PipemanRadio Interviews Lunar About New Concept/Thematic album Tempora Mutantur

0:00 Hi, you have unto censure fore Wow, crazy young, Wake up America. It's time for the Adventures of Pipeman on W four C why dot Com West Pompeas is number one Internet radio station. Here's your host, the pipe Man. Settle some raison, even down shift the seasons.

0:43 Turning brown, you're cold Brown. This is the pipe Man here on the Adventures pipe Man W four c Y Radio. And I'm really excited about our next guest because, first of all, not only do they have some badass new music, but the music has some meaning to a lot of people, including myself and to them obviously, which we're going to talk about. So let's welcome to the show. Lunar. How are you good? Good? The band you're alec. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Nobody else is with me unfortunately. Right, so we'll just pretend they're all there.

1:26 Yeah, yeah, that's fine. That's what that's what I usually do. So there you go. So tell us about the new album and what it means to you. You know, it's a concept album that I think is really cool and I want to hear from your brain. Okay, all right, well, yeah, the concept that this one it feels a little more thematic than conceptual to me, and and it's it's splitting hairs, I know. But you know, with the last record we did, the Illusionist, it was like this whole story that was told, you know, from front end Act. And but this one just kind of has this overarching theme of the passing of time. So you know, the title of the record, simpora mutantur is a Latin phrase that translates to the passage of time.

2:14 And so really each song is kind of just dealing with different elements of that that that everybody faces, you know what I mean in in how we how we perceive time, how it affects people differently, how your headspace can have those different effects of of of vacancy or you know, when you're in a in a terrible headspace, how time can seem to move longer like it you know, seconds feel like hours type things, or the opposite that the you know, the the great moments are are fleeting, you know, they just disappear from us too quickly. So it deals with a lot of elements of that, and uh, and some of the stuff of like how we how we try to alter time in our head to how we try and hold on to the memories how we try and escape some memories, you know, things like that.

3:07 Yeah, And you know, first of all, I want to say, I'm glad you said thematic because that does kind of pinpoint. Some people may say splain hairs, but there's to me, there's a huge difference. Like you said, you know, a concept album, it's a concept from beginning to end, right, Something that has a theme can go off the concept. He'll stay within the theme right. Right, exactly. Yeah, And that's that's where where I get in that, you know, like just specifying with it, because like I feel like when people hear concept album, they think, oh, this is a story that's being told, Like like if I'm reading a book, I need to start at the beginning and end at the end. You know, this one is not necessarily that with The Illusionist, yes, the last record I feel it was that, but this this record, no, you can. You can have each individual chatter kind of sitting as their own piece, but it has this overarching theme throughout it, you know.

4:06 Nice, Yeah, I agree. And then you know, I think the theme of good music is that an artist is portraying something from deep inside them, some kind of message, but whoever's listening is too, it just not may not be the same message. It may be in the same realm meaning to it, you know. Yeah, and I one hundred percent agree. And I often try and think of that in writing, especially lyrically, because of the fact that, you know, the songs that I've connected with that that the artist that wrote it may have had a very specific thing that happened to them, but that's not the same thing that happened to me necessarily.

4:52 But I can, you know, have those words kind of latch onto my own personal experiences, and I want to make it the same way. So there's this you know, kind of vague metaphor within the lyric writing where I want it to be something that means something personally to me, but also be able to have individuals attached to it in their own way. You know. It's so key because to me, the key to a great lyricist is that when I hear a song, it hits me somewhere like deep and like real. But that wasn't the intention of the artist. They just put the lyrics in the song so that you could put your own meaning to.

5:37 It, right right exactly. Yeah, I think I think there is, you know, some intention behind it. From an artist's standpoint, and but also like to your point of what you're saying, it's it's the bigger intention is it's coming from something real from me, from the artist that's writing. It, you know, right, Because if I'm in the audience, yes there is some intention to hit the audience, but you don't know my specific meaning exactly. Yeah, yeah, one hundred percent and yeah, and and ultimately, you know, as as a musician, as an artist, you know, like I want what I'm putting out there to connect with people. But also even if it connected with no one, it's it means something to me, you know, and it always.

