Arma is a local band that has been battling its way through the Chicago music scene during the past year with its Mars Volta-esque prog-rock. “Welcome to our castle,” said Taylor Brennan, the band’s lead singer, as we wound our way through a maze of practice spaces tucked into Pilsen’s industrial district. Their small claim in the “castle” is a narrow 10-foot by 30-foot sanctuary crammed with amps and instruments since the space is split with their friends, the band De La Parka. Hunkered in the room are the rest of the band members, guitarist Alejandro Guzman, bassist Mike Cali and drummer Ben Ludwig. They usually meet in the small space two to three times a week.

After the band practiced some new songs, The Chronicle sat down with the members of Arma to discuss why they think they are one of Chicago’s hardest working bands.

The Chronicle: How long have you guys been a band?

Ben Ludwig: A year, just about.

Taylor Brennan: It’s not even the official year date, it was the end of November and it all happened within the course of a day. Ben and Alex and I were in this other band with this other guy who wrote pretty much 100 percent of the songs. He was a lot older than us, like 30. I moved here from Rhode Island because of him, but I haven’t spoken to him since the day [we broke up]. Our humor just didn’t match up. So that ended really quickly.

BL: I think I made a mother joke to him and he just wanted to [kill] me.

TB: The timing worked well for us.

The Chronicle: How did you guys settle on the sound?

BL: We never talked about what we wanted to sound like, we just sit down and play whatever, and then we rule out stuff that sounds too cheesy or generic.

TB: We all come from very different musical places. Mike and Ben were in a metal band before, and they brought in influence from that. The range of what [Alex] likes is the most diverse of anyone I’ve ever met. That guy will go from death metal like Pantera [to] Phil Collins on the same playlist.

The Chronicle: So that’s your songwriting process, you record jams and then pick out the pieces?

Mike Cali: It’s kind of half and half, part improvising and part thought-out songwriting.

TB: One person will start playing, Mike will fill in [on bass], Ben will fill in [on drums], and then they’ll come up with something. Ben is a recording guy so he’ll take all the pieces and go home and build it then send it out to me and I’ll play around with it.

BL: Recording practice helps a lot. Because we’ll just hit record and jam out for 20 minutes, and there will be little bits and pieces that we forget about. They’ll end up being major choruses in the song.

The Chronicle: How many shows have you played in your first year?

TB: We’ve played about 30 to 35 shows in Chicago and the surrounding area and we had a six-show tour in the Northeast. Overall, the tour was a great experience and we worked really hard to put it all together, and everybody had a part.

The Chronicle: So it was very grassroots?

TB: Yeah, it was kind of like road testing the band. We all wanted to go on the road eventually to see if this will actually work.

BL: So we tried it for a week-and-a-half instead of committing to three months with a label or something.

TB: One of the most rewarding things of the tour was Vermont; everything fell through with Vermont. We had a great venue booked that died on us last minute so we found another place to play with three touring bands that all had label support. They had all these guys—booking manager, a tour manager—and when they got there, they were so misinformed. Some bands have the mentality, “We’re signed to some kind of label, we should be getting paid now.” It just doesn’t work that way.

The Chronicle: How do you use the social media explosion to your advantage?

BL: We’ll do Facebook and MySpace, but in my past experience, that only goes so far. Meeting people face-to-face and giving out physical CDs to physical people goes so much further than the Internet. I’d say a comfortable balance between the two [is important.] You can’t be a band and not have some sort of presence on the Internet.

The Chronicle: What band can you all agree on?

MC: I think [The Mars] Volta might be one of the only bands that we all listen to.

TB: The Mars Volta, Tool, Rage Against The Machine, Incubus, Muse and … The Mars Volta.

For additional information visit ArmaMusic.com.