SKULLKiD
Thrill Me
2022 | Rock
— track 12: “I’ll Wait Forever”
Heath Bsharah: We all like spooky shit. Who doesn't like spooky shit? This is August right now, I'm already watching horror movies. It's that time. So yeah, we wanted to write some spookier stuff. We were all listening to a lot of AFI at the time, stuff like that. Obviously not every song on the record is spooky-inspired or whatever, but that was where we started.
Aaron Galeana: I think you can tell definitely which songs I wrote, because I'm really bad at trying to write spooky stuff. I tried to, but then it turns around as being another pop punk song [laughs].
Heath Bsharah: I know how to write weird, spooky stuff on guitar. So I was just like, "Oh, hey, here's a creepy riff. Because that's all I know how to write. Take this guys." Most of my influence is on the heavier side. I wanted to rip off Genghis Tron. I've got those grindcore, hardcore, metalcore-type influences. So, Thrill Me opens with — I'm like, "We're going to do something that's not going to be on any other pop punk record. We're gonna start off with some blast beats, okay?"
People around here are always like, "You guys just write a lot of songs, quickly." And we definitely did with this. We were like, "We'll do a few." And then 12, 13 songs later, we've got an hour of music.
Chance Bsharah: I feel like I'm kind of useless when it comes to the rest of the band. Like, I'll skip a practice, then I'll come back and there'll be three new songs and I'll have to try and figure out what to play [laughs]. That's how productive they are without me.
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Chance Bsharah: I always thought that I couldn't play music, especially having friends that were in choir and orchestra. I played a lot of rhythm games like Guitar Hero and Dance Dance Revolution, so I had that stuff down. But five years after high school I started playing bass for a band called Wall Meat here in Rapid. And I really didn't know what I was doing, but you kind of figure it out, as long as you surround yourself with people that can do something. We broke up because our guitarist and vocalist moved after graduating college. And then I jammed with people here and there but nothing really stuck until SKULLKiD. I do the synth in SKULLKiD, which I also didn't know how to play when we started the band. I still don’t know the notes on it. I know one chord. That's it.
Heath Bsharah: I started playing drums pretty late as well. I was like 21, 22 when I started playing. Growing up, [Chance and I are] brothers, we didn't have a lot of money, so I never — I wanted to play music, like orchestra, band, whatever, but I never asked because I figured our parents couldn't really afford it. So I had a buddy that was selling an extra set of drums. I picked them up. I was still living my parents' house because I was still in school, so I didn't really have an opportunity to play a whole lot. When I bought my own house a few years later, I started actually doing it. About a year later, I was in a metalcore band with a couple buddies, called it Megalodon. We didn't really do anything. And then yeah, I did drums for Wall Meat, ended up writing music, it was really good. Once that ended, I'm not gonna say I was adrift, but definitely there was something missing after that. And then I met Aaron at work, we were working at Best Buy at the time. We were just talking about punk music and video games, we decided to jam. That's how we started doing the SKULLKiD thing.
Aaron Galeana: I play bass and sing. So I'm originally from Los Angeles. I've been in Rapid City for about five years now. Started as a guitar player in middle school. My brother had a bass and it sat in our bedroom forever, and my best friend had an Iron Maiden cover band, so I brought the bass over and I learned "The Trooper" and "Aces High" the first day there on bass. And that was it, I fell in love with the bass. Since then I've played in multiple bands, done a few tours with some pop punk and ska bands in California. My uncle, he's been [in South Dakota] for over 20 years. And [about five years ago], I was kind of just not sure where my life was going, so I came out here to figure stuff out for a bit. I was really gonna only stay here for a year and then go back to California, but I met my wife, so she locked it down here [laughs]. With SKULLKiD, I started off playing guitar at first, and then we recruited Dyllan and I got back to my love of bass.
Chance Bsharah: Dyllan [Harrington] could not make it [for this interview]. He had a show with one of his other bands, Judo Air, tonight.
Heath Bsharah: When we started jamming it was like, no expectations or whatever, and it felt really good. That was 2018 in the summer.
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Heath Bsharah: We recorded the entire first album ourselves [2020’s Love Letter to Hate]. It took a long time, and it sounds okay, but it could be a lot better. So we're like, "Well, let's spend real money, go to a studio." [Jerry Sutton] from that metalcore band that I was in way-back-when, he has a studio here in town [Ridgetop Recording Studio].
Aaron Galeana: [Recording Thrill Me with] Jerry was great. He made it super easy. I've been in a lot of bands back in California, so I've definitely had my fair share of studio experience. I've had nightmare engineers that, when we were not there would take matters into their own hands and really screw up the song. We were always on the same page with [Jerry]. I mean, there'd be times where he'd go, "Hey, let's try that again. Don't suck this time." [laughs] But all-in-all, it was a good experience.
Chance Bsharah: I go back and forth, but I want to say that "I'm a Fuckin' Bug" is my favorite [song on Thrill Me].
Heath Bsharah: We're not a very political band, but we're still in that punk genre, so every now and then we'll talk politics. That song ["I'm a Fuckin' Bug"] is straight up about the governor. Dyllan likes to say, "What if Kristi Noem woke up one day with her outside matching her inside?" And it's obviously Kafka-esque, The Metamorphosis, except just straight.
Aaron Galeana: I love playing "Skate Parks and Broken Hearts." Based on a true story, I broke up with a girl before I moved out here. I just left her a letter and I moved to South Dakota [laughs]. I don't know if she actually read the letter, but I got a text message saying, "fuck you." [laughs]
Chance Bsharah: "I’ll Wait Forever" is honestly, objectively, probably the best song on the album.
Heath Bsharah: I think a lot of it has to do with the dual vocals.
Aaron Galeana: Dyllan and I do have songs where we split vocal duties.
Heath Bsharah: And then we had my indulgence with [the 30-minute final track of Thrill Me], “Crypt Keeper.” That song is mostly me. I wrote most of the guitar parts, Dyllan helped me put them together structurally, and he recorded [the guitar parts for] all of it, because again, I'm not great at guitar. But all those lyrics and all the vocals are me on that song, all the screaming, all the singing. Dyllan wrote bass and he actually programmed most of the drums, but he's like, "I'll program these drums trying to emulate you." He did pretty good.
I ordered vinyl [for Thrill Me], did an order of 100. Super limited. It's a double record because of “Crypt Keeper.” [laughs] Yeah, again, my fault. It's definitely a bucket list thing.
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Heath Bsharah: Beginning of this year, we kind of relaxed a bit, not doing as much band stuff because we all just needed to chill.
Aaron Galeana: Yeah, [last year] I got engaged and married, my wife and I got a house, and my wife had a kidney transplant too.
Chance Bsharah: And I had my son Harrison with my wife.
Heath Bsharah: But now we're getting back to like, "Yeah, we need to write," and it feels good.
Aaron Galeana: Yeah, right now we have five or six ideas for songs, and definitely it's going back to more of my punk rock roots, like Bad Religion, NOFX type stuff. These new songs are already to me — Don't get me wrong, the album's fucking great, but these new songs, I think these are gonna blow that out of the water.
Heath Bsharah: Isn't that always the goal?
SKULLKiD’S ESSENTIAL SOUTH DAKOTA ALBUMS
Woman is the Earth — Dust of Forever (2021)
Nodes of Ranvier — The Years to Come (2005)
The Spill Canvas — No Really, I’m Fine (2007)
SOURCES
Bsharah, Chance, Heath Bsharah, and Aaron Galeana. Interview. By Jon Bakken. 11 August 2022.
