Shane Day - guitar
How did you come up with your band name? Chris's son at the time was 8 years old, 2004 - he came up with "Devil King" but we didn't want to be lumped together with other bands who had devil in their name, so we played around with it and looked for that "three syllable" flow, like Aerosmith, Mötley Crüe. Led Zeppelin, Judas Priest, Black Sabbath. We liked the contradictory nature of the two words and the way that people can read into the meaning of the name in numerous ways. Also it looks big in print, on merchandise, sounds like a big band. Three syllables could be the key to success was the thought perhaps haha ...
Do you write your own music and lyrics? Yes, we have been pretty much since the start. Before we really learned any covers, we came up with our own tunes, and we added some covers to get the crowd involved. We have a medley, Jungle Love by Morris Day and the Time, Motley Crue "Girls Girls Girls" You Spin Me Around by Dead or Alive and we play at lot of 80's pop tunes, but we metal them up. For example our new album "Empire of Sin" includes a cover of Hall and Oates "Maneater". We do Dragula - by Rob Zombie, other covers we sometimes perform are INXS " Devil Inside", Billy Idol "Rebel Yell" Billy Squier "The Stroke" , Ozzy "Bark at the Moon" just to name a few.
How do you guys go about writing songs? Sometimes Chris will have the lyrics and Shane will come up with music, other times, we come up with the music first, it's kind of interesting that our drummer writes 95% of the lyrics - he writes to my persona and how it will sound on stage. But really song ideas can come from any of us whether its myself, Chris, Shane or Steve we bring in the idea and hash it out in practice and everyone contributes til we have a song which can then change a number of times before we try it out live and eventually record it.
When did you start playing together? The three of us (myself, Chris and Shane) have been together since 2004 - the core of the band has known each other for over 22 years - I had a band, my first band out of high school, and Chris had a band, and we opened for his band. He left that band, and I joined that band, and a few years after that, we started playing for another band, it goes way back to the 90s. Steve our current bassist has been with us about a year and half or so.
Do you have any other bands? Christ has a cover band, 90's alternative band, Triggered- and Shane and Chris play in a punk band started by one of our former bassists Thom Copher called Payback's a Bitch.
Where is everyone located? I'm based out of Charleston, and Shane is based out of Huntington, and Steve and Chris live in Kentucky, we meet in the middle, practice once or twice a week. If we have a show or several in a given week , we sometimes count that as practice too.
What are some bands everyone is into or influenced by? our influences come from everywhere really..Shane is very into Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, Metallica, and Journey. Both he and Chris were very into Prince and Duran Duran growing up. Chris loves 80s glam band like Motley Crue, Poison, Guns and roses but also got heavily into White Zombie and Pantera in the 90s. I grew up on all sorts of music from 80s bands like Quiet Riot and Twisted Sister, as well as power pop stuff like Jellyfish and Marvelous 3, classic rock like ACDC, alice cooper, KISS, the beatles, ..
Steve likes a lot of heavy newer stuff like Gojira, he loves Strapping Young Lad..we take all our influences throw it in a blender and it comes out sounding like Zeroking.
What is your history as a band? Where have you played before? In rhe early 2000s Chris and Shane played together in a band called Painscape. After that band sorta dissolved they began trying out different singers and they went thru something 10 or more different guys . I was living in Atlanta GA at the time and I came back to visit some family in the summer of 2004, Chris played me a demo of a song he and shane had recorded ..which later became 54XTC and is pretty much the earliest Zeroking song that we still play today. I really liked what they were working on and I took the chance to move back to WV and we began working on more material. We started playing shows in early 2005 and began recording some songs which led to our 2006 EP " The Sweet Sale of Excess" . We kept on playing shows in the WV, OH, KY region mainly, continued writing songs and eventually recorded the songs which comprised our full length " Kings of Self Destruction" released stateside on Vanity Music and distributed worldwide thru the Orchard/Code Seven and is available digitally on itunes, amazon, spotify.
In June of 2014, we recorded thee songs w Ben Wells of Black Stone Cherry producing which formed the basic tracks of three of the songs included on our upcoming album "Empire of Sin".
During our time as band we have played shows in WV, OH, KY, VA, MD, GA, TN, NC, SC, IN, and OK . Opened for countless national and international acts, played festivals, received airplay on terrestrial and internet radio stations both here in the US and worldwide, released a pro shot video to youtube for our song "Dead Rockstar" whivch debuted on Revolver.com, appeared on a sampler cd included with the November 2011 issue of Classic Rock magazine (UK) which had a circulation of more than 75,000 copies worldwide, played Rocklahoma festival in Pryor Oklahoma in 2009, those are a few highlighs and we havent written all the chapters to our story yet haha..
Have you done any metal festivals before? Quite a few actually ..in 2006 we played X Fest in Huntington WV..the headlining bands included Staind, Three Days Grace, Black Stone Cherry., we coheadlined the loud and local stage w Byzantine (Metal Blade records and a WV band) and played X Fest again w Bobaflex in 2011 ( Headlining bands included Alterbridge, Theory of a Deadman, Black Stone Cherry). We played Bearfest in Parkersburg WV in 2010 which featured Nonpoint, Saving Abel, Bobaflex, Cavo and others. Rocklahoma in 2009 featured bands like Ratt, Night Ranger, Skid Row, Jackyl, Twisted Sister, Stryper and we played on metal day which had bands like Anthrax, Metal Church, Overkill, Anvil among many other legendary artists,,we also played Rally on the River in Ironton Ohio in 2012 (?) opening for Texas Hippie Coalition...there are probably others that are slipping my mind right now but those stick out to me off the top of my head lol .
What is your most memorable event as a band? Weve had a lot of memorable events over the years some of which ive previously mentioned. But some others include our first time opening for Nonpoint in 2006,,that was our first really big national show, Our local rock station at the time brought us on air for an interview and accoustic performance before the show this was right before we released our first ep. Getting picked by 103.1 the Bear in Parkersburg WV to play its annual Party like a rockstar event in 2006 and 2009 (that show we opened for Pop Evil) was really special. We had one of our songs remixed by legendary producer Beau Hill (he produced bands like Alice Cooper, Ratt, Winger, White Lion and many more)
Recently we played Al Rosa Villa again in Columbus Ohio which was a first for Steve and is significant because thats where Dimebag Darrel of Pantera was shot and killed.
Rocklahoma was memorable because it the furthest distance we have traveled as a band. And also has to be the hottest place weve ever played , It was like 118 degrees during the day. By the time the evening hit like 98 seemed cool in comparison haha
What would you like us to share with your fans?
Show up! Get off our couch and come out to Metal in the Mountains and rock a lot of different styles, bands from VA, NC,WV you're going to hear a lot of different things. We are here to help people forget about the bullshit of the week and celebrate rock and roll. We are looking forward to the AC/DC tribute band. We are trying to bring the fun back to rock and roll.
Here are some ways to connect with us and check out our music:
www.facebook.com/zerokingfans
www.reverbnation.com/zeroking
@zerokingandy on twitter
www.myspace.com/zeroking
www.youtube.com/zerokingband
https://youtu.be/RuJSqszl17Y
https://youtu.be/UH66LCegzG4
Some of the national acts we have shared bills with:
Black Stone Cherry
Soil
Drowning Pool
Fozzy
Duff Mckagans Loaded
Mushroomhead
Primer 55
Dope
Nonpoint
Skindred
Airbourne
Flaw
Kittie
Texas Hippie Coalition
Bang Tango
Kill Devil Hill
Pop Evil
Halestorm
Rev Theory
Burn Halo
Bobaflex
Byzantine
