The LA based We Are The Riot was formed in 2010 and is a band that’s equivalent to a bad-ass sports car in traffic. That shiny red car seems to break free from the crowded pack of cars, pressing the pedal to the floor and excelling to top speeds. Then, they get stuck in traffic and have to wait until they can put the pedal to the metal again. Did that confuse you at all? Well life’s already full of too many mysteries, so let me explain this a bit further.
You see, the band consists of Mikal Cox and Meegs Rascon of Coal Chamber, Andy Cole of Static-X (now Wayne Static) as well as Cheyne Fritts and Jimmy Trigger. The band was formed after Coal Chamber disbanded and then took a hiatus in 2011 to allow for new activity from Coal Chamber as well as Wayne. The band hit the road in 2014 as openers for Wayne Static and won audiences over night after night. There were rumblings of working on a new album this year when it was announced that Coal Chamber signed a new record deal, thus causing the band to hit the brakes again. Don’t worry though, as guitarist Meegs Rascon told me in out talk, it’s only a temporary pause for the band is eager to excel again.
Meegs: How you doing Johnny?
I’m having one of those kind of days man; how about yourself?
I hear you man! I’m going through some shit too man. You know what? I keep telling myself that they are some things going on in life right now that are extremely worse than what I’m going through, so I’m ok. You know what I mean man?
I’m a firm believer in that too. You know what? How about we focus on some good things that are going on such as your EP The Hollywood Demo Sessions that’s now available for digital download and all the positive attention that you guys are getting?
Yeah man, it’s awesome and I love it! We really want to spread the word about it. We’re really passionate about it and we put a lot of hard work into making it. We’re doing it the old, grassroots way, from the bottom up and on our own and it’s really gratifying. We truly appreciate everything from each interview that we get asked to do to each t-shirt that someone buys from us.
A band being gracious in this day and age of social media travels quickly, maybe not as quickly as bad news does, but it still is heard by just about everyone. It really speaks volumes about what the band is made of. You guys have Jimmy Trigger on vocals now and I was wondering if the addition of him into the band changed the dynamics in any way?
As we see it, the band really started when Jimmy joined us. What we had before was a different thing so we decided to keep the name because we really loved it and no one really knew a lot about the band. It was a fresh start for us when Jimmy joined and it was so new to us. The music dynamics changed and even the friendship within the band shifted. Now, that’s not making a dig towards our old singer, but with Jimmy things kind of melted into what we really wanted all along. It’s just like you said about the dynamics changing; he helped to complete the puzzle. The music stylings changed, the vocal stylings changed, everything changed and we moved in the direction that we had been seeking from the beginning.
How does the songwriting process work in this band?
In this band, this is how it works; I want to put this out there first. This band is 100% equal as far as everything goes. As for the writing process, everyone puts in their two cents worth. We have five members, but every song is different and not everyone always contributes the same thing. One day, I may have a riff, one day our bass player Andy might have one and we’ll write on it and jam on it. Then, maybe the next section is someone else’s part that they come up with, so a song can be written by all of us. Someone may write the structure of a song and bring it in, and then we all contribute to different aspects of it until it’s complete. It’s an equal thing and it’s meant to be that way so that we have longevity. Our backgrounds, meaning Mikey and myself, don’t really matter when it comes to this band.
I read on one of your social media sites that you were looking at going in later this year to work on your full length album. Can you give us some in-sight on that?
Right now, it’s tentative, but we have been discussing it for quite a while. We’ve got everything on hold for a minute so that we can do our Coal Chamber stuff.
Congrats to you guys! Yeah, I read that you just signed with Napalm Records. I wondered if that would delay things with this band.
Yeah, it will obviously, but I’ve been working on both, as far as negotiating, for a long time now. I have to make sure Coal Chamber and this new deal is my priority and when that part is done, then we shift our priority to We Are The Riot. The guys are so cool with everything and being very supportive about it. It’s cool because this band’s a bunch of friends and we love each other. They told us to do our thing and when it’s time, then we’ll fucking do this one too. So, if everything falls into place with the right producer, the budget and everyone’s schedule, then we’ll hopefully start work on the We Are The Riot album later this year when Coal Chamber’s on a break.
