CHILDREN OF THE REPTILE'S OZZIE TALKS MUSIC AND HAVING FUN!

Heavy metal of the traditional new wave kind is what Children Of The Reptile considers themselves to be. In this case, they have a few releases, including most recent being a full-length titled "The End". According to them the two full-length are about 45 minutes in length time-wise, with the EP at 25 minutes in length of time. So in other words, it's a lot of good riffs to go around. As such, vocalist/guitarist Ozzie Darden goes into further details about their music and future plans!


1. Please tell us about the history of your band and its members.

Ozzie: We truly started in 2010 with most of the current members onboard. Chrils Millard(guitar) and I formed the band after leaving our former bands. David Hufham (Bass) and Jon Kiker (Drums), high school friends of Chris, jumped onboard and we gelled pretty quickly. We played around North Carolina recording songs whenever we had made enough money to do so. In 2013, we released our first album. (“Children of the Reptile”) Shortly thereafter, Jon Kiker, our first drummer, quit the band for personal reasons. A few attempts were made to replace him and a few shows played, but it took until 2015 to get a truly permanent and stylistically appropriate replacement in Chase Kelly. Since Chase stabilized the throne, we’ve put out “The 4 Weapons EP” in 2016 and just a few short weeks ago, released our second full length album called “The End.”

2. What’s the origin of the band’s name?

Ozzie: It’s actually the name of a song I wrote for my old band, Death Machine Weapon,s that we never played. It was based on the Reptites from the SNES game Chrono Trigger. They were sort of a primordial race of reptilian hyper intelligent humanoids who attempted to exterminate the early humans in 65,000,000 B.C in the game’s timeline. I wrote the song about them, titled it “Children of the Reptile” and decided to make it my next band’s name. We still play the song, it’s the last track on our first record and still one of our best, in my opinion.

3. Where is the band based out of and what is your music scene like there? Are there any local bands you could recommend?

Ozzie: We’re based out of Wilmington North Carolina. The scene here is pretty fruitful for heavy music. We’re the home of Weedeater, Toke, ASG, Sourvein, and Thunderlip. So it’s a pretty top heavy scene. We’ve been sort of in a lull for new metal bands but it seems like there’s finally some other bands starting to pop up. Our favorite local band is called Mortal Man, though. If you like metal or hard rock, you gotta check out their bandcamp page.

4. How would you describe your style?

Ozzie: So, if you’re a fan of the New Wave of Traditional Heavy Metal, you’ll like us. We try not to just ape bands from 1982 or whatever because we really like Mastodon and Death and shit like that too. But our foundation will always be in Iron Maiden, Manilla Road, Black Sabbath, Thin Lizzy, etc.

5. What have you released so far and what can someone expect from your works?

“Children of the Reptile” - Full Length, 2013
“The 4 Weapons EP” - EP, 2016
“The End” - Full Length, 2018

The full lengths are about 45 minutes, the EP is about 25. You can expect a lot of good fuckin’ riffs!

6. Do you have any new music in the works?

Ozzie: We’re always writing something but nothing new is completed as a band right now. We expect to be playing brand new material live by the middle of the year, and hopefully start recording it by the end of 2018.

7. How about playing shows and touring, have anything planned out?

Ozzie: We just went on a short string of dates in support of “The End” so nothing big planned out right now. We’d like to make a run up north over the summer if possible, but due to our lives and jobs and all that lame shit, it’ll probably be a run of less than a week. It’s just the reality of modern touring, unfortunately, everything is more expensive. I’m 34 and married. The other guys are in their mid 20's but we all gotta show up at work most days, you know?

8. What plans do you have for the future as a band?

Ozzie: We really just wanna have fun and take it as far as we can while not hemorrhaging money. None of us wanna be rock stars but we want people to hear our music. If our ceiling is “regional well loved touring act” that’s fine with us.

9. Where can we listen to your band and where can we buy your stuff?

Best spot is on bandcamp: (https://cotr.bandcamp.com/). You can listen to and buy all of it there! If you want physical copies, best thing to do is message us on our Facebook page.

10. What is it you’d like a listener to remember the most when hearing your music for the first time?

Ozzie: To me, the best thing about metal is that is gets the imagination firing. I think we all aim to do that with our music in this band, so if somebody remembers just getting that heroic or evil feeling creeping into their bones after a particularly powerful riff we’ll have done our jobs.