and he ’ d go out into the live room and tweak the amps . And then he ’ d come back into the control room and we would listen to it and make changes , if needed , based on what we all heard .
What was your pedal setup like for this record ? Teranishi : Well , I just changed up my whole pedal scenario . On this last record , I didn ’ t just walk in with my pedalboard and set up for recording . Instead , we had a mountain of pedals sitting in the control room , and Eric was really into fiddling with them . However , most of the distortion came from running my AC30 really hot — I ’ m a fan of tube distortion . I did subtly use my JHS Pulp ’ N ’ Peel compressor in front of the AC30 . I also used a JHS overdrive for stuff that I wanted to boost , and for most of the cleaner parts , I just rolled back the volume . Kensrue : For a long time , I was getting all of my gain by driving my amp really hard , and then backing it off for clean tones , but I could never quite clean it up as much as I wanted . Then I realized you could have the best of both worlds by using overdrives to push the tubes . So now I ’ m basically using two amps that are just on the edge of breaking with stacked overdrives so the amps feel and sound really lively . I ’ m actually trying these Mojo Hand FX Rook Overdrives to get my baseline sound . They constitute my middle tone , and then I ’ m boosting up or dropping down from there . Mojo Hand is actually doing a small run of custom artwork Rooks for me that should be available soon . Those Rooks work really well for running into other pedals and I have one going into the Walrus Audio Harvester for the next step of gain . And I didn ’ t think I was going to land here , but my last pedal in that chain is a Walrus Audio Iron Horse distortion as the last piece on my amp plate . I keep it set with the distortion knob almost off because it ’ s got a really nice , tight low end that I haven ’ t had in a long time . So , the tonal characteristics are not really shifting , the Iron Horse is just firming things up and giving it a little extra punch .
Right now I ’ m looking at it like this : I want to have five levels of sounds . I consider my Rook as about three or in the middle , and if I want to come down from there , I subtract volume going into it . If I want to go up , I add the Harvester and then , I add the Iron Horse on top of that . I have a pretty complicated board that runs with a MIDI controller , and one of the pedals on my board that I use like a Swiss Army Knife is a Line 6 M5 . It has the ability to create volume presets that I have set to 75 percent , 55 percent , and a 35 percent setting of my total input volume . And so , I ' ll just cut the input into the drive pedals because I feel like rolling off the guitar ’ s volume knob muddies the tone .
Teppei uses a M5 live because there are a couple of random parts that would otherwise require a bunch of different pedals . The M5 streamlines this for both of us . I ’ m using the Liquid Foot controller — it ’ s a really cool system — because I ’ m singing and playing . Using MIDI means I don ’ t have to dance around the board . I ’ ve been using it for the past year now and I feel like I ’ ve finally got the hang of it . I ’ m thinking of redesigning my setup right now to simplify things even more .
Were there any wacky effects that you never thought you would see yourself using that appeared on this record ? Teranishi : Yeah , definitely . There was a lot of chorus on this record , which we never used before . It came from the Roland Jazz Chorus . Eric had a bunch of really weird pedals , and a lot of them I wasn ’ t familiar with . Dustin has an Electro-Harmonix POG that we actually used a lot , too . It ’ s cool because you can use it pretty subtly . For example , if you want a little something more on a lead , you just sneak in a little bit of the higher octave and it sounds great . I ’ ve never really used one of those before , and I thought it was a cool pedal . Kensrue : The Walrus Audio Julia is a newer chorus / vibrato pedal that sounds killer and has lots of different sounds that are all really usable . Instead of just turning either chorus or vibrato on , it has a blend control . It ’ s kind of shocking how many sounds you can get out of it .
Songs like “ Death from Above ,” “ Whistleblower ,” and “ Blood on the Sand ” are very politically charged . Given the current state of affairs , do you think music can shift the political zeitgeist ? Kensrue : I believe everything can change . The way in which people react to music is unique . It has a lot of potential to change us on an individual level , and it ’ s individuals who are going to change society .
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