Ecce Shnak, the art rock quintet from New York City, the United States of America, has put out their latest EP, Shadows Grow Fangs, and even though every song of this EP is great in its own terms, one of the stand-outs is Jeremy, Utilitarian Sadboy. This track was released as a single in 2024, besides two other songs, Prayer On Love (2024) and The Internet (2025). So we had the good fortune of getting in touch with David Roush, frontman and songwriter of Ecce Shnak, and he was kind enough to answer some of our questions about this track and more. So read on to check out this interview below!
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Hello – first of all, “Jeremy, Utilitarian Sadboy” is a super song by Ecce Shnak! But before we get more into it, can you take us through your musical influences in general, or is there any specific influence you want to mention for this track?
Thank you so very much for the props on the track. It means a lot when people “get” the music I make! My influences are from all over the map. When I try to generalize, I tell people that I draw from 3 primary sounds: popular music (broadly speaking); classical music; and heavy music (metal, punk rock, and hardcore). For “Jeremy, Utilitarian Sadbody,” I would say the primary influences are Fugazi, Queen, Rage Against the Machine, Dillinger Escape Plan, and classical art songs.
I would initially like to focus on the lyrics as they are pretty intense. So, can you tell us about the idea behind writing this song?
I actually wrote the song very long ago and sat on it for around a decade. In my mid-20’s, I lived around the corner from Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia. It is now a museum, but it was once a working prison. I learned about the subject of the song, the utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham, from attending the museum. I learned that when it was in use until the early 20th century, they used Bentham’s suggested technique of “rehabilitation” for prisoners: solitary confinement. This was a shocking and sad fact that an earnest humanitarian could have advocated for such a disastrously cruel practice.
I researched more about Bentham’s life. His ideas and other peculiar aspects of his life were fascinating. Most notably, he basically chose to have his body taxidermied when he died so that his students could view his body in a glass case in a seated position, to view it as a “stale instrument.” I had this wild math-metal instrumental lying around, so I figured I would write a vocal about Bentham for this track.
The song has new relevance in my life and in the often cruel world at large, as I have recently made close friends with a man who is both in solitary confinement and on death row in Ohio, Mr. Keith Lamar. I believe his story that he is wrongfully convicted and wrongfully sentenced. There is a documentary in the process of being made on his behalf with the ultimate goal of him being liberated. He is a brilliant writer, speaker, and artist in his own right. Look him up on Spotify, in fact!
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Now, coming to the composition, it is heavy, gritty and kind of has an in-your-face attitude about it, but at the same time, it goes through several sonic shifts. So, will you give us a sneak peek into the overall compositional idea of the song?
There are two big sections: a math-rock song and a chorale funeral dirge. The math-rock song has two verses and two choruses. At the time I wrote it, I had been wolfing down the Dillinger Escape Plan record, “Miss Machine.” My groove is nowhere near as stridently oddly metered as anything on that record, but I know that that album nudged me to try to write something that could be both techy but could also “dance.” The final blast of the math-rock section had such weight to it but is also in a yummily singable key, Db-flat major.
The vocals until that point are very fast, shout-y/bark-y, and rather mysterious. I am proud of them, but I also recognized that most of the lyrics are not very intelligible, which was a bummer, so I decided to end the song with a great, big, scrumptious singalong. Somehow, the lyric “No matter how severe my scowl, I’ll always grin underneath” occurred to me as the refrain, as it summarized the weird ironies and contradictions of Bentham’s philosophy and the tragic and absurd course his life and, ultimately, his death took.
The main vocals and the choir voices blend together in perfect harmony, considering the nature of the whole song. Can you please share some details about this?
I suppose the choir section has a gratifyingly gentle sound that contrasts with the moshpit of the first half, and yet, again, they are both in the same key. Also, the fantastic contralto singer, Bella Komodromos, lights up a lot of the big powerful hits of the first half of the song with her stunning voice. Bentham’s life and worldview has both chaos and violence as well as justice and idealism in it. When my friend and producer Jeff Lucci, Bella, and I were recording the song, I strove to perform the vocal part both as an homage to and a rebuke of this complicated fellow. All of these things might explain the successful synthesis of these contrasting particulars.
You can check also check out the official video of Jeremy, Utilitarian Sadboy by Ecce Shnak, here:
And finally – tell us about your new single ‘Prayer on Love’.
In sharp contrast to “Jeremy, Utilitarian Sadboy,” I have referred to “Prayer on Love” as Ecce Shnak’s most straightforward, whole-grain rock song in our catalogue. It is a moderately slow song in 4/4 time with two riffs, two verses, and two choruses. Though there’s a high-pitched, Nels-Cline-inspired guitar melody, there is not a guitar solo or even a single cymbal crash in sight. The lyric is a meditation on the nature of love and its diverse manifestations a la bell hooks. It honors the complexity of love without declaring that it “is all we need.” The last verse is a celebration of the unique love in each person, all of our flaws notwithstanding: “Still my love is a star/Still my love’s a precious opportunity/and a miracle/flowing down the river of consequences and circumstances/and a self-same being.”
What can fans expect from Ecce Shnak in the next few months?
We are hoping to expand our fanbase exponentially, play some great big festivals, and get on a tour with some of our favorite bands. Aside from that, we are playing shows in New York City and the northeast here and there, shooting music videos for a full-length album we have in the works, and recording other fascinating thangamajangs, so STAY TUNED, n’bys, girls, and boys! If you fuff with our stuff and aren’t a fascist, please connect with us and get on the Shnak train. We’d love to have you on this journey! 😉
So, if the above interview excites you about what else awaits you in the album Shadows Grow Fangs by Ecce Shnak, please go ahead and check it out. You can listen to it here:
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