A Killer’s Confession is the cinematic band fronted by former Mushroomhead vocalist Waylon Reavis. The band recently released Victim 2, the second installment of a trilogy telling the story of a serial killer. Reavis recently took some time to discuss the record and band.
Please press the PLAY icon below for the MisplacedStraws Wayne Reavis interview –
On the studio team behind Victim 2 – Dusty Boles and Evan McKeever. About three years ago I started working with Dusty. I met him on the road. He was doing engineering. I’ve always worked with other musicians like Sahaj Ticotin and wrote songs. I had come to a crossroads where I really wanted to rebrand the band, and Dusty and I were just kind of talking on the side and he said, “Well, let’s do it together”. He goes, “We will just do the studio, and your guys can do the live”. I started working with Dusty and we just came together. I told him about this vision I had of the victim trilogy, because that’s where Dusty started was with Victim 1. We did the Victim trilogy, and we started that, and we rebrand the band and we got the music right Then we brought in Evan McKeever to do vocal production with me. I’m working with Dusty and being like, “I really like this part. Can we shorten this? Can we, can we go to this, this key?” Dusty’s really good. He is very, very talented, sound engineer. Then went to Evan McKeever to do vocals.
Evan is a dream to work with. He could put me in a corner and just absolutely just pull things I didn’t know I could do outta myself. You are just as good as the people you work with. They lift you up. Those two I’ve done Victim 1 and Victim 2 with, and they’re the core of the studio. It is between us three. We all sit on the same page. Once a year we get together and we all kinda laugh because of how easy it is to work with each other. That’s a real pleasure. When you, you go in to do something and it’s not pulling teeth, it’s just like you’re cracking jokes, then when it’s time to go to work, everybody can just go that top level of just excellence. Then I had the live team, who have the, the insurmountable job of trying to recreate what we have done in the studio. And I feel like the guys that I’m working with do an excellent job. They understand that they’re there to bring that to life in a live aspect.
On the concept behind the Victim trilogy – The Victim trilogy is pretty much he’s an individual that has just witnessed the worst in inhumanity. He’s watched people get away with murder. He’s watched terrible things happen to people and these perpetrators just getting away through falling through the cracks in the law. But he himself has some kind of a mental disorder. He has a split personality and he’s under enough stress from watching this toward that personality kind of cracks and he becomes this vigilante. But he struggles with it in himself because he’s got the multiple person, he’s got one side of his personality is like, “Let’s do this”, and then the other side’s like, “No, let’s not”. So, I found it very interesting to write about this, with these albums, I never tried to be heavy. I tried to be more lyrically and just deep. If it got heavy, it got heavy. I didn’t do it just to talk about killing. I wanted to do more of a psychological thing… kind of hypnotic because the guy’s kind of under a trance.
He’s a little bit just swoon over by this, he’s kind of like been snake charmed. So, musically I feel like we do that sonically. You see A Killer’s Confession, and you expect it just be brutal, brutal music. It’s not, it’s more hypnotic and it’s more of that psychological, like something else is in control in the background. It’s kind of the “Wizard of Oz”. Don’t pay attention to what’s going on behind the curtain type deal, and very, very difficult. I’m not trying to brag or anything. I’m really being honest. This subject matter has been so difficult to write to keep it in, in order and make it cohesive throughout.
On bringing A Killer’s Confession beyond expectations with diverse music – I see that a lot. A lot of people expect it to be that, but that’s the thing. You expect it, and I’m trying to give you the unexpected. I’m trying to entertain you, but I’m also trying to bring awareness. All these situations. All these people that are getting away with the crimes they’re getting away with, I’m trying to bring some kind of thought of “Well, let’s look into this and like what he’s really talking about”. Some people become aware that there is a foothold in reality here, it’s not just a story, it’s a cautionary tale of don’t act on your gut, your primal instincts. There, there is cause and effect. There is good and there is bad. There is justified means of punishment that come along with you taking the law into your own hands. That’s where we’re going with this. It’s a little bit of a fable and it’s got its morals, there’s cause and effect here.
If my English teacher was with me, working with me, “Oh wow, you’re, you’re really following the true form of writing a book or something”. I feel like that’s what I’ve been doing. I feel like I’ve stepped out from writing songs, and I put them to music of course, and they are songs, but I’m telling a bigger story. But here’s the thing. I really didn’t do it for anybody. I did this to challenge myself. I wanted to know if I could do something this grand and really make it work. Hopefully, I’m not just blowing smoke up my butt and I’m able to accomplish this, but I’m really trying to do something different.
