PipemanRadio Interviews Fronz of Attila at Aftershock 2025

0:04 Hi, you love then too? Yes, that's true. Why for you? You? This is pipe Man here on the Adventures pipe Man W four C Y Radio and I'm here. With Franz from a Tilla Nice. A little Birdie told me or I overheard it. I was eavesdropping that you're like the only unsigned band at all of Aftershock. Is that true? Oh? Yeah, for sure. So we've been unsigned for several years and we do our own operations, our own recordings, our own production. Everything is fully in house. So it's kind of rare these days, which is weird because it would make more sense for band to do what we're doing. But bands are locked into these label contracts and Attila is unsigned and we self record, so everything is fully in house. Like we have a we have a full studio house that we purchased in Atlanta, Georgia. We have a full studio. We're unsigned.

1:19 We do everything fully alone and independent. All of our music is unbiased, like there's no one influencing us to make something. We only do what we want to do and if we don't want to do it, we don't do it. I love it and it's crazy, man, Like we're the most free you could be and. It's crazy that you're the only one like that, because that's the way it should be. Way it should be. I have this philosophy. I have somebody that sat backstage during eighty sunset strip days and watch these record labels tell bands how to play their music. Yep. The business people should stay to business people and the artists stay to creative people.

2:01 So I'll go ahead and say that there was a point in time where I feel like labels did provide an extreme amount of support, whether it be monetary or promotional. So there was a point of time where labels were a very integral factor of being in a band. But for Attila, there is nothing a label could provide unless you want to just drop millions of dollars on us, Like yeah, okay, cool, we'll take it. But unless you're gonna do what we want, yeah, exactly, Like, there's nothing you can do to appease us. We're unsigned, we're independent, we self record, We do everything on our own. We make everything that we want to make, and it's really fucking fun. It's cool that way because we don't have a deadline. We don't have to release an album at this day. We don't have to make this kind of song.

2:52 We don't have a label coming into the studio saying oh we don't like this song, like make it different. We just do whatever the fuck we want. And that's what's fucking cool. What I think is cool about that is it makes you a true artist because if you can express any way you want. And like Kean on you said about deadlines, I think deadlines make for not as good a music because you, as and rs, you're rushing to put something out and almost probably one hundred percent of the time you're like, oh I would have done this, I would have done this, but you didn't have the time to really evaluate what you were putting out there. And we have unlimited time. If we don't like what we're doing, we don't have to rush it right, So there's no rushing in our process and making music, and there's no rhyme or reason we meet up on a women we're like, fuck it, let's make music because we want to. And I think that's special because we're not forced to do it. We do it because we love it, and that's what separates us from everyone else in this entire music scene.

3:55 I love it, and you're also Kean you said, fun if you're not having fun in this business. It's the wrong business. Oh of course, And I think just I don't think, I know, but looking at other bands that are signed to these big labels, they're pretty fucking miserable. Bro Like, they're pretty fucking miserable. They're not happy, they're not having fun. They're on tour, they're miserable. They're doing this, doing that. We don't have to tour unless we want to tour. We don't have to make music unless we want to make music. So I think it's cooler for a fan in the audience to see a band that's actually like happy to be there, right, So that that is the essence of Attila. We're here because we're happy to be here and we want to be here.

4:43 And it shows like if you're out in the audience, you can tell when a band is not having fun, and then you can tell when you guys are just having a. Blast exactly exactly. And if you're having a blast, I'm gonna have a blast. Yep. I can't tell how many times there's spend times I've seen bands I know they're not having fun up there. I'm like, yeah, you can look at them and they look miserable, or they're like worried about their stage sound or this or that, or they're just not having fun or they're tired or whatever. It's like, Attilla's here because we fucking want to be here. I love it. That's it. And how do you feel playing these Danny Wimmer festivals? I fucking love it. Danny Wimmer is one of my favorite human beings on the planet, and he has helped Attila so much and we are forever grateful to him because being a band in our position, like I said, unsigned, usually, like the big sign bands get all these cool festivals like Aftershock, but Danny Wimmer, he's got some place in his heart for Attila and he somehow will choose Attilla to play all these festivals. And we are forever grateful for Danny Wimmer, and we're happy to be here. And it's cool, you know, it's cool to be an unsigned art is that gets these opportunities because we're just.

