Todays blog is brought to you courtesy of Fighting For Autism Junior Ambassador Lewis Dyer
Lewis is a talented martial artist, who trains with Kairos Marital Arts in Retford, United Kingdom. Aside from martial arts, Lewis is also an incredibly talented musician too.
Fighting For Autism prides itself on actively involving those on the autistic spectrum and asking them to carry out interviews with people from around the world that share a common interest with them, Lewis was asked to carry out an interview with Jon Howard who is the lead singer from Canadian band Imonolith.
Imonolith is a hard hitting, 5 piece Canadian based Hard Rock/Metal band made up of an impressive pedigree of musicians whose debut single and video, Hollow was released on January 18th, 2019. The song attracted 216,000 streams in 2019 on Spotify alone, not including Apple Music and other streaming outlets, Jon has also been the vocalist for the bands Threat Signal and Arkaea.
Lewis Dyer interviews IMONOLITH lead singer Jon Howard
1. Do you ever get nervous when performing and how do you overcome it?
"Still to this day my nerves go CRAZY right before hitting the stage. That moment when the intro music is playing and we are about to perform, my heart is going a mile a minute. I think its a combination of things. A bunch of anxiety mixed with anticipation and adrenaline, I dunno… But its never stopped me from getting out there!! Honestly once I hit the stage, my nerves calm down and I become comfortable and own the stage. I have to be very well rehearsed and have my set planned though, or else I won’t feel comfortable".
2. What was your first step in pursuing music as a career?
"My mother put me into piano class when I was young, really can’t remember how old. I wasn’t very good and wanted to switch to guitar lessons. I sucked at that too and just quit all together. It wasn’t until I was about 12 or 13 years old when I picked up a guitar and taught myself how to play songs I actually liked. The trigger for me to pick that guitar up was the death of Kurt Cobain… I didn’t know who he was at the time, but watching the news story really hit me hard. I couldn’t figure out how or why someone would commit suicide when they had everything they dreamed of. I didn’t really understand much at the time. Anyways, I got hooked on Nirvana and wanted to be just like Kurt. Once I taught myself how to play the song Come As You Are, I was unstoppable! haha So yeah, I started with playing guitar. Once I hit high school I formed a band and began chasing a music career. We didn’t have a singer, so I just started singing and playing guitar. Our first show was a battle of the bands in 1998".
3. Who inspired you when you were younger?
"Guess I answered that already! haha So Nirvana got me into playing grunge rock music, but around that same time I really got into bands like Alice In Chains, Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, Smashing Pumpkins and Stone Temple Pilots. By high school I started craving heavier music and started getting into bands like Metallica, Pantera, Fear Factory, Korn, Megadeth and Meshuggah to name a few".
4. What are your top 3 music albums of all time?
"Thats a tough one! I love a lot of different albums for different reasons
These are 3 albums that REALLY influenced me
Metallica - And Justice For All
Nirvana - Nevermind
Pantera - Far Beyond Driven"
5. Can you teach us how to do the metal scream?
"Oh man, it took me years and years of trial and error to figure that out! I would hide in the basement and make the craziest noises trying to figure out what the heck I was doing. My family totally thought I was insane. Once I got a car I was able to scream in there and feel more comfortable haha. So now you can figure it out too! haha".
6. Which one of your band would win in an arm wrestle?
"Well, I used to think it was me. For some stupid reason on tour after some liquid refreshment we would arm wrestle each other on the tour bus. When we were touring with The Agonist through Europe I decided to arm wrestle the biggest dude around haha. I ended up tearing something in my arm and was in bruuuutal pain for months. Still to this day, every single day, my arm hurts when I move it a certain way. So yeah, no more arm wrestling for me"!
7. You’re on your own in the band’s rehearsal room, and a zombie outbreak has started. A zombie gets in the room... what instrument/equipment do you use to defend yourself?
"Can I just grab the actual drummer and hit him with that guy? Can’t seem to keep a steady drummer so I might as well toss him to the zombies as a distraction hahaha"
Jon Howard
The latest album from IMONOLITH -State of Being, if you'd like to find out more about the band please visit their website www.imonolithband.com
Or you can listen to Jon cover the Linkin Park song Crawling
www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFzdvrog3Tg
On behalf of everyone at Fighting For Autism, we wanted to say a massive thank you to Jon Howard for taking part in the interview, to Lewis Dyer for asking some amazing questions and being an outstanding ambassador for Autism Awareness and Acceptance, and thank you to Justin Dawson for all of his assistance....and finally Thank you to Simon Fell, who is the co- creator along with Lewis of the Zombie apocalypse question that was asked to Jon.
If you have a story you'd like to share, or you'd like some information about Fighting For Autism we can be found via our website www.fightingforautismeurope.org
