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While Lee Artavia and Jake Snyder of IVEBEENSHOT play some of the most abrasive death/grind/metal in the county, they really just want people to hear their music.
OC Weekly: You've got pretty unique song titles like "Gloryhole" and "Do Hookers Stand in the Rain?" but it's impossible to tell what you're actually singing. Do the titles and lyrics have any relation?
Lee: Pretty much all of the song titles are inside jokes. We're not big fans of naming our songs typical death metal things like "Festering Dying Fetus" or things like that. The lyrics usually don't have anything to do with the titles.
Did it take work to be able to do the grindcore/death metal growling?
Lee: I used to really suck at screaming, but I kept at it. It took me a solid year to master it.
Is it tough being a death/grind band from Orange County?
Lee: We really don't play Orange Couny. At all. Like ever. We've been around about two or three years and we've played in Orange County about two or three times. We mainly play in LA and Riverside, the Inland Empire—a lot of kids come to our shows out there.
Jake: They like grind out there.
Is there something about the Inland Empire that makes death metal and grindcore have a bigger appeal?
Lee: There seem to be a lot more metalheads out there. Here in Orange County, they're into the indie/emo/poppy stuff.
Jake: Pretty much the opposite of what we play.
Lee: Yeah. We want kids to know that there's more extreme, intense stuff than what everybody's listening to nowadays. But it's hard in Orange County unless you want to sell 50 tickets to play on a Thursday night—pretty much a pay-to-play kind of thing. We don't do that.
How did the band start?
Lee: Me and our guitar player Nick Scaccia wanted to start a band, so we asked Jake if he wanted to play drums. He had never touched drums in his entire life. I never screamed in my life either, so we played together for a whole year before releasing a demo. We've all been friends since seventh grade. We all graduated from Cypress High School in 2001. We started in Cypress and we're still here.
Do you know of any other Cypress bands?
Lee:There's a straight-edge hardcore band called Pillar of Fate that's from Cypress. They're buddies of ours, but what they play is pretty different from what we play.
Who are your favorite local bands?
Lee: There's a band called Cryptic Gallbladder Splatter and they're from La Palma and Cypress. Apparently Phobia is from Orange County and they're a pretty big band. Oh, we do actually have our first Orange County show in a year coming up at a bar in Fullerton.
Is it strange playing grindcore at ?bar shows?
Jake: It's really weird, especially with the bar locals. They really hate grindcore.
Lee: All the locals run out. We've been kicked out of a bar because all the locals left two songs into it.
Jake: But bars are definitely fun because we like to party and drink.
IVEBEENSHOT WITH THE TRIGGER ASSEMBLY AND KNIFEMILL DISINTEGRATOR AT BIG'S BAR & GRILL, 645 S. STATE COLLEGE BLVD., FULLERTON, (714) 526-8481. FRI., 7 P.M. CALL FOR COVER. 21+. VISIT WWW.MYSPACE.COM/IVEBEENSHOT FOR MORE INFORMATION.
