I had the pleasure to talk to Afterneath’s guitarist and vocalist Cody DeGroot and bassist Joe Iaccarino. The band released their first EP “Afterneath” earlier this year. Consisting of five outstanding tracks, the record is just the beginning of a promising musical career that proves once again that Hardcore is rooted in local talent.
ARTWORK: TYLER SPRUILL
Angie: Afterneath is such a cool name. Can you tell me how you came up with the name? As well as how you guys met and formed the band.
Cody: Joe is relatively new. I started the band like six or seven months ago. A lot of the stuff on the EP is stuff I’ve recorded for years, like up to like two years. And I love shoegaze and mixing heavy with shoegaze! So, I was like, I just want to play shows. Tyler, our guitarist, and lead singer, I met him at Guitar Center when I used to work there, so by Atlantic City. And then we went through a couple of different vocalists and band members. Our old vocalist is how I met Nick, our drummer, and that’s when it kind of all started happening. That’s when everything happened really fast. Like, we got all the songs down. Went to the studio. Then Joe came along. I met him at the studio.
Joe: Yeah, we met there.
Angie: Oh, Joe, do you work there?
Joe: I have an internship at the studio.
Angie: Oh, that’s awesome. That’s very cool.
Cody: So yeah, that’s really it. I mean, it wasn’t anything too crazy. The band name is literally just a guitar pedal.
Joe: It was a guitar pedal?
Cody: Yeah. It’s a reverb pedal. Because we were thinking about so many different names and stuff, and I looked down at Tyler’s pedalboard and it said “Afterneath”. I thought it sounded cool. Everything was taken. So, we were like, “all right, well, that works!”
Joe: I didn’t even know that.
Cody: It’s just cool. I think before Joe joined we were thinking about the name Lowlight. But there was a band from Asbury’s—they are not active anymore, but they were shoegaze, and they were called Lowlight. So, we’re like, “it’s too close to home. “
Angie: Lowlight is a good name, actually.
Joe: Maybe you subconsciously knew. Maybe you saw it [the pedal name] before.
Angie: Listening to the self titled, your first EP—which congratulations. I heard a lot of influences. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I heard some Loathe and Deftones. Where do you draw inspiration for your music? Do you have any favorite artists or techniques that you hear other bands that you want to try out?
Cody: Oh, I have a lot. All right, let’s backtrack. When I first started playing, it was all pop-punk. Blink 22 was my favorite band. And I was neck deep in all that kind of music. Then I started getting into heavier stuff. A Day to Remember, top band for me of all time. And then it just started to get heavier and heavier. For a while, it was like super heavy metal core and hardcore, which I still love. But over the last couple years when I started getting like shoegaze and Loathe—their music is so good. I also love weird stuff, like Dance Gavin Dance.
Angie: Okay. That’s not weird. It’s unusual, I would say, but not weird.
Cody: And then 80s stuff, like The Cure, Depeche Mode.
Angie: It’s like goth influence is what you’re saying?
Cody: Yeah, a lot of goth. I listen to a lot of goth stuff. But. I don’t think that necessarily shows in our music. It’s more like, we literally took shoegaze elements and grunge and then combined it with hardcore. The biggest inspiration for what I was writing the EP was a lot of Split Chain, their new album motionblur. Soul Blind… Title Fight. Just stuff like that. It was the main influence.
Angie: What about you, Joe? I don’t know if you were involved in the writing of the EP.
Joe: I was there for the recording process, but not the writing process.
Cody: We’re working on some new stuff, and I think it’s definitely getting a little bit heavier. And we are all working on it together.
Angie: Since you’re contributing to the writing of new music, what are some bands that you draw inspiration from?
Joe: I have a lot of influences everywhere, but a big piece of my influence is grunge. Everybody always says Nirvana…
Angie: I was going to say Nirvana.
Joe: Yeah. I also love Soundgarden, I love Alice in Chains. I’ve recently been getting into Blind Melon. They’re not in the genre of what we play at all, but I could still draw the influence from it and just, you know, switch it up a little bit, and then it becomes what we play. But I just have influences kind of everywhere. I try to listen to as much music as possible. Every genre that I could think of, I probably listened to.