6:05 Stoked to be here. And Danny Wimmer is a great person to provide this opportunity. And I love hearing that because in sixteen years of doing this festivals, I've never heard an or say something bad. Yeah, that's exactly because most other festivals that's definitely not the case. Mm hmm. And like we always play like Welcome to Rockville, which is Florida where we're from, and we'll play like Sonic Temple and Incarceration and all of those festivals that Danny Wemmer puts on are phenomenal. But we haven't even played California at all. This this is our own no, no no.

6:46 We played After Shock two years ago, but this is our this is our first time playing California all of twenty twenty five. Wow. So we didn't play a single show in California. But Danny Wimmer was like, hey, at Tila, come on out play after Shock. And we're like, hey, it's a lot of work for us. To come out. We're on the opposite corner of the planet, right, but we'll. Come out and play. Just can you throw like some cabs on stage for us to play with? And a drum said and he's like bet. So we're like cool, we're done, Like let's go take let's he takes care of us. So he told him like, hey, we need some shit to play with. We can't take all of our gear across the country. It would take like four or five days, you know, for a singular show, it wouldn't make sense. But he's like, no problem, and he took care of us, and we had a phenomenal show today and I'm happy that our only show in California for this year is today at Aftershock Lo.

7:42 It was awesome, And you know that makes you want to do better too, Right when you're being taken care of by the person running the festival, it makes you want to like just go up there and do everything you can to make everybody happy. Of course, Yeah, we're here to put on a show, and we're here to make the crowd and entertain. And that's my favorite thing about the music industry. Like, I'm here to entertain. I'm here to make people forget about the bullshit in their life. I want people to disconnect from their problems and I want people to just have a great fucking time. I love it. And so what do you think is your favorite part of being an artist.

8:26 My favorite part of being an artist is probably just being able to say whatever the fuck I want. And I think my favorite part of being an artist is probably the reason most people hate their lives is because they're controlled by other people. And they have to do what someone tells them to do or whatever. But with Attila as an artist, in the singer of Attila, like, we do what we want, Like, we don't have any people pulling the puppet strings. We're just doing what we want, when we want, on the time we want. And I think that's such a blessing to be an artist and be able to do that. And that's what makes it special, is that we're just doing it because we fucking love It's that's what it comes down to.

9:13 And what about your crew? How do they like working with Attila? So that's a good question. Our crew is fucking phenomenal. And Attila is probably the only band also in the whole industry that has had the same crew for multiple multiple years because usually crew members, Yeah, usually crew members dip out because the band fucks them over. Yeah. The only thing we've ever happened is that a lot of our crew members I can name off a bunch of them, but a lot of our crew members have gone on to a bigger artists where they get paid more, and we've given them our blessing because obviously, like if you have an opportunity to make more money as a crew member. We support that because we want you to do the best you could do. But some of our crew members, a lot of them went to Falling in Reverse, one of them went to Bear Tooth, a lot of them went to a band called Ocean Alley, which is like a massive reggae rock Australian band. So we've had like a lot of our crew like graduate essentially to bigger bands, and we don't feel any hard feelings. These are our best friends and it's not a weird thing.

10:26 But we've never had a crew member leave us because they don't like us. Some people just get bigger opportunities, but most of our crew has been the same exact people from like day one, which is really cool. And I really love your attitude towards it because it just shows what kind of human being you are, because you don't want to hold anybody back. Hell no, and you all wish them well exactly. Bro. You're telling me like, if you really love somebody and they're your friend and they have an opportunity to make like double money or triple money, if are you a real friend? If you tell them like fuck, you don't do that, right, that's a bad friend.

