New Noise Magazine Issue #40 by New Noise Magazine

N E W A L B U M L I V I N G P R O O F A V A I L A B L E J U N E 1 5 TH 2 0 1 8

Shining a light on the joys and heartaches that lie at the intersection of the LGBTQIA community and the world of alternative music…

trail. Creating anything that comes from within is all about creating your own yellow brick road, brick by brick. It might lead you to Oz, or it might lead you to Hell. As for me, I make my own costumes, I write my songs, I direct my videos, and I try to use every facet of my artistic ability to speak from my point of view. My work can be polarizing—and sometimes, difficult to digest—but I don’t give a fuck. I’m not going to dumb down my work emotionally anytime soon.

FEATURING FELIX AND THE FUTURE

ome people look at the night sky and feel small, quivering in terror at the vastness of the universe. They shrink at the thought of the cold, soundless vacuum of space, littered with long-dead stars that still haunt our view.

Others gaze at the night sky and feel wonder, marveling at the boundless explosion of glittering celestial bodies, the infinite galaxies, the uncharted depths of existence. Under the dark indigo tapestry of a night sky—at least, the sections that aren’t obscured by towering skyscrapers—Felix And The Future just looks up and sees home.

and slips into blackholes of doubt and deception.

ON BEING FELIX

When you don’t fit into a box, most people either try to force you into one or they ignore you altogether, because their brains aren’t wired to accept the unexpected. I write music to express the most extreme version of myself. That version changes from song to song. Felix is both a sensitive, cosmic crooner and, also, a hyper-violent banshee that lives on the moon. I use my voice, my piano, and my music to try to connect with anyone out there who wants to pick up my signal— the way I’ve connected with artists that I admire. Sometimes it’s the melody, and sometimes it’s the music, and sometimes it’s only the longing and suffering that come through my radio.

Spiritually caught between the moon and New York City, Felix is one part Brooklynite singer-songwriter and one part bona fide Moonman. Suited up in an avant-garde aesthetic and equipped with challenging high-concept theatrics and a warm, gently wavering voice, he explores all the facets of New York nightlife and the Milky Way and incorporates them into his grand cosmic opera.

ON INFLUENCES

His most recent release, Holy Hands Vol. 2—released via Coconut Shake Records on Feb. 2, but recorded in the distant future—charts his travels through space and time as he interacts with a cast of vivid, surreal characters

ON BLAZING TRAILS

The one good thing my dad did for me was accidentally take me, my cousin Zieke, and my brother Jesse to see “To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar.” He had no idea what it was. We did. We lived for that movie. That movie stirred a rebellion in me like no other. I think every artist who is making work that is personal is blazing their own

I’m a Moonman with a plan. I cough up glitter after my shows. There’s a lot about me that sets me apart from my contemporaries, but I’m mostly looking for those things that bring me together with other artists and listeners.

ON SECRET PASSIONS

I will watch any horror movie. My first movie memory was “Night of the Living Dead.” My grandma and I watched horror movies my whole life. She raised me on the macabre. We also used to hide and scare each other all

the time. One time, I thought I gave her a heart attack, because she turned red and grabbed her chest. I started to call 911 before I heard her laughing at me. She was pretending. She was a sick, sick woman. And I loved her for it.

ON FINDING YOUR PLACE IN THE UNIVERSE

Before I was a Moonman, I was just a simple Earthling. Who got beaten and kicked around and called fag and was laughed at for not being what I was supposed to be. I tried to be invisible as best as I could, but I just couldn’t help being me. I liked shiny things. I like strange clothes, and I liked to dance light on my feet. Well, I danced so light that I found zero gravity. I made my own spacesuit that keeps me warm on cold nights and is so sparkly that you can see it all the way past Pluto. I still get laughed at— and called fag—but it’s really hard to hear that noise when you’re listening to the warm hum of a meteor shower. The light that you shine is yours, and yours alone. 

SHIFTING THE FOCUS FROM THE INDIVIDUALS WHO CREATE THE BEST ALBUMS TO TAKE AN INSIDE LOOK AT THE BEHIND-THE-SCENES JOBS THAT KEEP THE INDUSTRY RUNNING. GO BEYOND THE MUSIC AND MEET THE PEOPLE WHO KEEP YOUR FAVORITE BANDS IN THE PUBLIC EYE…

could go to and photograph. After a little while, I was putting out work that I was really proud of and started reaching out to publications in order to shoot bigger shows at real venues. I still love going to shows and photographing a show, but at this point, I’m much more interested in the moments that happen backstage, before and after and all that time in-between.” What are her thoughts on being a touring photographer? “My personal favorite part of being a tour photographer is being able to capture all of the moments offstage. The bonding that happens on tour happens in the van, it happens in gas stations, it happens on 3 a.m. detours. I feel so honored to be let into the world of these artists who create such beautiful, important music. I’m much more interested in the aspect of human connection that comes with touring than just getting a chance to capture artists perform. That said, I’m wildly excited to photograph Diet Cig on tour with Bleachers this May, and while I know the live shows will be so special, I think the moments offstage will be really magical.” Besides photography, Dubin is a fantastic director. She has directed music videos for Half Waif, Diet Cig, Caracara, and The Superweaks. How did she progress into directing, and how does she help create visuals for music? “I think my progression into video work stemmed from me wanting to have a stronger connection with artists I really loved that went further than just taking photos of their live

PHOTOS: ASHLEY GELLMAN

hilly is a busy place for music. The bubble and scene there have produced a healthy amount of our favorite underground and mainstay acts. With a constant supply of musicians, there’s an equally high demand for people to help capture the bands’ aesthetics and bring them into new focus. That’s exactly the job for Em Dubin. She began her venture into the music industry as a senior in high school, interviewing and shooting bands around her area for a project that is still ongoing, The Duby Scoop. She continued to progress to more and more work behind the camera. Dubin has taken her talents to the road, but

shows. I got very into filming acoustic sessions for a while, making dozens of them with sites like Table Three Media and The Alternative—two publications who really saw something in me from the very start and who I’m always very grateful for. From there, I started making more narrative-driven music videos for friends like Weller and The Superweaks, where it was more about building a whole world that fit with the song rather than capturing a specific moment in time.” “Working on the music videos for ‘Harvard’ and ‘Maid of the Mist’ with Diet Cig was so special because Alex [Luciano] and Noah [Bowman] have a really great grasp on the world they want to create, and helping them bring that to life with film just really felt like an honor and a chance to stretch my wings a little bit. […] I’m really proud of all the work I’ve made since I started, but ‘Maid of the Mist’ felt like my first big step into the role of ‘professional director’ and not just ‘friend who’s good with a camera.’” Her advice to people looking to get behind the camera? “It’s not about your gear. Someone can have the most expensive camera in the world, but if you don’t know how to properly frame your subject, it won’t make a difference. I think it’s helpful to start small and simple and really outgrow your gear instead of trying to play catchup with ‘professional’ gear you may not need yet. A basic camera body with manual functions and a 50mm prime lens will take you so much further than you’d think.” 

we’ll let her explain that—touring is a wild experience best brought to life by people like her! How does she keep her drive for shooting bands? “I realized, after a little while, that I had my camera in my hands with me at these shows in order to film the interviews after, and I was sort of naturally compelled to start shooting live. Going to college in Philadelphia provided me with this really incredibly opportunity to keep shooting shows nonstop, because there was always a show in someone’s basement that you

about myself and the people I love and care about.”

F E AT U R I N G P O E T / E S S AY I S T H A N I F A B D U R R A Q I B

At the time of this conversation, Abdurraqib is home in Columbus, Ohio, a brief and increasingly rare respite from a busy schedule promoting his second book, “They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us.” Published in November 2017 and comprised of essays from The New York Times, MTV, and Pitchfork, as well as previously unpublished pieces, “They Can’t Kill Us…” is the result of Abdurraqib’s lost weekend in Provincetown. It’s a study on race, culture, and Carly Rae Jepsen. Whether he’s writing about a friend’s suicide through the lens of Fall Out Boy’s meteoric rise or Migos and Johnny Cash and the trouble with personas, he approaches every story with thoughtfulness and respect. Abdurraqib reminds us that all music is worthy of consideration. “I don’t ever want to be the old guy who’s listening to songs and telling people younger than me that the things they’re listening to are bad or stupid. I think there’s a lesson to be found in adjusting the way I am hearing and adjusting what I am asking of the music I listen to,” he says. “The work of the critic is to be wrong and to be comfortable in your wrongness enough to seek out something that helps to explain that to the world better. I want nothing more than to be so wrong about music that it leads me to these great moments of discovery in songs that I would have never considered listening to before.”

wo years ago, Hanif Abdurraqib drove to Provincetown, Massachusetts, in December. The beach town was deserted “except for the town drunks and the bars that kept open to serve them,” as he puts it. Abdurraqib went to Provincetown with one purpose: to find out what type of writer he wanted to be. He didn’t exactly succeed—but that’s OK.

PHOTO: ANDY CENCI

“If I could answer that question, I would stop writing,” Abdurraqib says. “I thought I could go there and find that answer, but thankfully, I didn’t. My hope is that every time I sit down to write, I’m a different writer, which I didn’t think about then. It is in consonance with the type of person I am. It is in consonance with what I’m learning or what I’m going through or what I’m finding out

Abdurraqib is praised for his use of language—which often reads as lyrical—and his ability to weave together personal stories and cultural touchstones in a way that is poignant, insightful, and expansive. He has established himself as one of the leading voices in cultural criticism, a feat made even more impressive when you consider the reaction his writing got when he first started. “It’s funny as I think back now. So many of the complaints about my music criticism were things that it’s being praised for now,” he says. “In 2011 or ‘12 or so, a lot of people were saying, ‘It’s too flowery’ and ‘It’s getting away from the songs too much’ and ‘There’s too much poetic language in it.’ I wasn’t making enough money to keep writing music stuff, so

I decided to try something else, try putting some of the poetic language to use.” This decision led him to poetry and the thriving community of poets in Columbus. Through attending open mics, befriending poets, reading books, writing bad poems and making them better, Abdurraqib found a welcoming outlet for his work, eventually publishing a book of poetry, “The Crown Ain’t Worth Much,” in 2016. “I really took to poetry because it felt like I was being told repeatedly that what I was doing in music criticism wasn’t working, and I found this thing with people telling me, ‘You have room to work here,’” he says. “I was just trying to have fun and create consistently. And then, I found a voice that worked for me and a style of writing that worked for me. I found a way to bridge these voices, this critic’s voice and this poetic voice. That felt like I found a new home.” For him, music is often the bridge between poetry and prose. “My goal is to look at the world through a lens of what I’m listening to,” Abdurraqib says. “A way to do that and also not close myself off completely is to think about how what I’m listening to informs the world or how it brings me closer to the world I live in or what threads are resting underneath the music I love. My goal is always to write to figure that out. So much of my writing is a failure to figure out the bigger picture I’m trying to see through. I don’t think failure’s a bad thing. I think failure is opening me up to new and exciting ways of hearing.” 

“A lot of emotional labor was put into feeling comfortable with certain words being on paper,” he admits. “I personally overthink things quite a bit, so I would change the lyrics if I felt that doubt that comes creeping on from overthinking, but the ‘tone’ of each adjustment was the same as the last, so I knew it was coming from an honest place.” “Anytime we are asked what the songs are about,” Baldwin continues, “I say ‘destructive human behavior.’ That theme sticks around, because that behavior is still relevant. It’s difficult not to wake up with frustrations, whether they be personal or with the world at large. I’ve never been able to write about my specific issues, so I focus on the wider range.”

NO ANSWERS, NO SILVER LININGS- LACE

INTERVIEW WITH CRAIG MICKLE AND JOSH BALDWIN BY NICHOLAS SENIOR

There are a growing number of acts highlighting the shared musical backbone of noisy post-punk and vitriolic hardcore, though few are quite as promising and potent as Lace. Their debut LP, Human Condition, out now via Funeral Party Records, emphasizes the Houston band’s strengths and hints at greater heights—and life’s greater lows—yet to come. Coupling musical

venom with honest lyrical aggression, Lace’s knotted hardcore is a revelation, marrying an unhinged and experimental attitude with an open window into their souls.

Mixing mood with the ferocity of key influences such as Dismember, Nihilist, Autopsy, and Darkthrone, Finland’s Ghastly create a netherworld of gripping death metal. Signatures of doom and black metal swirl in a typhoon of morbid smog. Ghastly leader Ian J. remarks on their 2011 demo, Death Is Present, “It gave me a boost to do more and explore my musical path.” The path is forged with flames as J. handles guitars, drums, and bass and Gassy Sam slays on vocals. Now, Johnny Urnripper adds guitars and vocals.

victory. Damian Herring of Horrendous mastered Death Velour after Ghastly utilized their rehearsal space to record. “Recording Death Velour wasn’t easy,” J. shares, “for example, equipment didn’t work well and crashed down many times. On the other hand, you cannot have a decent product of art without suffering. Damian has mastered both albums and has done a good job once again.”

Ghastly bore their severely punishing second LP, Death Velour, on April 20 via 20 Buck Spin. “Funny enough, both [our 2015 debut Carrion of Time and Death Velour] were done almost a similar way, but you learn while exploring the world of recording,” J. states. “Comparing the music on both albums, Death Velour is more advanced than Carrion of Time. It has more depth to it.” That depth results in a plodding pace yet yields a triumphant feel. The simmering black metal staccato guitars and reticent drums announce the music much like a warrior march declaring

Guitarist Craig Mickle notes that the album stemmed from a desire to create abrasive and heavy music, but it took some welcome unexpected turns. “Before recording, we

didn’t anticipate the process or finished product to be as moody and chaotic as it turned out,” he says, “but as we listened to the songs coming together, I think we all saw a palette that we could really expand on.” Vocalist Josh Baldwin acknowledges that Human Condition was a difficult collection of songs for him to find the right words for.

Despite his words, comfort clearly isn’t on the agenda in Human Condition, but based on this stirring debut, existential angst suits Lace just fine.

LAID TO REST IN DARK VELOUR-GHASTLY PHOTO: SAARA KUJANSUU

Just as he returned to Herring, J. also revisited the same artist, Riikka Pesonen, for both LPs. “Both album covers are top notch,” he asserts. “They go hand in hand with the music on each album and create an atmosphere that’s unique.” However, the image evoked by velour, the fabric, may belie the visceral, grating aggression of death metal. J. accepts that. “I like to hear people’s interpretations of the title,” he says. “It’s something that is not set in stone and gives your imagination room to develop ideas. On the other hand, wouldn’t you like to be shrouded in the comfort of a dark velour, rather than the basic white silk, when the energy has left your body?” Touché. I’ll preorder the casket now.

Unlike other bands who aim to shed light on the darkness, Lace are merely concerned with the catharsis of exploring the darkness. There are no silver linings here. “Writing in a way that tied a neat little bow at the end of it would seem incredibly disingenuous to the way I may feel or a listener may feel,” Baldwin notes. “I don’t think there is any answer to be offered, but being able to perform these songs genuinely and emotionally is a temporary comfort in itself.”

INTERVIEW WITH IAN J. BY HUTCH

West Thebarton are a seven-piece garage rock band from Adelaide, Australia. Set to release their new album, Different Beings Being Different, through Violent Soho guitarist James Tidswell’s Domestic La La Records on May 18, they are poised to join a growing number of Australian bands making a name for themselves beyond The Land Down Under. Quick-witted vocalist and sometimes guitarist Reverend Ray is candid about the initial difficulties of working with such a large group. “At first, it was hard. Like, really hard,” he admits. “Having said that, though, everyone now just kind of knows what they need to do in order for everything to run smoothly.” According to Rev, as he prefers to be called, the band’s members bring a wide variety of influences to the table. “With seven of us, it’s a bit hard to have one particular influence that everyone has, but there’s definitely music that a few of us get into hard,” he elaborates. “Soul and garage rock are definitely the biggest influences on the band as a majority. I like to think that a lot of the music we try to write and play live is like soul music on speed.”

The gregarious Rev speaks excitedly about the music scene in his home country. “Australia’s great!” he exclaims. “I can’t speak for every scene, but the rock [or] garage [or] whatever-box-we-fit-into scene is awesome. Super healthy, and there’s very little trivial competition or crap like that.” His relatively isolated home city has improved considerably too. “Adelaide’s really grown a lot since I started playing shows in the scene,” Rev says. “Adelaide bands have really put their foot forward on a national level, and as a native, it’s cool to see how far we’ve come as a city.”

ACE AUSSIE TUNES- WEST THEBARTON

West Thebarton are anxious to get the infectious, energetic music on Different Beings Being Different in front of a live audience, and they have a number of highprofile gigs lined up for the summer. “We’re heading to Europe in the middle of the year, so thankfully, we’ll be escaping the cold,” Rev says. “We’re playing Reading and Leeds Festival, as well as some other cool festivals around the place, so we’re all just itching at the bit to get over and play them.”

INTERVIEW WITH FRONTMAN REVEREND RAY BY TOM CRANDLE

SUCH A SAD SOUND-NO HOPE/NO HARM PHOTO: SCOTT MURRY

came back out of the woodwork and started saying all this horrible shit,” O’Neil explains, “but I think that, both myself and Aaron, who write the songs together, we kinda grew up on The Smiths, and it turned us into sad bastards in a lot of ways.”

The current political climate in the States is as hazardous as ever. No matter which direction we turn, there’s something awful happening. It can leave one feeling apathetic. Boston band no hope/no harm capture this numbness on their self-released debut EP, Swimming in the Charles. While strolling along said Charles River, vocalist Luke

O’Neil speaks with a baritone cadence that reflects his output: slow, contemplative, and consistently agitated. Just what one might expect from a band who pulled their name from a lauded Smiths track.

Even when no hope/no harm are writing love songs, it comes with a dark humor. In their poppy emo track, “Toxic Baby,” a couple’s passion is compared to taking a dip in the Charles. It wouldn’t be the cleanest, most joyous experience, nor is the relationship at the center of the song. “[I] insert a little bit of Boston’s geographical sense of living into some of the songs,” O’Neil confirms. “I feel like that makes a specificity of place, it really helps people relate—it’s real. Even if you’re never going to come here, you might get a little sense of what it’s like. It’s not all Red Sox assholes. There’s another side to us too.”

“When [vocalist and guitarist] Aaron [Perrino] and I named the band, Morrissey

The band prove this with sliding guitars and a twang that one may not expect from a

California’s Gods Of Mount Olympus— fronted by Brian Wahlstrom on keys and vocals—play piano-centric punk with a rock beat and a touch of jazz. They describe themselves as “Billy Joel on speed.” Wahlstrom and drummer Paul Rucker of Armchair Martian founded the band as a duo in 2013, and they later added former Unwritten Law guitarist Steve Morris and Matt Riddle of No Use For A Name fame. Now, they’ve released a debut self-titled EP, originally available digitally via Joey Cape’s One Week Records, then on vinyl through Bird Attack Records.

It’s definitely not Billy Joel. The music hits hard like a rowboat in a hurricane, a four-man crew pushing against the tide. Wahlstrom explains Rucker’s backbeat, noting, “Honestly, I wouldn’t be able to do it without Rucker, because he totally understands the vibe that I’m going for when I write a song. He’s not someone who goes, ‘Oh, what would Ben Folds do here?’ You know what I mean? He goes, ‘Let’s fucking shred this thing.’ He’s not afraid to go faster, and that’s what I want.”

INTERVIEW BY WITH VOCALIST LUKE O'NEIL BY SCOTT MURRY

Is their sound just punk rock? “I’m a Propagandhi fan, a Lagwagon fan, of course, and that was my influence growing up, big time,” Wahlstrom says. “I think our next record we’re working on right now, our full-length, is gonna be a lot more aggressive and more fast. So, it might lean more toward punk. I’m not quite sure. What I like about it is that it doesn’t really have a category.”

What really makes Gods Of Mount Olympus special is their piano-forward approach. “I would consider myself a purist when it comes to the piano,” Wahlstrom says. “I have a lot of people, when I’m doing studio work, they go, ‘Hey, throw a little organ on there, throw a little MOOG,’ and I’m like, ‘I really only play piano!’ I think I can play those other things, but I love just focusing on that one instrument. I’m not sure why, I

track like “Punch a Nazi in the Face.” Rather than focus too literally on politics, no hope/ no harm harness a feeling. “[Trump’s] such a collection of clichés and stereotypes that it almost neuters you from being able to address them head-on,” O’Neil says. “They’re already ridiculous.” Ultimately, he feels this administration is further breaking down our freedoms. “It’s like with Sinclair TV news stations,” he adds, “they all have the same stories coming out of one central space. I feel like that’s the same thing with media and music. It has no geography or sense of place.” Thankfully, no hope/no harm are committed to restoring a localized approach. Focusing on Boston, their personal stories of satire and struggle are able to transcend location by being inherently human. It still doesn’t make me want to swim in the Charles, though. That’s likely to cause typhoid.

