FROLIC

“You create art for yourself and hopefully other people like it. You can’t go in trying to please everyone because you’ll never do it.”

“Solos are great, but silence is golden.”

“The riffs have to be original, melodic, and interesting. I try to make riffs that transport me to another plane.”

“Technology tends to breed complacency. If we can break that cycle, we might be on a better trajectory.”

“Once a person forgets to think, all is lost.”

“Technology’s negative emotional impact on us is a human problem.”

“Our music is meant to take people to a different universe they never imagined.”

“We have a lot of fun creating different environments and universes. That’s what inspires us to write the music we love.”

“Legacies Of Cybernetica is both a reflection of today and a glimpse into the future.”

“We don’t think about comparisons. We just go in and write our music.”

“The future of underground metal lies in endless combinations, experimentation, and never being afraid to explore something new.”

“We hope people understand how much these songs meant to us, to everyone who played them, and to the community that keeps underground metal alive.”

Emerging from California’s legendary Bay Area thrash scene, Frolic are proving that tradition and innovation can thrive side by side.
On their debut full length ‘Legacies Of Cybernetica‘, the band fuses razor sharp riffing with futuristic themes, exploring technology, identity, and the human condition without losing the raw energy that defines thrash metal.
In this interview with Fok ‘bs‘, Edgar Sanchez, Elijah Post, and Zak Kufeld discuss the ideas behind the album, their creative philosophy, and why the future of thrash is still being written.
‘Legacies Of Cybernetica‘ suggests that technology itself can leave behind myths and history.
At what point did you stop seeing cybernetics as science fiction and start treating it as something deeply human?
Edgar Sanchez: “As we were writing, we realized more and more that the lyrics were resembling our everyday society as it has become today.”
Elijah Post: “We’ve hit that point where a good portion of the human population deals with advanced technology everyday, both for good and for ill. The visual aesthetic of the album is extravagant, but the stories…”
Being a Bay Area thrash band comes with enormous expectations.
Do you ever feel you’re writing songs while an invisible audience is constantly comparing you to the past, or has that pressure become a source of motivation?
Edgar Sanchez: “We don’t even think about those sort of things. We just go in and we write our music.”
Zak Kufeld: “You can’t think about others opinions when you’re creating art. You create art for yourself and hopefully other people like it. But you can’t go in trying to please everyone because you’ll never do it.”
Your music is highly technical, yet it rarely feels like musicians trying to impress other musicians.
How do you know when complexity is serving the song rather than competing with it?
Edgar Sanchez: “Because the song is the complexity that makes the song rather than it competing with its own thing we feel that each song is a different art piece that resembles its own form.”
The album explores virtual worlds, fractured identities, and technological evolution.
Do you think the greatest danger of technology is what it does to society, or what it quietly changes inside the individual?
Edgar Sanchez: “Definitely how it changes the inside of the individual because once that person forgets to think, all is lost.”
Elijah Post: “I would say that it’s the same thing. If every individual, or even a majority is affected by technology, then society has been affected.”
Zak Kufeld: “Technology as a whole tends to breed complacency. The individual is slowly leaning into technology more and more. I feel like if we can break that cycle, we might be in a better trajectory.”
Thrash has always been music driven by instinct, while science fiction often asks philosophical questions.
Was combining those two worlds a natural process, or did you consciously try to make aggressive music that also invites reflection?
Edgar Sanchez: “It felt like a natural process where we just went in with that aggressive touch that was already a part of the music with our previous releases.”
Tracks like ‘Living In Virtuality‘ feel surprisingly relevant in an era where many people spend more time online than in reality.
Do you think future listeners will hear this album as speculative fiction, or as a document of its time?
Edgar Sanchez: “I would say it would be a combination of both because it definitely does resemble a lot today and I’m sure that people will have those same thoughts in the future.”
