Interview with Eddie Veliz of Kyng

by JJ Ulizio

After a long and sweaty night on the Clutch tour, after the bands had finished and the crowds had dispersed, after the staff at Pittsburgh’s Stage AE began cleaning up, I had a opportunity to speak to the vocalist/guitarist of the Los Angeles, California based stoner metal band Kyng.
Kyng is a blend of a thunderous rhythm section with thick guitar riffs, melodic vocals and harmonies reminiscent of 70’s rock that comes across without seeming dated. A live force to be reckoned with for sure. They had no problems standing tall next to some of the rock and metal legends they played with that night.

Eddie Veliz: Hey man how are ya?

JJ Ulizio: Not bad, and yourself?

EV: I’m fucking dandy!

JJ: So, this is the beginning on the tour. I see you guys have only done a couple of dates so far?

EV: It’s funny because its probably only like our third or fourth show, but a couple of shows got cancelled, some festivals got rained out, so I think it’s our second show, but it should have been our third.

JJ: How many shows have you played here in Pittsburgh, have you been here a lot in the past?

EV: We’ve been here a handful of times. Apparently I forgot that I’ve played at this place. I think we’ve played here twice, this will be our third. We also played at another venue that’s not to far away from here. We had some girl throw a bra up on stage.

JJ: That’s always fun

EV: No it wasn’t. Ha-ha, I do love Pittsburgh.

JJ: What can you tell us about the new album you have coming out?

EV: This new album is absolutely phenomenal. It’s fucking amazing. This new record is so outstanding. I think we have done some of our best work in this one. We are ready to push and go above and beyond and be as successful as we should be.

JJ: How long did it take you guys to record it and put it all together?

EV: To record it, it was kind of a different process; it was a little more in depth than we would do. We would normally go into the studio and just go right through it, it would normally take us two to three weeks, maybe a month. That’s including mix down, and mastering. This was a whole different process. We worked with Machine, he produced the album, and they guy was kind of a “Mad Hatter” if you will.

JJ: I’ve heard that about him.

EV: He took a lot of time to get things dialed in as best as possible. We would get there and we would be hitting some riffs and we would get 30 seconds in and he would be like “NOPE! DO IT AGAIN! And change the fucking tone.” So we would change tones in between the riffs, and you can hear it on the album, if you’re a tone geek, you can hear the little tweaks that he was definitely getting into. The “Mad Hatter” he’s really good. It took about two months with mix down and going back and forth. Once we started to do mixing and mastering, we were out of Texas, we were back home. You know because we were there for like two months. So once we got back home we had to go back and forth with him through emails, and that was just a pain in my rectum! But we got it done and in sounds fucking phenomenal.

JJ: One thing I wanted to ask you guys about was, well, when I first heard you guys it was on Liquid Metal on Sirius XM.

EV: That’s family.

JJ: I hear a lot of great things about Jose, I hope to meet him someday.

EV: He’s the best.

JJ: One thing I heard was that you guys have been strongly endorsed by James Hetfield of Metallica.

EV: Yeah so I hear, yeah yeah!

JJ: …and the story that I hear, or at least was circulating around the web was that he handpicked you guys for the Orion Music Festival. How did that all come about?

EV: I think what happened was he asked a couple of his friends for help. Like “hey, who do you guys think we should get on this Orion Fest?” So he asked a couple of different dudes and then he asked Jose and Jose said “Kyng!” you know, first one on top. His daughter Mya also wrote a list of bands and was like Slayer, and then Pantera, and then it was Kyng! And it was all cute and written out and awesome. So she sent that to him. It was great because Hetfield‘s response was like “Already have them, they’re already on, who else?” I was like WOAH!!! That just blew our minds. I think we were in Canada when we got the word that we were going to do that. We were all just blown away when we got the email, we were running around through the hallways trying to find each other. We were so excited like “Hetfield picked us for Orion, it’s going to be great! We’re going to do it!” I was just amazing. It was the first Orion Fest, I think there was two. You can’t beat that. We got to play with Metallica, fuck man, come on.

JJ: Really yeah, who doesn’t at least respect Metallica in this day and age.

EV: Seriously.

JJ: In the past several years festivals seem to have become more of a thing than they ever were when I first got into the music scene, how would you say playing a festival is different than say playing on a tour like this?

EV: Festivals are one offs, we’re actually playing one tomorrow. I kind of see them like, you know, you ever see those episodes of Scooby Doo where Batman would show up or like The Harlem Globe Trotters would show up. That’s what festivals are kinda like. You just go to this place where you see all these dudes from bands that you either know or you don’t know. It becomes kinda like a family reunion of sorts. You meet and hang out and catch up with a lot of friends, it doesn’t matter if it’s the dudes who were working the sound or the dudes in the band. Its really cool, you get to hang out, and hug, there is a lot of hugs going around. For festivals I think the music Is kinda secondary. You get there and you’re like “Oh, I’m going to see my buddy Kyle from Hellyeah, and you go say hi and just catch up. Then you play your show and it’s just like a blur. You just want to get it out of the way to go and have a good time, kinda like a backyard barbecue of sorts. To finish the question, to do something like this, this with these types of tours when you are on a package like this, and a great one too, you got Clutch, Zakk Sabbath, & Kyng, This is where you build those bonds, lucky for us we already know Clutch, they’re family to us. We’ve toured with Black Label Society so, you know, brother Zakk, or father Zakk if you will. Joey Castillo (of Zakk Sabbath) we had never met, but he’s really cool. So you know we started building those bonds, he’s played with Queens of the Stone Age, Danzig, & BL’AST! Then you have Blasko who plays with Rob Zombie & Ozzy. These long stints with these bands is where you build that family so next time you see them you’re like “Whats up bro! How you been?!”

JJ: What did you think of the kids from School of Rock? Did you catch any of their set?

EV: We did yeah, we were watching them back there, I was singing along to them with some Iron Maiden. That was awesome, very cool, it’s always cool to have kids who are into rock and metal like that. Because they’re a dying breed you know? Its really hard to find kids who are into like Sabbath, Iron Maiden, and they even played a Clutch song and Neil even came out to sing it with them. Most kids are into Justin Bieber or whatever the hot flavor of the month is, or whatever band Disneyland is putting out or whatever band Nickelodeon is pushing. Its cool to see kids under the age of 15 just destroying and wanting to rock.

JJ: That’s all I got, I don’t want to keep you too much longer. But before we go do you have anything you want to plug or want to say?

EV: The new album is out on October 7^th, so go get it, Its going to be the best album we’ve ever done. Go to the website http://kyngband.com we got merch. and all that other cool shit so tell all your friends Breathe in the Water is out October 7^th, Please buy it.

About Author

JJ Ulizio

JJ has been a contributing writer and huge asset to Empire and Empire Extreme since the very begining. He is always digging for new bands and has a true heart and desire to see the bands grow and succeed.

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