Words by Maddy Howell / Photo by Nick Karp 

Most bands would love to believe that there is no other band on the planet quite like theirs, but for The Callous Daoboys – it’s an undeniable fact.

Architects of chaos, describing the sounds constructed by the free-spirited Atlanta, Georgia collective is an almost impossible task. Mixing up a base of extreme metal fury with nu-metal flourishes, math-rock touches, suave jazz twists, pop melodies and indulgent prog into an explosively unique sonic cocktail, they’ve spent the last few years obliterating the limits of what’s possible in the heavy music realm.

With 2022 album Celebrity Therapist delivering on their polarising mission statement, confusing and delighting the scene in equal measure, they’ve become known for their ability to completely scramble brains – and on album three they’re taking it to a whole new level.

Challenging yet gleefully playful, I Don’t Want To See You In Heaven is a declaration of complete mayhem. Swerving in a new direction every time you think you’ve grasped where it’s heading, it’s the kind of unrestrained frenzy many artists strive to command, but few manage to effectively deliver. Its chaos intricately crafted and bound by melody, each one of its songs is a slab of sheer ecstasy. Proving that innovation is far from dead, it’s the kind of record that proclaims that the sky isn’t the limit as it blasts fearlessly into the stratosphere.

Ushering in a new era and standing on the verge of something huge, as The Callous Daoboys prepare to unleash their third studio album on the world, we sat down with vocalist Carson Pace to delve into their esoteric yet boundless vision.

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When we look at how The Callous Daoboys has evolved over the last few years, it feels as though you have found a distinct sound, but that sound is never set in stone. Going into this project, how much of your vision was about challenging people with your art?

Pace - That's a good question. I think that I always go into every album, or even every song, with the goal of challenging myself. In turn, I think that challenges the listener. I'm not a musical genius, I don't know dick about theory, and I have no ear training. I could maybe tell you what a perfect fourth interval is, but other than that, I’ve got nothing for you when it comes to stuff like that.

As far as challenging the listener goes, I think it just happens accidentally. That’s been the goal from the start, and it will continue to be the goal. It happened a lot on this new album, but I never set a goal to write a pop song or a 12-minute prog song. It was more like, ‘How do I take what I've started with and make it the best possible piece of art?’

 

With the discussion that Celebrity Therapist and its following EP God Smiles Upon The Callous Daoboys sparked within the scene, you set a real bar for yourself going into this record. Was there a feeling of pressure as you approached it?

Pace - Of course. I think anybody who says that they don't have the weight of expectations on them is lying or is just so enlightened that I can't possibly comprehend it. We're lucky in that sense though, because people are still discovering us. We're a weird band, and sometimes it takes people multiple listens, multiple albums, or multiple times seeing us live to understand it. 

We haven't really had the record yet. We've had good records, but I think this is the one. In fact, I know that this is the one. We haven't had to follow up a big one yet though, and the God Smiles EP was so different from Celebrity Therapist. I was worried about whether people were going to be on board with it being so different, and it’s the same with this one. I feel like we are scaling upwards, but inevitably there are going to be people that rank the older stuff higher than this. Personally, I think this is our best, and I'm super proud of it. If people don't get it immediately, I’m confident that they eventually will.

Going into this with the idea of creating your biggest statement yet, how did working with producer Dom Maduri impact the process? 

Pace - I’m so glad you asked about that, because I love talking about Dom. He’s my best friend, and the way that it came together was so organic. Even when we were talking to other people, we always kind of knew it was Dom. It’s like when you’ve got a couple of hot girls asking you to prom, but there's that other one that you really want to say yes.

Dom and I don't think the same way at all. The way we write music is super different, and even the way we listen to music is different, but we have this unspoken connection that happens when you've been friends with someone for ten years. Dom knows what I actually want. I'll do something, and he'll be like, ‘You don't want to do that’... And he’s always right. It’s that brutal honesty you get with friends. He'd be like, ‘That's good, but it's not good enough, and you know that it's not good enough’. He'd be correct about it all, and the name of the game with us doing the record together was that it was never a case of, ‘Oh, that’s good enough’.

We would never take something mediocre. We've worked with producers before who have been like, ‘Yeah, that was good’. Dom never gave me that, and we would work until he was able to say, ‘That's fucking fantastic’. He made it special just by being there, and it would be a completely different record without him. We work so well together as friends and collaborators, and he's able to tame my mind whilst also pushing me into directions that I can be afraid of. He pushes me to sound the best I've ever sounded, and he's so good at his job. 

