Josh Feigert of Wymyns Prysyn talks ‘Head In A Vise’

• Steve Pomberg
• Wymyns Prysyn: Andrew Wiggins (from left), Bobby Michaud, and Josh Feigert.

Head In A Vise by WYMYNS PRYSYN

Tonight (Thurs., Jan. 22), Wymyns Prysyn takes the stage at 529 to celebrate the arrival of it’s first proper LP, Head In A Vise. Before the show, singer and bass player Josh Feigert took a few minutes to talk about inspiration, found art, and how technology leaves a mark on his songwriting.

Regarding Head In A Vise’s cover art, the frame seems to be an important part of the image: That’s how it’s presented on your Bandcamp page as well. It’s not just a jpeg of the artwork. Did you want to emphasize that it’s something more than just the cover?

I feel like, to an extent, other covers I have done were simple one or two-color ink drawings that I was happy with but were primitive or they weren’t as developed. We spent a long time on the LP, and this is a painting that I spent a lot of time on. When Bobby Michaud moved here to play drums is when I started working on that painting, while hanging out with him at our house on Danner St. I would go out in the front yard spray paint while hanging out with him. It was the beginning of the era of having Bobby in the band. For me, painting using found materials is really important, so hopefully people notice it’s painted on a window. Most of my art is done on found material, even a lot of the drawings are done on paper that I’ve found and scavenged. I think that’s the closest I have come to doing something good for the world (laughs). There’s so much waste out there that can be used for free. One, I’m being thrifty, which is also part of the thing with the cover art. Rather than get someone to take a picture and make a jpeg of it I just took it with my phone. However, we did get Tim Song to do a much better photo of the cover for the LP.

How does that found aesthetic relate to Wymyns Prysyn’s sound and the image?

As far as found materials being important to me, and being related to music, I find a lot of music by just going to thrift stores and looking through dollar bins, and picking up stuff I have no idea about. A lot of the things that influence me are these kinds of lost, trash things, as opposed to something that’s really obvious — maybe it’s just one note I found on this one record in a dumpster. As far as a consistent aesthetic with my art, a lot of people don’t realize it but in the line work there are bodies. I’m not going to say they’re human, but on the new record we have a song called “Tumor Town.” It’s about a dystopian future where people are connected through a network of tumors, like people are giant 5,000 pound blobs and the tumors act as wires, almost, and people get money through government assistance based on the amount of disease they have. So diseases are shared through this network of tumors and people are trying to get sicker and sicker in order to live.

I get the impression you’re talking about the Internet.

Yeah, I mean the Internet and technology in general are very influential in my lyrics. Some of the line drawings are like these tangled bodies where there might be a torso or a head and this arm goes into the head, so it’s like representative of that network of tumor people.

The whole thought process sounds very — industrial. More concerned with the grim side of technology. Wymyns Prysyn is one of those groups where I’ve often had to ask myself, “What kind of music is this?” Do you think of it as punk rock?

It definitely is.

But there’s a lot more to what you do than just cut-and-dry punk rock.

It’s the seed of it. The beginning of it. On the new record we have a synthesizer and tape manipulation. The end of the record is a song that is built on something that was recorded about 10 years ago. It is me, Bradford Cox, Brandon Floyd, and Joseph and Chris from Wilson and Heath recording in the basement of the Danner St. house. It was just a jam session we had. It ends with Bradford (I think it’s Bradford) doing this vocal loop, and I thought ‘that’s how I want this record to end.’

It’s called “Totem Reality.” Has Bradford heard the song as it appears on the record?

I don’t think he has. He’s a pretty open-minded person who listens to a lot of different music; maybe he’d enjoy it. I don’t know. He’d have to answer that. But the title of the song was from a time when I ran into him and one of the guys who plays in the band Polish Nails at Highland Row. Me and Kim Sullivan ran into them. We started talking — I don’t remember what we were talking about, but Kim misunderstood something and said “Totem Reality?” That’s what she thought she heard one of us say. Bradford and I both looked at each other and said, “I’m using that!” I guess I got to it first, but I wanted to acknowledge him and put him in the song.

Tell me about the album’s title track, “Head In A Vise.”

When it all started, “Head In A Vise” was the obvious choice to be the first song on the album. It sets everything off and it’s the one song we were the most stoked about. While it still sounds like a song we’ve done before, it pushes the vibe we’re going for with this record. I think my favorite song on the album is probably “No Home,” which is the first song on the second side. It’s the one that I almost felt sort of embarrassed about when I first singing it. I hadn’t figured out how I wanted to sing it yet. Now I think it might be my favorite song I have ever written. There are some chords on it and changes that I’m really proud of. Now, I’m kind of wondering how I ever came up with them.

<a href=”http://clatl.com/atlanta/night-birds-dinos-boys-ghb-wymyns-prysyn/Event?oid=13210699” target=blank_”>Wymyns Prysyn plays 529 tonight with Night Birds, Dinos Boys, and GHB. $8. 9 p.m. 529 Flat Shoals Ave. 404-228-6769. www.529atlanta.com.