Musculus... a band strictly linked to a little rehearshal room in a place as far away as the European territory allows. Imagine a little, peaceful island in the northern sea, with more sheeps than people; a small airport with a little cabin made of earth and wood... oh no, that was another story but it's not that different! We meet Jay and Kira for a brief talk.

DRR: Jay, how you got together?

Jay: Well, it's a strange story. I am an airplane pilot and one of my jobs is to shuttle back and forth from Scotland to the Fair Isle to bring supplies and stuff. Rob is the guy who keeps things fit at the airport on the island, so we've known each other for some time now. We talked music a lot and I use to bring him lps of obscure bands from the seventies that I can find around in Edinburgh. Every now and then i can stay at the airport for a few hours and we used a place in a little hangar to jam a bit. Things got interesting when we discovered that on the isle there was a drummer, and a female one too!

DRR: So Kira you joined in.

Kira: Yes you know there is no great amusement in a little isle; some tourists come and go, but we all have some time to spare. So when I heard from Rob that he was jamming with this fascinating airplane pilot I begun to practice my drumming skills again ahah!

DRR: It must be hard to have a costant practice schedule this way

J: We do it whenever we can; really it's not a problem, we just go there have a beer (a cola for me as I have to fly back) and play our asses off for a couple of hours; we just work on the songs at home and share the files through the net.

K: We almost rehearshed the songs 3 times before cutting the EP.

DRR: Yeah the EP, how did Doom Room Records discover you?

J: Federico from Doom Room Records is a friend, we met in the nienties in Budapest during an holiday.Being both fans of seventies rock we kept in touch somehow, and after he knew about our band he just asked to send something to publish.We recorded on an old 8-track machine. He liked our first cuts and even if they are raw, he added some post production and mixing and made them sound funnily nice!

DRR: Are you playing any live venue?

J: Yes but just some pub gigs with lots of cover. Maybe some friends will sobstitute one or another member of the band from time to time, as we all cannot be fisically present all the times.

DRR: How do you feel having an open door in the band?

K: It's like a big party where you don't know who's coming next.

Musculus join their power trio force again for their first full lenght album, "Southbound". It seems they have left the sixties influences of their 2013 ep behind and turned the gain up stepping heavily into the next decade (we mean the 70s!).

DRR: Hi guys, and welcome back!

Jay: Hi, we're glad to be back with our first Lp!

DRR: Tell us something about it.

Jay: It's called 'Southbound' and we really like how it turned out. We got some new gear during the last two years, and so we beefed up our sound a lot. We also got some time to write songs... I've been listening a lot to faster and heavier rock from the seventies like Ted Nugent's stuff and also some punk stuff. I'm a lot into that decade right now, and I think you can hear it ahah. I also found a pair of belbottoms in my parent's cellar, a bit of mould smell but in good condition!

DRR: There is some great guitar work on the album.

Jay: Thanks! Sure as hell there are lots of riffs, all classic stuff but I think with a modern edge too. Some riffs I composed by myself then played 'em to the guys, as on 'The Lord's your sheperd', but most of the stuff was done during the rehearsal, i think you can hear they are very spontaneous riffs, no overly complicated stuff.The most time in pre production was spent trying to balance the songs between their various parts and dynamics, not writing riffs.

Kira: Yeah we rehearsed a lot so we could record at least the drums bass and first rhythm guitar live in the studio, as I did not want to do the drums first and then go through some post production nightmare. Then Jay added the other guitar tracks and vocals.

DRR: The album sounds very american. What about the lyrics content?

Jay: Yeah we did not want to do an album about sheeps (laughters) even if the last track has something to do with it. So we used some imagination and tried to travel with fantasy through the USA and its paranoia. So we talk about pyromania, hearing alien voices, and a general state of threat and danger. We have some love songs too anyway, something about summer love and a couple of ballads.

Kira: I really like some of the lines you wrote, they are really poetic.

Jay: Pathetic?

Kira: I said poetic!

Jay: Peptic!

DRR: How have you chosen the cover?

Jay: That was an idea of the company, we had no particular idea. They suggested to take the template of the cover of the Germ's album, which I don't know but has a really simple and striking cover. We kept the layout and the colors but we had to choose a symbol to substitute the blue circle. I could not figure out a symbol related to the title, but that thing that looks like a rose's stem, which also could be a southbound route with the three of us.

Kira: It looks like the Germs version of 'October Rust' to me.