Sipping beers on a riding lawn mower. Hailing the Buckeye State. Aching about failed relationships amidst a flurry of massive country choruses, fiery fiddle solos and bouncy metal breakdowns. Muscles popping out of sleeveless American flag shirts, and a peak-U.S.A., go-for-the-gold mindset of “cranking hog.” Welcome to the weird world of Bilmuri — the countrified metalcore solo project of songwriter Johnny Franck.
On paper, country and metalcore are two genres that should be treated like church and state. Only a true ’coreman like Franck can make them work together. As a teenager, the Ohio-based musician was an early member of Attack Attack! and helped bring “crabcore” to the Warped Tour masses. Fatigued by the scene’s nonstop tour cycle and carbon-copy bands, Franck eventually left Attack Attack! after their 2010 self-titled album to focus on becoming a producer. “I got so fucking sick of it, every band coming in and wanting the exact same thing,” Franck says today of the metalcore sound that dominated the early 2010s.
For the next few years, Franck kept busy with production work and released singles with the indie duo the March Ahead. Bilmuri was born in 2016 — after he had a simple, but striking songwriting realization: “I can take a shitty song and make it sound dope, but what if you had a dope song and made it sound even better?”
This led Franck to take a hyper-pop songwriting approach with Bilmuri, mesh-ing metalcore with the best parts of different genres: from anime-inspired chill-beat-core to hell-yeah-brother country bangers. He’s also adopted a super productive approach to the project. In the past eight years, Franck has released a staggering 14 Bilmuri full-lengths.
The most recent is this year’s AMERICAN MOTOR SPORTS — their major-label debut for Columbia Records — which serves up twangy metalcore heaters like the earworm “BETTER HELL (Thicc boi)” and the saxophone-tastic “BLINDSIDED.” As Bilmuri’s singer, songwriter, guitarist and overall mastermind, Franck cartwheels on the tightrope between fun and funny — but is careful to not lean too far into the latter. He doesn’t want Bilmuri to become a comedy act. “I would never sacrifice the seriousness of a song to make some sort of gag,” Franck says. “All the gags are usually sounds, like the Taco Bell bell.”
As a testament to how much Bilmuri’s stock has risen over the past few years, the band was invited to play BABYMETAL’s FOX_FEST in Tokyo this May, and later this year, they’ll be joining Sleep Token as direct support for the masked phenom’s U.K. and European tour. So what is behind this strange magic that allows Bilmuri to successfully merge contradictory genres — and catch the attention of some of heavy music’s most forward-thinking and popular outfits? We caught up with Franck in between tractor rides to find out.
You’re going on tour with Sleep Token, which might seem like a random pairing. But when you look at the surprising ways both bands merge heavy music with pop, it starts to makes more sense…
JOHNNY FRANCK I agree that both Sleep Token and I have pop sensibilities. I mean, that’s what I listen to. Pop, to me, is the gladiatorial combat of who can make the best song — and it’s cutthroat, it’s competitive. I like studying it because these are the best people at music. What’s cool, too, is I’m getting to write with a lot of these pop writers now, and we have a great time. I don’t know if [Vessel] writes everything, but if he wanted to get in the room with a bunch of Swedish dudes, he could.
My wife and I were recently driving through rural Wisconsin, and we threw on American Motor Sports. I feel like that drive made me get that record on a deeper level.
That’s perfect dude. Wisconsin’s countryside is beautiful. I’m glad you enjoy that part of the Midwest, and I’m glad people hear the Midwest in the album — ’cause that was one of my goals. I want people to be proud that they’re from the Midwest. I am — I love it here. Everyone from Ohio is fucking proud to be from Ohio.
I don’t think it’s ever discussed how Ohio has the highest batting average when it comes to producing metalcore bands.
Dude, it’s crazy. My theory is that we all hung out with each other and swapped ideas and stuff, like, “Oh, that thing they do is cool.” And then they do the same with you, and everyone’s kind of like sharing information because we’re playing shows all the time. Then Attack got big, and then Miss May I got huge as well because we’re all sharing everything. My other theory is there’s nothing else to do here.
Julie Jackson
American Motor Sports is interesting to me. I think in metalcore there’s this mode of overcomplicating songs with synths and stuff, but I get the sense you wanted to simplify everything.
Oh absolutely. What’s cool with this record is that I spent so much time on it, and I really went back to square one. I felt like I got a little too “artistic” on my last album [2022’s GOBLIN HOURS], like, I’m gonna make art, dude. And then people were like, Well, we’re not gonna listen to it. I had an ego death there where I was like, OK, people aren’t going to consume everything that I do. It has to be a relationship. So, I challenged myself on this record to only write songs with a guitar and vocals — no amp on the guitar, just straight into the computer and no effects on anything. If it sounds cool with just a guitar, then it’ll sound cool when you add all the other instruments into it.
This is also the first time I’ve heard country blended with metalcore in a way that wasn’t meant to make fun of it. It’s clear you’re a fan, and not just trying to do a bit.
The instrumentation of country music is my favorite. I think what turns people off is the beer-and-trucks talk in country, which is fine, ’cause I love it. But if you just listen to the instrumentals and how masterful the players are, I think you could really get into that. Pedal steel is cool, fiddles are awesome. All these instruments are sweet. My dad was in a bluegrass band growing up, so I was around it my whole life. I wanted to show respect — so if a country fan listened to it, they’re like, OK, he’s respecting country music.
You’ve been grinding in music and evolving your sound for close to two decades now, and it seems like the fruits of your labor are truly paying off.
I be eating the fruits, dude. [Laughs] I’m enjoying the wave, for sure. It’s cool, sometimes things you work hard on don’t do well and things you don’t work hard on do — like the song that you spent 15 minutes on does better than the one you spent 15 hours on.
It’s nice to see that people are really enjoying it. I think this is the best thing I’ve ever done, and everyone so far has been like, “Yes, we think that too.” With Bilmuri, I want to bring heavy music to the masses. I want to show an arena of people what a breakdown is — and for them to see a crowd of our fans going off in the pit. My goal is to play a pop-music fest, a country fest and a metal fest in the same year. But we’ll take whatever people want, man. I’m just happy to be playing music.