Gambling, vaping, and touring: a conversation with Counterparts' Brendan Murphy

Today I sat down with Brendan Murphy from Counterparts on one of the last dates of their largest US headlining tour yet. We discussed keeping busy on tour, pioneering the “funny band social media” thing, juggling vocal duties for two very different bands, maturing lyrically, and a lot more. Responses have been edited for clarity.

How's tour been so far?

It's been sick. Long for sure, but it's been fun. The shows have been crazy. A lot bigger venues than we usually do. So scary at times. But the good thing is at least every show has been packed out. Every show has been pretty wild. And it's been fun. Just long for sure. A lot of days off on this one, which are definitely nice towards the start of tour, but then by the end it's like bro, come on, let's bang this out and get home a week earlier.

What have you been doing to entertain yourself on your days off?

Honestly, Counterstrike, or just other video games. A couple days into this tour I bought a 24 inch monitor from Best Buy, and I have my keyboard, mouse, and my headphones, and so on the off days, if we get a hotel or even at some of the shows f the venue wifi is good enough, I have a ROG Ally for gaming, and so I'll set up and just play CS. And then if I don't have internet, then I'll just play single player games. I've been playing Lies of P, Control, and I still gotta beat Sekiro. Oh, and gambling for sure. Definitely lost a lot of money on the tour, but whatever.

Where's been your top gambling spot so far?

We just gamble like at the venues, although after the show tomorrow there's a casino, so we'll definitely be going to that. We play dice, like everybody on the tour package, we throw dice in the green room. Between bands, before the show, after the show. We've played on our bandwagon a bunch. We've had like Pain of Truth pile into our wagon and we all throw dice. I'm probably down 500 bucks. That's like the minimum. I haven't had much luck on this one.

Are you taking that outta your own money or the Counterparts budget?

My own. The thing is, I never have cash, so I have to go into the Counterparts band money and take it and then keep a record of okay, I took 200 bucks in Salt Lake, I took 300 bucks in wherever, just so when it comes time for payouts at the end of tour, it's okay, Brendan owes the band this much specifically for gambling. But, sometimes I've done other tours where it's like I can't stop winning, so you like to think it evens out, but you just gotta keep going.

You can't stop.

That's the thing. If you stop, you're a loser. If you stop when you're down, you're always down. You gotta just keep trying.

So, if you guys start singing a lot on the next record, it’s cuz of gambling debts?

Exactly. If there's ever a moment where we fully embarrass ourselves, that might be a way of getting outta some debt. But nah, it's usually good, it's just a way to pass time, and we're all friends, right? So if we're doing a hundred dollars roll of dice, I'm bummed I lost, but at least one of my friends won it, and not a random ass slot machine at a casino or like a dealer or someone that I don't know.

Speaking of touring with friends, you've done the Private Room tour a couple times where you basically just bring out people you like, and I feel like this tour is maybe a spiritual successor to that in a way?

Yeah, I think every headliner that we do since the first Private Room is basically a Private Room tour, you know what I mean? The only difference being that we called it Private Room 1 and then Private Room 2.0, and then I don't know, I think it just clicked and we were like they're all Private Room.

If we're headlining, we're picking the bands. We get to pick who comes out with us. More often than not, we're friends with them and if we're not friends with them, we just think the band rocks. And then we become friends with them. Maybe every once in a while it's oh, there's this band you don't know but they're doing really well. They're pretty valuable and we'll take 'em. But then by day two you can tell okay, these guys rock. I think we're a pretty easy band to get along with, so we're easy to be friends with.

Have you heard otherwise from anyone? You don't have to name names.

I guess not. I haven't heard people say that we suck or we're rude or anything like that. I've definitely heard people be like, “yeah, they're pretty quiet. They're in their own world.” I think I'm definitely the most extroverted one. I make an effort to go and hang. The other guys are a lot quieter and we all play video games for the most part, but they play a lot. And so they're a little bit quieter, a little bit less likely to go out, I think, and just meet a bunch of people. But I get bored often, and so I'm like, “Hey, what the fuck? What are you guys doing? What the fuck's going on?” That's how I've made all my friends during tour.

