Cobra Starship…you might be thinking “aren’t they that one band who did that one song for that one movie with Samuel L. Jackson?” You might even be thinking “I didn’t know they were actually a band…I thought it was just that guy from that one band, that other guy from that other band, and that chick from that Swedish band getting together for a one off.” Well, my friend, you’d be wrong; very, very wrong.

Just read their Fueled By Ramen band bio, and you’ll soon see that not only are Cobra Starship real, but they are here on a mission: to take over the world. Guitarist Alex Suarez talked a bit to Shout! recently about the new album, hardcore bands, and family secrets…

S!: You guys have done loads of festival tours. What’s been your favorite band to share the bill with?

Alex: Well, over the summer, we did a world tour, and we did a tour with The Academy Is…, and we ended up doing a bunch of festivals with them all over, like Germany, the UK, Belgium…it was awesome!  We had a great time!  It was awesome that we got to do the same tent as those guys, but we got to do some really sweet festivals like Reading and Leeds, and one in Germany, and we got to see The Arcade Fire, and Smashing Pumpkins played, it was awesome!  It was truly an incredible thing to see and watch and be a part of. It was just really cool because every night it would be somebody different…like a whole mix of scenes, depending on the festival.  I got to see Mellencollin play!  I had never seen them, but I really liked their record when I was in like, middle school, so I was like “this is sweet! Not only do I get to see this band, but I get to see them 12 years later at this festival in Germany!”  You know, what are the odds of that happening?

S!: You’re going overseas for Give It a Name and back to Australia later this year…are there any differences for you between US and foreign bands?

A: It’s pretty awesome, because the first time we went over to Australia we went with TAI on that world tour and we got to play with the really sweet band from Australia.  They were just awesome dudes!  They were into the same scene…their bass player is actually from somewhere in the US.  It was cool.  We all have similar influences, and they were a little more euro, but they’re trying to be at more of an American pop-rock level, which was really sweet, I thought. In Japan, we saw this one band that was really sweet, this Japanese punk band that played before us at Summer Sonic Festival.  I was like “ok, I have to see this. A Japanese punk band?”  But they were sweet, they just shredded it! It was going like an old hardcore house show back in the late 90’s…these kids were just going crazy shredding and playing and stuff! So yeah, not much of a difference between US and foreign bands.

S!: Viva La Cobra has been out for a while now.  How do you feel it’s doing, and how to you judge an album’s success?

A: Everybody’s a critic.  If you go to a website, everybody’s gonna give their full on opinion because it’s a message board or whatever, whether they love it or don’t like it, or it’s not their thing, it doesn’t matter.  Critics are sweet. I think we’ve gotten a lot of great reviews, which is awesome.  I think it’s doing really really well!  We’ve been really consistent on our record sales.  We’ve been consistently touring, and it really shows.  Obviously, a lot of kids are downloading records these day instead of buying them, which we’re totally cool with, we actually don’t mind it and we suggest it, like “play the songs and come to our show so you can have a great time!”  We just did a really successful headlining tour, which was our first headlining tour ever, and we just had sold out shows across the country and Canada!  It was just rooms full of kids singing along and having a party, so that’s all we could ask for at this point!

S!: Yeah, we were actually at the Atlanta show because we were upstairs covering The Devil Wears Prada and Silverstein…we’d been trying to get into the Charlotte show the next night, but that wasn’t gonna work out, so your rep got us into your show downstairs to do our photos!

A: Really interesting that you bring up that show in particular!  That show was very intimate…the whole tour was kinda like that because we weren’t really sure how big a venue we needed to book…we’d rather book small venues, and keep it more intimate with the core fans that have been there from the beginning, because they really appreciate that. What was really sweet about that show was that I used to be really into post-hardcore music from back in the day, and I heard there was a hardcore show going on upstairs (TDWP, Silverstein, Protest The Hero).  Our merch guy is really into hardcore music and was like “you’ve GOTTA go see these bands!” So I went up and I caught some of the bands, and I had such a great time up there! TDWP was awesome!  They put on such a great show! Everyone was going crazy, going ape shit, and that’s what you want to see when you go to a show like that, you know? So I was really excited about that.  And then, after the show, I noticed that one of the dudes from one of the bands was watching our whole set downstairs.  I was thinking “I wonder what he’s thinking about all of this?”  I mean, he plays in a metal/hardcore band, and we’re Cobra Starship, like partyboys.com, doing our thing, having a good time! And then afterward, somebody introduced me to their drummer (TDWP) and he was like “I love you guys! You put on a great show!” It was kinda like two worlds colliding, but like, in harmony!

S!: Do you feel pigeonholed as a band by your involvement with a label that represents such a particular style of music?

A: To us, it’s kinda sweet because we’re involved with all of our friends. Like, we’re really tight bros with Fall Out Boy and that whole Decaydance crew. The Academy Is… we toured with for like six months last year, which is awesome, because they’re like, our boys. And we brought The Cab out, which is a new Decaydance band, and we toured with Gym Class [Heroes]…I don’t know, FBR has a particular sound, like Cute Is What We Aim For, Paramore, but they’re all kind of different in their own way.  And it’s kinda sweet, between Panic [At The Disco] and Gym Class [Heroes] and us, I feel like it’s kind of in the same genre, but different tweaks and styles of it, different versions. It’s kind of just one big family. Everybody’s just hanging and doing their thing!

S!: What is it, in your opinion, that FBR/Decaydance is doing differently than other labels to make it’s bands stand out so successfully in an already saturated industry?

A: Actually, it’s really interesting that you asked that, because I think we are a perfect example of it…like in the hip hop industry, they all kinda help each other out, they’re all bros…like Jay Z has a new artist, so they’ll help out Rhianna, you know what I’m saying? So, we’re new to Decaydance, so we did our first tour with Gym Class Heroes, then we jumped on the tour with Panic, so it’s kinda like the family is helping each other out. We took The Cab out on their first tour ever to help them out.  So everybody is kinda like taking out a new band to share them with their fan base, and hopefully their fans will in, so we’ll see how it goes.  I think a lot of people (a lot of labels) don’t really roll like that anymore.

S!: Where do you think that the band would be if “Snakes on a Plane” had never happened?

A:  I’m glad you asked that! Snakes on a Plane was just a huge leap.  I feel like we were fortunate enough to have that to help us jumpstart and skip 2 years of van touring.  We’ve all done van tours, we’ve gone through the shit with other bands like that, you know? It was a huge single, but we still had to tour a lot and not make any money for a while! But I guess it brought us to the next level right off the bat.  We were like “let’s take advantage of this and really try to work as hard as we can to really take it a step further.” But maybe we’d still be in the same position now just because we busted our asses…I mean, we toured like over 9 months last year, and this year, we’re trying to schedule ourselves through Christmas right now.  We’ve been on tour all year as it is. So it’s a hard call to make.

S!: A lot of bands we talk to mention how bad it is for the industry when bands shoot past the rough times, like you guys have admittedly done. How do you respond to that?

A: It’s weird, because we didn’t really break to a massive extent…I guess we had a lot of publicity, but we still did tours where we budgeted it out so that we could have a bus, but we probably should have taken a van [laughs].  A lot of bands come out and are called one hit wonders, but we just tried to exceed that. Like, we took all the elements from our first record and tried to take what the kids liked the most about it and have more fun and creativity with it.  The market gets flooded with one hit wonders, that still holds true for us a little bit, a lot of people still know us as the “Snakes on a Plane” band…but we’re just touring and doing our thing!

• Official Site: http://www.cobrastarship.com/
• MySpace URL: http://www.myspace.com/cobrastarship