We came up in our scene together, and when he met us, we were just kids playing around with stupid bullshit. We didn't have any good songs, and we had no idea what we were doing. He was also the youngest guy working out of the studio that he was working out of at that time, and over the years we've been able to work on our craft separately and then come back together. That's truly what makes this special, we are finally good enough to work with each other.

There’s a comfortability that comes with working in an environment like that, and that allows you to explore and embrace so many different parts of your sound. Heaviness and chaos are core elements of The Callous Daoboys, but the likes of Two-Headed Trout and Lemon lean further into your pop influences than ever before. Where does that love of melody come from for you?

Pace - The words that I've been living by for the last five years are, ‘I don't have any guilty pleasures’. As much as I like underground mathcore and metalcore, I love pop music and pop rock too. The good stuff is often not the popular stuff, but I love diving into old records and stuff like that. I'm a big fan of Sting’s solo work, as well as 90s R&B like Brian McKnight, D'Angelo and Jodeci. I’ll probably never be able to sing shit like that, but that infectious melody is there. If you can write a good melody and people can sing it back to you, that's the most magical part of music.

When it comes to melody, I think that our worlds can coexist. We can have the heaviest breakdown you've ever heard, but we can also have a super catchy chorus in the middle of it. I love that about our band, and that's something that I keep wanting to explore and find new ways to combine the two. Honestly though, it feels like we tried every possible way on this record. I’ve got to start innovating now for whatever we do next!

 

When we look at how this band has evolved, your clean vocals are something that have come an extremely long way. As a musician, how important is the idea of pushing yourself and your abilities? 

Pace - I think I have to be like that, because I'm so lucky to be here. Every day on tour, particularly the ones we did recently with Chiodos and with Silverstein and Thursday, I'll just look around and think, ‘I'm sharing a green room with Thursday… That's absurd’. I wrote these songs in a basement with no windows, and here I am playing them across the world with some of my favourite bands. I always feel that imposter syndrome, but it's a grateful imposter syndrome. I'm so lucky to be here, and I don't think I'm the best singer in the world, but I want to strive to always get better.

I always want to get better at songwriting, singing, screaming and guitar, and I always want to be the best. There's only a ceiling if you put it there, and if you write the same song over and over, you're never going to get better at what you do. I'm never going to half-ass anything for this band, or for any other band. I don't see myself as somebody with a ceiling, and I'm just going to keep living that delusion. Delusion has gotten me this far, so at that point, is it really delusion? 

A great example of that is Country Song In Reverse, because ending a record on a 12-minute-long prog-country song is bold as hell. Is it exciting to prove to yourself that not only can you do things like that, but that it can exist in the same realm as songs like Lemon and Two Headed Trout?

Pace - It's crazy. It feels like I'm sitting on a royal flush. All of the other cards in the poker game have been presented, and I've had a royal flush since the beginning of the hand. At the same time though, it also feels like I have a bomb. Maybe it’ll explode and no one will like it!

It’s the song that I'm most excited for people to hear though, and the creation of it was so fulfilling. There was no point where I thought I should cut it down, and every time I added something new it felt as though it just had to be there. I think that the rest of the band not being skeptical about it was what drove me there, but I kept having these internal battles. I would be like, ‘Is no one saying anything to me about it because they’ve just accepted that I'm not gonna allow it to get cut? Are they just doing this to appease me?’ When it was finished though, everyone thought it was amazing. 

Honestly, it fought us. We tried to load the individual audio tracks from my laptop, and it just wouldn't open the file because it was too big. The song is also in B standard, which is really low. We didn't have a guitar that could fully handle it, so we had to go back and re-record some of the guitars three times. That song fought us to hell and back, but when it was finally done it was like, ‘Holy shit, this might be the best song on the record’. 

For any artist there’s always the danger of overthinking those moments, of analysing your instincts and intentions so deeply that you start to lose the magic. When it comes to The Callous Daoboys, how have you managed that balance between seriousness and silliness?

Pace - It was hard in the beginning to figure out the silliness, because our original drummer and bassist definitely thought they were joining a joke band. I remember a specific instance where we were practising a song, and our drummer asked if I had the lyrics. She asked what they were about, and I explained that it was about communism and time travel, or something like that. She was like, ‘I thought we were writing joke songs about cowboys’. She was so bummed!

