The Panther Caps Interview

 

1.For those that have never heard of you before, can you tell us a little bit about the solo project?

The Panther Caps is blackened, psychedelic doom metal mixed up with power crystals, wild mushrooms, the occult, creepy new age babes, and everything else your parents feared in the 70s-80s during the Satanic Panic! The ‘Caps keep it energetic, fun, sexy, carnivalesque – all the elements needed to spread like a disease. Our songs are fairly straightforward, and our riffs are all the kind of thing a 13-year-old kid can play.

I live on an island in Alaska. There’s no “scene” or anything like that, and touring is off the table since the only way out is by plane or ferry. I can drive across a bridge to Juneau, but it’s isolated from the rest of North America by a 1,500 square mile ice field jammed full of glaciers. It’s a great environment for pursuing your esoteric musical tastes as a lone wolf, but don’t expect anyone to share your weird interests.

I’ve been doing the “one man show” thing for over 20 years with a variety of projects. (By the way, “one man show” is the name of a really putrid French cologne from the early 80s.) I used to do a lot of black metal – I’m kinda a black metal dude at heart. One-man black metal is a well-recognized phenomena and well respected, but I’m finding it’s less common in doom. My older black metal projects include Skaltros, Kuundlaan, Ataxeta, Mulozhi (trap music with black metal vocals), Naukati (ambient), Sutreak (ambient). My old blackened doom band from a number of years ago is Malaxis.

So yea, the Panther Caps is the latest in a long list of one-man projects, and the one that I’m currently focusing all my energy on. It’s an orgasmic outlet for a lot of ideas I’ve had pent up for a long time.

2.In the last few months you have released 3 albums, musically how do you feel they all differ from each other?

All the songs on the first two albums, “2 Satanic 2 Panic” and “Rises Again” were recorded at the same time.  I intended to do enough jams for one album, but I always end up overdoing things. I ended up with enough songs that I had to divide them into two LPs. “2 Satanic” has some of the more retro / 70s-sounding jams, and “Rises Again” is stuff that has a bit more of a hardcore influence.

I put them out around the same time, because you only live once, right? And plus, “Paranoid” and “Master of Reality” came out only four months apart… so I figured I’d just go for it, release them, and work on more material. Father Yod released 9 albums between 1973 and 1975. The Incredible String Band released “The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter” and “Wee Tam…” (a double album) the same year, in 1968. If you’re having a good year, just go with it.

When the first albums were done, I instantly experienced a post-partum depression feeling – really bummed to be done working on new Panther Caps stuff. I also got to thinking “man, I really want to do an album with the guitars tuned all the way down to drop B.”  After a few days I decided “what am I waiting for?” and started up another marathon multi-week recording session, with everything in dropped B.

You’ll think I’m bonkers, but the second time around I ended up with enough songs for three albums – and that is after destroying all the songs that didn’t meet my quality control standards!  “Graven Images” is the first of the three albums to come out of that session. It’s a bit more classic and demonic sounding. There’s one coming up called “Determinate Negation” that’s more southern rock-sounding, and one called “Teardrinker” that’s more hardcore-ish. But they’re all kinda cousins to one another. I’m going to release those two next year.

“Graven Images” is heavier than the first two releases because everything is tuned down lower. I also tuned the two lowest strings on my bass in unison, which thickens it up and gives it a kinda chorus effect when I’m playing both strings at once. I wanted it to be like the old screamy hardcore band Pageninetynine, which would tour with two bassists. James Brown did that, too. All that low end becomes a lot to manage, mix-wise.

I think the humor is probably more apparent on “Graven Images,” too – another difference. The Panther Caps has a lot of humor going on, because it’s good to not take things too seriously.

3.You have released a good amount of material in a short amount of time, do you spend a great amount of your time wring and creating music?

I don’t think it’s a lot of time, but maybe others will disagree. I came to the realization recently that I can only do about 2 or 3 hours of something per day before it stops being any good. And I came to that realization through figure skating. I’m an adult figure skater, if you can believe that. If I skate more than 2 hours in a day, I start getting weary and worry I’m going to end up hurting myself… screwing up a jump or falling out of a spin. It’s really apparent in skating that once you get past 2 hours of doing something, you’re getting diminishing returns.

