Today we’re speaking with Myrone of Firstborne, who’ve been turning heads with their crushing new release, Lucky.
Hi! The album is called Lucky. In hindsight, what was the single “luckiest” accident or unplanned moment during the recording that completely changed the record?
We more or less improvised the basic form for “Shine” in one take. We were talking about how we wanted to make a song with some big dynamics, and I started playing that little riff at the top of the song, and then Chris came out of nowhere with that “diggita diggita” drum fill, and then we just kept jamming. I think we had the whole song done in like 5 minutes or so.
Chris is known for precision, Girish for vocal firepower, and you for soft shred wizardry. What was the biggest creative clash you had in Texas, and how did it transform a song?
One of the things Chris and I talked about a lot in our time in Texas was the difference in our writing styles. Chris loves to whittle away at a song endlessly, polishing them into perfection, whereas I like to do songs as fast as possible so I don’t lose the initial spark of inspiration. We were talking one night and he said “you know it took us over a year to write “Laid to Rest” start to finish,” and I laughed and said “dude… “exclusive coupe” (My most popular song) took me 4 hours tops to make form start to finish, and when I did it I thought it was a throwaway song.” This sort of creative friction makes us a good team, I think. Chris pushes me to put a little shine (pun intended) on stuff, and I feel like I’m getting him more comfortable with being a little more raw and in the moment.
You walked into the studio with 150+ ideas, and ended up using none. How did you mentally flip that switch from “prepared architect” to “let’s burn the blueprint”?
Chris was adamant that we write in the studio. I had never written with him in person so I didn’t know how fast we would be able to work, so when he kept saying “no man we gotta write in the studio” I just smiled and nodded and said “Uh-huh,” while simultaneously writing a bunch of stuff beforehand. When we got there and got set up, looked at each other, and then wrote 3 tunes from scratch on the first day, I breathed a sigh of relief and realized we didn’t have to dip into any of the demos.
Machine has worked with very different artists from Clutch to King Crimson. What was the weirdest or most surprising direction he pushed you toward in the studio?
Machine brought out a little more of the punk attitude, which you can hear in songs like “Wake Up,” and “Minefield.”
If you stripped all distortion away and had to perform Lucky acoustically at a jazz club, which song would survive the transition best, and why?
The MTV unplugged version of “Rescue Me” will go down in history, mark my words, haha.
FIRSTBORNE is a rare international collaboration. Did you notice cultural differences – musical or personal – between an Indian powerhouse singer, a groove-metal icon from the US, and a shred-pop guitarist from LA?
Yes and no. I mean obviously we all have extremely different lives and we’re all bringing different spices to the Firstborne stew, but at the end of the day despite the geographic differences, the three of us deep down are metal dorks. It speaks to the international appeal of Heavy Metal in the sense that Metal rarely is #1 most popular genre, but people EVERYWHERE love metal. Metal transcends borders in a way that’s magical.
You’ve all been in bands with long histories and legacies. Was there a liberating sense of “no baggage” making this debut full-length? Or was the weight of expectations impossible to ignore?
Yes totally. I think a lot of people project a lot of expectations on the Firstborne project because of Chris and Girish’s legacies, but the truth is we really couldn’t care less. We went into the studio with zero expectations or goals creatively. “Lucky” is an incredible time capsule of a bunch of dudes just in the moment making the music that they thought was cool on that particular day.
A lot of fans try to pin you down genre-wise. Instead of genres, if each song on Lucky were a movie scene, what kind of scenes would they be?
You know the scene in Terminator 2 where John Connor storms out of his house and gets on his friend’s bike to go to the mall, and they start blasting “You could be Mine?”
I think of that scene every time I work on a Firstborne tune. Would Jon Connor listen to it on a boombox on the back of a motorcycle?
Was there a song on Lucky that almost didn’t make the cut – but once it did, became essential to the album’s identity?
Yes, we almost didn’t finish “Normandy.” It went from almost being scrapped to being the first song we got lyrics on.
The three of you bring very different fanbases. Was there ever a moment where you worried, “Are we making something too left-field for one side of the audience”?
We don’t really think about stuff like that.
The first time you listened back to the finished mixes of Lucky, what detail made you grin like a fan instead of a band member?
The background vocals in “Rescue Me” get me every time.
If you had to design a “starter pack” for someone who has never heard FIRSTBORNE – three songs from Lucky and one outside influence – what would you pick?
“Shine,” “Rescue Me,” and “Wake Up,” and then I’d tell you to listen to Van Halen’s Balance.
When writing in Texas, did the environment (the barn, the isolation, the landscape) seep into the music in ways you didn’t expect?
Yes. Machine’s studio is out in the Texas Hillcountry where you can pretty much do whatever you want on your property. It wasn’t uncommon for us to go outside for breaks and hear people shooting off guns in the distance, which I’m sure was total culture shock for Girish. We got into this heavy conversation about the glorification of guns here and that’s what inspired the lyrics for “Shine.”
Every great record has an inside joke or running gag from the studio. What was the Lucky inside joke that listeners would never guess from hearing the songs?
Half the reason we titled the record “Lucky,” is that the journey to Austin almost derailed the entire record. When Chris was leaving Richmond, somebody had broken into his storage unit and messed up all his drum hardware. Girish’s bag didn’t make it from India initially so he showed up without any clothes or anything. I somehow made it there without issue, but I got this crazy rash on my leg, so the entire time I was in Austin, I think I spent half the time putting cortisol lotion on my legs lol. Long story short, we were lucky to get the record done at all.
Your band name, FIRSTBORNE, implies something primal, new, almost mythic. How does Lucky reflect that “first spark” compared to the singles and EPs?
Lucky was the first time we were a “real band,” breathing the same air and jamming in the same room.
If Lucky were a live setlist performed front-to-back, what kind of journey would you want the audience to experience physically and emotionally?
I hope each and every audience member goes on an epic journey from the pit to the merch table, and then spends 102318129387987 dollars on Firstborne merch and CDs, then I hope they go home and make TikToks that go extremely viral!
When people look back 20 years from now, what do you hope they say about Lucky in the context of each of your legendary careers?
I can’t speak for the other guys, but I just hope people listen and think, “man, the guitar player did a pretty good job!”
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