Fiddling Around with Folk Metal...

Devil in the Kitchen is like no other metal band you’ve ever heard. It’s got lightning speed, punishing riffs and a lot of chunky groove—but it’s also got fiddling. Lots of it. Imagine one of those old beer commercials where two separate channels are magically melded into one. Now imagine on one channel is a traditional Celtic/Cape Breton folk jam, and on the other channel is a Motörhead concert—and you’ve got an idea of what Devil in the Kitchen sounds like!


Since its debut in the fall of 2003, this up-and-coming band from the Boston, Massachusetts area has gotten a lot of notice regionally, and is poised to start gaining recognition nationally as well. I had the pleasure of seeing a DITK show in Somerville, Massachusetts in January, and more recently I caught up with Andy Reiner, the furious fiddling frontman of Devil in the Kitchen.


NoC – Michael De Los Muertos
AR – Andy Reiner, lead fiddle for Devil in the Kitchen

NoC: Tell us about how Devil in the Kitchen got started.

AR: Would you like me to talk about how I met everyone or just how we got the band together? Because how I met everyone is kind of contrived… [NoC: I think he means “convoluted.”] But I’m happy to say it.

NoC: How the band got together, mainly.

AR: OK. The beginnings of Devil in the Kitchen were in a band started by me and Stash [Stash Wyslouch, DITK guitarist] in 2002. We played really bad metal, but there was one song where in the middle of all the crap I picked up a 5 string electric fiddle in the shape of an anchor and played “Catharsis,” the third tune in what is now the DITK song “Viper.” The response to everything but that song was “meh,” but people flipped out during “Catharsis.” We eventually fired our drummer and replaced him with a drum machine. We also got a second guitarist/bass player named Trey who I had met previously through some really random connections but found him again through an ad placed in the Music Emporium.

Somehow through Trey I ended up playing in his other band with current DITK drummer Alex [Carrara] in a band called Mortal Coil (which, after its demise—sort of, but that’s a different story—released a demo under the name Dawn Floods the Distance. [Mortal Coil] eventually broke up due to everyone but me and Alex leaving to transfer to colleges that were out of state. Mortal Coil ended up using the fiddle song that was originally played by OM [NoC: Ossuaric Mortuary, a death metal band], and added on two tunes that I wrote (“Catharsis” is a cover). The recording you can hear on our site and the DITK demo as “Viper” is technically Mortal Coil.

The same thing happened with this band where people flipped over the fiddle song and didn’t really dig everything else so much. So I proposed that we start a folk metal band based on the completely ridiculous reaction we got from crowds when we played “Viper.” I asked Stash to play guitar. Bassil [Silver-Hajo, bassist] was a guy that Trey knew (and I’d met originally because he did sound at a Mortal Coil show in Cambridge) and ended up recording the Mortal Coil demo in his basement, and I asked him to play bass with us because I didn’t know anyone else who would want to play in such a band even though he was mainly a drummer. Over the summer I’d written one song that Stash and I decided was awesome and would be the first song of what at that time we called “the folk metal band.” That song is now “Oven Hampster;” “Viper” was sort of inherited from Mortal Coil and OM.

NoC: OM is Ossuaric Mortuary, right? AR: Yes. The band [Devil in the Kitchen] started rehearsing in September of ‘03. Looking back I guess I just kinda went on a rampage of writing and arranging traditional and contemporary fiddle tunes (it ended up being a mix of about 50/50 covers/originals, split often within songs) and we learned them quick enough to play our first show on Halloween at the Lexington VFW Hall, which is so small that 50 people make it look full.

NoC: What musicians influenced you growing up?

AR: It would seem like I’ve always liked folk music since it is so influential in my playing and writing. That’s not the case actually, I started playing classical and fiddle music since I was 5 in 1991 and didn’t actually enjoy playing it until ‘98. I’d say my father had the biggest influence from the beginning—he’s the one that got me playing all this fiddle stuff, he’s written 3 fiddle books and has been in bands since a long time ago. The magical thing in ‘98 that made me start enjoying playing was Mark O’Connor’s Fiddle Camp in Nashville—suddenly I was in music city USA and there were all these kids playing this stuff too.

I couldn’t appreciate at the time who was teaching there, huge, famous masters of the fiddle—Natalie MacMaster, Darol Anger, Claude Williams, Buddy Spicher, Randy Elmore, Rachel Barton (at this time I wasn’t listening to metal, but she got 25 fiddlers up on stage fucking ripping on Sabbath’s “Paranoid,” and this was classical virtuoso!), Richard Greene. Of course now I do [appreciate them], and I’ve returned to such camps as often as possible because it is just simply paradise to go and learn from the metal equivalents of like Dio, Ozzy, Malmsteen, you get my drift and only focus on playing for a week. I’m doing 4 of these things this summer. Obviously somewhere along the line I started listening to rock stuff, which started out with some really crappy radio rock in middle school, drifting into metal with In Flames, Metallica, and Cannibal Corpse, by freshman year I was even writing (not that I knew what I was talking about) for an online metal zine called Defenestrated.

