New Noise Magazine Issue #32

FQP shines a light on the joys and heartaches that lie at the intersection of the LGBTQIA+ community and the world of alternative music. While queer representation is often refracted through the prism of normative curiosities and concerns, FQP features queer voices saying whatever they want, however they want. Don’t fear the realness.

PHOTO: EM DEMARCO

mates—as a result. I have dealt with some unpleasant experiences from time to time living here, but I have real support for the first time too as a mentally ill trans woman.

I would like to see Pittsburg continue to move in a direction that is more comfortable and led by marginalized voices—more trans, queer, POC artists, as well as their needs being centered and met. Things feel like they are heading more in that direction. I hope that continues.

featuring Kristine of Het Ward Pittsburgh’s Het Ward aren’t afraid to get right in your fucking face.

Featuring vocalist Kristine, drummer Rye, guitarist Justin, and bassist Kallen, the band share members with Silence, Athame, SpiritBox, Mercury Uncovered, and Medium Ugly. On their self-released self-titled EP—out now digitally via Bandcamp and available on cassette via Get Better Records in late spring—they blast through five furious hardcore tracks that sound as though they’re seeping up through the floorboards from a particularly rowdy basement show.

From their no-shit-taken assertion of “Fuck your complicity / Fuck your greed / Fuck your transmisogyny” on the EP’s opener, “T.G.F.F.S.,” to their battle cry of “We’re the callous kids you drove into a corner / We’re your demise drawn, no quarter” on closer, “SINKING,” Het Ward lend a righteously enraged voice to queer and trans individuals everywhere who are sick of tone-policing and respectability politics. Het Ward is both revolutionary rallying call and mollifying musical catharsis—violence in, violence out.

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ON THE SCENE

I started going to hardcore and punk shows around Syracuse, [New York], in 2001. I was only 14 at the time. Throughout the years, I’ve seen a lot of really powerful things happen that moved me and changed me in a very big way at a very urgent time in my life. In contrast to this, there were a lot of really awful things I grew up around that simply should have never happened, nor should they ever happen—violent assaults, extremely transphobic and homophobic language and behavior, and a lot of misogyny that went unchecked. These elements still unfortunately exist and find their way into shows and spaces.

I personally believe, as a whole, DIY punk has gotten much better at addressing these issues. I feel much safer at shows now. Ten years ago, the thought of being out to people was simply out of the question. I live in Pittsburgh now. People here are, for the most part, really friendly and accepting. There is a much larger queer presence at shows here than there was growing up in N.Y. too, so I made a lot of wonderful friends—my awesome band-

ON COPING

As you begin to express yourself more openly, as you come to better understand your experiences and who you are, you will also begin to recognize—if you haven’t already— the many ways in which people have and continue to mistreat people like us. You will discover that some of those people are also people you’ve been calling your friends.

You will lose some of these people.

It will hurt. A lot. Trust me, it is for the better to be rid of people who cannot respect you or your needs.

Seek out other people who are much like yourself. It’s important to have support, but also important to have support from people who can empathize and have been or are going through similar circumstances.

ON SUPPORT

There are so many people who have helped me make sense of my life, who I am, and what is important for my survival. A lot of the most influential people in shaping who I am are also people I am fortunate enough to call friends.

One person who comes to mind is my friend Jade from CLAW [and] Anti-Androgen. I have followed her music ever since the days of Passengers being a band. That band

helped me through a lot of confusing turns I was having to make in life. I’m fortunate to call her a friend of mine. I don’t get to see her as often as I’d like to, as we have always lived in different states. When I do see her, it’s like we hang out every day. I never feel a need to hold back. I can tell her anything. She’s wonderful. Also, CLAW and Anti-Androgen are such good bands.

I’d also like to give a shout out to my friend Nai. They are a friend of mine from Pittsburgh. They’ve been to almost every show we’ve played in the city. More importantly, though, they’ve been there for me countless times, have lifted me when I was falling apart, and have knocked me down a peg when I wasn’t acting my best.

They are so brilliant and so awesome—not to mention really funny.

ON SECRET PASSIONS

I have kept my responses relatively serious, [but] I really like talking about weed. [Laughs] I love it. I love everything about it: how it smells, tastes, the ways it helps me cope with my PTSD and trauma. I nerd out on all the strains and also get really into talking about smoking weed. I feel like I can’t do it most of the time without sounding like I’ve been to every Kottonmouth Kings concert since 1998. I love weed nevertheless. Please! If you’re a fan of Het Ward and like weed too, smoke my gay silly ass up on tour and nerd out with me about weed!

new albums from topshelf records:

additional new titles coming soon from:

tour dates, merch & info:

Special Explosion, Oshwa, People Like You & No Vacation.

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The record touches on personal and external “vultures” that weigh the band down, yet the mindset is positive, stating a desire to “move on, keep trucking on simple.” “I lost my father in January of 2013,” Bragg explains. “My father had a rare type of cancer, and it really sucked all of the life out of him. He was my main support system when it came to my music; he was also a bass player who also played in bands, so he really understood me. Losing him had thrown my family into a dark place, where we were struggling to accept what had happened. [The band] stepped in and really helped me to ‘move on, keep trucking on simple.’”

FENDING OFF THE SCAVENGERS- POINT OF VIEW INTERVIEW WITH BASSIST MICHAEL BRAGG BY NICHOLAS SENIOR

It’s easy to get excited about punk in the summer, but holy hell, Vultures is fantastic: more intricate and even more hooky than Point Of View’s last EP, 2013’s Burner. Despite all that’s going on in this joyously complex music, the earnest lyrics and belt-out-your-lungs hooks are the heart and soul of Vultures, due out via Creator-Destructor Records on May 12. The Bay Area band’s latest batch of

songs is immediately memorable, and the Propagandhi-meets-emo-pop-punk style has “classic” written all over it

Salt Lake City duo, Human Leather— comprised of Choir Boy’s Adam Klopp and Sculpture Club’s Chaz Costello— have delivered a debut LP that is both a neon-lit masterclass in synth pop and a nostalgia-fueled time machine. “We started doing Human Leather as a collaborative effort a little over a year ago,” Klopp says. “At first, it wasn’t intended to be a live band. We just wanted to record a batch of pop songs and do an album. It’s been really rewarding for me, personally, because it’s helped me to learn more about recording and to become more confident with producing something independent of outside help.”

directly. If I had to compare us to better-known bands of those genres, maybe a shitty version of Tears For Fears mixed with Depeche Mode? Some of my main current influences are Lowlife, China Crisis, and Valerie Dore.”