6:20 Will and it has to first, like it's not gonna mean anything to anybody else until it means something to you, Because to me, any kind of art is expression, and especially expression of feelings and emotions. Right right, Yeah, and I one hundred percent agree, and yeah. And the the stuff that that I like to to approach is that the dark stuff in the in the world essentially, and and because it's a it's an outlet for that kind of stuff, you know what I mean, Like a lot of the themes within these Lunar records are are very they're dark they're depressing, you know what I mean, And yes, they come from my own personal experiences, but they're this outlet of you know, I can't change, yeah exactly one hundred yeah.

7:02 And it's therapy for you the artist, but it's also therapy for me the listener, because you know, again putting my own meaning to it like that, it's so therapeutic. If it weren't for music, I will have either killed myself or or killed somebody else of it. OK. Yeah, I feel I feel like that could be said for so many of us. And that's that's why we that's why we gravitate towards this type of music. I think, you know, there's the there's there's the conceptual aspects of personal meanings, but then also there's the musician ship behind it too, you know what I mean. And when we listen to metal artists, at least for me personally, it's a lot of the like, by God, that guy is incredible, right, it sounds great and it hits me right in the fields.

7:51 It's got everything, you know, everything that I. Want and you know what it especially metal like, there's some in a bond between all of us, even if we don't know each other because of the darkness of the music and the therapy it provides us. I I yep, I agree, yeah, because I've had this conversation with people before where it's you know, because of the fact that the people that gravitate towards this music, you know that we're here because we've been through some type of hardship in our life. Yeah, and so there is this like you see somebody walking down the street in a metal T shirt and there's just this like I don't know you, but there's this instant camaraderie.

8:37 You know, no doubt that nobody else can understand. Yeah. Yeah, And that's the funny part. Like I have a brother. He can't really understand it too well. And I talk about even like getting together with a woman. I'm like, I need a woman that likes metal, and he's like, well, that's kind of ridiculous at your age. No, it's not. You don't get it. It's word than just listening to a song. It's not teenage angst. You know. It's like people that say to me, oh, well, I used to like metal. If you say you used to like metal, you never really liked metal and some of stuff you think you liked wasn't really metal? Yeah, yeah, it didn't. It didn't have that meaning, that attachment to people who are saying it like that, I think, you know, yeah, and so you know, yeah, there could be the surface level of just like oh I used to enjoy it musically, but nothing else about it, you know.

9:33 And and then from but like you're saying, like, hey, you know having a partner that that likes metal, it's because of that connection factor, you know. One hundred percent. And like the conversations you can even have you know that you can't have with somebody else because they won't understand it, you know. And you know, the thing is, too is most of us metal heads at a point in life and doesn't have to be now. It was way back when we were a kid or a teenager, we were the outsiders. Yeah, we were the freaks to this, to that. But when we go to a metal show or a metal festival, there are no outsiders.

10:14 Yeah yeah, and we. Don't even have to all be exactly the same. We're just all for this family, and we have different ways that we express what we're feeling and why we're there. Yeah, exactly. And but but that that instant camaraderie though, you know. No judgment, no judgment, none of the things we experience out in the outside world, let's put it. Yeah, yeah, I agree. And you know, even with your album. Okay, what I think is cool about your album is, you know, the passage of time. I've been finding this out even more than ever recently. Okay, it's so different in different stages of life. Like, yeah, you were spot on with you know, the bad times, but then you look the back on the bad times too, and it seems like a blip in time when you're like ten twenty years ahead at a bad times, you know, right, yeah, But while you're in it, it's like it seems like it's a million years.

11:16 Yeah, eternity. But then yeah, and then and but then yeah, good and bad memories and you look back on them in all this time and it becomes like you said, just this, just this drop in the bucket, you know, and it's so weird. And I've reflected on that a lot in recent years of becoming a father, and that's that's what's latched onto it a lot for me, because you know, you constantly have people of the of the generation before that have raised their kids already that when you have little kids at home, they tell you like, oh my god, cherish this time, this is the best time. But I'm just sitting here like, oh my god, I'm exhausted all the time, and i don't know if I'm doing the right thing by my kids. And everybody's telling me latch onto this, but I feel like and then when you get to that point, they're like, it's gone in an insult.

