For a band that builds their own microphone preamps, creates their own stage light show, films documentaries, and records their own record, Car Bomb might just be considered a bunch of the world’s biggest control freaks. Inspired by Converge, Radiohead, Odd Future, and even comedian Louis CK, they believe that in this day and age you can do it all yourself and follow your own vision in order to create music that is unique and meaningful. Since being dropped from their record label in 2011, Car Bomb has found a sense of strength in its newly found freedom and have turned into a completely self reliant and closed-box operation consisting only of its four members: Elliot Hoffman (drums), Greg Kubacki (guitars), Jon Modell (bass) and Michael Dafferner (vocals). Every part of their upcoming album “w^w^^w^w” was done by themselves, and they know that’s the only real way to do it right. The result is a complete sensory overload: a unique and relentless avalanche of an album that swallows any label you might try to throw on it.To understand Car Bomb’s music, you must consider the wide range of their collective influences: metal, IDM, jazz, classical, hard-core, progressive metal, rock, death metal and much more. Next, take in the fact that the band consists of highly meticulous members whose professions are graphic design, computer programming, network administration, business ownership, sound system engineering. Lastly you would have to understand that though metal might be their common thread, not everyone in the band listens to the same thing. Greg gives an example: “On tour, a Zappa song pops up on Elliot’s iPod practically every five minutes . Zappa has like 5 million albums and I can’t stand him. I cringe every time one comes on, but then I take comfort in the fact that I can always retaliate by putting on Pink Floyd, which drives Elliot crazy. Who the f**k doesn’t like Pink Floyd?” This sums up Car Bomb’s semi-dysfunctional creative process which usually consists of a member poking at each other’s interests and challenging them. From that creative tension and meticulous dissection you wind up having a band that is really passionate about their music with each member having to fight for their ideas to be heard. This creates Car Bomb’s signature brand of chaotic metal, which sounds like music that constantly fights itself. Nothing ever sits still for long and there are always unexpected changes every few seconds.Car Bomb started as early as the year 2000, when two New York based bands, “Neck” and “Spooge,” shared a rehearsal space underneath a local butcher shop in Rockville Center, Long Island. The two bands found themselves frequenting each other’s rehearsals and developed a mutual respect. “Neck” was one of the New York Hard Core scene’s most unique and brutal acts, and “Spooge” was an orgy of Zappa and Mr. Bungle influenced virtuosic madness. Once both bands called it quits, the need to play heavier and more complex music drove Jon to seek out other musicians. In 2002, he recruited Greg to play in a project that would become Car Bomb. After various personnel changes Greg recruited his old band mate from “Neck” Mike and Jon recruited Elliot from “Spooge”. The band began writing songs and playing shows locally on Long Island and New York City. Early on the band almost got sued by General Motors for selling merchandise that defaced the Cadillac logo with the “Car Bomb” name. That’s when they knew they had something. After winning over thousands of fans on Myspace (they created one of the first software bots that automatically invited friends), they got signed to Relapse Records in 2006 and released their critically acclaimed debut album “Centralia” in 2007.For the next three years, Car Bomb performed all over the US and Canada with bands like High on Fire, Pig Destroyer, A Life Once Lost, Last Chance To Reason, Dysrhythmia, Body Count, M.O.D, Crisis, Cavalera Conspiracy, The Chariot, and Gojira. Ever since their first show together with The Cavalera Conspiracy, Gojira and Car Bomb have developed an affinity for each other’s music and have become good friends. Gojira’s Joseph Duplantier was kind enough to even make a guest vocal appearance on the new track “Third Revelation”. Jon states “Joe is like us in a lot of ways: he doesn’t only listen to heavy music, he truly loves what he does, and he’s always striving to do better. We follow that same mentality and have become close friends because of it.” Joe was also featured in Michael Dafferner’s documentary “Why You Do This”, which also included Randy Blythe of Lamb of God, Josh Scogin from the Chariot, Ben Falgoust of Goat Whore/Soilent Green and Richard Christy of Charmed Walls Of The Damned/Death/Iced Earth as well as the Howard Stern Show. The film, which was made entirely by Mike and released in 2011,is about the uphill battle of being in a progressive heavy band. It documents and interviews bands that range from first starting out to others who are opening for Metallica. While Mike was off filming his documentary, the rest of Car Bomb began work on their second album. “We are all huge fans of music, especially entire albums” says Greg. “Our goal was to create a heavy record that fans could listen to from start to finish, over and over again and not get bored.” After two years of writing, the band dove head first into the recording process. While working their full time jobs and running their businesses, they were acquiring one piece of studio gear at a time. Two small home studios were built and the arms race began! Elliot built one in Brooklyn to handle drum tracking, and Greg built one on Long Island for everything else. While Greg was demolishing a wall between two bedrooms in his house to create a large control room and building his own quadratic sound diffusers, Elliot was one-upping him by building his own drum room in his Brooklyn apartment and hand assembling clones of classic microphone preamps, compressors, and equalizers. “At one point Elliot’s apartment looked like a science lab, with oscilloscopes, soldering irons, wires, and all sorts of other electronic crap in every corner” recalls Greg. “He definitely won the DIY gear battle.” While building and buying recording gear, Elliot and Greg refined their recording skills and began tracking “w^w^^w^w” in January of 2011. From then on the band would constantly hit road blocks, redo parts, rewrite songs, and re-record instruments over the course of the next year and a half. “We really wanted to get a ‘live’ sound happening for this record” says Elliot. “A lot of bands solely rely on triggers and amp modelers. We really tried to use as much analog gear as possible to create a more natural and organic sound. It was definitely a long drawn out process of trial and error. And a lot of, ‘shit, we gotta do that over’moments.”The result is Car Bomb’s sophomore album titled “w^w^^w^w” (often referred to as “double-u click double-u” for short) which is their most ambitious and diverse release to date. The title is a reference to one of the song’s musical themes, but the band hesitates to say which one. “After a few listens fans will get it…it’s pretty obvious” states Jon. Songs on the record range from the 50 seconds of syncopated chaos “Auto-named”, the catchy mid-tempo “Lower the Blade”, to the speed-metal infused “The Seconds.” Each song displays the typical chaotic timing that is signature Car Bomb, yet express a clear thematic differentiation this time around that makes each song its own. Mike states, “It’s really easy when writing technical music to sound like you’re just stringing random riffs together. Though we wanted to make a lot of sharp turns in each song, we really strove for each song to have its own distinct sound and mood.” Greg elaborates, “most people will hear just random noise when listening to this record, but to us it’s all really simple ideas. We’re fascinated by the book ‘Godel Escher Bach’ by Douglas Hofstadter and we try to make music that is recursive. We try to establish certain themes and then shape and resuse them in different ways to create songs that have common threads in them. Patterns repeat, but not in ways you’d expect.” This process creates songs that fans can grasp in one way but maybe can’t grasp in another, and all the time they are swallowing you into a hypnotic and infinite vortex. The influence of M.C. Escher’s (the “Escher” in “Godel, Escher, Bach”) is also evident in the “w^w^^w^w” cover artwork which is simply a nauseating spiral of small repeated patterns.After finishing a second US tour with Gojira during the Summer of 2012, Car Bomb is anxious to release “w^w^^w^w” and get back on the road. “This has been a really long journey, but we’re all really proud and excited about this record” says Greg. “We are always in awe of other bands and artists that are on the forefront of creativity, and we hope we can somehow contribute to that ideology and do it justice.”