PIANO PUNK- GODS OF MOUNT OLYMPUS

INTERVIEW WITH BRIAN WAHLSTROM BY JOSHUA MARANHAS just—growing up, Billy Joel and that Elton John kind of sound was what I always loved. You don’t hear a lot of extra stuff when they’re playing.”

tal replication of music, and it’s percussive and melodic. So, you can do almost everything.”

“I think that you can do a lot with the piano,” he concludes. “I mean, it’s a horizon-

Much like those famous flying saucers in ‘50s sci-fi films, Emeric Levardon’s Hollywood Burns debut, Invaders—out now via Blood Music—has come out of nowhere, and it doesn’t come in peace. The album abruptly abducts your perceptions of synthwave by daring to broaden the musical scope beyond the ‘80s. Sure, the boisterous and throbbing basslines and dance-floor-ready synth melodies will warm any cyberpunk’s heart, but Invaders is equal parts Perturbator and John Williams, Jerry Goldsmith, or Goblin. Seriously, there’s a song on the record that will incite a trickle of fear in anyone who has seen “Suspiria”— before working its way down to your shaking hips. Invaders works so incredibly well because Levardon expertly melds the silly with the serious, the synth with the cinematic. Few records are so visual in telling a story. It’s a testament to the Parisian artist’s talent that his retro stylings feel decidedly unique rather than like a dated homage. “For this project, I tried reinvent the myth of the saucers to make them scary again,” he explains. “Saucers look very naïve and childish now. I was trying to make them scary again, which is not that easy. [The album’s

visual artist and I] wanted to build on the idea of ‘What if these saucers were made in the deepest flames in Hell, something with no mercy?’ It’s not necessarily satanic, just made out of pure evil. It was very far from the ‘50s saucers.” “What I like,” he continues, “is the contrast between the cheesy monsters and the very serious. The Theremin sounds very naïve and silly, and the music around it is very serious. The contrast makes it interesting. It’s all fun. I don’t take it or myself very seriously.” Invaders sounds so cinematic because, despite his obvious musical skill, Levardon is a cinephile first and foremost. “I am more of a cinema lover than music lover,” he confirms. “I’m more influenced by movies and shows than music, especially Hollywood movies from the ‘80s to early ‘00s. I guess that’s probably why I chose my name.” Much like that ode to campy Hollywood, “Mars Attacks,” Hollywood Burns aims to put some menace back in the alien mythos, all while having a bit of fun along the way.

INTERVIEW WITH EMERIC LEVARDON BY NICHOLAS SENIOR

A SALVE FOR INVISIBLE WOUNDS- LUME PHOTO: JAE AMEY

INTERVIEW WITH BASSIST DYLAN HULETT BY JOSHUA MARANHAS Shoegazing, heavy, post-hardcore—Chicago’s Lume are all of it, and they are more. Defining post-hardcore gets more difficult each day, as hardcore grows beyond the music many artists grew up with. “We were in a little bit heavier hardcore bands growing up,” bassist Dylan Hulett says. “[When] I initially went to my first local shows, the scene we grew up in Port Huron, Michigan, was solely based around

hardcore. That was kind of the idea in the back of our minds this whole time. As we get older, we’ve kind of strayed further and further from that type of genre. Definitely, we’ll always have roots in that for sure.”

Being punk rock in Edmonton, Alberta, requires you to give a shit according to drummer Garrett Kruger from The Allovers. The vast country means that playing shows across Provinces can take 12-hour drives. Bands “have to fucking grind,” he explains. Playing music requires tenacity. That spirit is displayed on their debut full-length, Yer Guises, out via Anxious And Angry Records on May 18.

finish landscaping, then spend the evening practicing the demos. The film score may not have happened, but The Allovers are definitely happening. “It was in his demos where I saw, like—not the charm, but I was like, ‘Man, there’s something about these songs. It’s gotta be explored further than just Matt sitting in his basement,’” Kruger says. “It was happenstance how we came to be, but from the point that we wrote the first songs collectively, that weren’t just Matt’s demos, it was like, ‘It’s on!’”

Writing records in the winter helps. “I think it has to do with the isolation in the winter times, right?” Kruger says, “[In] wintertime, you kind of hunker down in the jam space three or four days a week, rehearsing, writing and stuff. Then, when spring comes, it can’t come soon enough. You just want to be out playing.” The Allovers came together accidentally. Guitarist Matt Pahl was demoing songs for a movie score he was writing, and Kruger and bassist Paul Arnusch would

SONIC ABDUCTION- HOLLYWOOD BURNS

Those roots are apparent on their sophomore LP, Wrung Out, released via Equal Vision Records on April 20, but Equal Vision has long

Yer Guises sounds like a product of Canadian winter: being stuck in the jam space, rehearsing for months—or in their case, years. Writing began around 2010 and fully formed after three revisions. “It was originally supposed to come out then, and then, that label folded,” Kruger says of the delay. “A couple years later, it was supposed to come out on a label out of Ontario, [but] the recording that we did the second time through, we didn’t

been a space to workshop new ideas. From Ray Cappo’s thinking between Youth of Today and the creation of Shelter to Converge’s Jane Doe, it’s where undefined artists find a place to define themselves. “I thought about that when we initially went forward,” Hulett says. “Maybe nowadays, it’s a little strange, [but] the older people who know Equal Vision from back in the day can listen to this album and kind of relate a little bit.”

ways of writing music, ways of sounding. Like textures, tones—it’s hard to pinpoint a band when they’re taking influences from all over.” If healing has a genre, a sound, a category, then Wrung Out is healingcore. “It’s kind of [about] carrying on, and it feels good to let it all out and get this record out, move past it emotionally,” Hulett concludes. “[It] helps with the healing process.”

Lume have experienced the ultimate loss— the death of friends to suicide and drug overdoses—and Wrung Out was written during a time of coping and overcoming pain. The record gave the Midwest band the latitude to explore themselves. “Emotions were all over the place, like ‘Could we have helped them?’ ‘Could we have done something to help this?’ ‘Why did this person decide to do this?’” Hulett recalls. “The mental illness factor, the addiction factor, all these things were playing through our heads.” With all of that going on, Lume were able to grab a million feelings and cross several genres. Hulett describes his experience as “mixing so many feelings and emotions and

THE GREAT PUNK NORTH- THE ALLOVERS

INTERVIEW WITH DRUMMER GARRETT KRUGER BY JOSHUA MARANHAS like it. So, then, we benched it again. Then, finally, we recorded the current version of it. Every time we’ve recorded it, we’ve written new songs. ‘Rinky Dink’ wasn’t even written when the first one was supposed to come out. It sort of was a real slow build. But as the recording

stands, this is the right one. [It’s the] most refined with the best songs.”

The two most important parts of a map are the legend, which explains its various symbols and markings, and the compass, which indicates direction. Yes, there was a time when people had to learn how to read and interpret maps, lest they become aimlessly lost. Southern Californiabased alternative rockers Modern Maps established their legend and compass from the start. Their Rise Records debut, hope you’re happy., out June 1, shows that the trio are masterful musical cartographers, building off shared experiences and sprouting from self-discovery to chart a sound that’s as assured as it is astoundingly entertaining.

These 11 songs came from us expressing ourselves in our most honest form.”

Of the band’s sonic compass, vocalist Trever Stewart says, “The sound of this record came from growing up as emo kids and listening to bands like The Cure, The Used, and Saosin. There was never a moment where we actually ‘chose’ a direction for our sound, because from day one, we’ve all carried the same influences as artists. Our sound came naturally.

However, Stewart acknowledges that finding the group’s True North required some self-reflection and Lewis and Clarktype discovery. While it may just be one symbol on the album’s legend, there’s meaning behind its honest lyrics. “Writing honest music can be a very painful experience,” the vocalist explains. “We learned that the painful chapters in our

Modern Maps were able to connect with the past to create the sound of their future, and trekking north for tracking allowed for old connections to come into play. “hope you’re happy. was tracked over a six-month period in Portland, Oregon,” Stewart shares. “I actually grew up just south of Portland, so we were able to include some of our lifelong friends in the writing and recording process, which really made us comfortable and allowed us to not to hold back when producing this record.”

SALT FLATS ALT FOLK- REGAN ASHTON

PHOTO: ERIN MATHIEU

INTERVIEW BY JOHN B. MOORE Regan Ashton’s decision to put out his first solo record was not spur-of-the-moment. In fact, the Problem Daughter vocalist has been holding onto some of these songs for a decade. “I get super excited to do a solo record, and then, something will come up with Problem Daughter, which will make me say, ‘All right, fuck this. I wanna jam

with my dork-ass friends,’” Ashton says. “I suppose the downtime I had between [2016’s] Fits of Disorganized Boredom and our new record, coupled with on and off substance abuse and not feeling too great about myself, pushed me to do something on my own—actually, finish this shit, you know?”

Slow Mass set high expectations with their 2016 EP, Treasure Pains, delivering a sampling of confident post-hardcore that flashed promise. It was enough to earn touring slots alongside mewithoutYou and Rozwell Kid, as well as some early buzz in the press. Given the band’s pedigree, that probably shouldn’t have come as a surprise. Slow Mass guitarist Josh Parks tours with Into It. Over It. and previously played in Former Thieves, while drummer Josh Sparks—no, that’s not a typo—spent time in all three bands before departing to join Minus The Bear in 2017.

profile, they’ve opted to let their music stand on its own. “It wasn’t a huge concern, but [it was] a little bit of an overlapping concern for a while having members playing in other projects, just making sure that it didn’t overshadow anything that we were doing,” Webb says. “It was a goal of ours to start something completely new.”

But don’t call Slow Mass a side project. “To view it as a side project wouldn’t do justice to the love and care we put into the band,” guitarist and vocalist Dave Collis says. Indeed, they are a full-time band—rounded out by bassist and vocalist Mercedes Webb and new drummer Dave Maruzzella—who come second to no one else. Rather than leverage their connections to raise their

Just as Slow Mass are more than the sum of their associated acts, their sound is more than a facsimile of their influences, drawing on everything from the early Dischord catalog to folk and noise rock—the band’s website describes them as “Chicago weirdo rock.” The results speak for themselves with On Watch, the band’s debut full-length, out May 11 on LandLand Records. Familiar in feel yet distinct in execution, the band reach beyond tired tropes and genre clichés to truly create something of their own. In keeping with Slow Mass’ collectivist approach, there’s no singular dominant player or personality here. The end product is al-

MUSICAL CARTOGRAPHY- MODERN MAPS

INTERVIEW WITH VOCALIST TREVER STEWART BY NICHOLAS SENIOR lives are just lessons to be learned and material for our art. Going forward, we’ve realized that we were built for this and that we are so excited for the road ahead, no matter how challenging it may be.”

will be pinned on their passionate, powerful songs and earnest lyricism. They’re the real deal—even if reading maps isn’t your thing.

With all the pieces etched in papyrus, the band’s map to success is starting to materialize, and Modern Maps’ evolution

The result is the six-song EP, ...And the People You Always Have With You, out May 11 via La Escalera Records. The San Diego label also put out the last Problem Daughter album. “I’ve been sitting on these songs, some of them for up to 10 years. Can you believe that?” Ashton says. “‘Scumbag’ and ‘Junkyard Parakeet,’ they were written billions of years ago by my dear friend and unofficial mentor, Erin Tooke. All of these songs were written and considered for Problem Daughter. In fact, the fourth track, ‘Anywhere But Here,’ is a Problem Daughter song. It’s off our second record, [2010’s With Open Hearts and Empty Hands].” Despite sharing a song, Ashton’s solo album is definitely a departure from the music of Problem Daughter, taking a more alt country and folk detour. “I grew up in a shithole town called Spanish Fork, Utah. You pass it going south from Salt Lake City toward Vegas,” he says. “It is a cowboy town. I got beat up, made fun of by ‘good

PHOTO: MADI ELLIS

ole boys’ and rednecks, but I’ve always liked country music. Although I pushed against it for so long, that part of the town kinda stuck. Better that than the racist, meth-loving parts, that’s for fucking sure. So, I made a country album.” When asked if this is just a one-off project, Ashton admits to being unsure. “I don’t really know. I like having the opportunity to put out different kinds of records and not having any down time,” he says. “I get really fucking dumb and self-destructive when I have nothing better to do. However, I don’t like playing solo as much as I do with my friends in Problem Daughter. I think my main focus will be cranking out records with Problem Daughter, and [I’ll] release solo shit in between.”

CHICAGO WEIRDO ROCK- SLOW MASS

INTERVIEW WITH DAVE COLLIS AND MERCEDES WEBB BY BEN SAILER ways the result of collaborative effort, reflecting the full scope of their creative input and diverse backgrounds. “I don’t think any of us have come to a song where we’re like, ‘Let’s write a song like this,’” Webb says. “It’s all pieced together in a way that it’s impossible to pinpoint in the songs that ‘Oh,

this sounds like that,’ you know? I think that’s why we try to collaborate so much, so that we can create something completely authentic.”

RLYR

Without words, they speak, in long patterns and dissolving norms. The journey tunnels into deep emotion, a feeling of inclusion and progression. This is not your uncle’s prog. This is astral-scratch prog—a new language refined. RLYR—a band composed of Chicago luminaries from Pelican, Locrian, and, formerly, Russian Circles—are a force like the wind: every leaf twirls with unique appreciation. For this bunch, it’s all about being connected. “It’s really determined by being in a room together,” guitarist Trevor Shelley de Brauw notes of their approach to songwriting. “The songs turn out the way they are because of the particular people involved. It’s about playing off one another and expanding on the same principle.” That principle is based on instrumental music, something all three members have in common. While de Brauw plays with the dark sloggers in Pelican and power ambiance masters in Chord, drummer Steven

Hess splits time with experimental droners Locrian and dream pop duo Cleared, and bassist Colin DeKuiper is an ex-Russian Circles guy who also holds it down for sludgy post-rockers Bloodiest. The terrain is similar, but with RLYR, there’s more textural admittance, more trust and organic spill. “Pelican is harder, more based on the negative,” de Brauw says, “while RLYR is the flip. It’s about positivity.” RLYR’s second full-length, Actual Existence—released April 13 via The Flenser—has the sort of mood rearrangement that lifts inner bacteria to dance, causing endorphins to swim, your mind a runaway balloon. It’s geometric causality, a humming smile you can dream to. This is music that is absolutely connected and very wide in mind. “We rehearse the shit out of the songs,” de Brauw laughs. “What’s cool about this group is that it’s different. All three of us are all over the map in terms of our musical tastes. It’s a sonic journey.” Actual Existence pulls in a contemporary way. It’s music that is trusted and crafted to make slow inlays. Like a long walk to find reason within the numbing madness,

INTERVIEW WITH TREVOR SHELLEY DE BRAUW BY CHRISTOPHER J. HARRINGTON it exudes confidence and originality. There is no rush to please, no rush to flatten or consume—it simply breathes. Like the one touchstone band the three members can all agree on, RLYR’s progression is made in the connections of the attributes: the extensions appear like a story, an arc, music that is about distance. “One of the bands we all agree on is Yes,” de

Brauw says. “and [their 1974 studio album], Relayer, is one of their greatest records. So, we thought maybe Relayer for a band name. I searched Facebook, and there was some dad band doing covers called Relayer. Steve wanted a name with four letters, so we thought: RLYR.”

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LIFE IN VACUUM Life In Vacuum are a Toronto-based trio who take post-hardcore and screamo to the next level. Their critically-acclaimed 2014 full-length, 5, was the culmination of a series of EPs and the explosive 2010 Commander Clark LP—which garnered comparisons to Refused, Drive Like Jehu, and Comadre—but it felt like the band had finally found their footing and, more so, a distinctive voice. Under New Damage Records, they got a bit more raucous on April 27 with their new LP, All You Can Quit. When it comes to their musical identity, the biggest comparison is At The Drive-In, which vocalist and guitarist Sasha Chornyy explains is a compliment but also something they never planned for. “We weren’t trying to stick to any specific formula or previously established sound,” he says, “and we definitely weren’t keeping our list of influences in check. But I do personally love some of the albums by At The Drive-In, Refused, Drive Like Jehu— and I gotta mention that new Hot Snakes record, [Jericho Sirens], too. I guess every song sounds a bit like one of those bands to listeners in its own way. That’s what people relate to, but for us, it’s just jams that we made and play.” Chornyy makes it clear that Life In Vacuum have matured since their last album, and he adds, “While writing 5, we were able to do a

LIK The surest way to make good music that will stand the test of time is to stick to what you know and what you do well, and that is exactly what Swedish metallers Lik do on their sophomore record, Carnage, which hit shelves and digital libraries in all its sickening glory on May 4 via Metal Blade Records. “Basically, it’s the same as the last record, but with everything extra on top,” guitarist Niklas “Nille” Sandin explains regarding the album, “and by that, I don’t mean that we’ve added other elements like organs and flutes, but the guitar sound is grittier, the bass sounds like a freight train coming at you, and the drums are just perfect—so much punch without it feeling fake or triggered.” Building on the foundations that are already there seems to be the theme with Carnage, in a wonderful way that only fans of classic death metal will understand. Of course, it’s great when bands push the limits of genre-bending, riff-noodling, or introspective lyrics and themes, but there is something

PHOTO: BRIAN MCMILLAN

lot of preproduction on our own, and a lot of things got figured out ahead of time. […] With All You Can Quit, some songs were written a while ago, some right before we went in the studio, and a lot of things were a result of working with Josh Korody [of Fucked Up] who coproduced the album. He had a lot of pedals to play with and a lot of cool ideas, and we were able to just go nuts and improvise with sounds.” “Our vocals are way more stripped down here, and I think it turned out sounding closer to what we sound like live,” he continues. “While making it, we were generally in the mindset of not being afraid of trying new things and trying to not make the same sounding record again.” Chornyy maintains that it’s this fearless approach that guided their process. “We just knew that we didn’t want to limit ourselves with the sounds we are already comfortable with and wanted to make a record that stands out on its own,” he says. “At some point, we felt, ‘You never know what life will throw your way tomorrow. It could be the last Life In Vacuum record we get to make, so let’s make it count.’” The gamble has indeed paid off on All You Can Quit, as the band sound a lot more focused, expansive, and way louder than ever before.

I N T E R V I E W W I T H V O C A L I S T / G U I TA R I S T S A S H A C H O R N Y Y B Y R E N A L D O M ATA D E E N Chornyy ascribes a lot of this dynamic to bassist Geoff Albrecht, who joined their ranks just before recording. “It was a fun, laidback experience. Writing became more involved, and we were able to communicate within the band more than ever,” he explains. “Before, we would just jam the songs many times, over and over, until the structure would somehow craft itself—which sometimes was exhausting. This time, there was a lot more discussion going on about how to put them together and why we wanted to do certain things.” Chornyy—who migrated from Ukraine to Canada with his brother and drummer Ross Chornyy in 2004—indicates that All You Can Quit is, ultimately, about facing life’s challenges. “It’s generally about trying to

move on, to escape from things,” he concludes, “trying to quit inner vices and to quit certain people—and ultimately failing.”

to be said for pure death metal with slapstick lyrics about gore and plenty of crunchy, groovy riffs. “Since we did everything like we did with the first album, [2015’s Mass Funeral Evocation], I’d say that it hasn’t evolved a bit, to be honest,” Sandin laughs about Lik’s sound, “but it definitely sounds more massive. We worked with Lawrence [Mackrory at Dugout Productions in Uppsala] on the first album as well, and he knows exactly what we’re looking for since we’re into the good ole Stockholm sound.” The band rely on a similar ethos when it comes to lyrics. First of all, they choose not to publish any of their lyrics along with the music. Their intention isn’t to be elitist, but rather, they hope to challenge the listener to pay closer attention to the vocals. Regardless, they proudly admit that what can be heard on the record is standard-yet-classic brutal death metal fare. “It’s what you can expect from old-school death,” Sandin admits, “horrendous lyrics about everything from the undead to doctors you might wanna think twice before you book an appointment to. It’s a mixture of both fiction and reality.”