11:07 So even even if you're. My best friend and you work for my band and someone offers you triple the money that what a til can pay. Fuck yeah, take that offer, like you you have my blessing. I want you to succeed and make more. We'll pay everyone as high as we can. But you know, every band makes a different amount of money, and we pay everyone as much as we possibly can. But if you, if you, if you can work with a bigger band and make more money, you have our blessing. We want everyone to succeed, that's all. That's all we want. We want everyone to thrive. Yeah, and if you could pay the more money you would. We would, yeah, dead ass, we would, like you know, if we were making falling in reverse arena money or you know whatever, like of course, like we would pay everyone a fat fucking amount of money, right but we don't make that money right now. And that's fine, and I'm not mad about that. It's okay, but but I think it's just fair to let your crew go. Like, spread your fucking wings, bro, nob spread your fucking wings.

12:07 Make some money, bro, Like you're my friend, I want to see you thrive. I love it. I love it, and okay, so I saw again your caricature done earlier. Yeah, tell me and tell me how cool that was. Bro, that's my favorite artist. He created all the original caricatures for Bob's Burgers, and he also created two of my favorite music videos of all time for a band called trash Talk, like the animated cartoon videos, which are so fucking underrated they're insane. If you haven't watched them, just look up the band trash Talk music videos and you'll see the animated videos. It's like dudes taking like acid and shrooms and shit and they're like losing their minds and like motorcycles smashing their heads open and like people pissing on their faces.

12:56 It's fucking insane. Bro. So he's made like a lot of my favorite art, so for him to draw me is just such a blessing. But him and I have become good friends and he's drawn me quite a few times, and it's just a really cool thing that I cherish. And I looked at it was pretty freaking good. It's fucking sick, dude, right, I look like a redneck, redneck metal bobs Burger, cigar in mouth, beer in. Hand, just piece of shit. It's awesome. I've love album cover. Oh, it could be. It's it's good. There it is. Is there anything else you want to tell the listeners about that you got coming up that they should know.

13:38 I think the biggest thing that people should know right now is that Attila is releasing our brand new album on Halloween, October thirty. First. The album is called Concrete Throne. It's fully self produced. We did everything on our own, and I'm not even kidding. Like the album goes from like the heaviest song ever as the intro to a country song, to a death core slam song. To like it's all over the place. So I love that it kind of it kind of feels like an album where if you listen, if you actually listen to it front to back, you're gonna be like, what the fuck is going on here? See? And I like that. We were just talking before. I was talking to the dude from Bowling for Suit who you were talking to, Yeah, but we were talking about that about you know, back in the day, like everybody was a fucking gatekeeper and you could only like this band and you gonna and it was such bullshit, and I love We were talking about aftershock and how you can have here hip hop, pop, punk, metal, rock, whatever, and we're just one big, happy family.

14:44 Yeah, exactly. And I think back in the day too, people just had more of like an attention span where people really valued the idea of an album, and when you dropped a full album, people would sit down like that day and they would listen to it front to back. But now I think the issue is, like people are so consumed in this like TikTok social media world where it's like doom scrolling all day, and it's like, instead of doom scrolling all fucking day, if you just actually sat down and listened to your favorite band's brand new album front to back, you might you might have like a greater visceral experience, like you might feel something really cool.

15:26 But it's just you can't change people. You just have to live with the world we live in. Yeah, but I would just hope that people would listen to the new Attila album front to back, because I think putting out an album is a very special thing and I think people should listen to it front to back. Yeah. You know, there's so many albums out there that I think if they weren't listening to front to back, they wouldn't really make any sense, you know. Yeah, imagine Dark Side of the Moon if it was just released as singles. Yeah, stupid, right fully stupid. Like you can't listen it at its album just once, just even when they play it on the radio, you hear like, fuck they cut it off where it's the rest of the song. Yep, exactly.

