Loud Amps and Cracked Cymbals: A Conversation with KAFIZA
Photography by Alexander Jibaja
It’s an unseasonably warm day in April, and I’m sweating through my mascara in the upstairs commonspace of my friend’s Avondale apartment. Standing shoulder-to-shoulder with about 20 other people—some whom I’ve known for years and some whom I’ve just met—I take out my phone at glance at the time—9:30pm. This shit was supposed to start 30 minutes ago, but that’s rock n’ roll I suppose. Then, under the raw glow of makeshift spotlights, two figures emerge on the “stage.” They bulldoze through 30-odd minutes of screaming guitar riffs and deafening drum fills. So, this is KAFIZA.
I’ve seen Max Grazier and Tony Mest—the two musicians that comprise KAFIZA—play countless times in their other projects. Tony in Girl K (formerly), Burr Oak, and Rat Tally; Max in Rat Tally. I never had my doubts about either of their musical abilities, but when Tony told me he wanted to start a hardcore band about a year ago, I questioned how he and Max would conjure the time to add another project to their already-packed schedules. But it was a thought I had and then tucked away and then forgot about.
Then, out of nowhere, KAFIZA’s self-titled debut record appeared on Bandcamp at the end of February. I remember playing it while biking at the gym and thinking “God damnit, they did it.” How? I had no idea. When? I had no idea. But somehow, KAFIZA was staring up at me from my phone, urging me to keep pedaling with each 200+ bpm track.
There are a lot of things I don’t understand about KAFIZA, like how they wrote, recorded, and released their album in one month (the shortest month, at that). Or how they’re managing to book an American tour when they’ve existed for less than six months. But after sitting down and talking to them, some of it started to make sense. I could try to explain, but I’ll let you, reader, suss it out for yourself.
Tell me about your background in music—how'd you get here?
Tony: So I woke up and I got in the car and made a cup of coffee. Not in that order. That'd be weird if I made a cup of Joe in the car. [laughs] I've been playing music here in the city since I was six years old.
Where are you from?
Tony: I'll say Evanston 'cause I won't go into describing how I was raised, but Evanston, and then I have been living in the city since 2015. I've been playing music since I was two, but playing shows in the city since I was six. Crazy.
What kind of shows?
Tony: Like Creedence Clearwater Revival cover bands with my father. I would be in school and he'd pick me up and he would say, "Hey, get ready. We have a gig this weekend." He would just take me to these bars and I was scared shitless. A little later I played with my church. So yeah, I've been playing in bands—in church and jazz and school—I've been playing a lot.
Max: I grew up in Portsmouth, New Hampshire which is quite far from here. But I was actually born in Chicago. My parents are both musicians and started a community music school in my hometown, so I was six when I started piano lessons. I had to wait until I was eight to start learning guitar. I grew up playing music with my brother, and then years later I got into Berklee. I did my undergrad there and fell in love with recording and producing music.
While I was at Berklee, I met Addy [Harris], who is the front person in Rat Tally. I knew of Rat Tally and I wanted to be a part of it from the get go. She, being a year older than me, moved out of Boston sooner, and through the pandemic ended up here in Chicago. And that is why I wanted to move to Chicago, just 'cause she landed here.
Upon moving here, I met Tony at the Golden Dagger. Tony was actually the first person I met at the Dagger after I applied to work there—he trained me to work the door and we just hit it off. Rat Tally was looking for a drummer here in Chicago, 'cause at that point it was just Addy and I. Immediately I was like, you know, Tony's the vibe. And then we became good friends through that. We had joked about starting a hardcore project for almost a year before it actually happened.
Tony: It started off as a joke for sure. We were like “Man, everyone's soft here.”
Max: I was like, well maybe we should start a hardcore band. And I have done a recording thing every year since I was eight called the RPM Challenge. The goal is to record a record during the month of February—a record being either 10 songs or 35 minutes of music. And it has to be original music that's written in February.
Does it have to be recorded, mixed, and mastered all in February too?
Max: All in the month.
Tony: And released.
Max: Then during March there are listening parties all around the world—you probably can find one in Chicago. This whole thing originated in Portsmouth, which is how I know about it. But it's a worldwide thing that songwriters do. And since I'm in many different projects now and mostly focusing on Rat Tally, finding time to write is tough. So I try to block out February every year to do this. But doing the challenge as a band with someone was something I hadn't done since highschool. Thus birthed KAFIZA.
How did that conversation go where you're like, "Yo Tony, I wanna do this record but we have to do it in a month.”
Tony: Well, we were both traveling.
Max: And we were both really…
Tony: Busy. I was in L.A. for a couple of shows. And you were...
Max: On tour doing front of house for Future Teens, Macseal, and Shallow Pools. I didn't have the time I'd normally have for the month. I was on tour for two weeks of the month and February's already a short month. For the first week of the month we went back and forth writing songs.
Tony: And then I left for L.A. When I got home, Max picked me up from the airport at like 10:00 pm. We recorded nine riffs that night.
How late did that go?
Max: Like 4 or 5 in the morning.
