THE KING OF MARS
Classic rock 5-piece The King of Mars is an ode to 60’s and 70’s rock lovers. Blending each member’s individual music taste with their mutual love for classic rock legends, The King of Mars takes sounds of the past to a new place. With their latest single “Junkie Road” tackling the demons of addiction, The King of Mars is coming into their own as songwriters, gearing up to release more singles this summer.
Basement: How did this project get started?
TKOM: The King of Mars started back around 2015. The founding members were all studying music at Columbia College Chicago. I (John Bruner) had been writing songs for a few years at this point and was wanting to find a band to help bring the songs to life. I met Matt Gordon through a guitar teacher at Columbia and we immediately started working on my existing songs. Soon after that, Matt and I found enough members to make a full band and hit the ground running from there.
Basement: What influences your sound?
TKOM: We have a wide range of musical influences. Some of our members are from more of a classic rock background like Nirvana and Pink Floyd while others are into more contemporary jazz/rock like Snarky Puppy. Our songs end up landing somewhere in between these influences.
Basement: The King of Mars has a very distinct classic rock vibe- what drew you all to this style and how have you fused your individual music tastes to center around the band’s sound?
TKOM: That classic rock vibe is definitely the strongest musical influence on us, so I think that’s why we tend to gravitate towards that sound. We like to borrow from other genres and add on to our classic rock basis. We end up with songs that have jazz elements in the horn lines, funk influence in the bass and even Latin styles in the percussion that come together to create a modern twist on old school rock music.
Basement: What does your songwriting and recording process look like?
TKOM: For most of our songs, I’ll come up with the skeleton for the song with rhythm guitar and vocal parts. Then the rest of the band will add on their own parts from there to fill out the song. Recording wise, our keyboardist, Randy Deadman has been recording and editing our songs from his bedroom studio. Then we send it off to the super talented Noam Wallenberg at Rax Trax Recording to mix and master the song.
Basement: What narratives/themes do you hope or notice coming across in your work?
TKOM: For our latest single, the theme centers around addiction and trying to dig your way out of dangerous habits. Addiction has been a constant theme in my life in more ways than one, and I know a lot of people who’ve dealt with it various ways, too. My hope is that when people hear this song, they might feel a small sense of comfort to know they’re not alone in their struggles.
Basement: Your newest single dropped May 14th- can you tell me about Junkie Road and what went into making this single?
TKOM: Junkie Road was the first song that Matt and I really wrote as a fully collaborative effort. He helped me with some of the lyrics and we worked together to write most of the guitar, bass and drums. I actually wrote the intro riff to this song about 5 years ago and couldn’t get it to find a good place for it. I showed the riff to Matt about 2 years ago and then suddenly we finished writing the song in about one day. Randy helped us painstakingly edit and record all the parts and he had a huge part in shaping the overall sound of the song.
Basement: Anything else in the works? What’s on the horizon for The King of Mars?
TKOM: We’ve been really busy during quarantine writing a ton of new songs. We’ll be releasing a couple new songs over the course of the summer so stay tuned for more release dates! We also made our very first music video to go along with Junkie Road. The video will be released on May 21st!