from Cleveland.com recently received a call from Monoxide of Twiztid. This call was to promote tonight’s stop on the Be My Bloody Valentine Weekend mini tour.
Tonight’s show is happening at the Agora Theatre. Twiztid will be joined by Stevie Stone, Boondox, The R.O.C., G-Mo Skee, MBK, and Insane E. You can read the full interview below.
CLEVELAND, Ohio – It’s not often you get a call from someone “in the middle of a dark forest, deep in the bowels of Hell.”
But hey, it’s also not often you get a call from a guy named Monoxide Child, either.
Monoxide – that’s what we close friends call him, anyway – is half of the duo known as Twiztid, who will be at the Agora Theatre on Saturday, Feb. 13, to headline their “My Bloody Valentine Show.”
“Nothing in the world says love like Twiztid,” said Monoxide, known in some circles, like on his birth certificate, as Paul Methric. His partner in the juggalo-culture horrorcore hip-hop band (how’s that for a string of descriptives?) is Jamie Madrox, born Jamie Spanilo.
The two were born and grew up in some of Detroit’s toughest neighborhoods. Monoxide is fond of pointing out that there were 3,000 kids in his school and five were white. “And we were two of them.”
That definitely influenced their music, but it had a greater impact on their outlook on life.
“More, it shaped our outlook on people,” Monoxide said. “Coming from the lower class, you kind of had a hodgepodge of everybody. I gained a lot of street smarts from growing up there.
“Even though we grew up in the jungle, as long as you were true to yourself, you were good,” he said. “If you come down and try to be something you’re not, that’s trouble. Detroit can sniff out a phony quicker than anything I’ve ever seen in my life.”
Being “true to yourself” really is the essence of the juggalo culture in general, and Twiztid in particular. Yeah, songs such as “The Boogieman” (and the hilarious introduction to it) off the band’s latest release, “The Darkness” have pretty dark and frightening themes, but the essence of the band is the opposite.
“We’re not malicious,” Monoxide said. “Twiztid is not here to bring evil to the world, it is here to rid the world of evil.”
Songs like “In Hell” and “Back to Hell” and “Dr. Weasel” are there as forms of release, he said, much like horror movies.
“Some people like watching Michael Meyers and ‘Friday the 13th‘,” he said. “We’re in the same category, except there’s more imagination to ours.”
There’s something else that seems to run counter to the frightening, toothy makeup the Monoxide and his band mate sport, much like the original juggalos, Insane Clown Posse: These guys and their comic-book evil bond with their fans – they call them family – in a way you might not expect, and it’s because of a shared of sense of disconnect.
“A lot of parents, a lot of immediate loved ones don’t understand the effect we have on that person we’re connected with,” Monoxide said. “It’s crazy to be shunned by so many parents when we’re a lot of the reason your child is still alive.
“A child talks to us [via social media] about wanting to kill themselves, and if it wasn’t for us, they would have done that,” he said.
That’s a heavy load to bear, he admitted.
“We deal with it as honestly as we can,” Monoxide said. “There’s nothing more jarring than to have somebody tell you that through social media. Nobody else will listen.
“We’re just a [bleeping] band,” he said. “That kind of responsibility is immense, but we’ll take that responsibility, because these kids need somebody.”
Even if that somebody usually calls from a forest deep in the bowels of Hell.
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