The Callous Daoboys fall further into chaos

“DAOBOYS! DAOBOYS! DAOBOYS!” 

The crowd at ArcTanGent Festival in the southwest of England is making noise before the Callous Daoboys do. The tent they’re playing on a Saturday afternoon is stuffed full of bodies, several of whom sail over the barriers before their opening number “Star Baby” has a chance to transition from frenetic math rock to a sudden jazz pop break in its back half. The Atlantans bring a whirlwind of chaos to the stage, and they get chaos back, but who could expect anything less from a band who pride themselves on creating music that “sounds like two songs fighting,” and who use wildly disparate songs from “Sweet Caroline” (a natural fit for an English crowd, since it’s associated with football chants) to Zedd’s “Clarity” as transitions?

Then, there’s the small matter of frontman Carson Pace’s mosh calls, wryly nodding to the country’s state-funded health service when he implores the contingent, “Show me just how free your healthcare is!” They’ve made a home just under 4,500 miles from the state they hail from. 

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Their ArcTanGent show is the last in a three-week run of dates across the U.K. and Europe — some of them headline shows, some of them festival shows, some of them support slots for Holy Fawn and Hippotraktor. These have been their first shows outside of the U.S., and for Pace, it’s his first time ever leaving the country. “I thought there would be more of a difference, but it turns out everywhere has grass and trees and buildings and stuff,” he jokes, sitting with guitarist Dan Hodson at a picnic table backstage at the festival. “No, it’s been great. I love it here. Truthfully, I think the U.K. and Budapest are my two favorite places. I love Germany, too. It’s crazy I get to come here at all, let alone play shows to a lot of people here, and we’re playing some of our best sets here.”

It’s been a “borderline DIY” operation, with Hodson effectively stepping up to tour manage as well as perform. “I’ve learned that we can handle a lot more than we think we can, and that it’s pretty easy to figure out what you’re worth,” they reflect. “Not to toot my own horn, but me and Maddie [Caffrey, guitarist] did a lot to get this thing set up and pull it together. We’ve been learning a lot about what each of us is capable of — it’s interesting to see and very rewarding to see how everyone functions like it’s just another day on the job. It really cemented that this is what we’re meant to be doing.”

The sextet — completed by violinist Amber Christman, bassist Jackie Buckalew, and drummer Marty Hague — have had more eyes on them than ever following the release of their critically adored second album, Celebrity Therapist, last year. Although everything might be coming up Daoboys now, it hasn’t always been that way, and this flush of success they’re experiencing hasn’t exactly fallen out of the sky. It’s the product of grinding away since 2016 while also going through numerous lineup changes (Hodson, for one, only joined the band last year) and all the typical emerging band road bumps. “For a little while, we were touring in this bus that was just a piece of shit. It had no AC. It broke down every seven shows. We had to replace the tires on it so many times,” Pace remembers. But, when life decided to take a break from following Murphy’s law, they’d turn to each other, and, without fail, one of them would say, “God smiles upon the Callous Daoboys.”

That in-joke ended up becoming the title of the band’s forthcoming three-track EP, a knowing, humorous wink toward their own success, as well as their enjoyment of being self-referential. Look further into its lyrics, however, and the extent to which God really has smiled on these eccentric noisemakers can be called into question. Sure, they’re closer, in Pace’s mind to “becoming the band that I see in my head,” but it’s not without its downsides — “substance abuse, breakups, [and] not really being able to be home when other things in your life are happening.” 

To confront these subjects, Pace challenged himself to be blunter and more direct with his lyrics instead of putting a wall up with complex metaphors. “I think that the biggest complaint about my lyrics is that they don’t make sense,” he considers. “They mean something to me, but this time around, I think you can probably get what I’m talking about, which is the first time I’ve been proud of that. I think previously, being honest was really hard for me, being naked in front of our audience was very difficult for me, whereas this time, I feel like I’m being as honest as I possibly can.”

Did he think, then, that he was using metaphor as a way to hide? “Definitely,” Pace confirms. “There were [times] where [I’d use] a metaphor that was an extrapolation of a metaphor that’s a reference to this thing that only I know about. I certainly don’t regret those lyrics at all. [But] the place I want to be in now is just saying everything that’s in my heart, as corny as that sounds.” 

Pace and Hodson are keen to stress that the three songs that make up God Smiles Upon The Callous Daoboys aren’t Celebrity Therapist B-sides. “It has nothing to do with that record — they were written so far apart, but it’s a little epilogue that closes the book, if you will,” Pace clarifies. On top of that, these new songs will be the band’s first to feature the musical fingerprints of their current lineup, marking Hodson and Hague’s first contributions to their sound. 

Then again, it’s easy enough to discern that Celebrity Therapist and God Smiles Upon The Callous Daoboys were written at different times, by different people, just from the sound of these new songs. They’re markedly different from Celebrity Therapist, even though they haven’t uprooted their mathcore nous and still shift styles like they’ve picked them from a grab bag. The Callous Daoboys in 2023 are just as heavy, but they’re also catchier, groovier, more immediate, and more them.

“Where I want to head going forward is having a sound that’s entirely our own,” Pace elaborates. “In a league where we’re not being compared to this band or that band. You know, I appreciate the Dillinger Escape Plan comparisons — that’s a band I saw so many times, and I love them to death. But I’m ready for it to be like, ‘What does the new Callous Daoboys song sound like? It sounds like the Callous Daoboys.’ That being said, I want to do more wild shit.” He even sees the band playing around with electronics more, having used to make it.

One of the most interesting aspects of this EP, meanwhile, is the band’s flirtation with nü metal. It’s pushed to the fore most on its standout final track, “Designer Shroud of Turin,” where their wrecking ball riffs have an indelible groove, not to mention a cackle-rousing shoutalong of “NOSTALGIA FOR THE 2000s!” and their most muscular chorus to date. Both Pace and Hodson have their own close ties to the genre — one of the first bands they ever bonded over was Korn, while Pace cites Limp Bizkit as the reason he wanted to play guitar. “I think that [influence] just happened naturally with us,” he continues. “I think, before, I was trying to resist the nü-metal elements, and now I’ve opened the floodgates. Now, I just don’t give a fuck.”

“[My gateway into] more extreme music was Korn, Limp Bizkit, Slipknot, System Of A Down,” Hodson adds. “I probably wouldn’t have the sense of groove and rhythm that I do if it weren’t for those bands. That’s such an important part of nü metal; it takes so much influence from hip-hop, and it makes you move. Our drummer Marty will always say, “I play drums to make people dance.’” 

Put simply, this band’s quest, at this moment in time, is to be daring, even a little crazy, but most importantly, to be gloriously individual. “I think we’re just trying to write what we find interesting,”  Pace concludes. “This is the band that I want to hear, the band I wished existed [when I was younger]. I feel like when you do that, you’ve stumbled across something really special.”