INTERVIEW WITH NIKLAS "NILLE" SANDIN BY ADDISON HERRON-WHEELER Lik are currently trying to tour and play shows as much as possible to get their music in front of the masses. The reception they get from playing live strongly affirms Sandin’s belief that old-school and classic death metal still has a solid fanbase. “It’s so rewarding to do an intense and sweaty gig in front of people who are just as much into it as you are,” he says. “We got our first taste of that in Germany a few years back. We

did a mini-tour there with our comrades in Overtorture. We always talked with people in the crowd before and after the gigs. Then, you could see firsthand that people are living for this kind of music still to this date.”

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FISTER When you’re at the top of your profession, they say you have “a leg up” on the competition, so what do St. Louis, Missouribased sludge band Fister have on their noisy contemporaries? For starters, their latest release—and first for Listenable Records, out on vinyl May 18—No Spirit Within, represents the pinnacle of the group’s doomy progression. The songs have a deadly precision, a haunting melodicism, and a hellfire fury. Fister don’t pack a punch so much as wield an army of musical mitts in the form of earth-leveling riffs. No Spirit Within is a beautifully exhausting listen, in large part due to the keen songwriting’s ability to wreak havoc on your ears, mind, and gut. Fister’s fourth studio album was the result of a tight schedule, and the band’s continued focus on making every record heavier than the last helped shape their best yet. Guitarist and vocalist Marcus James Newstead notes that their emphasis on aggression and texture worked to their advantage. “Since [2015’s] IV was just one long song with thematic changes, we wanted each song on this new record to have their own identities and to try to approach each song with a different attitude,” he explains. “There are some musical variances that I wanted to explore this time around, and since we had a really small window to actually write and record the album, we were into trying pretty much any wild idea we wanted to.”

“As we’ve gotten older as a band,” Newstead continues, “we’ve taken to being more mindful of composition rather than just jamming on a part over and over and jumping to another random riff. Those moments do happen, but more often than not, there’s some concrete inspiration behind it. A lot of the tension, release, and atmosphere in our later music comes from being more mindful of the composition as it’s perceived as a whole. It all stems from our mission of trying to step into darker and heavier territory each time we write new material.” Like each fist is paired with another hand, Fister wanted to couple the textured batch of sonic violence on No Spirit Within with themes centered on death. Newstead shares that the idea took root very early on in the band’s time together. “Death is all around us,” he asserts. “[Lead vocalist and bassist] Kenny [Snarzyk] came up with the album title about three years ago when we were driving back from the last day of our first West Coast tour. It holds true to the content on the album within the themes of the songs. It ranges from the terror of impending demise to the sheer ignorance humankind has of [the] sliver of time it has in this universe. The wide sweep of content ranges from the personal story of a ghost damned to float around with no afterlife because they led

INTERVIEW WITH MARCUS JAMES NEWSTEAD BY NICHOLAS SENIOR a horrible life to a front-row seat to the cosmic demise.”

Within, Fister’s spirit is present and willing and their flesh is anything but weak.

Despite this apparent lack of levity, Fister are far from being brooding blokes. “We all do our best to healthily channel our fury into the music,” Newstead acknowledges, “which is easy, because our world is truly fucked. We’re from a ‘small’ big city where we get literally every spectrum of societal engagement. You can’t help but see every side of how shitty people can be. Also, we all have deep, dark senses of humor and love to laugh, so we keep each other’s spirits in good shape.” Based on the results found on No Spirit

KOBRA AND THE LOTUS Some bands manage to convey the brutality and heaviness of metal and also balance the nuances, lyrical concepts, and clarity of heavy rock. Kobra And The Lotus, originating from Canada and known the world over for both their rock and metal roots, are one of those bands.

interesting nuances. These albums are more modern-sounding, but without losing that heavy metal essence that the band has always carried. We’ve introduced a balance between hard rock and heavy metal, as well as brought forward more of our individual characteristics into the music and vocals.”

“We’re a hard rock and heavy metal band with melodic yet crunchy guitar riffs and dynamic clean vocals, all with a modern flare,” vocalist Kobra Paige explains. “I’m most excited about the prospect of having new music out in the world once again. We’ve really come a long way in our sonic evolution, so it’s exciting to share it and represent something we proudly made together.”

As with all of their music to date, the lyrical structure behind the songs and the imagery and messages that go into the them are extremely important.

Kobra And The Lotus released the second part of their epic opus, Prevail II, on April 27 via Napalm Records. The first installment, Prevail I—also released by Napalm in May 2017—set the tone for a collection of music that conveys emotional intensity, and the band are still going strong with this second edition. “Prevail I and II are, without a doubt, our most virtuosic and dynamic bodies of work thus far in the history of the band,” Paige asserts. “There was massive collaboration within the songwriting, and it made for some very

“The lyrical content is very important to me,” Paige affirms. “To each writer their own, but for me, the only reason I’m in music is to feel a purpose through the message and how it affects people. I really want to encourage self-awareness. Even when I write lyrics about other people, I learn a lot about myself. There are so many reflections. Usually, if we are honest, we can find pieces of everything, good and bad, inside ourselves. I’m often inspired by a sound or a riff that I hear, and it will spark what the individual song is calling me for. Every sound has a color, an energy, and a story to tell.” Similarly, the musical composition of each song is also intentional, created to mirror the messages in the lyrics and complete the artistic structure of the record.

INTERVIEW WITH VOCALIST KOBRA PAIGE BY ADDISON HERRON-WHEELER “The composition was mostly organic and in-studio,” Paige says. “Every song had a unique order of creation. If we look at ‘Let Me Love You,’ for example, it was one of the few that had come into the studio as a demo, but it was hugely transformed musically into a completely new song. That is why we have the heavy version and the acoustic version.” Prevail II is a heavy metal masterpiece, and fans of Prevail I and the hard rock stylings of Kobra And The Lotus will not be disappointed.

DYLAN CARLSON After a sojourn in the U.K. exploring the history and folklore of the British Isles while performing under the moniker drcarlsonalbion—a period that saw collaborations with Steeleye Span’s Maddy Prior and The Hackney Lass, aka Rosie Knight—Dylan Carlson is now back in thoroughly American territory. The Seattle musician’s latest offering, Conquistador—released April 27 via Sargent House—is a meditation on the legends of Mexico and the American Southwest, tracing the real-life account of Spanish explorer Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca. Cabeza de Vaca, along with Alonso Castillo Maldonado, Andrés de Dorantes de Carranza, and Dorantes’ Moorish slave Esteban, was part of the doomed Pánfilo de Narváez expedition in 1528, and the four men were among the few who made it back to the Spanish colonies after a period of 20 years in the wilderness. As Carlson puts it: “Things didn’t go as planned, I guess you could say.” The album follows in a thematic chain that began with Carlson’s band Earth’s 2005 release, Hex; or Printing in the Infernal Method—a hypothetical soundtrack to Cormac McCarthy’s novel “Blood Meridian”—and his soundtrack, GOLD, composed to accompany the 2013 film of the same name. Yet, what it retains from his other more recent works is a sense of folk history and the mythic nature of storytelling. Though the actors in his latest work are real, Carlson’s approach to the tale dispenses

with textual sources in favor of a more openended interpretation. “The oldest history of the country and the landscape has been destroyed and lost and has to be discovered in different ways,” he explains. “There was a concerted effort to eradicate the native population, and then, the ones they couldn’t eradicate, to eradicate their languages and histories, and that has left the landscape wide open to a lot of interpretations. Then, the history that is there—obviously, because it’s written by the so-called winners—it doesn’t go back very far in some places. A lot of that is closed to the traditional methods of investigation: there’s no books, no maps.” Conquistador nonetheless forges its own distinctive sense of narrative, one as hypnotic and vast as the land its story depicts. The record’s track listing, with titles like “When the Horses Were Shorn of Their Hooves” and the despairingly dark “Scorpions in their Mouths,” resembles fragments of a half-forgotten tale, the meaning of which is lost or has been redefined by the teller. “I mean, it’s sort of how stories worked in the day,” Carlson says. “They change and grow and get added to and subtracted from. It’s similar in that way to how tales adapt to their environment and change.” Recorded by producer Kurt Ballou, Conquistador features contributions from fellow Sargent House artist Emma Ruth Rundle and Carlson’s wife, artist and

INTERVIEW BY LUCY BRADY dancer Holly Carlson, who appears on the album’s cover. Musically, it brings together many strands from Carlson’s earlier work, building on the interpretive model adopted during the making of Earth’s 2008 LP, The Bees Made Honey in the Lion’s Skull.

overarching motif of loss and rediscovery in an unknown and hostile land.

“I had musical ideas and motives, but the structure came during the recording process,” he shares. “In that way, it was similar to how [Earth’s 2011 and 2012] Angels of Darkness, [Demons of Light I and II] records were created. The structure is quite loose and improvised. Then, the last song, [‘Reaching the Gulf’], the return part, that was the most composed and the most structured.” This and the 13-minute epic of its eponymous opening track echo Conquistador’s

MOS GENERATOR Over the past 18 years, Washington’s Mos Generator have been generating some of the best stoner rock in the underground. Their take on Sabbathian-inflected jams has stood out from their fellow heavy rock brethren and sistren because of how grand and, well, classic the songs sounded.

range of influences as well,” he adds. “I’ve been wanting to bring more of my influences to the forefront of the Mos Generator sound for the past few albums, and I think Shadowlands has a nice blend of many styles from different eras: ‘70s, ‘80s, and ‘90s included.”

However, the group’s latest effort, Shadowlands, out May 26 via Listenable Records, finds Mos Generator spreading their musical wings in the best—and least expected—way possible. Vocalist, guitarist, and chief songwriter Tony Reed had two “aha!” moments that helped shape the band’s most impressive effort yet, and it all involved looking at art in a newly focused light.

Shadowlands really does sound like a record that successfully embraces a whole range of classic influences. There are at least four different decades of musical greatness present, yet the result is wonderfully cohesive and memorable. It’s the type of record you blast on a Friday afternoon while grilling up the first meal of the weekend.

First and foremost, Reed notes that the record that will bless fans’ ears in May went through a drastic transformation. “This record went through a lot of changes over the last year,” he explains. “The first draft of it had a mid-tempo feel with less dynamics. It was sonically more dense but didn’t breathe like the end result does. I had everything mapped out and even had a different title, but after we went on the road for seven weeks, I decided that the album needed some drastic changes. I wanted it to capture the energy that we project onstage, so scrapping some of the songs and writing new ones was the only way that could happen.” “The songs that I decided to use have a wider

Despite the positive emotions the album’s multifaceted sound generates, Shadowlands’ themes do lurk in a darker realm. “Lyrically, the album is very dark, and the artwork is a perfect interpretation of [that],” Reed notes. “The moment I saw Adam [Burke]’s painting is the moment I changed direction on the record and changed the title to Shadowlands. Here is the breakdown: I am the rider, and I’m trying to reach the light of the sun, which represents purity and goodness. The Specter represents the darkness we all possess. It’s not necessarily an evil presence, just something that keeps me from being as complete as I want to be.” That choice to take a deep, hard look at Mos Generator’s sound and a wonderful piece of

INTERVIEW WITH VOCALIST/GUITARIST TONY REED BY NICHOLAS SENIOR art by Burke spoke to Reed, and he didn’t shy away from being just as thoughtful in his own works. “Most of the lyrics are very transparent and introspective,” he shares. “It’s a style I’ve been doing over the last few albums, but it has really come to its zenith on Shadowlands. Unlike my lyrics in the past, on this album, you don’t have to guess at what I’m talking about. They are very direct and, sometimes, tell a side of me that is hard to admit. This is not a typical style in the hard rock genre, but I hope it can reach people on a human level. We all have things about us that we don’t like.”

AMORPHIS

Finnish powerhouse Amorphis are a household name to most metal fans. They’ve been around for 28 years and, for pretty much all of that time, have been considered a formidable force in the death, folk, and progressive metal worlds.

Now, they are releasing a new album, Queen of Time, on May 18 via Nuclear Blast, and regardless of their lengthy tenure, they’re really excited about it. “There are old, recognizable Amorphis elements, [but] there are also new things, like orchestral sections and real choirs,” guitarist Tomi Koivusaari explains. “Some of the things we used to make with keyboards, we wanted to execute with real instruments and real human voices. I can also easily say that this album is our deepest, most progressive, and most versatile to date. We wanted to make good music and accomplish everything that it takes. [We were] not thinking just how we should make a metal album, but overall—well, [a] great music album. There are so many layers and emotions inside the songs.” The group are definitely maintaining some of their standards when it comes to this release. They are still writing a lot of lyrics based on Finnish poetry and folklore and sticking with many of the tried-and-true

elements they have previously embraced as far as songwriting structure and overall sound. But they are also interested in making progress and driving the music forward. “When we started the band in 1990, we were really young, so naturally, we started to find new kinds of music styles and our tastes were getting wider musically. So, instead of trying to just stick [to] pure death metal and getting bored and having a lack of inspiration, [we] wanted to make music without limits to keep this fun and inspiring—like it should be in my opinion,” Koivusaari says. “I think every step we have made musically in [the] past reflects to how we sound right now. Even if there have been some strange experiments, thinking back, I think we had to do those.” “I would like to say that we sound like Amorphis, and that’s what we have heard from our fans too during these years,” he adds. “When we started, we of course took influences from bands we were listening to at the time, but nowadays, I think we are mostly taking influences from ourselves. Of course, everything we are listening to is still affecting what we do, but it is just refining what we think good music is.” While Koivusaari digs a lot of music and tries to embrace all kinds of sounds, he

I N T E R V I E W W I T H G U I TA R I S T T O M I K O I V U S A A R I B Y A D D I S O N H E R R O N - W H E E L E R definitely admits that metal has changed a lot since the group first started making music. For example, he points out that death metal used to be a lot more punk, whereas now, the focus is often on intricate song structure. In spite of these changes, he appreciates modern metal and hopes that the group’s fans will support the scene in general.

for Amorphis as they tour in support of the record over the next two years.

“Take a listen to our upcoming album, support [the] metal scene—especially these days—by going to shows, buying merchandise, and even buy the actual album as well,” he says. Pick up Queen of Time on May 18 and look

SPACE MERCHANTS For a band who take their name from the book that coined the term “muzak,” The Space Merchants’ new doozy of an album, Kiss the Dirt— out May 4 via Aqualamb Records—is anything but elevator music. The Brooklyn group’s sophomore record finds them traveling even farther than before, discovering new dive bars in another galaxy. This is the sonic equivalent of having an acid trip in the bathroom between Woodstock and a ZZ Top concert in ‘69. However, behind all the personality and smoke, groove and melody are the true leaders of this Starfleet. Kiss the Dirt was produced by Grammy-winning engineer James Brown, and his keen ear for character and melody worked wonders for The Space Merchants’ sound. “I felt like the first couple years we were playing together, we were kind of experimenting and trying to find our sound,” vocalist and keyboardist Ani Monteleone says. “Sometimes, we wrote songs that were jangly and poppy; sometimes, the songs came out super heavy and drone-y. In my head, I always had this idea of what the band sounded like, but when I heard it recorded back, it never sounded quite the way I imagined it—until after we recorded this album. James had this amazing way of pulling the best take out of all of us.” Vocalist and guitarist Michael Guggino agrees.

“As musicians, we are just the products of what we like,” he admits, “so, the style and writing seems natural to us. Sometimes, the style is conscious like ‘Reborn.’ I wrote that song after having both seen ‘The Last Waltz’ and Sleep live within a week of each other. It just begged the question why there are no songs that sound like Sleep covering The Band.” Musically, Kiss the Dirt sounds like it takes inspiration from just about every musical style and sound from the ‘60s and ‘70s, grinds it up into a fine powder, and offers it up as a sonic drug for the listener. “This was not an exercise in genre,” Guggino adds, “this is us playing the kind of music we think deserves to exist.” Lyrically, for a record that deals with chaos and mortality, the songs themselves delve mostly into rather intimate moments. It feels personal rather than pedagogic. “I like to talk about big concepts through rock ‘n’ roll words,” Guggino says. “Entropy is a thread that runs through all of the songs. The idea that things are flying apart and cooling down and there’s nothing you can really do about it translates well into punk and blues. It’s like Sisyphus: you have to learn to enjoy pushing the boulder up the hill. Otherwise, life is very hard. We are lucky that we get to turn our frustrations into art.”

I N T E R V I E W W I T H M I C H A E L G U G G I N O A N D A N I M O N T E L E O N E BY N I C H O L A S S E N I O R “I think it’s funny that our songs are all about such serious subject matter,” Monteleone interjects, “because, as a band, we are a bunch of goofballs. So, while we are singing about witches and death, we have a ton of fun together, which probably comes out in the songs.” While Kiss the Dirt is a serious release about rather sobering issues, above all else, it’s just a damn good time. There aren’t any other bands like The Space Merchants, so it’s a good thing they have become the best version of themselves as they travel around the galaxy in search of new inspiration and another whiskey bar to play.

PHOTO: CHRISTIAN MARTIN WEISS

he best sci-fi and fantasy often succeeds due to the strength of its world-building. The stronger your world, the more daring the directions you can take with each new episode. Such is the case for the excellent and exciting second chapter from German progressive metal group Alkaloid. Their sophomore record, Liquid Anatomy—due out May 18 via Season Of Mist—expands on what made their debut, 2015’s The Malkuth Grimoire, so impressive while rewriting the band’s musical and thematic playbook. The complex and mind-melting mix of spacey prog rock with truly monstrous death metal is still Alkaloid’s foundation, but the diverse sections of the band’s style have been stretched beyond their previous limits, resulting in a record that is strangely addictive and melodic, despite its musical density. Likewise, vocalist and guitarist Morean’s impressive narrative skill has been augmented on Liquid Anatomy. One of the band’s best attributes is their lyrics based on a wide range of sci-fi, fantasy, and horror concepts, and Morean has challenged himself to create even more vivid and vibrant worlds. “In such a collaboration of musicians, where each of us has their own world and the means to express it but, also, to constantly change it, the end result is pretty unpredictable, also to us, when the songwriting process starts,” he says. “In principle, every one of us is a composer and completely free to make whatever they want to make. This is one of the great

things about being in this band: total artistic freedom, no limits at all, and the unquestioning trust from your bandmates that whatever you come up with will be welcome.” Part of what makes Alkaloid such a unique entity is Morean’s lyrical focus, which has shifted over the years to a new paradigm in sci-fi and futurism. “Don’t get me wrong, fear, horror, destruction, and ugliness should always be a part of metal, because they best fit the emotions that the music kicks loose,” he explains. “Already, for a while, I’ve felt the need to also expand the range of emotions in my lyrics and vocals. I mean, how many songs can you write about the urge to kill, the glory of Satan, or any of the other metal clichés, before you have absolutely nothing new to say anymore? Besides that, I think that creation is a much more interesting subject or activity than destruction. Destruction is easy: just smash the damn thing with a hammer. Every idiot can do that, but to create requires vision, understanding, and dedication. It’s a much richer process.” He notes that this creative vision is a bit different than outright escapism, elaborating, “To me, it’s about discovery and exploration and the denial of limits. Maybe you can’t always change things where you are right now, but you always have the option to move on and look for more satisfying or more interesting things. People may imprison your body, but the fetters in your mind come only from yourself, and no one except yourself can ever take away your freedom to escape into

the worlds in your own mind. This is one of the absolute fundamentals of life for me.” “So, it’s not about being blind to reality or running away at all,” he continues. “It’s the knowledge that you’re free, that no one can ever imprison your mind or tell you what to think. Things like meditation, astral travels, fantasies, and theories, but also physical travels and being open to explore things you don’t know yet, are all expressions of this liberty. It doesn’t matter who or where you are. I mean, look at Stephen Hawking, for example, and how he has changed the understanding of our universe from a seemingly hopeless, un-free position. As we say in German, ‘die gedanken sind frei,’ [‘thoughts are free’], and I feel it’s my duty as a creative person to use that freedom to its absolute limit, so I can hopefully come back with fresh ideas to the ones who want to hear them.” When it comes to this world-building, how do these diverse cosmic ideas come to fruition? Morean laughs and notes that it takes time, patience, and a lot of research. “It usually starts with something really small: some detail you see or read or just some vague intuition of hidden depths in something you wouldn’t

notice at first,” he shares. “Then, that little seed incubates in the subconscious mind. In time, I become obsessed by it, and ideas start to come. If it’s a good idea, it gets bigger all the time, and before you know it, you have to build a whole universe.” “When you start fantasizing about the cosmos or biochemistry or geology or pretty much whatever, you soon find yourself chasing an infinite horizon of possibilities,” he notes. “I just hope that Alkaloid will exist long enough for me to feel I’ve truly and honestly said everything I have to say about those things. At the moment, it feels [like] even a hundred new albums wouldn’t be enough.” 

having lives as people in our 30s, and it isn’t as though killing ourselves 200 days a year on the road was boding well enough financially for us. Maybe it was a question of economics, which kind of sounds lame and not punk, but I also really enjoy having a semblance of financial security, so that’s what I’ve been focusing on the past few years. We’re trying to be a little bit more discerning than we have in years past, where we’d just quit our jobs to go on tour like it was no big deal.”

rowing up is still hard to do, but El-

Scare Industries. The band formed in 2007

way may have finally figured it out. At a crossroads in their punk rock careers, the Fort Collins, Colorado, band decided that, rather than calling it a day, they would self-record another album and not stress about what happened next. The result is For the Sake of the Bit, an eight-song song LP that speeds by in 26 minutes and will actually play at 45 rpm on vinyl.

under the moniker 10-4 Eleanor and became Elway after signing with the label in 2010, which infamously resulted in them catching heat from a certain NFL quarterback for choosing to share his last name. They toured extensively for years, but with all four members now entrenched in their professional lives—“Except for [drummer] Garrett [Carr], who is still living the punk lifestyle, doing whatever misty business he does,” Browne quips—the band spend less time on the road, instead devoting themselves to their careers. Browne recently returned to Fort Collins to take a software engineering job, guitarist Brian Van Proyen is a factory technician, and bassist Joe Henderer is finishing a master’s degree in Chicago to become a biology teacher.

