée is from the Bay Area (northern California), so maybe one day we'll venture south and explore the Sunset Strip.

MM: You will love it... If you came upon an obnoxious American tourist at a restaurant making tired and redundant remarks about the whole “Irish drinking thing,” what is one of the vilest foods you would recommend?

Gary: I would suggest that they try the now-ubiquitous American institution of McDonald's Restaurants Ltd.

Alex: I'd recommend black pudding, I actually like it but I know Americans have a difficult time with the concept of eating dried animals' blood, which is weird when you consider that America gave the world “hamburgers.”

Jeff: The sandwiches you get in garages in the states that stay fresh for about two about weeks. Not even sure if they count as food. People go on about some of the silly stuff that the EU does but as long as sandwiches that stay fresh for more than two weeks are illegal than the EU is a good thing.

MM: See, that's why I love the U.K. They illegalize all of the disgusting convenience store food. Like Ebola is a convenience food! But still, blood pudding: DO NOT WANT! Haggis: DO NOT WANT! Kippers: DO NOT WANT! Anything served with the eyeballs and a mouth, one or the other is bad enough but both, no no no. When I spent a week in London I lived at Wimpy's.

Alex: blood pudding, haggis, and kippers are awesome. You should try steak and kidney pie too... or pigs trotters, or ox-tongue. All English delicacies. You guys do actually have those foods too, you just process them a bit more and call them “hot dogs.”

MM: Yeah, point. That is why I stick with kosher even though I'm not Jewish! Anyway, I'm hazarding a guess that you guys aren't into high sheen production. Do you see yourself polishing your tracks a little more with future releases?

Gary: Only a bit – we're all about the energy and making it sound like a band. It's boring not to be gritty.

Alex: The Eruptors has to sound raw and angry. The next album will probably sound a bit “better,” and we are taking a bit longer over the recording process, but if anything it will be even more “in-your-face.”

Gary: Our record sounds the way it does not through negligence, but from a conscious decision to sound like an actually rock band in a room playing stuff loudly. And if you can't hear every note perfectly, then good – welcome to our world! We like to be dirty and rude and a bit rough around the edges – that's part of the Eruptors' thang.

Jeff: ...Although it would be fun to do a Steely Dan type album some time in the future. The far distant future…..

MM: I can't say enough how good that makes me feel. it's that tsk-y second album where the record company gets involved and decides who to hire to produce and engineer and tries to give bands a flat shiny sound that will sell (at least they hope it will sell). I think that's why a lot of bands go down the toilet after the first album. What do you think?

Alex: Luckily, we are signed to a small independent label who give us complete artistic control. And from their point of view, I think that it suits everyone financially as well as artistically if we self-produce using our own studio. There's no pressure on us to polish our sound just for the sake of airplay or becoming more acceptable to the mainstream. Any changes will be because we think it sounds better sonically. Our albums are our statement. We're just trying to create the music that we want to hear as music fans. I think there's enough people out there with similar tastes to us who are badly served by the “music industry” in general, so we just need to get word out so that those people know we exist and can hopefully enjoy our music too.

MM: That's great to hear. You're signed with Maniac Squat Records. Tell me about this label. I've never heard of them. I'm not sure how to feel about the words “maniac” and “squat” being right next to each other, I'm hoping you can give some insight.

Jeff: The name is genius. Maniac Squat was also a band back in the day and they released a single called “Fuck Off'!” How cool is that???

Gary: "Fuck Off" was a single-of-the-week in Kerrang! Magazine in the early/mid 1990's (and you can still buy it, on iTunes). The record company “Maniac Squat” was formed by the singer from the band “Maniac Squat” and is part of a bigger group he now runs called "Laughterwards" – he's a cool guy who likes to play with words... And guitars.

Alex: Maniac Squat the band were similar to The Eruptors, a fact which influenced our decision to sign to this label.

MM: You guys know too much. It makes my head hurt. Ha ha. Okay, the band is touted as having "low slung guitars" on your Myspace page. That reeks of coolness. Does that mean “guitars strapped above your navel" is uncool?

Jeff: Everything we do is scientifically designed to be cool. If we haven't specially mentioned something as being cool than it is uncool. So therefore, “guitars strapped above your navel” is uncool.

Gary: Did Slash play his guitar above his navel? Angus Young? Lemmy? Jimmy Page?

MM: POINT.

Alex: It describes the sound as much as its position in relation to my navel.

MM: Tip from the ladies: lowslung is actually better. You have a cooler posture on stage and the girls are constantly grinding their teeth hoping for the guitar to move just a leeetle bit to the right so they can feed their silly little girl fantasies...(sorry ladies, I let the cat out of the bag didn't I)? Okay, so this album is actually an epic science fiction story. That's relatively rare nowadays, as opposed to the seventies. What's the deal with that? Was the story actually written before the songs were or, did the story kind of bloom on it's own during the music writing?

Jeff: It all was part of a very long hallucination that took place on the Camino de Santigo.

MM: Okay...?...

Gary: We recorded a bunch of our songs in the time we could find to get to the studio one summer and decided we would crowbar the whole thing into a concept album. Jeff had a lot of the vision for the concept originally, and then we all got into the idea. So does that make Jeff the Irish Shakespeare? I think so!

Alex: Funnily enough, for a band with such a punk sound we all like a lot of 1970's rock…

Gary: We love seventies rock, including prog rock – the more pretentious and ridiculous and unrealistic the theme, the better. Our next album may be its antithesis, though, so hold on to your hats…

MM: What about Fraggle rock? I love Fraggle Rock! Are you intense Science Fiction fans? Do you attend Star Wars Conferences? Do you have Spock ears in a drawer under your socks? Just checking.