12:05 Oh yeah, Like I can tell you for me specifically, like this is why I've been talking about it lately. It seems to me the last thirty years I blinked my eye, and it happened. Before that, it was slow as shit, okay, you know. And then even to your point with kids, Okay, I have four kids and they're all adults. While they were kids, eighteen seemed like a million years. Away, right right, And. Now eighteen is a million years away, as my oldest is forty. Now, you know, it's like, but it's a million years away in the other direction. Right right, Yeah, And then you try and think back to when they're five, and you're like, man, I barely remember that.

12:46 You know, time goes so fast, and what's wild is the older you get the faster it goes Because I was talking about this with my brother's mother, who's about to be ninety. Okay, she says, you think it goes fast at your age, you should try my age. And it's true. It's like the days just whiz by every year that you get older. It's the weirdest thing. And you know, so the whole passage of time is like it is perfect because everybody that's going to hear this music is going to have a different feel from that. And then even you know, I also like kind of from your music, trauma bonded with you because I've had several people pass away in the last few years include it.

13:39 And I don't mean just people like the closest people in my life, like the people that like were in my life most of my life that aren't now. And it's a weird trip. And I think it's great that, even if you're not doing on purpose, that you're paying amen to Ryan who passed away in twenty eighteen, because there would be no band without him. Man, it's got to be really weird after he passes to even continue the band. Yeah, yeah, it certainly is. Thank you, by the way for saying all that. Yeah, it means a lot to me because yeah, he you know, he wasn't he wasn't just a bandmate, not a colleague to me, you know what I mean. He was he was one of my best friends in life, and we had known each other since we were eleven years old, you know. So it's something that is definitely like you're saying, it's one of the people that it's not just somebody you knew that passed away, which not not you know, diminishing that for anybody in any way. It's difficult to deal with no matter what when you lose somebody, but when it's somebody that had been a part of your life for most of your life, it hits you daily for years and years and years. You know. It doesn't go away. It gets but it doesn't go away.

15:02 Yeah, and I gotta give you props for keep going on because I mean, like, I lost my best friend of life who was like a brother of me since we're thirteen years old, you know, last year. And this is the dude that I went to thousand, thank you, thousands of gigs with during the eighties, like when we were teenagers. Yeah, and lots of Shenanigans because you know, Eighties Medal in LA and then we would we would take the Greyhound bus or hitchhike up to the Bay Area. When Slayer Metallica left LA and left us, all the other bands we didn't want to go see and you know, and it's like I go and I do. I go on tour and I do radio coverage of festivals all over to US, UK and Europe. And now every time I go to a festival, it's weird to me because my bro ain't around to either be there or to share it with.

16:02 Yeah, yeah, it uh, it's it's it's it's I totally one hundred percent understand what you mean. And yeah, it's it's it's a weird thing. And and like that, and going back to to the our perception of it too, because it it's you have to change your perception of life essentially, because it's somebody that was always there and now is not and you have to you have to shift sometimes everything that you do depending on who that person is, you know, and and it'll hit you in the weirdest ways when you know you're at a festival or you know something I I've had where you know, a song comes on and I just think, oh, man, Ryan would love this. I should text him, Oh wait, exactly, yeah, like that that can't happen. And yeah, and for me, it's it's it's happened twice, not just with Ryan, but you know, my childhood best friend that I knew from eight years old, he passed away in a car accident when he was only one and so and he he was like a brother to me, you know, and so it's it's certainly between the two of them. It's it's something that I feel comes through in the stuff that I write often because I deal with it every day, you know.

