1. Who are you?
I am Spencer Burton, [backing vocalist and guitarist of Attack in Black.] Son of Timothy and Toni. Brother to Jillian, grandson to the stars and moon.
2. What do you do?
I do many things. I dream. I dream of a world where beast and man share the same respects as one another. Where a man can graze peacefully on the open pastures of the prairies. Where beasts can walk into a store and buy themselves a carton of any juice they like. I dream of a place where animal and man are one in the same.
3. Where can someone find you?
Nowhere. I have spent many years making myself untrackable. I have no identity, except the one I have led you to believe is true. I am here and there, I am the sky and air. I am in fact nothing.
4. Where do you live and work and why?
I live in the darkest, deepest caves. I work only to sustain my well-being and I do so on my own accord. I have no official title. I can only tell you what it is that I call myself. Invisible. Ghost. Dreamer. Death.
5. When did you start making music together?
We made music together one fateful night, many moons ago. It appealed to our ears and our ears only. We did this to soothe our savage sides, to tame the beast that this world would not let us become. We are animals trapped in a human world.
6. How would you describe your music?
The sound of wind and water. Earth and fire. We are the elements combined to make one thing. A sound so tamed by the inability to truly become what we were meant to become … we sound like earth, wind and fire.
7. What inspires you?
Love.
8. What’s the nicest things someone has said you to after a show?
“Let me take you somewhere. Let me take you to a place you have never seen. Let me show you a world you never thought existed. I want you to let me show you love, hatred, happiness and sadness in its purest form.”
9. What’s the worst thing someone has said to you after a show?
“I don’t think we should see each other anymore.”
10. What are your current obsessions?
Sound and sights. Looking at things for the first time. Hearing things for the last time. Freight trains.
11. How do you keep your energy up while touring?
A small rechargeable battery pack located beneath my left knee cap. Every few hours it clicks in and gives me a shock of about 80 milliamps. I generally don’t even bother with smaller amperages. If it’s not strong enough to kill a small animal or child I don’t think the shock itself would be necessary.
12. How has touring with the new material been?
We never told anyone about this. I’m surprised you asked, but after re-upholstering the van, I don’t think touring has ever been more of a pleasurable experience. The new material on the seats is not only soft, but quite pleasant to look at as well.
13. When someone says “Kingston” you think…
A city, one run by demons. A place of vast molten seas and skies as red as the backside of a baboon. I think of death and sadness. Torture and mayhem. I also think of a city filled with love. A place I would call friend if I could speak to it directly. I have been working on a device that will allow me to speak directly to the earth itself.
Maybe I would start by asking the ground beneath the streets of Kingston what it thought of itself. You can never truly know someone until they have opened themselves up completely.
14. If you could give any advice to yourself in hindsight when you were first starting out as a musician, what would you say?
Go to school.
15. What are you currently working on?
This interview.
–Ally Hall
Attack in Black played last night at The Mansion and are continuing home to Welland for a Halloween show.
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