16:08 And it's interesting what you're saying, because I talk about it all the time. I remember, first of all, when you bought an album, you didn't get to hear what it sounded like first. So one of the things you would do is listen to it over and over and over again. Why because you didn't get it free. You had your hard earned money you had to buy, and you made sure that you listened to it over and over and that. But it was a full experience. I would sit on my balcony with the headphones on, look at all the artwork, and you know, read all the lyrics. My kids will get in the car with me and they're all like, Dad, how you know the lyrics of every single song? Because that's what you did. You Yeah, and you over and over and over the whole album, not one song at a time. You would listen to a whole album over and over and over and over again.

16:57 So my fiance has the vinyl from Lenyard SKINNERD right before the plane crash happened, and I opened that vinyl and it gave me goosebumps because when you open that vinyl, in the insert, it's all the details of the album and everything. But also in that in that insert is like, hey, if you want a T shirt, send five dollars. If you want this, send two dollars. If you want this, send six dollars, and then just like cut this slip off and send your slip and your cash to this address. And we'll ship you a shirt. And I was like, fuck, that was such a cool time to be alive, where you just you got to you got to like live the album, listen to it, and while you're listening to it on your vinyl player, you got to just open this insert where you got to choose like things you want. And then it was also like, hey, we're gonna be on tour soon, like you can buy a ticket, and it was just so fucking cool. I'm not like that old where like I'm super we're into the vinyl days, but I missed that physical like experience days because I used I used to open up a CD, for example, and read every lyric.

18:11 I would read every thing that the band had to say about their process, like their their thank yous or their whatever, like the backstory, the art, everything, and it's so much more of an experience. But now with everything being so digital and everything being so like fifteen second mindset, Oh my god, it's so fucked. My favorite songs ever, people today would have never made through the intro. Imagine exactly. Imagine like a song like Battery by Metallica. Yeah, let's say the first ten seconds you'd be like, next track, yep, you know, fast as a Shark by except you'd be like, what the fuck is this next track?

18:54 Yep? And we were like, oh my fucking god, so they waited. That's what's fucked, bro. They're like pro programming people to live in this like ten to fifteen second like brain time frame to where it's like when you're a musician, it's difficult because you now we're living in this world where we have to capture people's attention within fifteen seconds or else we're fucked, right, and it shouldn't be like that. We should be able to create like a piece of art. But now we have to capture people's attention in like TikTok world, and it's fucking stupid, dude, it's so fucking stupid, dude, it's fucking it's so fucking retarded.

19:35 I hate it. Oh. I even have talked to artists who we were talking about the songwriting process nowadays, and like you have to change if you go by what they tell you to do, you have to change the songwriter. It used to be like get an intro. A verse, chorus, verse, solo, Yeah, bridge, chorus, another, verse and chorus. Now it's like, okay, you gotta go right into the chorus. Yeah, one verse, chorus. The chorus has to hit within thirty seconds. Now, if you're gonna write a song that has a chorus, the chorus has to hit within thirty seconds. If not, you're lost, you're done, You're cooked. It's fucked. It takes away the artistry.

20:23 If you want to make like essentially like this big, beautiful painting where people understand what you're doing, no one's ever gonna understand. Like think about Bohemian Rhapsody right right, the longest song ever, but that's also like the biggest song ever. And everyone still loves that song because it's like grandfathered in, so to speak. But if that song where if Bohemian Rhapsody was released today, no one would fucking care because they would just listen to the first ten seconds and skip done. And it's like, no, you can't just do the first ten seconds. Listen to the whole fucking thing. It's a piece of art. But people don't understand that. And that's okay, Like I'm not judging.

21:05 It's just kind of like, as an artist, a journey. That's what a song like that does. It takes you on a journey. It takes you on a journey. But I think people these days don't want a journey, they want a quick fix. So as an artist, it's difficult being from the artist perspective, the one writing the music and stuff. We have to navigate this new world where people want a quick fix. They don't want the journey. They want the quick fix. And of course you will have the core fans that will experience the journey, but you will never progress as a band or become a big band so to speak, unless you figure out how to hook people in right away. Yeah, it's fucking weird. Dude, it sucks. It's I'm not gonna lie.

