New Noise Magazine - Issue #25

WITH OKKULTOKRATI Interview with drummer Lars by Mike Gaworecki

PHOTOGRAPHY BY REMY EIK

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orway’s Okkultokrati, purveyors of all things dark and heavy, recently announced that they’re joining the roster of Southern Lord Records. The label—known for focusing on the more experimental side of metal—is perhaps the perfect home for a band whose music is a ferocious stew of punk, D-beat, crust, sludge, doom, and black metal. “Southern Lord acts like Earth, Velvet Cacoon, Gore, Sunn O))), and Winter have played a big part in shaping our approach to music, both personally and in Okkultokrati,” guitarist Erik Svarte said in a statement when the signing was announced. “To me, a band like Sunn O))) represents something contemporary, and we recognize ourselves in that.”

Southern Lord just rereleased Okkultokrati’s two most recent albums, 2012’s Snakereigns and 2014’s Night Jerks. But the bigger news is that a brand new album is forthcoming, to be released by Southern Lord sometime this fall.

Okkultokrati drummer, Lars, says that the new album is currently being recorded in Oslo’s Malabar Studios. Fellow Norwegian Emil Nikolaisen of the shoegaze/indie band, Serena-Maneesh,who worked with Okkultokrati on Snakereigns, is

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once again handling production duties.

Those vital statistics are all well and good, but what you’re probably wondering is: what does the new album sound like? “First of all, we have added a full-time synth player in Feffe Severin,” Lars says. “We wanted to add some otherworldly sounds to the pot and get closer to what the mighty Emperor did on In the Nightside Eclipse. What we are trying to capture on this record is a notion of crystallization. That means cutting the crap and getting closer to the potential that really exists in our sound.”

PHOTOGRAPHY BY LARS DALEN

While principal songwriting was done prior to the studio, Lars says the band are pushing themselves to forge the purest musical statement they can. “All the songs were written before we hit the studio, but treated as bastards after tracking, exploiting whatever traces of good DNA we could find,” he explains. The band track the songs as they would play them live, “no fucking click tracks or whatever,” Lars adds. Then, the vocals are tracked on top. “Right now, we are mixing the record 24/7,” he says. “A record takes time: if anyone tells you otherwise, it is said out of either laziness or ignorance. Or both.”

All of the lyrics were written before

entering the studio as well. The lyrics, Lars says, “explore subjects that have to do with ideas of evolution and status quo, like control and priming, future visions, transhumanism, the multiverse, detachment versus feelings, manipulation and honesty, masters and servants.

Hidden futures, if you will.”

After the album, which doesn’t yet have a name—at least not one the band will share—is released in early fall, Okkultokrati plan to hit the road, embarking on a month long European tour with industrial upstarts, Youth Code. Lars adds that he and his band have “several other live plans after that and next year.”

shines a light on the joys and heart-

FQP aches that lie at the intersection of the

LGBTQIA+ community and the world of alternative music. While queer representation is often refracted through the prism of normative curiosities and concerns, FQP features queer voices saying whatever they want, however they want.

Don’t fear the realness.

to our neighbor’s place to watch the pay-per-view events like “Wrestlemania” in the early ‘90s. I was friends with the kids who lived there, but they didn’t like wrestling, so here I was in the smoky room of a double-wide trailer with two gray-haired men, watching sweaty, nearly naked men touch each other.

It’s no wonder I turned out gay. […]

FEATURING MARS GANITO OF AYE NAKO

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rooklynite Mars Ganito is best known as the vocalist and guitarist of Aye Nako, a DIY band who have forcibly wrenched pop punk from its oft misogynistic, heterosexist, and predominantly white roots to create catchy, youthful jams for fans of the genre who have long been ignored or maligned by its progenitors. The band embark on a short tour with Screaming Females in May, and are in the process of writing songs for their third record.

Outside of his work with Aye Nako, Ganito is working on a horror film called “Flesh” about a Black serial killer, and considering creating his own podcast with Laetitia Tamko from Vagabon. “Now that I’ve said it, I have to do it!” he laughs.

ON VIDEO GAMES:

I was always a quiet kid, but if you knew to talk to me about video games, I would suddenly become impassioned and talkative. That remains true today. I lived for video rental stores and scanning the backs of the boxes trying to decide in what alternate universe I was going to spend my weekend.

The feeling of getting to be someone else, somewhere else—I was desperate for that. I needed the escape. I needed a break from

being the confused, traumatized, isolated Black girl that I was.

There was a weird phase where I didn’t play video games much at all.

I gave my them up to have a “social life” and focus more on making music. Two years ago, I came back to them. […]

I think video games get a lot of flak and [are] deemed a waste of time by non-gamers, because they are only thinking of AAA titles and, like, picturing adolescent boys [and] infantile men in their basements calling their virtual enemies “fag” or something. Meanwhile, there’s so many girls and women who game, so many queers and trans people who game, so many people who aren’t bros. I feel a stinging in my heart when a “friend” comes at me with their blasphemy, saying they straight up don’t like video games. You just haven’t found the right game for you.

ON WRESTLING:

I can only count on one hand the people in my life that I can talk to about wrestling these days. I’m talking WWF and WCW era. My dad got me into it. I tuned in every week till I was 17 or so. He and I used to walk across the street

I’ll always have a place in my heart for wrestling. I’m thankful that YouTube exists, so I can relive some of the most exhilarating moments in my life, such as the time when Stone Cold [Steve Austin] snuck up on Booker T at the grocery store and asked if he wanted some ketchup with his ass whoopin’, Rey Mysterio performing his aerial moves, when people got chokeslammed through the ring, when Goldust did or said extra gay things to the other wrestlers, the goosebumps I got when The Rock said anything, and the times Chyna entered with her fireworks bazookas. It was so important for me growing up a “tomboy” to see a woman like her. She wasn’t afraid to kick men’s asses and I always appreciated that. Requiescat In Pace.

To be quite honest, when I hear anyone say “TLC,” my first thought is tables, ladders, and chairs.

ON HAIR:

Most early photographs of me exhibit a shy mixed kid in oversized t-shirts, sweatpants or “Ninja Turtles” shorts, and poofy, frizzy hair. […] I didn’t grow up with any Black family members, so I wasn’t taught how to care for Black hair.

My first haircut wasn’t till eight or nine years ago, and I only recently started using the right products.

If you see me wearing a hat, it’s very likely due to my insecurities surrounding my hair, not because of the weather or for style.

My stomach churns when I see white people with dreadlocks. […]

It churns thinking of white men reading this and thinking how silly I must be to talk about hair. I guess it’s also silly to bring up how when Black people let the hair on their head grow out naturally, they get denied jobs, suspended from school, and are assumed to be unwashed and drug dealers.

There’s a new ad for SheaMoisture that I haven’t watched yet, because I know it’ll make me cry and I don’t want to do that right now. From what I’ve read, the commercial makes a statement on how there’s a separate section for the “ethnic” products, while the “normal” haircare section gets to be called “health and beauty.” A quote from the founder of the company, [Richelieu Dennis]—“I have often said over the last 20 years that the beauty aisle is the last place in America where segregation is still legal”—resonates with me and my story. I used to either shy away from or even make fun of the “ethnic” section. This makes me want to vomit remembering how firmly established my internalized anti-Blackness was at that point.

That section tends to be where you can find skin bleaching creams, which, had I thought more about, I might have used instead of wearing only pants and long sleeves so my skin wouldn’t tan those couple of summers in the middle of my teenage years. My reasoning: “No one would love me if I have dark skin.”

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has kept in touched with their vocalist over the years, and recently, the opportunity came up for us to tour together.

There has been so much going on behind the scenes over the past four months.

None of this would be possible without the support of Victory Records, so we are very thankful for them picking us.”

The label also played a part in shaping the new record. “Victory Records contacted our manager when we were about 70 percent done with the album,” Eriksson explains. “The signing and what they told us gave us the spark to scratch three songs we had previously written and write three new songs in a different direction. The full-length has songs we wrote two years ago and songs we wrote three months ago.”

EASYCORE REVIVALISTS- ABANDONED BY BEARS INTERVIEW WITH BASSIST GUSTAV ERIKSSON AND VOCALIST LEON EKELUN BY MATTHEW SAUNDERS

Easycore saw a “revival” in 2015, and one of the most talked about bands in said revival was the relatively unknown Abandoned By Bears. Now, their debut full-length, The Years Ahead, has been released on April 29 via Victory Records.

Abandoned By Bears formed in the summer of 2012 and had big dreams, especially to one day tour the States. “We have always been influenced by AmeriListening to Stars Hollow’s debut EP, I’m Really Not That Upset About It, presents its own challenge. Out now via Sorry Dad Records, the five songs represent fighting the enemies in one’s mind. “It’s kind of hard to hone in on exactly what I’m upset about. It’s a million things and really nothing at the same time,” remarks Tyler Stodghill, vocalist and guitarist of the Iowa trio. The title of the record is a bit tongue in cheek, while still evoking the struggle of being a person who lives with constant melancholy. Stodghill continues, “I’m just a guy in his 20s going through college and trying to not let day-to-day life kill me.”

There’s plenty to relate to between the visceral music and the individuals playing it. Bassist Jesse Ledbetter offers his own screaming vocals to the mix, which combine with Stodghill’s to form a sort of call and response, or sometimes, blend together as gang vocals that emphasize specific parts. Wyatt Timberlake intri-

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can culture and media,” bassist Gustav Eriksson says. “In Sweden, we have our own media and music, and the music is very electronic heavy with Avicii and Swedish House Mafia. The ‘pop punk’ scene is so small as I can count the bands I know within this scene on my left hand.”

“This is why we are excited to tour the States this year!” Eriksson explains, cately ties songs together with winding yet steady drum grooves. At times, the drumming even takes on a pop style. “It’s to a point where having any other drummer would probably make us sound really weird. We’re all into pop music,” Stodghill comments. The light stabs the guitars make with their sliding licks would make you think otherwise. Stars Hollow are complex, with whirling guitar wrapping itself around a tight-knit rhythm section. “Embarrassed” is an album highlight, its dazzling atmosphere combining with the riveting emotions pouring out from the band.

With their punchy music comes a lyrical depth that doesn’t focus on appealing to the masses. Stodghill uses their music as his own outlet. “I don’t really write for the sake of people thinking that I’m deep or poetic,” he says. “I write what’s honest and what fits in with my perception of things.” The lyrical lines ride through Stodghill’s memories; the three

adding, “We can’t wait to try all the food in America. We [are] excited to try Taco Bell and In-N-Out!” The members of Abandoned By Bears will see their dreams come true this summer when the band co-headlines the Guardian Of Easycore Tour with Artery Records band, For The Win. “We’re really big fans of For The Win,” Eriksson says. “Our vocalist, Fredric [Andersson],

In the past few months, not only have the band signed to an American label, they’ve also welcomed a new member into their lineup, Max Fahlman. “He’s a great friend and drummer, and that’s exactly what we needed right now,” Eriksson says.

The band claim none of their success would be possible without their loyal fan base. “I just want to thank our parents, Victory Records, and all of our fans out there,” vocalist Leon Ekelund says. “It means a lot when people come to see us or tell their friends on Facebook to check us out. We’re thankful from the bottom of our hearts.”

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NOTHING TO BE UPSET ABOUT- STARS HOLLOW

INTERVIEW WITH VOCALIST/GUITARIST TYLER STODGHILL BY SEAN GONZALEZ band members seem to wonder whether their memories are fair-weather friends.

It’s an emotional connection everyone can get behind, and Stars Hollow will continue to dazzle people with their

own reflective penance. “It wouldn’t be nearly as fulfilling if I felt the need to hold myself back,” Stodghill concludes.

I’m Really Not That Upset About It does everything but that.

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Ontario based melodic punks—not quite pop punk!—Rarity are one of the latest bands to sign to Rise Records, and with their debut April release, I Couldn’t Be Weaker, the band are truly rising to the occasion. Their hypermelodic, surprisingly aggressive form of post-hardcore meets easycore is assuredly easy on the ears, and this record showcases a band in their infancy who are much wiser than expected.

Rarity do not fit into a neat musical box, and that’s on purpose. Drummer Evan Woods explains, “When it came time to write a full-length record, we stopped thinking, ‘Oh, a pop punk band wouldn’t do this,’ and started thinking, ‘Do we think this is sick? Yeah? Then it goes on the record!’ Emotionally, we want to give listeners literally everything we could give. These songs mean a lot to us, and if we can’t convey that, then we’re doing it wrong. It

wasn’t about just writing songs; it was about catharsis through music.”

“This record is honest,” Woods continues. “It is a very personal and incredibly self-critical album. It touches on anxiety, heartache, [and] social issues, as well as other more personal concepts. We’re happy to be sharing these feelings, though, as it works as an emotional outlet for us. We hope it can in any way make it easier for someone else who shares these worries.”

Rarity do a truly fantastic job conveying that musical and lyrical honesty in their own unique style. I Couldn’t Be Weaker may be too heavy for the pop punk defenders and too melodic for hardcore tough guys—this is “life isn’t easy” core. If listeners need a reason to check out Rarity, they only need to jam “Effexor” really loudly a few times to seal the deal.

ONLY THE SICKEST CUTS- RARITY

INTERVIEW WITH DRUMMER EVAN WOODS BY NICHOLAS SENIOR The band will be announcing summer tour plans soon, so if you are looking for a new punk band who aren’t afraid to be authentically musically and emotionally heavy, get out to a Rarity

show. If you’re looking for a perfect sweet spot between Rise Against and Say Anything, Rarity will be your new favorite band.

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FRESH, ORGANIC BAY AREA JAMS- KNOW SECRETS MOVING FORWARD- THE SUNSET SHIPWRECKS PHOTO: JOE CALIXTO

INTERVIEW WITH FRONTMAN ERIC URBACH BY JOHN B. MOORE Eric Urbach is a vet of the San Francisco punk scene. So, when he decided to launch his new project, Know Secrets—a community based band with a revolving set of musicians—he knew exactly where to go to draft folks for the record.

“To find people, I put out the word to my peers, and most of the folks I asked decided to contribute,” Urbach says. “After a few songs were recorded, word started to spread about what I was doing, and a bunch of people I didn’t know started reaching out to be a part of the project. It was great to see the response to the idea and get the opportunity to work with people that I had close personal relationships with as well as people I’ve never met or worked with before in any capacity.”

The result is the full-length At Rise, which comes out June 11 on Urbach’s label, 301 Collective, and will be available on Know Secrets’ Bandcamp.

The entire process was organic, even the songwriting. Each song started as one or two riffs and a general picture in Urbach’s head of where he thought it would go. He would then spend a few hours with the collaborator(s) hashing it out before the studio date. Once in the studio, they did some fine-tuning and put the song down. “Much to my excitement,

the song always turned in an unexpected direction,” Urbach says. “It was really important for me to have this be an exercise in letting go of expectation, as well as creating a space [in which] people felt comfortable and supported so the contributor’s musical voice came through.

Each song has a different character because of that, and I felt humbled that other people were excited to add their voices to the sound of the band.”

In total, 18 people—including Urbach— worked on At Rise. Among them was Urbach’s dad, who helped record the album and played drums on the song “In Descent,” which they worked on together. The two also co-run Lodasia Sound.

Urbach has also put together a live band to perform the songs in San Francisco and at a few other West Coast dates.

Though At Rise has yet to be released, Urbach is already thinking about the next record. “My goal is to do different versions of this process every time we set out to write something,” he says. “I have a few different ideas for how to approach the next thing, and, while I’m in no rush at the moment to hop back into it, I’m very excited to see what happens next.”

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I N T E R V I E W W I T H G U I TA R I ST / C O - VO CA L I ST RYA N M AS S E Y BY J O H N B . M O O R E American Steel put out five full-lengths and a handful of 7”s and EPs over their nearly 15 years of existence, earning a reputation as of one of the most consistently great punk bands in the Bay Area. When the band folded and half of the group went on to record a new album, one would think they would have clung to the prestige.

“Well, first and foremost, this is a completely different band playing a different style of music,” says Ryan Massy, formerly of American Steel, who now plays guitar and shares vocal duties in The Sunset Shipwrecks. “But beyond that, I am a big believer in band chemistry—that something in the interaction of a group is what makes it special and greater than the sum of its parts,” he continues. “You could replace the least capable musician in a band with someone who was supremely talented and still mess the whole thing up. So, when [bassist] John [Peck] moved to Berlin, we pretty much just all looked at each other and said, ‘Well, that’s that.’”

Between American Steel and its forerunner, Communique, Massey and Peck had played together for close to 20 years. With the dissolution of the renowned punk band, Massey, along with drummer Scott Healy, teamed up

with San Francisco scenemates Brian Miu and Sean Reilly to start The Sunset Shipwrecks, a band who are straightahead rock ‘n’ roll. “This music is just where my head is at; old rock ‘n’ roll and soul music have always been at the center of my musical universe,” Massey says. “We get to be a bit more dynamic, and I get to sing in more of a variety of styles, which I love getting to do.

And when I feel like letting loose and screaming my lungs out, I still get to do that too.”

Their 10 song debut, Community, comes out on Massey’s newly revived Lugosi Records May 27. The record was also an excuse to call up Kevin Army, the famed producer and engineer who has worked with some of the biggest punk bands of the past few decades including Operation Ivy, Jawbreaker, Green Day, and American Steel. “Kevin and I have stayed in touch over the years and worked together on a couple of small jingle projects at my studio in Oakland,” Massey says. “Kevin never lets me quit until he thinks I have done my best work. […] I am very much indebted to Kevin for the hard work he put into the album.”

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FRESH OUT OF THE HEPATITIS BATHTUB...

DIRECT HIT! G

et pumped, Direct Hit! fans! Wasted Mind—the Milwaukee based pop punk band’s follow-up to 2013’s apocalyptic concept album, Brainless God—is nigh! After the string of improbable instances of bad luck that befell the band surrounding their sophomore record—such as their van getting stolen and their equipment being destroyed in rehearsal space fire—they were due to catch a break.

Woods admits to being blown away at the prospect of being on a label that inspired him as a teenager. “I’ve been following Fat Wreck since I was 15 or 16 years old,” he says. “You never think that you’re gonna end up being able to work with the kind of people that inspired you and the scene that kind of opened your mind to the world.”

That break came when Fat Wreck Chords signed Direct Hit! to release their new 12 song concept album, set to drop June 24. Vocalist, guitarist, and founder, Nick Woods, remains at a loss to describe how it all happened. “It’s totally surreal,” Woods says of opening for NOFX and touring with fellow Fat Wreck band, Portland’s Mean Jeans, as part of the Hepatitis Bathtub Tour.

“There’s a lot of people that ask how we ended up on Fat Wreck, and it’s such a long, convoluted, random, ridiculous

After starting Direct Hit! in 2007 as a way to release songs on the Internet, the band would congeal six years later around Woods, drummer Danny Walkowiak, guitarist Devon Kay, and bassist Steve Maury. “I wanted the band to be 100 percent about fun,” Woods recalls. As the band progressed, they unsurprisingly got better. Woods says Wasted Mind—a sort of surrealist “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” meets “Naked Lunch” meets a punk rock Jerry Bruckheimer movie—will prove that. “I think it’s our best record yet,” Woods says flatly. “This was the first time that we went into a studio for three weeks and worked

MEAN JEANS S

synth, closing track, “Are there Beers in Heaven?” has a sick keyboard intro.

Billy says that the drummer—whose real name is Andrew Bassett—even has “a solo album on Burger Records as The Hound Of Love, [2013’s Careful Houndy], that is predominantly synthesizers.”

Those electro-pop tidbits have found their way into a good deal of Mean Jeans’ discography over the years.

ome may argue that bands like The Riverdales were a bit too on the nose when aping the Ramones, but Mean Jeans embody the group Joey and the guys would have evolved into had they not broken up. After several releases on Dirtnap Records in their home base of Portland, Ore., the trio have signed with Fat Wreck Chords and it’s a perfect fit. “Staying true to the idiotic approach that Mean Jeans have always taken with everything, we emailed info@fatwreck.com and asked if they would put out our new album,” vocalist and guitarist Billy Jeans says.

“They said yes.” Sometimes, that’s truly all it takes.

Despite the change, Billy assures, “Dirtnap has been great for us and we maintain a lot of respect for the label.”

The band officially hooked up with Fat just before Halloween in 2015, and have since released a 7” single, Night Visions, and a new full-length, Tight New Dimension. They’ve also joined NOFX’s Hepatitis Bathtub Tour alongside Direct Hit!

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Tapping into Wilder’s affection for

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PHOTOGRAPHY BY ALAN SNODGRASS

story that I don’t even know how to explain it all.”

“I’m surprised I haven’t pushed for more whacky synths on our songs, but maybe it’s because keyboards just aren’t that punk?” Wilder says.

He is also quick to correct me when I mistakenly call the track “All the Beers in Heaven” by saying, “It doesn’t matter either way, because if there are beers in heaven, we will chug all of them to be sure.”

The tour with NOFX is both the largest Mean Jeans have ever played and the band’s first tour in a support slot.

Junior reflects that “everything about it is way different from how the Jeans usually roll. But it’s rock ‘n’ roll, not rocket science. I think we’re pretty good at having fun wherever we are and in any situation, so we are just gonna party on through it.”

When asked if they’re planning on any split releases with their new labelmates, Wilder jokingly responds,

INTERVIEW WITH VOCALIST/GUITARIST NICK WOODS BY NICK HARRAH really hard on making sure everything was perfect.”

Woods calls Wasted Mind “a cartoonish vision of drug use,” before adding, “I spent a lot of time watching movies about—not necessarily drug use, but about the horrors of the mind and imagination and stuff like that, and expanding what it is that you know just based on your own brain. So, in a way, it’s kind of a commentary on our own music, since we never really write about real life topics.”

For Woods, real life is a trip. It’s OK if he’s at a loss to put into words how it feels for his punk rock dream to come true. “There aren’t many times in your life when that kind of thing happens,” he says. “You spend 10, 15 years working on something and trying to be as good as your heroes and the people you care about. To be recognized by them on the level that we have, where they are actually interested in putting our music out… I don’t really know how to describe that.”

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PHOTOGRAPHY BY ALAN SNODGRASS

I N T E R V I E W W I T H B I L LY J E A N S , J E A N S W I L D E R A N D J U N I O R J E A N S BY K AY L A G R E E T “We met with the Fat crew Face To Face to discuss this, but they have a very Hi-Standard, so they said Good Riddance to us, because wev weren’t up to Snuff.” He then adds, “But, for real, I’m tryna do a split with Frenzal Rhomb, the Australian punk maniacs who also love guzzling the beers.”

