interview from nzone magazine:

Though Factory 81 hails from Detroit, they are definitely unlike anything else. Their unique sound contains rock, funk, metal, and hip-hop rhythms. Their music is the result of varying tastes of the members, Nate Wallace (vocals), Bill Schultz (guitar), Kevin Lewis (bass), and Andy Cyrulnik (drums). With their debut album “Mankind” gaining popularity, Factory 81 is enjoying the ride

Name: Andy Cyrulnik

Tell me about how Factory 81 was formed

Really what happened was Kevin and Bill, the guitarist and bass player, had been jamming for a little while, putting different bands together, different line-ups. They came across Nate, who’s the singer right now. I think they played a few shows with him before I ended up joining the band last. So we’ve been together for about three years pretty much. We started out in Detroit playing local shows and worked our way up to where we are now.

Describe the band in three words.

Aggressive, melodic, and (other than annoying) obnoxious

Who are some of your musical influences?

We’re big fans of Tool. But the cool thing about our band, actually, is that all four members are totally into different styles of music, so everyone sort of brings their kind of influence to the table when we’re writing songs. Me and our singer Nate are big fans of jazz, anything from jazz to classical. We try to keep a pretty wide range of music that we listen to on the road.

Do you fight over the music you listen to?

We have our own little way of taking care of that. Everyone pretty much has their own headphones. It’s the only way we can seem to get along.

What was it like recording your first album?

Actually when we recorded “Mankind” we had no idea that that album would even be distributed nationally. It was a really low budget album recorded for an independent label called Medea Records in Detroit. They pretty much just gave us four days to go into the studio and just bust out whatever we had at the time. It was pretty cool though because it came out pretty decent for being so low budget. It’s fairly rushed. I think it’s cool because it captures more of a live, raw feel to it.

I was listening to the album and skipped ahead to #81. What’s the story behind that song?

81 was actually a song that we were screwing around with in the studio and just happened to record it and pretty much wrote it while we were recording it. It was a last second deal. We had no intention of originally putting it on the album, but it came out kind of cool. Nate just started rapping some craziness over it and we were like ‘cool let’s throw it on.’ We usually don’t play it live, but for some reason when we do Detroit shows a lot of kids will request us to jam it, so we’ll bust it out here and there

What is touring like? Do you like touring?

Yeah, touring is a ton of fun. It’s a ton of work. It’s really nothing that we expected it to be. It’s great. Starting off like we are right now being a brand new band, it’s a lot more work than you expect. It kind of knocks you into shape. Going out for two months at a time, we’re pretty much just jumping right in the fire. It’s cool though. We love having the opportunity to play in front of a brand new crowd every night, playing cities for the first time. We try to give people a good first impression of Factory 81.

Do you have a favorite city that you’ve played?

There’s a few cities that you’d never expect to be the craziest cities in the world. San Antonio, Texas for some reason. We go down there and the first time we played there was on the Kittie tour, which is the biggest tour we’ve done so far. It’s really cool to play in front of 3,000 people. Now every time we go back there it’s just the same. Those kids are crazy. Milwaukee is another great city. Chicago, of course Detroit. Pretty much every city we go to has its own uniqueness about it. All the shows have been really cool.

Do you get on each other’s nerves while touring?

Oh yeah, totally

Does anyone do anything that really annoys you?

We all annoy the hell out of each other. That’s part of being in the band. That’s another thing that we learned on the road. Everyone has their own thing. It’s being stuck in a stinky old van for months at a time. There’s nothing you can do about it. We’ve learned to deal with each other.

Who is your favorite artist to see live?

I’d definitely go with Deftones and Tool. Some of the smaller bands that we’ve toured with that are really great live like Glass Jaw and Mud Van’s really cool. We’ve learned a lot from touring with some of these bands and just checking out their live show. Each band has something different to offer.

What is something about your band that most people don’t know?

People have no idea that we wear the same clothes for two weeks straight. I don’t know if you want to put that in there. We don’t have enough time to do laundry. People have no idea we wear the same clothes every day.

How does the band feel about other Detroit artists such as Eminem, Kid Rock, etc.?

I think it’s cool. We obviously aren’t being compared to these other artists musically or anything. At the same time people like Eminem and Kid Rock taking off definitely puts Detroit back on the map. Which in turn gives a lot of these younger, local bands the opportunity to get heard and people will give them more of a chance now that Detroit is more of a music city once again. I think it just adds to the opportunity for local bands and record labels.

-Alison Schuermann

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