Jeff: I like sci-fi movies. Specifically ones where in the future all the hot chicks wear skin tight leather outfits.

Alex: Gary and I are both doing PhDs right now as well as all of the band stuff, so we're too busy to attend Star Wars conferences. But, when I was a kid I had a lot of the Star Wars toys and I watched all of the Star Trek episodes and films. I also enjoyed TV series such as “Battlestrar Gallactica,” “The Triffids,” and “The Invisible Man,” and I liked the album “The War of The Worlds.” I've since hung up my Spock ears though. The most recent sci-fi movie I watched was “Leprechaun In Space” which is awesome. I'm into old horror films too, which has inspired some songs which are going to be included on our second and third albums.

MM: You've figured out the passcode for all geek associations all over the states, Alex! Five words: "Battlestar Gallatica" and "Leprechaun in Space." Remind me to bring a rubber Klingon forehead so you can wear it at the gig I come to watch.

Alex: Awesome!

What are your PhDs in, boys? (If you don't mind my asking)?? If I could hazard a guess I would go with veterinary proctology and botany (and especially its relevance to UV light)...

Gary: Mine is in Music Education and Sociology.

Alex: Mine is in Local Government Procurement. How Rock n' Roll is THAT !!!??

MM: See??!! That's why it's not my job to guess other people's education goals. Ha! So, how did you come up with the name "The Eruptors?" Is something erupting? Private potty joke?

Alex: I saw a T.V. show which showed a volcanic eruption. That made me think of the Van Halen track “Eruption” because I am a such a dork that I can relate everything to my record collection. Then I thought “The Eruptors” would make a cool name for the band. It all happened in a split second, a flash (or should I say, an eruption??!) of inspiration. Molten rock!

Jeff: Red hot molten rock. Fired with force.

MM: Sounds very manly. \m/

Gary: Actually, it's a reverse-psychological pun (so you ought really to like it), based on the erroneous Freudian notion of anal retentiveness. Move my pens one millimetre from their rightful places on my desk and feel my wrath. And, it's also got something to do with the sexual potency that we all possess in terrifyingly massive amounts.

MM: Alrighty then. Pick a random song or heck, even your favorite on "Bad Time" and explain the lyrics, even (especially) if it's out of context.

Jeff: From our album, 'Bad Time…' I pick the whole thing. 'Cause it's all genius! And also because it's a space opera. No one's writing space operas any more yet, it used to be the most popular type of sci fi. Check out books like “Star Smashers of the Galaxy Rangers” by Harry Harrison or “Starbeast” by Robert Heinlein. As for songs by other bands, I choose “My Card Says Typhoon killer” by Gluecifer. That's a great song. I wish my card said that…

MM: Space operas...All I can think of is that horrible KISS movie. Ha ha.

Gary: A song by another musician - "All my Exes live in Texas" by the inimitable George Strait. It's about all his exes living in Texas = "that's why I hang my hat in Tennessee.” Bloody genius. And it's a total lie as well, beginning to end.

MM: And which country songs really do tell the truth? I can name......um....none?

Alex: I pick The Eruptors song “Theme From The Eruptors” because it's our anthem! Check out the lyrics I wrote:

"Guitars go crunch and the bass goes boom,

Got the drums kickin' ass when we're rockin' the room,

Now we've come to rock the show,

Eruptors! Eruptors! Go! Go! Go!"

MM: Now I'm thinking of Ace Frehley with pompoms. Is that good or bad? Hee hee. All of you have super cool names: Jeff Pepsii Reich Fuhrer of Rock (bass/vocals); Lightnin' Alex Lee Hooker III (guitar/vocals); Flamin' Gary de Niro (drums/vocals). Do you think that's your ticket to success? Do you think you can give me a super cool name? Please?

Gary: Names are but a part of the ticket. The main thing is our attitude – just do what we do, don't apologize for it, and I'll help with a name. I'm thinking along the lines of "Rana: Nemesis of the emotionally hardcore".

Jeff: Cool names have to be earned, not just given.

MM: Well, I am up to earning nicknames but they're usually not cool. “Nemesis of the emotionally hardcore has got a nice ring to it.” Does it come with a cape and a sword and a wicked scar somewhere on my face? Aweshum!

Alex: You have to buy the accessories as 'add-ons'.

MM: DANG!! Why is Gary "flamin'?" Don't you think it would be a small kindness to put him out so that he doesn't get blisters?

Gary: I'm flamin' because I play fast and hard and loud. The flames are a direct consequence of my drumming style.

MM: Good, good. Just don't light the sticks on fire while your amidst working on your motor skills and being a badass. You have really cool graphic art for your logos and promotions. Did you hire an artist or is one of the guys in the band the contributor?

Alex: Thank you! The album art and our Tshirt designs are by the awesome Andy Tilley at Sumpdoggy Designs. He has a website (which also includes the Eruptors online store). http://www.sumpdoggydesigns.co.uk/7.html

MM: Oh my God, you guys! Gary, Alex, and Jeff thank you so much for sitting down and making the time to chat with me. I had wonderful fun and I'm hoping I can look you up when I get to Ireland one day and sit down and have a couple of pints with you (and have you watch me and laugh uproariously as I fall on the floor because one pint, if I remember my last trip overseas, was well more than enough)! Wonderful to meet you, and on to the geek Alex: Live Long and Prosper...yeah. Don't take it too hard, Alex. It could be worse, someone very close to my heart owns every series of “Stargate SG1” and watches them often. Now that's fucking geek right there, so be grateful. There's always someone worse off than you are. Ha ha. You guys are so punk rock!

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