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Curl Up and Die weren’t a band longer than they were a band. The homegrown metalcore quintet played its last show in 2005 at Anaheim’s revered Chain Reaction after a busy eight-year stint. During that time, the band released two LPs and four EPs across Revelation and Status Records, and focused on consistent touring to support that body of work. If The Only Good Bug is a Dead Bug, it certainly seemed as if the group was on a mission to squash all of them.
After a few failed attempts over the years, the band finally played its first proper “reunion” in the same venue where things ended nearly 15 years ago on June 22, 2019. Not long after, the quarted announced its early anticipated Las Vegas reunion show, which is slated to take place Aug. 30 at Bunkhouse Saloon.
To supplement Punks in Vegas’ induction of the storied act into the Vegas Archive, and to preview the big homecoming gig, we chatted with vocalist Mike Minnick and guitarist Matt Fuchs about that last show, memorable ones from previous decades, and new music.
“We chew rocks and make mosh.” – Myspace
Why finally do it here? Why now?
Mike Minnick: I lived remotely. I was in Chicago for awhile. Matt and I were always trying to get it together here and there over the years. It would always get hung up on a drummer. We wanted to include Jesse [Fitts, original drummer], but he’s kind of over this style of music. We didn’t just want to get any drummer…
Matt Fuchs: Yeah, we’re weird about having guys in the band who aren’t our friends already. I’d known Keil [Corcoran, current drummer] since I was in junior high. It’s cool to keep friends in all our bands.
Why Anaheim first? I know things with the band ended in that area.
Mike: It was familiar to us. We knew we could do it there, and that was the spot where it would fare the best—or at least gauge how a reunion could end up. I thought it was gonna go bad, but it didn’t, so that was cool …
Matt: I think it’s because all of our shows were awesome there.
Mike: We’ve probably played Vegas more times than we played there, but that’s probably the venue where we’ve played the most over the years. It was usually always a blast.
It’s hard, because in Vegas you run into the issue of picking the venue, and those kinds of things have been unstable here over the years …
Matt: We also knew that our show there was gonna be ultra fun, and some of our later Vegas shows were not that great. At one point, we got ketchup squirted on our van [laughs]. We had tons of haters.
Mike: Yeah, it got pretty “tough-guy,” and we were just a bunch of weird, nerdy dudes. Nowadays, it’s not weird for those two types to hang together. You can be a werido, tough-guy, jock, whatever, and you can listen to anything you want. During that time, it would kind of splinter. I remember backlash on us because I would say, “It’s cool to mosh and all, but don’t punch a girl in the face while she’s trying to watch the show,” and people would boo us.
We didn’t even do a last Vegas show. We kind of didn’t break up in Las Vegas. Maybe this’ll be our last one [laughs]. Kidding …
That reunion show sold out and I heard it was bananas. How was it on your end?
Mike: It was awesome, man. Maybe I’m too pessimistic, but I always try to keep expectations low. I kept doubting—telling myself, “ I don’t know, man. It might just be fun … maybe people bought tickets and just won’t come.”
Then, the second we went onstage, that all changed. You know that feeling you get when you can feel people attentive, engaged, and ready to go? I felt that as soon as we started playing. The whole show was so intense—far beyond anything I had anticipated.
Matt: We just played too many songs [laughs]. I was so damn tired.
Mike: Seriously [laughs.] We played the longest set we’ve ever played. We thought that we should just try to hit each era of the band because it would be fun. I knew I would get winded, but it would be fun.
Matt: It was hot.
Mike: It was really hot! We felt the crowd getting winded, too. I thought, “Damn…”
Matt: We were soaked in sweat. I don’t know what it was, but my eyes were on fire practically the whole time. I’m not sure if it was my sweat, or if I had stuff in my hair. My kids were there, and right when we finished, they were like, “Your eyes are so red!”
Matt: We were spraying that rose water stuff. What are those?
Spritzes?
Matt: Yeah, I’m sure that stuff went straight into my eyes. It messed me up.
I know you’ve tried to reunite numerous times before over the past few years—one of them being Revelation Records’ 25th anniversary in New York. That didn’t end up happening.
Mike: That was a debacle. We were talking about it—just talking. Rev asked us if we wanted to do the show. We said yes, on the condition that we’d all get it together with a drummer. At the time, we were kind of talking about it anyways, so that would be a good time to do it.
They announced us, and it was before we talked about how we would even get out there, money, all that. They just assumed that we were on it. There were announcements on punk news sites saying that we reunited, and it wasn’t true! It was a new A&R guy who we didn’t know at Rev because time had passed.
Matt: Back then it just didn’t seem as realistic. This time, it seemed totally possible, but back then, it was willy-nilly.
Mike: We were just trying to play together, but I’d have to keep coming back to Vegas, and they’d have to learn and write the songs without me … it would be tough.
Matt: I don’t like the long-distance band idea.
You two live in Las Vegas now. How does it work between the other two members who live in Los Angeles?
