Interview by Simon Russell-White
As the saying goes 'get busy living or get busy dying!' This is certainly true for Greg Puciato, (the living part that is) multi instrumentalist and vocalist for Better Lovers, The Black Queen, Killer Be Killed, Jerry Cantrell's Solo Band, his own Solo band and, of course, vocalist for the now very deceased Dillinger Escape Plan.
He is a man with an already distinguished career, and yet again he has turned up the heat on the majority of his above mentioned projects and is hitting our shores with his Solo outfit in Summer 2024. It feels like five minutes ago that he graced us with the first-ever Australian tours for The Black Queen, but believe it or not that was almost five years ago! Where does the time go?!
Celebrating his second solo album Mirrorcell the follow-up to his debut 2020 record Child Soldier: Creator of God, this is the first time us Australian's will see Greg live as a Solo artist, with his band of course!
Given the limited time with Greg I kind of wish I had a buzzer so we could talk about each project for the exact amount of time, the man is literally that busy! Recently having joined long-time friends Will Putney (producer and guitarist in Fit For An Autopsy) and three remaining members of now very deceased Every Time I Die (Jordan Buckley - guitar, Clayton "Goose" Holyoak – drums and Steve Micciche – bass) to form a new band Better Lovers. In short, this is a band that celebrates friendship, kinship and the pure love of music!
Having just dropped their new single Two Alive Amongst the Dead, "this was actually the first single as a complete band, we wrote and recorded between shows on our first tour" explained Greg. Hopefully, we get to see Better Lovers in Australia sometime soon.
Moving right along, recently Greg was given the honour to join Alice In Chains legend Jerry Cantrell (guitar and vocals) for a run of live solo shows, during this interview we capture Greg explaining a moment where a once long-time idol has now not only become a band member but a dear friend of Greg's, he talks about those little moments where he simply cannot believe the position is in and how a moment with Jerry on stage took him back emotionally.
Greg also owns a record company Federal Prisoner which will be releasing the next The Black Queen record as writing has actually begun.
The man simply doesn't stop, Greg expresses feeling partly overwhelmed with the amount of projects he has on but as he explains so well, is aware that time is against us all, so the time is now.
Greg hasn't sat for many interviews for a little while, I wonder why?
He went on to laugh about the chance of the Killer Be Killed boys suddenly giving him a call, to cut another record and/ or tour.
He went on to explain how much Max Cavalera (ex Sepultura, Soulfly, Nailbomb and Killer Be Killed) loves to tour and is a huge influence on him.
Who knows we may see another Killer Be Killed record in the future, this is something that seems very damn likely too.
Greg Puciato has the incredible ability to separate styles and musical abilities between various projects, so make sure you grab a ticket for his first-ever Australian run of solo (with previously mentioned band) shows in January 2024, it promises to be a fun time.
Tickets from destroyalllines.com