A WILHELM SCREAM - Nuno Pereira & Trevor Reilly [ENG]

The guys from A WILHELM SCREAM have finally released a new record with „Lose Your Delusion“ after a nine-year break, and what the hardcore’ers from the States have delivered here is definitely worth listening to. We met up with the extremely good-humored Nuno Pereira and Trevor Reilly for a chat at the SBÄM festival, where they were to act as midnight snacks on the same day.

[SWITCH TO GERMAN VERSION]

Nice to meet you guys! How was your trip so far?

Nuno and Trevor: Not bad, not bad at all. Good actually. We have an excellent driver.

You are hot for your gig tonight, you’re some kind of Midnight Special today.

Nuno: Indeed, we are the midnight special

Trevor: We are the midnight snack (laughs)

 You had a couple of gigs on the tour so far, how is it going?

Nuno: Great, Fantastic. Incredible venues and also bands. Old friends, new friends – It’s been excellent so far.

Are there any mentionable highlights so far?

Nuno: Yesterday was pretty dope with Comeback Kid in Goldenstett (?), those guys are good friends of ours and put on a kick ass liveshows. It’s like a “Win Win”, you gotta hang out with people you love and hear bands you love.

You have been to Linz Before?

Nuno: Yes, I think so!

Do you remember the venue?

Nuno No, but Trevor has a better memory than I do.

Trevor: I really don’t know.

The Posthof maybe?

Trevor: Yeah, that sounds familiar.

It’s about 500 meters from here…

Nuno: Oh! Very close.

Trevor: Nice, we could play a show there before, we play a show there before we play tonight.

Nuno: Yeah, we got time for playing two shows.

Haha, would be nice! Are you looking forward to see any of the other bands today?

Nuno: Yeah, absolutely THE DESCENDENTS, like again an incredible band. THE BOUNCING SOULS, I haven’t seen them in so long, so that’s gonna be really cool. WIZO, I think I haven’t seen them ever. So that should be really good.

But I guess you have to leave tonight for the next show?

Trevor: Yeah, Frankfurt tomorrow.

Nuno: But, it’s all good, sleep, wake up in a new place, play another gig, it’s going to be fun.

So, you will have a normal visitor day until your show today?

Nuno: Exactly, we get out to have some coffee, some food. Delicious catering here at the SBÄM festival.

Trevor:  We ate seven times already today.

Nuno: And there is nothing else going on today.

Trevor: And we had multiple showers, just shower, eat and shower again, we are gonne spend 3 days in one day, it’s gonna to be sick!

Nuno: That’s a good way to put it.

You had already a few gigs in spring already, how does it felt to be back on stage after the last two years?

Nuno: It was great, we felt we are doing what we are supposed to do again. You know there is a lot of “Wischi-Waschi” stuff going on. And a lot of bands are not coming over, because they are not sure know if the ticket sales are going to be good, and people are scared of buying tickets, because they don’t know if the bands cancel or the country shuts down and allow stuff again.

And we just said fuck it. We don’t give a shit we just go. Got the band on the plane in the van and go. And you know what? The shows went incredible, it’s good to see there is still a lot of excitement for live music.

How did you work it out the last two years as a band and also as people?

Trevor: We still stayed in contact as a band. We did Zoom Band meetings every second week, it was really good to keep us in touch. Cause we spread out all over the world, the band members and stuff.

Brian is in Canada and our Guitarist Jason is in Chicago, Nuno, Nick and myself are in New Bedford Massachusetts, our manager Ray is in California, and our other manager is in Toronto. So, we all get on this thing (zoom) crack jokes and talk some shit and maybe make a record.

Nuno: We made the most of our time. Trevor was finishing up building his studio together with his father in law. Me and my wife were working on our house, so we stayed busy as people. Even though we weren’t able to hang out a lot, but meeting up via Zoom meeting. So, kind of business as usual.

So, we may have to hope for another pandemic to get another AWS record, since it took you 9 years?

Nuno: God, don’t hope for that, we were busy. (laughs)

Trevor: Never hope for that. It just takes some time to write such songs, they are that good, let’s just say that. (laughs)

Your songs are mostly kind of complex and also catchy. Was it always the plan to have both worlds in one band together?