17:09 Yeah, And I can't even imagine what would be like to be in a band with somebody and then they're gone and be up on stage or creating and like they're not there, but they are there in spirit, but they're not physically there. And you know, that's why I give you kudos for making creating new music. And see the way I look at as you're exactly right, you kind of have to change the way you think. You have to change your attitude because you can't change what happened, okay, right, And I am a motivational speaker, so I believe in that stuff wholeheardly, so the fact that you're writing music, that's to me the best therapy and grief counseling you could have.

17:51 And yeah, I thank you, thank you, and yeah, you know it's helpful to me. But again going back to what we were saying earlier too, and like you said in Trauma, bond with it, you know what I mean, that means the world to me because if I can take the stuff that I've experienced and put it in to a record that can help somebody else that's going through the same kind of trauma, then I want it life, you know what I mean. Like, and that proves you're a true musician, because that's how a true musician thinks. There's a difference between the musician and the person even though they don't even exist anymore, that wants to be a rock star. Yeah, you know, it is a different way of thinking because there's a different path you're taking, a different goal, and for a true musician, it is about exactly what you just said.

18:43 Yeah, yeah, and thank you. Yeah, okay it Like I said, it means a lot to me to hear that, because that's that's what I that's what I hope for with this, you know what I mean? Like like like I was saying before, it's it's always going to mean something to me. But if it's out there around the world world and connecting with and helping other people, then I'm over the moton you know. There you go, So tell everybody how they can reach out to you guys on the web, socials get the new album, check out tour dates, and most importantly, buy merch because that's the only way bands survive nowadays. There are no more rock stars. They need you to buy their merch.

19:24 Yes, yes, yes, please, it's so so helpful. You have no idea, everyone, So okay, So socials were on all the all the regular stuff Facebook, Instagram, x, Twitter, YouTube, whatever, all Just look Lunar band Official and then for music and merch go to our band campage lunarbandofficial dot bandcamp dot com. You'll find all the stuff there. There's there's you can you can buy the albums digitally as opposed to just streaming on which even that is very helpful support. But there's tons of physical merch. There's CDs, there's limited cassettes, there's vinyls, there's t shirts, beanies, all kinds of fun stuff.

20:06 I love that you have cassettes. Yeah, yeah, I love the cassettes. They're cool that even if you don't play, they're cool little collector's. Items, you know, no doubt. Like I mean, I still have my cassettes from the eighties and it's just kind of cool to have it. Like, yeah, it doesn't sound the best, but it's cool to have. Yeah, he cares, you know, Yeah, yeah, yeah, I agree, And it's you know, I I love collecting things personally, and so I like that, you know, each each album, the cassettes are like different colored shells going with the artwork, you know, like the the Idol on his purple cassettes and uh, The Illusionist is red cassettes. You know. So it's cool little collector's items.

20:47 I think I love it. I love it. Any other things you want to let the listeners know about that we haven't covered already. Yes, what one last thing is if you're in the Vancouver area, will be played at the Hyperspace Metal Festival in April April eleven. We're playing there with Glyph and Enforcer and Psycho Stake. It's gonna be a fun time. Wow. I think I'm gonna have to check that out. There was another band I interviewed yesterday that they couldn't announce yet, but they said they were playing some festival and it was okay in Canada, but they can't announce it yet, and so I'm wondering if that's the same one.

21:28 I don't I'm inclined to think no, because that one's been announced for a while. So yeah, I guess that may be true. I think I know which one it is, but I'm not going to say because I don't want to ruin it for that artist that you interviewed. Yeah, there was another one that I thought it was in my head, but I haven't mentioned that one yet, But then when yous have like, hmm, maybe I should check and see that one. So yeah, there, Well that's. This one in It's in about six weeks in Vancouver. And actually, even though Lunar has a existed for over ten years, it's always been a studio only project. With all the hardships between Ryan's death and members far away and stuff, we never have played with this band on live.

