Review Fix Exclusive: The Cannibal Kids’ Damian Gutierrez Talks ‘Save Me The Time’ And More

Review Fix chats with The Cannibal Kids’ Damian Gutierrez, who discusses the band’s original, goals and creative process for their new single, “Save Me The Time.”

Review Fix: How did you get involved in music?

Damian Guitierrez: Music started off being just a natural instinct for us and quickly became an uncontrollable desire to learn, create, and do more. And that goes for all of us. We’ve all been making music since we were 10-12 years old. We have all grown with it, with each other, and it’s become a huge part of our lives. We don’t see ourselves doing anything other than music. This is, without overstating, the most important thing in our lives.   

Review Fix: What’s your creative process like?

Guitierrez: Every song is completely different. But more recently the three of us have built project studios in all of our houses. Since we all love to record and produce we’ve been trying a new process. We all write an idea at home and bring the project file in person and hash it out in of Ableton. We’ve been trying to nail song-structure and sonic production in ways that are fresh to us. This is where a lot of our new sounds has been coming from. But again, you never know when that song will creep up on you. There have been several moments when, out of nowhere, a melody will strike me and I gotta run to the bathroom to record it on my phone’s voice memos. For this new project and the new music coming out this and next year we’ve been dedicating weeks to just writing and nothing else. We would sit in a room for hours everyday for 2 weeks and write and write and write. No rules, no parameters, nothing. We wanted to push ourselves to the limit.  

Review Fix: What inspires you?

Guitierrez: Cannibal Kids is inspired by love, technicolor horror movies, nature and a lot of old foregin records. We are also super inspired by the musicians around us, physically and metaphorically. We love seeing people  push the lines of what it means to be a musical artist in 2019. We only hope to be able to do the same one day.  

Review Fix: How would you describe your sound to someone who has never heard you?

Guitierrez: Quirky, catchy, indie-pop tunes. Sometimes laid back and nostalgic, other times dancey and emotional and ready to punch you in the face.   

Review Fix: How are your live shows different from your studio work?

Guitierrez: Sonicly our sounds much more raw live than our studio work. We also love to do alternative endings and transitions between songs that you won’t hear on our records. And depending on the theme of the show (i.e. christmas show, halloween show) we change our set list to include musical allusions from other famous tunes. For instance, for our Halloween setlist, we have a whole Luigi’s Mansion Theme cover  that transitions into our song Graphing. We try to make every show as special as possible. It can be a bit hard to describe so make sure to come out and experience it for yourself next time we come by!

 Review Fix: What inspired your latest single?

Guitierrez: “Save Me The Time” was half written last year and half this. I was going through the woes and motions of dating in Miami, as everyone does here. And that’s mainly what the song was based on. All the stupid flakeiness and annoying parts of wanting to make a reltionship work but in the end, it doesn’t. When I brought the idea to Dustin and Luke, they loved it and we hashed it out within a few weeks. The song isn’t directed towards anyone in particular, it was just one type of way I was feeling at that moment. The funny/sad truth is, even I have committed some of the things I was railing against in the song, so it’s just as much a heartbreak-song as it is a song about personal reflection. For the ending-bridge I wanted to shift the direction from being about blaming others to blaming myself and calling out the things I need to work on… also that I don’t care if you call me back… even if it hurts haha.

Review Fix: What are your goals for the rest of 2019?

Guitierrez: We’re closing off the year with lots of BTS work on our next single and music videos. As well as planning tours and more content. So yes, we’ll be working over our Christmas vacation.

Review Fix: What’s next?

Guitierrez: There’s no telling honestly. As we know is that we’re going to working nonstop all next year to keep pushing out more content for our audience and continuing to grind for success.  

Review Fix: Anything else you’d like to add?

Guitierrez: Thank you so much for having us! If you like what you’ve read so far, please check out our latest single “Save Me The Time” as well as our other single “I Keep My Eyes Closed” and it’s new music video!. And please follow us on any social media platform with the handle @CannibalKids. Our music can be found anywhere and so can we. Be on the lookout for tour dates and come out. Again, thank you!