So I realized it’s the same for music. Any more than 2 hours and I might be doing more harm than good. I gotta be really careful with my vocals so I don’t blow out my voice, because then I have to wait a few days before I can do it again.  It’s the same with the fiction I write, too – more than 2 hours per day, and my writing becomes dull and feels like a grind instead of doing something exciting. Stephen King talks about writing for 5 hours a day or something, but that guy was doing Tony Montana levels of coke the whole time, to the point where he can’t even remember writing Cujo.

I think the best pace is probably 2 LPs per year, like bands used to do in the late 60s / early 70s.  I’d love to do some other split LPs or EPs with other bands in the meantime.

I’m all about efficiency. I leave everything set up so that when the mood takes me, I can easily sit down and within seconds be recording. That’s a help.

I’ll let you in on the secret to my productivity, but it comes at the price of listening to a longwinded story. I was 12 years old when Smashing Pumpkins’ “Siamese Dream” came out. A child, right? I saw a brief clip on MTV and it utterly blew my mind. The 70s big muff sound was the greatest thing imaginable, but the clip only lasted for like 10 seconds. Those 10 seconds absolutely haunted me – I had to get more! I’d listen to the radio and watch MTV for hours, hoping to get another glimpse, but it didn’t happen. Back then we used to copy and trade cassette tapes with other kids. So I hunted and asked around until I found a kid who knew about Smashing Pumpkins and had a tape, and then I figured out which of my tapes he wanted a copy of. I ended up trading him trading a copy I made of “Superunknown” by Soundgarden and getting “Siamese Dream” – with the last couple songs cut-off due to the tape being too short. I listened to that thing, and it was like “wow – this is IT. This is what I gotta do.” To this day, I see it as the greatest rock and roll album ever made. Then I learned that it was all performed by one dude (except the drummer), which was incredible to contemplate. I bought a guitar because of it, and got a tablature book, and learned to play by learning every song on Siamese Dream. Thanks to that album, I fell in love with big muffs, cranked British amps, 70s guitars. Basically it’s all big muff doomy Sabbathy stoner stuff. Their first album, “Gish,” is also an amazing psychedelic rock album. Then they had this album out called “Pisces Iscariot” which was all these B-sides and leftovers they had laying around. The amount of leftovers they created was incredible.

Then “Melancholie and the Infinite Sadness” came out and was a massive let down. The Smashing Pumpkins I loved were no more. They were wearing stupid costumes – top hats and marching band uniforms, and they were experimenting with a bunch of weird and incoherent stuff. I tried to like it, but it lacked the coherence and audio engineering craftsmanship of Siamese Dream. It was clear that making Siamese Dream – the perfect rock album – literally made Billy Corgan the same. He would never be the same again. So I remained stuck on Siamese.

There was one good thing about the “Infinite Sadness” stuff, though – one really important good thing. The single for Zero - a straight up dumb song - had a B-side called Pastichio Medley on it. It’s a 23-minute song with 73 different unused Smashing Pumpkins jams in it – leftovers - about 10 seconds of riffs from each one. Kinda like what got me into them in the first place – 10 seconds of something I couldn’t have any more of!  Just about every single song/riff was fabulous and reminded me of the old stuff.  It made it clear that they were writing and recording a vast amount of content – kinda just jamming around – and only putting out a small amount of it onto finished albums. There was all this non-pretentious stuff lurking in the background, existing 10 seconds at a time.

So that became my workflow. Plug in a guitar, put on a drum loop, and just jam out one riff after another over it for maybe 15 or 20 minutes – like Pastichio Medley. Then I go back into it, listen for the riffs I like, and cut and paste all the good stuff out. I reorganize those, and then play over top of them, and boom – that’s how I get songs. I’ll do a bunch of those 15 or 20 minute riff Pastichio-like sessions as separate projects in Logic, then dissect them and kinda reorganize everything to play over it. I end up with a ton of content. I’ve been working that way for over 30 years at this point, and that’s how I end up with so many songs. It really is a jam-based process, where I spontaneously improvise my way into finding different songs, and then jam over myself.

As far as vocals and lyrics, I’ll write out song titles and part of a chorus, but the lyrics are very improvisational. I try to keep a lot of emphasis on the sound and rhythm – approaching it a lot like freestyle rapping.

I want the songs to generally be shorter and more concise. I want them to have more of a traditional pop music format – verse, chorus, verse, chorus. I try to keep it simple – memorable riffs I could have played when I was 13, yearning after Siamese Dream.