Mean Jeans will tour the Midwest in May before heading to Europe in July and August, and will hit up a few well known fests along the way. Aside from touring, their favorite summertime activities include toobin’, reminiscing, chuggin’ beer, and grillin’ and chillin’.

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Mean Jeans just might party harder than you.

WITHERED W

ithered carved a nice, wretched name for themselves in the extreme metal underworld during the 2000s. Atlanta’s heaviest and most pulverizing sons released three widely acclaimed blackened death metal albums before sinking below the radar after 2010’s Dualitas. Thankfully, Withered have emerged from their festering cocoon and returned with yet another deranged sonic masterwork, Grief Relic, out May 27 on Season Of Mist records. “Well, it was anything but a hiatus on our end,” vocalist and guitarist Mike Thompson says of the band’s extended six year gap in releases. “At the end of the Dualitas touring cycle in 2012, over about a six month period, we lost [ex-guitarist] Dylan [Kilgore], our relationship with Prosthetic Records ended, and we lost [ex-bassist] Mike [Longoria].”

Despite these setbacks, Thompson and longtime drummer/force of nature, Beau Brandon, decided to carry on and work on new Withered music themselves.

The duo eventually added guitarist and vocalist Ethan McCarthy of Primitive

W

VHS

ith members from bands such as Criminal Code and Big Eyes, Violent Human System—or VHS for short—have an abundance of musical talent amongst them.

Three of the four members are Seattle transplants by way of Reno and have adjusted well to the rainy Northwest.

Vocalist and guitarist Jawsh explains the move, saying, “I’ve never lived anywhere else, so I wanted to leave Reno before I never did. Figured it might be my last chance.”

“It’s a lot easier to not get things done [in Reno]. There’s no real sense of urgency,” bassist Chris says. Whereas, in Reno, they were working part-time and living in houses with free practice spaces, having less free time in Seattle helps to motivate the band.

VHS guitarist, Morgan, agrees that if they “did the same band in Reno, we probably would have broken up three months ago.”

The band—which also includes VHS drummer, Gavin—started up in 2014 and have put out several releases— primarily cassettes—on their label, Casino Trash Records. “Initially, we just wanted to do a bunch of VHS stuff, and then, we started doing stuff for our friends,” Jawsh says. Freak Vibe from

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Man into the fold. As Thompson explains, “Beau and I continued writing and had a few songs roughed in when Ethan came on board in 2013. We finished roughing in the songs and started tracking drums and guitars in late 2014.” The band eventually recruited renowned musician/studio wizard, Colin Marston of Dysrhythmia, Krallice, and Gorguts, to join them on bass and help bring Grief Relic’s haunting sound to life. “We decided to self-finance the recording so that we’d have full control over the process, creativity, and our peace of mind,” Thompson adds. “Basically, no compromises, anywhere, period.”

For future reference, when Thompson alludes to crafting music with no compromises, he basically means making Withered’s songs unconscionably heavy and chaotic—in a good way. Grief Relic is essentially a 40 minute voyage into the heart of darkness.

“It’s about emotional permanence,” Thompson says of the album’s title.

“The things that we cannot unlearn and the things that are torn from us that can never be regained. Imagine your soul, heart, or psyche as a puzzle that you’re born with. When a puzzle piece is lost [or] taken, it leaves an emptiness. No matter what, you will not find that same shaped piece ever again. Think about

Seattle was the second release from Casino Trash—of which all 400 copies sold out—and the label’s upcoming 7” is for The Shivas, the band’s first release not for K Records. Jawsh is also acutely aware that their band name lends them the opportunity to release on VHS, but says they couldn’t find any. “Any band can have a bad name,” he says, “but we have two bad names.”

INTERVIEW WITH VOCALIST/GUITARIST MIKE THOMPSON BY JAMES ALVAREZ how long it might be until every piece of you is lost or mangled.” Speaking of mangled, anyone but the finest metal connoisseur might not survive the Grief Relic listening experience. Gargantuan riffs merge with a barrage of blast beats, waves of chill-inducing feedback, and an absolutely torturous dual vocal attack.

“On the previous albums, we had always written as a group,” Thompson explains.

“This was a completely different landscape that I think resulted in a more dense writing style. We wanted to do our version of a death metal record and

agreed there would be no interludes, intros… Just dense, heavy riffs. Since everyone wasn’t in the room at the same time, we inadvertently worked to compensate for the sonic void we felt with only one guitar and drums; so, it was done more in layers.” This explains the methodically planned, multilayered assault of tracks like “Feeble Grasp” and “Husk.” Think Blessed Are the Sick era Morbid Angel fighting the discordant riff-benders in Immolation, during a true Norwegian black metal snowstorm, and you’ve got the unforgiving gist of Withered’s new album.

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PHOTOGRAPHY BY MONICA MARTINEZ

“It’s all good music. I back everything that we put out,” says Morgan of their DIY label. “I think, in the first year, we did eight releases. All cassette, and then, we have two 7”s out now.”

After initially making some demos, VHS passed them on to Dave Dickenson from Suicide Squeeze Records. On June 17, their upcoming record, Gift of Life, will initially be pressed on vinyl

by Suicide Squeeze, and later have a run of cassette tapes on Casino Trash, because, as Jawsh explains, “You can buy a tape player for eight dollars at a thrift store. It’s not hard.” Some of the songs on the full-length deal with his day job, working “on the periphery of the medical field,” as he puts it. “I’m around sick people all the time. It’s kinda depressing.” Gift of Life’s first single, “Wheelchair,” lays down some heavy lyrics, such as “There’s only drugs for the pain / And there’s only pain without drugs.”

The band as a whole play music that exists in a crazy crossroads between My War era Black Flag and Mind Spiders/

INTERVIEW WITH JAWSH, MORGAN, AND CHRIS BY KAYLA GREET Marked Men: it’s frantic, distorted, and paranoid. “I’m uncomfortable, like, 90 percent of the time,” Jawsh says. “You can’t even go outside without being recorded. Hopefully, we’ll never be famous enough for someone to take pictures of us.”

Earlier this year, VHS took off for their second small tour down the West Coast to San Diego. “The winter was so long this year,” Morgan says. “I felt like if we didn’t get out of town for at least just a week, then we would have gone completely stir crazy.”

Seattle will see a record release party around May 30 when the LP comes out.

Following that, among local shows they play throughout the year, VHS will play Suicide Squeeze’s 20 year anniversary

show in August. They plan to hit the road in the fall to support Gift of Life, with tour dates to be determined later this year.

.....

THE BROWNING I

solation is by far the best thing The Browning has done,” says vocalist and founding member Jonny McBee. “It’s the most emotion, the most purity in content matter, and is the most true to me. I wanted to take what The Browning does and show people its true potential and darkness.” The Browning are an eclectic band best known for their ability to seamlessly combine electronic music with the heavy breakdowns and unclean vocals of metalcore. Think Skrillex meets Whitechapel, in which bass drops can double as the breakdown of a bridge and the backtracks are just as catchy as the vocals are harsh. On June 24, Spinefarm Records will give the public a chance to hear the next installment in The Browning’s genre-defying discography: Isolation.

"

The Browning initially began as McBee’s solo project in the mid 2000s, but eventually cranked up to a full-fledged band with two full-length releases and two EPs under their belt. “The biggest challenge [when following up an album] is figuring out how you can write another 12 songs that aren’t exactly like what you’ve done before,” McBee continues. “What else can you talk about?

A

WIRE

t this point, the U.K. art-punks in Wire have become a household name. Their first record, Pink Flag, came out in 1977 and has become a seminal album for many music fans, but those fans may not realize that they’re still creatively productive. They have put out a wealth of content in their near 40 year existence. Despite a couple of gaps in their career, the Wire train is still chugging along at a hearty pace with their latest album, Nocturnal Koreans, out now on the band’s own label, Pink Flag Records.

The titular track from this latest LP was inspired by their most recent tour in 2013. Vocalist and guitarist Colin Newman reveals that there is part of

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What other cool things can you do? The Browning now has almost 50 songs that have been written and recorded, so it can be tough to make sure you aren’t repetitive.”

McBee tries not to take outside musical influences into account when writing new material, though he may occasionally let Rammstein—who he calls the “best band to ever exist”—slip onto his media player.

“When I am in ‘writing mode,’ I try not to listen to any music besides what I am writing, because I don’t want to get influence from anything outside of my own head,” McBee explains. “This I feel is what makes our albums as unique as they are. I don’t want to be influenced by anything. I want to write a Browning album.” Instead, McBee finds inspiration from both himself and the social culture that surrounds him, especially the digital age. “A big influence on the album is the state of humanity and how disappointed I am with it in multiple ways,” he says. “I hate the Internet, I hate the way people treat each other… I hate a lot of things.”

With titles like “Pure Evil,” “Spineless,” and “Disconnect,” it is clear that there was a lot of harbored abhorrence channeled into Isolation. “I have grown a lot over the years in my musical taste and preference,” McBee says, “and with Isolation, I wanted to represent where I am right now musically. The album is a lot more mature and

INTERVIEW WITH VOCALIST/PROGRAMMER JONNY MCBEE BY NATASHA VAN D U S E R the lyrics are by far the best we’ve ever had.” McBee cites his love of blending metal and electronica as a key to unlocking this developed tone. “They are both a part of the music just as much as the other,” he explains. “They both add darkness, heaviness, melodies. I pay just as much attention to both aspects.”

Drawing from the world around him is also what inspired Isolation’s title. “While writing all the lyrics for the album, I was writing the song ‘Isolation,’ and the word just really resonated with me,” McBee says. “There are a lot of points in life that people feel like

they are isolated in some way.” Thankfully, all this new music from The Browning won’t be isolated for long, as they will set off on a European tour this summer in support of I Killed The Prom Queen. McBee is highly optimistic about the upcoming touring cycle, and just as he feels this new record is their best work, he hopes their live shows will follow suit. “I think the music is something a lot of people can attach themselves to for multiple reasons,” McBee concludes.

“We want people who have seen The Browning multiples times to have a whole new experience when they see us [this time around].”

.....

that tour sprinkled in the lyrics, but they also feature “experiences relating to every tour which stay lodged in our collective consciousness.” Wire have tried to tackle their last handful of tours in a van rather than a sleeper bus, and to stick with reasonable distances between gigs. “That means you end up in places where the routing takes you,” Newman says.

“The basis of Wire has always been about ensemble playing, rather than individual brilliance,” Newman reflects.

This current period is the longest Wire have worked as an active band since they first formed. Newman states that making it work really boils down to “the amount we have achieved over those [last] nine years.” He continues, “If you go back 10 or 20 years, it was quite normal for Wire to be referred to in the past tense,” and adds that “deep within Wire’s DNA is the interest [and] obses-

INTERVIEW WITH VOCALIST/GUITARIST COLIN NEWMAN BY KAYLA GREET sion for new things, new approaches, new strategies. It’s the thing we have most in common.”

gance of the production process—finding creative solutions to get things to work is an important strategy!”

Many of the songs that appear on Nocturnal Koreans were initially written and recorded during the sessions for their 2015 self-titled LP, but just didn’t quite fit onto that record. “We recorded 19 pieces for what became the Wire album, but there was no way they could get completed within the timeframe,” Newman remembers. The band planned to play everything from the self-titled record live, so they stuck with the 11 tracks that made most sense in a live setting, leaving them with eight tracks for the current record. “There’s not a great deal that doesn’t get used,” Newman explains. “It’s part of the ele-

Now that Wire manage their Pink Flag label, they have a lot more independence in their creative output. “It becomes about informed choices,” Newman laments, continuing that “the obvious benefit of having your own label is that nobody can pressure us into doing anything we don’t want.” As it stands, they operate in cycles: in one year, they’ll release an album and tour, but the year following will only feature an album on its own. This is one of their off-years for touring, so fans will have to wait one more calendar turn to see them once again traverse the U.S.

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COMBICHRIST

C

ombichrist have been trafficking in an abrasive sound and image for quite some time.

The Atlanta-by-way-of-Norway based aggrotech band have never shied away from controversy, but vocalist Andy LaPlegua has always viewed the band as a way to embrace a character. With This Is Where Death Begins—due out via Out Of Line Music on June 3—LaPlegua seems to be taking off the mask a bit. However, fear not, as the band’s seventh record is their best yet, with a perfect balance of metallic and electronic elements.

The vocalist’s aspirations for this album aid in understanding the aggressive nature of Combichrist: “I always separate musicians from artists; a musician can do what they know and/or play what other people wrote for you, [ but] being an artist, you always have to challenge yourself and push the limits. It never just falls into place until the end of the process, but when it does, it’s like the whole world make sense.”

NERVOSA

L

ike the best of ‘80s thrash, Nervosa are one hell of a potent riff-machine, cranking out angry, vitriolic tunes on the back of some legitimately fantastic metal chops. The Brazilian thrashers’ sophomore record, Agony—due out via Napalm Records on June 3— feels influenced by the band Death, with nimble riffing from guitarist Prika Amaral interplaying with the rhythmic one-two punch of drummer Pitchu Ferraz and bassist Fernanda Lira. Agony ups the ante considerably from their also-excellent 2014 debut, Victim of Yourself.

Though the media often chooses to focus on the band members’ genders rather than their musical output, Amaral feels Nervosa are just like any other band and the conversation is fueled largely by demographics.

“For me, this is natural; it’s the same thing [as] an all-male band,” she says.

“But there are less female bands than male bands.” The fact remains that Nervosa craft some of the best retro thrash around, and fans shouldn’t worry about the gender identities of the musicians creating it.

What Amaral and Nervosa feel fans should be concerned about is the

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LaPlegua continues, “From the beginning on, I wanted to make sure that I took this to a completely different level with every album, push the boundaries and do something I haven’t done before.

That being said, nothing in music is original, it’s all done before; it’s the way you put it together that makes it special. I’m not writing for AC/DC, so I always made sure every album sounded different. This album, I’ve basically collected all the inspirations I’ve had over my whole life and wrapped it up in one album.”

LaPlegua is spot-on, as This Is Where Death Begins has a rather timeless quality to it, merging sounds and influences from the ‘80s and ‘90s with modern ideas to create something lasting. This is the soundtrack to one hell of an End of the World Party.

Part of what helps This Is Where Death Begins stand out is how LaPlegua’s personality shines through his Combichrist personality. On this record, it’s clear he is more confident sharing his own opinions. He explains, “I wouldn’t say [I’m] political. I’m opinionated.

It’s a big difference. I’m not running

state of the world we live in. It’s completely natural that a thrash band would arise from one of the most corruption-plagued countries in the world. Amaral says this ties into the themes of the record and even the album’s cover art. “The skull [on the] cover is trying to get out of a hole,” she explains. “The chaos is about the humanity and our behavior, and Agony is what we feel. The corruption in my country is terrible, and this is basically the worst thing for us. All of the problems in Brazil are due to the corruption [that] happens.”

“We mainly speak about the things which are annoying us,” she continues. “We live in a weird world with twisted values. We are hostages of bad attitudes: we are destroying nature, there’s no true peace, and there are so many other things…”

To support Agony and its important message, Nervosa have a ton of live shows and tours planned over the next few months, and that’s just how Amaral likes it. “Playing live and being on tour is exactly what we want!” she exclaims. “We love to travel, to meet new people, to play in new and exciting countries and cities all around the world. We have four important tours this year. The first is in Latin America, and then, we’ll be off to Europe in June and July.

In August, we are in the East Coast and Canada.” It won’t stop there for

PHOTOGRAPHY BY ALAN SNODGRASS

INTERVIEW WITH VOCALIST ANDY LAPLEGUA BY NICHOLAS SENIOR for office; I would like to, but I’m not,” he laughs. “I always thought death begins with birth, and, in some shape and form, this album is the rebirth of Combichrist.”

It truly is a bit of a rebirth for the band, as this new incarnation feels distinctly alive and creatively fertile. This Is Where Death Begins’ sound and lyrics are Combichrist’s most potent yet. A neat little summation of LaPlegua’s viewpoint can be found in the darkly comic inclusion of a Ted Cruz snippet that

begins “Destroy Everything.”

The band have a very active 2016 planned, with tours in South America in May, Europe in June and July, and a potential return to the U.S. later on. For those who have been put off by the previous versions of Combichrist, let this excellent, slightly more personal version of the group reintroduce itself. You will be more than pleasantly surprised.

.....

PHOTOGRAPHY BY LAURA MARIE ANTHONY

INTERVIEW WITH GUITARIST PRIKA AMARAL BY NICHOLAS SENIOR the band, as they have much more planned. 2016 looks to be a huge year for the trio.

Which makes sense, because Nervosa kick ass, harnessing everything metalheads love about metal in the ‘80s, throwing it in a blender, and plugging it into their amplifiers.

Agony will surely go down as one of the best thrash albums of the year.

While sports fans are cheering for their countries at the Rio Olympics, Nervosa will be hard at work condemning the corruption and poverty afflicting their country and encouraging their fans to do the same.

The band want to shake the world of its indifference to twisted cultural values, and with the powerful vehicle

of that message bursting forth in Agony, whatever future is left for humanity will at least be bright for Nervosa.

.....

NOMADS N

omads release their debut fulllength, the crushing Love It or Leave It, April 22 on Melotov Records. The crusty hardcore L.A. based band started out in 2011, played their first show the following year, and have had a revolving door lineup, according to the only constant member, vocalist Mocaine. “We had six drummers,” he laughs, “probably, like, four or five different guitar players. It switches all the time for some reason or another.” The band as it stands now consists of Mocaine, guitarists Dobermane and gUZIe, bassist Prison Mark, and drummer Basura.

Nomads kick off the blistering Love It or Leave It with “Falling Down,” a fast blast that clocks in at 39 seconds and don’t back down. Included in the album’s 11 tracks are two cool covers: GG Allin’s “Commit Suicide” and the unexpected Sisters Of Mercy track, “Lucretia, My Reflection,” which closes out the album. About covering GG Allin, Mocaine says of the outlandish artist’s output, “I love it all, but I don’t wanna say about

WRONG

B

uild up a burly hardcore soup filled to the brim with lean riffage and punk-infused dynamism, add that special ingredient commonly known as existential wondering— free-form jazz and noise inspired guitar soloing—and presto: you’ve just entered the universe of Miami based noise-rockers, Wrong, whose selftitled debut full-length is now out via Relapse Records. Composed of former Kylesa, Capsule, and Torche members, and burning luminously with a ‘90s-esque ferocity—think Helmet, Prong, and Unsane—the band have constructed a solid foundation of timehonored architecture, enveloping it evenly with a unique and refreshingly loose abstraction.

“In terms of energy and presentation, our sound is an intentionally strippeddown, no bullshit type form,” lead vocalist and guitarist Eric Hernandez notes. “I use very few pedals and create a basic platform: verse, chorus, verse, solo. I thought, ‘What if the records Meantime [by Helmet] and Justice for All [by Metallica] morphed together: it’s this idea that we’ve built our sound from.” This is Wrong’s principal blueprint, and from it, Hernandez— who formerly drummed for Kylesa and sang and played bass in Capsule—and

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98 percent of this shit. That one, I was like, this is the least bad song he has.” As for the slower, more melodic Sisters Of Mercy cover, which came out absolutely awesome, the frontman says it’s one of his favorite songs ever by one of his favorite bands. He didn’t know what to expect when the band tried it out. “It’s the only [song] we’ve ever recorded where I was a little worried. I didn’t know if I was gonna be able to pull it off,” he says, adding, “It worked. I’m real stoked about it.” They are even planning on playing it live, if the occasion seems right. “I feel like it’s something we’ll throw in when it seems like a good time to do it. There’s a right time for it.”

For their original material, Mocaine says, “I write about what I know about.

I think a lot of punk bands stick strictly to very typical political topics—and there’s nothing wrong about that.

But this is therapeutic for me.” He continues, “There’s a lot of drug stuff, darker depressed things on the record.”

He wants to reach the kids who agree with the politics of many punk bands, but “then, at the same time, they have severe drug problems or maybe they wanna get it together, but they can’t.

Or they think they can’t. I feel if they see something I write, maybe they can

PHOTOGRAPHY BY DAN RAWE

INTERVIEW WITH VOCALIST MOCAINE BY JANELLE JONES relate a little bit.” One song included on the record that he feels especially proud of is the penultimate track, “Too Little, Too Late.” “I think that shit goes hard,” the vocalist says. “I want everyone to hear that song. I love the riff. It’s one of my favorite things I’ve ever written.”

Unfortunately, Nomads don’t get to go out on long tours too often. “People can’t really leave for that long. Some of us aren’t that young anymore, so we’re not that ‘fuck work, let’s just leave’” mentality, Mocaine says. Still,

they get to do some cool, “bucket list shit,” as the vocalist puts it. They’re playing two shows, June 5 and 6, at The Glass House in Pomona and The Roxy in West Hollywood with seminal U.K. hardcore punks Discharge. “I’m losing my mind about that,” Mocaine gushes.

“I have my little mental list I wanna do: tour with Extreme Noise Terror; we did that last year. Play with Discharge.”

He concludes, “It’s all coming together.

The stuff I wanna do is definitely happening. The only one that’ll never happen now is Motörhead.”

.....

fellow axe-man Ryan Haft—also of Capsule, as well as Psychic Mirrors— can freely delve into the crafty exaggerations that truly shape this thick-skinned band.

“You see the guitar solo being eliminated from a lot of contemporary music, particularly in this form,” Hernandez laments. “In Wrong, we’re just going for it, man. Playing bass and drums in bands, I was always the backbone for the sound, you know? It’s really cool to be able to drive from the melody, to be able to lead in varying directions, to really have some freedom.” Hernandez’s solos have a spatial fluidity reminiscent of rhythmic pulses. They encircle a warm idiosyncratic realm, blending exceptionally with Haft’s more linear and busy extensions. “Ryan’s a jazztrained guitarist, and his solos are more inclined towards precision,” Hernandez explains. “I go with less notes and gravitate more towards a drone and noise approach.” The resulting compound is intricate: both solid and indistinct.

