Each year that I have attended Housecore, I have come away from the experience finding out about different heavy metal acts that I normally may not have found out about one my own.  Last year, Bloody Hammers and BlackQueen were the acts that really did it for me.  This year, it was a band called Skan.  Skan play a very intense version of blackened death metal and I liked what I heard prior to attending Housecore.  I reached out to the wolves of Skan and Jo, their lead singer, was nice enough to arrange for us to sit down and have a chat.  Everyone was shaking off the previous night’s festivities, but that didn’t stop these guys from being dope as fuck.

Please read along:

Robin Goodfellow – Did you have fun last night?

Jo Merino – Yeah, did you come out at all?

RG – Yeah, I got intensely turnt and just staggered around. So tell us, what is Skan and what do you do?

JM:  Skan is an extreme metal band from Austin, Texas, and as far as what we do, I don’t know how to answer that.

RG:  Okay, so what is the significance of the name Skan?

JM:  It actually comes from the Lakota Sioux nation, which is a northern Plains tribe, that has a lot of reservations in South and North Dakota, and I have a lot of admiration and respect for the Lakota people and their traditions.  I was kind of looking for a name and it just came.

RG:  Do you have Lakota heritage?

JM:  I have Cherokee and Choctaw.  Do you?

RG:  I’m Ojibwe/Chippewa, but you can’t really tell.  Does having a name with indigenous roots affect your music in any way?  Do you add any other more traditional elements beyond the name?

JM:  No.  We are more about what the name actually means.  There are several definitions of the word Skan and I have my own definition for it as well and my own personal relationship with it as well.

RG:  How did you get involved with Housecore?

JM:  They asked us to do it.  Last year, the drummer Dan and I were in another band called Skrew and we played here and folks from here actually heard our music too, and they were interested and asked us to play here.

RG:  So are there any acts here you are especially looking forward to seeing, or any movies?

JM:  Last night, Hobbs’ Angel of Death, they were pretty awesome.  Really though, I’m looking forward to Portal.  When they told us we were playing with them, I was actually pretty happy about that.  Their music is very bizarre, it’s very different and it’s very much their own.  I feel it’s really intense music. I feel like they have a lot of conviction in what they do, and that’s something I admire in other bands.  It’s a very rare thing these days.

RG:  Absolutely.  Okay, so the best part of doing festival shows, and the worst?

JM:  I don’t really view it as positive or negative, it’s just an experience.

RG:  Okay.  So last question, since our blog is called Drunk in a Graveyard and we center on horror movies, heavy metal and getting wasted, we always end interviews with the same question – favourite horror movie and alcoholic drink to go with it?

JM:  Ah!  That’s a hard one!  I’m a big fan of B movies, so I really like old Alfred Hitchcock.  Vertigo is one of my favourite movies, and for that..  I dunno, I think like a Scotch.  A really good Scotch.

Drunk in a Graveyard wants to offer up very sincere thanks to Jo and all of the dudes in Skan for being legit as hell, and also being kind enough to take a moment to speak to us.  In the meantime, if you haven’t already, please go purchase their album and support these guys.