But yeah, that's the only thing I've heard. Before a bunch of us stopped drinking, it was like, “oh, they're nuts. They party crazy.” And then now it's “oh yeah, they're fucking nerds. Like they're playing Magic and fucking Elden Ring and doing all that stuff.” And I'm like, both are true, honestly. You could have both, it's just a different phase. I used to be a drunk and now video games replaced drinking.

It's the new addiction.

Yeah, exactly. New addiction, A slightly healthier one, I would say. One that I could still do and drive a car when I'm done, so that's sick.

Speaking of extroversion, and your persona, you're pretty well known for Twitter and your overall social media presence. It seems like every band nowadays wants to do that. Every brand, every person's like “I gotta be funny.” Do you have any advice for what to do, what not to do?

Not really. I think it's weird at this point I'm just like let them do it. Not that I think that I was doing anything crazy or intentional, that's just me. I'm just making my little jokes. When you're a band, you see certain bands, they put on this mystery show thing, and everything's super serious, and you can't laugh. I'm like, fuck that. When it comes to the lyrics, that's when I'm serious. And then the rest of the time I'm like, I don't want to be the miserable guy all the time. So we were just normal, and we were honest. If a show rocks, it's “yo, this kicks ass.” If a show sucked, I would be on stage like, “yo, this fucking stinks.” Just being real. And I think people appreciate it. That being said, I think it was definitely tied into my Jameson era. When I was drinking a lot, I was like, what the hell else do I do? And I was posting on social media a lot and now I only really every once in a while. But yeah, I see it and a lot of people have compared it to us and said “they're trying to do the Counterparts thing or the Brendan thing.” And I mean anyone can do it. As long as it's real, like you can tell when somebody's trying to do funny shit like that and when they're actually funny. And I think for the most part yeah, most people are pretty good at making jokes and shit, so it is pretty easy.

But I think it's cool. I would rather meet bands that I look up to and they're just fucking normal instead of you trying to hang out with and talk to them and they take everything crazy serious and never smile. I don't wanna hang out with those guys. That shit sucks.

It's nice when a band or somebody's doing it and they're smashing it and people are like, “oh yeah, they're doing the thing you did.” I'm like, okay, that's nice. It's a nice compliment. And I will say, I don't know, maybe I could have a bit of an ego about it because when we first started doing that, people really didn't like it and we got so much flack for it. Bands wouldn't take us on tour and managers and shit would be like, “how can you fucking run your band like that?” And I was like, “I don't know. 'Cause I'm a kid. 'Cause I graduated high school four months ago. What are you talking about?” Now, it's definitely easier to be goofy for sure. Back then even the kids that liked the band were like, I wish they would just be serious. I'm like, “what for? Like why do I have to be fucking serious?” Like I said, the record is the serious part. Now it's time to goof off.

Your lyrics are personal, honest, and it almost feels like your whole life has been out in the open in some way. Obviously you still wanna maintain a private life, how do you find a balance between writing about everything you feel and just keeping stuff inside?

It's definitely tricky. But I think that there's a lot of stuff where I find personally that the biggest sort of struggles in my life and I guess the hardest things that I've been through are just the things that I default to talking about. For me it sucks 'cause it's yeah, I wish I could write a whole album about “oh, I tried to dunk a miniature basketball yesterday, cut my hand open and that sucked,” but instead it's “oh no, I'm writing about wanting to kill myself 'cause my cat's dead and like all these things.” I find that I think you can do it in a way where I'm not necessarily like blatantly coming out and being like, “this is about this and this is what the song is and stuff,” I can find ways to make it ambiguous enough to where it's okay, the theme is there, but it's not like somebody can't listen to “Whispers Of Your Death” 'cause they're like “I don't have a cat, so I don't know what that's like. I've only had a dog.”