We definitely struggled with it in the beginning of the band, but now we've gotten to a point where even when we do something silly there’s this undertone of melancholy. We’re laughing, but it can be emotional at the same time. We’ve also been able to inject our humour into our merch, our live set, and how we are as a public facing band, so the art has been able to get a little more serious. 

A good example of that is at the beginning of Idiot Temptation Force. I scream ‘ugg ugga boo ugga boo boo ugga’, which is funny, but it’s something my great grandfather used to say when he would answer the phone. He was the closest thing I had to another artist in the family, as he was a preacher. Not a fire and brimstone preacher, just an overall good dude. He was the closest thing I had to another performer in the family, and that was a way of immortalising him and honouring his legacy. It’s a goofy, ridiculous thing to do, but it's not about that, it's what it means to me. I'm perfectly fine with people thinking it's silly though.

There’s a big difference between tracking songs for a record and performing them live, and what’s interesting about the way that The Callous Daoboys has evolved is that it almost feels like the music has changed to fit the energy of the live show. It’s a little bit backward in some ways…

Pace - I don't think I've ever heard that observation before, but I definitely agree with it. We do take the live show into account when we're writing, and a lot of that is about seeing what works and what doesn't work. A great example of what doesn't work is a song on Celebrity Therapist called The Elephant Man In The Room. It was one of the first songs we wrote for the record, and we genuinely thought it was going to be our biggest song. We talked about that so much, but it’s the least streamed song on the record. Every time we've played it live; the crowd just stares at us. 

When we were writing for this record it was like, ‘Well, hang on… Is this another Elephant Man?’ We had to make sure that each song had a moment where you're able to bob your head, or a moment where you're able to sing along. For a lot of bands, that comes naturally, but we were just too stupid to figure it out until now. We’ve realised that sometimes we don’t do a breakdown for long enough for people to start moshing, and on Idiot Temptation Force there's a breakdown that sounds like Suicide Silence or something like that. Jackie [Buckalew], our bass player, was adamant that it needed to be extended. It was originally around ten seconds, but we made it longer. Those are the things you learn along the way, and it's the growing pains of songwriting, especially for music like this. Sometimes you just miss the mark. You take a big swing, and you miss, but the important part is that you swung.

It’s exciting that the band’s growth is happening like that though, because there is this real limitless feeling to it now. There are so many ways this could go, and that mentality has been embraced by so many people. As a creative, how does it feel to look at what you’ve built here with The Callous Daoboys?

Pace - It's so freeing, and the response to Lemon was probably the best example of that. I've seen bands change their sound or attempt to make a song like that before, and it just did not work. I had so much confidence in Lemon though that I wasn’t even worried about it. I know it's a great song, but the response to it has been so awesome.

I really do feel like we can do whatever we want now, and what I want to do changes day to day. Some days I want to write an ass-beater, and some days I want to write Lemon. As far as the sound goes, it feels like we are untethered to any genre. Maybe that's a bad thing, but it feels like we can fit on any show in the scene. It’s a blessing and a curse, but artistically, it's the freest I've ever felt.

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I Don't Want to See You In Heaven, the new album from The Callous Daoboys arrives May 16th via MNRK Heavy. Order the album - HERE

En route to the release of I Don't Want to See You In Heaven, The Callous Daoboys are relentless on the road.

Currently, the band are supporting Chiodos on the 20th anniversary tour for All's Well That Ends Well along with Hawthorne Heights and Emmure. The Callous Daoboys will alost take on supoprting dates this spring under Beartooth in addition to an appearance at the inaugural Unhinged Festival with Knocked Loose, Lamb of God and more this summer.

A full list of dates can be found below. Tickets can be purchased - HERE

All's Well That Ends Well 20th Anniversary Tour

4/9 St. Louis, MO Pageant
4/11 Nashville, TN Marathon Music Works
4/12 Atlanta, GA The Masquerade
4/13 Charlotte, NC The Fillmore
4/15 St. Pete, FL Jannus Landing
4/16 Charleston, SC Charleston Music Hall
4/17 Raleigh, NC Ritz
4/18 Richmond, VA The National
4/20 Silver Spring, MD The Fillmore
4/21 New York City, NY Webster Hall
4/22 Worcester, MA Palladium
4/24 Philadelphia, PA Franklin Music Hall
4/25 Pittsburgh, PA Roxian Theater