Wrong formed in 2014, mostly to be a participant in the local Miami underground music scene. The band lean heavily on a blue-collar approach: one of union, inclusion, and unadorned formalism. “I just wanted to play with my friends, be a part of the local scene,” Hernandez says. “The whole band is one full of family and friends, and exists as

I N T E R V I E W W I T H V O C A L I S T / G U I TA R I S T E R I C H E R N A N D E Z B Y C H R I S T O P H E R J . H A R R I N G T O N part of a greater extension of what’s happening around Miami.” The band quickly churned out their debut EP, Stop Giving, in 2014 through the label, Robotic Empire. Soon thereafter, Relapse showed interest and signed them in 2015. “Working with Relapse has been great,” Hernandez offers.

“They picked up on what we were going for right off the bat. The label has its extreme side, its way out there ambient and experimental side, and we’ve really meshed perfectly with them. It’s really amazing to have a record company in your corner: pushing your stuff, going the extra mile for you. Knowing they’ve got our backs out there is something that gives us a lot of confidence. We couldn’t be more excited.”

The band’s self-titled debut fulllength finds the collective stacking and molding dynamic extensions onto the foundation they built up with Stop Giving. The progression, complexity, and aggression of the new songs have a bold edge: melodic, groovy, and still remarkably hefty. “The new stuff is more intense. We’re progressing without losing that driving heaviness, that crushing vibe that’s our signature formula,” Hernandez proclaims.

“We’re in a real groove right now; we’ve got a bunch of songs that haven’t been recorded, and we’re just growing all the time.” The stars across the lush Miami coastline are lining up perfectly for Wrong: a band who are quickly starting to figure their unique approximation.

.....

HAIL THE SUN

same time as a lot of other bands in our genre like Dance Gavin Dance, though. Even with that, we still had a strong fan base. That was huge for us.”

ail The Sun are a progressive post-hardcore quartet from Chico, Calif. 2016 is shaping up to be an amazing year for the band, as the new Equal Vision acquisition are lined up to play two and a half weeks of the Vans Warped Tour and release their new album, Culture Scars, on June 17. They also recently finished a run with Sacramento’s A Lot Like Birds, including a stop at South

By So What?!—the Grand Prairie, Texas, festival founded to give Dallas residents the South By Southwest treatment closer to home. “I had a blast. It was so much fun,” vocalist and drummer Donovan Melero says.

“I think the support really surprised us. We were consistently busy at the merchandise table and we had a great crowd.”

“I don’t think anyone would disagree that we have an overlap of fans with Dance Gavin Dance,” Melero agrees.

“If they weren’t playing at the exact same timeslot as us, I can imagine [our crowd] would have been even bigger. From what was there, it was still really big.”

H

Bassist John Stirrat adds, “It was a really fun day,” but says “it was really windy and cold. But, not cold enough to freeze. Still blue skies. You still get a different kind of adrenaline rush playing at a festival outside like that. They had us playing around the

SOURVEIN

A

complex juggernaut of darkened sludge riffs and shadowy poetry, Sourvein have cruised the underground highways of extreme metal since the early ‘90s. Broken axles and multiple roadblocks haven’t stopped founder T-Roy Medlin from pursuing his vision: creating a body of work that is as gritty and real as anything you’re ever likely to experience.

Now, a record deal with Metal Blade has led to one of the most anticipated albums of the year.

Aquatic Occult—featuring a who’s who of metal luminaries—dropped on Metal Blade April 8.

“The difference is we were set up with more time and leeway for this record, about a month for the recording process,” Medlin explains.

“I’ve worked on records in the past where we had a week to do the whole thing. I was riding Greyhound buses [while] finishing the lyrics, the band was totally wrecked from touring, working part-time jobs, it was tough—but it’s my life, it’s my everything, man.”

With this arena of opportunity, Medlin set out to create something truly epic—something both

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Now, Hail The Sun are focused on preparing for Warped Tour. “The people at Warped Tour have been amazing. The love they’re showing us through social media and the exposure is going to be amazing,” Stirrat exclaims. “We’ve known now for a while, but we couldn’t say anything yet. We’ve been wanting to tell people so badly.”

“It’s like having a baby,” guitarist and co-vocalist Shane Gann adds. “You want to tell everyone right away, but you want to wait until it feels right.”

Melero echoes Stirrat, asserting, “What’s so cool is being a part of that brand on all of our social media [and] all of our promotional material; it’s

transcendent and commemorative.

“I thought of the way the Melvins and Queens Of The Stone Age had approached some of their records, with all the varying musicians, and I figured that would be something I’d like to do,” he notes. The record features appearances from Randy Blythe of Lamb Of God, Stig Miller of Amebix, Reed Mullin of Corrosion Of Conformity, Dean Berry of Iron Monkey, and Dave Capps of All Tore Up. Aquatic Occult showcases the familiar supernatural vibe of many of Sourvein’s older records, while showcasing an urgent dynamism that emits a thick modern hardcore mist with each churning riff and maddening growl. Mike Dean, the bassist from Corrosion Of Conformity, produced the album and played bass on a number of songs.

According to Medlin, Dean was very hands on: “He’s very much a producer. He really pushed me to try different approaches and methods with my vocals; things I would have never thought of myself.”

As killer an album as Aquatic Occult is, Sourvein’s panis et butyrum has always been their live show.

Their live sets exist in the corridor between reality and black magic: hauntingly punk, grim, wondrously austere, and most importantly, truthful. “Man, when we started out

PHOTOGRAPHY BY KAYLA SURICO

I N T E R V I E W W I T H D O N O VA N M E L E R O , J O H N S T I R R AT, A N D S H A N E G A N N B Y PAT R I C K M A R I O N really special. There’s also a smaller lineup this year. It’s even better timing with our new album coming out and all the cool things we’ll be doing tour-wise around it. It’s nice to see the progress we’ve made over the last six years as a band.”

On the subject of their forthcoming album, the band reveal that Culture Scars will feature 10 brand new tracks. “I’ve been told by outside peers that it’s still very much us, but with more variety,” Melero explains. “No one’s going to hear it and go, ‘These

guys changed. It’s so different.’ I think it’s still us.”

“You could say it’s a little more progressive,” Stirrat offers.

“Our comfort zone grows,” Gann elaborates. “We just start branching out in every direction, but it stays within that zone.”

Don’t miss Hail The Sun on Warped Tour this summer, and be on the lookout for Culture Scars June 17 via Equal Vision Records!

.....

PHOTOGRAPHY BY LAURA MARIE ANTHONY

INTERVIEW WITH T-ROY MEDLIN BY CHRISTOPHER J. HARRINGTON playing this music, there was no huge crowds, no expectations,” Medlin muses. “There was EYEHATEGOD, Grief—just a handful of us. The music came from the heart, and it still does. When I play live, it’s a chance for release, a sort of hazedout spiritual trance. It’s just me and the music.”

A longtime skateboarder, Medlin admits he doesn’t do as much riding as he once did, but it’s still in his veins. “I’ve been skating pools since 1983, but my knees aren’t what they used to be.” he says. From the breezy haunts of Carolina Beach to the vast cities of America and Europe, Medlin has ridden his band, like his skateboard, through the tides

of time, crushing minds every step of the way. “Music is everything for me,” he admits. “It’s my vision, my reality.”

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DARKNESS DIVIDED

D

arkness Divided’s sophomore record makes great use of its self-titled status. It’s a statement of intent, musically and lyrically, and what a powerful statement it is!

The Texas based band’s potential for greatness was teased on their 2014 debut Written in Blood, but it’s fully realized here. Darkness Divided—out now through Victory Records—is one part As I Lay Dying, one part Within The Ruins, all parts awesome, and the band come out thrashing with their latest work of old-schoolmeets-new-groove metalcore.

Lyrically, the album’s theme centers around the cycle of one’s beliefs: innocence, contradiction, and reaffirmation. Vocalist Gerard Mora explains, “It’s definitely something I see in the scene at shows and stuff, where people say that ‘I used to be like this, and now I believe that.’ It’s interesting to think about what makes people who they are today. When I write lyrics, I don’t have an agenda necessarily or push anything.”

“The first song I wrote was ‘Misery,’ and it was on that same idea of seeing things for the way they are and seeing

SUNSHINE GUN CLUB

D

an Sunshine—née Dan Walker— had already written all of the songs that would end up on Sunshine Gun Club’s debut album, Heaven, before he even bothered to put a band together.

“The record was there, and I was psyched to start playing shows and start getting an idea of how the music was going to translate live,” he says. “I had some people in mind.”

Those people were Denis Makarov— now Denis Red Scare—ex-bassist for the band Bootblacks; guitarist Rex Weaver from the Brooklyn electro punk outfit, Team Robespierre; and drummer William Broussard from The Death Set. “We’d all known each other from past projects and touring together, so it was a pretty easy process,” Sunshine adds.

Heaven is out digitally and on cassette May 6 via Wiener Records.

Though it started as a studio project, the songs were simply too good and too fun to play, inspiring the band to get out and play shows. Despite their foray into playing live, nothing on

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people learning about and through life,” he continues. “There are so many things that are contradictory to what you were brought up with and can’t be explained. It’s something we can view, but never fully understand.

I realized people come from different places, homes, and ideas, and that brought forth the first part of the album, which is ‘innocence.’ I realized I want to discuss how other people build up these ideas for you, and then, there are things in life that contradict those ideas. At the end of the day, as you go through your life, you have to reaffirm some things you grew up with and reaffirm things you learned from other people through the contradictory part of your life.

I feel like it was inspired, really, by hearing other people’s stories on the road. I wanted it to be more broadly relatable.”

The vocalist is often seen with a cross around his neck, but he doesn’t want to let his faith get in the way of his positive message. On expanding upon his own calling, he says, “I never feel like I’m someone who is high and mighty; that’s not why we’re a band.

I found a lot of encouragement in music growing up, and I feel like it’s really important to offer that same encouragement to others through my music. God has put me in a place where I can and should use my talents to help inspire others.”

Heaven was jammed out or realized in a rehearsal space, but rather, all evolved in the studio. “I had a vague plan to gig it at some point, but in reality, I was just happy getting these songs out of my system at my own pace and to just see what happens,” Sunshine says. “And then, I guess what happened is: I put the band together and we played a bunch of local shows in and around New York, which was awesome.

But I think, for me, the writing and production side of things is what I’m most passionate about.”

Based in Brooklyn—one of the most crowded music scenes on the planet—it takes more than just good music to get noticed, so the band are also working on building their brand online. “Nowadays, the video content especially has to be on point,” Sunshine says. “Everyone’s finding stuff on YouTube before anywhere else, I feel. Tight branding is essential. But, most importantly, you have to have that personality onstage that sticks with people. Of course you’re never going to win everyone over, but coming across with that not giving a fuck attitude from the jump, most people, I find, warm instantly to that, because I

INTERVIEW WITH GERARD MORA, JOSEPH MORA, AND SEBASTIAN ELIZONDO BY NICHOLAS SENIOR Darkness Divided was quite the family affair, as former drummer and fellow Mora brother, Christopher, helped record the album. When asked about their brother’s involvement, Gerard and bassist Joseph Mora cannot contain their laughter. “It was really fun, honestly,” Joseph interjects. “We all had a really unified vision, so it worked well. We had a really good understanding, at a minute level, of what we wanted to accomplished. The hardest part was getting up early in the morning to start work. Some days, it felt like we spent more time at the BBQ than the studio,” he laughs.

during which he took inspiration from an odd source. “We wanted to write something a little different and something for us,” he explains.

“That whole intro for ‘From Dust to Stone,’ I wrote it in MIDI on Guitar Pro while I was watching ‘American Horror Story: Freak Show.’” The band were literally clowning around on that track.

Overall, this self-titled album is an overwhelming success, one that not only improves with each listen, but also deserves that type of investment.

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Guitarist Sebastian Elizondo recalls a memorable songwriting escapade,

PHOTOGRAPHY BY ELLIOT GOLDSTEIN

INTERVIEW WITH VOCALIST DAN SUNSHINE BY JOHN B. MOORE think it essentially resonates with how most of us feel in just wanting to completely unhinge with no inhibition.”

Sunshine Gun Club have approached their live shows so far with an honesty and rawness that translates directly to the crowd, making them feel like an integral part of what’s happening in the room. “You have to make an impact that goes a million miles past normal and expected,” Sunshine says. “Stamp a lasting impression right in the center of

people’s brain activity.” As things continue to evolve, Sunshine believes Sunshine Gun Club will be mostly a studio based experiment.

For now, he’s just happy playing select gigs, keeping it special, and not burning out. However, he admits, “If the band got some heat and the opportunity to tour popped up, we’d most likely hit the road.”

Until that happens, Sunshine and his band are staying busy writing their second album.

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GRAYLING A

s if being a full-time student is not hard enough these days, Lexi Campion is matriculating and staying on top of a blossoming musical career with her project, Grayling. The artist’s debut EP, Everything that Burns, hit shelves April 15 via NDE records. Campion has put her entire being into these five songs, letting instrumentals roar behind her trembling voice as her emotions spill out onto the floor around her. It’s the imagery of a 19-year-old conductor controlling the flow of an emotional orchestra emanating from within her heart.

Campion has built songs that sonically capture what she is depicting in her lyrics. The tracks resonate with the singer on a very personal level, and that deep connection helps craft

WEEKEND NACHOS

I

magine the shifted perspective on the human experience if we knew our death dates. From the Tikker Watch that estimates life expectancy to death-clock.org to the legions of people who once called Dionne Warwick and The Psychic Friends Network, many tangle with the temptation to calculate how much time they have left before shuffling of this mortal coil. As the evil dudes with a silly name, Chicago’s Weekend Nachos, created Apology, they knew this was going to be their final album.

Relapse Records etches the epitaph on May 20, but the eulogy won’t be filled with passive platitudes; it will be screamed with sweat and spit and followed with fists. Here lie Weekend Nachos.

Twelve years ago, Weekend Nachos spat out a demo. Since then, they have toured the world in a furious rage. Their sound is heavy and dark; looming breakdowns birth spastic punk-grind-hardcore epileptic tantrums. John Hoffman’s misanthropic growls have lured fans to five LPs, and “too many 7”s and splits to name,” bassist Drew Brown says. Their four full-lengths exhibit the band’s tenacity, drive, and talent. “Apology is a fitting end,” Brown states. “It does all the things we have always done as a band and a few we have never done.

We managed to get a number of friends involved too.”

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the dynamic shifts in each song.

“It’s important to me that the instrumental components of my songs reflect my lyrics,” she states.

“I think the dynamic changes on the record capture the themes that I’m addressing perfectly.” As is apparent on the soundscape of Everything that Burns, Campion admits that both pop and alternative music pique her interest. “I tried to marry these characteristics in a way that made sense. Bands like Bully and PVRIS were big influences throughout the writing process for the EP,” Campion admits. Their influences can be heard seeping through Grayling ’s thick layers of passionate cries. The songs are raw, yet have plenty of atmosphere riding through them, evident especially on the horn-blaring finale, “Soil.”

Campion’s location also influences her music. “The local scene here in Philadelphia has also impacted my sound,” she confirms. “Through local shows, I discover so much

Hoffman adds, “Apology is our best one. And since it’s the final album, I might actually stick with that statement forever. I don’t think we’ve ever written anything so honest and true to our sound.”

“Judged” is a minute and a half of ferocious hardcore and a sort of sendoff from Hoffman. “It’s become really P.C. these days to gawk about who’s transgender, who’s gay, and who’s so-and-so minority in punk [and] hardcore,” he says. “Part of not discriminating against people for bigoted reasons is also not obsessing over things people can’t change or don’t want to change about themselves. The sooner we realize that, the easier it’ll be to move on and be proud of things that matter, like our actions and accomplishments.”

Of the punishing “POW MIA,” Hoffman explains, “It’s really easy to forget why you matter in this world when you’re being abused— physically, mentally, or sexually.

You see yourself as nothing.”

Weekend Nachos play with titles that trigger responses like “Fake Political Song ” and “N.A.R.C.” Another vicious track, aptly titled “Eulogy,” is comprised of angry, resentful lyrics lamenting a friendship now saturated with spite and regret. The music obviously matches, ringing feedback and sludge-like stomping matching the rancorous guitars.

Apology is the band’s strongest release. Going back to mammoth albums such as Worthless and Still—

PHOTOGRAPHY BY KIM WOODCOCK

INTERVIEW WITH GENERAL MASTERMIND LEXI CAMPION BY SEAN GONZALEZ new music that always leaves me inspired.” While being in an area with so much to offer musically might trouble some artists, the young songwriter is opening a door for her music to be taken seriously, even while she finishes school.

“I’ve definitely made sacrifices in order to pursue Grayling and my

education simultaneously,” she admits, “but I love what I’m doing, so I make it all work.” With a release as ambitious as Everything that Burns, it’s apparent that the sky really is the limit for Grayling.

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PHOTOGRAPHY BY JACKI VITETTA

INTERVIEW WITH BASSIST DREW BROWN AND VOCALIST JOHN HOFFMAN BY HUTCH or EPs like Black Earth or Watch You Suffer—the talent and vitriol were there, but guitarist and producer Andy Nelson, having recorded other bands in recent years, has honed his skills. This album feels more urgent, wrought with frantic necessity. “Andy is a huge part of Weekend Nachos’ sound,” Hoffman asserts. “He invented our guitar tone. He is really important to the feeling people get when they hear us on record and also live. We all kind of treat recording like an excuse to get together and make ignorant jokes and eat food.” That joy and fun maybe not resonate in their music, but their camaraderie and synchronicity meld together into an energy that is palpable.

When the band’s headstone is viewed—cracked and worn from the decades of powerviolence and punk bands they’ve influenced—the name Weekend Nachos, despite its

quirkiness, will garner respect and awe. Hoffman concludes, “The feeling that I get from creating masterpiece records with these guys at Andy’s studio is definitely something I’m gonna miss. Thousands of people are going to hear these recordings of ours, but only the four of us will ever know what it was like to produce them.”

RIP, boys.

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GRAND MAGUS Grand Magus mastermind Janne “JB” Christoffersson had one simple goal when it came time to write their May 13 Nuclear Blast release, Sword Songs, the follow-up to 2013’s excellent Triumph and Power. “The goal was to make an album that was a bit faster and more ferocious than Triumph and Power,” he says. “That album turned out great and had a majestic feel overall, and we absolutely want to retain that—I think it’s kind of our calling card—but we wanted Sword Songs to have a different kind of energy, more aggressive. It’s really up to the listener to decide whether we have accomplished this or not. I think we have.”

The band also used a different engineer for the mixing of the new record, which affected how it turned out. “This time, we used [producer] Roberto Laghi for the mix, which had quite a big impact on the sound I think,” Christoffersson says. “The similarities are, of course, quite big, since we haven’t really changed our basic type of music since Wolf’s

T

HAKEN

o evolve is to progress. Likewise, to progress is to evolve, to grow exponentially from modes and forms built upon the foundations of previous advancements. There is a difference between progressive rock and progressive music, though the two systems can certainly overlap.

London’s Haken—a progressive metal/rock band who formed in 2007—unmistakably fit the bill of said overlap, yet clearly understand the distinction between the two styles. “Progressive rock as a genre is definitely defined by its central characterization, by its instrumentation, and by its recurring themes,” lead vocalist Ross Jennings states. “Haken is most importantly progressive in its mindset: the way we approach our art. We certainly work to defy expectations, and to be as original as possible.”

The band’s newest record, Affinity, released April 29 through Inside Out Music, is a burgeoning slab of dizzyingly punishing and sneakily lush contemporary rippers. According to Jennings, the process of creating the album was completely different than past efforts. Fundamental aspects from

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Return in 2005, really. What we do is to write from our hearts; all our albums have been a reflection of where we were as a band at the time.

Our focus is on writing the best Grand Magus songs that we can, not to think too much about whether our style is changing or whatever.”

Sword Songs—which is the band’s eighth release overall—features their trademark traditional metal attack, taken up a notch. It’s everything you could want out of a Grand Magus album and more. They have a found a sweet spot that is still very aggressive, yet retains a high level of melody and memorability. It is a perfect example of prefix-free metal in modern times.

The album opens with the anthemic blast of “Freja’s Choice” and includes up-tempo rockers like “Forged in Iron - Crowned in Steel” and “Master of the Land,” as well as the rousing self-motivational closing number, “Everyday There’s a Battle to Fight,” which features a melody and lyrics by drummer Ludwig “Ludde” Witt, marking the first time Christoffersson hasn’t written all of the lyrics for an album.

What’s even more impressive about Grand Magus’ metal mastery

certain ideologies of progressive music were instrumental to its inception. “It’s always been Richard [Henshall], our guitarist, who has written the majority of the songs and the basic skeleton to each album,” Jennings notes. “On this album, he had to let go: the process was beginning to be too much for him. It forced everyone to work on the album individually as well as collectively. We really had to respect each other’s opinions, compromise, and come together as a team to create working solutions. The album is an incredible collective effort, containing equal pieces of each one of us. We used Affinity as the title of the album, because we worked on it like a family.”

Affinity swims through a plethora of dimensional realms in its nine vigorously intriguing songs.

Sections bend from Tesseractlike technicality: XTC influenced pop, Tool-ish riffage, and Dream Theater virtuosity to Mr. Bungle inspired ingenuity, John Carpenter influenced synths, and Gordian Knot-like intricacy. While not entirely a concept album, Affinity certainly has a dominant theme: the 1980s. “It started with the song ‘1985,’ and we really just built around that,” Jennings says. “We didn’t go into it thinking, ‘We’ll create an album about the ‘80s,’ it just kind of evolved from that initial

I N T E R V I E W W I T H V O C A L I S T / G U I TA R I S T J A N N E "J B " C H R I S T O F F E R S S O N BY T H O M A S P I Z ZO L A is that they didn’t start out as a fist-pumping trad metal band.

Originally, the band—which also features bassist Mats “Fox” Skinner—started out playing doom metal and slowly made the move into different waters. “We never had a plan really, it’s just been a natural progression that reflects our emotional approach to music,” Christoffersson says. “Also, you change as a person over time, and also, the dynamics within a band changes from time to time, this also affects the music, of course.”

Grand Magus have had a long, successful career. They’ve released killer metal albums and toured the globe, spreading their sound far and wide, with one exception: they have never played North America. But it’s not for lack of trying, according to Christoffersson. “Plans have always been there, they just haven’t panned out yet. We are working on it!” he promises.

Fingers crossed.

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INTERVIEW WITH VOCALIST ROSS JENNINGS BY CHRISTOPHER J. HARRINGTON song, and we went with it. During the ‘80s, technology really started to integrate into people’s daily lives and truly changed their way of life.

