New Noise Magazine - Issue #11

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IN THE STUDIO WITH

Photography by Luna Duran

INTERVIEW WITH Vocalist Tony Foresta WRITTEN BY Brandon Ringo

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t almost seems as if Tony Foresta never, ever stops moving.

Between being the voice of legendary nuthrash monsters Municipal Waste and now spewing his hate-snark in crossover super group Iron Reagan, it seems like he is constantly on tour or in a recording studio. Though his focus for much of the last 13 years or so has been on Municipal Waste, 2014 has truly been the year of Iron Reagan. In January, the band released a violent blast of thrash/ punk fury in the form of a split with Exhumed. Then in March they announced their signing with Relapse Records. In June, the band released the 13 song Spoiled Identity EP exclusively through Decibel Magazine’s Flexi series.

Now, armed with new bassist Rob Skotis of Hellbear (replacing Paul Burnette of Darkest Hour) and new 2nd guitarist Mark Bronzino of Mammoth Grinder, they are currently in the late stages of preparing their monstrous Relapse debut Tyranny Of Will.

At what point did you guys begin the songwriting process for Tyranny of Will?

I think around six months ago. We have been touring really hard all year so we actually wrote a lot of stuff while we were on the road. It was kind of cool being around each other for so long and all thinking about and discussing the record to together almost daily. I think that made things go way smoother with the recording process.

How did you guys come about choosing the title Tyranny Of Will for the record? Was there

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a specific meaning or was it just because of the song title?

We actually had the album title before we knew there was going to be a song called that. Once we wrote the music it just kind of felt like it fit for the song. Usually the album title is the last thing we figure out before the record is done. For this album it was the first thing we did.

From a lyric-writing perspective, did you once again force yourself to tone back the sense of humor for Tyranny Of Will or did you cut loose a bit more?

With so many songs to work with I was able to bounce around a bit more. I mean I gotta be myself to a point and I’ve always been a bit of a smart ass. I think that perspective helps our more serious topics come across a bit more interesting anyways.

As far as the band’s mindset when recording the album, how different was that compared to when you did Worse Than Dead?

With Worse Than Dead we were a very new band. We weren’t really sure where we wanted to go with it musically. I mean we still are relatively new, but we weren’t really sure which direction we were heading in. I think with the lineup change and the amount of touring we have done it’s really helped mold the band into something really inspiring and positive and everyone is on the same page firing on all cylinders.

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COLD WORLD

ALESTORM

INTERVIEW WITH Drummer Nick Woj WRITTEN BY Janelle Jones “We’re a hardcore band. We just experiment and put all [the] different experiments in our songs,” says Cold World drummer Nick Woj on their approach to making music.

Their upcoming August release on Deathwish, How the Gods Chill, is pummeling hardcore with a hip-hop vibe.

Is How the Gods Chill a Danzig reference?!

[Laughs] Yeah, definitely.

You put out your first split in 2004. So this year is your 10th anniversary?

Yeah. It’s weird to think we’ve been around that long, but we’ve been pretty sporadic as far as releases and touring, so it went by pretty quick.

“Sporadic”?

We’ve always had members who lived pretty far apart from each other. In the beginning, it wasn’t like that; we were all from Wilkes-Barre, PA. Some of us lived in Philly, but that’s only two hours away. But it ended up as our current lineup: our singer lives in England, I live in Boston, our bass player lives in Phoenix, one guitar player lives in Wilkes-Barre, and the other in Detroit, so… I don’t know if there’s another band that spread out. It makes it pretty hard to get things done, so it takes a while.

The last full-length on Deathwish was 2008. What happened during the interim?

A lot of members moving and things like that. A couple of us have put out records with other bands, so we haven’t necessarily disappeared from the scene.

It’s taken a long time for the record to come out. The record was kind of written and demoed so long ago. When you have people that spread out getting the little things done to get the record finalized, that was the biggest thing holding us back.

It comes out in August, so when were you in the studio recording it?

Almost two years ago now. [Laughs] The thing with us is there’s a lot of postproduction ‘cause we have hip-hop parts and guest vocalists, so it’s hard to get people together to get that done.

When you book time in a studio for a hardcore/punk band or an indie band, it’s an allotted time. You’re there until the record’s done, and then you’re not a priority, so it was hard to finish because they had other bands in the studio. That was part of it. Also, we had trouble with the vocals. Dan [Mills]’ voice kept blowing out, so we ended up recording the bulk of his main vocals while we were on the road, in hotel rooms.

Listening to the record, you can’t tell.

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Well, our touring guitarist, Arthur [Rizk], he’s kind of a recording wizard, so having him on the road with us was a big help. He wanted to see the record get done, so he knew what had to be done as far as motivating Dan and bringing his little portable studio on the road with us, so that was a big help.

How did the guest appearances all come about?

I write all the lyrics for Dan. I show him the delivery of the lyrics as far as the vocal patterns, so some stuff I think maybe will sound better with someone else doing it, or someone like [guitarist] Alex [Russin] will write a song that I think will fit better with melodic vocals. Since Dan lives in England, sometimes we have George [Hirsch] from Blacklisted sing for us, so I had him sing a full song. Then I had a close friend of mine – Omar [Gonzalez] from Soul Search – sing a full song. I sang a full song, and then Alex sang a full song. Half the record, Dan isn’t singing.

[Laughs] We just try to get creative with guest appearances, and it also helps since he’s so far away, it puts less of the vocal work on his shoulders.

Does Dan ever say, “I have to change this”?

No, he’s a lump of clay. [Laughs] Unfortunately, we can’t mold the tone of his voice. Kinda like an anchorman, whatever you put on the screen, he’ll read it.

Did you know from the beginning that you would have different elements than the run-of-the-mill hardcore band?

When we first came out, we wanted an early ‘90s Roadrunner Records melodic, more broad sound than a lot of bands in our scene were doing, to make it more listenable than a straight up hardcore record. Our favorite stuff is ‘80s N.Y. hardcore straight edge, Youth Crew hardcore, but we just didn’t see a need for that. It wouldn’t be exciting or fresh to anyone, so we decided to [add] some Life of Agony or Biohazard, those types of bands, maybe some mid-level Sepultura-vibe. Then that got popular in the scene. Not that we made it popular. We just always kept trying to do something creative that other bands weren’t doing. Also, we got into punk and hardcore before pop-punk got big.

I listen to a lot of older punk and Britpop and things that most mosh-core bands now aren’t directly influenced by, so it’s easy to take influence from that, whether it’s song structure or lyrics or whatever. And that’s not even touching on the hip-hop side of things.

How did you get into punk and hardcore?

I got into punk through skateboarding and metal. Anybody 30 or older, that’s pretty much how you get into it. Or

INTERVIEW WITH Keytarist/Vocalist Christopher Bowes WRITTEN BY Brandon Ringo Ahoy, landlubbers! For a decade now, Alestorm – Scotland’s finest purveyors of Pirate Metal – have been sailin’ the high seas, pillagin’ and plunderin’ across the globe. Now they be releasing a new album of fist-pumpin’, mead-drinkin’ tunes. Raise a glass and sing along, or be keelhauled in the briny deep like the scalawag ya arrr.

support slots all the time was getting boring! [Laughs] I also brought out my own line of skincare products, but they didn’t do so well. “Scurvy (TM) – because yarr worth it” wasn’t the best advertising slogan. But the actual writing for the new album didn’t start until like, midsummer 2013. When I feel like it, I can churn out songs at a million miles per hour.

What’s been going on since your last release three years ago? When did you start writing Sunset on the Golden Age? Since the release of Back Through Time, we’ve been touring the world pretty much nonstop. We finally got to the point where we get to do headlining shows everywhere in the world, which is kinda cool. Doing

How did you approach songwriting and incorporating so many disparate elements on Sunset?

Well, for the first time, [guitarist] Dani [Evans], [bassist] Gazz [Murdock], and [keyboardist] Elliot [Vernon] contributed a couple of riffs, which took some of the strain off me. Maybe it added a new edge to the sound, who knows? But I did deliberately try to incorporate some new elements – it’s so easy to fall into the trap of writing “Yet Another Pirate Metal Album,” so I forced myself to put in all these surf rock elements, plus all the screaming, and even the rapping. I think it works!

you get into Metallica, and James [Hetfield] had a Misfits shirt on, and you check them out or something like that. Thanks lists on records or Thrasher Magazine and stuff like that was very important. Pennywise was out then. I also would check out The Jam and The Damned and The Cramps and all the late ‘70s, early ‘80s punk, Discharge…

So that’s how I got into punk, and then I just kinda stayed with it and got into hardcore and also stuff that might seem exotic to kids now like Morrissey or Type O Negative. That stuff was on MTV when I was a kid. Sonic Youth.

[Those were] just normal things that I liked. I think people think they’re cool if they get into Sonic Youth now. I had my grandmother buy me Dirty on vinyl when I was a kid. So it wasn’t weird, it was a normal thing.

Getting these hip-hop guys to contribute, had they heard of you before?

Meyhem Lauren, we worked with before. We did a song with a rapper called Sean Price, a 12” single, and on the b-side, we did a remix where instead of the hardcore song as the backing music, I used one of my beats and we got Meyhem Lauren and another rapper to do verses. And Meyhem Lauren was really cool and did it for free. We kept in touch and have talked every month or so since then, so he was excited to be on the record. I also wanted to give a little check since he did it for free.

So that was cool. And he knew what hardcore was from growing up in N.Y., and he was involved in graffiti, so those worlds kinda crossover. Kool G. Rap, he’s an older guy, so he hasn’t heard of us, but he did a verse on an album by Unkle – which is DJ Shadow and this dude James Lavelle – and his verse was so awesome that I referenced it to him when I talked to him on the phone. I was like, “Just do what you did on that record,” and he knew exactly what I meant. So it was pretty cool to talk to my favorite rapper of all time.

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Is it difficult not to repeat lyrics while sticking to the limited subject matter of “pirate metal”?

There’s only so many times you can rhyme “quest” with “west,” “treasure” with “pleasure,” and “plunder” with “asunder,” before it all stars sounding stale [Laughs].

So we’ve gone a bit more bizarre with lyrical themes this time ‘round: there’s a song about underwater bees, a song about an invasion of space squid zombies from the future, and a song that’s just secretly a recipe for cheeseburgers. So there’s always plenty of lyrical territory left to explore!

Are your lyrics fictional, or is a bit of reality thrown in as well?

Mostly, it’s complete fiction… But I think “Drink” is probably a wee bit autobiographical. Basically, it’s about how we’re all poor as shit and doing this for the fun, and how we are always very happy to be given free alcohol. Please buy us shots, if you ever see us. Thanks in advance!

Are there particular books, movies, or records that inspire you?

I’ll be honest, I’ve got absolutely no idea about historical piracy. Everything I know, I learned from skimming Wikipedia for five minutes after someone asked me a tricky question in an interview once!

Most of the lyrical ideas just come from inside my head, or from stupid in-jokes. ”Wooden Leg” essentially started out as a dare to write the most asinine song ever.

Musically, the greatest inspiration ever for me is the English symphonic metal band Bal-Sagoth. Pretty much inspires everything I want to do. Also, the music of Alan Jackson. “Chattahoochee” is the best country song of all time.

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DIKEMBE

Photography by Andrew Wells

INTERVIEW WITH Vocalist/Guitarist Steven Gray WRITTEN BY Joe Fitzpatrick You may be familiar with the “Emo Revival” sweeping the country, but emo never left. People just started paying attention again. Receiving much notoriety for this resurgence in relevancy are Gainesville, Florida, natives Dikembe, who have been making seismic waves since the release of their debut full-length Broad Shoulders in 2012. They recently teamed up with emo staples The Jazz June for a split and are preparing for the release of their second full-length album, Mediumship, due out this August, which features standout tracks including their single “Hoodrat Messiah” and a revamped version of “Doughnuts in a Six Speed.”

You’re a teacher. How do you balance teaching and touring during the school year?

Teaching and touring work perfectly together. We pretty much only tour during breaks, so we’ll do two weeks in the winter, a week in the spring, a few weekend tours, and then we have this huge window in the summer, which lends perfectly to what we want to accomplish as a band. Also, it seems like most of the bands we like do their big tours in the summer, so it works out pretty well. Sometimes we get offered cool tours, like with The Hotelier, in early September, which can be a pain in the ass because I can’t be like, “I’m The trio that makes up Long Island’s Crow Bait boasts a resume including Iron Chic, Sister Kisser, American Hellfire Club, Jonesin’, and Slip Silver.

But if you think you know what to expect from their debut Sliding Through the Halls of Fate, you’re wrong. The record is a fantastic collection of influences across the musical spectrum, from punk to snatches of classic and Southern Rock.

Drummer Chris Arena (Sister Kisser, American Hellfire Club) speaks about making the album, getting some friends to drop by the studio, and signing to Don Giovanni Records.

Was it a conscious decision to make Crow Bait sound different from your other bands?

It was a mostly conscious decision.

We’ve known each other for years and decided to start a band that could veer away from some of the past sounds we’re associated with. We never really wanted to have a specific “sound” or style, as much as always be willing to experiment a bit and move out of our comfort zone.

In general, I think we always wanted this to be a band that could get kind of gritty, while still maintaining a lot of pop sensibilities, with all three of us contributing vocals.

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gonna be gone for a month. See ya!”

What grade and subject do you teach?

Eighth grade language arts. It’s a really creative thing that works out well with what we do as a band. I love to write and make a good impression on my students.

Has teaching language arts been beneficial to your songwriting?

I always knew that I wanted to teach, and I decided on my career even before college. I definitely think it has helped me to bring out the creativity that writing lyrics calls for. I love reading literature, from Edgar Allen Poe to Kurt Vonnegut, and those authors have definitely inspired some of the lyrics I have written over the years.

In a recent interview, you said, “I’m famous for not being allowed to cuss in songs or interviews because my students will probably end up reading it and I’ll get fired.” Do you teach at a Catholic school where cussing is frowned upon?

Nope, I teach at a public school. Kids use Tumblr more than we do, and I don’t want any of them to tell on me [laughs].

Do you tell your students that you play in a band?

We did an acoustic video with Fake Problems, who are apparently big with

middle school girls, and they realized that it was me. I honestly didn’t even realize that our band had that type of reach. I usually try to keep it as hidden as possible, because it can be distracting because they want to talk about my band or my tattoos, when they should be focused on learning.

How influential was Jesse Lacey and Brand New in the creation of Mediumship?

It was pretty huge. Brand New has always been one of my favorite bands.

They were one of the gateway bands for me to discover music outside of what I heard on the radio or what my parents listened to. With Mediumship, we wanted to create an album that we liked to listen to. If it weren’t for Brand New, I wouldn’t have started playing music.

Do you remember the rivalry between Brand New and Taking Back Sunday?

I absolutely remember that! I was also really into Taking Back Sunday at the time. I remember when I was on the bus with my girlfriend at the time, who is now my wife, and she was wearing a Taking Back Sunday t-shirt, so I told her that Taking Back Sunday sucked so she would talk to me [laughs].

Does Dikembe have any rivals?

If you are not in on the joke, you might think that we are rivals with You Blew It!, but we are the best of friends with them. On the surface, it may seem like we hate each other, but we love those guys, so we are allowed to talk shit about them. I saw them in 2010 at a show in Orlando before Dikembe was even a band, and we just hit it off and have been best buds ever since.

You guys just released a split with The Jazz June – their first release since 2002.

How did they approach you?

That whole thing was insane. Our first record was like a crappy version of [their record] The Medicine, so when they hit us up saying they wanted to do a split with us, we were like, “Name a place and time, and we will be there.”

We were really eager to work with them, and it was so insane how humble they are. It’s so weird to us how they will

The split puts you in an interesting position within the “Emo Revival,” as you teamed up with veterans of the early 2000s emo era. Do you think emo is here to stay?

Yeah I do, and I don’t think it ever left.

We are super grateful that [the revival is] happening, and I probably wouldn’t even be talking to you if it wasn’t. We have been doing this for years, and I have seen The World Is A Beautiful Place play for the last six years. I think that it’s always been around, and people haven’t been looking for it, but now they are. It’s stupid and silly, but it’s a double-edged sword.

What is your favorite food to eat while on tour?

Without hesitation, I would say anything from Sheetz. When we are in the region of the country that has it, we will eat there about 10 times per week.

The first time we went there was with You Blew It! on the way to Blacksburg, VA. We walked in [and] were in shock that they had a fryer. We ate there, then we stopped at another in Blacksburg before the show, and we went back after the show.

Do you like Wawa too or just Sheetz?

I don’t really like Wawa, Sheetz is leagues better. If there is a Sheetz and a Wawa right next to each other, I will choose Sheetz every time. Maybe if Wawa can get fried mac and cheese bites, then we will reconsider.

On June 5, you tweeted from the band account “2014 year of the call out.” What does that mean?

My friends and I go to Universal Studios a lot, and we like to yell random things at people, like, “You don’t even know about the secret entrance!” We will call people out for anything. It’s stupid. I don’t know if 2014 is the year of the call out, but if it is, I’m sorry [laughs].

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CROW BAIT

How do you guys approach songwriting duties? Do you it divided up? Work on them separately? Or just jam stuff out?

All of the above. Usually [guitarist] Sal [Fiteni] or [bassist] Mike [Bruno] will bring a song to the table (whole or incomplete), and then we’ll adjust it from there to create the song in its current form. Some songs were also built off of jams during rehearsal.

Sliding Through the Halls of Fate is your first full-length. Tell me about the record.

How long have you been working on these songs?

We recorded the record with John Meredith (I Farm/ GSD/ Earworms) at his studio in Ridgewood, Queens.

We did three sessions beginning in September 2013, and ending in January of 2014. We laid down the basic tracks live and then did overdubs. We were lucky to have some friends guest on the record, including Lou Fontana (On the Might of Princes/ Small Arms Dealer/ Fellow Project) adding some guitar tracks, and Justin Williams (Deep Pockets) adding some keys. Some of the songs on the record we started writing over two years ago, while others were written two months before recording.

We went into the studio with 15 to 16 songs and only 11 made the record.

email us complimenting our music, and we’re on the other end freaking out. The whole process was very streamlined, and it was also great working with [labels] Topshelf and Tiny Engines.

INTERVIEW WITH Drummer Chris Arena WRITTEN BY John B. Moore How did the song “83” come about?

Started out as an acoustic song that Sal recorded for his solo project, Slip Silver.

Eventually, we turned it into a full band song. Lou Fontana does this wild slide guitar part throughout the song.

How did you guys wind up on Don Giovanni?

After our first 7”, they expressed interest in working with us at some point in the future. We took a while with writing and recording the record, but we kept

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in touch with them through the whole process and were really excited to put the record out.

You just played some shows with Beach Slang. Do you plan to tour this spring and summer?

For the summer, we’ll be playing around Long island and New York a bunch. We plan to do an East Coast tour in the fall, and do a U.K. tour early next year.

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handguns

JOHN GARCIA INTERVIEW WITH John Garcia WRITTEN BY Stephen Sigl

INTERVIEW WITH Guitarist Brandon Pagano WRITTEN BY Joe Fitzpatrick Despite their struggle to stand out from other pop punk heavyweights, Handguns are back with a bang with the release of their latest album Life Lessons.

Since their start, Handguns – made up of vocalist Taylor Eby, guitarist Kyle Vaught, lead guitarist Brandon Pagano, bassist CJ Wilson, and drummer Ryan Pyle – has toured the U.S. with numerous bands, including A Loss For Words, The Wonder Years, and The Story So Far, and released three albums.

Life Lessons promises to be their best one yet, with Alex Gaskarth helping the band to step up their vocal quality and content, a target for critics of 2012’s Angst. With Gaskarth’s contributions, the men of Handguns hope to become contenders in the scene. I speak with Pagano about the one-two punch the band hopes their album will deliver, and the band’s most interesting tour stories.

Why did you decide to go with Alex Gaskarth to produce Life Lessons?

Alex got into it a little late. We were already done with the music, but Taylor and I were having some writer’s block coming up with the lyrics. We were trying to rewrite, and our producer Paul Leavitt (All Time Low, The Dangerous Summer) had recorded with Alex before, so he called him in to help us out on the vocal parts. He really helped step up our lyrics to a new level, and it was really cool to work with him.

How has the A Love Like Tour been going? Any interesting stories?

It has been crazy for us. This is the biggest tour that we have ever played.

We have been hanging out at the venues for the most part, but we have had to stay in some of the weirdest, cheapest hotels. At one we stayed at, we were 100% sure that it was run by a drug cartel. One of the weirdest things to happen at the venues was early on in the tour in Memphis. Some girls snuck backstage and flashed everyone in the back room. That set the tone for the weirdness of this tour [laughs].

The album art for Life Lessons is very similar to Angst. Is there a common theme?

For sure, Ryan Eyestone did the artwork for Angst, and we loved it so much. He also worked with a bunch of other bands like Rotting Out and Comeback Kid. We were stumped trying to come up with a new concept for Life Lessons, so we hit up Ryan again. We really like what he did with the decrepit house about to be torn down to signify the change in our lives that we wrote about on the record.

Will that theme continue for future

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records?

We haven’t talked about it yet, but personally, I would have no problem doing that. Nowadays, some people don’t think album art is very important since music is released digitally for the most part, but I think it is still very important and should be a reflection of the music.

What is one of your fondest memories with Handguns?

In May of last year, right before Warped Tour, we went to the U.K. for the first time with Senses Fail, and one of the first venues we played was in Bristol on a boat that was docked and turned into a venue called Solexa. We were just really excited to be a band that day and to finish our new record. We felt ready to take on the next year.

Is there a particular song on the new record that is very personal to you?

The most personal to me is the song “Queens,” which I wrote. Taylor and I usually split the lyrical duties about 50/50, but I wrote that song about where I lived, and how moving from a big city to a small town affected me. There are a lot of personal references that people won’t get right away, and some of the meanings are more farfetched, but I think people will understand the basic concept I wanted to get across.

What is your favorite food to eat while you are on tour?

I really love Greek food, but it’s not the easiest to find. I also love to get a lot of cheap Thai food and just ball out [laughs].

Has Handguns ever performed any covers?

One of the first times we played in Japan, we were doing a headlining show in Tokyo, and we played through just about all of our songs. It was about a 16 or 17 [song] long set, and the crowd still wanted us to play more, so we covered “Dammit” [by Blink-182] as an encore.

We used to do a Taking Back Sunday song when we were starting up, but when we got bigger we stayed away from that. We still do some covers from time-to-time, but it’s usually a spur of the moment type of thing.

What “life lessons” do you hope listeners take away from the new album?

We wrote the lyrics to this record at a time when we were in between who we used to be and what we wanted to be seen as. We really want to be a contender in this scene, and I guess the main take-away from it is to take proactive steps to be who you want to be seen as in the future.

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John Garcia has been a focal point of more bands than Jack White. Best known for his groundbreaking work with desert-rock pioneers Kyuss in the early ‘90s, Garcia has also recorded extensively with Unida, Slo Burn, and Hermano, as well as lent his vocals to such non-metal groups as The Crystal Method. After taking some time off to study veterinary diagnostics, John returned to music by reuniting with original Kyuss members Brant Bjorn and Nick Oliveri to form Kyuss Lives. They subsequently changed their name to Vista Chino and released a record, and now John has set his sights on finishing his long-awaited solo album.

I saw Kyuss Lives about two years ago at The Wiltern, and the crowd was singing along with every song…

To be able to play those songs again, especially with Brant, was an amazing experience. I really enjoyed it, to be able to do what we did against all odds. We went through the wringer to get that album made. A lot happened with the demise of Kyuss: you had Queens [of the Stone Age], you had Nick, you got Brant doing Fu Manchu, and I was in and out of the music scene. But to share the stage with Brant again, he’s a great musician, lyricist, songwriter, and drummer. I love seeing him behind the drums. The Vista Chino is parked in the garage and she’s gonna stay in there until me and Brant decide to take her out again. I’m a family man first and foremost, and my family allows me to do some of the things that I do. To have a stranger call the home office and talk about my record is surreal, and I appreciate the fact that there’s interest.

You guys inhabit these songs with a professionalism that contradicts the idea that you’re just a family man…

Yeah, well, Nick is the real deal. He lives for music. Brant’s the exact same way.

You talk about professionals? Those guys are lifers, they’re not going to do anything else. [Vista Chino] as a unit: Nick, Brant, and Bruno. That rhythm section, though Bruno is a little new, has been playing together since high school and for years, they did that. We played all over the world, so of course that history and chemistry is there. I’m just appreciative if I can do that stuff with Brant and Nick, if only for a show, or a tour, or an hour. It’s an experience and it clicks. There’s really no magic to it. It was a lot of work trying to organize those four guys into a room, but everyone wanted to be there. If it

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becomes mechanical, that’s when you have to bail out.

With the Chino Vista album, you guys moved beyond “desert rock” as a genre, and evoked the literal aesthetic scope of the desert.

I’m very proud of where I’m from. I made the move to Los Angeles once for the career I was pursuing – veterinary diagnostics – and I knew immediately upon unpacking the first box that I had made a tremendous mistake. I fulfilled my commitment to that company, and I came back and started making music again. We are literally in the middle of the desert, halfway between Palm Springs and Joshua Tree. When the kids go outside to play, I have to scan the playground because there’s rattlesnakes.

People either get the desert or they don’t.

Either you see the beauty in something so desolate or you don’t. I was born and raised out here, so I’m a little protective of it.

In 2008, you mentioned a solo album called Garcia vs. Garcia. Is this that album?

This is the album. Garcia vs. Garcia became my Chinese Democracy; I could not get it out. And I finally came to the conclusion that I had to stop saying yes to everybody. Vista Chino wanted me to do another record, and I had to say no. Hermano and Unida both wanted to do new records, and I had to say no.

It was finally time to say yes to me. I’d been thinking about this since I was 19 years old and I’m 43 now. One of the songs was written when I was 19, “Her Bullets Energy,” and if someone had told me, at the age of 19, that Robby Krieger would be playing acoustic guitar on that track, I would’ve told them, “You’re out of your mind, go jump in a lake.” But that happened and what a moment that was.

Who are the kids singing at the end of Hermano’s …Into the Exam Room?

Those are [guitarist] Dave Angstrom’s kids, Audrey and Evan… Good record.

It’s one of those albums you can listen to repeatedly.

There was a lot of emotion with what I was going through at that time in my life. It’s my favorite Hermano record. I love Dave Angstrom. Why he is not one of the biggest guitar players in the entire world just blows my mind. That guy has got to be in my top three guitarists of all time. He helped me a lot on this record too.

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HOUR OF PENANCE

INTERVIEW WITH Paolo Pieri and Giulio Moschino WRITTEN BY James Alvarez Hour of Penance hail from the Roman Catholic stronghold of- you guessed itRome, Italy. What’s a fast and furiously blasphemous death metal act like Hour of Penance to do when the friggin’ Pope and his holy city/international tax haven are located in their very own backyard? They crank out a rippingass album like Regicide, that’s what. A 40-minute anti-theist, extreme metal thrill ride that would make the Polish Satanists in Behemoth proud, and leave hardcore religious folks cowering in its wake.

The term “regicide” literally means the killing of a monarch or sovereign. Given their proximity to the Vatican, and the image of a grotesque Pope-like figure corrupting the masses that adorns the album’s cover, it’s not hard to see just who Hour of Penance are targeting here. Paolo explains that the album’s title “revolves around the themes of destruction and rebirth and the killing of the king – be it your own fears, prejudices, or dogmas that you build inside yourself to cope with reality.

Only by letting go of those illusions and tearing down the walls of ignorance and fear that society, religion, and every form of dysfunctional authority you encounter during your life, can you start to rebuild your own path as a free man who has no need for a king.”

As cool as this new Pope may seem – warning about the perils of income inequality, lambasting greed and homophobia throughout the world, and generally rejecting the lavish papal bling his predecessors seemed to love so much – he’s still the figurehead of an ancient, orthodox institution responsible for some heinous acts in the past and unfortunately, modern times as well.

This is some deeply philosophical, eggshell walking territory we’ve stumbled upon here. Honestly, how do you tackle these daunting humanistic quandaries of the spiritual and sociopolitical realms? The fellas in Hour of Penance use good ol’ fashioned death metal. Giulio says, “The album art is a snapshot of our culture. The statue in the middle of it being stabbed by the Pope is the Statue of Italy. Our country is deeply wounded by the effects of bad government and the Vatican. We wanted something tied with the theme of the record. While I love some of the ‘90s death metal albums, I find that some of them don’t really reflect what the album is about. We really wanted our fans and listeners to have an idea of what Regicide is, by simply veiwing the cover.”

Aside from the controversial theme and album art, Regicide also signals an exciting new chapter in Hour of Penance’s career. This album marks the

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recording debut of the band’s smoking new rhythm section: drummer James Payne and bassist Marco Mastrobuono.

According to Giulio, their addition to the fold helped spice things up during writing and recording process of the record. Don’t get me wrong, Hour of Penance is still flying the brutal death metal flag proud and high, but after some heavy touring and an infusion of fresh blood to the team, the band has produced their most diverse and pristine sounding album to date.

“In the past two years, we played almost 200 shows pretty much everywhere in the world,” Giulio says. “The stage is where the band and every musician improve their playing and techniques, [and] that is reflected on the new record.” Regarding Hour of Penance’s newest recruits, he says, “They’re both very talented musicians, and their entry in the band definitely helped change the sound for the better. James can play anything from death metal to jazz, and his approach to our new songs made everything sound more varied and organic than our previous drummers had. Marco is a bassist and a sound engineer. We recorded the bass in his studio and this is the first album where the bass can finally be heard, which is very hard for this kind of music. We really wanted each note to sound clear and intelligible,” he says. “Regicide is the most complex album we’ve done so far, and while it’s a technical death metal album, we also wanted our nonmusician fans to be able to understand what’s going on.”

Every guitar note, every growl, every china crash and snare crack jumps out through the speakers. Hour of Penance’s latest offering delivers lightening fast bruisers like “Reforging the Crowns” and “Redeemer of Atrocity” alongside heavy riff anthems like “Resurgence of the Empire” and “The Seas of Light” that should get festival crowds chanting and headbanging in unison.

The album is definitely more than just a wall of extreme metal noise, and Paolo tells us why. “When we completed the preproduction of this album, we decided to go for a different approach,” he reveals, “because the riffing on the songs was really technical and fast compared to our previous works. So the best choice was to track only one guitar per side instead of two, and going for a less compressed sound to make everything more distinguishable. I believe it was the right choice and we’re all very satisfied about the production of Regicide.”

They may have been aiming for pure sonic blasphemy on Regicide, but for death metal fans, Hour of Penance’s new record is downright heavenly.

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THE HOMELESS GOSPEL CHOIR

INTERVIEW WITH Derek Zanetti WRITTEN BY John B. Moore Whether fronting a crust punk band or shouldering an acoustic guitar and raging solo, Derek Zanetti has always been preaching into the mic about government, religion, war, and corporate corruption: the cornerstones of any solid punk rock song. It comes as little surprise that this Iron City native’s political punk folk rock found a home at A-F Records, the label founded by fellow Pittsburgh political punks Anti-Flag. Chris #2, the bassist for Anti-Flag, dug the material so much that he decided to produce the record. Zenetti’s latest full-length, I Used to be So Young, is a fantastic mix of Billy Bragg and Frank Turner attitude filtered through a disillusioned, witty American.

On the eve of his album’s release, Zanetti takes some time to speak about the new record, working with Chris #2, and his record collection.

How long have you been working on these songs?

Some I wrote within the last nine months. “The Holiday Song” and Brooklynite black metal champions Mutilation Rites made a big splash in the metal world with their 2012 debut album Empyrean. The album received generally high marks from music critics, keyboard warriors, and actual humans [aka fans] in dank venues across the country. Now our favorite mutilators are back with their second full-length, aptly titled Harbinger. This record is definitely Mutilation Rites bringing their A game.

