Marina Koyen
The band The Flavor That Kills.
The Flavor That Kills (from left): Christian Burnson, Ryan Corcoran, Eric Hartz, Educational Davis.
“I feel like this band is sometimes like a four-way intersection with no stop signs,” says guitarist Educational Davis of Madison’s The Flavor That Kills. “You might crash—and sometimes we do — but there’s all this bumping and maneuvering around until eventually you get this cool pattern down.”
Since forming in 2012, The Flavor That Kills has proven a powerhouse act in Madison’s music scene. The four-piece knows how to deliver electrifying live shows that showcase their skill as musicians. They released their latest album Book of Secrits on January 24; the band will play an album release show at The Bur Oak on March 15 with support from Nester and The Moonboot.
Book of Secrits, the quartet’s third album, marks their first release featuring the newest incarnation of the band’s sound. They traded in the distinctly retro sound of the Fender Rhodes electric piano, opting for the more standard format of two guitars, bass and drums, a departure from the more funk-inspired ’70s rock of their first two albums.
The Flavor That Kills is a collection of veterans of Madison’s music scene — each with a decade-plus of experience in other projects: Eric Hartz (drums), Ryan Corcoran (vocals/guitar), Christian Burnson (bass), and newest member Educational Davis (guitar).
The four members have crossed paths frequently over the years, often sharing billing at local venues. “We were all in pretty successful bands, but we were all interweaving between different projects until we eventually connected,” Hartz says.
The Flavor That Kills started as a merging of members from three local bands. Burnson met Corcoran at the now-defunct Liquid Lyrics Lounge on Park Street about 20 years ago — the two were members of Screamin' Cyn Cyn & The Pons and Awesome Car Funmaker, respectively. When Awesome Car said farewell in 2009, Corcoran began repurposing demos he’d kept for a planned collaboration with Burnson and the other Awesome Car members on a new alt-rock project, Lake Delton. When former Hum Machine drummer Hartz eventually got involved, the project morphed into The Flavor That Kills..
The Flavor That Kills pulls from soul, blues, and rock to create a sound they refer to as soul punk. At times, Corcoran’s striking voice and the bluesy guitar riffs on Book of Secrits are reminiscent of bands like The Black Keys. On tracks like the propulsive “Nerve,” Davis’ dynamic guitar riff and the driving rhythm section complement Corcoran’s vocal prowess.
While performing at a festival in 2019, The Flavor That Kills were short a guitarist, and Davis, there with another band, hopped on stage to fill the gap. From then on, he was part of the group.
“Joining this band has been really liberating,” Davis says. “It’s so much more freeform.”
The band takes a collaborative approach to songwriting. Burnson typically leads with a bass riff that he and Hartz develop;the two guitarists then build off the rhythm section. Of the 13 songs on Book of Secrits, five were ready to record when they entered the studio. During the pandemic restrictions, some tracks were written as they were recorded — a process that resulted in a few first-take recordings making the album.
Book of Secrits was engineered and mixed by Beau Sorenson (Death Cab For Cutie, Superchunk) and recorded at Madison’s Coney Island Studios. The album aims to capture their live sound. Collaborating with Sorenson helped the band experiment with new sonic layering. “He’s weirdly the fifth member on this record,” Burnson says. “We really gave him artistic license.”
“I think you have people that come from very high-energy bands,” Davis says. “We all come from that ‘put on a good show, make it high energy, play your ass off, and have fun’ side of things.”