Trevor: I think as time goes one, yeah always try make the catchiest songs possible. That’s the the kind of music we like, we all like catchy music.

You often don’t have the common song structure…

Nuno: The Verse – Chorus, Verse – Chorus Thing? Cause the fun for us too, because I think and for a casual listener this may is weird, but the fans of ours, who know us, understand that we are having fun writing songs in that way and it translates. They see us having fun doing it, and they get to digest it and having fun too. In that regard it’s just like solving a rubic cube: You like, oh shit, that seems fun as fuck… Oh yeah, I did I figured that out, that part is crazy… I figured it out. Someone at home at the guitar, bass or drumkit trying to learn AWS songs is exciting as it is for us playing and write these songs.

Do you remember was there a point, where you decided to start a band or want to make music?

Trevor: It’s easy for me. My dad and my uncle, they had bands when growing up. So, since I was seven years old I was going to shows, went to their shows and watched my dad in the studio. So, I am like, I want to do what they were doing, cause they had fun. I go to my uncle’s band practise all the time, and be the same thing, practise one hour and then the other hour and a half they were just hanging out in the fellowship of it all. That’s my answer

Nuno: That’s a very natural progression. Trevor’s family is very musically inclined for generations. They were allowed to make noise in someone’s basements. You know what I mean. Grandfather, father, uncles making noise at dinner time shaking the house at dinner time in the 70ies, 80ies and 90ies. And then Trevor’s parents were letting us do the same thing in the 90ies and the early 2000thousands.   It’s a pretty fantastic dynamic that the Reilly’s got going on.

We had music in the house, records and stuff like that. I always loved music. And Then I got into skateboarding and got introduced to more punk rock music instead the standard Top40 Rock and Rap Music and stuff. I think it was an H-street video or something, Matt Hensely(?) was skateboarding to OPERATION IVY, I remember being like You What is this sound, I have never heard music like that. I have heard THE CLASH, SEX PISTOLS I have heard other bands, but I’ve never heard something like that. And set to skateboarding I was like – This is it – This is so good. And starting to get more and more into to it. And then I think I saw a PRIMUS on 120 minutes or headbangers ball one day, and it was like at the Fillmore they hat like five circle pits going on. And I was like – That’s cool as fuck, I want to make people do that. You know what I mean? So yeah that was definitely a moment.

Meeting these guys, like meeting Trevor, John Carvalho and the other guys. And we were: Yo, we are doing this, we are not going to watch music videos, we are gonna make music, and that was my first chance to really get in there. That was huge.

You are around such a long time now. So, may some people or bands tell you nowadays, that your Band was the reason they started to do music. So how does that feel?

Trevor: Amazing, just amazing

Nuno: Incredible, a lot of responsibility.

Trevor: We rise with the challenge (both laughing) , it’s very cool.

After such a long time since your last record; Was there the point when you said, ok let’s do it? Was there some kind of plan?

Trevor: The plan has been in the works for four years, I mean you gotta take two years of the table for everyone. I thing everyone was robbed of two years of their prime in this music thing. So, before that point it was a lot of these songs, were kinda almost done four years ago and then another twelve which just didn’t quite make the cut. So, we are always writing, so it’s not like ok let’s start writing. Cause its very difficult to just stop writing and then start again writing. Specially for me it’s really difficult to do. So, I just keep the creativity going even in a small way. I thing with all this, I think we will hit it sooner again as everyone is excepting from us. Let it put that way.

Nuno: Very cryptic, I love it. (Laughing)

Trevor: Yeah man, Serious.

I  really like the artwork, what was the idea behind and how does it fit to the title?

Trevor: Dave Kloc!

Nuno: Dave Kloc is a genius and a very good friend, so we approached him right away to get some stuff going. And he had some ideas of his own as well, we just gave him just a kind of concepts. I came back with an initial kind of idea, and Trevor and me are it’s kinda cool, bit its needs to be bigger and needs to be more, you know. And so, Dave is like: Alright man, just shoot me some more ideas.