21:51 Everything sucks, right to build. Well, what happened to the build up? Some of the best songs, there was a build up to it. I remember taking a music class in college and they said the key to writing this was then the key to writing a hit song is to hit all three types of people, visual, oratory, and kinesthetic. And they said the example of the one song that does that best of all is Stairway to Heaven yep. And it's because of that build up, Like the whole song is a build up yep. Yeah, of course. And even think of like another song I think of is Don't Stop Believing. Yeah, you know where, Like that part doesn't come in until like three or four minutes into this song. It's a slow build, and then at the very end you get.

22:40 Dude, stop believe. But people back then they had no other choice but to listen to the whole size, so they got the full experience. But nowadays kids would just hear like don't Stop Believing, which is a hit, they'd hear the first ten seconds and skip, So it's we're kind of just in this fucked world where dude, I don't even know how to explain it, like, we're we're fucked, bro, Like. I I have a solution. I've been talking about all day. I've been talking about a lot. The solution to the whole world's problems is to have one big music festival that everybody's required to attend. The only people that are banned from the festival are politicians. Everybody else is perfect quired to attend. Yeah, because listen, we won't fight, we won't argue, and will just fucking enjoy this festival.

23:30 Perfect. That sounds amazing. I think, though, to circle back and answer the question, it's literally just social media that kind of ruined everything because people expect a quick fix. Social media is so curated to give everyone that quick fix, quick fix that people expect that from music. Now where they want that quick fix and people are they're not excited for the long burn or the journey of a song or where it takes you. Everyone wants a quick fix. Everything is literally fifteen seconds or less. We're fucked. I don't know how to reverse this. Even in my business. Okay, so where it used to be either a thirty or a second sixty second commercial, sixty doesn't even exist anymore. And it's like a five fifteen or thirty and thirty is kind of long.

24:24 Yeah, exactly. It's just everything like that, everything is shorter and shorter, and it's like what happened, like because it's not like we're all humans and we're all the same, so it's not like our attention spans have gotten shorter. It's more so that they've forced our attention spans to be shorter because they're forced feeding us like quality, Like I say quality, and it's all dog shit, but like bullshit quality content that strikes your attention right away within the first like few seconds, and you're just like boom boom boom, boom boom, and you get everyone doomed scrolling. And that same thing applies to music, where it's like, dude, music isn't meant to be this way. It's meant to be a journey. Like, listen to the album, enjoy it. And I'm very grateful for the people out there that still appreciate the journey.

25:15 And I know that real music fans do appreciate the journey. Real music fans when a band that they like releases an album, they will listen to the full album front to back. And I really appreciate those people, but those people are gonna be your core fan base, whereas like reaching new people becomes a difficult task as someone in a band because you have to hit that like ten second or less mark where you're like, fuck, dude, like this is a good song, just fucking listen to the whole thing, but everyone is so brain dead from doom scrolling that they're just like boom click done, boom click done, boom, Like all right, fuck it, they're gone, They're gone, dude, It's fuck. It's as fucked dude.

26:01 I can't wait for your new album because I I am gonna listen listen from the gain to end, over and over and over again. Thank you so much. Our new album is gonna take you on a journey and you're gonna feel really weird. And I'm excited for you to feel weird. I like that because it's gonna take you from really heavy to country music to back to even heavier, back to like rock and roll chorus, back to heavy, back to Like anyone that listens to the new Attila album front to back is gonna essentially be like what the fuck is going on? And I think that's what's cool. Is just creating an experience that's weird, like it's it's a weird journey, and I want people to experience the weird journey. So I hope that when Concrete Throne comes out on Halloween that everyone sits down and listens to it front to back so they can experience how weird and different the album is.

26:59 Well, they have to or they can't listen to my show anymore. Deal the deal, dude, let's go. I love it well Man, always a pleasure to have you here, and thanks for being on the Adventures of pipe Man. Of course, pipe Man love you, bro. Thank you so much. Thank you for listening to the Adventures of pipe Man. I'm w for Cui ray. Deal