Not only is the instrumentation on Affinity influenced by the ‘80s, the outlying lyrical themes are as well.

There’s a lot about how technology relates to individuals in a society.

How we relate to computers, and how we’ve evolved in so many ways since the initial integration of the personal computer.”

With a rugged aesthetic steeped in retro-inspired hues, Affinity also navigates through the waters of a unique visual expression. Close your eyes, and it’s not hard to imagine scenes from the films “Buckaroo

Banzai,” “The Terminator,” “Blade Runner,” and “Escape from New York.” “We were inspired from ‘80s cinema, as well as from the pop culture and technology of the time,” Jennings says. “We certainly had ‘80s science fiction visuals in our minds throughout the process. The album is really more like a soundtrack to a film than a conceptual piece.”

A modern progressive metal band who are truly progressive is a thing of substance. Haken are a band filled to the brim with considerable and invigorating ideas, executing them with an intricate skill, an ardent grace, and a notable joy. Affinity is their paramount statement.

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REAL FRIENDS

T

o paraphrase the movie “Frozen,” a big part of growing up is learning to let it go. On their 2014 debut release, Maybe This Place Is the Same and We’re Just Changing, Real Friends did everything themselves: bassist and lyricist Kyle Fasel wrote all of the lyrics for the album, and they recorded with a friend of theirs in his home studio.

On their highly-anticipated follow-up, The Home Inside My Head—due out on May 27 via Fearless Records—the band wisely learned to let some of it go. The band upped the ante by going to not one but two studios, and brought in producer Mike Green—who has worked with Pierce The Veil and All Time Low—to help cowrite and produce three songs, and Steve Evetts to record the rest of the album. Fasel and vocalist Dan Lambton also shared lyric-writing duties. This collaboration came together better than even the band could have imagined, resulting in the best, most fully realized version of Real Friends yet.

On working with Mike Green, Fasel explains, “He’s done stuff with 5 Seconds Of Summer. When it was first brought up to us, we were kinda weird about it,” he laughs. “Then, when we went out to L.A.

LANDSCAPES S

omerset, U.K., melodic hardcore band Landscapes’ sound is as personal as it is striking. Their latest record, Modern Earth— out now on Pure Noise Records—is their best yet. It’s difficult not to get lost in the album’s beautiful take on hardcore coupled with vocalist Shaun Milton’s lyrical honesty.

Of the new record, Milton shares, “It’s still personal, but prior to [2012 debut] Life Gone Wrong, I’d gone through such a deep and dark depression. I suffer from anxiety and depression anyway, so that was a big turning point. With Modern Earth, things have changed. It was easier to write for this record.

My head’s in the right place now, whereas it wasn’t with Life Gone Wrong. Even playing it live, it was rough. This record has an outsider’s perspective. The idea is that I want people to be able to understand depression better. It’s not enough to tell yourself, ‘Chin up, eh?’ My purpose is to try to get people to understand that it’s not something people can just shrug off.”

“Everybody wants an easy answer,” he continues. “Everybody wants the way out of this world to be the

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and tried it out, it was actually a great experience. It wasn’t what I expected, where he would just give us something he wrote and that was the end of it.

Instead, there were some things that he suggested that we’d never thought of doing. It was very collaborative. It was like having another member there.”

“Working with Steve was great,” Fasel continues. “A lot of the little things he’d suggest really added up. You can never stop learning with music and songwriting.” Working with Green and Evetts was a great experience for the band, and their willingness to work with outside influences shows that letting go can do wonders for your work.

Fasel didn’t even mind relinquishing lyrical control. “I actually really enjoyed not doing all the lyrics,” he admits. “For one, having Dan do some of the lyrics gives those songs a different feel. It was kinda cool to be that much more critical of my writing, because I knew that I didn’t have to do it all. It really gave me the opportunity to use my best work, and it’s refreshing to sit back and hear something different than my own lyrics on the record. It was really natural too.

It added that much more variety, which I think shows on the album.”

Real Friends’ maturation process pairs naturally with their humble nature. On

PHOTOGRAPHY BY KAYLA SURICO

INTERVIEW WITH BASSIST KYLE FASEL BY NICHOLAS SENIOR the criticism the band has received over the years, Fasel concludes, “We weren’t trying to reinvent the wheel. I remember when we first were getting press, people would say that ‘Real Friends are good, but they’re nothing special.’ Well, we never said that we were God’s gift to pop punk,” he laughs. “We just write want we want to write. Hopefully, people see through that. To me, you really relate to something when the band doesn’t beat around the bush. We try to be honest and straightforward. We’re just some dudes.

We don’t get together when writing and go, ‘Well, it’s time to write a hit single,’ and we don’t huddle before going on stage and assess how everybody’s

dressed. If we have a thing, we’re just five normal guys.”

It’s a very Midwestern ideal: as long as you are happy being who you are, that is enough. That level of contentedness is unusual in today’s society, and it’s what makes Real Friends feel so real.

The band are set to take the mainstage of Warped Tour by storm this year. With a powerful, collaborative album full of genuine, genuinely fantastic emo and punk jams, 2016 is looking like a great year for Real Friends.

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easiest possible thing, but that’s the problem: you’re stuck on this planet.

This comes down to the whole point of what Modern Earth is about. The idea is that you’re familiar to Earth itself, but imagine you were from a different planet that was similar to Earth, and you arrive on Earth and within the first 24 hours, you realize it’s no different from the hellhole you came from and there’s no way out. You’re stuck there. You realize you never managed to get away from what you were trying to run away [from].”

Landscapes really took the DIY aesthetic to new heights with Modern Earth’s artwork. “I just sort of put it to everyone that I wanted to try to make the album artwork incorporate with the [‘Neighbourhood’] music video, but not use Photoshop,” Milton explains. “We kind of did it blindly. I took Black Flag ’s font,” he laughs, “and put it down on hardboard and [medium-density fiberboard] and used a jigsaw to cut it out and sewed the MDF, so that it could bend properly, so there was a depth to the letters. Anyway, the idea was to make it so that it had a Smashing Pumpkins or The Cure vibe to it. It was definitely a lot of work, but to us, it was worth it. At the time, fucking hell, I was pulling my hair out, but now, looking back at the artwork, we can look back at it proudly.”

INTERVIEW WITH VOCALIST SHAUN MILTON BY NICHOLAS SENIOR Landscapes have never been the happiest of bands, so it only makes sense to go all in on their previouslyhinted-at gothic influences. This resulted in an album that gleefully borrows from the best of ‘80s postpunk and more modern melodic hardcore to great effect. Milton doesn’t hesitate when asked about the sonic shift. “It’s all The Cure,” he laughs. “Like, even the setting we used for the guitar pedals, we called it ‘The Cure-Offs,’ because it’s just ripping off The Cure 100 percent, and I’ve got no problem admitting it.”

Landscapes write songs about depression with an ‘80s bent; would they call their sound “Curecore”?

Milton loves the label and shares, “It’s better than being called a ‘crymosh’ band. I’ve got to live with that,” he laughs.

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HENRIETTA T

he idea of having paper wings is attached to falling aimlessly, anticipating the deathly feel of the cold ground somewhere beneath. This, in turn, is wrapped into the imagery and sound of Orlando indie band Henrietta’s newest release. Paper Wings—out now via Animal Style Records—is short and succinct, a 22 minute offering that flutters with dynamic builds and wiry come downs. Henrietta scratch at your brain with their own weighted assault. Each song has a gradual incline followed by a quick drop that changes the way the song hits you. This is evident in their first single, “Arrows,” which lightly treads with soft plucked guitars before expanding due to vicious belting from Manny Urdaneta’s vocal box. While light in their texture, the guitars still find a way to pierce the ears with motifs thanks to the fiery drum work intricately weaving everything together. “Arrows” also marks a sonic shift in the record, being rather dark in comparison to many of the other contributions on Paper Wings.

“We’ve been sitting with these songs for a while now and just want to put [the

MIND SPIDERS M

ind Spiders may have been around for five years and put out three albums prior to their latest, Prosthesis, but according to founder and sole constant member, Mark Ryan, it feels like an all new band. When the Ft. Worth, Texas, based band started, it was primarily Ryan—also of Marked Men—playing everything and “screwing around recording stuff,” as he puts it. In the years since, Mind Spiders have gone through a bunch of members. Now, he has a solid lineup in his Marked Men cohort, drummer Mike Throneberry, and synth player Peter Salisbury. The new album—Mind Spider’s fourth, which came out in March on Dirtnap— was recorded as a four piece with bassist Daniel Fried of Bad Sports and Radioactivity. Fried, who has since moved to Austin, is now super busy with his other band, Video.

Ryan says that, as a three piece, Mind Spiders are “even more electronic based, because the bass parts are done by synthesizers. I just feel like it’s more a band now and more cohesive.” He adds that, in the past, “when we played live, it would always be a mess, because we had so many people,” before describing a lineup of two drummers, two guitarists, a

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record] in people’s hands and see how people like it,” Urdaneta comments. “It’s similar to—if you were to make an awesome pizza, you’d be way more excited to share the pizza than to eat it.” The songs were outlined by Urdaneta and polished by the rest of the band. “We spent six days [at Legit Business studios in Greensboro, N.C.] and had a great time just trying out different things,” he continues. “It was a lot more fun and productive than just sitting at home in your P.J.s and just kinda doing it. Plus, we got to eat these rad as fuck gyros at this awesome Turkish deli. [Shout out to] Jack’s Corner.”

Maybe it was the gyros, or maybe it was how the record was written, but Paper Wings bleeds a refreshing stream of lifeblood into multiple genres simultaneously. It’s the perfect mix of emotional indie rock that cuts at your skin with hook-laden choruses bending over weeping guitars. Matt Kopkin—who has since moved on to pursue other things—left his mark on the record with bellowing basslines, mixing their way into the glittery guitars. The slight twang thrown around in “Black & Blue” is syncopated between a ferociously catchy lick ringing from other guitarist Colin Czerwiński that slides in behind Urdaneta’s yelps. As the song winds down, the

INTERVIEW WITH VOCALIST/GUITARIST MANNY URDANETA BY SEAN GONZALEZ rhythm section is roaming, with fills flying from all over John Chapman’s drum kit. Henrietta’s tight-knit playing style bursts with infectious song after infectious song throughout the seven track record, even in the stripped-down finale, “Few Friends.”

Urdaneta has a clear thematic awareness running throughout the lyrics of Paper Wings. It’s like staring directly into the face of hope and wondering whether or not to believe in it. It’s both sobering and extremely personal, with Urdaneta confessing, “I talked a bunch about fleeing

from how you feel and trying to ignore it. I even openly apologized to people I’ve wronged. It was a weird meta element to the writing, where I talk a lot to myself, but in the perspective of someone else.” Every song tackles one main feeling, while also encircling multiple feelings and ideas into a cohesive track.

“You can’t fly very far on paper wings,” Urdaneta admits, comfortably falling back on the album’s central concept. The tentative hope knitted throughout Paper Wings is inspiring, proving that there is room to fly for Henrietta, even with doubt standing in their way.

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keyboardist, and bassist. “It was just a cacophony of noise. Now, it’s tighter and more of a band.” In fact, Ryan is so impressed with the band’s present incarnation and latest material that Mind Spiders have taken to playing only songs off the new record, and even ones that have yet to be recorded.

“There’s not as much layering [as previous material],” he notes. “For the most part, we can pull off everything live.”

It’s not only their live show that have benefitted from this streamlined, more focused approach. Prosthesis is a truly moody, dark, seductive, intriguing tour de force. From the apt opener, “Rip It Out,” to the ominous “No Filter” and “Nothing Without It” to the icy title track, it’s a striking effort. Ryan explains, “I intentionally wanted it to be more cohesive than the other albums. For a longtime, Mind Spiders was more a recording project than a band, so I just would throw whatever against the wall and see what stuck,” he laughs. “It didn’t have a real consistent thing to it and was all over the place.” Adding to the cohesive nature of the album is the fact that most of the songs are based around synthesizers and sequencers.

The record, Ryan says, “lent itself more to that sound.”

The guys have been playing locally in Denton, Dallas, and Austin, but for this particular record, he doesn’t see

INTERVIEW WITH VOCALIST/GUITARIST MARK RYAN BY JANELLE JONES potential for much extensive touring.

His other band, Radioactivity—whose lineup includes Fried and Jeff Burke, who recorded Prosthesis with Ryan at their studio in Ft. Worth—are very busy this summer. Though he’ll be busy with Radioactivity and recording other bands at his studio, the prolific Ryan discloses that Mind Spiders already have enough material for another record. “My plan in the next months is actually to try to work on that more than doing touring,” he adds.

One final aspect of Prosthesis that must be noted is the album’s incredible artwork. “As far as the record goes, I’m almost more proud of the artwork than the album,” the frontman says with a chuckle. The

record’s lineup had actual casts made of their faces, which Ryan then hung on a large canvas and Salisbury photographed for the cover. The actual piece of artwork will be shown at Mad World Records in Denton.

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15 BRAND NEW SONGS FROM THE ISRAELI PUNKS OUT JULY 1ST!

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DEBUT ALBUM FOR FAT! 12 TRACK CONCEPT ALBUM CHOCK-FULL OF DRIVING POP-PUNK ANTHEMS. OUT JUNE 24TH!

DEVILDRIVER INTERVIEW WITH VOCALIST DEZ FAFARA BY JOE SMITH-ENGELHARDT

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fter the departure of longtime members, guitarist Jeff Kendrick and drummer John Boecklin, in 2014, DevilDriver recruited former Chimaira drummer Austin D’Amond and guitarist Neal Tiemann and returned with a fire burning inside of them. The California groove masters still have their signature sound, but come across as a band renewed on their May 13 release Trust No One, available via Napalm Records.

Singer Dez Fafara describes the new material as a rebirth for the band and himself. “It’s

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got a real gritty thing to it,” he says. “It’s got a really aggressive feel. It’s heavy, but you can understand the lyrics, which I love.”

Often, when longtime members leave a band, their sound can change drastically for the worse, but the addition of D’Amond and Tiemann created a tighter band with a rejuvenated energy. Fafara describes the new lineup as more cohesive than ever before, with all of the band members contributing to writing new material. “ When Neal came in, he came in with almost 12 tunes,” he says. “I would have said if we could at least put out six or seven of those, you would never know they were written by a guy that just came into DevilDriver.” Of D’Amond, he adds, “ You’ve got to have somebody that knows what you’re doing. Somebody

that understands the band, understands the sound that we do, and I think when we put Austin in, it was because Austin really understood how to groove.”

Devildriver spent around two years writing the material for Trust No One, meeting at guitarist Mike Spreitzer’s home to practice two or three times a week. The band put together 22 songs altogether and narrowed that down to 12 for the album. Fafara says the new members fit in instantly and relieved any tension that was in the band before, making for a smoother, more relaxed process. “One thing that I wanted to get out of the band was any kind of drama or negative attitudes,” he elaborates. “I did that, and now, the vibe has been so incredibly positive.”

The album’s title and lyrics were inspired by Fafara’s year

and a half process of overcoming this negativity from business partners, band members, and people in his personal life. “That process led to everything I’ve been talking about in this record,” he says.

“Everything from anger to betrayal to love to kindness to forgiveness to keeping your head up to being positive; there’s all sorts of topics on this record.” Fafara says DevilDriver named the album in a very straightforward way, so people would have no need to deliberate on the meaning behind it. “I just wanted it [to be] so literal and so poignant,” he explains. “All the lyrics are real literal.”

Trust No One was recorded at various studios in Los Angeles—including the remarkable NRG Studios and Fafara’s home studio—with producer Mark Lewis, who the band has worked with on three albums in the past. The band saw Lewis as a producer who could understand what they wanted and capture their best effort.

“There’s just something about a guy that can do 10 bands in a year if he wanted to and make them all sound different. Like, he completely understands all the colors of the palette,” Fafara exclaims.

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PHOTOGRAPHY BY ALAN SNODGRASS

PHOTOGRAPHY BY RICK RODNEY

INTERVIEW WITH VOCALIST MISH WAY AND GUITARIST KENNETH WILLIAM BY TIM ANDERL

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or many fans of punk rock, the allure is simple: the music is fierce, menacing, direct, and offers them a vicarious voice with which they can level frustrations at the world around them. White Lung are just this kind of dangerous and relatable band. “I was always told that my voice was a problem,” vocalist Mish Way confesses. “I was told I was talking too loud or to shut up. So, I learned to use it in a way that didn’t irritate everybody, and that was in singing. When I’m onstage, my job is to sing and sing well and entertain. My brain is always going a million miles a minute. The one time when I’m not overthinking things or losing my mind over trivial things is when I’m onstage. It is a weird adrenaline rush that resets your brain.”

teaming with producer Lars Stalfors, who has previously worked with HEALTH, Cold War Kids, and Alice Glass.

White Lung spent a month in the studio, working closely with Stalfors to push their new songs to the next level. “I spent a year just recording little snippets of stuff on my phone,” guitarist Kenneth William says. “We went into the studio with four songs finished. We looked at those four songs and talked about what the record needed, and assembled new songs out of the little pieces of music that I had kicking around. So, we did a lot of it in the studio.”

William, and drummer AnneMarie Vassiliou, and hit the streets at breakneck speed via Domino Recording Company on May 6. “People always ask if there is a lot of pressure to follow up the last record and make a really good record, but we just try to make them all good,” says William.

“You always want the last thing you did to be your best work,” Way interjects. “You don’t want to keep writing the same album.

Deep Fantasy was great, it did what it did, but we needed a new challenge. So, we worked with a new producer and a whole new set of influences. We were trying to challenge ourselves as well as “I did 100 percent of my work in the people who listen to us. We the studio,” Way adds. “We don’t don’t make music publicly to have a full-time bass player, so have no one listen to it. If people we can’t write any other way. It play that card, they are fucking had to come to life in the studio.” lying.”

with urgency. “This time, we wanted to sound different,” William explains. “It isn’t a massive departure from our old records, but we wanted it to sound unique. We used a lot of Earthquaker pedals to get some weird noises. There are a couple times where we used samples.

The songs on this record are more distinct from each other, and that was my main goal.”

“I wanted to write the best vocal lines I could, and I took a real chance with melody in terms of what I can do to prove that I can really sing,” Way adds. “We wanted to do some things that were out of our wheelhouse: we slowed the tempo down, we said some different things. We really wanted to step outside of our comfort zone.”

White Lung will be touring extensively in support of the Paradise—White Lung’s fourth Clocking in at a powerful 28 new album, including a special album and the follow-up to minutes, the album simmers New York album release show at The band circled their wagons 2014’s critically acclaimed Deep with desire and pain, love Baby’s All Right on May 7. in Los Angeles in October 2015, Fantasy—was written by Way, and beauty, and seethes

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PHOTOGRAPHY BY JOE CALIXTO

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I

s that guy leaving his car here?!

He’s running. He parked his car at a green light and ran away. If you see anything on the news about an explosion in Vegas, you heard it here first,” Culture Abuse guitarist John Jr. says as he watches the scene unfold from his tour van.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY CHELSEA MUEHE

Though San Francisco’s Culture Abuse started as a punk or hardcore band, depending on who you ask, that’s not quite how they define themselves now. When a gas station attendant sees their tour van pull up and asks them what kind of music they play, they say “rock ‘n’ roll,” or “punk rock ‘n’ roll,” if they want to get more specific. Their new album, Peach—which was released April 9 via 6131 Records— reflects this change.

Jr. is a visual artist and designed the cover for Peach. Though it features the band’s trademark chain-link fence iconography, it doesn’t much resemble the cover to a hardcore record. For one thing, it’s pink. “It’s supposed to give you a good time feel, and not a hardcore band feel,” Jr. says. “We’re moving away from the angsty, mean attitude to an attitude that’s more fun and more relatable. We’re sick of playing shows where people just stand around and look mad at you. Vocalist] David [Kelling] brings a camera on stage.

He’ll take a photo of the crowd in the middle of a song. At some point, we noticed it was all people with their arms crossed, and they looked bored. We don’t want that—we want people to come to our shows, have a good time, and not feel intimidated. So, that’s where we took the writing of the record, and we wanted the album cover to match up to that.”

Jr. says the punk attitude is still there, but now, it’s more approachable. The songs started as punk songs in rehearsal, but evolved into something more in the studio. “Dream On”—the first track released from the album— started cynical and sarcastic, but then changed course. “At first, it was like, ‘Your life sucks, dream on, but it’s doubtful you’ll get there.’ Now, it’s more like, ‘Hey, dream on, dude. If you think you can do it, don’t let anyone tell you you can’t,’” Jr. says.

“Peace on Earth” takes the horrors of the 24 hour news cycle, personal loss, and the bleak state of world leadership and twists it into a tale about finding your own space in life through art and music. “When you’re focused on that, that’s when there’s truly peace on earth,” Jr. asserts.

“Turn It Off” is a mix between ‘90s Bay Area punk and grungy, mutated power-pop. At one point, the song’s chorus gives way to an ethereal, reggae-inflected passage that sounds like an alternate universe version of something from Rancid’s Life Won’t Wait. That’s no coincidence, Jr. says. Rancid are Kelling’s favorite band and hugely influential to Culture Abuse, simply because Rancid pushed the envelope of what punk could be. Culture Abuse share the same goal: to switch things up and do something new. “One of our goals is to work with [Rancid frontman] Tim Armstrong,” Jr. says.

Culture Abuse are confident and optimistic. “We have very high expectations for this record,” Jr. admits. And they’re no longer seeing many audience members standing around looking bored. “We’re seeing people sing along with the songs we’ve released, and the record’s not even out yet,” he adds. “That’s getting us more and more pumped to keep touring.”

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PHOTOGRAPHY BY ADAM DEGROSS

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espite all the odd reunions lately, fans would have bet dollars to donuts that Saosin would not join the club. Vocalist Anthony Green’s departure in 2004 was well-documented, and with the major success of his solo records and, of course, Circa Survive, the thought of Green rejoining Saosin never seemed plausible.

Against all odds, the band’s seven year hiatus is over, Green has returned, and the release of their third full-length—Along the Shadow, out May 20 via Epitaph Records—proves that Saosin are fully alive again. The record, paired with the band’s upcoming summer run on The Taste Of Chaos Tour, might mean fans will finally witness the full story that Saosin always intended to tell.

