MONSTERS
1. Thanks for agreeing to do this interview! Allow me to just geek out for a second as someone who has been a fan since the beginning and say I’m very excited for this. Would you please introduce yourself and what you do in the band?
Dude, thank you so much for having us!! I cannot thank you enough for sticking with us for this long. It means so much that folks like you have kept the band in rotation even after all these years. I’m Frankie, and I do vocals for the band.
2. Take us back to the beginning. What was it that got you into heavy music and who were some of the foundational bands for you?
So my background is an interesting one. I grew up homeschooled and didn’t enter public school until 6th grade. My entrance into the world was a confusing one, as I was very, very sheltered during my homeschooled years. We could probably do an entire separate interview just talking about the damage homeschooling can do to you, hahah, but needless to say, I was somewhat lost coming into public school. Fortunately, my older brother had already been getting into metal and heavier music. He showed me Metallica around the age of 12, and I was hooked. I think to this day, Metallica is probably my favorite band.
From there, the floodgates were open. I dove into nu metal: Slipknot, System of a Down, Mudvayne, you name it. I was so attracted to the intensity and also the sense of safety it provided me, giving me a place to fit in.
My first “core” show, or whatever you want to call it, was Zao and Haste the Day at a VFW hall. Probably aging myself there, haha, but it was so captivating that I knew this was the scene where I’d find a home.
3. I don’t want to re-tread too much ground from your outstanding interview with the Brutality Podcast guys (readers can—and should—view that here), but I think for context’s sake it’s important to recap some of the backstory. What led you to Monsters and what was the “mission statement,” as it were, for the band that was one of the definitive shapers of “The Chicago Sound” of hoppy/bouncy deathcore? Also, if you would, tell us about your vocal delivery style and how that differs from the large majority of deathcore bands and hews in inspiration more closely to that of someone like Keith Buckley.
Love that you listened to that interview! I’m humbled to this day that Brutality had me on, and I’m a massive fan of everything those guys are doing.
So MONSTERS was formed after the end of my old local band, The Dial. Most of my friends were going off to college, and I knew I just wanted to keep making music. We were close friends with JEROME, as we all grew up in the same area, so me and Ben Siptrott of JEROME got together after the end of high school and decided we wanted to make the heaviest music we could possibly think of. MONSTERS’ original lineup featured Ben (JEROME), Andrew Levinson (JEROME), Delos Germaine (ROOKS) and myself. We interchanged some bass players at the beginning, but that was the core group that got the band up and running.
Chicago was thriving, man. We grew up seeing Veil of Maya play at our local Knights of Columbus and Dead to Fall play on the floor of a church, etc. We had a lot of really positive and impressive bands to look up to, which led us to our more bouncy, twangy sound.
As for my vocals, I LOVE hooks. To me, the most important part of a strong single is the hook everybody can know or remember. Keith Buckley of ETID did this the best in my eyes, so what I tried to do was emulate his catchy lines and delivery, but then make them sound more “deathcore,” if that makes sense. I feel like we accomplished that catchiness piece, and coupled with Ben’s riffs, it just kind of worked right out of the gate.
4. Not to gas you up too much, but The Righteous Dead is a legitimate classic and I am on record as saying it is easily one of the best deathcore releases of all time. What was the writing and recording process like and did you have the feeling while it was “being born” that you were genuinely on to something special?
Well first off, thank you so much for saying that, man. I love that EP and have it framed on my wall at home, haha, so I really am grateful and appreciate hearing your love for it.
The writing process for MONSTERS has always been best when we get in a room together. A lot of bands write separately, but for us, the collaboration piece was key. We sit down, Ben typically has a riff in mind, and then the band works together to figure out where the song needs to go and what needs to happen.
When we wrote The Righteous Dead, we were just more excited about the material and really didn’t know where it was going to go. We knew we loved it and were so excited to get it out. “Ignite the Underground” popped off on Myspace, and that was the indicator for us. That was right around the time we were approached by labels, management companies, etc. I think the first time we debuted “Ignite the Underground” live and saw the response from the crowd, we knew we had something special.
5. What would you say are some of the main highlights from this era?
Man, there were so many highlights back then. We got to play some of the sickest shows I can remember. Direct support for Whitechapel, our very first full U.S. tour with Within the Ruins and Chelsea Grin was a special one that holds a special place in my heart. We were just so excited to be playing in other states for new kids and new cities.
I remember vividly pulling up to a show in Boston on our first tour with zero idea if anyone would know us or even care. We set up merch and got our gear ready to open. There was a large group of dudes who were heavily tatted and, from the looks of it, much older than me. Scary-looking guys. We were 18 years old at the time, so we were all chatting amongst ourselves like, “Holy shit, look at those dudes,” haha.
I picked up the mic to start our set, turned around, and the biggest dude of the group put his hand on my shoulder and goes, “Hey man, we drove 7 hours to come see you guys, and we’re going to fuck shit up.” And they did exactly that, haha.
