ICE NINE KILLS's SPENCER CHARNAS On Touring With METALLICA: 'It's Such An Honor'

In a new interview with Mike Hsu of the 100 FM The Pike radio station, ICE NINE KILLS frontman Spencer Charnas spoke about what it's been like for him and his bandmates to tour stadiums around the world with METALLICA in 2023 and 2024. He said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "Anytime anyone mentions it when I'm doing an interview, and I'm not B.S.ing here, I get chills. Because it takes me back to when I first saw METALLICA, which was, I guess it would have been the Fleet Center [in Boston] in '97; it just switched over from the Garden a few years before, I think. And I remember that concert so vividly. My dad took me to it. They were, if memory serves, I think they were on the 'Load' or the 'Reload' album cycle, and it feels like that concert was a week ago. I remember the way that Lars [Ulrich, METALLICA drummer] came out over onto the stage, and he was drinking a beer, and they had this, like, pyrotechnic kind of, like, accident, but it was part of the show. One of the crew members, I remember, fell down and was hung by his like feet by a wire and everyone was, like, 'Oh my god.' But it turned out it was all part of the show."

Spencer continued: "They were one of those seminal bands for me. They made me, along with NIRVANA, wanna learn how to play guitar riffs. And so when we got that call to be on a few shows at first back in 2022, getting that call a few months later, 'Hey, do you wanna do the whole world tour with us?' I mean, for someone who grew up on that kind of music and METALLICA being the pinnacle of that, it's such an honor. And I still have to kind of pinch myself every time we show up at one of those stadiums and realize, 'I'm not just going to see them. We're on the show.' And they've been so nice to us. They come into the locker room and say 'what's up' to us. And they're really sort of showing us the way of how, when you're coming up, you take bands out, and take the bands out that you think are cool, and you treat them great. And we've learned a lot from them. And we can't thank them enough, and also thank all of their crew and their whole team. They've just been so accommodating. And also thank you to our fans who keep coming out to those shows, to see us play with METALLICA. I see so many INK shirts in that crowd. It's just a huge honor."

Speaking about the opportunity to play with METALLICA at the Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts in August, Spencer said: "It's mind boggling. That's a place I've been going to since I was a little kid. Not just sporting-wise, but the second iteration of Spooky World [haunted attraction] was there. And obviously, Spooky World, the original especially, was so influential to the band. That was the first time I had ever seen anything like that, ever been able to meet a celebrity from a horror movie. I remember I met Kane Hodder, who played Jason, and George P. Wilbur, who played Michael Myers in ['Halloween'] Part 6. And I still have my signed Jason mask from that very night. So, to be now playing in a venue where Spooky World was housed for a number of years, it's all that sort of full-circle moment for me, being a kid from Massachusetts."

ICE NINE KILLS's latest release "Welcome To Horrorwood: Under Fire", was made available last October via Fearless Records. The effort capped off the ambitious "Horrorwood" saga concept and was by far the band's most intricate and detail-oriented release yet. "Welcome To Horrorwood: Under Fire" is a three-LP deluxe edition of "The Silver Scream 2: Welcome To Horrorwood". It features the original album, now with the addition of "Meat & Greet", two reimagined tracks and a limited edition, wearable Silence mask, all encased in a super limited and highly collectible flame-engulfed box set.

Decadent, devious and fiercely insane, ICE NINE KILLS celebrate pop culture's darkest edges, mining a cinephile library's worth of iconic horror on 2018's "The Silver Scream", which spawned Top 10 Mainstream Rock single "A Grave Mistake" and Top 20 hit "Savages". The creative marriage made in hell of music and fiction began in earnest with the Top 5 Hard Rock album "Every Trick In The Book", which brought the previous three records' themes to new levels and which the band perfected on 2021's chart-topping smash hit "The Silver Scream 2: Welcome To Horrorwood". The phenomenally successful album, released in October 2021, scored ICE NINE KILLS their first Top 20 position (No. 18) on the Billboard 200, topped the Digital and Current Hard Music charts, hit Top 5 on the Current Rock, Independent, Current Albums and Album Sales charts.

Since the release of "The Silver Scream 2: Welcome To Horrorwood", ICE NINE KILLS have seen phenomenal growth. Throughout 2022 they toured the U.S. extensively on three legs of "The Trinity Of Terror", have supported METALLICA in packed, sold-out stadiums around the world on their "M72" world tour, toured the U.S. with SLIPKNOT and launched their enormously successful horror convention, The Silver Scream Con, which just celebrated its second, sold-out edition last month. Spencer was featured in the music video for the official song from "Scream 6", Demi Lovato's "Still Alive", an ICE NINE KILLS flyer was used in the movie and featured a Spencer-recommended easter egg. Since spring of last year, as well as wowing packed-out stadiums around the world with METALLICA, ICE NINE KILLS have headlined numerous sold-out shows on their "Wurst Vacation" European tour and thrilled tens of thousands of fans at Download festival to huge acclaim from both critics and fans alike. They then toured the U.S. with FALLING IN REVERSE on their "Popular Monstour" run and hit the road for "Fear The Premiere" U.S. headline shows in August. ICE NINE KILLS finished 2023 on a high with the release of "Welcome To Horrorwood Under Fire" and the "Kiss Of Death" co-headline tour with IN THIS MOMENT.