Metal Contraband’s Chelsea spoke with Anthony Paladino of IDK on everything from their latest release, “Nark 5”, to their lineup changes over time, biggest inspirations in Hardcore, Punk, and Metal, and more. Check it out below:
Photo via IDK Official Website
Chelsea joined here on the phone by Anthony Paladino from IDK. How are you doing today?
I’m good, how are you doing?
Great, thanks so much for joining me. Your most recent news with IDK is the “Nark 5” single out on Scorpion Records now, which is actually your first new music in 15 years. Talk about the return of some new music from IDK and what made now the best time for this track?
Well, thanks for having me on today. So I guess around 2008 was our last release that we did. Between then and now we pretty much just gigged locally, we weren’t even thinking of writing any new music. We did a gig in 2019, and then the pandemic hit, and honestly, how “Nark 5” came about was out of nowhere. I hadn’t talked to my drummer in a while; this was probably around 2023, and we hadn’t played since 2019. I hadn’t heard from him in a while, and out of nowhere he sends me this music that he and our guitar player wrote. And he basically said, “Hey, we just wrote this. It sounds like it should be an IDK song. What do you think?” And I listened to it, and I thought it should be, too. It sounded like it was right in line with what we do. And I asked him, “All right, well, you wanna make that?” I could write some lyrics or something. And that’s really how “Nark 5” came about. It was just a couple of years of being completely inactive and not even in touch with the guys. And then my drummer just sends me this recording and we built it from there. You know, we actually added some parts, arranged the song a little differently, and that’s pretty much it. And then we recorded it; we decided to record one of our older songs that’s on our old Eureka EP, and we decided to do a Sabbath cover, too. So that’s pretty much how it came about.It was just my drummer sending me a recording that he did.
Very cool, just a little spark of an idea, and then you guys went ahead and did it, and kind of reformed the band, which is awesome.
That’s it exactly.
And yes, you mentioned the Sabbath cover, you covered “Symptom of the Universe,” so what made you choose that Sabbath song specifically, and how did you put your own spin on it?
In the past, we’ve covered Sabbath songs, we’ve covered the real popular ones like “Iron Man” and “Paranoid”, and then we wanted to put it down on tape and get a Sabbath song out there for everybody to hear us do. And we just thought “Symptom of the Universe” was the most rockin’, you know, it’s something that we were always messing around with in practice over the years, and we just thought it was most appropriate for us to do, and we thought we did it well. We basically did it exactly how Sabbath does it until the end outro part, where they break it down and they’re playing all those little intricate guitar parts quietly, and Ozzy’s singing over it, so what we did with that part was we went the opposite way with it. We turned it into an IDK kind of like, fast hardcore-ish part into a breakdown, and I basically sing the same lyrics as Ozzy during that part, and that’s really it. I mean, that’s it in a nutshell.
Also talk to us about the origins of IDK compared to the current lineup. You mentioned that it was your drummer that you hadn’t spoken to for a while, and then also the guitarist as well, so is it entirely returning original members? Did you assemble anyone new for this lineup right now?
It’s not, it’s all members that we’ve had in the past. I mean, we started way back in 1991 when I was in high school. So, compared to then and now, we’ve had numerous lineup changes. Myself and Tom, our bass player, being the ones that have been through…I’ve been there the whole time. Tom’s been there 99% of the time. He joined the band in the early 90s. So right now, the current lineup is actually myself, Tom, Adrian Spoleti, who’s our guitar player/hype guy. So he actually started the band with me back in high school, and then he left for a long time, and now he’s back. Long stories, I can’t get into that now, but it’s all good, and Fabio, our drummer, who joined the band back in 2007, Mike, same thing, he joined the band back in 2007, and we’ve re-recruited another older guitar player that played with us in the early 2000s a couple months ago, Scott Dorey. So realistically, IDK is a six-member band right now, because Adrian sometimes won’t play guitar, and Scott’ll jump on the guitar. And Adrian will pretty much just sing with me and, like I said, act like a hype man, but that’s pretty much the story with the lineup right now.
Solid, and that’s great; it’s like a return of various lineups over the years, which is cool, and it sounds like a little bit of rotating flexibility, which is kind of what you need in a band nowadays, for sure. You guys are very heavily rooted, obviously, in the hardcore like you mentioned, definitely some punk as well, but there’s some metal connections as well, with having the Sabbath covers part of your history as well. So what bands and genres do you feel like you connect with that really inspire you the most?
