Relax.itsfine - Band Interview

Photo credit: AJ (@original_gentlemen)

Thursday night at Oscura, I had the pleasure of chatting with Tyler and Nick from Relax.itsfine. They are members of the up-and-coming metal band. We spoke about their newest single, laughed over our drinks and talked deeply about projects yet to come!

Standing outside of my personal favorite venue (bar/cafe) on Jazz Night, Tyler and I had our usual T&K (a vodka redbull, which is our signature drink when we hang together) while Nick was sipping on a refreshing Sunshine City IPA. I am eager to share in depth about the band, their writing process, the single release, and more!

Q&A WITH RELAX.ITSFINE -

Kayla:
Lets start easy, what are three words that you guys would both use to describe your band?

Tyler:
Relax. It's fine. No, I'm kidding. I’m kidding. That's a great question. Angry, Unique, Cinematic. There are a lot of, like, sounds that this man here creates, and we just make it-it’s very large sounding like that, yeah.

Nick:
I think my three would be emotional, rage, cinematic. I think that is a good word. Yeah. I think that's a great fit. We play with a lot of landscapes in between or added sound effects during songs to exemplify certain areas, so it's a good choice of words.

Kayla:
I really like the word cinematic, actually. It’s really good.
So tell me how the band forms. A little bit of background on you guys as, like, musicians.

Nick:
Oh, boy. (Laughter)

Tyler:
Okay. So that's a good question. So without adding any names in here, this is the place, Oscura, shout out. This is the place where I met all of the people that kind of got me into the music industry and with photography stuff and such.

Basically, two people came up to me and were trying to make a band. And I jokingly told them “hey, if you need a person that screams, I'll do it” and a day later, they send me a message saying “Hey, Do you have any videos of you screaming?” And the only ones I had were me screaming in my car after I got off work, like, going home. Sent them over, and they go, boom. You're in. Like, cool. We're in!

And then, like, two weeks later was when the two of us met with the two other members that we had. We went to a show. We wrote a song that day, and we thought it was the best thing in the world. We look back on it now, kinda rough, but had some personal differences, some creative differences, and we basically told these people we're still all respectful to them, all love to them. We basically told them, we're all made to make music, just not together right now.

Because they all do have their own music careers, and they are doing well in those. But it was just different schedules, different locations. We're both on a very similar schedule with how chaotic our jobs can be, so it works out. And so, yeah, that all happened within the span of, like, three months, and then we've been doing this thing for six months straight. We're looking into some members right now and hopefully can get them situated in. But if anybody reads this and thinks it's badass, feel free to send us a - reach out.

Nick:
If you're interested, if you hear it and you're like, damn, I wanna play that, hit us up.

Kayla:
Absolutely. Yeah.
So how would you guys describe your sound to somebody who's never heard it before?

Nick:
I would say that our sound is very, very wide. It's very eclectic.
The songs themselves are always gonna come out as metal bangers. But as you listen to them, you can hear all the influence coming from other genres, whether it be EDM or movie scores, like cinematic, very, very mood setting style sounds coupled with two step riffs with super wide stereo guitars. We're always reaching for heavier, fuller, more epic, not to be cliché, sounding sounds.

So everything's a story, and we all have a story to tell, and this is ours. So relax, It’s fine.

Kayla:
I love that. That is so cool. I love when songs do that.

Can you guys share more - I guess, maybe more so for Tyler? I’m not sure how much you’ve (Nick)  been at Oscura, but how have these venues helped you grow and what they mean to you as a local musician?

Tyler:
I love that question.
These venues are very, very important because well, granted, I take photos here a lot.
But just for local musicians, there are a lot of those larger venues that, like, Crowbar, you can get a good amount of people, but, like, trying to get shows at Jannus Live, like, smaller venues are good and DIY venues really, really good. Everything for smaller artists is good because that gives them the experience in front of a live crowd, how to do with different sounds, different people, like, just meeting different faces. And, I mean, that's kind of how everything kind of transpired to get to the band. But it gets you the practice because it’s more of an intimate venue because you're so close to everybody and a lot of the people you know. So if you fuck up, you're like, damn. My bad.