“People are going to play it on the wrong speed a lot,” vocalist and guitarist Tim Browne jokes. “We wanted to make something short and punchy. It’s not a deeply thematic record and didn’t need a lot of fleshing out, so we just wanted to record all of the songs that we thought were the best. We wanted an album where all of the songs are good and are part of the vague mission statement of the record, and then, it just breezes by.” For the Sake of the Bit—available on vinyl May 4—is Elway’s fourth album for Red

“The last few years have been pretty lean in terms of Elway shows. Since Better Whenever came out in 2015, we’ve probably played only 20 shows, and that’s just because everyone in the band has their respective careers,” Browne explains. “We’ve been focusing on

Elway are digging into their holiday time for a Midwest and East Coast tour with Dead To Me and DMFK after the release of For the Sake of the Bit, which Browne says is dedicated to those who contribute to the music scene without pretense. “It seems like the older I get, the more I realize that one of the most poisonous things you can do as a person in a band is to pretend as though you creating these fourchord pop punk songs is your gift to the world and it’s really seriously important,” he asserts. “I just never really liked the idea of taking myself that seriously, and there are times that I can pinpoint in my past where I really was taking myself way too seriously. I was pretending that my rinky-dink punk band was something more than just a protracted hobby where I get to travel and share my art with people. It’s incredible that I get to do that, but I’m also not going to win a Nobel Prize and I should stop pretending I’m in the running for one.” Featuring some of the most mature songs the band have written, but still firmly en-

trenched in the four-chord melodic punk that gained them a loyal following, Elway’s latest album is the sound of a band with enough confidence to know they have nothing left to lose. “As we age, we try to do some different things and add different sounds. This is, by no means, our Jets To Brazil-style departure from punk music, because I just don’t think we’re talented enough to do something like that,” Browne says. “We have to do everything within a framework of the kind of punk rock that we’ve always played, but we were trying to venture out and get some weird pedals in the mix or just some parts of songs where there are different key changes or chord progressions. There are a lot of sevenths on this record, and that’s the third trick I have in my toolbelt that I’m finally using. But it was still piecemeal experimentation in the framework we’re stuck in, just because we’re such a slacker band.”



PHOTO: MICHELLE C. ROBERTS

he first thing that’s evident on Little Acts of Destruction, the second album by Red Hare—featuring members of ‘90s D.C. hardcore bands such as Swiz, Bluetip, and Sweetbelly Freakdown—is the urgency and immediacy of its 14 songs, which burn by in 31 minutes. In fact, album opener “Distractor” blazes by in less than 60 seconds, minus a short sample that announces, “Ladies and gentlemen, The Crusher!” “There’s a lack of redundancy in writing songs like that,” guitarist Jason Farrell says. “It’s something that I’ve come back around to, as I’ve certainly been guilty of blathering on in the past with other bands I was in. I remember being especially joyed that the first song on this new album came in under a minute. I was like, ‘Perfect!’ If the point of a song was made, why repeat it in a third verse?” Red Hare take cues from the bands they were originally inspired by growing up in the D.C. hardcore scene, the land of Dischord Records, where they have

again found a home for the May 11 release of Little Acts of Destruction, following up 2013’s Nites of Midnight. “Growing up and listening to The Faith or Minor Threat, I can remember the songs being short, but they never felt cut short, you know?” Farrell says. “There’s just an economy of energy on this new Red Hare album, and I really like that.” The four-piece are led by the enigmatic vocals of Shawn Brown, also the original singer of Dag Nasty, who have reformed in recent years. Brown, Farrell, and bassist Dave Eight also played together in Swiz and Sweetbelly Freakdown. They added former Garden Variety drummer Joe Gorelick to the mix to complete the Red Hare lineup. In the end, according to Farrell, friendship and creative collaboration with the people you trust wins the day. “I’ve known Dave since seventh grade, and I’d see Shawn at shows when I was 14, and I knew him from skateboarding. We just have a long history together in the D.C. scene

and have always been friends,” Farrell explains. “Besides the friendship, you also have the working relationship. I don’t always have the most time right now, so if I’m going to do something, I want to enjoy it, and I don’t want to make it feel like work. So, I’m going to do it with people I enjoy being with.” Aside from the tight bond amongst the members, Red Hare added the familiar ears of producer J. Robbins of Jawbox and Burning Airlines and even brought in an old buddy to do guest vocals on the fifth track, “Surrogate.” “We brought in Alec MacKaye of The Faith and Ignition, and it was cool because he is one of my all-time favorite vocalists,” Farrell says. “As far as working with J. again, we wanted to be in the same area as the first album but come back around a little bit with not such a modern sound. This one sounds a little more analog-y and burlier in a way—maybe not as refined.” Farrell says the thing that made him most proud of Little Acts

of Destruction was Brown’s performance and the subtleties these new songs brought out of a vocalist known mostly for his mighty roar. “We know Shawn has a good scream, [but] are you going to put a scream next to another scream? No. You put something else next to it, so the scream sounds even better,” Farrell explains. “Shawn has this regional Hyattsville, [a D.C. suburb], accent that I fucking love, so you put in these calmer spoken moments that are just as menacing as the screams; it brings out his regional dialect, and that makes me smile every time I hear it on this album. Everything is enhanced by contrast.” 

PHOTO: MELISSA SCHEFFER

“The past two records have been a remote writing effort for my portion, more so this time, as I don’t think we ever rehearsed the songs with me in the room,” Skinless vocalist Sherwood “Thunder Wheel” Webber IV shares in reference to the band’s 2015 release, Only the Ruthless Remain, and their new LP and sixth studio album, Savagery, out May 11 via Relapse Records. “I think [the band] is pleased with the result, but there were probably times where they wondered if I was going to deliver. There were some lapses in my output due to work and life obligations, but the end result is very kickass in my opinion.” For the past 25 years, these New York death metal giants have been crushing the genre with their ever-brutal material, so Savagery has a lot to live up to. Webber shares how, even when life was throwing things at him, he was able to maintain his goals during the writing and recording process.

“I’d get the songs and would write demo versions of the lyrics as I was able. It’s been a busy couple of years for me, [but] the guys kept the tracks coming,” he says. “When I sit down and write lyrics, I just kind of listen to the music and meld some bleak thoughts, weave it all together on paper, cut and paste, most of the time in a notebook I carry around. Ideas will come at any time, and I just write down the concept to be further explored later. [There’s] no agenda or message to drive home, just dark concepts to match the music.”

“I think it’s just been a part of our lives for so long that we kind of don’t know another way,” he says. “Being in the band is just a part of our existence and creativity. We always enjoy hanging out and being at shows, seeing old friends, and having fun. At this point, that’s what it’s about.”

Clocking in at around 37 minutes, Savagery is a nonstop ride of pure death metal gold. From the rampant drum beats to grueling guitar shredding, Skinless continue to honor their good name with top-notch musicianship. Webber says that death metal is important to their lives, introducing numerous avenues for positivity.

“For the most part, I think that the band doesn’t really have anyone to impress but ourselves and the core fanbase,” he states. “We know who we are as a band, and I’ve learned to just relax and let it happen. As I said, it’s just fun, and we know and trust each other. We like beer and brutality [and are] men of simple musical tastes as long as it’s nice and heavy. That’s

For Webber, the lifestyle that comes with being in a band is the best reward. His love for the music brings him and the other members of Skinless opportunities to live an extreme and fulfilling life.

what’s reflected in our music.” Webber concludes by sharing that there will be a lot more to come from Skinless after the release of Savagery. “We’ll just hammer out some shows this year and are very excited to get our record out. It’s a real slab of brew-tality,” he quips. “We have some shows being announced soon. We are quite limited, but we aim to make the most of the shows we are able to play!”



PHOTO: MARGARET LORD

esides being the most metal name of all time, Wolvhammer’s moniker evokes a different type of ritual than those most often associated with black metal: one undertaken in a Minnesota forest while cloaked in heavy winter jackets and sitting around a fire pit, likely with a case of beer nearby. On their fourth record, The Monuments of Ash & Bone, out May 4 via Blood Music, Wolvhammer double down on their love of Nordic black metal, cold and doomy sludge, and oppressive atmosphere to craft a stunning display of musical savagery. However, the band are adept at keeping their musical and lyrical gloom rooted in this earthly plane. This isn’t grandma-friendly music by any stretch—or, if it is, congrats on having the coolest grandma ever!—but this focused fury allows Wolvhammer to feel like adults in a realm where so many black metal acts rely on shock-factor and gimmicks. While the band have always been known for the quality of their cast—which features members

of Skeletonwitch, Abigail Williams, and Novembers Doom— Wolvhammer’s latest proves this Midwestern group are a true force to be reckoned with. This is wonderful grown-ass metal. Guitarist Jeff Wilson chuckles at the mental image of the band creating their own rituals and notes how the band have homed in on a simple yet effective formula. “When it comes to the songwriting, though,” he clarifies, “the only real formula I have is to start with the vibes of the first and last songs and work my way toward the middle. Otherwise, there’s really no ritual at all to be had. If anything, we’d like to be pretty anti-gimmick. I’m not interested in shredding my guitar. I’m not interested in writing 20-minute songs in whatever silly time signature no one can count. That’s not what this band is about. We aren’t trying to alienate people. It’s just dark, it’s moody, and hopefully, it’s catchy at some point too.” “There’s always a desire to switch things up a little between records,”

he adds. “I think all I really had in my head before going in was to kind of push the tempos further on this one than we had previously and to blend in the band’s older style with the new approach we took on [2014’s] Clawing Into Black Sun. I seriously doubt we’re ever going to do any sort of concept record, and we definitely aren’t trying to reinvent the wheel at all. The only thing we’re focused on is writing the best songs we possibly can and hitting on some sort of emotional level with ourselves as well as the listener.” Wolvhammer’s dark and introspective lyrics have morphed over their 10 years and four full-length releases, but what helps keep Wolvhammer’s masterful grasp of musical darkness grounded is a lyrical focus on reality and emotion. “The lyrics for this band have always been of a personal nature,” Wilson explains. “We’ll talk about the things that everyone can relate to and leave the storytelling to the power metal bands. Sure, we’re metal dudes, and we all have

somewhat of an interest in the occult and dark imagery, but the children can keep the demons, the makeup, and the mythical creatures. We’re grown-ass men; we’re our own masters. We’ll think for ourselves.” It’s that mindset that makes The Monuments of Ash & Bone stand out from the pack. The way Wolvhammer embrace the cold darkness of reality is certainly “metal” enough for even the most kvlt of us, and their incredible balance of emotion, musical prowess, and haunting atmospherics comes together to create an impressive return. 

PHOTO: JEN CRAY

rooklyn-based rock band BOYTOY’s latest record is proof that the environment in which a band records can influence their sound. Night Leaf—out April 27 through PaperCup Music worldwide and Stolen Body Records in the U.K. and Europe, with Burger Records handling the cassette release—was recorded at producer Kyle Mullarky’s ranch in Topanga Canyon. Vocalist and guitarist Glenn Michael Van Dyke explains that BOYTOY met Mullarky—whose previous work as a producer includes bands like The Growlers and Allah-Las—while they were snowbirding in California. She goes on to describe the setting of Mullarky’s recording utopia as “a ranch style house with another house in the back and a trailer— and an old well, which is where he set up his studio. It’s this small, intimate setting with a lot of really great equipment. It provided a very clean, intimate setting to work on stuff. It was quiet, and we

could go surf in the morning if we wanted to. And there [were] some pigs that we could play with. It felt very healthy.” Although they wrote the album before arriving at Mullarky’s Pump House Studios, BOYTOY noticed that the final product sounded quite different from what they had written. “We’d had these songs that we’d been working on for a little while,” Van Dyke says. “We’d workshopped them in Los Angeles a couple weeks before we went to record. When we went into the studio, the songs completely changed from what we had, to the point where, sometimes, we’d listen back and be like, ‘Wait, what song was this again?’” “It’s pretty subconscious when you’re in an environment like that,” she explains. “It just kind of sinks in. I don’t think you’re aware of it while it’s happening. It’s the nature of recording and inspiration and how it is transformed.”

The sound that emerged on Night Leaf is reminiscent of ‘60s psychedelic rock fused with riffheavy surf rock. It is evident on the record that BOYTOY have a strong appreciation for the music of the ‘60s. Van Dyke says artists from that decade were a part of her life from an early age, as her parents were fans of bands like The Allman Brothers, Bread, and, of course, The Beatles. Even beyond the influence of her family, Van Dyke has a deeper reason for her love of ‘60s rock. “It was the dawn of recording—or modern recording, rather,” she says. “I’m a huge studio nerd, so a lot of the equipment that was so standard and cheap back then, that you hear all over records— like the compressors and the reverb tanks and all the analog tape and the time that went into it—I think is super romantic.” Perhaps that is what makes Night Leaf so special: the time BOYTOY put into it. They worked on the

music until they knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that they had created something they were proud of. “Everything was a conversation on how to make it the best that we could,” Van Dyke says of the album. “I think, with Night Leaf, the reason it feels so good is not only did we find a good mix of people, but also just being able to take some time to take a step back and be like, ‘OK, do we like this? No? OK, what don’t we like about it, and how can we make it better?’” 

y-winning engi neer James Bro m m a wn ( F o r G ced by o Fighters o u n g s d p r s o k , Spoon c o r y J ) b o s h d u e a t h a r R t ay St ephens (Shaba s u yc l l i s l z z Pal p nove ac e s / F graphic ny antagraphics) e g n a p u s 0 0 and l with 1 d e ak r viny o s e Ten whiskey platt s Avai lable on ace but it sounds just a p s r s nice o dow n he ad e f m c i s u re on Earth.” – KEXP m y l r a e l c s ’ t “I

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hree years ago, Canada’s most powerful metallic punks, Cancer Bats, were Searching for Zero, and on April 20—or 420, the day when more things are lost than on any other day of the year— they returned to announce to the world that they found it. The Spark That Moves, the group’s surprise sixth record—dropping via their own label, Bat Skull Records, in partnership with New Damage Records in North America—serves as a stunning and invigorating reset button. It’s a fiery, forceful reclamation of all that has made Cancer Bats such a singular voice in the art of melding crunchy Southern riffs with punk and hardcore bite, and it proclaims that these Canucks are kicking more ass than they ever have. The Spark That Moves feels like a record for the fans, like Cancer Bats took their 11 best songs and brought them into the future with all the experience and wisdom they’ve gleaned over years. It’s guaranteed to be a fan-favorite, because all of the things that made each of the group’s previous records so special are represented here in one album. It has the type of energy and grade-A certified riffs that will excite a 60-year-old biker, a 30-something new parent, and a kid in high school equally—

all with the venom and bite of an angry, coiled snake. In short, Cancer Bats have not watered down their greatness after all these years. There’s a reason the record feels like a mid-career Best Of experiment. Vocalist Liam Cormier explains, “I was like, ‘Let’s look at our setlist. Let’s look at why we play these 15 songs every night. What are we looking to add to the conversation?’ There’s a reason everyone has gravitated toward these songs and asked us to play them. It’s not like we want to rewrite those songs over again, but we realized [these live favorites] are the spirit of our band.” “As much as we like throwing in some stoner songs and other stuff,” he continues, “I was saying, ‘We’ve already done that, though.’ We don’t need to write another thrash song, because I’m down to just play ‘All Hail’ and ‘Pray for Darkness,’ and we’re never going to play more than two thrash songs in a set. We don’t need that. If we want to play a super sludgy song, we have ‘Sleep This Away,’ which we don’t even play. If we need to get the sludge out of our system, we could just start an Electric Wizard cover band,” he laughs. Searching for the band’s creative

spark—or zero—required some serious reflection and time away, and not being tethered to a record contract was instrumental. “We have this freedom, and part of that was everyone having done some other things in life,” Cormier expands. “So, we were like, ‘Let’s come back and do Cancer Bats as best as we can.’ That’s been really helpful, because we didn’t have a label or anything—we were out of contact with everybody—so we were just existing as dudes playing music. We didn’t even know if it would turn into a record. It was from a genuine desire to play together and have fun.” Why the surprise release? Cormier laughs and compares releasing an album to baking brownies—which is extra apropos on 420. “I’m really stoked on the idea of saying, ‘We have a new record. You can order it right now,’ instead of the usual thing where it’s like, ‘We have a new record, and here’s a teaser video. it’s coming out in three months,’” he explains. “People think this little counter we have is going to open up to a preorder that will explain that our record’s coming out in October. Fuck that! When I see a preorder for a band, that’s just a bummer. I just want the record right now. Don’t tell me until the brownies are done. Don’t tell me you went to the store and that you’re going to invite me over in three months. Call me when

there will be some kickass brownies ready.” This move of giving fans what they want when they want it is rooted in the punk ethos, Cormier notes. Cancer Bats are saying their art is available now—come support them if you want. The result is a sonic experiment that tests the hypothesis: What if a band got to rewrite their classics later, when they were better songwriters? Assessing that hypothesis through multiple spins—they are pressing vinyl!—is not only encouraged, it’s doctor recommended. The Spark That Moves isn’t the sound of a band retreading old tracks; it’s the sound of a band embracing what makes them unique—and why fans have stuck around—and harnessing those traits to amazing ends. 

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eavy metal is timeless, but many bands feel that they occupy one specific moment in time, that they can’t move forward into a new era. Not Kataklysm. The Montréal and Chicago-based quartet realize that death metal is forever and that they still have a lot of music left to make. “This is the first album we have written together under the same roof in over a decade,” vocalist Maurizio Iacono says of Meditations, their forthcoming album, out June 1 on Nuclear Blast. “We all live in different cities and countries, so it makes it difficult for us to get together. But we were determined to get together and experience the writing process in the same place ‘garage-style,’ like [how] some of biggest records were made. The album came together very organically and brings a fresh new outlook, with everything from fast-paced moods

to power crunches and melodic attacks. It’s a very complete album.” Despite being used to long-distance communication, Kataklysm felt it was key to get together and jam in the traditional style for this record. And, though they had already released 12 LPs since forming in 1991, they felt confident they could make something fresh and forward-thinking. “Change is a good thing,” Iacono explains when asked how they feel about modern death metal. “I welcome it even though some of the overly processed productions and over[ly] technical albums go way over my head. There are still some good bands out there making some noise and bringing the genre forward. Kataklysm works hard to keep moving forward as well and not stay stuck in the past.”

