MUSIC&RIOTS Magazine 06

music&riots FREE | Nยบ 06 | NOVEMBER 2014

MONO ZOLA JESUS LE BUTCHERETTES SONGS OF SPLENDOUR AND HEARTACHE

ADVENTUROUS AND SPOOKY, THE CONTRASTS OF PERFECTION

TERI GENDER BENDER SPEAKS OUT: THE TRUE VOICE OF OUR GENERATION

+

magazine

++

GOAT PURPLE BLACK MOTH KIND COUSIN SALLIE FORD MIREL WAGNER NEIGHBORHOOD BRATS OOZING WOUND

GODFLESH

J MASCIS FINCH JEN WOOD ELECTRIC WIZARD ANDY BURROWS FOUR YEAR STRONG NO BRAGGING RIGHTS UPON A BURNING BODY

Unsettling groove and intricately minimalist endeavours.

1

2

music&riots

November

FEATURES 06 08 10 12 14 18

BIG PICTURE WITH...

Goat in Glasgow UPCOMING - ENTER SHIKARI Fourth album in January INTRODUCING - Purple An interview with Hannah Brewer ROUND UP - Faith No More, XTRMST, Belle & Sebastian INTRODUCING - Neighborhood Brats An interview with Jenny Angelillo NEU // VOL.6 - Kind Cousin, Kid Wave, Buscabulla, Girlpool

“Our existence is full of contradictions… mankind is full of contradictions.”

Justin Broadrick - Godflesh

72

INTERVIEWS 28 J MASCIS

30 32 34 38 42 46 50 54 58 62

ANDY BURROWS MIREL WAGNER JEN WOOD SALLIE FORD FOUR YEAR STRONG NO BRAGGING RIGHTS FINCH OOZING WOUND ELECTRIC WIZARD LE BUTCHERETTES

80 MONO

68

“The whole idea was to make music as a person and don’t care how it sounded, just trying to have something that’s honest, passionate, explosive and very personal.” Zola Jesus

86 BLACK MOTH 90 UPON A BURNING BODY COVER STORY 72 GODFLESH

An interview with Justin Broadrick

REVIEWS ALBUMS REVIEWS 96 Slipknot, Today Is The Day, Weezer, Zola Jesus, Marmozets, Cavallera Conspiracy, Grouper, Thom Yorke, Usnea, Mark Lanegan, Godflesh

REPORT 114 LIVE Goat, Amplifest 2014 (Swans, Wovenhand, Yob, Marissa Nadler...), Girls Names, Quadron

118 CINEMA Gone Girl, Maps To The Stars, Horns, White Bird in a Blizzard, The Giver...

musicandriotsmagazine.com

3

WORDS FROM THE EDITOR...

music&riots magazine musicandriotsmagazine.com

FREE | Nº 06 | NOVEMBER CEO/EDITOR IN CHIEF

Fausto Casais (faustocasais@musicandriotsmagazine.com)

DEPUTY EDITOR

1994

Well no one cares about what the editor might say, so instead of babbling around the same old bullshit issues, I decided to compile a list of albums that are celebrating 20 years of life. We grow with them and now they’re able to vote, get married and go to college, life is short but these records are here forever... Enjoy! ********* Tori Amos - Under the Pink ****** Nirvana - MTV Unplugged in New York ********** Korn - Korn ****** Kyuss - Kyuss (Welcome to Sky Valley) ** Manic Street Preachers - Holy Bible ********* Soul Coughing - Ruby Vroom ****** Corrosion of Conformity - Deliverance ********** Machine Head - Burn My Eyes ******* Bad Religion - Stranger Than Fiction ********* Rollins Band - Weight ******** Frank Black - Teenager of the Year *********** Darkthrone - Transilvanian Hunge *******Johnny Cash - American Recordings ********** Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds - Let Love In ******** Rancid - Let’s Go ********** Marilyn Manson - Portrait of an American Family ******** Acid Bath - When the Kite Strings Pops ********* Pantera - Far Beyond Driven ***** Jawbreaker - 24 Hour Revenge Therapy ******* Codeine - The White Birch ********** Slint - Slint ************** Stone Temple Pilots - Purple ********** Nine Inch Nails - The Downward Spiral *********** Jeff Buckley - Grace ********* Shampoo - We Are the Shampoo ******* Pavement - Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain ********** Veruca Salt - American Thighs ********** Helmet - Betty ************ Blur - Parklife ********* Beastie Boys - III Comunication ********** Hole - Live Through This *********** Soundgarden - Superunknown ************** Weezer - Weezer ********* Green Day - Dookie *********** Sunny Day Real Estate - Diary ******** Jawbox - For Your Own Special Sweetheart Your Editor, Fausto Casais

4

music&riots

November

Andreia Alves (andreiaalves@musicandriotsmagazine.com) Tiago Moreira (tiago@musicandriotsmagazine.com)

ART EDITOR // DESIGNER Fausto Casais

FEATURES EDITOR Fausto Casais

CONTRIBUTORS // WRITERS

Nuno Babo, Nuno Teixeira, Sílvio Miranda, Ricardo Almeida, Sergio Kilmore, David Bowes, Mariana Silva, Fausto Mendes Ferreira, Nuno Nogueira, Rui Correia, Ana Filipa Carvalho, Rita Sedas, Rui Santos, Daniel Ferreira, Carlos Cardoso,Cláudio Aníbal, Myke C-Town, Ellery Twining, Luis Alves, Rita Limede, Ibrahima de Brito

PHOTOGRAPHERS

Andreia Alves, Ricardo Almeida, Peter Davidson

GENERAL INQUIRIES

info@musicandriotsmagazine.com

ADVERTISING

(faustocasais@musicandriotsmagazine.com)

FILM EDITOR

Fausto Casais (faustocasais@musicandriotsmagazine.com)

ONLINE ADVERTISING

(andreiaalves@musicandriotsmagazine.com)

HUGE FUCKING THANKS

Mike Cubillos,, Lauren Barley, Frank van Liempdt, Deathwish Inc, Head Up! Shows, , Thrill Jockey, Neurot Recordings, Mute, PIAS, Sub Pop, Sargent House, Stephanie Marlow, Amplificasom,Nuclear Blast, Metal Blade, Alfred Hitchcok, Nick Allport, John Lennon, Dylan Carson, Epitaph, Earsplit, Matador, Spinefarm, Southern Lord, Tell All Your Friends, Riot Act Media, Team Clermont, Bloodshot Records, Roadrunner Records, Joan Hiller, Justin Broadrick, Teri Gender, Jen Wood, Eros Pasi, Rude Records, Pure Noise Records, Slipknot, Henry Rollins

SEND YOUR PROMOS TO:

promos@musicandriotsmagazine.com

WEBSITE:

musicandriotsmagazine.com All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in whole or part without our permission. The views expressed in MUSIC&RIOTS Magazine are those of the respective contributors and are not necessarily shared by the magazine or its staff.

6

music&riots

November

THE BIG PICTURE

GOAT

SWG3, Glasgow 28.09.2014

Picture by: Peter Davidson

www.facebook.com/MUSICandRIOTS.Magazine

7

LISTENING POST Saint Saviour In The Seams

Surface Area Available on 04.11.2014

2:54

The Other I

Bella Union Available on 11.11.2014

Downfall of Gaia

Aeon Unveils The Thrones of Decay Metal Blade Available on 11.11.2014

Anatomy Of Habit Ciphers + Axioms

Relapse Records Available on 07.11.2014

Cretin

Stranger

Relapse Records Available on 05.12.2014

Slipknot

.5: The Gray Chapter Roadrunner Out Now

Weezer

Everything Will Be Alright In The End Republic Out Now

Today Is The Day Animal Mother Southern Lord Out Now

8

music&riots

November

ENTER SHIKARI NEW ALBUM IN JANUARY

UPCOMING // ENTER SHIKARI

E

nter Shikari, the UK-based band that has been “abusing music’s worthless genre boundaries since 2003”, is ready to drop another album.

Entitled The Mindsweep, the fourth and upcoming album, is due to release on January 19th 2015 via Ambush Reality / PIAS. The album, which contains 12 new tracks, was produced by

Dan Weller with the band in Lincolnshire this year, and it was later mixed in London by Jeremy Wheatley (The Vaccines, Dizzee Rascal, Sugababes…).

Rou (vox/electronics) said about the album: “We pushed ourselves vocally with some of the rawest angriest vocals we’ve ever done as well as some of the most dulcet and delicate. It’s even more diverse than normal as we’ve built more confidence and fearlessness to widen our influences further.

Melody and aggression will always be an important side of what we do, but with this album there was also a concerted effort to

concentrate on texture too.

Alongside the core of our guitar, bass, drums, electronics set-up, there’s so much new instrumentation and orchestration. Writing for and recording woodwind, brass and strings was so rewarding and really felt like it brought a new dimension to the music. Just can’t wait to play these songs live now!”

musicandriotsmagazine.com

The Mindsweep arrives on January 19 via Ambush Reality/PIAS 9

E L P PUR PUNKRock,

Fun,DIRTY, Sexy and a general LIFE-TOMAX

ATTIUDE

H

Words: Tiago Moreira

ow did you guys meet?

I saw Taylor’s reggae band playing at a cafe in Beaumont and thought he had the most unique voice. After they played I asked him if he wanted to jam. He said he was down. I had to bug him on Myspace few times before he actually came and jammed because he thought I was a little kid (I was 17, he was 20). [laughs] At first, it was just a 2 piece but dang… We needed bass, man. So Taylor invited Smitty over to one of our jams and it just totally worked.

There were any plans, in the beginning, about the direction that the band would take?

No. We just wanted to write music because there was literally nothing to

10

music&riots

November

“30 miles from the Gulf of M Texas the home of Purple th interview with Hanna Brew (409), the Texa and do in Beaumont. We would just jam in my shed all day and make really crappy recordings on my computer. It was so freaking fun man.

You said “we get bored real easy.” That’s why Purple was created? To fight the boredom?

Hell yeah man. It kept us sane. I think we would have literally lost our minds if we didn’t create this band.

(409) is the East Texan area code and also the name of your album. Is the album your version of Texas, the way you see it?

Yeah. I believe so. All the songs are about experiences we had around here and we just love to represent, you know. There are some really hard working people out here and also we have some really great friends, man. I think

INTRODUCING // PURPLE

“I would describe it as loud, dirty, hot as hell and drunk.”

I got all 13 drum tracks in 2 days. By the end of it, I just broke down crying because it was just hardcore. [laughs] I’m sure all the girls reading this understand.

But yeah, it was an amazing and emotional journey in the studio.

Frenchie just knows how to push you until you are playing and singing your absolute best. I think he has helped us really grow as musicians.

Purple’s videos are really enjoyable, to say the least. Did you guys enjoy the experience of making them? [laughs] Of course!!! We always work with the same filmmaker, David Morrison. He is really open minded and just lets us be freaks while he films it. We just spend a few days partying in front of a camera is what it feels like. [laughs]

Mexico in Jefferson County is the city of Beaumont, he three piece thunderflash of rock excitement.” An wer (drums/vocals) about the band’s debut album, as scene, how boredom can drive you how disgusting milk can be. it’s so awesome we get to travel the world and share that with everyone. I don’t want the (409) to be forgotten. UGK, Janis Joplin, George Straight and The Winter brothers are all from here. That’s crazy man!!! This place is full of music history. Something in the water I guess.

What’s like in Texas? I mean, the music scene.

Well… I’d say it’s a lot of rock, country and rap. Those groups don’t ever really mix though which is a shame. But people love to jam out here. If there is a live rock show in Beaumont you can bet your ass at least 100 people are gonna come out and go wild. It’s so awesome. Lots of passion.

How would you describe (409)?

I would describe it as loud, dirty, hot as hell and drunk.

How was it creating these tracks? Was it easy because there was no concept or idea or sound holding you back?

Yes. It didn’t feel like we were thinking too hard about it. Just letting out whatever we felt. It felt so good. Like I was getting a lot of things off of my chest by making this album. The songs are very honest.

The album was recorded by Chris ‘Frenchie’ Smith. How was it like to work with Chris and how was it the recording process overall?

Frenchie is our freakin’ homie!!!

Seriously… he’s awesome. He really helped us organize our wild random thoughts and turn them into really solid songs. He is intense and so am I so it was just like running a marathon when we were in the studio. Seriously, when we recorded at Sonic Ranch,

“Leche Loco”’s video is probably my favorite. Weren’t you guys sick of all the milk by the end of the day?

Thanks dude, but oh my gosh, man.

That was so gross. It was all luke warm milk and Smitty and Taylor were actually chugging it! Ugh, and they were drinking tequila. I was just pretending that I was drinking it. And by the end of the day we were covered in dried up milk and dirt. Sick. Nasty.

What are the plans for the future?

I know there’s an exciting tour with The Subways in October…

Yes, I know!!! I’m so stoked about this, man. The Subways are bad ass. We will be playing in the UK and Ireland with them. We are also going to be playing in Paris, France on this TV show called, “Album de la Semaine” [Album of the week].

They will feature a live performance of one song every day for a week and then at the end of the week they show the whole performance.

Sometimes I can’t even believe all this is happening. We are just going to keep writing and stay true to the music because that’s what got us here so far, man. Well, and also with the help of our awesome new label, PIAS and our manager, Sandy Roberton. Love those dudes.

www.facebook.com/MUSICandRIOTS.Magazine

(409) arrives on November 13 via PIAS 11

ROUND UP

COLLECTOR’S CORNER

SLEATER-KINNEY DELUXE BOX SET + 7’’ WITH UNRELEASED NEW SONG

S

leater-Kinney were known for their feminist, left-leaning politics, and were an integral part of the riot grrrl and indie rock scenes in the Pacific Northwest.

Start Together is a deluxe box set compiling all seven of Sleater-Kinney’s critically-acclaimed albums, plus a 44-page hardcover book and an art print. Each LP is on a different color of vinyl, and this box is the only way to get these albums on colored vinyl. Each album has been freshly remastered by Greg Calbi for this release. This box set is limited to 3,000 copies and coincides with Sub Pop’s October 21st, 2014 release of remastered versions of Sleater-Kinney’s seven individual albums.

The box set comes also with a 7’’ marked “1/20/15″ featuring a previously unreleased Sleater-Kinney song, reportedly titled “Bury Our Friends”.

Start Together arrives on October 21 via Sub Pop. This box set is limited to 3,000 copies 12

music&riots

November

NEWS

Senses Fail have announced that they have signed to Pure Noise Records. The news comes shortly after the band kicked off their nationwide Let It Enfold You 10th Anniversary Tour. Senses Fail will also be entering the studio in November to start recording their next full-length which is scheduled to be released in summer 2015.

Liferuiner will be putting out their new album titled NOMADS in early 2015 via InVogue Records.

The band will begin tracking the album next month and it will be

XTRMST AFI’s Davey Havok and Jade Puget straight-edge hardcore duo announce debut abum

I

t was announced earlier this year that AFI‘s Davey Havok and Jade Puget had teamed up to form the straightedge hardcore duo XTRMST. Now it has been revealed that the group’s self-titled debut album will be released on November 18th via Steve Aoki’s Dim Mak Records.

“Jade and I have been talking about starting a straight edge hardcore band for years,” says Havok. “We started writing and recording in early 2012 and chose the name XTRMST because it expresses the messages represented on the record. The straight edge movement is not one of moderation. It’s based in undeniable objective truths.”

Puget adds, “The straight edge philosophy is something that Davey and I gravitated towards at a young age, drawn by concepts and ideals that seem almost foreign in modern society. Like much of the other subcultures we were a part of growing up, it puts us at odds with 99% of the people around us, which was something we embraced.

Being sXe for over 20 years and being musicians, it seemed natural that this crucial ideology would find a musical expression.”

Puget produced and mixed XTRMST at his home studio and at The Treehouse in Los Angeles. “I wanted these songs to be chaos, at times difficult to listen to, the wild architecture difficult to understand, but with a taste of the hardcore we grew up on thrown in,” Puget says. “The vocals are raw and the main vocal in every song is the first take.”

XTRMST self-titled debut arrives on November 18 via Dim Mak Records

mix/mastered by Jay Maas (Defeater, Counterparts, Polar Bear Club) and tracked and produced by Derek Hoffman of Fox Sounds.

Chicago’s Harm’s Way will be hitting the studio to record their yet-to-be-titled new full-length album. The band will spend a week with Andy Nelson at Bricktop Recording and resulting tracks will be mixed by Kurt Ballou at Godcity Studios. Scheduled for an early 2015 release via Deathwish Inc..

A few months after the

Libertines reunited for their first shows in four years, the Libertines’ Carl Barât has announced an album with his new band, The Jackals. Meanwhile they’ve unveiled their debut single “Glory Days,” that was produced

by Joby J. Ford (The Bronx) and was taken from the band’s much-anticipated forthcoming album, out on Grand Jury Music in the US and Cooking Vinyl Records in the UK. Souvenirs have signed to Other People Records (Trade Wind,

Tommy Boys) for their debut LP, You, Fear And Me, to be released on December 16, 2014. Once out, it’ll follow 2012’s Tired Of Defending You seven-inch EP. Anti-Flag are back in the studio in order to start record their new album. The band is currently in California recording their 10th full-length album, a follow-up to their 2012 LP The General Strike (SideOneDummy Records) and this year career-spanning compilation titled A Document of Dissent via Fat Wreck Chords.

musicandriotsmagazine.com

13

D O O H R O B H NEIG S T A R B Words: Tiago Moreira

P

unk isn’t dead, it just has an identity crisis. Do you agree with this statement?

No, I don’t think punk rock is dead.

It’s just semantics. Anything can be punk rock, you know? I don’t think punk rock is dead, I think it can mean all sorts of things to all sorts of people… It’s open for interpretation.

You said “I just want to play punk rock, drink coffee, get a tan, do push-ups and get rad”. That’s where it stops or can we assume that the “play punk rock” part means way more than just simply play?

You want to hear something crazy? I actually can’t drink coffee anymore. I had all these allergy tests and I’m allergic to coffee.

I can’t drink coffee anymore so that’s totally a false statement. I just want to drink tea or fucking water… I want to do other things aside from what I’ve said but I guess I have no interest in overanalyzing life, like really getting into a deep discussion about whose mind I’m trying to change through playing music or what breakthroughs I’m trying to make. It’s just simple… punk rock!

It’s just rock ‘n’ roll, R&B based beat that people long time ago 14

music&riots

November

... are fucking slaying it. The band from Los Angeles, California has been taking the world by storm with their no-bullshit punk rock and an energy and intensity that doesn’t make anyone indifferent. We had a nice conversation with Jenny Angelillo (vocals) about the band’s new record, Recovery, among other things.

invented. It’s not rocket science.

People overanalyze the shit out of everything and it’s just doesn’t have to be like that. That’s basically what that statement is.

“Fuck it, it’s rock ‘n’ roll and let us enjoy life and stop thinking hard about it”.

“Neighborhood Brats sound like a female-fronted Black Fag”. Do you feel comfortable with that?

I’ve never heard of that band before. Are they from LA? Yeah, right… [laughs] I don’t really think we sound anything like Black Flag and I really wish people… In fact I’ve been very… I don’t want to talk about Black Flag anymore. You know, they get so much press because of the Neighborhood Brats that I’m done talking about them.

It’s a pretty mindless comparison.

There’s clearly a progression on the Neighborhood Brats’ sound.

Do you agree? If so, in which way do you think the band has progressed and evolved?

I don’t agree with that. I mean, it’s just a natural thing. We have been doing this band for five years; obviously you’re going to evolve. You’re going to learn how to play your instrument differently; you’re going to sing differently, and start to listen to different music… that’s going to start to influence you.

You’re going to get bored writing the same song that sound the same way. When you have been in a

band for five years, obviously there’s going to be an evolution.

We write songs in a different way we used to. Back then we would write songs in band practice and now it’s pretty much George [Rager, guitarist] and I writing songs by ourselves... [pause] George basically wrote all the Neighborhood Brats’ records that have been written and he will write probably the ones that will come in the future because he writes music constantly, non-stop, like a crazy genius. He’s constantly writing and working.

So, George is responsible for the first step but down the line the other members participate in the creative process, right?

Yeah, we have different members in the band and of course… we now have Dan Graziano, our new bass player, and he’s really influenced by The Stranglers, he really loves them, so he’s a little bit more post-punk than we’ve been in the past and that’s super cool because it adds a different element to the band. Mike Shelbourn is our drummer now, and he’s a different drummer than the drummers that we had in the past so naturally it’s going to be a progression. But we, George and I, will never be in a band that doesn’t sound like the Neighborhood Brats.

How was it the recording process? A fast one?

George and I, we started to write

INTRODUCING // NEIGHBORHOOD BRATS

“You learn from mistakes, you learn from life experiences and that helps you grow and evolve.” the album in October of 2013 and we recorded the album in February of 2014, and it took us about four days to record this new album… and then we had to go back to do some vocals, and George had to do some guitar overdubs, etc.

So yeah, it was a fast one, and a stressful one too, because you work so hard on these songs and…

George and I worked really hard on this album, probably the hardest working thing we’ve done with this band. We showed Kirk Podell, our old drummer, and Dan how to play these songs in only two days… but George is pretty committed. I trust George with almost everything in my life. If he says that something is going to happen then it’s going to happen.

In the first song, “Year of the Brat”, you say “I don’t resent my past, I don’t regret my past”.

But it seems there were some unfinished businesses. That’s indeed the case?

Yeah, there’s always unfinished

business. There’s a really important phrase that I like to live by, “I don’t regret the past nor I wish to shut the door on it.” We do things in our past, we do mistakes, and we have victories… I don’t regret anything I’ve done nor I wish to forget it, you know? You learn from mistakes, you learn from life experiences and that helps you grow and evolve.

Do you think that Recovery has a kind of a “closure feeling” attached to it?

Yeah, I think there’s a lot of closure with this album. I know that for me personally there’s a lot of closure.

I mean, this is a really personal album where I… I felt that it was very therapeutic.

Yeah, it was very therapeutic and very cathartic. It was cathartic without a doubt. Like I was saying, it’s a very personal record. I went through a lot of life changes and the process of writing and recording this album. For the first time… well, not for the first time, but I

have really, really much invested in everything I wrote about in this album. This process is all about not being stuck and keep moving, you know?

You guys moved to L.A. Would you say that change affected the band?

I’m living in San Francisco, actually.

But yeah, it was important for us to move to L.A. so we can all be in the same place and work on this album together… To be honest, I’m not a huge L.A. fan. I love Long Beach, California, which is where we were living but San Francisco is my home now. The boys are still down there.

I mean, we will always be a L.A. band, always. The band is currently having a long-distance relationship with me, which is fine because I’ve done it before.

Recovery is out now via Deranged/Taken

By Surprise Records

www.facebook.com/MUSICandRIOTS.Magazine

15

ROUND UP

FAITH NO MORE VERY BUSY IN 2015

F

aith No More prepare for their highly anticipated 2015 album by releasing a limited edition 7’’ single of the new single “Motherfucker” which is due to premiere on November 28 via Record Store’s Black Friday Event.

Only 5000 copies of the 7’’ will be pressed, making “Motherfucker” a true Faith No More collectible. The single will be released digitally on December 9th. The 2015 album will

+ NEWS

16

music&riots

be their first since 1997’s Album of the Year. The release will be the first from Faith No More’s newly formed imprint, Reclamation Recordings, which will be distributed by Ipecac Recordings.

“We’ve always shared a chemistry between ourselves that’s unique to this band, but these past few years of touring together have made us aware that we not only as a unit, but we like the new stuff play better we’re coming up with… So we’ve decided; we’re going to get busy in 2015…make an album we’re proud of, kick things up a notch, get out

Sylosis have unveiled details of their new album, Dormant Heart.

Frontman Josh Middleton said: “It’s the most pissed-off, aggressive and intense album we’ve done, yet it still retains the epic, progressive and melodic side we’re also known for. It’s a very gloomy and atmospheric album. We’ve been through a lot as a band and individuals and we’ve made our darkest album to date.” Sylosis fourth full-length will be out via Nuclear Blast on January 12 next year.

It looks like singer/songwriter/harpist Joanna Newsom will appear and narrate the new film by Paul Thomas November

there and perform it and maybe even dedicate a little more focus to our fans in the states this time.” said Bill Gould, Faith No More founder.

Mike Bordin, Roddy Bottum, Bill Gould, Jon Hudson and Mike Patton are already working on their as-of-yet untitled album that is being recorded in an Oakland, California studio with Gould handling production.

Prior to the new album’s release, Faith No More will headline Australia’s Soundwave Festival in February 2015. Worldwide tour dates will be announced soon.

Anderson, Inherent Vice, based on the novel by Thomas Pynchon. This new movie stars Joaquin Phoenix, Benicio Del Toro, Owen Wilson, Reese Witherspoon, Josh Brolin, Martin Short, and Jena Malone and Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood did the score.

Fiona Apple has shared a new song called “Container” for the forthcoming TV show The Affair, this new track was produced by Apple’s frequent collaborator Blake Mills, the single will soundtrack the show’s opening montage.

Frank Turner has announced

BELLE AND SEBASTIAN NEW ALBUM IN JANUARY

B

elle and Sebastian will release their ninth studio album on January 19, 2015 (Jan 20 in North America) via Matador Records – their first to be released on Matador worldwide.

Girls In Peacetime Want To Dance is the long-awaited followup to 2010’s Write About Love. The album was produced and mixed

at Maze Studios in Atlanta by Ben H. Allen III, best known for his work with Gnarls Barkley, Animal Collective, and Raury, among others. The band – who have been listening to things like vintage Detroit techno and Giogio Moroder – have brought a dance-party element (and a disco song about Sylvia Plath) into their gorgeous tales of sensitive souls navigating a world gone awry.

Additional mixing was done with longtime collaborator Tony Doogan in Glasgow,

and the album was mastered by Frank Arkwright at Abbey Road Studios.

The band will be playing a handful of US dates this autumn, the first of which was in Miami, and they’ll play some UK shows and a few major shows next spring and summer. More 2015 dates will be announced later this year.

details of his new album, The Third Three Years. The folk/punk singer-songwriter will be releasing the album on November 24 through Xtra Mile Recordings. It’s going to feature 21 songs of live versions, demos, some covers, collaborations and previously unreleased tracks.

Such Gold will release their sophomore full-length, The New Sidewalk, on November 10 via Razor & Tie Records. The album will follow the band’s 2012 awesome debut, Misadventures.

Angels & Airwaves are

back with their fifth album, The Dream Walker. This new release will be amplified with the addition of an animated short film, comic book series, novels and a liveaction feature film. According to a press release, some of this will be released somewhere in 2015.

War On Women have just finalized their self-titled album that will be available this coming February from Bridge Nine Records.

The exact release date will be announced soon, but in the meantime, the band will be on

tour in North America in the coming months to promote this forthcoming release.

Melody Prochet, aka Melody’s Echo Chamber has shared a new single called “Shirim“, which she describes it as “very symbolic for me…” This single was written, produced and released by Melody herself.

She is currently recording new songs for her second album that will be released in the Spring of 2015, and follows her 2012 self-titled debut.

Girls In Peacetime Want To Dance arrives on January 19 via Matador

musicandriotsmagazine.com

17

NEU // VOL.6

NEU! KIND COUSIN KID WAVE BUSCABULLA GIRLPOOL

KIND COUSIN Where? Louisiana (USA) Who? Allison Bohl DeHart For fans of: Lykke Li, Bat For Lashes, Tennis

A

llison Bohl DeHart is the woman behind Kind Cousin. Growing up in Louisiana, Allison always had a natural inclination towards music and singing, it wasn’t until she graduated and film turned into a career that she had time to pursue her dream to have music as a creative outlet.

After playing with a few bands from time to time, she just developed her own songs that led her to start her own project. “I just continued to collect the songs and started to kind of make a plan to sort of saving up to record my own record...” said Allison.

Having her husband and drummer Peter DeHart (Brass Bed) and sound

engineer Aaron Thomas on board, they recorded together in an old chapel her debut album, the amazing Tremendous Hem, which was “a very reverent experience, very sober... just very in the moment, because we were far enough away from everything and it was a completely joyful experience.”

Allison’s voice is just a mesmerizing instrument that captures all the beauty of her music and as she said “any woman that has a unique character and embraces the voice that she has, that was always very encouraging to me” and that is evident in her own way to express herself through music. She was kind enough to talk with us about all the little things that led her to this very moment.

www.facebook.com/MUSICandRIOTS.Magazine

19

that’s kind of similar to my filmmaking as well.

L

et’s start with a cliché question. Tell me a little bit about yourself and what led you to become a songwriter.

I was born in Louisiana and I’ve always lived here. I lived in North Louisiana for a while and kind of grew up in church. I went to study art in South Louisiana which is drastically different as far as the culture, the people and so I was kind of exposed to a different culture and I really fell in love with the area. I graduated in Experimental Media and Filmmaking. I’ve always been interested in music, sing and play guitar when I was younger, but when I went to college I kind of decided to just concentrate on art and filmmaking. I was continuing to write songs but not playing them with anyone. When I graduated from college, I got a job in filmmaking and I was gonna have more time to pursue music as a creative outlet. I started playing with a few bands and touring occasionally, but kept writing songs for myself and I kind of held on to them, because I imagined them being played in a certain way and sounding in a certain way. So I just continued to collect the songs and started to kind of make a plan to sort of saving up to record my own record... And then I did it, released it and I’m gonna be playing it live.

As you mentioned, when you were in college you studied filmmaking. In which way do you think that filmmaking influenced your take on music?

I think that both are forms of storytelling and I prefer the music or the lyrics to be an abstract form of storytelling. You can tell a very little story with music and you heard that a lot in pop music, but I like the kind of sickest story and hide it a little bit in obscurity, and 20

music&riots

November

It’s obvious that your voice is your main instrument in your music and you do it so graciously.

What singers were an inspiration for you?

I’ve always really connected with Björk and the way that she is, her voice as an instrument in all of the many ways that she sings and also CocoRosie, St. Vincent, Lykke Li, Nina Nastasia... anyone with an interesting voice, even Regina Spektor and all of The Ronettes. I could go on forever. [laughs] Any woman that has a unique character and embraces the voice that she has, that was always very encouraging to me, because it’s not much about sounding like someone else but just about having confidence and power in the voice you have.

Before we talk about your debut album, you recorded and released a Harry Nilsson tribute EP On Nilsson with Brass Bed in 2012. How did that collaboration and idea come about?

We did a Harry Nilsson tribute show in Lafayette and everyone in town was there. We’re all fans of Nilsson and a lot of the indie bands that play around here are also fans. I’ve always really loved the songs that he and Shelly Duvall did for the Popeye soundtrack and so when we did the songs, Brass Bed played two other songs and I played two of the Shelly Duvall’s ones. It just went really well and so we decided that we wanted to record them, and then we liked how they turned out and so we decided that we wanted to release them. For us, Harry Nilsson is just a very inspiring songwriter because he didn’t necessarily take the normal path as to how you are supposed to be a musician, like if you start playing music people are like “Well, you need to play live and you need to tour around.”

He made his own path and he was very artistic about it all, so we just kind of wanted to have an ode to him for that.

Tremendous Hem is your first album and the 10-tracks are so well-crafted. How was the songwriting process to get all the songs together?