Nick:
Not only in the fuck-up sense. If you ask anybody you know if they would rather go see a job for a cowboy in the middle of a stadium or a job for a cowboy in a club that holds 500 people, they would much rather be in a club with 500 people. Yeah. That's why these local smaller venues are what's important. This is home base for Tyler. I don't have a home base for venues based out of Tampa and Ybor. It would either be Orpheum or Crowbar. Those are going to be the two main ones. Brass Mug too. Shout out Brass Mug. But that’s it. And that's all the death metal scene. What's the other one?

Tyler:
New World. Shout out New World. New World’s pretty good. Deviant, Libation. There's a lot, Tampa’s got a lot.

Nick:
It's this is the first place that I've come with him to see local music. Our former band, we met at Hooch and Hive.

ALL:
RIP. RIP. RIP. 

Kayla:
What does community look like, sound like, and what does it feel like?

Tyler:
We're going from, like, an Oscura perspective. There are so many events where you meet so many different people on so many different walks of life- I just said so many a lot, but it's a good adjective.

You meet everybody that is on different walks of life and has different stories, and we make like, with community, we try and make music that can draw that in or, like, people know our stories or at least hopefully will, and they could take those and draw their own conclusion of this is the perspective we're coming from. From a hardcore perspective in this scene, I mean, showing up and getting to mosh with your friends is pretty fun, but also knowing, like, if you fall, people will pick you up, not just in a pit, but, like, in real life too. If I were driving down the road and I got a flat tire, I have a whole list of people I could call and be like, yo. Fucking help me, please.

Metal is a whole family. All genres are- everyone has their own opinion, but, like, metal makes people happy, and everybody gets in this own personification of just we're here to be angry and let out all this emotion here in a pit. 

Nick:
Yeah, and not taking it home with us.

Tyler:
Yeah. And it just is very therapeutic, knowing you get to be there with some of the best friends you can make, especially in this scene and in this essentially little hole in the wall, which really isn't a hole in the wall anymore because it's been getting a lot of attention. So yeah. Shout out.

Nick:
Another thing that's also a factor in community is something that we're trying to do in Tampa at the home base in Ybor. There are talks of starting something that has already started, that is already moving. So talks of something is just alluding to what it is.

We are doing somewhat of an umbrella effect, where a conglomerate of artists can come together under one roof, one house, one overarching company. Everything that you could need from video editing to audio recording to engineering to guitar writing to lyrics to singers to sit-in bass players to anything, all being able to be found in one spot and one, you know, click of a link or one, you know, dial of a phone number. I feel like that's what I would love to achieve as far as community means. And everybody gets what they deserve out of it because the recognition or the financials should never go to anybody else that didn't have a hand in what was happening. It’s gonna be something totally different that's coming.

You just gotta relax. It's fine. 

(laughter)

We get to say it so many times because it makes so much sense in every situation.

Kayla:
Do you guys have a favorite memory as a musician, whether in this band or from a live show, like a highlight of something if you will?

Nick:
Yep. Mine's easy. Yeah. Mitch Lucker before he died, shaking his hand, hanging out with him, being on the stage with him. That was— that was pretty pretty epic. Pretty gnarly. I think that's my number one. My second is— I've discovered a golden egg. So Mhmm. Just letting that hatch. We’re watching what happens.

Kayla:
How about yourself, Tyler?

Tyler:
It's gonna be another Oscura memory.
Yeah. There was a long time where I would always get super nervous being in front of a mic or, like, recording, and I'd always look at all of the stuff that I did and would be like, no. No. No, need to redo it. And one vocalist who kinda told me or, not necessarily told me, but I saw his performance, and I was like, just be yourself. Be silly. Kaonashi.

Just do you. There's no point in trying to like- you can have inspirations, but don't try and mimic people. Just kinda do your own thing. Your own voice is unique. Everybody's voice is unique. It just needs to be heard and have the right outlets to be heard.

Kayla:
If you guys could go on tour with anyone in the local scene, who would it be?

Tyler:
Fuck. That's a hard question. In the local scene? 

Nick:
Not enough space, spiritual chaos. Mothbite, in Gloom. How many bands?

Tyler:
I think if we keep it to three, three four, I think, would be-

Nick:
Imagine Relax.itsfine is headlining, and we have two openers. 

Tyler:
We want something good for us. I think In Gloom would definitely be a good fit.

Nick:
That's great. Yeah. 