With all that in mind, Meditations really is an apt title for the band’s latest record. Kataklysm seem totally at peace with continuing to release new music after 27 years as a band, even if that means competing with some of the more technical groups who have sprung up during that time. Lyrically, they chose to focus on the everyday and lived experiences, rather than the gory or esoteric directions the genre sometimes goes in. “Kataklysm has always approached lyrics in a very social-based aspect,” Iacono says. “The band is about reality and the things we face on a daily basis. The album is called Meditations, because, for us, the answer to heal lays in the music. It’s the place we have always turned to in order to help us get through our daily struggles.”

All of this isn’t to say that Kataklysm are taking a passive stance when it comes to how this new record will be received. Quite the contrary: not only are they actively taking a new, fresh approach to the music, they are playing four different record release shows in the U.S. and already have tour plans lined up as far ahead as 2019. “We have always gambled on things, but in a calculated way—production is the latest one with us,” Iacono explains. “Using an outsider to mix our album, like Jay Ruston, was not a move many saw coming. He brought a much-needed touch of modern life in our sound that I think is giving a new outlook to our music. We stay very focused on where the genres are heading and adapt without changing our core values.” 

PHOTO: JACKI VITETTA

SECOND STILL Los Angeles, by way of New York, trio Second Still don’t appear to be a band who are concerned with pacing themselves. Their debut effort was lauded by one critic as the “best post-punk debut of 2017,” and only months later, they followed it up with a pair of EPs, both released on April 20: the Part Time Punks EP via Sentimental Records and Equals via Belgium’s Weyrd Son Records. “We [are] completely humbled by the positive response and support from overseas,” guitarist Ryan Walker reflects. “It’s a beautiful thing. When we toured Europe last fall, we were shocked by how much love we felt, especially from the cities and countries we never would have dreamed of visiting.” While the songs on Equals retain the intensity and allure of the band’s previous effort, Second Still continue to lurch forward into uncharted territory, picking up an arsenal of analog synthesizers. According to Walker, the seamless way in which these songs blend is a happy accident. “[Equals] contains songs that were written over a large timespan, with no intentions on how these songs would live together,” he admits. “‘Automata’ was written just months before the EP, whereas ‘Walls,’ the bonus track, was written when the band was still in New York.” “For me, the cohesion is found in the evolution of our music,” Walker adds. “The band’s sound is shifting, and this EP

demonstrates that. Suki [San] has some truly powerful vocals, both sonically and in meaning—and it isn’t fair for me to say what she’s communicating, since her stories can either directly move you or they can be left open to interpretation. For me, this EP is less about communicating and more about celebrating our growth.” Equals also demonstrates more pop savvy than ever before, which Walker says was unintentional as well. “We definitely recognize the pop elements throughout the EP, but for me, it was never intentional,” he confirms. “When I listen to music, I’m never directly trying to seek out pop. There’s definitely a lot of ‘80s and ‘90s pop that I’m influenced by, from Depeche Mode and anything from the Manchester hacienda scene to Grace Jones to The Human League. Sometimes, pop is just so engrained in music that it inevitably shows itself in all facets of music, including ours. The versechorus-verse-chorus-bridge-chorus formula just happens to represent the best structure at times.” For a band on a lightning-fast upward trajectory, it is surprising that Second Still don’t look over their shoulders from time to time and that the finish line isn’t necessarily a destination as much as destiny. “As long as we grow as a band [and] as individuals and, most importantly, remain as authentic and genuine as possible, then we are happy,”

WAX IDOLS If there is a single common inevitability for human beings, it’s that we’re all on a collision course with mortality. For their fourth album, Happy Ending, Oakland, California’s Wax Idols offer an exploration of the abstraction and finality of death by spinning it through philosophical, political, and personal perspectives.

“[The idea] occurred to me rather suddenly while we were in the van on tour two summers ago,” vocalist and guitarist Hether Fortune recalls. “At first, it was sort of just this funny, tongue-in-cheek idea that came to me—I was probably stoned, I can’t remember. We all started riffing on the concept and cracking jokes about how we could have songs called ‘Congratulations’ that are about not having to be alive anymore.” “Needless to say, we have a pretty dark sense of humor as a band,” she adds. “I think that’s something that happens to people who have lived through a lot of messed up shit and/ or who have dealt with depression, which we all have. Over time, the album became, at first, much more abstract and conceptual and, then,

PHOTO: ALLISON LITTREL

INTERVIEW WITH GUITARIST RYAN WALKER BY TIM ANDERL Walker says. “I guess that’s the goal. We focus on short-term goals and take things step by step. At certain moments, I’ll look back on what we’ve accomplished and be in disbelief. It feels like we are fulfilling a dream rather than achieving a lofty goal.” In the meantime, Walker is also enjoying one particular aspect of their new L.A. home. “Go Dodgers!” he exclaims. “They are one of coolest franchises in all of sports. They even had a day where they celebrated the legendary Los Angeles punk band X. What other franchise can say they did that? I also love how irrationally superstitious baseball fans are. It makes winning that much more satisfying. Also, what can’t Justin Turner do?”

PHOTO: MATTHEW VINCENT

incredibly visceral and personal. It was a strange journey.” On Happy Ending—set for release via the band’s own Etruscan Gold label on May 16—the quartet’s sound carries a darkwave and postpunk aesthetic while integrating more classic pop hooks. Fortune, whose contribution is at the center, acts as Wax Idols’ songwriter, arranger, producer, vocalist, and guitarist, while also contributing bass and organ. That said, the other members’ contributions are equally critical.

INTERVIEW WITH VOCALIST/GUITARIST HETHER FORTUNE BY TIM ANDERL

Additionally, Monte Vallier also provides a crucial piece of the puzzle. “He has been the engineer and coproducer on every Wax Idols fulllength, as well as every single and 7”, aside from the first 7” for ‘All Too Human,’” Fortune relates. “Very few men have been able to create a working environment wherein I feel completely safe, comfortable, and respected. I wish I could throw millions of dollars at him. He’s absolutely brilliant and one of the kindest, most generous humans I’ve ever known.”

Despite tackling the heavy subject of death with such artistic confidence, Fortune isn’t quite sure what actually happens when one’s time is up. “I have no idea [what happens when someone dies],” she says. “I feel like I’ve been living on loop for thousands of years, but that’s a story for another day. Making this album was my way of trying to process all of the postdeath possibilities and scenarios, both for the living and the departed. I do believe in the transference of energy after a person or any living thing dies, though. Make of that what you will.”

She is, however, certain of the ways she hopes Wax Idols’ music will be remembered. “I spend my life chasing immortality via art,” Fortune admits. “That’s what we’re all doing, and anyone who says otherwise is full of shit. I suppose I want my work to speak for itself when I’m gone and to tell a story that is reflective of who I was—the good, the bad, and the ugly.”

PHOTO: AMBER THIENEMAN

ouisville, Kentucky, multi-instrumentalist Ryan Patterson—also known as R/Pattern—has long been a critical fixture in the city’s punk scene. Perhaps best known for his work with Black God and Coliseum, fans of punk and hardcore regard him as a forerunner of progressive musicianship. Although some might consider the moody post-punk direction of Patterson’s Fotocrime a left turn, he’s not willing to concede to that perception. “Fotocrime may be more of a wide right turn. It’s not an incredibly huge stretch from the last Coliseum album, at least conceptually,” Patterson asserts. “People who know my tastes, as well as the radio show I did for a few years, might not have been too surprised by this sound. It’s music I’ve loved since I was young, and I’ve grown more and more interested in exploring synthesizers and sequencing. But, of course, reinvention is interesting and exciting, and this is what the band shaped into as I was working on new music. Plus, it’s nice

to be able to sing in my vocal range.” Alongside writing and recording for a pair of EP releases, 2017’s Always Hell and Always Night, Patterson was demoing and recording material for Principle of Pain, Fotocrime’s debut LP. The record sees release via his own Auxiliary Records on May 18. Principle of Pain—which was recorded in Baltimore with famed producer and musician J. Robbins—continues to vault drum machines and analog synthesizer sequencing to the forefront of Fotocrime’s sonic landscape, further establishing the band’s distinct musical identity. “The album material, with the exception of ‘Gods in the Dark,’ was written over the course of 2016 and recorded alongside the Always Hell EP in early 2017,” Patterson recalls. “I wrote and performed all of that on my own and initially planned for Always Hell to be a quick teaser before Principle of Pain gave a more complete perspective of Fotocrime. As the

album took longer to release than planned, we recorded a few new songs after Nick [Thieneman] and Shelley [Anderson] joined the band. [That became] the Always Night EP. It’s interesting and different for me to release music out of the order that it was written and recorded, but I’m glad it worked out this way in the end.” On Principle of Pain, themes of confusion and uncertainty surface on a reoccurring basis, because, by Patterson’s admission, both are things that worry and intrigue him. “Confusion and uncertainty are unsettling by nature, right?” Patterson explains. “I can’t say that I specifically experience confusion on any type of regular basis, but I am regularly baffled by the choices humans make, their selfishness and obliviousness to realities that lead to detriment. On the other hand, the road to the unknown can be a warm, sunny path or a foggy, black pit. Sometimes, it’s exhilarating to dive in; at other times, it’s the thing I fear most.”

Additionally, the stunning album cover was painted by Chicago-by-way-of-Barcelona artist Noelia Towers, renowned for her beautiful, challenging artwork depicting elements of BDSM and feminine power. The cover is her first commissioned artwork and an interesting element of the Fotocrime narrative given the debt punk, post-punk, and goth music owe to women and LGBTQ innovators. “Gay and trans people and culture was a huge part of the early waves of punk, especially in New York City, and women were certainly among the most important figures throughout the history of punk,” Patterson asserts. “As the aggressive sounds of the music reached less progressive ears and it grew to become a diluted idea over the past 40 years, some of this was lost along the way.” “Post-punk and its offshoots were a reaction to the earliest examples of this lack of progressive attitudes in music, art, and ideals,” he concludes. “I think music that values depth and introspection rather than blunt ideas and sounds is more welcoming and less specifically masculine.” 

together ourselves with help from some of our Danish associates. It’s been way less of a clusterfuck than we expected so far,” Rønnenfelt says.

particularly astute critic recently compared Beyondless—the fourth album from Iceage, released via Matador Records on May 4— to The Rolling Stones’ historic Exile on Main St. At the time, The Rolling Stones already had a solid foothold in the rock music realm but an amalgam of influences was leaching into their sound, from soul to jazz, honkey-tonk to country, and even gospel. They were also coming to terms with being young men crossing the threshold into their 30s, uncertain of what their futures held and restless for what was yet to come. At first glance, this perfect storm of catalysts bares similarities to the evolution of Copenhagen, Denmark, quartet Iceage, who were once considered disciples of post-punk and devotees of Joy Division. “We always were [restless]. That’s not something that has changed,” vocalist and guitarist Elias Bender Rønnenfelt says defiantly. “The restless urge to create something and push yourself into unknown territory has always been the basis of what

we did. We didn’t think about Exile on Main St. in the studio, but some friends have mentioned it. I think maybe we can see that,” he ultimately concedes. Comparisons to The Rolling Stones aside, the record is one that is clearly wrought with emotion, conflict, playfulness, and, at times, humor. “I think there are a lot of conflicting emotions going on [with Beyondless],” Rønnenfelt reflects. “Some negative, some hopeful, some ecstasy, some desperation—a lot of things that clash together. There isn’t one straightforward message. There are a lot of dualities. What we thrive on is pushing ourselves into risky territory in order to keep things alive for ourselves. We are risking failure for the sake of exploration.” The band’s recent exploration has led them to undertake a series of international “Opening Nights” residencies in New York, Los Angeles, and Tokyo, which precede a run of tour dates that stretch to November and across multiple continents. “We all sort of put this

Additionally, Iceage have invited new musicians to the fold who’ve incorporated saxophone, piano, and other instrumentation into their performance. “All of the artists that we picked out were people that we admired. It has been interesting to see all of it,” bassist Jakob Tvilling Pless says. “Lately, it has been a transformative experience getting to know these songs in a live setting,” Rønnenfelt shares. “Each night, I think we get a better understanding of where these songs can take us and what sort of space it’s leading us into. It’s an interesting period for us, because it feels so alive, and right now is the process where we’re developing each night and beginning to feel more and more at home.” “It’s definitely a new energy,” Pless agrees. “I feel like we have a groove like we’ve never had before,” Rønnenfelt continues. “[Adding additional instrumentation] allows us to push it into another space, and these guys playing with us are really talented musicians. We feed off of each other.”

When asked where they predict this journey will lead, Iceage are hesitant to commit to much. “That’s a pretty loaded existential question,” Rønnenfelt objects before settling on a simple answer. “We’ve come to learn that we have a big interest in writing songs and pursuing this musical journey, but we’re taking this one step at a time.” “We stay open to new possibilities all the time,” Pless offers. “We make records, and then, we go play,” Rønnenfelt jokes. “If we felt like we’d done our magnum opus, we wouldn’t have anything else to do but stop. Every record becomes an encapsulated, compressed version of what life was like at the time of the writing. We have faint ideas about where we want to take things next.” It is suggested that, perhaps, the absence of over-planning follows Hunter S. Thompson’s idea that “life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well-preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming ‘Wow! What a Ride!’” Rønnenfelt and Pless agree, “That sounds pretty good to us.” 

“Anytime we write an album, it is a snapshot of our existence while the record is being created,” Parkway Drive vocalist Winston McCall says of the band’s sixth album, Reverence. “I’ve [only] written one conceptual album. Obviously, there is a lot of grief and pain on this album, which represents what we were going through at that time. It has been a hard three years for us personally, and we’ve all experienced a lot of loss. That’s what came out in these songs. The ones that weren’t personal are very dark because, worldwide, it is a dark time in history.” As such, Reverence—which drops via Epitaph Records on May 4—is the most sonically diverse and emotionally intense work the Australian five-piece have created to date.

“Elements [of goth and industrial music are] definitely there,” McCall admits. “It was intentional, but not in the way that we were saying, ‘Let’s put goth and industrial parts in there so that we can write a record that sounds like that.’ Those influences came out because they are personal influences. They are parts that we enjoyed creating. We never said, ‘Let’s go in an X, Y, or Z direction,’ but those sparks were inspiration for creating this sound. I listen to a lot of that kind of stuff, but it had never made its way into our records.” For perhaps the first time in Parkway Drive’s career, McCall demonstrates a rock-solid confidence in breaking the mold of their previous, more metal-leaning efforts and pursuing new directions. “If we want to write music differently or unlike anything we’ve done before or redefine the band in a particular way, we can,” he asserts. “The band

is five friends, and this is the music that represents us. After having been a band for a long time, you get stuck in the mindset that you are defined by everything you’ve done previously. For this record, it was a goal of ours to take everything that we find interesting in music and carve songs and a record out of that concept and that concept alone. It has taken us a lot of time to get the confidence to actually do that.” Reverence also sees the group allowing more melody to leach into their songwriting. “This is the first record where I’ve had control of my voice and to sing and write melodies,” McCall explains. “A lot of the melodies ended up coming out darker than ever before. It left a lot more space for creating a character that was driven by a vocal performance rather than the guitar performance.”

Despite some fans pushing back a bit against the new direction—in particular when Parkway Drive premiered their single, “The Void”—McCall’s resolve and determination remains strong. “I think you can hear [in our records] when we’ve chosen to push and when we’ve chosen to remain safe,” he says. “This is the first time we’ve been pushed to go into a recording with no preconceived notions of what Parkway Drive should sound like. We like heavy; we like melodic. It doesn’t have to be metalcore. This is the next step in the legacy of the band. After 15 years of writing music together, this is where we want to be. It is what we need as musicians. I hope people remember that we were fierce in the creation of this record.” “We are swinging for the fences,” McCall concludes. “That is why the record is the way it is.” 

PHOTO: ALYSON COLETTA

PHOTO: SAM GERHKE

hile returning home from a long-running tour in support of Soft Kill’s November 2016 release, Choke, frontman Tobias Grave faced a series of events that threatened to destroy everything he held dear. At eight months pregnant, his partner Nicole Anne Colbath— who runs Cercle Social Records— began to bleed out in the van. The band were en route from Los Angeles to Portland and miles from the nearest medical facility. They raced through the night to the UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento where trauma center doctors worked to save Colbath and their unborn child. Although the surgery was considered a success, Grave’s son, Dominick, was born unable to breathe on his own. Later, his lung collapsed, and he flatlined on the table while Grave watched doctors and nurses struggle to revive him with blood transfusions and breathing and feeding tubes. “He essentially died and was hooked up to a lot of machines that made his little lungs function since they wouldn’t on their own,” Grave recalls. “The doctors and nurses did not sugarcoat what

was happening, confirming that he was very sick with no guarantee of surviving this horrific ordeal.” Grave admits that, in years past, his safety net in stressful situations was drug use, and facing the uncertainty of whether his son would live led his thoughts toward breaking his sobriety—until he realized he had another coping mechanism. “I coped with what we were facing by writing and demoing material in the hospital instead of giving into the urge to use drugs,” he shares. “It was one of the purest and most emotionally draining experiences of my life. A good chunk of this album finds me really analyzing my relationship with substances, namely crystal meth. I’m exploring what led me to that drug and why. Obviously, there are elements of both survival and fatherhood, but [the theme that informed the record] was the realization that things were going to change in my life forever from that moment forward.” The result of Grave’s writing is Savior, out via Profound Lore on May 11.

“[I was] also digging into something that seems fairly taboo to admit, but I explored the helplessness I felt as I realized how badly I needed my son to make it, so that I’d have him as a guiding light,” he continues. “All that digging through my mind and soul made me really believe that I needed something to pour my unselfish and undivided attention into in order to stay clean. People say the trick to sobriety is you have to do it for yourself, and I never felt confident in accomplishing that on my own. When that [guiding light] was almost taken away from me, I didn’t know that there was hope for me.”

in my songwriting,” Grave admits, “but [for Savior], I pulled heavily from U2’s Joshua Tree, Miami by The Gun Club, The Replacements, Dire Straits, Tom Petty, and The Stone Roses, to name a few. I have gotten more confident in my singing and took a lot of chances on this album, most notably returning to the vibe of [2011’s] An Open Door in the sense that I’m not doubling up my voice and not burying it in effects. That confidence also helped me accept that my voice is a huge part of what defines this band, and no matter what we bring sonically, my singing makes it cohesive with what we’ve already done as a band.”

With Savior, Soft Kill—whose lineup also includes guitarist Conrad Vollmer, bassist Owen Glendower, and drummer Adam Bulgasem—have created a flawless pop-laced record that transcends being pigeonholed in just the post-punk genre and is arguably the band’s strongest to date. They have already spent months on the road in 2018, previewing material from the record during a tour with their comrades in Choir Boy.

While Grave anxiously anticipates Savior’s release as preorders roll in and celebrates an already successful tour with sold-out dates in Los Angeles and New York, neither of these things overshadow his pride in his son, who fought hard, got healthy, and is now thriving.

“The Sound, Chameleons, Asylum Party, and The Cure will always influence tones and textures with-

“He’s perfectly healthy and turns a year old [in March]. He will likely celebrate by destroying more of our things,” Grave jokes. 