I write all my songs vocally first, so no instruments. Most of the time just driving around or in the

shower I have a melody coming to me and then I’ll use my iPhone to record it. Afterwards I’ll start to do a demo from there in GarageBand and just let myself be free as far as where I can go, because I’m a lot more comfortable singing than coming up with any pattern of melody before I am playing it like starting with guitar or piano. I start with that and then usually there’s some sort of lyrical context that comes with the melody and a story kind of develops from there. Then I can either continue to take it to an instrument or I work with someone else to develop how you can turn it into a song in many different ways. My favorite part about a really good melody is that if it’s a good melody, you can play it a million different ways and it would still sound great. So it’s just kind of deciding the right way to play it to make it more effective to this overall narrative of the song.

All songs are so gracious and gentle. Is there any of the songs that stand out the most for you?

I really like the way “Gum Wrapper Rings” came out, because to me is an ode to the 50’s/60’s girl group music. If you listen back to around that song, the pure love and the pure blissfulness of how they sing about love is completely beautiful, but when you grow up and you know the reality of love it’s not all sugar coated and candy coated. In that song we tried to kind of get across that idea of when you’re young you’re enamour with that idea of love, and as you grow older you realize that it’s not always just like that.

You have ups and downs and you have complications... Lyrically, that song is an ode to that kind of music, but with the knowledge of modern times.

This album was recorded in an old chapel during a week with your husband and drummer Peter DeHart (of Brass Bed) and sound engineer Aaron Thomas.

So how was this particular recording process?

We wanted to make the record but we didn’t want to have like a flick feel off studio sound, so we did a bunch of demoing for it and we decided that we wanted to do it in a unique space, and so we went around to all the places in town that we could imagine possibly staying and recording. We

INTERVIEW // KIND COUSIN went to a barn and auditioned the audio there. We went to a house and auditioned the audio there.

We auditioned our own house and then we found out this one guy owned an old chapel that he converted into a lost writer space in St. Martinville, Louisiana. We contacted him and asked him if we could rent it for the time to make the record and he was all about it.

So we moved in and we turned it into a studio for a week. We woke up early, recorded all the day and stayed up late. It was just a very reverent experience, very sober... just very in the moment, because we were far enough away from everything and it was a completely joyful experience. A lot of that, you know, a lot of being in the proper architecture to get nice reverb really helped with kind of “you” as the singer getting in the mind of where you should be to be singing.

One of the interesting points of this album is that was released in the form of a miniature art book with a digital download code inside. What can you tell me more about that art book?

With this project, I want to do it not the way that it should be done historically, but the way that’s the best for the creative desire to make me push myself. I have been kind of saving out for a while from vinyl, because vinyl is something that I respect and if I could release on that it would feel like I would be happy with it, but the practicality of that is a lot of money to do that and you have to make sure that you’re not storing them forever. I never really wanted to do CDs because I felt like they were just on the way out and people don’t have the same respect for them that they used to. I do a lot of photography and just like I’ve been collecting songs, I’ve been collecting photos. I like things that are collectible, small and very intimate, so I wanted to do a little book that you could read while you’re listening to the record.

When I was younger, I used to love when there were liner notes with the CDs or vinyls and you could sit in your bed and you could read along with the record. That’s the idea of the book.

Are you currently working on new projects that you wanna share with us?

I am working on these songs for another Kind Cousin record and I also play with a band called Carbon

Words: Andreia Alves // Pictures: Leah Graeff Poppies that is another band that my husband is also in. Carbon Poppies, Kind Cousin and Brass Bed are currently working on a project where we are starting our own record label called MA’AM Records. The first release was the Kind Cousin release and the all point of the record label is to have an avenue for us to release as much as possible and be constructive... Make a lot of work, put a lot of work out and have one place for everyone to do that.

What’s your favorite record of 2014 so far?

I’m obsessed with the Cate Le Bon record, Mug Museum. It came out last year but I’m obsessed with it.

The production, her voice like the falsetto vocal mixed with her kind

of low voice, it’s fantastic!

What about favorite movie of this year?

Hum. [pause] I haven’t seen it yet, but I think Boyhood seems like it’s gonna be the best movie of this year. I can’t wait to see it. The bad part about living in a small town is that you don’t get as many movies, but also I volunteered for a film festival here and the goal is to get the movie at the festival this year, so hopefully I can see then. [laughs]

musicandriotsmagazine.com

Tremendous Hem is out now via MA’AM Records 21

NEU // VOL.6

KID WAVE Where? London (UK) Who? Lea Emmery, Harry Deacon, Serra Patale, Mattias Batt For fans of: Beverly, DIIV, Honeyblood

B

orn in Sweden but living now in the UK, Lea Emmery moved to London in 2011 willing to start a rock band and that’s how Kid Wave was born. Unfulfilled with what the Sweden music scene had to offer her, London was the starting point that she needed as she started to write and record songs.

With no band to back her up in the beginning, she was joined in 2013 by Serra Patale (drums), originally from Perth in Australia and who taught drums at a music school where Lea was studying, Mattias Batt (guitarist), who is an old friend and hails from the same town in Sweden as Lea, and ultimately Londoner Harry Deacon (bass).

22

music&riots

November

As the line-up was complete, the group released the debut single “All I Want”, which also features the B-side “Young Blood”, all produced by Rory Atwel. The infectious and fuzzy indie rock riffs have this dreamy, summery vibe along with Lea’s stunning vocals.

More recently, the band released a new single called “Gloom”, which is another shimmering song that is featured on their upcoming release.

Gloom EP was produced by Atwel and recorded at Lightship 95, and features the singles mentioned before, plus a new song. The EP will be released on November 24th via Heavenly Recording and they’re recording their debut album which is due for release in early 2015.

BUSCABULLA Where? Brooklyn (USA) Who? Raquel Berrios and Luis Alfredo Del Valle For fans of: Chairlift, Grimes, Beach House

B

uscabulla means troublemaker in Spanish and it’s the name of this exotic, slinky music project. Brooklyn-based Puerto Rican designer Raquel Berrios and multi-instrumentalist Luis Alfredo Del Valle are the girlfriend-boyfriend duo behind this project and together make lush and irresistible electro-pop music that is heavily influenced by vintage Latin music like salsa gorda, Cuban psych and ‘80s Argentinian rock.

Raquel sings in her native language and it gives a more exotic and mysterious (for those who don’t understand Spanish) touch to their songs that’s been described mostly as a new generation of Caribbean music.

Earlier this year, they won a contest put on by Guitar Center and Converse, which the prize included the opportunity to record at the latter corporation’s Rubber Tracks Studio in Brooklyn, with Dev Hynes - also known as Blood Orange. The result is their selftitled EP. The duo has recently released their EP on Kitsuné, which the four tracks are a combination of Hynes’s neat production along with the richness and impressive rage of genres that the band has. Rachel’s voice is subtle and sensual as she sings with Luis’ craftsmanship.

They also unveiled the video for the track “Caer” directed by Alan del Rio Ortiz that shows precisely their amazing, seductive sound.

www.facebook.com/MUSICandRIOTS.Magazine

23

NEU // VOL.6

GIRLPOOL Where? Los Angeles (USA) Who? Cleo Tucker and Harmony Tividad For fans of: Daphne & Celeste, Juliana Hatfield, Babes in Toyland

G

irlpool are two friends, Cleo Tucker (guitar) and Harmony Tividad (bass), based in Los Angeles that since they met at the famous DIY venue the Smell, the two quickly grew very close. When they started making music together, their purpose was to write honest and sincere music, but more importantly - being vulnerable is really important to their music.

The girls use only a guitar, a bass, and their own vocal harmonies in a very raw, stripped-down sound.

There’s no drums, but honestly they don’t need that to make a good, catchy song. Their minimal approach gives space to the lyrics to take a much important role on their songs:

24

music&riots

November

they are genuine and sincere.

Overall, their music is a mix between a straightforward punk attitude and rock’n’roll vibe.

Early this year, the duo put out their self-titled debut EP. They quickly began picking up buzz in many places and then they were picked up by Wichita Recordings, who are reissuing it and releasing it on November 17th.

Even though they formed less than a year ago, Girlpool are set to open for Jenny Lewis for some tour dates this fall and released a Split tour cassette with that’s only available for purchase at their upcoming tour dates. About new songs, the girls said that are more thoughtful and come from a deeper place. Let’s wait and see what 2015 has in store for them.

AVAILABLE AND FREE! YOU YOUR IPAD OR TABLET AN

Issue 1 // April

Issue 2 // May

Issue 3 // June

Issue 4 // Summer Issue

Issue 5 // October

Issue 6 // November OUT NOW!

musicandriotsmagazine.com

enquiries

OU CAN READ ONLINE, ON ND EVEN IN YOUR PHONE

follow us everywhere

J MASCIS WHAT MORE CAN WE SAY ABOUT THIS GUY?

The answer is quite simple: he is known and celebrated for founding, singing and playing guitar in one of the most influential and awesome alternative rock bands on the planet – Dinosaur Jr. We guess that’s more than enough to talk with J… that and the fact that J Mascis has a new solo album. A man of few words, as always. That’s ok.

The music does all the talking.

Words: Tiago Moreira // Picture: Justin Lapriore So, what drives you nowadays?

What makes you get up and create new music?

Well… I guess I just don’t have any other interests or another job.

Y

ou said two years ago that You’re Living All Over Me is the best Dinosaur Jr.’s album and that you achieved your goal with that record. The album was released in 1987. Do you have set any goals since then? Did you manage to achieve them?

Not really.

28

music&riots

November

You’re a very spiritual person.

For how many years have you been meditating? What’s the impact that mediation had and has on you, as an artist and as a regular person?

I don’t know. [pause] I guess if you do meditate you just feel better somehow and probably that has some sort of impact on the music.

Tied To A Star is an interesting name. Why have you chosen that title?

It was just part of some lyrics I

wrote and I just thought that it sounded interesting… not really sure.

Would you say that Tied To A Star is a theme-driven album?

It has a theme but it’s more like the vibe of it and the feeling I wanted to get across, it’s not like a literal theme. I guess I want to put a certain type of melancholic vibe in it.

I heard that the recording process of this new album was a little bit faster than the last one. How was it the recording process?

Yeah, there weren’t as many guests doing stuff so… I guess I had a better idea of how I wanted to

INTERVIEW // J MASCIS You were responsible for some soundtracks: Sunlight Jr, One Track Heart: The Story of Krishna Das. How was that like?

It’s cool. It’s easier somehow because you have a movie that you just are fitting music into it.

Sometimes the movie will just write the music by itself, you know?

Do you have any plans to write another Witch’s album?

Yeah, we would like to do it, but it’s hard to find the time with everyone. We’ve done some recording but I don’t know when we will finish it.

Weren’t you searching for someone to sing in it?

Yeah, but I think our regular singer [Kyle Thomas] is into doing it again.

How do you recall your experience with Upsidedown Cross?

Yeah, that was a great album. I think it’s one my favorite albums that I’ve been involved with. Those guys are pretty weird.

“I guess I want to put a certain type of melancholic vibe in it.” do rather than the last album. I just sent it out to a bunch of people to see what they would put on it and how that would form songs more, and with this one I just had more ideas how I want it to sound.

Talking about guests, Cat Power guested on “Wide Awake” [song off of Tied To A Star]. Have you met her to record the track?

No. I was supposed to record with her but then she didn’t show up so she ended up doing by herself later.

How she ended up in the record?

I invited her.

Marq Spusta is the author of Tied To A Star’s artwork. Did you work together, exchanging

ideas back and forth, to create the artwork?

Not on this record. It was just something that he had.

Did you have any idea what you wanted for the cover?

No. I just saw one of his works and I chose it.

Dunno why but I have this impression that your solo stuff is way more therapeutic for you than the Dinosaur Jr.’s stuff, for instance. Do you feel it that way?

I haven’t thought about that, I guess. I would say that the only difference is that with the acoustic stuff I can’t hide behind anything. I just have to stand up on it.

What’s the deal with Sweet Apple? They just released a new album this year [The Golden Age Of Glitter] but you just play drums and guitar in some tracks…

Are you in the band?

I don’t even know. That’s a good question. I didn’t feel like I was much a part of the last album so, I don’t know.

How was it that show that you played with Dave, Pat and Krist at Saint Vitus, after the Nirvana Hall of Fame thing?

That was great.

I’m curious, you said that the worst Dinosaur Jr.’s album is Bug but in 2011 you toured playing that album from start to finish.

Was it a give the fans what they want kind of thing?

Well, we got an offer to play the album so we decided it that if we would gonna learn it we might as well play another shows. It was interesting, yeah. It’s still for me the worst Dinosaur Jr.’s album though. I just learned to like it a little bit more, I guess.

musicandriotsmagazine.com

Tied to a Star is out now via Sub Pop 29

ANDY BURROWS Words: Andreia Alves // Picture: Jenna Foxton

“It was a very creative experience.

I was able to totally immerse myself in these songs."

30

music&riots

November

You may know this guy from some quite awesome bands: he was the drummer of Razorlight and it’s now the drummer of We Are Scientists. Besides that, he has his own solo career, has worked with Tom Smith from Editors under the moniker “Smith & Burrows” and also co-wrote the soundtrack to The Snowman and The Snowdog with Ilan Eshkeri which was nominated for a BAFTA Craft Award.

For a quite busy and talented man, Burrows is now releasing his fourth solo album called Fall Together Again. We caught up with him to know more about this new effort and how was the whole process of getting it done.

INTERVIEW // ANDY BURROWS

Always McCartney. Lots of George Harrison - he’s a sure-fire regular on the “Andy stereo”.

Also some Harry Nilsson, The Shins, Squeeze, Broken Bells, Lemonheads, Crowded House...

T

hanks for doing this with us, Andy. First of all, you’re about to play some shows in the great UK after the new album’s release. Are you excited to play the new tunes over there?

Yeah I can’t wait to go and play these songs live. It’ll be so much fun to have two albums to now choose songs from... UK & Europe. Can’t wait.

You’re going to release your new album this October. Overall, what can we expect from Fall Together Again?

I think it’s a good follow-on from Company. There’s melody, big ol’ drums, lots of harmonies. Some happier songs, some sad ones, love and loss... Lovers, losers, strings, brass. It’s a bigger sounding record I think. Slightly more widescreen. It’s like Company’s older brother.

Does the record’s title has a special meaning for you?

It does. Yep. Very much so. It’s a Steely Dan lyric. A friend reminded me of it - it feels like it fits so well. With the songs, with where I’m at in my little corner of the world...

According to the press release, Fall Together Again is a record imbued with the spirit of early McCartney solo albums and sunroof-down daydream soul.

It’s shot through with the kind of sun-dappled soft rock that used to radiate from American FM radios in mid-70’s. So, what were you listening to when you were writing the songs?

Probably some McCartney.

What is the main difference between Fall Together Again and your previous album, Company?

The main difference is that my band play on this record.

Company was just me and Tim Baxter, whereas I recorded this one with Steve, Stu and Mike, who play with me live. I still played drums, guitars and piano but everyone chipped in and we all sang. It was a lot of fun to make. Not quite so lonely.

You started the recording process of this new album at the end of 2013 in North Wales’ famously isolated residential studio Bryn Derwen. How was it like the recording process this time around?

It was very windy and rainy. We were fairly isolated up in the mountains of Snowdownia. At one with the hurricanes. It was a very creative experience. I was able to totally immerse myself in these songs.

Fall Together Again is your tenth LP, between past solo albums and your recordings with Razorlight, We Are Scientists, Smith & Burrows, plus your soundtrack for The Snowman and The Snowdog.

Looking back at these amazing albums and projects, what is the moment as a musician that stands out the most for you?

Wow. That’s a toughie. They’re all stand-outs for me in a way.

Not just because that’s an easier answer but because it’s true.

I’m very lucky to be on this cool musical journey. I never planned any part of it really. When I was a kid all I wanted to do was play drums. Now I do all this other stuff. It’s amazing. I count myself very lucky.

The soundtrack of The Snowman and The Snowdog is an amazing piece of art. How did you end up to work on it?

Ilan Eshkeri (film composer extraordinaire!) is a friend of

mine - we often talked about perhaps working together one day - should the right opportunity arise - and whilst I never thought it would happen - this one uber opportunity did arise! The film company Lupus Films and Channel 4 both seemed to really like the idea of me working with Ilan. To work on that film was a complete dream come true. It was a fantastic experience. I love the film so much. I still can’t believe it’s our songs and me singing!

Are you planning on doing more soundtracks in the future?

Yes. I’d love to. We’ll see, I guess.

Which bands or records are you into lately?

Some newish. Some not so new… Broken Bells, The Shins, First Aid Kit, Lucius and We Are Scientists!!! Wilco, My good pal Tom Odell. I guess maybe even he isn’t new anymore? I wish The Cardigans would do a new record... I like that new song by Jenny Lewis. Yeah, that’s enough.

I’ll stop listening to random stuff!

Do you recommend us any new bands that we should listen to?

My brother’s new band/project called GIANTS.

Fall Together Again is out now via Play It Again SAm 31

MIREL WAGNER One girl that isn’t afraid of using repetition and sing like she was raised in the American country/folk scene.

This is Mirel Wagner. Her latest record, When the Cellar Children See the Light of Day, is a taunting little piece. Mirel shared some words with us about it.

Words: Tiago Moreira // Picture: Aki Roukala

W

hat’s the meaning of repetition for you?

In a way I really like these sort of feelings that repetition gives you, I guess it gives you a certain freedom. It sort of gives you boundaries and structure, and inside this structure you have this freedom, in a way. But I don’t know. I try to not think about it.

The production is fucking wicked. Was it something that you wanted to consciously achieve? So damn punchy and taunting (provokes and challenges).

Of course! I wanted to have something interesting but… Yes, but I’m not quite sure what you mean.

Don’t you agree that the production has changed from the first record to this new one?

No… Not even a little bit?

Yeah, maybe.

32

music&riots

November

“It th do so you w

t’s always a good hing when you’re oing music, and it ort of helps when sort of don’t know what to expect.”

INTERVIEW // MIREL WAGNER

So, this little change was something that you were aiming since the beginning or something that you found in the middle of the process?

Yeah, it was something that came to me when it was happening, sort of speak. There’s not really that much overthinking in term of “what will I do?”, “how is this supposed to sound?” or “what is the next step?” Everything was very natural and sort of happened while the process was going on.

We’re talking about production and recording… How was it, working with Vladislav Delay (producer and a Finnish electronic musician)?

It was very nice…

I know that he’s not used to deal with this kind of music.

As far as I understand, yes. This is not the kind of music that he’s known for or that he’s used to deal with or even into it. But I don’t know… you have to ask him.

Was it refreshing for you, to work with someone that’s not used to deal with the kind of music that you do?

Yeah, of course. I had to open myself to different ideas and his mentality of exploring… It’s always a good thing when you’re doing music, and it sort of helps when you sort of don’t know what to expect. In my case, I’ve never heard his name or his music. I don’t know much about his music and I’m not really into the type of music he does. It was basically a new experience for me and for him. This mutual discovery and we both tried to keep our minds open.

You said that “the songs are first and foremost filled with desire. And there’s this hope in them that love overcomes everything.” Would you say that you feel like Madeleine L’Engle (American writer) when she says, in her book A Ring of Endless Light, “Maybe you have to know the darkness before you can appreciate the light.”?

Of course, because there can’t be one with the other. They belong together.

You also said something that honestly I couldn’t understand because my opinion is quite the opposite. You said, and I quote, “the songs are sort of – I hate to say – fragile in a way, very soft and gentle. They need the space and attention.” Why do you feel that way about your songs?

I don’t necessarily feel that way.

Just happens that I’ve said that thing in that day, but of course they’re fragile and delicate. In my opinion there’s only one way to look at them, but there’s also this huge amount of strength and power that are also there… I just don’t like to talk about it. I don’t like to pinpoint these things out. I want to other people to make their own mind about these songs.

I would say that you’re not only a fan of Townes Van Zandt but also you have a deep respect for his legacy and you have been influenced by him. Do you remember your first contact with Townes’ music and what made you love it and respect it?

I really can’t answer your question because unfortunately the first time I’ve heard about Townes Van Zandt was after my first album came out and someone mentioned it. It was never an influence.

So, what kind of artists have influenced you?

The good ones. The interesting ones.

Which ones do you consider to be interesting?

An artist that has something to say and that has a unique way to look at life. That’s really hard to find nowadays.

Right now you’re working with Sub Pop. How that happened and how it has been so far?

They contacted me through my manager and it has been nice.

Were you involved in the creation of the videos for “The Dirt” and “Oak Tree”? How was that experience?

Yes, I was involved. It was very nice those experiences.

When The Cellar Children See The Light is out now via Sub Pop www.facebook.com/MUSICandRIOTS.Magazine

33

JEN WOOD

It was at an early age that Jen Wood first started her musical career with the Riot Grrrl duo Tattle Tale and her 1997 debut album No More Wading. She also collaborated with many high-profile artists, such as The Postal Service where she appeared as a guest vocalist for the duet "Nothing Better". After more than 20 years of an excellent career, Jen still impresses and amazes with her music and to proof that is her new album Wilderness, that follows the 2010's critical acclaimed Finds You in Love. In Wilderness, Jen used piano as the main instrument that gave her a new boost to a more refreshingly bold and vibrant approach. Jen was kind enough to tell us all about what inspired her for this album and why it is a sharp departure from her previous works.

Words: Andreia Alves // Pictures: January Fredericks

34

music&riots

November

I

t’s been more than 20 years that you started your musical career.

Tell us a little bit about your thoughts and feelings of being an inspiring musician for more than two decades.

I feel really grateful. To me, it’s a real privilege to make music and have it to be heard by people. It’s almost a luxury; I think about how there are so many talented people out there who need to be heard, but aren’t… or who are being silenced… so, it makes me feel humbled to continue to have opportunities to make records and share my music. Honestly, I forget how long I’ve been doing this music thing, and when I look back and remember, it’s kind of a crazy feeling to just realize what a long musical history I have!

35

You’re about to release your new album Wilderness and it’s your first release since 2010’s Finds You In Love, which according to the press release marks a sharp departure for you. What aspects stand out on this new album to be defined as a sharp departure?

In part, I think the sharp departure aspect has to do with the emotional place I was in when I was writing these songs. I was wrestling with a lot of anger, fear and disappointment, and I needed to be honest about it.

I wasn’t interested anymore in downplaying or subduing what was going on. Back in 2009, my family and I were going through some major tragedies that had a really intense impact on my life.

Two people I loved were both diagnosed with cancer within 6 months. One of them was my husband’s 3 year old nephew and the other was my Mom. It was totally overwhelming. I hid from a lot of people and sort of lived on my own little island for a while. I couldn’t go out in public and fake it, I couldn’t - and didn’t want to - pretend like everything was OK when it clearly wasn’t. I needed to focus on my family; we just all clung to each other. Around that same time, I got married and my husband and I decided to buy a piano. I needed an outlet to just keep my head above water, and music has always been the way in which I process things and find a way to survive through it all. As I was writing on the piano, I felt a new voice sort of emerging, maybe I hadn’t felt that kind of voice since my Tattle Tale days; I took the filter off and just started to tell the raw truth and not worry so much about what other people were going to say about it. I felt like I was making myself even more vulnerable by being/singing from a loud place. I think on my past albums I would often sing from a place of softness, and in a way maybe I was trying to protect myself somehow or make myself feel less vulnerable by not being confrontational. Perhaps I didn’t really want to be seen and heard, so I sang softly. My past albums are all pretty mellow and subdued, and I got to a point where I felt like I questioned if I was being honest in my songwriting… how much raw, intense emotions had I been filtering out because I didn’t want to make any “waves”? I took a risk on this album by allowing myself to sing from a place of these very 36

music&riots

November

unpleasant, ugly feelings. I had to, because I was processing so much in my personal life that I had to work out what was going on through music. There was also a departure in terms of the instrumentation.

In addition to piano, we added Gameboy to my songs. I was really open and excited to have Andy Myers (aka Stenobot) be a collaborator. Mixing in his gritty electronic Gameboy sounds with the pretty piano, created this cool, weird, clashing feeling… it was perfect because it bumped up the intensity of the mood/ feeling in my songs, and I think the Gameboy made my songs sound more interesting. I was ready for different, so I was all about trying new things and breaking the rut I had been in.

It was all instinct and intuition. I didn’t chart out any of my visions and ideas; I made every choice based off my gut feeling.

One of the highlights of this album is that you played everything on piano as the lead instrument and you put aside the guitar. What did lead you to this new approach?

I’d really hit a wall with writing songs on acoustic guitar; the last show I played solo, I was just so bored with myself … ha! I needed to just take a break from music altogether, and I had no idea when I was going to return to it. I had realized that there was no point in me playing music if I wasn’t having fun and enjoying it, and I felt that it wasn’t fair for people in the audience either, because if my heart wasn’t in it, then I wasn’t being genuine. I didn’t want to waste anybody’s time. That was six years ago. Around that time, my husband and I decided that we both really wanted to buy a little piano for our new house, and long story short, I ended up finding this adorable little baby grand 1920’s Whitney Piano. I fell for it right away and it was pretty affordable because it was old, so we ended up bringing it home. The piano had this beautiful golden-honey color and an amazing sparkly sound. Every time I sat down to play I felt this surge of inspiration and excitement; I hadn’t felt that for a long time with guitar. I think I really just needed a challenge; and learning a new instrument was perfect because I was dealing with so many overwhelmingly intense life things. The piano

allowed me to have a new voice and it was the perfect distraction too. I couldn’t stop playing that piano; I would just write and write and write. I didn’t have any plans to record anything, but as I continued to write, my husband, Josh started noticing… and he began to encourage me to work at it more because he thought I was writing stuff that actually sounded cool.

That piano was, in many ways, my saving grace during a span of several years that were so brutal and nightmarish. A couple months before my wedding, we got a phone call in the middle of the night from Josh’s younger brother, Andy. He was at Seattle Children’s Hospital with his 3 year old son, and they had just found out he had Leukemia. We canceled our entire wedding and centered all our focus and love on this little human being. It was crisis mode and it was survival mode. Shortly before this happened, I had found out that my Mom had cancer again. She’d had breast cancer about 12 years prior and now it’d come back with a vengeance and she was diagnosed with a blood-cancer, Lymphoma.

On top of all this, I just got married and we moved into together into a new house. Everything in my life changed in so many drastic ways all at once. This album basically chronicles the last 6 years of my life.

How was it like for you to dedicate to an instrument that you had barely any experience?

I loved every minute of it. Growing up, my Moms had a piano in the house, and I always liked tinkering around on it. But when I found guitar I just poured every ounce of my energy and focus into trying to master that instrument. It was cool to re-discover piano and to take on a new challenge. It was frustrating though at times. In the beginning, there was a lot that I couldn’t do on the piano—I had to really work at it.

What does this album Wilderness represent to you?

To me, it represents courage, strength.

I must say that I fell in love with “Run With The Wild Ones” since the first listening, and it’s interesting that the song conveys this Autumn feeling and the lyrics are for sure a precious part of it. What did inspire you to write this song?

INTERVIEW // JEN WOOD

“Honestly, I forget how long I’ve been doing this music thing, and when I look back and remember, it’s kind of a crazy feeling to just realize what a long musical history I have!”

This song is probably the most challenging one for me to explain in literal words; It’s about so many things. It’s a story that begins with a snapshot of a specific night in the winter of 2007, in Bellingham. The entire town was blanketed in white puffy snow... but then I sort of fast forward to how what happened on that night gave me a brand new view of the world. I wrote the song because I was trying to make sense of everything that was changing in me and all around me. It was my way of saying that people could try and change me as much as they want, but that I wouldn’t just blindly assimilate to a new culture. I was really struggling to hang on to my own identity and to also try and be open, and not afraid of inevitable change at the same time. During that time I think I felt pretty displaced and lost, and I wasn’t sure who to run to. I was in a strange in-between kind of place… in between the old me and the new me.

What’s your favorite song on this record and why?

I’ve gone through phases, so my favorite song changes. I think right now, it’d be “Where Real Love Is”. I really love the production on this song and all the lush textural sounds that are woven into it.

What are your tour plans after the album’s release?

I don’t have any tour plans in place yet… we need a really cool (and friendly) band to take us on tour with them!

What’s your opinion about the Seattle music scene nowadays?

I’ve actually taken a break from the scene for the past 5 years or so, and am just now getting involved again which has been a learning curve in and of itself.

Some things have changed, some things remain the same, but I’d have to say the Seattle music scene seems to be healthier than ever. It’s an exciting time for

Seattle Music.

Any new bands from there that we should listen to?

Yeah, I’ve got a list for you guys!

There’s so much more, it was hard to make this list because I could just keep adding to it! “S” – Cool Choices, Skates!, Andy Fitts – Smoky Wilds, Pickwick (they’re currently working on a new album), Yuuki Matthews – Funny Morning, Tomo Nakayama – Fog on the Lens, Deep Sea Diver, Ormonde, Lazy Animals, The Constant Lovers, Deep Creep.

What have you been listening to lately?

S – Cool Choices, Andy Fitts – Smoky Wilds and Beck – Blue Moon.

musicandriotsmagazine.com

Wilderness is out now via Radar Light/New Granada 37

D R O F E I L L SA Words: Andreia Alves // Pictures: Jason Quigley

A NEW SOUND ON PURPOSE

38

music&riots

November

After she parted ways with her previous band, The Sound Outside, Sallie Ford wanted to do something new and start an all-girl band, which it actually happened. With a new band by her side, she has released a new effort titled Slap Back that is basically an ode to all the babe rockers. Sallie told us all about this new album, how has been like to have the all-girl band, tour plans and much more...

39

L

ast year, you and The Sound Outside parted ways. What did lead you to make that decision?

It was clear that it was time for something new.

There were no bad feelings; that band had just run its course.

You said that it was a dream of yours to start an all-girl band and now it came true. How did you meet the girls and how has been like to have the all-girl band?

It was fun finding the band members ‘cause I basically just asked around to my friends in the music scene in Portland. I really lucked out with the band I have now. The best part is that I feel like it’s the rockinest band I’ve ever played with.

Now without the guitarist Jeff Munger on the band, you are the only guitar player. How is it like now playing live?

Well, I did that on purpose. I wanted to challenge myself to be the only guitarist and I love playin’ instrumental parts and keeping it simple and not too flashy.

When did you start working on this new effort?

It was a year ago that I first started playing with the new band. I was writing songs for the new record a few months before that, though.

Your new record Slap Back is an ode to all the babe rockers. What can you tell me more about that?

That’s just what it sounds like to me as an overall theme.

What did inspire you musically and lyrically for this record?

Musically, I wanted to incorporate different types of rock: surf, garage, fuzz, pop and punk. Lyrically, it is a personal record about my life - like my friends, my love interests and what I have witnessed that seemed to come to the surface in my head when I sang.

To write these new songs, you turned your room into a studio. How was exactly this writing process?

I have a Tascam 4-track cassette player that I like to make demos on. I would just work on an idea and record it at its freshest and then maybe record over that as it got more polished.

You had Chris Funk on board to produce the album.

How did you meet him and how was it like to work with him?

I met him through Annalisa Tornfelt, who is in Black Prairie (the band that Funk is also in). Annalisa is the sister of my former bassist, Tyler Tornfelt. She plays on a few

40

music&riots

November

“I wanted to challenge myself

to be the only guitarist and I love playin’ instrumental parts and keeping it simple and not too flashy.”

INTERVIEW // SALLIE FORD

of the Decemberists records and then later started a band with Funk. Funk is the man. He totally gets me, challenges me and inspires me. He made my record rock and kick ass.

Which song of this album is your favorite and why?

“Never be Lame” is probably my favorite song because I love the harmonies the gals did and I love playing the guitar solo. The way we recorded the guitar solo on the record sounds kinda like a ‘60s sitar guitar. I had wanted to buy one of those for the record, but instead we just toyed around with multiple layers on guitar and

octaves, and got a cool effect!