You boil it down to yes, it's about my cat, but the overall theme is grief and mourning and losing something important to you. That's how I've done it anyway. I've tried to be honest about it and for me, I guess there's things that I keep private. If I had a rash on my ass or something, I wouldn't write a song about it. I don't feel bad or any type of way about people knowing that about me because I'm not embarrassed. I'm like, that's something I went through. I've written records about relationships. I've written records about losing friends, my cat dying, I've written songs about how I want to kill this fucking guy, specifically this person, all these things.

I don't really mind if people know that about me, because I'm like I don't need to hide it. That's just me. That's a real feeling. They're all real things that I write about. I think part of that is one of the reasons why I think people like us so much 'cause they're like, “oh yeah, I've been there.” It bridges the gap. It goes back to what we were talking about with social media stuff where it's above anything else, I'm just a fucking guy. I'm just a 33-year-old guy, alive, just dealing with it, so I think the less walls you have built up between you and your fan base, the more that they're gonna relate and care and enjoy your music.

You guys have been a band for like over 15 years–

Yeah. It's been a minute for sure.

–and obviously the entire scene has changed like eight times in that span. You guys have changed, but not a lot. You've been relatively consistent–

Yeah, that's a good word. Consistent. You know what you're getting. Maybe we do some shit a little bit different, but overall it's Counterparts, which is a conscious decision on our part too, because at this point it's like, what are we gonna do, go do a complete 180 on like record eight and be like, oh yeah, nobody listens to the first seven albums. Bro, at that point we would just break up and start a new band 'cause that would be ridiculous. Maybe if it was album two, three, sure, but at this point it's just nah, we're Counterparts. We get it. We know. We know what we need to do.

–do you think lyrically Counterparts has to be sad and angry or depressed or negative? Like, I feel like a lot of people look for you for that.

Yeah, for sure. It certainly feels like it. There's been times where things are going really well, and I'm just “oh fuck, we gotta like record soon. I don't know what the hell I'm gonna write about, everything's going well.” I don't think that Counterparts always has to be negative when it comes to lyrics.

Whether it's sadness, anger, suicidal, whatever it is, I don't think it always has to be bad. I think that those are things that I would say a lot of people go through. Maybe not everybody. But we are that band for a lot of people. When people feel a certain way, it's like they can relate, and then in turn they relate to the band quite a bit. I don't necessarily think that we’re gonna turn around and be like, yeah, “this is a happy record,” 'cause that would be like, even if I was really happy, like I'm not an overly positive guy. The best I've ever been in my life, I'm still like, yeah, I'm fucking miserable. I hate people who are positive, overly so, those, “oh, yeah, your mom got hit by a bus, but hey think about it this way.” I'm like, “fuck you. No.”

But yeah, I don't know if we'd ever do it. That being said, I'm also like, I don't even know if I'll ever be good. I can be better, but I don't know if I'll ever be sound mentally. So I think there'll always be something to write about. Even if I could write stuff that's happier, we've done that before, but probably nothing that's gonna bring a smile to people's faces. I feel like that might be out of my wheelhouse a little bit. I don't think I know how to do that, but if that's all I feel, I gotta be honest with everybody and I'll learn how to do it.

I think, especially recently, certain metal bands have been getting bigger, and there's been a back and forth between fans and bands who’re like, “oh, we're maturing, we're moving on, We have to like to do something different.” How do you think a band can mature while also not betraying themselves or their fans or whatever?

I think being in touch with your fan base is probably the biggest one. A lot of people might not know this exists, but there's a Spotify for artists app that, if you have music on Spotify, you can see the age group of all your listeners and like this is where they're from and like all these things. Those things have existed for years and I always pay attention to them and then I see it and I'm like, our fan base is aging with us. When we started the band, it's yeah, we're 18. The people that listen to us are 18. And then now when I look at the age range of people who listen to us, it's yeah, between 25 and 35 basically. And I'm like that's us. That's the age range of the band. So I think being in tune with your audience helps.