Lazy Karaoke—released via Cercle Social on April 30—harkens to ‘80s new wave and new romantic staples. “I think we’re drawing from a pretty even mix of new wave, goth, Italo disco, and mainstream ‘80s pop,” Klopp offers. “It’s hard to say which bands we sound like

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Bassist Michael Bragg discusses Point Of View’s camaraderie, saying, “I think our sound has progressed pretty organically because of our lineup staying the same for so long. We started playing music together as a group when we

“I agree with ‘shitty Tears For Fears,’” Costello laughs. “I think we pull a lot of inspiration from mainstream ‘80s pop, things like Human League, Kate Bush, Madonna, Cindi Lauper.”

Whatever the influences in Human Leather’s wheelhouse, Lazy Karaoke draws some of its considerable strength from Klopp’s dramatic, Anohni-esque baritone warble. “[I haven’t had any] official vocal training apart from singing in choirs,” Klopp confesses. “I think I have bad technique, actually. My parents and choir teachers always said I had bad singing habits. My breathing is wrong or something. Not sure that I am necessar-

were in our junior high years. We also had a lot of back-and-forths during our jam sessions growing up, in a way that somewhat forced us to grow closer as a group. We do a good job of challenging each other. We’ve spent a lot of time together, which has created a brotherhood between us, and it allows us to question each other’s ideas without anybody getting sensitive.”

That mindset pairs perfectly with the music, giving the tunes an uplifting, buoyant feel despite the subject matter.

So, how did Bragg deal with these issues? “I try to have fun,” he says. “Music is what gives me that feeling, so I guess I have turned to the music to keep that forward momentum going. Being able to rely on each other as a group is a great support system too, especially since we’re all pulling on the same rope and feel a lot of the same things. Being able to all work together on the same project is a really great way for us all to express ourselves and let out some stress in a positive way—with the help of loads of beer, obviously.”

VHS WISHES & POP STAR DREAMS-HUMAN LEATHER

INTERVIEW WITH ADAM KLOPP AND CHAZ COSTELLO BY TIM ANDERL ily unique, but I think I do have a wide vocal range.”

Costello’s contribution cannot be understated, lending a softer, more pristine vocal and some of the most creative guitar work in modern indie synth rock. Not only are the duo swinging for the fences sonically, they’re also camera-ready: Lazy Karaoke comes with a companion

VHS video compilation. “We decided we had to do it so people could have our faces on their TVs and want look and be like us,” Klopp jokes.

“Yeah, we wish to be pop stars,” Costello adds.

The collage on the cover of Glass—the debut album from UV-TV, released on March 10 via Deranged Records—is put together from headshots of the band that have been cut to pieces and reassembled in a chaotic fashion, making it hard to tell what the individual members look like. “We like the idea of being obscure,” vocalist, lyricist, and bassist Rose Vastola says. “We’re not trying to hide or anything, but I do think we focus more on the music than our personal image.”

free-flowing solos. UV-TV take a similar approach to their live shows. “I think we usually try to start things out with the more straightforward songs, then kinda work our way into the longer, more drawn-out songs,” Bernacett explains. “I think the album and our live show sound the same.”

The Forlida band’s pop/punk music is an energetic blend of melody and noise, driven by Vastola’s straightforward basslines, Ryan Hopewell’s propulsive drumming, and the ever-expanding textures of Ian Bernacett’s guitar. As the album unfolds, Bernacett moves from brief bursts of distorted chords to long,

Vastola and Bernacett both sing lead, although Vastola handles most of the vocals, both on Glass and onstage. Like Bernacett’s lead guitar, Vastola’s voice floats freely through the mix, just another element of the band’s overall sound. “I don’t really like it when the vocals are the first thing that jump out

PHOTO: ARLINGTON GARRETT III

Vastola agrees, “We do a pretty good job of filling the space live. You’ll just have to see it for yourself.”

METAL FOR WHAT AILS YOU- ANCIENT ASCENDENT

I N T E R V I E W W I T H A L A N W E B B , N A R I M A N P O U S H I N , A N D A L E X B U T L E R BY N I C H O L AS S E N I O R If most bands are targeted therapy— that is, they scratch a certain stylistic itch—then Ancient Ascendant are a broad-spectrum antibiotic. The U.K.based group have steadily honed in on their chimera metal, and Raise the Torch is their ode to all that makes playing metal great. Blending elements of black, death, thrash, doom, and

classic heavy metal, the group’s third record—released via Spinefarm Records on April 21—can literally cure whatever metallic itch you have— though if persists, see a doctor.

In 2010, vocalist John Maiello relocated from New Jersey to Seattle and, among other things, tried to start a band. “Long story short, that band never went anywhere, and I realized I wanted to front my own band,” he remembers.

After a few false starts, teaching himself to play guitar, and fretting about whether his songs were good enough, Maiello found the motivation he needed. “I saw a band called So Pitted, and honestly, they were the worst band I had ever seen in my entire life,” he admits. Because of that experience, he figured, “If they could do it, I could do it.” Thus, Dead Bars played their first show in March 2013. “Now, So Pitted is on Sub Pop. I have no idea what I’m doing,” he says.

for them.” After things between him and his previous band, Big Eyes, fizzled out, Frederick wanted to start playing music again. Both Jersey natives, the two gelled well early on, and drumming for the band has introduced Frederick to new friends and great experiences.

He states, “If it wasn’t for Dead Bars, I’d probably be living in the middle of nowhere by myself and/or homeless by now.”

Drummer C.J. Frederick—who joined shortly after that first show—vouches that So Pitted are much better now, and Dead Bars have “nothin’ but love

CREATING UNITY THROUGH OBSCURITY- UV-TV

“We approached the writing in the same way as we have for a while now, as it seems to have been proven to work,”

Dead Bars’ songs are simple and catchy.

“I try to sing, I just don’t really know how,” Maiello admits. They are often summed up as a pop punk band, but Maiello’s vocal style is equal parts melodic, ferocious, and gritty. After five different EPs and splits, Dead Bars finally released a full-length record called Dream Gig in March via No Idea Records. “I never thought anybody would understand this band, so the fact that a cool record label asked us to make

INTERVIEW WITH IAN BERNACETT AND ROSE VASTOLA BY J. POET at you in the mix,” Bernacett says. “I think we mixed [the record] to have everything blend together and be represented equally, instead of trying to showcase our strengths and hide our weaknesses.”