Matt: It’s super easy. Now we have a system: They’d come out here and we’d practice, or we’d go out there and practice. It’s back-and-forth.
Mike: Not one person is overburdened. It’s totally even. During the last show, we were trading-off on weekend practices.
Matt: Later this month, we’re gonna practice in a remote house in Joshua Tree. We’re gonna lock ourselves away. There are no neighbors for miles.
Are you going to write in there?
Matt: Yeah, we’re gonna start.
How’s the new stuff sounding?
Matt: Riff-wise, it’s a little bit of everything. It covers everything from thrash to industrial.
Mike: We’re gonna keep pushing on the electronic elements we’ve used before–from the fast stuff, to the slower, doomy stuff. I don’t think it’s going to be a crazy shift; just a natural evolution. Nothing drastic, but Curl Up and Die…just years later. After doing different bands, it’s fun to make music like this and practice the old songs. I learned how to scream over Matt’s riffs, so it’s natural when it comes to figuring out patterns. It comes to me. It’s fun.
How’d it feel playing some of the older songs two decades later?
Matt: Some of the old riffs are a little embarrassing, but the majority of it is still super fun.
Mike: Yeah, I like playing the majority of the set. There are some songs I like less, but I like the guitar parts for, and vice versa. I’m pretty hard to understand, and I jump around on the lyrics page, so I redid some things for the older songs to make it more fun for myself.
Do you have an era of songs that you enjoy playing the most?
Mike: Yeah, I like the last record, The One Above All, The End Of All That Is, the most. I feel like that’s where we locked in and established our own style completely.
Matt: I like that, too, and I like the EPs a lot.
Speaking of, The Only Good Bug is A Dead Bug is about to turn 20…
Matt: That’s weird!
Mike: Yeah, I still feel like I’m 20.
Matt: I just feel like I’m stuck in my early 20s.
Mike: Now that it’s 20, I think to myself, “Oh, I was a little kid when I made this!” It’s always fun revisiting—no matter how old you get, but man.
Matt: I think it’s so sloppy … so messy.
Mike: Oh, yeah, you were a teenager, so…
Matt: I remember when I started re-learning the beginning of “Absolute Denial of the Ultimate Nullifier,” and it was just … nobody played the same thing. Everyone was playing it all wrong, and it was recorded wrong, so I just had to write it all over again. I had no idea how to play it.
Mike: I had to do the same.
How did those practices go?
Mike: It’s cool to approach stuff from a certain perspective. Keil was a new member, so it was fun to incorporate him, and the stuff he does. That made it interesting for all of us. He’s more technical—more locked-in.
Matt: He’s way more consistent and solid tempo-wise.
Mike: He’s always on-top of stuff. He learned all the songs on his own before our first practice together. It was crazy.
Matt: I’ve been in other bands with him, and when we’d practice with those bands, we’d always joke around about playing Curl Up and Die songs. We’d mess around and actually do some of the songs here and there over the last two years. I knew that he was low key learning all the songs [laughs].
Mike: It’s weird, too because he had to remind me about some parts that I’d sing higher. My voice has changed over the years, of course, but Keil made it a point to point that out [laughs].
Over the past few years, Vegas has embraced reunions like Faceplant and Boba Fett Youth, but CUAD’s feels independent of that—even though it’s the same city and scene. Why is that?
Matt: I love Boba Fett Youth. I was at that show. Growing up, I learned so much about how to play guitar from watching them. All the weird chords … it was so cool.
Mike: If you asked me two years ago, I’d say that we had some distance from the city. I’d come back to visit, and it would feel weird. Here was a place I grew up in, and I visit, and it’s much different. Now, I’m here and settled back in.
Of course, we’re friends with a lot of people in the bands who we’ve played with. That just comes with growing up in the scene. However, I’ve never done a band just to be a part of the scene. I do bands because they’re cool, fun and a creative outlet;I don’t think about it as a community. That’s on both ends—creating music and going to shows.
Matt: I think early on, all of our friends were in this huge scene. You’ve got Faded Grey … and it was just defaulted to a big community. We used to mob around, maybe 20 of us.
Mike: Right. I think it had to do with being young, too. We would just hang out as a group because we were all friends. Then, you get older, and realize you hang out with yourself a lot more [laughs]. It rules.
Some people nurture the scene, and it’s super important to them. I think a scene and community are both incredibly important, but I just don’t feel like I’m any part of that. Like how a vote doesn’t matter for an elected official, I feel like I’m outside of it.
What’s next for CUAD? You mentioned that Joshua Tree practice…
Mike: It’s going to be ongoing. We’ve got that booked, and we’re just going to see where it takes us. We’re gonna take our time with it; we want to make some shit we want.
Are you playing shows, too?
Matt: Yeah, it’s kind of all of it [laughs]. We’ll play some shows. We’ll probably save the new songs until they’re done.
