"I mean, I consider what we do closer to pop music than it is to grindcore or something like that," Carson says. As with their live show, they'd like their albums to reach people outside of niche heavy music too. If you've read anything about The Callous Daoboys, you've probably seen them compared to any number of late '90s / early 2000s mathcore and metalcore bands - Every Time I Die, Botch, The Chariot, The Dillinger Escape Plan, Converge, etc - and they do indeed look up to all those bands, but their goals don't start and end with reviving 20-year-old mathcore records. If we were just playing the album tracks as they are, I think it would come off very weird and rigid." The way that we approach live shows is to try to make it as unforgettable as possible, as tight as possible. "So I think that part of the live show is trying to appeal to everyone on some level, especially with the music clips we put in between songs, or a dance interlude or something like that. "We're fully aware that our music and our sound isn't for everybody, or rather that there's a lot of people who aren't going to seek out bands that sound like us, let alone seek us out," Carson told me over Zoom a few weeks later. It felt like you were watching the start of something special.
![i only wanna be with you i only wanna be with you](https://assets.onlinepianist.com/sheets/previews/sa/98795/98795_2.png)
I ONLY WANNA BE WITH YOU FULL
Knitting Factory was no more than half full during their set, but everyone who was there looked either awestruck, amused, utterly confused, or some mix of all three. It was a little bit funny but also entirely serious, like just about everything The Callous Daoboys do, from their artwork to their music to their lyrics to the very name of the band. They committed to the bit for a good minute or so, until Matthew Hague their drummer gave a four-count and they segued seamlessly into one of their brutally discordant originals.
![i only wanna be with you i only wanna be with you](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Dzp2cNMWCZQ/maxresdefault.jpg)
At some point in the middle of the set, they started playing DJ Sammy's 2001 Eurodance cover of "Heaven" over the PA, and then Carson - who was decked out in a Saweetie shirt - commanded the crowd to "dance!" as he and the other seven members of The Callous Daoboys followed suit. And when they started playing, they sounded like mathcore's answer to Cursive, with their sinister horns and strings owing as much to The Ugly Organ as their riffs owe to We Are the Romans. When I walked into Knitting Factory Brooklyn this past June to see The Callous Daoboys opening up for LIMBS and Greyhaven, they had squeezed eight people onto the venue's relatively small stage - including two guitarists, a bassist, a drummer, a keyboardist, a violinist, a saxophonist, and their magnetic lead vocalist Carson Pace - looking something like mathcore's answer to Broken Social Scene. Pre-order the new Callous Daboys album on swirl vinyl.