Somewhere between a swamp hallucination and a small-town government meeting gone to seed, BUNNIES have carved a record that gurgles and spits its way through what they simply call evil.

‘Horror Spectrum’ isn’t concept so much as condition not cleanly arced or mythologically sealed, but lived-in, cracked, and still leaking. Like if Magma covered Gummo.

There are babies in aquariums. Tubes for piss and worse. Dante lingers, sure, but so do jet skis and cat posters. The grotesque and the absurd are filtered through genuine musicianship, not ironic detachment and it’s that friction that keeps you awake. Their 23-minute closer (‘Realm at the End of the Horror Spectrum’) is less a song than a guided psychic excavation. Think scoring a film that no director would dare shoot. Yet every movement is crafted, tangled, and intentional… the madness doesn’t happen by accident.

You feel this band lives in the material. They’ve rehearsed it, suffered it, maybe exorcised it. This is live band energy wielded like ritual. Trumpets surge through it like sirens, basslines anchor just enough to make the eruptions count. They aren’t interested in comfort. Or genre, really. They’re interested in feeling. In narrative. In blowing it all open and calling it a song.

Since 2005, BUNNIES have been crafting wild, conceptual sonic odysseys that blur the line between composition and improv. Born from a post-Pixies-tour revelation, they relocated to western Massachusetts to explore a musical future they saw coming, and feared. With three LPs of psych-prog ferocity under their belt, including the mind-bending ‘Transportation To Mind Transformation,’ and their latest one, BUNNIES operate as a tightly knit unit of intuition and invention. A multiversal expedition.

Alongside the following interview, we’re excited to premiere the brand-new video for “That Evil Ghoul,” directed by Alle Kern.

“What it is to be evil in this current phase of living”

So the record kicks off with “Homunculus” and it’s this long, twisting piece… what were you guys channeling there? Did the music come first or were you writing with those intense themes in mind from the start?

Matthew Newman: “This mess on the screen isn’t real/Oh no, it is real/Homunculus, an actual human six-month-old baby crammed in a foul-smelling aquarium… Homunculus, an evil act that entertained all, to the horror of most and the delight of the wicked few” — BUNNIES

We had been writing in a long-form narrative way for the previous couple of records, and we wanted to try to write some songs that were a bit more compact and worked within more traditional song structure methods, including things like verses and choruses and pre-choruses, bridges, etc. Things like that, but still do it with our BUNNIES sensibility. This was one of the first songs we began to write for this record, and so we kind of started from that standpoint.

We also knew early on that we were going to explore the theme or idea of Evil for this record in the lyrical and musical realm, so this idea of the Homunculus fell into place as we were exploring different subject matter to write about. Piss and shit tubes followed.

We were shocked and horrified to see that there was a recent real-life homunculus of sorts that was exposed and rescued right around the time we were starting to release this record, not far from where we live. A man in Connecticut was held hostage in a very small room for over 20 years, affecting his physical (and obviously psychological) growth.

“The ‘severely emaciated’ 5-foot-9 man weighed just 68 pounds when he was found in the home in Waterbury on Feb. 17 by authorities who had responded to a report of an active fire at the residence, according to officials. The man told first responders he intentionally set the fire in his room and alleged that his stepmother had held him captive since he was 11,” officials said. — ABC News.

The album’s described as exploring different kinds of “evil,” and it came together during a pretty turbulent time. Were there any specific moments or headlines that fed into the writing?

We started writing this record during Trump’s first term. Obviously, we despise Trump and think that he is evil, but we were especially interested in, confused by, and disturbed about how many people were buying into the unbridled ugly vileness of the policies that he and his goons were trying to pass, and just the hatred that was on display. Caging children, vile rhetoric and policy towards just about every marginalized group of people, the overt lying and gaslighting, just his stupid face, the weaponization of trans existence to fuel hatred and political gain, covfefe…

We were thinking a lot about moral questions and particularly what it is to be evil in this current phase of living that we found ourselves in on both micro and macro levels, local to worldly. Of course, things have just continued to rapidly devolve since then.

There’s this really wild balance on the album… tight composition on one hand, then full-blown chaos on the other. How do you guys ride that line without tipping too far into either side?

A lot of weed, and love for classic tight songwriting as well as far-out psychedelic freak-out free-form jamming helps us stumble on down along that line. And a lot of weed too.