What are your upcoming tour plans?

We are touring the US for about three weeks in November. Also headed to Canada. Then down the West Coast in December. We’ll be rolling!

Do you recommend us any new bands from Portland that we should listen to?

I love Summer Cannibals. They are gonna be playing some shows with us this winter. I also love Old Light, Sons of Huns, The Shivas & Wooden Indian Burial Ground.

Check ‘em all out.

What’s your favorite record of 2014?

I haven’t been listening to much new stuff this year. The War on Drugs’ new record this year was pretty good. I loved Beyoncé’s self-titled release, but that came out in December of 2013. Does that count? Been listening to stuff from the ‘60s mostly.

www.facebook.com/MUSICandRIOTS.Magazine

Slap Back is out now via Vagrant 41

g n i d n fi

k c a b y a their w

Words: Andreia Alves // Pictures: Patrick Moore

ll recognized for their great and we are g on Str r Yea r Fou , 01 20 in d me For pop-punk. Since the release of theirk intense mix of melodic hardcore any,d Sha pe Or Form which is the most roc fourth album, the 2011's In Some Wa date, things shook a little bit. Fans oriented record they released to dropped by their previous label, didn't get so well the record, they gotite ve efin hiatus. As of 2013, rumors haing and ultimately they went on an indbro up, but the band was just tak speculated if Four Year Strong had maken ir return with the awesome new the de y the r yea s Thi . off e tim ded their nee amazing indie label, Pure Noise the th wi ned sig d an y tor His In wn Do Go EP that told us all about his thoughts Records. We caught up with Alan Dayear s and their comeback. about their latest effort, their 3-y -hiatu

42

music&riots

November

43

but at first it wasn’t us leaving the label. Actually everyone got fired and the label doesn’t exist anymore. We were kind of picked up by the sister label I’m assuming just in case we sold a million records and then when we didn’t sell a million records they just dropped us two months after the album came out. That didn’t help with all of us being already sick of each other and wanted to take some time off.

I

t has been a while since you guys released new music, which you took some time off before this come back. During that hiatus, what were you up to?

We kind of took a lot of time to enjoy our personal lives. I think that was one of the biggest reasons that we wanted to take the time off. Not necessarily personality issues with each other or crashing with each other creatively or personally. It was more like we were sick of each other of spending so much time touring.

I think that’s inevitable to after spending almost 10 years with someone almost every day of the year, you get sick of them. We just needed some time apart, we needed to be home with our families and a couple of us bought houses recently and got married and all that stuff. People just kind of want to spend some time at home and get away from everything, which after spending so much time at home and not tour we realized that as much as we love home life, we really love to be on the road and love to play live shows. We didn’t take too much time off where everybody hated us, so we can actually get back to it.

Your lastest album In Some Way, Shape Or Form had some quite mixed reviews and then you guys left Universal Motown Records.

Looking back in time, how do you feel now about that?

We love that album. We had a really great experience like personally between all of us making that record was a really important time for us as a band I think. We learned a lot about ourselves as songwriters, as musicians and as people. I think we got closer than we’ve ever had or at least for a long time and we made a record that we were really proud of. We tried to step outside of the box and until this day we love that record.

It didn’t go so well with the fans and as you said we left the label, 44

music&riots

November

Do you think that In Some Way, Shape Or Form was a turning point record for the band?

Definitely, it was in a lot of ways!

Like I said, just learning about ourselves as songwriters and the physical experience of making that record was a turning point, but also the reaction we got from the fans and all that kind of stuff, the negative response and getting tossed from a label was all very much a turning point for us creatively and in a business sense, you know? Because we have now no manager, we have a new record label that’s a small indie label and not a major label. We’re just kind of changing how we do things and I think so far it has been working to our advantage because it feels more like when we first started out and we were kind of doing a lot of things ourselves and everything was our decision and not other people’s advices influencing our decisions.

It’s just really us wanting to do things our way and that’s how the band started, so it felt really good.

This comeback with this new EP Go Down In History must feel like a new start for you. So when did you start working on these new songs?

We started writing the songs last winter. Our last late fall we started to get together a little bit here and there, because we were really in a rush and then we started writing a little bit and then we decided that we weren’t getting a lot done at home. We just decided to get into the studio and just see what we could come out with. In the studio, we wrote a lot of the stuff for those songs and we wrote as a band for the first time in a while. A lot of times, Dan [O’Connor] and I did the majority of the writing and then kind of come to the band with it and then we worked on them from there. But this time we were kind of writing a lot of the music all four of us in a room and I think that

had a lot to do with the sound of the record’s feeling, more like older songs and that’s how we kind of used to write stuff. We were writing it more as if we were playing live, which I think it’s really important for our band.

The new EP seems like a mix between of Enemy Of The World and In Some Way, Shape Or Form. What inspired you guys while you were working on this new EP? That was kind of our plan, that was to release something that felt like it should gone in between those two albums to kind of bridge the gap. Like I said, we’re still very proud with In Some Way, Shape Or Form, we still love the songs, we love the record and we wouldn’t take that back. But we realize that maybe for the fans it was too far out of left field for them to understand how we got there musically, so we wanted to release something that sounded that it could be written between there to let people understand why we made that record and how it makes sense to us in our heads.

A lot of people actually have been saying that that’s what it sort of sounds like - a mix between the two albums - which it’s great because that’s what we hoped for and that’s what we wanted. After the negative response of the last album we really wanted to do something that we knew our fans would like, but to not put our tails between our legs and just do what everyone expected from us. We wanted to do what still felt like where we were in our lives musically, you know? We wanted to have parts of In Some Way, Shape Or Form in there along with things that people would really love about our older music, which it was mostly for us we realize it when we wrote older music all we were thinking about was the live performances. “How would it be a live show?” and that’s how we wrote the songs and that’s why our shows would end up so great, because people love the songs and we wrote them for that reason. When we were writing Go Down In History, we really wanted to write songs that would be amazing and fun to play live that people could go crazy too but also have the songwriting that we learned on the last record.

So in future releases, are you guys going to keep on exploring

INTERVIEW // FOUR YEAR STRONG

"... we were kind of doing a lot of things ourselves and everything was our decision and not other people's advices influencing our decisions!" more styles and try new elements?

We’re gonna always try and push the envelope a little bit, musically and creatively, because that’s how we’re gonna stay interested after so many years of being in a band and being stuck inside this “genre box” that people expect us to be in. We always want to try and take a step outside of it. We just wanna keep having fun. We wanna stay interested and at the same time we wanna keep our fans interested, because as many times as people say “Hey, I want that to sound like your first record... Keep making music like that.” If we did keep making the same record over and over, people would get bored of us and so we have to keep it interesting. We always wanted experiment different things and that’s what keeps it fun for us.

We’re absolutely gonna do that.

The record was recorded, mixed and mastered by Machine (Fall Out Boy, Every Time I Die) at the Machine Shop. How was it like to be back at the studio and work with him?

Working with Machine is great, because we worked with him a bunch.

We did Explains It All, our cover

album, with him and we did Enemy Of The World with him and it’s always such a great experience working with him. He’s so enthusiastic, animated and so excited. The thing about Machine versus some other producers that we worked with is that he really got what we wanted to do. He was a fan of the band and so he was thinking as a fan. If we were doing something that was too weird, he would say “I don’t know if Four Year Strong would do that...

That’s not what I wanna hear Four Year Strong do.” He kind of put us back into where we should be and he was really good at that. He was really good at keeping us really excited about it, because like I said he’s so enthusiastic and so excited when you write a part and you show to him, he loves it. He’s out of this world. He’s just like jumping around screaming. He’s a lot of fun to work with.

Are you guys currently working on new songs?

We are! We’re working on writing some more music and to maybe put out... We just wanna keep releasing music; I think that’s the most important thing for Four Year Strong right now. We wanna stay

relevant, we wanna keep being a band because we kind of fell into obscurity for a little while the last couple of years and people weren’t sure if we had broken up or whatever, so no one really knew. But I think at this point of our career we just want to keep releasing music and wanna keep people excited about our band. We wanna stay excited, so we’ve already been working on writing new material and we have some studio time booked to start working on new stuff.

What’s your favorite record of 2014 so far?

My favorite record right now is - and I don’t know if most people would expect this from me - the new Jenny Lewis record called The Voyager. It’s an amazing record and I love it. To be honest, I’ve never dug deep into Rilo Kiley or Jenny Lewis music, so I don’t know any older stuff all that much. I saw people posting about this new album and so I checked it out and it blew me away.

musicandriotsmagazine.com

Go Down In History is out now via Pure Noise Records 45

Quoting Sylvester Stallone on his 2006's film Rocky Balboa, "the world ain't all sunshine and rainbows. It's a very mean and nasty place and I don't care how tough you are it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it... Now if you know what you're worth then go out and get what you're worth. But ya gotta be willing to take the hits, and not pointing fingers saying you ain't where you wanna be because of him, or her, or anybody!

Cowards do that and that ain't you! You're better than that!" That quote illustrates pretty much the values and principles of a band with a brave attitude and a continuous musical progression. I'm talking of course of No Bragging Rights.

Why did we cite that quote in particular?

Because one of the songs of NBR's amazing new album The Concrete Flower has that same quote in the song.

We caught up with frontman Mike Perez that explained us the whole theme behind their new effort and much more.

NO ATTITUD BRAGGING VALUES RIGHTS HARDCO Words: Andreia

46

music&riots

November

DE & ORE

Alves // Pictures: Matt Vincent

www.facebook.com/MUSICandRIOTS.Magazine

47

N

o Bragging Rights was formed by you when you were only 15 and since then you’re always progressing and trying new approaches on your music. How do you keep up that energy and continuous willingness?

We just get inspired by people in our lives... We tour and travel a lot so we always meet new people and always visit old friends and kind of seeing where they are in their lives and stuff that happened in our lives too always make you truly write about people’s stories and my own story that kind of happened over the year. I guess what keeps it fresh is, you know, kind of thing that music is helping and people relate to that really keep it fresh for us.

How do you feel about your band as a whole nowadays?

For a long time our sound had changed a lot and I think we kind of figured out what really works for us and everything in our music, like we kind of know how the process can go more efficiently and then on tour - which we did a lot - we just learned how to play together. I think our line-up is stronger that it has been.

You guys re-signed to Pure Noise Records, where you were originally the first group to sign to the label in 2009. Why did you guys get back to the Pure Noise family?

We’ve known Jake [Round, label founder] for a long time and when the label started we were the first band. We kept in contact and we’ve been friends this whole time. I feel that all success Pure Noise was having we were right there kind of rooting for them and we realized that we were not gonna be more with Good Fight [record label]. Pure Noise was the first option for us. We didn’t know that it would be an option for them [laughs] but as soon as the opportunity was there, we talked with Jake and it happened so fast, you know? It was really awesome that he wanted us to come back and we wanted to go back so badly, so it worked out perfectly.

You said that you guys found

48

music&riots

November

your identity in the previous record Cycles and that helped you to push your sound even further. In which ways do you think The Concrete Flower differs from Cycles?

When we’re older, we’re a little bit more confident and I guess educate ourselves more and the material that we’re writing, because The Concrete Flower talks a lot about mental illness and stuff like that. I feel that in Cycles we tried to be more direct in some of our songs like “Cycles” and “Hope Theory”, where we were more direct to those kinds of topics and I think with The Concrete Flower we were even more direct in that sort of matter and being more educated about it. It made a lot easier to be more indepth and to explain the songs.

So when did you start working on this new record?

We actually kept pushing back when we were supposed to start writing it, but even since I would say in half way through for the album Cycles, I’d already started to come up with topics I wanted to write about for the new album.

It wasn’t until we ended our tour with Rotting Out - it ended like in March - that Daniel [Garrow, guitarist] wrote the music in about a month, which didn’t seem too long but he’s always writing and he always has ideas. For a year, I had been sitting on song topics that I wanted to write about and I love to know more or less what songs I had in mind like the social matter and he kind of wrote music based on that. When I had the music, it kind of made it easy and fun to try to put lyrics with these music ideas. It went really quick. The whole process was like a month long, but the preparation for the album was over a year.

What does it mean to you the album’s title, The Concrete Flower?

The idea for it is like something beautiful basically coming out from something impossible and difficult. We know we need a lot to people that are in a really tough spot or had a really rough or horrible past. It’s been one of the greatest things to see, and we see that all the time, when these people, friends and family are very able to come out of it like basically come from nothing and build themselves up. That’s the idea of coming from something

negative and coming out in something positive.

“Outdated” has such strong and straightforward lyrics about someone that you care about and is in a depression and about the constant lack of understanding of people that this is a serious sickness and not a weakness.

Nowadays it still is a subject for discussion. How do you feel about that?

The reason to write about and just talking about is how that is a sickness and not a weakness was just because a lot of people don’t realize how common it is and one that’s even real, because so many people dismiss mental illness, they just pass off and they need to not be sad anymore. For people who are suffering from a mental illness, it’s a sickness and we can’t really help, you know? They try everyday but it’s harder, it’s just something they deal and struggle with, and it’s remindful about how we talk to each other and how we treat each other. There are some people that are just giving you an emotion like that, but there are also people who have nothing wrong as far as what’s going on in their lives, but because of the sickness they’re always feeling down and probably becoming hopeless. That’s just dangerous to somebody who’s feeling emotionally sad. I just want people to be more aware about how we treat each other and you never know what somebody is going through.

“Brave Hearts” is another track with a very important and special message.

Yeah, I feel like is kind of silly how you can judge anybody from loving someone else, you know? I know we all come from different beliefs, whether it’s religion or whatever, but I never felt it was right to judge anybody for who they choose to love and it’s even worse that you should hate them for it.

I never understood that and I’ll never understand, because I have family members who are gay and I never saw the reason to love them any less. It drives me crazy when people who are born this way living just like anyone else and have feelings of love just the way we all do, and then someone comes along and tells them that they’re wrong about it. I just wanted to say that if you love someone, love someone and don’t be embarrassed or shy or quiet about it.

INTERVIEW // NO BRAGGING RIGHTS

“... I know we all come from different beliefs, whether it’s religion or whatever, but I never felt it was right to judge anybody for who they choose to love and it’s even worse that you should hate them for it.”

The track “Fallen Masters” is another great song and I really love that Rocky Balboa part at the end. What led you to pick that movie and that quote in particular?

One is because he’s awesome, I think he’s incredible. [laughs] I felt like it went really well with the content of the song, because the lyrics itself are more about someone trying to learn from “my mistakes” and I just really like that Rocky quote and it’s kind of crazy, but for me we can’t really blame anyone, because you need to take some responsabilities, you have to learn with your mistakes, and it’s kind of push through it. I wrote the song and then the song have a big long outgrow. I was going to talk over it and I don’t know but that quote came up. [laughs] I’ve been listening to that quote for a long time and it just worked perfectly, I just couldn’t believe it. When I heard the song, I was always thinking about that quote and then it fitted in the song. I thought it complemented the

lyrics and the song very well.

On the recording process, you worked for the first time with Will Putney (The Amity Affliction, For Today, Stray From The Path).

How was the experience to work with him like?

Oh man, he was awesome! He was like a professor and it was like going to school. Talking about my side of working with him, every lyric and every melody I had I would just sing for him or I would read the lyrics for him. He wanted me to explain the songs just to make sure that it’s clear and if something wasn’t clear he would ask me to clarify. That was something that I’ve never had to do, but with him before we even started tracking, I had to explain each song I had. We wrote parts that he felt they weren’t explain correctly or they weren’t explain right. If he felt I could explain better, it was almost like he had me work on it at night and come back tomorrow like homework, you know? It’s really cool being pushed like that. On recording

the melodies, he was really encouraging. If he liked the melody, he would let me know and then when we felt like the melody could be better, he would encourage me to write a better part. It was really cool. I haven’t had that kind of help, I guess. I definitely had help in the past, but like this was like going to school.

I trusted his opinion and I believe that everything that he said was to help. I really embraced anything he had to say.

What’s your favorite record of 2014 so far?

There’s a couple. [laughs] The one that I’m enjoying a lot and it just came out is Finished People by Sleeping Giant. I’ve been listening to that record a lot. There’s a really cool album by the band called Masked Intruder called M.I.

musicandriotsmagazine.com

The Concrete Flower is out now via Pure Noise Records 49

FINCH It was back in the late 1990's that Finch were formed. A band with great melodic post-hardcore tunes and rad lyrics, and from there they released two remarkable records: What It Is to Burn (2002) and Say Hello to Sunshine (2005). But then the group went on a hiatus in 2006. Since that moment they had been on and off with the band, but it was until they played some shows celebrating the ten-year anniversary of What It Is to Burn in 2012 that they were finally back! Signing with Razor & Tie and expanding their time writing new songs, Back to Oblivion is their new record and a proof that the band is better and more motivated than ever. We caught up with Daniel Wonacott that talked us through Finch's huge comeback.

Words: Andreia Alves // Pictures: Jonathan Weiner

50

music&riots

November

THEY’RE THEY LEF CHAPTER

BACK TO WHERE FT, THIS IS A NEW R, NOT A REBIRTH...

Y

ou played on this year’s Warped Tour. How did it go and how was it like to play the new songs?

Warped Tour was a lot of fun. It’s kind of notoriously a hard tour because of the heat and the schedule, but we actually found that it was quite pleasant. They treated us really well and we had a lot of fun doing it. It was an opportunity to play some of the new songs, test them out and see what others thought about it and it felt great to have a response from everybody. Of course we played a lot of stuff from the other two records too. We have a great, loyal fan base in the United States which is very lucky to have, so anytime we get to do big festivals like that and expose our music to new people we’re happy to do it, it’s a lot of fun.

www.facebook.com/MUSICandRIOTS.Magazine

51

It was great to see you guys back on active with your music and it was last year that you reunited and did the What It Is To Burn Ten Year Anniversary tour. How did it feel to be back on the road and play together again?

It was awesome! After a couple of years after we broke up in 2010, we were a little bit conscious of getting back together and playing.

The anniversary tour was just a great way for us just to enjoy playing together again and we always toured well as far as our relationship and stuff go. We had a lot of fun and we were just blown away by the reaction from the Ten Year Anniversary tour. It went from 2 or 3 shows to a whole almost year long and it was just absolutely amazing for us. We’re incredibly lucky to be able to continue doing what we’re doing.

It was really amazing that you guys sold out the first couple of shows for that tour and then you ended up touring for a year on that. How did you guys feel regarding the fact that people still care about Finch after all these years later?

It’s always a surprise! We didn’t really have any expectations as far as who would show up or why or how or whatever, and like I said, it’s an incredible uplifting surprise for us to be playing sold out shows all across the world on a ten year old record. I think it speaks very strongly about not just our music... I think that people love our music and they loved our record. Doing this anniversary tour also has to do with people with an appetite for rock music and watch a new great rock band is a lot of fun. We got to do that a lot this year since we played in a lot of festivals and we got to watch a lot of rock bands. It’s just not really the same as doing a lot of shows as a folk group or a dance group or whatever. Rock music has a special place in the world and I think that we’re lucky to be part of it.

Was that tour the push that you needed to write music again?

Yes, it was a big part of it. We didn’t really have plans to make a new record when we started the anniversary tour and we had too much fun and enjoyed playing together that whenever we spend enough time together we end up writing new music regardless. It’s just what happens when we’re in rehearsals. When we’re 52

music&riots

November

practicing, someone is gonna have a new idea. We enjoy jam together so it happened very naturally. It wasn’t a predefined idea like “We’re gonna do an anniversary tour and then follow it up with a record.” It was like “Maybe we should do an anniversary tour and have kind of an organic process of ‘we really love the new stuff that we’re writing and let’s put it out’.”

Did you feel any pressure for this comeback or was it something that you were cool about it?

No, there was no pressure. It was very enjoyable and relaxed in that sense. We did what we wanted to do as far as the anniversary tour is concerned and we took our time writing the new album. It took almost a year writing it and there was definitely no pressure. Only our own expectations we needed to achieve, you know, we wanted the songs to be good, we wanted to see Finch and we wanted to put out something that we were proud of, but there was no external pressure.

need to be changed a lot, some songs don’t, but it always ends up going through all five of us and that’s kind of why this sounds unique. It goes through all five of us to be able to really make the cut and that’s kind of how we’ve always worked. Sometimes successfully, sometimes not successfully, you know?

Sometimes that process leads to disagreements and creative walls, but this time it was very fluid and it was good. Everyone was happy to be working on new material.

Although it took a long time and it seemed to move really quickly, it didn’t seem like we were stuck.

What do you think it has changed the most between now and then as a band?

I think when you get older, things aren’t as automatic… when you were basically a kid thrown into playing shows and touring worldwide, it’s hard to handle it.

You don’t really know how to handle it. I think that we have a good idea of what our band is to us and what it takes to be successful with our own endeavour. We’re just a little bit wiser, smarter about how we do things and why we do things.

We’re not afraid to say no to things that we don’t want to do and likewise other things we really want to do and we’ll fight for it.

I think that’s what had changed.

Now we have a very clear idea of what we want to do and not afraid to fight for it.

In general, what did inspire you to write this new LP in 9 years?

I think for every individual member that writes for the band, we were all inspired by different things. I’m inspired by trying to create something that is big, lush, beautiful and meaningful, and you can find inspiration from anything, you know, whether be other music or movies or art or even your own life experiences. I’m a very disciplined writer; I try to get up every morning and treat it like a job when I’m writing and so I’ll stand five or six hours a day working on stuff. I try to be very diligent about that, but that’s just my personal process. We were inspired by the Ten Year Anniversary tour. We wanted to make something that had the energy that we were feeling from the crowd and we weren’t thinking about the other two records that the band has, you know? There wasn’t any sort of talk about doing what it is to burn number two, Say Hello to Sunshine. We really want to do something new, fresh and unique to what we feel now. I think we were able to accomplish it. I think that the record that we made really represents where the bands it’s at right now and all of us individually.

You said you guys took almost a year to work on this record. How was it like the writing process between you guys this time around?

We write as a group all five of us.

We spend a lot of time together when we’re writing, so someone will come in with a song idea and it never stays the same, you know what I mean? If I write a song and bring it to the band, it will end get ting changed. Some songs

You guys named this third record as Back To Oblivion. Why that title?

Actually, the title track (“Back To Oblivion”) was one of the first songs that we really finished that everyone thought “Wow, that’s really great!” We really felt great about that song. Nate had written the title and it is the chorus line, and we all thought it was a great idea to name the record with that. It had a lot of meaning

INTERVIEW // FINCH

“We’ve gone through lots of ups and downs, but the fact that we still have hope and our own little world as far as Finch is very meaningful for us.” for us based on the song; that song really kicked off the inspiration to keep writing music.

It was more born out of a song than out of a title.

Lyrically, Back To Oblivion is probably your most introspective record to date. What can you tell me about Nate’s writing inspirations?

I know that Nate takes time with his lyrics, you know? He will write a piece of music and he will have melodies or will be singing gibberish over the songs while we’re writing them and then he’ll take them home and finds his lyrics. I know that he has a little story that’s interwoven through to the record and just from his mouth he said that it’s about hope. There’s a lot of struggle and strive in the world and this record kind of lyrically, I think, speaks to the idea that however small or big your problems are, there’s always some sort of hope to lean on to.

We thought that was very powerful and we love when there’s a great set sense of lyrics to stand behind as far as us as musicians.

It’s a real pleasure to be able to play these songs and believe in what’s been said. In my mind, it represents who our band is...

We’ve gone through lots of ups and downs, but the fact that we still have hope and our own little world as far as Finch is very meaningful for us.

For this record, you worked with Brian Virtue (Deftones, 30 Seconds To Mars, Jane’s Addiction, Audioslave). How was the experience to work with him and be back in the studio?

It was great. We’re big fans of Brian’s work with 30 Seconds To Mars, Deftones, Jane’s Addiction... He makes big, lush, beautiful rock records and that’s why we wanted to work with him and he was very insightful as far as helping us tweak the arrangements and make things just right. He also took our lead to as far as the way we wanted the record to sound and he wasn’t pushing us and anyone wasn’t giving directions like “You guys have to make this kind of record or that kind of record...” He got

on board with the vision that we wanted to accomplish and he’s very, very good at getting the performances out of us, helping us shape the songs better than they were before.

With such a great comeback and a great record, do you think we’re gonna listen to more Finch’s record in the future?

Yeah, absolutely! I think that we have a lot more in us musically and once we’re done touring and supporting this record I think we have every intention of getting back into the studio and continue making music. It’s not lost on us how fortunate we are to this late on our career, you know, 15 years of being a band that we have an opportunity of continuing making records. We definitely want to work harder and make sure there are a lot more Finch records to come.

musicandriotsmagazine.com

Back To Oblivion is out now via Spinefarm Records 53

OOZING WOUND

The heavy rock band Oozing Wound has released their second album Earth Suck. Formed in Chicago, the trio has been a prominent name in the underground rock scene due to the fact they enjoy playing fast, heavy and aggressively but in an unpretentious way. Zack Weil, guitarist and vocalist talked with us to clarify some of these issues with no bullshits, talked about their new record, the American society and the death of Metal.

Words: Ana Carvalho // Pictures: Sarah Cass

Y

ou guys are from Chicago, right? How did it all start?

Yeah, we’ve been here for a while.

Kyle, the drummer and I, were natives to the Chicago area, Kevin the bass player kind of moved around when he was younger but he’s been in Chicago for quite some time…at least like fifteen years or something. So we’ve all kind just being here, in the same circles 54

music&riots

November

e

for a while, maybe for the last ten years or so. Then six years ago, I formed a band with Kyle called Cacaw, I had some songs that didn’t kind work for that so I asked Kevin to be in the band and in the past three years it’s pretty much been what it is.

What are your influences? I heard about Ministry, is that true?

Yeah, I like some aspects in Ministry. They are really up tempo, like a repetitive style. We take at least something from that but I don’t feel we particularly follow like one band, you know, there’s elements of that, of High on Fire, Nirvana… I don’t know people

compares us to Metallica, Slayer… we don’t really focus on that at all.

It’s interesting you’ve mentioned those bands….

What do you think about those comparisons people do?

It’s heavy, it’s fast, I can get the comparison. People call us Thrash and obviously those are the really two top stones of Thrash Metal.

I feel we sound more like Dave Mustaine from Megadeath but hey that’s me. [laughs] I heard some funny things like “They sound like Nirvana but faster”… [laughs] I mean, we don’t quite

write songs like they do but we definitely take the no bullshit standards. We’re definitely a heavy rock band.

How does it feel to live and create art in Chicago/USA, in the center of the Capitalism world?

[Laughs] If we are in the center of Capitalism I’m shocked because no one’s paid us really yet.

I mean, there’s no endowment for arts unless you have a very specific vision you can apply for grants and things otherwise mostly you spend your time playing music in shows, basements and you hope the CD doesn’t crack on it.

Your lyrics are very ironic, they kind of attack the consuming society. So how is it to produce music in that kind of environment?

At times it’s fun, other times you’re fighting against this thing and there’s no way to do it and you just pull it out when you’re working saying “Yeah this is a piece of shit but it’s like the best I got.”

Your essence as a band is based on lyrics full of irony against this consuming society, social habits. How did you realize as a group you wanted to approach things this way?

For the most part of the lyrics it’s just me. We do all the music as a band but when comes out to it it’s mostly I kind of pre-write a subject that immerges and then I have some song ideas I keep around just to see if something will work. But mostly it’s about how I feel day to day, I’m pissed off about so many things.

[Laughs] You see the news and that stuff that I have absolutely no control over. It’s about what comes from within me.

“... the Black Album is the beginning of everything that´s bad in metal. You don’t play fast anymore, you just play heavy, and you incorporate like the worst aspects of hard rock and melodic like grungy elements.”

Actually you could write about love, or common things... [laughs] I feel embarrassed. [laughs] I wish I could because more people would connect with that and what I do. I wish there could be million different ways to write love songs like that, but that would be even funnier like those angry love songs you know? [laughs]

www.facebook.com/MUSICandRIOTS.Magazine

55

How was the writing process for Earth Suck? Did you record the album in three days this time around, right?

Yeah that was like a luxury to have three days instead of one. For the most part, I sit and come up with riffs, I kind of put them on what I call the riff log, and just have, you know, these large amount of ideas we can use and then I bring those into the band. I see which ones they like, we jam on for a little bit then I go back to see which ones I like. It is a kind of a back-forward process. Although lately, Kevin has come up with more stuff and so has Kyle but for the most part we work on it, I take it back and we do some more and then at some point becomes a song. And it’s always mysterious when that happens.

capture it out… and then we go back and listen to that “oh this is really what we were trying to do.” [laughs]

But the matter is you maybe don’t need to spend so much time on the studio when underground bands like Oozing, if I can say so, do awesome work in some days…

Sure you can. I think part of that becomes from the desperation to get it out and you don’t have the time. The more time you have in a studio it seems like it takes ten years to come up with Chinese Democracy or whatever Metallica seems to do in a studio these days and they come out with the worst songs, because they have absolutely no desire or hunger anymore.

The song “Going Through The Motions Till I Die” is the less thrashy and the riffs are heavier like the Black Sabbath’s ones. Is it supposed to be the “rock ballad song” of the record?

[Laughs] Sabbath’s definitely.

Actually we don’t do slows too often, there’s some stuff on the split that is slower…

Earth Suck it’s a step forward and a consolidation of your massive sound. The guitar solos and the drums are powerful and speedy, but you introduce some heavy rock variations on the compositions which can make us think “man, this is thrash but something unique and fresh, not the classical and linear thrash with its typical lines and melodies.”

Yeah, the record is definitely a step up, we had a little bit more time to make the sound that we want it.

It’s still not quite what we envisioned but I think the next one will be there. We tried not to imitate like the people we looked up to or maybe I am too selfconscious like “Oh this sounds like High on Fire song” so we tried to make something that would fuck it up a little bit. So people would be able to say that. There is definitely a more repetitive crowd-rock thing going on in this one. But apart from that, the sound we have when we were jamming… we tried to 56

music&riots

November

I read in an interview when someone asked you about the thrash guitar solos, to be more precise about the fact you don’t use too long guitar solos like the thrash bands... [laughs] I wish I could do that [laughs] I can do some old school solos, I can put some little sings but for the most part I don’t think like a lead guitar player like spraying the shit in the whole song. I’ve never been into that 2 minute solos that don’t go anywhere. It was not our plan to make it on that way.

I don’t even wanna say we come from a Punk background, but we are just a bunch of weirdos.

Another curious fact: on stage you seem like you’re having so much fun which makes a huge contrast with the very negative and serious posture of Thrash bands…

We don’t hate ourselves, I don’t know why people have to have such a bad time on stage, you get to connect with people, it’s fun. You can pose and you cannot smile, you can act like you’re better than your fans and whatever but we have absolutely no interest in posing in that sense.

Humor, spontaneity and energy are your motto?

Yes, probably, we don’t wanna be too jokey but at the same time we can’t take things seriously. I’ve seen all these bands coming and going and people will talk up this shit and nobody wants to see your band. You realize it’s all a big joke, it’s rock music. How can you take something seriously? It was a music invented by a corporation for teenagers in the 50’s; it just has been transformed and it’s cool.

But you can’t pretend that is something bigger than it is.

What does it mean the song “Bury Me with My Money”?