Vastola laughs and chimes in, “I think [the vocals] are too loud! Even though I may be the ‘frontperson,’ I don’t feel that way. That’s why [the vocals are] blended in with the other instruments.”

bassist Alan Webb explains. “We have a designated period of riff and song idea writing which everyone contributes to, everything goes into a shared folder that we usually call ‘Legs’—ideas that might have legs. Then, [vocalist] Alex [Butler] and I get together over the course of a few weekends, drink a lot of Bier Deluxe and try to flesh out those ideas into something that we like.”

the band itself, but this time, I wanted to be a little more optimistic. The songs outline exploration, traveling to distant places far from the easy comforts of home. This is kind of a metaphor for our own compulsion to make music in this overcrowded, ‘golden old days’ obsessed metal world. While in the last album, the conclusion was that all endeavor turns into [echoes and cinder], here I wanted to celebrate that endeavor.

The journey itself becomes the reward.

‘Once more to the cold’ then translates to: ‘Go on, then. Let’s write, record, tour, and lose a bunch of money on another album.’”

Guitarist and self-identified token Swedish member Nariman Poushin notes that this record was a much more collaborative process, and that he “snuck a few of my boneheaded riffs in there this time.” He continues, “Our records have been zeroing in on this sound, which can be best summarized as ‘not giving a fuck.’ Is it death metal?

Is it extreme? Is it ‘proper’? Who cares?

We had a great time. A great time!” he laughs.

Raise the Torch is lyrically reflective, but with a bit of a lightened mood—pun intended. Butler explains, “As in [2014’s] Echoes and Cinder, the lyrics reflect on

It’s clear that Ancient Ascendant have a sense of humor, and that lighthearted nature reflects the efficacy of their musical antibiotic. From its riff-y extremes to its moody reflections and its thrashy outbursts, Raise the Torch embraces everything that makes metal entertaining: a band making music they love and having the best time doing it.

THEIR BAND COULD BE YOUR LIFE- DEAD BARS

INTERVIEW WITH JOHN MAIELLO AND C.J. FREDERICK BY KAYLA GREET an album is really fucking awesome,” Maiello enthuses. It’s also, in a way, how they found one of their members after a lineup change. “[Bassist Jon] Oddo literally sent me an email that said, ‘Application for Dream Gig,’” Maiello remembers. “Our band could be your life.”

Though nothing is set in stone yet, Maiello assures that Dead Bars will make appearances on both coasts at some point this year—though Frederick opines, “Touring sucks and is bad for you, but I guess I’ll do it anyway.”

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The Oakland music scene—like many great music meccas—tends to be a tad incestuous. So, it should come as little surprise when one band simply morphs into another. Case in point: RAYS. “[Guitarist and synth player] Troy [Hewitt] and I really admired [vocalist and guitarist] Stanley [Martinez] and [drummer and synth player] Alexa [Pantalone]’s band, Turner, as soon as we saw them,” vocalist and bassist Eva Hannan says.

“Eventually, they approached me about playing music together—I think they were into my dance moves. The band needed a fuller sound and more range for experimentation, so Troy joined too.”

So, what’s the significance behind the band’s name? “It’s a short word with a positive connotation,” she says mat-

ter-of-factly. “There are some good Rays out there.”

The band’s self-titled debut came out March 30 on Trouble In Mind Records.

It’s an impressive mix of post-punk steeped in late ‘70s and early ‘80s influences. “We started to play music together because it seemed obvious what the outcome would be,” Hannan says. “Based on our interests and personal styles, we thought it would fit together well, and by the time we were making the record, the sound was in place. It came together fast when we started playing as a group.”

Despite having just released the album, RAYS have already started writing new songs. “The next batch is starting to sound cohesive, but it takes a while,” Hannan says. “Sometimes, when you

SYNTHESIZING A BRAND NEW SOUND- ARCADEA

INTERVIEW WITH DRUMMER BRANN DAILOR BY BRANDON RINGO

STRANGERS IN A STRANGE BAND - RAYS

PHOTO: JAY HINMAN

INTERVIEW WITH VOCALIST/BASSIST EVA HANNAN BY JOHN B. MOORE do a demo, all you get out of it is the realization that the song needs more work or time or guitar solos or something else entirely. We want to keep our creativity a natural process, so we’ll all just have to wait and see what comes out.”

For now, the band plan to road test the songs on their debut. They have a short tour of the Pacific Northwest scheduled in spring, followed by Midwest and East Coast stops in June and the Southeast in September.

of downtime, the newest is Arcadea, featuring Mastodon drummer Brann Dailor. Alongside Dailor are two vocalists and keyboardists: his longtime friend Core Atoms of Zruda and Raheem Amlani of Withered. The band’s debut selftitled album will be released June 16 via Relapse Records.

sold. “I love electronic music, and I love all the synths and stuff,” he shares. “So, when I started listening through what he had been working on, I thought it just sounded awesome, and I really wanted to play to it. Then, we wrote some stuff together.”

While Arcadea’s lineup is fascinating on pedigree alone, their sound—consisting of only keyboard, synth, vocals, and Dailor’s drums—is definitely their most alluring feature. When Atoms first discussed the idea of working on a project together, Dailor wasn’t immediately sold on collaborating, despite playing together previously in the band Gaylord. “I always liked his playing style,” Dailor says, “but I would kind of shy away from doing any kind of side project that was heavy rock or something that was all guitar, because I just feel like I already cover that with Mastodon.”

Although Arcadea’s music is void of guitar and bass, the recording process was still full of creative blood and thunder. “I just look for the feels,” Dailor explains. “The soundscapes are a little different, but across genres, you’re really just looking for a certain feeling, so as long as that’s there, it’s all good. As long as you get that certain feeling that you’re looking for— for me, music is music. I get the same feeling from Stevie Wonder that I get from Slayer. That’s really what I look for.

When we were jamming together, it was a little different—just looking at two dudes with keyboards and jamming with them, it’s a little bit of a different look—but emotionally, it’s pretty much the same.”

Unlike many bands who have gone from a smaller indie label to major label superstardom, Mastodon are continuously at the peak of their creativity. With each new album come, they add new elements and nuances to their sound, expanding their already

legendary status. What is their secret, you ask? It’s simple: they never turn off their creative faucets.

Seattle’s Danny Denial—fronted by the malcontent of the same name, with support from bandmates, Adam Cignatta and Ian Dexter-Crawford—play a mix of ‘70s punk, ‘80s new wave, and ‘90s alternative that could easily double as the soundtrack for a Gregg Araki movie.

According to Denial, the back of their own VHS box would read: “So much angst! So much despair! A misanthrope with really green hair! Danny Denial stars as the titular (Sad)Boy Anachronism in this naked display of punky power chords and passive aggressive lyricism the Neu York Times calls ‘really, really negative.’”

further explore that this year, to push more tonal extremes and work beyond the melancholy.”