That last track, ‘Realm at the End of the Horror Spectrum,’ is a journey. It moves through so many moods and scenes. Did you approach that like scoring a film or building out a narrative?

We approached writing that song by saying, “We are going to write the most epic prog psych song that BUNNIES possibly know how to write.” We feel that there is a certain place that straddles between prog and psych music that is like the sweet spot, and that is what we were going for. We certainly tried our best.

Yes, the intention and follow-through was to write a long-form narrative story or song. We talked a lot about and were influenced by the idea of Dante’s Inferno while writing that song — a journey with someone being led through different levels of a hellscape-like place. Not necessarily “Hell,” but something along those lines.

We were also talking a lot about small town government (and corruption), which is ironic because then Jeremy became a city councilor in Northampton. We also talked a lot about jet skis and cat posters too. Yeah, I would say we are pretty heavily inspired by film scores (particularly the psych and prog-inspired ones of the 60s and 70s) and the idea of writing music similar to a film narrative. We are all huge film nerds.

<a href="https://bunniesareaband.bandcamp.com/album/horror-spectrum">Horror Spectrum by Bunnies</a>

The production is super alive, like it’s barely being contained. What kind of gear or recording techniques did you lean on to capture that edge?

Wow, thank you for saying that. We really strive to convey the electricity from the live playing aspect of our group. We feel that our songs are created to be played live and loud, so we really try hard to have that come through in the representation of the recorded versions of our songs, which can be a tricky line to walk and hard to accomplish.

With this record, we took our time recording it over multiple years. We initially did most of the tracking with our longtime friend (and one-time early BUNNIES member) Robo and then did the mixing (and some further tracking) with our other longtime recording collaborator Justin Pizzoferrato at Sonelab Studio).

We feel super comfortable with both of these dudes and we just played around with sounds and performances until we were happy. We wanted to keep the tracking very relaxed, and we love to play the music, so we would try different tempos, performance feels, chaos levels. Playing together live as a band to get the energy of the take was crucial. Then we would just get freaky with it from there because we do also enjoy the phase of experimenting with overdubs and fun recording toys.

Rebecca’s bass and trumpet bring a whole new layer to the band. How did that shift the way you arranged or thought about the songs?

Thanks for noticing! Becca’s otherworldly trumpeting opens up new worlds of possibilities for us as a band. In terms of arrangement, it gives Jeremy the opportunity to use his octave pedal so that his guitar can provide the low end (in ‘Realm at the End of the Horror Spectrum,’ for example, and also in one of our new tunes).

In addition, it gives Jack the ability to choose whether he wants to continue playing keys on a tune or switch to the bass guitar, like he does on our cover of ‘Venus in Furs’ by the Velvet Underground. Becca’s trumpet takes us to whole new levels of far out, and there has even been some talk of her rocking the clarinet on future music that we write.

Becca is also a rad bass player. She has a certain way of playing that keeps tension but is also sitting in a groovy pocket.

You’ve got this full visual world tied to the album too — the vinyl art, the coloring book, all that. Were the visuals created alongside the music, or did they grow from it after the fact?

We have been super fortunate to work with some amazingly talented artists throughout the years. For this record, we knew early on that we wanted to have a gatefold LP cover with some kind of expansive illustrative artwork to represent the many different characters and situations from within the album.

While we were writing and rehearsing and recording, we talked a lot about what the album artwork could look like and how that might be accomplished. Sometime during the recording process, we found the artwork of Davor Gromilovic and we were all just blown away. We contacted him, and luckily he was down to work with us to create the front and back cover for the record. We sent him a bunch of the lyrics from our songs, and then he did a few rounds of basic sketches. When we were happy with the rough outline, he went away for a bunch of months and created this amazingly detailed hand-drawn piece of art that completely exemplified what we were going for with the music. We are so psyched with the outcome.

He also pulled a bunch of the characters from the drawing out to make the coloring book as well. So anyone that buys the LP can color the characters as they listen to the record. We also worked with a bunch of absolutely amazing video directors on videos for all of the songs on the first side of the record. We couldn’t be happier with the way that all the videos have turned out so far, and we just love working with other creative people on these projects.

We have ambitions to do a video for the long-form song Realm at the End of the Horror Spectrum, but we’ll see how that goes. If anyone wants to take on a video for a 23-minute epic that jumps all over the place, let us know.

