Inside The Tank: Brood Faye Isn’t Holding Back
THE TANK IS A BODY, A DIARY, A DETONATION
Los Angeles artist Brood Faye doesn’t ask to be understood, he dares you to feel him.
His debut album The Tank is less of a project and more of a full-bodied purge: his tracks full of emotional whiplash, are stitched together by rage, memory, and a relentless drive to process the unprocessable. “It’s just a mind-body connection that, once tapped into, is always available,” Zach (his real name) tells me. “I request access to my mind and body, and then release the shit into the stupid notes app.”
There’s no artifice here, only impact. “Gov Psy Op” was written in one breathless session. “Me and Larry” started as a bad demo in 2020 and evolved into an epic, featuring a birthday voicemail from his uncle. “I’m just fucking pissed all the time,” he says bluntly, “because there is just so much that is so wrong... with everything.” But this isn’t hopeless noise. It’s clarity inside chaos. Controlled explosions.
“If you're only physicality without mind, it can be exciting but meaningless,” Zach reflects. “If you're only of the mind, you're not in the muck with everyone else. When I'm writing, I ping pong between head and heart and limbs and organs.”
That raw integration carries through the album’s emotional center: transformation. Zach admits The Tank wouldn’t exist if he hadn’t let go of everything else. It’s not about becoming someone new, it’s about resurrecting someone he’d buried. “I suppressed my gothia and punkality because I chose to be an actor for so long,” he says. “All that masking was traumatic in itself.”
On stage, at places like Gold Diggers, he transforms anxiety into transcendence. “Before my set I was just upstairs in the green room having an anxiety attack,” he laughs. “But once I was onstage, I was having a fucking ball.”
“Fuckaround Sue (Feudal Remix)” is a defiant exhale, featuring longtime friend Troy (Feudal). “We’re alike in that way,” he says, “I’m a goose-and-a-half, but I have a lot to say and I express it with brutal aesthetics.”
But The Tank isn’t just loud, it’s honest. Zach doesn’t moralize or make protest songs for the sake of it. He believes art should disturb, comfort, and complicate, not preach.
“Expression and connection are voided when you're too specific in your beliefs,” he explains. “What anyone receiving any medium of art wants is a story that confuses and elates them and causes them to question things as they are.”
When asked what he’d say to his audience right now, no message feels more sincere than his simple answer:
“Hey, I love you.”
Brood Faye by @houseofvivian
At Damaged Disco - Gold Diggers, Los Angeles 06/26/25
11 Questions with Brood Faye
Interview by Vivian Villa-Caratachea | houseofvivian
Vivian: “The Tank” plays like a diary cracked open and distorted through speakers. What kind of headspace or ritual gets you into writing something that honest? Where do you go, in your mind or physically, when a song needs to come out?
Brood Faye:
It's just a mind-body connection that, once tapped into, is always available. Start yelling something and it can manifest in your neck and back, your stomach. Basically every spiritual or religious teaching is rooted in the belief that our suffering and joy via our thoughts will manifest in us physically in one way or another, so I engage in the thoughts and feelings that I know will drive my body and my voice.
But allowing the space for those two to play ping pong is the great trick of creativity, and people notice when art is one or the other: if you're only physicality without mind, it can be really exciting, but no one can tell why you're doing what you do because what you're doing is without meaning. If you're only of the mind, you aren't in the muck with everyone else, you aren't engaging in the universal language of the body.
When I'm writing I just ping pong between head and heart and limbs and organs. I request access to my mind and body, and then release the shit into the stupid notes app. I think this is just a long-winded way of saying that all-encompassing vulnerability is the best way to make any art, and I wear my heart on my sleeve for the most part so I'm geared for it.
Vivian: Some tracks feel like late-night voice notes turned epic (Me and Larry especially). Do you write with specific people in mind, or are you writing to process your own story?
Brood Faye:
In the case of Me and Larry, it took a long time to piece-meal together, but once the elements were in place it was done quickly. It was essentially two sessions, one in 2020, literally the first Brood Faye beat I ever made, recorded into my laptop, and it was absolute horse shit.
At the time I was mad over a breakup and police brutality (story of all our fucking lives amirite), and then when I picked it back up last year while looking through old demos I was feeling a lot of the same feelings.
I won't deny it, I'm just fucking pissed all the time because there is just so much that is so wrong... with everything.
But last year I had way better instrumentation and mixing skills, and I threw in a birthday voicemail from my sweet old Uncle Larry because it just felt right. Some people asked if it was him I was mad about, to which I say absolutely not.
The title was originally Message to World Leaders, then Message to World Leaders From Me and Larry. So in a way, yeah, I was processing multiple stories of mine, just regurgitating a bunch of different aspects of my life, hoping that when in tandem they spoke to someone.
Vivian: Gov Psy Op hits like a scream into the void, but somehow still controlled. What inspired that track’s energy, and how do you balance chaos with clarity in your sound?
Brood Faye:
I honestly don't know, it is definitely one of the simplest tracks I'll probably ever create. I struggle to minimize when I make art, like I keep layering and layering and ultimately have to peel back so many parts so that a track is even borderline viable, but in this case I didn't do that.
I just recorded and sorted perc/bass/synth, wrote lyrics (on paper!), recorded vocals, trimmed the fat as they say, then it was done.
Vivian: There’s a thread of transformation running through this whole album. What did you have to let go of to make this project real?
Brood Faye:
Everything else in my life, practically.
