GRIMM INTERVIEW - PART 2
Maci Gian
For my second interview, I’ve met up with a local band called Snake Bite, which consists of the members: Styx, Storm, Synth, and Soul, though the fourth one sadly couldn’t make it. We’ll be going into depth over being a Grimm fan long after they’ve shut their doors, traces left behind from a once active community, and signs that the Cauldron might have some activity brewing with it…
Q: Thank you again for agreeing to this interview! I gotta say, it’s very exciting getting to talk to other Grimm fans close to my age, though I’m sure you’ve got more knowledge, seeing as you live so close to them and all. Why don’t you tell the viewers about yourselves!
Styx:
I’m Styx, one’a the lead singers of Snake Bite. Been in Feratuvia my entire life, also like to play the guitar.
Storm:
I’m the drummer—oh, Storm—I’m Storm, and I play the drums. Also lived in Feratuvia my whole life, and I’ve known Styx since we were in grade school. Real big fan of collecting a lotta old media made here. Cassettes, DVDs, zines, records, though those are harder to come across.
Styx:
Yeah, yeah, she’s roped me into collectin’ as well, ha, and it’s kinda what got us interested in starting a band in the first place. And over there is—
Synth:
Hiiii, hi, hey, I’m Synth! I’m the ’newest’ member, but I’ve been here for several months now. I moved from France wit my family, and I grew up playing flute and the piano, and I dabbled a liiitttle bit with a violin, but I’m still super new. I uh, I actually perform with the synthesizer for our band!
Styx:
Soul’s another friend of our’s, also known him for a long time. Sings ’n plays the guitar with me, but uh, couldn’t make it here, unfortunately.
Q: Could you tell us a little bit more about your band?
Styx:
We’re sorta underground. Lotta the posters and CDs we have, they say we’re a ‘rock band’, but we just play whatever we want and see what happens. Whenever one of us gets an idea for a new song, everyone else starts pitchin’ in till we got somethin’ we all like. Storm’s crazy, though. She makes the merch, posters, and she’s able to make like, five songs in under an hour.
Storm:
I just really enjoy it, haha. I think being in a band’s the best thing to ever happen to me. I always have this urge to make something, like I have to make something or I’ll die, so as soon as we finish up a song, I get about a million ideas for new ones. I like to burn CDs, or—or make cassettes, and flyers, and Synth’s got this cool button-maker she got dirt cheap at a thrift store we’ve been using like crazy! Sometimes we make our own shirts and jackets—stuff with our logo on it, right? But those take longer.
A lotta my designs are inspired by older, indie bands in Feratuvia, like Castle Ruins, 3 Withering Crows, and Barbed Wire Knuckles. There’s a ton of cool record covers and box art that go crazy with their colors and compositions. If you ever go to one of the record stores here, you’ll see what I mean.
Synth:
I was really surprised how many concerts happen in Feratuvia. Before I moved here, concerts were a big deal at my old city, but they only happened in one or two super expensive theaters or concert halls and it was just the big celebrities, you know? But here, there’s a ton of bands that perform literally anywhere, including ours.
Like, we’ll try to get a spot in a bar or club, but their lists get filled up really fast, so we’ll end up playing at like, in front of a car repair place, or the roof of a restaurant, or at a graveyard.
Q: Woah, are you allowed to perform at graveyards?
Synth:
Well—we haven’t gotten in trouble for it… Yet?
Styx:
Other bands do it all the time.
Q: So bands—more specifically independent artists—seem to be a big part of Feratuvia. Did Grimm have their own band?
Storm:
I don’t think they had one band play for them, I think they grabbed whoever caught their attention at the time and had ‘em perform before their games or during halftimes.
Synth:
Don’t think they had anyone place after the games either?
Storm:
No, probably cause it’d be real awkward if they lost, meanwhile rock’s on full blast, haha!
Styx:
Yeah, sorry, we don’t really know too much about the Grimm stuff. Soul’s more of the Grimm guy. He’s the only reason we knew that team even liked this sorta music in the first place.