You’ve been compared to all kinds of acts… Beefheart, Gong, King Gizz, Ubu. Do any of those comparisons actually feel accurate to you, or is it more like a weird reflection?

We love them all, but I don’t know — those are all some huge shoes to eat. Riverbottom Nightmare Band might be closer.

It’s been a minute since your last full-length… did that time away change how you approached ‘Horror Spectrum’ creatively? Was there a sense of needing to blow things open again?

‘Horror Spectrum’ was a creative endeavor started before, with a development slowed by the pandemic. We were chipping away at it for years while navigating lockdown and all the chaos and disruption at the time. The compulsory breaks in between opportunities to work together as usual forced us to find alternatives and did slow us down. But it also reminded us how vital it is to pursue art and storytelling and try to make something come to life where there once was nothing.

Luckily, the subject matter of the LP was evil, which of course has an evergreen presence and kept offering us “inspiration” during the extended course of song making.

We are always trying to progress our relationship with the music we make and how we make it, so yeah, I think we are just generally always on the verge of trying to blow things open. We are all getting up there in years, which I think helps to push us in not wanting to stagnate or get lost in any nostalgia bubble. The music we make is rooted in certain forms of the past, but we are trying to push them in new and different directions toward our future.

Jack’s mentioned before that having a concept helps structure the madness. Now that you’ve explored this big evil theme, what’s next? Going lighter or doubling down?

Evil, check and moving on…

Nah, we are in the process of figuring that out. We are starting to write new songs from a very band or personal point of view, describing actual events that have happened to or with us as a band. This is new territory for us. We wrote a song about the time a bat kept swooping at us as we were leaving practice, and also the time that three-fourths of the band saw some kind of unexplained night sky event on the way home from practice, and another about the speculative future of an event that only happened metaphorically and burned us all up.

How are you thinking about playing these songs live? Are there ones that are tricky to translate to the stage or demand something totally different from you?

What a great question. At BUNNIES, we address this consideration from the beginning of the songwriting process. We have always been firstly a live band, and when we make songs, we don’t want to spend time getting stuck with material that only works on a recording and can’t be properly presented in a live setting.

So, almost all BUNNIES songs are designed or written to be played live, arranged to be played live, are almost entirely recorded live as a band (with vocals overdubbed from a scratch track and limited multitracking), and get rewritten if they don’t work rehearsed live. We have played every song on Horror Spectrum at various live shows. In a sense, the LP was made in order to produce a new live set.

We strive to bring an electricity to our live set, so when we play these songs out in the world, we usually push them quite a bit and really rev the engine on them.

Given how cinematic this album feels, have you thought about turning it into something more… like film, animation, or even a stage piece?

See above answer in which we try to petition someone out there to make a video for our 23-minute epic prog psych jammer song ‘Realm at the End of the Horror Spectrum.’ Otherwise, we have videos for all the other songs either done and released or on their way.

A staged piece would be amazing, and we have talked about dipping our toes into the “musical” world before. We once made a short film or song hybrid called The Deep State of Strawberry Tart that lives kind of in that zone. We played it live once along to the film at the Northampton Academy of Music, where luminaries such as Mae West and Harry Houdini performed.

If we rewind to the early days, what was the original idea behind BUNNIES? How did you all come together and what were you trying to do that felt different?

We started this band 20 years ago. Our intent was to put together a live band for an audience wanting to hear an escapist, rowdy, and weird rock performance. I think we’ve always acknowledged that unfamiliar music tends to be more stimulating, interesting, and easier to get lost in. Or at least, if someone doesn’t find entertainment in unpredictable sounds, BUNNIES don’t make sound for them.

We got together as a functioning band called BUNNIES in the mid-2000s in Northampton, MA, and at that time there was an amazing amount of talented, weirdo bands playing. We were happy to be a part of that and contribute with our own slant on the art, noise, psych, prog, jammy, heavy, loud rock and roll that we were exploring. We were trying to accomplish a type of time travel in which we made songs that opened up a portal to the decades of the past as well as the unforeseeable future.

Before BUNNIES, what kind of bands were you playing in? Was there a moment or shift that made you want to start something like this?

