Ennio Morricone, the prolific Italian composer responsible for the scores to over 500 films—including many of Sergio Leone's beloved spaghetti westerns of the '60s—has died at age 91. According to the New York Times, he died on Monday, July 6, at a hospital in his hometown of Rome, after being admitted there last week after a fall.

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The GRAMMY winner's iconic soundtracks were filled with literal bells and whistles and other eclectic sounds that transported moviegoers to the Wild West and beyond. Morricone created a powerful partnership with Italian director, scoring the Dollars trilogy (1964-66), The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966)—all starring Clint Eastwood—Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) and more of his films.

While there are far too many to list, his other notable scores include Giuseppe Tornatore's Cinema Paradiso (1988), Brian De Palma's Untouchables (1987) and Quentin Tarantino's The Hateful Eight (2015), the latter of which earned him an Oscar and a Golden Globe, plus a GRAMMY nomination. The Untouchables score earned him a GRAMMY win at the 1988 GRAMMYs. He was also honored with the Recording Academy's Special Merit Award in 2014 and received seven career GRAMMY nominations.

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Tarantino, like many other directors and musicians, was inspired by the Roman director's majestic soundscapes. Before The Hateful Eight, Tarantino used his music in Kill Bill and Inglourious Basterds.

The power of his compositions was felt outside of the films he scored and even and the movie industry. According to Rolling Stone, "JAY-Z, Metallica, Radiohead, the Ramones, Muse, Gnarls Barkley and many others claim[ed] his music as either sample or influence or both. He was also the rare composer to inspire listeners to buy soundtracks, selling over 70 million records over the course of his career."

As the New York Times explains, one of these inspirations came from his hit "The Ecstasy of Gold," the theme song for The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Metallica has used it as opening music during their concerts and the Ramones used it to close theirs. The GRAMMY-winning classical cellist Yo-Yo Ma recorded a rendition of it on his 2004 album dedicated to the composer, Yo-Yo Ma Plays Ennio Morricone.

Morricone also worked on TV scores as a classical composer, and as studio arranger and composer at RCA. He wrote music for Joan Baez, Paul Anka, Pet Shop Boys, k.d. lang, Andrea Bocelli, Sting and more.

Born in Rome on Nov. 10, 1928, he lived there his whole life. Despite his Hollywood fame, he only first traveled to the United States in 2007 at 78 years old and never learned English. 

"He sometimes scored 20 or more films a year, often working only from a script before screening the rushes. Directors marveled at his range—tarantellas, psychedelic screeches, swelling love themes, tense passages of high drama, stately evocations of the 18th century or eerie dissonances of the 20th—and at the ingenuity of his silences: He was wary of too much music, of overloading an audience with emotions," the Times states.

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Updated Friday Oct. 13, 2023 to include info about Kendrick Lamar's most recent GRAMMY wins, as of the 2023 GRAMMYs.

A GRAMMY veteran these days, Kendrick Lamar has won 17 GRAMMYs and has received 47 GRAMMY nominations overall. A sizable chunk of his trophies came from the 58th annual GRAMMY Awards in 2016, when he walked away with five — including his first-ever win in the Best Rap Album category.

This installment of GRAMMY Rewind turns back the clock to 2016, revisiting Lamar's acceptance speech upon winning Best Rap Album for To Pimp A Butterfly. Though Lamar was alone on stage, he made it clear that he wouldn't be at the top of his game without the help of a broad support system. 

"First off, all glory to God, that's for sure," he said, kicking off a speech that went on to thank his parents, who he described as his "those who gave me the responsibility of knowing, of accepting the good with the bad."

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He also extended his love and gratitude to his fiancée, Whitney Alford, and shouted out his Top Dawg Entertainment labelmates. Lamar specifically praised Top Dawg's CEO, Anthony Tiffith, for finding and developing raw talent that might not otherwise get the chance to pursue their musical dreams.

"We'd never forget that: Taking these kids out of the projects, out of Compton, and putting them right here on this stage, to be the best that they can be," Lamar — a Compton native himself — continued, leading into an impassioned conclusion spotlighting some of the cornerstone rap albums that came before To Pimp a Butterfly.

"Hip-hop. Ice Cube. This is for hip-hop," he said. "This is for Snoop Dogg, Doggystyle. This is for Illmatic, this is for Nas. We will live forever. Believe that."

