Written by Lauren Napier

Opiate for the Masses, their name hailing from the philosophy of Karl Marx, boast an awe-inspiring electronically influenced heavy rock sound. They stay true to their music and are not corrupted by the conformity that surrounds them. The live show is incredible – they involve the spectators and fans in their performance and are rewarded with sincere enthusiasm and participation. Warped Tour allowed me the chance to speak with bassist Ryan Head, guitarist Jim Kaufman, and drummer, Seven Antonopolous.

Who/What are your major influences?
Ryan: Pink Floyd
Seven: Slayer
Jim: Nine Inch Nails
Ryan: We all like different styles of music which is cool. When we get into writing we bring our own influences to the table. It really makes the band sound different.
Jim: When we agree on something we know that it’s definitely good because we all like it. If we don’t all like it then we don’t use it.
Seven: Which rarely happens actually.

How did the band form?
Seven: About six years ago.
Ryan: Yeah, about six years ago in Phoenix, AZ. There were a couple different bands we were playing in. We all just wanted to play with each and thought it would be better that way. We quit our bands and started this.
Jim: And the rest is history.

What do you consider to be your greatest musical achievement?
Seven: The last record we just put out.
Ryan: Yeah, The Spore.
Jim: Our first major distribution through Warcon.

What genre do you consider your music?
Ryan: Polka…(laughs)
Seven: Industrial Rock or something…Metal.
Jim: Industrial. Whatever genre it is, it’s a good genre.
Ryan: We’re definitely not Emo.
Jim: We have such a broad range of what we do that it’s hard to pinpoint one genre.
Seven: Listen and figure it out for yourself.

What’s the bands biggest regret?
Seven: I don’t know. That we didn’t start earlier I guess…but I’m not sure that that would have been possible for us.
Jim: If we had started any earlier…we were pretty young when we started this band already. We pretty much stand behind anything we’ve ever done.

Could you describe the songwriting process?
Jim: Very emotional. We use computers mostly to write and record our ideas and then work things out after that. It’s easy for us to write with emotion because we write from the heart and everything’s about experiences. It’s natural for us.

As a band how do you stay true to your music and art?
Jim: By staying true to ourselves.
Seven: We do what we want to do – no matter what we hear.
Jim: We’re influenced by different styles and bands, but we just continue to do what we want to do.

What would be your dream line-up?
Jim: Alive or dead? Nine Inch Nails
Ryan: We went on tour with Avenged Sevenfold and My Chemical Romance…that was a great tour.

Any last comments?
Ryan: Check out the website…opiateforthemasses.com…but our CD The Spore.
Jim: You can also check us out on Myspace.