Landlord

Chapter One:

Introduction

Landlord.

The most famous metal band ever to come out of the United States.

Landlord consists of Sheen Estevez on rhythm guitar and vocals, Matt Strauss on lead guitar, Jimmy Neutron on bass and backing vocals, and Carl Weezer on drums, all of whom are from Retroville, Texas.

Landlord has a complicated history, starting with how all of the band members got together.

Sheen, Jimmy and Carl had always been best friends, and even started a band called the Llama Lords of Science.

"Yeah," says Sheen, "We didn't spend too much time thinking up a cool name for that band,"

In LLoS, Sheen played bass, Jimmy played guitar, and Carl played drums.

Jimmy says, "Yes, we were an instrumental rock band, we just started jamming, and we didn't write any words. We just kinda felt that the music, all the guitar, bass and drums, just spoke for themselves. We didn't really think we needed words to go with it, we just let it play,"

LLoS broke up before it's first gig, and the three boys didn't form up again until five years later when Sheen was 19, and Jimmy & Carl were 17.

"This time," Sheen says, "We really thought about what we were, not just our name, but our music, how we acted, who was doing what, we just thought for three days, basically,"

"We," Carl says, "as a group, liked metal… not the screaming, kill everyone metal, but metal that was like Metallica, or somebody that actually had some message to send. One of my favorite metal songs is, actually, 'Blackened' by Metallica, because it just sounds like a hardcore, bang-your-head-until-you-have-internal-bleeding metal song, but the lyrics actually mean something really compelling,"

The three boys decided to be a metal band, and have Sheen sing and play guitar.

"Sheen, when we started Llama Lords, was not a very good singer, but after 5 years, I guessed his nuts dropped and he became a better singer," Jimmy says, laughing.

After thinking for a few hours, the band decided to be called Landlord, which is a reference to LLoS, in a sense.

After a few days of writing songs, Landlord ran into a little wall.

"We realized that we needed another guitarist to help with the riffs, and to do some solos. I could play guitar and I was pretty good, but we needed some insane solos, and I just couldn't come up with them," Sheen says.

"And it wasn't just that," Carl says, "When Sheen would go into a solo, it would sound hollow, because just the bass and drums would go, and the piece wouldn't sound alive as much,"

"Our solution," Sheen interjects, "was to plug the bass into the guitar amp, and then turn it onto the 'Lead' setting, with high distortion, on the solos, and have Jimmy play an approximation of the main riff,"

"It still didn't sound right," Jimmy says, "And, even though I loved how the bass sounded with distortion, we knew we needed another guitarist,"

So Landlord tried out three guitarists:

Jerry Bradley, who played in a band called Sniper, but was 23 and had a questionable past.

Drake Brooks, who was a great guitar player, but only had an acoustic guitar.

Matt Strauss, who had played with the metal band Caesar, was 16, and was a great metal guitarist.

The boys chose Drake Brooks.

"We tried out Drake," says Carl, "and he just had the look of a great metal guitarist. He had some muscle, but he wasn't huge, he had the long hair that got into his face when he head banged and rocked out, he just had it,"

"We bought an electric guitar," says Sheen, "and an amp, then we set everything up in the garage, and gave him the guitar, plugged it in and everything. He played a little lick that sounded pretty good, then we showed him some of the songs we were working on, sheet music and all… and he just looked at us…"

Carl then finished saying, "he looked at us and said, 'I can't read music', and we were like, 'Well, oh s**t, if you can't read music, I'm sorry, but you're out!' And we kicked him out of Landlord,"

"One of the most awkward things I've ever done," says Jimmy, "was picking up that phone, calling Matt, and basically saying, 'Okay, you remember those auditions to be our lead guitarist? Well, we made a mistake and we want you in!'"

"Thank God he said he would join us!" Carl says.

Matt Strauss pulled up to Jimmy's house where the band would jam in the garage, and asked Sheen and Carl to help him with his stuff.

"I was thinking, 'Well, it's a guitar, an amp, and some chords, why would he need our help?' How wrong was I?" says Sheen.

"Okay," Carl says, "When got to the trunk of his car, he popped it open, and, lo behold, a huge amp, an effects pedal with, what seemed to be, one billion effects, and then he said to us, 'My guitar couldn't fit back there, it's in the backseat of the car,' I looked at Sheen, and he looked at me, and we knew that this guy would be in, if he could read music [laughs hard] for one and if we could actually get along with him,"

"We sort of hit it off," Matt says, finally speaking for the first time in the interview, "I played a little lick, and they handed me the music, I played it and watched their jaws drop."

Matt Strauss was immediately put in the band, and the band set to work on writing songs.