FILM, DESPAIR, AND GREEN HAIR- DANNY DENIAL

“‘Beard’ is an older song I wrote,” he continues. “It was born out of one of my rare and crazed infatuations, and the whole song was just embarrassing to me. Then, it became this silly, fun stalker anthem my band and I would pull out for shows, and to my shock, people seemed to like it more than the album cuts.

So, it sort of got itself here to spite me.

When I decided to rerecord it as a band track—with the keys and that zig-zagging synth—I knew instantly there should be a B side, and it should be titled ‘Shave My Face.’ […] It’s both about desperation and resignation, which I’m most proud of.” On April 28, the band premiered the video for “Beard,” directed by Toran Whitaker and shot in part at Seattle’s Scarecrow Video. It’s a whimsical departure from the seriousness of Denial’s self-directed short for Goodbye’s “Blow Up Your Whole Life,” and proves that his filmic range matches that of his music.

So, what can fans expect from the sequel?

Denial hopes to start touring and take on more cinematic endeavors, and plans to release a summer single entitled “Rose McGowan.” “I’ve been very lucky, especially in this past year, to make such big strides with my music and to

Denial self-released his debut full-length, Goodbye, on March 3, and followed it up with a new single, “Beard” b/w “Shave My Face,” on April 21. While the LP explored Denial’s personal Escape from L.A. and relocation to The Great Northwest, the songs on the single “stand independently,” he says. “These songs are a little more upbeat, play with synths a bit, and have a very frenetic, zany energy my other material might not. I want to

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Though each of the band’s members have formed supergroups of varying styles during their limited periods

However, shortly after listening to what Atoms had come up with, Dailor was

PHOTO: COLLENE MCCARTER

INTERVIEW WITH FRONTMAN DANNY DENIAL BY KELLEY O'DEATH get to create and connect with so many beautiful people,” Denial concludes.

“Now that the album is done, I feel weightless. I can own what I do—finally— and have some fun in the sandbox.”

Philadelphia’s Dr. Beardfacé And The Spaceman are a great band with a silly name. “We’re a weird group of people,” frontwoman Kerrie Trube admits, “and although we don’t watch TV 24/7, there are a few shows that we absolutely love. [Bassist] Shawn [Betz] and I were watching reruns on Netflix one day and started talking about how great the characters are of Dr. Beardfacé from ‘Scrubs’ and Dr. Spaceman from ‘30 Rock.’ Both are doctors, and both have weird pronunciations of their names, and we joked about how it would be funny to name our band Dr. Beardfacé And The Spaceman and hear people struggle to say it. We were only half serious, but the other guys in the band liked it, so it stuck.”

ton of diversity in musical influences among our members, since we don’t all listen to the same stuff,” Trube explains. “If you give three people three different songs of ours to listen to, they’d each probably label us a different genre based on that one song. And we like that—we’re kind of proud of being difficult to define.”

The band blend together genres ranging from punk and alternative to rockabilly and doo-wop. “There is a

On May 5, Altercation will release Here for the Scraps, the band’s first full-length album. “We’re really

Dr. Beardfacé And The Spaceman met Altercation Records’ Travis Myers while playing Upstart Fest in 2016. “He saw us play and—lucky for us—liked us enough to offer us a spot on the Altercation roster, which we gladly accepted,” Trube recounts. “We really feel at home with the label and haven’t found one band on Altercation that we don’t love.”

N.Y.’S DYNAMIC POST-PUNK DAYDREAM- ROYA PHOTO: SAMANTHA WEST

INTERVIEW WITH JAY HEISELMANN AND RAHILL JAMALIFARD BY JAMES ALVAREZ Roya is Farsi for “dream” or “vision.”

It’s also the name of a rad new Brooklyn punk band with a dreamy self-titled debut dropping this June on Burger Records. If you like gargantuan hooks and rock ‘n’ roll of the toe-tapping variety, Roya are the band for you. Oozing emotion, packed

with both somber vibes and rollicking energy, Roya’s debut record is a dynamic post-punk daydream you won’t want to wake from. The band’s many influences and creative energy merge on songs like “A Sickness,” “Maleman,” and “Allergic Reaction,” tunes that would dominate

When Cayley Spivey decided to pursue music in earnest, she knew she wanted to do more than play garages and friends’ basements. “When I started the band, I had this idea,” she explains, “and anybody I brought in, I told them that this is something I want to take really seriously for the rest of my life.”

As Spivey worked out the lineup, she made it clear that this was the real deal, telling potential bandmates, “‘If you join, I want to take it as far as we can.’”

was now a whole new platform for her music. “To be honest, when I started [Small Talks], I kind of already had that idea [to take it seriously], because there’s nothing else I’ve been as passionate about,” she expresses.

“It was always in the back of my mind, because music is the thing that makes me the happiest, and I just wanted to pursue it.”

That band-in-the-making became the emotionally-charged indie pop trio, Small Talks. The ensemble was completed with the addition of drummer Justin Charette and bassist Kenny Kelly, while Spivey took on the vocals and guitar. For Spivey, what started as writing songs in the privacy of her own room as a young teenager

Since Spivey first moved forward with her idea more than a year ago, Small Talks have made their mark in their local scene in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, earned a place at Common Ground Records, and released their first EP, Until It Turns to Petals, on March 17. Being picked up by a label was a reassuring step in the right direction.

“It feels amazing,” Spivey says. “We felt like we got the green ‘go’ of, ‘Hey, you’re

TV PARTY- DR. BEARDFACÉ AND THE SPACEMAN

INTERVIEW WITH VOCALIST KERRIE TRUBE BY KELLY MCGOWAN stoked about it,” Trube says. “The name of the album falls in line with our TV sitcom doctor theme: it’s part of a quote by ‘Dr. Mantis Toboggan,’ a doctor that Danny DeVito’s character Frank sometimes pretends to be on ‘It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.’

I feel like it tells the story of our

progression as a band, and my dog Barkley is prominently featured on the album cover—but don’t tell him.

He’ll just start bragging about it to the other dogs in the neighborhood.”

rock radio in a just universe. “It’s been a pretty organic process,” lead guitarist Jay Heiselmann says of the band’s uncanny songcraft. “Nothing has ever been forced.”

[‘Mod with Feelings’], is the first song we ever wrote,” Heiselmann shares. “Rahill wrote it, and we made it into a song. We recorded most of it—at least guitar and drums—the first day we met.”