Vivian: When you’re creating, do you think more about how it feels or how it will hit? Do you care if people understand what you’re really going through, or is making it enough?
Brood Faye:
It's a catch 22, because you need human beings to perceive your work in order for your work to truly exist.
Fortunately, loving the same style that everyone around you loves makes it easy, because then 20 people in a room engaging with and enjoying what you're doing feels like a million.
But I struggle with the "what's next?" of it all. For instance the show I just played two nights ago that went very well and lifted me in so many ways, and in this inevitable emotional crash thereafter I'm already seeking the next hit, and hoping it will be bigger.
I've been performing since I was a kid, and there is truly nothing as immediately rewarding as doing a good show to a bunch of people, except maybe falling in love or having really amazing sex.
I leave out drugs and alcohol because those never provide real rewards.
Vivian: Who played the biggest role in shaping this album — was it you stepping into a new version of yourself, or were there people in your orbit that pushed this body of work into being?
Brood Faye:
(Deep south Appalachian football player accent) "I just wanna thank God, my mama, my papa, the Mamas and the Papas..."
No, it's just me, and it's a very old version of me I got to revive.
I suppressed my gothia and punkality because I chose to be an actor for so long, and when you make that choice a lot of people will convince you you need to look normal or be a "blank slate" to succeed in those spaces, and I listened to people I shouldn't have, society at large, and my own assumptions for a long time unfortunately.
Sort of wish I'd just stayed who I was, because all that masking was traumatic in itself.
Vivian: At Gold Diggers, there was this electricity — before, during, and after your set. What was moving through you that night? What did it mean to be seen in that way by your friends and community?
Brood Faye:
Oh my god... you were there, Viv? We never kissed...............
Electricity before?
Before my set I was just upstairs in the green room having an anxiety attack, freezing and sweating, which was reeeeally fun.
Then, once I was onstage, I was having a fucking ball, because there's this disbelief in my existence in each moment — that I know what I'm doing and I'm doing it well, so all I really have to do is enjoy being outside myself.
That was my favorite show I've played so far.
And yeah, it was heartwarming as fuck to watch my friends, several of them relatively new friends, trickle in before my set while watching from the window upstairs sweating and freezing like the Phantom of the goddamn Opera.
Vivian: Fuckaround Sue (Feudal Remix) feels like a controlled burn. How did that collaboration come together, and what made it the right way to close out the record?
Brood Faye:
Troy and I have been pals since I entered the scene, and I admire him as an artist so indelibly.
He's so sweet and so very fucking silly, but makes such vicious music, and we're very alike in that way: on the surface I'm a plain old-fashioned goose-and-a-half but I have a lot to say and I'm very angry and I express it with brutal aesthetics.
I took to Feudal immediately when I heard their first EP, UNIT 1, and because remixes are quite common in EBM I already knew I wanted one from Troy and Matt.
I wanted them to do a remix but I chose a track from my first EP instead of a track from the album like I asked of Healng and Ex-Heir, and I think my intuition to do that was very correct, because the remix has been very well-received.
Troy feels like an old friend, or a brother.
That being said, he took a very long time to finish the remix and I'll always hold that against him, probably until the day I die.
Troy, if you're reading this, fuck you. I love Troy.
Vivian: A lot of artists talk about release, but The Tank feels more like exposure. Was it cathartic? Risky? Both?
Brood Faye:
It was all of it, but for that reason felt like taking a bunch of mushrooms, but not too much.
I didn't have huge expectations, so to experience any catharsis was lovely.
It just comes down to acceptance.
If people I love and respect like my music, I'm golden.
EBM is never going to sweep the nation, right? So just reformulating and molding diary entries and having a grasp on the technology so a few people understand you? That's divine.
Vivian: What’s one truth about being an artist in 2025 that nobody really talks about, but you feel deeply?
Brood Faye:
Is everyone moralizing or avoiding moralizing?
It feels like they are, like they either carry a torch that says "I believe this and I condemn that," or they avoid belief and condemnation altogether.
When protest music comes out it's often not very subtle, and that's good! because it motivates the masses.
"I am an antichrist, I am an anarchist, don't know what I want, but I know how to get it..." — I still have plenty of affection for Sex Pistols, even as John Lydon carries on as the world's biggest cunt, because Sex Pistols served a very clear purpose in Britain in 1976.
But we are in a very different world now. John Lydon moralized in his music as a youth, but in his day-to-day since has embodied very fascist beliefs. His moralizing was a lie.
As a person who is very motivated by world events, I'm never going to explicitly state my opinions in the context of my art — firstly because all art should be up for interpretation by the viewer, and secondly because expression and connection are voided when you're too specific in your beliefs.
Again, I only mean in art.
In life, we should all be Annie Lennox and Shirley Manson, we should be freaking the fuck out and breaking the law and fighting the upper class with our teeth and fists.
After all, no one wants to read a book in which the author's political point of view is terribly obvious (idiots do, I suppose, see: James Patterson fans).
What anyone receiving any medium of art wants is a story that confuses and elates them and causes them to question things as they are.
There are many pop artists I agree with and love as human beings whose art I couldn't give a fuck less about because they are not using the human conflict they see to speak on universal truths — they are just regurgitating moral appeals.
Vivian: If you could speak directly to your audience right now, just as you are, today, what would you want to say to them?
Brood Faye:
Hey I love you.
Me and Larry - Brood Faye
Thank you! - Viv
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