While no longer Snot‘s newest member in the face of Sonny Mayo‘s departure hits past April, vocalist Andy Knapp has certainly been the most impactful addition to the group this year. Plucked from relative obscurity outside of his local band scene, Knapp has gone on to fill the role previously inhabited by the late Lynn Strait, ex-Bad Wolves vocalist Tommy Vext and more.
Despite the big shoes to fill, Snot fans have largely welcomed Knapp with open arms. And while it’s surprising how he almost feels tailor-made for the role, it turns out Snot have actually been a longtime favorite of his. In a new chat with audioeclectica.com, Knapp spoke about getting the opportunity to front the band for their successful reunion run that began this year. He stated, “This whole thing, I still don’t have the right words to express what it means to me and what this band means to me and what Lynn Strait was to me growing up, wanting to play music.”
Knapp went on to outline his musical upbringing, including the first time he heard Snot in the 90s, and the impact the band had on his life since [transcribed by Blabbermouth.net]:
“I kind of dabbled in everything, but I think, the high school years and all that stuff, I was more of a hip-hop kid than I was punk rock and stuff like that. I grew up in Oxnard, and mostly everybody was listening to Misfits and Dead Kennedys and all that real old-school punk stuff, and I was more into like N.W.A. and LL Cool J and Beastie Boys and stuff like that. And then when I moved to Ventura, I met a group of friends and that’s what really kind of got me into listening to more metal and more rock music. That was my freshman or sophomore year. That’s when Nirvana hit, and that just fucking changed the whole game. Loving hip-hop and getting introduced to Nirvana and stuff like that, I was just kind of dabbling into that side, and then — boom — Rage Against The Machine comes out and just kind of puts it all together…”
When asked if Rage Against The Machine was the band that crystalized things for him, Knapp cited both them and Beastie Boys‘ revered third studio album “Check Your Head” as being pivotal to his musical journey. He then got back on track, stating:
“And then me and my brother, we really started getting into sound systems in our cars and stuff. And then that’s when Korn came out and it was bumping, so it was, like, ‘Oh, shit, this music hits hard.’ And it had that kind of hip-hop feel. It was just all kind of a progression.”
He continued:
“I was the prime audience for nü-metal, man. All those bands — Linkin Park, Deftones, Papa Roach, any of those bands. And then Snot was just the band that kind of just stood off by itself.”
After explaining how his late teens saw him and his group of friends begin to explore playing music on their own, he went on recall his first experience with Snot:
“I can remember exactly where I was when I first heard Snot. My boy was, like, ‘Dude, you gotta check out this band.’ And he threw on Snot and the first song he played was ‘Snooze‘. And I was listening to it and I heard Jamie‘s snare and I was just into that snare sound. It kind of had that Helmet crack to it, that piccolo kind of feel. And I was just jamming to it. And then Lynn comes in, all loungey and just kind of loose.
And I’m, like, ‘Oh, that’s pretty cool. It’s different.’ It was different from what was going on. And then when he came in with, ‘Well, here’s your motherf*ckin’ wake-up call,’ it was just, like, ‘Who the f*ck is this guy?’ And I just got wrapped into that record hard. So I caught the record, like, summertime of ’98, and I remember going, like, ‘Oh, I really wanna go see this band,’ blah, blah, and I was waiting for my opportunity to see this band, and he passed away that year.
The record had been out for a while. But anyway, that’s what kind of leaned me into going back to my boy saying, like, ‘Why don’t you try to sing?’ And I was, like, ‘Well, if I’m gonna f*cking sing, I’m gonna try to do it like that guy [Lynn] does it. ‘Cause he doesn’t give a f*ck, and he’s just doing his own thing. And that was my approach.”
“I tried to explain it to Mikey and Tumor and Jamie — that was what I learned from Lynn, was just, like, just do you. Be real. That’s just kind of what I felt coming from him. And he was so relatable. He was from our area. I tattooed my stomach like him, I pierced my eyebrow like him. I was just enthralled with this kid, the way he dressed and the way he carried himself. I’m not trying to say that I’m anything like that guy. That guy, he was a crazy dude.
He was very relatable as far as just — I guess his appearance, the way he dressed, and that’s what I was attracted to. I was just, like, ‘Oh, I’m gonna pierce my eyebrow. I’m gonna bleach my hair.’ It wasn’t an obsession or anything like that. It was just I thought he was f*cking cool.”
Later in the chat, Knapp confirmed that despite new material already in the works with Snot, he also has a record from his other band Stronger Than Machines in the works for a release either late this year or early next year.