Mike: I think the first hurdle was the Chain show. We wanted to see how it’d go, and how it felt to play with each other. It went really well, so now we’re going gung ho with the band. This next show will be a blast.
What took so long?
Mike: We goofed on it—the fact that people think we don’t want to play Vegas, but the fact is that we do. I’m super excited.
Matt: I just wish there was an all-ages club that sounded good. The Bunkhouse sounds amazing. It’s tough.
Vegas has, historically, had a tough time keeping all-ages venues afloat.
Matt: Tell me about it!
Mike: We’d always think, “Man, this venue rules!” Then, it’d get shut down a few weeks later. When we started, we’d buy a generator and play desert shows. We were joking around, and we even considered having the Vegas gig be a desert show. It would be fitting [laughs].
What were some of the most memorable ones?
Mike: I remember the Black Dice show.
Matt: Oh, yeah, with The Tombs!
Mike: The singer bit our friend Dave [Gorum], who did all the artwork for the Curl Up and Die stuff. While they were playing, he just went ahead and bit him!
Matt: He singled him out for no reason, darted at him, and did it. There was commotion, and when it cleared, Dave realized that he’d been bitten. Those dudes were crazy. That happened in the late ‘90s. Black Dice were some weird art kinda band. They went on to do indie and grind stuff.
Those Tomb shows were something else. I remember running across the desert with my amp because the cops were chasing me. They found out about the show somehow, and kids scattered like ants. That might’ve been a different band, now that I think about it.
Mike: Even going out there to attend shows was a whole thing. You were never sure if cops were gonna roll up. I remember we had to make a few trips to get backup generators…
Matt: St. George shows were great, too. I remember hanging out at a McDonald’s on the way there, and clearing the ball pit out. McDonalds used to have these things called PlayPlaces where small kids would play while their parents did shit. We rolled out with garbage bags and emptied it out, then let ‘em all go in the middle of the set we played that night. We also had this thing called the Nemesis Enforcer. Gustavo’s [Mendoza, bassist] dad made it. It was a box covered in carpet with light switches—one of them triggered the strobes, another triggered the wash lights. The strobes were going off, and it became a giant ball pit.
Mike: We ended up on the hood of a cop car, actually. The one time we were involved in a fight at a show, it was wild. We played some sort of bar and pizza/arcade area. The venue had security guards. Our friends from the city started singing along—not even moshing—and one security guard there was on a power trip. He started grabbing them, and then he started using mace…
Matt: Our friend Dave got maced, and he ran for it. I saw red and remember myself punching him and throwing him against the wall. The crowd was going with us. I had my hands on his face and couldn’t punch anymore. They ran into my cab, and it collapsed onto my guitar. I ended up losing it.
Mike: I couldn’t see what was going on, but I felt fists hitting my fists. When I finally saw what it was, it ended up being Matt punching the dude because of what happened to his guitar [laughs]. They called the cops on us, and they put us in plastic cuffs. They ended up taking the security guard away.
Justice!
Mike: Right! I remember the first Curl Up and Die show. We played at a frat party, and we were still teens in a joke band. I remember people thought we were gonna play pop-punk. The audience was mainly drunk bros, so we showed up and went as nuts as we could for 20 minutes, and just left. Everyone was confused.
Matt: We played a show at a BMX crew’s massive house. It was fun. Then a week later, they found a body in one of the locked rooms!
Mike: I remember another one when we played at some rich kid’s parents’ house on the West Side. It had a basement with a racquetball court. We pulled up to the side and was told to unload by a spiral staircase, which led to the court. It was the worst-sounding place, but so much fun.
The dad of the kid came home during it all. He started yelling, and our guitar player, John Brown, kept telling him to shut up.
Matt: The Halloween shows were always a blast.
Mike: I remember one year, the host’s dad bodyslammed me during the set.
Woah, maliciously?
Mike: Kind of. He wanted to have fun with some of the kids and he started moshing. The kids weren’t digging it. I was hyper and having fun, so I jumped on his back. I was in a Tigger suit, mind you. So he did the did it. It hurt.
Bringing it back: What can we expect at the show?
Matt: We just want to have fun.
Mike: We’re just excited to do it.
Matt: I’m excited to play for friends new and old. It’ll be sick.
Mike: I pride myself on our performances. I don’t want us to be known as the group of old dudes who do it just to do it. I [perform] as a genuine way of expressing myself, so I owe it to myself to do it as best as I can. I don’t play a show just to play a show. That’s not a good enough reason for me.
If I think of Curl Up and Die like a relationship, it’s definitely the longest and most consistent. I know Matt. Even if we all come from different places, we come together to do something every now and then. That’s a relationship.
Matt: Yeah, after all these years, I’m in a band with friends. Making things with friends is really personal, and the vibe of that really hasn’t changed much over the years. The show will be crazy, but at the end of the day, the songs and intent are the same.
-Ian Caramanzana
CUAD at Chain Reaction photos by Christopher Mounts
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