The Magnums

The OCC Viking News Music Issue has finally been released. For those of you who haven't gotten enough, here is my interview with The Magnums.

                Words and language are up to interpretation. If one were to travel around the United States and ask people what came to their mind when they heard the word “magnum,” there are several answers you can expect to find. In some areas you’ll hear a gun, or the wine bottle or in some cases people may remember the work of Tom Selleck in “Magnum P.I.”

                  However, if you ask fans of the Jersey Shore music scene, the response will more than like be “The Magnums.” Starting off as a side project involving front man Nico Santo Domingo and guitarist Garret Bayard, The Magnums have evolved into a something that puts people on their feet when they perform.

DB: How would you guys describe your sound?

TM: Sex jazz, it’s like a sex bomb in your ear.

DB: Care to elaborate?

TM: We’ve called our original music a bunch of stuff over the years. We just tend to have fun. We can be real loud at times. Sound guys are not fans of us. But we just try to have fun, drink and play music.

DB: How do you guys feel about performing cover songs?

TM: Well we’re definitely not a cover band. We wouldn’t say covers suck, but we’re an original band. When you’re at a bar, people just want to hear [stuff] they know and get drunk. But at a few shows we’ve asked if people wanted to hear a cover or original, and 99 percent of the time, they ask for originals.

DB: Do you think people are more into your originals than your covers?

TM: Oh absolutely. We hook people in with the covers, but once they hear our originals they’re like “Oh Magnums, cool,” except for the 10 drunk girls that want to hear “American Girl.”

DB: You guys are friends with the guys from Temporary Grace and you’re all representing the Jersey rock scene. How do you guys help each other out?

TM: Well you know, we share equipment or plug each other’s shows. We’ll call each other up and say we need someone to play with us and we just go help each other out.

DB: As a band you guys mesh together very well. Offstage, do you guys have the same experience?

TM:  We really fit. We call each other to hang out as opposed to the past where it was more like a business relationship with our original line-up.  

DB: What can you guys tell us as far as your studio work?

TM: We  had our first six track album called “Big Things” back in 2007. Right now we have a full length album coming out called “Midnight Stealth.” It may be the best recording we’ve done and the artwork is incredible. We put a lot of work into it.

DB: Do you guys see this going far or is it just something to do for fun?

TM: We definitely do it for fun. If something were to happen then cool, but if not we all have other things going on.

DB: What’s next?

TM: Promote the hell out of the album. We’ve never really pushed our albums. We just kind of let them flub out. But this time we’re really going to push it and step out of our [Toms River] domain a little bit.