I’m tired of the same old songs. I’m tired of the formula. I’m tired of, “This is a radio rock song. This is thrash. This is guttural. This is Emo, this is this, this is that”. I’m tired of that. I’m tired of sub genres. Music is music. If it’s a good song, it’s a good song. Now, granted, I’m doing more of the storytelling stuff, but I’m not gonna follow any of these lines anymore.
I’m not trying to be a metal band. I’m not trying to be a pop band. I’m not trying to be a rapper. I’m not trying to be a country artist. I am just an artist. I am just trying to leave something greater than myself. When all said and done, when people go back and listen to it, it’s like, “wow, this guy really had something deeper than just trying to be a rockstar or famous”, and all that stuff’s for the birds. I could care less. I don’t care about fame, I don’t care about money. I care about the message. I care about the art. I care about people caring to hear something. I guess I’m just sick of the industry to say the least. Nothing against anybody in it, it’s just not for me. I don’t need to be famous. I got the people, I got the people that love me, and that’s more than enough for me. So, I do this for myself, and I’m lucky enough to have people that enjoy it. If you can’t be happy with that. I guess I’ve just had a career that spanned for so long that, I just strive for different things now and I’m content.
On covering Nirvana’s “Heart Shaped Box” – First of all, we were talking amongst ourselves. Dusty and I were like, “Well, we’ve gotta do a cover. We gotta do a cover.” I’m like, “But how do I make this cover really fit in with this story? How do I make this work on a scale so it makes sense that there’s a cover in the middle of the album?” I chose “Heart Shaped Box” for obvious reasons. You said there’s a darkness about that song, but I was in my mind and I was thinking, “Well, you ever had a moment where like you had a song stuck in your head that you cannot get it out no matter what?” Our version of “Heart Shaped Box” is that song in our protagonist’s head. That’s the song that he’s constantly (hearing), whether he’s stalking somebody, that’s what he’s hearing in his mind, but he’s hearing that version of the song. So, we’re like, okay, “Let’s do this. Let’s put it together. Let’s let, let’s make it very haunting”. I’ve said that when we were putting it, “Let’s make this haunting, let’s make this darker and let’s not change it. Let’s make it to where you’re hearing the song, but there’s a little bit of a darker edge to it.”
When Evan and I stepped in the studio last January when we, we recorded it. I said, “Let’s stop this. Don’t mess this up.” We’re laughing, but man, I’m nervous. “Are you sure? Are we sure we’re making the right decision?” Because we knew the gravity of actually taking on a Nirvana song. I respect Kurt (Cobain). I think he was so ahead of his time. He was such a good writer, such a good lyricist. He was the true artist. He was rock and roll, and I’m gonna say it lot that he was the embodiment of it. He went against the grain. He didn’t do things because corporate wanted him to, he did it because he wanted to do it. He wrote what he wanted to write. I did not want to throw any disrespect on that. I felt that it was the first thing. First it was most important to make it a tribute to where we’re not trying to change anything. You did what you did, it was perfect already. This is just our take on it. I felt like we accomplished that by staying not safe, but grounded, this is a Nirvana song. It is a Nirvana song. This is not A Killer’s Confession. This is Nirvana. This is just A Killer’s Confession playing it. I feel like we came in, and we took some inspiration from when Disturbed did “Sound of Silence”. How David (Draiman) had done that low voice, and it was just so good and we’re like, “What if we did that?” We did that and just like, “Oh my God, this is so good”.
I’m giving it all away. But this is the truth of it. This is the thought process that we had went through to make this, but I’m telling you, if you could cut the tension and just the care of knowing that we’re all huge fans and do not mess it up. That was so hard. That was the hardest song to do. Don’t mess this up. My wife, bless her heart, my wife Julie, is my biggest advocate and she’s the first person to tell me, “You messed up”. My wife is just the best. She did not go with me down to Nashville, because I do all the vocal production in Nashville. She did not go with me. She had to stay home. We were just having our first grandbaby, so she, she stayed home to be with them and be with family, which was completely understandable. She wasn’t sitting in the studio where she’d be sitting in the back waiting for the day to be over and be like, “no”, or “yes”. I didn’t get that from her. I come home and Evan sent me a rough of the song, and my wife is probably one of the hardest people in the world to impress. She don’t care if you’re famous. She does not like fame, money, none of that phases her. She does not care about that stuff and she doesn’t get giddy and she doesn’t get starstruck and she doesn’t show a ton of the excitement. It is got to be something. Wow. It’s gotta be good. She got that and she sit there and listened to it. All she did was stick her arm up. Her hair was up on her arm. She goes, “Oh my God”. That was the biggest compliment I could’ve got. My wife was like, “Come here, lemme show you something. Wow.” She goes, “You just killed this”. She goes, “This is amazing”. So, to have that, I felt comfortable. She was in Nirvana fan too. Coming from that, I was like, “okay”, hey, I thought I did it all right.