PHOTO: FARRAH SKEIKY

o begins The HIRS Collective’s debut LP, Friends. Lovers. Favorites., released April 20 via Get Better Records and SRA Records. The opening track, “Wake Up Tomorrow,” featuring Bitchcraeft, is everything the Philadelphia-based collective’s friends, lovers, and favorites have come to expect from them— crushing and concise—but it’s also a fitting intro for a record that is, at its core, a love letter to their community. “If it weren’t for our friends, lovers, and favorites—who have become our family—a lot of us in the collective wouldn’t be alive,” HIRS say. “The amount of outreach and support we have gotten from them is mind-blowing and so heartwarming. Makes us feel like we are either doing something kinda right or that the work and support we’ve tried to give is coming back to us in the sweetest ways. Also, the word ‘community,’ like many others—‘queer,’ ‘safe space,’ etc.—have been trampled on and overused or misused by so many folks trying to infiltrate our community and scene. I hope we can take those words back and make them feel like they have more genuine meaning again. We really hope that we’ve also helped keep some folks alive and [let them] know that they aren’t alone in the world.” Being a collective is just one way that HIRS invite active participation from their community. “We challenge the idea of ‘punk’ as a genre and [see it] more as, hopefully, an ethic,” they explain, “one in which we try to be able to include everyone by trying to always play all-ages shows; invite and support bands, groups, and performers that are made up of other oppressed and marginalized folks; have sliding scale and no-one-turned-

away-for-lack-of-funds shows; have sliding scale ideas with merch; invite trans, Black, POC, femme, short, etc. folks to take up space at the front of shows—stuff like that.” Still, listeners won’t find much space between the music and the message on Friends. Lovers. Favorites. HIRS’ songs are short, swift, direct punches to the gut. “If something needs to be longer, we’ll make it longer,” they shrug, “but it seems we’re able to get our points across quickly. Also, if you hate us, you don’t have to deal with us too long, and if you love us, we’ll always leave you wanting more. That’s a pretty good feeling.” This may be HIRS’ first full-length, but the collective have already released literally hundreds of songs. Regardless, the new album feels like a major milestone. “It feels huge,” they confirm. “We’ve normally written and recorded stuff over the course of maybe a month or a week or even just one day. This took about four years, and it was so involved and hands-on. It also involved so many of our friends, lovers, and favorites—hence the name, duh—so it feels so special to have so many angels we love and care about so much as a part of this record in so many different ways.” Some of those sweet baby angels are gargantuan powerhouses of the underground, including Shirley Manson, Laura Jane Grace, Martin Crudo, Erica Freas, Marissa Paternoster, Alice Bag, and Sadie Switchblade, just to name a few. “It meant so much to us to humanize these folks that we have looked up to for so long,” HIRS say. “It’s amazing to be able to ask folks you might see as these huge, untouchable rock stars to be on our record and, then, for them to be excited, commu-

nicative, see the importance of our message, and say yes. We’d be lying if we said we didn’t cry or get happy-nauseous when the folks we asked said yes. So many intense feelings. Thank you to all of them!”

is not immune. This trend makes a track like “I’m Tired” stand out like a fiery beacon. The song features lyrics and vocals by Pierce Jordan of Philly’s Soul Glo, a band who harness hardcore’s potential to fuel Black liberation.

It may feature some serious heavy-hitters, but the true star of the album is the powerful statement it makes. Is there a thread that ties all of these tracks together? “Definitely,” the collective say. “Existing in the world as marginalized and oppressed people. Being an ally for them/us.”

“The song is largely about microaggressions I observe and experience in the city as a whole,” Jordan says. “[It’s] hilarious [how] a lot of these microaggressions are coming from liberal-appearing white people, even though a lot of them have dreadlocks or won’t look me in the eye as they walk past me on the street or will walk into oncoming traffic in the middle of the day to get onto the opposite side of the street when they see me. Shit like this makes you not give a fuck about how you look to people, whether your hood is up or down, because you’re probably seen as threatening regardless.” Jordan discusses this further on Soul Glo’s forthcoming A-F Records split with San Antonio’s Amygdala.

Part of this allyship comes in the form of one of the most historically important yet commonly derided forms of radical action: violent resistance. Even their logo—a hand with long, sharp, hot pink fingernails brandishing a pocketknife—makes it clear that righteous violence is a cornerstone of The HIRS Collective’s mission statement. “When there are trans folks, specifically trans women, specifically trans women of color, being murdered over and over and over again, why would we ever choose to only be passive?” they offer. “People, often cis straight white men, come at us all the time, like, ‘Why are y’all so violent? Why do you want to hurt men?’ and we just want to say, ‘Read between the fucking lines. It’s not all about you. It’s about us and how we are in danger all the time.’ We also support de-escalation, nonviolent communication, accountability processes without excommunication, and more, but we also support violence as a last resort—and as a first, because we are sick of being in danger without being able to respond.” There is also a tendency to see violent resistance as more palatable when it’s proposed by white voices and movements, and punk

As if all the pathos, rage, joy, and general badassery imbued in Friends. Lovers. Favorites. isn’t enough, the LP also comes with a copy of their 2017 EP YØU CAN’T KILL US and the brilliantly titled YØU CAN REMIX US, which features the EP’s five tracks remixed and reimagined by women musicians. HIRS will be out on the road until late May, but after that, what lies ahead? More tours and shows? New music? “Always yes, and always yes,” they assure. Until then, they only ask that you remember: “It’s OK to be sad. It’s OK to be sick. It’s OK to take meds. It’s OK to not take meds. It’s always OK to ask your friends for help.”



hat makes a work of art powerful? What does it take to make art speak to the masses and elicit emotion? “I think writing music should be something more than just putting a bunch of riffs and words together,” At The Gates bassist Jonas Björler shares. “At The Gates has always been about creating music as an art form with profound intellectual depth. For our inspiration, we always tend to go back to classic literature and music composers.”

sistance. The book discusses how art can be used politically; its characters talk about art as a means of revolution and resistance against oppression in 1930s Berlin. Lindberg shares how he translated the ideas within the novel into the album’s lyrics. “To me, the most important factor is the emotional impact, to portray that in [my] words and in our music,” he says. “The discussion about the importance of culture, resistance, and to fight the abyss of apathy, that leads to a possibility for populist agendas. It is time to take back our culture—our world.”

“To me, [art] is everything,” vo- Lindberg has also stated that To calist Tomas Lindberg adds. “I Drink From the Night Itself re-

need to express myself, channel emotions through the vehicle of my mind [and] soul. I have an addiction to this emotional and intellectual challenge. It is my drive, so to say.” To witness this inspiration and passion, one need not look further than the Gothenburg, Sweden, band’s newest record, To Drink From the Night Itself, out via Century Media on May 18. Many of the album’s ideas come from German writer Peter Weiss’ epic novel The Aesthetics of Re-

flects his love for art, standing as a testament to living as an artist—to living for art. He believes that part of what makes art beautiful is its honesty. “The feeling that your art is important for yourself, that it portrays honest and real emotions, that will always come across,” he says. “Especially in this superficial world we live in today. The real stuff will always hit you the hardest, because there is so much plastic stuff out there.” Taking inspiration from such a heavily political novel, To Drink

From the Night Itself arrives during some appropriately troubling times. Lindberg recognizes the instrumental role that art plays in politics and hopes that At The Gates’ work can inspire some form of positivity. “I would love to channel the feeling of importance and urgency,” he shares, “that our music and my lyrics could evoke a feeling of desperate urgency—the feeling that we feel ourselves, that this is important and not just some background noise.” In times of struggle, he laments that “people, in general, are just too comfortable to question stuff today. Art—and culture, in general—has the chance of waking peo-

ple up. It is my vision that this album is like a beacon, a call to arms for the ear upon this apathy.” The new record is also a big return for At The Gates. As their sixth studio album—following up 2014’s At War With Reality, which was their first full-length since 1995’s seminal Slaughter of the Soul—To Drink From The Night Itself has much to live up to in terms of the band’s legacy. With that said, it is easily their best record since Slaughter of the Soul. Not only do At The Gates

offer rich themes and lyricism, they also present pure, vicious death metal. Rather than try to cram a hundred different things into each song, they stick to their own time-tested formula with the utmost professionalism. It is never a matter of proving they can play their instruments, but rather, using effective song structure to capture the radiant melodies the band are known for. “We don’t want to overcomplicate the music just for the sake of it,” Björler confirms. “I feel there’s too much focus on the individual instrumentalists nowadays. Nobody is talking about songwriting ability, which is essentially much more important for [At The Gates].”

Not only is To Drink From the Night Itself a strong contender for album of the year, it’s one of the best death metal albums released in quite some time. Björler says that the band are just getting started. “In the near future, I can see us on the road for, like, two years to make a solid campaign for [To Drink From the Night Itself],” he reveals, “and, this time, we will probably write some new music on the road, so expect some new music in 2020.” 

PHOTO: JACKI VITETTA

PHOTO: AMANDA DEMME

he middle point of eternity is where the heart finds art. This special void is unmistakable. Curved and tailed, rising circular and strong, it bends the will from the pains of humanness. It is life, interrupted. When rock bands tap into this eternal spirit, they do so by fusing disparate elements. You know it when you hear it: typically challenging, often odd, and always spiritually fluttering, this is not a safe direction, but rather, one for individuals who need to express the true reality of their experience. Enter Sweden’s Tobias Forge, the mastermind behind art-rock heavy metal legion Ghost. Recently confirmed as the band’s creator and main songwriter, Forge spent roughly a decade behind the various masks of the band’s demonic anti-Pope frontman in nigh-complete anonymity. A recent lawsuit initiated his desire to reveal his identity, but it’s a moot point. For Forge, Ghost were always about going beyond the individual and bringing a much-needed spark of mystery to the masses. “I just wanted to create something that was really cool, something that I would appreciate seeing,” he says. “I wanted it to have certain elements that I felt were missing in today’s music scene,

annihilation. It was a call to the past, an offering to the old gods. Forge revealed himself because it was time, but it changed nothing about the band’s rough-hewn attack on contemporary norms. “For me, it’s not important that people talk about me,” Forge says. “I want people to talk about Ghost. It just got to a point where I needed to explain a few things to a few people and address a few things that have been miscommunicated. That’s it, basically. I just feel like I started this, I’m the responsible one. [If] anyone should comment on it, it should be me.” Ghost’s newest record, Prequelle—out June 1 via Loma Vista Recordings—continues the leap toward levitation. Its beauty sparkles around its dark subject matter. The ability to birth music that sinks deep into the soul while still maintaining its complexity is a special trait. What Ghost have always done well is to stretch the canvas: to keep the listener centered while still enmeshing them in a drifting fantasy. There are the riffs and the melody, but then, there’s the intricacy and headiness that bands like Genesis and Pink Floyd excelled at. Ghost are about taking a journey, spiritually and intellectually. They are a throwback to Romanticism. The painting and writing is a narrative, as much as it is a shock of intensity. “I listen to a lot of prog music,” Forge says. “I’m very, sort of, smitten by instrumental and vocal music that takes you on trips.”

where everyone’s always available and everyone’s always tweeting something when they think or eat or take a shit. I just wanted there to be some sort of mysticism, some new artist with something clandestine going on that makes you fucking imagine something.” Ghost provided that, with an exclamation. They stood out as a unique band in a sea of heavy metal normality. The extremeness of the group was centered on juxtaposition, not complete

Prequelle, indeed, contains two completely instrumental tracks, a first for the band. The songs help complete the mentality of Ghost’s inner-structure, extending their visual landscape and making the yellow brick road all the more vast. “We spent a lot of time talking about having instrumentals on previous records,” Forge explains, “but it never turned out to be more than a minute of a section. So, upon making Prequelle, I definitely felt that, now, I needed to have more than just the token plug excerpts,” he laughs.

Ghost’s 2010 debut, Opus Eponymous—on which Forge debuted the first of his papal alter egos, Papa Emeritus—was flush with devastating end-times themes. For 2013’s Infestissumam, Forge embodied the original anti-Pope’s successor, Papa Emeritus II, who sang about the Inquisition, while Papa Emeritus III took over on 2015’s Meliora to discuss societal greed and material gain. Prequelle introduces Forge as the ominous Cardinal Copia and covers the Middle Ages and the Bubonic plague. Its dark nature is akin to the previous records’ overall narratives, but there’s much more light here. This devastating piece of human history has been a popular theme for many a metal band, but Prequelle offers a dif-

but he extended it toward a greater analogy and metaphor. “I sort of wanted to medically explain what happened to your body when you were stricken with Bubonic plague,” he says. “Then, the next step was sort of working with the Middles Ages and how it mirrors a lot of states of the world: the state of my world and the state of people in my age. It’s a record about mortality. It’s a record surrounded by death, but, essentially, a record about survival: coming to terms with mortality and, yeah, basically surviving and trying to have a more positive outlook on life.” When Ghost scatter their psychedelic ashes over you, baptizing

PHOTO: MIKAEL ERIKSSON

ferent, more personal take. Forge focuses on the individual, human aspect of the period, pondering what it meant to have death literally at your doorstep. “I was more interested in tapping into the human mechanism, the human psyche being face to face with the turmoil of that,” Forge offers, “seeing the complete destruction of your whole world, because that was what they were facing—but, mind you, though half of Europe’s population was wiped out, half of the population actually survived, and I wanted to make a record about that.” Forge also found a mirror image of those times right before his very eyes. He hunkered down on the physicality of the Middle Ages,

your musical soul, it’s easy to be swept away into oblivion, but they are a very human band. The group remain centered on the Earth, using its symbols, elements, and abstractions to ruminate on the nature of existence. “With Infestissumam onward, the satanic bit, it’s more symbolic,” Forge says. “It’s not really about God. It’s about mankind and how [individuals] interpret the ideas of God and an un-God, what the knowledge of those things causes us to do and how it causes us to treat each other.” Regardless of where the listener’s faith lies, Prequelle is a beautiful record. Let’s concentrate on that.



t’s time to bring out the leather pants, white face paint, and heavy black liner and lipstick. Dimmu Borgir have returned for their 25th anniversary celebration, and their newest full-length record release, Eonian—out via Nuclear Blast Records on May 4—proves all these years haven’t stopped them from dominating the black metal scene.

“I think the new record sums up the whole history of the band. Eonian is a 25-year celebration, so to speak,” frontman Shagrath says. “We have included a lot of elements, like we did in the ‘90s, such as certain types of keyboard sounds and a specific atmosphere that we wanted for this record.”

The album revolves around the concept of time, “dealing with the spirit quest for knowledge, dealing with the world we see and the world unseen while intertwining dimensions and metaphysical realms,” Shagrath offers. He also strongly encourages listeners to dissect the album on their own and create their own thoughts and descriptions. “It’s too much information to take in from listening to it once, so I hope the listeners take their time, and I’m sure they will appreciate this new record. If you dig into the details and know the history of the band and the history of Norwegian black metal, then

you will be able to find a lot of links to that sound,” Shagrath adds. “I am very proud of the history, it is an authentic expression—which is why it has survived more than two decades.” Like Shagrath says, Eonian represents the band’s 25th anniversary, and the theme of timelessness really connects to the celebration. Dimmu Borgir continue to maintain key aspects of their performance and sound, using orchestral instruments and choirs with their classic metal riffs and growling vocals. Using live orchestras holds a special place in the band’s heart, and Shagrath mentions

that the approach is related to his favorite memory in their 25 years of being a band. “It has to be the Oslo show we did with the Norwegian Radio Orchestra and Schola Cantorum Choir in 2011,” he admits. “That was a big achievement in our history, a very emotional moment to be onstage with a huge orchestra and perform a lot of our songs with them in that setting. You can only imagine—we have always been a band to include keyboard elements and strings and choirs into our music, and to be able to do that in front of over 10,000 people in a live setting, you have to kind of pinch yourself in the arm. It

was a very magical and epic moment.” Another element of the band’s performance that has remained a constant throughout their years of success is their visuals and attire. Shagrath jokingly compares the idea of ditching their aesthetic to Gandalf from “Lord of the Rings” wearing jeans and Nike shoes, asserting that the audience wouldn’t be convinced by the character. “For us, the imagery has always been an extremely important part of what we do. Visuals need to complement the music,” he states. “We’ve kept with that since we were

young and carved it into something on our own. When we perform live or when we do videos and photoshoots, it’s a big part of what we do.” Dimmu Borgir released the single “Interdimensional Summit” in February along with a music video. Shagrath says the song doesn’t come close to representing Eonian in its entirety, and he notes that each song varies from the others. The track was written in 2012, which gives it a similar sound to their previous record, Abrahadabra, from 2010. The band released another single from the new album, “Council of Wolves and Snakes,” in March.

“I am also very proud of that song, and I have very strong confidence in what we do, so no matter what, for us, it is still a big success,” Shagrath shares, stating that Dimmu Borgir don’t worry about criticism and mixed reviews from the latest single. “It is extremely different from that first single, so a lot of people should be surprised by it.” Dimmu Borgir are far from seeing an end to their journey as a band. They may have 25 years down, but the band hope to continue for a lifetime more. “It’s not like I chose this way; it chose me,” Shagrath says.

“Music is an expression of feelings, [whether] it’s musical or lyrical. It’s my way of channeling emotions. I would do this no matter what. Music, to me, is a very big part of my life. Looking at all the hard work and details, I think we have achieved a lot and we show pure dedication and hard work.” 

PHOTO: KYLE BERGFORS

â&#x20AC;&#x153;You just remember that bittersweet feeling that you just had the best summer of your life and that summer has now come to an end.â&#x20AC;?

s summertime creeps ever closer, there’s an anxiousness in the air—a desire to feel the sunlight warm our skin after an endless winter. There’s also an underlying sense of freedom that stays rooted in the back of our minds, even as summer vacation becomes a thing of the past. It’s the effortless joy that summer brings that fueled the creation of Hawthorne Heights’ first full-length album in five years, Bad Frequencies.

remember that bittersweet feeling that you just had the best summer of your life and that summer has now come to an end, and now, you have to really learn to deal with The change of pace ended that.” up being an overwhelmingly positive experience for the It’s that balance between the band, giving them the time light and the dark moments they craved to make sure we all experience in life that every moment of the album Woodruff says the band tried came out exactly the way to express with this record. they wanted. “It’s almost like you went from as high as you could “In the past, it seemed like possibly get to this despair, we had to get into the studio, only because this fun is over, “A lot of [Bad Frequencies] is [but] this time around, we the summer is over,” he says. about the adventure that sum- wanted to get into the stu- “It’s not that anything tragic mer brings,” vocalist and guitar- dio, so it’s, like, entirely dif- happened or anything, you ist JT Woodruff describes, “the ferent,” Woodruff expresses. just don’t feel that warmth jumping in your car, cranking it “We had no self-imposed that you just felt.” up, hanging out with people who deadlines or anything like you love, and just choosing your that.” But Bad Frequencies isn’t all own adventure, just trying to about the feelings lost when not get caught up with the crazy Bad Frequencies is full of vi- the magic ends. Woodruff part of life, really just throwing brancy and energy from start explains that the album may that all out the window.” to finish. The songs brim be reminiscent of the loveli-

best time and how you don’t have to worry about all the bad times you’ve had.”

with hopefulness, nostalgia, and, as you would expect from Hawthorne Heights, an overarching sense of melancholy. Thematically, the album touches on the pangs of watching the best moments in our lives turn into distant memories.

ing,” Woodruff says. “We’re ready to just make the most out of our new summer.” 

Throughout the course of 2017, the band spent most of their time on the road and piecing together what would eventually become Bad Frequencies, released via Pure Noise Records on April 27. According to Woodruff, this was the first time Hawthorne Heights had really taken their time with a record. “We found that it was just

a much better way to do things, because we didn’t force ourselves to continue writing when it wasn’t there,” he says.

“When you go back to your childhood, you couldn’t wait to get out of school, and then, you had the whole summer to just kick it with your friends and do crazy things,” Woodruff recalls. “You just

est moments in life, but it’s also a reminder that there are more wonderful moments ahead.

After 15 years as a band and now with six full-length studio albums under their belts, Hawthorne Heights have maintained a solid career and loyal fanbase, all propelled by a humble and passionate work ethic. While many other notable acts of the mid-2000s emo era have called it a night, Hawthorne Heights have persevered with their enthusiasm intact. “When your new record comes out, this is the time to swing for the fences and put in all the miles and all the hours and all the sleepless nights and all the hanging out at the coffee shops trying to get a little bit of energy and conversation happen-

“You cannot look over your shoulder and think about who you were; you can’t let that define you. You have to concentrate on who you are right now, and you can make wonderful decisions in your life right now,” he relays. “This is an album about only looking back to the most beautiful, purest parts of your life where you had the

hen Strung Out were on tour in Australia in 2016, vocalist Jason Cruz says the legendary California punk band came to a major crossroads.

making it even more difficult to categorize the band’s already chameleon-like sound. Listeners will see the clouds break in songs like the ironically upbeat “Duke of Sorrow,” but they are drawn back into darkness with songs like “Black Out the Sky,” which paints “I thought we were going to break a bleak picture of what humanity up,” he recalls. “Morale was down, has become. and it was a pretty dark [period]. Me and [bassist] Chris [Aiken] “When I was living in L.A., I nowere rooming together, and he ticed that you can’t see the stars,” wrote what is the first song on the Cruz says of the inspiration be[new] record, ‘The Architect.’ He hind the title track. “Living in L.A. was doodling around on it, and at the time, watching ridiculouswhen I heard it, I knew it was the one. I think it’s one of the best pieces of work we’ve ever done.” That dark period was a mixed blessing for Strung Out, but the hits kept coming. In February 2018, to the shock of many fans, longtime drummer Jordan Burns left the band on less than amicable terms. On the other hand, Strung Out are not only continuing, they’re also releasing one of their most inspired albums in years on May 11 via longtime home label Fat Wreck Chords. Black Out the Sky is a collection of eight—mostly—acoustic tracks, including reinterpretations of “Unkoil” from 2002’s An American Paradox and their classic “Matchbook” from 1998’s seminal Twisted By Design. Cruz says it was the right time to change things up. “We had to part ways with our drummer of 20 years,” he confirms. “That’s big. After everything we’ve done, we needed to take a pause and create a different type of feeling, so when we come back with an electric record, it’ll have more impact. You can’t keep doing the same thing over again, because it becomes white noise.” White noise it is definitely not. From eerie, ominous melodies to upbeat, honky-tonk choruses, Black Out the Sky pushes creative and sonic boundaries,

"You can express the same pain in the writing as you can when screaming."

ness all around you and people just chasing the wrong kind of life—[the song is] about how we lost our connection the basic, to the sky and the stars, and how we just replaced it with halogen bullshit.” While Black Out the Sky is technically a short LP, it offered an opportunity for experimentation usually provided by the band’s EP releases. Cruz says Strung Out’s EPs tend to be pivotal moments for the band—corners turned down new roads. “Yeah, the last EP we did, [2000’s Element of Sonic Defiance], was after [late former bassist] Jim [Cherry] left the band—that EP was a turning point,” he says. “An EP is like a tester. It’s quick, and you can leave your comfort zone. Some people might not see it as a real record, but it is. It’s an excuse to do something ballsy.” While many artists’ electric songs eventually go acoustic, it’s rare to see many acoustic songs make the jump to electric. Cruz notes that, on future tours, they could very well defy that trend with some of these new songs.

