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A Need To Be Shot Interview

An interview with Alex Osman of Texas based power electronics/death industrial project A Need To Be Shot.

July 16, 2024

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Hi Alex, thanks for speaking with Discipline Mag. On your latest release, S/T, the delivery of the music feels very much in line with some of the greats of power electronics, noise and death industrial; Whitehouse, Wolf Eyes and Brighter Death Now are just some of the recogniseable influences here. Though the shorter track times (2-5 minutes) and structure of the songs make the release feel more accessible by relative standards. What was the motivation behind the structure of this release?

I was inspired by bands like Naked City, Fantomas, The Locust, and Spazz, who were notorious for their short track lengths, some songs even lasting less than a minute. I wanted to create these short bursts and moods, and experiment with the opposite of the kind of traditional 6-11 minute long tracks you find with a lot of noise projects.

The lyrics on the opening track of S/T, ‘Eat Shit’, have been taken from a book of yours called Problem Child. Could you explain Problem Child in more detail and how you came to use segments of it for ‘Eat Shit’?

Problem Child is my first book, composed of material from over 10 years that I felt fit together to create a sort of narrative photo album or loosely interconnected vignettes. A lot of segments I wanted to feel like pure energy, and the intensity of some of them felt like they needed to be rapidly shouted into microphones one after the other to create almost a sense of insanity and danger, like rabid dogs barking at you on a dirt road.

Your move to Texas was at least partially informed by a feeling of kinship you had with Texas artists. I believe some of which included The 13th Floor Elevators, Scratch Acid, The Jesus Lizard, The Mars Volta and so on. What other Texas artists inspired you and why was this compulsion so great?

Butthole Surfers were everything I wanted a band to be, just pure strange chaos. I’m mad I wasn’t born early enough to see them in their prime, but they were the inspiration for all my early-adulthood stage antics, getting naked during sets, wearing costumes, hurling myself into drum sets, projections, etc.. I still have scars from that period. I also really love Blaze Foley, Rusted Shut, and Skatenigs. Blaze wrote some of the saddest songs you’ll ever hear in your life.

Did moving to Texas live up to your expectations?

Quite the opposite, honestly. For all the tacky billboards and t-shirts exclaiming how weird it is, it’s oddly the most normal, and kinda boring place I’ve ever lived. I was hoping it would have retained at least a little bit of that Slacker feel, but that’s long gone and replaced with this kind of phony, uncanny valley, wannabe-LA feel that I don’t personally resonate with. It’s been severely isolating, to say the least. I’ve been planning on moving back up north within the next year.

How about the music scene in Austin. The city’s musical legacy appears to be ongoing with events like South by Southwest and Austin Psych Fest (now Levitation Fest). But how about noise, power electronics and ‘experimental outsider music’ more generally, is there an appetite for this stuff?

I hear a lot of stories about how it used to be, even around 2015, where the noise scene was more thriving. It has died way down since, which is a shame because there’s some incredible noise and noise-adjacent acts here. Mental Abortion plays some of the most intense shows I’ve seen in recent years, I can’t recommend them enough.

The narrative around America’s southern border states presented by mainstream media tends to revolve around the border crisis, fentanyl smuggling and a host of social issues that stem from there. As someone ‘on the ground’, would you consider this to be a fair assessment?

Texas has been one of the worst, as far as laws go, and I predict it being among the first to enter a complete police state in the future. A lot of friends have left or are moving away due to social issues, which upsets me that it’s bad enough that people are being driven away from their home state. And I actually worked at a movie theater where this guy made a fentanyl drop by shoving it under a seat. So, I’d say it’s a reasonable assessment, yeah. But to say it wholly encapsulates the south is a wild exaggeration, which mainstream media is famous for.

Your home state of Pennsylvania was catapulted into the spotlight over the weekend with the attempted assassination of Donald Trump. Is this kind of event out of step with the usual character of Pennsylvania? And what is the feeling amongst your friends and family?

I certainly didn’t expect it at all. There was some gun violence, but the majority of it was gang and drug-related or personal. Most of the people I knew in Pennsylvania who hated Trump were very anti-violence. They didn’t like the guy, but they didn’t think he should be murdered or anything. And the conservatives weren’t necessarily the violent type, like they weren’t about to try to assassinate Biden or Obama. Me and my friends always wondered if an assassination attempt on Trump would happen, even way back in 2016, especially back then. We just didn’t expect it would be in our homestate and not too far from where we lived.

While A Need To Be Shot is centered around power electronics, you also have a history performing and creating a wide range of sounds. This has ranged from shoegaze, post-rock, grindcore, trip-hop and beyond. With this diversity of output in mind, what instruments, genres and projects do you consider your flagships?

I’ve always hated the idea of doing the same thing for the rest of my life or sticking with one genre, instrument, or medium. I’ve played guitar and drums all my life, which is why I still use them in certain ANTBS songs, because I like having as many tools as possible to work with no matter what project I’m working on. But I’d say ANTBS, Thinner, and Elephant Pill have been my favorite projects, for sure. I still go back and relisten to all the Elephant Pill stuff and just wish I hadn’t wiped it all off the internet, and wish I still had the space and time to keep making that stuff.

As an author of several books, there is a literary element to your work that I feel coincides with your admiration for Leonard Cohen. How do you square these influences with A Need To Be Shot’s abrasive sound and unrelenting lyrics?

Many of my favorite musicians are also writers, which I always admired. Their work feels photographic, like they’re trying to paint a picture in your head. I think of “Nick the Stripper” by The Birthday Party, with Nick Cave describing the character and his actions, while the music and those horns almost provide a soundtrack to his reading. I’m kinda trying to do the same thing, find the intersection between literature, music, and visuals.

For you personally, what’s the appeal of being a solo artist?

I had to learn independence and self-reliance very early on in childhood, which in a lot of ways has been a godsend. I think working alone is just what I’m used to and what I’m most comfortable with, because you work on your own time and it’s less stressful. I’ve been in a few bands in the past where the other members kinda look at me like, “Okay Alex, you write all the songs. Write an entire album right now,” which is frustrating. It was like when you worked on a group project in high school, but you were expected to do all the work. I will say, I prefer playing live in bands, but I prefer to create solo.

Where did the name A Need To Be Shot come from?

The name came from a dream I had, where I was dating this girl whose face was rapidly morphing throughout the dream. And she was yelling at me, saying, “I have needs of my own that you would never understand, like a need to be shot.” The phrase stuck with me when I woke up, but the weird coincidence is I initially planned to name the project You Will Be Shot, after the John Zorn track.

Your father played in nu-metal bands during your youth. Does he have any interesting stories from those times? Perhaps his band supported Korn in a stadium, he attended a particularly crazy Ozzfest or something similar?

Nothing too huge, it was mostly local shows. He did get to help Kevin DuBrow of Quiet Riot in the studio once, though, shortly before Kevin’s death. But getting to be in a studio all the time and go to his band’s shows at an early age was probably a bigger influence on me than anything I can think of.

What are your plans for the rest of the year with A Need To Be Shot? Are shows, tours, releases, networking, labels or anything else on the horizon?

I have two albums worth of material recorded, as well as a finished split with Infibulation. Then there’s a film coming out soon-ish that I helped write the original score for and have a small role in, so I’m really excited for that. Other than that, mostly just playing shows in Austin and San Antonio while I prepare for the release of my new book Scandals, which contains some of the poems that became lyrics to ANTBS tracks.

Follow A Need To Be Shot on Instagram and listen to the latest release, S/T, below.

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