There was a lot of controversy when Green left Saosin, but his return to the fold was surprisingly drama-free. “We never really sat down and had a conversation about it,” he reveals. “I think, by the time we were ready to get in the same room, we had worked out our initial shit with ourselves.

We were just kids. You don’t really know what you’re doing or how to deal with relationships. We all came from the same spot, and it was good. I had had nightmares about it in the past, but everyone was really cool. Everyone had changed leaps and bounds, myself included. That happens when you get older: you either turn into a bigger shitbag or you become determined to not be a shitbag.”

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Though Green’s homecoming came as a shock to many fans, he speaks of it casually. “I like making music and variety just keeps anything from getting too monotonous,” he says. “I was kind of in the mood to make something heavier and more metal or whatever. It was just the right time.”

“They sent me a bunch of ideas they had written and not used for the last record,” Green recalls. “There was stuff that was really cool and some we had established bits and pieces of.

[Bassist] Chris [Sorenson] and [guitarist] Beau [Burchell] are always writing. Beau wrote the major riffs to ‘Red Light’ in a hotel room in Chicago when we played Riot Fest. He was so juiced up from that, that he came home and recorded those riffs.

We workshopped everything and we all built the record together.

There were ideas and riffs, but all the songs got restructured the more we all worked on them and shifted them around. Everyone had their hand in fine-tuning the songs. It was very much a collaboration. I think the best ideas on the record came after I was in the band and Beau was just riffing around all inspired.”

Along the Shadow will not only feature a renewed Saosin, but a renewed Green as well. Reflecting on the ways he’s grown as a musician since he first joined the band, the vocalist admits, “As a young musician, I made things more complicated than they needed to be. I wasn’t as open or intuitive to the nature of creativity. I feel like I had to live up to this idea that I was some genius or talent. As you get older, you

realize it doesn’t matter. Being able to sing and perform a song you really love and believe in is the main goal. There is no right and wrong way to go about doing that.”

Despite Green’s newfound perspective, the process of rejoining his Saosin brethren was not without its unforeseen challenges. “This was really the first time we had all worked together on stuff, so communication was the biggest thing,” he says. “It was a challenge in the beginning. How do you work together on something when you’ve never done it before? A lot of it was just trial and error.” Now that the band have found their footing, they are able to relax and enjoy themselves. “I feel like everybody’s just having fun right now,” Green asserts. “For a really long time, it was this heavy cloud of seriousness. I think we’ve been able to just have this fun exercise in endurance and surrender.”

“Everybody in Saosin has jobs, they have real things they’re doing and this is just like a side project we all feel passionate about,” he continues. “It’s really cool to have that vibe onstage. No one is there making their ends meet, it’s

just fun to meet.” Does this mean they’re also not concerned about “making it”? “We’re not trying to make it,” Green laughs. “We’re just trying to have a great time.”

Though he now has a new Saosin record under his belt, Green isn’t done diversifying his musical portfolio. “Tentatively, I plan to start working on a Circa record at the end of this year; they’ve already sent me a bunch of songs,” he says. “I have a solo record that is going to come out end of the summer maybe. It’s hard to say what’s going to happen when, but I’m not going to stop doing anything. I’m just going to manage my time wisely so I can do everything I want to do. I want to start a reggae band. There’s a lot I haven’t experienced yet. My hip hop record sounds awful, but it’s completely done.”

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PHOTOGRAPHY BY JAKE LAHAH

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TOTAL DOMINATION OF LAND, SKY, AND SANDWICHES Interview with guitarist and pianist Vidar Landa by Hutch

ALL PHOTOGRAPHY BY JACKI VITETTA

When Kvelertak guitarist and pianist Vidar Landa answers the phone, he is eating a sandwich. Relaxing on a rare day off, the food is a welcome meal after his flying lessons. For someone who travels as much as Landa and his bandmates, he must possess a perpetual need for adventure to opt for getting in another small plane.

Kvelertak’s last three years have been almost solely dedicated to touring the U.S., Europe, and Scandinavia in support of their 2013 LP, Meir.

They opened for Mastodon for two jaunts, then supported Slayer and Anthrax through Europe. As Landa continues to devour his sandwich in a Roadrunner conference room high above New York City, he admits to the inevitability of more touring. At this point, Kvelertak have been in the States for one week, headlining with

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support from Torche and Wild Throne. The following day, they’ll hit Montreal, then Toronto, Chicago, St. Louis, and many more cities over three

more weeks. “We like touring over here,” Landa says. “Each new state is like a new country.

Exciting. There is so much to see. Our crowd over here has been growing each time. People treat us great. You meet cool people that care about music.”

After three years of touring, the Norwegian ambassadors are ready to bless the earth with another record. Nattesferd—out May 13—is their third studio album, and their second with Roadrunner Records.

The opening track, “Dendrofil for Yggdrasil,” has thick, frenzied guitars and pummeling

hard to call the evil and wicked “Berserkr” anything short of metal. Like Mastodon meets Judas Priest, the track salutes Viking legends of melees and carnage.

Speaking on Nattesferd’s production, Landa explains, “This time, we decided to record live, which we had never done. So, when we wrote all the songs, we knew we had to pull it off in the studio. You can feel it in the songwriting. For an entire album, we jammed out. It’s more organic.” That coincides with drums, the band’s decision to record border- in their home of Oslo, Norway. ing on “Other records were done in blast beats, Salem, Mass., with Converge but eventually, it guitarist [and] GodCity [Stusettles into a more ex- dio] owner, Kurt Ballou,” Lanpansive feeling, embracing da explains. He also reports a swirling atmosphere. This is that Kvelertak produced the odd for the band, but paradoxi- record themselves for the first cally makes sense when Landa time. “A lot could have gone claims that Kvelertak injected wrong,” he jokes. “more of a classic rock sound” and “lost some of the hardcore The band chose to record in and punk influence” for Nat- Norway for several reasons. tesferd. The “classic rock” vibe “We wanted to make it easier is sometimes more apparent for ourselves to be home, since in the band’s mindset and ap- we tour so much,” Landa says. proach to recording than in the “But, the main reason is that album’s final sound. It would be we needed this huge studio,

Amp e r Tone in Oslo, with one big room for all the amps to be separate from each other playing live. Nick Terry is the engineer. He works in the studio that did the last Turbonegro album, electronic music, and The Libertines.” That variety—added to the vast elbowroom—massages a grandiose feel from tracks like “Svartmesse” without compromising their status as a tight, focused metal songs. The production’s influence on the slower, more rock-oriented tunes like “Ondskapens Galakse” is more obviously beneficial: the harmonies and instrumentation are lighter, but they flow with that jam feeling in a big way.

The four weeks close to home in Amper Tone obviously allowed Kvelertak to fully flesh out their ideas.

With all of this talk about growing their sound, many fans will wonder how that evolution affected Erlend Hjelvik’s vocals. Landa assures—as does Nattesferd—that they remain unchanged. “He sings the same. That’s our sound,” Landa says. “That’s the way he sings; that’s part of the edge. If we started having clean vocals, it would sound cheesy. But, we have different stuff like choral vocals and even female vocals on two tracks.”

Kvelertak are constantly spinning new ideas and have already released a video for Nattesferd’s second track, “1985.”

Landa says the band handed over the controls to an old friend, Fredrik S. Hana: “We worked with him since our first record. He did our first video and one for the Meir record.

Personally, I have known him since out of high school.” The video’s “A Clockwork Orange” visuals are eerie, a wrestling match between sinister dread and a judgment-free party.

“The video is based on a movie [Hana] had written that never went into production,” Landa explains. “It is a gang of friends stretching their boundaries, doing things you normally wouldn’t do. It’s pretty wild, with uncomfortable scenes.”

The video’s initial balance of nostalgia and fun does indeed take a foreboding turn. Landa admits, “The soft feel and silly vibe of friends hanging out goes dark. There is self-realization that happened to the friends.”

The band’s summer will be dominated by European festivals, after which they will support Nattesferd in Scandinavia and Europe. They are currently booked all the way through December. On these tours, Kvelertak will have the opportunity to embrace their new expansive sound and leave behind the need to make setlists that cater to short opening slots and different headliners’ fan bases. “It comes down to time. [On] this tour, we headline, so we do what we want,” Landa says. “We find a setlist that works. With Slayer, we were opening, which means we have 30 minutes. We take out the jam songs and choose the shorter, high energy ones. We don’t think too much [about] the crowd; it doesn’t matter what type of crowd. We use the diversity of what we have done over three records.”

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INTERVIEW WITH VOCALIST/GUITARIST TODD JONES BY RIDGE BRIEL

BRUTAL. UNFORGIVING. UNRELENTING. These words have become universally synonymous with the Nails brand. After signing with Nuclear Blast Entertainment in mid 2014, all eyes have been on the band in eager anticipation of their new album. “It’s overwhelming,” says bandleader Todd Jones. “We can’t keep up with the demand in regards to touring and shows, but we’ve attempted our best effort to make a record that represents us, makes us happy, and fits in well with the rest of our discography.” They’ve just finished recording this new entry, entitled You Will Never Be One of Us. “We’re looking at an early summer release, as long as record plants don’t fuck us,” Jones laughs.

Humanity—You Will Never Be One of Us is shaping up to be their best record yet. “With each recording, he outdoes himself,” Jones says of Ballou.

“Guitar tone, drum tone, bass tone, mixing, everything. His production style is perfect in assisting Nails in getting our point across. I don’t see Nails making full-length records without him being involved.”

The writing of this record started right after the band wrapped recording for their previous album, Abandon All Life, which came out in 2013.

“We’re always thinking of ideas for songs, writing riffs, making lyrical ideas, and stuff like that,” Jones says. He adds that fans can expect You Will Never Be One of Us to feature a rerecording of “In Pain,” but will not include “Among the Arches of Intolerance,” two tracks that were previously released on limited edition flexi disc.

explains, “You Will Never Be One of Us is about arrogant, snide, social climbing parasites that try to attach themselves to factions not for the sake of helping those factions or allowing relationships to grow and flourish, but for the purpose of personal gain, whether that be financial, social, or sexual.

It’s not about us or our friends, but it’s about anybody who dedicates themselves to their passion and has to deal with imposters trying to steal from them.”

What influenced Nails’ decision to sign with Nuclear Blast?

“We didn’t publicly announce that we were free of label commitments after Abandon All Life, so not many labels were hitting us up,” Jones replies.

“Slayer is on Nuclear Blast and I’m a big mark for Slayer, so that’s why we signed with them… Just kidding. We signed Produced once again by the albefore I even knew they were mighty Kurt Ballou—who has Their records have always fol- on Nuclear. They offered a deal produced all of their releases lowed some sort of theme, and that fit our agenda more so aside from their first, Obscene this one is no different. Jones than other label. Also, the fact

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that Monte Conner was behind signing us was another big reason. He’s the guy who signed all the great death metal bands to Roadrunner Records in the late 1980s [and] early 1990s.” Conner was Senior Vice President of A&R for the label at the time, and was responsible for bands like Trivium, Death, Gorguts, and Porcupine Tree, among many others.

Anyone who follows the band knows of their touring schedule: short runs and one-off fests are the norm for Nails. 2016 looks to be no different. “Every tour is ‘full’ in regards to commitment and the pressure we put on ourselves to make sure we can deliver the best Nails experience,” Jones asserts.

“We’ll do some East Coast dates, West Coast dates, European dates, and I imagine some festival appearances. If you follow the band, you know what to expect.”

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PHOTOGRAPHY BY CHRISTIAN NAPOLITANO

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"People talk about letting go, and that’s exactly what happened."

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ou would think Domenic Palermo would be excited about the next musical chapter that awaits his band, Nothing. He is, but any excitement or eagerness that surrounds the impending release of the Philadelphia noisegaze outfit’s second full-length effort, Tired of Tomorrow—out via Relapse Records on May 13—is overwhelmed by a greater feeling of dread. “There’s always that black cloud you see coming,” Palermo says. “I wake up every day and I know I’m one day closer to being out of my comfort zone for six weeks.

I have to leave my dog and leave my bed. And then, after that, it’s hard to come back home, because home doesn’t feel like home after you’ve been gone for six weeks. You’re kind of stuck in this purgatory of not being comfortable anywhere.”

Palermo’s voice shows the wear and tear that band living can have on someone. He’s never less than friendly in conversation, even mustering up a few laughs when the opportunity arises, but he sounds rough with exhaustion. Talk to any working band caught in the vicious

cycle of touring and recording, and they’ll tell you about the rigors of being on tour. It’s an oft chaotic existence marked by hours of traveling in vans, bad food, and precious little sleep.

There are also endless stretches of stagnation and boredom, dead space that’s always left to fill between leaving for the next city and that all-important hour on stage.

If those were the only obstacles standing in Nothing’s way, Palermo might not be sweating the idea of hitting the road again so intensely.

Those aforementioned realities might be uncomfortable, but the vocalist and guitarist’s road woes have, on occasion, extended into the arena of danger. About a year ago, right as Nothing were getting ready to record Tired of Tomorrow, Palermo was jumped after a show in Oakland. The end result left him bedridden in a hospital with brain swelling, vertigo spells, a fractured skull and orbital, and an injured back. “No one knew if I was going to be back in time to record,” he says of the incident, which left him hospitalized for three days. “I didn’t talk to anyone for two weeks. By that point, both as

a band and as individuals, we were drilled into the concrete.

So, there was no more worrying about anything at that point.”

The incident is just a snapshot of the kind of chaos that has come to define Nothing in their

five years of existence. Palermo formed the band in 2011 as a means of readjusting to life after prison, having served two years for aggravated assault and attempted murder after stabbing a man during a fight.

His musical roots were in hardcore—Palermo formerly fronted Horror Show and performed with XO Skeletons—but Nothing took his songwriting in a more melodic, but no less noisy direction, less Sick Of It All and more My Bloody Valentine and Swervedriver.

The success of 2013’s excellent Guilty of Everything made for a busy past few years for the band, and Tired of Tomorrow seems poised to build on the rock solid foundation laid by its predecessor. Its title speaks of a band accustomed to looking over their shoulders while waiting for the other shoe to drop, but the 10 tracks on Tired of Tomorrow have a blue sweetness to them. A gray mood still hangs over the record, but the new songs are among the most tuneful and accessible Nothing have written, with Palermo citing early Radiohead and ‘90s Britpop among the re-

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cord’s influences. “I wouldn’t feel comfortable making a record if it didn’t progress at all,” he says of the band’s movement toward the melodic. “At the same time, we try not to stray too far from what we’re doing. We enjoy what we do, but there has to be room for progression or some sort of arc.

Otherwise, it becomes boring.”

Tired of Tomorrow is primed to build on the band’s success, but the work that went into getting it done was considerable, and not just in terms of the Xs and Os of songwriting and recording. In addition to Palermo’s injury, the band broke off their relationship with Collect Records due to the label’s ties to embattled pharmaceutical CEO Martin Shkreli.

Down a frontman and absent a label, the band were in a troubled position heading into a month of recording.

But Palermo pulled himself up by the bootstraps. While the rest of the band returned to Philadelphia, he stayed behind in California, holing up in a cheap motel for 10 days in Big Sur. There, he pored through demos, took painkillers, and wrote, before rejoining the band with new material and renewed purpose. “When I showed back up at the studio, I just said, ‘OK, let’s work,’” he recalls. “We had all these demos at that point, but I said, ‘Well, I have these new ideas.’ People talk about letting go, and that’s exactly what happened. The songs—as cliché as it sounds—started to write themselves at that point.”

With Collect out of the picture, the band returned to their former home, Relapse Records. Palermo anticipates a touring schedule more hectic than the one that followed Guilty of Everything, but he’s ready to brave it. A new record means a clean slate, and the singer is holding out hope that some light can break through the dark. “I have enough in the closet that I can pull from, but I’d much rather write about things that aren’t fucking my life up,” he says.

“I would love for there not to be so much drama surrounding everything.”

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RAPPER AND LOVER OF THE 175 AND UP CLUB, TRINIDAD JAMES, PLAYED GUITAR AT A NOTHING SHOW IN LOS ANGELES AND SHOWCASED HIS SWEET LICKS

PROPAGANDHI ERGS!(REUNION) MUSTARD PLUG A WILHELM SCREAM SMALL BROWN BIKE DEAD TO ME KNAPSACK LEMURIA MEAN JEANS THE MENZINGERS LATTERMAN(REUNION)

LESS THAN JAKE

DILLINGER FOUR OFF WITH THEIR HEADS THE FLATLINERS SAMIAM STRIKE ANYWHERE TIM BARRY MASKED INTRUDER BOYSETSFIRE BRAID F.Y.P(FINAL SHOW)

3 DAYS. 14 VENUES. 300+ BANDS.

YOU BLEW IT / TENEMENT / SHELLSHAG / PEARS / ELWAY / TOYGUITAR / GOLDEN PELICANS / RADON / PUP MAC SABBATH / SAVE ENDS / CAPTAIN WE’RE SINKING / AJJ / GUNMOLL(REUNION) / VACATION / AUDACITY / ANNABEL TIMESHARES / SOMOS / PRAWN / AFTER THE FALL / FREE THROW / CHEAP GIRLS / BIG EYES / SUCH GOLD PINK RAZORS(REUNION) / NIGHT BIRDS / UNITED NATIONS / RVIVR / THE COPYRIGHTS / DOWSING / TORCHE IRON CHIC / IRON REAGAN / BIG D AND THE KIDS TABLE / TWELVE HOUR TURN (REUNION) / PLANES MISTAKEN FOR STARS JEFF ROSENSTOCK / TOYS THAT KILL / BROADWAY CALLS/ WAR ON WOMEN / RED CITY RADIO / ROZWELL KID FLOOR / UNDERGROUND RAILROAD TO CANDYLAND / SLINGSHOT DAKOTA / AGAINST ALL AUTHORITY(REUNION) DRUG CHURCH / SUNDIALS / CHRIS CRESSWELL / ERICA FREAS (RVIVR) / MICROWAVE / EAST CAMERON FOLKCORE / WET NURSE / SUCH GOLD SIGNALS MIDWEST / DIKEMBE / STEVE ADAMYK BAND / POST TEENS / ANTARCTIGO VESPUCCI / ARLISS NANCY / CHRIS FARREN / FRAMEWORKS THE UNLOVEABLES / WE ARE THE UNION / ARMS ALOFT / OSO OSO / DIGGER (REUNION) / COASTER / TIRED FROM NOW ON (REUNION) MAX LEVINE ENSEMBLE / COKE BUST / LIFTED BELLS / BROADCASTER / PRETTY BOY THORSON AND THE FALLEN ANGLES (FINAL SHOW) WORSHIP THIS/ TILTWHEEL / RUNAWAY BROTHER / NORTHBOUND / THE BROKEDOWNS / HOLD TIGHT! (FINAL SHOW) / REGENTS / CHOKE UP

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PHOTOGRAPHY BY NICK KARP

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V

innie Caruana always seems to self-diagnose his ailments. “There’s something wrong with me,” he says, laughing.

“I’ve developed a problem with my ears—this is gonna sound even stranger when I connect it to soy sauce.” Waving his chopsticks at a restaurant in Brooklyn, the 36-year-old singer-songwriter explains how a series of troubling chronic symptoms led a fully inked man to carry a constant stock of Coconut Aminos in his pocket, a healthier, albeit less satisfying, substitute for the sodium-packed sauce he used to dip his sushi in four times a week. This is just one of the measures he takes to manage what he believes to be Meniere’s Disease.

Before the Movielife and I Am The Avalanche vocalist most recently entered the studio, he knew something was off. He’d woken up feeling like the flu hit him—his body was fighting something off.

Halfway through the next day, he started losing his balance. But it wasn’t until Caruana started recording his debut full-length solo record, Survivor’s Guilt—out May 27 via Equal Vision—that he felt he truly triggered the condition. “I sang, like, half of the record in one night, which is very rare, but I was on a roll,” Caruana says. “I must’ve tweaked my eardrums, because I [was] blasting through the headphones all night.” Following that evening, life became increasingly difficult. Gnarly tinnitus, dizzi-

ness, vertigo, and headaches completely threw off his equilibrium, making him wonder how he’d ever be able to finish the record.

“I was waking up every morning feeling like shit—walking against the wall in the subway, because I was afraid I’d fall into the tracks because I was so off-balance,” he says.

At first, he thought it was a brain tumor—he tends to get himself worked up when facing stressful situations. After three different doctor visits yielded no results, he tried to keep his cool and take care of it himself. Diving down the Internet rabbit hole, he found support groups and other people experiencing his symptoms. It turns out Ryan Adams took two years off due to the Meniere’s Disease, which increasingly began to look like the musician’s worst nightmare.

Caruana has been taking steps to healthier living, but while he proudly touts his aptitude for self-diagnosing most of his health issues, he also ponders whether or not the misery he undergoes is self-induced. “When I started recording this solo record, everything started getting all fucked up with my brain,” he laughs. He recalls a recent conversation with Steve Choi of RX Bandits, who also plays on Survivor’s Guilt and is a member of the side project Peace’d Out. “Dude, what’s wrong with you?” Choi asked Caruana.

“You’re torturing yourself!”

PHOTOGRAPHY BY DEREK SCANCARELLI

Maybe it isn’t by chance that when Caruana hits the studio, bad shit happens. While recording his solo EP, City by the Sea, in 2013, he somehow destroyed his back. One herniated disc later, his girlfriend became his full-time nurse, helping him do everything for six months while he was couch-ridden and on a steady diet of Percocet. Hundreds of pills later, his body ached from the necessary evil of the medication, which tore apart his stomach in the process. “I don’t fucking know if it’s coincidental,” Caruana says about his current situation.

“Maybe I did tweak my brain into being fucked up, because I was hypersensitive about making the record perfect.”

The goal for this record was to dedicate “maximum output and integrity,” he says, and to take his solo work to a different stratosphere sonically, as well as in his songwriting. The elephant-in-the-room question is: why now? At 36, why did it take so long for him to pour everything into a solo record? “Honestly, I think I’ve been lazy most of my life, I really do,” he says candidly. “I wasted a lot of fucking years.” For that reason, Survivor’s Guilt holds that much more weight. “I could’ve made my solo full-length debut 10 years ago, but it wouldn’t have been as important or substantial to my life and career as it is right now,” he says.

The man Caruana is now is quite a departure from who he was 10 years ago, when it comes to both lifestyle and love. He would drink, smoke weed, bartend all night and sleep all day. He missed the daylight. He certainly wasn’t helping his career grow. “I’d ask myself, ‘What am I doing here?’” Caruana explains.