This goes back to the first question but I always had a feeling that somehow this metal stuff would work with the really traditional folk music that I’d been playing but no one to my knowledge had done it. I think I always had a vision of how this stuff should sound and it worked really naturally in my opinion and this was reflected in how people were reacting when we played that lone fiddle song in the sea of other stuff my first bands were playing. Turns out, people had been doing similar things to what I wanted to hear...close but not exactly. Ashley MacIsaac, the gay left handed stoner ex-crackhead Cape Breton fiddler, did a lot of experimenting with Cape Breton fiddle tunes infused with rock. He’s been a big influence since I heard him. [NoC: “Cape Breton” is a distinctive style of traditional fiddle music from Nova Scotia, Canada.]

Going back to fiddle camp, Darol Anger and Richard Greene were teaching this “chop” technique that is sort of a rhythmic backup thing you can do that you can hear in DITK songs like “Trey Eats Meat” and “Little Greene Men.” A lot of these camps (and I should mention, these aren’t like the guitar rock camps for kids, most of them have just as many if not more adult students than kids) just had an amazing variety of teachers doing everything from western swing, bluegrass, jazz, Cape Breton, Irish, Scottish, New England Contra Dance type stuff...the list goes on and on, but this is where most of my influences are from. That and listening to a lot of heavy fucking metal!

NoC: You mentioned that no one to your knowledge had done that (fusing metal with traditional folk music)...what’s your opinion of bands like Mago de Oz, or Skyclad? Were they an influence at all?

AR: Well, like I said before I’ve always had a vision of what this kind of sound should be like. I had a digital 4 track that I did a lot of demos of varying quality...there’s a song that sounds like Apocalyptica though I hadn’t heard them at the time, and I was experimenting with distortion and stuff on the electric fiddle I had but never really came to what I wanted to hear and the fusion finally worked once I had a band to work with. The closest bands to the sound I always wanted to hear are: Ashley MacIsaac (album: Hi How Are You Today); Hoven Droven, a Swedish folk rock band; and Korpiklaani, from somewhere in Scandinavia I assume from the sound, who I just recently got their newest album. There’s also an Irish folk rock band called Tempest that comes close. I always wanted this stuff to take the final dive off the cliff and just play some balls to the wall metal. And there was kind of the opposite problem once I found there was even a genre of folk metal.

Bands like Skyclad and Mago De Oz....I like listening to them but my problem is that the writing is clearly metal-based and the folk parts are added almost as an afterthought. Still a huge part of the sound, but also it never sounded to me like the players they employed for this were really all that well versed in folk music. I’m not trying to bash them, but in the same way that the folk rock bands I mentioned before lacked metal riffs and power chords like I wanted to hear, these bands didn’t really catch my attention on the folk side of things. Keep in mind I’ve been growing up with this kind of music because of my dad and that side of things just seemed a bit like metal musicians trying to write folk music but it just ended up being metal songs with some kind of cheesy added folk instruments. I really wanted things to sound true to traditional folk music so that someone well versed in that sort of thing could find what they were looking for in the music as well as someone who wants killer riffs.

NoC: So, in a sense you’re striving for (for what lack of a better term) could be called “crossover” appeal, meaning, betweek folk fans and metal fans?

AR: When I am writing for this band, that’s what I’m trying to keep in mind, yes—as a huge fan of both folk music and metal, something that respects and stays true but also builds on both of those extremely, extremely large and diverse genres. Not to say that I do all the writing, I have to mention that too. I’m very bad at writing guitar riffs for example, though occasionally I come up with something good. Mostly I write the fiddle parts and demo everything on a computer so everyone can get the feel and everything else sort of falls into place.

NoC: So, insofar as the writing process, it generally begins with you, with a fiddle riff (is it accurate to call it a riff?)

AR: As far as fiddle riff or not...it depends on the tune. Listen to “D-A Set”—that’s a medley of Irish tunes all of which are A-A-B-B as the form (as are like 90% of fiddle tunes). Whereas something like “Coked Up Leprechaun” I would say that it is more riff based, as far as the fiddle parts go. Combine that with guitar riffs that Stash comes up with, and songs are some combination of all of the above with maybe some solos, harmonies, whatever.

There are some songs I’ve fully written and the band has learned them basically as-is. Other times it’ll be more like, “OK, I have some cool tunes here, lets come up with some more parts.” The epitome of that second process is a newer song called “The Strathspey King” which I think was definitely more of a team writing effort than just me. And we keep moving further and further in that direction...it just depends on the song.

