What is Defunct, Current, and Loud?

You guessed it. Defunct band, of course.

What started as a group of friends playing together as a Nirvana cover band, these self-taught musicians reimagined their sound, drawing inspirations from classic shoegaze bands and their personal record collections, like a first pressing of Free Wheelin' Bob Dylan, the Cure, Led Zeppelin, and Nine Inch Nails. They have a re-debut album in the works, set to be released next month.

What's better than to do what you love with some friends along the way?

Let's get to know your role in the band.

David Collett: I am the lead singer and lead guitar player in Defunct. I also write most of the stuff.

Kaleb Cronan: I am the secondary and rhythm guitarist. I come up with some ideas sometimes, and they get used and maybe they don't. 


Andrew Johnson: I play drums.

How did Defunct get started?

David: Last year, I went to university at Kennesaw State University and every year they do a gazebo show. They'll invite a bunch of bands out to play at this gazebo. They invited us out because we had a couple songs out. But, at the time when they invited us, it was just me. I was the one recording everything, playing everything, you know.

So I had to cobble together something so we could have a live band to play. So I hit up Andrew and he was down to do it.
My friend from Florida played bass, he had to drive up for that show. It was very thrown together.
We just became friends again; we clicked with one another.

What was in your music rotation when you were recording your EP?

David: I was listening to a lot of DIR EN GREY. They're a Japanese band. I was listening to obscure, I like that record a lot. That was what a lot of the inspiration was. Also a lot of early 9 inch nails, like downward spiral era and broken EP. What were you listening to at the time?

Andrew: Miles Davis "Live-Evil", I like the drums on that record a lot.

How often do you practice?

Kaleb: Every Sunday. Sometimes multiple days a week if we can get together. But mostly every single Sunday for the last 4 months.

How would you describe Your music scene?

Kaleb: There's a lot of really good bands that don't really have that many listeners or that many people who are actively following what they do. You find some really out-of-the-ordinary music that is really interesting to hear because you don't really hear that kind of stuff nowadays. It's a lot of punk and metal.

Andrew & David: Yeah, tons of punk and metal.

Have you ever played at A record store Before?

David: This is our big re-debut of the band with this current lineup. It's our first time playing a record store. It's gonna be a pretty crazy show, I feel.

How did you come to reimagine the song "Nymphs Finding the Head of Orpheus"?

David: Actually, my girlfriend, she came to me with the idea. She really likes the original artist, which is Nicole Dollanganger.
She showed me the song and though it would be cool to shoegaze. So, I made a backing track and she liked it. She sang on it and that's kind of where it all came from. I heard the chorus that song and I thought, if this song had really heavy guitars it would sound really cool.

This is gonna sound really

egotistical, but I made the song sound how I would want it to sound.

https://defunctband.bandcamp.com/track/nymphs-finding-the-head-of-orpheus

What inspires you to create?

Andrew: I don't know. I just have a need to do it. I just feel like I need to do something with my hands or something, make sound.

Kaleb: It gives me something to imagine. I've always been a creative person. So it allows me to make things that sound weird, but cool. Something that tickles my ear, tickles my brain.

A lot of weird philosophical stuff kind of inspires a lot of the stuff I do.
I like to think about what someone else would feel in the situation that I write about or that I create. I like to think, if someone else is inspired by it, then they can create something by it. That's what inspires me in a way, just the fact that I could possibly inspire someone else.

David: I grew up playing guitar because my dad. I guess there's my biggest inspiration, my dad. He taught me how to play guitar when I was a kid. Ever since then, music's just been a part of my life, because my dad was in a band in the 90s. [The Vicious Kanids] So, he just kind of rubbed that off onto me. So now I'm just thinking about how talented he is. I guess that inspires me, because, I just want to be as good as he is.

The most memorable Defunct show?

David and Andrew: The gazebo the show [last August] is really memorable. Yeah, it was. It was very wonderful in the crowd. Because that was awesome, man. There was a lot of outside factors and internal factors like pushing and pulling at it. The mixing on the stage was really off. It was really hard to hear. You couldn't hear anything. So we were all just hoping we're in time. It was awesome. It was really awesome. It's fun to look back on that, though, and see how far we've come from that. That's also what makes it something memorable.

Would you say you've always been comfortable on stage?

Andrew: 
I don't find it exactly comfortable. Going back to the gazebo show, you (David), had to pull me out of the woods because I ran away from that. But I'm pretty okay with it now, I don't make it such a big thing.

Kaleb: Oh, I've actually never played live before. So playing this Housewolf record show on Saturday is gonna be the very first time that I'll ever be on stage playing guitar in front of people. I kind of love people asking me if I'm nervous or asking me if I'm scared or anything, but that's kind of the whole point, is playing live in front of people.

So I'm more excited than anything. Just all that attention on me all the time would be very nice.

Jokes aside, seriously, it is exciting just because this is anything we've always wanted to do, is just play live for people, play music, and share my experience with music. So, I can't say I have any personal things about playing live. I'm just excited.

David: I grew up in band. I started doing like school band in 6th grade, I played French Horn. I was on stage once every 3 or 4 months because we would have our band things for school. Then in high school, I did theater and that kind of throws you in front of a bunch of people.

I will say, though, when we did that gazebo show, I was extremely nervous.
I didn't tell you (Andrew) because I didn't want you to freak out because I knew you were already freaking out. But I was like, I was extremely nervous. And once we got into it, the nerves definitely calmed down.

