Spencer Charnas tells us about the misfits of screen and sound that inspire his musical storytelling within the Ice Nine Kills world.
From becoming mates with slasher stars to the band who kickstarted a “lifelong obsession with music”, Ice Nine Kills’ Spencer Charnas gushes about his biggest heroes…
“Kevin created not just a music festival with Warped Tour, but a cultural movement. [I was always] excited to go to Warped every year, and Kevin gave Ice Nine Kills our shot when we were nobody. The first one I attended was probably in ’99 or 2000, and it was the first time I had seen so many punk bands that I loved in the same place. I would go with my buddy Andrew, and we would sneak backstage and hand out demos. I remember getting thrown out by, I think, Pennywise’s tour manager…”
“He’s one of my favourite filmmakers of all time; there was something fearless about him. Wes had a minor hit in the ’70s with The Last House On The Left, which gave him a little bit of credibility in the film business. He’d [written a new] script and every major studio passed on it. He ended up teaming up with a very small studio at the time, and they got together and made the film that turned out to be A Nightmare On Elm Street. That story has always spoken to me: if you believe in yourself, keep on going.”
“I saw the video for Smells Like Teen Spirit as a very young kid, [when] MTV was the coolest thing on the planet. That video spoke to me; the look of it, the sound. I was like, ‘This is amazing!’ I wanted to be just like Kurt Cobain. I wanted the sweater, I wanted to bleach my hair. I marched into my parents’ room and was like, ‘Mom and dad, I want to play guitar.’ That was the first song I ever learned; I had a great music teacher named Fred Shepard who taught me, and that began a lifelong obsession with music. Kurt never gave a shit about what was popular. He never seemed to follow any trends, and just did what he thought was cool. There was something very nonchalant about him.”
“Nirvana was very inspirational in terms of me wanting to play music, but in terms of crafting my own songs, I have to say John Feldmann from Goldfinger. They wrote these incredible songs and I love the band so much, but I’d never seen them live. Finally, they came to my town when I was a freshman in high school. The first thing that John did was jump into the crowd and start crowdsurfing. I was like, ‘That’s what I want to do. I want to write my own songs and be as cool as Goldfinger.’ That night I got up onstage, because they invite people up during their song Mable, and he gave me the mic for one part. I started a band that night, and I have the date tattooed behind my ear. Twenty years later we ended up working with him, as he’s co-written a number of Ice Nine Kills songs.”
“I had never heard of Matt Lillard until I saw Scream. Him and Skeet [Ulrich] blew me away with those performances. That was the first slasher movie that I saw on the big screen, and there was just something about those two. I have sort of morphed Skeet and Matt into the way that I view storytelling and acting, and the way that I view a twist ending. To me, [Scream has] one of the best twists in film history. Both Skeet and Matt have become buddies of mine – we travel the country doing horror conventions.”
INK tour the UK from December 8. This interview originally appeared in the winter 2025 issue of Kerrang!.
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