A Dirty Dozen with JORDAN MATTACCHIONE from I C RED – October 2026

According to a recent press release: “I C RED, the Charlotte North Carolina-based band, officially launched in 2026 but the force behind it has been building toward this moment for years. Its members Robbie (Drums), Jordan (Vocals), Sam (Bass), and Kelly (Guitar) grew up in the music industry, learning it from the inside, taking hits, sharpening their sound, and earning their instincts the hard way. What started as a tight-knit team with a shared history evolved into something heavier, darker, and more intentional. A modern industrial-leaning rock project built on aggressive energy, cinematic production, and hooks that stick. Over this past winter and spring the band shared their first transmission with the track “Industry Superstar.” Their bold, high-impact, and visually cohesive look blends modern heaviness with electronic textures and a concept-driven aesthetic that is as striking as the music itself. In a world where everyone is overstimulated, distracted, and numb, I C RED is here to break the trance and make people feel emotion again. Now, the band has released their debut six-track EP, THERMAL via Riser House Rock. They also shared the video for the song “KILLING ME.” We get singer Jordan to discuss new music, influences, and more…

1. Tell us a little about your latest release. What might a fan or listener not grab the first or second time they listen through? Are there any hidden nuggets you put in the material or that only diehard fans might find?

THERMAL is the prologue to I C RED. It summarizes pieces of a much bigger story that we’re only now beginning to tell and a lot of what’s buried in these songs probably won’t make sense until later. As far as hidden nuggets go all I’ll say is… there’s a lot of them. For anyone who cares about Easter eggs, we litter pretty much everything we do with them. Pay attention to the artwork, the merchandise, the videos, the posts, and all the wording. Nothing is there by accident. We’re about to start telling a much bigger story, but the funny part is, we’ve kind of already told the whole thing. If you really want to figure it out early then you probably can.

2. What got you into music and can you tell us about the moment you realized you wanted to be a musician?

Funny enough, I’d say Guitar Hero and Rock Band are probably the first things that really got me into music. I used to play them with my family when I was a kid, and I think that was the first time I realized I didn’t just want to listen to music… I wanted to be a rockstar. I got a guitar and messed around with it for a while and eventually I enrolled in an actual School of Rock. That’s where I completely fell in love with playing music. My mom and I used to joke that once I graduated School of Rock we should open our own place called Rock University. Then one day she drove me to a building, asked me what I thought of it, and told me she had bought it and that we were actually going to do it. She built an entire music school around supporting this dream I had. Honestly, she’s a huge reason any of us are here doing this today. Kelly was part of the very first program Rock U ever did. Sam came along closely after, and then Robbie. The four of us have been playing music together in some form for around 15 years. We really did grow up doing this together so the chemistry in I C RED comes from a lot more than just starting a band with some friends. Over time I think we all realized the same thing: sound can genuinely change people. Music changed our lives and now all we really want to do is spend ’em’ creating something that makes other people feel something too. So I guess taking over the world together feels like the logical next step!

3. Building on that, is there a specific song, album, performer, or live show that guided your musical taste?

That’s a loaded question for me because I could talk about musical influences for hours. My first concert was Mötley Crüe and Def Leppard. So my introduction to live rock music was immediately this massive, over the top production. I think that permanently affected the way I look at putting on a show. Vocally, Chris Cornell had a huge impact on me. Soundgarden was one of my favorites growing up and that combination of singing high, aggressively and emotionally definitely inspired the way I learned to use my voice. Steven Tyler and Robert Plant were big influences in that way too. One show that genuinely changed me was seeing Soundgarden with Nine Inch Nails. I went primarily for Soundgarden and knew some of the bigger Nine Inch Nails songs… but I was completely unprepared for what I saw. I left obsessed. Every time I’ve seen NIN since, I’ve walked away feeling something that most live shows just don’t give me. Trent Reznor has had a massive influence on the way I think about music, production and performance. I genuinely believe he’s one of the most important musicians of all time. At the same time, we grew up playing covers every weekend through Rock University, so we were exposed to everything from classic rock and metal, to blues and pop before we ever toured as an original band. That gave us a pretty wide musical vocabulary and a ton of on stage experience. I think all of that shows up in I C RED now. We want the songs to matter but when you come see us live we also want you to feel like you actually saw a show.

