Louisiana’s Capra blew the door off the heavy music scene with 2021’s In Transmission, a dangerous and exciting take on metallic hardcore.
Lead single “The Locust Preacher” hit like a cinder block to the chest, putting fans of bands like Everytime I Die and Converge at full attention. It introduced Tyler Harper's chaotic and disorienting brand of guitar as well as frontwoman Crow Lotus’s incendiary voice, vicious enough to shred the fabric of reality. The southern swamps of Louisiana color their music with just enough grime and nastiness to set them apart.
Now, the Lafayette quintet are ready to take their next step with Errors, showcasing not just their growth as musicians and songwriters but also as individuals trying to navigate an increasingly complex world.
“What this album was about for me,” Lotus said, “was allowing myself to be angry at people who've hurt me, rather than blaming myself for everything or allowing myself to be sad about a situation rather than just trying to be strong all the time.
“I think there's something to be said about being able to do that,” she continued. “Allow yourself to be angry sometimes. Allow yourself to feel things. If you don't it's going to come up at some point at an inopportune time and it's not going to be your choice. So it's better to just allow yourself to feel things on your own schedule.”
Guitarist Tyler Harper echoes her words. Errors is about letting yourself feel.
“I think since COVID I've become more emotionally aware of how I'm feeling,” he said. “That was always something I struggled with when I was younger. I had anger issues, and in the past addiction issues and stuff like that. So I never really knew how to feel anything. It was always like I was trying to escape that feeling.
“Now, guitar has just become that way for me. So when I write, all the songs are different because I'm feeling different, feeling different moods and I'm allowing that to be released through just frequencies and sound.”
When a band gains a ton of attention on their debut, it sets a nearly impossible set of circumstances for its follow up. Does the band give its audience more of the same, potentially blunting the impact of the record? Or do they try to tweak and evolve with the risk of alienating the fans that got them to where they are?
“I always liked when bands do something different on the next album,” Harper said. “I think it was relatively easy to do on Errors rather than In Transmission, because when I think about it, a lot of In Transmission was written before COVID. So after that, the whole world changed and we had to think differently and do things differently. Then there's just been a lot of changes in my personal life, and I know for Crow as well. Getting out of toxic relationships or knowing who your true friends are and meeting people that actually care about what you're doing. So it's just one of those things where it was a different vibe, for sure.”
Harper’s mind thrives in chaos, which is why so many songs on In Transmission have no repeated parts. While there are still plenty of insane and chaotic riffs throughout Errors – ones that he still has to practice in order to play live – there’s also more simplicity this time around, which was a challenge.
“[Loser] was too simple for me,” he said of the album's fifth track. “For a long time I didn’t like it. It’s just so straightforward that my chaotic brain didn’t accept that it was just that simple. Now I love this song.”
Playing so many live shows helped inform the band what they could and needed to do better. Harper recalls plenty of times people were just staring at them on stage because the guitar parts and music was so all over the place it would take them a minute to really get into the music.
“For songs that are more simplistic, they can hear it and they can groove with it and when [a riff] comes back they’re excited to hear that part again. I think that feeling is really cool.”
On the lyrical end, Lotus approached Errors with more confidence than the debut because she wasn’t as concerned with people discovering every personal detail about her.
“I feel like I expected people to hear the songs or look at the lyrics and know exactly what I was talking about and basically just see right through me, but it's really not the case,” she said. “I mean, even if they do it's not a big deal, but for the most part people are just able to relate their own life experiences to it. They're not like, ‘Oh, so this is what's going on specifically in your life.’
“I guess I was so afraid that I’d just be putting all my business out there, but it's really not the case. So for this album, I was just like, I'm just gonna write what I want to write and then I'm not going to constantly be worried about how it's going to be perceived. I'm just going to write it in a way that I know that I'm going to be happy about it or that I'm going to like being able to perform for years and years.”
They’ve been getting their chance to perform on stages across the US and Europe. On top of their already relentless touring schedule, they joined fellow Louisianians EYEHATEGOD on the road as well as supporting Killswitch Engage on a handful of dates in April.
Capra even hit Europe for the first time in August, floored that people from across the world would care enough to come to a show.
But the biggest moment of 2023 is set to come on November 4, 2023 when they’ll open the fourth annual Dia De Los Deftones festival at San Diego’s PetCo Park, with a lineup that Knocked Loose, 100 Gecs, Pinback, Pieri, Rile and, of course, Deftones. It’s an opportunity they almost couldn’t imagine.
“I didn't allow myself to get my hopes up until [the booking] was confirmed because I knew that if I was excited about it and then it just ended up falling through… I just cannot handle that heartbreak,” Lotus said. “So I fully just clocked out of it mentally.”
But according to Tyler, they shouldn’t have worried. Their fate was written in the cosmos and revealed to him by a psychic in Salem, Massachusetts during a vacation with his girlfriend.
“Right off the bat she knew I played guitar and music and had an album come out, and I was like, ‘This is kind of crazy.’ Then she was like, ‘This year, you're gonna play a show with a very big band’ or something. She said something along those lines.
“Literally, within 12 hours we got an email from Deftones about playing this show. I was just like, ‘What is going on?’ So we made a bunch of jokes about like, ‘My psychic says big things are coming,’” he said with a cheeky grin. “But it's very surreal. I never thought it'd be asked by Deftones to play this festival.
Not only are they playing the festival, but the eclectic nature of the festival means they’ll mix it up with artists they might not otherwise play with.
“I think it's really, really cool that they incorporate people from different genres into this,” Lotus said. “I think that it's so important for people to be exposed to a variety of things, you know? One of the acts that I'm really excited about is a performer called Doechii on it. She's really cool, I'm just like, wow, I'd never in my life – if you told me I was going to share a stage with her – would have ever thought that, that's insane!”
Harper isn’t one to stop and smell the roses. He’s always thinking five steps ahead of what the band could or should be doing next. But the reception to Capra, the opportunities they’ve earned, and the ability for a dude from Louisiana to play crazy music to people all over the world resonate deeply.
Errors is another step forward for a band that isn't done learning about themselves and evolving. Since their first set of EP’s, they’ve crossed chasms of emotions to try and understand their feelings so people who have felt, will feel or are feeling similar can be understood themselves.
“I say it every interview,” Harper said, “but the point of this band was to have people to feel that way, where they can release whatever is inside of them and not to bottle it up, like [Crow] was saying. Then that way we can relate on a certain level, like just between band and listener, and it's a release for everyone else as well.”
The band are different people than when they started this band, which Lotus appreciates every day.
“I hope that I continue to grow for the rest of my life,” she said. “Just looking back since the time that we recorded the last album, it's like night and day. Now, I think I'm in a place where I can just appreciate what I was able to create at the time and the person that I was at the time. So though I feel that I have grown a lot, I'm still able to look back and say, ‘I like what I've done, and I'm happy that I was a part of it.’”
Errors by Capra is now available everywhere via Metal Blade Records / Blacklight Media. Get the album - HERE
