Destroy Boys, formed in 2015, has been creating gender fluid spaces from their hometown punk-rock scene in California to all over the world.
Releasing their fourth studio album, Funeral Soundtrack #4, just last August, I sat down with the lead singer of the band, Alexia Roditis, to dive more into their history and evolution with punk music. Read the interview below.
Emilia Pashayeva: Hi! How are you?
Alexia Roditis: Hi! I'm okay. How are you doing?
E: I'm doing good. Where are y'all at right now?
A: We are in South Carolina.
E: How's the weather looking like there?
A: It's actually really nice. You've been in the cold though.
E: I love the red lip!
A: Thank you.
E: Well, thanks for taking the time to hop on this quick Zoom interview with KVRX.
A: Yeah! Thanks for having me.
E: How's tour been treating you so far?
A: Tour's actually been really good. Morale has been really high. We've had a couple incidents with our transportation, something broke down, got a new bus, missed a show, and then our bus got flooded with sewage. But, everyone still has high spirits. So, it's been really nice. The shows have been awesome too. The fans are so cool. I love them.
E: That's really good to hear. What have been your favorite cities to perform in for this tour?
A: Probably the Boston show. The Boston show was really, really good. I felt super on for that one. Also, sorry if I'm speaking a little quietly. I just did 11 shows in 12 days. So I'm a little…you know.
Boston was definitely a highlight though. I feel like Toronto was really good too. Chicago is always great. Really, there's a lot of good shows. Every single one has been pretty awesome. Denver too.
E: Yes! Love that.
Starting off pretty general–what got you into punk music? What about the genre spoke to you lyrically, musically and visually?
A: I think the first thing that really drew me in was the community aspect. I really liked music, but I wasn't a huge punk until I was like 15. I think I was really surprised and excited by the group that I saw at my first punk show and the dancing and the loud music. That energy really drew me in. I love the music. It was so aggro, and I hadn't ever seen anything like that. I truly think that part of it was just seeing musicians do their thing in close quarters. I loved everybody's style too, like the individuality that you see with people's jackets and what they decide to put on them. A lot of punks that I met were really nice too. So, I felt accepted relatively. I definitely feel like there's a really big community when it comes to punk specifically.
E: I think that with so much energy and emotion there, there's a lot to connect to. That first show you went to–was it more of a DIY show or was it some bigger punk group?
A: The first couple shows that I went to were, in order: One Direction, 5 Seconds of Summer, then Reel Big Fish, then Less Than Jake which was like a ska band, then Streetlight Manifesto which was also a ska band and then the DIY punk band. The punk show was at a tiny spot with graffiti on the walls, on concrete floor, with blacked-out windows. It was just so cool. The DIY show is what really solidified my interest.
E: The visuals of punk are super cool and that actually leads me to my next question. Your guys' visuals are also really tied to the identity of the band, and I was wondering what influences you guys pulled from for the cover art of Funeral Soundtrack No. 4 and the album's music videos. I know some band members expressed having interest in horror movies and using them as influences.
A: Yeah, Vi has a lot to do with the visuals. She made the cover by hand. She made a collage. We also started with the actual album title after we recorded the songs. So we got the album title, then she kind of started to pull from different sort of funeral, goth-like influences. I wish she was here because she could talk more in depth about the reason for each aspect. I remember I suggested angels, candles, roses, whatever to kind of fluff it out and make it look cool. With the music videos, she really likes horror movies, so she goes into that. I'm more of a fan of surrealism and very symbolic stuff, even if it's very in your face. I really like metaphors and visuals, that kind of thing.
I feel like you could see that in our Plucked music video. There's not a strict timeline for Plucked, but there's a lot of heavy symbolism in there.
Especially with our music video for Boyfeel. It was very symbolic and very planned out. I really wish that we could have done a bigger production for that song, but me and my friend, Tay, still made do and it turned out really good. In Boyfeel, even the part where I'm getting on my toes to reach something is sort of an homage to being short, but also feeling masculine. Then, when I'm on the couch with all my trans homies, it's sort of an homage to community. The song is very dark and that's why I wanted to make the video more fun. I wanted to showcase these scenes to represent queer joy and community and friendship.
There was a Challengers shot that I did and the bathtub shot was from Timothee Chalamet from the French Dispatch. So, there's a lot.