“‘The Architect’ would be a great electric song—or ‘Black Out the Sky,’ that would be good too,” he says. “The great thing about acoustic is that it showcases how good these guitar players are.” Cruz is right—and modest. While showcasing the talents of axe wizards Aiken, Rob Ramos, and Jake Kiley, the album also exposes Cruz’ strength as a vocalist. Black Out the Sky demonstrates the singer’s impressive range and then some, pushing his vocal cords to brinks and clarity unheard on previous records—particularly, the falsetto moments on the closer ballad, “Presidio.” “You focus more on the writing and melody as opposed to the delivery and the anger,” he reflects about penning acoustic songs. “You can express the same pain in the writing as you can when screaming.” He pauses for a moment, then adds, “I had more fun, because there was more singing and less screaming—less anger and more melody and longer takes. I think it made us better musicians. I know it did.” 

PHOTOS: ALAN SNODGRASS

n a 2012 post on his website, Frank Turner signs off by writing, “So there it is. I really don’t want to talk about this much more—today has fucking sucked, actually—but I hope this clears things up for some people.” At the time, Turner and his politics were the center of a debate in one corner of the internet. If you’re unfamiliar with the story, here’s the condensed version: In September 2012, a music writer for the Guardian wrote a story that mainly consisted of quotes Turner had given in interviews between 2009 and 2011. The quotes addressed a range of Turner’s political opinions, but the one that sent Twitter abuzz—and led to Turner getting “100 death threats and hate mail a day” according to an interview he later gave to the Guardian—was the one where he said, “I consider myself to be pretty right wing.” Like most “Twitter scandals,” this one quickly blew over, but it left a mark on Turner. “I’ll take my punishment. I’ll take my share of the blame for that,” he says. “I’m not going to be bravado about this. It was an upsetting experience for me, and it really put me off the idea of having those kinds of conversations in public about politics, not least because it strikes me that the degree of nuance in public political conversations is essentially zero.” Now, six years later, Turner has created a political album—sort of. Even with songs like “1933,” a punk anthem about the dangers of political movements that promise national renewal, and “Make America Great Again,” a cheeky pop song that pays homage to Turner’s love for the U.S., he’s still reticent to use the label. “Partly the function of the fact that I’m getting older, and I’m arguably in my late 30s now, and also as a function of what’s happening to the wider world at the moment, the central emotion that I’m feeling about current affairs and politics is doubt and confusion,” Turner says. “Political certainties that I feel that I

grew up with are mostly turning out to be bullshit at the moment. That’s combined with the process of getting older and realizing I know nothing about anything anyway. It’s sort of an attempt to write a political album with that in mind. It’s quite hard to write fist-pumping anthems along the lines of, ‘I don’t really know what’s going on.’ I’ve given it my best shot.” Lyrically, Be More Kind—released May 4 on Xtra Mile—covers everything from the aforementioned doubt, confusion, and politics to undergoing therapy on “Little Changes” and finding new love on “There She Is” and “Going Nowhere.” The most prevalent theme, though, is summed up by the title track. “In a world that has decided that it’s going to lose its mind / Be more kind, my friends / Try to be more kind,” Turner sings over a simple acoustic guitar that gradually melds into a pretty strings arrangement. At its core, Be More Kind is a hopeful, forward-looking album that encourages people to talk and listen to each other, regardless of politics. “At the center of my politics is— and this might sound like a really pretentious thing to say, and I’m sorry if it does, but at the center of it is quite a deep affection for human beings,” Turner says. “We’ve done some pretty great stuff collectively. We’ve done some awful stuff too. I think there’s cause for optimism in there somewhere. How it is we get out of our current impasse, I don’t know. In the grand scheme of things, human beings are OK. I like human beings.”

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OB’s new album, Our Raw Heart, is the Eugene, Oregon, band’s eighth full-length and their Relapse Records debut. Its seven songs run for nearly one hour and 15 minutes and are every bit as towering and crushing as fans have come to expect, maybe more so than anything YOB have released—but the album damn near didn’t happen. “I definitely almost died,” vocalist, guitarist, and chief songwriter Mike Scheidt says. “The whole future of the band was uncertain.” And yet, here they are, ready to release their latest epic doom masterpiece on June 8. “We have a new album that we all genuinely feel

is some of the best stuff we’ve ever done with each other,” Scheidt says—and from the way he says it, it’s obvious that he is as grateful as anyone that this is so. Scheidt was admitted to the hospital in January 2017 with a hole in his sigmoid colon, which caused air bubbles to enter his intestines. Aside from being a life-threatening medical condition, it caused him blinding pain. “When I got to the emergency room doctor, I basically left my body from pain,” he recalls. “The pain just made me dissociate. I have never done DMT, but I would imagine this was something like that, because I’ve done plenty of other psychedelics, and it was more psychedelic and far-out than any experience I’ve ever had. […] It was just me basically dying, and the doctor said I was a few hours away from not being able to be saved at that point.” The life-saving surgery Scheidt underwent was supposed to last three hours. It took nine—though he found out a few months later that the surgeon listened to old YOB records in the operating room. Even after the surgery, there was no guarantee Scheidt would make a full recovery, and it didn’t help matters that when he had a second surgery to remove an ileostomy bag, he caught MRSA and shingles while in the hospital.

Scheidt doesn’t relate his tale of woe to elicit sympathy for his suffering, but instead, to explain how it informed Our Raw Heart. “Certainly, some of that suffering informed it,” he says, but more importantly, he emerged from the experience feeling inspired. “I wasn’t able to play guitar for about six weeks, and when I did, a couple of the ideas I’d been working on right before I got ill—I was a little worried that maybe I had forgotten them, but in fact, as soon as I could play, they came right back to me like I’d never stopped playing them.”

Knowing this backstory, it seems intuitive that a lot of joy went into the process of writing and recording the band’s new opus. “You know, we didn’t know if we were going to be a band at the beginning of the year,” Scheidt admits. “Instead, we had this new music to work on that was coming from a place of celebration. Definitely still heavy and going into some dark territory, but with a sense of empowerment and, kind of, warriorship—a feeling of moving forward in life, but with some new vision, some new eyes.”

No one will mistake Our Raw Heart as being the work of any band but YOB, but Scheidt says he approached the album from a new vantage point after his near-death experience. “Everything was seen and filtered differently,” he explains. “I mean, it’s like, no one’s going to listen to this album and think it’s not us. With each album, we’ve endeavored to make sure that there is something there that is pushing us and that the vibe of the album, the actual flavor of the new album, is different than other records. There’s an anchor of the flavor of who we are, but there’s also pulling up that anchor and sailing in the new seas. Each time, there’s different things that have been a catalyst for that arrival, and this time, it happened to be a severe illness.”

Scheidt is wary of delving too deep into what his lyrics “mean”—“Trying to describe what lyrics are about is like dissecting a frog. It’s like, you can do it and see all the inner workings, but the frog doesn’t survive,” he says— but he does offer that love is a recurrent theme on the album. “Not the Hallmark variety, but the actual thing that even the most hardened person, if they’re knee-jerking against it, they’re knee-jerking against some kind of tender thing that’s within everybody and ties us all together,” he offers, “and that’s ‘our raw heart’: it’s this connection that, speaking for myself, I feel with everything that’s alive.”

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PHOTO: KELSEY AYRES

“For this Gatherers record, I went into it knowing that I didn’t want to write from a first-person perspective. I wanted every song to explore a third party’s perspective in any type of capacity or serve a way more visual type of form for whoever is listening to it,” vocalist Rich Weinberger states about writing the lyrics for We Are Alive Beyond Repair, the New Jersey band’s third studio album, out June 1 via Equal Vision Records. The vocalist continues, “None of this album is meant to sound optimistic at all,” and the soundscape of these 11 tracks represents that completely. The first single from the record, “The Floorboards Are Breathing,” was released in March. The song may have a pretty presentation with very ambient guitars and a drumbeat that lets all of the instrumentation breathe together, but Weinberger’s lyrics detail

more haunting images. This dichotomy helps extend Gatherers’ creative ambitions further than ever before, allowing for the absurdity that is reality to be present in an audible balance. “There’s an underlying ugliness to everything,” Weinberger comments. The 10th track, “Ann Liv Young,” is a high point of the album, taking a melodious swing with a really spacious progression that evokes a tortured, reflective penance. “There’s a part in the middle of ‘Ann Liv Young’ where there’s a lot of layered percussion in there, and that, for me, is the highlight of the record,” guitarist Anthony Gesa says of the song. “It was something that we did in the studio, and there wasn’t a prior conceptualization of it. This part took on a life of its own.” For a song that discusses the idea

of bringing something into the world while knowing that it’s only temporary, the spontaneity of its conception works to fulfill its purpose. What separates Gatherers from most bands who play heavy music is the weight behind with their sound—without ever needing to wind into a breakdown. The gnashing vocal stylings are blended with dynamics and syncopation that bend moments to a breaking point. The eighth track, “Lambs to the Chapel,” rips through its frantic pace with desperate screams, building a sense of one’s tortured agency imploding from suffering. The song’s cataclysmic shaking of the frame ends with a quiet warmth, giving listeners a chance to breathe through the crushing weight of the vacuum it has created.

“It’s knowing our surroundings,” Gesa explains. “We’re always keeping in mind that there has to be space for Rich.” On the album opener, “Spill,” Weinberger’s vocals kick down all of the walls in his way, adding an overall top layer of melody that keeps the harmonious nature unsettling. It’s the perfect introduction to We Are Alive Beyond Repair, a gruelingly beautiful piece of heavy music destined to tear at the eardrums of all listeners who dare to brave it. 

The sense of space that Gatherers conjure is unmatched by most other bands.

n the mid-2000s, UNDERØATH were an undeniable powerhouse in the alternative scene. The Tooth & Nail band—at the time, unabashedly Christian—fused the angsty aggression of Refused with the hooky melodies of Jimmy Eat World, thus functioning as a gateway into the world of heavy music for many young people. On the outside, the band appeared to be soaring, but internally, it was a different story. Fueled in part by the identity crisis of determining whether or not they were still a faith-based band, the six members fought with each other ruthlessly to the point of misery. “We used to fight through everything,” frontman Spencer Chamberlain says, “and the recording process used to be really painful. None of us wanted to be around each other, ‘cause we’d just fight all the time.” Eventually, they couldn’t take it anymore, and in 2013, the group formally disbanded. However, as the saying goes, time heals all wounds. “We found a way to mend all of our relationships, within ourselves and within each other,” Chamberlain says. Originally, the plan was for the band to reunite for a tour celebrating the 10year anniversary of their 2006 fan-favorite album, Define the Great Line. Fans expected it to be a one-off, but when the six members got back together, new music became less improbable and more inevitable. “We come from the era of pre-laptop bands. We came from the era—at least at the beginning of our band—of writing stuff in [the] garage,” Chamberlain says. “So, obviously, if we’re a band of people who mess around with instruments, stuff is gonna start happening.”

PHOTO: JORDYN BESCHEL

As the group set out to write new music, they decided they wouldn’t limit themselves by trying to create a record that resembled the rest of their discography. “We had kind of boxed ourselves in over time, and our box kept

getting smaller as opposed to bigger, so I think we just had to start over,” Chamberlain explains. “I don’t want to hear the same record five times from a band. I think it sucks when bands give me the same stuff over and over and every record sounds like a B-side of the record before.” In allowing themselves that creative liberty, UNDERØATH were able to make Erase Me—released April 6 via Fearless Records—an album that sounds markedly different from their previous work yet still has the bite that made fans fall in love with them in the first place. Accompanying their new musical direction are some of the most vulnerable lyrics UNDERØATH have ever written. Erase Me doesn’t shy away from heavy personal topics, from the band’s relationship with organized religion to Chamberlain’s struggles with substance abuse. “I’m lucky that I have an outlet where I can sing and write about things I might not want to talk about,” he says. “I feel like there’s a lot of people who deal with the same demons that I have who don’t have that liberty, so the least I can do is let myself be out there naked for everyone to see.” Chamberlain believes this isn’t the last of UNDERØATH. With the sacrifices that the other members made to reunite, he says it is inevitable that the band will write more music to make it worth their while. “Those dudes gave up a lot to start this whole thing over and really believe in the songs that [we] were writing,” he concludes. “I feel like it’s obvious that if those guys are quitting jobs to do this so we can tour and make people happy and make ourselves happy, we’re gonna be doing it for a long time.” 

PHOTO: JOE ELLIS

pon listening to the acoustic instrumental prologue to Light This City’s new record, Terminal Bloom—out May 25 on drummer Ben Murray’s label, Creator-Destructor Records—the first thing to pop into most people’s heads will likely be “Battery” by Metallica. This arrangement was a deliberate choice by the San Francisco melodic

were still teenagers. Maturity happens, no matter how hard you rock. “There’s so much that’s changed for [Light This City] in the last 10 years in our lives, there’s no way it wouldn’t result in a more mature record,” Murray says. “I’ll be honest, I can’t listen to the first two Light This City records, [2003’s The Hero Cycle and 2005’s Remains of the Gods]. The immaturity of the music—some

were fearing this record, especially since [vocalist Laura Nichol and I] did Heartsounds for eight years, so maybe it would be poppy, like with clean vocals. But it’s like, ‘No, dude. We know how to write this music.’”

death metal quintet. In addition to honoring the legends that came before them, it serves as a confident affirmation of what the recently-reformed Light This City are here to accomplish.

people love those records, but that’s the beauty of growing. It would be scary if I looked back on those records and was like, ‘Perfect. Wouldn’t change a thing.’”

lodic metal is still the band’s modus operandi. Their early Metallica and ‘90s-era In Flames influences are worn proudly on their sleeves, but after 10 years of playing in other bands, Light This City know what they want and how they want it. Murray emphasizes that this record all killer, no filler. “We try to only have bangers. I can’t stand momentum letting up at all,” he says. “Even on [Terminal Bloom], there’s one instrumental interlude, but every song is fast and intense. The guitars are harmonized, it’s thrashy, and there’s blast beats. This is not an artsy record! We’ve never been an artsy band.”

After all, they broke up 10 years ago, which might as well be a lifetime in the music scene. The world was a different place in 2008, and even though the band have the same members, they are different people now than they were when they disbanded. So, fans will probably appreciate hearing something familiar in the first moments of Terminal Bloom—a little head nod that says, “Hey, we know it’s been a decade since y’all have heard us, but don’t worry. We got this.” The word “mature” has become loaded in the world of heavy music—conjuring up thoughts of clean vocals, radio-ready choruses, and piano-heavy ballads—but one can’t ignore that Light This City wrote their last record, 2008’s Stormchaser, when they

The seeds of resurrection were planted back in late 2015, when heavy metal legends The Darkest Hour asked Light This City to open for their 20th anniversary show in San Francisco. Coming off the positive response from fans and how natural it felt playing together again, Murray and guitarist Ryan Hansen began writing material for what would become Terminal Bloom. With almost 10 years of untapped Light This City riffs and ideas in the bag, an explosion of creativity resulted in the entire record being written in three months. For fans who are still worried about what a “mature” Light This City record will sound like, Murray assures that Terminal Bloom won’t come as a surprise to anyone familiar with their catalog. “I think some people

Combining the relentless riffage of thrash with the memorable guitar hooks of me-

not what Light This City is for. We would start another band if we wanted to do that.” See? Maturity doesn’t have to be a scary concept. With it comes a profound clarity about who you are, what makes you happy, and the fearless confidence to express it. “Looking back, I think it was an age thing,” Murray explains of the breakup. “We had such high hopes for the band and toured so hard that, as 19 to 20-year-olds, we didn’t know how to handle getting burned out.” “I hope it doesn’t sound negative when I say I don’t have any expectations for this record,” he adds. “We used to be a band that’s out to take over the world, but we realized that’s not how shit works. So, we just thought it would be cool to do another record.”



For anyone worried that Light This City might try to pull a Load/Reload, you can now sit back, relax, and just bang your head. “There’s nothing on the record that people are going to hear and be like, ‘What the fuck?’ You know?” Murray assures. “We’re not trying to expand our sound and be a more ‘well-rounded’ band. No, man. That’s

PHOTO: VLAD SAVIN

s the lonely sharpness of the ancient night drops, a blackhole of inspiration is awoken. Its spirals of shadowy emptiness ring loud like the bells of midnight. The god of creation is unmasked— there is no god. Only the individual, burning the freedom of formation across their tincture of finality. The stone of the universe is birthed. Look yonder, there is the spark.

You’re left in an environment of cold realness. “The timeless factor is something that all real art should possess,” Raphael relays. “We worked on Titan for a solid two-year period, from writing to recording. It was a very intense period of my life.”

“Titan was a joyous, victorious, stressful, soul-destroying, fanatical, mind-bending experience like all real art should be,” Nocturnal Graves vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Jarro “Nuclear Exterminator” Raphael notes. “Creating something of true potency will never be an easy ride. You have to bleed for your art, to push through moments of complete dissolution in order to know the feeling of victory when the war is won.”

You can feel it. Every launch, an immediate connection. The songwriting, sharp, compact, and calculated. There’s a looseness to the overall dynamic, but a very crystalized propulsion. The two forces work to create a deep sense of place. “Before we started this recording, we had a lot of discussions about what direction we wanted to take things,” Raphael says. “All parties agreed that we wanted to open new doorways for the band, both lyrically and musically, so we basically went in with the mission that the new album should be dark and unpredictable.”

Titan, the Australian band’s third full-length in their 18-year career, dropped May 1 via Season Of Mist. It’s a dark and slashing work, its moving parts crafting a complex horizon. Nocturnal Graves have always carried a bleak chip on their shoulder, but Titan is much heavier. The record’s strength is its edgy gloom. Every pulling emotion sculpted in charcoal numbness: a real heartfelt trip.