Trevor and me in the studio high as fuck working on songs and like that is cool and something like this. And Dave brought it all alive. I running around the studio with my phone and took pictures of little things in Trevor’s the studio at his house or whatever around the city that we live in. He is like get me some pictures of cool buildings, and I said Like no problem dude, I know a ton of cool buildings, so I was running around with my kid DownTown and was taking pictures of some building and those kind of set up a foundation for the cover and then it was like what else could we put on here. Dave had some incredible idea about like phobias and fears, irrational ones. Like alligators in the toilet kind of shit.

Like the monsters under the bed…

Nuno: I remember being a kid I was scared of horse shoe crabs, very common in our area, scared shitless of them. So, I was like: Dude, draw some fucking horse shoe crabs in there, but let the bottom grabbing like a hand. And he just like Ok. I was like “make the hand creepier” (laughing). Shit like that is really fun, it’s an extra extension of the art in general, the whole package is something we pride something on, taking pride one. Dave Kluc what a fucking stud

Where do you the differences to „Partycrasher“ not only musically but also in the production wise.  Within nine years there was quite a difference to recording a record right now? It feels like every year, the productions get better and also easier to access.

Nuno: Trevor got a bunch of cool gear now.

Trevor: Yeah, built a new studio, put in everything, put all the gear in, worked at the acoustics of the space a lot. I think more than anything I took a lot of time during the pandemic to listen to records that I like.  I spent a lot of time in thinking on records, that I like the sounds, that I like to listen to. And everything that we did, was trying to get to this goal. James Witthin was huge in helping me engineering and everything and coproduced and stuff like that and we really took our time to make, that’s something you can’t really do, you can’t spend like two months on a record, unless you wanna spent an insane amount on money at a studio. But when you built your own studio, you can do it. So, it had something to do with the satiating the perfectionist sickness.

Nuno: Trevor also works with other bands, not just AWS centric. He obviously has a studio and books and records and produces bands. So that kept him going, learning new tricks. So, all of these lessons added up and we applied to our project and that was super helpful and it made just sound everything sound that much better

Do you want to tell us which band or record you had in mind to get this sound

Trevor: There were few. One was FOUR YEARS STRONG – “Brain Pin”, I thought that sounded phenomenal, and sort of was heavy and sort had a top40 kinda pop tinge to it. And a CONVERGE record called “Axe To Fall”, that was another one that sounded really clear. I like big sounding, clear sounding, bright sounding. That kind of stuff.

I guess you heard that question a few times. I know the origin of the name (Scream from Horror Movies or also Star Wars), but why did you choose that?

Trevor: I think we were just looking for a band name. And our friend Harry Mcfee was sending some to us, the two I remember him sending , was the “Mute Print” and „The Wilhelm Scream” and I was like I like both. And then we kinda went what “Wilhelm Scream” means, so that is cool cause so literally everyone has heard A Wilhelm Scream before. I guess we couldn’t come up with something better than that.

Nuno: There were really bad ones.

 Like?

Trevor: There is a really bad one, but I really don’t want to say what it is because there is an actual band, which has that fucking band name right now. But it sucks because I really want to say it right now. John Hence came up with it, anyway

Nuno: Oh yeah (both laughing)

You started with a different name, why did you change it?

Nuno: Sound was changing, members were changing. We figured to make a fresh start right now because we were ready to hit the road for the next 18 years straight.

Trevor: We were in our early very early twenties, getting out of our teens. That’s the time to do it, a founding member has left the band and it wasn’t a really good split with him either. Just start fresh.

Nuno: A clean slay.

Do you still play songs from the first two records?

Trevor: It kinda depends, if we near our hometown, some people scream play this or that song from SMACKIN’ ISAIAH.

We have to come to an end. Last question, what can we expect tonight?

Nuno: Ooh, get your fucking face melted of, with some good time ripping licks. Drinking couple of Red bulls. It’s gonna be fun, its gonna be loud.

Trevor: The venue looks dope, I am so glad we are playing inside.

We just saw Chaser in there, it was intense

Nuno: Yes, Chaser was great in there

Trevor: They were sick

Nuno: Is an awesome sounding stage. And hopeful everybody will be so hammered that they think we are the greatest rock band of all time.

There are no barricades so it’s going to be intense.

Nuno: Yeah, there are no barricades. Yeah fuck that barricades.

Thank you very much for your time and this nice chat! Looking forward to see the show tonight!

Nuno & Trevor: We thank you!

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