AntiMusic’s Morley Seaver recently interviewed Florida stoners SHROUD EATER about their music, influences and the history behind their name. Excerpts from the interview are below:

AntiMusic: Shroud Eater grabs onto a riff like a pit bull. How does your material come about? Do you keep jamming until you hit upon something interesting or do you hear the riffs in your head at various times when you're not even actually playing?

Jean: “The majority of times riffs will come to me while I'm not playing - usually when there's no instrument around. Lately I'll just record ideas on my phone, and then flesh them out on an acoustic guitar, then present them at rehearsal. Other times at rehearsal, when you're listening to what your band mates are playing, or a certain rhythm or whatever and ideas come about that way - so we do a little of both.”

AntiMusic: What are 10 influential albums (collectively speaking) that would construct a musical skeleton which makes up the beast known as Shroud Eater?

Jean: “This is an incredibly hard question - the results may differ depending on when you ask us, but here goes, in no particular order: KYUSS, Blues for the Red Sun; BLACK SABBATH, Black Sabbath; THE CULT, Electric; JOY DIVISION, Substance; HIGH ON FIRE, Blessed Black Wings; ALICE IN CHAINS, Dirt; JESUS LIZARD, Shot; THE CURE, Pornography; LED ZEPPELIN, I; JUDAS PRIEST, British Steel.”

AntiMusic: OK, I have to ask. What's the story behind the name? Vampire fans anybody?

Jean: “Well, every band name you've basically ever thought of is taken, apparently. We had a list of names we kept cycling through but never really fell upon anything we liked, and the stuff we were mostly fond of was already taken. I was checking my email one morning last year and noticed this story National Geographic was running about the Vampire in Lazzaretto, a 16th century skeleton found in Italy with a brick shoved into its mouth. Before vampires were romanticized, they were believed to be a corpse which attacked and killed its prey from the grave – when suspected graves were excavated, they would find the corpse with a hole eaten through its burial shroud, and its mouth brimming with blood, hence the term. Anyway, I found the story fascinating, the name really stuck out to me in a gross and macabre way, and to seal the deal there were no band names out there listed as Shroud Eater – so it basically stuck!”

To read the entire interview go here.