Q: How’d Soul find out Grimm was interested in music?
Storm:
So when you go to a record store here—any of ‘em—what’s nice about them is that they’re basically an archive too—
Synth:
They just don’t throw anything away.
Storm:
Shush, shush, shush—! But what I was saying, they got a ton of old things there, and at one point Soul found a cassette with Grimm’s logo on the back of the box. We thought it was some official merch so we asked, and the owner told us that any bands that were personally selected got to include the team’s logo on their stuff to show it was ’official’. Kind of like a ‘badge of honor’ sorta deal.
Styx:
Some of the bands had a little section at th’bottom that told you which player liked ‘em most.
Synth:
Oh, the CDs, the CDs!
Storm:
Right! Some CDs also had that Grimm logo, and they had actual recordings of them in the Cauldron, so you could see what the place was like during halftime. They’d be recording right in the middle of the field, audio wasn’t always the best cause there’d be a million people cheering, or there’d be really bad wind, or the disk was all scratched up, but it wasn’t the worst. It was cool to hear how different every band was.
Soul got really interested in Grimm whenever they appeared in any of those videos, to the point he’d only rewatch their bits so he could see what the whole team looked like. He’d take about a hundred screenshots whenever they were on screen, and started asking around if anyone knew anything.
Styx:
We burnt him a CD that had nothing but Grimm in it as a birthday gift and he nearly cried. We even made a fake dvd manual thing that had pictures and stuff of the players, the Cauldron, all that, and we made the cover of the box look like it was some ’sports-education’ thing so he wouldn’t get in trouble. His parents don’t like him listening to music—or anything they think’s ’bad’—they would’ve taken it away. Don’t think they even know he’s in our band, pretty sure he’s told ‘em we’re a ‘book club’ or whatever. Hate ‘em.
Ah, you know, speaking of the Cauldron, we were almost gonna perform there once.
Q: What? Really?
Synth:
Not like—! It wasn’t official! We kinda did it in a way we weren’t supposed to…
Styx:
We were trying to find a place for our next performance, and Soul suggested the Cauldron.
Synth:
I was completely against it.
Styx:
You thought it was haunted.
Synth:
That place is sooo freaky, I can handle anywhere else in Feratuvia, but anytime I look at that castle it’s like someone else is looking back!
Styx:
But it would’ve been so sick—that’s why I thought it was a good idea—that it’d be cool. Imagine: Gettin’ to play in front of the Cauldron, that wicked castle behind you as the slamming of drums fills the air, those nasty, twisted trees curling around you as you’re screaming into the mic, all while the crowd’s clawing at you through that fence… Tell me that doesn’t sound like a good show!
Q: So what exactly happened?
Styx:
We all met up in front of the Cauldron one night and climbed over the fence. Synth ’n I hadda help Soul and Storm up—
Storm:
Not the best climbers.
Styx:
—And we started walking around, trying to see where would be the best spot, but man, it was insane how massive it was. You see the photos, you can see it all over Feratuvia, and you go ‘Cool, a castle’, but when you’re up close to it? The size just hits you. It was awesome.
Synth:
I hated it, ugh, sticks and vines kept scratching my legs, anytime a leaf touched me I thought it was someone’s hands, and it was getting so dark! I kept telling them we were being watched and they didn’t believe me!
Styx:
You just said it always felt like you were being watched around that place!
Synth:
This time I was right, though! I told you a million times and you didn’t listen!
Styx:
And I said I was sorry about a million times too!
Q: Someone was watching you? Who? Did you get a good look at them?
Storm:
No. It was getting late, most of the castle was like, just a giant, looming shadow at that point… Synth wanted to stay away cause she got a bad feeling about who was inside, I wanted to stay away because I was worried about the outside.
The thing looked ancient. Cracked walls, dirty windows, covered in webs, moss, vines, holes in the wall that probably had a nest of animals living inside of it, I thought the place was gonna collapse. We stayed close but not too close to it if that makes sense? But Soul, he was just… Looking at it.
