November 27th, 2013 
Drew Caruso 
While a smaller Boston based band at the moment, I have the pleasure of being friends with Vitamin Sun, a band that just released their first EP, Ergonometry.
Weaving in and out of complicated time signatures, the progressive rock band is ready to blow up onto the scene. Sure to please fans of Coheed and Cambria, The Mars Volta, and The Dear Hunter, Vitamin Sun create a soundscape of polyrhythms and serenity, finding ease in balance versed in the in-between. Embarking on a typical weekend night for us in Allston, MA, myself and the band traversed to the local liquor store. Check out our conversation after the break.
Drew Caruso: So we began this lovely evening with a trip to the liquor store. To start, tell us your name, your role in the band, and what you got to drink this evening.
Kyle Hamel: Hello, I’m Kyle, I sing and play guitar, and I’m drinking Anchor Steam Beer, made in San Francisco since 1896, and it has a cool label with an anchor on it.
Josh Merhar: I’m Josh, I play drums, and I am drinking Samuel Adams Winter Lager, seasonal brew made right here in Boston.
Zack Wenner: I’m Zach, and I am drinking Leinenkugel Orange Shandy, and I play guitar and sing occasionally.
Chris Restaino: I am Chris, I play the bass and I sing a little more than Zack does, but not as much as a Kyle. I am drinking Blue Moon Belgium White.
John Tyler Kent: I’m Tyler, I produce for Vitamin Sun, and I am drinking Sierra Nevada Celebration Ale.
Kyle: What are you drinking, Drew?
Drew: I got a nice cheap bottle of Beringer Merlot. So you guys are based in Boston now, but you had your beginnings elsewhere. How did the band initially form?
Chris: Who wants to take this one?
Kyle: I’ll take this one.
Zach: No, I will take this one.
Kyle: Well…No, I’m not going to take this one.
Drew: This is essentially the simplest question.
Josh: Okay, here we go. Zack and Kyle went to high school together outside of Boston, but didn’t play music until later. But, we all went to the University of New Haven in Connecticut. I met Kyle, we shared a suite together, though we never really hung out with Chris, he lived on the same floor as us but he was weird. We thought he was the dorky kid with glasses.
Chris: I hung out with cooler people freshman year.
Josh: That’s true.
Chris: Then, all my friends left and I was like “Shit, I need to get new friends.” And I was like, alright, these guys seem okay.
Kyle: Yeah, so that year we wrote a bunch of songs that would later become our first release, EP Ergonometry. But, we all transferred to the Boston area, so once we all settled at our new schools we got Zach, and here we are.
Drew: So you guys have had these songs for quite some time now, but you just put out your first EP. How does that feel to get that finally out there?
Chris: Great. I mean we wrote the songs so long ago, in 2011. Since we all transferred it was hard to work on the band and such, but now being all settled in, we have been able to finally finish the EP.
Josh: Chris, Zack and I transferred schools a semester before Kyle, so when he finally came back to the Boston area we were able to finish working on the songs.
Drew: Even though you guys just released an EP, you still have a lot of material ready to go for another release, right?
Kyle: Yeah, we finished writing the EP a long time ago, almost two years, so immediately after that we started writing new songs. I mean no one wants to play old stuff for a really long time. We have a bunch of songs done for our next release, and a lot more in the works. We are hoping to be ready to record a full length next summer.
Josh: Yeah, it’s great, we have so many ideas floating around right now.
Drew: Glad we won’t have to wait two years to hear it. So we are fortunate enough to have the producer of the EP here, John Tyler Kent, who happens to live with 3/4s of the band now. How did you go about producing this EP for Vitamin Sun?
John Tyler Kent: I had known Chris for a few years, and he had heard some of my stuff I had worked on and asked if I would be interested in working on the EP. As you said, it has been nice living with most of the band now, since I could check in and see what they thought as I would through the process. It was about a month of mixing, but it was nice, this was my first experience working on something that wasn’t my own.
Josh: The songs had been starting to sound stale to us, so it was nice for Tyler to come in and bring new life to them in the mixes.
Drew: Yeah, I can definitely hear that in the songs. Your songs themselves are very diverse, jumping around with different genres and such, so within this tonal unification what would you say you as band members bring individually to the songs?
Chris: I feel like we all kind of draw from different styles. I like pretty much everything except for country, though I guess I listen to more alternative stuff. Most bands I listen to don’t really play in ridiculous time signatures, so I guess I take and learn from those bands, and just make it a little weirder. I’ve been listening to a lot of The National, and The Strokes, Queens of the Stone Age, Modest Mouse, and The Dear Hunter, lately. I think The Dear Hunter is very big influence on our sound, on how to fill a song and make it whole. They have such a big sound throughout all their works.