I figured it out when I was thinking about these Republican politicians who basically have that give me mentality and like “fuck you” if you need anything. It seemed funny phrase to say following up with our “No Charity”. [laughs] It’s just the duality of people that supposedly like the Christian concept of sharing but at the same time it’s like “give me mine, I want it, you’re not gonna have it”. That’s basically all I see. A lot of this record, even though it’s written in some character perspectives, it’s about that we all fucking tired of working in stupid dead jobs that will not go anywhere. It’s the people who co-opted and pretended they had some Christian mentality when in reality they’re just like… they’re evil.

Talking about American Politics, there’s only two parties fighting for the power, a little bit like in here…

Yeah for the most part. What you can call those parties is always shifting… what they stand for supposedly and it’s all shifting towards the right. Democrats, Republicans, Liberals, Conservatives… Generally only two people ever gonna be elected into the presidency. Every once in a while there’s a weirdo third party but that’s just as bad as the Republicans but now congress can’t do anything so even the most democratic presidents do all these big crazy conservative things. We are all fucked.

How’s the political music scene in Chicago? Is there somehow a sort of movement?

Lyrically probably not but just the idea that an underground band can be a political one specially in Chicago where it’s hard to see a band that you like, because they will be only able to play in a bar, so people open up shows basis and make things but it pissed off the neighhoods. In that sense it’s a political act but I don’t know many people who are being overly political in their lyrics mostly because people don’t wanna think about it right now. They would much rather think in anything else and we’re gonna all get killed by drones. [laughs] Why do you think the Americans are so passive about what’s going on in their lives, their future Where did the rebellion go?

INTERVIEW // OOZING WOUND

“A lot of this record, even though it’s written in some character perspectives, it’s about that we all fucking tired of working in stupid dead jobs that will not go anywhere.”

Large of military force. Speaking about a story for example, there’s this program like maybe a decade ago, where the government was like selling out pieces of military equipment meant to small towns like a tiny town gets a tank, which doesn’t make any sense and they have to use it at least once a year.

Nobody trusts the police to do the right thing or the government to do the right thing. Our news system it’s not very good, it’s very easy… if you say everything it’s like the most important news item and makes nothing important and so it’s easy to phase that stuff out and focus more on whatever TV show you wanna watch. It is a collective fault. The media wants but the people want to be entertained.

What about those 60’s movement, the political fights and the non-conformist spirit?

Definitely, they all got co-opted and they all turned into marketing bullshit. My dad was a protester and a hippie and even he wouldn’t protest today. The environment for him is beyond…

It’s indefectible and dangerous.

And you can actually because more harm than good, Fox News just needs to take a zapping of something and replay it a million times and use their headline and if they keep lying and they say this is what it is, people will

say is that what it is.

What about a tour around Europe?

Oh absolutely. I’ve been to England but never actually to mainly Europe. And neither Kevin nor Kyle. It’s one of the biggest dreams that we are always hoping a band helps us go there.

What are you current listening to?

A lot of power-pop from the 70’s, like Bad Finger, Abba, The Shoes… everyone expects us to hear like Metal bands which I do like, but for the most part the metal that I really enjoy has been dead and buried for like twenty years. The records that I really got into like Darkness Ascends by Dark Angel or Destructions Release by Agony.

Those bands still exist and I just don’t like them anymore. They don’t do things that I’m into, modern metal production sounds awful to me. We’re mostly historical listeners and the new stuff that comes out that we listening to is like our friend’s band from around here. One of my favorite new bands from Chicago is called Melkbelly, they’re really interesting, kind of sound like the Breeders. We are just looking for genuine people making interesting stuff.

What happened?

The 90’s. [laughs] I sincerely gob Kurt Cobain for saw what his influence was gonna do to everything that happened. It’s just that digital production in the 90’s, crazy amounts of compression in everything, the desire to put melodic elements into heavy music… everything just like that died in the 90’s as far as I’m concerned. Metallica are the archetype band for what happened... Three amazing records, one kind of shitty record, more like half good and then the Black Album. And the Black Album is the beginning of everything that’s bad in metal. You don’t play fast anymore, you just play heavy, and you incorporate like the worst aspects of hard rock and melodic like grungy elements. Every song got to have like a verse and a catchy chorus. I hate all that fucking shit. I feel like there’s definitely this movement to trying go back into that old sound and this is the problem that others bands run into: if you start idealizing that sound too much and be like Metallica in the 80’s, you’re gonna sound like a joke.

You mentioned that a part of Metal has died some years ago. musicandriotsmagazine.com

Earth Suck is out now via Thrill Jockey 57

NASTY, LOUD, EXTREME...

WELCOME TO THE TWISTED WORLD OF:

ELECTRIC

WIZARD

58

music&riots

November

When we talk about doom metal we talk, without a doubt, about Electric Wizard. The band is one of the most recognized faces of slow, heavy and fucked up music in 2014… and it has been for quite some time, with classics like Dopethrone or Come My Fanatics.... Time To Die, is Wizard’s latest studio offer, and the reason why we exchanged some words with Jus Oborn (vocals/guitar) – the always well humored leader that founded this beast known as Electric Wizard back in 1993.

Words: Tiago Moreira // Pictures: Steve Gulick

www.facebook.com/MUSICandRIOTS.Magazine

59

original and try to stay fresh, even after all these years. The alternative is just play the fucking hits forever. [laughs]

I

t wasn’t easy to give birth to this new album, right?

No it wasn’t easy, it was pretty difficult actually. [laughs] Everything seemed to go wrong.

We had a lot of problems. We tried to start our own label and then Rise Above kind of got pissed off about that and we had almost every sort of difficulties. Even going into the studio turned out to be a pain in the ass… and added to that some things that happen on a more personal level, you know?

Would you say that those difficulties helped creating the album?

Yeah, we try to do heavy music and it has to come from somewhere, from dark places, you know? You can’t put it all under all the time.

It’s good to channel those feelings into the music. Get the anger out, sort of hatred and being pissed off with people and things around you, around the world. I love our fans because they can relate to that just living their own lives. I mean, in the end it’s a good thing. [laughs] But to be honest it didn’t feel like a good thing back when it was all happening. [laughs] How the return of Mark Greening helped to shape this new album?

Mark is an old friend… We played together when we were just kids so it’s really natural to jam together with him. We had sort of all the songs written but we were having problems arranging them, so once we jammed the songs with Mark it just came together. It was kind of the final touch that we needed.

I remember that it was a really amazing feeling when we jammed for the first time, for this album, with Mark.

60

music&riots

November

Clayton Burgess is now Electric Wizard’s full-time bass player.

How that came about and how it has been so far, the relation between him and the band? He’s 21 years-old, right?

Yeah, I think that’s his age. [laughs] He’s young but actually we have a lot in common. I don’t know, I guess I see a bit of him in myself… [laughs] An angry young man. I think he was born around the same time when the band was formed… Quite strange, isn’t it? He kind of despises his own generations in many ways, which I felt the same when I was young like him. It’s really good work with Clayton because not only he’s a great bass player but also he brings some refreshment and excitement to the band, you know? Also, I really love Clayton’s band, Satan’s Satyrs.

It seems to me that Time To Die is a perfect album to introduce people to Wizard’s music because it has almost every aspect of your music throughout the years in one single experience. Do you see it that way?

Yeah, in many ways it was intended like that. It was meant to be a full-circle kind of album.

There are a lot of references to early albums and things like that. We tried to put a cap on everything. I think with each album we try to perfect a sound that we never got it right particularly. I mean, everyone loves Dopethrone but the process of making that album… it was a fucking nightmare. [laughs] Talking about perfecting the sound… Do you still think that Electric Wizard hasn’t “developed at all”?

Oh you know, I think we haven’t developed that much. [laughs] With so much material under your belt, the fear of repeating yourself exists?

You know, it’s kind of inevitable and it’s very difficult to stay ahead of yourself, sometimes. I think the only thing we can do is try to stay

This album is about death. Do you agree with Charles Bukowski, “You have to die a few times before you can really live”? Would you say that train of thought is what you had in mind when you were creating this album?

Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense. Yeah, that was my train of thought on this album. I think this band went through death a bunch of times. It’s not like I wanted to carry on, we just seem to not fucking die, like fucking zombies or something like that. [laughs] “Somebody fucking kill us for god’s sake.” [laughs] Do you find it rather hard to make a statement in a world that almost despites art and just embraces entertainment?

Absolutely! It’s very difficult and probably some of the frustration about it comes out on this album.

The frustration of not being able to make music for a reason anymore… It’s just about the fucking record sales and money that you get from it. I’m in a place that I don’t even believe that music can be revolutionary, you know?

You started recording the album in East London. Why’s that? I know that you hate big cities.

Yeah, I hate big cities. We started recording the album in East London because the studio there has all the right equipment so it made sense, you know? So, we had to go there to record and then we started to argue a little bit about the mixing and decided to finish it out in the country, and that worked a lot better anyway. More time and less restrains.

I know that you sometimes write your lyrics just a few days before hitting the studio to record. How was it this time around?

70% was still done like that. I mean, it kind of works that way for me. I think all of kind of the ideas comes with more urgency that way and that’s definitely the type of ideas that I’m looking for.

I love ideas that have that urgency feeling in them and also, very important, that is as honest as it can be. If I take too much time they turned out in fucking poetry or something. [laughs]

INTERVIEW // ELECTRIC WIZARD

“You can’t put it all under all the time. It’s good to channel those feelings into the music. Get the anger out, sort of hatred and being pissed off with people and things around you, around the world.”

You have your own imprint called Witchfinder Records. How is that going? I remember of you talking about releasing this album on Witchfinder Records, your imprint, and about the thing of having limited pressing and the silliness of eBay. Can you elaborate on that?

Yeah. This new Electric Wizard’s album is not limited at all, as you know, and anyone can buy it. But about the limited pressing editions, I think… [pause] I don’t understand why some labels operate like that. I mean, releasing something that is limited because they know they will sell them almost instantly for a lot of money. It’s not about selling as many records as possible and definitely it’s not about putting the music out for

the fans. I don’t believe in that situation. I prefer to sell as much music as possible and get as many songs out there as possible. I mean, that’s why we are here: to spread the message and the music. So, that being said I think it’s a little bit of a problem in the underground now. Everyone is trying to sell limited 100 copies.

It’s more about the cover or the fact that is limited. I’ve heard it sometimes, “The music is not that good but the packaging is amazing.” What the fuck? [laughs]

out. One is death. The other is mental institutions. Or third, you can’t get out.” Can you talk a little about that?

We used the sample but it was missing the last line, “Or third, you can’t get out.” This was added to kind of indicate… sort of about Electric Wizard. [laughs] I tried to die, I tried mental institutions and in the end I think it’s really no way out. It’s kind of a joke on me.

The album closes with a recording of Dale Griffis, the prosecutor of the West Memphis Three case – “When you get into one of these groups, there’s only a couple of ways you can get musicandriotsmagazine.com

Time To Die is out now via Spinefarm Records 61

h c t u b e l

TE GEN BEN SPE OU THE VOI OF GENE

62

music&riots

November

s e t t e r E h

ERI NDER NDER EAKS UT: TRUE ICE OUR ERATION Words: Tiago Moreira

www.facebook.com/MUSICandRIOTS.Magazine

63

Sometimes there’s justice and the ones that deserve to be helped are indeed helped.

Omar Rodríguez-López (At The Drive-In, Mars Volta, Bosnian Rainbows) was able to offer his help when his mind was blown away by the strength of this Mexican band called Le Butcherettes. Fast forward seven years and the punk based band from Guadalajara keeps going strong, one might even say they’re bigger and better. We had the pleasure of talking with Teri Gender Bender (vocals, guitar, keys) about the new Cry Is For The Flies; her upbringing; Ipecac; feminism, and everything in between.

D

are so many secrets. A woman’s heart is like an ocean, so mass, unending in the depths of water space time. With all this in mind, they were hard working folks and did everything for us (me and my brothers). It was hard for them at first trying to stay afloat in a country (U.S.A at the time) where there is so much self-entitlement and if you are a minority you fall into the trap of economic/mental slavery… At heart, they were leaders, and didn’t let themselves be messed with.

I remember of Omar talking about how he discovered your band and the fascinating thing is that he fell in love with the idea of the kind of the band you are first and the music after. Do you think that’s why he has been so involved with the band?

He’s the type of person that believes that above all else; intention is everything. That one band can have all the technical ability but have no soul and another band can have very little technical ability (ahem cough sneeze) but be carried to great heights by pure soul. He often says it’s not what you do, it’s how and why you do it.

o you remember the first time that some song or band had a huge impact on you that made go “Wow, this is really incredible”?

I was in my little room which was covered up in posters, dust and spiders, in Guadalajara. Recording songs was all I would do after I would get back from school to help me to unwind and enjoy the glistening afternoon.

Sometimes after a brutal day of being bullied at school and tortured both physically and mentally, in my room I’d sit on the floor and record on my cassette player, which was given to me as a gift by my father. Just going through the process of being alone in my room was the building moment of “This is my savior.” Maybe not in those exact words… it was more of a general feeling of safety and that I was born to tap into these floating melodies covered in spirits from the past, present and future.

You have changed drummer three times now, if I’m correct. What was the impact of that on the band and on you personally?

Sometimes a chapter in a book ends earlier than you think it will. Life just happens in your face in the form of a miniature death spasm.

The impact for me was felt more inward than outward, I just had to keep going with my vision to serve the music or I would have ended up killing myself!!! Believing in destiny, I feel like the band has a much more complete sound with Lia Braswell on drums. Not only do we have great live chemistry but it’s really smooth and innovating.

She appreciates being on tour. I had the disgrace of touring with people who complain about basically being alive.

I know that your parents had a huge impact on the artist that you eventually became. Can you pinpoint in what way they have impacted you, Teri the artist?

Both my parents are similar to characters from a Russian (Dostoevsky at best) novel. Tragic, beautiful, insane and tortured. They both displayed a division inside themselves. My father worked at a prison but after work he would sit on the couch and recite poetry and speak about philosophy while drinking a bottle of Rum. My mother was an actress and is a very passionate woman. She is very over protective when it comes to her children. Off stage (she is an actress), inside of herself there is a canal that I can’t go down because it is too dark. There

How was the time right before you have started to work on this album? There was some kind of pressure attached to it, the starting of the new creative process? I mean, it seems that so much good stuff happened so quickly.

I was in the middle of moving from my home country (Mexico) to the U.S. again. Being on a terrain of

64

music&riots

November

INTERVIEW // LE BUTCHERETTES for certain songs, mostly keeping it simple because this is in way the essence of the band. Also to a certain degree none of this was super planned out. I show up with a ton of songs and dissect them, by chaining a chord to another chord hence making the melody a lot more interesting. It’s definitely a challenge if you are hung up on an old song and if you don’t want to grow… you know? Like a relationship, if you want to learn to grow and be a team and a good lover it means you’ll have to learn to let go of your old ways and open up and communicate. If anything, there was a lot of communicating during the process which always makes it fun. Communicating through jokes is also a great way to break tension.

“I use my fear and my love for life and death to make songs or pictures, paintings, books, getting to know other cultures, people etc. Except these songs, the art is already existing.” limbo. Feeling rootless. Feeling a tremendous amount of guilt for trying to move forward with my band. So in order to not focus so much on the burning new chapter of my life I proceeded to record these songs and lock them in a closet. The new album isn’t really so new, it’s been recorded two years ago. During the recording of CIFTF there was definitely an eerie vibe in the air.

It must have been because my mind was in the middle of so many clouds and finishing the record went by fast. We did it in a matter of 10 days. There really was no pressure attached because the team involved was superb and utterly professional… the process keeps going even when you are not aware of it at all. Looking back at it now, I learned a lot. Had a great time drinking my black coffee and working with Omar, Lia, Lars (engineer) Jon (engineer) and Chris (mixer). The microphones that were used were old vintage microphones from the 50’s which were auctioned from a studio man that lost his family in a fire… maybe

in some part the aggregation I felt inside myself during the recording of the LP. Can’t wait for the album to come out on vinyl, it feels like an old album from another time period. Raw and honest.

There’s an undeniably display of evolution and will to take things not only a lit bit further but also through other paths. I remember reading some interviews that you did before the creation process for this album and you had this kind of twinkle in your eyes when you were talking about how you wanted to write new material and achieve something a little bit different, evolve through different paths. Can I assume that it was not only a challenge but also your definitive goal with this new album?

It happened so naturally, learned a lot with how you can take a song to a different level. Some songs on the album where originally guitar but since I love playing with my Casio kid-toy key board Omar suggested I make up new key parts

Henry Rollins is a guest on the album. How did you manage to convince him? The guy is ultra-mega-super busy all the fucking time.

I woke up in the morning with a pit in my gut and got the urge to locate Henry. I’ve heard before that he wrote a nice piece about Le Butcherettes in the L.A Weekly.

I really like how he’s not a one dimensional artist, and has actually stepped further within himself and the world… he travels and writes, supports art, is a wonderful poet behinds his musical past. So when I wrote him thanking him for his support I took the risk of asking if he wanted to do a spoken word piece on the subject of guilt. He replied to me in a matter of fast.

He’s a real gentleman. He made the time to do this. And you’re right, he is very busy, he was in the middle of filming his new television program amongst writing for the news… I’m very grateful.

Talking about “Moment of Guilt”, the track where Rollins guests with his always amazing spoken-word… Who wrote the Rollins’ bit? I don’t even want to quote it because that bit is so amazing that I don’t want to spoil for anyone. It’s perhaps one of the “best empowerment” speeches that I’ve heard for a long, long time.

Henry wrote it himself! All I did was suggest the theme that the album revolved around. He said he’d do the best he could and within a week he showed me what he came up with and I was blown away.

Listening to his voice and to the story helped me reach a certain

musicandriotsmagazine.com

65

closure with that part of my life.

I will always be grateful to him to the people that were involved in this album.

While we’re talking about special participations, can you talk how Shirley Manson (Garbage’s vocalist participates on the track “Shame, You’re All I’ve Got”) ended up on the new album?

I wanted a strong female front woman to participate on the album. Shirley Manson was amongst the first people to come into my mind. She has always been a true inspiration. Reaching out to her was very natural because her bandmate/producer Butch Vig knows my manager and his wife.

His wife runs this amazing program in Reactor (a Mexican music station). She had interviewed Garbage before and they were really nice and down to earth people. In the music world, everything and everyone is aware of one another… and if not there is a link that binds the artist to another one. I sent her the song “Shame, You’re All I’ve Got” and Omar and I suggested she add her voice to the choruses and the bridge. She is very varied with her vocal tone so she added brilliant balance and did beautifully. She put time into it and her husband recorded her. So it has an intimate feel to the recording. Listening to her voice gives me chills.

It seems that you have almost as much urgency to show your strengths as also showing your vulnerabilities, weaknesses and worries. I guess it all comes down to what Jack White said, “Art doesn’t come from comfortable places”.

I agree with what Jack White and many other artists have to say about Art coming from uncomfortable places… I also agree that to Live in fear is to cease to Live (Buddha)… I use my fear and my love for life and death to make songs or pictures, paintings, books, getting to know other cultures, people etc. Except these songs, the art is already existing. We use ourselves as little antennas to transmit what is already in the air. We are functioning antennas, be it in the most horrible of places like in the burning 108F desert or in the most luxurious of islands, a beach view, Puerto Rican Coconuts,… Art comes from uncomfortable places but it also comes from beauty that not even the most outstanding 66

music&riots

November

poet can put into words. Art is life… and humans help bring it into this dimension… which is why it is important that modern artists cover songs from the past, that way we our studying our history, learning how musicians used to write music and to keep that alive. We must not let the music from the past vanish. It’s good that modern artists are using samples from old music and making new arrangements with the samples… making a new composition.

As far as I know, this new album doesn’t have literary references like Sin Sin Sin had. Would you say that this album is way more about soul searching than Sin Sin Sin? I mean, a more personal record.

Before the record was a record they were poems from my journal. When I would travel from place to place one of my personal items that would never be away from me was my passport and my journal! Hell, I would even leave behind my hairbrush and toothbrush at times and brush my teeth with apples and comb my hair with forks. Now I have the bad habit of traveling with my computer… it helps me record song ideas no matter where I am.

The downer is that NSA can tap into your device. It can happen to anyone. Also on another note, I’ve been reading quite some books on the subject of the internet (You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto and Who Owns the Future?, by Jaron Lanier), how the first martyrs of the fallen industries are

“Modern day pseudo feminists focus too much on gender and less on achievements...

The essence of feminism is beautiful and empowers the souls of men and women.”

musicians… and it will keep on doing the domino effect until computers do surgeries and Surgeons will only be in charge of putting in the data for the computer to operate, making their pay much less. Ah! But yes, both records … all my music comes from written format first, from my journal. It’s all personal. CIFTF is just less direct and doesn’t hold the listener’s hand at all. Maybe because during this phase was when I was most disconnected from people. I was living on the streets, on my own, myself, playing music in venues that were full, making me feel crazy that I was still able to feel so alone.

Soledad is an addicting feeling.

This album is about a woman in distress searching for herself… before she can be a mother, before she can love another she has to be okay with loving herself, even if she is too arrogant, she needs to let go of that fear. Sin Sin Sin included my father’s favorite (and mine) literary leaders, they were my grieving buddies, the link that helped me still make a connection to my father despite him not being alive.

The medium between life and the far beyond.

Omar said that he had this sickness of wanting to control everything but he was aware of that and he wanted to change that. That sickness has a place of its own with Le Butcherettes or it’s the other way around?

Personally, I think Omar developed the need to acquire control because control equals safety… equals insurance for your work, your art. Sure you may just be the antenna that tapped into the floating spirits but at the end of the day it was YOUR antenna that did it, not X or Y… and sometimes X or Y may want to possess the art for ill intentions. So in short I can be emphatic and understand way he was this way before. I’m completely the opposite, every person I worked with I would give them the liberty to take a piece of myself in exchange for a friendship. I would give and give and take little. This of course can only turn out sour. Because then people expect you to keep on giving. I’m learning to find a middle ground.

To still be open for collaboration but while holding my own as well.

(Or just not let yourself be bullied into a corner or a have a creative outlet spit on).

INTERVIEW // LE BUTCHERETTES

“Before the record was a record they were poems from my journal.

When I would travel from place to place one of my personal items that would never be away from me was my passport and my journal!”

You’re on Ipecac now, one of the most awesome labels out there.

How that happened?

My other band Bosnian Rainbows was on tour with Tomahawk in Scandinavia. Both bands got along very well. Months later me, Mike and Omar met up for dinner and he talked about putting out our music.

He put me in touch with the co-founder of Ipecac, Greg Werkman. It all flowed really nicely. They really liked LB and Greg asked to manage me. I still have to hit myself in the eye or the head really hard to make sure I’m not dreaming. Ipecac is such respected label because they are down to earth people that want nothing more than to help serve the music.

We have such a great team.

You’re on the way to become as notorious as some of your feminist idols/biggest influences. Do you ever feel the weight because some of the responsibility that you kind of are accumulating with time?

I feel no weight at all because in my head I’m nowhere close to becoming notorious. So thank you

very much for that. For me and other people that have been in music that are close friends of mine, it’s more about being introspective; it’s important for artists/musicians to read about philosophy, world history and classic literature… it will help teach musicians to become leaders instead of being content to being slaves of the music industry.

In any movement there are always some problems and flaws, which is natural because the human being is involved. What’s for you the biggest problem or the biggest flaw of the feminist movement?

The alienation of the individual.

Truth is we’re not all equal. We should be equals but then what happens when a hard working musician is being paid less than his lazy female booking agent (totally just an example)? We shouldn’t be basing economic factors on gender. Modern day pseudo feminists focus too much on gender and less on achievements. In their attempt to gain equality

they often create an environment that causes further inequality. The essence of feminism is beautiful and empowers the souls of men and women. It helped build outstanding leaders, Gloria Steinem… but the corruption of feminism has created people like Valerie Solanis where they plainly killed in the name of hatred. A huge part of being a feminist is giving other woman the freedom to make choices you just might not make yourself, as an individual. Sometimes it feels like that part has been lost in translation and can cause other women to feel alienated and not comfortable with dressing like a _____ or like a_____ or talking like a ______ etc. Respect is the key.

Being conscious that not everyone is the same as you is key. But hey, it is also our right to hang out with people that are exactly like us. [laughs]

www.facebook.com/MUSICandRIOTS.Magazine

Cry Is For The Flies is out now via Ipecac 67

ZOLA JESUS

ADVENTUROUS AND SPOOKY, THE CONTRASTS OF PERFECTION Words: Tiago Moreira // Pictures: Jeff Elstone

Nika Roza Danilova, aka Zola Jesus is a workaholic – we thank you Joe Pesci. Since 2009 Nika has been releasing album after album – along with some splits, EPs and a collaborative album with JG Thirlwell (Foetus), entitled Versions. There was always an adventurous side on Nika’s personality as an artist. Taiga, her new album, just happens to be another wild adventure.

In an interesting conversation we had the pleasure to talk with Nika about the making of this new album, how important it’s this album for her as an artist that’s growing and her ability of not giving a fuck – we thank you Joe Pesci.

68

music&riots

November

C

onatus was the first record you couldn’t return to write in the winter. Do you think you were too comfortable writing during the winter and that was making you uncomfortable?

Yeah, I definitely feel more creative in the winter.

Two years of touring in support of Canatus. Was there a time where you just thought it was too much?

No! [laughs] It was exciting. Of course you get tired but this is… it’s a job but at the same time is what I love to do, so I’m willing to do whatever I have to do to continue to be able to do it.

These new songs were written in Vashon Island in the winter.

What was the effect of a place like Vashon Island, and the winter itself, had on you and obviously in your music?

Yeah, I think that moving to Vashon Island and writing the record there instead of Los Angeles, where I used to live and write, was very different and inspired me in new ways. It inspired me because I was able to remove myself from society and create something that felt more full-blooded. I didn’t have contact with what was going on with the world and I was able to create 69

something that was just really honest and pure.

So would you say that you were pushed against the wall by the loneliness and isolation?

I don’t know about pushed against the wall but it felt liberating.

You have once said that as a kid, growing up in Wisconsin, it was all about the freedom and experiment. Is it something that can be said about your intentions as an artist?

Yeah, I think that because when I moved to Vashon Island it reminded me so much of home and where I grew up that I felt free to experiment and try things that I never would have tried and to make music that maybe before I wouldn’t feel comfortable making and yeah, it just made me feel very empowered to just follow my instincts.

How was it the creative process for Taiga? Where you always starting with your voice and these melodies and then the instrumental part?

When I was writing the record a lot of the times it would start with me acapella but also some of the songs were written around some beats.

Dean Hurley, who initially was supposed to only mix the album ended up to do way more than that. For what I’ve heard, Dean’s contribution was really important.

I wasn’t sure when I was working on the record initially if I wanted to work with a producer because I just was afraid that my ideas would get diluted by somebody else’s work and that made me scared.

I was very protective of my creative ideas but when I met Dean, he only wanted to make my ideas more realized. He never wanted to bring his own ideas… I mean, he had ideas about how to help me communicate what I was trying to say in a better and clearer way.

That [Dean’s work on Taiga] I found invaluable because without it I feel that the record would be compromised in some way.

Didn’t he help you choose the songs, in a way? I heard that you had dozens and dozens of songs.

Yeah, I had something like one hundred tracks. I didn’t know what was good and what was bad anymore because I was writing 70

music&riots

November

music every single day and at that point you’re like… you just lose perspective so quickly and so I would play songs for him and he would encourage me to go on or tell me to stop because the song was bad. But most of the songs I just really strongly wanted them to be on the record.

“Do you wish/You could go back to it all?” Is it a thought that has been haunting you for a while now?

Yeah, in general I feel that in terms of where we are as a culture that we’re progressing and moving forward, but not in a way that feels productive and in some ways I feel that we’re moving backwards. And yeah, sometimes I wonder what would happen if we just stopped evolving and we just content where we were… but we are not like that. Humans want constantly to move things forward and I’m the same way as an artist, I always want to get better. Find more efficient ways to do things.

How much of a hard trip was for you to write the lyrics to “Nail”?

I mean, there are some heavy subjects mentioned on that song.

I think a lot of the questions that I asked myself are questions very broad but at the same time is very hard to find the answers for them.

Like, the lyrics “How am I supposed to survive/If I don’t know what’s wrong and what’s right/How am I supposed to know freedom?/If I don’t know, I’m living inside”… I mean, you never really know what freedom is; you never really know what a honest way of living is because we only know what we are exposed to.

That constant inability of really know the truth or know what’s... right or wrong. [laughs] I’m always asking myself, “What’s the right way to live? Is it worth it? What’s the point?” I guess that’s the big question, “Why am I here and what the point is?” I mean, how do you know how to make your time on Earth valuable in a way that you’re able to feel that there’s a reason to be here? That’s why I make music, it’s because I feel that I need to be doing something extremely profound… well, not necessarily profound but something that puts me to use.

It’s kind of a justification to be alive, you know?

You have been very open with the fact that you dream of

having one of your albums on the 1st place of Billboard 200. It’s all about this huge hunger?

That’s a little bit different. That I said because I feel… [pause] I will never make pop music like that, the kind of stuff Billboard “wants” but it is so weird that as a musician there are always these different segments. It’s like you’re or this musician or that musician.

You’re or a commercial musician or an underground artist… or you’re experimental, or classical.

I just found these boundaries so bizarre that I like to break them down, you know? But that doesn’t mean that my goal is to be N.º... but at the same time it makes me incredibly unhappy [laughs] because no matter what you do or what you achieve people will say, “Oh, you should be so happy with what you have”, but the truth is that my whole life has been about not being happy because I constantly feel like I’m pushing myself, you know? If I’m not pushing myself then I don’t deserve to be alive. That’s kind of extreme but that’s the whole point. The whole point is to be unsatisfied, and the minute I’m satisfied I feel like I’ve accomplished something so I have no business being here.

Basically you’re the type of person that always see the glass as half empty. Doesn’t makes you go bezerk sometimes?

Oh yeah! Oh my gosh, all the time. [laughs] It’s definitely a problem that I’ve been struggling with that my entire life. Unfortunately! I mean, it’s not a big deal. It’s just like you said, some people are optimists and some people are pessimists.

Being a pessimist makes me want to work harder and try harder and keep improving and keep doing this, and that’s positive in a way.

That’s why you have released so much stuff in just five years?

Yeah, I can never stop. [laughs] Must keep going. Must keep trying.

Must keep pushing. [laughs] You decided to push the album’s release because it was a “fall product”. What do you mean by that?

Fall is the greatest season… fall and winter. I feel like I’m so alive in fall and winter so I wanted the album to be out in the fall because I wrote this album in the fall. I guess I just wanted to have

INTERVIEW // ZOLA JESUS

“The whole idea was to make music as a person and don’t care how it sounded, just trying to have something that’s honest, passionate, explosive and very personal.”

the album out in the context of these next months.

Do you think this record represents the first time where you’re really confident and comfortable with your own voice? [slowly] Yes! [pause] I went through a lot of work the last couple of years to confront all of the fear, doubts and insecurities that I had with my voice and I’m actively working every day to make myself more confident with my voice but I feel that I’m at a place where I’m not hiding, you know? And once you’re not hiding then you have to confront it and that makes you acquire some confidence.

George Carlin, the comedian, once said that the most important thing for him as a performer was when he discovered how important is to not give a fuck.

Were you a little afraid of working on songs that could be considered too much poppy sounding? Did you learn to not give a fuck, just like George?

Yeah! That’s kind of why I moved to an island, and I wanted to, like I said before, separate myself from society and even from Zola Jesus.