The focus is certain. A strong black metal cloud hovers around each infusion of alteration. The concepts are relayed spiritually as well as technically. You can feel the togetherness and wholeness. This is Nocturnal Graves at their highest of forms. The desolation of the Titan’s mood is parallel to the group’s uncompromising direction. These guys are serious. “The human world will find itself on

its knees before anything of a positive, empowering paradigm shift takes place,” Raphael asserts. “Only the strong and wise survive. A close look at the lyrics of ‘Titan’ shows a clear philosophical direction toward the liberation and empowerment of the individual, which is a direct disdain toward the many aspects we stand against in today’s world.” “Titan,” the closing track, creeps along slowly, then turns confrontational. While Raphael’s admission about the world is extreme, reflecting those feelings is the only way he can achieve timelessness through his work. In “Ecdysis, Shedding Weak Flesh,” he compares humankind to something like a butterfly: only by shedding a layer can mankind fly to a higher level. “Life is nothing without growth,” he notes. “Yet, the world which surrounds us does everything to halt the individual from elevating itself to a higher state of being. The lyrics and concept of the song relate to breaking free of anything that weakens the individual from both personal barriers to society as a collective.” The song also wades in new waters for Nocturnal Graves, adding musical dimensions that tunnel deep into the psychological attributes of the main themes. It features a nightmarish

tunnel of a guitar solo and ambient landscapes of an alien and inhuman nature. “That song took a long time to get right,” Raphael explains. “Our material has mostly been fast and aggressive as opposed to dark and brooding, so my focus was to create riffs that were atmospheric yet heavy and metallic. Personally, it’s one of my favorite pieces from the entire history of the band.” Titan is best played deep in the night: a lonely diamond of force reflecting the individual all alone in the dark world. “True, powerful art comes from the darkness within,” Raphael says. “Sitting in my studio at night, working by candlelight, channeling inner darkness into the music was paramount to this final product.” 

lot has changed since alt-metal legends Sevendust signed their first record deal nearly 25 years ago. Most notably, the internet has emerged as a ubiquitous force and changed not only how people interact, but also, how they consume music. Some things have remained the same. Bands still have to make music and tour, and Sevendust have proven they can do both, despite facing some challenges along the way. Now, the Atlanta-based hard rock outfit return with All I See Is War, their 12th full-length and Rise Records debut, on May 11. Vocalist Lajon Witherspoon is rightly stoked. “Man, you know what? It’s exciting. I’m actually kind of beside myself,” the 45-year-old father of three admits. “It’s really exciting to have

done a new album and be a part of Rise Records and get ready to come back out.” However, Witherspoon is also rightfully fearful that we’re seemingly on the brink of World War III. “I think that’s what’s goin’ on in the world,” the singer asserts. “You can’t hide away from what you see when you turn on television. […] It’s just craziness. It is. As much as we hide from it and we try to shelter—and we do that as much as we can—we can’t hide the fact that it’s still out there.” “I just feel like it fit for the album,” he adds. “It’s not like the days when we were in school. All we did was read about war: World War I, World War II, you know? We got to see the helmets and a couple of the old grenades. […] Kids, they might read about that, but they turn on the TV, and they see it.”

Sevendust took a much-needed break to write before moving into producer Michael “Elvis” Baskette’s Studio Barbarosa South in Orlando, Florida, to record the follow-up to 2015’s Kill the Flaw. “First off, I can’t wait to get back to his freakin’ house again!” Witherspoon admits with a laugh. “He’s every bit as cool as he’s been over the past few years that we’ve had our talks.”

bringing ‘em to our shows—and the kids now have kids! What a beautiful thing to be a part of: to still be relevant in the industry and to have grown with these people and to have people come and have you sign their baby’s little onesie.”

“Man, lemme tell you what, there wasn’t one day that I was not really excited about working with him and [engineer] Jeff [Moll] in that studio,” he adds. “Maybe the timing was right in my life, my career, my time, growing and just feeling confident. […] It was a match that I felt was just great.”

While life and the world can sometimes get you down, Witherspoon says he hopes his band can offer some respite. “We’re just able to paint a canvas with music and, then, put some emotions in song and go out there and, hopefully, give people a break from all those things that tend to wear us down,” he says. “Music, to me? This world would be a crazy place if we didn’t have it.” 

Despite how things may have changed since the mid ‘90s, Witherspoon says one thing remains constant: Sevendust’s connection to their fans. “We’re family,” he asserts. “I was 21 when we signed a record deal, and we were out there. We have people out there who are the same age, who are goin’ through the same things, and living life the same way, and now, they have kids, and they’re

“I’m like, ‘Sorry your parents make you listen to us, but, thank you!’” Witherspoon says with a huge laugh.

PHOTO: GREG JACOBS

mone says of the sentimental event. “Joey’s brother always wants me to show up. I get to play with Cj and do a little set, and I [sing] a few songs [afterward].”

topped in Pittsburgh while on their East Coast tour, Richie Ramone has a lot to say, naturally. He and the band are still touring on their 2017 release Cellophane, which turned out to be one of his favorite albums. They also have a powerful new song that Ramone just wrote and recorded as a limited-edition flexi single called “The Last Time,” and they are gearing up to plow through many more dates, including hitting South America in April and May. Of the East Coast tour, he says, “It’s been going good,” but adds that “it gets a little more crazy in South America,” alluding to the storied hysterics the Ramones would be met with on the continent, a special hotspot for the band. As the drummer and vocalist tells it, things haven’t changed. “It’s like The Beatles. I can’t go out of a hotel room without getting spotted,” he laughs. “It’s the only place in the world where that happens.”

After that extensive whirlwind, Ramone and the band are going to Europe for six weeks and are working on booking the West Coast later in the year. Ramone teases, “I don’t want to give it away, but I think there’s gonna be a special bill going on for that one.” In between, Ramone—who, from 1983 to 1987, was the drummer for the Ramones, arguably the most influential punk band ever—will perform on May 19 at the annual Joey Ramone Birthday Bash in New York City. Held at the Bowery Electric, he will join many of the late frontman’s friends in celebration of his spectacular life, performing as The Love Triangle alongside Ramones bassist Cj Ramone and guitarist, vocalist, and Joey’s brother, Mickey Leigh. They are slated to play songs from Road To Ruin, which commemorates its 40th anniversary this year. “I’ve been going back there. It’s a nice night. You see a lot of friends.” Ra-

He continues, “It’s sad in a way, but you celebrate his life. They always end with ‘What a Wonderful World,’” of which Joey Ramone famously did a rendition. “So, there’s a bit of heartbreak going on, but it’s a nice gathering of people.” Speaking of bittersweet, the flexi single, “The Last Time,” is a tearjerker and totally relatable to anyone who’s ever gone through the hell of losing a loved one. Of its sound and feel, he says, “It’s sad, but it’s poppy and uplifting at the same time.” Ramone says his father had dementia and was really not doing well, but he currently lives in Los Angeles while the rest of the family still resides in New Jersey. His mother called and said he should come out to see his father, as it seemed like he was just waiting to see or hear from Ramone before he died. Ramone says he got to the house and “held his hand and whispered in his ear what the song’s about.” His father passed soon after, on Feb. 11, “so, it hasn’t been long,” Ramone says. Immediately after, words for the song began coming to him. “It was like boom, another line, like he

was spoon-feeding me. The second verse, he’s going, ‘Don’t be afraid, I’m proud of you,’” he recalls. “It was just coming out like crazy for two hours. I went in my little studio and wrote the words down.” “There’s something to be said about that,” he reflects. “Maybe [lost loved ones] do hear. I don’t know.” Ramone divulges that after penning “The Last Time,” he began writing more new material for the next fulllength, which he is hoping to have out by the end of the year. “I may do a single before the end of the year or I may finish the album,” he says. “I like doing albums, but it’s a lot of work.” “When I write, it has to have meaning to me,” he relates. “I don’t just write songs; I have to experience something, or it has to affect me personally. I just don’t write about politics or nothing like that.” On a promising note, he adds, “On the road is where I get a lot of ideas for song titles or things I wanna write about.” Stay tuned!  Don’t see the limited-edition “The Last Time” flexi in this issue? That sucks! Head over to NewNoiseMagazine.com/subscribe today and never miss out on a flexi again!

PHOTO: SPENCER CHAMBERLAIN

he story of The Pact— the sophomore record from Detroit hardcore crew True Love, released March 20 via Triple B Records—is the story of the staying power of heavy music. Across decades, the hardcore music community continues to give people the opportunity to live out their dreams and have a good time doing it. On The Pact, the members of True Love—vocalist Dominic Vargaz, bassist Joe Palleschi, drummer Derrick Daniel, and guitarists Mike Cesario and Alec Faber—dig further into this feature of the community, carving out a niche for themselves. Whereas, in the past, True Love followed after the trends established by well-known names like Carry On and American Nightmare, for The Pact, the band’s members pushed themselves to test new boundaries creatively. They sought to buck both what

would have been the easiest route for them to take and the one their fans might have expected, instead propelling their sound to an even heavier extreme. “When we started writing the record, we had already been a band for about four years, and we sort of didn’t really stray too far from the Carry On [and] American Nightmare style of hardcore,” Faber explains. “So, for our style of hardcore, you either go soft or you get hard, and we knew we didn’t want to go soft or become more melodic or anything like that. A, that’s not what we like, and B, that’s not the direction we wanted to take. Plus, it would be the direction that people would assume we would take based on our name and our aesthetic.” “So, we wanted to do A, what we like, and B, what people maybe wouldn’t expect from us,” he continues, “and that was to just write a harder, faster record.

That was the main focus behind it.” The band also took a unique route in the release of their newest album. Rather than set and hype up an official release date, True Love pushed the record out as quickly as possible, so they could immediately free themselves up to play the new songs on tour. “For me, hardcore is the most fun style of music to play,” Faber says, explaining his commitment to live shows. “I love almost every kind of music there is, even some country and stuff like that, but to me, live music, specifically live hardcore music, is like the purest form of expression. Starting a hardcore band and playing in front of people has always been what I wanted to do.”

rio—who has played with groups like Forced Order—came onboard ahead of The Pact, and Faber describes his contribution to the creative process as incredibly valuable. Overall, Faber says that the writing process for The Pact was both more collaborative and more thoughtful than anything the band have put out in the past, and it shows on this hard-hitting album that True Love plan to tour on as much as possible. 

However, the rushed release doesn’t at all mean that True Love didn’t completely pour themselves into The Pact. Cesa-

Originally from Ohio, Mahoney’s documentary and narrative work has been seen at various international film festivals such as Cannes, Tribeca, and Melbourne, as well as on cable TV. In addition, he spent over a decade in the Midwest music scene fronting the band Murder Your Darlings, who ran in the same tightknit circles as former members of Brainiac. “My sincere love for the band and the music is what made me pick this up and run with it,” he adds. “I also truly believe that this story is important, compelling, and needs to be told.”

DOCUMENTARY SPOTLIGHT: “BRAINIAC: TRANSMISSIONS AFTER ZERO” INTERVIEW WITH DIRECTOR ERIC MAHONEY BY TIM ANDERL

tragically killed in an automobile accident in 1997, sending ripples through the indie rock landscape and shattering the cornerstone of Dayton’s rock scene.

Sadly, one very important person was notably absent: Brainiac’s captivating and enigmatic frontman Tim Taylor, who was

In the ‘90s, the Dayton scene began generating worldwide buzz from bands such as The Breeders and Guided By Voices. Arguably the most innovative of them all, however, were Brainiac. After several singles, the band signed to New York City label Grass Records and recorded two seminal albums, 1993’s Smack Bunny Baby and 1994’s Bonsai Superstar, with Girls Against Boys’ Eli Janney at the production helm. Countless tours and much critical acclaim came, which landed the band a slot on Lollapalooza and a deal with Touch And Go Records. The band released another fulllength, 1996’s Hissing Prigs in Static Couture, and two EPs on the label, using producers Eli Janney, Steve Albini, Kim Deal, and Jim O’Rourke. Brainiac had just concluded a tour with Beck and were slated to sign a major label record deal when Taylor passed.

n December 9, 2017—25 years after the formation Dayton, Ohio, spazz rock weirdos Brainiac—Brooklyn’s The Bell House was buzzing with indie rock luminaries who were gathered to perform a tribute concert honoring the band. The show featured performances by Girls Against Boys, Savak, and The Heist—aka The 8G Band from “Late Night with Seth Meyers”—and appearances by members of Hole, Les Savy Fav, Dismemberment Plan, The Wrens, and more. Also present were most of the core members of Brainiac—often stylized as 3RA1N1AC—including guitarists Michelle Bodine and John Schmersal, bassist Juan “Monostereo” Monasterio, and drummer Tyler Trent, as well as fans and friends of the band who’d flown from distant corners of the globe for the celebration.

Immediately, the impact of Taylor’s loss was felt in the tight circles of ‘90s indie rock radio. “Dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, he’s fucking dead, the guy from Brainiac is fucking dead. I want this to mean something to every fucking one of you,” Jeff Buckley shouted from a Memphis stage in May 1997. Over the past two decades, the music and influence of Brainiac has been lauded by everyone: Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails, The Mars Volta, Melvins, Mogwai, Death Cab For Cutie, and countless others. “It’s a story I’ve always had in mind to try to tackle, but last year, I realized it was the 25th anniversary of the band forming and 20 years since Tim passed away,” says director Eric Mahoney, who organized the Bell House show as part of an effort to immortalize the band on film for a new generation of fans. “Those two things kickstarted me thinking that perhaps the time was right to start working on [“Transmissions After Zero,” a documentary about the band].”

Production of the film hasn’t come without an emotional impact on the director. “[It’s] something I didn’t quite anticipate, but this is an incredibly heavy story,” he relates. “When you are working on something like this, you’re in it day and night for at least a year or two. It definitely can take a toll, and being from Dayton and a part of the music scene, this revisits a crippling loss for our community. But I do feel there has been a massive amount of healing through this process, and that is the main takeaway and makes it so rewarding.” In February, Mahoney wrapped a second Kickstarter campaign for the project, asking fans for the funding needed to complete the film. “We [needed] to secure some more financing to get all the postproduction and editing done,” he says. “That’s the only real hurdle I’ve faced is simply being able to bankroll this to execute the kind of quality and original film I’d like to make.” When the film is completed in late 2018, Mahoney plans to seek a distributor and to secure a major festival release. For now, he’s thankful for every person who has helped to push “Transmissions From Zero” further into the limelight, including early supporters, Reznor and actor Mark Hamill. “We’ve been so lucky that people have been so supportive and helped in that way,” he says. 

BOOZE & GLORY: REGGAE SESSIONS VOL. 1: PIRATES PRESS

Now comprised of an international team of members, the former London-based crew Booze & Glory embrace a cleaner sound these days. But in the sessions from their prior LP, 2007’s Chapter IV, remaining founders Liam and Mark recruited The Londonians from the U.K. and Vespa from Poland to crank out reggae versions of three crowd favorites plucked from their catalog. Reggae Sessions Vol. 1—released on March 2—is three 45s with a mono and stereo version of each track, packed in 1000 polyvinyl bags for the standard version or 1000 slipcases for the deluxe version.

GIUDA: ROCK ‘N’ ROLL MUSIC: RISE ABOVE RECORDS

Italy’s golden boys, adorned in sweat and vigor, are ready to feed all of your glam needs. Whether you’re craving a soundtrack for the roller rink or just need an excuse to wear jorts, Giuda have come to inject unabashed catchy pop rock into your life. After three LPs and six EPs, this two-track banger was unleashed from Rise Above on March 30. That move is a nice nod toward seeing them catapult from small streetpunk circles into the ‘70s rock crowd. Clap your hands and strut that stuff on 300 purple, 300 fluorescent green, 200 lime green, 100 red trim, or 330 black vinyl units.

GHOUL / ILL BILL: SPLIT 7”: TANKCRIMES

Who the hell saw this coming? But if you are familiar with Ill Bill, you know he loves his metal. He is the perfect match for the mutants from Creepsylvania. Ill Bill gives an exclusive with Non Phixion and Heavy Metal Kings cohort Goretex on “Pentagram,” which has a nefarious conspiracy sample to open and is a fazed-out, eerie synth track à la “Suspiria”-era Goblin. Ghoul crush with their track, “Splatterthrash 2: Thrash Damage,” a fast blend of death and thrash metal. Stoked to know that these aren’t toss-away tracks and were made for this May 11 release. Tankcrimes hook it up with 200 on blue and red splatter; 250 on half blue, half red; 550 on blood red; and 1000 on silver.

SCREAM: NMC 17: SOUTHERN LORD

This record is a treasure. And with how exquisitely Southern Lord handled their Brotherhood, Uniform Choice, and Poison Idea reissues, there is no doubt that this will be a fine piece of wax. The sound is brilliant, in the literal sense: full and vibrant. For 1988, this is spectacular. Oddly, No More Censorship was released originally on the reggae label, RAS, unlike SCREAM’s first three LPs on Dischord. Here, the well-established band added flavor to charged punk riffs, political and confrontational while still potent. Southern Lord reimagined the entire product from scratch. NMC 17 dropped April 27 with new liner notes and photographs as a CD and on silver vinyl.

Various Artists: We All Want Our Time in Hell: Corpse Flower Records Lacking the swagger and polish necessary for major appeal and the rock ‘n’ roll kitsch of the Misfits, Samhain were for the diehards. They were violent, brash, and punishing, boasting takes on real-life murder and horror. Samhain soon became Danzig after Rick Rubin became interested—but wanted a more marketable band—but in that flash of hellfire, four years garnered some blistering, blusterous punk. Now, in 2018, some of metal’s most sinister names banded together to rehash Danzig’s gnarly brainchild: Midnight, Ghoul, Acid Witch, Brain Tentacles, Ringworm, and Child Bite, to name a few. Mastered by James Plotkin, the May 4 tribute will be limited to 300 copies in three color variants: black, white, and orange.

APOLOGIST: HOUSTON: NO RENT RECORDS apologist’s Rose Rae wrote about her new cassette, houston: “This tape is about me refusing to be angry. Last Passover, I was drugged and raped in Houston, Texas. This compelled me to finish recordings I had been working on for over two years.” The emotional heaviness can be felt. The six compositions on the tape are sparse noise and ambient extractions that evolve into distinct mind clouds. “absorbent” is soft and dreadful, wishing for a sky that will eventually shine. “coal to carbon” is circular blocks of avant-garde waves and hopes, while “houston” is beautiful and serene. It’s inspiring to listen to music that is about the power to heal and pursue life—not the kind of power that deafens and destroys it. “Ethically and ideologically, I believe it is better to use the full weight of your experiences to create, rather than to exact meaningless vengeance,” Rae added. Listening to houston, you start to dream of a better place.

DRIP: HELL DRAGS ON…: RUNSTATE TAPES Montréal’s Drip are sandpaper punk: scratchy with absolute terror. The band’s newest ripper, the quick and punishing Hell Drags On…, is six crusty songs in the vein of “fuck you,” a welcomed 11 minutes of shadowy rock ‘n’ roll. Put this little nugget on in the middle of the day at the office and, then, start knocking things over: files, people’s lunches, your boss’s new fucked up jacket—just kidding, don’t do shit like that. But seriously, this tape is pure energy, and it’s played well too. The bass is circular and commanding, while the lead singer is serious and loose in a Johnny Rotten via Karl Willetts fashion. The whole thing is fast, reminding you of the power of doing things you love. Like, there’s no time to sit around and mope while the world burns down. Nope, get up and protest for Animal Rights, march to the beat of Art Blakey’s drums, paint your fridge—no, wait, don’t do that—and feel the power that is Drip, a singular vision birthed in the alleyways of the great North: perpetually relevant, perpetually stimulating. Punk rock—is there anything better?!

FUCK LUNGS: HONEYSUCKLE: ALREADY DEAD TAPES AND RECORDS Fuck Lungs are a free jazz duo from Chicago who wear their city’s weather-beaten soul on their sleeves. Flutes, saxophones, drums, and electronics collide in a cornucopia of vision, ranging from fierce to down-right sublime. There’s a cross-pollination of speed and patience that works to the album’s strengths: mainly, the ability to be completely technical and futuristic while maintaining jazz’s organic beauty. “Fresher Breath” is a walk through Kurosawa’s “Dreams,” a meditation on peace in the presence of terror. “Lunar Tunes” takes orbit, meshing tape manipulation with Ornette Coleman abandon. The cassette is pink and also very punk—there’s a silence in the background that hints at another planet, another force. The two musicians, Curt Oren and Joe Hess, have an innate connection, compressing their emotions into a singular expression. Listen: Chicago free jazz lives hard!

KI/NU: AMIGO: SEE SEE TAPES See the sun. See the shape of the infinite zone. Ride the concrete into the sands of eternity, drifting out, out beyond the surf. Words come naturally when listening to Brazilian producer ki/nu’s newest offering, Amigo, tape with enough dreams in it to last two lifetimes. Hip hop and ambience play a lengthy role, as does physical environment: a very West Coast vibe resides hard in the album’s instrumental language. A component of existentialism mixes with the lo-fi feel, delivering exactness: fluid yet solid, like walking the streets when the sun is shining, the glare reflecting off car windows sharply. The mood is memory: you can feel yourself and the arrangement of thoughts from particular sections of your life. It’s a trip right to the front door of your childhood, when hip hop ruled your entire world. Thanks, ki/nu!