Iron Bison is an beer-fueled basement metal band born in Cleveland, Ohio. 

Please list all of your band members and their roles in the band. 

Josh Richey - guitars/vocals

Paco Manzuk - drums

For starters, what bands were you guys a part of prior to Iron Bison? 

I played rhythm guitar with a hip-hop group called Green Sunrise for a while and that was my first band. Then personsplacesthings as a fill in bassist for a while. Chris from PPT not only is featured on the song "Get Over It" from our new album, but he also produced and recorded the whole thing. For Paco this is his first serious project. 

How long has the band been around? What’s the origin of that name and have you changed the band’s name before? 

We actually played our first venue show at the Phantasy almost exactly 3 years ago on Feb. 26th 2016. I think we debuted the project at a house show that winter a few months beforehand. As we've mentioned often, this was a total fake band for probably over a year before we even played together. It came from an inside joke and snowballed us all the way to where we are now. Plus I think the name just kicks ass and I could never change it

Who writes your songs? What are the main themes or topics for most of your songs and do you think these topics will change over time? 

Musically I'll bring some guitar ideas to Paco and we'll jam on them and he's great at helping structure things. I think the way he plays really makes it easy to dictate what we wanna put where. Lyrically I handle everything in that department. Ive written a lot about topics including loss and apathy etc. I think our catalog has a pretty good spectrum of really bleak outlooks to songs like the 1st single from our album "An Ocean Ahead" which I wrote to be kind of self empowering. And then sometimes I just wanna write songs about beer. And as long as beer exists and there's things to be pissed about I think that's what you can expect from me, because it's really cathartic and I think that's what drives the content.

What bands are currently inspiring the music that you’re making? 

We haven't been cooking up too much new material seeing as we just released our first record. But I've been toying with ideas in my head quite a bit because I think we're already ready to work on new things. Trying to get heavier for sure, but also groovier and have some fun too. Bands like the Bronx or turnstile or Angel Du$t lately have been inspiring me, I wanna take influence from that but I also wanna be heavy and ugly. 

Was there a particular band/artist or concert that inspired you to start a band?

Can't say specifically, but for me, music has been a huge obsession since discovering stuff like Sabbath and Metallica and all the greats at a really young age. It was just kind of inevitable

What do you do to prepare for a show? Any flexing, exercises, etc … 

We don't really have a routine besides drinking beer, but we kind of have a knack for not putting a lot of pressure on anything beforehand and we just let all our energy explode the second we start and it's just up from there

What has been the biggest highlight of the band’s career so far?

We just had our release show for our first full length album called "Searching for the Sun" and it was incredible. It was our second headliner and it was easily twice as good as the first. It was also the first time we did things completely our own way and I think it proved what we're capable of. It's got us really excited to see what's next. 

If you could tour with any bands, past or present, who would they be and why? 

I'd love to tour with bands like 68 and Fever 333/Pressure Cracks. I love the insanity both of those frontmen have and I try to bring some degree of that of my own to the table when we play. Any lineup where every one is kinda nuts would be ideal

Is there anything else you would like to add? 

As mentioned we just released our first full length. It's called "Searching for the Sun" and you can listen to it anywhere you stream music. Nothing concrete yet, but we plan to do some more shows around the Midwest again this year to promote it, so keep an eye out for some dates.