4.A lot of your lyrics cover Occultism and Satanism themes, can you tell us a little bit more about your interest in these topics?

I grew up in the 80s with the Satanic Panic going on. People seriously believed that there were all these hidden satanic messages poisoning and subverting society, all over the place. Stuff hidden in music, tunnels under daycares, secret symbols in graffiti, Dungeons and Dragons teaching kids black magic and witchcraft – you name it. Anything might be perverting mainstream culture and wholesome suburban life – which really were not that great, actually. I grew up immersed in that atmosphere of lurking paranoia, and it was frightening as well as fascinating. And in a way, really cool. Like, if there were all these hidden messages, I wanted to find them. I wanted to create hidden messages of my own. I wanted to understand this horror movie around me. And it was disappointing to find that it was largely fabricated, and that actually, the weirdest and creepiest people were the allegedly normal ones. They were also the ones taking the most and weirdest drugs. And still are.

Flash forward to my early 20s. I lived in rural Zambia for about a year and a half, teaching fish farming. The superstition and demonology was astonishing – a highly complex array of traditional beliefs, mashed up with Christian beliefs that missionaries forced upon everyone. They had a universe filled with monsters, demons, witches… just horrible stuff. Every day, tons of crazy stuff going on. I was the only non-Zambian in my area, and the only person who questioned the validity of this stuff… but the thing is, everyone believing and organizing their lives around this stuff had a massive impact on society. And I saw a bunch of incredible practices that – whether or not you believed in the underlying mythos – were utterly terrifying. They had this one practice called “flying coffin” where if someone is allegedly killed by a witch, four guys - usually drunk out of their minds - will go running around the village carrying the coffin on their shoulders as the coffin “searches” for the witch, like a giant Ouija board placard. And then when it finds the witch, the guys – who are allegedly possessed - start beating the witch to death with the coffin. And I saw this stuff and other things on a similar level of intensity going on. All the time.

My resulting worldview is basically that if someone believes in something, they’ll take a bunch of actions based on that belief and get similar outcomes as though it were true… so in the end it’s basically the same as it being true. So whether you think it’s true or not, you essentially have to deal with it as if it is.

I find cults fascinating in a disgusting sort of way. I read about them all the time and watch every documentary I can. I think mainstream religions are just megacults, with tax-exempt status. I’m not into Christianity at all, and that’s where the idea of Satan and the Devil come from. They’re kinda like a form of blackmail churches have used to control people – do what you’re supposed to, or you’ll end up being tortured by the devil. But Satan can be an interesting symbol of resistance. Like, in 19th century France, visual artists like Felicien Rops and authors like Huysmans drew upon satanism as a way to negate and subvert typical bourgeois social values.

I think everyone should develop their own web of beliefs, create their own spirituality, and individualism should rule the day. Just don’t hurt or try, exploit, or exert control over other people – let people be curious, and pursue and develop their own individual interests. Do what thou wilt but don’t harm others - the whole Aleister Crowley thing.

I am also a huge believer in the placebo effect – if you feel like a yoni egg or Santa Claus or praying to a Furby is doing some sort of good for you, keep on doing your thing.

5.Lyrically you are also inspired by horror films, which horror movies have had the biggest influence on your songwriting?

By far and away the biggest influence on my writing is the television soap opera Dark Shadows. There are 1,232 episodes, and I’ve seen them all more than once. You have to wonder “how did they do so many?” Basically every day they would create and film a new episode, live. It’s kinda like my approach to creating music – the Pastichio Medley thing. I love the late 60s / early 70s atmosphere and colors. I really appreciate when they’re going back in time – then you have like two layers of nostalgia going on; the 1970s imagining the 1790s. And they even go to the 1990s. Then they create this idea of “parallel time” – the idea there are infinite variations upon your reality, all playing out at once, which allows the show to explore alternative plots and ideas beyond the ones they’ve exhausted, reusing and reconfiguring the same characters. It’s not frightening at all, but full of gothic atmosphere. The wind is howling or else it’s raining continuously.

I like Vincent Price films, with my faves being the two Dr. Phibes movies, and then Theater of Blood. Again, they’re not frightening at all - highly atmospheric and humorous. The bad guy” is a character who has been maligned by society, getting cold-hearted revenge on a list of people who’ve done him wrong. Panther Caps is kinda like that – sort of going through a checklist channeling a bunch of pissed-off energy.