Vocalist Rahill Jamalifard echoes Heiselmann’s sentiments. “I think Jay and I have a cool relationship. He’s really experienced, he’s been doing music for a while,” she says. “This is my second project, and he was basically with me on my first project, because he recorded my first band. I think he likes that I don’t really have a lot of things to [fall] back on when it comes to music stuff. I don’t think, like, ‘I want to sound like this genre’ or ‘I’ve been doing this forever.’ It’s more like, ‘This seems like a fun idea, let’s try it.’”

With such apparent chemistry amongst them, it’s no wonder Burger Records— who had already worked with Jamalifard’s previous band—were quick to swoop in and work with Roya from the getgo. “Burger has always been really supportive,” Jamalifard reveals. “They were looking forward to whatever else we were going to do; it was kind of a no-brainer.”

Heiselmann adds, “She’ll pick up things I’m playing and be like, ‘Let’s do that, let’s do that thing again.’” This winning formula, showcased throughout Roya’s debut, has been in effect since day one of the band’s existence. “The last song,

Crafting hits since the band’s literal inception. Knocking out a stellar debut on a vanguard label while still in their relative infancy. What does the future hold for such a promising new band? “Other members have added dynamics,” Heiselmann says. “Our sound is getting a little heavier now. The next record is kind of leaning towards that. I mean, the world is getting a little heavier…”

SOMETHING YOU WILL REMEMBER- SMALL TALKS PHOTO: KRISTINA MCCOMAS

INTERVIEW VOCALIST/GUITARIST CAYLEY SPIVEY BY ANNETTE HANSEN doing the right thing, and we’re going to help you out.’”

And when it comes to new listeners, Spivey wants them to know one thing: “We hope that they see this as the beginning of something that could be really amazing,” she says. “We’re

just trying to connect with people and give them something that they can remember.”

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Caddywhompus have a knack for melding various styles within their music. The duo of vocalist and guitarist Chris Rehm and drummer Sean Hart touch upon art pop, math rock, free jazz, noise punk, and psychedelia with their latest release, Odd Hours, released April 14 via Inflated Records. “Sean moved to New Orleans in 2007 to go to school, and I moved there the next year for the same reason,” Rehm says, detailing their migration from Houston, Texas.

“We knew in advance that we wanted to start a band, but didn’t have a name or idea until we got a practice space and started writing.”

Odd Hours was made during the dog days of summer in August of 2016. “It was in the high 90s and 100 percent

humidity, and we were in a large gutted house that we converted into a studio,” Rehm says. “We had a single window unit installed in a window six feet in the air on one of the walls that dropped it, like, one degree, but it was usually off for the takes since it was right above where we set up the drums. So, it got hot.”

“Sean’s a pretty loud drummer when he wants to be, and I’ve always tried to match him and basically be as sonically present as possible with my amps, running a sub octave to a bass amp and having my ‘normal’ guitar line sent to both a PA and a guitar amp,” Rehm continues, explaining how Caddywhompous capture their unique sound. “In past recordings, I’ve tried to capture my guitar sound by

PRECIOUS DEATH METAL CARGO- JOHN FRUM PHOTO: KRISTIE KRAUSS

INTERVIEW WITH BASSIST LIAM WILSON BY JAMES ALVAREZ Psyche-shattering death metal from the minds of some of the most talented players the underground has ever assembled, John Frum’s debut album, A Stirring in the Noos, drops May 12 via Relapse Records and is sure to turn heads and indoctrinate many into the

band’s oh-so-bizarre musical cargo cult.

After going through a couple years of uncertainty, a few guitarists, and “more drummers than Spinal Tap,” according to frontman Teddy Too Much, Telephone Lovers are back—full speed ahead. They now have a solid lineup— with Too Much, bassist Billie Telephone, guitarist Pat Salway, and drummer James Carman—and just released the vinyl version of their self-titled 12-song debut album on Disconnected Records. They celebrated its release at Alex’s Bar in Long Beach in March and followed that up by playing a bunch of shows at SXSW.

on.” Telephone Lovers originally released their self-titled album online and on cassette via Lolipop Records in 2016.

Staying true to the band’s aesthetic, it was recorded “straight to an 8-track machine,” Too Much explains. “We just try to stick to the sorta ‘70s formula with that. I think it sounds great: punchy, warm.” Their next full-length is sure to be recorded in a similar fashion.

Since the material on the record is from 2013, the Long Beach-based power-pop meets ‘70s punk band have almost enough songs ready for a whole new full-length. “I can’t wait to jump in the studio and start recording,” Too Much gushes. “We have most of it written.

We’re trying to get our hands on maybe three or four more songs we all agree

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Derived from the fascinating 20th Century Melanesian cult figure dubbed John Frum, the band’s name is a “tongue in cheek curveball,” according to bassist Liam Wilson. “We were looking for a

Despite how great the songs on Telephone Lovers came out, shortly after everything was completed, “everybody kinda went their separate ways,” Too Much says. “Some of the guys went on to other projects. I didn’t even know [if ] I had a band, so the record was on hold.”

Then, their bassist texted him with a simple, “Let’s jam,” and it all started back up. At this stage, Too Much says, “We’ve gotten really tight, and I’m really stoked.” Now, he’s looking to get another van to replace their old one—which ran until it had 400,000 miles on it—by

SWEATIN’ OUT COMPLEX JAMS- CADDYWHOMPUS

INTERVIEW WITH VOCALIST/GUITARIST CHRIS REHM BY ROBERT DUGUAY recording every speaker of every amp with varying success. This time, on Odd Hours, studio engineer Ross Farbe and us decided to pretty much stick to one amp for guitar, and I think it helped to make it sound even more direct and intense.”

On touring in support of Odd Hours, Rehm explains, “Our summer is pretty open-ended at the moment. We’re hoping to do some touring in the late summer, but nothing is announced just yet. Stay tuned!”

band name [and] I heard the term ‘cargo cult’ and heard the John Frum story and thought, ‘That’s batshit crazy. I love it.’”

bands such as The Dillinger Escape Plan, The Faceless, and John Zorn amongst their ranks, it’s no wonder that John Frum’s debut conjures such a mass of unholy racket. Tracks likes “Presage of Emptiness” and “Memory Palace” mix creepy technical death metal with unpredictable improvisation. “It sounds like fucking galaxies are colliding in the middle of that song,” Wilson says proudly.

Legend has it that native peoples on the island of Tanna came to worship Western servicemen and the massive military cargo shipments they’d unload during World War II, developing a literal cargo cult of mysterious goods dropped from the sky. “When the army came and then left, the whole thing was, ‘Where are you from?’ and they’d say, ‘I’m John from Wisconsin’ or ‘John from New York,’ and that’s how they got ‘John Frum.’ Everyone is sort of a cargo cult John Frum follower,” Wilson argues. “I don’t know how the fuck my Apple computer is made; I could never make one. Hopefully, John Frum the band could go play in Tanna. Like we are John Frum: ‘I guess we are here to bring our cargo. Our cargo is this death metal shit.’”