To Pimp a Butterfly singles "Alright" and "These Walls" earned Lamar three more GRAMMYs that night, the former winning Best Rap Performance and Best Rap Song and the latter taking Best Rap/Sung Collaboration (the song features Bilal, Anna Wise and Thundercat). He also won Best Music Video for the remix of Taylor Swift's "Bad Blood." 

Lamar has since won Best Rap Album two more times, taking home the golden gramophone in 2018 for his blockbuster LP DAMN., and in 2023 for his bold fifth album, Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers.

Watch Lamar's full acceptance speech above, and check back at GRAMMY.com every Friday for more GRAMMY Rewind episodes. 

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Since its release in 2003, there's been a consistent (pingy) drumbeat of chatter about Metallica's St. Anger.

The quixotic snare sound — which bassist and producer Bob Rock claimed he spent about 15 minutes crafting — is central to the St. Anger discourse; a Google search for "metallica st. anger snare" yields about 661,000 results. As for why the eight-time GRAMMY winners uncharacteristically nixed guitar solos? That question yields millions of hits.

Then there's the 2004 documentary Some Kind of Monster, one of the most uncomfortably revealing portraits of a rock band engulfed in a mid-life crisis. Memorable moments abound, but for one scene alone — drummer Lars Ulrich's Middle Earth-looking dad hearing a take, and telling his son to "delete that" — the film is a must-watch.

Given the controversial status St. Anger has accrued, it may seem like the metal community may want to, well, delete it. While your mileage may vary, this hotly debated album shouldn't be consigned to any internet-snark dustbin.

Listening with the benefit of temporal distance, tracks like "Frantic," "Some Kind of Monster" and "The Unnamed Feeling" sound raw and alive — perhaps of their time, given its adjacency to then-ascendant nü metal. Ultimately, they conjure the sensation of a reset, rather than a capitulation to trends. 

Today, St. Anger seems to hew less to the reputation it's engineered, and more to Rock's characterization of the thing: "To me, this album sounds like four guys in a garage getting together and writing rock songs. There was really no time to get amazing performances out of James. We liked the raw performances… we just did it, boom, and that was it."

To mark the 20th anniversary of St. Anger, here are five facts about the album.

Metallica Started The Album In An Old Army Barracks

By 2001, Metallica hadn't released an album of original material in almost five years, since 1997's Reload (a follow-up to the previous year's Load). 

While these sessions ground to a halt due to personal upheaval and frontman James Hetfield heading to rehab — and the band later continued work at a new studio in San Rafael, California — this no-nonsense setting befitted the unvarnished quality of the music.

Bassist Jason Newsted Left The Band Early On

Newsted was the second bassist for Metallica, after the tragic 1986 death of Cliff Burton. Newsted's departure came the month they began St. Anger, which destabilized progress on the album.

"Due to private and personal reasons, and the physical damage that I have done to myself over the years while playing the music that I love, I must step away from the band," Newsted said in a statement. "This is the most difficult decision of my life, made in the best interest of my family, myself, and the continued growth of Metallica."

St. Anger Represented Intense Catharsis For James Hetfield

As Hetfield put it, St. Anger was a valve for which to release intense psychological pressure.

"There's a lot of passion in this. There's two years of condensed emotion in this," he told Metal Edge magazine at the time. "We've gone through a lot of personal changes, struggles, epiphanies, it's deep. It's so deep lyrically and musically… It's so hard to talk about, you really need to hear it."

Accordingly, St. Anger is nothing if not visceral — and two decades haven't sanded off those sharp edges.

As St. Anger's Recording Wound Down, Robert Trujillo Joined On Bass

While producer Bob Rock recorded the bass parts on St. Anger, his instrumental involvement 

would prove to be transitional; Robert Trujillo joined Metallica on bass in February 2001. 

Having played on all ensuing Metallica albums, 2008's Death Magnetic, 2016's Hardwired… to Self Destruct and 2023's 72 Seasons — all of which were warmly received by critics — Trujillo is now the longest-serving bassist in Metallica.

Critics Were Polarized, Then As With Now

While some contemporaneous critics knocked St. Anger as everything from "an ungodly mess" to having "underwent more processing than cat food," not everyone characterized it that way. 

Allmusic called it a "punishing, unflinching document of internal struggle"; Rolling Stone said "there's an authenticity to St. Anger's fury that none of the band's rap-metal followers can touch."

As for the band themselves, they've seemingly come to accept St. Anger, warts and all. 