In the meantime, fans can check out this kick-ass mini-movie of a video that you guys released for “It’s Not What You Wanted.” How did you come up with that video?
That was directed by Brian Cox and I think that was mainly his vision, but we all put our two cents worth in as well. He’s pretty awesome and he has his own production company called Digital Iris Productions. He’s actually our drummer’s little brother. If you look at their faces they look the same, but the younger one is a big boy.
Can we back track just a little bit? I wanted to ask you why you put this band together back in 2010? Was it to fill a void during downtime with Coal Chamber or something else?
I wanted to play a different style of rock, a hard rock, heavy rock style or whatever you want to call it. I had been doing Coal Chamber 
for such a long time that I wanted to give this a shot. I wanted to do something where the guitars weren’t tuned super low and I wanted singing vocals. I really love bands like Papa Roach and all those bands on Octane Radio; I really do love that style of music. I also wanted to have a rock and roll band that was very high energy live. So far, it’s been slowly building up, but we’re very excited. We finished off a run with Wayne Static a few months ago and we did extremely well on it. The kids really responded to us and they bought a ton of our merchandise. We actually sold out of all of the EPs that we took before the tour was over with. The response from the kids and the way that they would line up at our merch booth after our set was just phenomenal; that told us that we were doing something right. That tour was actually our test to see how we would do outside of LA and how the kids would respond. We knew we were sticking this out and that we were going to fucking do this mo matter what.
Wow, what a great feeling that must be to go to these markets where people may not even know you and are there to see Wayne (Static) and you win them over like that.
The lines were humungous! We would hit that stage and play for maybe a half hour and we would get back to our merch booth and the kids were all lined up to meet us. We sold a ton of merch, took pictures, signed stuff and made a lot of new friends and fans. It was pretty damn awesome!
That’s pretty cool man; the power of music is an amazing thing. Do you remember what it was that first got you interested in playing music?
I was 11 or 12 and I was just getting into rock and metal through my uncles. They would play me these albums and there was one that literally changed my life. I remember begging my parents for the money to buy it and I finally got it and I rushed out and bought Motley Crue’s Shout at the Devil. Besides the fact that it had that big pentagram on it and it looked so satanic, but it was just so rebellious and the music was so fucking heavy at the time. I remember bringing it home and my mom said it was devil stuff, but not anymore; she’s cool with it now. The first time that I heard it, I knew that was my path and my destiny, so I picked up a guitar and I’ve been at it ever since then. I knew that was why I was put on this earth.
We Are The Riot – “It’s Not What You Wanted” (Official Video)
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Man, I love that album and that’s one of my favorite album packages as well. The gatefold pic of the band was just sick.
Fuck yeah and all those flames and shit in the background!
How about we finish off with a few tough questions about your childhood? Are you game?
Yeah man, let’s go for it.
Were you into wrestling growing up? What would your wrestling name be if music ended and you became a professional wrestler?
That’s funny; you know when I was a young teenager, I was a raging wrestling fanatic. Do you remember the Road Warriors? Well, they were the Road Warriors in the NWA and then the Legion of Doom in the WWF. What would my name be? I’d probably say No Bueno Rascon, even though I’d probably get my ass kicked so hard (laughs). I’d definitely be a bad guy because they have the most fun.
What about your favorite cereal? I know you had to have one.
If I remember correctly, it was Apple Jacks; that was my favorite shit ever, that and Captain Crunch, but it had to have the berries in it.
Now, you probably consumed quite a few bowls of cereal on Saturday mornings while watching cartoons. What was your favorite?
Tom and Jerry, the best.
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By Johnny Price, Senior Lead RockRevolt Magazine Journalist
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