Elijah Post: “I always felt like the unrelenting repetition of the chord progression at the end of ‘Living In Virtuality’ while everything around it keeps changing did a good job representing the profound sadness of a person loosing their awareness of the world around them.”
Twin-guitar bands often talk about harmony, but the real challenge is usually knowing when not to play.
Has learning to leave space become just as important as learning to play faster?
Edgar Sanchez: “Definitely…we tried out a guy hella years ago and he just did not know when to not play haha.”
Zak Kufeld: “Solos are great, but silence is golden.”
Elijah Post: “We try to write music where everyone has moments to lead and moments to support. We try to balance each other out.”
Your songwriting constantly shifts between precision and controlled chaos.
When a new riff emerges, what tells you that it belongs in the world of Frolic rather than simply being an interesting musical idea?
Edgar Sanchez: “The riffs have to be original and melodic and interesting. I try to make riffs that transport me to another plane.”
The title ‘A Shattered Soul‘ introduces a very personal image into an otherwise futuristic concept.
Was it important for you that even the most technological themes remain emotionally grounded?
Elijah Post: “When I wrote the lyrics to ‘A Shattered Soul’ I got some direction from Lenny to evoke themes of loss and resilience, which I’m all about as a fan of Judas Priest lyrics. At the end of the day, technology’s negative emotional impact on us is a human problem.”
Thrash metal was once considered the sound of the future, and today it has become part of heavy metal history.
What do you think modern thrash still has left to discover that earlier generations never explored?
Edgar Sanchez: “I think that music can be good, but the technicality of the music is what’s going to push listeners into a frontier that they never been into before. Our music is definitely meant to take people to a different universe that they would’ve never imagined. At the end of day, they can interpret how they want to hear the music and what the songs mean to them for the listener.”
Zak Kufeld: “I’m not sure if there will ever be a finite amount of combinations that you can do with any sub genre. There’s always gonna be some other way to express, formulate, and write. Trying to incorporate something new might not work out at first but experimenting makes making music incredibly more satisfying.”
Listening to ‘Legacies Of Cybernetica‘, one gets the impression that every song is part of a larger universe rather than an isolated story.
Do you see yourselves gradually building an ongoing mythology across multiple albums?
Edgar Sanchez: “Most likely…we have a lot of fun when it comes down to these kinds of concepts that can create different environments and different universes where can take our minds. It causes us to create awesome music that we enjoy.”
If someone from 1986 somehow heard this record without any context, which aspect do you think would surprise them the most, the songwriting, the production, or the very subjects you’re writing about?
Edgar Sanchez: “I would say all of the above! It’s definitely something from the future and if someone wants to hear it in 1986 they would probably be blown away by how the album sounds cause everything is really up-to-date and more modern, but with its own musical cutting edge too.”
Zak Kufeld: “I’d like to think that they would like all of those aspects, but I think the subjects that we’re writing about would be particularly intriguing to them. Either way I hope they invite us to play Ruthie’s Inn!”
Finally, if ‘Legacies Of Cybernetica‘ were discovered a hundred years from now as the only surviving record of today’s metal scene, what would you hope people would understand about your generation from these seven songs?
Elijah Post: “That this was an era where underground metal found its sound in the endless combinations of all different types of the genre. Without context they might not even see that, but hopefully they’ll be able to feel it in all the different ways that we wrote stuff on this album.”
Zak Kufeld: “I would hope that people would understand how how much fun playing these songs was and how much it meant to the people playing them and the people who came out to listen to them and the folks in the scene come out and support folks like us chasing dreams like this.”
With ‘Legacies Of Cybernetica‘, Frolic look beyond nostalgia and toward new frontiers, combining classic Bay Area aggression with thought provoking concepts and fearless musicianship.
Their answers reveal a band driven not by expectations, but by curiosity, creativity, and a genuine love for making music.
If this is only the beginning of Frolic’s journey, their future promises to be every bit as ambitious as the universe they have already begun to create.
by Fok ‘bs’