“The bills were being paid, but life was not happening.” The album’s opening track, “Burn It Down,” is representative of this period. It’s also about the people who got away, “the ones who grew as human beings while you’re just the doing the same old bullshit in the same old setting,” he says.

Divorce also seems to have played a key part in Caruana regaining his life. At the age of 27, after he’d already toured the world, he married his 23-year-old sweetheart from England who was facing deportation. The two were divorced two years later, but she got her green card and decided to stay in America. For a while, Caruana was angry about the situation, but now, he’s at peace with it. Take “Under My Side of the Bed,” a song he wrote about the fear of returning to love

after loss. “No one was ever gonna want to date me; I was divorced in my 20s, I felt like damaged goods,” he says. “By the end of the song, this guy realizes that’s bullshit, because as soon as love happens, it knocks you on your ass again.”

Now in the latter half of his 30s, Caruana’s not concerned with anyone else’s decisions, as they shouldn’t be with his. As he likes to put it, “Nobody else is your God.” His newfound sensibility and urgency circle back to his experiences over the past decade. After missing out on all those years, what if something goes wrong and he can longer do what makes him happy? That’s where Survivor’s Guilt snaps into place. Of course, it’s a record about love and regret. It’s miserable, but it’s also optimistic. It’s also inherently fatalistic.

For most of his life, Caruana had never lost a loved one. It started to wear on him: the notion that, someday, his luck would run out and he’d be faced with the harsh reality of death. “Nobody I knew died. It was crazy,” he says. “I started getting really stressed out about it, like, fuck, I wasn’t ready for it.” But eventually, people in his life started to pass, as they do in everyone’s life: grandparents, friends, and family. He could understand losing someone to old age, but some were accidents, some were drug related, and many were simply too young. “When young people die, it’s impossible for me to even grasp,” he says, shaking his head. “I have breakdowns about it all the time. Some of them have been on stage.”

Loss tends to make people conscious of their own mortality and Caruana is no exception. He’s got the self-awareness to know he still takes most of his days on earth for granted, but he’s trying to change that. His navigation of these new feelings comes in the same old format: writing lyrics. It’s the only therapy he has. To make the most of his life, however much of it he has left, he hopes to pay homage to the ones he’s lost. “It’s a blessing to be here,” Caruana says. “I feel like I should avenge the death of everyone that goes before me by living fruitfully, living for real, and being a good man. Maybe I didn’t live as much as I could’ve before. Let’s start now. That’s Survivor’s Guilt.”

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PUP

Interview with drummer Zack Mykula by Samantha Spoto

PHOTOGRAPHY BY ALAN SNODGRASS

T

he Toronto based punk rockers in PUP hit the ground running when they formed in 2013 and haven’t eased up in the slightest, quitting their jobs and touring extensively, playing nearly 450 shows in the last two years

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to support their self-titled debut. All that time spent together instilled a confidence in these childhood friends, one that helped ensure their new record—The Dream Is Over, out May 27 via SideOneDummy Records—would be unsuscep-

tible to the dreaded sophomore slump.

It also led them to the realization that the punk lifestyle doesn’t always resemble the romanticized dream. People often don’t consider the lack of personal space, the living out of a tour van with your bandmates and their instruments, and the garbage left over from gas station meals. It’s the lonely nights, the empty wallets, and the sense of disillusionment that ultimately take a toll. For every sold out show, for every record sold, PUP must take the good with the bad, and sometimes, the bad manifests in a physical way. “We aren’t constantly of sound mind, so we aren’t of sound body,” drummer Zack Mykula admits. In the midst of their tour with Modern Baseball, lead vocalist Stefan Babcock developed a cyst on his vocal chords which began to hemorrhage. He and his bandmates dropped off the bill and returned to their hometown to recuperate and strategize.

venir of sorts, a representation of triumph for a band who worried about the real possibility of having to ask themselves what could have been. “It’s empowering to take things back into our own hands again,” Mykula says.

“It’s not entirely put behind us, but just taking ownership of that nightmare feels great.”

The songs on this album don’t sound like they belong to a group of people who were told to—at the very least—slow down. They are loud and hard and jolting, yet it’s clear there is a certain level of precision, a careful crafting of words and notes at play. “It’s characteristic of us more than the first record,” Mykula says of The Dream Is Over. “It’s less of a band trying to find its footing and more of us having learned to speak what we mean in a more concise, refined way.”

These 10 tracks exist as vignettes—quirky and anthemic narratives that illuminate the goings on in Babcock’s life.

There is an ode to his pet chameleon—which he met on the Like the dedicated and per- set of the band’s “Mabu” vidsistent group they have prov- eo—confrontations with anxen to be, PUP returned to the iety, neurosis, and growing up States soon after to play the no matter how difficult life gets. handful of shows they previ- “The overarching theme is livously canceled. One of those ing through adversity, owning shows happened to be at Brook- up to it and facing it head on,” lyn venue, Saint Vitus; it was Mykula says. on that stage where the band’s frontman explained what had For the preservation of health transpired over the past few and sanity, PUP don’t intend months and what that would to indulge in the same type of mean for the Canadian quartet. binge touring they did the last While powering through three go around, but there will still be new songs, Babcock told the plenty of opportunities to see sold out Greenpoint venue how them do what they have done a doctor suggested he forego his from their inception: pour their music career, telling him verba- hearts onto stages while riding tim: “The dream is over.” out their dream at full speed— no roadblocks in sight. “The Babcock took his doctor’s dream isn’t over until you make words and slapped them on the it over, and that’s up to us,” spine of PUP’s second record. Mykula declares. “I couldn’t “The dream is not over,” Bab- imagine doing anything else cock said at Saint Vitus. “We’re and the others couldn’t either. fucking here.”

It’s going to be hard, but if it’s not hard, then I figure, what’s The Dream Is Over serves as the point?” the ultimate jab at the people who didn’t believe in PUP. In The band will get back in the some ways, it’s a knife twisted van at the start of summer. in their own guts too, as they Hopefully, this tour will not kill have doubted their own poten- them. tial at times. But it’s also a sou-

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PHOTOGRAPHY BY JACKI VITETTA

RUBY ROSE FOX

INTERVIEW BY KELLEY O'DEATH

M

any descriptors get tossed around in an effort to describe Ruby Rose Fox, from “soulful” and “powerhouse” to comparisons to Lou Reed and Tom Waits, but how does the Bostonian frontwoman—whose first full-length album, Domestic, will be released on May 24—define her own musical identity? “Well, I have an unusually low voice for a woman,” the tenor vocalist begins. “I think it developed because, as a kid, I lost a sister to cancer, and to calm myself, I would heavily imitate Roy Orbison, Elvis, and Judy Garland. I think the low timbre of their voices soothed me and was like a musical balm to my distress. Now, I think my voice calms other people down.

I think that’s why people like it.”

The velvety rumble of Fox’s voice is distinctive, but the whole of her musical persona is equally rich and textured. “I can confidently say I’m invested in feminism,” she explains. “I’m invested in telling stories that are difficult to hear and hard to tell.” Even the moniker “Ruby Rose Fox” is more than an artfully crafted stage name. “Ruby Fox was my grandmother’s name,” she reveals. “She lived her life in a state-run mental institution. I think this Ruby Rose Fox is about the ‘redo.’ It’s about demanding the boldest and most fiercely-loving version of myself every day.”

Fox’s band may be eponymous, but the nine-piece ensemble—which includes three backing vocalists dubbed The Steinems in honor of feminist icon, Gloria—is truly a team. “When you really have a band, you can feel it,” Fox attests.

“Plus, I think I’m always looking for family, and this band is like a family.” Now, that family has reached a major milestone with Domestic.

“Our fans really made it happen, as did my manager Roger [Metcalf ], and my cowriter and producer, David Brophy,” Fox notes. “David kept sending me tracks to sing to during one of the darkest and saddest years of my life. I had been feel-

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ing very broken, and I’m not sure I could have made this album alone.”

The lyrics that accompany the 12 expansive, nigh-cinematic soundscapes on Domestic stem from both social critiques and Fox’s own personal curiosities. “I was healing from a traumatic relationship and I got obsessed with American history, particularly the Cold War,” she says of the seed that would eventually grow into the album’s 10th song, “Ronald Reagan Killed the Radio.” “I probably watched 100 YouTube documentaries on the subject, and because I was emotionally distressed during this time, it all felt very real and immediate to me. The moment I couldn’t step away from was the moment Ronald Reagan and Gorbachev met at the White House and came so close to nuclear disarmament—but Reagan was tired and wanted to have dinner instead. I think I was looking for answers in my own life.”

Despite the depth and complexity of her writing process, Fox says that once the record reaches listeners, she just hopes that “they feel something. That they feel like their time wasn’t wasted.” And though the band have been honored with several awards over the last couple years, plus received a deluge of critical acclaim, Fox says, “I still stand firm about the importance of making a living over fame. I mean, anyone can get famous in a post-Warhol universe. That said, I’m actually completely honored by anyone who supports and loves the music. The connection with my fans and band is really my whole life and feels very real and genuine. If that’s what fame is, then… Bring it on!”

Fox will be able to connect even more closely with her fans when the band tour in support of Domestic this fall. They are still working to finalize the dates, and she exclaims, “If you want us in your town, let us know!”

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PHOTOGRAPHY BY EBRUY ILDIZ

MARISSA NADLER Interview by Tim Anderl or over a decade, Marissa Nadler has channeled gothic American sounds to produce her own unique, dark, and moody songcraft. Strangers—her seventh full-length record, which hits the streets May 20 via Sacred Bones— is a deeply moving look behind the curtain into her personal troubles and triumphs. “My music has always been dark in tone, starting from my first record. I think the instrumentation is now a better fit for the lyrical content, and that’s what makes it seem darker,” Nadler says. “It is almost entirely autobiographical, tinged with some major liberties taken throughout the years in terms of name changes and setting changes. The new record is more painterly and surreal, but based on real fears and experiences. It can be an uncomfortable feeling to put

F

yourself out there, but I’d rather do that than write songs that don’t mean anything to me or are not truthful.”

While her musical journey indicates that she’s experienced heartache and loss, Nadler uses her unique experiences as a springboard to personal growth and perspective. “I think, like anyone else, I have some major downs and have certainly had some issues,” she offers, “but then again, who hasn’t? I think it’s just part of being human. I just try to keep looking at the bigger picture and see the whole world and keep perspective on things.”

“As I get older, I’ve got a better grip than I used to,” Nadler confesses. “I just try to put the low moments towards something

productive, which, in this case, is songwriting. I also think writing from an honest—and sometimes, less than flattering—perspective does resonate with people. I certainly gravitate towards music that is that way.”

Guiding Nadler and Strangers through the recording process was producer Randall Dunn. “I love working with him,” she says.

“He definitely has a good handle on creating lush, spacious atmospheres. But, I lean harder on myself than I do anyone else.”

Although her immediate goal of completing Strangers is afoot, Nadler continues to keep her eyes on the horizon for new opportunities. “I really enjoy making records and recording,” she says.

“Then again, I also feel very guilty

if I’m not working on something or making something. I’ve always been that way. Healthy? Who knows. But, that compulsion to create is a great motivator. I want to continue to make records and continue to challenge myself to write the best songs I’m capable of. I’d like to keep working with stop-motion animation, which is a relatively new pursuit for me.

I’m also interested in making a body of fine artwork that I can be proud of, and to get into some galleries. Painting and drawing was my first love and I went to art school, studying it. I’ve been very focused on my music and would like to bridge the gap a bit more.

I wouldn’t mind spending some years doing soundtrack work for crime dramas and horror movies and getting more into scoring too.”

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ALL PHOTOGRAPHY BY POONEH GHANA

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W

hen you’re a band with four guitarists who play loud, fast rock ‘n’ roll in Nashville, Tenn., you’re bound to stand out. When your band has the ever-so-amazing moniker Diarrhea Planet, that attention tends to get magnified even more. Thanks to a rigorous touring schedule, increasingly high profile festival appearances, and the support of successful local indie label, Infinity Cat, Diarrhea Planet are getting ready to explode in 2016 with the release of their third album, Turn to Gold, on June 10.

Planet have another thing going for them: their use of four guitarists, which makes them look just as cool as their name and music sound. “There’s a band in particular, Liquor Store, who have played with as many as eight or nine guitarists,” Miller explains. “We thought it would be funny to have as many guitarists as possible, and I think our record is five or six, so they still have us beat. We’re going for maximum guitar rock.”

What I like to do is look [at] where everyone is playing on the fret board and try to fill in the gaps, so you get big piano block chords, a little bit different voicing to fill out the sound.

I think we’ve become more aware of where each other is playing, and getting a little better at fine-tuning a lot of that stuff so we’re not stepping on each other’s toes all the times.”

with the drums. There’s a lot of bleed from the guitar amps, you can hear the snare rattling, and that’s what he was all about: capturing the live show even though there’s quite a bit of bleed. He was like, ‘All right, let’s roll with it. This is how you guys sound live. Turn the amps up, don’t worry about volume.’ That was really cool.”

Though having that many guitarists onstage at once looks awesome and chaotic, the band have developed a simple writing method that keeps the creative process from becoming too much of the latter.

“One person will write a demo, which will usually be one or two guitar tracks and vocals, and the rest of us will write parts over that,” Miller relates.

“We’ll jam and work out our own parts over the top of that, If having a cool name and the and if something’s not workwill to be on the road con- ing, we’ll stop and run a few stantly isn’t enough, Diarrhea sections, tweak a few things.

live show into a studio environment can be challenging.

Fortunately, thanks to the production techniques of Vance Powell—who has worked with The Dead Weather, Sturgill Simpson, and Jessica Simpson, to name a few—the band’s raucous onstage insanity comes across on record. “Vance was really cool, because he had seen us live before and he understood what we were going for,” Miller enthuses. “He had us set up in the tracking room as we’d set up live, so four guitars in a row in the same room

arrhea Planet are well on their way to making Turn to Gold’s title a self-fulfilling prophecy. “We’re not afraid to be the biggest band we can be,” Miller assures. “I think we’re all pretty invested in this and want to take it as far as we can. We’ve had a blast touring almost nonstop the past few years [and] putting out records, and we want to continue to grow and share our music with more and more people.”

With every ingredient for Translating the awe-inducing success in the music industry madness of Diarrhea Planet’s more or less checked off, Di-

The aforementioned factors are major factors in the band’s success, but the main ingredient has proven to be their fast and reckless style—which is apparent both on record and, especially, live—one that they’ve effectively honed over the years thanks to an equally relentless work ethic.

While staying in perpetual tour mode is not a bad thing, it can have some adverse effects. “In the past, we’ve spent so much time touring, it’s been difficult for us to set aside time to write music together to go into the studio to record,” admits vocalist and guitarist Emmett Miller. “So, this is the first time we’ve really taken time off. It was late fall, early winter [of ] 2015 that we took off time from touring to write the entire record, rather than just going into the studio with things we’ve had on the backburner for a while.”

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PHOTOGRAPHY BY JOE CALIXTO

INTERVIEW WITH VOCALIST/GUITARIST KEVIN DYE BY NICHOLAS SENIOR

P

arallel Lives—gates’ astoundingly great sophomore album—is clearly a product of influence. The record, due out via Pure Noise on June 3, was influenced by Michigan transplant and gates vocalist Kevin Dye’s new life in New York City. “I was working a job where I had to take the subway,” Dye says, “and I’d constantly see the same person on my morning commute, or I’d hear a passing conversation—only a sentence or two—and wonder what the rest of their story was. I’d walk past people and never know what their lives were like.”

Dye decided to expand on the idea of these little, seemingly meaningless encounters and their effect on parallel lives. He became obsessed with the idea and decided to go for it on the record, “because I’m transplanted from the Midwest and because this city is new and shiny for me and having to take public transportation—I’m rubbing elbows

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with people I never would have had I stayed in the Midwest. For New Yorkers, this is just their way of life, and that’s super fascinating to me. I can’t imagine moving away from New York after living here.

Everything else must seem so small, after having all this stimulus all the time; everything would be unsatisfying to me. There’s so much going on here. It’s a bottomless pit of influence. Just realizing there are so many people, lives, and stories going on and being able to intertwine these stories with personal experiences of mine and things that are really important to me.”

“It was a challenge, but I knew going in that I wanted to [tackle this idea],” Dye continues. “We knew what the album title was going to be early on, and I knew I had a lot of these skeletons of songs that would work, so we pursued it.

[2014’s] Bloom & Breathe is really interwoven together, because it’s about one scenario. This time, I was able to detach myself from that and

really intertwine these other stories into the lyrics and try to get better at my songwriting abilities. I have a long way to go in learning stuff. I think that’s what life is: constantly learning new things about yourself and other people, and I love that.”

have clearly succeeded, as Parallel Lives is as layered as a wedding cake, and each bite of their musical concoction is made that much more enjoyable because of the clear care the members put into each and every detail.

This detail-oriented approach extends to everything in gates. “Our guitarist [Dan King] and bassist [Mike Maroney] do all of our art for us,” Dye explains. “They took the photo that was the background, and it came together really well. It’s my favorite artwork we’ve had so far.

[Art is] a huge part of our band. The artwork has always been there since day one. I remember joining the band, and the background of the Myspace page was what ended up being the cover of our first EP,” he laughs. “I feel very privileged to have these guys in the band that can create art that just resonates with the album so well.”

The band’s upcoming summer tour with Thrice will be unexpected wish fulfillment for Dye. “Thrice was a huge influence for me, especially Vheissu and beyond,” he says. “That record was one of those records where this band totally changed what they did, and it’s so much better than what they were doing.

It’s like you really can just do what you want; you don’t have to follow the rules. It’s an absolute honor to tour with them. It’s a band that has done whatever they wanted their entire career, and that is the kind of band we want to be.”

“Our goal was to push ourselves into new territory and come up with something that we could all be super happy about on a lot of different levels,” Dye asserts. They

Dye’s Midwestern modesty won’t let him say it, but gates have become that band with Parallel Lives.

Their promising, pretty sound has transformed into something gorgeous and grandiose.

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D

ark Funeral—the Swedish lords of unrelenting black metal—are back after an impromptu hiatus from their frosty throne. It’s been nearly seven years since the band’s last full-length release, basically an eternity for the band’s fans. The Dark Funeral squad survived lineup changes and label swaps during this period, but thanks to the leadership of founding guitarist, Lord Ahriman, have emerged from it all even stronger, and somehow, even darker. The band’s sixth full-length, Where Shadows Forever Reign—out June 3 on Century Media Records—proves that even grizzled black metal veterans can still learn wild new tricks.

“I’m always writing,” Ahriman says assuredly. “Whenever ideas pop in my head, I record them. I need to find that vibe, that feeling.” With nearly seven years to work with, Ahriman had ample time to explore a plethora of musical vibes and ideas, which ultimately led to the creation of Where Shadows Forever Reign, one of the band’s most diverse and rewarding sonic offerings to date. Dark Funeral’s trademark full throttle black metal assault is still prominent—especially on ragers like “The Eternal Eclipse”—but songs like “As I Ascend” and “Temple of Ahriman” slow things down long enough for some genuinely creepy atmospherics to enter the equation. The album still feels like

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a bullet train to the underworld, it just makes a few pit stops in some dark and nefarious new places along the way.

“When I start writing, I work on it until I’m 100 percent satisfied,” Ahriman reveals. “There are riffs that I scrap or save for later, but usually, I work part by part, piece by piece until everything is the way I want it. With this record compared to previous ones, I went more with the flow. Most of the time, I want this intense sort of chasing the note feeling from beginning to end. This time, I went more in-depth and went more by the feeling I was looking for. I sort of stepped outside myself and stopped thinking that it had to be super fast all the time—which, I guess, is one of the main reasons it turned out so dynamic. I had quite a lot of material written over the last three, four years, but it wasn’t until the last four or five months that I sat down and completely focused on getting these songs together.”

The creative process behind Where Shadows Forever Reign was also affected by the 2014 addition of Heljarmadr, Dark Funeral’s firebrand new frontman and Ahriman’s spirited new collaborative partner. Heljarmadr’s name roughly translates from old Scandinavian tongues as “a man belonging in hell,” so you know he’s the perfect guy for the job. “The two of us worked close together,” Ahriman says proudly. “It took a while for he and I to find our

way of working together. We had to try out a bit to see how we would work on music and lyric and vocal arrangements. Once we got that going, it really made a difference.”

Heljarmadr’s recording debut with the band naturally came with some big shoes to fill and lofty expectations to meet. Jumping to the forefront of one of black metal’s most revered institutions and replacing longtime throat-shredder Emperor Magus Caligula would be a daunting task for anyone. Luckily, Mr. Heljarmadr brought his A game and delivers an impassioned and hell-worthy performance. On the album’s blitzkrieg title track, his voice coaxes venom from even the sweetest Swedish guitar melodies. “Beast Above Man” features an eerily articulate rasp and some pronounced guttural bellows for good measure. “This time, I wanted the music and lyrics to be symbiotic with each other,” Ahriman says. “This is the first record since the debut album actually where I’m quite involved with the lyrics and vocals. Once we started working together on ideas, I just had so many ideas, I presented them to Heljarmadr and he was like, ‘Dude, this is great.’ Plus, he had some brilliant ideas himself,” he says fondly.

“It was quite inspiring to work on these arrangements.”

Excited to share Where Shadows Forever Reign with the world, to properly showcase their new-

ly minted lineup, and kickstart a slew of stage dominating concerts touring the globe once again, Dark Funeral wound up facing an interesting dilemma regarding their otherwise uber satisfying new album. As Ahriman explains, “It’s the first record where it’s been this difficult to pick single tracks, because all of them have their own identity and they live their own lives sort of.

It’s really difficult to pick just one.

We decided to pick ‘Nail Them to the Cross,’ because, first of all, it’s a very catchy song and also very intense and fast.” The band released a corpse paint adorned video for the song last year, both to quell fans’ bloodthirst for new Dark Funeral material and to act as a showcase for the new tricks they’ve developed and hellish tapestries they’ve weaved on their new album.

“We also experimented a little bit with the drums,” Ahriman adds.

“It’s triplets on four beats, that’s why the drums sound so extremely fucking fast. It’s four beats on the guitar, but triplets on the blast beats.” This is a maniacal feat that makes sense when you’ve got a diabolical drummer like Dominator on your squad. “We wanted to do something really extreme with that song and show that we still got it,” Ahriman laughs. “We felt that was a good song to show that you can always count on Dark Funeral.”