NoC: Going back to what you said a minute ago about bringing the metal genre and folk genre together, would DITK be equally at home at, say, Wacken Open Air, as you would be at...[fill in the name of a folk festival?]

AR: I think we would fit in very well at Wacken and I would love to play there someday. I think we’d fit in less with folk bands based on sheer volume and the fact that we’re playing out of half or full stacks depending on the show and metal fans are used to listening to concerts that destroy your hearing for no real reason other than that LOUD IS AWESOME.

NoC: So, if you could be on a bill with any two bands in the world, what would they be?

AR: I’m going to ignore the number 2 in your question... I would say Ashley MacIsaac, Finntroll, and Korpiklaani would make quite the folk rock fusion concert.

NoC: Finntroll is awesome, and that would make a great bill right there! You have been totally instrumental up until now...any thought of having a guest vocalist for maybe a vocal track or two?

AR: We originally toyed with the idea of a vocalist and didn’t really end up doing anything. I think I arranged at least 2 songs for it too. What we ended up deciding was that the fiddle essentially had replaced the role of lead vocalist. Listen to all these Celtic fiddle players especially and there’s all these completely instrumental albums where songs will just be tune - tune - tune - tune - tune - tune - end. We use more rock song structures (not to deny that we do the tune - tune - tune thing sometimes also) and there’s usually some catchy melody that hopefully grabs people. I just didn’t see the point if we were doing these heavy arrangements with lots of stuff going on and lots of melody why there would need to be a vocalist in the mix. That said, we’re hoping to steal a singer from a certain fairly big local band for maybe one song on the next recording which will be a full album of completely original songs.

NoC: Ah, that segues into a next question, about the future of DITK...there will be a full-length album, then?

AR: There will be a full length original album. Its way too tentative to really say any details but we’re hoping for some actual distribution on this one instead of just doing it ourselves like we’ve been doing Wizard’s Walk [EP].

NoC: Show/tour plans?

AR: The writing process is going slower than before because of the fact that we decided not to do covers on it, and previously it was easy to be like, “Oh yeah, so and so tune would fit perfectly in this!” But I can only do that with my tunes now. But all the songs are turning out awesome I think, and we’re maybe 1/4 to 1/3 of the way through writing.

We’re always trying to play as many shows as possible in the area. In late May and June we will hopefully be touring. The plans have changed so many times at this point what I say now will probably change in a day so, you never know. But currently we’re hoping to do the first leg on the east coast, and we’ve found a booking agent for the second leg. I would say at this point the tour schedule is extremely optimistic but don’t really want to mention any details of cities because I’m sure it will all change... www.devilinthekitchen.com will have all the details the second we actually know anything for sure. The best possible outcome would be shows from May 25-June 2 and June 6-18...way more ambitious than our first tour which was a lean 3 days through Delaware, Rhode Island and New Hampshire.

NoC: What’s been your most fun or most interesting experience playing live?

AR: 2 most fun experiences. Firstly, last summer we were invited to open for the Dresden Dolls at the Paradise in Boston. This show sold out to 600 people and was also our CD release show for Wizard’s Walk. Playing to that kind of big club crowd was something I hadn’t ever done before and I loved every second of it. The other thing is that our first show was in Lexington and 75 kids came I think total that night. We have kept playing in Lexington over and over and each time it gets bigger and crazier. Usually the bulk of the crowd will be moshing/headbanging/stepdancing/line dancing (whoa!) and playing to that kind of really enthusiastic crowd in rented out rooms may even be cooler than playing to a sold out crowd of 600 people. With this kind of thing a lot of the time there is no stage and I’ll end up dodging people and crazy things always happen. Lexington fans ROCK.

NoC: Well, your shows are certainly lively—I can testify to that from personal experience!

AR: And dare I say you came to a relatively tame show.

NoC: Is there anything else you’d like to tell our readers, anything else you want them to know about DITK?

AR: Come to a show! All this folk music I’m talking about is mostly originally dance music, there’s something missing from the recordings in this respect. Its meant to make you move the hell around instead of sitting there like a dazed turtle. If you live far away from New England, find some bands for us to play with near you and WE WILL COME TO YOU (sooner or later). And no, we are not going to play “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” anytime in the near future (though I won’t say never!)

NoC: Haha, I wasn’t going to ask about that...but now that you did I’ll be sure to put that in the interview! Well, thanks a lot...this has been very interesting.

AR: Of course, please check out www.devilinthekitchen.com for free MP3s, show/tour information, sign our mailing list to hear about all this stuff when it comes, join our forum...also, sometime in the near future there will be some video footage from Delaware! Thank you, Michael, and thanks for reading, whoever the hell you are looking blankly at the screen!

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