Taylor Destroy – An Xperience Interview

Taylor Destroy – An Xperience Interview – by Liam Sweeny.

RRX: What is Taylor up to today? What are you doing?

TD: I’m in a band called Aspect Iris. We are a progressive metalcore band and we’ve been writing a lot recently. Our last EP Vol. 0 was recorded with Landon Tewers from The Plot in You. It was the first thing we ever released. I also was invited to New York Fashion Week recently and our song actually got played on one of the top three biggest runway stages, which was so fucking cool. I never in my whole life would imagine being a part of something like that. But I got to go and be in the front row. I watched all these models walk down the runway to our song. It was an incredible experience. As for just Taylor Destroy right now, I’ve been working on coming back full force with my TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube content along with posting more things to streaming platforms.

RRX: I’m picturing this, uh, Fashion Week. So when I picture Fashion Week, when I picture the runway, I’m picturing EDM music, you know, like in the movies or whatever because I don’t go to that stuff. I just picture that in the movies or the TV shows like that’s the kind of music – I wouldn’t imagine progressive metalcore being used for something like that. Did you ever get a sense of why they used it? Is it that they’re just changing? Is it a cultural thing? How did you explain it to yourself?

TD: It depends on the designer. One designer had country music, another designer had some EDM, another designer had pop music, but the designer that used our music, her name is Harleen Middleton and her designer studio name is Haus of Harleen, and she is very alternative. She’s really cool, tatted all over the place and her runway was more of a message. So all the other shows I watched that day were just your typical models walking down the runway and that was pretty much it. But what Harleen did is she told a story and it was so impactful. Each piece that she created aligned with the story about things like sexual abuse, mental abuse, and things that you go through throughout life. It was just really cool. So it was more alternative. It made me really proud to be a part of something that had a message like that. I stand up for the girls, the gays, the “theys,” and the entirety of the LGBTQ+ community. One thing I love about my community – I haven’t even been posting regularly for about a year. I broke my ankle last year. But even though I’m not really posting much right now, if somebody makes a video saying women can’t scream, my community will tag me in there and say, ‘Taylor, did you see this?” They just want me to go in there and roast them. So, that’s what I do.

RRX: That turns into a question. I almost don’t want to answer or ask it because it seems like it’s such a common question. You’re a female metal singer. You know, what’s it like in that world? And let me try to find a way to answer or to ask that uniquely. Did you ever encounter any vocal challenges? Not even as a woman, just as a person. Did you, did you encounter any vocal challenges when you were coming into it? Were you encouraged to scream louder than other people or were you encouraged the opposite way?

TD: Being a woman in the scene, I was never looked at too kindly. I was actually in music about eight to 10 years ago and I was in our scene. Everybody shit on me and didn’t take me seriously. Everybody hated me. No matter what I did, it didn’t matter. I would post things and the comments online were just people being nasty to me. They even went as far as saying that they hope that I get assaulted at shows or sexually assaulted at shows. It was awful and I got bullied out of it. So I stopped making music for about, God, I wanna say like six years. Then came TikTok. I got on that just for fun. My sister got me on it to do some cosplay stuff. I didn’t expect anything. Then I saw someone I looked up to for years; their name is KTheScreamerOfficial on YouTube. So I decided to duet them and the video did all right. I was like, “Oh well, maybe I’ll come back.” Then I posted my cover of “Popular Monster” by Falling In Reverse and, overnight, I got 100,000 followers. It was the most crazy thing. And then everyone was like, “Where’s your band? Where’s your merch?” And I didn’t have any of that. I was gone for so long, but then everyone was just so encouraging. It’s changed a lot now. So now you got people like Courtney LaPlante and Maria Brink and all these other amazing female-fronted bands. It’s more accepted now. Back when I started, it didn’t matter if you were good or not, it was just, “We’re gonna shit on you because you’re a woman” and that’s kind of what it seemed like anyway. You still get those comments saying, “You don’t actually scream; it’s autotune,” which makes no sense. I’m sure you know this; you can’t generate a scream from autotune. But regardless, it’s an amazing thing to be a part of now. And I love just seeing all of my friends coming up. My best friend Kasey Karlsen from Deadlands – she’s killing it and I’m so proud of her. Now is the time for us to rise up. And I think we’re doing a damn good job at that right now.

But I guess to go back to your original question. Was there anything difficult when I first started screaming? So I started when I was 10 years old. My mom and my dad raised me on metal. I was looking up to people like Chester Bennington and one day I was, like, I wanna do that. So I started learning to scream in my room and my parents didn’t know about it until my 13th birthday party. I screamed in front of the entire family and everyone was just stunned. They were like, “What just happened?” It was funny, but it actually came rather easy to me the first time I screamed. I was at my friend’s birthday party. We were just passing around a mic trying to give our best metal scream, and I did it. One of my friends said, ‘That was actually pretty good.” So I went home and just practiced it until I could do it. The only thing I could say that I’m struggling with now is that I’m trying to get into doing false chords. I found out from our producer that I’m actually using a fry and a false chord at the same time, but I can’t just strip it away and do just a false chord. So one day I would really like to be able to do that.

RRX: So can you explain what a false chord is? Because that’s something I don’t even know.

TD: Ok, so a false chord is kind of like a loud over-exaggerated sigh. Where a fry is more restricted. So it’s more like a cat’s meow or the grudge. A fry sounds more like that if that makes sense.

RRX: Tell me about your band, Aspect Iris. Tell me how you came up with the name because I always loved it. That’s something I’m always interested in and I never ask.

TD: So I guess I’m just gonna go through the whole thing from start to finish. When everything was happening on TikTok, I was explaining to one of my old producers the kind of band I wanted to be in. He then said, “You should just join this band” and then connected us all together. We all sat down and we just clicked. It’s something I’ve never seen in a band dynamic, personally. I used to take photos and videos in the scene back in the day. I was all over Bogies, Valentine’s, and Northern Lights back when they called it that – just taking pictures. And a lot of the bands, not all of them but a lot of them, hated each other. So I always said, “I never want that.” I want a big friendship and that’s what I found. I’m so thankful and proud that I found people who are just such genuine human beings. We all love the same things and we’re all so supportive of one another. I’m in a band with my best friends, and that’s all I ever wanted. And it’s why we’re not eagerly looking for a bass player right now. We don’t wanna mess up our vibe.

But Aspect Iris originally was gonna be called Iris Aspect. The boys came up with that before I even showed up. What ended up happening is I took to Google (as I do) and there’s a painter somewhere that goes by something similar to Iris Aspect. And I was like, “Oh, we can’t take this small artist’s name.” So then I was like, “But wait, what if we change it to Aspect Iris? Wouldn’t that be cool?” The boys ended up loving it more so we stuck with it. Basically, what Aspect Iris means is everyone has a different perspective on everything. What you see through your eyes could look completely different to someone else. It’s all about the aspect of it. So Aspect Iris.

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