Reluctant Hero

“We weren't like, ‘Let's create a metal supergroup,’” Greg Puciato tells Apple Music about what is, whether he likes it or not, a very impressive metal supergroup. “It just happened. That’s part of what makes it so fucking cool.” He’s one of three vocalists in Killer Be Killed—another thing that makes it cool. Having three singers allows for collaboration usually reserved for genres like hip-hop or jazz. Rather than trading fiery verses or spindly brass solos, Puciato, Max Cavalera and Troy Sanders take turns singing, screaming and harmonising over songs they almost entirely wrote together. Puciato and Cavalera also play guitar and Sanders is on bass, while Ben Koller, the only non-singing member, provides drums. And they had a ton of fun doing it—perhaps the coolest part of all. Reluctant Hero comes six years after their self-titled debut. They only toured their debut album once, for the 2015 Soundwave Festival in Australia, where they realised they were loving it so much that they couldn’t just leave it at one album. It had all started with a casual conversation between Puciato—who has fronted The Dillinger Escape Plan and The Black Queen, and released his solo debut just weeks prior to this album—and Cavalera, founding vocalist of Sepultura, who went on to sing in Soulfly among other groups. “We got in a room like little 13-year-olds,” Puciato says. “We didn't use a computer, we put our phones aside, we were just riffing and playing for like a week.” Then, Dillinger were touring with Mastodon, for whom Troy Sanders sings and plays bass. He’d heard about the project by then. “He asked who was playing bass and I was like, ‘I think Max and I were both going to play bass and we’re just going to hire a drummer or something.’ He was like, ‘No, I'm playing bass.’ I said, ‘Oh, all right. Well, I guess you're going to sing too, then. So we'll have three singers and that'll be fucking cool.’” The final addition was Koller—who plays with Converge, All Pigs Must Die and mo