"There are things I would like to change on some of the records, but it gives them so much character that you can't change them," Hetfield said in 2017. "St. Anger could use a little less tin snare drum, but those things are what make those records part of our history."

Unflinching, daring and unpolished, St. Anger is one of the ultimate "line in the sand" albums in heavy music history. Whatever your perception of this ugly-duckling entry is, take its 20-year anniversary as an opportunity to revisit its fury with fresh ears.

How Many GRAMMYs Have Metallica Won? Ahead Of New Album '72 Seasons': 6 Questions Answered

On their new album, 72 Seasons, Metallica circle the wagons and consolidate all the elements that make them… well, Metallica. Which, granted, many bands tend to do when they cross the four-decade mark. But for these eight-time GRAMMY winners, it's entirely a new look.

"There was this strange thing for many years in our band," drummer and co-founder Lars Ulrich told The New York Times in 2016. "We were in such a hurry to move forward, and in such a hurry to move away from certain perceptions about us, that we kept chasing something that we didn't really need to chase."

Much like its predecessors, 2008's Death Magnetic and 2016's Hardwired… To Self Destruct, 72 Seasons eschews any detours they've taken in the past. The songs sprawl; guitar solos are firmly back; there are no NWOBHM covers or symphonic collaborations. The title is backward-looking in a different way — a reference to the years between birth and age 18. And the ouroboros nature of 72 Seasons applies to the lyrics, too.

"Full speed or nothin'," founding vocalist and guitarist James Hetfield barks in lead single "Lux Æterna," a direct quote of "Motorbreath" from their 1983 debut album, Kill 'Em All. In "Room or Mirrors," he quotes "broken, beat and scarred" from Death Magnetic. Those 42 years together — approximately 168 seasons? — are clearly on these four men's minds.

With 72 Seasons tantalizingly close to release, take a look back, just as Metallica do on record — and find answers to six key facts about the world-dominating thrash titans.

Who Used To Be In Metallica?

While Metallica has maintained its current lineup since 2003 — Hetfield, Ulrich, guitarist Kirk Hammett and bassist Robert Trujillo — the band has some famous former members.

The spirit of their early bassist, Cliff Burton, hangs heavy in the rearview; he died in a touring van accident in 1986, right as they hit a zenith with 1986's Master of Puppets.

In a spat that honestly deserves its own article, Megadeth leader Dave Mustaine was the original lead guitarist of Metallica; he's credited as a songwriter on a handful of songs on Kill 'Em All and their celebrated second album, 1984's Ride the Lightning.

Other past members include their original bassist, Ron McGovney, and mid-period bassist, Jason Newsted, who left the band in 2001 to focus on his band Echobrain.

How Many Albums Has Metallica Sold?

Metallica have sold more than 125 million albums worldwide — 67 million of those stateside.

At press time, their best-selling album is 1991's Metallica, or The Black Album — the one with indelible hits from "Enter Sandman" to "Nothing Else Matters" — with a whopping 17 million sales.

How Many GRAMMYs Has Metallica Won?

As of 2023, Metallica have won eight GRAMMYs and been nominated for 18.

In order, those eight wins were for… 

• Best Rock Performance ("One")

• Best Metal Performance ("Stone Cold Crazy")

Best Rock Performance (Metallica*)

• Best Metal Performance ("Better Than You")

• Best Hard Rock Performance ("Whiskey in the Jar")

• Best Rock Instrumental Performance ("The Call Of Ktulu")

• Best Metal Performance ("St. Anger"),

• Best Metal Performance ("My Apocalypse")

Check out Metallica's complete GRAMMY stats here!

What Is Metallica's Biggest Song?

By the standard of the Billboard Hot 100, Metallica's most successful song was "Until It Sleeps" from their 1996 album Load — their sole top 10 hit, which peaked at No. 10 and remained on the chart for 20 weeks.

(As per the Billboard 200, their most successful album is The Black Album, which peaked at No. 1, hung there for four weeks, and spent an incredible 706 weeks on the chart.)

Song-wise, though, a look at more granular Billboard categories provides a clearer picture. 

"Master of Puppets" is their biggest track in the Hot Rock & Alternative Songs chart; it peaked at No. 5. It's also their most successful song in the Rock Digital Song Sales chart, at No. 2; Hot Rock Songs chart, also at No. 2; Hard Rock Digital Song Sales chart, Hard Rock Streaming Songs, and Hot Hard Rock Songs, all at No. 1; and Rock Streaming Songs chart, at No. 3.