It's tough to say, like I wouldn't even necessarily call myself mature, but there's a way to I guess be honest, but also be an adult about it. I think if you take us for example, If you look at the earlier shit, it's certain songs where it's okay, like you did this, like this bad thing happened to me, it's someone else's fault. And then as time goes on, it's like, oh wait, maybe that was my fault. Maybe I'm the fuck up here. You know what I mean? As you go through experiences, approach it differently, and even with me, where it's anything bad that's happened, I get heated and I have a hard time controlling my emotions and all that stuff.

When you go back and look at it as an adult, this is what I would've done when I was 20 and this happened, but I'm 33 now. And being like, okay, let's look at it from other angles. And I think if you are open to that mentally, you can be open to that in your work as well and in your art.

If counterparts listeners had their own fan base name, what would you want them to be called?

Morons. Or I don't know, rich people, I think.

Wealthy label executives.

Yes. Wealthy, wealthy charitable people.

Record collectors.

Yes, exactly. Yeah. People who buy a lot of tickets to shows and come and go crazy. That's like such a thing in all the K-pop that I listen to. And it's always something cute like with TWICE, their fan group is Once and Black Pink, it's the Blinks and shit. And for us, I'm like I just call 'em motherfuckers, I'm like I guess that fits.

Counterparters?

Yeah, like Parters. I don't know. It would be, like I said, if I could call 'em anything it would be wealthy people who love to donate to bands 'cause that would be sick.

Speaking of donations, what would your dream sponsorship be?

I'm trying to think of something that I spend a lot of money on, but it's really just food. Getting a vape sponsorship would probably save me a lot of money. I don't know what else. Personally, selfishly, I'm probably the only one that would care but I always look at okay, is there any computer kind of companies that hook up bands? Trying to think okay does Nvidia give people in touring bands like graphics cards and shit? Trying to find stuff like that where it's okay, what do I want or need that I don't really want to pay for, but I don't know.

I feel like we have the important ones in terms of music equipment, microphones, whatever it is, like it does help. It helps a lot. So selfishly, yeah if Gatorade, if I got sponsored by like Lime Cucumber Gatorade, that would be sick, I don't know what else. Honeydew Melona bar sponsorship would be fantastic. Hill’s ZedD food sensitivity cat food for my cat would be huge. But yeah, that's it.

Zed, I forgot You're Canadian.

Yeah. Yeah. I call it ZD, but every time I go to the vet they're like, ZedD I'm like, yeah. Yeah, I guess. Sorry I'm not a Yankee.

You spend so much time here, do you still feel out of place in the US?

No, I definitely don't. If anything, now it's like I feel out of place in Canada. I'll think about things that are just so common here, like even restaurants and shit or like certain things. And then I'll go home and be like, “oh fuck, we don't have that here, do we.” The only time I'm like, okay, Canada's got it is when I think about okay, what would happen if I broke my arm right now? In the States that would suck and Canada would suck, but it would be free. You know what I mean? So I'm like, that's nice. America's sick, if we couldn't tour the states I'm done, I quit. There's a lot of bands that barely tour the states and they do Europe or something like that. I'm like, nah, if I can't tour the States, there's no point in playing music.

Speaking of Europe, have you guys got any plans coming up?

Yeah, we do. I can't remember when it starts. It's in August. Last year we did all of the June Europe summer festivals, and this year we're doing all of the late August festivals and stuff. I'm sure we'll announce that soon. After this tour, we're off for a little bit, then we do Japan and Australia, and then home for a month after that. And then do Europe again. And then that's all we have in the works as of right now. But we will do some shit probably, I guess probably go record or something. I don't know if it'll be another EP or maybe we'll try and do a full length. But yeah we're doing shit, we're always busy somehow.

Speaking of recording, we just got the heaviest Counterparts release, I would say, would you guys ever do a light EP, like a total opposite, Nothing Left to Love title track type thing?

