Alyse:

So, yeah, our band’s name is Lylvc. At the time, I had lilac hair, but obviously we have a dual vocalist band. At the time, a lot of bands were using V’s instead of A’s, it was the cool thing to do. We thought it made the band name and logo look a little bit more edgy and have that dual vocal kind of duality.

Alyse  :

I’ve been singing since I was a kid. I started writing music when I was six years old in the church. But, I grew up listening to Chris Cornell, Metallica and a lot of the great rock legends. I also listened to a lot of blues growing up and people who sang with their soul and pain in their lyrics. I just was a big fan of that. What about you, Oscar?

Oscar  :

I think my big inspiration, where I really wanted to take the microphone as a platform musically and to kind of speak to the public, was in college. I did debate in college, and I had an opportunity to really hone in on my ability to argue and understand sociopolitical issues. And funny enough, that lines up very well with Rage Against the Machine. A lot of my inspiration was through watching Zack de la Rocha, his energy, the way he approaches the crowd, the way he speaks with such a passion and fervor for his beliefs and his desire to stand up for human rights, was where that came for me. I was like, if I could emulate that in any form, with the background I have and the way I grew up, I feel like I have a responsibility and skill set that I’ve kind of created for myself.

Alyse :

I ordered some pizza for my band and we had way too much. Sometimes my eyes want to eat so much! So I ordered a billion billion pizzas. And then I realized, okay, my band is completely stuffed. They’re full, and we have all these pizzas left. So I ended up messaging Butcher Babies and Eva Under Fire and I told them all to meet us if they wanted to eat some pizza. It was our first time that we got to sit down with them and just kind of be humans together. I thought that that was really nice because we’re out here to work together but it was nice to be able to have that camaraderie.

Oscar  :

I think similarly, it’s the human connection aspect of things, right? So we hang out all night, whether we open or whether we headline. We’re hanging out all night to talk to fans and just ask people their thoughts. Everybody made time for us, and we gave back. So on this tour, we’ve actually been premiering our new song, Starless, that just released today. That song has a very deep personal story for myself over my suicide attempt seven years ago. I talk about that on stage, because like I said, I think with our platform, it’s very important for us to tell our stories. And kind of be a point of connection for others as well. After the shows, I’ve had a lot of opportunities to talk with other people who have had similar stories or had similar stories within their family or friends. I think a lot of people have been impacted by suicide or depression in a lot of ways. That opportunity to get very personal and connect with people, is why I’m telling the story. To recognize that you’re not alone, that people who have been affected are not alone, none of us are legitimately alone in those feelings. We have people to reach out to, we can, and we should.

Alyse  :

I have family in Ohio, so they visit pretty much every time we play in Ohio. But I think that there’s always been a great energy, because I tell them, I’m from here and then they’re like let’s throw down for her. So it’s another connection. There’s been a lot of great energy on this tour!

Oscar:

Yeah, I think we gather together and do a fist bump thing. I think it really does energize each other, because, like I said, whether we are opening the night, or whether we’re closing the night, we bring the energy to leave our imprint on that stage. We make every effort to burn the building down. So we come together right before the show, have our little chant and just make sure we’re feeling right and feeling ready and gonna stay tight during our performance. And let’s burn this mother down! It’s a way for us to have that point of connection right before we go on stage. We might have come separately and had whatever kind of days individually. We all work our day jobs on the road, or we’re running around throughout the town trying to take care of errands for ourselves. But right before hitting the stage, we’re coming on as a unit, and so we perform as a unit. We keep it together as a unit, and we try to burn the building down every time!

Alyse:

I’m a computer hacker. Yeah, I literally, legally, my day job is a computer hacker. I specialize in malware, making viruses that infect your computer. And I’m really, really good at breaking into cell phones, but I write detailed reports saying here’s how I broke in, here’s how to fix it, and how to prevent it from happening.

I have my day job hacking for a very big financial market out of Chicago. They run stocks, options and features. I run their adversarial red team, their DDoS attack team and their non stealth team. That’s three hacking teams, and I oversee all third party pen tests. I also do hacker one and bug crowd for hacking like Apple and Google and people who have bug bounty programs and that fuels our dream. I like being able to spend all of my day job money just into Lylvc and doing my dream. I want to sing and make memories and make experiences on the road. I think that there’s no reason why I should be sitting on money when I can live my dream. So I really love being able to put everything into our art.

Oscar  :

Alyse has the most exciting thing out of the band members. It’s been really cool to be even a little part of listening to a Mission Impossible kind of person, like “we’re getting into the database, closing all these things, hacking into the mainframe”, and I’m like, oh my god, it’s the matrix.

Alyse:

I’m legally doing this!

Oscar  :

Over the last three months, I’ve really explored what I want to explore about myself, creatively and artistically. I typically always have a million different things going on. Like a hobby I haven’t tried. So over the last few months, I’ve actually taken on a tattoo apprenticeship and been working on my artistry while being on tour. Some of them have heard me buzzing in the back with my tattoo machine, practicing on fake skin. I’ve been trying to share as much of my journey as possible, practicing my drawing and my tattooing skills. I’ve been sharing that online. I’ve had a lot of fans be like, Okay, are you ready? Do you have your gun? It’s been really cool to see and hear the response from a lot of people who are just so supportive, who’ve followed my musical journey, and are interested in following all the artistic avenues that I get to explore.

Oscar  :

I’m already marking the cities where I’m just like, let’s go find a shop that’ll let me work out of it for the night, I’ll ink you up and then we’ll keep it moving to the next city.