Like, his eyes were just locked onto something the entire time we were making our way around it. Even when we were talking to him, I noticed he’d keep looking back to that spot. I tried to see where he was looking, but I just—I couldn’t.
Eventually I bumped into him for the hundredth time, but before I could say anything, he was looking up at the castle again. I turned, and then—then I saw it. There was a lit window, and someone was there.
I grabbed onto Soul and I started whispering—I thought the guy could hear us, I dunno why—but I whispering: “Dude, dude, how long have they been there?”
And Soul said: “I dunno.”
And I didn’t believe him. Or—I didn’t fully believe him. Not then, not now.
He was watching that window the entire time, there had to have been a reason. He rather noticed the light was on, or he noticed someone was there, and he didn’t tell us anything.
Styx:
I still think it was a ghost.
Storm:
Of who? Spike Dawson?
Styx:
Hey, people say he never left the castle after the incident.
Storm:
Anyways, anyways, after that, Synth screamed and freaked us all out. I thought she also saw the guy—
Synth:
But there were a ton of those cloaked people—the—the Cauldron’s guards—and they were coming from all over, and we just started running! We just kept going and going, we leapt over the fence and all shouted that’d we text each other as soon as we got home to make sure we were all safe, it was so scary!
Styx:
Y’know what’s weird, though? Anytime I heard people say anything about those Grimm guards, they’d mention there were only a ’few’ of ‘em, like four or six at the most. We had nearly 10 approachin’ us.
I dunno if the current owner hired more of them, or if more came out cause we looked like a big group, but if they wanted to scare us off, it worked.
Q: Did you ever get caught? What was the aftermath like?
Synth:
No, and that’s… Honestly, even weirder. Or maybe something did happen, and we didn’t see it, cause we were hiding over the next few days.
Storm:
I ran off with Styx and just crashed at their place during that time. We tried to get Soul to come over, but he was too scared about those guards finding us, or his parents finding out, so he stayed at his house.
Synth:
I stayed home for as long as I could, but I still had to work. I uh, I do part time at the Abominable Abundance, it’s a diner, and I kept, like… Waiting for someone to come up to me and arrest me. I kept thinking they’d still be wearing that cloak, but honestly, if they came up to looking like one of my regulars, I’d probably freak out more.
Storm:
Looking back now, the fact we were the only people refusing to go outside definitely made us look suspicious.
Styx:
Definitely.
Storm:
Like, if they were hunting us down, and they had tabs on everyone in Feratuvia, they definitely would’ve locked onto us. But uh, no, nothing happened. Didn’t get a letter, no ominous people watching us from the shadows, and when we went back to the castle, it looked like it was empty again.
Q: You went to the castle again?
Styx:
Soul wanted to. I dunno what got into him, I dunno, maybe it was that figure in the window, but I had never seen him want to get into a mess like that again. Not that he hates getting into trouble with us, but when things start to get too risky, he gets… He gets genuinely scared, like he knows he’s gonna die if he tries to do it again. Worries me.
Synth:
Yeah, usually if we’re about to do something stupid, Soul’s the only one who agrees with me when I say we should knock it off, but he was so serious about going back to the castle.
Styx:
Right, right, cause when we met up again, he was like: ‘We have to go back. We gotta go back. Please? Can you help me?’
Storm:
I thought he wanted to see the person again to maybe get a better look at them, but he said it wasn’t that. Don’t fully believe him with that either, but I did believe him when he said he wanted to go back.
Synth:
He looked—he looked anxious when he was saying that. Not in a ’scared’ way, but… Ah, it’s weird to describe, but it’s like he was… In a rush?
Styx:
Yeah, noticed it too. Biggest reason I agreed to go back; never seen him that way in my life.
Synth:
I was able to convince them that meeting in front of the castle again would be a bad idea, so we went down to the uh—we went through the sewers instead. It was gross—
Storm:
Disgusting.