I like the old Hammer Films stuff a lot, as you can probably guess by the art. My fave is “The Horror of Frankenstein” – Ralph Bates is hugely hilarious in his arrogance.

Jean Rollin’s films are really bizarre and worth checking out – bizarre euro horror.

The horror I like isn’t really scary – it’s all atmospheric. I find it comforting.

The types of things that actually scare me are unhealthy eating habits, sugar and caffeine being hidden in food, bad water quality, hoarding.

6.What is the meaning and inspiration behind the name 'The Panther Caps'?

Panther Caps are extremely toxic hallucinatory mushrooms that grow here in southeast Alaska. They look like Amanita muscaria but are brown, vastly more potent, and will make you feel like you’ve died and gone to hell multiple times over. They’re absolute evil… and a real, living part of nature.

7.Can you tell us a little bit more about the artwork that you have gone for on your album covers?

I view the Panther Caps artwork as secondary to the music, but you gotta have visuals. I make them myself using AI. Since I live on an island in a remote area of Alaska, I don’t have access to a coven of creepy Hammer Films-looking babes, so AI’s gonna have to get the job done for me. I’m really picky about visual art and takes a huge amount of effort to get the type of results that I want and like. It’s a huge pain in the neck, in fact – particularly the video. Generating AI content is its own form of art… but very different from other forms of art. It’s almost like DJing, or remixing, or something. Or maybe a craft more than an art.

When Mr. Doom put up the first Panther Caps video for “Exhumed in the Cemetery” a few people put up negative comments saying stuff along the lines of “ew, an AI video… and the music seems like AI.” Mr. Doom explained to me there’s a big backlash against AI music going on, which I was unaware of, as I’m a dude that lives on an island and is out of touch with what is going on in any “scenes.” In response, I started putting up cereal box-like lists of ingredients that explain how everything is made, so that people can understand what they’re enjoying.

I’m cool with someone hating my music but would want them to hate it as something an actual human created rather than based on suspicions of it being AI. It’s really unfortunate to consider that underground bands and prolific one-person metal acts may have a hard time finding an audience due to the atmosphere of suspicion and paranoia that AI is producing.

Personally, I have nothing against AI, but would want to know when something is AI, or partially AI, and to what degree. It’s like putting sugar, caffeine, and creepy food coloring in breakfast cereal – make sure to disclose what went into it, so that people can make informed choices about what they’re putting into their bodies, or in the case of music, into their brains.

8.With this project you record everything by yourself, are you open to working with other musicians or do you prefer to work solo?

I’d be glad to consider working with other musicians, but it would need to be done remotely, it being the case that I am a dude living on an island in Alaska!  I grew up on the east coast and was in a lot of bands back in my teens and early 20s, but then started moving and living really weird places with no one around who shares my musical interests. I’ve been in Alaska for getting-on 20 years and have no plans to move away.

My favorite role is as lead singer, not playing instruments, jumping around and being chaotic. As much as I love playing guitar, that’s what I’d want to do with a live incarnation of the ‘Caps – the Iggy Pop kinda stuff.

9.The albums were released on 'the Swamp records', can you tell us a little bit more about this label?

The Swamp Records is based in Las Vegas, and puts out releases from underground doom bands from all over the world. You can buy them individually, or join “The Swamp Krewe,” which is a $5 subscription service kinda like Netflix for stoner doom. I got hooked up with them unexpectedly hen Fuzzy Cracklins – the head of it - started following the Panther Caps on Bandcamp. Fuzzy is an anthropomorphized alligator with a cowboy hat and a joint – and clearly has some artificial intelligence at work behind his persona. When I saw the image, I had a laugh and thought “man – this joint-smoking alligator dude is such a good fit for the Panther Caps!” I also have fam in the south and have spent a lot of time there, and the southern vibe really resonates with me.

Anyhow, Fuzzy’s been a super kind, genuine, supportive dude (or reptile?) who has given me a lot of ideas for helping to share the Panther Caps with a wider audience. The revenue split is very fair, and I definitely benefit from the relationship. It’s a great option for underground doom bands.

10.On a worldwide level how has the reaction been to your music by fans of black, doom and stoner metal?

I thought maybe the black metal and hardcore aspects wouldn’t sit well with the doom folks, and the doom stuff might put off the black metal and hardcore fans, but people seem to be figuring out how to enjoy it. I’m surprised it has had the positive reaction it’s had, and secretly kinda worry maybe it should be pissing off more people!

