Vancouver hip hop collective the Swollen Members “prevail” on their brand new CD, “ Beautiful Death Machine” which dropped today, March 19.
The Swollen Members are just beginning a cross Canadian tour in Cranbrook, which stops by Studio 54 in Lethbridge, March 26 with CityReal, Loyal T, F-Bomb and Sin Sane, Pyke and DJ Fuze. Then they will be touring Europe.
“It’s a great start to the year,” said Prevail, aka Kiley Hendricks, who is looking forward to returning to Lethbridge.
“We’re working on a new set. But it will be the same Swollen Members high energy show. We’ve got a few new songs. It will be the full Battle Axe Warriors experience,” he continued adding they have just dropped their brand new CD “Beautiful Death Machine” today, March 19.
The band has had to cope with their MC Madchild’s battles with drug addiction, but Prevail said he is fighting fit now. They were recording during these times and released their last CD, “Daggermouth,” a couple of years ago.
“ He can talk about what the experiences were happening, instead of as they are happening,” he said adding he can look back on them now.
Prevail is very pleased with the new CD, which he said came together quickly.
“It didn’t take long. It took about two months. We went to Rob the Viking’s new studio, the Chamber. We recorded a song a day and recorded 35 or 40 different songs then put together the 12 we thought worked best,” he continued.
“We wanted to get back the grit and the dark and the dirt. We wanted to get back to our roots,” he said.
The music includes some interesting samples including spooky keyboards, vocalizations and ominous lyrics about everything from Ernest Hemingway to Social Distortion and even a clip of about Charles Manson and Devil worship.
“It’s the furthest thing from the truth for us,” he said rapping about darker, more abstract subjects is the furthest they go.
Prevail is best known for his freestyling.
“ There are a couple ideas about freestyling. It’s like coming up with ad libs off the top of your head, and straight through your mouth without writing anything down, ” he described adding freestyle rap originated on the East Coast and slowly spread west. He became interested in freestyle while living in California.
“Freestyle is another way of performing. It’s like shutting off your brain to peripheral stuff and talking about what you see happening around you,” he said.
They have all been busy with other projects as Madchild released his solo Cd last year which has since been nominated for a Juno, Rob The Viking is busy in his new studio recording Swollen Members and other artists and they have a new EP coming out as well. Plus Prevail started his own online style, arts and culture magazine http://www.prevailprevail.com which is updated pretty much every day.
In the meantime, they have fond memories of Lethbridge.
“We’ve worked with Booda a lot. We used to play the Stone. It’s defunct now, but I loved it when they redesigned the place. I guess we’re playing someplace else now,” he said.
Advance tickets for the show, which begins at 9 p.m., March 26 are available for $25 from Studio, Infamous, Boarderline and all Gas King Locations.