“The album is about warning signs,” guitarist and vocalist George Paul says, “…red flags, be it in relationships, or symptoms of substance or self abuse.

It took us a while to find a name for this record. I have an extremely hard time writing lyrics for this band, and when I had come up with the theme of the record, finding a title was even harder. Eventually, [drummer and cofounder] Justin [Ennis] mentioned Harbinger while everyone was trying to brainstorm and it resonated with all of us.”

The music collected on Harbinger does more than warn. This album marks the devastating continuation of Mutilation Rites’ self-described “filthy black metal” sound, and is potent enough to stop an elephant in its tracks. Album opener “Black Pyramid” is a seven- minute rager that begins with a blur of tremolo picked goodness, becomes awash in a creepy psychedelic haze, rinses and repeats until an infectious foot stomping section takes the reins. It is a catchy, but pummeling, double bassled charge reminiscent of the heavier moments on Immortal’s At the Heart of Winter.

This record is filled to the brim

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“Capitalismo” have taken me my whole life to write [laughs].

It’s a beautiful record, but it’s pretty bleak. Or do you see it as ultimately optimistic?

I realize that there are very heavy concepts in the record such as war, religion, PTSD, and being exposed to Fox News, but I try to sing about these heavy topics with more than just a morbid sense of grim reality. Now, my entire adulthood has been lived through a lens plagued with war and fear of war.

From the time I graduated high school until this very moment, I have been living in a country that has not known peace. In fact there are teenagers now, who don’t know what it’s like to live without the black umbrella of war. I guess it is hard for me to write a song that’s not referencing the hypocrisy of this neverending religious war, and sometimes that can come off as morbid. But I always try to offer a positive solution, rather than just leave you with the dark abyss of with just about everyone’s favorite extreme metal influences. Razor sharp Dissection-ish riffs executed with a totally raw, Darkthrone-style delivery.

One moment, there’s a surge of crust punk intensity beaming through the album, the next it stops on a dime with doom-inspired dread. Harbinger is rife with thrashy d-beats, lumbering riffs, and otherworldly head-scratchers like “Ignus Fatuus” that just yanks the listener into a sonic black hole.

This album expands upon everything that made Empyrean great without compromising Mutilation Rites’ filthiness.

“I don’t see us changing our formula anytime soon,” Paul reveals. “I think the U.S. has enough bands taking steps in the wrong direction in metal. It seems like things just keep getting worse and worse. We’re all metalheads and want to write metal songs. I’m not sure why bands have decided to lose focus on great riffs and make background music metal. It’s sad really. Maybe that makes me a close-minded metal fan who isn’t open to change, but I don’t really care.”

Some things have changed in the Mutilation Rites camp. Bassist and covocalist Ryan Jones joined the band back in 2012, right after their debut album’s recording session wrapped.

Paul describes his addition to the creative process this time around as nothing short of invaluable. “Ryan has been an unbelievable asset in Mutilation Rites,” he gushes. “His guttural vocals are a large focal point of the new album, bringing a much larger death metal influence overall. Not to mention, he is a sound engineer himself, so he’s got a wonderful grasp on how his bass should sound in the grand scheme of the band.

American politics masked as some form of hyper capitalistic Christianity.

How did you first connect with the folks at A-F Records?

I was a huge fan of A-F Records before I was ever close friends with anyone in the bands. But I guess it all really started when I played a show with the Green Day Cover Band (Chris #2, Tyler and Josh of White Wives). After the show, Chris #2 approached me and said he really dug my tunes, and said we should talk about working together on future stuff. I was just flattered that he liked my tunes enough to take time to say so. Roger Harvey and Chris #2 played some White Wives songs acoustic at my wedding, which helped us to grow closer as friends (White Wives are my wife’s favorite band). I guess the rest is what they call history.

As a kid in Pittsburgh, did you listen to Anti-Flag growing up?

I was always into punk music as a kid, and being from Pittsburgh, I obviously knew who Anti-Flag was. However, I first came to really pay attention when I first saw White Wives play. When I saw them play for the first time, I was totally blown away, I was pumped that a band like that came from my hometown. It wasn’t until recently that I discovered the majority of the Anti-Flag catalogue, and I totally love the tunes. They are so catchy and fun.

club shows, everything. Every night of the week, there is something for someone. I do need to be honest that I miss Club Laga a ton and nothing will ever quite fill its shoes. But what we have now is pretty fucking sweet.

Have you always played as a solo acoustic musician or did you start out with traditional punk bands?

I played in a slew of horrible punk bands when I was a much younger man. I sang – well, yelled – in this one crusty punk band and I loved it, but every night, the same kids would come out. I felt like I was preaching to the choir. These kids don’t need to hear about my crazy left wing politics, that our government is fucked, that religion and church is just a corrupt pyramid scheme; they already knew that. So in 2009, after spending a year traveling and living out of my backpack, I decided to try and make my crazy political congas more palatable and more conducive to a broader audience.

So I picked up an acoustic guitar and wrote some Dylan/Cash folk country tunes and started hitting the road.

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Pittsburgh had a great punk scene early-to-mid ‘90s, but it was pretty small. What is the scene like now?

I think that the music scene in Pittsburgh is up there with the best in the country!

We have amazing DIY punk venues, house venues, all-age shows, 21+ shows,

MUTILATION RITES Photography by Kris Alan Carter

INTERVIEW WITH Guitarist/Vocalist George Paul WRITTEN BY James Alvarez It feels so strange to me that this is the first recording that Ryan is on. [Former bassist] Ian [Deaderick] left the band right after Empyrean was recorded, and Ryan has been a part of the group ever since. He›s also written a good portion of the lyrics as well, which I am extremely grateful for.”

Lyrics are an important part of any song. We all know people like to feel included, and crowd participation at a show, regardless of genre, is essential.

Yes, even drunken metal fiends like to sing, or grunt, along with their longhaired heroes. As luck would have it, Mutilation Rites have finally joined the published lyrics club with Harbinger. “This album marks our first with printed lyrics,” Paul explains.

“Most people think I don’t actually write lyrics, which isn’t true. My vocal phrasing is just sloppy and messy, so it sounds like nonsense… It’s a slurred stream of consciousness when I actually sing them. With printed lyrics, maybe people will be able to sing along this time around. Ryan’s vocals are also a

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little easier to decipher than mine. It’s been a blast trying to work out patterns for Ryan’s vocals on the new album.

Most of the phrasing on the entire record was mapped out by him, and some of the songs’ lyrics were entirely written by him as well.”

Be on the lookout for Mutilation Rites’ new album, Harbinger, when it drops this July on Prosthetic Records. It’s the filthy black metal album with the white background and freaky, funhouse ride from hell inspired artwork on the cover, designed by renowned international graphic artist Valnoir. “Valnoir reached out to us right after Empyrean was released and wanted to work with us on any upcoming projects,” Paul says.

“After looking at his impressive and extensive list of works, we agreed to hire him for the upcoming full-length.

We explained the album and sent him the lyrics, and he just kind of took it from there. I couldn’t happier with how it looks. The gate fold inside is even more insane!”

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“What made us love Braid in the rst place — start-stop changes on a dime, scrappy punk songs with a ton of heart.”

-NPR The highly-anticipated new full length album from Braid — the band’s rst in over 15 years. Available everywhere July 8, 2014 on CD, vinyl & digitally.

New 2014 releases also coming from Sundials, Nai Harvest, Prawn, You Blew It!, Cut Teeth, Empire! Empire! (I Was a Lonely Estate), Field Mouse, My Fictions, The Jazz June & Special Explosion.

MUSCLE & BONE

INTERVIEW WITH Vocalist/Guitarist Rob Travis WRITTEN BY John B. Moore Musically, Asheville, NC, is much better known for its banjo-strumming hippies than it is for punk rock. But in basements and garages and sweaty house shows across the city, kids raised on emo and punk rock are making their voices heard. One such band is Muscle & Bone, a fantastic group that marries the influences of The Anniversary with Sunny Day Real Estate.

How did you guys first come together?

[Vocalist] Adam [Gross] and I had been talking about starting this band for a long, long time. We’ve had the “We should start an emo band,” conversation on and off since 2007. When both of our bands had broken up, we starting talking about doing a band together again. My band had been broken up for a few years and I had been writing a lot in the meantime and playing some

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solo shows, so when Adam’s band broke up, we decided to give it a shot. We got together in March 2012 and starting working on some songs. Ryan [Hoots] played drums in my old band and is a best bud and incredible drummer, so I asked him if he wanted to jam.

We found it really easy to write songs together. We wrote the songs for the EP and recorded them in May 2012. Chris French was moving to Asheville around that time, and he and Adam were going to be roommates, so Adam talked him into playing bass for us. We played our first show in July 2012.

terms of both instruments, bass and guitar. We also had a couple of riffs lying around to borrow from, so it happened fairly quickly. With the EP, it was Adam or myself bringing in finished songs, and then sort of arranging them with Ryan and adding parts if need be. This record was a total collaborative effort.

Peace & Light was a lot of pieces of riffs that Adam and I brought in and we worked on together as a band. A few of the songs came in as finished ideas.

“I Am an Oak” was a finished idea, as was “Song for the Broken Road,” “Song for Broken Teeth,” and “Direction.” For the most part, we all pieced the songs together as a band.

I read that your EP came together quickly. What was the process like for Peace & Light?

With Peace & Light, we were a full band.

When we were writing the EP, we didn’t have a bass player, so I had to think in

How did you first connect with the folks at Black Numbers?

We actually finished recording Peace & Light around June of last year, and we sent it around to a few labels.

We contacted Black Numbers at the

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tsr-store.com topshelfrecords.com

recommendation of several people. Our friends in Placeholder put out a record with them. They put out a split between Go Rydell and Grey Area. They put out a couple of Static Radio NJ records.

We’re friends with PJ Bond who is on that label. We had a lot of incentive, so we just sent them the record, and Dave [Frenson] got back to us pretty quickly and said they wanted to do it. Dave and [founder] Phil [Battiato] are both great people who have contributed so much to the punk community over the years.

I feel like they really, genuinely like this record, and it means the world to work with people who believe in your work.

Did you guys all grow up listening to similar music?

I guess we all grew up in the ‘90s. We were definitely all into the alternative rock of that time. Third Eye Blind, Everclear, Smashing Pumpkins.

Stuff like Red House Painters, The Lemonheads, Sebadoh, Archers of Loaf, Superchunk, Seam, Hum, Nada Surf, etc. Josh and I could probably listen to Punk-O-Rama comps for an obscene amount of time. Collectively, I’d say we all love The Anniversary, The Get Up Kids, Saves the Day, Mineral, Rainer Maria, Sunny Day Real Estate, The Promise Ring, Texas is the Reason, Magnolia Electric Co, Pedro the Lion, Codeine, and a million others. In the van, we’re either listening to Elliott Smith or the song “Big Rock Candy Mountain.”

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CORY BRANAN Photography by Nicole C Kibert

INTERVIEW WITH Cory Branan WRITTEN BY Angela Kinzie For nearly 15 years, Mississippi born singer-songwriter Cory Branan has been paying his dues. While Branan’s self-described “mutt music” covers wide ground – everything from rockabilly to traditional and alternative country to pop to folk – he’s also garnered attention from members of the punk rock community, opening for bands like The Gaslight Anthem and touring as a member of the Revival Tour with Chuck Ragan and Laura Jane Grace, among others.

Though Branan’s insightful, poetic lyricism is praised by both fans and peers, the 39 year-old didn’t begin writing songs until the age of 25.

“When I was 21, 22, I started playing at a little place called The Daily Planet… playing open mics. I started first trying to sing, as awkward and timid as I could. Now it’s weird to even think that I was shy, because I’m not at all. I think it helps, honestly, to have some years of living under my belt before I started blabbing about my feelings. [Laughs] It gives you a little bit of scale… For me it worked.”

On stage, Branan’s songwriting combines with a deep southern accent and impromptu wit, both as unmistakable as his loud, “spazzy” acoustic guitar technique.

“Technique is one word for it. [Laughs] When people ask what I do, I’m just like, ‘Well, I don’t know what I’m doing, but I also don’t care that I don’t know what I’m doing.’ That’s the crux of my technique. I just try to keep on my toes and keep people engaged.” He adds that he’s “lucky enough to open up for some bigger acts, so to control the room, you gotta beat the crap out of the thing.”

Branan’s fourth full-length album will be released in August, ambiguously titled The No-Hit Wonder.

He admits the title is partly autobiographical, but explains: “I started out writing it about a bunch of people at a thing called Folklife that I used to go to in Memphis. I just met so many great, talented people. Then on the road over the years, I met so many struggling people doing what I

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do, just barely fuckin’ makin’ it… You get to sing your songs for people, and on paper it should be great. It should at least be work; it should be a job that you can get by on. It’s just not that way these days. It’s real tight for a lot of people. So I wrote songs about all these rad people I see out on the road with nothing to show for it but the song, and they still do it anyway.”

Since the release of Mutt in 2012, Branan experienced the loss of two close family members, got married, and had two children. Inevitably, these changes found their way into the new material.

“Some of the darker stuff that’s happened and the more personal stuff is encoded. Usually the closer something is to me, and the more it means to me, the less I’ll sing about it straight. There’s some stuff about home, some stuff about my father… I guess [the songs are] all formed by it, even if they’re not particularly about it. I definitely look at home in a different way now. I look at the road in a much different way. It takes distance to write something that’s going to be universal, that’s not going to be some whiney ass diary entry. I want something that’s going to do these things justice and not just be catharsis for me. I want for it to stand up on its own and hopefully, if not honor a memory, at least be useful for someone else who hears it.”

When it comes to an ideal career, Branan says, “I’d like to have a little bit of dough come in the mailbox somehow, but that doesn’t happen anymore. There’s no such thing as money off records or publishing for the most part, unless you do commercial music. So you’ve got to stay on the road.

It’s a struggle. I do real well in places, but that’s not gonna always be… I tour 120 shows a year. I do it because I love it, obviously, but that’s my job, and I have to pay the bills with that. I would like to be able to keep making the kind of music I want to make and have a loyal steady crowd in most towns… but nothing crazy. Just enough to warrant going to the town and not going into debt in my life.”

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Westfield, MA, is often thought of as the hometown of lo-fi heroes Sebadoh.

Beyond the oft-sensitive Lou Barlow’s releases, Westfield also loves its metal, and the current kings in that category are scene mainstays Within the Ruins.

The band has proven with each release that they are not just another shitty scene band, and are amongst the ranks of New England’s finest. eOne release, Phenomena, is their finest hour yet, a thrill ride of impossibility and focused fucking hostility.

This record is pure evolution for Within the Ruins. How hard was it to write this?

It was a challenge in that we always want to top ourselves with every album.

Invade and Elite were such hits with the fans that we felt the need to really push ourselves as far as we could go in every aspect of the band. I definitely think we achieved that with Phenomena. To top this one will be the real challenge.

Do you think this could be your Master of Puppets? Your next level?

It’s funny you made that reference to Metallica, because we do the same

[laughs]. I think we all feel Elite was our Master of Puppets and Phenomena is our …And Justice for All. I feel that this album will stand the test of time and become a fan favorite very quickly.

Joe Cocchi’s guitar playing, from “Gods Amongst Men” to “Ronin,” shows so much growth and technical skill…

Joe’s writing has always amazed me. I swear the dude is a machine that drinks beer. We basically took all the awesome stuff from our prior albums and refined it. Also worked on song structures and different effects to make each song its own entity.

Your lyrics are extra strong on this release. “This utopia was built on horror.” Would you discuss that lyric?

This album is actually a concept album.

Every song is based off of a different comic book hero or villain. This particular lyric comes from the song “Clockwork,” and I based it off of “The Watchmen” and “Sin City.” It basically means that this city that has been built by the corrupt so they can live lavishly was built on the suffering of those

INTERVIEW WITH Vocalist Tim Goergen WRITTEN BY Morgan Y. Evans beneath them. Pretty powerful subject matter. I loved writing this song.

Have your fans been supportive as the band’s sound grows in new directions?

It is awesome that the fans have our back. They know that we won’t stray too far from our sound, but they are very accepting of any changes we throw at them. We have the best fans in the world.

You were hospitalized recently for heart and liver complications. Everything OK? Yeah, everything is OK now. Had a little scare with my blood pressure spiking, which caused my heart and liver to swell. I’m on medication now and feel better than ever. Ready to hit the road again!

All Photography by Jeremy Saffer

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What is behind the album’s title?

Well, since the album is about super

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heroes, Phenomena pretty much sums that up. It also has a deeper meaning, because without the human imagination there would be no characters to write about. The fact that all these alternate realities and stories came from the human mind is a phenomenon in itself, and it’s something we all possess.

Are you stoked for Summer Slaughter?

You, Origin, and Goatwhore in one day?

Wow. I’m very much excited to watch Origin every night. I am most stoked for the hangs and the fun that come with it.

This is our third appearance on the Summer Slaughter Tour, so I imagine it’ll be just as, if not more, fun than prior years. I’m ready for it!

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Most of the great things that happen at punk rock festivals are forgotten after the hangover finally subsides. Thankfully, Ex Friends didn’t fade away. The band – Plow United vocalist Joel Tannenbaum, Beach Slang drummer (and artist) JP Flexner, The Retreevers guitarist Leta Gray, bassist Audrey Crash, and guitarist Jayme Guokas – formed thanks to a backstage meet up at 2011’s Riot Fest Philadelphia. The Philly scene is not that big, so it seems inevitable that this group found its way to each other.

After a couple of 7”s, the band put out their debut full-length at the end of 2013 and are back with a new EP, Animal Needs.

And, as if their merch table wasn’t crowded enough, Ex Friends is nearly finished with its second full-length.

How did you guys first come together?

Short answer: the band formed backstage at Riot Fest East in Philadelphia in 2011. Longer answer: it’s very Philly. Our lives have been intertwined in odd ways forever. Jayme and I played in a couple of the super weird, lo-fi twee pop bands together in the late 1990s/early 2000s. We were out of touch for a long time, and then, all of the sudden, we just kept finding ourselves in the same room and knowing the same people. Now he’s married to one of my best friends, who he met at my wedding, of all places. We might as well be related at this point. Audrey and I were going to the same shows in Philly at places like Stalag 13 and Killtime in the 1990s, and have a lot of the same friends. I just always knew her as this incredible musician. We were sitting around a bonfire in West Philly in 2011 when I asked her to join the band. JP was kind of the newbie. I met him through Arik Victor of Creep Records and asked

him to print some Riot Fest posters for Plow United. But yeah, Riot Fest.

He played drums for Weston that day, and we were both basically having the best day of our lives, and it seemed like a good idea to start a band. Audrey and Jayme were both there that day too, randomly. Jayme and Audrey knew each other in passing forever through a slightly different series of West Philly band connections. Leta is friends with Audrey. They already played in a couple of bands together and we somehow convinced her to join Ex Friends too.

The band has been pretty prolific lately. How do you find the time to write and record when you all have other commitments?

Yeah man, exactly. We all have grownup jobs and we all play in multiple bands. I’m not entirely sure how we get anything done, but we do. I write songs like a crazy person.

It’s almost like they write themselves, so there’s always a backlog of songs to learn. I usually record acoustic demos of them and send them to everybody, but everyone’s super busy so that’s kind of a hit-or-miss way of doing things.

We are pretty hardcore rehearse-ers.

We only have a few hours a week to practice, so we try to make them count. If we’re arranging and learning new songs, we just play them over and over again until it sounds right. For the most part, everyone does their own arranging, so that helps. I am kind of a hack, musically, and I’m in a band with these amazing musicians, so it doesn’t make any sense for me to tell them exactly what to play. And then we

PALLBEARER

INTERVIEW WITH Bassist Joseph D. Rowland WRITTEN BY Brandon Ringo One listen to the titanic, crushing doom made by Little Rock, AK’s, Pallbearer and it would appear that they’ve been doing this for 20 years. However, the band has only really been around since 2008, formed as a side project by guitarist and vocalist Brett Campbell and bassist and vocalist Joseph D. Rowland. In the years since their forming, the band’s career has taken off to monstrous heights thanks to the strength

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of their debut album Sorrow & Extinction.

Now they are back with Foundations of Burden, another stunning and emotional masterpiece of modern doom, now with 10% more piano ballads!

When did you begin writing Foundations of Burden?

We’ve been writing it for a long time.

Actually, one of the songs on Foundations

EX FRIENDS

INTERVIEW WITH Vocalist Joel Tannenbaum WRITTEN BY John B. Moore usually manage to get in the studio a couple of times a year for this or that, and we tend to be pretty efficient in the studio as well. Actually, we were at Red Planet yesterday, recording songs for a split 7” with F.O.D., and I swear, I sat in the control room and watched JP, Audrey, and Leta nail this song “Strangers” in one take.

One take! Nobody gets anything in one take anymore, and there they are, nailing shit in one take like they are Stax sessions musicians in 1966. It’s nuts. So yeah, the short answer to your question is that it’s all about efficiency, I guess. And then of course the final part of the equation is the records themselves. We’re really, really lucky that there’re labels that want to press records for us, and we try to be really

organized when we deal with them. It helps having a graphic designer in the band, no question.

Have you started thinking about the next full-length yet?

Thinking? Shit, it’s about 90 percent written! The working title of the album is Genre. Paper+Plastick is gonna put it out. We’re hoping to record it before the end of the year. It’s gonna be quite a bit different from Rules For Making Up Words. They are still songs with four chords about people and places that are broken in some way, but what we’re doing with those four chords, and the way we are telling those stories, that’s gonna be a little more complicated.

of Burden, we were in the process of writing around the same time we were recording Sorrow & Extinction and we considered including it on that record, but at the point it was at then, it didn’t really fit the vibe. We stopped working on it and focused on other things for a bit. But basically, for the last two years, we’ve been writing the songs for the new record. It wasn’t like every song was being worked on for the entire two years. A lot of the stuff on the new one, Brett and I wrote while away from each other.

belongs to them rather than just hearing mine and that being the de facto thing that the song’s about, that’s kinda boring.

Everybody should have a little ownership of the song if that’s what they want.

Lyrically, you guys present some very interesting imagery. Could you tell me a bit about where your lyrical inspiration comes from?

Man, I can’t really speak for the lyrics that Brett writes, but the ones that I write, I’m definitely drawing from real life experiences and kind of putting them into a sort of otherworldly, dream-like context.

And also, a lot of the lyrics I write, I draw from actual imageries from dreams that I’ve had and I try to use the songs as a way to try to help myself to interpret what direction those dreams are trying to point me in with my life. But I don’t really like to talk too much about my interpretation.

That’s up for everybody else to interpret for themselves. I think there’s a lot more value to the songs if everybody can just have their own meaning and that meaning

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I feel “Ashes” is definitely the most unique song on the record. What inspired it?

My first instrument that I ever learned how to play was the piano. I actually was a pretty proficient pianist when I was younger, and I still like to play and write and stuff when I have the opportunity. I wrote that song and there was an old ‘70s Fender Rhodes in the studio, so I used that to play it instead of a piano like I had written it on. It’s like an electric piano, a little different, more specific sound. It’s definitely, like, kind of a different song that I still think fits the Pallbearer vibe.

It’s cool how it breaks up the vibe before the final song. Did you structure it that way?

We intended from the beginning that it would be the next to last song on the record and “Vanished” would be the last one. So yeah, it definitely has a deliberate intent on our part to have a little bit of ebb and flow on there, before the final emotionally intense ending.

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DEFEAT THE LOW

INTERVIEW WITH Vocalist Chris Huaraque WRITTEN BY Brandon Ringo Since their formation, Portland, OR’s, Defeat the Low has had a DIY approach: filming their own videos, taking their own promo pictures, controlling their own promotion, and even recording their debut record. They’re even signed to their own record label (sorta) thanks to their rhythm guitarist and Rise Records’ head honcho, Craig Ericson.

The band signed to Rise in early 2014 and is now planning a fall release for their debut album A Nervous Smile.

Vocalist Chris Huaraque discusses how the band came together, why they signed with Rise, and the lyrical inspiration for the record.

How and when did the band come

POINT OF VIEW

INTERVIEW WITH Michael Bragg, Curtis & John Wallace WRITTEN BY Brandon Evans Tucked away in an undisclosed dive bar on a 90-degree day, I sit with the members of the San Jose punk band Point of View. Amidst a mountain of Olympia and PBR cans, we discuss their upcoming California tour with The Vibrators, glimpse what life is like returning from a tour, and how an incomparable punk hero and local legend, the late Tony Sly, made a lasting impression on all of their young lives.

You guys are going on tour with The Vibrators. How did that come to be?

JW: We’ve played with these guys probably five or six times before in Modesto and Stockton. Usually Hella Mad Records kinda hooks us up with those guys. I don’t know how [The Vibrators] did it, but they just got in with those guys, and it seems like whenever they play in California, they always book with Hella Mad. We kinda just became the band that likes to play with them, and

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when they said they were coming to California in September, we were the first picked!

You guys are all pretty young, but you’ve been a band for half of your lives. What do you think you’ll learn from a band as seasoned as The Vibrators?

CW: I guess, I don’t know. I think we’re going to find out, really. Like we said, we’ve played with them, but we’ve never toured with them.

You’re right, though, The Vibrators are a seasoned band. I’m sure there is going to be something that we pick up and take away from the experience.

JW: As far as the professionalism goes though, I’m stoked on that.

These guys have been doing it for 30+ years, and it’s cool to be around guys like that. I would love to be in that position 30 years from now!

What is the most uncomfortable part about touring as a younger

together?

Well, we’ve been together for going on two years now. We’ve actually only been playing shows for close to a year. We all live in Portland, we’ve all been friends, and most of these guys have been on the Rise roster, so we’ve all known of each other for a while [from] growing up in the Portland area. We just started jamming for the fun of it. We had no real intention when we first started jamming; we were just jamming to have fun in the basement.

When you started recording, did you have a particular sound in mind or did that develop as the process went on?

Definitely. Our sound, it did start to take a little more form as we wrote more songs, but it did start out with a definite feel that we tried to keep with the initial first few songs that we wrote, a feeling of like a mid ‘90s kind of alternative with late ‘90s punk. It’s just stuff that we grew up listening to that we like to listen to and that we like to play, not trying to be anything else.

Are your lyrics stories you’ve created or are they about real life?

Well, most of the stuff I write is just thoughts and feelings that I’ve had collected in notebooks throughout years that define certain experiences that I’ve been through. How I was band?

CW: I think it’s coming back and going back to work.

JW: I think knowing that while you were gone, you didn’t make any money, and that you need to make up for that somehow is pretty uncomfortable.

MB: Last summer, when I left with Kill the Bats, I wrote a song on the way home. I was pretty drunk, I think I was in San Diego, and my girlfriend at the time broke up with me the day before I left for tour. To make matters worse, my Dad died like six months before that, and that song was like me going, “Fuck, can I not go back to my original life and just be in this van forever?!” Coming home sucks!

An interview with a San Jose band would be incomplete without discussing the impact of the late Tony Sly. Did Tony make a lasting impression on you?

JW: Absolutely, we actually played with Tony Sly in Los Gatos. He was playing an acoustic set. It was Tony Sly… MB: …but at first, it was supposed to be No Use for a Name.

JW: Right, right… I don’t know the reason they didn’t end up playing.

Maybe because it was a different scene, but who knows? Los Gatos is a really bougie kind of town, you know, so there were probably only like 30 to 40 people there.

MB: I remember I really, really wanted to play that show and I had to sell a certain number of tickets to

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feeling at the moment. I’ve struggled with a couple of things in my life, so I try to write about mostly perseverance and overcoming, trying to keep it positive even though there is kind of an ominous undertone to a lot of it.

Did you consider other labels?

Well, initially, when we were just jamming, just recording our demos, and just wanted to play local shows for fun, we weren’t even gonna look at a label. We weren’t gonna put anything out. We started playing a few shows, considering putting together a real full-length, then talk[ed] about representation and trying to get it out there. Being in a band with Craig, we joked about signing to Rise at first, but we played with the notion of signing with a smaller label, maybe using their resources and promotion. But… Why would we want a middleman? Why would we want to give someone else a cut? Why wouldn’t we take advantage of the resources that we already have in-house? They’re good at what they do. It would be cool to not say, “We’re just signing to Rise because we can,” [laughs]. But when it came down to it, it was like, “We have these awesome resources. We have everything that we need right here.” Rise is doing great, they know what they’re doing, so why not?

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get on the bill. We hated that kind of shit back in the day, but because Tony Sly was playing, I busted my ass to make sure it happened. I would literally corner people in high school and tell them like, “You’re going to the fucking show… Buy a fucking ticket!” It was so important to us to make that happen and get on the bill. We brought what I felt at the time was a lot of people to the show.

Most of these people probably didn’t give a shit about us back then, and chances are, they weren’t part of the scene and didn’t know who Tony was either.

JW: It was an interesting show; we didn’t even really get to talk to him. I think that even if we got the chance, we’d probably say something dumb like, “What’s up dude?!” [Laughs] MB: I think I shook his hand and said hi.

JW: NOFX actually got everything started for me back in like sixth grade, and then I started to get into other bands under the Fat Wreck Chords umbrella. Then when I heard some of Tony Sly’s songs on some of the video games I was playing, it changed a lot. I really got into that whole Fat Wreck Chords sound and Tony was a big part of that!

MB: Huge part of that! Tony and Joey Cape put together great melodies, and have a very similar way of doing things. I think that’s why our music sounds the way it does. It’s all we listened to for years, and we have guys like Tony Sly to thank for that!

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ENTRAILS

the early ‘90s when we were aiming to be a [death metal] band. Some of the songs weren’t complete in 2009 when I began the new era of the band, but I completed them from the riff library I had on my old tape recordings. In that way, I could make several extra songs to fill up the demos.

INTERVIEW WITH Jimmy Lundqvist WRITTEN BY Brandon Ringo Entrails is currently one of the best bands waving the flag of Swedish death metal.

Last year they released Raging Death, their Metal Blade debut, to rave reviews.

This year, while the band is hard at work on their sophomore record, Metal Blade is unearthing Resurrected From the Grave, a collection of demos that never saw the light of day after being recorded by the band in 2009. Though these songs have

been around for a while, they reek of the same hateful Swedish destruction Entrails’ fans have come to expect over the years.

Heart to Heart has come a long way since their first release, with varying vocal styles and incredible performances that leak emotion. It was only right to hit up the man behind all the madness, Nick Zoppo. With the release of their upcoming record, Dulce, on Pure Noise Records, Nick is in good spirits.

their music with a band member, or write on their own, but Nick likes to take risks when collaborating. “Steve Klein [ex-New Found Glory] actually wrote a few lyrics on the record. He is a good friend of mine and it was easy for me to relate, because we have been feeling a lot of the same things. I was against it for a while, but it was awesome working with him and seeing these songs come to life.”

“I am beyond excited for this release.

With every record we release, we strive to have it be better than the last. There are lots of improvements since we started writing music.”

Recently, the music video to their track “Firefly” was released and to Zoppo’s chagrin it was very well received. “I was surprised when ‘Firefly’ was the first song released,” Zoppo admits. “We got a great response from it. I was excited to finally release some new stuff regardless.

Glad they enjoyed it.”

Is Resurrected From the Grave mostly songs that you wrote in the ‘90s, or was this an early incarnation of Entrails?

All music that is on this demo collection is basically the stuff the band and I made in

The band is known for its rough edges and loud and wild music, but sometimes they like to take it down a notch... sometimes. “I love acoustic music,” says Zoppo. “As for Heart to Heart though, electric all the way. I’d like to do some acoustic songs at some point, but I love to feel the energy from my boys. Turn it up.”

