Ice Nine Kills' Spencer Charnas Names the Bands + Productions That Inspired Their Live Show

The Ice Nine Kills live show has been years of influence in the making and Spencer Charnas reveals those who inspired what you're seeing now during a chat with Full Metal Jackie.

The singer says his influences date back to some of their first shows he ever saw, shouting out Rob Zombie and the Family Values Tour of the late '90s. But it's not just rock shows that have grabbed his attention.

"I've always been super interested in musical theater, so seeing Les Misérables and Phantom of the Opera when I was a kid, my parents took me to see it, that kind of stuff, although it wasn't rock or metal, but the showmanship and that level of production blew me away."

Charnas also shouts out a very big influence in Metallica that also happens to be one of their tourmates of the last few years. "It's so cool to be playing with bands that we idolized and that inspired us," said the singer.

As it was Halloween weekend, Charnas and Full Metal Jackie also delved into Charnas' horror movie fascination. The singer recalls the "lightbulb moment" that changed their career, shouted out the movie he was most excited to address in song and shared some of the cool experiences indulging his horror movie love through the inroads he's made as a horror rock band.

In addition, Charnas speaks about recently making the jump into the movie industry writing the script for a new film. Check out more of the conversation below.

It's Full Metal Jackie. Very excited to say that this week on the show, we have got the one and only Spencer Charnas of Ice Nine Kills with us. Finally making it happen. Thanks so much for being here. The band, of course, had a heavy summer and fall tour schedule, plus the I Heard They Kill Live 2 album you can order as well. Spencer, let's talk about the live show. You have shown such dedication to the live presentation. I was wondering, who was your holy grail of concert showmanship growing up?

It's really a combination of so many different artists. A few that I could list that sort of blew my proverbial mind as a kid seeing for the first time ... I saw Rob Zombie. I had never seen anything like that theatrical with the robots onstage and the go-go dancers.

One of the first arena shows I ever went to was the Family Values Tour in '98. The first year of that tour was at the Worcester Centrum and I was just blown away. Everybody was amazing. Rammstein with the fire, Limp Bizkit with the alien spaceship stuff and then Korn with the Korn Cage. It was just one of those moments that kind of blew me away.

I've always been super interested in musical theater, so seeing Les Misérables and Phantom of the Opera when I was a kid, my parents took me to see it, that kind of stuff, although it wasn't rock or metal, but the showmanship and that level of production blew me away.

And then punk bands like Goldfinger and Reel Big Fish and obviously Metallica. Seeing them in probably, I think it was '97, my dad took me to see them. Their showmanship, and I remember there was one part of the show where they made it seem like there was an emergency, like some guy got twisted up in the wires and on fire and it turned out that it was part of the show.

Those are probably the bands I can think of right off the top of my head, and it's so crazy that we formed relationships with several of those bands that I mentioned so, so many years later. It's so cool to be playing with bands that we idolized and that inspired us.

Ice Nine Kills, "The Laugh Track"

Spencer, another great headline tour the band did with Dayseeker, Kim Dracula the Funeral Portrait and Mest. Plus, they had the opening slot for Metallica. That has to be something of a next level experience, playing to that size of a crowd in those venues. What did you learn from touring with Metallica over the last few years that you've either applied or want to apply to how Ice Nine Kills runs their tours?

What haven't we learned from those guys? Their entire team, from the management to the stagehands to the lighting to the band themselves, they're such great people who have taken us under their wing and sort of showed us the ropes.

On just a playing level, that round stage, it really takes a little while to get used to because it's so different. It's sort of theater in the round, that's really what this is. So the first few times doing it, we were a little like fish out of water. Who do you play to? Because it's such a massive venue. We'd never played anything like that. So sort of through watching them and just kind of feeling the crowd as we went on through the last couple years, we specifically kind of realized you let the jumbotron, the screen do a lot of the work.

You don't have to run around and feel like, "Oh my God, there's 50 to 70,000 people here, I gotta run around like an a maniac." You can kind of take it easy a little bit, because most people that are watching you are watching on those screens, right? So kind of conserve your energy and less is more. That's what I've found on a strictly strategic level.

The two shows that they do in each city with different set lists and different opening acts is something that we were really taken aback by and we just used that sort of model on the last tour that we did.

We did something called the Silver Screamathon where we played Silver Scream 1 on night one and Silver Scream 2: Welcome to Horrorwood on the second night and different support acts on each night. So that was really inspired by what we learned from Metallica, and it worked out so great. Most of the shows that we did, even though we were doing two shows in a single city, sold out and they were just wildly successful.

