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Bringing Korean Rock to America With @officialnobrain

To see more of No Brain’s punk lifestyle, head over to @officialnobrain on Instagram. For more stories from around the music community, follow @music on Instagram.

This interview was conducted in both Korean and English.

While South Korean pop acts are finding increasing fame in the United States, Korean rock bands are barely making a blip with American audiences. And, according to punk quartet No Brain (@officialnobrain), it’s a tough sell even in their home country.

“The rock scene in Korea sucks,” drummer Hyunsung “Dolly” Hwang says. “Basically in Korea, rock is never going to be major.”

“Korean people, they hate all the loud guitar and sounds,” says singer Sungwoo “Bulldaegal” Lee. “They just love pop music. But now it’s better than before.” For anyone looking to check out more K-Rock, one of their favorite contemporaries are fellow punks Crying Nut, with whom No Brain released a split covers EP in 2014.

No Brain was founded in the late ‘90s and influenced by rock mainstays such as Green Day, the Sex Pistols, Nirvana and Metallica. The Seoul-based group would establish a measure of fame with their upbeat songs about women, booze and general rabble-rousing such as “Your Crush on Me,” “Radio Radio” and the ska-inflected “Soju Shot,” an ode to Korea’s most popular liquor. They’ve also made a number of fans in Japan and Russia, though not without some consequences.

At the 2001 Fuji Rock Festival Bulldaegal controversially tore up a Japanese imperial flag during a performance of the Korean national anthem (“No more shows in Japan,” he says, laughing). They also played in Russia in 2013, which he says was a great time because “Russians love rock music, and they love the vodka.” Dolly, however, wasn’t as much of a fan: “It was terrible because I was so drunk on vodka. I had two bottles of vodka, and I could’ve been killed. I was almost dead,” he says, before making a vomiting sound. That episode resulted in the as-yet-unreleased track “Hangover,” which manager Howon Lee describes as “nasty.”

And now, thanks to a big break in the American market, No Brain––so named because they aim to rock so hard that their audiences are left without brains––are about to unleash their first English-language EP.

Their stroke of good fortune happened in Toronto during Canadian Music Week in 2013, when they performed for a crowd that included Seymour Stein, the Sire Records co-founder who signed the Ramones, Talking Heads and Madonna, among many others. He was so excited about their show that he vowed to see them when they came to Brooklyn in 2013 as part of the Seoulsonic tour, an annual trek that spotlights some of South Korea’s best acts. The gig started two hours late and the septuagenarian Stein actually dozed off but woke up when No Brain kicked off their set. He signed them to a deal and hooked them up with Grammy-winning producer Julian Raymond to work on the album at Nashville’s acclaimed Blackbird Studio.

“We never even imagined playing in the US. We didn’t really think about it until we met with Seymour,” says Bulldaegal.

While the band, rounded out by guitarist Minjun “Vovo” Jung and bassist Wooyong “Bbogle” Jung, loved recording in Nashville, Bulldaegal struggled when it came to singing in English, even though he can speak it and understand it conversationally. “It was sort of a terrible experience,” says Bulldaegal. “My problem is my accent. Instruments are just instruments. They’re just going to play. I don’t know about the results, if it’s good or not, but anyway I tried my best. [Julian] gave us the confidence of what we’re doing and what we should be playing and what we should sound like, and about the lyrics too. We were, of course, worried about the accent, but he really [guided] us in the right direction. He helped us get the best results.”

Bulldaegal has little to worry about. The new songs, which include “Better Off Dead,” “I Will Fight” and “Uh-Huh,” come across as a mix of Green Day, the Hives and Jet, and his accent, while noticeable, doesn’t remotely get in the way of understanding the words. He’s still getting the hang of them, no easy feat after almost 20 years of singing in a different language, but his bandmates don’t notice. “Sometimes I make mistakes with the lyrics but the guys don’t understand,” he admits. They’ve also performed some of the songs for Korean audiences, who are receptive even if they’re not sure what Bulldaegal is singing about. “It’s like an English lesson,” he says.

Even when singing in their native language, No Brain’s infectious energy and self-deprecation keep winning over American fans, which are apparently less rowdy than their Korean counterparts. “The Korean audience, they’re ready to party,” says Dolly. “They’re so ready to get crazy and whenever we start playing music, they go nuts. They party like it’s the last day of the Earth. The Americans are kind of chilled out and relaxed, but they know how to enjoy the music.” Adds Howon, “The American audiences like to buy us drinks after the show, where in Korea, they get drunk themselves.”

–– Dan Reilly for Instagram @music

by via Instagram Blog