Johnny Buzzerio (courtesy of Party Smasher Inc)Giraffe Tongue Orchestra, the new band featuring William DuVall of Alice in Chains, Mastodon's Brent Hinds and Ben Weinman of The Dillinger Escape Plan, has been in the works for quite a while. When all of the members were finally able to find time in their schedules to make GTO happen, they had to decide what they wanted the band to be.
"What we didn't want it to be was some sort of vanity project, just toss-off thing," DuVall tells ABC Radio. "What we wanted it to be was something that could create its own lane for all of us."
With that goal set, Giraffe Tongue Orchestra delved into making their debut album Broken Lines, and soon learned how they could create a new sound.
"When I do a riff that sounds very much like me, as soon as Brent does his idea over it, it becomes something completely different, or vice versa," Weinman explains. "We have very different styles, but...somehow they meld very well."
Most of the music on Broken Lines was written before DuVall officially came aboard, and the vocalist challenged himself to not ask to change anything.
"Some of these songs are full of not only challenging time signatures and a lot of information coming at you from all of the instruments, but also really rapid and sudden mood swings from part to part," he says.
"I had to kinda throw out any sort of handbook on conventional rock song writing," DuVall adds. "A lot of this stuff was...some of it was almost like writing for like a theater production."
Broken Lines is out now. If you want to catch DuVall's theater production lyrics live, Giraffe Tongue Orchestra will kick off their inaugural U.S. tour November 29 in Boston.
Copyright © 2016, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.