Luke Fabian (Pupil Slicer): Six Songs To Die With

We have neither the budget nor the imagination of BBC Radio, so we've borrowed from their Desert Island Discs program to bring you our own scaled-down version, dubbed Six Songs To Die With. We ask a noteworthy musical guest to select the six songs they'd be stranded with on an obligatory desert island. Hypothetically, said guest will be dying on this island, so they've been advised to choose wisely. Selections appear in no particular order.

Luke Fabian: As an early missive, I hope this does not get flamed as hard as Will Ramos' recent Lambgoat list. It probably will, but here we go anyway. I’ve extended the concept of this, and give to you: 6 Songs to Die With….from the Pupil Slicer Van. 6 songs to Tour With? Maybe?

Slicer has recently completed a UK / EU run with Boris, we now head into the summer festival season and then have a UK tour booked with Employed to Serve, in the autumn. Much time has been spent ‘in the van’ and music can elevate, entertain and energize the weary road-beaten soul. Here is some music that has done that for Slicer in the past and will continue to do so in the future.

The Dillinger Escape Plan

"Gold Teeth on a Bum"

Luke Fabian: To anyone familiar with the music of Pupil Slicer - it would not be a huge shock to find out that Dillinger is included on this list. Well, sometimes obvious things are the best and right things. But not to be too too obvious, I swerved including "Setting Fire to Sleeping Giants" or "43% Burnt". The band loves the entire TDEP back catalogue, and the Option Paralysis LP is a favourite, hence this pick. It’s also a favourite of my wife. On a recent, and mammoth drive back at the end of the EU Boris tour from north-western Denmark, Kate played the entire TDEP back catalogue to our new live guitarist Alex. An extreme act, yes, but a necessary one, and essential part of Alex’s induction and ongoing Slicer orientation. Extra props and shout out to Alex’s frequent refrain of ‘this sounds like Cynic’ in reference to the lead guitar sections throughout the discography. Not a TDEP influence I was aware of, but hey, every day is a school day.

Rush

"Tom Sawyer"

Luke Fabian: As a big Rush fan, I, of course, have to impart the power and genius and Rush to my bandmates and crew often, and with great passion.

The response I receive to ‘Can you put some Rush on please?’ in the van, is more often than not, the classic drum groove and vocal refrain of "a modern-day warrior, Mean, mean stride, Today's Tom Sawyer, Mean, mean pride".

Out of politeness, my fellow Slicers will put on Rush as I asked, but instead of either my requested or hoped-for deep cuts like ‘The Necromancer’ or ‘Cygnus X-1’ (Book I / II) or even tertiary tier bangers like ‘Time Stand Still’, it’s basically always ‘Tom Sawyer’ or if I’m lucky ‘YYZ’ or ‘Spirit of the Radio’. So to be truly representative of music from ‘the van’, it is ‘Tom Sawyer’ that goes on the list. Uncontestably a rock classic.

The Presidents of the United States of America

"Peaches"

Luke Fabian: In-between the shows and van rides filled with extreme music; a way to cleanse the mind is to put on some non-heavy music. This usually starts quite tastefully, with soundtrack, jazz, game music but enviably diverts via Aqua and Vengaboys kinda territory. Before the pitying depths of euro pop are explored, 90s and 2000s bangers are scrolled through.

In one of these runs we came through "Peaches" - a fun, mid-90s slacker indie track. It was kept in rotation after that and like the extremely cool people we are, we sing this together in the van. It’s a great track and the band themselves are kinda left field and interesting. The possibility of doing a cover of this song has been floated a couple of times, if anything else as an exercise to get better in group harmony.

Metallica

"Orion"

Luke Fabian: Josh is a big fan of ‘Tallica, and makes no apologies for loving Lars, and in his words this track is a ‘Luke sound check classic’. It’s a done conversation, but could this be the greatest Metallica instrumental? Depends. For the purposes of this list, yes it is.

Josh or I will usually put on "Orion", as it’s a song that we have jammed various parts of in the past, and I generally keep in my list of semi-worked up material to warm up with when practicing – it is kinda self-enforcing thing.

The Mastodon cover of this is great, and again, a track I would like Slicer to cover in the future at some point. Which is a nice link to the next pick.

Mastodon

"March of the Fire Ants"

Luke Fabian: Mastodon are one of my and Frank's favourite bands, and Josh was into Crack the Skye quite a lot when he started playing drums. This is information well-known to Kate.

One of Kate’s classic van banter pieces, guaranteed without fail, is to crack on "March of the Fire Ants", and then proclaim as bold as anything ‘this is the only good Mastodon riff’. Kates continued education on the ‘Don is a work in progress, and I can only hope that in-between the NIN and Mario Kart music, I can get Kate into arguably the greatest metal band of the 21st century.

Maybe some of the exposure to Mastodon's music has paid off though, to my ears when it was being pieced together the main riff in "Momentary Actuality" (3rd single from our new LP Blossom) – has a Mastodon-equse quality.

The Callous Daoboys

Celebrity Therapist

Luke Fabian: We were fortunate enough to get a copy of this way way, before it came out. During the recording of Thermal Runaway, and then on Tour with Rolo Tomassi and Heriot in the UK, we listened to the LP together as a group a lot.

It was frankly super impressive, and we were completely floored by the scope of the release. On my part especially with all the progressive elements, and Between The Buried and Me style sections.

Celebrity Therapist served as reference point, in terms of quality and breadth of vision, as well as motivating us as a band to push ourselves to achieve similar heights, if this is what the Daoboys are going to raise the bar to. What an album. Slicer will continue to bump it.