Heart to Heart are always ready to lay it down in the studio. No two records ever come out the same, and with every song the vocal styles chang, which leads

This collection features many quality songs. Did you ever think to incorporate these riffs into your past records?

Well, back then, the riffs and music were easier to create, I guess. Growing up and having Slayer and early Metallica – among others – as influences, along with the new emerging death metal style that I became aware of in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s made for a fun and inspired time to write such songs and sort of do a mix of what I liked from everything I heard. In our past, we never made any records, even if we tried several times in the studio to record a demo or whatever. Those times we tried to record something, we barely had someone who could mix or anything, so it always ended up as a unmixed song on a tape with a terrible sound.

Has writing for the follow up to Raging Death begun yet?

The songwriting is done for the upcoming album. I composed a bunch of songs after the summer last year that we, from time to time, are rehearsing.

But, we also do shows every month in some way and because of that, we can’t concentrate the amount of time needed to have the new stuff recorded yet. Also, there are still a few songs to learn, but we are getting there soon. I hope fans won’t have to wait that long for the next album.

Have you noticed any evolution in your songwriting since you wrote the songs on this demo?

Hell yeah! New music has passed my ears and definitely influences my songwriting, but I still try hard to hold on to the old school feeling: don’t get too technical, or get into anything that won’t fit the Swedish way to play death metal. It has to be easy riffing and also have the right feeling. I hate to make fillers; all songs must have something that messes up your brain.

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HEART TO HEART Photography by Harrison Lubin

INTERVIEW WITH Vocalist Nick Zoppo WRITTEN BY Joseph Tucker to a bigger fan base and a strong sense of creativity. Zoppo says, “I love trying new things. I’ve learned that singing one way gets boring for me. I’m a huge fan of R&B, so I like to get a little freaky (laughs). I enjoy pushing myself. How the instrumentals come out determines what I’d like to try.”

While the band is growing in popularity, they still aren’t afraid to share some of their secrets to success: “Hustle hard.

Play any show you can, whenever you can. Get your name out there. Don’t let anyone bring you down. Follow your dreams. If it worked for me, you can easily do the same.”

GUST

probably the best trick we know to bring all of that together. It gives the lyrics the space they deserve.

INTERVIEW WITH Tommie Ek & Fredrik Forsberg WRITTEN BY Morgan Y. Evans

“Hollow Faces” has a section reminiscent of a mellow, jazz/blues Rollins Band breakdown. It really works.

FF: All of us are into a lot of different types of music, and we all love melancholic tunes. It’s probably just a result of that. It’s a challenge sometimes to get parts like that to work with the rest, but we love to challenge ourselves to write stuff like that, and it sounds pretty cool on this record!

Grave,” but “Humility in Disguise” is more about those capitalistic scumbags who’ve taken over the world, in particular Sweden. Thanks to a colder political climate, I’ve noticed a huge change of attitude in common people too. Greed and individualism prevails and it permeates the whole society, from top to bottom, showing the real nasty sides of human beings. “Humility in Disguise” is about those fuckheads who run over the weaker ones everyday just to get higher up on the ladder. Fuck Capitalism, fuck greed; [I’m] ashamed to see human beings take care of one another so poorly.

Artists in this genre usually co-write

Photography by Magnus Larsen

Sweden’s Gust are the newest signees to the respected Southern Lord stable, and a band with a fresh perspective, lots of enthusiasm, and a killer crossover sound on songs like “Reality Chokes” and “History Repeats” that will make you take notice. This is the new shit.

How’d you get involved with Southern Lord?

TE: It was actually Brad Boatright of Audiosiege/From Ashes Rise who mastered our new album (he also did some guests) who got Greg [Anderson]

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at Southern Lord onto our new album.

Feels great to be a part of the SLR roster among so many great and inspiring bands.

What inspired the extreme enunciation of the lyrics? Is it to make sure people hear the words or incidental?

FF: We really want the vocals to pierce through, to sound urgent and convincing, and the lyrics to hit people like a trainwreck. Going extreme with the enunciation of the words is

Trollhattan is a real place? Are there trolls?

TE: [Laughs] Yeah, it’s actually a real place. It’s an industrial suburb where most people are unemployed and blame the bad economics on the increasing amount of immigrants. Which is pretty fucked up, if you ask me.

What’s “Humility in Disguise” about?

Lying Christians, maybe?

FF: [Laughs] There’s a few songs on the album that actually are about lying Christians, like “From Cradle to

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This record has a real, live feel. Are you happy with it?

FF: Yeah, I mean, we barely did any mixing or editing. There’s no fancy stuff going on. We just recorded our songs in my studio (Fvck Life Studios), tried to get takes with a good feel and not overanalyze shit, put up the right volumes, and do some basic mixing, and apparently it shines through. It’s mostly a combination of great takes and a kickass master by Brad Boatright at Audiosiege. And yeah, we couldn’t be any happier with the result.

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Street Eaters

Photography by Adam Thorman

INTERVIEW WITH Drummer/Vocalist Megan March WRITTEN BY Janelle Jones With their latest LP just released, I asked Street Eaters some questions about the intense post-punk masterpiece Blood::Muscles::Bones and the Berkeley-based band in general, which is composed of drummer and vocalist Megan March, and bassist and vocalist Johnny Geek.

This is your second full-length. Is the new album different from the first?

I think with this new record, we took a lot of the energy we had from the first one, and made everything leaner and meaner. During the writing process, it felt like we honed in on what we really wanted. We had a clear vision of what we wanted the

record to be as a whole, instead of a bunch of songs thrown together.

There were a lot of ideas we left out because they didn’t fit, and I think knowing when to cut something out is just as important as knowing what you want there.

Will you give us a brief history of the band?

We started in 2008 with the intention to write songs, play shows, tour, and record. Not a lot has changed since then, except we now have a lot more amps. We’ve gotten to tour the full U.S. three (soon to be four) times, play in Japan, and tour the U.K. and Europe for six weeks (and this fall we’ll be in Europe for another

seven weeks). We also do small regional tours on the West Coast, or sometimes we’ll fly out to the Northeast or the South. This next U.S. tour coming up is particularly exciting, because we’re playing a bunch of cities we’ve never played before and I’m hoping to check out new bands.

out, but everything we did [and] the songs we wrote were what we needed to do at the time. It’s a huge process – our new record wouldn’t be what it is without the previous We See Monsters, Rusty Eyes and Hydrocarbons, or even the self-titled.

We never got too hung up on a set style; we just let it happen.

“Null” and “Tailings” both have intricate intros. What are these songs about?

I think it’s important to set the tone for certain songs, and extended instrumental intros are a really great way to do that. It creates a mood. We like moods. “Null” and “Tailings” are both about death to some extent: death of a parent and death of a friendship.

You two are married. How does the band dynamic change when it’s your spouse?

We considered playing music together before we ever considered even dating, so the music was always the basis for the band, not our relationship. Plus, bands are always partnerships/marriages to some extent. I will say that living together and being as close as we are makes it easier to practice a lot and understand how to cooperate well under even the most difficult situations.

Why did you choose “Reverse” as your first single?

We chose “Reverse” because we think it represents the energy of the album as a whole, and kind of like an intro, it sets the tone for the record.

My promo copy has a different track order than that listed on your site. Now it would be weird to hear it in a different order! Is the order meaningful?

Yeah, we were pretty deliberate with how the songs were ordered, but it just goes to show that once you put music out, people (or their computers) can order things however they want. I know what you mean though; I have the same feelings about mixtapes.

Did you always want to have female/male dual vocals and your current sound?

It kinda just happened organically.

We were still figuring ourselves

You both previously worked at the Gilman?

Gilman was the only all ages “safer” space in the Bay Area when we were growing up, and it played a huge role in how I got involved in punk. It’s great to travel around and see other DIY spaces around the country that have similar ethics.

Speaking of DIY, you put this album out on your own label, right?

We put the new album out ourselves on our own label, Nervous Intent.

The 12” comes with a three-color letterpress cover. It can be ordered, as can the cassette tape or digital versions, directly from our website http://streeteaters.com.

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LEE COREY OSWALD

INTERVIEW WITH Guitarist/Vocalist Lee Ellis WRITTEN BY Mike Hex

P

ortland, OR, is home to a lot of great bands spanning myriad genres, but Lee Corey Oswald rises to the top. Consisting of guitarist and vocalist Lee Ellis, guitarist Dan Silver, bassist Sam Pape, and drummer Corey Ciresi, the group mixes elements of punk, pop, and folk into a catchy and well-rounded sound.

The four-piece’s years of hard work are starting to pay off. I sit down with the band in their backyard on a sunny Saturday afternoon to chat about everything from hair masks, ants living in computers, and who the sexiest member of the band is. We also discuss the band itself – their move to a bigger label, shooting a video, and their writing process. In case you’re wondering, Sam is the band’s sexiest member. His light blue eyes and long lashes seal the deal.

How many times have you been asked which member is Oswald?

70,169. Though it is a pretty dumb name, so I guess I can’t always blame them. But if you know who (supposedly) shot Kennedy, wouldn’t you at least have an inkling? Maybe we assumed too much.

How was shooting the music video for “Progress”?

The video for “Progress” was recorded by our friend Tony West in the woods of Forest Park in Portland, and in our At this point, 2014 has been a pretty great year for Relapse Records. They’ve put out quite a few incredible records from new signings, including Brooklyn trio Mortals. Their new record Cursed to See the Future combines of the best elements of thrash, black metal, and doom and still manages to keep its own unique approach and style. If this record is any indication, you’re going to be hearing about these three talented-yet-violent women and their uncompromising sound for a very long time.

What were your initial intentions for your sound and did that change at all when you began writing Cursed to See the Future?

I think that when we first got together, we’d come from hardcore, post-rock, crusty, mathy-punk, emo places – and sounded like that. We flirted with the idea of majestic, bleak, gothy metal for a short while, with some keyboard experimentation, but that veered into screamo territory. So, we grew out of that and only gradually started bringing more black, doom, and thrash to the table, after having tried out a lot of everything else. I couldn’t help it, because of learning from Dave [Lombardo]’s parts as the drummer for

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garage (we all live together), also in Portland. We got a bunch of our friends to go and act like they liked our band (just kidding, but seriously). We gave them free beer and stuff, so it was really more of a party than a video shoot. We had to carry all of the props into the woods, including the generator, which was really heavy. It made it worthwhile in the end, and we really feel like we accomplished something. We covered ourselves in fake blood and choked on fake blood capsules. Dan can be seen choking in the outtakes of the video. It was pretty gnarly.

The band started as an acoustic two-piece with just you and Corey, but evolved into a four-piece. Was this always the goal?

When we first started in Scranton, PA, in 2008, we were really into the whole folk/Americana thing. Corey and I were previously in a weird hardcore band called Dinosores and were pretty tired of the whole rock band thing. We were really into stuff like Bright Eyes, Woody Guthrie, Elliott Smith, and Against Me! and wanted to start crafting songs that were in that vein, just the two of us. We’d write stuff in his old living room in Scranton and riff off of each other, seeing what we could come up with. I had never written complete pop songs with lyrics before, having mostly played in hardcore, grindcore, and metal bands up to my junior year

in college. One night while drinking heavily, we came up with two possible band names: “Momma Cass and the Ham Sandwiches” or “Lee Corey Oswald.” Though it makes little sense (especially now that there’s four of us), we thankfully chose the latter. We had a revolving cast of musicians playing live with us before eventually packing up and moving to Portland in 2009. There, we played anywhere and everywhere, just trying to get our sound out in this new city across the country from our home. We have always been huge fans of pop punk/power pop/emo pop indie punk/whatever name tag you wish to add here, and again began to toy with a revolving cast of musicians, trying to add certain elements here or there to complement our sound. We eventually revisited the rock band formula, and after some rises and falls, finally settled on Corey on drums, myself on guitar and vocals, and new addition Dan on bass and vocals. We recorded an album and toured a bit before eventually adding Sam on bass so that Dan can play guitar (he shreds). We’ve had some extensive incarnations of our band, and I guess you can say we definitely had the goal of becoming this one day, though the process by which it happened has been quite organic.

When writing, who does what?

I handle most of the writing process, writing songs in my room on my acoustic guitar, and most of Regards was written this way. Dan also has two songs on the record as well. When either of us have an idea, we’ll bring it to practice and flesh out everything with Corey and Sam. Usually I’ll demo my stuff on my phone or laptop first, giving the rest of the band the ideas I have for the song.

This also helps me to come up with drum part ideas, bass parts, harmonies, other guitar parts, etc. and we all get a sense of what the finished product would sound like. Other times someone will have an idea for a bass line or drum part, or I’ll show Sam or Dan the root notes of the song and they’ll write a part over that, and then we all kind of solidify our parts from there. I’m not much of a drummer, so I crudely give Corey my idea of what I think the

When you began songwriting for Cursed, what were your creative inspirations?

Although our process is a collaborative one, I can’t speak to how my bandmates

Why did you choose to track Regards reel-to-reel?

We love tracking reel-to-reel and also recorded this way on our last record. It helps us get a raw, rock ‘n’ roll sound, capturing the essence of what it’s like to see us live. We prefer analog over digital for the emotional and nostalgic edge it adds to the music. Two of the acoustic songs I actually recorded on my phone, as well, overdubbing some of the instruments in the studio. Adam [Becker] is awesome at his job and he killed it in the sessions we had at Blackwater Studios.

Was there a theme or feeling you were trying to capture with Regards?

Regards can essentially be described as a take on the ironic politics of the underground world and how the term “punk” apparently means something different to everybody, regardless of what the term’s history or literal definition may be. Other songs on the album are personal reflections from inside of this world, addressing things like love, heartache, and anxiety related to the ambiguity and helplessness of Generation Y (or the Millennial Generation, depending on how you label it).

How much of the band’s power comes from Lee’s hair?

Too much, if you ask me.

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MORTALS

the Slayer cover band, while Elizabeth began to incorporate more tremolo riffs and Lesley espoused doomy breakdowns. We’d like to think we know what a Mortals song sounds like, but hopefully, that will keep on evolving.

When you began writing Cursed, did you have the deal with Relapse?

Not really, no. Prior to inking the deal, we’d already had two songs of the record down, “Epochryphal Gloom” and “Devilspell.” Joining the Relapse roster certainly put the proverbial fire under our asses.

Apologies for any cheesetastic-ness, but signing with them was pretty much like a metal fairy tale. (It’s possible!) At the end of our 2012 tour, someone from their office got hold of our EP, and tried to contact us through our email, which – since we’d just come back from tour – we weren’t really checking. Their initial overture went unnoticed for WEEKS. When we finally saw it, I was convinced it was a prank. It was just so hard to believe! Turns out they were very serious.

drums should be like by tapping my thighs or chest or something.

How has the move to No Sleep Records been?

The process has been great. We’re extremely excited to be on their roster and they’ve helped us out quite a bit, though we’ve only been officially signed to them for a couple months. Touring, for instance, is different now because we have a booking agent and don’t have to really worry about setting up shows and such, which Corey used to predominantly do. We’re super excited for the record to come out and to hit the open road. Our music is now able to be distributed to and heard by lots of different people, and that was always a goal of ours.

INTERVIEW WITH Drummer Caryn Havlik WRITTEN BY Brandon Ringo approach the writing process, or their creative inspirations. But for me, I felt like we’d begun to build these mini epics of riffs and swells, swinging stoner doom episodes, and potential circlepit parts, and they needed completely solid drumming to anchor them.

So, for starters, there are a bunch of considerations: how do I do something that supports the riff/song, doesn’t bore me or isn’t completely predictable, is still within the realm of being executed cleanly, yet is still metal enough?

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Balancing all of that is rather like the acrobatics of Cirque du Soleil, without face-paint/body-paint. If I’m ever stuck, it’s then on to a burning question of “What would Dave [Lombardo] do?

Or what would Des [Kensel] do?” (i.e. solve by choosing to lean in either the Slayer or High on Fire direction). Also, I think I’d just seen an Alien marathon to prepare for Prometheus, and was listening to Explosions in the Sky a bunch.

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BELPHEGOR

INTERVIEW WITH Vocalist Helmuth WRITTEN BY Eric May

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t seems that sickness and metal seem to be going hand in hand lately. Luckily, Belphegor vocalist Helmuth was recently victorious in his battle with the debilitating typhoid fever that he caught in South America. Just as Behemoth frontman Nergal whooped cancer’s ass, so did Helmuth defeat typhoid fever. You can bring us down, but you can’t kill us. We’re metal! We discuss this in further detail, as well as some of his beliefs and the brutal fucking record that is Conjuring the Dead, which will be out August 8.

Exactly how did you get typhoid fever? How is your condition now?

Ave! We are in the final stages of completing the video, booklet layout, and bonus DVD that comes with the limited digipak version of the new album in August. I got a typhus infection during our South American raid in 2011. Don’t get me wrong, we dig shredding in South America.

It’s always a pleasure. I just didn’t take care of my body, as always, when we were on tour. I did a lot of hard drinking, drugs, etc.

Belphegor stands for excess and we glorify chaos. We practice what we preach! Anyway, the virus totally fucked up my lungs and I could barely breathe or lift anything. Thousands of people died in the world war because of this damn virus. Yes, I had to change a lot of things in my life.

But I didn’t turn to religion or become a born again Christian. @ NEWNOISEMAGS

The only gods were the doctors who saved my ass, and they are the reason why I have the honor to still be here and celebrate death music. Yes, it forced me to take a long break. The following openheart operation involved the doctors sawing open my rib cage.

After the operation, you feel like a damn robot/zombie for weeks.

Hell yeah, it took me almost one and a half years to come back and be able to perform again.

Also a lot of setbacks during the healing process didn’t make it any easier. The 21+ years of a “suicide lifestyle” during my Belphegor hellride did its damage and almost killed me. When I’d stand up, I would think, “Fuck, I am ready to go.” I had to capitulate because my body, heart, lungs gave me a fucking “No!” and I had to step back again. They were some tough times, man. “Rise to Fall and Fall to Rise” as one of our tracks on the last album, Blood Magick Necromance (2011), says, and that pretty well sums it up. But I’m doing good now.

I’m pleased that I am allowed to play guitar, and front my band again… It feels just great and I am thankful for it. Hail Metal!

Do you think Conjuring the Dead will top the masterpiece that was Blood Magick Necromance?

Conjuring The Dead stands for the brutal metal of death. It’s aggressive, direct, and obscene – the way it’s meant to be. This album is 666% percent Belphegor inside. Our supporters deserve

guitar, always with an electric.

That was an idea from [producer] Erik [Rutan], and it sounds really magnificent. “In Death” is about my return on stage [to] front my band again. It’s a kinda Death track with thrash roots, very old school with amazing precise guitars and some Gary Moore/ Eddie Van Halen/ Steve Vai influenced guitar leads. I also want to mention that we wrote some of our most complex and technical death tracks, such as “Rex Tremendae Majestatis,” “Conjuring the Dead,” and “Legions of Destruction,” where I have, for the very first time, vokill guest appearances from my favorite death metal singer, Glen Benton [Deicide] and my favorite avant-garde/ black metal singer, Attila Csihar [Mayhem]. It is a big honor to me to have these two guys putting their magick on that track. I mean, they are legends and that’s still unreal to me. There is total respect from my side, and a big thank you in their direction.

On “Flesh, Bones and Blood,” we also experimented, as the track comes with an industrial touch and fat fucking brutal slam death metal guitar section, which we have never tried before. I am so proud of this album, because the path that led up to recording it was the hardest and rockiest path that I’ve ever had to walk. I hope people understand that that’s the reason why it is so dark, raw, and brutal.

only the best and they fucking get what they deserve with this new offering. I won’t compare it with other Belphegor releases, and I also won’t say that it’s our best album. But it’s our most mature record, in my opinion. This was a hard ride, but at the end, people should decide how they feel about it and I hope they dig it. Because it was so tough to get back on track, this is a very special LP to me. Everything was very serious this time and needed more months more than expected.

It was like a second rehab after my six weeks in hospital and six week rehab. You know, the most important thing is always to have a goal in sight, where it’s worth it to stand up, to fight and breathe.

For Conjuring the Dead, we put the epic aside, concentrated on the brutality and straight in the face sound wall, like a World War II tank is rolling over your body. You find trademarks of Magick, raw passion and chaos music in this new chapter. The master plan for when we create a new album is to develop and raise the level of intensity. And we did it again.

Belphegor is named after the demon. What is your relationship to the dark realm?

Belphegor is still like a raw, uncut diamond. We fought and practiced, worked hard and toured our asses off. We never changed our style drastically, nor split up. We are still here and on fire, ready to rumble and to destroy. Belphegor is the blood in my veins. If demons like it, then that is great and highly appreciated. If not and people are offended, then that is also fine by me. We are still consistent, brutal, and march in worldwide, without compromise, the way it’s meant to be. It’s about time that the metal community got an overdose of diabolical death/black metal. It’s fucking Conjuring the Dead.

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Lyrically and conceptually, what is Conjuring the Dead about?

We added, as always, a lot of classical stuff in the guitar department. I think it is great as it is. I don’t wanna repeat myself each album, you know. There is always some experimentation within our brutal style. I have never before played the clean guitar sections with a real acoustic

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INTERVIEW WITH Mark Heylmun & Eddie Hermida WRITTEN BY Ridge Briel

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uicide Silence blends epic deathcore breakdowns with the fast paced agvgressiveness of grindcore. After the untimely death of singer Mitch Lucker, the status of the band was in limbo for almost a year, but in October 2013, it was announced that celebrated vocalist Eddie Hermida (ex- All Shall Perish) had joined the band.

Now, one of the most influential bands of the last six years is back with their fourth album, You Can’t Stop Me, and are ready to tear it up on the Mayhem Fest stage.

You Can’t Stop Me was taken from a song Mitch was writing before he passed. Why this title rather than other lyrics he was working on at the time?

Mark: There were no other lyrics. It was a recovered set of lyrics written the week prior to his accident. Fast forward to September 2013, Eddie was already in the band and we got sent these lyrics with the repetition of “you can’t stop me.” We had one song that it could potentially have been for, and instantly knew what he was working on. It couldn’t have been more empowering to read the lyrics written from our brother in that room together that day. We immediately wrote “you can’t stop me” on our white board in our jam space. We knew what we needed to do for the record.

Beginning.” What inspired you to revisit that track?

Mark: It’s a badass song we didn’t play for that long. It got swallowed up by new tunes in the set. We played it at the memorial show and ended up naming the show “Ending is the Beginning.” We love the old Suicide Silence songs and it felt right to do. It’s a slightly revamped, obviously new version of the song, and Eddie slays it and pays homage to Mitch’s classic voice. It is fucking extreme.

Were there a lot of tryouts and submissions from vocalists hoping to join Suicide Silence?

Ultimately, why did you choose Eddie?

Mark: There were NO tryouts. The memorial show was a memorial show and nothing else. There was no thought in our minds on what we were going to do with Suicide Silence when Mitch passed. We wanted to do something for him and his family, which is the Kenadee Lucker Educational Fund, and the idea that started the memorial show. After that show, we were on a hiatus we didn’t know if we would return from. We met up often in that time and eventually all came to the conclusion we wanted to keep

the band alive and move forward.

Eddie was one of the first friends we made early on and we have known him and [All Shall Perish] forever, since like 2005. We all liked the idea of having him work on Suicide Silence music and doing something that Mitch would back up. Mitch and Eddie learned from each other and grew together and influenced each other, so it was perfect. Once we asked him, the snowball quickly turned into an avalanche. We asked in April 2013, he let us know he was all in

by July, and at the end of December 2013, we had brand new Suicide Silence music. It all just happened so damn fast.

Eddie, what inspired you to leave All Shall Perish and join Suicide Silence?

Eddie: Technically, I was asked to leave ASP, but as far as why I chose to join Suicide Silence, it is really simple: I wanted my friends to continue their band.

I wanted to make sure that my future work and money earned from that work – we give a certain percentage of our earnings to The Kennadee Foundation – would go to something positive. Also, I was sensing a slowdown of some sorts in the ASP camp and wanted to try something new. I asked the SS dudes to allow me to stay in both bands and they obliged. However, for some reason the ASP guys wanted to move forward without me. That was their decision.

After the contract with Century Media ended, why did you go with Nuclear Blast?

Mark: It’s fucking Nuclear Blast.

Monte Connor was moving over and wanting to sign us. It was an offer we couldn’t refuse. We knew Nuclear was about to make some big moves, and it seemed like a dream come true to go from [Century Media] (a favorite label for all of us from a young age) to fucking Nuclear Blast (another

You re-recorded “Ending is the

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amazing label we’d all been fans of forever).

There are tracks with Greg Puciato from The Dillinger Escape Plan and Corpsegrinder from Cannibal Corpse on You Can’t Stop Me. How did those come about?

Mark: George was down to rock some vocals for us since 2011 when we toured and partied every day together in South America. It was engraved in our heads when he told us he would do it one night when we were hanging out, probably listening to Hank Williams III or something. Cannibal [Corpse] is a huge influence on us and [Corpsegrinder is] on a track called “Control” that is real throwback to the old days, a classic Suicide Silence type track.

Greg, pretty much same story, but recently when we were on [The] Soundwave [Festival], we asked him if he wanted to sing on a part of the song “Monster Within.” He was down and we were stoked, ‘cause the song is a different kind of tune and his voice just makes the song stand out even more. Both of their bands are influences on us in their own ways, and I think the two songs are two sides of the band’s sound. Listen to them backto-back, totally different songs, but it still sounds like us while being able to work with some of our favorite voices in metal today.

What was it like heading into the studio to record the new album?

Mark: We were all pretty amped going into the studio. We had some sick tunes on our hands; we kind of felt it. We had demoed a lot on our own prior to actually getting into the studio, so we knew by the time the record was done, it was going to be something. When you decide to name your album You Can’t Stop Me, you better write an unstoppable record. We wanted to make our fallen brother proud, so needless to say, emotions were high and moods were heightened and we powered through it.

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STEVE ADAMYK BAND I

INTERVIEW WITH Vocalist/Guitarist Steve Adamyk WRITTEN BY Janelle Jones

catch up with Steve Adamyk just a few weeks before his Ottawabased band’s fourth LP, Dial Tone, will be released on Dirtnap.

Though it’s still Steve Adamyk Band’s signature poppy-punk, the frontman says they definitely tried to go in a different direction, explaining, “We just tried to add different elements wherever we could, just to make it a little more wours.”

Why was “Crash Course in Therapy” the first song you put out for people to hear?

To be honest, that song was originally on the chopping block. We recorded with Matthew Melton from Warm Soda and Bare Wires, he has a home studio in Oakland. We flew down to record with him, because we really liked the way the last Warm Soda album sounded. We just felt like we should do something different because the last few records had a similar sound to it. So anyways, we went down there and that song ended up sounding like technically, sonically speaking, really, really cool. We felt like that was a track to showcase the album, give an idea of what the record’s actually gonna sound like from a production standpoint.

It was on the chopping block? That’s one of my favorites.

It was one of my favorites too, but this was the first record we ever fully composed as a band. They’ve always been my songs… It’s always been me going into the studio with the rest of the guys blind. So we’ll essentially rehearse and write the song in the studio, and then record it instantly, and then move on to the next one.

Because we have a much more solidified band now – even though the band name is obviously my name and I write the songs – we really operate as a regular band does, with everybody having equal say in what happens. We spent a lot of time just practicing these songs for months before we recorded and [“Crash Course”] was the one song, when I first wrote it, I was like, “This is gonna be really catchy.” It didn’t really fit that well right away, but I think we just sped it up a bit more when we recorded it, and I think it turned out great in the end.

In the past, was having a “fluid” lineup intentional or could you just not find musicians who could tour?

It was a bit of both to be honest. At first, it happened because that’s how it started naturally; it wasn’t intentional.

I get really anxious. I’m not really good at taking my time with music, so when I first started this band, I was in such a rush to get everything out as fast as possible. I don’t have time to wait for people’s schedules. I really have a hard time with that, because I’m in my early 30s now. I feel like you really have to strike while the iron’s hot. It could be perceived as a positive or negative thing depending on how you look at it, but [it] is probably why I’ve put out so much music. Trying

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to keep the quality in there of course too. The band did solidify eventually, but that was kinda all secondary.

If somebody wasn’t available, I just found somebody else who was interested and willing at the time.

I’ve just been really lucky the last few years, everyone in the band is really committed and enjoying being a part of it. So it seemed like a natural move: let’s take a couple extra minutes here and preplan everything a little more in advance, so we can have a product we’re all really happy with.

The press release said Forever Won’t Wait was the “pop” record, Third was the “punk” record, and this one is the “garage” record. What do you think?

I think that could be from a naked eye perceived as that. It wasn’t intentional.

Essentially we just wanted to do something different for this record. I think our three albums prior to this one are all pretty much poppy-punk records that have a power-pop [vibe], or whatever you wanna call it. We still wanted to keep that in mind, but we didn’t wanna keep recycling the same format over and over again.

And we all have extremely broad musical tastes. We’re not the kind of band that just listens to punk records all day, even though that’s what our passion is. I actually listen to a lot of garage and even hardcore music in my spare time. So for this record we felt like having it [be] not necessarily more garage, but more raw and less polished compared to other poppunk bands we get compared to that are really slick sounding. That’s not always our idea of what the finished product should sound like. We just thought we’d take an extra step for this record and have a record that isn’t as produced in the studio, still well thought-out, but definitely with a sound that is sonically more unique for sure.

How did you get into punk in the first place?

I’ve been a fanatic about music since I was really young. I grew up listening to Metallica and Nirvana cassettes when I was 10 years old back in 1990, and I just started playing in crappy high school band, playing covers of whatever punk band was popular at the time. And then that just turned into me being a young adult and playing in bands. I ended up touring a lot pretty extensively with one band, and when that fizzled out, I just wanted to keep it going so I [did] this solo thing. I’m not quitting my job and moving back into my parents’ house or going on the road for extended periods of time. At this point in my life, I kinda just wanna keep doing as much music as I can and touring when I can, and trying to have the best musical career you can have while having a normal life.

I think it’s important to have the balance of the two without going crazy or broke. [Laughs]

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You said in your biography, “To me, my whole life, my whole career – the good and bad – has been about taking things as they come. Everything goes up and down like a rollercoaster.

You just have to go along with it and not hang on too tight to anything.” What inspired this mindset?

It’s a lot easier way to live. The label stuff has been driving me crazy, and it freaked me out for a while. It’s much less stressful to think that way, and better things come to you with that mindset, especially in music.

Why was it so important to convey a positive message throughout this record?

I wanted my stuff to feel positive.

I feel like it’s very natural for me to lean towards those types of messages. Ironically, I wrote them at dark times in my life.

Even if I am not feeling that way, the message makes me feel better, and I hope they make other people feel better too.

Photography by Christian Napolitano

THE READY SET

Your lyrics celebrate women rather than scorn them. What are your thoughts on how women are treated in the music scene and society as a whole?

I think that in the music scene and the society, it could definitely be better. It sucks how women are treated, but I think a big part of it comes down to the fact that girls can be how they

want to be. There is not anyone who can make you do anything.

It’s tough to answer. I try to be a gentleman, but it can definitely be better.

What is “Fangz” about?

It’s kind of about a person who makes you feel alienated, and putting those bad feelings behind you and being whoever you want to be.

Why did you decide to set up the Fangz Street Team this year?

I wanted to give some of my fans a chance to get in for free, and give them some merch for showing support and helping to spread the word about Warped Tour. We have had a huge response so far!

As one of the headliners for this year’s Vans Warped Tour, what are you looking forward to most?

2011 was the last time we played it, and this year, I have a lot of friends on the tour. It’s going to be an amazing time, and I’m looking forward to see[ing] how the new songs are received. It’s great timing since the record was just released, and it will be the first time playing the new songs on stage as a full band.