Synth:
I actually found it much easier than going around the castle! But uh, the sewers were huge. Like a huge, freaky, smelly maze, but we thought it must’ve had some access to the castle because of how big it was. We didn’t know where to really start, and I was not going to have us split up, so we just picked a direction and stuck with it.
Storm:
It started with all of us close together, and we’d sometimes hear a strange noise—
Synth:
Probably rats.
Storm:
Yeah, probably, but then Soul eventually took the lead and he looked so serious. He completely shut up and just kept walking. Honestly, it freaked me out more than the sewers, haha, but we were goin’ deeper and deeper, and it was getting late, and we didn’t even think about how we’re gonna get out, but then we heard something—and we saw this light and—
And…
And we had to go back. We went back home.
Q: Really? You might’ve heard someone else in the sewers and saw a light but didn’t investigate it further?
Styx:
Never said it ‘sounded like someone else’.
Q: But why mention you heard something if you thought it wasn’t noteworthy?
Synth:
Cause it was—cause it was kinda scary! And we got scared enough to run away!
Styx:
And even if we did hear something more, some things are best left, ah, classified.
Q: Classified? Why? You said you didn’t check it out, which means you didn’t see anything worth classifying. You didn’t even hear anything weird, apparently. What’s there to ’classify’?
Storm:
It’s for safety, you know? We don’t want to take any chances, especially if we were too close to the Cauldron on accident, or if we exposed something important—if we revealed it here, publicly, those guards would actually have a reason to hunt us down.
Q: But you’ve admitted to trespassing on private property, and going off of this story, you’ve basically done it twice, is that… Not enough of a reason for the guards to find you?
Synth:
Hey, hey, woah! We never said we were close to the Cauldron when we went through the sewers! We didn’t even see where that light led to or what was above us!
Q: No, you three didn’t… But what about that Soul person? He was ahead of you, wasn’t he? Did he see what was ahead?
Styx:
Neither of us are Soul. We can’t answer that.
Q: Did Soul want to go back home?
Styx:
He came back.
Q: Alright, why don’t you tell me what you are able to share. What happened afterwards?
Storm:
We ended up not having our next show at the Cauldron, it was too risky. My boss at the music store I work at, she came up to me and told me there was a bar looking for a jig, so we went.
Q: No follow up conversations about the sewers?
Storm:
That was—it was a private conversation. I don’t feel comfortable sharing, sorry. But we, uh, we started playing, and everything was alright, but Soul kept staring off, and—and I think he was—I—he was just shaken up, I think.
Q: Could you please remind me why Soul couldn’t make it to this interview?
Synth:
He’s busy with stuff, you know?
Q: No, I don’t know. In fact, I don’t think you’ve even told me why he couldn’t be here in the first place. Heck, for all I know, this guy might not actually exist—
Styx:
You think we’d make up a whole entire guy for an interview?
Q: I don’t know! But what I do know is that you guys have talked more in depth about your band-adventures and music more than you have about Grimm. Yeah, you gave me a few brief stories, and one really blurry photo, but—
Storm:
Hey, hey! Wait! We have a photo of the sewers too, we’re not lying about this stuff!
Q: What. Guys, this is scary—I don’t even know what I’m looking at.
Storm:
The sewer system!
Q: Okay, yes, obviously, but that’s not Grimm related. That’s just you guys getting into trouble again. And why is the quality like that?
Synth:
We’re really, really sorry that we can’t share everything, it’s just for safety reasons!
Q: Then why did you agree to this? You emailed me, you got the forms going over what this process was going to be like, you knew I was looking for information on Grimm, you told me you had plenty to share, but apparently none of you are big Grimm fans, and the only one that is just-so-happens to be the same member who isn’t here. I feel like this has been nothing but an attempt to promote your band.
Styx:
Look, we just promised him that we wouldn’t share everything.
Q: Promised who? Soul?
Styx:
That’s classif—