Spotlight: DK-Zero

In this spotlight feature where we bring you bands deserving of far more love and listeners, we have the overwhelmingly talented Dk-Zero!

Formed up of D-punk who is a talented musician from Seattle, he forms one half of the vocals, the other half of the vocals are by Kato. Many of you may know her as Kato punk, originally born in Wales and moving over to America in 2007 she has become one of the most famous alternative models out there. She also started the original and oldest running steam clothing online store known as Steampunk Couture. Finally there Is Skye on the guitar making for a very unique Industrial band. DK-Zero played the main stage of WGT this year in their first ever European show, no small feat!

Interview:

Q. Thank you for joining us! Kato I have been a fan of yours for a fair few years so it is wonderful to speak to you in regards to industrial music now. D-punk I must admit, I partially based my dreaded hair on yours. For those who don’t know Dk- Zero who are you, and what is the sound, theme, andstory that make up you music?

Thank you so much! We are excited to be here talking with you; and of course we love talking about our music whenever we get the chance. I am going to give you a little bit of a backstory so you understand the roots of DK-Zero and how we came to be. Kato and I met in early 2015. Both of us were going through horrible breakups with some really toxic people. I had been a professional bassist for nearly 20 years at the time. Kato was in the midst of doing nearly everything else in the world. She was running her clothing business,

running all her modeling websites, talent scouting every day and ultimately landed a staring role in the television show Steampunk’d. So it was a crazy time for us. In the middle of all this we had a crazy night of drinking... Kato started singing and a friend of ours said “you guys should start a band together”.

At first we sort of laughed it off, but a few days went by and we looked at each other and were like “maybe we should do this”. So Kato and I started listening to all sorts of Nu Metal and Industrial Rock and realized this is what we needed to do. We needed to write music that had that energy we loved in some of our favorite bands from that time period. So I scoured the internet in 2015 trying to find any band who were writing music like that... and I couldn’t find any new up and coming bands that had the sound I was hearing in my head. I knew we were onto something. The concept for DK-Zero was there...

We wanted to blend Industrial Rock and Nu Metal from the late 90’s and early 2000’s with Cyber, Breakbeats, EDM and Hip Hop elements. We wanted it to be aggressive and energetic and also retain some traditional song structure. I wanted people to be able to feel that anger and that aggression, but also be able to understand the lyrics and scream along with us.

Q. You recently played the main stage at Wave Gotik Treffen how was that experience for you and were you well received in Germany?

Playing the MainStage at Wave Gotik Treffen... what can I say. It was probably one of the most incredible live show experiences we’ve had so far. It is a huge venue and the sound was perfect. It was absolutely amazing. In a lot of ways I wish every show could be like that. We were really fortunate as well to have Chris L. from the band Agonoize and Funker Vogt play keyboards for us on that show. There are a few clips on our YouTube channel of him on stage with us if you want to check those out. He’s been a good friend of ours for years now and he acted as a translator on and off stage, which made our whole experience at WGT so much fun. We got to joke around a lot with the sounds guys and the stage crew, which made it feel a lot more like family.