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PHOTOGRAPHY BY LORI GUTMAN

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INTERVIEW WITH FRONTMAN JASON BUTLER BY JAMESON KETCHUM

e have no limitations whatsoever,” frontman Jason Butler opines from the back gate of letlive.’s trailer, currently parked behind the Hawthorne Theater in Portland, Ore. It’s late March and the band’s new record, If I’m the Devil…, is still months from being released on Epitaph Records. The sun is setting and Butler has been resting in his Bandwagon, trying to knock out the last bit of an illness that kept him from playing the first few dates of their tour alongside The Wonder Years—leaving Every Time I Die frontman, Keith Buckley, to fill in. Later in the evening, Butler would tell the audience, “Someone took my beanie when I jumped in the crowd. I don’t need it back, but I do have shingles.”

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Considering his poor health, Butler shouldn’t be all that enthusiastic to be interviewed, but that his offstage demeanor diametrically opposes his madman live performance. Speaking with Butler takes you many places. Smalltalk rapidly gives way to more important topics, and it’s clear that he’s always ready to dive deep.

In order to scratch the surface of what fans will experience on If I’m the Devil…, one must first acknowledge what letlive.’s previous release, 2013’s The Blackest Beautiful, presented. When questioned about the transitional pressure the band put on themselves after wrapping up one powerhouse record and moving on to the next, Butler becomes his most candid. “When I write, I always think about what

we’ve done prior, what it’s done for us, and did I enjoy that?” he reveals.

“Was it so visceral that it can only exist in that moment that I wrote it, or is it something that will sustain and continue? I’d like to take the things that I feel have this perennial timeless element to them and carry them onto the next record.”

It’s appropriate that letlive. would analyze the past in order to create the future. For a band who wear their hearts on their sleeves as intensely as letlive. do, it would only hinder their creative output to ignore what was happening within the unit itself.

Butler expands, “I know that plenty of bands talk about the art being the driving force, but I don’t hear many bands talking about this: we were growing so much as human beings and that can be very difficult. It found

its way into us as artists, and it made writing considerably longer than we would like. At the same time, it made the record we have now.”

Changes being a part of any artistic effort, Butler cites his wife, singer-songwriter Gin Wigmore, as a massive inspiration to whom he has become as an artist. The track “Foreign Cab Rides” actually begins with an audio recording Butler made while en route to Wigmore’s home to tell her he loved her after almost losing the relationship altogether. “I was a victim of self-sabotage, which I always did, because I had to have an escape route,” he admits. “I did it with her, and that was the moment I realized that I was fully in love with someone. I recorded it—I was in such a weird, anxiety-riddled moment that I was voice recording my trip in the cab from the venue to her house to tell her, ‘I love you. I want to love you.’”

Autobiographical songs aside, ...Devil feels largely propped up by statements of confidence and cohesion within the band itself. Changes were happening both personally and professionally, but Butler found it most important to make sure the team was on the same page before moving forward. He even went so far as hitting pause on the record and having these conversations among the four members in the studio, ensuring that …Devil was coming from letlive. as a unit, exactly how the band envisioned it. “There is a very strong theme that braids itself throughout the record,” he explains, “and that idea is about change and recognizing that there are things that need to be discussed, ideologically as well as sonically.”

Butler recognizes that good art is progressive and ever-changing; he is an avid reader with a voracious

appetite for learning both sides of any coin. His output has a purpose and a cause, not just breeding controversy for controversy’s sake.

“Success is such a dirty word in music now, because it’s synonymous with selling out,” he muses. “I mean ‘success’ as far as gauging if you did the right thing. For this record to be successful, I felt like we really had to discuss what our intent was.

This record had to seem deliberate, because if it didn’t, it would seem apocryphal or disingenuous.”

The vehicle of letlive. has allowed so much musical freedom. Listeners really can’t nail down what it is they’re seeing or hearing when exposed to the band, they just know they’ve experienced something special, something possessing an appeal that runs deeper than just a cool frontman and heavy riffs.

Musical direction doesn’t seem to have much meaning when it comes

to letlive.’s body of work. Instead, the art represents experimentation and boundary pushing elements.

“To me, the most forward-thinking, against the grain music would be the R&B, electronic, hip hop stuff that is averse to everything that is standardized in music,” Butler says.

“That shit is punk. For me, I wanted to try to find a way to not sound like a hip hop or R&B band, but advance the register in which we sit as a rock band.”

Nothing feels contrived about If I’m the Devil…, which could stand to be the most important release of the band’s career. Instead, the album feels like beautiful chaos, careening between violent tirades on hot topics and almost uncomfortable moments of self-reflection. It’s not easy to stay fresh—especially when your band can’t be defined in the first place—but the canon of letlive. is proof that art clamors

for a reason to exist and take hold.

Butler adds, “I think trying to find a way to stay excited about the shit you’re doing 24 hours a day, 365 days a year is a challenge that needs to exist inside of you if you want to continue being an artist that affects anything.”

All in all, Butler is a happy guy, and he should be. Though If I’m the Devil… has only been lent to a few ears so far, the frontman is anything but tightlipped about its creation. …Devil doesn’t feel like letlive., but that isn’t a comment on its quality or direction. Rather, it feels like another piece of the puzzle portraying what the concept of letlive. truly means. It is an act that is utterly fearless, genuinely limitless, and comfortable exploring new spaces. …Devil reminds us that letlive. are the future.

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TRIBULATION INTERVIEW WITH GUITARIST JONATHAN HULTÉN BY CHRISTOPHER J. HARRINGTON

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“We haven’t completely changed our sound, really,” notes guitarist Jonathan Hultén. “We’re still the same people who’ve created all this music, and a lot of the elements are still present that were there from the beginning. The horror and gothic atmosphere has always been our inspiration. It’s just fantasized in a different way now. It’s another side of the coin, you know?”

The most prominent sentiment running through Tribulation’s albums is the distinct darkness therein; it’s in this precise dimension where the band feels a complete freedom of approach. The chance to look at things differently, see the shapes change, and mold dark forms. Death metal bands are certainly not always dark in nature, and this is an important distinction to consider, particularly when jumping to conclusions about a band’s evolution and intent.

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“The Children of the Night is a more dynamic record than past efforts; there’s more space throughout it, more room for things to be going on,” Hultén notes. “Whereas on The Horror, a straight-up death metal sound was the intent. You know, I don’t label us as a death metal band per se, and I remember I didn’t ever think of the band as simply a death metal band. We were certainly influenced by the old-school death metal stuff, but we were really just creating music in the form of the genre, rather than actually being in the genre.”

There’s a huge difference between these two states. The ability to see one’s art outside of one’s self, to be able to clearly understand the context of how things are viewed, and to navigate creatively based on the strength of one’s own convictions is a method that produces great art. Tribulation have traveled through a creative process rooted in the need to express what they trust in. This is the DNA of the band, and this is precisely why they’ve arrived at such success.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY ADAM DEGROSS

n the darkness, many find their true strength.

Harnessing the shapes of diamond-fused inspiration that pour endlessly from the shadows, they build from it. It is here where they capture the spirit of life. The strength of absolution. The light within the whole. Creation is the fire of the night, the ship to the new world.

Arvika, Sweden’s Tribulation—a band molded from such vast gloom—hums a particularly dark verse that’s destined for the deepest of depths. Over a decade old now, with three stirring records to their name, the band have evolved considerably in the past few years. From straight up old-school death metal on their 2009 debut The Horror, to the progressively inclined, gothic-inspired, rock ‘n’ doom found on their latest full-length, 2015 Century Media release, The Children of the Night, Tribulation have always reigned in creative distinction: they do things their own way.

The Children of the Night was a breakout album for Tribulation, finding itself on a boatload of top 10 albums of the year lists and deservedly so. It’s an enchanting meditation on darkness, doomgroove, inward-divination, and ‘70s inspired headbangers. It’s also wickedly progressive, an attribute central to the band’s overall mindset. Though the record was released last year, Tribulation have sated fans’ thirst for new material with a January 2016 release, The Melancholia EP, which features several remixes of the title track, three demos, and—bizarrely—a cover of The Offspring’s “Pay the Man.”

with Abbath, High On Fire, and Skeletonwitch, a huge outing for any contemporary extreme metal band. Tribulation have come a long way since The Horror, and, in a few ways, they’ve found themselves in unfamiliar territory. “The tour went really well; it was certainly different from any other tour we’ve done. It was the first time all of us didn’t drive in one van together,” Hultén says. “We were with the other bands on one giant bus, so it was very different. Having a mutual respect for everyone aboard was important, so we weren’t blasting music whenever we wanted to.

This was our fourth tour across the States, and we always love traveling across this country.”

The band recently finished up the 2016 Decibel Magazine Tour

Tribulation are moving linearly, creating forms from an eternal

darkness of inspiration.

Creatively, they’re peaking, and soon, will start the journey to create a new album.

“We’re writing new material as we speak,” Hultén enthusiastically relays.

“We’ll start recording at the beginning of next year.

It’s really rolling,” he laughs.

Forging individuality, high-art, and unrelenting rockers that are destined to be the younger generation’s “classic metal,” the band ride into the abyss with a profound confidence— brooding, yet lofty—the mark of true darkness.

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INTERVIEW WITH VOCALIST/GUITARIST DYLAN MATTHEISEN BY JOE SMITH-ENGELHARDT

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iny Moving Parts launched onto the math rock scene in 2013 with their aggressive debut full-length, This Couch Is Long & Full of Friendship, but a short year later, found their tamer side with Pleasant Living. Two years later, the band have taken the two approaches and built on them with their third atlbum, Celebrate, set for release May 20 on Triple Crown Records. “Some of the songs are our catchiest songs ever and others are our heaviest songs, so it has a nice overall vibe that’s pretty smooth,” vocalist and guitarist Dylan Mattheisen says. “That was kind of the idea we wanted to do on this record.”

The band recorded Celebrate in one month at producer Greg Lindholm’s home studio in Minneapolis.

Mattheisen says the recording process was much more relaxed and comfortable compared to their other albums. The guitarist credits the pleasant process to the band’s friendship with Lindholm and their choice to give themselves more time to record. “It just felt right,” he says.

“It felt like we needed to do that to find our special little sound for the record.”

Mattheisen explains that the band write their songs using certain consistent elements, while also constantly trying new things, so the entire album flows together smoothly. “We like to make every song sound like a Tiny Moving Parts song,” he assures, “but also, each song is different from each other, just to keep it more interesting for the whole record to play through.”

Tiny Moving Parts released the track, “Happy Birthday,” as a preview of Celebrate, which Mattheisen describes as a prime example of what the group can bring to the table. “The pace is pretty Tiny Moving Parts, I guess,” he says.

“It has a lot of tapping and quick drum parts, back and forth vocals a little bit. It just felt right to do that as the first single.”

Prior to the release of Celebrate, Tiny Moving Parts went on tour with The Wonder Years, letlive., and Microwave. Mattheisen speaks excitedly about the bands on the tour and is thrilled about the amount of new people who saw and enjoyed Tiny Moving Parts. The guitarist also mentions how much fun all the bands had together, not only while playing shows, but also in their time off. One of the highlights for Mattheisen: “All four of the bands got a cab in Mississippi and partied the entire time with a little blow-up boat. We went in this little pond, and kind of went around the woods and found some bones and stuff, and just had a really good time. That was probably the highlight of all the tours we’ve ever done. It’s one of the coolest things we’ve ever done for sure.”

The guitarist says the trio are planning a very extensive list of tour dates to showcase their new material. “We just want to tour hard throughout the year and just promote the new record, because we’re really proud of it,” Mattheisen says. “Hopefully, we can hit up Japan and Australia, because we’ve never been there before. We’ve only been to Europe once, and we’d like to do more international touring.”

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PHOTOGRAPHY BY ASHLEY DAY

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he young indie punks in Modern Baseball are renowned for their honest approach to songwriting and storytelling. Now, they’ve reached even further beyond that mark with their anticipated LP, Holy Ghost, out May 13 via Run For Cover Records.

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The Philadelphia transplants’ third full-length is the first they’ve recorded with someone outside of the group, namely Hop Along’s Joe Reinhart at Headroom Studios in the heart of their adopted hometown. It was in this same city where Modern Baseball co-frontman, Brendan Lukens, contemplated killing himself on a roof only a few floors up from the basement the band had outgrown.

Without knowing it at the time, his bandmate and best friend, Jake Ewald, saved his life with a perfectly timed text message.

Lukens spent the next few weeks receiving treatment for his mental illness back in Maryland, where the band had their humble beginnings. He returned to his bandmates days before they would enter the studio to record Holy Ghost. With very little time to spare, the songs began pouring out of him like floodwater.

Lukens wrote a total of five songs, which comprise the entire back half of the record and center

on his anxiety and depression.

The first half belongs entirely to Ewald, who writes hauntingly of his grandfather’s death. The two sides may be viewed as two separate entries from two different journals, but as a whole, they come together to form a vulnerable telling of universal struggles.

Those deeply personal struggles help us to see how our experiences and our actions are intrinsically intertwined. “We spent a lot of time analyzing the relationships in our lives, romantic and otherwise,” Ewald says. “Confronting mental illness or death is a really personal process, but while you’re confronting it, you realize how much it simultaneously affects all the different people in your life.”

This emotional truth telling isn’t something Modern Baseball have shied away from in the past. Their debut LP, Sports, and its follow-up record, You’re Gonna Miss It All, both feature narratives that peer intimately into the minds of the band’s lyricists. With that said, Holy Ghost is wrought with an unmatched emotion. Ewald admits that their willingness to be open and intense was partially fueled by the greater sense of connectivity Modern Baseball feel with their listeners. “Not to devalue the honesty of the last two records, but with those, it still felt like we were putting ourselves out there without knowing how people would

receive [our music],” he shares.

“By now, we know that we have a strong, trusting relationship with our fans, and we owe it to them to be as honest as possible.”

While Holy Ghost serves as a shedding of skin for Lukens and Ewald, it also represents the importance of verbalization and the reward of vulnerability—concepts they hope listeners latch onto and feel comfortable engaging with once they lift the needle from the album. “We’re hoping the record will encourage our fans to be more honest with themselves,” Ewald says, “to not be afraid to share their personal discoveries with the people they care about.”

Modern Baseball have wrangled their ghosts and will make the darkest parts of their souls shine brightly on stages across North America starting in May.

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PHOTOGRAPHY BY EMILY DUBIN

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PHOTOGRAPHY BY ALAN SNODGRASS

GORGUTS INTERVIEW WITH VOCALIST/GUITARIST/COMPOSER LUC LEMAY BY SEAN GONZALEZ

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wanted to make something different and give me a challenge as a composer,” Gorguts frontman Luc Lemay comments about writing the Canadian band’s newest offering, Pleiades’ Dust, out May 13 via Season Of Mist. Instead of doing the traditional three or four song release, Lemay summoned his gift for writing music and put it all into one living, breathing, 33 minute song.

It’s an epic that trudges back and forth between the thick distortion of textured guitars and pristine cleans. The cleans are refreshing, giving listeners space to breathe in contrast to the swirling chaos that makes up the heavier parts on the song, and giving the heavy parts power when they kick back. Lemay even brought to life an ambient drone section that swarms the mix with otherworldly buzzes before it slides back into a booming, sludge-friendly group of licks. “On each record, I try to introduce a new character

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in the sonic spectrum of the band, so I don’t feel limited,” Lemay states. “It’s like classical music; if it’s loud all the time, you’re going to get bored. It’s important to keep this dynamic approach in the music.”

Lemay titled the record after the Pleiades star cluster found in our galaxy—also known as the Seven Sisters—but much like the music, there is more to it than that. The cover of the record features an astrolabe, a scientific instrument that thinkers of old would use to move the section of sky they were viewing to orient themselves. The record was initially inspired by the book “The House of Wisdom” by Jim Al-Khalili. From that, Lemay established a new definition for the word “Pleiades,” figuring everything can be part of the magic of that word: a group of books, the constellation, and a group of thinkers. This viewpoint parallels the music, the actual star system, and parts of the book. The dust is

what remains of the people, fragments of things that have been destroyed and remnants of the groups of thinkers.

“The more we evolve, it’s the fucking same. Leaders destroy beautiful things.”

The lyrics unearth even more about Gorguts’ new record.

“The more we progress and the more we know—at the snap of a finger, an invasion can destroy everything,” Lemay explains.

The song tells a story about the collapse of the Dark Ages, with Rome falling. Lemay personifies knowledge as a sentient being wandering through destruction after destruction of empires and leading to new

renaissances. Through this tale, Lemay wanted to inform listeners of this message: “The more we evolve, it’s the fucking same. Leaders destroy beautiful things.” The destruction of The House of Wisdom was the central focal point, but it led Lemay to craft Pleiades’ Dust.

Gorguts have been harbingers of technical death metal for several decades, always furthering the genre and carefully crafting music that challenges people’s ears.

Yet, the magnificent beast that is Pleiades’ Dust was essentially a happy accident. While reading book reviews in a magazine, Lemay stumbled upon Al-Khalili’s book.

“When I discovered that topic, I said, ‘Wow, that would suit the music incredibly well,’” he says, “because the music was finished, but I couldn’t find a topic to dress the music with.” The lyrics were the last piece of the puzzle for this sonic creation. Lemay summarizes this revelation perfectly: “Writers don’t choose their topics, topics choose them.”

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here’s really no expectations with the record—it’s kinda nice— other than we hope people can find some enjoyment with it,” says Hesitation Wounds vocalist Jeremy Bolm, also of Touché Amoré. If this seems like a nonchalant attitude, it’s because he and his bandmates— guitarist Neeraj Kane of The Hope Conspiracy, drummer Jay Weinberg of Slipknot and formerly of Against Me!, and bassist Stephen “Scuba” LaCour, formerly of Trap Them—view this band as a place to be free and do what they want on their own terms: a “no-stress environment,” if you will.

That easygoing attitude has been evident every step of the way for Hesitation Wounds, from their inception in 2012 to writing, recording, and releasing Awake for Everything, their debut full-length out May 27 on 6131 Records. “The band when it started was just a wild idea of getting people who didn’t really know each other too well in a room together to see how many songs we could write in a day and record them the next day,” Bolm explains. Since it was a new, experimental endeavor,

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the band ended up putting out their first 7” on Bolm’s own label, Secret Voice, back in 2012.

Finding a label to release this new album was somewhat easy according to Bolm, as he’s best friends with 6131 owner Joey Cahill, who released several of Touché Amoré’s early records.

“When the record was about to be mixed, we were talking, and he said he’d be happy to put it out,” Bolm says.

To help cover the recording duties, the vocalist enlisted the help of Alex Estrada of Silver Snakes fame, a close friend and also the man who recorded Hesitation Wounds’ first 7”.

Kurt Ballou of Converge mixed the album.

The material contained within was—in the spirit of the band’s beginnings—written quickly and off the cuff. They wrote roughly three songs on a Monday, four on Tuesday, three on Wednesday, and then added one other song: the album’s closer, “Streamlined,” which was written during the band’s

early days. What resulted from this brief writing period is some seriously heavy and thoughtprovoking hardcore alongside slower, more melodic numbers that make for a great mix. This low-pressure writing process is a major draw for Hesitation Wounds’ busy members. “I think that’s the allure of the whole project,” Bolm explains. “All of us play in bands that demand a lot more emphasis and attention to detail. I think with this, we enjoy the on the fly, no secondguessing way of writing music.”

All of the band’s members are busy with their own lives and bands, so Hesitation Wounds have no concrete plans to tour on Awake for Everything. Weinberg will be on tour with Slipknot, while LaCour is expecting his first child around the album’s release. “We’ll play shows when we can, but it’s nothing we wanna stress about,” assures Bolm, adding for good measure, “It’s meant to be a fun project.”

In their four years together, they have probably played a total of 10 shows, alongside bands such as Paint It Black, American Nightmare, and Self Defense Family.

Of course, it seems an article can’t be written without noting the band members’ pedigree.

When Bolm is reminded that every news item about Hesitation Wounds throws around the term “supergroup,” the vocalist says it just comes with the territory. “Obviously, people are going to listen to [this band] if they’re interested in any of the bands we’re affiliated with,” he says. “The term ‘supergroup’—we’d be silly to take offense to it. We chose that path.”

“It feels silly,” Bolm laughs, “because I’ve never considered myself someone who would be considered super.”

CALIST JEREMY BOLM

INTERVIEW WITH VO

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BY JANELLE JONES

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en years ago, without a hint or basic understanding of how to run a label, Kevin Duquette and Seth Decoteau started Topshelf Records. What began as a means for self-promotion gradually developed into a thriving business—one that has cumulatively housed nearly 95 bands over the last decade.

In 2006, when the pair first started Topshelf Records, they performed on a small scale. Over the years, they have needed to adapt to changes in the music market, altering their strategy and benefiting from the resurgence of vinyl and cassettes. For an operation that once solely relied on selling CDs, they couldn’t foresee having the wherewithal to do anything but that. They recall the moment, almost four years after their inception, when they pressed their first record—Old Pride by Piano’s Become The Teeth—as one of their proudest.

It’s moments like this— when the ability to create a lasting, physical piece of music becomes a reality for countless bands—that have allowed Topshelf to exist as a sustainable entity.

Not long ago, the duo abandoned their nine-to-five jobs and left their parents’ garages to pursue the label full-time, but until recently, the prospect of turning their passion into a career seemed unfathomable and improbable.

When the pace of work increased and their availability lessened, Duquette and his partner had to weigh their options. “We got the label here on our own. It’s an extension of us, our interests, and the people we want to work with,” he shares. “We didn’t want to sacrifice that, because we couldn’t balance the time. At that fork-in-the-road time, it was like ‘shit or get off the pot’; we had to decide if we would go all in or let it go.”

Although they chose to go all

in, they did so while also letting go in the process. The pair packed up their belongings and moved Topshelf Records to the opposite coast, trading New England’s brutal yet familiar cold for San Diego’s sun. With that, they left behind Boston’s ever-present talent in a widening independent circuit.

“We were really embedded in the DIY scene in Boston, which made it difficult for us to leave,” Decoteau admits. “We felt confident, though, that we could uproot, become part of the scene in San Diego, and still keep those ties back east without alienating anyone.”