I reached out to my friend, I think you might know him, Chase from Visitor Center. I reached out to him and I was like, dude, how do I like get over this nervousness? And he was like, “let it happen, man.”

And I was like, honestly, that's the best advice you could give me. Since then, I've been playing more shows with another band that I'm in. I drum for another band. I guess just being up there and doing it more gets rid of your nerves. I don't really get that nervous anymore.

How did you learn to play your instruments?

Andrew: I'm self taught.
I got like a drum kit as a gift as a kid. I didn't pick it up for a while. Then, I got a guitar when I was 16.
I wasn't a good enough guitar player, so I kind of had to learn how to play the drums. But I eventually think I learned both. No lessons. YouTube.

Kaleb:
I got my 1st guitar when it was like eight or nine. And, obviously, you sit there and you learn one or two songs and then it sits there for a couple of years. Then you pick it back up and then that's when you dive head in. At most you watch a couple of YouTube videos and you're like, all right, I think I got this. Then after that, you're really just kind of on your own. 


David: My dad got me an acoustic when I was like six. He showed me how to play Country Road by John Denver. So I knew how to play 4 boards. And then same thing. I set it down. I didn't really touch it for a while. In high school, when we all met each other, we would just sit there and we'd play Nirvana covers. That's actually the conception of Defunct.

Defunct was originally a Nirvana cover band during freshman year of high school. And then it just got abandoned. Whenever I recorded the first Defunct single back in 2022, since we used this name already, I decided I'll just use it again. It's a cool name. If we're going to get really, really technical, like down to brass tacks, he's [Kaleb's] also a founding member.

Kaleb: I'm like a subtle founding member of the band, left and then came back.

David: Lost child, but now he's found.

This one is gonna be interesting because Kaleb, you've never played live. If you had to choose, what would you pick?

1. Only recording music and streaming it successfully, but no live shows

2. Only playing live music, but nothing on streaming platforms and you don't have to worry about recording.

Andrew: I like recording. I like messing around, making little experiments and stuff. 


Kaleb: I would say, I think it would be interesting to only play live because of the type of things that you could do live that you couldn't do while you're producing music. But, I think I would have to agree with Andrew. I would like to record music all the time because you do have modulations that you can do within the sound of the recording. So you could really do some out there stuff with the layering. So, I'd probably go with just recording music all the time.

David: That's really hard, I really like both because there's a part to the live performance where you can just go fucking nuts. Like, when we rehearse one of our songs, I'm beating up the synthesizer, like I'm 1990s Trent Reznor. And I love that. I love that energy that you can't really get in a recording. But on the other hand, I really do like sitting at my computer and messing with like sound waves until they sound crazy. 


So I think I would have to lean more towards recording as well, because I just like the experimentation and the technical part behind it. I guess, it's unanimous.

Do you collect any physical media?

Kaleb: I have so many DVDs, vinyl records, and CDs.
I would love to just record an hour long movie of just playing live and doing that, like they used to do in the 90s. Just hand out DVDs with me playing live, that would be fun.

Favorite records in your collection?

David: My all time favorite album ever made, and I have it on every format, is Disintegration by The Cure. Then my second favorite's probably the Downward Spiral by Nine Inch Nails. Those are my two big ones.

Kaleb: I've got an original pressing of The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan.
I also have a couple of Zeppelin and a lot of Red Hot Chili Pepper records those are what I hold dearest to me.

Andrew: He just got me Heavy Metal by Cameron Winter on wax, so that's probably my favorite. I have a lot of Nirvana records and Hendrix records that I like to listen to.

Stop Reading This & Go Outside!!!

Kaleb: I would like to say something actually.

I would like to say, go out. Just go outside and enjoy life and look at trees, you know? Just go and do something, anything. It's better than just sitting down all day watching TV, scrolling through TikTok. Even if it's just going outside for like a 5 minute walk, just go outside and enjoy the planet while we have it.

We don't really get to do this for a long time. So just being able to go outside and playing music with people that I love and getting to enjoy music with people that I love. I think that's just the best part of life. You know what I mean?

What’s next for the band?

David: We are working on our debut record right now. 
And we have a single that I'm selling at the show. This is the lead single, which it will not be on streaming. It's CD and Bandcamp, download code only because I want to try and incentivize people to come to the shows.

That's going to be the lead single for the new record. I want to try and get it out in early June. It's almost done. It needs a little more time in the oven. We're working hard on it. You guys have been putting a lot of cool shit on it as well. It just needs a little more time.

The big thing about this one is, it's kind of a departure from the more new metal side that we've kind of experimented with the EP. It's definitely a lot more shoegaze and a lot more electronic. A lot of stuff that I've been listening to lately to that gets me in the headspace for it is Doppelganger by Curve and Frailty by Jane Remover. I've been listening a lot to get some of the more weird synth stuff. Then My Bloody Valentine and Ride, classic shoegaze bands. Got to go back to the roots.

Andrew, despite being the drummer, has done a lot of guitars on his record. All of his guitar parts sound fucking phenomenal. Like they sound really good. And Kaleb, too, you've written a couple guitar parts for it, too. Several.

Since Defunct's conception, it originally started as just me. I still primarily do the writing and recording, but since we're an actual group now, I want to include them more on the writing and recording process. It's just kind of hard sometimes, you know. But I think it sounds really cool. I'm very proud of us for doing it.

Editor's Note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

https://defunctband.bandcamp.com/