Oscar  :

Yeah, absolutely. That’s where my head went.

Alyse:

With all of our songs, Cam writes our instrumentals. Cam is on our on keyboards. He’s not here tonight but he writes all of our instrumentals. Then Oscar and I sit and we listen to the instrumental, and we try to see what emotion it’s evoking for me? Do I feel empowered? Do I feel angry? Do I feel sad? When I listen to this instrumental, how does it make me feel? Because, at the end of the day, if we write lyrics that don’t match the feeling, it’s not going to be a good song. Once we have that emotion in mind, we talk about our individual stories when we feel that emotion. What’s a story that relates to you? Because you have a story that relates to a certain emotion, right? So we try to find a center space between him and I and we write about that emotion, whatever that feeling is. I think the good thing about that is that Oscar and I are both telling the same story from two different perspectives. I think that when you listen to the music, especially live, you feel our lyrics, and you feel this power and passion in everything that we’re saying. We’re not just saying something generic. I’m feeling my verses, he’s feeling his verses, and it’s making us connect to each other, because you have something that evokes that emotion from you, too. I think that if we can relate, then there’s a more powerful connection between us at night.

Oscar :

Just a big ditto. I think live is where we explode. We love writing and coming up with ideas and being able to creatively collaborate as artists. We really bring it to life on stage. I make every effort to promote “you gotta see us live”. You have to be out there. You have to share in this energy with us. I think it’s one thing to hear the record and it’s another thing to breathe it with us when we’re on stage. We’re trying to share this space, share this energy, share this oxygen, this back and forth with the crowd, this give and take. When we’re able to do that with a crowd who’s there to have a good time, that’s when everybody’s gonna absolutely vibrate on a whole different level.

Oscar:

Yeah, exactly.

Alyse  :

We’re on tour right now. We just finished Ship Rocked in the Bahamas, which was insane. We did Ship Rocked with Halestorm and Motionless In White. It was an amazing experience. Then immediately we got off the ship and it was time to start a six week tour with Eva Under Fire, Butcher Babies and Jeris Johnson, we still have multiple days left. I think today is March 10th. We still have nine days left. After the tour is over, Oscar and I have some writing to do for the label. Then we have MMRBQ in May with Godsmack, Alice Cooper, Everclear, and The Hooters. In September we have Rocklahoma. That’s a huge festival. Then we normally do a tour sometime in the fall or winter. So stay tuned. That should be announced sometime this summer.

Oscar :

I think Eminem because I get told often that I have a very distinctive tone to my voice, and Eminem has a very distinctive tone as well. I started listening to Eminem in third grade. That’s been a huge influence for a bit of the aggression that I bring, but it’s still very different. You wouldn’t say the aggression from Eminem is the same as Zack‘s, right? Or DMX is very distinct. So I think I would want to hear our songs in Eminem‘s voice. I’d definitely be going crazy with that!

Alyse  :

I think if it’s going to be our songs, I have a lot of high notes in my set, so it would probably be hard to pick a voice that wouldn’t be able to hit those high notes. I really love Haley Williams, and I know she’ll be able to knock out those notes. I think if I could swap her vocals, that would align. But if it doesn’t have to be Lylvc songs, and I just want to have some fun with somebody else’s vocals, I think Maria Brink from In This Moment. We have the same manager and we got to see her at Welcome To Rockville when our manager invited us to go. I love her screams, she’s just non stop. I think it would be really cool to play around with her growls and stuff.

Alyse :

Ice Nine Kills for me. They’re killing it right now and the fans are going crazy. I think that those crowds would be insane. I just think that they would eat us up.

Oscar:

Yeah, I think it used to be I Prevail. To just learn how to play drums from their drummer. I grew up singing a lot of their songs as well. I think From Ashes To New would be a lot of fun to tour with. We played with them in Greensboro. We played with them on Ship Rocked. Yeah, they’re super cool. And I think they’re very honest with their audience. Matt talks about mental health awareness and a lot of stuff like that. I think that level of authenticity is so cool. So to get to pair up with a band that’s willing to do that, would line up perfectly with our intention.

Alyse  :

I mean Oscar and I sometimes  jump out into the crowd and stuff depending on the venue.

Oscar  :

I got one. We were in Europe and we had been experimenting with our stage presence. We were on tour with Biohazard and Life Of Agony. So it’s a little bit of a different vibe than what we bring. But it was incredible. We were playing sold out warehouses to 1000s of people. At first we were a bit timid to be out there in front of so many people. Kind of like, wow, this is a new experience. We kept very much to our structure and what we like to do on stage. We were having a little bit of trouble connecting with the crowds. The crowds were very different than what we bring. So they’re looking at us like who are these kids? Dancing around on stage and playing this weird music. But they were bringing that energy of “punch each other in the face” and “we’re old school”. On our keyboardist is Cam, and I said let’s have fun. Let’s experiment. So we started trying to knock each other out on stage. There were days where I would grab him and slam his head against mine. So this experiment had gone on for a couple of weeks, to the point where I think I went up to him and punched him in the stomach. He was like, okay, and he kicked me in the stomach and threw me across the stage. I literally went head first almost into the barrier, falling off a six tall stage. So I’m literally catching myself on the edge, and some poor woman right there in front is just trying to catch me from falling face first into the barrier. Luckily, I didn’t fall off the stage, didn’t break all my teeth. Then we just kept going and looked at each other just laughing like, Okay, now we know the line!

Alyse :

Yeah, I mean, I’m just dancing in my own world, head banging in people’s faces and stuff, and I had no idea you guys were doing that!