Tyler:
I love their sound. I love the guys there. I'd say, like, in gloom for sure. Yeah. Spiritual, spiritual chaos, chaos for sure. Shout out, shout out our boys. Not Enough Space would be a very, very good fit. And if we have one more, locally, that's a really hard pick. I know too many people. If we're keeping in that theme, if we're going spiritual chaos, I think we do Reverya. Dude, the little three-piece that they are, they kill it every single time. I think that'd be the three.

Kayla:
Okay, what about a famous band?

Tyler:
Orthodox. That'd be mine. That'd be mine.

Nick:
Even though their fans might make a weird face, humanity's last breath. That would be sick. I think that would be a good one for modern. And then if I could do an all-time band, dead or alive,

Original lineup just because I feel like it would fit well with our music, Original Volumes. Yeah. RIP, Diego.

Tyler:
RIP. That would be great. That's a good question. That's a hard question, though.

It would be “alright, who wants to do this? First come, first served because there are too many of y'all motherfuckers.” (Laughter)

Kayla:
What is something people might not expect from this project?

Nick:
I have one word. Success.

Tyler:
That's true.

Nick:
We don't want to hold anybody back.

Tyler:
That’s- yeah. We don't want to hold anybody back, and we all are, we're just trying to do our thing, make music. We have music ready. We're putting it out, and we're gonna keep putting music out.

Nick:
Yeah.
We have an album done. We've listened to it on repeat for a month and a half, two months now. We're just making sure that we have it right. We want to make sure it's spot on the way that we envision it. And I think the cool thing is that we both left the previous project with an idea, and we have not deviated from said idea. We continue to build upon it in the same vein with the same core idea, and because of that, it's allowing us to maintain an idea while telling different stories, if that makes sense. We're very all over the place.

Tyler:
Hopefully, down the line, this will let us get some features with some people because that's one of the things I'd love to do. Yeah. Especially with Tampa Song House, we want to get some familiar faces in there, let them hear what we're doing and the sound that we're creating, but also just collaboration. I think that's a really big thing in music. Like, you can do a lot on your own with two people, but you never know if somebody could come in with their own, like whether it was, like, a guitar, a drum, a bass, whatever feature, even a vocal feature, you could add them into this and be like, wow. That fits really, really well.

Nick:
As it stands right now, we're recording everything at my house. I have a makeshift miniature studio built in my house. We do everything there. Anything that you know, anybody collaboratively that would want to come and do some recording is more than welcome. Come on.

Kayla:
And then lastly, what are you guys looking forward to the most?

Nick:
Shit.

Tyler:
There's a lot. With the side gig of photography, if we got more live shows and we're playing different shows, that also means that's an excuse to be at these shows. So if I'm not at a merch table or stuck somewhere, I get photos and have fun doing that, but also opportunities. Like I said earlier, there are a lot of people that come to shows, and you never know who could show up.

And just talking and networking with different people is one of the best things you can do, especially in the music industry. Because as big as the music industry seems, it's really fucking small. You could casually meet people. There have been a lot of people, especially in the Orlando/Tampa scene, that would just walk by you and you will not have a clue. So I'm excited to meet a lot of new faces and also learn a lot because with producing music and publishing music, there's always going to be critiques from people, but there'll also be things that people really, really like. And I'm excited to take the criticism and whatever may come with it and learn and be better.

Nick:
Yeah. For me, I just wanna watch people sing along to our songs. That's all. I just wanna watch a crowd of people. I wanna watch a sea of people move to the exact movement of a groove while screaming the words with Tyler screaming into the mic. That’s all I wanna say. That's all I hope for. That's it. I'm simple.

Kayla:
I love that. I think that I think that's definitely attainable for you guys.  Especially at  these local places and, you know, meeting people and just getting your name out there. That’s all it is.

Nick:
Yep.

Kayla:
I think that's totally attainable.

Nick:
It's gonna be fun. Yeah. Just relax, guys. It's fine.
(Laughter)

Kayla:
Just relax, guys. It's fine.

Tyler:
Relax, it’s fine.

If you haven’t - go check out the NEW SINGLE “Crusade” on spotify, out now!!
We were so happy to sit down and talk with Relax.itsfine about their music and to get to know the members more. Give this amazing band some love, and reach out if you’re interested in any of the projects mentioned above.

As always, huge shoutout to Oscura for being a place for us all to come together as a community and be able to create so many cool things, love ya.