This memory holds such a special place for me because it showed we weren’t just a local band anymore. Kids were coming out to see us, and that meant the world and definitely lit the fire for me.
6. So again we won’t re-tread too much ground here, but what my friends and I call your “windbreaker era” followed, and I know the band was, to put it bluntly, fucked. I don’t necessarily want to re-visit that saga (again the readers are encouraged to watch the full podcast interview for more), but are you able to find any silver linings from the experience of effectively having to euthanize the band before what I know myself and others expected to be your genre takeover? I know in the aforementioned interview you mentioned you weren’t particularly happy with a lot of the LP’s contents, but I do firmly believe that you guys were way ahead of the curve with the sonic direction you were exploring and did much to pave the way for what Sarge D called the “sludgewave era” and the success of bands ranging from Barrier to Traitors to Bodysnatcher to Ten56.
Bro, thank you so much. I really appreciate you saying that and including us in the conversation with such great bands.
Man, silver linings from that era are hard to find, haha. We were, as you said above, fucked, and it just felt like we were trying to tread water to keep ourselves afloat. Now that I’m older and in the latter half of my 30s, I look back on that time with more fondness. I think it reinforced the importance of our fans and supporters. While we were being screwed over internally, nobody on the outside knew what was happening. I remember a conversation I had with the band right after all the bullshit went down, and I remember saying, “We’re going to just keep playing for the kids who care about us until we can’t anymore.”
There’s freedom in letting go, and I think we knew the band was going to come to a close, so that last year or so of the band, we just put it all out on the table for the kids who would come see us live.
As for the full-length album itself, there are some tracks I’m still really proud of on it. “My Urge to Kill,” “Sin Spitter,” and “Freelance Terror” were all some of my favorite tracks to play live and listen to on my own, haha. Overall, the album just didn’t feel as cohesive as TRD, and I attribute a lot of that to the band writing the album in between tours, on and off the road. We really weren’t able to get the whole band together to sit down and iron things out, so it felt like we lost a little bit of that collaboration piece I mentioned above.
I’m still so happy people like that album, and seeing it on the shelves at Hot Topic was another incredible high for the band.
7. Walk us through, if you would, the years following the band’s untimely demise (I’m using this kind of language intentionally as we approach After Death) and what, ultimately, made you want to resuscitate Monsters?
So the band broke up, and we all became adults and adjusted members of society, haha. I worked for a retail company for 10 years, rose through the ranks there, and eventually moved all over the country for work, etc. The rest of the guys found their place, between getting jobs in construction, and our guitarist Andrew even got a job working for the The Wall Street Journal. I honestly thought music was just over for me, like it didn’t have a place in my life anymore other than listening to my own favorites.
We played one reunion show back in 2013, and that was about it. Fast forward to last year, our good friends in Oceano were scheduling their final show ever. OCEANO and MONSTERS had been close friends for years, so they asked us if it would be possible for us to get together one more time to play their last show ever. We felt it was right and made sense given the weight of that particular show. So we got on phone calls with each other, and we all actually really were itchy to do something.
The response to us announcing that show was surreal. So many kids reached out saying they never forgot about us and had been waiting for this, etc. It just felt so warm and fuzzy for all of us, so we were like, “You know what? What if we just drop a new EP?” After the reunion show, we let the dust settle for a week and said, “Fuck it, let’s announce new music,” and now here we are.
8. What can you tell us, without any spoilers, about the upcoming After Death EP?
It’s heavier than anything we’ve ever done. It feels like us back in 2008. We dedicated nearly three months to writing four new tracks together. Flights were booked, and we all got in a room together and started working.
I can’t explain in words how excited I am for this new material, but I think kids will vibe with it. I worked on my own tone to bring a grittier and more aggressive sound than my earlier work, and the band just started pumping out the heaviness we’ve all been craving all these years later.
We’re going to have two features on the EP, but we’ll leave those as a surprise. :)
I would describe it as “MONSTERS but make it 2026.”
9. Merch drop when?
We’re dropping a T-shirt this month, actually. Since After Death will likely drop around July/August, we’re releasing The Righteous Dead Extended Edition along with a shirt this month. We’re working with Matt and the team at DSFP Records for this, and we’re super excited!
We’ll do a larger merch drop alongside the release of After Death, so definitely more is coming.
10. Is there life After Death? Is the band “back-back,” semi-back, just seeing what happens…?
I think “semi-back” is the right term. It’s really tough to organize shows and such because of our lives and day jobs, but we are 100% going to have an EP release show this year, so keep your eyes peeled for that.
From there, who knows honestly? We’ll see what happens.
11. Thanks for taking the time to answer my questions! Any last words for the readers?
My last words are always thank you. Thank you for caring, thank you for listening to us, and thank you for supporting the band the way you do. Thanks for doing this with me!