4. If you could call in any one collaborator to do a song with, who would it be, and why?

If I have to pick one, I’d say Oli Sykes. Trent Reznor is the obvious answer after everything I just said, so I’ll go a different direction. I’ve always been obsessed with songwriting / songwriters, not just bands. I spent years studying the people behind the songs too, writers like Max Martin, Ryan Tedder, Louis Bell just to name a few. I’ve always wanted to understand why certain songs connect the way they do. But when it comes to modern rock Oli is one of the people who has inspired the way I think about songwriting the most. What he and Jordan Fish built together helped push Bring Me The Horizon, and honestly rock music as a whole, into a completely different place. The way Oli approaches songwriting is something I’d really love to pick his brain about. More than anything, I’d love to be in on his creative process and collaborate with him on an I C RED song and maybe even a BMTH song.

5. What is your favorite activity when out of the studio and/or not on tour? What do you like to do to unwind?

Honestly, we’re not very good at shutting it off. We have a tendency to feel guilty when we’re not working toward the next thing because we’re very aware of how much we want to build and how far we still have to go. That’s something we’re all still learning to balance everyday. But when we do shut it off, we’re all massive nerds and gamers. We love the Souls games, God of War, Zelda, Metroid and a ton of other stuff. That influence definitely sneaks into ICR stuff all the time.

6. How would you describe your music to someone who’d never listened to you before? What is the one comparison a reviewer or fan has made that made you cringe or you disagreed with?

We call it Modern Industrial. It’s gritty synths, dirty bass, electronic drums, distortion and all the textures we love about classic industrial music, but with a much more modern approach to hooks, vocals, and production. We love huge choruses and great melodies, and just stuff that makes you stank face. At the end of the day we’re just I C RED. We just make the kind of music that makes us feel something. As far as comparisons, I honestly don’t think there’s one that has ever offended us. Music is open to interpretation and if somebody hears another artist in what we do then who am I to tell them they’re wrong? Comparison is just honestly how people make sense of new music. Obviously we have influences and we’re definitely not shy about them, but the goal was never to become a new version of somebody else. The goal is for eventually somebody to hear another band and say “That sounds like I C RED.”

7. When your band is hanging out together, who cooks, who gets the drinks in, and who is first to crack out the acoustic guitars for a singalong?

I’m definitely the cook. Cooking is something I genuinely love when I actually have time to do it. It’s weirdly therapeutic for me. The acoustic guitar singalong part is where this question stops describing ICR. If music breaks out while we’re all hanging, it’s much more likely that Sam shows up with his laptop saying “You guys need to hear this” and suddenly we’re all sitting around a hot tub making faces at a laptop. That probably explains our dynamic better anyway. We all naturally fall into very different roles and balance each other out well. Within I C RED I’m The Creator, Sam is The Technician, Kelly is The Architect and Robbie is The Enforcer. I’ll let you decide what that says about each of us.

8. When was the last time you were starstruck and who was it?

I actually don’t get starstruck very often. I’ve been lucky enough to meet a lot of people I really admire over the years and usually I’m pretty comfortable just walking up and introducing myself. But a little over a year ago, in a previous band, we played a show with Bring Me The Horizon at an outdoor amphitheater. I was backstage standing in line at an ice cream truck, which was parked a few feet away from the last bus in the row of buses. Right as it became my turn to order Oli Sykes stepped off that bus close enough that I could have easily introduced myself. I looked at Oli. I looked at the ice cream truck. I completely froze… and ordered the ice cream. By the time I turned around he was gone. I didn’t get another chance to talk to him that night and I thought about how ridiculous that was for days afterward.very Next time the ice cream can wait.

9. What is the best part of being a musician? If you could no longer be a musician for whatever reason, what would be your dream job?