And what mighty death metal shit it is.

A Stirring in the Noos is a wild, mindbending voyage into uncharted waters of brutality. With alumni from shred-tastic

A Stirring in the Noos is the culmination of years’ worth of basement jam sessions from incomprehensibly accomplished shredders and growlers, itching to make new waves in the vast sea of extreme music. “It’s authentic dudes in a basement literally making underground music underground. It’s raw!” Wilson gushes. “A lot of John Frum is going to be improvised. Every solo on that record is improvised. Some nights, it might fall flat on its face; some nights, it might be cooler than anything we recorded.” Heavy, chaotic, unpredictable—that batshit crazy band name actually makes a lot of sense now.

FOR A GOOD TIME CALL...- TELEPHONE LOVERS

INTERVIEW WITH VOCALIST/GUITARIST TEDDY TOO MUCH BY J A N E L L E J O N E S the time autumn comes around and to hit the road, possibly embarking on a U.S. tour.

Along with refining their sound, Too Much is excited about another direction the band have been moving in: with

this new lineup, everyone is participating and contributing more to the songwriting. “I wasn’t really expecting that, but whatever is happening, I’m into it,” the frontman says. “I’m like, ‘Cool, I like that.’”

It’s always pleasing to see members of likeminded metal groups form a new band. When seemingly disparate entities combine forces, the possibilities are almost endless. Fans of both the dizzyingly dissonant Dodecahedron and proto-djent pioneers Textures probably never imagined members from these two groups would form a new project, but now, there is Ulsect. In a lot of ways, the group successfully merges the styles of these two bands into something totally their own. It may seem almost impossible to adorn such a swirling cacophony with surprisingly melodic and atmospheric tinges throughout, but Ulsect’s self-titled debut has done just that.

“This fusion evolved quite naturally for us,” guitarist Arno Frericks says. “We’re intrigued by the dividing line between dissonance and melody, and we have worked with both aspects from the very beginning. We feel that the contrast be-

tween ‘light’ and ‘dark’ helps emphasize both sides and creates an interesting friction.”

Ulsect have done just that, creating an almost unclassifiable subgenre of heavy music that’d take most hardened fans at least five or six words to accurately pinpoint. “We’ve never set out to operate within a specific style or genre, but have rather always followed our gut feeling on what works best and truly grabs our interest,” Frericks says. “The main goal was to create a platform for our artistic outputs. During the process of creating this album, we’ve focused on the overall atmosphere above all and wanted to incorporate a sense of tension within both the heavy and more spacious passages.”

The band recorded, mixed, and mastered the entirety of Ulsect on their own and are set to release it upon the world on May 12 via Season Of Mist. While

DON’T GET CAUGHT SLEEPIN’ ON...- SLEEP IN.

FRICTION BETWEEN DARK AND LIGHT- ULSECT

INTERVIEW WITH GUITARIST ARNO FRERICKS BY KIT BROWN most “side projects” would be content with just that, Ulsect are already poised to take their savage material out on the road. “Following the release of our debut album, we’ll play two exclusive shows with our brothers in Dodecahedron. The week after that, [on May 27], we’ll perform at FortaRock [in The Netherlands]

alongside bands such as Decapitated and Batushka,” Frericks says. “We’ve also got some exciting touring plans for later this year and are definitely planning on doing a follow-up record, but all in due time. It feels great to finally unleash our music, and we can’t wait to reveal our album in its entirety!”

He played in a bunch of local bands in the past, and we’ve always really liked his songwriting and vocals.

When our original singer decided he wanted to step away from the band and pursue other things, Tom took over right away and learned the songs in a couple weeks, [ just] in time for a 10-day tour we had booked.” A few months later, he was officially in the band, and Sleep In. started working on new songs.

to push ourselves every time we write a new song and make music we enjoy, but that also challenges us.”

Joe Franks—Sleep In.’s other guitarist—agrees. “We have always been all about what is best for the song,” he says. “At the same time, we try to look at writing through the lens of: if it’s fun to play, it’s probably fun to listen to.”

The band are already planning some tours for the summer and fall and expect to play more regional gigs to support the record. They are also working on a couple of music videos and managing to write new music, in the hopes of putting out another fulllength as soon as 2018. “For the time being, though, pushing the new EP and doing as much touring as possible is the goal,” McNelis says.

It’s been two-and-a-half years since Tom Fowler joined the South Jersey slash Philly-based outfit, Sleep In., but most fans didn’t hear Fowler’s vocals until the band put out their self-titled 7” in March of 2016.

“He joined the band about six months after [2014 full-length] Settling came out, and sang on the two-song 7” we put out last year,” guitarist and backing vocalist Eric McNelis says.

“We’ve all been good friends with Tom long before he joined the band.

Those new songs show up on the band’s latest EP, Tension & Release, their first release with Black Numbers, out on June 23. Despite having someone new on the mic, the record stays faithful to the sound from their debut. “I think the overall sound and vibe that we’re going for is largely the same,” McNelis says. “I think we’ve grown a whole lot since we made Settling, though, both as people and as songwriters.

Ultimately, we really just want to try

“Extremity began as [drummer] Aesop [Dekker] and I getting together to simply create some super raw and primitive death metal, something we both have a soft spot for,” vocalist and guitarist Shelby Lermo begins. “We were sort of just doing it for fun for several years, but once the music started taking shape, we decided to focus a bit and round out the lineup. [Guitarists] Erika [Osterhout] and Marissa [Martinez-Hoadley] were the missing pieces we needed, and recording an album was the natural progression.”

take this project very seriously until the last couple years [and] didn’t even have a name until a couple years ago!”

BAY AREA BRUTALITY-MONGERS- EXTREMITY

INTERVIEW WITH ERIC MCNELIS AND JOE FRANKS BY JOHN B. MOORE

That album is the Bay Area brutality-mongers’ debut, Extremely Fucking Dead, released on April 7 via 20 Buck Spin—a record six years in the making.

“Playing in other bands is, of course, time-consuming, but I don’t think it was really a factor in delaying the release of the debut,” Lermo says. “We just didn’t

Holding within their ranks current and former members of bands as disparate as Agalloch, Cretin, Vastum, and Trepanation, the sound of Extremity is surprisingly primitive and gnarled as the Northwestern forests, but unexpectedly refined—unexpected even by Lermo. “Aesop and I had a very specific idea for the sound of Extremity from the beginning, but it definitely evolved into something different over the years,” he explains.