The whole idea was to make music as a person and don’t care how

it sounded, just trying to have something that’s honest, passionate, explosive and very personal. I made these songs that you hear now on the record and some people say that it doesn’t sound like Zola Jesus that they know but… it’s ok because I’m confident and I believe in it. This is why… it’s truly not give a fuck about what people think they want from Zola Jesus. As much as I respect and love the people that listen and care about my music, the truth is that I respect and love myself even more. [laughs] I needed to trust my instincts.

They think they know it.

Sometimes the artist does not even know himself.

Exactly! You make things and you don’t even know how they came out of you, or how did you make them, or how people will react, but it doesn’t matter because they served the purpose for you.

You’re talking about these boundaries that music has, or that people have built for it. I remember you saying that there’s this punk side on some electronic music, like Aphex Twin. I think Taiga has that element. Would you agree?

Yeah, I guess I would… I don’t know. [laughs] I think it’s always beem there maybe a little bit.

I guess Taiga is not a very comfortable record in a sense that’s always challenging the listener. I mean, every song is different from the other, you know? And people don’t know what to expect because Taiga show us that Zola Jesus is not something that you just know what’s going to happen next.

Yeah, I feel that my greatest fear as a musician is being figured out and then people can just dismiss it because they know exactly what to expect and what will happen, like you were saying. I mean, the thought of being just thrown into a corner and live there for the rest of my life, in this little niche… it’s scary and it would be really, really boring. Are you just going to be that one thing for the rest of your life when there’s so much music in the world? I mean, there’s so many different ways to express all of the ideas that you have.

musicandriotsmagazine.com

Taiga is out now via Mute Records 71

GODFLES Unsettling groove and intricately minimalist endeavours.

72

music&riots

November

SH

Godflesh is a household name, no matter what. The duo Justin Broadrick (vocals, guitar, drum programming) and G.C. Green (bass) started throwing stones into the water back in 1988 when they released their self-titled EP. One year later they were releasing the undeniable classic that is Streetcleaner. From that point on there was no doubt that something had changed, not only in the heavy music scene but in the music scene in general. After putting the band on-hold they returned to the live stages in 2010 and now in 2014 they return with some magnificent studio work: a brand new album (A World Lit Only By Fire) and EP (Decline & Fall). In a highly in-depth interview, we had the chance of talking with Justin Broadrick about almost everything, including his past, his other projects and everything that somehow surrounds the entity that we all love and respect: Godflesh!

Words: Tiago Moreira

www.facebook.com/MUSICandRIOTS.Magazine

73

W

byproducts of Final ultimately.

as it easy, for you, to go back to the “Godflesh mode” and start creating new music?

Yeah, very easy! I think as much as anything, I think I really needed to get back to Godflesh. It’s a sense of expression I really missed. I mean, Jesu satisfies me creatively and artistically in many ways, but I think I really needed the Godflesh form of expression as well. It enables me to have a different form of therapy. [laughs] I think I use all music as therapy so it’s really useful for me, and it’s very…

I get very frustrated not having Godflesh as a sense of expression, I guess as the years roll by I certainly need this. One of the simplest things I’ve ever done creatively and artistically and it was very easy to go back to Godflesh. I think a lot of people, outside of the band and stuff, would it consider maybe quite hard but no, it’s very, very simple.

We, the listeners, can feel this weird element that somehow connects everything that you have done in these last three decades – JK Flesh, Techno Animal, Greymachine, Jesu, Final, etc. Do you have problems to organize yourself in terms of “this song is Jesu, this song is Godflesh”?

There’s never really a problem.

I mean, everything… Is like you say, everything is a ramification and a byproduct ultimately. You see it, like many others – some unfortunately can’t see it -, essentially a link between everything that I do, and I feel the same. In a way almost everything comes from Godflesh, but also in a way everything (strangely) probably comes from Final, because Final was the first music I ever made. That was my first… Ironically the most experimental and most obscure thing that I do is Final, but ironically was the first music I’ve ever made as a very young child, almost. I started doing music for Final when I was literally 13 years-old. Before that I had bands in school but they were literally primitive punk bands.

Static Demon and Council Estate Electronics, for example, they’re 74

music&riots

November

But with Final you learned a lot of things that you further explored later on.

Absolutely! It’s ironic as well because it’s extremely experimental and it was my first exploration into music that had almost no boundaries. I started with this music that was essentially beatless, because that’s what Final is all about. It’s exploring a space without rhythm, ultimately. It’s weird because Final initially was inspired by industrial, power electronics and so on, but the backend of that, what I discovered through my parents was Brian Eno. That opened the doors, to me, to other space. A space that was more emotional and filled with melancholy… I was more accustomed, in my youth, to industrial music, which was filled with anger, hate, disenchantment and frustration. But ultimately it’s obviously what Godflesh is all about, the lineage is all there.

Godflesh wouldn’t exist without my discovery of industrial music at a young age… People by enlarge miss that. When people refer to Godflesh as industrial sometimes I find it wrong, because essentially they’re referring generally to a period of American music, which they often didn’t know the history and the legacy of industrial music and they’re referring to it as industrial. When people say to me, “Godflesh is like industrial metal”… Industrial metal suggests a music that I really don’t have a kinship with, but in a literal sense Godflesh is industrial, yes…

on Godflesh’s music.

Exactly, exactly! What you are saying is very important to me and I’ve been saying that in some recent interviews. Godflesh ultimately is about that grove and unfortunately industrial, and industrial metal, they really suggest something really, really stiff. It’s about the groove, bloated, quite excessive sound, but that is tighten and disciplined by this sense of old-school hip-hop even.

That’s an integral part of what we do, you know? Again, drum machines are very stiff, yeah, but for me the beauty of that…

But it’s just one element of it.

Exactly! The same goes for metal.

Yeah, Godflesh is metal but again that suggest something horrible but it also suggests something…

If metal kids can appreciate what I’m doing with Godflesh, then great, but it is the absolutely gutter of metal. It’s a reduction of it and it has nothing to do with heavy metal on a conservative mainstream sense.

You can say that about hip-hop. I mean, the stiffness.

Absolutely, and it is just in the programming that the swing is introduced. That’s important for me. It’s very odd for me because people miss the old-school hip-hop elements of Godflesh, but then what’s missed by even those the old-school hip-hop is that something very white and German was instrumental and influenced fucking hip-hop, which was Kraftwerk. All these early hip-hop Afrika Bambaataa and all that stuff - was essentially influenced by stiff German sound: Kraftwerk. But Kraftwerk accidently come across with this groove, with drum machines, you know? I saw this lineage as a kid. I didn’t understand it and I couldn’t articulate it, but I remember seeing Kraftwerk in the late 70s on Top of the Pops in Britain and it was the model. And I remember thinking, “Wow! This is mad.” I had this obsession with synth music as a kid. I remember the early The Human League records – songs like “Being Boiled” and “Circus of Death” -, and listen to John Peel. Krautrock is another big part of what I do, and a big part of what Godflesh is. It’s unfortunate but it also puts us in a good position, you know? So much history of industrial and synth music had such an impact on me, and Godflesh, but is by and large missed. It’s like Cabaret Voltaire.

Huge influence on me.

You were talking about Brian Eno and I think that we can establish parallels between his music and industrial music, because they share some elements. The other thing that I think some people miss when they’re trying to understand Godflesh is the groove. The groove is for me one of the key elements

Early, early electronic music made a huge contribution to industrial music. I’m talking about the early days when almost no one could afford the equipment, and even if you had the money for it you couldn’t operate it because it was very, very technical.

Yeah, you had to own or work in a

COVER STORY // GODFLESH

“This is a completely physical and emotional response and you take that anywhere you wish.” studio. Many of these early records were made by producers and it’s no coincidence. I remember a period where a sampler, the Fairlight, you know? The Fairlight sampler coast as much as it would be to buy a house… it’s ridiculous. It was the very first sampler and just people in the studios would have access to this stuff. I remember reading as a kid and fantasize about a sampler.

And you had to have the knowledge to use it. It was not user-friendly.

Oh my god, no! The first drum machine we bought you had to literally learn how to use it. It was not like picking up a guitar.

Fortunately I was already quite enamored at a young age with drum machines and I’ve been tinkering with primitive drum machines that I could get anyone to borrow me. It was really hard.

But getting back to the groove… It

is as important for me as the riff, you know? I was trying to explain this the other day: in Godflesh the hierarchy of composition isn’t always based upon the riff.

Obviously with metal the riff is the holy grail but with Godflesh that hierarchy almost doesn’t exist. Often a Godflesh song can be built around a drum beat, a machine groove… and that’s the same with hip-hop. A producer comes up with a great beat and then for me that’s almost the same relationship with Godflesh.

I come up with a beat and I love that beat and then I’ll think on heavy guitar and bass, and they can rhythmically explain that beat, you know? It’s almost the same way with hip-hop.

That’s why I agree with what you said back in the day, “Godflesh is the heaviest band in the world.”

It’s not about the decibels.

It’s about this articulation of elements that create a certain atmosphere… and the lyrics.

They’re really important.

Yeah! The whole philosophy of Godflesh from the sleeve and the lyrics to the texture of the music, to the components and to the atmosphere. I mean, this is it.

It’s extremely claustrophobic and generally there are so few lyrics.

Some people say more in just one song than us in an entire album but we say in an entire album is universal.

But sometimes you say more with ten words than some people in their entire career.

Yeah, yeah that’s it. That’s the point, exactly. Godflesh is so loaded that one sentence, or one song is… We don’t need to be overly verbose or literal because the philosophy is quite simple in a way, but again is

musicandriotsmagazine.com

75

paradoxical the duality there because is both simplistic yet so loaded as well.

I remember the first time that I’ve accepted the premise that Godflesh was indeed the heaviest band on Earth. It was when I heard you shout “Don’t hold me back, this is my own hell.” [“Christbait Rising”] Everything made sense from that moment on.

Yeah, absolutely! And people like yourself – there are many others out there -, they do comprehend this, they get it. Often people say that Godflesh is quite ambiguous or they go the other way and they say it is so direct and that’s almost too much…

You always gave space to the listener, and I’m not talking just about Godflesh.

Yeah, yeah. Absolutely!

Ultimately music is full of these contradictions, you know? And so is Godflesh and again, that’s the beauty of it and it’s recognized in it. Our existence is full of contradictions… mankind is full of contradictions. For me it reflects this frustration and these contradictions resign us to the human condition which is full of love but also full of hate. Full of birth and full of death. You know, all these dualities. It has to encompass everything because that’s the frustration that we feel as Godflesh, that’s what we’re trying to convey, in a way. It’s the very pain of the fabric of our existence, and we all interpret this in a different personal level. Of course this music is there for those who feel pain, essentially. It’s there to communicate and almost to find some sense of solidarity between all of us who feel that void and we have to face that void on a daily basis. And for some, they just don’t get that. They just bang their head against a brick wall to this music… and that’s great too, you know? [laughs] But yeah, for me that line is pretty much Godflesh. It says everything and still says everything. It’s quite funny because I’ve been doing some interviews and some people ask me what’s the story with this album, and… It’s the same old story. It always will be the same story. [laughs] There’s no story, there’s no need to be a narrative.

We’re not telling stories there.

This is completely a physical and emotional response and you take that anywhere you wish.

76

music&riots

November

These are the things that I’ve been always dealing with, and I will always deal with it. It’s just a cycle. It’s the same frustration and loss of innocence, I’m just older. The things that I saw as a child that I shouldn’t have seen and the things I was exposed to. I lost my innocence at a very early age due to a variety of things that I should have seen later in life, but I was disenchanted at an early age. I still have the same trouble articulating it now as I did then, and it’s almost unimportant. I’m expressing it in the most primitive way but ultimately because there’s so much to express that is an implosion, you know? I can’t get it all out. Simple as that.

There’s so much to get out that feel like is implosive so it needs to be a streamline, effective way of reproducing these emotions that I couldn’t write about it, you know what I mean? It has to be expressed almost monosyllabically because it’s too much, it’s too loaded.

I remember talking with you last time about the glimpse of hope that existed on the last Jesu’s record. I can’t stop thinking that there was a huge conflict in you because you brought a person to life in this horrible, shitty and scary world.

The duality that you were talking about, you know?

Yeah, what you said is absolutely right. That last Jesu album is all entirely about that conflict… a huge conflict. I actually never thought I had a child and I probably said that to you at the time. It’s part of the birth and death process that is biologically necessary, I feel. For me it balances me within my own existence. It both balances me and knocks me entirely off balance, because it proved to me that true beauty and true love does exist as much as true fuckin’ hate exists. [laughs] It makes me hate even more and it makes me love even more. [pause] It breeds fear even more than before, because before the fear was isolated. Again, it’s about the same duality. My fear it has always been extremely personal and extremely universal… odd but true. Now it has become even more magnified, and with Godflesh it made me even more defensive. I feel that I’m using that negative energy even more defensively with Godflesh. The

beauty of that and the sadness of that, I’ve been using with Jesu.

It has fueled both projects creatively tenfold, you know? I probably said that you, but there’s something about birth which immediately reminds one of their own mortality and their own death.

It is both horrifying and universally consuming. There’s a song in the new Godflesh album called “Life Giver Life Taker” and that refers entirely to that. I mean, that duality is so loaded. One can give life but it also can take it. I still find that astonishing. I can’t even articulate it. I can only make a sound and reduce it to its bare bones.

A World Lit Only By Fire.

It seems a title that reflects your political and social side regarding today’s society. Was that your goal?

Probably more than that. As you know yourself, with me I stand completely isolated in terms of…

When I look at politics I just think it is someone else’s thing, if you know what I mean. I feel alienated. I cannot align myself with anyone or anything or any movement or any government.

To me it’s all about distrust.

Anyone in any position of power ultimately is a tyrant as far as I’m concerned…

But that’s kind of political, Justin.

It is. You’re right. Ultimately is political. It’s bizarre because being apolitical is being political.

It’s looking at humans as a social, anti-social, as a beast and as a savage. That how we see it, both of us, in Godflesh.

I guess it’s your punk roots kicking in.

Exactly! It’s well documented in a way but it’s with me being aligned with a scene that felt that we could change things. I saw within that scene that there was a hierarchy and basically was condescend and patronizing. There were people that held social power within my scene. Again, that at a young age disenchanted me, entirely. I felt that something quite pure, again was just like anything else. It was all the fucking same.

We can see that nowadays with punk. It’s our ability to fuck up things and destroy everything that is good. And there’s always someone that wants to earn some

COVER STORY // GODFLESH bucks out of it.

Exactly! Exactly! Even when Crass revolted against the corporate punk bands and that scene they created – Sex Pistols, The Clash, etc. – and it was fueled by corporate labels and guys who worked as band managers wearing suits… It all became the same thing again.

Crass tried everything but people missed the point. They had the purest of intentions… Penny Rimbaud still lives the same way, he is still as pure and well intentioned as one can be. But people missed the point. When I went to Crass concerts as a kid I was absolutely enchanted by what Crass was trying to achieve but then I looked to the audience and it was still full of the mostly same stupid assholes that were going to The Exploited concerts. The people that were going there to beat you up. They were racists, they were sexists, and they were thugs. It was terrifying… People were just there because it was punk and that was it. Kids were there because it was a way to get away of the terraces.

There were very few of us that go it what they were trying to do.

When that scene splintered and became reduce, again it went to little pockets and again another hierarchy was formed and people miss the point, and people that held the power abuse it… even when we got rid of the football element and so on.

Do you know this band called Death Grips? If so, do you like them? [pause] It’s weird for me. I could talk a long time about Death Grips…

I’m bringing that up because I think it has a deep connection with what you were saying. To me they are probably the most punk band of these days…

I agree!

I loved that they decided to end their career this year. They released a bunch of records that I love and all of a sudden it comes to an end. There was not enough time for people to fuck it up. It’s a huge “FUCK YOU!” I completely agree with what you are saying. Initially I was quite cynical, to be honest. I just thought there was something marketed but on further examination I realized that they are very true and they have manipulated the manipulators.

“Our existence is full of contradictions… mankind is full of contradictions.”

You think about the Epic thing and… “YES! YES! YES!” You know?

Yeah, absolutely! That’s the thing, I got it wrong. I thought they were playing the game and then I realized that no, they were playing the game players, and…

Fucking hell!!! This is a very astute fuckin’ clever attack on manipulation. Some of their music I think it’s great and some of their music does nothing for me, but I still admire and respect entirely what they have done. I felt the same as you. When they said: “We’re done. Fuck off”… I thought, “Brilliant!” I got goose bumps when I read that, you know what I mean? Fucking amaaazing, and you believe it. I do not believe that they will suddenly reform. There will be no

fuckin reunion, I believe that. I just think they will do other projects, and of course that should happen because they’re fantastic artists.

The idea of Death Grips is much bigger than the music, you know?

It was something that we needed because there was nothing like that going on today’s music scene.

I absolutely agree, and I feel what you just said there is totally true as well, because on that level… and they reached a pretty fucking commercial level in the context of been exposed to almost a mainstream audience. Shockingly!

What the fuck else is out there that has done that and manipulated the manipulators? There is nothing, like you said. That actually touched kids, you know? There were kids out there in their teens who

www.facebook.com/MUSICandRIOTS.Magazine

77

would never be exposed anymore to any music that is in any way fuckin’ confrontational, controversial or presents concepts like that. That makes one think and that fuckin’ proves to generations that we all have been fuckin’ manipulated on a daily basis, and they do it with music and art. It was completely required and absolutely needed.

many more money based on decisions that would make me more comfortable and have so much more money, but I just couldn’t live with myself. It just isn’t possible…

I can’t! [pause] You know, to slightly contradict that, I do feel that I can make a lot more Godflesh music but that’s because, to use a shitty American expression, on a role.

Waiting four years, after the reunion, to release a new album was something that you wanted to do? I mean, I was happy to not hear a new Godflesh’s album right away because in my mind you were just taking your time, not rushing things out, and working your ass off to deliver the best album possible.

Yeah, and that’s it. That’s absolutely it. Many bands, as you and I know, they reform and they make a record in the first year - it’s an opinion whether that record is great or not -, and if a band feels that comfortable to do it, then fantastic… but that’s not the way for us.

But that’s because you were in need of returning to Godflesh and see things from that particular perspective.

Yeah! Once I found the voice again I was completely happy with the songs… I felt they were a honest representation and that they were achieving something. I felt that I could write a lot of material… I actually stopped myself and went to another work, you know? I never wanted to be seen as that artist. I could write another Godflesh album now but I would then need to stop and digest it in months’ time, you know what I mean?

That’s the thing, most of the times they are not comfortable with it. They want to earn more money, let’s be honest. You could earn way more money if you had released the album in 2011.

Absolutely! We could it by now released two albums and two EPs and that means that we would double, if not triple, the so called profit and so on. [pause] I could just write the same album over and over again. Some people would be happy with that as well, you know?

I could write Godflesh songs by the numbers…

There’s this other thing. If I ever see 3 Godflesh albums in 3 years, I would think that Justin Broadrick, the artist that I love, is gone. Like you had given up, you know? I mean, you are a perfectionist. That situation denies what you are.

Of course! You would know yourself, and so as many other out there, that it would not be honest.

That’s not an honest expression to just go out and knock out as many records as possible. I mean, this is it, you know? We could - Godflesh and even Jesu to some extent be so much more financially successful, but we make decisions all the time that have… Ironically I survive from music and I live from music, and I could make so 78

music&riots

November

We were talking about money…

How many offer have you received from labels to release this new album?

Lots! Ironically when Godflesh split up barely any labels were interested on Godflesh, nobody wanted us, you know? And now we had everything, from major labels, literally major labels, every small label you could imagine. So many people wanted to speak with me and in no way we played the game. I don’t mean this arrogantly but I wouldn’t even speak to labels… I mean, of course some of them are my friends and they are good people but I would say to them, “With all due respect, we’re going to do this ourselves.” But with big labels, major labels, I wouldn’t even have the conversation. I would literally say, “We are doing it ourselves. I don’t want to hear what you will offer.” I didn’t want to hear the big talk, you know? We would not play that game this time. It had to be on our own label [Avalanche Recordings]. Completely DIY. Of course we don’t have the power of big, major labels but people find the music anyway.

And it makes you a happier person. Robert Fripp [King Crimson] recently won his legal battle against Universal over the ownership of his own music, and

he said, “I’ve been happy for about two years of my life out of 68”. [Wire 368] Absolutely! Absolutely! I know exactly what he’s saying. With Godflesh, we will probably never own our back catalogue, you know? These are the fucking assholes that are in these record labels. They are motherfuckers these people, they really are.

They’re the scum of the Earth.

What they do with artists’ expression and one’s fucking art…

They just rape it and make money from it. It’s perverse. There is no one… I can’t trust any of these fuckin’ people, you know? We had such bad experiences, and Earache Records who went from being quite a sort of noble… They almost come from the right scene, but they became such fuckin’ cunts. They became the absolutely enemies that we, and even they, were railing against, you know?

Now they are such fuckin’ assholes that I would have to battle them in court to get my music back. At this age and at this stage of my career in music there’s just no better label than my own.

Starting the album with “New Dark Ages” was nothing that you decided like last minute, right?

You were seeking a very specific reaction, like always.

Definitely! When I compose that song half the album was not even composed and I knew that song would open the album. It just made sense, you know?

How was it to record again with Ben [G.C. Green, bassist] a Godflesh album?

So easy! It was ridiculous.

Somehow the break as just afforded him and I this luxury of time where we just missed each other, you know? Because socially we didn’t see each other as often as we would have wished – we took different paths and we live three hours away from each other – I think we managed to form a new bond, each is so refreshing and so amazing that we feel that we can finish each other’s sentences, you know? We both instinctively understand what we are trying to achieve.

There’s no argument, there’s no deliberation and even very little conversation. We just do it! It’s quite weird. We don’t sit down and discuss this for hours and hours… It’s actually the very opposite. I just send him the songs

COVER STORY // GODFLESH

“That makes one think and that fuckin’ proves to generations that we all have been fuckin’ manipulated on a daily basis, and they do it with music and art.” and he comes back with his bass lines. I just say “yeah”, or “maybe try a little bit of this or that”. He’s like a machine. We communicate on a different level, with the music. We comprehend each other and there’s this instinctive element that’s always present.

I always feel bad for Ben because I feel people don’t give him enough credit. He’s an amazing musician.

I feel the same way. Just because I’m the so-called frontman… whatever. Some people say, “Well, you compose the material. You write the beats and the riffs.”

Yeah, that’s true but I write them with Ben in my head. He’s there all the time… even if he’s not present.

And what he does on bass… the bass is one of the loudest things in

the mix. People (particularly new people) often complain about how loud the bass is in our records.

I mean, all that people heard is conservative rock music where the bass is buried in the background and the vocals and guitar in the front. My guitar is not an extension of my ego. It’s the opposite, you know? It’s anti-ego, it’s just a texture… It’s about the fucking bass and the fucking groove.

Were you happy with the drums of the last Godflesh’s album, Hymns?

The only way I can answer that is… I love Ted Parsons. He’s one of my best friends. His drumming is amazing and one of most mechanized and louder drummers that I’ve ever been on stage with, but – this is no disrespect to him

and it’s not negative to a drummer – Godflesh should – this is the same thing for Songs of Love and Hate – have always been a band with drum machines. This why I love these new records, because for me they’re the best records we have made in twenty years, because they are the best records we made since Godflesh stopped just using drum machines. I do feel that we made some great songs on those last three records but Godflesh is a man-machine marriage, and that’s it. And it always should’ve been, and I will be the first to admit it.

musicandriotsmagazine.com

A World Only Lit

By Fire is out now via Avalanche 79

MONO

U O D N E L P S F O S G N O S 80

music&riots

November

E H C A T R A E UR AND H s: Mitsuyo Miyazaki

Words: David Bowes // Picture

81

Perhaps one of the most critically acclaimed and hard-working Japanese bands of the 21st century, MONO have spent a career creating music of majesty, beauty and power and delivering live experiences that could best be described as life-changing.

15 years after their birth, they are delivering not one, but two, albums that complement and exceed anything that has gone before, and guitarist Takaakira “Taka” Goto talks us through the difficult birth of The Last Dawn and Rays of Darkness.

P

erhaps the most obvious question to begin with would be to ask where the decision to release two albums simultaneously came from, and how long you have been working on them.

Now I think of it, I always tried to create something cinematic that could help me overcome my sadness up until now. But this time, I faced a serious creative block.

I didn’t have any inspiration or storyline that I wanted to write about. I’ve been doing this for over 10 years now - write an album, do some interviews and then go on a long tour repeatedly, then try to write some songs between those times while I’m back in Japan for like 2 weeks, then again make a record based on those fragments I left behind. I think I forced myself too much this time. The more I thought about it, I couldn’t get any ideas. Every time I returned home, even though I tried, instead of leaving some song ideas behind, all I could do was pack my suitcase and go back on a tour, again and again and again. I think I basically reached my limit physically 82

music&riots

November

and mentally by the end of it.

Don’t get me wrong, every time we played live, I experienced something wonderful through our fans but in every other place, all I could feel was an absolute void.

I couldn’t write any songs, there was no inspiration, no one could help me, and eventually I was even unable to listen to any music to refresh my mind. Books, movies, colleagues, friends… there was nothing that could fulfill me in any way. I know this is not a pleasant story to hear but every time, before going on the stage, I vomited and often had sleepless nights because of the gastric pain from it. Through this pain, I came to a realization that my duty now is to make those feelings into sounds; the suffering, void, agony, endless fear and anxiety. I could no longer care about the thin layer of hope I had. It felt like this was the only thing I had left to try. But when you actually start writing based on these feelings, your daily life starts to become much darker and depressing. For example, even when I got out of the studio, my feelings were very rebellious without any thoughts, almost as though I had sold my soul to hell. Last summer, I had the opportunity to write music for some TV series and movies so, without thinking about it and not necessarily for MONO, I decided to

write completely different types of songs. I started to change my lifestyle as well, like I almost always wrote songs at late nights, but started writing early in the mornings or in the afternoon instead. Eventually, these new songs started to become like medicine for myself, just to live through everyday life. At that time, I had no intention of releasing two albums at the same time. But as time went on, I started to be able to accept the songs I wrote when I was in a really bad place, the songs which represented the dark side of me, the songs that I didn’t want to go near at least for a while. I then had thoughts about making all these songs as one album

INTERVIEW // MONO

but it just did not feel right.

The Last Dawn is an opposing album to Rays of Darkness. It is essentially an album about escaping from the darkness and seeking the light, at least for me anyway. This is why we decided to release the songs as two albums.

What do you see as the main distinction between the music on The Last Dawn and Rays Of Darkness?

The main human emotions are divided into positivity and negativity, and let’s say that they’re both 50/50 to begin with.

If we have even 1% more positive emotions, everything will start to lead towards the light. Simply put, for The Last Dawn, in a minimalist

approach, I wanted to express that, regardless of your current situation or emotions, if you accept everything as it is and find more positivity, you will eventually be able to overcome all the negativity. On the other hand, for Rays of Darkness, I wanted to express that if you have even 1% more negative emotions or thoughts, the chaos will eventually spread and drag you down to darkness without you noticing it. I just started to think that even if everything is in disorder, there is something that’s always in order. I really wanted to express that to the world as art. The two albums ended up representing the counterpoints in life - light and darkness, hope

“The Last Dawn is an opposing album to Rays of Darkness. It is essentially an album about escaping from the darkness and seeking the light, at least for me anyway.”

www.facebook.com/MUSICandRIOTS.Magazine

83

and hopelessness, love and loss, the emotions which can’t be expressed, pain which you can’t put into words, happiness which you can’t simply measure. We also at the same time felt and hoped that they could be something to exceed the darkness.

Given their differences in sound and tone, was there a separate approach taken for the writing of the two albums?

I decided to not use much orchestra or strings this time, which we had been using for quite some time.

This was also the advice Jeremy from Temporary Residence gave me when I was to unable to get any inspiration. As a result, we ended up only using a small quartet in The Last Dawn. I just wanted to go back to the straightforward approach of expressing everything as a 4 piece band. I also wanted to expand the possibility of guitar music and create a wall-crashing sound like we used to back in the days.

One word which has always been associated with your music is ‘cinematic’. Are there any directors who you feel match your music well, or who you would particularly like to work with?

I think Alejandro González Iñárritu, Lars von Trier, Alexandro Jodorowsky, David Lynch, Christopher Nolan, Giuseppe Tornatore, Kim Ki-duk, Takeshi Kitano and Stanley Kubrick would be great to work with.

Despite coming from Tokyo, a very urban environment, your music seems much more remote - when I hear it, I think more of Hokkaido’s cold outreaches than Kanto’s hustle and bustle. Do you feel there is a disconnect between where your music is written and recorded and the feelings you would like it to convey?

I was born in a small countryside city called Izumo in Shimane prefecture and lived there until I was 17 years old so I think that’s got a lot to do with how my sounds turn out. Not just Tokyo, but Japan in general, has started to change a lot from our economic development and, through these conveniences, I think we lost a lot of important values. I just want to continue portraying emotional landscapes through our music that’s timeless and can be appreciated over cultures and countries.

84

music&riots

November

Hymn To The Immortal Wind marked your first major experience of working with orchestras, and that sound carried on to subsequent releases. However,... Dawn and Rays... have removed these elements and as a result sound much more direct and stripped down. What prompted this change in direction?

I originally wanted to create something original, symphonic and spiritual like Beethoven but with electric guitars. So far, we managed to experience so many things, more than any indie band can ask for, like playing with full orchestra in New York, London, Australia and Tokyo. From these experiences, we tried something more complex and classical for our previous album For My Parents but at the same time, we started to raise some concerns.

During the album’s American tour, we started to feel like our sounds were like a spineless dinosaur compared to our old sounds. Sure, symphonic music is loud, epic and dreamy, but there is something lacking compared to rock music, like the pressure and destruction it can bring. We originally started off as a 4 piece, and even though our concerns started to rise much earlier, we just took them as a required risk to challenge something new. But as we toured more, we started to know for certain that our feelings were right. Going back to our original roots was an easy thing to do, but we also didn’t want to do what we have already done. We really thought about this a lot. There are a lot of instrumental bands out there in the world already, and we needed to find a new style and vision without using orchestra. Regarding this, I talked to Jeremy from Temporary Residence as well. He’s a really good friend of ours who we have known for over 10 years. I shared some ideas and demos with him, and sometimes cut the songs in half together. Other members helped me write the songs and gave me nothing but their best as well. Their performances got a lot more aggressive, pure and fresh compared to the beginning.

Especially when you return as a 4 piece again, the importance of each member’s performance becomes much more valuable.

With that in mind, do you have

any plans to perform orchestral versions of these songs live?

At the moment, I enjoy playing as a 4 piece so there is no plan but maybe in the future, I think it’d be beautiful to play with a small quartet.

One recent change which has continued, however, is the inclusion of vocals on your music, in this case with “The Hands That Hold The Truth”.

What are the benefits, for an instrumental band, of using vocals and are there any difficulties?

Personally for a long time, I always wanted to collaborate with Tetsu from Envy, one of the bands I respect. He’s been a good of friend of ours for so long so I’m really glad it became a reality.

When we collaborated, I didn’t really give him any instructions but he already knew what I was hoping to achieve. The song turned out to be such an incredible piece and we’re all very proud of it!

The two albums will be released separately but are also available as a single piece, bringing Pat Perry’s album covers coming together as two halves of a single, coherent work. Was this the effect that you wanted to create with the music on both albums as well?

The artworks were drawn by Pat Perry who was introduced by Jeremy from our New York label, Temporary Residence. We basically gave Pat the demos of the two new records and asked him to freely draw what he felt.