Angie: Okay, yeah, that’s fun. I wanted to know more about your writing process, who writes the lyrics, and do you write your own riffs, and your own lyrics?
Cody: For the EP, I wrote everything, and then we redid the drums, and me and Tyler redid some of the lead parts, but the bass of the whole song, the rhythm and everything is just something I had before. And it’s still sort of like that, but I’m trying to get everyone involved because, when I recorded the EP, I didn’t really have anyone there to write with me until afterwards. Now I’m trying to, you know, get Joe and Tyler and Nick to do some crazier drum parts and stuff like that.
Angie: What about the music part, not just the lyrics? Did you write the music part as well?
Cody: I wrote the music. I don’t really do lyrics. Tyler does the lyrics. I wrote, like little bits and pieces. Even for the EP, we didn’t even have any lyrics. We had very little. We just went and wrote it all in the studio. We were running out of time. I’m pretty happy with how it came out.
Angie: Yeah, it came out great. When I first heard you guys perform, I thought “wow, these lyrics are really good. I wonder who is the one that writes them.”
Cody: A lot of them don’t really mean anything.
Angie: But it’s okay. It doesn’t have to mean anything. Art is supposed to be ambiguous.
Cody: I guess you just interpret it as you go. It doesn’t really have to mean anything. Actually, the only one that I think really had meaning was Laika because it was—I mean, it’s about a dog.
Angie: Yeah, yeah, the space dog. I know! When I heard about it, I was like, “I need to talk to these guys right now.”
Cody: Yeah, I love all that kind of stuff, but it’s about her. It can also be about losing someone that you love. So, it has a double meaning. But other than that, I mean, none of them really have a crazy meaning, which is just the stuff we wrote in the studio. We were just like “Yeah. It just sounds cool. Let’s go with it.” I want to take more time on this set of songs to really get the lyrics good and make it more meaningful, I think.
ARTWORK: TYLER SPRUILL
Angie: Would you ever do a concept album? Like, something about a specific thing—say grief?
Cody: I don’t know. I feel like for me, the reason why I don’t write lyrics is because that’s all I write about is really sad stuff.
Angie: That’s the magic of music. That’s how people relate to you.
Cody: Yeah, I know, I know. And it’s cool, but most of the stuff I listen to is sad. But I just feel like I’m not the most creative with lyrics, so I don’t really do too much about that. Like, I’ll come up with some stuff, but Tyler’s the mastermind. Hence why he’s the lead vocalist.
Angie: How long have you guys been around now?
Cody: Six or seven months.
Angie: You’re relatively new and just starting to make a name for yourselves. So, what’s your favorite place that you have played at and what’s a place that you would love to play at?
Cody: We only played two shows. The first one was at Crossroads in Garwood. That was fun. That was our first show.
Joe: That was a great show. We played with Nodding Off.
Angie: I love Nodding Off!
Cody: That was fun. And then the other one was at the Asbury Park Brewery. That was cool. The sound wasn’t great. I feel like, as a whole, we played better. We played better, for sure. But the sound wasn’t great.
Angie: Was it the venue or was it you?
Cody: No, literally just like the speakers.
Angie: The speakers? Yeah, I’ve heard complaints.
Cody: Yeah, because at Crossroads everything sounded really good. The other one, I wasn’t totally happy with, but, you know, yeah. I want to play in Philly. I really want to get in the Philly scene. Okay. I would love to play in Underground Arts in Philly or just an independent Philly venue. I love the scene out there. I go to a lot of shows there.
Angie: I want to get into the Philly scene as well. What about you, Joe? Do you have any places where you’d like to play?
Joe: I would play anywhere. I really—I just want to play as much as possible, and I love the feeling of playing live. Yeah. Probably someone’s backyard. I don’t care. Backyard, basement, living room. Doesn’t matter. Baby shower, weddings.