E: Yeah. I think that punk is a genre where visuals are just such an important thing. You have those basics down of angels, roses, crosses, but I think it's cool getting to work on those bigger metaphors. Everyone honestly takes them in their own way and gets to realize a message in their own way.
A: Exactly. I also just like having a deeper lyrical song, but making the music video more lighter. Even with Plucked, it's got kind of a boppy vibe, but the lyrics themselves are actually pretty sad. It's kind of a sad song, but it's also sort of ironic about how I forgot how to sing, but I'm singing the song. Sometimes I do actually feel like that. That's a song that kind of unlocks my voice again if I need it. When I haven't been singing very much, I'll sing that song and it's very easy for me.
Also, I don't believe in binaries. So, I'd like to try and showcase that as much as I can with our music and the visuals that I contribute to. Again, having very contrasting visuals that don't box you in one place makes space for that.
E: Yeah, I definitely agree with that.
You've said before that all your albums are different soundtracks to different phases of your life that you've now left behind. How has the way you performed these songs changed over the years?
A: I like this question. Sometimes with the older music, I almost take a backseat and I let the crowd do more of the work if that makes sense.
Once I actually threw glass in my friend's eyes when performing. I still run around and do stuff like that on stage, but now I've realized the crowd is performing to this song right now too. For example with Crybaby, everybody's drinking, everybody's singing it and I don't feel like I have to put that much of myself into the song. I mean I still do, but just a little less than I would because I feed more off of the crowd with those older songs. I kind of try to play it with what everyone else is doing, catch a vibe with that and let the song speak for itself.
Since we've played some songs so many times it's like, “Y'all already know this song, just enjoy it.” I also think that I sing a bit looser with the old songs. I change the melodies, and I feel more comfortable making changes in the live set.
E: With older songs, they had more time to become iconic songs and then everyone's like, “Oh my god, I remember that one,” or, “I know this one.” It just makes a lot of sense to work with the crowd too, especially in a performance setting, because that's what music is all about.
Do you sometimes feel like those songs might be more fun to play? Because you kind of get to experiment with them more.
A: It goes back and forth. I think that there are certain songs that are always really fun to do, like Fences. Every time we play that it just goes fucking crazy, you know what I mean? I know that that's a song that is going to just go off. It's not even in our top songs on Spotify, but it's one of my favorite Destroy Boys songs. I don't think that it really depends on old vs. new as far as how fun it is to perform. But when we pull out a deep cut, it's cool to see what people know.
I'm always surprised by how different I sing now. I love doing newer songs too because it can be more exciting because I've really got to focus. I can't just have a blindfold on and do it. I have to think a little more about what I'm doing.
E: That's true. And there might be a little less singing along, so there's a lot more attention on you.
A: Yeah, exactly. We've been doing Amor Divino on this tour which is one of the songs on the new album. I've been playing around with where I sit on stage because for that song I've also realized I don't want to stand up the whole time. I can sing a little better when I'm sitting down for some reason. It's nice to have these sort of challenges too.
E: That's very true. I've also seen that you guys had started releasing a lot more singles after the Sorry Mom and Make Room albums. There's been a lot leading up to this most recent album especially. What type of work flow do all of you gravitate towards when it comes to writing and releasing music?
A: I will say the single thing is very much a label thing. The labels love putting out singles, even though it's like putting out half the record. Is this a good idea? I don't know still.
As far as writing, it's really varied over the years, With this album, a lot of the songs were written outside of the studio and then brought in as they were almost finished.
Some songs were completely made up in the studio. Our third record, Open Mouth, Open Heart, was more of us being like, “We have some ideas. Let's like put them all together in studio.” We just took one month and recorded all the music, but Funeral Soundtrack No. 4 took several months. We were recording for two months, intensely working on it. Then, we had three months of touring where I would go in studio some days and sing some shit, then leave and come back again.
I really like to either play by myself or jam though. I like to jam until something comes through. Me and Narsai are really good at it. I'll have an idea and then we just play together and more ideas fall out. When Vi and I write, it's kind of like–we have the guitar, we have lyrics usually and then we'll collaborate from there and see where the song goes or figure out what we should add.
