Massachusetts melodic hardcore punks A Wilhelm Scream will soon be back on Australian shores for a national tour. Known for their energetic live shows this is one band not to be missed. We caught up with guitarist and song writer Trevor Reilly to talk about the tour and get an update on new Wilhelm music.

SCENEzine
How’s 2016 been for Wilhelm so far?

Trevor Reilly
It’s been good but quite so far. We are about to play our first show of the year next week. We’ve all been at home doing our thing getting ready. It’s pretty strange usually we’d be about 3 months into touring but we are doing it a little different this year.

SCENEzine
Congrats on recently getting your new place also.

Trevor Reilly
Thanks very much we’ve got a lot of work ahead of us but we are pretty stoked about it.

SCENEzine
You were in Australia roughly a year ago can you share any memories of that tour?

Trevor Reilly
All the shows were incredible and all the bands were awesome too like Anchors were really cool guys and funny too. We love playing in Australia those are a lot of our favourite times.
Our first sold out show ever was in Melbourne which is pretty incredible I’ll never forget that ever. Every time is just amazing we always have a blast.

SCENEzine
We caught you guys last time you toured at the Newtown Social Club in Sydney. It was a pretty crazy gig how do Australian audiences compare to across the world?

Trevor Reilly
I remember first coming over there and was like wow everybody is so friendly. Everybody seems to be really excited. You can feel the energy before we even play a song. It’s always kind of been that way for us ever since we first went over there. A little different for us from when we play other places. Starting out in America we would play a lot of support shows and there would always be this thing like I hope they like us. It would sort of make us hardened kind of like develop this hard shell playing to some audiences where they were tough crowds to win over.

Kind of like a show me attitude. I guess that’s where a lot of our stage presence developed by playing harder and faster. But with Australia ever since the first time the energy was there already. Even with people who had never heard of us I just felt like people were there to have a good time.

SCENEzine
Have you ever been hurt while playing a show?

Trevor Reilly
Well I’ve fallen off the stage at Warped tour but for some reason I never got hurt. I probably should have. I fell from a massive stage I probably fell like 10 feet. I kind of just landed on my feet I don’t know how the hell it happened. The only time I really remember getting hurt I had wrecked my knee playing basketball when I was off tour. We had a week of when I was home and I had tore my acl. I didn’t get surgery on it for a few years later because I didn’t want to stop touring. We had just put out our first record and were about to put out our second so I didn’t want to kill the momentum of the band. Basically I’d get hurt every other show because my knee would give out. Every show I would collapse at some point. Other than that not really.
Our bassist Brian has got injured many times though. He’s knocked himself out and knocked his arm out of the socket, had concussions all kinds of stuff. He’s kind of a wild one.

SCENEzine
A huge crowd favourite is “king is dead” was that an easy song to write?

Trevor Reilly
Yeah it was kind of pretty quick to write. The part that took the longest was the intro. We really wanted to have a good intro. I wanted to have like a opening song on the record kind of intro thing. That took us forever to come up with for some reason. I came up with a bunch of the riffs and recorded it on my tape recorder but the tough part was the intro. The rest of it went quick somehow. I guess when your working on something and it’s going good you stay motivated to keep working on

SCENEzine
You’ve played a lot of festivals over the years. Has their been many oh my god I can’t believe we are playing with these guys moments?

Trevor Reilly
Oh yeah so many festivals will be insane. I remember seeing Faith No More and we were like holy fuck. We weren’t even on the same stage it’s just the fact that we were in Australia and we could see those bands. We are watching Faith No More for free in another country, crazy shit like that. Other than that on a more personal level I remember Strung Out took us on tour in 2006. That was pretty incredible because they are such a massive influence on us. They are one of our favourite bands. Another day in paradise album blew me away I used to listen to that on cassette tape while on the school bus. There’s been tons of bands that I’ve got to watch from side of stage like Rocket fro the Crypt and Lagwagon. It’s definitely a perk of getting to go on tour getting to play with some cool ass bands, it’s pretty rad.

SCENEzine
Can you give us an update on any new recordings?

Trevor Reilly
We are slowly starting to come up with ideas, but a new album isn’t in the works just yet. We will probably have a new 7″ out first.

SCENEzine
Wilhelm are know for their inventive song titles. Any ideas for new song titles yet?

Trevor Reilly
The President’s Weed is the name of a new jam, that was originally called the party crasher, which we called the album instead. Nick came up with the new name, I like it.

SCENEzine
Have you ever tried playing Wilhelm songs acoustic to see how they’d sound?

Trevor Reilly
The songs that I contribute have pretty much all started acoustically. I write alot of them on my dad’s Wasburn, work on the lyrics at the same time. The demos of most of our songs are me singing in my comfort zone level, so they sound alot different than when the band does our thing with them.

SCENEzine
One of our favourite songs is “soft cell”. Do you remember how the writing process for that song was?

Trevor Reilly
Thank you. The Soft Sell kinda started the same was as the other songs on Ruiner. On my 4 track tape recorder. I wrote all those songs usually in the middle of the night in the isolation booth of my dad’s home studio, in my parents basement.

SCENEzine
Do you have a favourite Wilhelm song to play live?

Trevor Reilly
Usually the newer stuff is cool to do because we are obviously less rehearsed on those than the songs we have been playing for years, so it makes it exciting so break those in in front of an audience.

SCENEzine
Can you leave us with a last message for your Australian fans?

Trevor Reilly
I just wanna say I can’t wait to see all you guys and rock out and have fun with ya’ll.

(interview by Christian Ross)