This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2012, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Luis Gonzalez, Brian Bo and Adam Moran share middle names. "All of our middle names are Michael," Bo said. "Luis' is Miguel, but it means the same thing in Colombian or Canadian or something."
They also share something else, as the trio are members of Amassing Massive Mass, with Bo on guitar, Gonzalez on bass and keys, and Moran on drums.
While each of the musicians has been involved in the local scene for years, Amassing Massive Mass has a short history, with the three first coming together in July to play instrumental math-rock.
Bo and Gonzalez answered questions about their sound, their inspirations and dental appliances.
How did you guys come together?
Bo • After sailing the stormy seas for a couple years as a much poppier sounding band, we decided to go all instrumental, and here we are.
Gonzalez • Blah blah blah, you know the story.
Did you grow up in Utah?
Bo • Adam and I are Utah originals, Luis came from Craigslist. Which I didn't know was a place before we found him. We all live in our practice space more or less.
Tell us about your day jobs.
Bo • Adam slings Apple product by day and inspires other people to practice their drums by night. Luis is a lion-head rabbit tamer, and I specialize in capturing light in a fancy box.
Gonzalez • I'm a server at Tucanos Brazilian Grill.
How do you describe your sound? What is math rock?
Bo • We sound like a black hole sucking in everything imaginable, with a splash of prettiness and some mind-bending drums. There's some heaviness, as well as raw speed and wildness, but it's definitely musical music. Math rock is rock built on numbers, and making only a little bit of sense: 2 + 3 = 6 and so forth. We have a good bit of math in there, but we focus on making songs that move.
Gonzalez • In my opinion, we [play] very dynamic musical rock. Call it instrumental post-rock if you'd like. The math in our songs just means that we like to play around with time signatures.
What inspires you, musically and personally?
Bo • Musically, I'm inspired by guitar overdrive, harmony and loud, loud drumming. Did I mention harmony? Nothing like layering notes and looping guitar parts. As a man, I'm inspired by pinch harmonics and Howard from Killswitch. Such a metalhead thing to say, but I want to sing like that guy every day I wake up.
Gonzalez • It may sound cheesy, but everything [inspires]. Day-to-day life, and of course the band I'm into that specific week.
Do they bury people with their braces on?
Bo • They might as well — they sew their mouths shut. On the real, though, imagine pulling a dead someone's braces off with pliers. Would you pop them off before you stitched 'em shut? Sounds like a crunchy job.
Gonzalez • Why wouldn't they? Wouldn't it cost more money to take them off? Plus, no one is going to go and open a coffin and then the mouth, and then look at their teeth. Well, I'm sure weirder things have happened before, but the removal seems like a pain.
If you were a page in a newspaper, what page would you be?
Bo • I would be the comics for sure, mostly because "Garfield" is in there and he's my spirit animal incarnated. Lasagna, lounging and silently abusing my mentally inferior superior? Yes, please.
Gonzalez • The comics part, obviously. I could start explaining why, but the reasons are endless and there is only so much space in this article.
What fuels your music?
Bo • Our music is fueled by a drive to create something that we all like, anger, short attention spans and beer.
Gonzalez • The writing process is fueled by focus and plain love for the music we play. It also involves booze sometimes.
What is your favorite color, and why is that one of the most useless questions to ask anyone during an interview?
Bo • Black is totally my favorite color. That's a useless question because I can go ahead and answer black even though it's not a color. Bam.
Gonzalez • All I know is that Brian's favorite is black. He's a metalhead and tends to always wear black T-shirts.
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