When Goes Cube scoots into Iowa City today on tour, the group members will need to make one stop before they take the stage — the bowling alley. And hopefully, they will knock ’em all down.
“We try to bowl before every show, and when you bowl close to a 200, you’re in a great mood,” guitarist and vocalist David Obuchowski said. “But the next day, if you bowl like a 109 for no reason at all, you’re really, really pissed off and that tends to affect your mindset.”
Goes Cube will come to Iowa City for the third time at the Blue Moose Tap House, 211 Iowa Ave., today with East of the Wall and Aseethe opening at 8 p.m.
Hailing from Brooklyn, Goes Cube originated as a project between Obuchowski and now-former bass player Matthew Frey. When the two started the band, they used a drum machine rather than a live drummer and named each song after whichever rhythm they decided to use (i.e., “Goes Cube Song 57”).
But since, the group has added a real drummer in Kenny Appell and released the critically acclaimed Another Day Has Passed last year. The group has another album on the horizon.
“The lyrical content, especially the first record, is largely about the sacrifices and struggles to get where we’ve been or where we were at the time,” Obuchowski said.
The new album, he said, will focus on different themes, mostly on how the industry works from an “insider’s view rather than an outsider.”
Each member in the band is self-taught, something that Obuchowski said differs from many other metal bands that focus heavily on complicated and technical riffs.
“People will say we’re really loud, which is funny because we’re the guys with the small amps,” he said. “I guess, for a combination of reasons, we are loud and abrasive. We physically play very, very hard, and I think that comes through.”
Obuchowski said Goes Cube loves to go on tour and get away from the coasts’ big cities. The group has even developed a significant following in eastern Iowa, said local band Snow Demon guitarist Matt Cooper.
“The way they play with each other on stage, it’s like they’re family,” he said. “Everyone who saw the first show seemed to turn all their friends on for the second.”
Cooper, who works as a tattoo artist at Nemesis Studio, 104 S. Linn St., actually tattooed a corn cob on Appell last time the group was in town because he wanted something “Iowan.”
Obuchowski is thankful to come to an area where he believes metal fans come out for the music, and are less concerned with what type of pants or shirts you wear.
“[There are] great people in [the metal scene], but some can be real judgmental, you know, ‘How many tattoos do you have, how big are your abs, and what’s your band name?’ ” he said. “We’re not called Blood on Your F—in’ Face, or Dark Thunder, or Doomsky.”
Funny names aside, the band tries to not worry about anything but the music, Obuchowski said. Goes Cube brings its own fusion of brutality and atmosphere — and hopes fans can appreciate that.
“We’re not trying to reinvent the wheel,” he said. “We try to play our heavy parts as heavy as they can be. We try to make our pretty parts pretty. Sometimes there’s screaming. Sometimes there’s singing. But, it’s never done in a mathematical or calculated way.”