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INTERVIEW WITH Jordan Witzigreuter WRITTEN BY Joe Fitzpatrick

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t has been three years since the release of The Ready Set’s debut album I’m Alive, I’m Dreaming, which featured their hit single “Love Like Woe.” Since then, sole member Jordan Witzigreuter has experienced both highs and the lows in his music career. Despite the lows – including disagreements with his former record label and his own personal struggles – The Ready Set have created an energetic, hope-filled album, The Bad & the Better, that inspires nothing more than good vibes. About his single “Higher,” Witzigreuter explains, “I wanted to make a really uplifting, inspirational song, because I wrote it at a time when I was in the opposite mindset.

I wrote it to almost convince myself things could get better, so it came out of this anxiety-fueled state. It’s about being able to look beyond the things in front of you that weigh you down and rise above it.” He speaks more about his switch to Razor & Tie Records, his message of hope to his fans and women in general, and his upcoming headlining spot on this year’s Vans Warped Tour. @ NEWNOISEMAGS

Growing up in Indiana, what artists did you listen to who inspired you to pursue a career as a musician?

I listened to bands like Green Day and Blink-182, and when I was 13 years-old, I started playing drums in punk and metal bands. Then when I turned 17 or 18, I started writing my own music and came up with this.

What have you been up to in the three years since releasing your debut album I’m Alive, I’m Dreaming, and why did you wait so long to release new music?

I have been touring and writing a lot, but I didn’t wait so long intentionally. I had issues with my previous label. While I was with them, they went through three changes in management, and they just wanted me to put out singles and not full records, which wasn’t something that I wanted to do.

What attracted you to Razor & Tie Records?

Razor & Tie just showed the most interest in me and what I wanted to do with my music. They made it exciting for me.

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Photography by Jaime Schultz

the scene is at a cool spot right now, but like everything, it will eventually meet its end and be filtered out for a few years until the next “revival” comes around.

MAJOR LEAGUE INTERVIEW WITH Vocalist Brian Joyce WRITTEN BY Brendan McBrayer Major League are on one of the most exciting yet stressful precipices a band can find themselves: the replacement of a frontman. And while they have a leg up on the situation thanks to former guitarist and current double duty frontman Brian Joyce – who has spent his time in the band writing the lion’s share of the vocal melodies and lyrics from the get go – he is still fearful about the switch. Brian chats about his new role as frontman, tourmates, and being prisoners in the People’s Republic of China. If you are a fan of pop punk, or just solid music in general, and not spinning the bands fantastic No Sleep Records debut LP Hard Feelings, you are messing up.

This upcoming record will be the first one featuring your vocals, correct? And will “Montreal” from the No Sleep Records A Comp For Mom be included?

That’s correct! This will be the first release from the band with myself on lead vocals. I had always done harmonies and backing vocals on the previous records, but this will be the first where you actually hear me [laughs]. “Montreal” WILL be on the record as well.

You have always written the majority of the vocals, but your delivery is much grittier. Will this be the case on the album as well?

Yeah, I’ve always written our lyrics and melodies, and then [former singer] Nick [Trask] and I would collaborate on what he could and couldn’t do and change it up accordingly. I think the reason for the grittiness live isn’t anything other than I’m really feeling these 28

songs. I have more of an emotional connection when singing “Because Heaven Knows” or “HomeWrecker” because they’re pretty personal. The vocals on the record aren’t nearly as gritty as they’ve been live, nor will they be in the future. I’m learning how to be my own voice, while still portraying the old sound.

Are you going in a different direction musically as well vocally?

Musically, this record is more what we want to do. I mean this in no way against Nick, but there wasn’t a lot we could explore musically with him. It was pretty cut and dry.

Some bar chords with some octaves, then let the vocals do their thing. So for this release, we kind of became the band we’ve always wanted to be. We’ve finally been able to break down, explore our craft, and gel together, rather than everyone write a part and then force it to work.

Did the writing and recording process differ from your last release?

This record is about us finally letting our voices be heard. It’s been such an enlightening and beautiful process. There’s not a single part of the record where one person shines over the other. You can really hear each person and their personality and what they can do throughout.

We were able to work with Will Yip and he really helped bring out the musicians in us. We didn’t [directin] a single guitar, or autotune a single vocal line or dub a drum track – it truly was taking our live sound and putting it on a record. He doesn’t bullshit. There’s no smoke

and mirrors with him. If it took me an entire day to do a song vocally, then so be it, but he (and we) agreed that we will not lie to people on this record. So that was a beautiful and intimate experience all in its own. For instance, “Montreal” was just me and a guitar in a room…

Because that’s what this is all about.

It’s about human beings creating music. We want to show what the four of us are actually capable of – not just for fans but for us as well.

What was it like touring with Have Mercy?

Touring with Have Mercy was great.

It’s so funny because they’re these four guys who treat tour like their parents are on vacation, like a “no parents, no rules” attitude. They’re all hilariously funny, energetic, and borderline alcoholics, but then you put instruments in front of them and put them on a stage and they’re the most depressing band [laughs].

There’s a true passion behind Have Mercy that I think a lot of bands could learn from.

What are your views on pop punk: where it’s been, what it is now, where it’s headed?

I think as far as “pop punk” goes, growing up, I never really tagged music to genres. I listened to everything from AC/DC to Pearl Jam and Nirvana to Blink 182 and Green Day. It wasn’t until post Drive Thru- era that bands started (at least in my perspective) getting thrown into these cliques and circles. I think the greatest part about the late ‘90s, early 2000s [was] the free will to tour with and label up with whoever you want. Which is why I love being a part of No Sleep, because it’s a label who still rides the mentality of supporting and putting out whatever the fuck they want. I think

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Do you have any tour stories you need to get off of your chest?

Oh man. So our first time heading to Japan in 2011, we tried to book the cheapest flights possible, which ultimately meant a 24- hour layover in Shanghai, China, both ways. When we got to China, we thought we’d just crash in the airport for a day and then catch our flight. Security informed us that the airport was closing at 2 AM, therefore we had to leave. OK, no big deal. As we’re heading out, authorities wanted to see our visas because we were carrying guitars and merch. We never got visas for China, only Japan. We then get told that we were being either detained or deported, and so began this long negotiation of five American kids trying to talk their way out of a life working in a rice patty somewhere in a desolate location [laughs]. They wound up taking us to a tiny hotel in the slums where they put us all in a small 10x10 room with no windows, one cot, and a toilet. They kept our passports and luggage and told [us] we’d get it all back before our flight. So we spent a good 22 hours in sheer terror that we were never getting home. Needless to say, [it] all worked out and we survived.

Is it scary living up to fan expectations during this transition?

It’s definitely something we’ve discussed from time to time, and were nervous about at first. But honestly, and I have no reserve saying this, we’ve never been a “cool” band. We’ve never had hype. Either way we’re going to get criticized, so we might as well just do whatever the fuck we want. It’s not like we set any kind of crazy bar to top with Nick on vocals. There’s truthfully so many other bands who do this whole “new age pop punk” deal better than we have, mostly because we don’t want to be that.

So why try and conform and blend in with what these bands are doing (which is still great by the way)?

We could very well play it safe and record another mediocre record like Hard Feelings, and keep this comfortable little hole we’ve dug ourselves into. But no one’s ever been remembered for following the rules. We might as well come out with a record that we love and we’re happy with. Even if it winds up still being mediocre, at least it’s something we’re proud of. We’re not “afraid of failing.” I think the only thing we’re afraid of is looking back and wishing we would’ve done what we wanted. This is the happiest and most comfortable the band has ever been, and I think the record, good or bad, will speak for itself.

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A comprehensive collection of the best ANTI-FLAG songs from the last 20 years! CD & 2xLP out now!

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an Jose’s Hard Girls have quietly produced some of the best punk songs in the last five years. The trio – who also make up 75% of Jesse Michaels’ Classics of Love – takes the classic punk rock fervor and mix in eclectic post-punk influences like Guided

By Voices, The Fall, Wire, Pavement, and Television. Asian Man Records just released their second fulllength, A Thousand Surfaces, and after one prior LP and a handful of EPs, the band is finally ready to be a little less quiet and take things to the next level.

The new album is the first time you’ve really changed your sound.

Rather than being subtle and brainy, it’s explosive.

I just thought that we should give a real shot at being a band instead of just doing it on the weekends. The songs are more impassioned, with something to prove. It came with an edge and a purpose. I spent a lot of time thinking about guitar parts.

We played these songs so much and just tried to get all the pieces together, to get the energy to be as complimentary with each other as possible. I think this is our best set of songs. We’re not doing it for anyone else anymore. It propels the album quite a bit, having that in the background. It’s kind of a big gamble for us at this age. We’re leaving our jobs and putting our finances up in the air. Mike Park [of Asian Man Records], when I talked to him about this, he said, “Why didn’t you do this five or six years ago?”

Why didn’t you do this five or six years ago? @ NEWNOISEMAGS

HARD GIRLS INTERVIEW WITH Guitarist Mike Huguenor WRITTEN BY Aaron Carnes

I was scared when I was younger. I was thinking that if I did that and it didn’t work out, I wouldn’t have a safety net prepared for me when I was older, but now that I’m older and I’ve been living the life of having a safety net, I’m realizing that doesn’t work for me at all. None of us are trying to make a lot of money on it. We’re just trying to actually be musicians instead of having to be second-class musicians who play occasionally.

especially one that has dynamics. It just opens you up to being able to use dynamics instead of just starting out at the highest point and just staying there until the song ends, which is also cool. We weren’t going to hold ourselves to a particular style of songwriting or anything. There have been songs that have been outliers, and we’ve gone through some paths here and there in the songwriting style. We’re pretty open to whatever works in the song.

This is the first album you’ve released on Asian Man. Why did Mike decide to put this one out?

I called him to get his advice. I told him that I talked to [drummer] Max [Feshback] and [bassist] Morgan [Herrell], we’re going to give it a shot at doing this for real. He gave me a lot of worst case of scenario kind of stuff, to try to scare us out of it, basically. When we were still interested, he said, “I’ll put it out and we’ll try to really push it.” I think he would have put something out before if we had been serious.

Your guitar sounds more combative against Morgan’s bass.

Max and Morgan have been playing together forever. They lock in to each other super well. I just want to be able to contribute something to what they’re collectively bringing.

The songs come from them playing music together for the past 15 years or however long it’s been. We’re just playing the songs over and over again, just trying out ideas and seeing what works, getting away from playing chords a lot, trying to keep songs infused with new ideas.

While this album is more energetic, it also has some of your quietest moments, like on “Without a Sound” and “Samizdat.”

There’s a different form of tension you can get out of a quiet song,

Where did you record the album?

We went to Atomic Garden [in East Palo Alto]. It’s the same place we recorded the Classics of Love album. I just played guitar on Jeff Rosenstock’s new solo record there

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as well. It’s kind of become the new place for us to go. Jack [Shirley] is incredibly good at what he does.

He’s extremely easy to work with.

You just try out whatever you want to try out and he’ll make it sound good. He just encouraged us to do it and he found the right mics and the right sound. I feel like my guitar tone in particular was the best sound I ever had. I feel like it ended up more present than any other live recording we’ve ever done.

What have you been listening to lately that’s influenced your music?

There’s always the same base influences I keep in mind. One thing I’ve come to like more lately is that first record by The Slits. There’s lot of guitar parts, not just chords.

It’s one of the coolest records I’ve ever heard. It doesn’t really sound like anything. It was produced by a reggae guy, but it definitely doesn’t sound like reggae. The guitar player [Viv Albertine], her playing has been pretty inspirational.

You guys have long instrumental sections in songs, which is atypical to punk. What role does this play in your music?

Lyrics should complement the song as opposed to overtly direct[ing] the song. When I first started writing songs, I wrote lyrics, and wrote music as a vehicle for the lyrics. Now I’m realizing that if the lyrics aren’t good, or if there’s no reason for one, there shouldn’t be one there. Also, it’s fun to rock. If it sounds good, just go for it.

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WRETCHED INTERVIEW WITH Vocalist Adam Cody WRITTEN BY Nick Pendergast

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retched have been carving their way through the underground death metal circuit for six plus years now. On the heels of success with the Metal Alliance Tour with DevilDriver in 2012 and their previous album, Son of Perdition, on Victory Records, the band introduced vocalist Adam Cody from North Carolina death metal/grind outfit Columns.

Their newest album, Cannibal, showcases the new addition to their evolving sound.

What inspired the album cover of Cannibal?

Cannibal is about people from many different walks of life who use or consume people in the same worlds or industries that they exist. The cover is depicting the skull (or a generalized cannibal) eating these heads all each representing other type of human cannibals. There’s a Wall Street asshole, a gold digging lady, a mentally ill person…

You guys contribute to the guitarist community by including tabulator charts in your music videos. Will this 32

continue in the future?

I think the play-through videos and tabulator will continue, absolutely. Those things are really cool for interaction with fans.

Photography by Clark Cunningham

that I may be able to relate to easier, but I love the previous vocalist’s lyrics. On Son of Perdition, the lyrics are heavily influenced by the book The Road.

There’s a Morbid Angel vibe on “Gold Above Me.” Was that intentional?

There was not an intentional effort, but I did open for Morbid Angel with my grind band Columns and have been listening to them a good bit more in recent months, so maybe.

What makes Wretched different?

I think we just have our own style at this point in time. We’re not a super young band anymore, [and] we’re all in touch with a broad amount of music. We are getting better and better at incorporating new things to our music, all while maintaining our musical dignity so to speak. The tech is there, the heavy is there, the melody is there. All of it is there!

Can you tell us about the early days of Wretched?

As I know it, the band started DIY touring while still in high school. We’ve all relentlessly toured the U.S. and Canada for six plus years now. We’ve played shows to empty bars and played to sold- out top notch venues. I started seeing a big difference after the Metal Alliance Tour we did in 2012 with DevilDriver.

Hopefully The Mayhem Festival will do the same thing for us this time.

Your lyrics recall Jean Louis Borges and H.P. Lovecraft. Who writes this shit? Where do you find inspiration?

I must credit the vocalist on the first two albums, Billy Powers, for most of the lyrics. He, as far as I know, was a big fan of otherworldly tales and authors. I, myself, am more a fan of authors like Chuck Palahniuk or Charles Bukowski. I’m much more into gritty real life scenarios. Things

How have your personal lives been shaped by the popularity of the band?

I don’t think the popularity of the band has changed our personal lives so much [laughs]. More musicians want to be friends and stuff, but also, musicians love to hate a band when they start doing well for themselves. The lifestyle of tour is what really makes a personal life hard. Being gone a lot makes jobs, relationships, etc.

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really hard to maintain.

On the cover of Son of Perdition, who is the figure standing tall above the people running from the explosion in the background?

It was meant to represent the devil or the bringer of Armageddon.

If could invent a supergroup, who would be in it?

Kevin Tally on the drum set [Dååth/Dying Fetus], Joe Duplantier from Gojira on vocals and guitar, Evan Brewer [The Faceless] on the bass, and Dimebag on the guitar, RIP. What do you think the future of metal music will look like?

We’ll keep seeing revolving trends, but I think we’re moving further and further away from the laptop-core that has somewhat ruled the last new wave of metal.

Death metal is cool once again, so maybe next up is grindcore?

What do you think the future of the world will look like?

Bleak, polluted, full of greedy bastards killing each other for the resources that they could share. A media-controlled globe totally infected with Wetiko, or the Western man’s disease.

No moral standard, only power and money… But I do think marijuana will be nationally legalized soon, so fuck it!

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attention to every detail of the album. I love having the ability to work on music at my own pace, and not have to pay any overpriced studio fees. Getting into home recording has been the greatest thing ever. As far as the bass goes, I have been using the same bass guitar to record since the Municipal Waste record Hazardous Mutation. It has a super punchy tone that I love.

I always thought Alex Webster (Cannibal Corpse, Hate Eternal) wrote the craziest parts possible. I try to mimic his style in Cannabis Corpse.

Photography by Luna Duran

INTERVIEW WITH Vocalist/Bassist Phil “Landphil” Hall WRITTEN BY Hutch

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s it token (tokin.. See?) to ask you about weed? Do those questions frustrate you?

No, they don’t. The theme of the band obviously results in a lot of marijuana questions. It’s a good thing, though. We just want to offer death metal listeners out there an alternative to the usual gore/ death/Satan lyrics.

How is the weed culture in Richmond, VA? The weed culture here is a lot different from what you would find in places like Oakland or Denver.

It has not been decriminalized here. So, sometimes it can be hard to find weed of the same crazy hydro medical quality. I am keeping my fingers crossed, though. I think D.C. recently made changes to its weed policy. That is a step in the right direction.

What did you smoke today?

I smoked some mid grade, nothing special. Like I said, really good weed can be hard to find here.

Is it tough having a sense of humor in such a rigid scene? @ NEWNOISEMAGS

Having a sense of humor is part of our identity. Even the most brutal death metal bands out there have dudes who like to joke around and party, so I don’t think it is such a crazy idea to incorporate levity in the genre. We take writing our music and performing just as seriously as any other band out there, I want to provide listeners with quality music with originality and personality.

What was your original intent with Cannabis Corpse?

The band started very modestly in a kitchen in Oregon Hill, VA. I was just starting to get into home recording, and my first project was what became Blunted at Birth. We had some friends starting a record label in Richmond. They put out the album as their first release. I am thrilled with the response people have given us about our tunes, it motivates me to try and improve with each new release.

You obviously had a great relationship with your last label.

What does Season of Mist bring to the table?

We love everything that Scotty and Tankcrimes have done for us. He has a killer label with a lot of good music. This time around, however, we wanted to do something a little bit different. Signing with Season of Mist seemed like a good idea.

They help get us out to a whole new audience.

How was working with Chris Barnes from Six Feet Under, and Trevor Strnad from The Black Dahlia Murder?

Chris and Trevor were great to work with. They both wrote their own lyrics and patterns for their songs and it was amazing. It’s fun to hear other people put their ideas on my music, especially pros like Chris and Trevor.

Who did the cover artwork?

An artist named Par Oloffson painted the cover. He has worked with a ton of bands like Immortal and Spawn of Possession. The cover depicts the events that happen in the [new record’s title] song “From Wisdom to Baked”: a bunch of burnout hillbillies who use the corpse of their dead relative to grow weed. You know... That old chestnut.

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When writing songs, do you start with lyrics? Concept? Or does the brutal riff precede all?

A Cannabis Corpse song generally starts with my brother [drummer Josh “HallHammer” Hall] and I making some demos. We do not begin picking the riffs until we feel like the song is entertaining without any vocals or solos. Then we pick from a big list of song titles that we have, and develop the lyrical concept from there. We are very fluid with our songwriting and make changes all the time until the final master.

I love the production, especially the respect and presence the bass gets. How do you record?

I have a studio at my place in RVA. That gives me the ability to pay

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C

hris Spencer of Unsane fame is one of my heroes, the epitome of a creative, edgy, and very metropolitan artist. For years, the dude has churned out such consistently amazing, heavy, and forward thinking shit that it explodes skulls to think about it. Now he is back with his project The Cutthroats 9, blessedly active again after a near decade long hiatus, to raise hell, hopes, and high water via the controlled chaos of new album Dissent.

How has the touring with Black Cobra and Arabrot been?

Unfortunately the singer from Arabrot fell ill shortly before the tour, so they were not able to make it. Wizard Rifle jumped on the bill and were not only great guys, but entertaining to watch and musically interesting.

It was really fun touring with Black Cobra. We’ve known them for a long time, so it was great to travel together. We found ourselves wishing that the tour was much longer. It was unusual for me to watch both bands we play with every night, but I did. There was a real sense that all three bands were like one big group of traveling musical gypsies.

Why the long stretch of inactivity? I mean, obviously you have other projects…

The stretch of inactivity was mainly caused by trying to get Unsane going. It can be rough when the drummer lives in Mexico and the bass player [Tony Baumeister] is The Melvins’ sound guy and tour manager. I was also back living in New York, so getting together with [drummer] Will [Carroll] was not so easy...

This album has some unreal chemistry. How much did you play the songs before tracking?

It really went in phases. At the beginning, I wrote a bunch of the material using Pro Tools and a drum machine. I then brought the tracks to Will, and we worked on the drums and song structure as a two-piece, which took us a few weeks. Tony came up from 34

INTERVIEW WITH Vocalist/Guitarist Chris Spencer WRITTEN BY Morgan Y. Evans L.A. and we hammered out the details of vocals and possible lead work. He also contributed another song outline (Eraser), which we worked on together.

Once we felt everything was good, we went up to Tim Green’s studio (LOUDER) and lived there for almost a week tracing and fine tuning things.

So, San Fran versus New York?

Not to pick a fight…

There is really no comparison.

Both have been horrifically gentrified. To be honest, I will always love New York, but once my neighborhood became drunken college students at

night and hipster idiots during the day, I knew it was time to go.

Is there enough dissent in society or are we still too passive?

I could write a novel on this topic, but won’t. Not here. No. There is not. We are all being manipulated by the media, government, and corporations.

But dissent can apply to a lot more than the big picture. An individual can feel dissent about any idea the group thinks is right.

What guitarists have influenced you? The slide guitar that

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makes Unsane great also makes Cutthtroats 9 unstoppable. Is there a benchmark you want to hit as a player or is it just about consistent execution?

A majority of the slide guitar players I like are old blues guys. I didn’t really play that much slide in Unsane. When we started The Cutthroats 9, I really wanted to do it a lot more. I learned to mess around with a slide when I was very young and always wanted it to be my main focus.

The Cutthroats 9 gave me that opportunity. At the moment, I really just want to play guitar as much as possible, be it with The Cutthroats 9, Unsane, or UXO. Fortunately my friend Alan Schneider and I have started a vinyl-only record label (Lamb Unlimited) that will allow me the opportunity to do that, as well as release music from bands we like.

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F

ollowing their recent signing to Deathwish, Coliseum offer up a double LP, Coliseum Deluxe Reissue, which compiles a remastered version of the band’s debut album, bonus demo tracks, in-depth liner notes, and neverbefore-seen photos. Vocalist and guitarist Ryan Patterson seems pretty psyched to put out this new and improved version.

I know you put something out with Deathwish before this reissue. You called them the “permanent label”?

I think that’s [our] way of saying that we are signing to Deathwish.

I don’t know how permanent anything is in life and especially in music. But yeah, we just joined the Deathwish roster and plan on putting out our next record with them, and moving forward from there.

You just put out Sister Faith last year. Why reissue your self-titled 10 years after its release?

It came out in June 2004 and was around for a while, and then we pressed it for a tour pressing in late 2006. That was the last time our first record was in print. At some point, Level Plane Records, who put it out originally, stopped putting out new music. We wanted to get it back out there for a while, but there’s always new music to work on and sometimes you feel like you’d rather be doing something new. Especially working with small labels over the years, records just go in and out of print. Our next record after the first record, Goddamage, has been re-pressed on three or four different labels. Most of our albums have stayed in print. But it’s [been] 10 years and it seems like it was a good time to redo it.

I had all these plans for quite a while: remixing it and remastering it, ‘cause [in] the original mix, the drums were barely in it and we recorded in a garage. It was very low-budget DIY recording. The drums were pretty drowned out, so my main goal was to get the drums back into the mix. Then I put out these other tracks from this era and there are cool photos that’ve never been seen from that time. I did some liner notes. We were thinking about trying to do some different things through different labels and it just seemed to make sense to do the reissue on Deathwish because of our history with them and their connection to us. Deathwish [has] moved on to all different things and had all different successes, they’ve always stayed very true to their heart of punk and hardcore. And that’s kinda the same thing for us. No matter what we do musically, I think we’ll always feel in our hearts that we’re a hardcore punk band, so it just felt like the right place to @ NEWNOISEMAGS

Photography by Dan Rawe

INTERVIEW WITH Vocalist/Guitarist Ryan Patterson WRITTEN BY Janelle Jones put the record.

Are the bonus demo tracks from your original demo?

Yeah, those were recorded by me on one of those Tascam cassette 8-track recorders. I had one of those and I’d record my own demos and record other bands a little bit. I don’t think those were ever released. I think I sent those recordings to Level Plane and a couple other labels, but when we actually released a demo, it was just four songs from the album sessions before the album came out. These demo tracks on this reissue haven’t been heard by anybody. They’re even more raw and fun. Some of the songs, the lyrics aren’t even quite done. You kinda hear the songs are still coming together. Hearing that pressed on vinyl was really neat after it had been sitting around on cassette for so long.

And then you have two cover songs including Fear’s “I Don’t Care About You.” Do you like to have fun with cover songs?

Yeah. Those two covers were recorded at the same time as the album. The Ramones cover and Fear cover, they’re pretty goofy, just kinda fun things we did in addition to the album. We’ve done a few covers over the years and they’re almost… Except for the Danzig song, which is a little bit later, but it’s still late ‘80s, pretty much everything else we’ve done has been early punk stuff. We covered The Misfits and Pere Ubu. Wow, Pere Ubu… We did a single last year that was really limited, we covered “Final Solution.” I like the simplicity of

those kinds of songs. I feel like covers that get too involved lose steam. I like the simplicity of a Misfits song or a Danzig song or that Pere Ubu song. You can really deconstruct it. And those are the bands I grew up listening to, so those are the things that seem right to cover. There’re certain bands that I would not dare try to cover no matter how much I love them.

A bunch of them we probably couldn’t pull off.

Plus, you’re encouraging younger fans to go check it out.

Of course. That’s always part of the appeal of a cover. I’ve definitely learned about tons of bands through bands covering them. It’s part of the lineage. A cover song or even mentioning you’re influenced by something, that’s how you follow that path of different bands and where their roots come from.

You said you have all these liner notes and photos for the reissue.

What did you write? The making of the album?

Yeah, a huge part of the album experience to me is the artwork and the inserts and the tactile element of it, so every record we do, we try to do as much as we can. This thing is pretty elaborate.

The jacket is silver-mirrored with black print on top of it, so everything is gonna have this very chrome, mirror-type printing on the LP itself, the jacket, and the two colored vinyl LPs inside.

Each one has printed inserts and then there’s a huge newsprint poster that comes in it, and the artwork, so there’s all this stuff.

Just the idea of this is fun, this is meaningful. There are photos a guy took of us at basement shows

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in Iowa in 2004 that I never used.

And I just wrote a few paragraphs about the beginnings of the band, who I asked to join the band, the process of recording. I wasn’t really sure if I wanted to do that or not because writing your own liner notes is kinda like writing your own history. But I felt like it would be meaningful. I wanted it to have some perspective and historical context, the timeline of our band there for people to see, and hopefully they’ll appreciate it.

Are you working on new stuff?

Yeah. Every Coliseum album we’ve had a different line-up, which is crazy. Carter [Wilson], our drummer now, probably seems like a new drummer to a lot of people, but he’s been in the band for five years. Our bass player Kayhan [Vaziri], everything’s going great with him. I felt like we should really write and record a new record quick, really capitalize on this. We’re getting along so well, playing so well together, and Sister Faith, as any new record should be, is by far the happiest I’ve been with of anything I’ve done. I want to jump on that, let’s not let three or four years go by, let’s start writing.

We’ve got a third of the new record written, making plans to record later this year and maybe have it out next year. Sometimes it’s hard being a small-ish band. Then there are a lot of things that are really freeing because we don’t have to tour year-round. We can really do whatever we want. I always think, “I’m not gonna put out as much music,” or “I’m not gonna put anything out until we put out our next record,” but it’s exciting.

They’re art projects. To me, it’s a project and you get to hold it in your hands and listen to it. The albums are the big statements, but we’re working on another strange, odd release for later this year. It’s hard for me to not do it. [Laughs] As long as someone’s there and wants it, then we’ll keep doing it.

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he release of Maximum Overload will mark a new epoch for British power metal veterans DragonForce. As the band enters its 15th year, its emphasis on good songwriting and tight musicianship is as strong as ever.

For its sixth album, the band went to Jens Bogren’s Fascination Street Studios in Orebro and Varberg, Sweden. The esteemed producer has worked with Devin Townsend, Katatonia, Opeth, and Paradise Lost, along with a long list of other notable acts. The record, to be released August 19, marks the return of singer Marc Hudson, who made his vocal debut with the band on 2012’s The Power Within.

While Dave Mackintosh played the drums on Maximum Overload, he left the band on good terms in June 2014. That same month, Dragonforce announced Gee Anazalone as their new drummer.

“We made [the record] surprisingly quickly, actually,” says Hudson.

“I was very surprised at the quick turnaround from the last album.

The album was recorded over a six- month period in different locations. We really brought our heads into gear during the tour in 2012. [Guitarist] Sam [Totman] and [bassist] Fred [Leclercq] were writing the stuff on the road. So that’s the reason why we were able to get it done so quickly.”

“Sam and Fred got together before we went on one of the tours,” he continues, “and they wrote the songs out and brought them with

them to the shows. We were all listening to them on our laptops, and the ideas that they would come up with. Everything kind of started off in that raw form when we were on tour. Those guys went to Sweden with Jens. They did all the drum tracking there, and guitars and bass. I was watching Dave do his takes on the drums and, my God, yeah, that guy can literally hear one snare out of place and that kind of stuff. That’s why we’ve got this refined sound, because he wouldn’t let anything slip. They worked on the songs more and kind of refined the whole thing.

Yeah, I’m completely pleased with the sound of the album now. I’m really happy.”

Totman came up with the idea of covering Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire.” “I think he wanted to do a song that would be immediately recognizable,” Hudson says, “but then, at the same time, put the DragonForce stamp on it. We made the demo, sent it around to a few people and the reaction was just amazing. I didn’t expect it to be that good. So we thought, ‘Why not? Let’s stick it on the album.’ I think we did it justice. Its lyrics are in the same vein of what we sing about, to some extent. We got to layer up the vocals and make it a glorious sound. To me, it’s a big departure from what the original

song sounds like, but I think he did a good job in making it what it is.”

Trivium singer and guitarist Matt Heafy offered guest vocals on the record, contrasting his gravelly style with Hudson’s soaring, more melodic sound. “We got him on ‘The Game’ and ‘Defenders,’ and on the song ‘No More’ as well,” Hudson confirms. “I was really happy to hear that we had him on board.”

Hudson has been able to pack a lot of life experience into his 27 years.

Before joining DragonForce, he worked as an electrical engineer at the BMW/Mini plant in Oxford, England. “That’s where Minis are made,” he says. “I quit my job to join the band. I did that for two years and then I realized I should probably finish my studies. So I was recording this album the same time as studying. Only yesterday, I found out I actually got a first class honors degree. Finished it.

Everything’s done now. So yeah, I kind of went back to do the whole engineering thing again, after having been on tour for two years.

So it’s been a bit weird.”

to be going there again this year, which is cool, in October. Playing in front of a Japanese audience.

It was the first time I had ever done it. And it was breathtaking.

I think there was something in the arena of 80 to 90,000 people there. For a festival. Not only was it cool to be watching them just go absolutely insane, [but] I had just joined DragonForce and they were absolutely insane for us. That was extremely cool.”

He adds, “One thing that sticks in [my] mind was in the canteen, like the catering services they had, I was spooning potato salad onto my plate and next to me was Sebastian Bach, and on my other side was Kerry King from Slayer. I was like, ‘What the fuck is going on here? This is amazing.’”