He’s truly an amazing artist. He managed to draw up the two worlds we imagined, darkness and hope. The artworks turned out really beautiful and we are really satisfied with them from the bottom of our hearts.

You recently worked with a true legend, Koji Morimoto, on the trailer for these two albums. In the west, he is regarded as one of the people responsible for popularising anime. What were your impressions of working with him and what do you think of the results?

Our collaboration with Morimoto was also great. We had the oppor- tunity to show him the demo version of “Recoil, Ignite” (which at the time didn’t have a title) and he apparently

INTERVIEW // MONO

“I just want to continue portraying emotional landscapes through our music that’s timeless and can be appreciated over cultures and countries.” got some inspiration from it and started on the animation. We had no idea what the end result would be like but he managed to create such a grotesque yet beautiful and evanescent visual of 15 seconds.

We were really excited to see such a world-class quality product as well. He also said that if he had more time, he’d love to do a full version as well. Not only Morimoto but all the people who decided to collaborate with us gave their best as artists, not as their businesses and we were simply stunned by all the results. We’re truly thankful for that.

Pelagic Records was introduced to us by Jef from New Noise who deals with our Asian and Australian booking. We already knew a lot of bands that work with Pelagic Records, anthe past a few months we spent working together with the owner Robin had been nothing but great. He himself plays in a band called The Ocean and we used to run our own label as well so we know what it’s like to co-run everything at the same time. We truly respect him for that. It feels like we found our new home in Europe and we’re really happy about it.

With these releases, you have continued to work with Temporary Residence, which always seemed a very natural home for the band, but have also signed with Pelagic, a label normally known for much heavier bands. How did you first come to be involved with Pelagic and how do you feel about being on their roster?

You have toured more extensively than most bands I can think of, particularly in Europe. How much strain does this put on the band?

To be honest, doing an extensive tour is not an easy thing. It’s a cycle. For over a month, you endlessly drive, sometimes get on a boat or a plane early in the

morning then fly to a new place, then as soon as the show finishes, get our move on and in the next venue, do another sound check.

When we started MONO and started touring, the internet was not a big thing compared to now.

YouTube didn’t even exist. We survived by simply playing shows and touring. So even now, we still focus and appreciate the real impact and every moment of live performances.

Thank you very much for your time with this. Are there any final things you would like to add?

Thank you for the great interview, see you soon!

musicandriotsmagazine.com

The Last Dawn And Rays Of Darkness arrives on October 24 via Pelagic 85

86

music&riots

November

Drawing inspirations of great outfits like Iggy and the Stooges, Black Sabbath, and L7, Black Moth have their own signature which is more evident with Harriet Bevan's strong vocals and ferocious lyrics and it's case to say "She's fast, she's lean, she's frightening" (yeah, that's from a L7 song). We had the pleasure to chat with the lovely Harriet about their long-awaited second album Condemned To Hope which was produced by JimSclavunos and the whole artwork was made

by Roger Dean, pretty awesome right? If you don't know Black Moth, this is the perfect time for it.

Words: Andreia Alves

I

t’s been two years since you released your excellent debut album, The Killing Jar. How have been things since then and how do you feel about the all great feedback you’ve been receiving?

I don’t know... it’s been kind of “wow” really. I mean, the first album came out over 2012 and we’ve just been so busy since then with touring. We released a single in between on Too Pure Records, which it’s a double side single “Tree of Woe” and “Savage Dancer”. We have been so busy and really just kind of enjoying this success of the first album. We really couldn’t believe what good response we had. You hope for few good reviews, but to have such kind of positivity across the board was just unbelievable and it was really exciting for us to know that people are actually into what we’re

doing. We’re kind of just enjoying that for a while and then suddenly we just had to write a second album. [laughs] We really needed to focus on that but it’s a very different experience, because we have to kind of follow-up on the success of the first album and we wanted to show we’re gonna take it, so we lock ourselves away back in the studio to carry on.

You combine dark riffs in this pure heavy rock ‘n’ roll fusion, and your voice is phenomenal on this mix. Some of your main inspirations are Iggy and the Stooges and Black Sabbath. What other bands or other stuff inspired you to shape your sound?

That’s a difficult one, because I never really know what it is that influences us... I mean, I listen to such a brutal range of music and I would say that the majority of what I listen to I don’t know how it directly influences the band, because I’m interested in obscure world music, 50’s/60’s pop music, dark old folk music and country...

I’ve been listening to a band called Exuma. I struggle to see what exactly kind of music fits into our music, but I think that’s what is really interesting about this band that is we have vastly different interests in music. I would say in terms of our kind of current metal influences, I think Dom [McCready, drummer] is the biggest fan of current metal and I suppose like all of us. Bands that we currently are into are Red Fang, Mastodon, Blood Ceremony, Electric Wizard, Årabrot, Bo Ningen... In this band, we all listen to old folk music and I think actually that our second guitarist Nico [Carew] is really interested in rock ‘n’ roll, surf, punk and all that kind of stuff which it really brought a new dynamic to it. Our first guitarist, Jim Swainston is kind of more grunge, metal and proto-punk and so I think that’s possibly why we have quite difficult to define our sound and it’s just because we got such a brutal range of influences.

That’s a really good mix of influences that you guys have there and I read that L7 is a huge influence of yours, is that right?

Yeah! A massive fan! [laughs] That’s exactly what I was about to say, I always speak about L7. [laughs] It’s a very huge influence on me just because I was

massively into grunge music in my teens and you know I like that Riot Grrrl movement and music as well, but overall discovering L7 was just an absolute… it totally shifted my kind of perception of how I see women in music, which I just think that the songs they made and that kind of ferocity is just something that I hadn’t seen anywhere before, you know? They really just have this kind of girl power about the songs they write.

For a bunch of woman to write this kind of song, it was just so bold and so much fun and heavy at the same time. They were quite like a heavy metal band and then they went to more grunge. I’ve always talked about my love for L7 and as a result of talking about her in an interview after the first album, her husband got in touch with me and I’ve been in touch with Donita [Sparks] and her husband Robert ever since. I’ve been following what she’s going and she’s been really supportive of Black Moth. It’s amazing to have some sort of mentor in that aspect.

Let’s talk now about your new and great record Condemned To Hope. When did you begin the songwriting for this upcoming album and how was it like to write the so long-awaited second record?

It was crazy, actually. [laughs] We actually wrote it in the space hall over two months of last year and, like I said, we were so busy with the first album that we kind of forgot that we needed to write another album. [laughs] We had a recording session but we wanted to record with Jim Sclavunos again - which he produced our first album - and we had a session with him in December and suddenly was September. [laughs] We were like “Shit! We really need to kind of pull out the back now.” It’s kind of a crazy time in all of our lives really, with the first album and a few of us are having a difficult time in life generally and suddenly we have this kind of huge possibility of follow-up the success of the first album. We just didn’t know how we were going to do it and so basically we just put our lives on hold, locking ourselves away in the studio for a month and just kind of slayed away like writing riffs and playing and playing. And I loved it for that, I really enjoyed it because it was so intense. We were really focused on it. When I was at home, I was locked away in my room writing lyrics and driving myself

www.facebook.com/MUSICandRIOTS.Magazine

87

insane in the process. [laughs] But it was so intense like the first album was written over a couple of years - like quite casually and for fun - but the intensity of having to really work very hard on putting something together. I think it makes a very different album and I think you can hear that intensity on it. When I listen back it’s very strange because it happened in a short space of time and I look back on it and I can only listen to it objectively, it just seems like a strange beast. [laughs] With such great feedback from your debut album, was writing this new album a challenge due to the high expectations from your fans?

Yeah, I think so. I think is dangerous to write with these kind of worries in my mind and so I think if we stop losing control of what we’re doing too much by what you think people want from you or what people expect from you and it can be stressful for the creative process. We really don’t write like that. We don’t ever have a motive or an intention when we get together to write. We really just do what it feels right and what it feels good, and somehow it all comes together. There were a lot of expectations this time around and we hope to fill out something not good but better and I think we’ve done that. I think we are better songwriters now and we kind of established what we are a bit more on this record.

So why call this album Condemned To Hope?

Yeah, it’s an interesting one. It was a difficult album to name, because like I said the lyrics sort of came from quite a frantic, crazy place and I wasn’t really sure what the overarching theme was while it was happening, but then I just sat back at the end of this kind of understand of what the theme seem to be about. I was really interested on the human condition and observational, in term of the real life... One of the things that I was really interested in was that the human condition seems to be a stative between hope and despair, and people torturing themselves with desires. One of the things that I come to realize is that a damaging thing hope can be kind of a positive virtue but actually it can leave you in a state of wanting when really I come to believe that the pleasure 88

music&riots

November

can only be lived in the present.

It’s an interesting thing though, the idea of hoping and that’s kind of where it left me. [laughs] This new album is much heavier than the last one. What do you think you approached differently on this album?

It’s hard to say... One different thing is that we had a second guitarist so we had a new member to write within this album, because Nico joined us after we recorded the first album and we wanted to be able to recreate the kind of richness of all the different guitar tones live, and so we took a second guitarist and then we had an extra person to write with us this time around.

So that was a different thing just having the fifth person involved in the creative process, but there weren’t any conscious decisions really. We do like to push ourselves and possibly getting heavier and heavier is something that we kind of unconsciously strive for, because I think you chase up buzzes when you play something really awesomely heavy live. It’s a great feeling and so I think we are constantly chasing heaviness in some way; I think heaviness can be found in everything from a downtuned guitar that you can make it heavier by playing it slower or the lyrics can make something heavy by being unsettling in some way. I think conceptually working towards something heavier but that can mean a lot of things.

You said that the human condition and the real life observations were some of the things that inspired you for this record, but what else did inspire you this time around?

One of the important things for me was that on the first album lot of my influences were from literature, my interest in the kind of Gothic horror and morbid fantasy and things like that. I think on this album, I did a conscious decision to kind of ground it more in the present and write something that was more recognizable in some way and I think the human stuff come through a bit more on this record.

I started to look around rather than just fell into books and films and started to actually respond to my environment and get some very strange lyrics that sound like they could be from a horror movie

it but also sound it could be just outside your own front door. I think another thing was just reality; I’ve started looking more into reality than fantasy.

Like you mentioned earlier, you worked again with Jim Sclavunos (Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, The Cramps, Grinderman) for this new record. How was it this time around?

It’s fantastic work with him, I have to say. We had such a good experience from the first album that when it came to the second one we wanted to work with him again and he was up for it, because he’s like part of the gang and he’s kind of the glue to hold us together in some way. He brings the best out of us and he comes in and out like a party, so he’s able to see the big picture and he’s got an incredible intuition for what makes a good song and what people want to hear. We can can indulge ourselves for 10 minutes, you know, and he’ll be able to rain in and see what makes a good well-crafted song. He just really gets us and he really understands what we’re doing and we have a really good time with him as well, so it’s a good process. It’s a very relaxing work of team.

Is there any song on this record that you love the most?

That’s a difficult question. [laughs] Let me think... “Tumbleweave” is really fun! I really enjoy that one and love play it live, it makes me laugh. I enjoy “Looner” for the same reason but I really like the darkness and heaviness of “Condemned to Hope”. But I think weirdly the one I kind of look forward to hear in the album is “Slumber With The Worm” because it’s just so weird [laughs] and it’s heavier. I also find that every album has a real weirdo track that doesn’t fit in with the rest. [laughs] Yeah, totally! “Slumber With The Worm” has this kind of Spaghetti Western vibe, if you know what I mean?

Yeah, it was a weird song that came from nowhere actually. Like I said, we’d been kind of swamped in this writing process and we’d been rehearsing all day, every day. One day, me and Jim were sitting in the house just writing separately in different rooms. I was writing lyrics in one room and he was writing guitar parts

INTERVIEW // BLACK MOTH

“... it was so intense like the first album was written over a couple of years - like quite casually and for fun - but the intensity of having to really work very hard on putting something together. I think it makes a very different album and I think you can hear that intensity on it.” in another room, and then we met up a few hours later to work with each other with that. He was kind of laughing about this strange western-almost-Tarantinosoundtrack-style riff that he was working on and he was just messing around with it. He didn’t really expect it to be a Black Moth song and I almost easily started singing the lyrics over it and we just loved it. It’s weird because it almost didn’t make the album, because it doesn’t sound like a Black Moth track but then when we took it to the rehearsal room Dom started to play this black metal blast beat. [laughs] Suddenly it turned out such an absurd song that we actually put on the album in the end, because I just think it shows our sense of humor, it shows that we don’t take genres too seriously and I think it’s fun to play with things and mess things up a bit. [laughs] One of the highlights of this album is the artwork which it was entirely made by Roger Dean (Yes, Uriah Heep, Budgie, Vertigo). So how did you get in touch with him and how did that brilliant piece of art come to life?

It’s amazing really! Me and Ged

Murphy - who runs our record label - we both are big fans and very interested in the artwork and the big part for our label is the vinyl package. They believe in making a really beautiful physical product, so every vinyl album that they release is a work of art. I absolutely love Dean’s work but never for a minute imagining that we would be able to get him to do our album’s artwork because he’s such a legend. But then Ged said “Well, why not ask him and see what happens?” and so he got in touch with him, and I met with Roger for lunch one day and we got along really well. He loved our ideas and we just decided that would be great to work together and it’s incredible really. He did a work of art that was personal to our album, you know, he listened to it and he read my lyrics. I think thework he did is just a perfect image of condemn to hope, that’s kind of the soldiers marching into oblivion.

few people have said that it looks like quite the classic imagery from World War I and II - because of the idea of the soldiers marching into battle with little hope of survival.

It’s interesting that he chose that imagery given that there is no war imagery in my lyrics. I love that he did that. I think that recognizable image actually encapsulates the idea of being condemned to hope better than anything that I could have imagined visually and it’s so simple and really quite moving... I think he made a work of art that is really special for the album.

What’s your favorite record of 2014?

The record that I’m really, really looking forward to come out is a collaboration between Scott Walker and Sunn O))) and I think that’s gonna be really spectacular and I’m so excited about that at the moment.

He really inspired himself by the whole theme of the record, which it’s about humanity and hope.

Yeah, I think so. I think it must be where he got from, because a musicandriotsmagazine.com

Condemned to Hope is out now via New Heavy Sounds 89

UPON A BURNING BODY They say that you should “prepare yourself for a brutal, unrelenting array of unabashed aggression and sheer ferocity that will beat you to oblivion.” In the middle of the storm there’s a metal band from San Antonio, Texas that wants to keep the good Texan tradition, tour relentlessly and bash everyone’s face with their most personal album to date, the new The World Is My Enemy Now. Danny Lead (vocals) was nice enough to share a few words with us in the middle of another tour.

Words: Tiago Moreira

90

music&riots

November

www.facebook.com/MUSICandRIOTS.Magazine

91

exactly what you said. The roots of the type of music that we have grown up listening to and we have been around all our lives. To put that track on our record it makes it even more real, you know? I mean, this is a real record about real things so, why not put the real music that we grew up hearing as well? for itself when you read the lyrics and you hear what I’m talking about.

The new album can be seen as a snapshot of the band at a specific moment or is it a collection of past experiences putted all together?

I would say it’s more a collection; it has for sure that kind of vibe.

I

saw Ice-T wearing an Upon A Burning Body’s t-shirt.

How much of an influence is Ice- T and Body Count for you guys?

They are a great band and he is a huge start so to have met him and became friends with him was a great thing.

I was also wondering how much of an influence is the all Texas music scene for you guys?

Sometimes people forget the importance of Texas for music in general. From Roy Orbinson and Blind Willie Johnson to stuff like Pantera and Butthole Surfers.

Yeah, people do forget and that’s one of the reasons why we do what we do and we represent the state of Texas, so we’re trying to bring it back to that place where people recognize all the talent again.

From The World Is Ours to The World Is My Enemy Now. What has changed and what’s the message behind this kind of confrontation between the 1st and 3rd record title?

A lot has changed and actually this record is stuff that I’ve been wanting to say but I haven’t been able to say, so it’s not really new emotions, it’s kind of the old emotions mixed with the new ones.

That’s pretty much the vibe of the new record and it kind of speaks

92

music&riots

November

For the first time you’re talking 100% about stuff that you guys have been through. Everything comes from your personal experiences. How that shaped the record and how was it to work with just personal stuff this time around?

It’s much easier because you get to write about what you want to write about and you don’t have to make shit up so, it’s easier but it’s also hard because you have to relieve those situations.

Correct me if I’m wrong but this is the first album that doesn’t have a film reference. Why’s that?

Yeah that’s right. We don’t have any film references on this new album because we’re tired of doing that; we’re tired of being limited to only making everything about a movie and something fictional. We wanted something real and that’s what we produced on this record. We were fed up with the movie thing. I mean, it was cool for the first one but we didn’t even want to do it on the second one but… whatever, what matters is that on this one it’s something that’s 100% for us.

I’m really curious about the seventh track, “A Toda Madrè ò un Desmadrè”. It seems a fairly important track in terms of revealing the roots of the band.

Were you focusing on showing that when you wrote that song?

Yeah! Ruben [guitarist] wrote that one and that’s just something that we wanted to put on the record just to have the kind of

On the title track you say “I’m sick and tired of being ignored”.

Why do you feel ignored?

Multiple reasons. I mean, from the past… You know, that comes mainly from the past because you try really hard to do what you do and nobody cares, nobody listens, everyone dismisses it and they tell you that it’s a road that will lead you to nowhere, just a fucking waste of time. That’s an emotion I had.

Ramon Villarreal was responsible to track drums for this new album. Why the decision of calling Ramon back just for recording?

He is a great drummer, you know?

This record needed great drums, something that could be simplistic and at the same time very complicated to play. We just wanted to have something that would stand out and we knew that he was the guy for the job and we just asked him if he wanted to do it. We were in between drummers at that time so it worked out for us for him to be able to fill in like he did and we really appreciate his great job on the record.

Upon A Burning Body has a relentless tour schedule. What’s the impact of that on the band’s music and evolution?

It’s hard to write new music when you are always on tour. We wished we had more time to focus on the writing part but I guess you just have to do what you have to do… I mean, the tour gives us the money that we need to support our families so it’s really important and necessary, you know? But hopefully we can change that a little bit in the future and then maybe we will be able to write for longer periods of time instead of doing it kind of fast.

The World Is My Enemy Now is out now via Sumerian Records

INTERVIEW // UPON A BURNING BODY

"A lot has changed and actually this record is stuff that I’ve been wanting to say but I haven’t been able to say..."

musicandriotsmagazine.com

93

94

music&riots

November

CAGE THE WATER “Cage The Water represents what we are now.

It is the natural evolution of all experiences we had by a mix of metal, hardcore and melody as transposition of everything around us like violence, anger and hope too” Distribuited by MOTHERKISSERS.com /motherkissers

/motherkissers

S T I L L AVA I L A B L E :

WARKNIFE “Amorphous”

WE ARE WAVES “Labile”

CRAWLING CHAOS “Repellent gastronomy”

world wide digital distribution

REMAINS IN A VIEW “Elegies”

HUMAN IMPROVEMENT PROCESS “Deafening dissonant millennium”

F O R N E W S A N D C O N T E S T B E C O M E A F A N O N F A C E B O O K : musicandriotsmagazine.com W W W . F A C E B O O K . C O M / M E M O R I A L R E C95 ORDS

1 REPULSIVE | 2 Pure shit | 3 terrible | 4 must avoid | 5 average | 6 good effort | 7 good | 8 very good | 9 EXCelLent | 10 pure c

OUT NOW

9

GODFLESH

A World Lit Only By Fire Avalanche (2014)

The first thirty seconds of the opening track, “New Dark Ages,” could be easily associated with the kind of “futuristic” and fucked up shit that El-P has been doing (some of it at least – check Request Denied for instances) for years and with what JK Flesh’s Posthuman presented two years ago, but as soon the fucking bass, guitar, and drum machine start moving around (with the normal damaging effect) there’s immediately this weird feeling that makes you truly believe that Godflesh is indeed back – a rather overwhelming feeling. That fuckin’ groove… it’s what Godflesh is “all about”. But those thirty seconds were not just to fuck with us, that element (we can simply call it ambient) it’s like a conducting line that by the time the bass, guitar and drum machine hit the stage assumes a rather important role by keep fueling the anger and to a certain extent stretching the boundaries of the sound. It’s buried in the background and it’s the kind of work done on Council States Electronics – the tension is now mostly concern of the strings.

The ambient part of the album is rather vital on the experience of listening to it – it has been for the most part when Godflesh is the subject matter. Sometimes kicking things out – passing the torch to Green’s bass –, and other times encapsulating the vibe on a downward movement that can be claustrophobic, bleak, and depressive – there’s a bottom to be reached on the last part of “Deadend”, that’s for sure.

Easy to find the influences that Broadrick had drawn from himself – when you have as many projects as Broadrick has, and had over these decades, then you are a slave of a rather complex and multi-layered search, and individual search if I might add. This new album, the first in thirteen years, recaptures a spirit and a sound that was somehow lost in 2001’s Hymns. The return of drum machines is pivotal in a sense that gives an (arguably) authenticity and kind of symbiosis effect between all the elements presented.

Justin’s vocals… unnecessary point of discussion. They remain sharp and weighty as ever, spiting the knowledge of a life that knows and embrace both love and hate.

A World Lit Only By Fire is Godflesh taking a good look of the past while staying in present always looking forward to the future.

One of the best works in the duo’s legendary career and one of the best beat oriented, ambient albums of the year – Justin was only very open with his hip-hop, electronic and ambient music influences – in a disguise of rock and metal - YES! The minimalist endeavors of Godflesh seem to be wrapped in black humor, because they are rather complex and fulfilling of one’s desire for an experience that conveys countless elements that can easily transform the album in an agonizing haziness that has the ability of setting you free and enslave you at the same time.

FOR FANS OF:

Brian Eno, Throbbing Gristle, Death Grips

ESSENTIAL TRACKS:

New Dark Ages, Imperator, Life Giver Life Taker

96

music&riots

November

TIAGO MOREIRA

REVIEWS

classic

www.facebook.com/MUSICandRIOTS.Magazine

97

10.11

OUT NOW

24.10

8

8

9

2:54 The Other I

ALT J This Is All Yours

Infectiuos Music (2014)

Metal Blade (2014)

The duo sister Colette and Hannah Thurlow had surprised and amazed with their self-titled debut album.

The heavy atmospheric sound with emotional lyrics made their music special and memorable. Two years later, they signed with Bella Union and wrote their new album. In Colette’s own words, “The Other I is an enquiry into the duality of the human experience... the idea extends to Hannah and I, to our sisterhood. We know intrinsically what the other thinks and feels, music is just another language we use to communicate.” Well, that’s exactly how we feel about this album.

Their way to convey their thoughts and feelings is sharper, their sound is gloomy as ever and Colette’s vocals show a striking versatility. Another great album from this unique band.

After the recent and overwhelming fame with the highly acclaimed debut album An Awesome Wave, the British trio Alt-J return with what is one of the most expected albums of the year, especially for critics that already classify them as the new Radiohead. This Is All Yours is a great album. Better than its predecessor and therefore augur up times of high performance and undoubted quality to this band. The expansive sound that this work brings is well trodden and with all the ingredients to please the already fans and even others. This Is All Yours is an album full of pop sounds, dubious electronics and increasing emotionality and is within this schizophrenia that they continue to make us revisit countless times this fixed placed. Oh! They are not Radiohead. Not even close.

What with being UK’s most erudite nihilists, it’s largely unsurprising that Anaal Nathrakh’s evolution in scope and savagery has resulted in their most vicious, ambitious material since The Codex Necro, skilfully fusing their industrial leanings with precise salvoes of blackened rage. Dave Hunt’s flip-flopping between grandiose hooks and the incoherent, bellicose screams of an end-days lunatic is presented here at its most effective, “Idol” and “The Joystream” delivering infectious choruses that nonetheless pierce humanity’s decaying heart with malicious honesty. Desideratum is a glorious testament to everything the band stands for - huge, yet raw; catchy and insistent, but unhesitatingly extreme. It’s a complex, ferocious sermon from true originals, and it ranks amongst their finest work to date.

FOR FANS OF:

FOR FANS OF:

FOR FANS OF:

Bella Union (2014)

ANDREIA ALVES

ANAAL NATHRAKH Desideratum

NUNO TEIXEIRA

Godflesh, 1349, Watain

Glass Animals, Foals, Jungle

Pins, Warpaint, Garbage

DAVID BOWES

OUT NOW

OUT NOW

28.10

8

9

6

ÅRABROT I Modi

BAPTISTS Bloodmines

THE BLIND SHAKE Breakfast of Failures

There’s just one little fact that you need to know about Årabrot: it’s, without a doubt, one of best freakyalternative-cool rock projects out there.

I Modi, the latest EP of an incredible discography, can be divided in two parts. The first three songs present the more “conventional” (yeah, right!) side of the Norwegian band, which is very inspired on early Killing Joke among other things. The second half (last three songs) is where all the juicy and somehow fresh material exists: Kjetil’s vocals, more freaky than ever, are involved by ambient music that freaks the fuck out of us with all the bleakness and beauty that are often confused with each other. They have reached a whole new level and “Annul” is one of the best songs of the year.

Vancouver’s hardcore/crust-punk outfit Baptists are back with Bloodmines.

I dare to say that this is a fucking punch in the face for the listener. Strippeddown of any kind of bullshit, this new effort is an insane rampage of non-stop rage, abrasive vocals and raw poetic punk fury. Lyrically speaking, Bloodmines is a cathartic experience, they totally pinpointed several situations showing how human relations are more filthy than ever. The lack of any kind of values are a reality and the way we see people interact with each other is seriously fucked up, the world is sick and is getting worse... Bloodmines is a genuine and emotional wake up call, a violent and darker look about humanity, corporate greed and this new found way of slavery that we live nowadays.

Fronted by brothers Jim and Mike Blaha, with friend Dave Roper on drums, The Blind Shake are a threepiece garage-psych-apocalyptic noise makers from Minneapolis.

Breakfast of Failures sounds is weird, experimental as fuck and quite exquisite, everything sounds so immediate and raw. The vocals are really more of a snarl, perfectly combined with dense psychedelic riffs and infectious noisy drums. Having six full-length albums to their credit, several singles, three collaborations with psych legend Michael Yonkers and another with downstroke warrior John Reis, The Blind Shakes with this new effort follow their own path, showing no slacking in these confused times.

FOR FANS OF:

FOR FANS OF:

FOR FANS OF:

Fysisk Format (2014)

Southern Lord (2014)

TIAGO MOREIRA

Killing Joke, Haust, The Body

98

music&riots

November

Converge, Drive Like Jehu, Nails

Goner (2014)

FAUSTO CASAIS

Thee Oh Sees, Coachwhips

FAUSTO CASAIS

REVIEWS

ANATOMY OF HABIT

9

Ciphers & Axioms

07.11

Relapse Records (2014)

“Anatomy of Habit is a well kept secret... Defying categorization, this five piece dwells somewhere along the realms of post-punk and doom metal.”

F

ormed in Chicago, 2008, Anatomy of Habit is a well kept secret, too good to be allowed to go on in the shade. Defying categorization, this five piece dwells somewhere along the realms of post-punk and doom metal. The instrumentation tends to be minimalistic and introspective, dense and solid in the heavy parts; there are long and hybrid song structures, alternating between soft clean guitar lullabying and

merciless neck-breaking riffs; the lyrics are sometimes more spoken or cried out rather than sung, in the narrative ways found in bands like Slint, Swans or Enablers.

Ciphers + Axioms, well, it’s a beast. Counting on two twenty minutes long tracks, it starts out sharp with the drums and bass on the lead, an enigmatic guitar building up suspense and a deep ritual-like voice. The guitar starts to gain terrain, kicking in the distortion – but don’t think we’re under the old post-rock crescendo formula-, and we shall welcome this sort of twisted doom-metal foreplay, only to be crushed by

FOR FANS OF:

ESSENTIAL TRACKS:

Tortoise, Swans, Joy Division, Slint

tremendous walls of textured distortion afterwards, not far from those elevated by acts like Yob or Ufomammut. And we’re still on the 5:30m mark; there will be time for demented screaming, tons of noise and a semi-lead guitar doing weird shit. In the second track, the singing and drumming outshine and, even though it is an overall the quieter track, it seems there is more space being filled with sound, in a subtle way, with that kind of attention to detail found in ambient music, which is pretty much the direction the song takes after the ten minute mark.

Radiate And Recede, Then Window

musicandriotsmagazine.com

RICARDO ALMEIDA

99

OUT NOW OUT NOW

7 BLUT AUS NORD Memoria Vetusta III – Saturnian Poetry Debemur Morti (2014)

From its cavernous and obscure beginnings, Black Metal has evolved to become one of the most forward thinking sub genres in Heavy Music.

Many bands have broken down the barriers that sometimes bind the creative spirits of the musicians, with more expression in one of the most extreme genres in Metal. In this, their eleventh album, the French band shows no signs of fatigue, creating a perfect balance between Black Metal and the more avant-garde and orchestral aspect of their music. After ending the 777 trilogy, they now continue with this, the third part of the Memoria Vetusta, which presents a more traditional Black Metal sound, without losing an ounce of the experimental vein.

NUNO BABO

FOR FANS OF:

OUT NOW

7 BONNIE PRINCE BILLY Singer’s Grave - A Sea Of Tongues

8

Domino (2014)

Another album by Will Oldham, one of the many he has already released in his 20-year career. This is not even very original, once resulting in the recording of themes he has interpreted with other artists, themes already heard in Wolfroy Goes to Town. The folk, blues, roots and country formula, among many other labels which we may want to describe the character of this American gem, has proved successful and this is a work tracing the quality line of the music created by the multifaceted Kentucky artist. This time, it’s a nice job for fans of the genre and more of the same for everyone else. Despite the musical and technical quality, the arrangements are nothing innovative nor does the album deliver great emotions beyond those that have already seen in the singer’s career. However, it’s still a very beautiful album that gives us a healthy company on a Sunday afternoon by the sea or in any other common place where we come across ourselves with this record.

NUNO TEIXEIRA

Drudkh, Negura Bunget, Darkspace

BONFIRE BEACH Bonfire Beach

Cleopatra Records (2014)

Bonfire Beach is the sleazy and darker project of Dexy Valentine, which is the frontwoman of dreamy outfit Magic Wands. Inspired by the gritty golden lights of Hollywood’s lost angels to the moonlit seances of the gypsy trodden beachcombers, Bonfire Beach is a solid and strong effort, filled with Dexy’s delicious vocals and that Love And Rockets meets Black Rebel Motorcycle Club meets The Kills’ Alison Mosshart esque.

There is something strangely unique about their own blend of genres, everything sounds so hazy and hypnotic and deliriously seductive.

Bonfire Beach debut album is quite something, their dreamy edgy punk sound gives the listener the perfect sonic voyage.

FOR FANS OF:

FAUSTO CASAIS

The Kills, Gun Club, BRMC

14.11

07.11

OUT NOW

8

7

8

Napalm Records (2014)

BROUGHTON’S RULE Anechoic Horizon

Relapse Records (2014)

BUSCABULLA Buscabulla EP

Listening to this album is a like a trip down to memory lane. In one word: amazing. It is the perfect example of how a stoner rock album should sound like. But you should not expect anything else from the prestigious stoner rock king Brant Bjork – one of the Kyuss’ founding members. On Black Power Flower every song has the potential to be a single. “That’s A Fact Jack” is probably the leader in terms of quality. A really groovy album that beats his first album in every department. From production to musical content and originality.

