Hanging Out With Cerebral Ballzy

It could've been a disaster; Cerebral Ballzy rocked up two hours late to the interview, and were pretty much comatose till some beers arrived. But after a little warming up, Honor and Melvin were perfectly charming. We talked about Liverpool a lot.

Noisey: Liverpool is literally the only major city you play outside of London on this tour, how come? Is this the party capital of the North?
Honor: It's been really cool, we're actually over here recording demos down in London for the next record as we've just been in New York for the past five months constantly writing. This is our first trip back out on the road in a long time. Liverpool is a crazy one, it's just a shame that Mason couldn't be here.

Poor Mason, where is he?

H: Our bro is back home awaiting a court date so he couldn't travel with us, but Liverpool is always fun. It's cool to see that kids still care, although last time we played here we got into a big fight.

What happened?

H: We were here for Liverpool Music Week playing in this fucking huge, disused warehouse with a load of other bands. Some dickheads got all anxious and started fucking with us until it sort of escalated into a big knock-out brawl. I guess people just don't like the look of us sometimes; but it's not like we're just gonna sit back and take shit.

I've always imagined you get loads of shit over your name.

H: We've been getting in trouble because they've been playing our singles on Radio 1 a lot. Some lady called in to complain which was a bit of an ordeal. It's hard trying to get around the airplay rules; it's not like when they can edit lyrics out because no-one is fucking with our name, dude

I thought it'd be worse than that; I thought parent groups would freak out at you.

H: It's not bad at all. People who know us know that it's not meant to be offensive and that we're not some malicious fucktards running a disability hate group. We've had people with cerebral palsy come to our show and be really supportive and there's a lot of kids who are handicapped, you know, and still come to see us often. We've been getting a rad reception everywhere we've been, we just wanna thrash the fuck out of our shows. Parents are just as supportive and understand what we're trying to do. Just because you're old, doesn't mean you can't appreciate punk. Man, we've even had a few MILFs stay and party after our shows.

How were the rest of the shows? I heard some talk of a human pyramid during your Southampton gig.

H: We played in Newport last night at a place called Le Pub.

Melvin: What the fuck man? You gotta say it in the accent!

H: Oh sorry sorry, [adopts mock-British accent], "LE PUB!" That went well and the crowds have been fucking gnarly, those bitches in Southampton made, like, a ten-tier human pyramid when we were playing.

M: And then Honor got wasted and toppled the whole thing by throwing a can of beer at the person up top.

You've toured with Trash Talk before, right? I love that band. You should tour with them again.

H: Yeah, they're our good friends, we just played some gigs with them like a week and a half ago. Those guys are our homies, we get to see a different side of them. Lee is a sweetheart. I don't wanna say too much about that tour though, I don't wanna incriminate our boys! Let's just say there have been a lot of fights and a lot of drugs on Ballzy's part. Plus a shitload of chicks. Man, a hell of a lot of chicks.

Who got more "chicks", you or Lee?

H: Look at me, who do you think, baby?

So I'm guessing this catalogue of porn on the floor isn't yours then?

H: That's some German shit where people send in their own images and get rated or you can call them up on live sex lines. It's all foreign anyway, we don't know what that shit says.

M: It's primarily a picture book.

Wait, this shit is pretty fucking weird, is that a spoon inside her?

H: There is a whole cutlery section in there …

Great. Ummm; what was working with Raymond Pettibon like?

H: It was unbelievable, words can't really describe how rad he is or how happy we were with the artwork. We've got some friends in NY who have been doing the whole cool art house project thing and producing music for the last ten years. Like our buddies in Japanther, and hanging out with them is how we got introduced to Ray. We just hit it off, he really enjoyed our music, we played some basketball and had some beers and before we knew it he did the piece.

Are you going to work with him on the artwork for the next release? Or are you guys going back to the home-made, DIY releases?

H: Who knows about collaborating with him again, we would obviously love to, but fuck no, no more of that grip tape shit. If anyone out there got one, you're lucky. That was fucking ridiculous man, we spent so much time on that thinking it would be cool because we had all this grip tape left over but it took way too long! We're always gonna keep the DIY sentiment going though, it's just who we are! Hell, when you're living like us on the road with your bros doing all this shit, you meet like-minded people. Like you; you have blue hair and you know who Agent Orange are, that's cool.

My hair is purple, I'm no Marge Simpson.

Marge is so underrated. I don't care what you say, your hair is definitely blue. Can we meet in the middle and call you 'Blurple' for the rest of the night?

If you really want to. What do you guys have planned next then?
I think you should take us partying. We're gonna need some whiskey and some bitches, you in?

Probs.

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