Tony: And then Max went on tour immediately after that. He got back on the 24 or 25 of February. I picked him up from the airport, we went straight to the studio, wrote all the lyrics, and recorded them
Max: It was in a hardcore way too, 'cause hardcore has a mentality of "just do it." It was very authentic and in the moment. We were definitely riffing and changing stuff on the spot. And if it was remotely close to good, we were like, okay, it's good.
Tony: We didn't have time to be nitpicky or critical of ourselves.
Max: Then I worked basically a full day, night, and the following morning to complete mixes and masters for everything. I took a short, maybe four-hour nap break.
Tony: It's surreal to listen to it. I'm like, what the fuck? We did a lot.
Max: It felt like a fever dream. And I want to emphasize, I would never do this for any clients ever. But regardless, I'm very happy with how it turned out, given how much time we had to work on it.
So, the record's on Bandcamp. Do you plan to put it anywhere else?
Max: Yes. I want to go in and do a little bit of a retouch mix-wise. We also wanted to add a couple new songs and then throw a KAFIZA deluxe LP on Spotify. The RPM record is still what we released, but I would put up another one.
Are you going to play it out at all?
Tony: Well, we hosted a house party—Max and I live together. We hadn't had a housewarming party, so we decided to have a housewarming/record release party and we played the record for our friends.
Max: Usually with RPM projects, it's just a recording project. This is different because we're playing it out, and we have to think of a live setup. Our setup's interesting. We're a duo but we have bass on the record, so we're playing with bass tracks that we run through a bass amp. It's sacrilege in hardcore.
Tony: Yeah. And we're running click.
Max: And a feedback track and other vocal tracks. When we play live, it sounds almost exactly like the record. And I think just because Tony and I play in groups that are more pop-oriented, we're bringing that into the hardcore realm.
Do you guys have any live shows booked?
Max: We're touring in August, and I guess we can probably announce it, but we're playing at Kitchen 17 on July 13 and at the Dagger on August 27.
Where are you gonna tour? Do you know yet?
Max: We're planning to do a big loop—start in Detroit, head our way to Boston, then all the way down the East Coast to Atlanta. Then work our way back up to the Midwest. It's fun planning because Tony and I have both toured a lot and we have friends in all the places we're heading to.
Are you excited to play on the East Coast, where there's such a strong tradition of hardcore?
Tony: Yes. But I'm also a little nervous. We're gonna get shat on by the hardcore kids.
Max: Yeah I worry about that.
Tony: Don't shit on us.
Max: I played in a hardcore-adjacent group in Boston for a while, so I know a lot of people in that scene. But when you go to Boston, it's the older heads that are into hardcore. It's the people that are like 35 that really go to those shows. And yeah, we'll definitely get shat on, but also I lived in Boston for five years so it's a homecoming for me.
Tony: And we're gonna shit on them hard.
Tell me about your histories with hardcore.
Max: One of my favorite bands growing up was this band called Defeater. The singer lived in my hometown for a long time and used to work at a local record shop I would go to. I would buy records from him, which is crazy because they played Warped Tour. And then in college, one of my best friends was very into The Chariot, Every Time I Die, Trash Talk, stuff like that.
Does being straight edge have anything to do with your background in hardcore?
Max: I grew up in a straight edge scene. A lot of people in New England are straight edge and a lot of my friends were. Three-fourths of the hardcore band I was in, including me, was straight edge. Being straight edge is not necessarily a hardcore-based thing for me, but it did originate in hardcore. I wanted to become straight edge when I was young because I'd be playing shows at like 14, 15, seeing these 35-year-old dudes roll up just plastered. It made a big impact on how I wanted to be perceived by people. And I also live that way because it makes my body feel good.
Tony, what about you?
Tony: I am not straight edge [laughs].
No, what's your background in hardcore?
Tony: The first band I was in—Going Backwards—was a hardcore band. Growing up in Evanston and Chicago, people were really into jazz, which was cool. And I played a lot of jazz in high school. And in Chicago, jazz is very white dominated, which gets old. Another reason why I wanted to start KAFIZA is because there's not enough hard music in Chicago. Everyone's on their little soft crying, lap steel type beats. Which again, is cool. We just wanted to do something that we both felt was missing in our lives, which was just loud amps and cymbals that are cracked and getting beat up.
How many amps do you play with?
Tony: Technically three.
Max: Going back to what I listened to growing up, my favorite band that I still listen to was Polar Bear Club. They're a post-hardcore group. I think they have straight edge ties too. But I wanted to play in a band like that, with amps on amps.
So last question. Tell me about learning to scream.
Max: Screaming is interesting. It's very tough. I watched many, many a YouTube video on proper scream techniques. There's a couple different ways to do it. I do a vocal fry scream, where you're kind of rubbing your vocal chords together and reaching the point where your head and chest voice break. Using your diaphragm is also really important—you cannot sing from your throat at all in this genre. And I always warm up for like 10 minutes.
Tony: I don't have many screaming parts—I mostly sing. But when I do sing, I'll just send it. I play every show like I'm gonna die later that night, you know what I mean? I should probably try a little harder to maintain my vocals.
Max: We'll do more warmups. We'll be fine.
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