It is not just a typical stoner rock album. We can feel a dominant heavy metal influence within it, giving the album’s name a real meaning. Top notch!

The instrumental post-rocker band has released their second album produced

by Justin Pizzoferrato, who worked with Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr. just to name a few bands. Anechoic Horizon is a dense record but very dynamic at the same time, full of melancholic moments. “Anechoic Horizon”, the single, is a perfect piece of post-rock ethereal melody, slow and bittersweet. “Shadows and Light”, track seven, follows the same path, now and then with some Mogwai influences. The guitars flow into some effects but the distortion is never too heavy producing a very consistent noisy roller coaster of emotions. The band (mostly formed by ex-members of Don Caballero and Blunderbuss) takes a step forward into their career.

Buscabulla, the Spanish slang for troublemaker is also the name of the dreamy and experimental indie project of Brooklyn based Puerto Rican designer Raquel Berrios and multi-instrumentalist Luis Alfredo Del Valle. Buscabulla EP is a blend of vintage Latin music like salsa gorda, Cuban psych and 80s South American rock with the most dreamy and dizzy, almost unmistakable indie tunes. Full of layers the duo combines Caribbean sensibilities with that simple, almost childlike melodies, swirling from song to song. Produced by Dev Hynes a.k.a. the artist Blood Orange, Buscabulla is charming in every way, with Raquel Berrios superb and sensual voice leading the way in this bold and minimalist piece.

FOR FANS OF:

FOR FANS OF:

FOR FANS OF:

BRANT BJORK Black Flower Power

IBRAHIMA DE BRITO

Hermano, Vista Chino, Kyuss

100

music&riots

November

Don Caballero, Mogwai, Slint

Kitsuné (2014)

ANA CARVALHO

Chairlift, Grimes, Beach House

FAUSTO CASAIS

REVIEWS

OUT NOW

OUT NOW

OUT NOW

6

6

8

Rise Records (2014)

ALUNAH Awakening The Forest

Napalm Records (2014)

BLUDDED HEAD Reign In Bludd

On their seventh full-length album, Deathcore pioneers The Acacia Strain are back with their new LP Coma Witch. Once again we already know what to expect, heavy and catchy riffs well combined with that ultra, extra rise of brutality. This is not a band that’s trying to innovate and/or explore new sonic territories, is that classic trademark Acacia Strain sound.

A repetition of what we are used to hear from Acacia Strain, but will for sure please any deathcore superfans.

This British Doom Metal project presents us a gloomy sound with some Psych Rock and ethereal female vocals thrown into the mix. They’ve shared the stage with some of the industries greatest names such as Saint Vitus, Trouble and Paradise Lost. Although they are still a fairly young band, they enclose many details and layers in their music that show this is not just run of the mill Doom and Gloom, but a very interesting musical project that lets us longing for future releases.

This second work of doom’s band Bludded Head is a blast. The music seems to float into a sort of nightmare of progressive fast and slow riffs, exploding into an apotheosis of heavy visceral doom. “Pouring Rain”, the third track, it’s a majestic ode, the vocals are a guttural intense screaming of pain involved by a downtempo drum riff that finishes with a slow and sick melody. This Texas band is definitely head for something really good…

THE ACACIA STRAIN Coma Witch

FAUSTO CASAIS

Sleeping Giant Glossolalia (2014)

NUNO BABO

ANA CARVALHO

OUT NOW

OUT NOW

OUT NOW

7

8

6

THE BODY/SANDWORM Split LP

COLD BLUE MOUNTAIN Old Blood

FOR ALL I AM No Home

Thrill Jockey (2014)

Halo Flies (2014)

Sharing Providence, RI roots as well as a uniquely skewed take on noise rock, both The Body and Sandworm have summoned some gnarly monstrosities here. For The Body, it’s a one-track monolith hewn from elegiac piano, caterwauled blues and hellish discord; Sandworm deliver feral and raw black metal, 10 cuts of screeching, doom-tinged misanthropia.

The combined effect is that of unbearable turbulence, a jarring shift from the beauty of horror to the fury at its heart; big, clever, and undeniably potent stuff.

InVogue Records (2014)

Heavy riffs and melodies. That’s an acceptable way to describe the beautiful piece of art that Cold Blue Mountain had just created. Old Blood is the second album by the CA-based five piece that combines big and heavy doom/post-metal riffs with distinct and superb melodies, including piano, violins and cellos into the mix. Lyrically, Old Blood tells a story - which is an indirect reference to Native Americans - but musically it tells a story too that is amazingly well done.

No Home is the new effort from Chicago fully and totally justified hyped metalcore outfit For All I Am. The band really stepped it up on this album, bringing all the guns to this new full-length, in these eleven tracks of fully desconstructed aggression that will for sure ignite mosh pits at their concerts. No Home is heavy catchy, filled with breakdowns and abusing of that electro-metallic intensity, providing them some solidly and consistence sophomore.

DAVID BOWES

ANDREIA ALVES

FAUSTO CASAIS

OUT NOW

OUT NOW

OUT NOW

8

7

6

HEAT LEISURE III & IV

HURRY Everything/Nothing

HYBRID CIRCLE A Matter of Faith

The collaborative project between Pontiak’s Carney brothers, Greg Fox and Alexandra Drewchin of Guardian Alien, Beach House’s Steve Strohmeier, and Robert J. Otten III was a multi-media project in their first released work I and II and now it is a pure two jam songs. III is more like an experimental rock song, instead of IV that is a psychedelic journey into a mad afro-beat that permanently echoes in our minds.

Everything/Nothing is the dreamy and fuzzy debut from Philadelphia’s three piece Hurry. After years of bedroom recordings, Matthew Scottoline, the main man behind Hurry finally puts their guns on the table and delivered a perfect example of pure 90’s nostalgia, where pop sensibilities meet distortion and noisy infectious guitar solos. It’s easy to label them somewhere between the world of Dinosaur Jr, Pavement and even Teenage Fanclub. Awesome debut!

The tech-prog metalcore troupe Hybrid Circle are back with their second album, A Matter of Faith. Shrieking riffs and huge breakdowns are on the menu for the listener, where their huge blend of styles and influences go from prog to metalcore and from djent to alternative metal. “A Matter of Death” is perfectly accurate and the way they mix genres is perfetly balanced, that cover of Deaftones’s “Head up” is actually an plus. Overall, we must say that besides some clichés, it’s a strong effort.

Hot Green Records (2014)

Thrill Jockey (2014)

ANA CARVALHO

Dead Apple Productions (2014)

FAUSTO CASAIS

www.facebook.com/MUSICandRIOTS.Magazine

FAUSTO CASAIS

101

OUT NOW

OUT NOW

OUT NOW

7

8

8

CANNIBAL CORPSE A Skeletal Domain

DARK TIMES Give

DEEP SEA DIVER Always Waiting EP

Criticize them, scorn them, censor them, hate them or simply ignore them, but like a zombie energizer bunny, they keep going and going.

Another slab of prime Gore Metal from one of the founding fathers of the genre they help to forge. When you listen to A Skeletal Domain is like listening to the perfect soundtrack to a slasher movie, filled with corpses soaked in blood and the stench of death. Otherworldly vociferations mixed with pummelling quasi martial rhythms are what you can expect from this record, as with any other release from this band. On the negative side, just a minor quibble with the sound of Paul’s drums, it’s a shame that Scott Burns is retired from production.

Unpolished and raw, energetic and frenetic, Give is the long-awaited debut from Norwegian underground outfit Dark Times. This is a band that is pushing their own boundaries, there’s some really freaky stuff that comes out from these Norwegians, their blend of punk, noise rock, hardcore, some catchy hooks and fuzzy guitars is quite something. Give is eclectic, there is riot grrrl elements, something between Bikini Kill and Sleater Kinney. Their punkish Nirvana meets Fucked Up sounds thrilling and invigorate. There is something in Dark Times that truly stands out, this is not the kind of punk that we are used to, this is real and unpretentious, everything is short and straight to the point.

Based in Seattle, Deep Sea Diver is Jessica Dobson’s collaboration with her husband, drummer Peter Mansen. After several years touring as guitarist for Beck and the Shins as well as stints with the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Spoon, and Divine Fits, Dobson’s is now taking her role as the frontwoman of her own band, Deep Sea Diver. Always Waiting EP is the follow-up to the band’s excellent 2012 debut LP, History Speaks. Regarding their previous work, this new effort represents a leap forward, showing a band that is not afraid to take risks, giving them a new sense of adventure through experimentation. Sometimes when we experience life more doors open and shows us the infinite possibilities that life gives us. Well done, indie pop has a new name that you should look for...

FOR FANS OF:

FOR FANS OF:

FOR FANS OF:

Metal Blade (2014)

Self-Released (2014)

Sheep Chase Records (2014)

NUNO BABO

Suffocation, Six Feet Under, Dying Fetus

FAUSTO CASAIS

Bikini Kill, Fucked Up, Nirvana, Pettybone

FAUSTO CASAIS

Cat Power, Tune-Yards, Best Coast

OUT NOW

11.11

OUT NOW

9

7

8

DECAPITATED Blood Mantra

ENERGY SLIME New Dimensional

Mint Records (2014)

Merge Records (2014)

Anyone who was pleased with Decapitated’s second lease of life record Carnival is Forever will undoubtedly consider Blood Mantra another work of superb musicianship, matching the destructive power of its predecessor. However, while Carnival centered on groove, the band now seem to be returning to the more technical side of their first records. Some of the finest cuts like “Exiled in Flesh”, “The Blasphemous Psalm to the Dummy God Creation”, “Veins” and “Instinct” explode with ferocious intensity through constant interplays between Vogg’s incisive riffs and Młody’s razor sharp drum patterns. All of these elements mixed with a plethora of refreshing melodic interludes make Blood Mantra, without any doubts, Decapitated’s most diverse and sophisticated offer so far.

Vancouver’s Energy Slime are Jay Arner and and her partner in crime Jessica Delisle, together are a goofy and dreamy stylistic duo that brings some light in this actual boring pop/rock world. New Dimensional is like a cosmic trip where psych meets glam meets pop, as if Energy Slime were somehow the bastard son of the fucked up match between Cindy Lauper and Ariel Pink. Fresh and exciting, the experimental fusion cocktail brings some confusion to the listener, and after some listenings we find ourselves filled with guilty pleasures and nostalgic feelings. If the summer was still around, New Dimensional would be for sure our perfect carefully-crafted cosmic soundtrack.

Mary Timony is no stranger in the world of music. She’s an active musician since the early 90’s - first in Autoclave, then in Helium, and then as a solo artist. After two solo records - Ex Hex (2005) and The Shapes We Make (2007) - she joined Wild Flag in 2010, featuring former Sleater-Kinney members Carrie Brownstein and Janet Weiss, but after releasing their first album the band call its quits. Now with her new project Ex Hex, alongside with Laura Harris and Betsy Wright, they create catchy and irreverent rock’n’roll and power pop tunes. Rips is simply a guitar, a bass, drums and a vigorous voice embracing the best of the rock, with a sort of Ramones/Cheap Trick/The Runaways hybrid. It’s raw and it’s awesome.

FOR FANS OF:

FOR FANS OF:

FOR FANS OF:

Nuclear Blast (2014)

LUIS ALVES

Aborted, Origin, Vader

102

music&riots

EX HEX Rips

FAUSTO CASAIS

Cindy Lauper, Ariel Pink, Grizzly Bear

November

ANDREIA ALVES

The Runaways, Ramones, Cheap Trick

REVIEWS

CAVALERA CONSPIRACY

8

Pandemonium

31.10

Napalm Records (2014)

“... a reflection of Max and Iggor Cavalera’s continuous path into increasingly heavier sounds and it can be considered the heaviest record that each of the brothers made...”

T

o anyone who’s been following his career, it’s evident that Max Cavalera is no longer interested in emulating his old Sepultura and Soulfly styles.

Instead his music has either been getting increasingly experimental with Soulfly or even more aggressive with Cavalera Conspiracy.

Pandemonium is a reflection of Max and Igor Cavalera’s continuous path into increasingly heavier sounds and it can be

considered the heaviest record that each of the brothers made collectively, with their blend of Thrash/Groove Metal managing to cross past Death Metal’s borders at times. From the ominous opener “Babylonian Pandemonium”, going through the crushing weight of “Scum”, “Cramunhão” or “The Crucible”, Pandemonium just doesn’t allow you to breathe for a single minute.

While Max Cavalera varies between “ghoulish” versions of himself, with frequent bursts of heavily distorted vocals, Igor Cavalera doesn’t seem to stop with his deliberate mission of not

FOR FANS OF:

ESSENTIAL TRACKS:

Old Sepultura, Soulfly, Nail Bomb

letting the songs’ fast paced rhythms die. On the other hand, Marc Rizzo stopped being the sidekick who only has to lay down some solos when it’s his turn. No. He actually became Conspiracy’s secret weapon, having upped his ante with memorable lead work throughout “Not Losing the Edge”, “Father of Hate”, and especially on the monumental “Insurrection”.

Pandemonium isn’t as Sepultura-ish as Inflikted, but it surely doesn’t sound a bit as monotonous as Blunt Force Trauma did. No wonder they wanted to call this record “Fuck that Groove”.

They meant business with that…

Not Losing The Edge, The Crucible

musicandriotsmagazine.com

LUIS ALVES

103

EXODUS Blood In, Blood Out

OUT NOW

28.10

21.10

8

8

8 FOREVER CAME CALLING What Matters Most

FIELD DIVISION Reverie State EP

Nuclear Blast (2014)

Self-Released (2014)

Pure Noise Records (2014)

Many fans rejoiced with the news that Steve Souza had returned to the Exodus line up after a ten year absence, and with good reason, because listening to this record, it sounds as the band has taken a Thrash shot through their veins. All the elements are in place, Gary Holt’s guitar wizardry, Tom Hunting’s surgical precision drumming and Souza’s evil witch vocals. A great thrash metal record with just a sprinkle of hardcore attitude like only Exodus can deliver. This record features some important guests in Chuck Billy from Testament and none other than Kirk Hammett on guitar, which makes this the first appearance from the guitarist in an album by Exodus, the band he helped to form in 1980.

Originally from Des Moines but now Nashville-based, Field Division creates songs of real beauty and purity with the Mother Nature as the perfect backdrop. “Faultlines” was the first song ever released by the duo - a breezy-dreamy indie folk song that made us dream and wonder about the simple little things in life. It wasn’t long before that Evelyn Taylor and Nicholas Frampton announced that they had this EP in the works. Reverie State is what we were expecting for: brilliant, well-crafted songs with heartfelt and warm lyrics with the Evelyn ethereal vocals. The duo added some new elements on these songs like synths, electronic effects and a ghostly choir giving an even more special touch to their beautiful tunes.

The California-based pop-punk band Forever Came Calling are back with their sophomore effort. For those who were super excited with their debut album Contender, this new one will exceed any expectations. What Matters Most is for sure what we were hoping for. It’s a frenetic trip over the most endearing and well-structured songs ever written by the band. They can be less appreciated perhaps because it hasn’t been given the best focus on them, but FCC is one of the best acts now in the pop-punk scene.

Honest and real lyrics delivered by the singer Joe Candelaria and a great dynamic effort based on emotion is what builds this great record. What Matters Most stands on its own, showing a writing maturity of the band.

FOR FANS OF:

FOR FANS OF:

FOR FANS OF:

NUNO BABO

Destruction, Testament, Kreator

ANDREIA ALVES

Feist, Fleet Foxes, Mazzy Star

ANDREIA ALVES

New Found Glory, Knuckle Puck

OUT NOW

OUT NOW

OUT NOW

6

9

8 KEEP THE PROMISE A Peaceful Mission Of War

ICEAGE Plowing Into The Field of Love

JEN WOOD Wilderness

Matador Records (2014)

Radar Light/New Granada (2014)

To React Records (2014)

Elias Bender Rønnenfelt was never a good singer (fact!) but what he manages to accomplish on this new album is un-fucking-believable. I mean, there’s a huge list of vocalist that doesn’t sing that good but manage to deliver the goods and not wreck the entire experience. Elias was able to do something like that on their previous albums… but that’s not the case here. Don’t give me the “desperate vocals” crap. Where’s the producer? The worst part is that instrumentally speaking this is the best album of them three, with an incredible bunch of tonalities, moods and details that challenge and excite. Elias succeed on the task of fucking what could possibly be one of the best albums of the year because he wasn’t able to follow the band’s evolution. Unbearable!

In a career spanning more than two decades, Jen Wood is back with her new album, Wilderness. After 20 years with her primary instrument, the guitar, Jen Wood wasn’t excited about it anymore, shifting from her guitar roots to a piano-centric sound and delivering us a powerful collection of ten pianobased songs. In a bold and exciting move regarding her career, Wilderness marks a sharp departure for the Seattle-based musician, in her first release since 2010’s Finds You In Love, and represents the chronicles of the last six years in Jen’s life and what she has experienced. It’s like a thematic story, with some storytelling structure in it. Jen is pushing herself as an artist and Wilderness is both compelling and vulnerable, but is also an ambitious effort, that aims for perfection.

Aren’t you guys sick of this bloody sucking capitalist system? Sick of this shitty world? Sick of corrupt bankers and politicians? Sick of the way woman keep being abused and treated? And what about the constant violations regarding animal rights? The answer to all this questions is a huge fucking YES! A Peaceful Mission Of War is what we may call a perfect modern hardcore album, the musical equivalent of a middle finger salute. On their debut full-length, they have already found a rare harmony between their own aggression and their own strong lyrical context. Keep The Promise debut effort is certainly worth checking out, full of powerful beatdowns and killer 90’s inspired hardcore riffs. Well done lads!

FOR FANS OF:

FOR FANS OF:

FOR FANS OF:

TIAGO MOREIRA

Protomartyr, Metz, Parquet Courts

104

music&riots

November

FAUSTO CASAIS

Jenny Lewis, Neko Case, Cat Power

Terror, Sick Of It All, Biohazard

FAUSTO CASAIS

REVIEWS

31.10

8

GROUPER Ruins

Kranky (2014)

R

u’in - noun \ the remaining pieces of something that was destroyed; the physical destruction or disintegration of something.

Ruins is the outcome of the collaboration between Liz Harris (Grouper) and Galeria Zé dos Bois (ZDB), an art centre, club and concert venue in the heart of Lisbon.

ZDB has been around for twenty years, promoting art in all its incarnations and is definitely one of the places to go when visiting Lisbon.

The album was recorded close to the sea in Aljezur, a small town in the very south of Portugal except for the last song, recorded in the U.S. back in 2004 -, and is Grouper’s first to be written exclusively for piano and voice.

Recorded unpretentiously, the album is the reflection of, according to Liz, “the first time I’d sat still for a few years; processed a lot of political anger and emotional garbage”, but also the documentation of her retreat in Aljezur. The ruins Liz claims to have passed by on her daily hikes to the beach certainly fit as the perfect metaphor for a record that deals with facing “emotional garbage” and getting past it.

The record ends up being a monument to the actual ruins, the buildings and the ones formed by what is left of a relationship – or something else, it’s none of our business anyway. Step by step Liz is emerging from the “underwater” register of her first works; slowly her voice is becoming more noticeable, overcoming the fear of being heard in such confessional moments.

FOR FANS OF:

Tim Hecker, Julianna Barwick, Laurel Halo

ESSENTIAL TRACKS:

Made of Metal, Labyrinth, Call Across Rooms RICARDO ALMEIDA

www.facebook.com/MUSICandRIOTS.Magazine

105

21.10

OUT NOW

03.11

7

8

8

InVogue Records (2014)

LOWER THAN ATLANTIS Lower Than Atlantis

Sony (2014)

MARIACHI EL BRONX III

California-based metalcore outfit Kingdom Of Giants are back with their second full-length. Who the fuck says that metalcore is dead? The answer to this is quite simple. Metalcore is alive and stronger than ever, this is a genre that has the power to innovate and sounds like new quite easily. Ground Culture is an ambitious effort, strong and tight, with incendiary riffs and smashing breakdowns, proving their ability to challenge some of metalcore’s finest. The most striking thing about Kingdom of Giants is their incredible sense of tension display and their perfect balance between the amazing vocal work of Dana Willax and their own brutality, giving a new meaning of intensity to the listener.

Well done guys!

Lower Than Atlantis are back with their new and self-titled album! Like in previous efforts, this is a step in a different direction for the boys from Watford! Basically, the album consists of 12 different songs, that are strongly different and make this album so diverse with plenty of choices for singles! The first one was “Here We Go” and was the first proof that this album is one of the most anticipated albums of the year in the UK! One of the facts is that almost in almost in every song there’s a catchy or an epic chorus line!

Another fact is that the band isn’t afraid to experiment with their sound! And those are two of the reasons why this album is so damn good!

Mariachi El Bronx – the alter ego of acclaimed Los Angeles punk outfit The Bronx return with their third effort, probably their most diverse album to date, as if that was possible?!?!... And yes guys, it’s possible! Not happy with their own mariachi genre limitations, they ditched the rulebook and dusted off old sequencers, synths and an ARP. The result is again amazing, seriously, these guys are kings, their own way of getting out of the normal with this “alter ego” project is absolutely perfect. Matt Caughthran’s lyrical and emotional approach balances between joy and introspection, with some lost notions regarding lost love and does moments when life just happens... A triumph of both authenticity and quality. VIVA EL BRONX!

FOR FANS OF:

FOR FANS OF:

FOR FANS OF:

KINGDOM OF GIANTS Ground Culture

FAUSTO CASAIS

Like Moths to Flames, These Hearts

ATO Records (2014)

CLÁUDIO ANÍBAL

Don Broco, Deaf Havana, Mallory Knox

FAUSTO CASAIS

The Bronx, Chingon

OUT NOW

OUT NOW

21.10

10

7

9 MONO The Last Dawn & Rays Of Darkness

MARMOZETS The Weird And Wonderful Marmozets

MELVINS Hold It In

Ipecac Records (2014)

Pelagic (2014)

Why are Marmozets about to become your favourite new band? Because they’re young, wonderful and sound like nothing you’ve ever heard before... And they have Becca MacIntyre screaming and singing like no one else, quite impressive and exciting we must confess. These kids are taking math-rock, huge choruses, melodic hooks and teen angst to the mainstream, but everything is done by their own terms, their creativity is mind-blowing and seems that nothing is going to stop them. Tracks like “Captivate You” and “Cry” bring Becca’s most emotional and vulnerable side, but “Why Do You Hate Me?”, “Vibetech” and “Weird And Wonderful” show their unique way of mixing their wild melody with heaviness. The Weird And Wonderful Marmozets is perfect in any way, flawless and perfect constructed.

Melvins’ new album Hold It In sounds like the perfect soundtrack to a horror film. There are some really cool tracks in it. “Seasame Street Meat”, “You Can Make Me wait” and “Brass Cupcake” are a must listen. In this album Buzz Osborne, also known as King Buzzo, showed us once again who is the boss – his vocals remain as original as his hairstyle. Their new single made a promise of greatness and the album itself fulfilled it. Twelve really well constructed songs that keep the album flow continuous and enjoyable. With a really well made production and good musicality. Thankfully their music style is still original and without a genre attached to it (read boundaries). A combination of all types of rock music in one album. Brilliant!

MONO might not be the most famous post-rock band out there, but they are arguably the best. Perhaps that’s because they have the ability of making us forget that label when we’re lucky enough to hear their music. Who knows?

The Last Dawn & Rays of Darkness – two albums that are meant to be together and heard as one single piece – reinforce the first thoughts while the band shows a whole new zenith in their peculiar and amazing upward (and also downward) movements. Exploring some new grounds they find a whole new level of dynamics in the old dichotomy of life: light and darkness. From the uplifting orchestral sounds, to the aggressive and bleak movements – magnified by Tetsu Fukagawa’s (Envy) vocals (first time they use vocals on a record). This is probably their masterpiece.

FOR FANS OF:

FOR FANS OF:

FOR FANS OF:

Roadrunner (2014)

FAUSTO CASAIS

Rolo Tomassi, Tonight Alive, Paramore

106

music&riots

November

IBRAHIMA DE BRITO

Melvins, Melvins and even more Melvins

TIAGO MOREIRA

GY!BE, God Is An Astronaut, Russian Circles

REVIEWS

OUT NOW

7

MARK LANEGAN BAND Phantom Radio

Heavenly Recordings (2014)

I

t’s rather common to stumble upon singers whose solo careers don’t live up to what they’d done before, fronting quite successful bands. Do I hear someone calling Chris Cornell?

Even though his name will always be glued to Screaming Trees, Mark Lanegan’s solo career has come to a very respectable and prolific place, and people realize that Lanegan’s worthy discography goes way beyond the legendary grunge act. Lanegan is a workaholic, constantly writing new music and collaborating with other artists, such as Queens of the Stone Age, Mad Season, Isobel Campbell, Duke Garwood, Moby and so on…

Said to have been largely composed on a smartphone, Phantom Radio is Lanegan’s attempted tribute to krautrock, post-punk and a 80s new wave radio show. Whether the album meets its goal is something open to discussion, but it is definitely an interesting new path the one being carved here.

Phantom Radio demands several spins before it kicks in, for it is not composed of songs that immediately stick inside someone’s ear. No, the devil is in the details – beats, layers of synthetized magic and heavily reverbed guitars. Electronics and Lanegan’s folk and rock tradition have come to a pleasant middle ground and the album ends up being more balanced than the EP No Bells on Sunday.

Even though the symbiotic nature of the record hasn’t exactly reached any kind of perfection, Phantom Radio is definitely a worthy challenge for the listener.

FOR FANS OF:

Screaming Trees, QOTSA, Tom Waits, Can

ESSENTIAL TRACKS:

Harvest Home, Floor Of The Ocean RICARDO ALMEIDA

musicandriotsmagazine.com

107

14.11

OUT NOW

OUT NOW

8

6

7

MONSTER MAGNET Milking The Stars: a re-imagining of Last Patrol

MUSEUM OF LOVE Museum Of Love

NEW FOUND GLORY Resurrection

Napalm Records (2014)

DFA Records (2014)

Hopeless Records (2014)

Monster Magnet’s tenth album Milking The Stars is a “re-imagined” version of Last Patrol featuring four new tracks and some live tracks. We must praise Monster Magnet, personally it’s wonderful to see living legend Mr.Dave Wyndorf well and back to what he does best, amazing music! It’s quite impressive to see how powerful and hypnotic is Dave Wyndorf’s voice, fitting perfectly in this some kind insane rock n’ loud flashy psychedelic re-imagining of their latest effort, Last Patrol. Milking The Stars... will for sure take you on a journey from pounding heavy rock through psychedelic interludes, we can really imagine this altogether as both a stylistic alternate reality or some kind of cinematic experience.

From the drummer of LCD Soundsystem arises Museum of Love, a band as electronic as the first, but with a completely different music scene that shows further exploration by experimentalism. More than LCD Soundsystem, MOL reminds me of the 80’s bands like Depeche Mode and Pet Shop Boys, among other icons. I confess that the song did not grab me. All the entire work somewhat is dispersed with more or less romantic attempts and picks up on successful formulas and captivating sounds. The classic electronic beat does not please me in particular, leaving to meet some interesting elements and nice textures throughout the project, but not enough to be able to evaluate this work as a result that makes me ask for more.

Dispersed. Strange. Too synthesized and too synthetic. Love the sax.

Florida group New Found Glory are no rookies in the pop-punk scene. Since 1997 that they have been releasing catchy and infectious tunes. Last year they made an announcement that kind of shocked fans. The founding member and guitarist Steve Klein was parting ways with the band for unfortunate reasons. With that, they wrote and recorded Resurrection as a fourpiece and the album’s title speaks for itself. These new songs are arise from the band and were written in a very cathartic way, where there are upbeat songs as well heavier songs.

Resurrection has well-crafted tunes and polished hooks, with the always emphasis Jordan’ vocals and lyrics, and some special guests like Scott Vogel of Terror on the title-track.

FOR FANS OF:

FOR FANS OF:

FOR FANS OF:

FAUSTO CASAIS

Fu Manchu, Hermano, Nebula

NUNO TEIXEIRA

Depeche Mode, Pet Shop Boys

ANDREIA ALVES

State Champs Blink 182, Neck Deep

OUT NOW

21.10

OUT NOW

7

8

7

OBLITERATIONS Poison Everything

OOZING WOUND Earth Suck

ORANGE GOBLIN Back From The Abyss

Southern Lord (2014)

Thrill Jockey (2014)

Candlelight Records (2014)

Dirty grooves, belligerence and plenty of fast, hard riffing – these are the things that grant punk a special place in our hearts, and Obliterations deliver them by the shedload. The Massachusetts massive’s debut is a diseased concoction that owes as much to Mötörhead’s hoarse, gravel ‘n’ bass ‘n’ speed charm as the vitriolic polemics of Black Flag, a true cross-over sound as raw and chaotic as anyone could hope for. The title track may drop the pace back to a predatory, prowling stomp and “Shame” throws in a black metal sheen to make its cacophonic point, but these diversions only stress the crux of Obliterations’ point – that life isn’t easy, it isn’t always fun and it sure as hell ain’t pretty.

Oozing Wound’s second record is more mature than their debut album, it’s clearly powerful on the riffs, on the attitude and on the sarcastic humor, an icon of the band. Recorded in three days, “Going Through the Motions Till I Die” track, reminds us some of Black Sabbath riffs: a dark, heavy but slow, sick song. We might think that after this the music’s direction changes radically but not so. The rest of the record remains raw, fast, aggressive and ironic. “Bury Me With My Money” is like a slap on your face like the whole “speed ahead” record.

Oozing’s provocative lyrics against wild capitalism or social habits allied with awesome technics transform this Earth Suck into a complete pleasure.

British stoner kings are back with their new effort, Back From The Abyss.

Stoner Rock nowadays seems to be on a high note with heavy music fans, judging by the proliferation of releases that carry the Black Sabbath flag. This can be a tricky path because either you have something to distinguish you from the rest of the pack, or you end up falling into oblivion. Luckily, Orange Goblin have attitude and style to boot, and are perfectly capable of standing on their own on an ever increasing realm of bands that by choice of imposition tend to follow trend and fashion. What you have here is a band that knows what they want to achieve with their sound and do it with panache.

FOR FANS OF:

FOR FANS OF:

FOR FANS OF:

DAVID BOWES

Black Flag, Black Breath, Baptists

108

music&riots

November

ANA CARVALHO

Sabbath riifs, good trash and hate grunge

Motorhead, Black Sabbath, Kyuss

NUNO BABO

REVIEWS

SLIPKNOT

8

.5: The Gray Chapter

21.10

Roadrunner (2014)

“Strong and intense, the fire is back. This is not a rebirth, because they were never dead... they still sound fucking great.”

After a six year gap since their fourth album All Is Hope Is Gone, the maggots are back.

The circumstances surrounding the making of Slipknot’s fifth album were very dark, tragic and full of changes. After the heartbreaking loss of Paul Gray, Joey’s shocking departure (he was fired) and Corey’s confrontation with Jim in Stone Sour - leading to his controversial dismissal from Stone Sour - we all feared for the future of Slipknot.

The truth, is that they’re back and stronger than ever, at least seems like that... .5: The Gray Chapter is an obvious tribute to the late Paul Gray, a cathartic experience for them, but for the listener it’s a brutal, honest and

almost unreal experience, because we’re listening to a new Slipknot album, something that we never expected to do even in our best dreams. .5: The Gray Chapter may not win over new fans to the rest of their catalog, but even without Paul Gray and Joey’s services they still sound like Slipknot, still sound heavy, filthy and furious, Corey sings like the Corey we know in Slipknot, besides the fears that this new chapter could sound like another Stone Sour crappy album.

