Mushroomhead’s Steve Felton Says the Band Won’t Play Without Masks Even Though It Sucks
Wearing masks cannot the easiest or most comfortable gimmick for a band to take on. Just ask Slipknot, Lordi, Gwar, Sleep Token, and The Locust, masks have got to be some of the most uncomfortable, itchy, and really hard to see in form of stage gear. For art-metal act Mushroomhead, the masks are a huge pain in the ass, but they would never perform without them.
In a recent interview with Dr. Music (as transcribed by Blabbermouth), drummer, founder, and sole consistent member of Mushroomhead, Steve “Skinny” Felton, was asked if the band would ever perform without their trademark masks. And while Felton explained how uncomfortable and difficult the masks were to work with, he also indicated they would never do a show without them:
“Yeah, the thought has definitely crossed the mind many times over the years. But if we were to do something like that, that’s what side projects are for and that’s what releasing something that Mushroomhead doesn’t have for you.
“Sometimes [when Mushroomhead is performing] it’s overwhelmingly hot, and your peripheral vision in a dark club, man — you can’t see anything,” he admitted. “To kind of find your footing, especially guitar players or singers, to find their footing, they just kind of stay planted for a little while sometimes because, like I said, with the lights, it’s very hard to see and breathe. The communication is tough. We have a lot of hand signals because there’s no lip reading. ‘Wear a mask,’ they said. ‘It’ll be fun,’ they said. I say it all the time: ‘Whose idea was this?’
“But I’m glad we do it,” Felton insisted. “It keeps us entertained. And I’ll tell you what — when you put a mask on and you get out there and you start performing, you definitely do take on a little bit of a different character and you just feel slightly different in the mask. It’s a little more free and open, and you’re not really worried about if you’re making direct eye contact or if you’re smiling right or you look cool. It’s like you’re in a whole another world as soon as you put it on. So it definitely helps the energy level when you’re up there. But it also drains it, because by the end of the song, when it’s Arizona at 104 degrees [Fahrenheit] at one in the afternoon, you’re, like, ‘What the hell?’”
So it certainly sounds like performing in those masks can get difficult, and Mushroomhead deserves some credit for their dedication to the bit. And, at this point, if any of us were to see them without their masks, we’d probably be traumatized like those kids who accidentally see Disney World performers with their heads off.
