23 OCTOBER 19-25, 2023 westword.com WESTWORD | CONTENTS | LETTERS | NIGHT+DAY | CULTURE | CAFE | MUSIC | FIND MORE MUSIC COVERAGE AT WESTWORD.COM/MUSIC Keep It Real INTHEWHALE DOESN’T CARE ABOUT GOING VIRAL. BY JED MURPHY “It’s hard for a band like us to fi t into how the music industry works. We’re 37 years old — we’re not going to do a TikTok dance,” says Nate Valdez, vocalist/guitarist of Denver band INTHEWHALE. “It feels disingenu- ous, also kind of predatory.” INTHEWHALE, which comprises Valdez and drummer Eric Riley, has always been somewhat of an odd band out in the Colorado (and national) music scene. It’s an extremely heavy band, yet it’s a two-piece. With Valdez’s melodic vocal style, the duo could never be called metal, and while the music is fast-paced with punk elements, it’s too polished to be called punk. The act never fully leaned into pop, either, staying close to its hard-rock roots. But Valdez and Riley fully stepped into their nu-metal shoes for what is undoubtedly their best work yet: Chosen at Random, which is out now on all streaming platforms. The album was produced at Rock Falcon in Nash- ville by Nick Raskulinecz, who’s worked with such legendary acts as Deftones, Foo Fighters and Mastodon. The results reveal a side of INTHEWHALE that has long laid dormant. Despite INTHEWHALE’s impressive track record as a touring band, Valdez and Ri- ley fi nd themselves at cross purposes with the current state of the music industry. “We are artists. We want to share our art with our fans, and not to a machine,” says Riley. “That does make us sound like dinosaurs, but this is some human shit. We’re trying to invoke something real. We’re not trying to get a twenty-second clip; we’re not trying to go viral.” Since the pandemic, many bands have had to come to terms with an industry shift that emphasizes fi nding that “viral moment” more than ever. COVID forced music fans to become more insular, looking toward social media for new music as opposed to going to local shows. And as an incredible live band that made its living playing shows, INTHEWHALE has been hit hard by this new normal. “I see a lot of the old faces, but people who aren’t musicians and just love music — I don’t see them anymore,” laments Valdez. While he and Riley dislike this new status quo, they do see it as a chance to reset. To start, they reformatted the band name from In the Whale to INTHEWHALE, an effort to make them easier to fi nd online. “We got really tired of people fucking up really badly. People would show up to shows and say, When does Or the Whale play? Or Said the Whale play? And we’re like, ‘Wrong band,’” laughs Valdez. “Every preposition you can think of, we’ve been. Aboard the Whale, After the Whale, Inside the Whale, Inside of the Whale.” “We just put out our song ‘Animals,’ and if you search ‘In the Whale Ani- mals,’ you can just fucking forget it,” adds Riley. While the name change is a practical choice, it’s also a symbolic one for Valdez and Riley. INTHEWHALE has spent more time on the road than most Colo- rado acts, and in that time, it’s gone through a lot of changes. Chosen at Ran- dom is a noticeable tonal shift, leaving behind the cheeky moments of humor peppered throughout the band’s previous releases and fully embracing its se- rious side. “Those early INTHE- WHALE records were snapshots of us in our twenties,” Riley explains. “Us moving down to Den- ver, working shitty jobs and riding bikes every- where. Ten years later, we actually have some shit to talk about.” Valdez and Riley met and began playing music together around 2009 in Greeley, but they consider 2011, when they moved to Denver, as the beginning of INTHEWHALE. They built a solid local audience by playing everywhere, then quickly took the leap into touring. From there, it was pedal to the metal. “It was scary as hell to go on tour. There were so many what-ifs and variables that we never even thought of,” recalls Valdez. “But af- ter the fi rst couple of years, we’d been through a hurricane; we went through a tornado; we’ve done an earthquake in L.A.; we’ve blown out tires; we’ve blown a transmission; we’ve blown engines. And honestly, it’s not that bad.” INTHEWHALE threw everything into being a band known for its live show, criss- crossing the nation aiming to blow people’s minds as a two-piece with the power of a full band. Between Valdez’s guitar work and Riley’s impeccable rock drumming, they found a dynamic and it worked. “We wanted to travel and be big everywhere. We hit our stride, then probably toured too much there for a few years,” says Riley. “There was a time when we exhausted everything. We played Omaha seven or eight times in one year. What are we doing? With the same tenacity that we hit Denver with, we took to the U.S., and you can blow that whole market,” laughs Valdez. Then came COVID. Leading up to it, Val- dez and Riley set their sights on recording a proper full-length album, something that had eluded them up until that point. They lined up time at Dave Grohl’s Studio 606 in Los Angeles and worked alongside Steve Evetts, who’s produced such bands as Every Time I Die and Dillinger Escape Plan. This album would become Vanishing Point, and they left L.A. excited about the future. Their label, Riot Records, wanted to make them a main prior- ity, and they had extensive tours planned that included Europe, Canada and even Australia. “We were leaving L.A. and we’re like, ‘Fuck, yeah, this is it!’ The record was getting mixed and mastered, we had an Australian tour on the books,” recalls Valdez. “We got these other things getting ready. Our manager is like, ‘So, guys, there’s this really bad fl u coming up....’ By the time we got to Boise, ev- erything was gone and all our shit was done.” “Smash-cut to me playing Cards Against Humanity over Zoom,” quips Riley. “And people howling at the moon for some fucking reason,” adds Valdez. Isolation was a struggle for INTHEWHALE. “It was hard to sit at home and fi gure out what normal people do: I guess I watch TV now. I guess people join wine groups,” Valdez recalls. “It was really weird to try and be in a civilian lifestyle after being nomadic.” The pair released Van- ishing Point in 2021, but it was dead on arrival. With no tours to support it, the album did not reach its usual audiences. It was back to the drawing board, so Valdez and Riley hunkered down and channeled their frus- trations into a follow-up record. As the pandemic was winding down, they reached out to Raskulinecz and discovered he had about two and a half weeks avail- able — but only immediately. So they dropped everything and drove to Nashville. “It was probably the fi rst time in a recording situation where we had the time to really focus on the little things. Usu- ally it’s like, ‘We have this much money, so we have two days to rip through everything,’” Riley says with a laugh. Working with Rasku- linecz and having that much time to record was a shock for the two musi- cians. Forcing themselves to slow down was counterintuitive to the INTHEWHALE process, but it gave them a taste of what it’s like to record at a top level. “We would be tracking, and he would come in and just talk shit with us and tell us stories of working with Deftones,” recalls Ri- ley. “We were like, shouldn’t we be working? He said, ‘No, dude, relax. The more relaxed you are, the more fun we’re having, the better it’s going to turn out.’” Listening to Chosen at Random, the re- sults are undeniable. The strengths of both Valdez and Riley are pushed to the limits, bringing out a musicianship and vulnerabil- ity that makes the album feel timeless and classic. And from a production standpoint, it’s a recording that will sound just as good in ten years as it does now. Looking ahead, they plan to hold on to some of what they learned from making Chosen at Random and slow things down, putting more emphasis on the small things. “We love making music,” says Valdez, “but we’re also business-minded, to where we want people to write our name correctly.” Chosen at Random is available on all streaming platforms. MUSIC Nate Valdez and Eric Riley are Denver duo INTHEWHALE. CHRIS MONGEAU