Spencer, you were just talking about what it meant to be part of that massive, multi-year run with Metallica.

We've just been inspired by them on every level. I've listened to Metallica since I was a little kid and I remember specifically while we were working on the last album talking with our producer, Drew [Fulk], and referencing stuff like, "Okay, I want this opening of 'Welcome to Horrorwood' to be reminiscent of 'Battery,' with that Spanish-style guitar, or we want this breakdown to feel like how the kick drum hits you in 'One.'" And that was before we knew that we'd ever be touring with them.

As a rock and metal guy growing up, every guy that starts a band, their dream tour is this tour. So we're sort of just on cloud nine, pinching ourselves the entire time. We know there are so many great bands out there, bands that are even better than us, that never get this opportunity. So we're just so humbled to be taken under their wings. I can't say enough good things about them and the experience of being on the road with one of the greatest rock bands of all time.

Spencer, there are certain check mark moments in a band's career. Ice Nine Kills recently had one with "A Grave Mistake," becoming the group's first ever gold single. What does it mean to you to have a song reach that mark? And what do you do with the gold record?

It's just crazy, you know? You think about growing up and being aware of gold records and platinum records and you never really think when you start a band that you'd ever attain that level of success.

But what I think about, it's so cool because that piano that starts "A Grave Mistake." I wrote that in my mom's apartment in Salem. I remember it was the first song that I ever wrote using a keyboard. I'm a guitarist. That's how I write my songs predominantly. And I remember going out to Guitar Center and buying this keyboard and putting it in my mom's apartment and, and coming up with that initial riff from "A Grave Mistake," that "Da-na-na-na-na-na." So that's what I think about. Wow, something that just started off just as three notes consecutively that I came up with in my mom's apartment in Salem, Massachusetts has reached and affected that many people. it's so crazy, it's so cool.

WATCH MORE: Ice Nine Kills' Miles Dimitri Baker Plays His Favorite Riffs

I'm saving a nice warm spot on my wall in my studio for that plaque. It's such a great achievement. And also, the song honors such a fantastic film, The Crow. Obviously that movie is shrouded in tragedy. Not only the story of the film, but behind the scenes where Brandon Lee tragically lost his life on that movie set. And so it's a nice way to honor him and his legacy and obviously the song wouldn't exist without that fantastic movie and that fantastic actor that was taken so tragically and obviously far too soon.

Ice Nine Kills, "A Grave Mistake"

Spencer, you've been here since the beginning, while many of your bandmates are newer to the group. Having been through it all, do you have a period that you view as the most personally and creatively rewarding period for having been in this band? I'm not saying it has to be the best album, but just that time that you most enjoyed everything that came with being in this band.

Oh man. Since The Silver Scream came out, the first one, which was 2018 if memory serves. I've been working at this band since I was 15 in high school when we started as more of a punk-ska band and those influences which we still wear on our sleeve very, very clearly actually, more so now than over the last five years.

Just getting that first Silver Scream album out, that was really the first time where it felt like, "Wow, I may have stumbled onto something." I always thought we were a good band, but it wasn't until I took my love of music, which was always obviously at the forefront of what Ice Nine Kills did. But it wasn't until I combined it with my other passion, which is film, and more specifically in terms of those albums, horror movies. So it was that lightbulb moment over the head where you're like, "Oh, that's what I should have been doing this whole time." because at the end of the day, I love music and I love film.

So taking those two worlds and smashing them together was such a fun and rewarding process to make those albums and those songs that I think that that's really why people gravitated towards them, because you could hear how much fun I was having and the band was having creating these things.

And once we released that album and then Welcome to Horrorwood was even more successful, just seeing all of sort of those 15 years of us grinding it out and trying to perfect a formula, come together and really capture people was extremely rewarding.

I'll never forget when the chips started to sort of fall in our favor.

Spencer, we've been talking a bit about horror. It's long been an aesthetic for this band. And I know you love horror movies and stage productions have also served as muses. Is there any film or stage production that is so sacred to you that you've not tried or didn't wanna touch it using it as an influence for your music? Or just the opposite, if nothing was off limits, what's the one film you most couldn't wait to incorporate as an influence for your music?

While we were coming up with which movies to cover, there were always those thoughts in my head like, "How do we do this? This movie's already perfect." But I was just resigned to the fact eventually that the movies are great and my job is to interpret that great film into a different medium. So that took off a little bit of the pressure.