As per the Rock & Alternative Airplay chart, "Lux Æterna" leads the pack, with a peak position of No. 2. And while one can go much deeper into the Billboard archives for further information — and factor in non-stateside success — it's clear "Master of Puppets" comes out on top.

Does Metallica Have A New Album?

They certainly do. As stated, 72 Seasons will be released April 14 via Blackened Recordings. It was teased via four singles: "Lux Æterna," "Screaming Suicide," "If Darkness Had a Son," and the title track.

Early reviews are strong: Rolling Stone called it "some of the deepest, hardest-hitting music of their career." Opined Consequence: "It's the sound of a band having fun, laying into a ton of riffs and embracing its own legacy as metal masters."

When Is Metallica Going On Tour?

Metallica will embark on the M72 world tour starting in late April. The trek, which stretches in 2024, will bring the foursome across Europe and North America. 

Check here for their complete tour dates, and be sure to take a dive into 72 Seasons — the perfect impetus to consider the metal heroes' past, present and exceedingly bright future.

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Chat Pile know they're odd ducks in their hometown of Oklahoma City. "It's either you're hardcore or you're shoegaze," the ascendant sludge-metal or noise-rock or whatever-you-call-it band's bassist, Stin, rues to GRAMMY.com. "Those seem to be kind of the two main options around here."

But it goes several steps beyond that. From singer Raygun Busch's idiosyncratic bark to their themes of mundane horrors to the sheer volume of memes swirling around their 2022 debut, God's Country, there's hardly an analog for this band anywhere.

On the other hand, Nerver are right at home in Kansas City, five hours northeast. The bludgeoning punk band, who released their whiplash second album, CASH, in 2022, are part of a rising tide of dark, heavy weirdos in KC. They're flourishing in many pockets up and down the I-35, which stretches from Duluth, Minnesota to the border between Texas and Mexico.

Birds of a feather: when Nerver played their first-ever Oklahoma City gig, Chat Pile were on the bill, and they became fast friends. Now, this nexus between two potent bands, regions and scenes — in what some dismiss as "flyover country" — is marked with a musical document.

Chat Pile and Nerver are out with a new split EP, Brothers in Christ, out Apr. 14 — a split-label release between Austin label Reptilian Records and Kansas City–based The Ghost is Clear Records. While Chat Pile's two offerings, "King" and "Cut," home in on their odder, mellower side, you'll rarely hear Nerver as heavy as they are on "Kicks in the Sky" and "The Nerve."

Ahead of the EP's release, Stin and Nerver’s bassist/vocalist and drummer — Evan Little and Mathew Shanahan — sat down with GRAMMY.com about how Brothers in Christ came to be, the emerging heavy scene in the central United States and their mutual love of Metallica deconstructions on YouTube.

This interview has been edited for clarity.

How did your two bands arrive in each other's lives?

Stin: It's kind of a funny story. I think the third show that Chat Pile ever played was this warehouse show in Oklahoma City. We were supposed to play; there were a couple of local punk bands. But then Nerver were on the bill, and so was Bummer. But Bummer bailed and Nerver ended up showing up, and we just met at the show and hit it off immediately, and we've been good friends ever since.

Evan Little: I think the I-35, as it usually is, was down to one lane, full of construction. We showed up to Oklahoma City super late and loaded in, and Chat Pile had just started playing. We watched them, and I don't think I had ever played Oklahoma City before. I don't want to speak for everybody, but…

Mathew Shanahan: It had been years for me.

Evan: We watched Chat Pile and were like, "Hey guys, that was a great set. Can we stay at any of your houses?" [Laughs.]

Stin: We've just kind of stayed in touch ever since then. We went on a mini-tour with Chat Pile, Nerver, and a band called Meth from Chicago, and we played five or six dates through the Midwest.

Evan: It was in May of '22, because we had originally planned on doing it in 2020, and then COVID shut everything down. Also, Minneapolis was in an uproar when we were originally supposed to play…

Stin: Oh, that's right.

Evan: George Floyd got killed. It was like COVID shut everything down, George Floyd got killed and my dad died all on the same weekend. So, s— just hit the fan, and everything went away. So we were like, "OK, maybe we'll try again in two years." And then it ended up eventually working out.

Stin: That was a really fun tour, too. That was a good time. And the funny thing, too, is I think from the get-go, we had talked about doing a split together. It just took a really long time for us to get our s— together to make it happen.