I think it works better for us when we do duos for writing music. When there are three cooks in the kitchen starting a song, it's just too many opinions. It's kind of hard to get anything done for us. It's also kind of nice to have different styles of collaboration. Some of us are more comfortable jamming than others.
I personally like to write–do two of us writing together, have the bones of an idea, present it to the third one, flesh it out even more, and so on and so forth. I feel like it also makes sense. With two different people working together, it's going to be a kind of a different dynamic with what clicks with them.
E: This kind of builds on to my next question. You had mentioned that there's a lot of strength to the fact that all four of you guys are still together as a band. You all grew up together during really transformative years of your lives when things are constantly shifting. What's the secret that's kept y'all together?
A: I think number one is a dedication to the band. That's a big part of it. A band is like having a baby. Despite the problems we've had, it's always been like we want to work this out because we have this band that we care so much about, so we have to.
It's not really even been an option to quit the band for me. I feel like the secret is really communication and not letting stuff get built up. Just don't let resentment build up. If there's a problem, just be like, “Hey, this upset me.” Then they're like, “Yeah, sorry,” or “No, this is why I did that.”
I think part of it is also not letting really little things get on your nerves because when you live with ten people for five weeks at a time, people just do shit that pisses the other ones off. The big part of it has really just been communication. If there's a big problem, let's resolve it as soon as we can.
If it's a little problem, maybe just let it slide or bring it up and be like, “Hey, just say you're sorry for this.” I feel like we've all had to learn to be really humble and take each other's criticism. A big thing is definitely not taking things personally.
E: True. Even with having all sorts of different roommates, it's been the same thing–just learning to not take it too personal. A big part is not to think that people's intentions are bad and not assuming the worst.
A: Yes, don't assume the worst of your bandmate if they do something that annoys you or something that upsets you because oftentimes the intention wasn't to be a piece of shit. I try to think like, “This thing upset me, but it's not a personal attack.”
E: Yeah. My mom would always tell me with whoever had upset me, “They are not your enemy. They're not out to get you. They're just living their own life.” It's something I remind myself of.
Ending on a high note, what has been one of your favorite parts of this album–whether it's been a time in the back rooms, recording in studio or getting on stage to perform at a certain show?
A: One of my favorite things is performing Amor Divino, honestly. It's been a really big challenge and one I'm really excited about. I can really showcase some of my vocal ability on this album in a way that I hadn't before. It's been really fun for me to sing these songs that are pretty comfortable for me to sing and still challenging and seeing the crowd's reaction to it. Boyfeel has, by far, been one of my favorite parts of the album too. That's one of the new songs that people do know the lyrics to.
E: It's an iconic song.
A: Thank you. So, that's been one of my favorite parts. It's also just been looking at all these gay people and being like, “Yeah, me too. You already knew that, but now it's in a song. You can sing it together.”
E: You kind of created this community. When you get to sing that song and see everyone singing along, I'm sure that's beautiful.
A: It’s awesome. The performances have gotten better. I just feel more comfortable on stage. I've been kind of talking about politics when we do an encore too. That's pretty fun. We have roses and tombstones on the stage for the performance aspect which is really fun to have decorations now. There are a lot of things that have been very exciting.
E: Yeah, it sounds super exciting. Well, I hope you'll make your way back to Austin so I can see y'all!
A: Yeah. Oh my god. We will be making up that day. We couldn't do the show the first time around because our bus broke down…
E: Things happen.
A: Yeah, we'll be back though!
E: Perfect! Are you getting ready to perform any time tonight?
A: We finally have a day off. I'm like, “Oh my god. Perfect.” I went to Waffle House for the first time on this tour.
E: Love Waffle House.
A: No, it's iconic.
E: I need the camo Waffle House cap.
A: So true. Those are so cute. Yeah, but it's been chill. I'm looking forward to listening to a podcast and going to Target. Just taking a walk in nature too. I'm excited to perform tomorrow though.
E: Building up the energy right now. Well, I'm going to leave you to you're relaxing. Thank you for taking the time to talk with me and KVRX. Have an amazing rest of tour! I will see you in Austin soon.
A: Hell yeah! Yes, you will. Thank you, bye.
Catch Destroy Boys touring in Europe right now or in the spring on the west coast!
You can also listen to their recent album Funeral Soundtrack #4 right below :-)