On touring behind Victim 2 – We’re announcing Friday the tour for this album, which will start in November. We’re not coming out the gates with when the album drops. We will not be coming out like on the road to support off the bat. We’re gonna be doing some promoting. We got some plans. We’re talking about overseas next year that is being in the works right now. So, everybody in in England and the UK, well the UK and Europe we’re coming. It’s being worked on right now and they’re making everything work so we can step foot over there and push Victim 1 and Victim 2 in Europe. But it’s a team, everybody’s gotta make everything work financially, flights and all that stuff. We’re taking a, a slower route of things, but I do not think it’s bad because you never wanna rush anything. The tortoise won the race. I’ve said this for a long time. I feel like AKC has took the long way around. We didn’t just flash as soon as I started AKC, we were like, “Oh my God, this is it, man”, it wasn’t like that. It was very much everybody crossed their arms and watched this, like, “What do you got?”
We took the slow road, but we were also a band that was built very fast. Very quickly the band came together, but the band had no real identity. We had a, a name, but we didn’t have an identity. We didn’t have a mutual understanding of each other. That’s another reason why there is the studio team and the live team, because the live team has changed. People don’t understand. The road’s a really hard place to be on, and it’s not for everybody. I’ve had people in the group and God, I love most of them. Most of them, not all of them. I love most of them. They have been with the group, but they have stepped back on their own terms, my son played for me for years, Morgan. He stepped down, but he stepped down because he wanted to become a father. That’s gonna be my grandson, of course I’m gonna be like, “yeah”. I’m not gonna be where you have to stay here. So, we kind of get to that point where this is really what I’m doing. I’ll hire guys to fill the spot to create, to make the music happen live. But when it comes to the vision and the storytelling, this is me. This is what I want to do.
Some people have asked me, Waylon, when are you gonna do your solo project?” Well, this kind of is my solo project. That’s what it is. Granted, I couldn’t do the live stuff without the live band. I will not say that this is all me. I said there’s a team. But there’s separate teams. You got your road team, you got your home team. It’s like there’s different teams and everybody is just as supported as the next person.
On if he would perform the entire Victim trilogy live next year – Not the entire thing. More just like key songs and visually, screens and stuff. Tell the story. Maybe actors on stage come out and like a little bit more like a play where it’s more like a drama. Like I said, I’m over being mosh pits. I’m over all of that. I’m over the typical, “It gets fast, it gets slow, there’s a pit”. I am more into just like “I witnessed something tonight. I seen a show, I heard something that moved me and maybe changed me for the better.” If that makes sense. That’s where I’m at now and I guess it’s just like I’ve just seen so much and I’ve been to so many shows, I want something new. I’m trying to create something new and whether it succeeds or fails. I don’t care because I want something different. I want something different for the audience. I want something different for myself. I can’t have the same monotonous, just like, “Okay, hit the road, do the show next town.” I need it to be something greater. I think that’s what I’ve been striving for for a very, very long time.
On evolving the band – A lot of people bring up the mask and stuff, “Why do I do the mask still, but I’m willing to like be in TikTok’s and stuff”. This is me, that is the character. This is entertainment and I do not take myself that seriously. Everybody wanted me back in the mask, when I took it all off and I just came up with the A Killer’s Confession and I walked up on stage, “Hey guys”, nobody cared. I told everybody, I said, and they’re like, “You gotta bring him back. You gotta bring him back”. I’m like, “Listen, if I bring that character back, don’t you get mad at me. But he is not politically correct. He will call it like he sees it, which will be correct. And it’s going to make a lot of people mad because like that’s the joy of that character.” He is the dark side. He is the dark side of, of what I’m talking about. He is the antagonist. He’s not the good guy. I love when people meet me, they’ll see the stage show and they’ll see all that, and I’m being all rough and tough and just like on a level of 20, and then I come off and I’m like, “Hey, how you doing?” And they’re like, “You are messing with me”. This accent. I’m welcome you behind the scenes. I can’t stand to watch somebody fall into a gimmick and it becomes everything they are. “Oh, you’re never gonna know the guy behind the scenes. You’re only gonna know who I am.” Forget all that, it’s like you are a man or a woman and you are a person that is entertaining. Now granted, if you don’t want to ever show the person behind that, I get it, but you’re more than the person you’re giving the world. That’s the difference between myself and a lot of the other artists who, once they put the gimmick on, there it is. Me, on the other hand, nobody wants to meet the dude in the mask because he’s not a nice guy. I’m kind of protecting you with that.
