Janus: Hosting ‘Head Bangers Ball’ Was a ‘High Point in Our Careers’

Janus might be only five months into promoting their debut album, 'Red Right Return,' but the Chicago heavy rockers have already hit a career milestone. The quartet hosted MTV's 'Headbanger's Ball' this January. "It was part of a long and crazy day in New York," vocalist David Scotney tells Noisecreep. "It was definitely a high point in our careers to be hosting and getting to share our insight and memories."

The show with Janus first aired Jan. 25 and is currently streaming online. Scotney confesses to having just watched a rerun that morning. "It was interesting, because I do a lot of the TV and interviews for the band. So it was interesting for me to watch the guys with a bunch of cameras in their faces. 'Headbanger's Ball' is one of those things we had all grown up with."

Scotney grew up watching bands like the Deftones ("they really opened my eyes to heavier more artsy kind of heavy rock") and Tool ("I'm a big Tool fan"), so it was something of an honor to present their own video -- for the band's latest single, 'Eyesore' -- on the show. "We got to talk a little bit about making the record. There are all these stories behind that that we don't usually share. 'Headbanger's Ball' gave us a chance to explain how it all turned out the way it did and how we look the way we do on stage."

About that: What's with the band's matching Soviet military styled uniforms? Scotney laughs. "Well, the uniforms are a small extension of a much larger concept that we wanted to wrap around the whole record," he says. "We were going for a 1920s Russian Constructionist kind of vibe." That doesn't mean that the album's title is a Communist call-to-arms, though. "It's actually a term that a ship captain uses when returning to port: Always keep the red buoy on the right-hand side of the ship to ensure safe passage home."