Zack: Well, for me and Kyle, Coheed and Cambria is a gigantic influence. In terms of my guitar playing and writing, I would have to say Thin Lizzy.
Kyle: Yeah, I mean Zack and I essentially became friends over Coheed and Thin Lizzy. I remember seeing him wear a Thin Lizzy shirt in high school, where no one wears a Thin Lizzy shirt, and no one knows who they are and you get made fun of. So I saw him and I was like “hi.”
Zack: Hi.
Kyle: Yeah, so when Zack and I write together it’s natural because we listen to a lot of the same guitar driven music.
Zack: And we have to mention Volta.
Kyle: Oh my god yeah, The Mars Volta just ruined my life in the best way. I absolutely love The Mars Volta, and I don’t think Vitamin Sun would nearly be what we are without that influence.
Josh: I’m going to have to agree with you. It’s like, if you, Kyle, didn’t show me The Mars Volta, I don’t know, they are like a huge influence for me as well. I was always into like unnecessarily technical music, like Blotted Science, I love Blotted Science. That shit is extreme.
[Laughs]
Josh: I like a lot of modern jazz drummers, and gospel drummers because they are just ridiculous.
Drew: So with that, how do you guys typically go about writing songs?
Zack: Typically Kyle comes up with an idea, or a somewhat structured song and we just kind of demo it at practice. We just kind of jam to the ideas after we understand how to count it.
[Laughs]
Kyle: It’s cool because we all write for the band, and sometimes parts come together super easily. Like I’ll bring a guitar part and we will all write over each other’s work. It’s pretty equal I say, we are always willing to give something a try, and that shows up in our songs. We don’t even stray from goofy parts.
Josh: We take a lot of risks.
Zack: There are a lot of parts where we will be playing live, and we will just look at each other and laugh, asking “how did we pull that off?”
Drew: Well the first time I saw you guys live, one of the guitarists fell off the stage, and there was a lot of consecutive and intimate eye contact during the songs with each other.
Josh: Yeah, we yell at each other a lot. People don’t realize, but we are essentially just yelling nonsense to each other.
Kyle: It feels good though, playing live is such a great release.
Drew: Remember that show in Providence, RI with the traveling circus? That was wild.
Kyle: That was Hellzapoppin.
Drew: Yeah, Hellzapoppin with Boobzilla.
Collective: Boobzilla!
Chris: Boobzilla…..I walked out of there a different person. But, that was one of my favorite shows we got to play. A lot of cool bands, and a traveling circus.
Drew: Boobzilla aside, how would you guys describe your music to those unfamiliar?
Josh: Industrial groove shift.
Kyle: It’s like, weird grooves, but a very comfortable tonality.
Drew: It’s strange but accessible.
Kyle: Yeah, it doesn’t generally follow a pop format, but we try to make it accessible.
Chris: I think of it as progressive indie music. It’s like, it is catchy, but we tend to throw in a lot of weird things as well.
Zack: We write in a lot weird time signatures, not because we want to show off, but because it makes the songs a lot more interesting to us.
Kyle: No one aims to write a song in like 11 or something, that is just generally the way it comes out with us. It comes natural, but it still has to feel natural.
Zack: There is so much music out there where I can just predict what is going to happen, it is interesting to make things different.
Drew: Since we are hitting December now, the end of the year, what is your favorite release from this past year?
Chris: I don’t know if I can pick one from this year.
Tyler: We are all checking our phones [laughs].
Chris: Yeah, I can’t pick one, but I would say The Dear Hunter at least. Migrant was great. I liked the new Arcade Fire that just came out, as well as the new National album, and Evil Friends from Portugal. The Man, all great releases.
Kyle: I guess Volcano Choir’s is my choice, Repave. I think that is a beautiful album.
Tyler: This is kind of cheating, but there has been this box set from A Perfect Circle released this year that has just rekindled my love for that band. Also, Alice In Chains new one, The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here.
Zack: Bad Rabbit’s full length from this year is just bitching.
Kyle: What about you Drew?
Drew: Frightened Rabbit’s Pedestrian Verse, love that album.
Be sure to check out Vitamin Sun’s debut release, Ergonometry here, and be on the lookout for a review of it from me in the near future. To hear what producer John Tyler Kent is up to, check out his recently released EP Alkonost, here.
And with that, our night was coming to an end. Though it would not end without a quick escape into the world of improvisational dance between band and producer.
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