Videodrone sounds like the name of a B-movie, large breasted female, sci-fi disaster flick. And as band they sound just like the images that their name conjures up. Formerly known as “Cradle of Thorns”, they sprung from the underground into the lime light with the assistance of their long time friends KoRn. Their self-titled debut under the new moniker was produced by Fieldy and was released on KoRn’s Elementree Records.

Break beats, progressive lyrics, and a rabid, sort of paranoid delivery all compose a style that took just about a decade to nail down. Their world is a dark, carnivores one that has been influenced by the imagery and shape of a place that will take shape in the future.

That observation was tested night after night as Videodrone started off the proceedings on the “Rock is Dead” tour. Composed of Ty Elam (vocals), David File (guitars), Rohan (keyboards, samples), Mavis (bass) and Kris Kohls (drums). Videodrone strong believe they have never been better. Kris recently gave Circus Magazine the 411...

Circus Mag: What’s the difference between Videodrone and Cradle of Thorns?

KRIS: Videodrone is more than they’ve ever been now, and it’s a futurist first step for a band who has progressed a lot more in a short period of time. Working with Fieldy. he showed us the next level of what we are capable of and a different side of ourselves that we didn’t know was even there.

Circus Mag: What can new fans expect to see?

KRIS: We’ll play the songs on the record! No I’m just fu*king with you. Um, we’ve got a few surprises, some tricks. Jon from KoRn does “Ty Jonathan Down” with us live, well maybe. That may change night after night. He did it on the record and I think he’s going to come out a few nights too. Expect to see Fieldy around too, he’s going to rap on “Pig in a Blanket”.

Live, energy wise we’ll be more intense. We’ve always been that way. If the record in nine then we’ll play eleven when we are on stage, so to speak.

Circus Mag: As far as you guys go, are all of the odd sounds on the LP vital to your sound?

KRIS: Totally, we’ve always been into cool weird sounds. We use keyboards and I play with V-drums, which are electric drums. We love those trippy type effects.

Circus Mag: They make it a very phat headphones record. Were some of those sounds buried in the mix on purpose for that effect?

KRIS: You’d have to ask John X and David Kahne, the guys that mixed the record. They knew what we wanted and they set the levels a certain way so that the record would come across just how we wanted it to.

I like the head phones thing, you’ll notice that with a lot of East Coast hip hop that they have those sounds going in the background too. The West Coast stuff is more for booming stereos. Oh, but as we are concerned, we are very proud of our record. It came out even better than we thought.

Circus Mag: As you get bigger will you bring in big effects and props?

KRIS: That’s defiantly the plan as we progress. Ty and Rohan are into the atrics. Opening the tour we are pretty bare of course, but as we grow it will get very dramatic.

Circus Mag: You bio throws terms around like sci-fi, hip-hop, and Italian horror movies. Is that the Reader’s Digest version of what you’re about? KRIS: I guess so, those are all cool things to say, and we defiantly vibe off a lot of that. Me, as a drummer I’m inspired a lot by Chad Smith of the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

We’re all into sci-fi and B-grade films, whacked-out Play Station games. Ty is really inspired by the H.R. Geiger paintings and his vinyl record collection is just immense.

Circus Mag: What was recording the album like?

KRIS: We drank a lot of beer and we had a good time. It was six guys having a really good time making an album. For Fieldy it may have not been that much fun because he didn’t get much sleep between working with his band and us.

Ty sings about some very person things so when he would cut a vocal track, he would have his moments. But for the most part we had a good time. If things were getting stale, we’d go to a club and have some drinks and come back to work.

--Adrian Gregory Glover