Matt played in some heavy experimental hardcore bands as well as an Americana band called EZT that once did a Peel Session at the BBC. Jeremy and Jack met in college in central Pennsylvania, formed a weirdo rock band called The Bennies, and moved up to western Mass to prepare for a 7-show tour opening for the reunited Pixies in 2004. After that tour ended, there was a strong desire to get even weirder and more thoughtful about our musical output — hence becoming BUNNIES.

Are any of you involved in side projects or other bands right now? Would love to hear what else you’ve got cooking outside of BUNNIES.

Matt does a secret project called DAD Chokes and also another one called Invisible Webs, both on Bandcamp. Not secret anymore. Jeremy recently acted in a film about a fictional band called Tallywacker, so technically he’s in a fictional side project. Becca plays bass and trumpet in the backing band for an amazing musician named Brandee Simone.

What’s coming up next for you guys? Touring, recording, weird experiments? Anything you’re excited to dive into?

We are hoping to get into the studio again as soon as possible to record the new autobiographical songs we’ve been working on. Some exciting shows are coming up too. We are looking forward to getting our new record into the hands and onto the turntables of more awesome peeps.

One idea we have been discussing or exploring is working with a producer to develop songs in the studio and seeing what that might look or sound like. Ideally, our ultimate aim is to get a little bit better with each album. A BUNNIES feature film would be pretty sweet to make someday as well.

What’s been on your playlists lately? Any records or artists that’ve been hitting especially hard?

Matt: Richard Dawson (solo and with Circle), ‘Paranoid Time’ by Minutemen, Jerry’s Kids – ‘Is This My World,’ the blue self-titled Adolescents record, Mountain Movers, FJM – ‘She Cleans Up,’ Powerplant – ‘People in the Sun,’ CSNY, the new Stereolab, Tommy Guerrero – ‘Road to Nowhere,’ Congotronics 2, Cardiacs!!! I also listen to a lot of music with my kiddos in the car (13 and 16 years old) so a lot of Kendrick Lamar, Eminem, Dinosaur Jr., and the soundtracks to the musicals Hadestown and Hamilton.

Jack: I am deeply and pleasantly mired in late sixties and early seventies psych, prog, and hard rock — both obscure and less so. A higher power willing, I will remain in this wonderful place. A few albums I’ve been returning to lately: ‘I Spider’ by Web, ‘Reality’ by Second Hand, ‘Faintly Blowing’ by Kaleidoscope (UK), ‘Volumen 2’ by Aguaturbia, the self-titled Socrates Drank the Conium, Andromeda self-titled, and always, at any time, ‘The Piper at the Gates of Dawn’ by Pink Floyd.

Becca: The start of summer has coincided with more road trips for Jeremy and me. We have some go-to albums including ‘Superunknown’ by Soundgarden, Funhouse by The Stooges, and ‘Angel Dust’ by Faith No More. TV on the Radio reissued Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes this past November and tracks from throughout their discography have played consistently in my sonic algorithms. Think of One by Wynton Marsalis, Jaimie Branch, Sentimental Education by Free Kitten, John Zorn, and PJ Harvey are making up much of my summer listening thus far. At home we’ve also been listening to Maggot Brain by Funkadelic and Phantom Island by King Gizzard. Enya’s Shepherd Moons is also a household favorite.

Jeremy: I try my darnedest, no matter how old I get, to hold onto that childlike excitement for music — like to the point of being a weeping fanboy for artists. I like the new Miley Cyrus album a lot. I appreciate artists who push the boundaries within the realm of pop. Always checking out whatever the latest King Gizzard release is (currently it’s Phantom Island, which I dig). They’re so prolific. I’ve also been loving this great live performance of Link Wray from 1974 playing a heavier, more psychedelic version of his 1958 classic ‘Rumble.’ I watched an interview where he explained how that song came to be. His band had been jamming in front of a bunch of teenagers who were noticeably bored by the standard rock ’n’ roll riffs they had been playing thus far. Then all of a sudden, the drummer spontaneously started laying down a triplet beat, and Link Wray, just going with the flow and without any forethought whatsoever, banged out the opening two chords of ‘Rumble’ and immediately all the teenagers started freaking out, screaming, and demanding more. I am super fascinated by whatever that secret ingredient is — that unexplainable spark that makes music exciting.

Klemen Breznikar

BUNNIES Official Website / Facebook / Instagram / X / YouTube / Bandcamp