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Relating his most memorable experiences from his years of touring with the band, Hudson says, “We went to Japan and did Loud Park Festival. We’re going

DRAGONFORCE INTERVIEW WITH Vocalist Marc Hudson WRITTEN BY Charlie Steffens

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@ NEWNOISEMAGS

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Interview with vocalist Keith Buckley by Joe Fitzpatrick

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ne must listen to From Parts Unknown at full volume to fully appreciate the unique intricacies of vocalist Keith Buckley’s dark, haunting melodies, guitarists Jordan Buckley’s and Andy Williams’ shredding riffs, and their complimentary rhythm section drummer Ryan Leger and bassist Stephen Micciche. After 16 years together, Every Time I Die still refuses to play on autopilot and consistently pushes the envelope, this time with help from producer Converge’s Kurt Ballou at his GodCity Studio in Salem, Mass. Their lack of concern for fame and mass appeal has given Buckley free reign to express his poetic words about love and loss, salvation and damnation. Buckley uncovers some of the mystique surrounding the songs and the album’s title, and how their love for music has kept them going.

How did Kurt Ballou push you to dig deeper on From Parts Unknown?

He didn’t really find new ways to torment us in order to bring out demons that weren’t already there.

But we felt the need to impress him, which definitely motivated us to step things up. That was definitely beneficial to the record.

In the band’s biography, you said, “Instead of making something that the kids can all sing along to, we wanted to make music that scares them.” What did you mean?

There is no way that our music will ever appeal to a mass audience. We realized that when we stop trying to find a common ground with our audience and we make the music we like, we will be much happier with what we create. It’s a tense scenario, especially in the hardcore scene, but we like to step outside our comfort zone, which is a good way to show people something that they are not used to.

We grew up watching Warrior, Macho Man, and Hulk Hogan, and they were the first celebrities in our eyes. Recently, we were watching a documentary about when the WWE was known as the Worldwide Wrestling Federation (WWF), and the commentator mentioned one of the wrestlers coming on the scene “from parts unknown,” and it stuck with us.

When it came time to pick a title, it made the most sense with the strange vibe we were going for.

What did you aim to accomplish with this record that differs from your six previous albums?

On the level we are at, we feel blessed to still be playing music without any hope for a hit single or radio play. We really would just like to play in places we have never been. We recently played in Russia, which was awesome. We really want to see the world and play wherever we can, like South Africa, India, China, you name it.

Do you know if you have any fans in those countries?

No, but I think it’s so awesome that we can use the Internet to contact them. When we started the band, that wasn’t possible yet. We hope that if someone over there likes us, they can help spread the word. It’s still DIY, but on a massive, global scale, and it’s really cool to be a witness to that.

Are there any bands that inspired your music’s southern rock elements?

It started because all of our parents raised us on classic rock like Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd. Now, I

like to listen to bands like Clutch and Mastodon for that groovy type of rock music, but you still can’t beat the classics.

Whose idea was it to feature Brian Fallon of Gaslight Anthem on this record?

That came from a friend of mine.

One of their songs came on, and he was telling me how much he loves [Fallon]. We put it on the backburner, and when we wrote the album, the part he sang on just fit his voice, so we hit him up asking if he would be interested. It was really informal, and we didn’t bother to go through any record labels. He is a good friend of ours, and he was happy to be involved.

I’m more than willing to concede anything to make a song better, and I’m glad it came out very organically.

Did you collaborate with any other artists on this record?

Yeah, we also have Sean Ingram of Coalesce on our song “Pelican of the Desert.” If you don’t know Coalesce, check ‘em out. They’re from Kansas City, and they kick ass.

What songs on From Parts Unknown will you perform during this year’s Vans Warped Tour?

I don’t know yet, to be honest. This week will be the first time we will be playing the songs outside the studio as a full band. During the recording process, we only record one instrument at a time, but it was written with our live show in mind. I think it will give us a better idea about which ones we want to play for Warped Tour.

Did your experience as an English teacher help you become a better songwriter?

I think it has. It took me a while to grow away from it to see the bigger picture. After I left my teaching job, I felt like it had been a complete waste of time, and I wasn’t using my degree for anything. It did, however, give me an appreciation of how to write stories, and it taught me how to use form and how to engage the reader. Whenever I write lyrics, I think of it more as writing a story rather than writing a song, and I read them to myself without any singing or music. I want to focus on how engaging they are to me.

As you celebrate your 16th year as a band, what advice would you give to a band that is just starting out?

Jokingly, I would say stop it.

You have to be really naïve and childlike to make it happen. You have to literally almost have the mindset of a child to get as excited about doing something for the 100th time as you did the first time. For five years, we didn’t play to anyone, but we kept at it because we loved it. If you don’t enjoy it for yourself, you won’t succeed.

Where would you like to see Every Time I Die in your 20th year?

I don’t really think of that. Just still doing it. Still touring and making music. It would be cool to be nominated for a music award, but that will probably never happen.

I just hope that we will still be finding new things to do.

....

Though the music may be “scary,” it also has a very positive message…

Despite the dark heaviness, there is nothing in our lyrics that isn’t true. I feel like that goes well with the positive message, even if it may be unexpected by our fans.

I also think that it goes along well with the strangeness, and it allows us to keep things new, while simultaneously allowing us to convey old ideas.

The album’s title was inspired by professional wrestling. Are you big wrestling fans?

Andy is an enormous fan, and we all have an appreciation for it.

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INTERVIEW WITH Vocalist Rob Halford WRITTEN BY Brandon Ringo

I

n today’s nostalgia-focused music industry, a big deal is made when a band reaches their 10th or 20th anniversary. For bands that reach their 30th anniversaries, huge tours are launched and parades are thrown in their honor. In the case of heavy metal icons Judas Priest, it’s been a whopping 40 years since the band released their first record. How does the band plan on celebrating such a massive milestone? They are unleashing a new record that easily surpasses everything they’ve done in at least two decades.

Though the title of their new record Redeemer of Souls is a reference to the larger-than-life character referenced in the title track, the band themselves were also in need of redemption in the eyes of more than a few fans.

It has been six years since the band released their last record Nostradamus, a sprawling concept album that was met with quite polarizing reviews. When they began writing again – this time with new guitarist Richie Faulkner – after their successful Epitaph world tour, they did so with a fresh-yet-retrospective mindset.

“We had a little discussion before we got down to the nitty gritty of writing the music,” states vocalist Rob Halford. “With Richie in the mix at that point, we had a chapter in the studio, and we decided, @ NEWNOISEMAGS

‘Let’s just kind of refocus and reestablish a lot of the important elements that we still love about Judas Priest.”

According to Halford, one of the most important elements the new record needed was a dose of old school, classic metal. “We weren’t going to try doing anything experimental, or trying to create a new sound or a new vibe, but we just wanted to go back to the roots and the essence, really, of Priest,” he confirmed. When it came time to dig down and pull those elements out, however, they didn’t just simply turn to their record collection. “We never listen to any of the old material; I think that can be quite dangerous for some bands,” he states. “But internally, we carry all of the music in our heads and in our hearts. So we just did the usual thing: we kick off every day with nothing and at the end of the day, you might have the components coming together for some really solid songs.”

When examining the history of Judas Priest’s music, one of the things that make their songs so timeless is Rob Halford’s lyrical subject matter and the characters he creates. “I’ve always tried to make the lyrics as interesting as I possibly can. You know, I read a lot of books; I just love strong, exciting characters,” he explains.

“I also think that, depending

on where you’re at in metal, and depending on what you’re saying, a lot of it can be redundant.

You can find yourself repeating yourself, but not intentionally.

So, when you create another character like the Metalizer or a character like the Redeemer of Souls, it’s a bit like a collection of metal heroes, you know, like Marvel or D.C. Comics. I think we’ve created, like our own universe of these characters.”

As the band releases more and more snippets and clips from the new album, they continue to whip fans into a massive frenzy.

Things were decidedly different in 2011, when they announced that their Epitaph tour would be their final world tour. With that announcement came a lot of worry from fans that the band would soon be calling it quits.

According to Halford, however, that wasn’t their intention. “I wish we could have found another word other than farewell,” he says.

“The intention was to do a special show that will never be replicated, in so much as, we played pretty much music from every single studio release that we’ve made. It was a very fulfilling experience.”

For those still concerned that they may never get to see the band live, have no fear! They have already announced a few dates this year with more still to come,

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albeit more sporadically than in the past. “We are gonna do dates again, but we’re going to be kind of rethinking the way we do these big, nasty world tours. Because, ya know, as I get older, it really becomes a bit more challenging physically to do night after night after night, as well as the travel and the different countries and time zones.”

Age should never be a reason to stop doing what you love. But naturally when a band like Priest hits their 40th anniversary and has multiple members in their 60s, fans and critics begin to assume that they’ll be hanging up the leather soon. Thankfully, Halford sees things a little differently. “I think if you’re still creative, I think if you’ve still got good ideas and you’re still passionate about what you do, then why stop it? I think if you’ve got something good going that you’re still able to connect to, and you’re doing it for the right reasons, then why deny yourself that opportunity?” He concludes, “I mean the fact is, I’m about to be a 63 year old metalhead. I think I’ve still got a lot of gas in the tank left. As long as my voice holds up – and it sounded pretty good on this record. And then, just talking personally, there are lots of things that I still want to do in addition to Priest, ya know; I really don’t feel the need to stop.”

.....

41

BRAID H INTERVIEW WITH GUITARIST AND VOCALIST BOB NANNA BY DUSTIN VERBURG ailing from Urbana, for the summer, so we wanted to writing the EP with [bassist] Todd Illinois, Braid’s punk do a podcast about that. We’re [Bell] and [drummer] Damon intensity, frenetic launching this thing called [Atkinson]. It just reenergized us musicianship, and Downwrite Summer where every and felt like old times. It felt great, smart, poetically approachable Monday of summer, we stream a so when we decided to write the lyrics came to define the different original song from one new album, we sort of put the word Midwestern emo sound of the ‘90s. of the artists. The songs are about out, and Topshelf Records was They influenced many of today’s summer. We’re going to post a new really excited about working with most popular emo, pop punk, and Matt Pryor song first and we’ll do us. It was just this perfect storm of post-hardcore bands, and are back 12 more artists after that. Every us wanting to do the album because in the saddle for their first full- Monday a new song to listen to, the EP was so fun to make, and length record in 15 years. share, enjoy. I think it should be getting into a hot practice space fun. We’re just thinking of fun ways and grinding out songs. We wanted How are you, Bob? to get content out, but we want to do it again. The fact that we had Not so bad. We were just finishing people to hear some of the more the support, the drive, and the up a podcast, but we’re all done. obscure artists on the site. excitement going made us want to do it.

How did it go?

So, let’s talk about Braid. You It went well! Lots of stuff to talk released an EP a few years back. You’ve had some of these lyrics about. This website I started with What was the catalyst for No written for years now. Do you still my friend Mark Rose, called Coast? relate to them now that you’re in a Downwrite, we try to do at least Yeah, we did the EP and then different place? one every two weeks. It’s called [guitarist and vocalist] Chris Yeah, I do. The lyrical content that the GetDownwrite Podcast and [Broach] and I decided to keep came from the batch that happened we talk about stuff on the site. But writing music together. We had years ago, I didn’t take full songs, we’re launching something fun a lot of fun getting together and I just took bits and pieces. I made

sure to use the parts that make sense to me now and are relevant to the song now. A lot of the lyrical content wasn’t specific lines; it was more sort of general ideas of what I wanted to sing about and what we wanted to talk about. It’s sort of been this list of to-dos that I’ve been keeping for a long time, and it got amplified once we decided we were going to do this Braid record. I went into it with the thought, “This is the last Braid record,” even though we don’t want it to be and I don’t think it will be. I wanted to get everything out on the table and purge myself of all of these ideas I’ve been housing for so long.

Does this mental spring-cleaning mean you’ve eliminated the backlog of ideas and you’re starting fresh again?

All that said, there’s still a lot to get to. I’ve been writing things down since at least ‘91. I’ve got a big bin full of notebooks from tours, and I’m starting to write stuff digitally, too. I’ve got Google Drive folders just full of writing. I’ll write stuff on tour, and scan it so I don’t have to keep the paper around.

There’s not going to be a time where there is a clean slate because there’s just so much. In the meantime, the record is coming out and I already have a bunch of new songs. There

Photography by Katie Hovland

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have been a lot of changes in all of our lives. I switched jobs, started Downwrite, toured solo, and Chris just had a daughter. The flood of ideas never really stops.

I remember getting Braid songs on actual mixtapes, and it was hard to find your records in the small town I grew up in. But now, NPR is talking about you and Entertainment Weekly is streaming your songs. That’s a pretty drastic change.

Yeah, it’s great. I suppose it’s part of the whole “emo revival” thing that keeps popping up. I think it’s because the folks who were big fans of Braid in the ‘90s, when we were first a band, have now grown into positions in the media and elsewhere where they can post about a new project by a band they really love. The Entertainment Weekly piece was from Kyle Ryan, who we’ve known for a long time.

Regardless, it’s amazing. You bring up a good point with not being able to find records all the time. Now, every single day, there are new songs streaming online and you can buy all of these records digitally and mail-order them easier than ever. I don’t know, it just feels good to be a part of the new wave, so to speak.

That’s why I’m hesitant to use the

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term “emo revival.” I don’t want to be part of a revival of something old, I just want to be part of a new wave.

We just want to make new music, and make the music that we make, so to speak. If the time is right for people to want to talk about it, then great. If not, then who gives a shit?

I’m glad people are talking about it, but we’re just making new music.

That’s our intention.

It seems like every band I talk to that’s consistently happy is on Topshelf. How has it been so far?

It’s great. It’s funny you said all the bands are happy, that’s because the label is happy. There’s really no pretension, it’s all coming from such a great, genuine place. When I was in college, I tried to run a record label and it sucked. It’s not easy. You lose money and you get disappointed a lot of times.

But they’re doing this in such a great way – they not only have the passion, but they’re super smart. I think because Seth [Decoteau] has worked for another label, seen them come and go, they’ve got their finger on the pulse of what this generation wants. They know how people want to see the bands, how people want to hear the bands, and what sort of merch they want. It’s really cool to be involved with the label and

with folks like that, because God knows, as much as we like to stay in touch with everything, we can’t just because we’re a little older and we have other things to worry about.

So having a label like Topshelf put out the record, and work it, is just amazing. We’re as happy as everybody else on the label.

Tell me about recording No Coast and working with Will Yip. It was fun. We purposely didn’t want to spend a ton of time on it.

We didn’t want to spend a month recording the record, so we actually recorded it in probably 10 days, maybe 12. Total. We wanted it to have that urgency. Frame and Canvas [1998] was recorded and mixed in six days, so we just wanted to recapture some of that.

Will was amazing. He understood the band and what we wanted. He understood that we didn’t want to make an “older sounding” record.

He never wanted to change the way we work or the way we sound.

He just wanted to make sure that everything sounded good. And thusly, he really kicked our asses.

Especially Chris and I doing vocals, because he just wanted to make sure that the takes were perfect.

On key, and with the right energy and emotion. There are lines where

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we did 50 takes to get it right, and to be honest, I wanted to kill him [laughs]. I was pissed! Both Chris and I – and this happens in all recordings – had these “oh my God” moments, because it’s so emotionally draining. But we’re way better off for it. He just knew the right way to get the best sound out of all of us.

Braid is definitely a part time band now. How does that affect your motivation and the way you approach things?

I think the motivation is the same whether it’s part time or full time.

The fact that it has to be part time now makes it a little frustrating, because the motivation is still there. We can all augment it with other creative projects. We’re all getting ready for this short tour and getting ready for the record to come out. We’re making sure all of the new songs sound good live and making sure we’re practiced up.

The motivation’s always there. Once that’s done, come the beginning of August, we’ll start writing new songs. Todd, our bass player, is a teacher. So when school starts for him, we can do weekend shows, but we can’t really tour. Then it just becomes us working on new songs for a while.

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Mayhem Photography by Adam DeGross

INTERVIEW WITH guitarist Teloch WRITTEN BY Ridge Briel

M

two months in total production time, before the album cover was started. Add a couple of more months for the graphics and I think we are there.”

Exactly thirty years have passed since the initial formation of Mayhem in 1984, and they are still going strong today with the release of Esoteric Warfare. Since the release of their last album Ordo Ad Chao seven years ago, Mayhem has stayed under the radar, especially considering the main composer Blasphemer left in 2008. New guitarist Teloch was tasked with composing the new album.

With the rapid writing of this album, it’s surprising to hear that they actually wrote more than what is on the album. “I had almost another album written,” Teloch confirms, “we even recorded most of it during a month in Budapest where we worked on different ideas. But when we got back home, I listened through the songs and thought, ‘Fuck, this is not the right album to release as a follow up to Ordo,” so I scrapped the songs and started over again. The songs were closer to a De Mysteriis vibe and it would not be the right time to release it, not sure if there ever will be a right time to release it.

Knowing the guys, I think we just look forward instead, as always.”

ayhem is, by far, one of the most notorious bands to come out the Norwegian black metal movement of the late 1980s.

With a heavy cult following that (de)flowered with late ex-guitarist Euronymous’s formation of the record shop Helvete, the black metal movement was quickly on its way to becoming the most sinister music uprising to ever grace this earth. Mayhem is THE band that started it all, taking a freak combination of KISS, Bathory, Venom, and Hellhammer, and creating their own successful formula of cold riffs, terrifying imagery (credit goes to late exfrontman Dead for pioneering the modern style of corpsepaint), and low end production that still holds up today.

“They stood there without a composer,” says Teloch, “also the only guitarist they had. They asked me in 2008 to join, but I was busy with other things at the time. In 2011, I didn’t have any ‘big’ things going on, so they asked me to join the band again. It’s not like the band had a break or anything.

Mayhem have kept it going the whole time with playing live and trying out different guitarists.”

Esoteric Warfare is an extremely impressive return to their roots.

It brings together the intensity and darkness of De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas with refreshing songwriting from Teloch.

“I started the writing for the songs that ended up on the album a year ago,” he explains. “The recording process in total was about a month or so. We used the same studio as Ordo [Ad Chao], Mølla Studio, to record the drums, vocals, guitars, and bass I recorded myself in SleikBallaMiStudio. We mixed the album at Mølla as well, over two sessions. Mastering was done by Maor Applebaum. I’m guessing 44

Even with the extended amount of time off and search for the right guitarist, Mayhem wasted no time hashing out this instant masterpiece. Teloch explains, “I used my ‘Mayhem guitars’ for this album, Ltd Ec1000’s. Three different ones with different pickup configurations, straight into a couple of ENGL amps, no pedals or shit like that. The effects you hear on the album we added later.”

Whether we will ever see these tracks is still up in the air, but it would bring a new insight into the behind the scenes workings of Mayhem that has virtually never been explored in depth since the early ‘90s.

guided him in the right direction.

But all in all, this is what Zbibbi felt after reading the lyrics and listening to the music. A fantastic cover.”

Always standing hand in hand with their music is their iconic imagery, and Esoteric Warfare is no exception. The cover art looks as though it is scrawled on a parchment background, at the center a machine-like city holding back an atom from being exposed to the outside, as would fit the definition of esoteric. “We had no idea what we wanted, the only idea was that [vocalist] Attila [Csihar] wanted a radar incorporated somewhere,” Teloch laughs. “Luckily our label hooked us up with Zbibbi. Attila and him worked close on the ideas. We gave him the songs to get inspired from, and also Attila explained in detail what he meant about the lyrics and

Behind that is a complicated maze, which seems to represent a difficulty reaching knowledge.

The album is very multileveled.

“Watcher” is a very good representation, with dark, ambient guitars serving as a precursor for the bone-crunching riffs and blasting drums. Adding some dynamics to the track is the softer, dark melody that permeates a blasting intensity leagues above what is considered normal within black metal. More impressive is the vast amount of work Attila put into writing the lyrics, which are a disturbing pleasure to read: “Nexus, Astral, Archon, Portal/ Illusion of flesh and blood/ Embedded in the core of mind/

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Cold-blooded instincts/ Demon seed inside.”

Exploring the topics of brainwashing, dehumanization, war, death, darkness, and paranoia, Attila goes the extra mile creating evil poetic stanzas and delivering vocally with spine-grabbing attention. The 11 intricate songs that make up Esoteric Warfare are some of Mayhem’s greatest.

Regarding their touring plans following the short European tour they just concluded, Teloch exclaims, “Next thing up is a festival in Inferno Switzerland, and then Øya Festival here in Oslo, Norway. We are working on North America as we speak, but it’s too soon to share any details.”

.....

For American fans, this is very exciting news, since U.S. Mayhem tours are rare.

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P

op punk antiheroes Masked Intruder are no strangers to running from the law.

Committing crimes and playing punk shows are just a few of the things these normal guys do in the name of love. But when the law catches up to them, it’s a trial to clear their names, fess up about their recent album, upcoming tours, and their thoughts on poetry.

I call to the stand the defendant: Blue, singer of Masked Intruder.

Blue, do you solemnly swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth under pains and penalties of perjury?

Uh, yeah.

Now, is it true that your latest album was released on May 27?

Yes. Would you say it has a more mature sound?

I think that would be fair to say, yes.

What changes did you make while writing and recording this album that set it apart from your previous releases?

Well, I mean, we thought a lot more about the tones and arrangements we were going for. We also tried to introduce a whole lot of different musical ideas, and spent a lot of energy fitting those things together just so on the record. We’ve never worked harder in the studio. We really put everything we had into this one, which is more than we ever had before, on account of us being older and allegedly wiser.

Was there a different approach to writing lyrics?

With this record we wanted things to be a little more subtle. We heard that ladies appreciate subtlety. So there was maybe more thought put into little lyrical details, like, you know, metaphors and junk.

A few of your songs are about getting the girl. What is the best way to earn a lady’s love?

I wish I knew! I can say that you can’t earn a heart by stealing it, as you can with a car or what have you.

You can’t hotwire a heart, so I don’t even know what approach to take.

I mean, maybe if you steal them something nice enough that would do the trick.

Is poetry an effective technique?

Like, haikus or whatever? I mean, I don’t really know. Shakespeare was a poet, and he was pretty dumb looking, so I gotta guess he didn’t do too well with the ladies. Then again, there was that movie about him being in love with Gwyneth Paltrow… That coulda just been special effects, though. If not, then yes.

Would you recite a poem you’ve written for that special someone?

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MASKED INTRUDER

Photography by Rebecca Reed

INTERVIEW WITH Intruder Blue WRITTEN BY Alex Del Campo to a lady. Unless it’s already been admitted as evidence in the trial, he doesn’t have to.

How do you feel being in the spotlight in the punk scene?

For the most part, spotlights make me nervous. They bring up nasty memories of barking dogs and dashed hopes. But, in this case, it’s pretty sweet! We get to meet all kinds of cool people, like musicians we grew up listening to, and ladies.

We also get to play in front of all kinds of awesome people, like other ladies. I mean, we appreciate the chance to play in front of dudes, too.

Just nowhere near as much.

Will Masked Intruder tour this year?

You bet your beans we will! We will be doing a bunch of dates in the Midwest, on the East Coast, and in Canada with Direct Hit! and Priceduifkes. Then we are playing D4th of July at the Triple Rock in Minneapolis. After that, we will be doing several dates on the West Coast with The Dwarves and The Queers. Then we are playing Reading and Leeds Festival in the U.K., and following that up with a tour of mainland Europe and a bunch more shows in the U.K. Then we will be playing Gainesville Fest.

There will be more after that too, but it isn’t announced yet.

What is your favorite pastime while traveling from state to state?

I mean, stealing is a lot of fun. But I don’t do that, and if I did, you can’t prove it. And, if you can, then, shit. Also, we like playing dice and drinking beer and eating burritos.

You know, regular stuff.

If you weren’t a part of Masked Intruder, what would you be doing?

Probably still be in prison. Or worse, maybe still in school. Just kidding: stay in school, kids.

Why did you stand in someone’s front yard at 3 AM singing love songs on a heart shaped guitar?

It seemed like the right thing to do based on all the television shows and romantic comedies I grew up on.

.....

How do you plead?

The Fifth.

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Capitalist kids

INTERVIEW WITH Jeff Gammill

BY Alex Del Campo How did the band meet and start out?

It started as a solo project, then turned into a band. [Drummer] Dugg [Nelson] and I played in a band in high school, so we’ve known each other forever. We went through a few guitarists over the years (and we relocated from Fort Worth to Austin) before we landed on Rawn [Hall], and that was when the band actually solidified. Then a couple years ago, we decided to expand into a fourpiece, so we added Braden [Holt] on second guitar and took things to another level.

Is there a story behind your name?

No real story, no. It was just something that I felt sounded kind of political, but also kind of fun, which I guess is kind of our thing. If I had it to do over again, I would try to pick a name that rolls off the tongue a little better, but what can you do? I once read a quote – I’ve forgotten by whom – that went something like, “There is no such thing as a capitalist baby or a communist baby. There are only babies.” That was in reference to the nuclear threat of the Cold War, but I think you could stretch some of that meaning to our band name. There’s no such thing as a capitalist kid.

Is there a concept or message on this album?

To be perfectly honest, our albums are mostly just collections of songs; there’s never any orchestrated message. But the title of this one is obviously a double entendre. We operate at a loss financially because we never make any money. But also, a lot of the lyrics are sort of about being overwhelmed and feeling helpless

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and stuff like that.

Which artists and bands have influenced your writing?

Sometimes I wonder if a person can ever really know who or what influences their writing. People are always quick to (accurately) point out the heavy influence of ‘90s Lookout Records on our sound (I like to refer to us as MT-esque). But at this point, the influences of all four of us are pretty broad. It would be impossible to list them all.

You just got back from a tour in Europe. Any upcoming shows or tours?

Yeah, we just wrapped up our first European tour with the amazing Dee Cracks from Austria. That was quite an experience. There were a few countries that we were unable to get to, and we didn’t go to the U.K. at all, so hopefully we will be able to get back over there one day. For this year, we have nothing written in stone.

There may be a West Coast tour this winter, but nothing to announce yet.

How would you describe your music to potential fans?

It’s hard to be objective about your own music. It’s power-pop with political leanings, or as Joe Briggs dubbed it, “power-fighting powerpop.” Roughly half the songs are socio-political; the other half are mostly love songs. Braden recently described some of my current songs as being somewhere between Bracket and Squeeze, which, if true, would be pretty awesome. We’re living in the Information Age now, so really, you just have to listen to it for yourself.

(And please don’t jump straight to a Green Day comparison. Thanks.)

Any parting words?

By the time you read this, our new album will be out on vinyl from It’s Alive, Toxic Pop, and Rad Girlfriend records. We hope people will like it. The next things in the works are seeing if someone wants to release our 2010 CD Too Big To Fail on vinyl, possibly with something additional on the b-side, as well as continuing to work on new material for a future release.

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L

ots of words come up in conversation with Dwarves frontman Blag Dahlia (born Paul Cafaro), most notably “weird” and “shit.”

That might be pure coincidence, but when put together, “weird shit” more or less aptly sums up The Dwarves’ crass-yet-deceivingly eclectic take on punk rock and hardcore over the last three decades. Beneath the crusty, scum punk veneer and the violent notoriety that’s helped the band stand as the last line of defense for tried and true, in your face punk rock, The Dwarves are, on closer inspection, a band with surprising diversity. Checkered amongst their hardcore wreckage have always

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been splashes of ‘60s bubblegum pop, electronic samples, and other musical touches that help give the band an added dimension.

It’s also a big part of the reason the band has survived for almost 28 years, Dahlia says, as many of their punk and hardcore peers have fallen by the wayside. “This band has always had a very white hot center to it,” he says. “It was always guys who wanted to play and make a cool record and play a good show.

It’s always been that way with one group of people or another, and it happened again this year.”

This year, August will see the release of The Dwarves’ latest trash rock

opus, The Dwarves Invented Rock and Roll. It’s a record that doesn’t deviate much from the band’s timetested script, namely, as Dahlia describes it, “loud punk rock music, weird shit, strange sounds, and another weird album cover featuring naked women.”

Good enough.

But even as the band continues to perfect its knack for provocative, confrontational rock ‘n’ roll, the world around The Dwarves has changed. Dahlia talks about the new record, how things have changed for the band over the last 30 years, and the challenge of energizing crowds today.

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It’s been almost 30 years since The Dwarves formed. Is that something you think about?

Yeah, it’s weird, you know? We celebrated our 25th anniversary a couple of years ago, but it was

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actually our 28th anniversary. We’d kind of forgotten it. Now it’s our 30th anniversary, I think. I’m not sure. It’s hard to say.

The band hasn’t lost its sense of danger. Does the music keep you feeling young?

Yeah, that and having sex with young women. Those are the two things. Cocaine will also make you feel that way for like 15 minutes.

Is it harder to maintain that intensity as you get older?

I think we still approach things that same way we always have. The difference is now we’re a little bit smarter, so we can carry it a bit better.

We were much more confused in the beginning, so hilarious things would happen. We had no production value, no gear, and that combined with a more chaotic scene overall.

It made for some wild shows. The crowds now know what to expect, so you don’t always get as wild of a show. But because of the way we play and the aggressive nature of the music, there’s always going to be crazy shows on every tour. There’s always a few that bubble over into some weird behavior.

Weird behavior? Are the shows still as violent as they used to be?

There’s not a lot of it, but there’s enough of it [laughs]. It still happens.

It seems like no matter what we do, once a year, something goes weird with a show. Something will happen, whether it’s too much audience participation or something weird with the gear.

Wouldn’t you rather have it be weird than have nothing happen at all?

Oh yeah, of course. I’m always looking for something interesting to happen. That’s what rock ‘n’ roll is to me. But other people have different expectations. A lot of times now, when we play shows, people are just standing around with their phones out for 40 minutes. I find that very odd, but that’s what they want to do. I think we play a better show when the people who love it are up front and aren’t shooting a movie on their phone, but are taking part in the show instead. But that’s the way people are now. I can’t change that, and I don’t want to stand here and correct the audience. If people want to take a picture of you like you’re in a zoo instead of taking part in the show and having fun, what can I do?

But I think a good rock ‘n’ roll show has a lot to do with the audience.

Does technology make it harder to do what you do now as opposed to 20 years ago?

Absolutely. All of that behavior has become normalized. Now, people are very used to watching video of people fighting, people getting bloodied, and people just boiling over. People are viewers of things rather than participants, so you @ NEWNOISEMAGS

have to do more in order to shock people. Nothing’s as visceral. When we used to see GG Allin, there were these acts of self-mutilation. It was just this weird, weird kind of thing, but most of the time there was never any footage of it. But not having the footage made it that much more legendary and weird. People would relate it to one another, and it would just become wilder and wilder. So if you were actually there and saw it for yourself, it was like taking part in a myth.

Yeah, you only had your memory to preserve the moment.

Exactly. People aren’t as precious about that stuff now that everything is filmed. People take a lot of pictures of us onstage, even though I’m not sure what we did. We were just talking to each other.

Does any of this take away from the fun of playing live?

Well now, I don’t have to work. I used to have to work a day job in addition to having to go out and entertain people and kill myself for no money. Now I find it very easy.

I just go out, play rock ‘n’ roll, and enjoy myself. It’s just different. I don’t feel the same way about playing live as I did then. It was very adversarial back then. No one was backing us up. No one would manage us or book us. It was very chaotic.

unified and making it sound like The Dwarves.

You almost become an editor of sorts.

Yeah. I’m that kind of a producer.

I like to play with shit that’s given to me. These guys are good players and songwriters, so they gave me really strong stuff to start with.

The first single is this song called “Trailer Trash,” which was written by our first bass player, Salt Peter. We started the band in high school. So to have that guy come back 30 years later and actually write the song that became the single, that’s just really cool. It’s just a group of people who all have the same mentality about how to write lyrics and arrange songs. I had a lot of outside help, too.

Dexter Holland [of the Offspring], who has helped with the last couple of records, he came in and sang a lot of harmonies and stuff.

So it became this sort of pastiche of different voices. We recorded

voices in different characters, we had answering machine messages from different bands. It’s just all tied together in a really odd way.