Angie: What’s your favorite song from the EP? And what’s the song that you were most excited for people to hear? And why?
Cody: I think it’s probably Laika.
Joe: That’s what I was going to say, too.
Cody: Because it’s fun to play, and I feel like the lyrics really hit. And, even if you don’t know what it’s about, I feel like it still hits you emotionally. Yeah. I kind of regret making it so short. It’s only like two minutes long. But that’s definitely my favorite.
Joe: I think from being in the studio—I think the first song that we worked on was Stare. And I remember when Cody went up to do the screams. It was the first time I had heard him scream like that. And there was a part where it all turns to gray and…
Cody: That’s in Drown.
Joe: Oh, that’s in Drown. Hahahaha. Yeah…. But I was excited for both Drown and Stare because they were both the harder songs of the album. But I feel like it was just a good showcase of what we were about.
Cody: Yeah, and I didn’t know I could scream. I swear to God, like, I went into the studio. I, you know, practiced at home, and then they were like, “yeah, like, let’s do some screaming parts.” And I was like, “all right, I’ll try it.” And then that’s it. We did it. It happened. But yeah, I think Laika is one of my favorites, just because of the emotional connection I have with it.
Angie: Would you say that’s your favorite to perform as well?
Cody: I think so. Yeah. I don’t have to sing or scream on it. I can just play. I love just getting into it. Playing—especially in this genre, it’s a lot to sing and play, ’cause you got a bunch of pedals, you gotta tiptoe on, and then, you know, be like, “Oh, I gotta remember to sing here and turn this off here.” It’s all math.
Angie: And what about you, Joe? Would you say those are your favorite songs to perform?
Joe: Yeah, but I think that out of all of them Falling Through is probably one of my favourites. Just because it’s different from the rest of the songs. It makes me want to dance.
Angie: So, um about the new music that you’re recording, would you say it falls under the same category as the music that you have out right now? Are you exploring any other genres?
Cody: So, one of the songs takes a lot of inspiration from Split Chain, that nu-metal/grunge/shoegaze mix. I really love that sound. The other song, I want to say it sounds a lot like the EP, but maybe there’s some heavier parts, there’s some more experimental parts. But definitely in the same umbrella of the stuff that we have out now. Specifically, Laika, I feel like it sounds like, and maybe Stare.
Angie: For the music that you’re writing right now, I know that the EP just came out. But would you say you want to expand the EP and turn it into a full album? Or is this going to be a new EP?
Cody: It’s going to be just an EP, I think. Eventually I want to take maybe one song out of the EP and put it on a full album—in the future. But I really like the new recordings, and I want to take our time on it.
Joe: Some collaborations maybe.
Cody: Yeah, like literally just sitting in a room for like, eight hours and see what happens.
Angie: What about music videos? I saw the one for your single Stare. Are you planning on releasing any more music videos for this era?
Cody: I don’t think so. At least not for this era. For the next EP—It’s two songs. I’m just going to say that It’s gonna be just a two song EP! But I don’t think we’re gonna do music videos. If we do, it’s going to be something that we record ourselves or a live video. Just because it costs a lot of money. And it’s hard to get everyone in the same room at the same time.
Angie: When you guys played at the Asbury Brewery, it kind of felt like guys were not just coworkers, but friends as well. You had this chemistry. It seemed like you were having so much fun. How do you think that ties into your work?
Cody: I think it’s important to just be yourself and not worry about what everyone else is gonna think. Specifically in a band situation. I should be able to, like, fuck around with Joe—you know, everyone kind of rips on Joe. He’s a new guy. And me and Tyler, we’ve been friends for a couple years. I mean, Joe, we met like three, four months ago. Nick, I met like six months ago. I feel like Nick, Tyler and I—before Joe joined—we just worked together. It was all business. It was all music. Now we’re starting to play more shows, and we are opening up more.
Joe: It’s important to have fun.
Angie: Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me. It was a pleasure. Congratulations again on your EP Afterneath, and I hope I can catch another one of your shows soon!