The best part about being a musician? How much time do you have? I’ve always felt this intrinsic duty to help people. As I’ve said a few times, I’ve always felt like I was meant to do something bigger with my life, and for as long as I can remember, that thing has been music. I love writing music, although I definitely have a complicated relationship with songwriting. When I write something I’m proud of, I feel incredible. When I don’t, I can be way too hard on myself. That’s something I’m constantly working on. But my true passion is performing. The second I walk onstage and see an audience ready to be entertained, I’m immediately in the zone. I turn into a different animal. Whatever is happening in my life outside of that room disappears, and nothing can really stop that force once it’s there. Then you get offstage and somebody tells you that a song, a lyric or a performance changed their life, helped them through something, saved a relationship, or maybe helped them realize a relationship needed to end. That’s when all of the work, sacrifice, and pain makes sense and feels worth it. That connection is probably the best part of all of this. As for what I’d do if I could no longer be a musician, I honestly don’t have an answer. That part of the question doesn’t really exist for this band. There isn’t a version of my life where I willingly stop pursuing music. I’ve already decided what I’m doing with this one.

10. What is one question you have always wanted an interviewer to ask – and what is the answer? Conversely, what question are you tired of answering?

You actually get the honor of being I C RED’s very first interview! So we haven’t had enough interviews yet to get tired of any questions. What I can tell you going forward is that I’ll always try to keep the conversation centered around the music, the band, and the world we’re building with ICR. We’re still very early in this and there’s a lot that we’re intentionally keeping quiet until the right moment. We have some very lofty goals and a lot of ideas that people haven’t seen yet, so I’d rather build those things first and talk about them once there’s something real to show. Outside of that world there probably won’t be much I’m interested in discussing publicly. We pour almost everything we have into this, and honestly it’s what I care about talking about. That level of obsession is probably part of what’s going to get us where we’re trying to go.

11. Looking back over your career, is there a single moment or situation you feel was a misstep or you would like to have a “do over,” even if it didn’t change your current situation?

Honestly, no. Not even a little bit. There are definitely moments I could choose to look back on negatively but I don’t really care to, because those moments are surrounded by other decisions and failures that ultimately got us here. As cliché as it sounds I really believe you have to fail over and over again before you understand how to win. And honestly, I think we made a lot of really good decisions for a band that was so young and independent for such a long time. I’m proud of how far we’ve gotten this. We use this metaphor a lot: for a long time, being in a band feels like wandering through fog. Every once in a while you bump into another band in there and maybe you move together for a while, maybe you get separated, but everybody is trying to find their way through it. Eventually somebody finds a clearing, takes it, and that opening closes behind them. You can’t always just follow somebody else’s path. Right now it feels like we’ve finally poked our heads above the clouds and out of the fog. We can see the stars and we can see the staircase leading toward them. The staircase is big and scary but at least we can finally see where we’re going. So no, I wouldn’t do anything over. I believe in where all of it brought us. Now we just have to climb.

12. If you could magically go back in time and be a part of the recording sessions for any one record in history, which would you choose – and what does that record mean to you?

Easy answer for me: Pink Floyd’s The Wall. It’s one of my favorite records of all time. If you gave me the “you’re trapped on an island and can only bring one album” question, then I’m taking The Wall. I just think it’s a masterpiece, not just because of the songs but because of the production, the arrangements, the storytelling, and how completely committed it is to its own world. Pink Floyd was so far ahead of their time creatively and I would have loved to be in those sessions just to watch some of those ideas become real and understand why certain decisions were being made. I’d especially love to have been able to pick Roger Waters brain during that process and hear how he was thinking about the story as the record was being built. I was also lucky enough to see Roger Waters perform The Wall live, and it was one of the best shows I’ve ever seen. At the time I knew the bigger songs but I had never really experienced the record as a whole. That show blew me away. I went home and watched the film, listened to the album front to back, and became obsessed with it. To this day if I’m going on a really long drive, there’s a good chance The Wall is getting played front to back.

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Category: Interviews