22:11 All of us are musicians in other projects. We've played and toured plenty, but this band has never played live. This festival in Vancouver will be our first live appearance ever after existing for ten years. Wow, and you know that's funny because now you answered another question. I was gonna say, Man, how come you haven't been at Aftershock since you're from Sacramento. Yeah, yeah, i'd tell MC call me. I'm ready, I'm here. There you go. Well, yeah, I do after Shock every year. It's one of the coolest festivals I think in the States at least, you know. Yeah, No, it's a fun one. And yeah, it's like twenty minutes from where I live. Yeah, and so I've been quite a few times. Actually, one year, during system of a down set, I broke four bones in my foot.

22:56 Wow, Shock, that was such a memorable set. I remember, like everybody, not just a few, every single person in the crowd sang every single song of the whole show. I have never witnessed that in my life. Okay, it's thousands of shows. Yeah, that gave me chills. It was unbelievable. Yeah, I missed most of it because it was pretty early in their set that my foot got stomped on and I couldn't stand anymore and I got wheeled out and had to go to the hospital. So it was. I saw maybe maybe two or three songs from System before that happened. Yeah, and but it was it was crazy for sure, just that the crowd was insane.

23:42 For them, Oh, no doubt about it. And uh, you know, of course last year Slayer Uh huh, you know that's a little crazy too. Yeah. I wasn't there last year. So so we'll have to see you guys at Aftershock next year in two twenty six, unless you can sneak it, you know what you could do. Don't be Frank if he listens, don't tell Danny Wimer I told you this. But okay, So there's been this band, Silly Goose, and they actually crashed Louder than Life. I think it was Loud in Life for Rockville. I couldn't remember what, but I think it was loud in Life. And they were playing in the parking lot, like they pulled up with their trailer and played in the parking lot, just like old school shit man, and Daddy Wibber himself was sitting out there just watching them instead of busting them. You know.

24:41 Yeah. The next day they played on one of the stages and they've been playing Danny Wimmer festivals since, so that's maybe that's the plan. Just show up. Maybe maybe you know what too. On a side note, if they are listening, I just saw that twenty twenty five's after Shock is on my birthday this year too, nice October three. Yeah. See, it's so weird because usually every year it's either on my birthday or close to because mine's October eleventh, it's right around my birthday, or it's always my birthday weekend right right, Yeah, except that's earlier this year too.

25:21 Yeah. I just saw it yesterday and was like mentioning, like, huh, after Shock's on my birthday this year. That's cool, you know. Nice. Well, see, then you should just do like have a birthday party in the parking lot play and you can invite Danny to come out to the park. There we go. Yeah, uh cool. Well, uh you guys rock and everybody's got to check out your music. It's badass, badass musicianship and definitely we'll hit you in the fields, which is what we need today because like, even you have this one song watch the World Change, and oh my god, that's the one thing I can say is for my bro is thank god he's not here to watch this world change. Because he would be cursing it as he was before he passed away.

26:09 That's good. I do have to correct you though. Just watch the weather change. Oh yeah, watch the weather change. Yeah I knew that, but I see that's a perfect example of what I was talking about before. You know, when you're think thinking something and it gives you meaning, that's what happens. Like, that's what immediately went into my head. And you could be to be fair too. On the last record, we had a track called turn Off the World, so you could just have been mixing the massive two of them up. Yeah. Yeah, I think we definitely need to turn off the world right now. Yeah, yeah, way, just take a break. I came up with something anyway last year that I think is the cure is basically, have a music festival for the whole world, and then we could stop hating each other and attacking each other and being asked because that doesn't happen at a music festival.

27:03 Yeah, wouldn't Wouldn't that be nice? Yeah? The dream, But yeah, it's unfortunately a far fetched dream. World is closer. I like Miss America asking for world peace, you. Know, right right? Yeah? Well you guys, I hope you rock that festival. I'm gonna have to look into that festival and I hope to see it after shock. But most importantly, everybody's got to go. Check you guys out, follow you on socials, get your music, buy your merch or they can't listen to my show. And yes, please all of it. We appreciate all of it. You check us out, hit us up on social media, all of it. We love it. Thanks well, thank you, and thanks for being on the Adventures of pipe Man.

27:46 Yes, thank you for having me. I really really had a good time. Thank you. Thank you for listening to the Adventures of pipe Man on w for CUI Radio.