As mentioned above, the only negative thing has been the “anti-AI” reaction I encountered after Mr. Doom put up the first ‘Caps video. It was kinda a culture shock to me to learn there was this AI war raging. I don’t use social media, and living on an island, I sometimes find out about things years after they occur!

I don’t know what I don’t know, so it’s all good… and a little funny when I find something out that I should have realized months or years ago. Like today I just learned that Ace Friedly died a number of months back.

11.Where do you see yourself heading into as a musician during the future?

Well, after “Graven Imagines” I’ve got “Teardrinker” and “Determinate Negation” to release. That’ll keep the Panther Caps going through next year. You’ll think I’m shitting you, but I started another marathon recording session and have enough jams for SIX OR SEVEN more albums. They all need vocals, though. It’ll take me a few more months to finish that up, and then I’ll be able to keep the Panther Caps going at a rate of 2 LPs per year for 3 or 4 years.

I’m going to stick to 2 Panther Caps LPs per year – like the Incredible String Band or Black Sabbath during their best years - so at some point I may need to start another side-project. I’ve got some ideas but need to keep them secret for the time being, as it’s something that hasn’t been seen or done before. It involves blackened, psychedelic doom, though.

12.What are some of the bands or musical styles that have had an influence on your music and also what are you listening to nowadays?

I won’t rant about early Smashing Pumpkins anymore, but Siamese Dream is what got me into guitars and fuzz. I just can’t get into the Pumpkins stuff after that.

I grew up on the east coast in the mid-90s through early 00s hardcore scene and had a lot of exposure to some incredible and creative post-hardcore bands in their heyday. I’m a big fan of the Stooges, the Birthday Party, Jesus Lizard – bands where you have one dude wildin’ out over hard-hitting guitars.

I was also in a hip-hop band in the 90s. That and the hardcore scene had a really intense DIY ethos. Like, people weren’t just musicians, they were workers. That attitude informed my creative processes and productivity. You weren’t some privileged rock star – you were a worker who had to put effort in.

I got into black metal when it was reaching America in the early/mid-90s. I remember reading about it as a kid and immediately loving it based on the descriptions and images alone, before even hearing the music!  When it comes down to it, I’m kinda a black metal dude at heart. But I really love the tone and atmosphere of doom and stoner rock. I got into it around 20 years ago, from the older dudes who worked at the independent record store. It was all Eyehategod, Pentagram, Sleep, Electric Wizard back then.

As far as what do I listen to, I mostly listen to older stuff. One of my favorite albums of all time is “Ionia” by Lycia, this atmospheric goth / dark-ambient band from the early 90s. Similar to me, it’s just one dude.  “Ionia” is my favorite, but “Cold” is a masterpiece. I can never get tired of listening to that stuff. The atmosphere is incredible. I like and listen to Eyehategod and Pentagram quite a lot. I like “Nattestid” by Taake – one of my favorite albums of all time that I can listen to endlessly. A guilty pleasure is the band Summoning – I really, really enjoy them, much more than I should.

I got dragged to a party last night and was talking and trying to relate to other people my age – actually a bit younger than me. I’m in my 40s. And someone was like “what’s your favorite record that came out in 2025?” It was pathetic, but I couldn’t name a single record that came out in 2025! They mentioned a few things that sounded like they were probably indie pop artists, and I was like “yea, um… I dunno.” Then they asked me a couple different ways what type of music I listen to and after evading the question once or twice I finally admitted “doom, black metal, shoegaze.” None of that rang a bell. And then this dude started telling me about his banjo.

13.Before we wrap up this interview, do you have any final words or thoughts? 

Just major thanks for the support that I’ve received, yourself included. I probably have super low expectations, but it blows my mind that a Panther Caps video on Youtube would get over 1,000 views in a week, or would be reviewed or featured on a blog in Europe. I’m a dude on an island in Alaska, and it’s amazing to think that these outrageous, fun jams could reach that type of audience. I really appreciate the Youtube streams, bloggers, reviewers and fans that have supported the ‘Caps, whether it’s with a “like,” buying an album, leaving a comment, or just enjoying the music.  So thanks and cheers - rock on and spread the Panther Caps disease!

Exhumed from the Cemetery - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dHdWVTBm2g

Our Lord of the Conibears - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSIj5V8IdTE