It sounds pretty conceptual.

I tend to think of records in those grand terms. Not many people in my genre do, and maybe they’re smart, because it’s easier to do it the other way. But I like to make something that ties together conceptually.

When can we see the record?

It’s really fucking cool. I’m hanging on to this cover. It harkens back to [Blood, Guts and Pussy], but it’s like a cooler version of it. We went for a real, primitive, kind of dirty look with a super-arty background, some beautiful girls. It came out great. We talked about getting it out by July 8, but honestly it’ll probably be closer to August 8. But it’s done, it’s in the manufacturing process. The Dwarves Invented Rock and Roll.

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Do you get nostalgic for the crazier and more dangerous time?

I think I’d be more nostalgic if I wasn’t still playing music [laughs].

But it’s still a part of my life, so I don’t have to feel nostalgic about stuff. It’s still happening. It’s happening in a different way, but I learned a lot of things along the way. There were some things I was doing then that made me more unhappy than the way we go about things now. I’m happier now. I’m not nostalgic for being angry, you know? It just made for a different stew.

Shifting gears, tell me more about the new record.

This one was really a collective effort. We had a bunch of cool songs sitting around. [Former Queens of the Stone Age bassist] Nick Oliveri, Rex Everything, he wrote some great songs. Josh Freese, who’s a really great drummer, had a really cool song that was in 5/4 time.

We’d never done anything like that, and I was fascinated by that song.

Chip Fracture, who’s been playing with me for years and is in John Cougar Concentration Camp, he had written a lot of great songs, Fresh Prince of Darkness wrote some songs. It was like everybody had written these songs except for me. I was like, “Fuck man, I’ve got to write some songs.” By the time I had written a few, we already had a great record. There was a lot of stuff, and it was all different because it was written by different guys. So it became a question of making it

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All Photographt by Akan Snodgrass

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CALIFORNIA

INTERVIEW WITH Adam Pfahler, Jason White & Dustin Clark WRITTEN BY John Gentile “I really have no idea what people are going to think when they hear the band,” says Adam Pfahler, drummer of the newly formed trio California. “Nor do I care, really.”

At first, the comment might come across as the cliché punk rock wedon’t-care-what-anyone-thinks! attitude. But, considering the pedigree of California, it’s actually a pretty bold statement.

Glance at any of the band’s flyers and you’ll see “Ex-Jawbreaker,” “Members of Green Day,” “With vocalist of Pinhead Gunpowder.”

As far as legendary Bay Area bands, California has a lot of the bases covered. Of course, you already know that Pfahler was a founding member and the drummer of Jawbreaker, the band that basically made emo the thing that it is. Then, on vocals is Jason White who has been in two renowned bands. He served as the vocalist for Bay Area scrappy punks Pinhead Gunpowder, who merged the frantic, teen energy of ‘80s Gilman punk with more mature, introspective lyrics.

Oh yeah, he’s also in this little band called Green Day, serving as touring guitarist for about a decade before becoming an official member about two years ago.

Maybe you’ve heard of them?

But while both Jawbreaker and Pinhead Gunpowder became known for bringing a more reflective, somber texture to punk, for bass California brought in someone with the opposite lifeblood. Dustin Clark, who plays bass and does background 50

vocals in the band, spent 15 years in Soophie Nun Squad, a berserk, frantic punk collective that was as much Zappa as it was Ramones.

“We don’t worry about what preconceived notions people might have about our band,” White says. “The other things that people are involved in are what they are.

We are kind of starting with a clean slate. We want the band to be judged on its own merits. As for the other bands, we didn’t even really speak of it.”

Pfahler adds, “I’m certainly not thinking about it that much.

That being said, anyone coming to the show thinking they’ll get some of the things from the other bands… I don’t think they’ll go away disappointed. We just wrote a bunch of songs. This is the first time in a while that I’ve been in a real band. It’s not a project. It’s not a side band.”

In fact, White formed the band with the express intent to create something where he was in the driver’s seat. Or at least in one of the driver’s seats. He says, “California is my expression with two other people who are also contributing. It’s the trio’s view of what we want to be doing. “ The band came into being after White wrote some solo tunes a few years ago. Needing a band to play the songs live, he called up Clark, whom he knew from Little Rock, Arkansas. After the pair went through a few drummers, they decided that they needed a more

permanent backline with Pfahler.

With that, the proto-version of the band was born.

They played their first show at San Francisco’s tiny Hotel Utah.

Despite being well received, the band didn’t congeal for over a year, due to the members’ other commitments. But once they got back together, they focused on creating a fully active, fully practicing, gig-playing band.

Although White had a set worth of songs, the group reworked them, and then quickly wrote brand new tunes. As you read this, the band will have just completed recording what is intended to be their debut 10-song LP. “Some of it is slower punk,” Clark says from the recording studio, JingleTown Recording Studios in Oakland, CA, “but we have some fucking barnburners, too. I think what I contribute is some of that.

My personality is that. I come from a collaborative past. 10 or 12 of my best friends making the weirdest songs that rock the most. So, for this, that’s what I bring to the group. How can we do this more fun? How can we spice it up?”

The band’s self-producing the album with some assistance from JingleTown’s house audio engineer Chris Dugan, who’s worked with everyone from Iggy Pop to U2 back to Green Day. The focus of their combined efforts is to give the recordings a face that conveys the trio’s headspace.

“As a band, we’ve been working together,” Pfahler says. “The ones that we cooked up in the studio, the ones with three chords, we

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wrote them in 20 minutes and it was just awesome. Though, I do have a hard time describing the band. I could say we’re a punk band, but we have a torch ballad and burnout songs.”

Clark states, “There are faster ones, slower ones. It’s Jason’s voice that really varies the songs. In some ways, it’s like a mini rollercoaster ride.”

“It is an age friendly record for folks around our age, 30s and 40s,” White continues. “But you can look at it from any angle. It’s not like we’re old farts or something.

There’s a Ron Wood record – Ron Wood of The [Rolling] Stones, and The Faces – it’s called I’ve Got My Own Album to Do, which was sort of a reaction to Rod Stewart’s album. This is kind of like that for us.”

Although all members contributed to the recording and lyrics, White’s weighty perspective is infused in all of the tracks. Take “Haunted Highway,” for example, or maybe “No Hoodoo.” Each of those songs comments on everyday issues through a metaphysical veil.

“I think maybe it’s easier to think in those terms when you’re describing something in a poetic light,” White explains. “It’s all subject to interpretation that way.

I am a superstitious person. I’m sort of more of a believer in blind luck than religion. I’ll paraphrase Woody Allen, ‘I’m not sure that I believe in God, but I fear him.’ This record is a statement of where we are as a band. It’s the statement of our union. It’s our State of the Union.”

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Black Anvil INTERVIEW WITH Bassist and Vocalist Paul Delaney WRITTEN BY Hutch

B

lack Anvil kills; black metal courses through their callused veins. Their hearts were stricken with this curse, not in a Norwegian Pagan forest, but on the cement tundra of New York City. The members’ former band, Kill Your Idols, reinvigorated the New York hardcore sound while meandering into oversaturated metal. When KYI disbanded bassist and vocalist Paul Delaney, guitarist and vocalist Gary Bennet, and drummer Raeph Glicken took their love of Black Sabbath and Judas Priest and went on to form Black Anvil.

After two albums, 2008’s Time Insults the Mind and 2010’s Triumvirate, they recruited a second guitarist – Sos – and developed a new songwriting approach. With the release of Hail Death, Black Anvil’s forged a sound to decimate your eardrums.

Is there a special chemistry between your core members after playing together for so long?

Well, Black Anvil is more than a band. This is a brotherhood. There are bonds that go beyond the music,

and that is really the creative force.

We’ve been through a lot together and we will continue that path to death.

How did adding a second guitarist improve Black Anvil?

Second guitar at this juncture was much needed. In order to progress in any way, and be able to pull this off in the live realm, we had to move forward with the idea. As we were in the early writing stages, there were rehearsals where [Bennet and I] both just played guitar and got shit on tape, bass I can handle later on in the process. Sos joined the ranks a little more than halfway through, I believe. So, it improves us in the sense that our vision can now be presented in full.

Was Sos intimidated walking into a family?

I don’t know if he was intimidated.

Had we sensed any sort of weakness, it would have been a turnoff, honestly. [It] was more of a “know your role” vibe, and we’re the type of individuals who, if you work with us, we work with you. You join our team; we show you respect. I think that was understood on both sides and clearly it made for a good match.

He effortlessly and seamlessly fit into the program. We’re definitely closed off in that regard, when it comes to letting people inside the circle. At this point, there’s sort of no reason to.

You cite KISS’s Destroyer as a big influence, and “Seven Stars Unseen” shares the epic structure of Master of Puppets. Is KISS a serious influence, not just kitschy nostalgia?

Destroyer and Master Of Puppets were two records that, upon discussing making this record, sonically were references to what we wanted. So, although I said, “We’re not influenced by things,” we are, of course. Influence is just a word that can be misinterpreted easily. There was no intention to rip off either record. Those albums are not even my favorites of either band. We wrote a bigger record with definitely a more rock ‘n’ roll vibe at times. Now, this is strictly music; it doesn’t mean lyrics will be about women and drinking.

Destroyer is a great reference to me for guitar sounds. Master Of Puppets, that’s a big – I’ll say “epic” as much as I don’t want to – it’s an epic record.

[Mercyful Fate’s] Don’t Break The Oath also is. Many records we grew up on. When the writing process began, the initial “riffs” that were turning up just felt like they needed to be bigger songs and crafted really well. We focused on that element until we were comfortable and satisfied with the results. That, to me, is where the comparison lies.

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Most black metal bands thrive on a bleak existential existence or the solitude of the forest. How does being from NYC impact your version of black metal and you as people?

Black Metal isn’t exactly about a location or photo shoot to me. Nor really something I associate strictly with a sonic value. Read our lyrics, and maybe you’ll find your answer. If it doesn’t fit someone’s expectations, then it doesn’t matter. It fits ours. I know where we stand, I know what we represent, and I certainly know what our lyrics mean to us. Being from New York, you can hear it in our music at times, perhaps, [though] maybe at times, you can’t? I don’t know. This isn’t something we keep our focus on. It’s just where we’re from. There’s a hood rat mentality we will never completely shake.

You stated that the new record Hail Death is “(probably) the most important thing” you have done in your life…

It is in fact the most important thing I’ve personally done thus far in my time here. I do believe we all share this sentiment. Lyrically, musically, this record is all of us. After years together, the fact that the passion and fire we have burning is stronger than ever, more willing to grow and expand than ever, is very important.

If we were to make the same record over and over again, to please people, or do something to reminisce on old times, it would be shit. I only want to move forward in this life. The past is there. It is not denied. You have a favorite pizzeria you love to go to whenever you’re at your mom’s house to visit. But, you live in a new spot and there are so many more options.

It’s the same thing. Our previous endeavors are moments in time we documented, and they will always be there. Now, we’re over here.

What led you to record with J Robbins?

We initially had a plan to record with Devo of Marduk at his studio in Sweden, [Endarker Studios]. There were some obstacles in the timeframe we were looking at, and we had to stay close, which sucked. Our heart was set on that. I recorded a record with J in the past. So, when it came time to rethink what our plan was, he was the first person who came to mind.

I knew he would understand our vision upon hearing the demos and without thinking, he did. Recording with him was great. He was as into this as we were and we created some real magic inside those walls.

What are the differences working with Relapse Records today as opposed to 20 years ago?

This is the third record on Relapse.

They released our first record properly here in the U.S., as it was initially released on a Dutch label, Monumentum/Reflections. There’s less money [today], you have to make things work. We do have a good relationship with the label though.

They support us endlessly.

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Photography by Jammi Sloane York

SHEER TERROR

INTERVIEW WITH Vocalist Paul Bearer WRITTEN BY Hutch “Very happy” is not an expression any long time Sheer Terror fan would predict vocalist Paul Bearer to softly state. But when asked how he felt about their first full-length album in 18 years, he responds simply, “I’m very happy with it. Musically, these guys clicked effortlessly. I am proud of my band.”

That band is comprised of guitarist Mike Delorenzo, bassist Jason Carter, and drummer Anthony Corallo. Some fans only consider one or two of this band’s lineups to be legitimate, but those stubborn pricks will miss out. If you heard the Spite 7” three years ago, you got a taste. But just a taste. Much like other NYHC titans – Sick of It All’s Based on a True Story and Agnostic Front’s My Life, My Way – the latest Sheer Terror album Standing Up for Falling Down musically revisits each era and combines them. “The music is a mix of the old stuff, [we’re] just putting a new energy to it and adding our own flair. These guys have their own style,” Paul confirms.

This is the same lineup from Spite.

Though Mike temporarily left the band – followed by a string of good, but not quite right fill-ins – Jason talked him into “at least coming down to jam. He wanted to rejoin. God bless his wife. She 52

finally looked at him and said, ‘Just fucking do it already.’” Paul says the “songwriting came fluidly since he came back. He’s a great guy. I love him to death.” Hardcore producer/ engineer for the last 20 years, Dean Baltulonis, helped out also, truly reuniting the players of Spite. “He knows how to get our sound,” Paul says. “He also knows how to push you without being a jerk.”

If you are not yet privy to Sheer Terror’s storied and fascinating history, there is no better primer than the documentary about them, “Beaten By the Fists of God” (Ian MacFarland, 2005). Go watch it. Do not mistake this for just another novelty reunion, as Paul is not motivated by sentiment. He is happy that “everything is on my terms. I felt good doing it again.

I couldn’t even say that about the end of Sheer Terror. These guys are not a bunch of whiny babies.

They’re just hungry to go out and play, to have a good time. I’d be stupid to let this slip away.”

Paul reports, astonishingly that, “for the first time ever” he had writer’s block. It was the “first time ever I wrote lyrics in the studio. It worked. I don’t know how, but it did.” This was especially crippling because he was so excited about the new music. “It got that bad, where I almost recorded mundane

lyrics. I got to the point where I wanted to just put out children’s records… We know that people expect certain things from Sheer Terror,” he admits. “We know that. And I am not going to deny them that. But I won’t deny myself expanding and trying different things. It is a balance. I have the luxury of writing lyrics for the band. I can write whatever the fuck I want. It’s not that I don’t care. I don’t have to sweat it so much. I sweat it for me.”

“I put care into my lyrics. I don’t write crap,” he assures. “I’m not going write about something that doesn’t mean anything to me, or cheerleader lyrics, or whatever the flavor of the day is – a PowerPoint presentation of positive messages.

I am 46 years old. I’m writing for me. I can’t be writing for the kids, that’d be ridiculous. If the kids enjoy it, fine, but if they don’t, I can’t hold it against them.”

The true essence of Sheer Terror has always been Paul’s lyrics, unlike any in hardcore punk. The anthems are classics you throw on while drinking with the boys, but the majority of one’s Sheer Terror listening tends to take place while alone in a dark room. Paul laughs, “I hear that a lot.” He takes it with a grain of salt. “I hope to write something that will make you

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want to turn the light on, look around, and say, ‘What the fuck am I doing?’ My words will affect somebody whether I want them to or not. People are going to take what they want from it. That’s what music is supposed to be about.

I have been the guy in the dark room, miserable and lonely, but I am usually listening to Jimmy Scott.”

“Of course I want my music to affect people,” Paul assures. “I want it to mean something to someone outside of just me. [Of course] I want it to mean something to me, that is why I make music. But if someone out there, whether they are actually connecting or not, finds [in it] a reason to like themselves… I want you to have a reason to like yourself. Taking away from whatever is driving them nuts and wanting to take that long walk off of a short pier. That’s a good thing. But I’m not gonna lie. Some of them, I wish would take a long walk off of a short pier.”

“I like to take my time with words,” Paul concludes. “I like to fuck with words, fuck with cadence.

I play with a song and let it grow and have it mean something. It’s gilding the lily. Well, maybe, it’s gilding the Venus flytrap.”

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Photography by Mackie Osborne

BUZZ OSBORNE

WRITTEN BY Stephen Sigl

Very few artists with 30+ year careers have taken as many artistic risks as The Melvins have. If Buzz Osborne is any indication, taking risks goes hand-in-hand with a passionate love for music and a deadly serious work ethic.

Immediately upon answering my call Buzz starts the interview by turning the tables on me…

Buzz: Where you calling from?

Venice.

Never heard of it.

Really?

Just kidding.

Where are you right now?

Eugene, Oregon.

Every time you’re interviewed, you’re asked about metal. How did you become the arbiter of heavy metal?

Oh, who knows? Our stuff kinda sounds like that, at least to some degree. But I don’t feel like the Godfather of anything.

People assume you are very knowledgeable and opinionated about it.

I suppose for some of it. I certainly like a lot of it, but I don’t like all of it, but I think that goes for all music.

There is no one genre that I think is 54

amazing.

Not even punk rock?

God no, are you kidding? That covers a multitude of sins. “Punk rock”? I don’t even know what it is.

To me, Gang of Four’s Solid Gold is a punk rock album, as is the Germs.

There’s not a lot to compare those two together. When people refer to punk nowadays, a lot of times they mean something that sounds like a Hot Topic band or really poppysounding Green Day stuff.

In the past, you did this Andy Kaufman thing live, you made the music seem unapproachable. Is that sensibility dead?

I don’t know; you just do things that interest you. I’m not a perverse guy, I like everything that I do. I never do anything just to irritate people. People are easily irritated.

I don’t even have to try. One of my problems is that I assume we’re all on the same page, and that generally isn’t the case.

Is that something you experience while playing live?

Oh yeah, sure. But playing live is a roll of the dice. You never know what kind of show you’re going to get. Some are better than others; they’re not all good and not all bad.

You use juxtaposition in your

work, from the album art of Stoner Witch to featuring Leif Garrett on your cover of “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” It’s a sophisticated sense of irony.

Someone asked me about the “…

Teen Spirit” cover recently, and I had to tell him it was a joke, us doing that particular song with a burnt-out teen idol… I thought it was funny. If you look at us and the very nature of what we do, we’re called The Melvins. How serious can it be? It’s certainly not a doomy, dark name, and we don’t use doomy, dark album covers. I never wanted people to be able to judge us by any of those things. The most offensive thing about us is how we sound, and that’s how I want it. To be confusing to people, that’s my job, man. I have no brother band.

There’s nobody out there telling us what to do. I have no interest in being anyone but me, or being part of anything. I have a really good saying: “I didn’t even know I didn’t want to do it until you wanted me to.” There’s jokes, there’s humor, and there’s irony all rolled into one big thing, but at the end of the day, I play with amazing musicians who play really well-crafted music with me, and I’ve done that for a long time. Now I’m out here doing the solo acoustic thing, which is totally different. I have to start all over and convince people that seeing a guy playing acoustic guitar by himself is a good idea. That’s my job to do. I live my life, musically, with my career, in a way that I would appreciate as a fan. I work. I do my job.

People have said that the new album has the same songwriting sensibility as The Melvins. Was an acoustic album something you wanted to do for a long time?

Well, I’ve always played acoustic guitar. Think of it in these terms: Bob Dylan could play any of his songs on an acoustic guitar and no one would care, same with Neil Young – no one would even question it. These songs sound like Melvins songs because I write the Melvins’ songs. There is no other way that I would sound. It’s weird to me that people would be surprised by that, because I don’t know what they think I would sound like. I certainly wouldn’t go out and do some countrified horseshit album the way almost everybody else does. I love country music, but I hate when a rock ‘n’ roll guy goes out and makes a horseshit version of some kumbaya crap. I also don’t want to sound like I’m at a renaissance fair. I just didn’t want to do anything that’s too obvious.

Are you enjoying the acoustic shows?

Oh yeah, I’ve done about 26 shows now, total. I’ll feel like I really have it down by the time I have 50 acoustic shows under my belt that I feel the vast majority are a success,

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then I’ll have a lot more to go on.

But you can’t do that unless you dig it out of the dirt. That’s why I’m playing everywhere on this tour: Fresno, Orange County, Billings, Fargo. That’s where you learn how to do what you’re doing. Don’t just play Chicago and L.A. and San Francisco, play everywhere, and if nobody shows up, who gives a shit?

Do your job and shut the fuck up.

You cannot get lucky sitting on your ass at home. I get luckier the more I put myself out there.

What do you think of this trend in music criticism in which a band’s latest album is heralded as a “return to form”?

I don’t know what they’re talking about. Whenever that’s said about our records, it means that they’ve never listened to our records. The easiest thing in the world is to write a shitty review. The hardest thing to do is to write a review that’s really amazing, about how much you love something. If I was reviewing records, I would only write about records I like. I’m not a professional journalist, I’m a musician, therefore when I talk about music, it means more than what a journalist does.

It’s like talking about carburetors with a mechanic; I might know a lot about it, but I’m not a pro.

Journalists pretend they know all about that stuff, but they’re rarely correct. Another thing that’s irritating to me is, what if you change your mind? You write this shitty review, then three months down the line, you really like that record? I’ve never seen anyone rereview anything. Like Lou Reed said: “Who wants to be a critic?”

I can’t listen to those people for anything constructive.

Reviews are rarely constructive.

Anytime they use the words “they should,” they’re being constructive and they’re always wrong. The vast majority of our stuff has been reviewed positively, print media has never abandoned us; the rest of the media has. I’m always appreciative of anyone who has any interest in what I’m doing. I never turn down an interview, ever.

They don’t always like what I say.

It’s funny when they ask a specific question and expect a certain kind of answer. They already have the answer in their head before they ask the question. Truth is stranger than fiction, always. But fiction is the most interesting type of journalism.

Look at Hunter S. Thompson, his stuff is always fun to read because none of it’s true. Art is extra in your life. It adds to your life, it is not your life, so reality does not come into play. Movies, books, paintings, they’re abstract art forms. Music is totally abstract, it’s the highest art form, nothing’s going to move you more than music will. No other kind of art will move you that much.

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THE MEATMEN

INTERVIEW WITH Tesco Vee WRITTEN BY John B. Moore

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esco Vee may have quit teaching years ago, but he can still school this latest generation of punk rockers on how to remain relevant decades after you release your first record.

A founding member of The Meatmen, Tesco Vee’s Hate Police, and Blight, among other groups, he also created the influential fanzine Touch & Go, as well as the long-running record label of the same name.

Nearly 20 years after the last collection of original Meatmen songs, the band is back with Savage Sagas From The Meatmen.

It’s been 20 years since the last studio record. Had you tried @ NEWNOISEMAGS

before now to work on another studio record?

Well, we (put out) “Cover the Earth” in 2009, which was a bunch of my favorite covers, but as far as an album of originals, nope.

Is this line up the same as Pope on a Rope?

No, totally different. It’s always been me and a cast of characters and the Klondikes I’m rocking with now are the best I’ve ever had. Get off your wheelchair butts Weenbags and come out and see a real punk band.

Did you approach the songwriting on this one the same you had in the past?

Yeah man. It’s a target rich environment out there, but I ain’t just railing against peeps I hate.

There is a pro- legalization anthem in “Pissed Hot For Weed” and just a whole lotta topical topics here, baby. You never know when the inspiration will strike.

Did you think there would ever be a Meatmen record again or were you certain that chapter was over?

Man, I have thought it was over many times. But it’s never over until you are tits up taking a dirt nap in a horizontal phone booth.

I’m having more fun than ever and certainly more than a man my age should be allowed to.

So I came across a pic of one of your bandmates with Stephen King on your website. He’s a fan right? How did that encounter happen?

My bassist was on tour doing merch for Lo-Pan, who were

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touring with Goatwhore and High On Fire, and as fate would have it one guy had to piss and they stopped at a Vermont gas station.

So Danny (Gillies) is pumping and has in his Meatmen hoodie and some dude at the next pump says, “Meatmen! I have all their records!” And it’s fuckin’ Stephen King. Man, who knew?

Are you working on any other new projects outside of The Meatmen?

Talking about a solo album. I still have a lot of tunes bouncing around in the cranium. Who knows!?

What’s next for you?

Touring in support of the new platter. Collecting toys. Riding Japanese motorbikes way too fast.

Loving my life in Michigan.

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It’s exciting now that I draw in more influences and take chances.”

“Enter the Fire” is an example of this experimentation. Ominous and chilling, a chugging cello provides the musical bedrock. Reed accredits this to a surprising sourse: The Beach Boys. “The cello was inspired by ‘Good Vibrations.’ The bass part and guitar directly rip off ‘Papa Was a Rolling Stone’ by The Temptations, which hardly has guitars in it. It’s a weird song. For us, we know we went into a different space. First time we had a foreign instrument be the focus.”

MOS GENERATOR

INTERVIEW WITH Guitarist/Vocalist Tony Reed WRITTEN BY Hutch

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e have realized when we make a record, we overprocess the thought. You know, we demo everything. And our demos are better.” Harsh words from guitarist and vocalist Tony Reed, the creator of one of the most anticipated and hardest rock albums of this year. Now commanding praise and respect for these groove soaked riffs, Mos Generator present a balls to the wall record of impressive recorded material.

“We demo album songs. They are raw and unfiltered. Our live record is the same. We have been told that we are better live.” Reed agrees, “A good band is better live than on record.”

“Does that insult you?” I have to ask.

“It doesn’t bother us because it is true.” Reed can absorb this feedback and harness the realistic insight.

He utilized that energy to extract an immense album. “I feel good with the result,” he offers. “I had to let go of some of my control issues.

I over-criticize and homogenize – and do not let the musicians explore on their own.” But loosening the approach to recording allowed Mos Generator to breathe as an entity, as one unit. As the songs were born, the band captured the energy. He says, “The title track was 15 minutes old when we recorded it.”

This process unleashes scorching solos and brash drums providing a taut culture of rhythms in which these monster riffs can flourish.

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Spontaneity and symbiotic growth provided more instantaneous songs.

“It was all done at my studio,” which Reed dubs a “lax situation.” “I wrote [a track] with the drummer [Shawn Johnson], on the spot, from riffs I had. We weren’t thinking about it. We just played.” Johnson wrote another track, then they re-arranged and wrote the complete version in 20 minutes.

Mos Generator started writing Electric Mountain Majesty in 2013.

Halting the momentum of the writing process was a European tour.

Returning, and then negotiating with their label, they felt ready to record. “We rented a grange and attempted to record in a gigantic wooden room, without headphones,” Reed explains. Instead of being the propelling factor, this only dragged recording out longer. Frustrated, he says, “The room was too noisy with sound bouncing all over.” Dissatisfied with the cantankerous results they were pushed back to square one. “We used one song.”

live.” The record is comprised of those live takes. This elongated recording now has Reed excited to start playing live. “It will have more of the animal in it on stage, more energy.”

Despite their chagrin at the sterile feel of recording, Mos Generator has spawned a mammoth album.

Big monster riffs till a brash soil from which to harvest adversarial, confrontational lyrics. Nothing is over the top. No need to scream or pound some message into the audience’s heads, just quality rock and ideas.

“We have a core sound, but if you get away from it, people freak out,” Reed says. “Recently, I am being more honest about non-heavy rock influences. I like rocking the boat.

In the past, I have had to do other bands to do non-heavy rock music.

Reed touts being a ‘70s pop music, soft rock fan. He was elated to finally “bring that element into the band.”

He felt satisfied and challenged to incorporate “pop hooks into catchy songs.” He is also quick to state defiantly that Electric Mountain Majesty is much “heavier than other records.” And he is correct.

There is no denying – despite Reed’s proclamation of influences from the sunny, blond, harmonizing factions – that this is a heavy-ass record.

Those influences are either subtle or the musician’s subconscious incorporation.

“You aren’t supposed to talk weird about your record,” Reed admits, “but I am still not sure. I always feel that way: bizarre. I filter through it, then I put it away and I wait to hear people’s feedback, and then I can accept it. I move on – I am already writing new songs.”

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“We had to reconvene at my studio,” Reed continues. “We would come in every week, twice a week: Tuesday and Thursday. We were lucky to leave stuff set up; if we had it or not.”

Recording in such a manner took months. “It was not a fast process, despite individual songs coming quickly. The three of us tracked ourselves and used no headphones.

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T

his is the fifth reissue of Final Conflict’s 1987 debut LP Ashes to Ashes, this time through Tankcrimes.

Why does this album resonate with new generations of punk/ hardcore/metal fans?

I think we were fortunate that, musically, what we did isn’t dated.

It’s heavy, fast and aggressive, just guitars and drums. No recording techniques or instruments used that sound “typically ‘80s.” With the resurgence of the crossover music scene, we were lucky enough to be one of the bands that people started to investigate. Lots of music blogs helped keep the music alive by posting downloads of the record while it was out of print. It didn’t hurt that you can find numerous old photos with members of Napalm Death and other legendary bands wearing our shirts. So people who like those bands naturally investigate because they want to know what their favorite bands are listening to.

What responses have you gotten live? How does it feel to perform these tracks?

We’ve been surprised at the response.

We have been out of the loop for a long time. And there’s so many great new bands playing. Most surprising was [Marilyn Deathfest], because we were sure no one would give a damn or know who we were. MDF was one of our best performances yet, and the enthusiasm from the crowd was overwhelming. Tankcrimes Brainsqueeze Fest was a lot of younger people who’ve heard of the band, but not seen or heard our music. They intently watched as we gained their approval, [and] after the set, we were approached by a ton of people who said they hadn’t heard of us until they saw that Tankcrimes would be rereleasing Ashes.

Do your other records get proper credit? What should fans listen to next after Ashes?

I’m just grateful for what attention we have gotten. I’m not going to get 58

They don’t care. As long as you don’t take away their HBO and reality TV shows, they don’t care. You see more people complaining when Facebook does something to the user interface than when a U.S. drone strike kills innocent civilians. So what does that tell you about the priorities of the average American?

INTERVIEW WITH Vocalist Ron Martinez WRITTEN BY Hutch bent if no one wants to talk about the other releases. We were just four kids wanting to play punk rock, and the fact we’ve been able to do so much, meet so many people, and influence a small group of people who started great bands is enough for us. Our second album Rebirth was a misfire due to a lot of factors, but people seem to like it. After the American Scream EP, we did a couple 7”s on [label] Bacteria Sour that were really lethal. All of those are going to be compiled into a full-length LP and [released] on Tankcrimes in 2015.

You can find original copies on eBay if people are interested.

if anything could have been taken from what we’ve done and said, it is to make sure the life you live is the one you truly want. If not, then change it.

What scenes pulsated with the most energy back then?

Y’know… Back then in the mid ‘80s, both the punk and the thrash scenes were really vibrant. [There was] lots of brotherhood between bands.

Especially thrash and death metal, ‘cause it was new; punk had already been around as a genre for over 10 years. But I have to say that the crossover scene going on right now is far superior in terms of the unity and ethics behind the bands playing.

Sure, there is a TON of classic music from the past. But the fans, bands, and the labels going today are so damn exciting and have learned from the mistakes made in the past.

Reagan was the perfect antithesis, and lent such stark iconography, for the flourishing of US Hardcore.

If hardcore was starting today, who do you think would replace him?

Christ, what a great question. I think corporations control things now more than ever before. Influencing who the U.S. goes to war against, the media, and what common folk think. People like the Koch brothers and Rupert Murdock scare the hell out of me. The amount of damage/ influence they’ve had on the U.S. is frightening.

What was your message then?

Being a band with political lyrics, people mistake us for having some agenda or belief system that we were trying to push. But that wasn’t us then, nor now. If you want to look for someone to tell you what to do, then join a religion. I guess

Have your values changed 27 years later?

I remember thinking when we were younger that eventually we’d be a lot more mellow and not be so against authority when we got older.

But man, I think we are even more defiant now. None of us have average 9 to 5 lifestyles, and we distrust the police and governments even more than before.

Do you worry that tele-comm company and retailer options are dwindling via mergers, etc.?

