Riff Wood talk “Green Day-inspired roots” and working with ‘Dookie’ producer on posi-punk new album: “We want to give hope to our generation”

Riff Wood have spoken to NME about the release of their second album ‘Butterfly In Black And White’ as well as being inspired by Green Day and The Beatles , working with pop-punk production legend Rob Cavallo, and their quest to make the world a more positive place.

The three mates from Davis County, Utah, originally wanted to start a band after watching Netflix musical comedy-drama series Julie And The Phantoms .

And, after Carson Groves, Hyrum Russon and Shredder heard Green Day’s 1994 album ‘Dookie’ for the first time, they knew exactly what sort of band they wanted to be.

READ MORE: Green Day’s Tré Cool knows you want a biopic – but Nimrods will do for now “‘Basket Case’ was the song that got us all into rock music,” Groves told NME over Zoom.

“It was just so carefree and [whenever we saw clips of them performing live] they just looked like they were having a blast on stage.” Russon added: “We were still learning guitar at the time and [‘Dookie’] wasn’t full of Van Halen -style shredding.

It was so simple, it felt like we could do it too.

That helped us gravitate to Green Day, Blink-182 and other pop-punk bands.” Shredder remembered: “It was also really different to everything else we were listening to, which was rap and pop.

It just felt exciting.

We still absolutely adore that album.” Six years later, Riff Wood have just released their second full-length record, ‘Butterfly In Black And White’.

The LP’s artwork is a reworked photo Groves took of milk that Russon had spilt before band practice and, after realising it looked like a butterfly, they started googling what a black and white butterfly meant.

Riff Wood.

CREDIT: Christina Huerta/Oh Snap! Photography “In some cultures it’s good luck, others see it as a sign of misfortune and death,” explained Russon.

“This whole album is about duality, positives and negatives, so it was a perfect fit.” The collection is full of snotty guitar anthems driven with a snarling teenage attitude – but while last year’s debut ‘Tough Luck’ was pure pop-punk, ‘Butterly In Black And White’ sees the trio take their sound to new places.

“We’re always finding new influences through different albums or going to concerts.