Maybe. We've been talking about that too, where the cool part about doing an EP is you don't necessarily have to commit. When we did this heavy one, we were like, “let's just make a heavy thing and it's an EP, it's six or five and a half songs, whatever. We can just do this,” and we were very clear about that, I thought anyway, being like we just wanted to do heavy shit for an EP and then, it's not that we're only heavy from now on, no more that's it. We're not doing anything melodic or like pretty sounding, no singing.

We just wanted to do a heavy EP. But we've also talked about okay, what if we did an EP that was just sad sounding like maybe could be singing, could be like Nothing Left to Love title track, but it's just not heavy and it sounds sad. It's emotional shit. We were talking about that and we're like, that would be cool. Or we might just wait and do a full length and be like, okay, here's a bit of everything. Like we have in the past. But yeah, I'm open to it.

I definitely like those songs, “Nothing Left to Love” and “Skin Beneath the Scar” and “Mass Grave” and all of those. The only thing for me is singing's hard. Hitting notes on stage is difficult. So the songs would have to be really big and people would have to go ape shit for me to want to attempt that because that's the thing for me. I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know how to sing. I just do it in the studio until I get it right, and that can take an hour for one song, and it can take three days for another song. I don't like the idea of it being a coin flip every night. Maybe I'll hit the note, I don't know. Maybe I could take some lessons or some shit and get a bit better at it, but I think as far as live stuff goes, kids want the heavy shit. They wanna mosh, they wanna stage dive and go crazy and sing along, and it would be tough to do a set without any of that.

I think even some of the songs we play on this tour, like here's this one and we know it's a sleeper and then we're all like, “fuck, we can't get rid of it though.” We can't cut it from the set 'cause it's gonna screw up the time code on the lights and all this bullshit. I think for the most part, yeah, it's like we're just doing what we think is sick and we think is fun, and then whatever translates well live. We have a bunch of songs that kick ass, but playing them live, it's okay, I can see people yawning. I see you dozing off. I don't want to play this fucking song live anymore. But yeah I'd be open to it. I think it could be cool.

You guys have a ton of variety across your discography, and then you're also in END, which is a whole can of worms, a ton of different sounds. How do you keep them separate in your own head, 'cause I know on the newest ep, people are like, “oh you have blast beats and shit, and there’s a lot of swollen pickle and you're END now.”

There was so much of that and I'm just like, I do get it to an extent where in the past it's like, yeah, you have my mid range vocal style and then the heavy shit, the really low or the really high shit that was more reserved for END, I do it a lot more on this stuff. But I think for the most part my main voice that you have with Counterparts, I just wouldn't do that with END. It just wouldn't fit. It wouldn't sound right. And like sonically, musically, they are very different.

Maybe yes, if you take a 30 second part that's a breakdown with a swollen pickle or an HM-2 thing on it, and me screaming low over top of it, yes, I understand how somebody who’s never heard it could be like “that's the same band, right?”

Because it's me, it's my voice. When you zoom out and listen to the whole ep, aside from breakdowns, like there's one part in “No Lamb…”, the “a heartbeat gained cannot replace” part where I'm like, that kind of sounds like “Pariah” a little bit, but it's gonna happen. I think END is a lot angrier too as far as lyrics go. Counterparts is definitely the sad one and END is like the angry, blasphemous kind of one. They're all blasphemous, there's a lot of religious imagery in there, but END is a lot crazier for sure. As far as lyrics go, it's more gruesome and shit. I think I do a fairly decent job at separating them, but even then, there is crossover. There's both intentional and unintentional crossover as far as lyrics go between the bands. At that point when I am reading through that and I'm like, wait, I think I said something like that with Counterparts, and I go back and look and I'm like, fuck, I did.

But then also, I'm the same guy. It's my brain. Whatever. If I'm ripping off myself, that's fine, as long as I'm not ripping off somebody else. But yeah I think again, that kind of just goes back to being like I know what to do with counterparts and I know what to do with END. They each have their own things that don't fit with the other one. So as long as there's those differences, I think it'll be okay. We'll see.