It’s definitely something that makes one concerned, and people should be paying attention to and fighting.

When your media options are controlled by only one source, how different is that than living in a country like Cuba or Russia? But people here are so damn complacent.

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How do feel about your legacy?

Every time we play a show, I’m grateful that ONE person shows up.

Those we get to talk to, the record seems to mean a lot to them. Ashes to Ashes was released in 1987, and nowadays, the public has such a short attention span. So, to still have people interested in it is beyond flattering. Back then, the fact that we got to record and release an LP was enough for us. But after all this time, there’s a few people STILL interested in it? Mind-blowing. Having our record issued on Tankcrimes is like a reward for all the hard work done years ago. It’s a contemporary label that is putting out music they love, and so we were honored when Scotty wanted to put it out.

What keeps you busy these days?

Music dominates all four of our lives on and off stage. I live in Austin, TX, and run my own booking agency full time. I book tours for a roster of bands from the punk and metal scenes: Cock Sparrer, Toxic Holocaust, and Neurosis. I also play bass in the Lower Class Brats.

The rest of the guys are still in Los Angeles. [Bassist] Warren [Renfrow] plays in The Cadillac Tramps, Manic Hispanic, and various other projects.

Jeff retired from tattooing a year ago.

He’s concentrating on his artwork, and [is] the main songwriter and idea man for the group. Our drummer Nick [Manning] plays in so many bands I can’t keep up. We have already recorded a new LP. I just have to record the vocals and mix. That will probably be out late in 2015. More shows when possible, no sign of slowing down yet.

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Photography by Ronny Salerno

They’ve Split The Tip and shared the road… it’s only logical we had The Lawrence Arms’ Brendan Kelly and British acoustic songsmith Sam Russo talk to each other about the experience.

INTERVIEW WITH Sam Russo WRITTEN BY Brendan Kelly

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ill you briefly describe the theory we discussed about booze tourism as per how it relates to your touring experience?

Afternoons spent in weird bars are truly golden. The weirder, the better. For my money, it’s the only way to dip your toe into a town when you’re on tour. You get a few beers worth of time to meet the locals, play the jukebox, listen to a few stories, and soak up the vibe of the place. It gets you out of the venue, out of that boxedin mindset and into the world, to share a few moments out of the glare with the kind of people who gravitate towards that lonely bar at the sticky end of town; to the roof of the town’s mouth. Behind its ears. Brendan and I have bonded over this mutual love of seeking out a cool, dark and slightly unsettling spot, setting up for a few hours and watching the world go by. We’ve had some great times too. How else would we have met Terry the barman who was simultaneously working a shift, enjoying the first day of his honeymoon by serving his wife cocktails, AND entertaining 60

his adopted son, Grilled Cheese, while still having the time to sing us a song of his own called “Tight, Bald and Wet”? You don’t meet guys like that unless you seek them out. So we’ll continue the search wherever the road takes us. What exactly we’re searching for is hard to define, but I’ll keep enjoying the company, the time, and the weirdness.

You’ve had some pretty fucked up jobs. Do any resonate as particularly brutal? Do these experiences help your songwriting by inspiring or hinder it, just by virtue of exhausting you/crushing your soul?

I’ve worked lots of jobs. I’ve loaded and unloaded wicker baskets from container trucks for 16 hours a day, I’ve made paving slabs, UPVC windows, I’ve painted miles of fence, cut acres of weeds, dug up rocks in fields, picked asparagus, worked building sites and bars, worked in a behaviour unit in a school, cleaned hospital wards, looked after pheasants, chickens, dogs, all sorts. I work any job that permits me to play music. My main priority is always touring

and writing, so I’ve never really done anything else besides work and write. The two are definitely tangled up pretty good. The work itself is inspiring because of what you find out about yourself and the world in which you exist, but it takes all your time. Free time is so hard to come by when you work the way I do. I think that’s why I write slow and carefully, I think that’s why I always sleep well. The most crushing jobs I’ve ever worked have been in offices. Anything where I’m tied to a desk does nothing for me, puts no bread on the soul table, no money in the bank of the spirit. Jobs where you clock in at 5 AM and work 12 hours straight with maniacs, scrappers, weirdos, veterans, people of all ages, races, and backgrounds; those are the jobs that keep you on your toes. The job where your boss is high on cocaine, where the guy next to you on the line keeps laughing at the ceiling, where you fill perfume bottles on a bench next to a woman who dated Rod Stewart – those jobs keep you sane. It’s when they stick you in a cubicle and tell you how to behave that your heart hides away, and slowly, you disappear.

You come from a lineage of

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rock ‘n’ roll. Has your dad given you any particularly prescient advice regarding musicianship, or conversely, have any of his cautionary examples rubbed off on you in any significant way?

I try and learn from his mistakes.

You have to beat the blood. You have to fail and not give up.

What intimidates you?

Don’t overthink the fucking question, Sam. Just answer.

The size of the world. The immensity of its contents.

People mostly. The complexity of everything I will never understand in humankind. Scary shit. That and men who dress well.

You’ve been called “wizard-esque” more than a few times. If you could consistently cast any spell, what would you choose and why?

If I could just pop a quick spell off, it would definitely involve some sort of giant speed control device. I would give myself the power to slow down time. I find myself more and more out of time with the world, and I would love to be able to slow her down a few notches so I can get my shoelaces tied and catch up. Finish my drink before the big rush. Drag out a sunset.

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INTERVIEW WITH Brendan Kelly WRITTEN BY Sam Russo

I

f you had to rate the following people on a scale of weirdness, where would you put them and why?

Brendan Kelly, Neil Hennessey, Chris McCoughan, Toby Jeg, Steve Harvey, Butch Angel, Cher.Weirdness is an arbitrary thing, right?

As in, to me, I’m the least weird person on earth, because I can easily rationalize everything I do or say, even if my behaviors and/ or words disgust me (as they often do). I’m still me, and therefore, I’m my own white balance for weirdness. Chris, Neil, and Toby are all interesting cats, and they’ve all got wild quirks (as any wortha-shit human does), but those are my brothers through and through, and about as close to me as people can get, so, by the metrics put in place here, they’re relatively normal. Steve Harvey is weird. He seems really driven, but he can’t rise above Family Feud (which he’s great on) and a crappy talk show and a crappy radio show.

What a thing… I can’t imagine being so driven and talented and stuck in such a purgatory of time intensive creativity devoted to putting out completely disposable garbage entertainment. That’s weird. Buck Angel is weird too, but also pretty fucking impressive.

He’s someone I’ve been fascinated by for a long time. You talk about taking the ideas of “normal” and completely dismantling them, Buck Angel has done a hell of a job. So he’s weird in a way that’s extremely pro-weird, but not in a weird-just-for-the-fuck-of-it way (the LAMEST weirdness in the world is weird with no agenda beyond just being weird). Buck Angel is doing the Lord’s work, as an activist, awareness raiser, and as a porn actor. People need that awareness, people need to see humanity’s various sides to properly and truly empathize with humanity as a whole, and people need to beat off, and the people who need to beat off to muscular dudes with pussies can’t do much better than Buck Angel.

Cher is the weirdest by far. She’s been so famous that she can’t walk around in public without being mercilessly punished/mobbed for like 50 years. Can you imagine

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what that does to a person? Holy shit. Yeah, Cher’s definitely a goddamn nut. Plus, she used to fuck Sonny Bono. That’s weird.

What’s the most inspiring thing anyone has ever said to you?

Well, firstly, I can’t really deal in absolutes in contexts like this, and beyond that, I don’t know if I really understand inspiration the way it’s bought and sold these days. For example, Jim Carrey is now going around Facebook “inspiring” people with some speech he made where he says (in regards to his dad, a funny guy who wanted to be a comedian, but never went for it, and instead worked as an insurance salesman until he was unceremoniously fired), “You can fail at the things you don’t like to do, so you may as well take a chance on what you love,” but that doesn’t inspire me.

To me, it’s a nice thought, but it’s also kind of like saying, “If you try, you can fly.” It’s Hallmark bullshit. I’m inspired by great works of art (“The Tin Drum,” “Death in Venice,” “Catch 22,” “2666”) and lowbrow humor (“Revenge of the Nerds,” a great, trumpeting fart), I’m inspired by beautiful girls and funny jokes and tragic news articles and shit like that. I can’t fathom someone just saying something to me that would inspire me, unless it was a joke that bent my perception in a way that I’d never dared twist it into before. I will say this though: when I was a wee punk just starting out, I got two pieces of advice from Pete Kourim, who sang and played bass in an old, super great Chicago punk band called Oblivion. He said the following, and it’s always stuck with me: 1) “You’re only as good as your last show,” and 2) “In order to have a good show, you are responsible for 50% and the crowd is responsible for the other half.” Those two things have always been true. I carry those two maxims around with me every time I consider the live aspect of rock and roll.

Well, I wouldn’t wanna have to do any playing, because I’m a terrible guitarist/ bassist/ drummer, so that’s out. I think I’d like to replace Mike D in the Beastie Boys, because as far as I can tell, they’ve had the best career full of insane times and dizzying highs, and they were on the goddamn RUN DMC Raising Hell tour! Mike D is also vastly, far and away, the least talented of the three, so I think I could fill his shoes pretty easily.

Also, he’s still alive, and being alive is something I’m pretty into.

And I KNOW he plays the drums on a lot of their stuff. Fuck that.

Someone else can do that. I’m in the Beastie Boys now. I can hire a live drummer. I’ll bring Neil.

Have you ever invented anything? If so, tell us about it.

Hmmm. I invented two little kids I’m pretty excited about. They look like me and my wife, and they now can wipe their own butts and make their beds, so I’m pretty much done putting ‘em together. I have invented a few songs. Some of ‘em are even okay. I’ve probably invented some words, and I guess that’s about it. I’m not very creative in an inventive regard. I can only tinker with ideas that already exist. I need to see something happen before I can conceive of it.

I guess you could say I’m naïve, in the most fundamental way there is. I can’t imagine what’s not right in front of me. I’m always shocked when people OD, because I never believe that people who

seem clean are actually high.

In this way, I can’t just make something out of nothing. I don’t have that mental power.

What makes you continue to make music, and what else do you do that’s creative?

I have a compulsion that forces me to create. It’s not particularly fun a lot of the time. If I go too long without doing something creative, I get antsy and nervous and irritable. Then I do something and it sucks and I feel deep self-loathing. Real cool cycle. Making music is the least intensive outlet for making something that I’ve found thus far and the only one where I’ve been lucky enough to have patrons who help me do it, so I keep doing it.

I also write jokes, short essays (badsandwichchronicles.net), scripts, and I make movies, both shorts and feature length. I’d like to do more of that, but it’s expensive and takes a lot of time and well…

No one pays me to do that, which makes it kind of impossible. I also work in advertising, and I’ve been known to write catchy taglines for yummy sandwiches and commercials for telecom companies. That’s where I really shine… Corporate slavery. I’d like to try stand-up, but I’m terrified of it, which is lame, because I’m only getting older and uh… To quote Jim Carrey: “You can fail at…” Nevermind. Also, I wrote your bio, Sam. That was a good time. xoxox

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If you had to replace any person in any band at any point in history and carry on in their shoes, who would it be and why?

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SERPENTINE PATH

INTERVIEW WITH Ryan Lipynsky WRITTEN BY Hutch On their second album, Serpentine Path eschews the praise and distractions, and move forward.

Emanations shows these warriors, steeped in sludge/doom metal, continuing through their devastating progression. When three members of Long Island’s long championed Unearthly Trance joined with guitarist Tim Bagshaw (Electric Wizard founder/ Ramesses), Relapse Records agreed to put out their invincible monolith of sonic sludge. How could they improve? Well, add a second guitar.

So, they grabbed Stephen Flam from doom legends Winter.

Vocalist Ryan Lipynsky brushes off the “supergroup” title, but also refuses to find it intimidating. “I don’t find it daunting,” he says, “I find it misleading. People expect the culmination of different bands to result in something better than the prior bands combined. When to me, Serpentine Path is simply friends getting together. To me, the term doesn’t apply.” Lipynsky, however, understands the usage is “essential for labels. It’s a way to advertise the group. It makes me laugh.”

Lipynsky cites many influences that wooed him in his youth. Bands that pushed the barriers of metal, like Winter, Grief, Eyehategod, Cavity, and Thorr’s Hammer. Lipynsky and bassist Jay Newman’s chemistry extends before Unearthly Trance, when “Jay and I would just jam with local friends and improv with really slow music. For Unearthly Trance, we wanted to be more creative with

doom. That was our approach. I wanted to take the template and see what we could do with extremely slow music, while integrating other influences into it.”

Looking back at their twelve years, Lipynsky is “proud of everything we did. We did as much as we could within the time we were doing it.

We put out a lot of records. We accomplished a lot. But I do feel frustrated by the fact that we did end. I never envisioned it ending.

Things diminish at a certain point, and we weren’t functioning how we used to. Things degrade over time.

We decided to end before it became not fun.”

That camaraderie and synchronization blossomed when catalyzed by doom tyrant Bagshaw.

And now they add another layer of experience with Flam: “After we did the album, we decided to focus on being a live group. We wrote material with [Flam] for the second album.” Lipynsky resigns into admiration and appreciation.

“Once he joined, we got a different perspective. His experience and his point of view balanced out Tim’s point of view. We arranged songs as a group. Stephen’s approach to sound helped us step up our game to another level. He is a professional. He also helps make the rehearsal sound as heavy as the album.”

As with their debut, Serpentine Path kept it in the family with

Emanations. The album was recorded and produced by Newman, but this beast has consistency and meticulousness that improve their delivery.

Lipynsky explains, “The first album was done at different locations, whenever we could find time. This time it was all at Jay’s new house.”

This consistent locale gave the band more focus and a more relaxed attitude. The three month span of recording was still sporadic, but honed.

When you offer the term “extreme metal,” most people think of the fastest players, the sickest blast beats and solos. Doom and sludge, however, reverse that expectation and drag your disemboweled intestines through the seventh circle of Hell. This music takes its time so you are forced to focus on the excruciating nuances of the experience.

“People think of extreme as fast,” Lipynsky explains, “but slowing it down, stretching time; that is more encompassing. And the reality is that playing slow is harder than playing fast. There is a strong sense of focus and precision. You get consumed by sound waves. When you just play faster and faster, you don’t feel all the notes.”

The lyrics match this captivating drudgery, exploring the darker sides of humanity. In Emanations, Serpentine Path embraces rejection of the church. “Essence of Heresy” delves into the trials in which Galileo was branded as a heretic.

Lipynsky says it all comes down to “how intelligence trumps religious tradition. How people grow and

learn [instead of following] one dogma. Basically it is against religious corruption.”

Lipynsky also meanders through some fantasy, or at least some horror-slanted possibilities. He talks of the track “Clawed,” which explores a Lovecraftian unknown entity that claws into the universal human psyche. He also presents a dystopian future in “Systematic Extinction.” Lipynsky ponders the “horrors of the future. If ever there is a world-governing body controlling the masses, they would want to reduce the numbers. That would lead to enslavement and extermination of specific factions to ease their rule.” He explains that his topics range from personal to religious to fantastical, but perhaps some are only deemed fantasy because they have not occurred.

Yet. “Wars have been going on for centuries, but now it is more sophisticated,” Lipynsky elaborates.

“The way our country goes about exterminating people, utilizing more technology increases the devastation. If things continue in this darker direction – more control, more imprisonment – eventually there will be too many people on earth. What is our alternative? There will be too many people fighting for resources. Only the people who control and oppress will be left.”

His music is an elongated dirge, but Lipynsky enjoys “turning off [his] mind when playing,” and finds it “exhilarating. The feeling of how harsh the vocals are is cathartic, not depressing. It’s exciting.”

How about for the listener? “I have been doing this for years,” Lipynsky shrugs. “It is normal to me. But people say, ‘Oh, its brutal!’ I hope the listener feels the weight and intensity, instead of connecting to their iPhone. Obviously the music is not made to feel good. This is for the people alone with headphones: more an experience of solitude. It is individualized.”

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from when you first started to

world around us, nor that “style” of

Tibi Et Igni?

life. We were teenage rebels who business,

created our own world to escape

equipment: just a bunch of fac-

from those grey streets of Poland

tors that you have to make deci-

in the 1980s. After 30 years, ev-

sions about. All of these have been

erything’s changed. Poland has

changing and evolving for us in

changed and we are so much more

last three decades. When me and

experienced in life. The streets and

[guitarist] Zbyszek [Wróblewski]

people walking around are still far

founded Vader in 1983, I could

from being right. No militia on the

not even play guitar. I was a bass

streets, a passport in the pocket, or

player. However, a few months af-

having a McDonalds Restaurant

ter I started to play guitar, I created

did not eliminate greed, stupidity,

the first Vader song, “Necropolis.”

or corruption. The problem just

Pretty much Priest influenced, not

changed its shape, but reminded

yet original, but filled with passion

us of a problem. We still have so

already. This track soon became

much to scream out loud about,

our first hit in the local scene.

bro! [Laughs] And this is just a

That’s why I decided to add this

tip of the ice mountain. As I said

song as a bonus to our new album.

before – we put our emotions into

Experience,

INTERVIEW WITH Vocalist/Guitarist Peter Wiwczarek WRITTEN BY Brandon Ringo

P

people,

death-wielders

to spend months with the same

I wanna close-up old Vader and

music and words. In Vader, we

Vader have been ac-

people, and you have to learn how

show how the band was evolving

create stories that include other

tive longer than I’ve

to avoid starting to hate each other.

in the next decades. The other rea-

stories. The story you read is for

been alive. Since 1983,

[Laughs] Not once, nor twice did I

son is Vader’s first official biogra-

you and your imagination. You’re

despite numerous lineup changes,

have to say “farewell” to ex-mem-

phy “Total War” was just released

free to interpret it. You may see

an ever-changing landscape for ex-

bers just because they could not

in Poland after almost six years of

demons, the apocalypse, or Hell.

treme metal, and a grueling tour-

stand it for any longer. The atmo-

research and interviews. It’s a huge

Of course, the real story is hidden

ing and recording schedule, the

sphere in the band needs to be

work by Jarek Szubrycht [he wrote

below. Life happening around us is

band has been uncompromisingly

clean, ya know? Vader is like a per-

the unofficial – and better – Slayer

the biggest inspiration to me! The

heavy and always stuck to their

fect commando: all are great sol-

book “No Mercy”), and contains

personal element is not explained

guns. This year, with the release of

diers with one experienced leader.

over 400 pages, and the whole

though, I don’t need to do it, and I

their 10th album Tibi Et Igni, they

Vader would never make any good

story and evolution of Vader. The

don’t want to do it. Let the imagi-

definitely haven’t slowed down one

albums without such a combina-

title is very accurate. It is hard to

nation speak!

iota.

tion. Of course, it is not me or my

explain in a few lines the process

colleagues who decide what about

and how all has been changing in

When

You never go more than two or

an album is good or not. Fans do

30 years. The book may help to

writer’s block, are there records,

three years without a new release.

it! They are our power and moti-

understand it, although it can’t ex-

books, or movies that inspire

What makes it possible for you to

vation. We never really had any

plain it all.

you?

tour constantly and still churn

extraordinary support or promo-

out solid records every few years?

tion as a band, but we always had

Are your lyrics more fictional

here. Almost every book, movie,

As I explained, Vader is our pro-

diehard fans and friends. This is

stories or based on real life expe-

or piece of art leaves a stain on

fession. This perfect situation lets

Vader’s biggest success! I wish all

riences?

my mind, which is enough reason

us focus on the band only. We do

bands could have such great fans

Both. Our lyrics were evolving

to write a riff, a line, or the whole

not need to steal time from our

like our Vadermaniax. We play

with ourselves. We never wanted

song. Events on TV or some dis-

supervisors or ask for vacation

for the third generation of metal

to say anything straight in the face

cussion on the Internet may be

to play a tour. Our life is to play

now, and we all are still hungry for

like our friends from punk rock

a spark me as well. I swallow life

and create. Sounds nice and easy,

MORE!!!

bands did. We also never touched

around me and speak about it

politics. We did not understand

through my compositions. This is how it works for me.

olish

right? It is nice, but definitely not

are

experiencing

There are too many to mention

easy. Living as a Metal Maniac is

How has your approach to Vad-

it and we did not want to under-

intense and non-defined. You have

er changed over the thirty years

stand it, either. We did not like the

64

you

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ORIGIN INTERVIEW WITH Vocalist Jason Keyser WRITTEN BY James Alvarez

T

he hyper speed death metal technicians in Origin have reigned atop the extreme music scene since the final days of the Clinton administration.

Formed in Topeka, Kansas, in the late 1990s, the band’s shred heavy style of death metal evolved at a blistering rate throughout the 2000s, pushing Origin beyond their local scene, past Oz, and straight into the fucking stratosphere.

A decade of sweep-picking and inhuman BPMs culminated with the band’s 2008 masterwork Antithesis, a mind-bending sci-fi opus that shattered the boundaries of extreme metal musicianship, taking the genre well into the realm of ludicrous speed. Dark Helmet himself would have been proud. Their 2011 follow up album Entity took their sound in a bold new direction, but found the band adrift without a proper vocalist.

Now Origin have returned with Omnipresent, another wicked slab of death metal wizardry and their first album with new[ish] frontman Jason Keyser. New Noise catches up with Jason to discuss the details behind the band’s new record, and see what’s up with the most celebrated shredders in metal.

First it should be noted that Omnipresent is Origin like we’ve never heard before. The speedy, space-aged tech stuff is still there, but is now seamlessly integrated with the new elements

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the band touched on with Entity.

There’s no doubt that this record represents a band reborn. “Since I joined Origin,” Jason explains, “the live show has gotten much more interactive and fun for the audience, more orchestrated pit action and all. I think there was a little influence in writing to those strengths, and to be a live act not to be fucked with. “Some of the slower, heavier riffs and the circle pit frenzy riffs came from that, but in general, I think we just write what we feel. If you ask [guitarist and founder] Paul [Ryan], he will always say he never wants to write the same album over and over, but he always keeps the same level of brutality and technicality. For Omnipresent, we used the progression of how the three year touring cycle for Entity changed our dynamic as a band to influence our writing process.”

Jason’s addition to the Origin team has not only upped the chaos factor in the live arena, but actually smoothed things out for the band in the creative department as well. “After their experience writing Entity, where they lost their vocalist right before going into the studio and Paul and [bassist] Mike [Flores] were stuck with no choice but to write and record all the vocals themselves, I think they were relieved to have a fresh influence in the writing process,” Jason says. “My first time recording with Origin, I came

in hearing the horror stories of previous recording sessions being hectic and frenzied, but by the end of these sessions, all I heard was how it was the smoothest yet.”

The music displayed on Omnipresent, brutality aside, is the definition of cohesive. The album is fluid, flowing together like an extreme metal tsunami.

The one-two combo of “All Things Dead” and “Thrall:Fulcrum:Apex” launches the album into warp speed right out the gate. Crushing waves of blast beats, melting guitar picks, and Origin’s trusty three-pronged gang vocal attacks, demolish all in its path, only to shift gears with mesmerizing instrumental tracks like album centerpiece “Continuum,” a haunting guitar epic reminiscent of something straight outta Star Trek. Jason describes these interludes as the “hills and valleys of brutality that is Omnipresent.”

“The album is definitely meant to be listened to as a whole from front to back,” he says, “and the interlude tracks are the slight breathers before getting hurled back into the fray. Paul was very excited to make ‘Continuum’ as a standalone track, the centerpiece of the album. It’s the black hole the other tracks are anchored to.” The rest of the Omnipresent galaxy keeps spinning on, with jaw dropping performances from drummer John Longstreth and Flores – great… Or greatest rhythm section in metal? – and all the mind-bending fret work we’ve come to love from axeman Ryan.

This leaves us with Mr. Jason Keyser. Although he first joined Origin back in 2011, Omnipresent marks Keyser’s debut recording with the band. His boisterous vocal performance is exactly what Origin needs in a frontman, and propels the already pummeling album even further into the abyss.

“I wrote the majority of lyrics for Omnipresent,” Jason explains, “as

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well as providing the general theme of the album. Being my main role, I take the lyrics very seriously, and very tediously make sure they are perfect. I’ve always been very intentional and tried to enunciate clearly, while still keeping the vocals as brutal as possible.

The lyrics to a lot of technical death metal get overlooked way too much. There are some amazingly deep writers out there, a kind of secret art form hidden in the indecipherable growls.”

Speaking of art, Omnipresent’s album cover is a gloriously disturbing sight to behold. A lone humanoid figure floats amidst a giant explosion of snake like vines and tendrils, surrounded by ominous clouds of doom.

The brainchild of artist Colin Marks of Rain Song Design, this same concept art is the focus of Origin’s new lyric video for “Absurdity of What I Am,” an absurdly killer track off the new record. “We wanted to capture the idea of the isolation of mankind,” Jason says, “in a universe of indiscriminate forces that could obliterate any trace of sentience in an instant. With nothing more than this sentence, Colin gave us the album art… It’s falling into the abyss of the unknown, solitary disillusionment.”

Origin’s new deep-space existential mind fuck, Omnipresent, drops this July on Nuclear Blast. They’re also set to demolish stages across the country as part of this year’s Summer Slaughter tour. “It’s a great opportunity to have a guaranteed packed house every night,” Jason gushes. “Our set is going to be blazing fast, with our strongest songs from the past few albums and the highlights of Omnipresent.

Despite being in the center of the lineup, we are determined to be the band every audience member leaves talking about.”

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metal like in the early days.

Are your lyrics mostly fictional stories, or are they also based on real life?

It depends on the song. Some of the stories are pure fiction; some do have a real background.

For example, for the song “Road Rage Killer,” just at the moment while Chris was working on the lyrics, there was some news on the Internet that a lunatic in the U.S. was driving around, killing people for no reason. It was scary how it fitted to the lyrics.

GRAVE DIGGER

INTERVIEW WITH Axel Ritt WRITTEN BY Brandon Ringo

W

hen examining the halls of heavy metal history, there’s a very good chance you won’t find many bands that have been alive and kicking as long as Germany’s Grave Digger. In fact, this year, the band celebrates the 30th anniversary of their debut album Heavy Metal Breakdown. In the 30 years since that first record, the band has been steadily touring and releasing solid album after solid album of old school German heavy metal.

This year, the band is releasing Return of the Reaper, their 17th studio album and one that serves as the ultimate testament

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to their staying power.

When did you begin working on the songs for Return of the Reaper?

We started in mid 2013, collecting snippets for the new album and talking about a completely new theme. I myself threw about 80 riffs in the ring; [vocalist] Chris [Boltendahl] started to collect lyric fragments. Even on the last Russia/Ukraine tour, [we were] sitting together in a truck stop station, singing song ideas to my mobile. Funny situation.

Reaper?

We thought that the concept album era has come to an end and we wanted to turn back to the roots of Grave Digger, [so we] started with songs and sounds in the way how it all began. Of course, the sound and the production is a lot better now than in those days, but the structure of the new album is pure heavy

Are you surprised that the band has lasted as long as it has?

Of course, this band had its moments where the protagonists were close to shutting the whole thing down, but in the end, the love of heavy metal kept the thing rolling. Now, with the actual lineup, there is so much power within the band, which will last for some more years, maybe decades, who knows.

We’ll do our best to keep the energy in the studio and on stage, not to fade away to lame and satirized slowpokes, counting money while playing, like some of our colleagues unfortunately do.

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How has your songwriting evolved from Heavy Metal Breakdown to Return of the

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LOUD LITERATURE Heavy Metal Movies

up. One title would lead to ten more, one director would lead to three musicians, which would in turn lead to obscure collections of movies, and then a poster with a monster playing electric guitar,

metal” comes in. Since it’s my book, I get to be the arbiter of what’s deemed “most metal.”

Once you get away from movies containing actual metal music, I figured in factors such as impact

and on and on and on.

on heavy metal culture, songs and bands named after a movie, real-life metal musicians citing it as a favorite, and other deciding elements.

INTERVIEW WITH Author Mike “McBeardo” Mcfadden WRITTEN BY Brandon Ringo

H

eavy metal and horror movies…two art forms that are often synonymous with each other and two things that go together perfect like pizza and beer. Thanks to author Mike “McBeardo” McPadden, you can now own Heavy Metal Movies, a book that serves as the definitive guide to over 600 movies that are either about heavy metal, heavy metal bands or have heavy metal as the soundtrack, as well as classic movies that represent all things brutal and unholy.

First off, how did the idea to do such a massively, preposterously comprehensive book come about and how long did the process take from start to finish?

The germ of this book began when I composed two entries for The Official Heavy Metal Book of Lists by my friend Eric Danville in 2009: “The 13 Greatest Heavy Metal Horror Movies of All Time” and “The 13 Most Metal Moments in Non-Metal Movies.”

I’d been wanting to write about crackpot classics like Rocktober Blood and Black Roses for years and years, and I finally had the opportunity. Then in December 2010, Destroy All Movies came out.

It’s a completely mind-blowing guide to punk rock films edited

by Zack Carlson. I couldn’t believe how great it was, so I challenged myself on the spot—right there in Quimby’s Bookstore—to come up with the heavy metal answer book. Ideally, I hoped Bazillion Points would publish it. That same day, I pitched the idea to Ian Christe at Bazillion Points.

It was originally titled Screen of the Beast in homage to his heavy metal history milestone Sound of the Beast. A few weeks later Ian wrote back and we were a-go. It happened in the middle of the night, which my wife can attest to, as I ran in and woke her up to tell her. From that point in February 2011 onward, I worked on Heavy 68

Metal Movies every single day for three-and-a-half years.

This may be a dumb question, but have you actually seen every single one of these movies?

Short answer: no. More complete answer: I saw as much of every single movie as I could—some exist only in broken chunks online, some survive only as photos and other ephemera, and a few are lost forever. That’s only a very small number of movies in the book, though. Overwhelmingly, I did sit through each movie all the way from beginning to end— hundreds u p o n hundreds of movies.

What was your process like as far as putting together the list of stuff you wanted to include and then getting it narrowed down? Like, did you start naming off every brutal movie or metal documentary you could think of in a huge list or did you separate them by category first or what?

I began with a number—the number of the beast, of course.

The idea was to find the 666 “most” metal movies and write them up.

People often ask me, “Are there actually more than six hundred movies that could be called “heavy metal”? I just want to shake them!

The list really is endless. To start, I had the 26 movies I wrote about in the Heavy Metal Book of Lists, and I knew maybe 50 other obvious titles. Then I basically typed “heavy metal movies” into Google and took note of what came up— and stuff never stopped coming

The thing I find most fascinating about the book is the inclusion of movies that aren’t actually about heavy metal or metal bands. It seems like that would be virtually impossible to do. How were you able to narrow the list down without including every horror and scifi movie ever?

That’s where the term “most

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LABEL SPOTLIGHT:

financially had to start with compact discs. “Is [vinyl] even viable?” she asked herself. By her second release, thanks to the first release’s success, it was. Melotov 002 was Dance for Destruction’s LP When Color Was Real. “Since then,” she says, “I have stuck to vinyl.”

Eschewing marketing or economic classes, Voltz boldly “jumped into it. I went on the Metal Blade MySpace. I sent a message asking if they needed interns. And they did. I worked on press kits and promos.” Starting a label seems daunting, but Voltz is clearly formidable.

Amassing the benefits of working for a behemoth independent label, she moved forward. “The internship was unpaid and I had no job,” she explains. “And I was using 30 minutes of gas to get there. So, I stopped. But I gained three months of experience and understanding of the process.”

Voltz also mentions a local venue, Cobalt Café, which was her hub for a while: “I was good at promoting bands I was into. They would send me flyers. I turned and did street flyers and Internet posts. It started like that. I learn as I go along.