The band has characterized .5: The Gray Chapter as a cross between Iowa and Vol.3: (The Subliminal Verses), and indeed we feel the tension and the rough aggression of lowa, and the

FOR FANS OF:

ESSENTIAL TRACKS:

Slipknot, Slipknot and even more Slipknot

melodic and more stylistic of Vol.3.

Melodic, diverse, noisy and atmospheric, this is an album made of contrasts. From the trash-esque “AOV” to the electroMetallica driven “Killpop”, and along the way we found the emotional yet heavy Paul Gray’s tribute in “Skeptic”, where Corey shouts “The world will never see another crazy motherfucker like you / The world will never know another man as amazing as you.”

Strong and intense, the fire is back. This is not a rebirth, because they were never dead. A couple of big mellow melodies aside, Corey still knows how to get heavy and sing like no one else. Overall, they still sound fucking great.

Skeptic, The Devil In I, The Negative One

www.facebook.com/MUSICandRIOTS.Magazine

FAUSTO CASAIS

109

OUT NOW

07.11

9

8

USNEA

TODAY IS THE DAY Animal Mother

Random Cosmic Violence

Today Is The Day were never a band that literally dropped the ball in all these 22 years. One can argue that their output in the noughties was below the bar they had previously set in the nineties but that’s actually only admitting how fucking brilliant they are.

Talking about TITD’s nineties period is talking about shit like Willpower or the undeniable masterpiece Temple of the Morning Star… I mean, c’mon! Pain Is A Warning was their “return”, their undeniable return. People were freaking out, and rightly so if I might add. Animal Mother? We finally got to the really interesting part. Why? It’s waayyy better than Pains Is A Warning. That’s right! Steve Austin (founder, guitarist, vocalist and producer) probably managed to set the fucking bar even higher.

The new album shows a band able to capitalize their best output (wow, right?) without any restrains that could have been present, pushing forward not only sonically but also with Steve’s intense, brutal and honest lyrics – “You’re not good. That’s right!”

It’s still mind-blowing and really hard to understand how the guy is capable of creating such distinct music in one single piece and make it work. More mindblowing is how he manages to hit the spot every fuckin’ time.

TITD are one of most brilliant and relevant bands of “extreme” music. Animal Mother is another proof, disguised as a killer left punch.

Lately it seems as if most sludge-doom bands are trying to see who has the biggest penis, meaning: who’s the loudest, heaviest, vilest band. This leads to tons of records that are not much more than a pointless storm of noise. Of course all of them look like boy scouts when compared to acts like Thou.

We also have Electric Wizard, who don’t really give a damn about phallic measurements and, still, end up being the number one doom act. Or bands like Cough, managing to come up with records like Ritual Abuse, a hopeless and dirty monument to suffering and failure, that is able to communicate all that dark stuff without neglecting emotion in favor of amps on steroids and tough guy attitude.

All this rant to say that: Usnea were able, once again, to come up with a release where balance seems to be the keyword. After a quite promising debut album, Usnea returns with Random Cosmic Violence via Relapse. It seems like this band drinks the same water that bands like Samothrace, Salome or any of the aforementioned do. In a way, the album sounds more conservative than its predecessor – slightly drifting away from post-metal dynamics.

There are classic elements of Evoken’s severe funeral doom, the sharpness of Thou and also occasional outbursts of black metal here and there.

Usnea are not reinventing the wheel here, but no one asked them to.

FOR FANS OF:

FOR FANS OF:

ESSENTIAL TRACKS:

ESSENTIAL TRACKS:

Relapse Records (2014)

Southern Lord (2014)

Unsane, Oxbow, Coalesce

Pallbearer, Thou, Cough

Animal Mother, Outlaw (Acoustic), Bloowood

Random Cosmic Violence, Healing Through Death

TIAGO MOREIRA

110

music&riots

November

RICARDO ALMEIDA

REVIEWS

OUT NOW

04.11

OUT NOW

6

7

8

INTER ARMA The Cavern EP

LOVESKILLS Pure EP

LUKE WINSLOW-KING Everlasting Arms

Relapse Records (2014)

No Shame (2014)

Bloodshot Records (2014)

To record a single piece of music that extends for forty-five minutes takes guts, to keep things interesting for the whole time requires talent.This band from Virginia manages to keep the rhythms flowing, intertwining heavy riffs with quieter passages to The Cavern.

Recorded during breaks from the relentless touring the band did on the ‘Sky Burial’ album, this record will appeal mainly to fans of Sludge and Post Metal, but it is recommended to metal fans in general to give it at least one spin.

Brooklyn-based producer Loveskills (aka Richard Spitzer) combines together elements of electronica infused R&B with pop sensibilities and hints of hip hop. His 2013 release, titled Multiplicity, was the the starting point to get to know this catchy and diverse synth-pop approach. This EP kicks off with a delightfully lo-fi synth cover of Smashing Pumpkins’ “Luna” and carries on with more five tracks of lush electronic-pop sounds and honest lyrics.

Hailing from New Orleans, Luke Winslow-King and his singing partner (and now wife) Esther Rose are back with their second effort with Bloodshot Records. Everlasting Arms is what we may call Americana music at its finest, where blues, country, jazz and folk are all aligned in perfection, providing the listener a unique experience, touching our soul and shaking up our mood. Vivid, intelligent and soulful, there’s plenty to admire in this album.

NUNO BABO

ANDREIA ALVES

FAUSTO CASAIS

28.10

OUT NOW

03.11

6

6

8

MAN OVERBOARD Passing Ends EP

THE PHUSS On The Prowl

O ABOMINÁVEL Enteléquia

Rude Records (2014)

Self Released (2014)

Magnetic Eye Records (2014)

Pop-punkers Man Overboard just passed by and delivered this new EP called Passing Ends, while we’re still waiting for their next album - which they’re working on, in order to release it in 2015. Mixed and mastered by Will Yip (Circa Survive, Balance & Composure), Passing Ends has four new tracks and an acoustic version of “Secret Pain”. Not enough to excite us, but it’s always a good listen to something new from these guys... A good appetizer for what will come next, their new full-length.

The debut album of the Portuguese band O Abominável is a dreamy effort. Technically very well executed, consistent and dynamic, Enteléquia is at the same time a strong lyric work. The lyrics are emotional, deep and poetic but as we hear the work as a whole, things get a bit warm and the thrill is almost none. Although, the quality is intrinsic and the waiting for the next chapter will definitely be worth of.

Dirty and loud rock - like rock n´roll should be - is what one can expect from an album of Josh Fleming and company. Using the same formula over and over again can take any band to a point of saturation but it is not the case of On The Prowl!

Produced by Jeff Saenz and mixed by Jordan Richardson. this third record is more aggressive, catchy from the beginning to the end and each song is different which makes this record a fresh, loud and fucking rock work!

FAUSTO CASAIS

ANA CARVALHO

OUT NOW

6 THE PICTUREBOOKS Imaginary Horse

ANA CARVALHO

11.11

03.11

7

6

RidingEasy Records (2014)

SLOW SEASON Mountains

RidingEasy Records (2014)

SPIDERS Shake Electric

Imaginary Horse, the third record of the German duo, is a bluesy and folky work full of rumbling reverberations.

Recorded in a motorcycle garage, this new album is more muscular, the drum riffs are raw and minimal and the guitar ones are bluesy and nasty.

The lyrics are pure hedonism. “Your Kisses Burn Like Fire”, the single, “PCH Diamond” and “These Bridges I Must Burn” are the highlights of a very consistent album.

The second full-length album by the Californian quartet reminds us clearly some of the 70’s psychedelic rock/ blues bands. The howling guitar riffs “à la Led Zeppelin”, the organic bluesy melodies and even the drum’s sound is somehow what they used to sound in the 70’s; in order to do so they recorded the album in a studio and in a garage. When you try to reborn that golden era of Rock, you better do it well and Slow Season did it.

This Swedish band presents us with a sound rooted in the 70’s Hard Rock, and although that is nothing original, they are fronted by a lady, and that gives them a different scope and feel.

They’ve had a distinguished career in their home country and with the carefree sound they present us it’s easy to delve into their sound and just rock your heart out. We’ll have to see if they have the perseverance and opportunity to reach the potential they preface on this record.

ANA CARVALHO

Spinefarm Records (2014)

ANA CARVALHO

musicandriotsmagazine.com

NUNO BABO

111

OUT NOW

OUT NOW

OUT NOW

8

7

6

RANCID Honor Is All We Know

SALLIE FORD Slap Back

SLEEPWAVE Broken Compass

Punk icons Rancid are back with their first album in five years. Honor Is All We Know was produced by Bad Religion’s Brett Gurewtiz, who also contributed to their previous seven efforts in some degree. At their eighth album, Rancid stick to their formula of great licks and huge hooks and that classic trademark anthemic big choruses. Rancid’s gritty punk is quite unique, everything sounds so immediate and insanely addictive, filled with the stories that reflects the cultural, political and social climate in which it was written and recorded. Modern punk only sounds good if sounds like old punk, only Rancid to make us feel like that.

Honor Is All We Know contains all of Rancid’s punk roots, only now it’s encased in perfection.

Sallie Ford and The Sound Outside were a rock ‘n’ roll band from Portland that in 2013 decided that it was time to parted ways, but not all was bad with that decision. Sallie kept on making her own music with a new backing band, where she fulfilled her dream of starting an all-girl rock ‘n’ roll band. The result is the easygoing and frenzy new album Slap Back.

Sallie has described this new effort as an ode to all the babe rockers and we totally get that. Her ability to make cool rock’n’roll tunes is sharper than ever and the resemblances with the 50’s, 60’s and even 70’s female rock groups is inevitable. Producer Chris Funk (Red Fang, Decemberists) had an important role to structure what Sallie was looking for.

Sleepwave is the band of the former Underoath frontman, Spencer Chamberlain. Sometimes it’s hard not to find similarities, whether or not they were intended. Broken Compass is not catchy for example as Bring Me The Horizon last work, but there are glimpses that suggest that Sleepwave can add something to the genre. Musically, the album draws influences from industrial rock (Nine Inch Nails) and Spencer cleans and screams (that are not that frequent) fit like a glove in every lyric of every song. Unfortunately a large portion of the songs sound like a copy of each other, it’s nothing groundbreaking but you still find some good songs! One thing is certain after hear the album, Sleepwave is worlds apart from Underoath!

FOR FANS OF:

FOR FANS OF:

FOR FANS OF:

Epitaph/Hellcat Records (2014)

Epitaph Records (2014)

Vanguard (2014)

FAUSTO CASAIS

Social Distortion, Operation Ivy

ANDREIA ALVES

Those Darlins, Hurray For The Riff Raff

CLÁUDIO ANÍBAL

Underoath, Nine Inch Nails

03.11

OUT NOW

OUT NOW

6

5

8

SOEN Tellurian

THOM YORKE Tomorrow’s Modern

ZOLA JESUS Taiga

Second album by this band labelled as a supergroup, and although that definition is up for debate, there’s no denying the individual capabilities of each musician. Like their first record Cognitive from 2012, this album has a very obvious influence, Tool, although on this album they are trying, and for the most part succeeding, in creating a style of their own. The other influence or let’s call it inspiration is later day Cynic, without the world music and Raga tendencies. This album will appeal especially to Maynard & Co. disciples but also to fans that appreciate Prog Metal musicians that don’t use any excuse to prove that they play well, trying to disguise an obvious lack of talent for composition.

The Eraser followed by Radiohead’s King of Limbs, followed by Atoms for Peace’s Amok, and finally this new solo album. In the last eight years these albums showed the undeniable interest that Yorke has towards electronic music. Although one can’t stone these last endeavors leaded by Yorke, one can say that they have not been particularly exceptional and even add that they don’t pair with some of the brilliant work he managed to deliver in the past. With Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes there’s a feeling of a clear step back. The album is a rather redundant exercise that leads to nowhere and lacks the profound emotional input that Thom is known for. Perhaps that’s the fucking point! Just doesn’t do the trick. Unfair, we know.

When an artist decides to say that the 4th album “feels like my true debut”… the asshole attitude kicks in and we are filled with jokes and a big dismissive attitude – most of the times it is a fucking joke anyway. Nika Danilova was actually telling us the truth. Taiga is the rebirth, thrown at our faces with a brand new, stronger than ever, level of confidence. Confidence in exploring, use the fuckin’ pipes and walk comfortably throughout poppy soils. Nika succeeds on the task of not repeating herself not only when compared with the previous albums but within Taiga itself, with eleven tracks that are challenging, different, dynamic, curious, not easily satisfied and sometimes dangerous. Taiga is probably the most important record of Zola’s career.

She learned to not give a fuck!

FOR FANS OF:

FOR FANS OF:

FOR FANS OF:

Spinefarm (2014)

Self-Released (2014)

NUNO BABO

Tool, Leprous, Opeth

112

music&riots

Atoms For Peace, Radiohead

November

Mute Records (2014)

TIAGO MOREIRA

Austra, Ema, Gazelle Twin

TIAGO MOREIRA

REVIEWS

REVIEWED NEXT ISSUE OUT NOW

9

WEEZER

Everything Will Be Alright In The End Republic (2014)

EX COPS

HAERTS

Daggers

DOWNFALL OF GAIA

Aeon Unveils The Thrones of Decay

In the same year the amazing and classic Blue celebrates 20 years, Weezer releases their ninth studio album, Everything Will Be Alright In The End. After the Red Album some kind of identity crisis and that strange way of embracing pop culture, Mr. River Cuomo needed to somehow do some emends, and with that we say public apologies... For a start the decision to once again call the services of Cars’ Ric Ocasek, about this we must say BRAVO! Everything Will Be Alright In The End sounds like a fan service and a huge return to the roots. “Sorry guys I didn’t realize that I needed you so much / I thought I’d get a new audience, I forgot that disco sucks / I ended up with nobody and I started feeling dumb,” thank you dude for this, we share the same feeling and now let’s “Kick in the door, more hardcore / Rockin out like it’s ‘94 / Let’s turn up the radio / Let’s turn off those stupid singing shows / I know where we need to go: Back to the shack.” Well, the lead single “Back To The Shack” says pretty much what we’ve been waiting for some time. Along the way there is some issues about girls, loneliness, substances and about his dad... And wait, there is also a duet with Best Coast’s Bethany Cosentino, a bit cheesy but it’s ok...

Album of the year? At least it’s a strong contender and their best album in 18 years. By the way, apologies accepted...

Haerts

THE TWILIGHT SAD

Nobody Wants To Be Here And...

RUN THE JEWELS

PIANOS BECOME THE TEETH

FOO FIGHTERS

TV ON THE RADIO

RTJ2

Keep You

Sonic Highways

Seeds

FOR FANS OF:

Pixies, Foo Fighters, Nirvana

ESSENTIAL TRACKS:

Back To The Shack, Eulogy For A Rock Band, Cleopatra FAUSTO CASAIS

SAVAGES AND BO NINGEN

Words To The Blind

MACHINE HEAD

Bloodstone & Diamonds

www.facebook.com/MUSICandRIOTS.Magazine

113

GOAT SWG3, Glasgow 28.09.2014

Words: David Bowes // Pictures: Peter Davidson

S

trolling out to the Saharan shuffle of Talk To God, clad in pseudo-North African garb and donning a mishmash of masks that are part executioner-chic, part Eyes Wide Shut at Ken Kesey’s pad, within minutes it’s made clear that even if Goat’s reputation precedes then, it doesn’t do them justice. Tonight is a kaleidoscopic cavalcade of light and sound, movement and fever, that not only sweeps up the audience in its dervish-like exhilaration but feeds and embraces it, the dual vocalists locking eyes with those in the front rows and cavorting with them, urging a shared experience of dance and rhythm.

While their live set-up is actually stripped back from that of their recordings, it makes little difference with the heady jam-session vibe that they drum up, “The Light Within” segueing into dreamy, wah-laden solos that sprawl and soar, while the flighty organ flourishes of “Disco Fever” are replaced with a less manic, though equally invigorating medley of funkified guitar, finger bells and slick basslines.

It lends the performance an air of unpredictability that, coupled with the leaping, undulating presence of their unnamed frontwomen, means it’s impossible to divert attention from the spectacle lest some spectacular riff or sight is lost to chance.

While the material on its own is sufficiently strong, and the skilful embellishments make it even more so, it’s the undiluted energy that Goat carry with them that is their ultimate triumph. “Run To Your Mama” is unstoppable, a delirious flurry of white-knuckle percussion, impassioned chants and the converging vibes of a thousand universes, and by the time their Hawkwind-channelling, strobe-lit explosion of an encore has wound down, the band are visibly breathless and the crowd aren’t far behind. They may not be the most quintessentially Swedish band around, but for globe-spanning, invigorating and downright exciting music, Korpilombolo’s finest have it covered.

114

music&riots

November

LIVE!

musicandriotsmagazine.com

115

AMPLIFEST Hard Club, Porto 04-05.10.2014

Words: Tiago Moreira // Pictures: Cláudia Andrade

DAY 1 // 04.10.2014 The fourth edition of Portuguese’s Amplifest presented the most ambitious lineup of them all.

Starting with Yob (educate them fools) was genius – not only because it was one of the most waited concerts of the fest, which provided an awesome number of audience members in the opening concert, but also because of the magnifique concert which was based on their all-round awesome new album, Clearing the Path to Ascend.

Peter Brötzmann with his clarinet and saxophone and Steve Noble on the drums, together in a spectacular display of free jazz throughout three music pieces and one small encore… all about freedom.

The folk endeavors of Marissa Nadler were backed up by the amazing Janel Leppin (cello and backing vocals) in what was probably the most in-your-face-and-no-bullshit show of the festival – July is really precious.

Following the honesty and vulnerability of Nadler, the Little Rock’s doomsters Pallbearer recapturing (with elegance and awesome skills) some of the decibels with a heavy set that sort of prepared the audience for the mighty Swans. 2 hours and 20 minutes not easy to take. Loud as fuck and filled with madness. Who said it was easy in the first place? The Seer and To Be Kind are two of the most amazing pieces of these last two years. Believe it or not, it only gets better live. Ben Frost presented his latest album, A U R O R A, with a (electronic) set that was claustrophobic, fierce, minimalist, and bleak… with the awesome company of Thor Harris (Swans).

DAY 2 // 05.10.2014 The second day started with one of the biggest surprises of the entire fest: Black Shape of Nexus with their brutal, heavy and relentless show with their sludge and doom metal. From an electrifying experience to a boring, always warm (not cold, not hot) set by the funeral doomsters Bosque. Conan are not the most exciting doom metal band around these days but after the Bosque set almost anyone can give the audience a good time… at least the UK band had some blood running. With the Urfaust concert being cancelled, the drummer VRDRBR joined forces with half of Sektor 304 to deliver a tribal/industrial and sometimes drone experience.

The day was not blowing minds but there was one thing to get excited by: Wovenhand. The band founded by David Eugene Edwards gave, arguably, the best show of this entire weekend. Centered in the amazing, heavy oriented, album Refractory Obdurate, it seemed that we were all under a big spell, cast by the shaman Edwards. Not only the songs are amazing, and were played amazingly, but there was also this entire performance that… memorable would be an understatement. Amazing!

Cult of Luna hit the stage in one of the last concerts of promotion of their last album, Vertikal. The band is famous for the explosive and captivating shows but this time they seemed to be out of tune with each other. It was a good show but there were some fragilities showed – they kind of ruin what’s probably their most recent masterpiece, “Vicarious Redemption”.

Overall, this fourth edition of Amplifest was not only their most ambitious effort to date but also their best effort to date. The festival keeps growing and we’re just happy to be here, seeing and hearing everything.

116

music&riots

November

Swan

Peter Brotzman

Marissa Nadle

LIVE!

GIRLS NAMES, THE JAPANESE GIRL Hard Club, Porto 27.09.2014 Words: Tiago Moreira

L

Wovenhand

QUADRON, SASHA KEABLE Heaven, London 16.09.2014 Words: Ibrahima de Brito

T

ns

Urfaust

nn

er

et us take care of it, right now. The Japanese Girl, the Portuguese band that was opening the night… they were just terrible.

There’s nothing remotely interesting with this power-trio – well, actually that’s not true because Corinna’s keyboards are kind of cool.

Unfortunately it can not save the lack of skill to create actual good songs nor can it hide the fact that the singer has a terrible, terrible voice.

Sometimes just one band is more than enough. With that out of the way, time for the UK’s Girls Names. Definitely what everyone wanted to see… it is really easy to understand why. The quartet from Belfast was able to create this high level of energy with their electrifying post-punk based sound, which was spread through the entire (half empty) room. Not only they presented their last album, The New Life, but they also managed to show the audience some new tunes that… fucking hell! They’re even better than their older material. It was basically one of these small concerts where everything (let us forget the opening act) seems to work perfectly and the energy is so fuckin’ awesome that we don’t want to leave the damn place. It was a really memorable night with a really memorable band.

Yob

he show had a really great potential and had all the tools to please Greeks and Trojans. With two great acts, singers and songwriters they could have made a much bigger impact than what they did. The last/major act Quadron was just not up to standard.

During the concert they performed some of their songs from their first album and some songs from the second album, Avalanche. It felt like she was singing the same song with just different names. You hear one you hear them all. Not even their cover on one of the King of Pop’s songs saved their concert. Hats off on filling the entire venue which is a pretty big feat considering its size and getting some sort of positive feedback from the crowd. Nevertheless they should have put a better show.

Sasha Keable was the one who kicked off the night with a song from her new EP called “Careless Over You”. Even though she started her performance 20 minutes late she proved that good things are for the ones who wait. She showed a great repertoire of vocal skills. With some really good high pitch notes hitting them falsettos like there was no tomorrow but also using her gloomy and low sexy voice. Giving a new meaning for the letters R&B. Her only flaw is that she didn't have any more new songs to sing - her new EP has only 4 songs. Sasha Keable is a one to watch out for. “Living Without You” was the highlight of her performance After a great opening act the nights’ standard should have gone up. But Quadron didn’t match those expectations. Their concert was mediocre compared to Sasha Keable, even though they have twice the experience. They have to understand that if their songs are all the same make a shorter set of songs otherwise the public gets bored.

Their fans loved it but anyone who went there without being fan, I can guarantee that they were bored as hell.

It was a really interesting night where the roles reversed.

Experience is not everything so it seems. Maybe Quadron should learn something from Sasha Keable, in order to move a step forward. www.facebook.com/MUSICandRIOTS.Magazine

117

118

music&riots

November

CINEMA

GONE GIRL 9 DIRECTOR: David Fincher WRITER: Gillian Flynn CAST: Ben Affleck, Rosamund Pike, Neil Patrick Harris, Tyler Perry, Carrie Coon, Kim Dickens, Patrick Fugit, David Clennon, Lisa Banes, Missi Pyle, Emily Ratajkowski, Casey Wilson, Lola Kirke, Boyd Holbrook, Sela Ward, Lee Norris, Jamie McShane, Leonard Kelly-Young, Kathleen Rose Perkins, Lynn Adrianna, Mark Atteberry USA 2014

O

h my gosh, Fincher did it again!

Gone Girl, directed by David Fincher and based upon the global bestseller by Gillian Flynn, is another precise and mesmerizing film that was able to live up to the hype that preceded its release.

Without any spoilers, we relate that story goes something like this... On the occasion of his fifth wedding anniversary, Nick Dunne (Ben Affleck) reports that his beautiful wife, Amy (Rosamund Pike), has gone missing. Under pressure from the police and a growing media frenzy, Nick’s portrait of a blissful union begins to crumble. Soon his new found lies, deceits and strange behavior have everyone asking the same question: Did Nick Dunne kill his wife? Games aside,besides the he-said-she-said sing-a-long, the truth is that the burning question here is who’s the real victim in the movie? This question and the multi answers to this will haunt you after the movie and for several weeks...

Let’s face it, David Fincher is a fucking genius, he really knows how to push the right buttons and mess with the audience the way he wants. Gone Girl is an elegant and exquisite psychological thriller, where Fincher plays with those simplistic key elements of life and of any other relation between husband and wife where trust, love and passion are the law. Above all, he pinpoints the moral values, and makes a perfect autopsy of what a dead marriage could be. But if a marriage is almost dead, is there any chance of saving it? According to Fincher there is, by the way the amazing and mesmerising Amy, perfectly played by Rosamund Pike, in her own insane way gives some clues about how a marriage could last...

All that said, Gone Girl is a terrific movie, is a masterpiece of genre film-making, deeply cynical and disturbing as fuck, there’s no denying that it’s an entertaining movie. David Fincher’s work always has near perfect flow and tension, well polished by a great editing and a perfect soundtrack, where Trent Reznor and his partner in crime Atticus Ross nailed it again.

FAUSTO CASAIS

musicandriotsmagazine.com

119

MAPS TO THE STARS

8

WHITE BIRD IN A BLIZZARD

7

DIRECTOR: David Cronenberg WRITER: Bruce Wagner CAST: Julianne

DIRECTOR: Gregg Araki WRITER: Gregg Araki, Laura Kasischke CAST:

After the 2012 cold, weird and claustrophobic masterpiece Cosmopolis, Mr. David Cronenberg is back with another exercise of pure and wicked social satire... Centered in the sun-soaked Southern California, Maps To The Stars brings some venom to the complex life of Hollywood’s rich and famous. David Cronenberg and his partner in “screenplay” Bruce Wagner perfectly portray some of the issues regarding Beverly Hills/ Hollywood rich and famous. Money, addictions, failed dreams, lost fame, envy, angst, haunted past, haunted future are some of the creepy aspects of this classic and dysfunctional psychological almost horrific tragicomedy. By the way, the whole cast was weird and fucked up enough as planned, but Julianne Moore was the queen of them all. Freaking amazing!

Shailene Woodley is a rising movie star – such as her ancestor Jennifer Lawrence – so it’s always fun to put her in a leading role, attracting kids to watch pretty good movies. White Bird in a Blizzard isn’t fresh and new and not even a hit, but we can honestly call it a well-spenttime-film. With Eva Green portraying the lunatic mum and Shailene Woodley as the angst teen whose life is thrown into chaos when her mother disappears, White Bird in a Blizzard is an honest and selfish tale of the not so modern family. Dialogues are dense and humble and Miss Green’s beauty is still overwhelming. Worth to watch on a cold rainy day, mostly if you’d like to recall your doubtful teenage years.

Moore, Mia Wasikowska, Robert Pattinson, John Cusack, Evan Bird, Olivia Williams, Kiara Glasco, Sarah Gadon, Dawn Greenhalgh CANADA/USA/GERMANY/FRANCE 2013

Shailene Woodley, Eva Green, Christopher Meloni, Sheryl Lee, Angela Bassett, Thomas Jane, Gabourey Sidibe, Shiloh Fernandez, Dale Dickey, Mark Indelicato FRANCE/USA 2014

MARIANA SILVA

FAUSTO CASAIS

8

THE GIVER

THIS IS WHERE I LEAVE YOU

5

DIRECTOR: Phillip Noyce WRITER: Michael Mitnick, Robert B. Weide CAST: Brenton Thwaites, Jeff Bridges, Meryl Streep, Alexander Skarsgård, Katie Holmes, Odeya Rush, Cameron Monaghan, Taylor Swift, Emma Tremblay USA 2014

DIRECTOR: Shawn Levy WRITER: Jonathan Tropper CAST: Jason Bateman, Tina Fey, Jane Fonda, Adam Driver, Rose Byrne, Corey Stoll, Kathryn Hahn, Connie Britton, Timothy Olyphant, Dax Shepard, Debra Monk, Abigail Spencer USA 2014

In a perfect community ruled without pain, suffering or even lies, a young man is chosen to receive the memories of pain and jealousy from the former real world, through and ancient and wise giver. What he realizes, however, is that love is also the beginning of pain, such as its consequence – and that’s why he eagerly tries to share his discovery with his friends and family. Meryl Streep and Jeff Bridges are the ancient rulers who protect the community from knowing the true and Brenton Thwaites (Prince Philip on Maleficient) is the young savior, who learns the value of love and loss as vital parts of human existence. Despite being a soft approach, The Giver is a happy discovery of what makes us humans – and a proper reminder of its worth.

This Is Where I Leave You is that sort of a typical comedydrama film with a talented cast, that fails completely in its goal to be a heartfelt and emotional movie, thus becoming just an ordinary one. Based on a novel written by Jonathan Tropper - who also wrote the film’s screenplay, - the story is about four grown siblings that after their father passes away they are forced to return to their childhood home and live under the same roof together for a week, along with their mother and spouses, exes and might-have-beens. For such a great and interesting cast, there’s nothing more to offer than a lack of real emotions that maybe could be the main focus on this flick, but it just leaves us wanting for something more frank and realistic.

MARIANA SILVA

120

music&riots

November

ANDREIA ALVES

CINEMA

REVIEWED NEXT ISSUE

6

HORNS DIRECTOR: Alexandre Aja WRITER: Keith Bunin, Joe Hill CAST:

Daniel Radcliffe, Juno Temple, Heather Graham, Kelli Garner, Sabrina Carpenter, David Morse, Joe Anderson, James Remar, Max Minghella, Kathleen Quinlan USA/CANADA 2014

INTERSTELLAR

By Christopher Nolan

“How the hell did that happen?” That’s the most prominent thought when watching Alexandre Aja’s new flick. Based on the novel by Joe Hill, Horns is a supernatural kind of black comedy that combines fantasy with romance. The film follows Ig Perrish (Radcliffe), the number 1 suspect for the violent rape and murder of his girlfriend, Merrin (Temple).

One morning, Ig awakens to strange horns growing on his head and soon realizes their power drives people to confess their sins and give in to their most selfish and unspeakable impulses - which he uses that to find Merrin’s killer. After all the confusing and abstract events, there could have been something more substantial here. As far as the story development goes, that’s up to everyone’s interpretation.

ANDREIA ALVES

THE BABADOOK

By Jennifer Kent

THE ONE I LOVE

DIRECTOR: Charlie McDowell WRITER: Justin Lader CAST: Mark

7

TWO DAYS, ONE NIGHT

By Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne

Duplass, Elisabeth Moss, Ted Danson, Kiana Cason, Kaitlyn Dodson, Lori Farrar, Marlee Matlin, Tim Peddicord, Ryan Pederson, Brett Bietz, Mary Steenburgen USA 2014

The One I Love is the highly-anticipated debut from aclaimed author Charlie McDowell, an original tale that continues to showcase McDowell’s keen observations of human relationships. The movie flirts with a couple on the brink of separation, Ethan (Mark Duplass) and Sophie (Elizabeth Moss) escape to a beautiful vacation house for a weekend getaway in an attempt to save their marriage. It’s an odd, somehow unsettling philosophical kind of romantic mistery comedy. There is clearly a Hitckockian approach, that gives the characters an alternative reality in which both can see their flaws, explore their individuality and intimacy, helping them to examine themselves, their relationship, and their future...

FAUSTO CASAIS

MR. TURNER

By Mike Leigh

www.facebook.com/MUSICandRIOTS.Magazine

121

NEXT ISSUE

2:54 NOTS SOEN EX HEX AGNES OBEL DARK TIMES BRANT BJORK CAVALERA CONSPIRACY SAINT SAVIOUR SET IT OFF LARKIN POE KID WAVE TODAY IS THE DAY BONFIRE BEACH MONSTER MAGNET NEW FOUND GLORY THE TWILIGHT SAD OBLITERATIONS ARABROT ANATOMY OF HABIT AND MUCH MORE...

122

music&riots

November

124

music&riots

November