Evan: We were eager to do a split, and we met those guys around the same time. We lived close enough to each other to where collaborating would be pretty easy.

Stin: That's a good point, too. The proximity is kind of a big thing, because Chat Pile's based in Oklahoma City and Nerver is based in Kansas City, which is about five hours away. You guys have definitely traveled down a couple of times to come hang out with us. 

And music aside, we've come up there and hung out a few times with you guys at different points, too. So, I think that helps. The collaborative part of it has been really cool and fun.

Evan: Even in the middle of the country, five hours is close.

Tell me a little bit about the OKC and Kansas City heavy-music scenes and where your bands fit into those puzzles.

Stin: In Oklahoma City, the heavy scene has changed so much over the years. It used to be relegated to more DIY, Maximum Rocknroll-style hardcore bands.

But after COVID shut everything down, this new hardcore scene has emerged across the globe that has more of what I would call a beatdown quality — that type of hardcore, and it's all people who are extremely young. But it's cool, because the scene is sort of exploding right now with that type of activity. You're seeing an explosion of bands coming around.

As far as more experimental, noisy stuff goes, there's not really a ton of that. I know people will call Chat Pile "noise rock" or whatever, and we're kind of the only band like that in Oklahoma City. It's either you're hardcore or you're shoegaze. Those seem to be kind of the two main options around here.

Kansas City, on the other hand, seems like it's got a lot going on. In fact, I would say it's one of the more exciting music cities in the country right now, at least with the type of stuff that Chat Pile and Nerver are doing.

Evan: There are a lot of really cool bands happening in Kansas City. A lot more noise-rock stuff. Like Austin was saying, we met Chat Pile when we were on tour with Bummer, and there seems to be a scene for loud, sort of darker bands happening right now. So, that's been great for us and allowed us to tour easier and play shows with similar bands easier.

Stin: Matthew, you turned me on to Nightosphere, and they only have a couple of songs out, but man — I can't get enough of those. They just put out a three-way split with Flooding and Abandoncy. One of those bands is from Lawrence [Kansas], right?

Evan: Flooding is from Lawrence.

Stin: Yeah, but still, it's that region. You guys have an embarrassment of riches in terms of all that stuff. Then, I would also say the Denton area of Texas has that kind of stuff going on as well, so it's sort of weird. I guess Kansas City's not really I-35, but…

Evan: Oh, it is.

Stin: OK, it is: cool. So, that switch of I-35 from North Texas to Kansas City: there's a little scene going on of cool, noisy bands right now.

Evan: Yeah, from Austin and Minneapolis. There's a bunch of good bands existing around one interstate. It's good. It's convenient.

Chat Pile. Photo: Juliette Boulay

Tell me about the tunes themselves — how they came to be, how you curated them to swim in the same bowl.

Stin: On the Chat Pile side of things, we wrote and recorded these songs after God's Country came out. So, the flavor of it is a little bit different than what is on the album. We're leaning more into the indie-rock side of our taste a little bit. We thought this EP would be a good place to put that type of stuff.

The other thing that was kind of crazy about it: like I was saying, it took us a long time to get our act together to put this out. Instrumentally, our songs were written for months and months.

It took forever to do vocals because our singer's partner has some health issues, so he wasn't even living in the state with us at the time. So, we had to wait a long time for him to contribute his part of the music.

Evan: For at least one of the songs on the split, we tried to include it on our 2022 album. We were completely fried from recording and decided, "Let's not push this; let's save the song for another day." And then, Chat Pile was like, "Go ahead, we're ready. We have songs written; we're good to go."

The other song, we wrote specifically knowing that it would end up on a split with them. I know we usually write as we write, and it's never that we write a song for a specific release that we're going to know all the context of beforehand.

We went and recorded both songs at the bass player of Shiner, Paul Malinowski's studio in the suburbs here. Zack Alvey engineered and mixed it. It was a very easy and pleasant recording experience, and the songs turned out good. I think both sides of the split ended up complementing each other really well. It all flows well together, I think.

Stin: I feel the same way. And what's funny, too, is I feel like it's you guys at your heaviest, and us at our most mellow.

Evan: There's a slow song and a fast song, and then two of you guys' weirdest songs.

Stin: We deliberately wanted to do the record with Reptilian and The Ghost is Clear. Reptilian is based out of Austin, and The Ghost is Clear is based out of Kansas City. We wanted to do the record through them to tie everything back to the locale — the regionality of the whole project.

Stin, how has it felt being memed into oblivion?

