Zack Weil of Oozing Wound on Metal, Sarcasm and Aging

For about a minute and a half, Chicago trio Oozing Wound rages around in some near-death rattle to begin “Hippie Speedball,” a track off its newly issued Earth Suck. Expertly executed repetitive sections solder the introduction into a longer, six-minute track that eventually skirts the avant-metal implications of its preface, only to fall back into itself for the final minute of the song.

The band, now two full-lengths deep into its career, has and likely will in perpetuity be thought of as a metal band. Taking a listen to anything off that new album or hearing the track Oozing Wound recorded for Adult Swim called “Drug Reference” bears that out. But it’s those verbose and insistent rhythmic repetitions that allude to a spate of influence and intent that sit well beyond the limits of the genre. Sure, Oozing Wound doesn’t always sound too far off from thrash or mid-’80s crossover, but frontman Zack Weil remains confident Oozing Wound is a force unto itself.

Paste: I know you and Kyle [Reynolds, Oozing Wound’s drummer] were in Cacaw a few years back. And that act was at least metal-adjacent, so how is Oozing Wound different?
Zack Weil: That band had so many limitations, self-imposed ones: Everybody had their specific tastes and there were only so many different ways to do something. Carrie [Vinarsky] and Anya [Davidson] were artists, and instruments weren’t their focus.

Paste: Was that band’s intent more serious?
Weil: What’s funny is there were definitely more serious band practices and less fun, but oddly, more focused on having fun at shows. The dichotomy is really weird, because Oozing Wound has always been about rocking out but also about having a fun time. It’s actually the first band I’ve been in that’s been fun. The difference between that and Cacaw—it was like work, but nobody thought it would go anywhere. So, it was very limiting and felt pointless after a while, whereas Oozing Wound is fun for the sake of fun.

Paste: The name of the band and some song titles come off as pretty sarcastic. That might just be the provenance of independent music at this point, but was that tone intended?
Weil: There was a very conscious pulling back on being too funny—we didn’t want to be a joke band. My honest sense of the world has been through very sarcastic sense of humor. I tried to incorporate it into other bands, but I would always get push-back. This one I’m allowed—if I think it’s funny enough or smart enough or stupid, I’ll usually push for it and they go for it. [Song titles] are almost all inside jokes—like “When the Walls Fell,” that’s a Star Trek: The Next Generation reference. It’s all stupid crap.

Paste: The first track off Earth Suck seems pretty serious—“Going Through the Motions Until I Die.”
Weil: A little bit; that was the second one we came up with. Kyle said that one day when he came home from work, and I just thought it was the greatest phrase I’d ever heard. Lyrically, I don’t even say that, it’s just makes sense going with those riffs.

Paste: Given the kind of perspective across your recordings, as well as a clear affinity for old hardcore, do you guys ever get flack from metal dudes?
Weil: We’re not really in the metal community. We did play Gilead Fest in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, though. That was the first major metal thing we’d ever done. Nobody booed or anything, but we don’t fit in with what the modern concept of metal is. We’re not super doomy; we don’t hate each other or wear all black. There’s no satanic imagery. So, yeah, it’s metal, but it’s not what people want metal to be right now. To us, we don’t fit in. And it doesn’t make sense to label ourselves that way. The idea of trying to be Metallica seems really silly to me.

Paste: In some of your press photos, you guys are all corpsed out, but it comes off kinda comical—someone’s wearing a Hawaiian shirt.
Weil: Thing is, we’re not trying to be funny in that instance. Kyle was just wearing a Hawaiian shirt; that’s what he wore that day. We talked about not wearing stuff with logos, and to him, that’s wearing a weird floral print, which is inherently funny. We just go with it. We’re not trying be anything other than ourselves or to block off things because people want certain things from metal bands.

Paste: You guys aren’t really part of the punk scene either.
Weil: I was never too into punk, and I think metal ages better.

Paste: Really? You mentioned Metallica, and it’d be easy to say that they’ve aged horribly.
Weil: Punk is youthful energy. It makes sense for teenagers and it makes some sense for 20-year-olds. But if you’re 50 and doin’ punk, it’s gonna seem kinda sad to me. Whereas metal, you can be a 90-year-old wizard, like Christopher Lee, and make metal records. That’s cool in its own way. Metallica’s not been something I’ve cared about since 1988.

I’m also not into the whole reuniting bands thing. I’ve been disappointed by 95 percent of the bands that come back together. If you don’t have anything new to offer, it’s pretty obvious.

Paste: I think one of the best reunion shows I’ve seen was the Zero Boys back whenever they first started playing again.
Weil: A dude like Alice Cooper, he clearly has some bullshit in his career—like the ’80s and ’90s. But I saw him and he was amazing. He was exactly what I wanted him to be: He didn’t fuck up and his band was awesome. Then Mötley Crüe played and they were the worst thing I’d ever seen. So, it can go either way.

Paste: Alice Cooper’s clearly an act. Part of why he was and remains successful is because it’s theater to a certain extent.
Weil: And he has amazing songs. The first six albums by Alice Cooper are great. He could play that shit forever and I wouldn’t really care.