So you’ve got two bands already, if you could front a third band, what would it sound like?

It wouldn't be screaming at all. If I could be in another band and do anything, I'd wanna play guitar, that would be sick. But if I had to do vocals in it I think it would straight up just have to be the polar opposite of Counterparts and END for me to enjoy it. I would want to be in a not like rock, but I'd want to be in a fuzzy kind of grungy band. And then my lyrics, they could be whatever's catchy. I wouldn't be up for 12 hours on thesaurus.com staring at the notes app with three words on it being like, fuck, what do I do? I could actually write and as long as it's catchy, it'd be good. I think that would be fun. Or I would just want to play guitar or something in another band. I played guitar before I did vocals, so that would be nice. It'd be nice to do that again, but just nothing too crazy. Or I don't know, crazy shit is fun though. But also, I don't know if I have it in me to do three bands. I think that would fucking put me in the dirt for sure.

Too much touring.

Yeah, exactly. I'm already away from my cat enough. I'm like, ah, I'm not doing a third one. But we'll see. Unless maybe The 1975, like a fourth or fifth guitarist or whatever, and they asked me, I would do it for sure. Not made of stone. I would take that gig.

They'll just put you out there unplugged. Just let you jam out.

Exactly. Yeah. That's the fucking dream. Then it doesn't even matter.

Since you mentioned that you played guitar, how much musically do you help out with Counterparts and END in the studio? Are you suggesting ideas, or just kinda sitting back?

I just sit back and let them do their thing. Every once in a while I'll have an idea, and I guess it might not even be like in terms of play this specifically, it might be like yo, what if it stopped there? What if it cut there and then came back in or something? I throw around ideas, just whatever comes to my mind. And every once in a while everyone will be like, okay, let's try that, and it's oh, that's actually sick and it'll make it. And then other times everyone's saying I don't think that makes sense. And I'm like, probably not. I'm sure it doesn't, I'm just saying it. You know what I mean? It's just like whatever comes to me. But yeah, I was never really good at writing shit as far as music goes. I can play music if somebody gives me a guitar and a video or something, or tabs or whatever the hell it is, and they're like, learn this, I can do it. But coming up with shit and writing, I can only really do it with words. I guess with music, I overthink it and I'm like, ah, I can't. But yeah, I just chill. For the last few records, instead of this last ep, I've just been like, yeah send me the demo when it's done and I'll start writing. And for this one I was in the room as everyone's writing, throwing ideas around and shit too. I made that conscious decision to be like, I want to be more involved in that, not only selfishly, so I can be like, oh this part sucks. I gotta make sure this doesn't ever happen again, but also yeah, wanting to be more involved and like more a part of it for sure. But yeah it's just suggestions and sometimes they stick, sometimes they don't. A lot of the time they don't, but they're definitely better than me at music. So anything I say, I'm just like, they know. I'm like, you don't even have to try the shit, it's just an idea.

Similarly, you guys have always had a very distinct aesthetic. How much of that is your influence since you've been in the band since the beginning?

I think at the start, I guess the early years, it was a lot of my influence. I really think we hit it around 2015-ish, around the Tragedy era. It was just like, oh, okay the visual side, the aesthetic, the merch designs, the fucking album are all of these things. This stuff is really important and I started wanting it to be more cohesive. In the past we’d have this pretty artistic album cover and then the merch looks like death metal merch and it doesn't make sense. You have to make it all fit. And especially with the EP, that was probably the most involved I've been with it as far as a merch spread goes in a long time. And I think it pays off 'cause I like our merch on this tour. We're fucking rich, we're smashing it because rather than being like okay random designer number three, give us two designs and then here's the spread. It's no, this all has to go together, this all has to make sense, and it for sure pays off.

