Swollen Members have had their fair share of trials and tribulations over the past few years, such as band member “Mad Child” Shane Bunting’s drug addiction, which had a strong influence on their previous album, Dagger Mouth. With all of that behind them, and with new album Beautiful Death Machine in their coffers, they are now back on top of their game and have found their original voice.
“It’s evolved, definitely, but sometimes when you’re evolving you realize you need to take it back to the basic, to the square root of the situation, that’s where you find the real strength and your real voice,” says Kiley Hendricks (stage name: Prevail). “And I feel that on Beautiful Death Machine we were able to achieve that.”
After the success of Dagger Mouth, Swollen Members are hungry for more and invigorated for their current tour, which started March 19, along with the release of their new album.
“We really wanted to just get back to the original flow and sound,” says Hendricks. “This one we really took it back, it’s really gritty, and it’s quite raw and very truthful. You know you get this kind of encrypted, encoded linguistics with Swollen Members, as you always do.”
Along with evolving with the band, Hendricks is starting to look down new paths to carry out his own creative skill set. And it’s not necessarily what people will expect.
He’s starting to build an online magazine, and subsequently a publishing company, which he hopes will be launching later this year.
“I took up a big cue from Swollen Members,” he says. “We’ve always been in that entrepreneurial independent mind state. So going on in life I want to be able to be in control of my own creative destiny.”
Along with starting up his own media company, Hendricks is pursuing motivational speaking to others with the same entrepreneurial spirit. He hopes to share the life lessons he’s learned through the failures and successes of his experience with Swollen Members.
“It’s business motivational, more entrepreneurship, and getting people to listen to their hearts and just be a bold businessperson, and have no fear about it,” he says. “Because every day in business you learn and make mistakes, and it’s what makes strong business leaders and strong people, to learn from those mistakes. But you have to go through your growing pains, and that’s part of business, and that’s part of life.”
Swollen Members
NEW DATE Friday April 26
Club 9one9, $20
strathconahotel.com/club9one9