Now that Topshelf ’s founders have relocated, they are steadily becoming acquainted with their new city’s music community. “We’re still finding our way around,” Duquette says. “We’re going out to shows, learning who books them, meeting people. It takes a while to really feel like you’re a part of something. We don’t want to show up and co-opt the scene. I want to be a passive participant in whatever is happening locally here to get a gauge of it before I step in and see how we can collaborate and mutually benefit.”

When it comes to deciding which bands to sign, Duquette and Decoteau consider more than simply sound. Although the label often gets pigeonholed as the poster child for emo revival, they have an eclectic roster which they anticipate will become more and more diverse.

“We are happy to carry that flag, but we don’t want that to narrow the conversation or have people dismiss us,” Duquette says. “If we like it, there isn’t a stop sign in our heads, there isn’t a filter.

We want to have fun and put out records we like.”

Ultimately, the two reach out to people who respect the scene and those involved in it. They look for bands who recognize and appreciate the label’s vision to support music, community, and each other. “We think of this as

a family; every band is an extension of us and we want to work with people who we feel comfortable with and who understand why we do things the way we do them,” Decoteau comments.

Over the last decade, Topshelf has experienced several momentous triumphs. They have grown their business up from the bottom shelf, watched bands graduate from basements to sold out, large capacity venues, and—perhaps most importantly—provided countless musicians with a space to showcase their art.

With all the gracious moments have come humbling ones as well. They can’t help but laugh when they reminisce about the time they thought their website stopped working because no new orders had come through, realizing only after they placed an order for themselves that it wasn’t broken at all, just inactive due to nobody buying anything.

While they continue to find their footing in California, Duquette and Decoteau look back fondly on where they have come from, while also keeping their sights on all the opportunities they look forward to. “A lot of the bands we grew the label with have gone on to bigger things at this point, which is great to see,” Duquette shares, “but as a business, it puts us in the position where we need to reset and continue to grow and bring in new talent. Going forward, there is going to be a lot of new blood, and we are excited to showcase that.”

They have a trip to the U.K. planned this summer to see a handful of their bands for the first time. They also have several new releases on deck, including music from Mock Orange and Field Mouse in production.

Topshelf Records may have begun by accident, but their success has been anything but accidental.

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BOOK NOOK NEW NOISE

Presents...

publisher’s first comic, “Realm of the Damned: Tenebris Deos” by writer Alec Worley and artist Pye Parr, both of which have released numerous stories through legendary British publisher, 2000 AD. While “Tenebris Deos”—out May 13—may be the first graphic novel to be released in the “Realm of the Damned” series, it certainly sets a magnificent gold standard with its psychotic exploration of horror icons and black metal lore. “[Beatty] had this project in mind,” Worley explains. “He wanted to reboot the classic gothic monsters—the King Vampire, the Wolfman, etc.—and tell their story set within this weird semi-post-apocalyptic world. Plus, everything had to be tied into the music somehow. My initial pitch was pretty much what we’ve ended up with, except the music influence was more kinda rockabilly and punk, with a more retro B movie horror vibe like you get from The Cramps and The Misfits. [The character] Balaur was more this scrawny, scabby Sid Vicious guy. I remember sending Pye loads of reference pics of Sid with his cock out, shooting up, or with blood squirting out of his nose!”

Though the story was headed in the right direction at its inception, it wasn’t until Worley began truly exploring the Nightside Eclipse that the narrative developed its Transilvanian Hunger. “I did tons of research. I read ‘Lords of

INTERVIEW BY BRANDON RINGO

WRITTEN BY ALEC WORLEY AND ILLUSTRATED BY SIMON “PYE” PARR

murdered their friend and eaten their brains in the name of Doctor Strange or Wonder Woman—that we know of—but you get the point.

The histories of comic books and black metal aren’t all that different: both became way more popular during their second wave, both have predominantly been associated with with awkward, white guys who play D&D, and both are still loved and hated in equal measure for the amazing progress and diversity they’ve experienced over the last 10 years or so. Granted, nobody has ever

Given their similarities, it makes perfect sense that the two art forms would collide. At the root of this collision stands Steve Beatty, bassist of British postpunks, October File, and owner of extreme metal stalwarts, Candlelight Records. In late 2015, it was announced by Beatty that he was starting his own comic book publishing company called Werewolf Press. In that same announcement, Beatty teased the

(WEREWOLF PRESS, 144 PGS.)

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Chaos’ by Michael Moynihan and Didrik Søderlind, which was just a mine of information,” Worley recalls. “The birth of black metal with [former Mayhem members] ‘Euronymous,’ ‘Dead,’ and Varg Vikernes is just a fascinating, horrible story. For me, it’s about that division between fantasy and reality, and where do you stop?

Are you going to realize this isn’t real life or are you going to make it real by letting it consume you?

And yet, realizing this is a fantasy isn’t to diminish its power or significance. All that thematic stuff—I wanted to fold all that into the story, almost make it like this symbolic biography of black metal, where the act of burning a church unleashes this primal monstrous force upon the world.”

The book’s narrative is permeated with an impressive melding of horror and extreme metal, and Parr’s artwork also draws heavily from the Sons of Northern Darkness. “Old photos from album inlays were a big influence on the look of the metal band in the comic,” Parr admits.

“Emperor, especially, have some great pictures of them in corpse paint, gurning with axes and blood everywhere. There’s tons of weird, bleak album covers to take influence from. I like how homemade it all looks. The band in the comic aren’t supposed to be rock gods or anything, so those slightly younger photos of wellknown bands felt much more authentic.”

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mer Chris Frantz, of all people. At one point in an interview during both those bands’ 1980s heyday, Gibby Haynes and co.’s name came up in the course of conversation. This moved Frantz to laugh and say, “Can you imagine being in a band you can’t tell your mother the name of ?”

Which brings us to James Burns’ “Let’s Go to Hell: Scattered Memories of The Butthole Surfers,” the AFT chronicle of Texas’ finest this side of Billy Gibbons and Roky Erickson’s respective clans. A rock group that created music as spaced B Y M I C H A E L L A Y N E H E A T H out and fucked up as the Butthole Surfers would clearly not be done justice with SCATTERED MEMORIES OF THE anything resembling a straight biography. Thankfully, Burns BUTTHOLE SURFERS” does nothing of the kind, dropBY JAMES BURNS (CHEAP DRUGS, 495 PGS.) ping the reader headfirst into My fondest—miraculously G-rat- play with his opening scenario of ed—memory of the Butthole Surf- Haynes’ mob being unleashed on ers involves Talking Heads drum- an unsuspecting audience at the

U.K.’s Reading Festival in 1989.

From there, Burns then rewinds the clock to the Surfers’ San Antonio beginnings, thus sending the ludicrous, anti-heroic tale of this astonishing band hurtling, like their titular human cannonball of song, in motion. Burns has been the ruler of a Surfers online fansite for years and presents as thorough a history of the Surfers as one could imagine.

It’s all unflinchingly reported: the insanity, creative and otherwise; the horrific yet riveting live shows that Jeff McDonald of Redd Kro-

ss would liken to “a more violent Exploding Plastic Inevitable”; the willful fuck-shit-up attitude that would fuel classics as spectrum-spanning as “Moving to Florida” and their unlikely breakthrough hit, “Pepper.” Not forgetting, of course, Mark Farner the dog and Ta-Da the Shit Lady.

Combined with scads of previously unpublished photos and comprehensive gig lists and studiographies, it all makes for a farfrom-‘scattered’ Butthole bonanza for fans both rabid and casual alike.

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“LET’S GO TO HELL:

“A WAILING OF A TOWN: AN ORAL HISTORY OF EARLY SAN PEDRO PUNK AND MORE, 1977-1985”

BY CRAIG IBARRA (END FWY PRESS, 344 PGS.)

B Y

M I C H A E L

L A Y N E

H E A T H

During that period in the early ‘80s when punk had mutated into post-punk and hardcore, the brittle, speedy musical miniatures of San Pedro’s Minutemen sounded like all yet none of the above—to which Mike Watt himself might respond, “We thought that was the point.” How this down-at-heels seaport south of Los Angeles came to hatch them and other fiercely individual combos is recounted in Craig Ibarra’s diligently assembled book, “A Wailing of a Town: An Oral History of Early San Pedro Punk and More, 19771985.”

Locals hip to the global stirrings like Joe Baiza of Saccharine Trust, the future Nickey Beat of The Weirdos, and Minutemen prototype The Reactionaries—the latter sharing the almost equally green Black Flag’s Pedro debut in February 1979—would soon create a sort of punk rock food chain, linking the L.A./Hollywood punk scene with those that eventually flourished in towns spanning the outlying South Bay region.

Ibarra has done a fine job of presenting an overall recall of those days featuring the aforementioned fellow travelers. One of the highlights is a remembrance from Joe Nolte of The Last, a band whose spiky but smart

punk-pop is in retrospect sadly underrated. It covers their time occupying an abandoned Hermosa Beach church that would eventually woodshed the early Black Flag and the McDonald brothers’ first efforts as Redd Kross, to name but two.

The book’s narrative also includes members of bands that came in the Minutemen’s wake—bands like Mood Of Defiance, Peer Group, and The Wigs!—running the gamut from art noise to skinny-tie pop, as heard on the amazing Life Is… trilogy of discs spotlighting South Bay music, as well as local fans and flamboyant scenesters like the infamous Jimmy Smack.

“A Wailing of a Town” is a fascinating, way overdue document of the birth and growing pains of an unlikely DIY music community in an equally unlikely setting.

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Epic Problem / The Slow Death: Split: 7” Rad Girlfriend Records

Chaotic and engaging, gnarly and catchy, Epic Problem move forward from their straight Leatherface worship. These brash tracks are snarling, yet harvest a mature sound of punk rock. Catchy guitar lines and drum patterns do not diminish the fury or the rough punk execution. Having Mackie from legends, Blitz, thickens the plot. The Slow Death conjure their cold Minneapolis upbringing for two introspective, solemn tunes. Frantic and fast, their stellar songs pack a punch. Bands like Face To Face and Avail weigh in their influence. In the past, they’ve covered (Young) Pioneers songs on a split with comedian Kyle Kinane. The two sides of this 7” make total sense together in sound and in quality.

Beastmaker: You Must Sin: 7” EP Rise Above Records

Taking two cuts from the incredible full-length, Lusus Naturae—also on Rise Above—Beastmaker give a chilling taste of their sound. The cover is the ghoulish visage of Vincent Price. The music is a fuzzed out blend of Black Sabbath and Witchfinder General. The Iommi flutters are strong here, but Beastmaker go far beyond cloning Birmingham’s finest. Heavy and plodding, the riffs thrash about and ensnare the listener. The drums wander and push the taut riffs. Spooky and ominous, Beastmaker tap into analog brilliance with a recorded live feel, heralding their antithetical approach to normal musical practices.

Tenement: Bruised Music Volume 2: Double LP REISSUE Grave Mistake Records / Toxic Pop Records

Grave Mistake—one the strongest hardcore labels of the last decade—continue to redefine themselves. Now, they’re releasing a compilation of Tenement, who themselves redefined conceptions of blending punk and “pop.” Formed in 2006, Appleton, Wis.’ Tenement were a noisy, frenzied trio that Grave Mistake says “married the genres of ‘pop’ and ‘punk’ without being explicitly ‘pop punk,’ and to many, represented the power and urgency of hardcore without actually conforming to the genre itself.” Permitting the release of frustration and loss as well as any tough guy hardcore, Tenement didn’t shy from singalongs or rock ‘n’ roll impulse. This collection finds the band moving further outside the parameters of punk and eschewing all preconceptions. Still driving and harsh, Bruised Music Volume 2 expands the notion of punk and your record collection.

Six Feet Under: Graveyard Classics IV: The Number of the Priest: LP REISSUE Metal Blade Records

Six Feet Under will release the fourth record in their Graveyard Classics series On May 27. They began these tributes in 2000 with Volume I, which tipped a hat to AC/DC, Sabbath, Dead Kennedys, Venom, Exodus, Hendrix, and The Monkees— or possibly Minor Threat. Volume II was all AC/DC, while Volume III featured covers of Mercyful Fate, Metallica, Slayer, BTO, Ramones, Prong, and more. Graveyard Classics IV: The Number of the Priest sees Barnes and company ripping through five Judas Priest covers on side A and six Iron Maiden covers on side B, all of which were handpicked by Metal Blade CEO Brian Slagel. The 12” vinyl comes in scarlet red marble.

Asschapel: Total Destruction: 1999–2006: Double LP REISSUE Southern Lord

Southern Lord are releasing the complete works of Asschapel. The collection merges the band’s Fire and Destruction full-length, the Live through Destruction live video, and more. The presentation is thorough with a double LP gatefold-jacketed package, a poster insert, and DVD. Total Destruction gathers 31 tracks of musical devastation. Big, ugly, thick guitars and crusty basslines fuel screamed words of hate. The band’s members looked upon their heavily religious and antiquated Tennessee suburbs with spite and enmity. Fusing punk, D-beat, crust, powerviolence, and simple frustration, Asschapel defined a sound unique to itself. Now remastered by the mighty Brad Boatright, this compilation brings to lights a little-known band whose members went on to join Pelican, The Swan King, Tijuana Goat Ride, Hans Condor, and others. Get ready for this one.

“The Damned: Don’t You Wish that We Were Dead” by Wes Orshoski DVD MVD Entertainment Group

On May 20, “The Damned: Don’t You Wish that We Were Dead” will be released on DVD by MVD. With one of the most impactful punk debuts and careers, The Damned are damned legends. Birthed alongside The Clash, Sex Pistols, and Stiff Little Fingers, The Damned were the first U.K. punk band to release a single—1976’s, “New Rose”—the first to release an album—1977’s Damned Damned Damned—and the first to tour the States, playing CBGBs in April 1977.

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For this documentary, the band were filmed around the globe over three years. It premiered at SXSW in 2015, and the reviews slanted mightily in a positive direction. Directed and produced by Wes Orshoski—who also made the “Lemmy” documentary—the film recruits original Damned founders Captain Sensible, Dave Vanian, Rat Scabies, and Brian James, and features commentary and adulation from The Pretenders’ Chrissie Hynde, Mick Jones of The Clash, Lemmy Kilmister of Motörhead, Nick Mason of Pink Floyd, Glen Matlock of Sex Pistols, Steve Diggle of Buzzcocks, and many more.

NEW NOISE ISSUE 25

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ISSUE 25 NEW NOISE

77

ILLUSTRATING HORROR BEAUTIFULLY THE ART OF

CHRISTOPHER LOVELL

Interview by Lily Moayeri

S

kulls figure largely into Christopher Lovell’s art. The British artist has so much detail in his work, sometimes those very skulls get absorbed in the numerous elements included in each piece: body parts, symbols, animals, nature. Lovell—who splits his time between England and Spain—is known for his fantasy, sci-fi, horror, and fairytale imagery, genres he has been drawn to from an early age. As a child, Lovell found he could entertain with his art, which was inspired by cartoons, comics, and monsters. He began winning art competitions and, when Myspace was around, posted his work there. After posting a t-shirt design on Emptees.com in 2009, within a year, Lovell was making art for recognized clients.

The first of these commissions was the clothing line Iron Fist with Kid Rock.

Among those fortunate enough to have Lovell’s inimitable illustrations as their album art are Smashing Satellites for their A-Sides EP, Caliban for Welcome to the Ghost Empire, and Byzantine for To Release Is to Resolve. Lovell also

offers elaborate t-shirt drawings and stunning, collectible posters, including one-of-a-kind posters for well-known horror films. These are deep and, of course, detailed to such a degree that they stand on their own, while also enhancing the terrifying aspect of the films they represent.

“It’s good fun to draw characters I grew up watching in some of my favorite films,” Lovell says. His rendering of eyes is particularly jarring, yet captivating. Lovell notes about this particular characteristic, “Eyes are essential to evoke an atmosphere or feeling in an image. Lighting dynamics are a big part of my style. That comes naturally with me doing what I need to do to please my own eye. It’s mainly highlighting, but I choose them carefully to give the right effect. I prioritize the eyes above everything else.”

On his YouTube channel, Lovell spends hours, sometimes days, creating time-lapse videos in which he carefully narrates the steps of his process. He also has videos that go through the tools he uses;

his making of prints, which are only available for limited amounts of time when his site’s store is open; plus, his self-developed techniques—the results of years of experimentation with various mediums—that give his work texture and dimension.

“Highlighting can be emphasized digitally if I scan my illustrations, but I always want my original work to stand for itself,” Lovell says, citing Simon Bisley, Ian Miller, Paul Bonner, and Les Edwards among the artists whose work he has admired since childhood. “Most of the time, my mistakes are still there. I refine errors until things start to please my eye. If I scan the work to finish digitally, I can correct things to a certain extent.

Digital has its advantages, but I much prefer to work traditionally. I like to have something organic and real in my hands. Digital just exists behind a screen.”

Even with his established position as one of the go-to artists for beautiful horror, Lovell is now focused on non-commission work.

At the moment, he is working on large canvases, aiming to create a minimum of 12 for exhibition purposes with the longer-term goal of putting together a book. So far, the canvases completed are part of his “Dark Nature” series, in which each piece has a story that evolves as Lovell paints. For these, he is primarily using acrylic paint, but can just as easily pull from markers, pencils, or any other tools that lend themselves to his final vision.

Music is another one of Lovell’s tools, which he always listens to while working.

“I have been listening to ambient drone music and film scores like the ‘Alien’ soundtrack,” Lovell says.

“The ambient drone helps me to plug in to a deep creative zone— sometimes incredibly dark, but also beautiful. Other than that, I enjoy listening to lots of different metal bands and bands from the ‘90s Seattle grunge scene.” The artist also has some guitar-heavy music projects of his own.

“I am picky about what bands I work for now,” he continues. “I try to go for briefs that suit my style and bands I am a genuine fan of. Some clients give me a vague brief with only a small amount of direction, as they know my style and are happy for me to be creative. There are times when I get restrictive briefs, but as long as the concept is something I can vibe from, then the creative process can still be enjoyable.”

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Come on with me, my bedroom’s right over there.”

“But, what about her?” I said, motioning my head toward her daughter.

“She’s sleeping, hunny, don’t worry ‘bout her.”

I

nstead of completing high school in 2004, I—in sound mind and good health—decided it would be a good idea to quit school and go on a two week tour with my hardcore band. The bill was Have Heart, Guns Up, and my band, Shoot To Kill. For everyone, it was our first tour.

On an old country highway in West Georgia, it took us over an hour to find the house party we were playing. We pulled up to a farmhouse with a one acre clearing where two cows grazed in the serene Southern wilderness. We loaded our stuff into the garage and played our set to about 15 teenage kids.

The house’s owner was in her early 30s, blonde, and the ripest Southern peach I had ever seen. She was divorced with a little redheaded firecracker she called her 17-year-old daughter, and she didn’t care that there were 15 dudes from Boston screaming into a microphone in her garage. She insisted on us staying the night and—being the Cool Mom she was—she sent her 22-year-old boyfriend out to grab beers. The entire party ended up sleeping over.

So, I decided to give it a shot with the redhead. I found her in the upstairs den with a couple of her girlfriends and a skinny guy who seemed to be slightly “touched.” They were asleep, but she was on the floor watching TV. I sat down next to her and she made the first move.

As we fumbled around, she started to breathe heavily and I began to take pride in my juvenile abilities, but I soon realized that it wasn’t her breathing—it was the skinny guy on the couch behind me. I whipped my head around to see his hand under his sleeping bag as it began to slow down from furiously pumping away. I awkwardly turned to the redhead, “I think he’s watching us and jerking off!”

“Oh, forget him. He’s just got the biggest crush is all. He’s harmless.”

“Y’all don’t have to worry about me,” he blurted out. “I’m finished anyways.”

I sat up in shock as she tried to calm me down. “Don’t worry— him and I’s just good friends is all. I let him watch sometimes, Now, at 17 years old, I was mor- but I never let him touch.” bidly obese and a typical, sexually inexperienced, awkward “It’s true, it’s true! One time teenage boy, but I was on tour we’s was out in the fields over and determined to meet chicks! there in the driveway and she

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I broke out in an awkward sweat. An older woman had never approached me before. I tried to formulate the right response, but I froze. Suddenly, I could feel her daughter begin to rub her eyes as she slowly awoke. In a wave of panic, I jumped up and ran downstairs.

I turned to her, hoping she’d I was confused, flattered, and tell me this was all a joke. She disgusted all at the same time. shook her head, “It’s true, I seen I ran out the backdoor and was him do it! I had to walk away, surprised that the sun was out. so I left him there to finish his I walked to the van and found business. I didn’t wanna watch our tour manager, Karen, packall that.” ing her bag in an equal state of panic.

He stood up with his sleeping bag wrapped around his waist, “You’re not gonna believe what triumphantly stepped over us, just happened…” I said. and made his way downstairs.

“I’m gonna clean up. Ya’ll have “No you’re not gonna believe fun now!” what just happened! I was hooking up with this guy, and he At this point, the mood was freaked out on me and stopped dead, and she fell asleep on my in the middle of it all. He started right arm. Sometime later, I confessing how he was trying to felt a soft hand slide across my be a better Christian and it wasn’t back and up to my neck. “Are ya right. So, I asked him questions sleeping, big boy?” a soft South- about his life and his church. He ern accent whispered. I turned got into it and, eventually, he exaround, and laying six inches plained how his pastor is a snake from my face was the redhead’s charmer. During his services, he Cool Mom! I turned over, but my dumps out bags of snakes onto right arm was still pinned under the altar and shouts at them with her daughter. Cool Mom laid on the ‘Good Word of the Lord’ unmy left arm and ran her fingers til the snakes go into a trance across my chest. “Ya know, it’s and are relieved of their evils. I so cold tonight. I could use a big got so creeped out, I grabbed my boy like you to keep me warm.” shit and walked out. I’m going to wake everyone up—let’s get the I laid there for a second in dis- fuck out of here.” belief. Not really sure how to comprehend the situation, I By noon, we were crossing the naively whispered back, “Don’t Florida state line, and I had you have a boyfriend?” gained a whole new perspective on the meaning of “Southern She tugged at my arm. “He don’t Hospitality.” mind none, he’s gone to work. kept showing me her titties and all, and I got so hard that I had to fuck something, so I just snuck up behind one of them cows there and I stuck my dick inside. And I tell you what—it felt just like a pussy.”

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