Every year, I gain new knowledge, which is a risky business model.”

INTERVIEW WITH Owner Melanie Voltz WRITTEN BY Hutch

M

elotov Records boasts a deep catalog.

They just joined forces with titan Deathwish Inc for distribution to help spread the message. Considering the small label started in 2008, their growth is impressive, as are the bands they have cultivated. And it’s all run by a girl! Gasp! Head honcho, Melanie Voltz can take that joke. She can roll with it all, but often doesn’t have to, as the punk and hardcore scenes have treated her well.

“Because [hardcore] attracts aggressive people, naturally, there are more men,” she states, but quickly appends, “I have never experienced the ‘boys club’ vibe. I have had so much help from Jersey, @ NEWNOISEMAGS

Cali, Todd Jones, SOS booking, my merch people. I have never had a bad experience. Hardcore is a solid group of people. I have never [had] some guy overstep [his] boundaries.”

Voltz’ ambition and motivation are staggering considering her youth. Melotov began just after she graduated high school, when she simply approached a local band that she liked, Charged. “It was incredibly DIY,” she admits. “I didn’t do too much research other than royalties for bands. There were no contracts or promises or press, just ‘let me pay for your CDs.’ Then, I had to figure out how distro worked.”

Voltz wanted to do vinyl, but

That attitude proves to be an asset.

Humble and appreciative, Voltz still has an undeniable spark in her. “I like to be a person who goes to a show where I see every band that plays,” she says. That manner places her finger right on the pulse of the scene. She also harvests bands by “word of mouth from friends. Deadhand. I would see them and [we] became friends.

Seizures. I had been after them for a while. I hunted them down. I get sent demos and listen to them on my long commute. But mostly, I seek out bands.” That method also snagged her top bands like Vices, Old Wounds, and The Banner.

Voltz tingles with anticipation for her 2014 roster. “These bands are hard working,” she says. They have made their name and just needed a label for help. I get bands that are planning tours and recording and thinking like an indie label.” She knows to tap into bands that are in perpetual motion.

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Voltz is prepping to surpass her 15th release, but there’s no secret formula for what captures her attention: “It has to be interesting, not cut from same cloth as the last band that just came out; something different that puts them outside.

Cool content, art, performance, music. I am not knocking niche labels, but that’s what I want. And the bands have to push and work hard. I have made mistakes with bands that were not committed, not touring, or a quick project that breaks up.”

This is most definitely not the case with new members of the Melotov roster ACXDC: “Yeah, they refined their sound,” Voltz agrees. “They’re growing and are more dynamic. I have it in constant rotation. The new album is ridiculous.”

Other releases include new band Flowers, which Voltz talks about with fervor. Future is up soon, as well. “I love them,” she gushes.

“One of my favorite bands. Future is Steven Ruiner’s new project.” She maintains an ardent enthusiasm, coming across as a fan and not a marketing team as she discusses Holy Tongues: “It’s three-fifths of Ruiner. They are ‘post-hardcore’ plus ‘buzz words,’ blah blah blah.

It’s awesome. It has a sad, dark edge with Ruiner vocals.”

Voltz continues talking 2014 releases: “Outer Heaven from Pennsylvania. That’s heavy on heavy on heavy, [featuring] the guitarist from Rivers of Nihil.

Again, heavy. Doomy hardcore like Xibalba and Harm’s Way. Gnarly.”

Voltz drives Melotov by choosing bands that push forward. As she passes their vinyl along to the salivating masses, and guides the label with a strong network of distro and digital help. She knows when to take control and when to delegate. Her savvy is salient; quick gut instinct and a prepared but daring attitude combine for a working formula. A friendly disposition and a passion for the scene ensure Voltz will be doing this for a long time.

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for people to read. I guess it is a little bit disparaging that it took me till I was 32 to be able to do that, but I am really happy with the way the book came out. I think that for my first graphic novel it is a really good one.

I guess if it took me that long, then it is worth it.

Maybe you’re a late bloomer…

It’s funny because the work I am most well known for is the book “Will You Still Love Me if I Wet the Bed,” which came out in 2005. They’re comics that I drew in college. So there are still some people who pretty much only know me from that. I like that book a lot; it’s definitely not reflective of my ability as a writer or an artist.

Now I’ll be able to take a big step forward from that, and hopefully, people will see me as more than just a gag cartoonist.

Where did you find the confidence to finally tackle this graphic novel?

I really just decided to do it. Zest Books – the publisher that is putting it out – contacted me about doing a book with them. They are primarily a teen and young adult publisher [so] it had to be a book that was appropriate for that audience. And not that I think my work is necessarily inappropriate for those audiences, but it’s not really marketed to those audiences. That actually took me a while to come up with a concept that I think would work for them and that I thought

I would enjoy working on. Once I pitched “Tomboy” to them, and they said they wanted to do it I had nine months to finish it. I kind of really didn’t have the time to sit and think about whether or not it was good. I just had to do it. I think that worked out well for me. Instead of being able to second- guess everything, I had to just plow through it and finish it.

In “Tomboy,” you talk about identifying with feminist zines.

Why were these writings so crucial?

I had grown up being slightly misogynistic and I was very into boy culture. I really thought that the best way was to assimilate and be as much like a boy as I possibly could. That’s what I identified with.

I didn’t know many other girls who were as extremely tomboyish as I was. So finding punk and finding zine culture – where people were a lot more outspoken about their feelings and involved in a subculture where it’s not just like, “Oh, a girl looks like this and a boy looks like this!” – it really allowed me to be okay with the fact that I was never going to be a girly girl. Because that was what was constantly thrown at me. “Oh, girls care about their hair. Girls wear make-up.” It was nice to finally have it reflected back at me that not all girls care about that stuff.

You can be a girl and not give a shit

Photography by Ramsey Beyer

ARTIST SPOTLIGHT INTERVIEW WITH Liz Prince WRITTEN BY Damian Burford

W

ho is Liz Prince? Liz Prince is an awardwinning punk rock cartoonist.

She won the 2005 Ignatz Award for Outstanding Debut for her book “Will You Still Love Me if I Wet the Bed.” She writes comics about her cats Wolfman and Dracula, her love of pop punk, and her adventures in dating. Her work is self-deprecating and sarcastic, but always honest and sincere. With “Tomboy,” Liz tells us a sweet, yet poignant tale of a young woman riding the gender lines, learning to be comfortable in her own skin and become the person she is today. The book is geared towards a young adult audience, but feeling like an outsider is universal and readers of all ages can easily 70

identify with the young Liz Prince and root for her to win.

You’ve worked with Masked Intruder, Razorcake, and Top Shelf Press, as well as made hundreds of zines and minicomics over the years. Are you surprised where punk rock and comics have taken you?

I don’t know if surprised is the right word, because I’ve always been very focused on drawing comics and drawing graphic novels had always been my goal.

I guess I am surprised it took me as long as it did to actually sit down and really just draw one. Some of that is based on the confidence I had in myself, that I would be able to actually finish a graphic novel and that it would be something engaging NEW NOISE MAGAZINE

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about any of that. That was really the most important part.

Is “Tomboy” a direct result of that?

I didn’t write the book to have any kind of morals. There is not supposed to necessarily be a lesson other than that there are tons of ways for somebody to exist in their gender that might not be what society defines it as. I certainly would be totally honored if people read the book and took that from it.

Was it ever painful to recall the moments you were documenting?

Some of it, surprisingly, was. I found that I don’t really remember specific instances based on what happened as much as how I felt about it. It was kind of going back and emotionally navigating those things. The only things that stand out are the times that you had a really good time or the time you had a really bad time. The stuff inbetween, at least for me, it isn’t as vivid in my memory. I was going back and having to rehash a lot of those things. There is not a lot that I find to be too painful to look at. I was surprised by my own reaction while writing about them.

Was it harder to be so truthful, knowing more people were going to read it?

No. Being as truthful as I am in my work has never really been an issue. The only thing that was challenging was to write a book for @ NEWNOISEMAGS

a specific audience. I’m honestly a little bit afraid it is going to be the kind of book that parents, librarians, and teachers find to be not really appropriate for the 14+ age range that the book is marketed towards. I’ll be honest and say that I don’t really know a lot about young adult literature. I don’t really read that much of it.

So, I don’t know things like how many curse words can you have, or how much can you talk about sex?

Those were the kinds of things that I was concerned with when writing the book, but my editor told me, “Just tell the story. If anything comes up as a red flag, we’ll deal with it.” There wasn’t anything like that. They never asked me to take some “fucks” out, or anything like that.

More controversial young adult books tend to be more important anyway, right?

When I was writing this one, I asked myself what I liked to read as a teenager. I liked to read books that didn’t pander to me and talked about things in a frank and honest way. The only time that I really swear in the book is in dialog, and let’s be honest: teenagers swear a lot! I thought I was being more adult by saying fuck as often as possible when I was 14 years old.

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Pickup a copy of Liz’s book at (www.zestbooks.net/tomboy)

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Copyright Liz Prince 2014, Tomboy published by Zest Books

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COLUMN:

CHEETAH CHROME

W

elcome to my new monthly column, which, like “Seinfeld,” will be about nothing. I’ll just kind of write stuff, and you just sort of read it, OK?

I’m not really an authority on much of anything that doesn’t involve a guitar, but that never stops me from putting in my two cents in plenty of other areas.

Plus, I’m not really that enamored of modern culture, it tends to bore the hell out of me. I don’t feel qualified to write for the younger generation, even though I know I am, and that I should try. The 21st century is more my nine year old son’s area of expertise.

He likes it here, thrives here, and knows full well that this is where he belongs. I just feel like most guys my age, pissed off that things have deteriorated so rapidly and wishing my son could have the childhood I had, crappy as it was.

At least I could go out and ride my bike all day with my friends, play in the woods, live life without the complications that have come along since the ‘60s. Since he can’t, he really likes staying in playing video games and hitting the indoor skate park, and since he’s been traveling with me since he was 2 months old, he has developed a taste for good hotels and room service. Not so bad really, he’s a hell of a lot cooler than I was at his age, and we still

get to play catch and kick a soccer ball around.

His America is very much a divided place. It was then too, but in a very different way. The politics really aren’t all that different, but the politicians sure are. They do nothing but posture now. It has become increasingly obvious that the fix is in, the game is rigged, and there isn’t a whole lot that your vote can do, regardless of which party it is cast for. It’s possibly too late to fix. The only difference between the two parties is the Democrats at least buy us dinner before they screw us.

And the people are different now too. In the ‘60s and ‘70s, we took to the streets in numbers to show how we felt. We did everything we could to get on the nightly news so the world would see that we weren’t happy with the status quo, that we were mad as hell and weren’t going to take it anymore. Protests like this are given credit for helping to shorten the Vietnam War, because we had politicians who actually considered the will of the people and could compromise toward a solution. That sure as hell isn’t the case now, when a Vice President can be asked how he feels about two thirds of the American people being against a war he helped start illegally, and his answer is, “So?”

Occupy Wall Street tried this with some success before being usurped by a bunch of homeless fringe characters who played right into the hands of the Right, and finally even pissed off the liberal Occupiers enough that they just went home. A shame too, because it was actually having an effect.

Americans today seem to be happy to sit around either watching rich, uninteresting people who get on TV simply because they’re rich (Kardashians, Chrisleys, Hiltons, etc…), or what I call the New Vaudeville, a whole slew of crappy talent shows and dance contests designed to keep the masses from thinking too much about, well, anything.

We’ve become a laughing stock to the rest of the world, consistently deciding against our best interests in favor of what is more convenient, what’s easier.

Quantity has become quality, quick and easy has replaced painstaking and well crafted.

Instant gratification has begun to destroy our culture – why read a book when you can Google a CliffsNotes version? Why go to a museum to see a painting when you can see it online, and zoom in to see it closer than the artist ever could? Why listen to music on vinyl, in my opinion still the best medium for recorded music, when you can pay the same price for an mp3, get 5% of the actual music instantly, then listen to it through cheap headphones made in China? Why go see a band live when it’s a click away on pay per view, or Youtube?

It’s a shame that our kids miss out on these things, and I do my best to try and make sure mine doesn’t, but it’s damn near impossible.

And I also have to accept that I’m not doing him any favors by trying to keep him in my century when he’s got his own.

.....

Cheetah Chrome is a founding member of Rocket From The Tombs, The Dead Boys, and The Batusis (with Sylvain Sylvain of the New York Dolls), and an acclaimed author. He has lived in Nashville for the past 15 years. He is the Creative Director/A&R Director at Plowboy Records.

Photography by Dawn Laureen

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EXTREMITY RETAINED NOTES FROM THE DEATH METAL UNDERGROUND the underground, because it was so driven by fans and fans who started their own bands.

As far as the book’s structure goes, I would think that was a bit of a nightmare. When deciding what stories should go where, how did that process work?

Once I began transcribing interviews (and this is a specific type of torture reserved for the 7th circle of hell I believe!), it became apparent that certain themes were unfolding, and certain threads were starting to form. For example, a tour story is obviously a tour story, so if Anders from Unleashed or Mitch from Napalm Death is telling me what it was like to go out on their first tours in 1990-91, that sits well in the fourth section of the book Rotting in the Van. The lengthy chat I had with Jim Morris from Morrisound Studios in Tampa (I

Photography by Alyssa Lorenzen

INTERVIEW WITH Author Jason Netherton WRITTEN BY Brandon Ringo

O

ver the last few years, death metal has seen an overwhelming boom in popularity thanks to all the reunions from older bands, as well as the amazing crop of new blood. For those who need a history lesson on the genre and its history, Handshake Inc. has now released Extremity Retained, an oral history of death metal and extreme metal as told by some of the biggest and most revolutionary names in the genre. Created by Jason Netherton (Misery Index, ex-Dying Fetus) is perfect for older fans wanting to reminisce about the good old days, as well as for those who completely missed it all and want to read about all the gory details.

The first thing I’m curious about regarding this process is what came first, the interviews with the different bands or the idea to make a book about the history of death metal?

It all developed spontaneously.

I had no idea at first what I was going to do with all the stories I was gathering, just that there seemed to be some value in collecting them, in the tradition of oral history. I bought the digital recorder and carried it around with me on my travels from 20102013, a period when my band Misery Index did a lot of tours and festivals. It was a sort of hobby at first, but after a while I looked at what I had and thought it would make a nice contribution to the

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stopped in there while visiting my father who lives outside Tampa in early 2013) - his recollections and stories fit well with the third section on studio and performance called Skeletal Forms. It more or less was built up organically like this, as various parts of various conversations became more and more situated into identifiably specific categories. One binding thread throughout the book is the transition from analog to digital culture, and how the internet and its technological extensions more or less upended the way the underground worked in its early years (fanzines and tape trading), and how newer “immediate” media forms like the MP3, blogs and downloading have affected things in terms of sincerity, mystique and authenticity.

.....

scene, because it was about 25 years old at that point and had yet to really be historicized properly through first person memories and anecdotes.

When you started the process of these interviews with all of these bands, did you create a big list of bands and people you wanted to include in the book or was it more about catching whoever you could whenever you could talk to them?

I had no list actually, it was more or less who I ran into along the way. If I was backstage at a random festival like With Full Force in Germany, I would look around at all the dressing rooms and just say, “okay, there is Morgoth, why not chat with the singer Marc, about the old German scene in the late 80s?” etc. So, after a while I accumulated over 100 contributors. Some were through email and some were through phoners/Skype, because sometimes people would not be in the mood to chat, and would just say “let’s do it later after the tour” or something. The idea for me eventually was more about getting a broad, international collectivity of diverse voices, rather than targeting the “A” list death metal heroes…there are plenty of “A” listers in there, but to really get the vibe and ethos of the underground, I was looking also to get the marginal and frontline voices as well, the bands that did not get as big, the zine writers, etc…that to me is the essence of

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LABEL SPOTLIGHT:

INTERVIEW WITH Owner Josh Grabelle WRITTEN BY Davey Owens

Y

ou went to law school, right? What made you start a record label?

Yes, I went to Syracuse University College of Law and graduated with a concentration in Intellectual Property and Corporate Law. After I graduated, I had a clerkship all lined up with a judge here in New Jersey, but about a month before it started, I called him up and told him I was bailing to focus on my record label. It was a risky move, of course, but I’m glad I did it. It was the first time I had been able to put 100% of my time into the label, as I had been in school since I started it, and it was nice to be able to devote all my time to it and see it grow organically.

A year later, I signed a distribution and funding deal with Sony, so it all worked out!

Congrats on the recent birth of your first child! How has becoming a father changed your routine at the label?

Thanks! Yeah, she is awesome. My routine hasn’t changed all that much since I have always worked in my home office. I have a pretty great set up here. I get to work with my daughter and my dogs and eat lunch in my kitchen and go take a nap if I need to. [Laughs]

and formed Bullet Tooth. It’s difficult to completely rebrand yourself. How did you overcome the hurdles, and what are your proudest accomplishments from the last three years?

Starting over was VERY hard to do, but I am glad I did it. My only regret is that I didn’t do it two years earlier when my former distributor initially pulled the plug and stopped paying us. Other than having to restructure the company, create all new assets (bank accounts, legal documents, health insurance, etc.), sign all new bands, and partner back up with the people we worked with in the Trustkill days, the hardest part was just getting off the ground. Here is why: when I made the decision to start over with a new label and new brand, I already had deals in place for Trustkill with a dozen or so distributors, merchandise companies, publishers, and more. I certainly COULD have just walked away from all of them and struck new deals with new companies, but these are the people l worked with closely for years and considered friends. The LAST thing I wanted to

do was burn anyone, considering we were in an unrecouped position with most of them (i.e. we owed them money). So, not ONLY did we start “from scratch,” but what most people don’t know is that we started from FAR LESS than scratch, as I agreed to take the debts from Trustkill and put them over to Bullet Tooth, recouping against sales from the new company.

It was a rough first six months or so, but we did it. It’s been three years now since the first album came out on Bullet Tooth, and we are in the black and doing great. It kinda rules. It’s on MY terms, with deals that I created, and I am in control of everything. As for accomplishments, it would have to be just reading fan’s comments, posts, and Tweets about the label and how they love all the bands. That’s really it and all I could ask for.

do it. It’s hard as hell. It’s rough. Most people aren’t cut out for it. That being said, spend some money on some great demo songs and send them out to labels. That is really it. Don’t spam label Facebook walls or get all your friends to Tweet about you, it is super obvious when they do that. We see right through it.

You get a handful of submissions a day. What do you look for and what are your major turn offs when a band is submitting?

I still look for the same kinds of bands I always have: hardcore, metal, metalcore, etc. I’ve never had an agenda when it comes to signing bands. I just pay close attention to all the bands out there making moves and creating buzz, and when one of them REALLY strikes me, I sign them. The best thing a band can do is write GREAT SONGS, and get out there and DO WORK. Bands who wait around for shit to happen are the WORST. They need to have ambition and be constantly working on their songs, performance, style, and overall vibe. There are 1000 great bands out there that have NO SUBSTANCE. You need to be MORE than great. It’s just like any other form of entertainment, like there are tens of thousands of 20-somethings in Hollywood who think they will land a huge role in a feature film, but only like 20 of them a year do it. Why do kids in bands think any differently?

If everyone could have success as a musician, then EVERYONE would

DON’T think that simply emailing a label A&R person will get you signed.

DO explain WHY you want to sign to a label and WHY your band is the best.

DO tell me what your plans are for AFTER you release an album.

DO include links to your music and live videos.

DON’T tell me all about your member changes (NOBODY CARES).

DON’T sit around and wait for shit to happen, ‘cuz it won’t.

Bands today have to realize that they are competing in a very oversaturated market. There was a good 10 plus years where A LOT of bands were getting together, and within one year, got signed and had a “career.” [They] could make money, pay the bills, and support a family. Right now it is more difficult, so the bands we look for are the ones that are willing to work HARD and not pull the plug when times get rough. EVERY band has a bad tour, or a bad night, or an album that misses the mark. If you give up the minute things go sour, you are not in the right business.

Being in a band is HARD. It has its rewards and it’s fun, but you have to be willing to work as hard as we do.

I think the scene itself will weed out the “weekend warriors” and, in a year, we will be left with kids playing the right music for the right reasons.

.....

Who from your current roster would you trust most to babysit your daughter?

Definitely the Throw the Fight guys, as two of them have recently had babies. In fact, they were just here for a few days while on tour, and were holding her and helping change diapers. Maybe I’ll include that in all contracts going forward: a compulsory “diaper-changing clause.”

Who would you trust least?

Definitely The Paramedic guys as they’re super young and total ragers.

They’d probably end up dropping her in my hot tub during an allnight hooker and coke party. Just kidding… Mostly.

You left TrustKill behind in 2010 76

Photography by Ian McFarland

NEW NOISE MAGAZINE

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BY STEVEN MATVIEW

R

ecently, I saw a Facebook friend post that they were disheartened by millennials’ lack of appreciation for or interest in looking back on bands that influenced what they love now – such as possessing an undying love for Fireworks and The Wonder Years while completely discounting classic hallmarks of the pop punk genre like The Queers and Buzzcocks (or even Lifetime, the most direct inspiration for the current wave of pop punk). I do think there is some truth to that, which seems counterintuitive since streaming services allow a free-to-almost-free smorgasbord of music past and present, without that Sam Goody $17-an-album barrier that kept people of my era from easily turning our Rancid admiration into The Clash love (it took days of lawn mowing and car washing to accomplish that). But even with all that access, there’s a reason less and less kids are looking back into music history or getting into punk rock. For a scene that prides itself on being more accepting than most, many of the genre’s eldest statesmen try their hardest to be off putting to every interested young person. I meet way too many people my age (early 30s) or older who are stuck on the generalized idea that “good” or “true” punk stopped existing somewhere between 1986 and 1997. It is in no way coincidental that the era in which these people think all the good music came from is also the time in their lives before real world responsibilities crept in – high school.

It reminds me of a masterful @ NEWNOISEMAGS

takedown of nostalgic Fox News pundits that Jon Oliver did on The Daily Show in 2010. After a montage of talking heads discussing how much better things were back in “their day,” Oliver pointed out that the world was a “happy, uncomplicated place” when you were a kid and blissfully unaware of the copious racism, sexism and homophobia that ran rampant back then, certainly more than today. What’s good and bad when it comes to music is small potatoes compared to those issues but Oliver’s segment on misplaced nostalgia always comes to mind when discussing newer bands on the internet, where being loud and obnoxious often trumps rational thought. When you’re a kid, you don’t necessarily care who “sold out” or who is “legit.” You liked the music because you liked it, for yourself, and weren’t afraid to express your love with unbridled enthusiasm. You don’t learn to be self-conscious about music until you get older and some jerk makes fun of you for not knowing who Bad Brains is – and ridicule isn’t exactly the greatest way to get you to check something out, is it?

The thing is, having come of age during punk rock’s big mainstream takeover in the mid-90s and later seeing the genre bastardized through manufactured acts appropriating an image of a lifestyle we hold dear for mall cred and big profits, I can understand why people have this flinching reflex, even though that era is more than a decade in the past at this point. A lot of people are drawn to various sub-

cultures, punk included, because of a need to feel like a part of a tight-knit family – and outsiders make people wary. But not every new punk band, or even the majority of new punk bands, has that insincere mall rock sound that you’re afraid of. If you’re a first generation Fat Wreck Chords fan you have bands like Red City Radio and Nothington carrying the torch of fast and melodic punk rock. Lovers of Bad Religion have bands like The Flatliners and Heartsounds keeping those awesome riffs and killer harmonies alive in bars across the country. Descendents?

Their pioneering sound lives on in the thousands of bands not afraid to infuse a healthy amount of pop in their punk like Direct Hit! and Iron Chic. Those of us that were sucked into the scene by early Green Day and the rest of the classic Lookout! roster have Mixtapes and Masked Intruder among the bands keeping pop punk simple, witty and fun. And The Clash are well represented in bands like Roll the Tanks and Dead to Me that obviously owe a lot to the band’s musical style while bands like RVIVR bring the antagonistic, political and social justice angle into the modern day. Whatever era is your era, the sound is still alive and trying to thrive.

I get it – as you get older, finding time to discover new bands is difficult, and work, family and other responsibilities take time away from attending shows and finding new bands that way.

But let’s put it this way – if you want punk rock to survive, the best way to go about that is for

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the genre to continue to make new fans to pick up the slack as the older generation retires to their suburban homes. I was lucky when I was younger to have a couple of older classmates who were willing to copy classic bands onto cassette for me, creating mixtapes that opened up my eyes to what punk rock could be, with more of a “if you like this band, then you’ll love this one” edge than just telling me everything I liked sucked.

When you see a kid with wideeyed enthusiasm for punk rock music – pop punk or otherwise – I encourage you to meet that enthusiasm head on and learn from each other. If your knee jerk response is to call someone a poseur and ostracize them from the scene, it’s time to recognize that YOU’RE THE PROBLEM. Young people aren’t going to have the gumption to go backwards on the punk spectrum and pay respect to what came before (or even check out punk rock in the first place) if those era’s biggest voices are so jaded and dismissive. If you want to keep the punk scene alive you can start a band or start a blog, promote bands and shows you like – or just be willing to give new bands a chance – all of which is more productive than shitting on the youth.

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Steven is the founder/owner of PunksInVegas.com which regularly covers the Las Vegas punk scene.

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Welcome back! If you want a long introduction, please pick up issue #10 where I go into great detail about some shit that doesn’t really matter now that we’re on FTR #2. Enough with the pleasantries, let’s get our hands dirty...

F

TEST OF TIME - A PLACE BEYOND irst up we have the

The coolest thing I noticed about

Test Of Time 7” ti-

this package was that it comes with

tled A Place Beyond.

an actual printed photograph from

Bridge Nine Records

a T.O.T. live show, and it’s held in

really made something special

place by those little scrap book

here. The B side has this awesome

picture holder thingies, and gives

black screen printed Test Of Time

it a one of a kind feeling which is

logo design that floats over the

definitely appreciated. All in all, a

clear vinyl. It comes in a heavy

neat 7” to add to your collection!

plastic bag with a 1 sided insert.

N E W

S

F O U N D

econdly, we have another Bridge Nine offering, only this one’s a little bigger.

We have the double LP for New Found Glory’s Kill It Live record. This one got a nice design treatment from Kyle Crawford of Electric Zombie. The cover features the lovable Quentin Tarantino look alike Jordan Pundik screaming his ass off in some filthy club. This stark black and white treatment isn’t something that I think we would normally associate with NFG but it totally works here. There’s also hand lettering

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G L O R Y

-

K I L L

I T

L I V E

out the ass on the back of this one as the song titles are inked onto the black and white photography in a very grimy, yellow type. The gatefold inside is littered with photographs taken at various points in NFG’s career making a shitty looking punk collage type thing that looks totally awesome. The actual vinyl itself is half black/half white and just sort of goes nicely with the rest of the packaging. I’m not sure whether or not there are other color variants or anything, but this works for me. Anything else would have been overkill.

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A N D R E W

W K

A

-

I

G E T

W E T (10th Anniversary edition)

ndrew WK’s I GET WET was just reissued on wax! A double gatefold/Double LP with the original cover and updated packaging, I jumped at the chance to add this to my shelf. In true Andrew WK fashion, I put the record on for the first time, did a few fist pumps before tiring myself out and sitting back down to finish off the A side. This sort of does the same thing as the NFG release, where the LP Sleeves feature photography taken throughout AWK’s career. The double vinyl records come in pure snow white, and really, what other color would you expect? This is readily available at your local online megacorporation… Nile.com? Mississippi.com?

I can’t remember. If you can’t find it, AskJeeves.com.

G H O S T B U S T E R S

I

ain’t afraid of no Record Store Day price gouging! I saw this previewed before 4/20 and knew I wasn’t going to be able to snag a copy at my local Rasputins, so I decided to wait for someone to

- 3 0 T H

flip it on Ebay. After RSD, these were going for 70-100 dollars a piece. I got mine for $10+shipping 2 months later. Fuck you, flippers. Anyway, this 10” record features the original recording of Ray Parker Jr’s Ghost-

A N N I V E R S A R Y

busters theme song. This comes on glow-in-the-dark, ‘ecto green’ vinyl.

It’s limited to 2000 copies worldwide and there are 4 different versions of the same song on this, which is sort of useless, but this is purely a

1 0 ”

fanboy/aesthetic purchase for me.

THE FUCKING THING GLOWS IN THE DARK LIKE SLIMER. IF YOU DONT THINK THAT’S THE TIGHTEST SHIT GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY FACE.

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B

angovers are a necessary evil, and after the last month of metal thrashing madness, they’re downright unavoidable.

From Deathhammer to Dark Angel, all rounded off with some hardcore macho-isms from Chain of Strength on their first NYC appearance in roughly forever, the sensible option would be to wrap up in a neck harness and soak your abused body in Epsom salts. However, with the recent announcement of Steve “Zetro” Souza returning to Exodus, it looks like we’ll be back doing the toxic waltz in no time. There really is no rest for the wicked. Responsible for the rabid vocal deliveries on their classic Fabulous Disaster LP, and the highly commendable comeback record Tempo of the Damned, Souza will undoubtedly prove a good choice following the departure of Rob Dukes. And to keep the good friendly violent fun flowing without interruption, the band are continuing to work on their 11th studio album, poised for a late 2014 release via Nuclear Blast. Andy Sneap

on production, Souza back on vocals, Exodus being Exodus – here’s to the originators of thrash keeping it fuckin’ real!

Back over on the East Coast, New Jersey old-school thrash warriors Overkill took a break from the studio in early June and shot two music videos with esteemed director Kevin J. Custer. Little more is known, but one can safely assume that in teaming up with Custer for the fourth time, Bobby Blitz and Co. created something spectacular in anticipation of the July 22 release of their 17th (!) studio album White Devil Armory. Heading slightly further east, Germany’s dedicated warriors of Teutonic steel, Desaster, who celebrated their 25th anniversary last December with a suitably metallized live assault in Blamberg, have extended the celebrations with a live release of that very show via High Roller Records. Including a set-list partially voted for by fans and an appearance by original vocalist Okkulto, it’s the second best way to bang your heads in honor of metal’s truest thrash forces without inventing a time machine and attending the actual show.

Since we’re on an eastward trajectory, it’s time to stop off in Tel Aviv, Israel, for the crossover tomfoolery of Black Sachbak.

Tongue-in-cheek, volatile, party-friendly, and politically aware, think Nuclear Assaultmeets-DRI-meets-S.O.D., with a suitably contemporary edge on titles like “Dubstep Sucks” and “Marx was Right.” They

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find themselves on the highly respected Stormspell Records roster, and the label will release the CD version of No Pay, No Gain come June 23.

Back across the Mediterranean, Italy’s post-apocalyptic masters of metalpunk Children Of Technology are revving their whisky-fueled choppers with Future Decay, their latest LP for Hells Headbangers, which hits the distros and stores in August.

Expect the usual dystopian soundtrack to any Mad Maxesque zombie infested B-movie nightmare.

speed metal hard as steel and hot as hell, like when Venom reigned supreme and the tremolo riff was yet to spawn, Cleveland’s sleaziest sons Midnight have just cut a filthy new slab of dirty riffs entitled No Mercy for Mayhem, also out this August through HHR. And if that wasn’t enough raw, satanic evil for you, U.K. young guns Exxxecutioner deliver a blackthrash attack more than worthy of earlyKreator/Sodom and Aura Noir comparisons. Abrasive production, scathing vokills, convulsing and erratic riffs – it’s nothing new, but expertly it’s chaotic and convincing evil thrash worship. Their six-track EP, aptly titled Fear the Priest, was recorded in one take and will see a limited cassette, CD, and digital release through Liverpool’s Ulthar Records.

Until next month, bang your heads!

Now, for those who like their

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