Muscle Beach Petting Zoo is an incredibly interesting band name with wonderfully interesting members. Their name came into existence because it was the wifi name at Andrew's first house in Eugene and he decided it was such a quality name that he needed to use it. There was some dispute over the band name with Michael insisting that INFINITY CHRYST would be the best band name. "Anything but Muscle Beach Petting Zoo!" -Michael
Some of their influences are metal, post-rock and some weird stuff in between. They don't easily fit into one genre and they're totally okay with that. They are the type of musicians who would rather be loyal to themselves and their music than try to fit themselves into a genre mold. I believe that's one of the reasons their music is so special. Their music doesn't resemble any other genre for longer than about 30 seconds at a time, which makes it hard to pin down.
The band consists of four members, Andrew, Chevy, Michael, and Max. When asked what their favorite moment with the band was, Michael told me "the Halloween show from this year was absolutely incredible. It was the first time a circle pit has ever happened at one of our shows and Andrew and I were just desperately trying to keep our pedal boards safe." Andrew ended up just kicking his pedal board to the side to make sure it didn't get damaged by being stomped on by a mosher.
"At this point, all of our songs aren't even words!" -Michael
"My best friends from childhood came to our first show and there was this one girl who was really drunk and there with her friends. My friends were standing right next to this girl and they said she turned to talk to one of her friends and just projectile vomited all over her friends face. This was definitely a monumental first performance for us but I definitely have blocked it out of my memory.
It's still one of my favorite moments though, partly because it was the first time Chevy ever got to play with us. We practiced together for twenty minutes before the actual show and then just had to roll with it." -Andrew
*talking about their first performance on Halloween* "Oh god, I remember the smell from that because I technically lived in that house for twelve more hours and that was my last night in the house. What a send-off." -Michael
"We almost got in trouble for calling our song World trade center but that lasted about ten seconds and we ended up changing the name anyway." -Michael
"I love the reaction our band name gets from our metal fans like they'll tell us 'Muscle Beach Petting Zoo, huh? that's weird..'" -Michael
"When you say a song name like white powder on stage in front of a bunch of people, you just sound like an asshole so the song title just wasn't worth it." -Max
"Whenever we would say white powder with the correct enunciation, it sounded kinda sarcastic, so it
"There was the whole white powder drama, where the song name was too hard to enunciate correctly, so people kept thinking we were saying white power. So obviously, we had to change the name of that song." -Andrew
"I was trying to text one of our song lyrics once and my phone f*cked up every single word and then I realized that's because our songs are literal nonsense. We always talk garbage nonsense in our songs until it isn't even real words anymore." -Andrew
"Part of the reason we wanted to call this song White Powder was because we had worked on it for almost two full years and it was kind of a Skyrim reference since you kill a white zombie and they turn into a powder pile." -Chevy
"Our band has a tough time fitting into any established cliches in Eugene's music scene. Like we get a little too heavy for straight progressive and we're too proggy for punk and we're really loud and fast so we're not easy-listening by any stretch of the imagination, but we're also not death metal. So it's like we kick ourselves out of most clubs that we get close to." -Max
"Honestly, living with the band at the Hilyard house is one of my fondest memories. Like there was this one time I used an air horn upside down and it totally froze my legs so I ended up losing my pants as a result. That house had a ton of great memories." -Chevy
"We've played metal shows where people were into it and then where people weren't and we've played with most of the bands in Eugene trying to figure out where we fit. We might come close but not quite." -Andrew
"I never want to be associated with that house, but it was where our first practice happened and kind of where Muscle Beach Petting Zoo first started." -Michael
"We used to do a lot of f*cked-up sh*t in that house like it was falling to pieces and we'd still have shows anyway. It was fun." -Andrew
"None of our songs have to mean anything; it's mostly about what people take away from the music."
"It's kinda funny because Muscle Beach Petting Zoo always gets the same reaction from people, which is '..what?'" -Max
"We'll actually go on stage and mispronounce our own name because we take our music seriously but we don't want to be perceived like we take ourselves too seriously. Like we try really f*cking hard when it comes to our music but we don't try to be perceived a certain way. The music, itself, isn't a joke though."
"Only one of our songs has lyrics so far, so it leaves the music up to people's experiences. It can be loud and ridiculous instrumental music at times so the post-rock narrative structure doesn't always work for what people can expect from us. But we still want it to be about what happens in your brain and imagination when you listen to our music." -Max
"The music that we play and write we take very seriously and put a lot of time into it. For better or worse, we don't rush writing AT ALL." -Andrew
"We're passionate about the music itself."