“Erika brought her own flavor when she joined the band, as did Marissa. What you hear on the album is a far cry from the vision we had when we started. We had almost an entire album written about five years ago, which we trashed and started over on from scratch. So, the songs aren’t actually that old.”

PHOTO: JENNIFER SUBLETT

INTERVIEW WITH VOCALIST/GUITARIST SHELBY LERMO BY LORD RANDALL For those who were able to attend the band’s live debut with Hammers Of Misfortune at The Eagle in San Francisco, a surefire pit-mangler was “Chalice of Pus”—a song that holds fond, if a bit blurred, memories for Lermo. “[That] is the one song on Extremely Fucking Dead that I had lyrics for years before

we began the recording process,” he says.

“I wrote them half drunk, sitting by a stream in a forest near Fairfax, California. To this day, I couldn’t tell you exactly what they’re about, just that I was reading a lot of Lovecraft at the time.”

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ARTIFICIAL BRAIN The technical fluidity of Long Island death metal futurists, Artificial Brain, is dense. The layers of intensity these guys construct are endless, presenting both a complex maze and a challenging set of interactions when experiencing their compositions. Where the group’s first full-length, 2014’s Labyrinth Constellation, made waves for its sheer multiplicity, follow-up Infrared Horizon—released April 21 on Profound Lore Records—sees the band sharpening their precision with space and timbre.

“Groove is king,” drummer Keith Abrami notes. “It’s what people remember. It’s what you bob your head to. There are so many emotionless death metal bands out there that are extremely talented and proficient, but leave me amazingly bored.

Sometimes, I can’t even get through the whole record. Adding grooves not only makes playing in Artificial Brain fun, it makes it more unique.”

Infrared Horizon is certainly classic Artificial Brain, but there’s a new looseness to the record that is intensely particular. The web of intricacy is slightly more accessible, and through this new portal, the denseness become

CONNOISSEUR When discussing Oakland, California’s Connoisseur, focusing on their love for weed is an obvious angle. One can be resolute in refraining from the token entry point, but it is inevitable.

Sometimes, immediately. Guitarist Daniel Hague discusses the gestation of their new album, Over the Edge, released April 7 on pink or black vinyl via Tankcrimes.

Hague—comparing it to their prior release, 2015’s Stoner Justice— states, “To me, it’s a little bit more of a hardcore record. There is some extreme slow and fast, but there’s less of it than what was on Stoner Justice.

This has more in between [tempos], a punk hardcore feel.” For fans of Connoisseur, Over the Edge is a step forward. The change is apparent. The music amps up the listener with time changes and rough riffs that incite.

After a recent two-month tour, Hague—with partners, frontman Carlos Saldana and drummer Lyle Sprague—got to work without hesitation. “After hammering away for two months, you want to have something new,” Hague explains. “Touring

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lusher, more psychedelic, and more ecliptic. Music this epically structured must take years to write. “Actually, the songs don’t take that long,” Abrami admits. “We try not to overanalyze the parts, because I think if we did, we’d probably never finish. There’s something satisfying about trying to keep things simple. We don’t really have much time together as a band, so practices have to be concise. We trust each other, and we give each other freedom to come up with parts.”

Infrared Horizon bravely explores the nether regions of interstellar space; unlike its predecessor, the record is cohesive in both conceptual and technical terms. The balance is mighty, and the escape into Artificial Brian’s universe is both seamless and extraordinary. This is the product of a distinct mind—whether it’s actually the band’s or some alien warlord mutant computer’s is another question altogether. “Our first album was not as focused lyrically—each song was its own planet,” vocalist Will Smith says.

“We all agreed to write about artificial intelligence in a futuristic, dystopian way on the new record. Over the last few years, I wrote lyrics as the rest of the band finished up instrumentals, and we would get into specifics based on the types of imagery and emotion each song evoked.”

I N T E R V I E W W I T H K E I T H A B R A M I A N D W I L L S M I T H BY C H R I ST O P H E R J . H A R R I N GTO N The narrative is an intense one, with songs as visually mind-bending as they are musically righteous. One of Artificial Brain’s greatest talents is their ability to create equal quadrants of sensory enlightenment. Listeners float through Infrared Horizon in stimulated equality: it’s ever-propulsive and always direct.

The band are exponentially imaginative, but there’s also a very dynamic physicality to the new album. Through the human will alone, the band are able to connect to the nexus of infinite expression. A deep honesty shines brightly throughout.

“I think Infrared Horizon is just maybe an expression of frustration and discontent,” Abrami explains.

“There is definitely anger involved in

my drumming, and when I listen to it, I can feel the stress that is present in my everyday life. It’s more of a ‘This is bullshit’ than a ‘Hey, maybe we should pay attention to the nonsense our species specializes in.’ I always tell people that I’d probably go insane if I didn’t have drums to clear my head.

Playing heavy metal is an amazing way to detach from reality for a little bit and let my anger flow through me in a healthy and creative way. I think that’s probably why you barely see fights at metal shows. We tend to get that kind of stuff out, rather than internalize it and take it out on others—most of the time.”

stepped up the need to start getting creative. The tour was fun and lit a fire under our ass.” While two of the 14 tracks on Over the Edge are three minutes long, all the other songs are one to two minutes each. They employ gang vocals and other hardcore tropes—the growls are still growled, as most sludge bands do, but this approach is certainly not new to hardcore. The sound is thick and heavy in a powerviolence tribute. With drums that propel, the punk vibe pushes the momentum instead of lingering and plodding like a doom song.

What was extended was the recording process. Hague reports taking much longer with Over the Edge than they did with Stoner Justice.

“We made sure we were satisfied,” he says. “We were able to be more critical of ourselves and give ourselves the time to make sure we got it right.” Connoisseur recorded with Greg Wilkinson—of Brainoil, Leather Glove, and DeathgraVe—with whom they have always recorded. At Wilkinson’s EarHammer Studios in Oakland, the band had “a lot of fun.”

Hague elaborates, “Spending a week with him is a great time. He is incredibly comfortable to be around. He has a great ear and a nice little studio. We were able to record everything that we wanted to.”

INTERVIEW WITH GUITARIST DANIEL HAGUE BY HUTCH For Hague, weed is about more than just culture and jokes, as he has personally struggled with cancer and praises marijuana’s medical benefits.

“I went through chemo,” he shares.

“Marijuana really kept the chemo tolerable: getting food in, my body keeping stress and anxiety to a minimum, keeping nausea to a minimum. Marijuana allowed me to not have to put all of the pills in my body.”

“People might see it as a corny gimmick to have a band be about weed,”

Hague concedes.