I just got sick of getting merch designs and people being like, yeah you wouldn't wear it and kids coming to the show will wear it and I'm like, I don't care if it's the best seller, I wouldn't wear that if I lost every shirt I own. I'm not doing that anymore. It has to be cool. It has to be sick. I have to, maybe I could wear it, but we've had shit in the past couple years where I'm just like, when I see kids wearing it, I'm like, ew take that off, fucking go get another shirt. That's disgusting. Everybody in the band was just yeah, we're not doing that anymore. We all have to approve it and we all work on it together. It's mostly me I guess, but then it goes through everybody else and then as long as everybody's happy with it, then it's okay, fine.

What do you think is the worst merch item you've ever done?

Worst as in the dumbest thing we ever did for sure, but for the record, we did it as a bit. We didn't make them like these will sell. On Warped Tour, we did those fidget spinners 'cause they were popping and whatever company we were printing through, they were like, hey, we can print on these things, we can make custom ones now if you care. And we were all like, that's so funny. Yeah, do it. None of us were like, people are gonna like this. We just had it so that people would come to the table and be like, what the fuck are you doing? And it worked. That and honestly every fucking tank top we've ever done. I hate tank tops. Anything like tie dye or like acid wash. They always come back and they have their little moment, but I hate 'em. I can't stand 'em. They're a waste of money. They don't sell, they just end up in a box in my parents' basement. Usually if anything's that crazy bad, it's been a misprint, But yeah, the fidget spinners were fucking terrible.

That's like a bit though. And so of the times, like 2017-ish.

Yeah exactly. And we do a lot of shit like for bits. For this tour, way cooler but also a bit, we did air fresheners, like the lamb air freshener. With that, I was like, “okay, I love this.” They were made in China and they came over and with all the tariff shit, they were held at the border for a while, so we didn't have them for the first week of tour. Every day I would wake up and be like, “do we have 'em yet?” That was one where I was like, I don't give a shit if we sell any of these. Worst case I have 500 for my car at home, so fuck it. That's fine, 'cause I love it. I think it rocks.

What scent is it?

It's weird. It says lavender on it. It's like a little bit of lavender, but it smells like lavender and those black ice air fresheners from the gas station. We joked about “oh, if we can pick a flavor like black ice, but it just ended up smelling like that.” We didn't get a choice, so I was pretty worried, but pleasantly surprised.

If you guys did a branded vape, what flavor would it be?

I think it would probably be peach or a mango kind of thing. One of those. I feel like that's pretty popular in the camp. Something fruity for sure. When we're all ripping vapes in the wagon and stuff, it just smells like a fruit salad in there. Nobody's really rocking with the one that tastes like custard or whatever. We're just like give me the watermelon. Maybe like a peach watermelon? Something that tastes like a Starburst or Skittles or some shit would hit with us. That'd be huge.

I wonder if that's legal, like just a band selling vapes?

I don't know. I guess if we ID’d everybody it wouldn't matter, but I wouldn't, and then also those wouldn't even make it to the halfway point of tour if we had vapes. We would start selling them and then we'd be like, yo, these are getting low, I'm not going to the store to get more, like I'm just using these for us, this whole box full of vapes. Like why would I go to the gas station? Exactly. These are just band fun for us to enjoy. It's money laundering.

Basically: sorry, Pure Noise, I gotta get vapes for the merch.

Oh yeah, they're Counterparts branded. But that says Geek Bar? Yeah, I know it does. Counterparts Geek bar. We're fucking geeks.

Counterparts Nvidia, Counterparts keyboard, mouse.

Huge. It would be awesome.

Alright, my last question: If Counterparts could do a cover set, what band would you do?

We did before in 2011 or 2012, I think we did a The Used cover set. That was really fun. I guess we could, it wouldn't make much sense 'cause they just broke up, but we could probably do a Misery Signals cover set, Of Malice front to back. I would do The Used again. That was fun as hell. That was awesome. We could do Poison the Well too. But yeah, that's probably it. Anything else, I don't think it would make sense. In my mind, I'd love to do a 1975 cover set, but I think I'm the only person in the band that really likes him that much, so that wouldn't be fun for anyone else.

Thank you for your time.