TG: Vincent! Thanks for taking the time to do an interview, I'm a big fan of the band. Could you maybe introduce yourself and give people an idea of who The Renfields are if they don't know?
VR: Hi!
I'm Vincent Renfield! I'm the singer, guitarist, and heart throb for
the hit Transylvanian Pogo Punk band The Renfields... However I am
currently only fulfilling about half of those qualifications in the
band... since we are not a hit and I am not a heart throb... despite
having a Justin Bieber haircut. The Renfields have been making music in
the underground for the past 10 years, we have released a bunch of
albums and played a ton of shows in that time... we're all very nice and
personable individuals and Glen Danzig would be ashamed of us.
VR: Yeah!
The Renfields started out as a one man project around 2007. I was in
another band and was really unhappy with where it was going, I attempted
to convince everyone to quit and start the Renfields with me but they
hated the idea and we disbanded. Instead of waiting to find band mates I
started recording music in my bedroom on my Fostex 8 track recorder. I
recorded everything in mono and played everything except for the drums.
At the time I was using a drum machine, which became known as the
Invisible Man. I released 2 full length CDs and used them to recruit
members. The idea was to record everything in mono and mimmic budget
rock bands like The Mummies and The Ripoffs. Eventually I met our first
drummer Dr. Herbert III and we continued on as a 2 piece for a while, we
were like a horror punk White Stripes... Over time we built up a full
band with a bass player, pipe organ, and a mummy hype man/sample player.
That lineup was solid for about 4 years and we continued recording and
releasing DIY albums on our own. About 5 years ago we had a massive
lineup change which was also the end of the budget rock/DIY Renfields.
With a completely new lineup in place, we started making a conscious
effort to make very polished pop punk music like Teenage Bottlerocket
and Masked Intruder. The result of those efforts is our new album "GO!",
which was the first Renfields album done in a professional studio.
TG: Very cool. Now, you re-recorded a good bit of songs from the old material for the new album. How did you go about picking which songs you wanted to put out on your first professionally recorded album?
VR: By
the time we started recording our new album, all of our old CDs had
been out of print for 3 years or more. We were in a situation where most
people only knew our stuff from hearing it live. Due to our change of
direction musically, the songs had sort of morphed into hybrid versions
of the originals. We chose to do 10 old songs spanning our first 5
releases and 4 brand new ones that weren't on any of our previous
releases. It took us 2 years to finally finish the new album, so by the
time it was released even the "new" songs were old. The plan is to do 10
and 4 on each new release. We still have about 25 songs that we would
like to re-release.TG: Sweet, sounds like we have something to look forward to over the next little bit. Now, since we are a horror page I'd like to get into the horror aspect of your band. Your stage show and costumes are part of what set you apart in my opinion. Were there a lot of bands that you took inspiration from or were you trying to do your own thing as far as the horror imagery and such goes?
VR: My biggest influence when I started the band was Kiss. My older brother gave me a copy of Kiss Killers when I was 8 and it completely changed my definition of what a band was. For better or worse, after I saw that album cover I stopped thinking about what my future band was going to sound like and started thinking about our image and stage show. Obviously The Renfields didn't form until much later, but Kiss set me on the path. Later on it was the budget rock band The Mummies, Gwar, and King Diamond that played a part. There is obviously a Misfits connection there as well, but not so serious. In the end, horror punk is a lot of 30 year old men trying too look tough and scary and very few can pull it off. We took the approach of being actual monsters that were trying to fit in with normal people as opposed to being normal people trying to look like scary monsters.
TG: A good bit of your songs are about horror movies and at times even reference actors like Nick Castle and Tom Atkins. What goes into writing one of your songs? Do you get inspired by movies to write specific songs or do you write music and then apply a theme to it?
VR: I always start with a title and then go from there. I write lyrics from the perspective of a really obsessive horror fan, so I like to put a lot of details and references that other obsessive horror fans will pick up on. I like to add in tag lines from the original movie posters and quotes from the films when I can. I try never to limit myself in terms of lyric writing. I don't force myself to write lyrics solely about the movies. A lot of Renfields songs have horror movie titles but reference ideas or situations outside of horror. On our Stalk and Slash Splatterama Part. 1 EP, we had a song called "War of the Robots" that was 50% about an episode of Lost in Space and 50% about Bush Jr. era politics. But I don't like to hit people over the head with that kind of thing so it's not overt. The song "Invisible Man" on our new album is the same way. It's about the movie but also about me having a resentment towards an ex band mate... Which I have since resolved, so I'm glad it's well hidden in dual meanings!
TG: Awesome. As a big horror fan I have to say that I definitely appreciate the details that you put into your songs. Something like referencing the song Mr. Sandman from Halloween II in your song "Halloween Night" just makes it even more cool. Aside from the songs that are obviously about specific horror films, you also have songs about The Renfields' backstory and their home of Transylvania which are really unique and deepen the mythology of the band. Is that just your creative side coming out, wanting to tell stories?
VR: The Transylvania songs work to further the characters in the band and the back story of the Renfields. The alternative is having a bunch of exposition in the stage banter and that requires things to be scripted, which is not appealing at all to us. For a band like Gwar it would be necessary. But we can manage with keeping it in song form. There is 10 years worth of Renfields lore to draw from at this point, so it's pretty easy.
TG: I'd like to know all of it, you should put out a book or something.
VR: We did have comic books... but they are long out of print!
TG: You guys have also in the past put out well made and hilarious videos for promotion and such. Have you ever given any thought to making a horror movie, or just a movie in general?
VR: We did a short film called Christmas Break at Crystal Lake a couple years back. We originally planned on doing a monthly web series that was a horror punk version of the Monkees TV show. We ended up getting too busy with shows and recording to follow it through, but it's still on the to do list.
TG: Sweet, I love to see that come to fruition. Well, Vincent, I'd like to thank you for taking the time to answer some questions for me, The Renfields are awesome and I hope to see the legend grow. Anything you would like to let people know that we didn't cover?
VR: All I'd like to say is take a second and check us out, burn it off the internet, buy it, see us live, steal it, whatever. And thanks!
Check out The Renfields and give them a 'like': The Renfields on Facebook
And pick up their new album GO!: The Renfields Store
Photos by Mike Winland Studios
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