Stoner rock icon Brant Bjork has mentioned the distinctive legacy of Kyuss in a brand new interview with Steel Hammer. Talking to Hammer of their newest situation, Bjork explains that Kyuss – broadly thought-about one of many pioneering forces within the stoner rock and stoner metallic genres – had been saddled with excessive expectations as their standing started to develop within the 90s.
“Our man on the label would at all times say, ‘You guys would be the subsequent Metallica’, and that bummed me out,” Bjork says now. “I wished to be this Kyuss! I felt like we fucking rocked and had hit the height of our chemistry on the time, and Metallica had been super-cool guys and actually supportive, however seeing all of it on that scale, it was identical to, ‘This isn’t for me.’ If that’s the epitome of success in a rock band, it simply appeared unrewarding. They bought up and performed the identical issues each night time, mentioned the identical issues… I may inform it’d grow to be a travelling circus, a machine. I used to be nonetheless 20 years previous, extra drawn to what we had been doing by way of improvising onstage and being unfastened. I wished Kyuss to go extra in that path.”
Because it occurred, Kyuss would get to see how Metallica did enterprise up shut and private once they supported the metallic giants on tour in Australia in 1993. By that time, Bjork was already rising disillusioned with issues within the band, and seeing metallic taken to its arena-filling excesses did not enhance his perspective to all of it.
“Supporting Metallica [in 1993] was fucking bananas,” he remembers. “It was bizarre; by the point our administration advised us in regards to the supply, I’d already determined I didn’t wish to be in Kyuss anymore. I felt like I used to be now not jiving with the fellows and no matter we’d had that was magical, it was gone. I didn’t wish to stick round to look at this actually magical ship sink into the ocean.”
In the end, Bjork would depart Kyuss following the recording of their traditional third album, 1993’s Welcome To Sky Valley, with fellow Kyuss alumni Josh Homme finally happening to type Queens Of The Stone Age.
Learn extra from Brant Bjork in Steel Hammer‘s finish of 12 months particular, out now.
