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Motograter Bio
What do you get when you mix the musical STOMP with hardcore industrial, a little rap blended in for variety, and some body paint? I suspect it might just sound like Santa Barbara rockers Motograter. "It's a food processor for your brain," describes founding member and Moto-player Bruce Butler. There's so much crossover in their sound that all five members of Motograter are hard pressed to define exactly what it is they do, but they're doing it, and it's catching on. Along side Butler on the 'grater (yes it is an instrument, and no, you can't buy one), you'll find Chris Binns on drums, Joey Krzywonski on Smur Drums (another Moto patent), Zak Ward's rap/death metal vocals, and new addition Eric Gonzales mixing up "Samples and Mayhem." Motograter doesn't look or sound like anything you have ever heard before. And that's just how they want it thank you very much.
"The original idea for Motograter was bass and drums." Says Butler, who began collaborations with his friend Dave Brogan in 1995. He urged his longtime pal and fellow Texan Krzywonski to come out to California to get in on the action; it was the way Krzywonski played Butler's bass lying down in his lap that inspired the idea for the Motograter. "I said to Joey, Instead of you conforming to an instrument, why don't we make an instrument to conform to you?" They bought an old guitar, dissected it, found a welder (Anthony Paul Studios), and lo, the first Motograter was born, resembling a medieval ironing board, with bass strings, and rusty saws. They christened it the "Motograter" after the angle blades on tractors that smooth roads, Motor graders. But though made for Krzywonski, the Motograter turned out to suit him less than the SMUR drumz, which the industrious duo had gone on to manufacture out of barrels-physically demanding to play, but easily handled by the bigger-framed lad.
Avid skateboarders, Butler and Krzywonski found Zak Ward, a rapper and freestyler at a skate park in early `98, and once they added him to the mix they knew they had something. Later that year, performing at a Halloween party on Haley St., they met Chris Binns, formerly the drummer for the metal band Intrinsic. "I was totally blown away by their sound, but I thought they could use a drummer," says Binns, who started jamming with them the very next day. December '99 brought the addition of Eric Gonzales who was friends of the band for quite sometime. " I was stoked to join, who the hell wouldn't be?," says Eric, who began taking over the samples and other stuff Joey was getting to busy to do.
The boyz have been busy playing numerous shows all over the Central Coast of California. Watch out for Motograter. They might just show up on your back door soon!
Check our interview on www.metalcult.com
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Big "Fuck Ya!!" goes out to Larik Mezey. Stage Manager Extraordinaire.
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Webpage design and updates by Crispy
Cd Layout, Photos, artwork by Amy Ruthlesss. Stay tuned for her killer website which is getting designed right now www.ruthlesss.com.
Motobio written by Korina Jochim-Santa Barbara Independent Writer
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