Me, personally? I mean, I’m in the middle of it all. My favorite bands of all time are The Ramones, Iron Maiden, Fugazi, Sick of It All, Leeway, then I’m into all the late ’80s, ’90s thrash, you know, Metallica, Anthrax, you know, punk, going back, again, the Ramones, the Misfits…all my influence in my songwriting basically comes from a connection with all of that that I just mentioned, and more. And most of the guys are into pretty much the same stuff, pretty open-minded, so that’s pretty much it; those are the influences, I mean, you know, we get the fast hardcore-ish parts, I feel like, from New York hardcore that we’ve always been big on, and my singing style is kind of different than your typical hardcore band. I sing, I shout a little bit, obviously, but I sing more melodic, and we incorporate New York-style breakdown-type parts, although they’re all in bright chord progressions, so they don’t sound as dark, if that makes sense. But that’s it, pretty much.
That’s great. I mean, yeah, having the kind of well-rounded sound helps you to keep those hardcore roots, but also cover songs like Sabbath songs, so you get a little bit of everything in there, which is great. And you mentioned Sick of It All, did you have some shows with them at some point?
We did some local Jersey shows way back in the day with Sick of It All in the ’90s, but that’s it. I mean, I’ve always been a huge…I mean, Sick of It All was absolutely my favorite, and is my favorite hardcore band, and they were my first introduction to New York hardcore. I listened to Agnostic Front, but I went to go see my first New York hardcore show back in 1991 at the Ritz, and that was where I saw Sick of It All, and I was blown away. I was there for Agnostic Front, and they were awesome, but Sick of It All introduced me to what I think hardcore really is, and then we got the opportunity to play with them. I never actually met the guys, even at the gigs that we played, but just being on the same bill was, like, mind-blowing, and they’re a huge influence on us.
Still, I mean, you shared a stage with them, so that counts, so that’s awesome. And outside of IDK, you’ve also been the frontman of the band Rip Face Invasion. Can you talk about that one, and what do you feel is kind of similar or different from IDK with that band?
Rip Face actually came about from some songs that I was writing for IDK back in, what was it, 2012, maybe? And I was writing vocal styles that were different than IDK. You know, I was shouting more, I was using more of the barking kind of hardcore influence in my approach to the vocals. And I talked it over with our bass player, who’s the IDK bass player, and I said, “Why don’t we make this something else?” And that’s where Rip Face Invasion came from, so it was basically some IDK stuff that we just pretty much twisted around and turned into something a little different. If you listen to it, my vocal approach is very different. So at that time, that’s what we were into doing, so I recruited a couple other friends, and we did Rip Face Invasion for a couple of years, released a couple of records on smaller independent labels, and that’s how Rip Face Invasion basically came about. It was from IDK writings that just developed, so we created something different out of it.
Sometimes you’ve got to expand the horizon a little bit, try something a little different, but now you’ve returned back to your IDK roots, so that’s awesome as well. And IDK, you mentioned Earache Records, and you guys used to be part of that label, but now I believe the most recent track is on Scorpion Records. Can you talk about that new label?
Yeah, so Scorpion is run by Scott Earth of the band Silence = Death. It’s a label that he started many years ago that Rip Face Invasion was actually on. It’s a little indie label out of New Jersey, and once IDK actually started getting our song together, you know, the “Nark 5” and all that newer recording stuff. I wasn’t running out to shop at the labels, because we’ve been pretty inactive, you know, for a while. So I hit up Scott, and I liked working with him on the Rip Face Invasion stuff, so I hit him up, and I sent him the track. I said, “You want to do this? You want to release this? We’re kind of quietly coming out of the woodwork again, you know?” And he heard it, and he said, “Yeah, sure.” He’s like, “This is great.” So that’s basically how that came about, just friendly connections, and again, I like what Scorpion did with Rip Face Invasion, and that’s why we went with them again.
Awesome, that’s great. Now, it sounds like there’s a lot of great stuff going on, new tracks, new ideas, new label, all that kind of stuff, but do you have any specific plans for more new music right now, or we’re just kind of hanging out with the singles, seeing what happens?
Well, we’re hanging out with the single now and trying to get that wherever we can get it. But at the same time, we actually are writing. So our main thing now is to actually finish up another EP, maybe a three or four-songer, and either get it out by the end of this year or the beginning of next year. So, yeah, we are concentrating more on the studio stuff.
Awesome. Any touring or live shows on the horizon? Or we’re definitely focusing in on studio?
Mostly studio right now, we all need to stay close to the home base because of our family lives. But we are doing gigs on the East Coast. Right now we have one booked over at Dingbatz in Clifton with the mighty D.R.I, so we’ve got that one gig coming up, and then, no touring, but you know, we’re available to play anywhere on the East Coast, so we’ll probably be doing something else in the beginning of next year, depending on the schedules.
Nice. Well, it sounds like you’ve got a lot of great stuff going on for IDK, and thank you for sharing some of that, with the origins, as well as what you’re up to now, and what you have coming up, so I wish you the best of luck with everything. Thank you so much for your time, and keep on having fun making new IDK music.
Awesome. Thanks for having me.