But I think the one that I was always really so excited to tackle was American Psycho. That soundtrack is so '80s and Huey Lewis and I just always thought of Ice Nine Kills doing their thing to that film and to that book.would just be incredible.

It turned out to be one of our most successful songs with that breakdown that sort of breaks the fourth wall and instead of him talking about, "Do you like Huey Lewis?" he's talking about Ice Nine Kills.

It was so cool that we actually needed to get permission from Huey Lewis to do that part in the middle of the song, even though it's like an interpolation, which is slightly changing some of the notes from "Hip To Be Square." He had to approve it and he really liked it and it's so cool that when you look up that song, it says written by the guys in Ice Nine Kills and Huey Lewis. So that was a real tent pole moment for me.

Spencer, your love for horror movies has allowed you certain opportunities others might not have. What was your biggest hero moment getting to meet or work with someone from the film industry? And I kind of wondered if it was even an actor or maybe someone behind the scenes, like an effects specialist or a director?

There's so many that I could list. It's hard to pinpoint one, but off the top of my head, a real great moment for me was .... In 1996, I was already a huge, huge horror fan. I loved all of the slasher franchises like Friday the 13th and Halloween, but I hadn't really seen some others like Army of Darkness in the theater. And so when I went to see Scream in 1996 in the theater, I was 10 or 11 at the time and I just remember sitting there and being so blown away that I was watching a movie where the killer was talking about other horror movies.

He's quizzing Drew Barrymore and he's talking about Friday the 13th, he's talking about Halloween. I was with my cousin at the time and I looked over to him right when that part was happening and I said, "Brandon, this is gonna be my favorite movie of all time." And 30 years later, that's still true.

So through the convention world, we do our own Silver Scream, I've become very friendly with Matt Lillard, who of course is Stu Macher. That's such an iconic role. We've been working on stuff for his liquor company. We did the merchandise for this drop that he did a few months back for a tequila that was delicious. And I remember when we were like, "Oh, let's film some content, me and Matt." So Matt came over to my house and I've got this big Ghostface statue, like right when you walk into my house. I have one of the knives from the original Scream, which I bought in an auction. So I'm like thinking, "This guy's gonna think I'm crazy, right?" But, long story short, to have a guy that I've idolized for years and not just in Scream, but so many amazing movies like SLC Punk, be in my house and filming content and shooting like we're pals, that was a big moment for me for sure.

Spencer, I've seen that you've taken things a step further. You've co-written a new slasher flick, Slashin' of the Christ, that's in the works. You've obviously had a strong visual presentation through the years with the band's music videos and your stage shows. What is it like now to see something you've written being adapted for a feature, and is this something you see yourself getting more involved with down the road?

It's been an incredible experience. I've always been such a lover of film, and not just horror, just film in general — comedies, dramas, action movies, obviously horror. Through Ice Nine Kills over the last five to seven years really embracing the cinematic love and roots that I have as a person into our music videos has been sort of my first getting my feet wet with that kind of stuff, working on scripts.

So to be working on this script with Paul Soter, who of course is in some of the greatest comedies in the last 20 years. He wrote and stars in movies like Super Troopers and Beerfest and Club Dread. So sitting down with a guy that, to me that's like sitting down with James Hetfield and writing a Metallica song. I'm sitting down with Paul Soter and working on a horror comedy.

So we wrote this script together. He immediately got my vision, was so good with dialogue and then it was just incredible that these really big heavyweights in the film industry, in the horror world, Greg Nicotero, co-created and directed a lot of The Walking Dead, and Brian Witten who executive produced the first Final Destination. There are films that I'm obsessed with that aren't horror, like American History X and The Wedding Singer. But they read the script and they fell in love.

So it's such a dream to be now working on a feature length film and we're getting to play with my heroes of music like Metallica in stadiums and we're also getting to work with my heroes in film. So it's really two things kind of happening simultaneously that really are such a pipe dream kind of moment for me.

Spencer, thank you so much for hanging out on this Halloween weekend. So excited for all the things that you have going on and just wishing you the best. Congrats on all the success.

Thanks to Ice Nine Kills' Spencer Charnas for the interview. I Heard They Kill Live 2 is out now and you can catch them on tour later this month in Europe. Stay up to date with the band through their website, Facebook, X, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube platforms. Find out where you can hear Full Metal Jackie's weekend radio show here.