Stin: It's really flattering, honestly. Because when we started the band, we never in a million years imagined that people would care about the music we're making. That's been the story of our lives up until this point.

So, my thought is: if anybody's thinking about us, whether they hate our band or think we're funny enough to meme or anything, all that's cool with me, because I would rather have people pay attention to us. They say the opposite of love isn't hate.

It's complimentary, too. Some of the memes are really, really funny. Those are the ones that we tend to share. We've obviously struck a chord in some way with people, and it's resonating, and that feels good.

Jonathan Tuite [The Flenser founder/owner, who released God’s Country] seems to have this weird knack for grabbing people's imaginations.

Stin: His tastes are incredibly eclectic, and he has a way of finding bands that live in this Venn diagram. They all circulate into or converge into this depressive, sad sort of world.

But it's tongue-in-cheek at the same time.

Stin: Well, I think you can be depressed and sad and angry and still have a sense of humor. Some bands on the label are funnier than others, but I do think that despite the kind of depressive nature of everything, he does have a tendency to pick bands that have some self-awareness and can joke around about that kind of stuff.

As underground musicians, what role do the GRAMMYs play in your lives?

Stin: I would say none at all, other than I am very much aware that people were mad that Metallica lost to Jethro Tull for The Black Album.

I'm a Jethro Tull fanatic.

Stin: OK, this is going to derail the question a little bit. But I absolutely love The Black Album, and sometimes I forget how much that album is imprinted on my psyche.

I've been reminded of it lately, because I've been going down this YouTube rabbit hole. There are people whose entire thing is they cover Metallica songs, but they do it in the style [of another album]. So, they'll take a song from Ride the Lightning and play it as if it were on …And Justice for All. They copy the style, the production elements… all of it.

There's this guy — I can't remember his name — but he's genius-level at doing this. The best ones are all the songs that get transcribed and played as if they're on The Black Album. I'm like, "Damn, maybe The Black Album is actually my favorite Metallica album," weirdly enough.

Evan: I've been in a YouTube rabbit hole of people replacing every snare in every Metallica song with the St. Anger snare. I think that's my favorite one. They should win a GRAMMY for that — the people who put that s— together.

Mathew: It was cool that Body Count won one not that long ago. That seemed cool. It was the same year that Power Trip was up for it right after [vocalist] Riley [Gale] died, and a lot of people were up in arms that Power Trip didn't win, which they should have. But Body Count still f—s.

Evan: I have no idea what's going on at the GRAMMYs — who wins or who's nominated. I can say confidently that I've never thought about it at all.

You're thinking about it now, buddy.

Evan: Exactly. When Stin told us this interview was happening, he said, "Get your tuxedos ready, boys."

Stin: It's funny, too, because whenever any type of awards show happens, my Twitter feed becomes insufferable for a day or two. It's like, look: awards can be fun. I'm sure it's fun to go, also, and put on your outfit. Look, my dad knowing that I'm doing an interview right now with the GRAMMYs — he can die happy now. So, there are many advantages to it.

Evan: I'm glad that Brendan Fraser won something. I don't know if they're all related, or what.

Where are your bands at in your trajectories? What are you primed to do next?

Stin: Chat Pile is working on a second album right now. It's slowly coming together. But in the meantime, we're gearing up to be way more of a road band than we've ever been before.

In fact, a week from today, we leave to go play Roadburn in the Netherlands, then we're going to play Roskilde in Denmark. Then, we have a weeklong tour in the UK. And then, we're going to embark on two coastal tours, which have not been announced whatsoever.

We're basically gearing up to do lots and lots of touring, and then hopefully, we'll have a second record out. We'll say the goal is by next year, but time will tell what happens with that.

Mathew: We're going on tour next month for 25 days.

Evan: If you live on the West Coast, come see Nerver.

Real quick, before we go: is there anyone you're excited about in your scene or an adjacent one that you'd like to shout out?

Stin: Hell and Primitive Man, to me, are making some of the most exciting music out there right now. I love Jesus Piece. I think they're amazing. I could actually see them being GRAMMY winners in a couple of years.

Evan: OK, I've got a really good answer. This band Missouri Executive Order 44 that just started here. Their whole thing is they play the heaviest music you've ever heard while dressed like bicycle missionaries. All the songs are about being Mormon, and it's a lot of fun to watch. Max makes everybody pray. It's a lot of fun. You guys should definitely give that band a GRAMMY.

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