“Connoisseur writes songs about weed, but it is about the friendships that come together. We write songs that are in honor [of ] friendships as much as [of ] weed. It is one of my favorite aspects [of weed]: other drugs have people sneak off and be private, [but] this makes you want to chat with people. I love that it gets people together, gets people talking.”

SHORES OF NULL Italy’s soaring melo-black doomers, Shores Of Null, reach high for that quickening veil of transcendence.

The band are swift to position and fast to transform. There’s deep compromise here, and the group’s newest record—the euphonic Black Drapes for Tomorrow, released April 14 on Candlelight Records—shows a collective zoning towards totality: every drive pulsing, circular, and deep.

“Music is pure emotion for us, and melodies have the power to change mood,” guitarist Raffaele Colace muses. “Davide [Straccione] is always able to surprise me with his vocal patterns, so I always feel that the result of our work is nothing but the pure expression of our personal feelings. It is the very reason why melodies play an important role in our music.”

The band simmer through varying musical idioms, but it’s the melody that centralizes itself as the group’s eternity. Every swift turn leaves a smoky heart of absolution. Riffs are in abundance, and layers are sweet

and rising. Imagine the hills that protrude from a vast ocean of sand, the wind pushing mounds smooth and real. Shores Of Null are tactile and progressive; their trip is taken with an acute awareness. “We mainly work on layers, so that is one element that surely brings progressiveness to what we do,” Straccione explains. “I’m kind of obsessed with vocal harmonizing. I love to experiment in many ways to give depth to our music, and it’s pretty much the same with the guitar work.”

Black Drapes for Tomorrow is notable for its unique pressure. You can feel the moments and the pure size of the whole shape. The movements are fierce, but gain slowly. Like water, the record is careful and exact, yet completely organic. “Water has always played a fascinating role on my psyche,” Straccione says. “We come from water, we are made of water, and we are surrounded by water. Water is life, but eventually, you could drown in it. I’m deeply fascinated by nature and everything that makes me feel small.”

Shores Of Null include some of Italy’s fiercest and boldest extreme musicians. It’s the variety of intensity that gives the band their ultimate purpose: a place to explore the

FEEDERZ

it’ll-only-encourage-them Day”—and Feederz, who first formed in 1977, will be touring. “We’re generally going on the attack,” Discussion pledges.

“After the election, it was pretty obvious we had to enter the fray. It was something that needed to be done,” Feederz vocalist and guitarist Frank Discussion declares, explaining his decision to start up his incendiary band again. Well, that and the fact that Slope Records head Tom Lopez approached the heretofore defunct band about putting out a record. “It was kind of a fortunate convergence of things,” he notes.

Discussion says the band recorded the 7” in three days in Arizona, the state where the band originated, though he now lives in the Tampa area—“Now I get a chance to turn Florida into a real battleground state,” he warns. Peligro is currently in L.A., while Clear Bob still calls Arizona home. The material was recorded by Meat Puppets and Exterminators bassist Cris Kirkwood, who also spent some time in Feederz around 1980.

Discussion says Lopez first talked to original bassist Dan “Clear Bob” Clark— who recently released a record on Slope with his other band, the Exterminators— about the idea. Discussion was up for it, so the two first-wave Pheonix punk legends asked Dead Kennedys drummer and one-time Feederz member D.H. Peligro if he would be into collaborating on new material. Initially the band were just going to do a 7”, but it soon turned into the two-song WWHD: What Would Hitler Do? single and a full-length, which the band are hoping to have out in the fall.

Of the interconnectedness of all the players, Discussion explains, “Back when punk started in Arizona, we were a pretty incestuous bunch. There was a group of about 10 of us. That was pretty much the so-called ‘scene.’” Feederz used to play biker bars, as there were no punk clubs around. “Sometimes, we had to fight our way out of them—literally,” he adds. Still, the band earned some of the bikers’ respect with their wild, sometimes violent ways and outsider status. “The whole thing was so bizarre, it was great,” he remembers. “The only people we kinda got along with were the bikers and gays. At that point, being gay was kind of an act of resistance. If you were overtly gay, particularly in Arizona, it was a big ‘fuck you.’”

Meanwhile, WWHD was released April 15—on what Discussion refers to as “Don’t-bother-to-pay-your-taxes-

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INTERVIEW WITH RUFFAELE COLACE AND DAVIDE STRACCIONE BY CHRISTOPHER J. HARRINGTON nether regions, the spaces that lay out like a ring system around a planet. Up close, the collective is intense and direct, but from afar, a perfect harmony, a synchronized whole. The melodic escapism is a joyous pursuit.

“We all have had very diverse musical experiences,” Colace relays.

“I used to play with the math-rock band, Mens Phrenetica; [guitarist] Gabriele [Giaccari] used to play hardcore-death ‘n’ roll with The Orange Man Theory; Davide still keeps on singing with the great stoner rock band, Zippo; and [drummer] Emiliano [Cantiano] plays in a bunch of bands, including Noumeno and Embrace Of Disharmony. Our bass play-

er, Matteo [Capozucca] had another band before called Il Grande Scisma Di Oriente, some pretty dark metal with an Opeth vibe to it.”

“Gabriele, Davide, and myself felt the need to create something different, aware of the fact that we had many musical tastes in common,” he concludes. “It was when I first sent Gabriele some demos that the idea started to become reality. All that happened afterwards came naturally and led us to the point where we are now.”

INTERVIEW WITH FRONTMAN FRANK DISCUSSION BY JANELLE JONES Feederz—in their initial iteration— lasted until about 1990 and started again in 2002 before taking another extended hiatus. “Then Trump happened,” Discussion says. “You can’t just lie down and let something like that happen.” In true Feederz fashion, the new songs on the 7”—“Stealing” and “Sabotage”—are vicious, hard, and sinister, fitting nicely amongst classic tracks like “Love in the Ruins” and “Taking the Night” with lyrics such as “It’s time for a not-so-civil war” sung in Discussion’s distinctive snarl.

The frontman’s politics are definitely at the fore. He is as critical of the left as he is of the right. “At this point, I don’t see how anyone can have any real hopes for the U.S. It’s done on both sides,” he

asserts. “It’s time to stick a fork in it.

The only thing left is to literally rise up, take things into your own hands, and insurrection. There’s a certain point where you have to say, ‘This is too much.’”

MICAH SCHNABEL Micah Schnabel—who puts in time as frontman and guitarist for Two Cow Garage, as well as driving his own solo projects—has been on a prolific streak lately, in part, thanks to a fellow bandmate. “I think I kind of found this new guitar tuning—Two Cow Garage’s other guitar player, Todd Farrell, showed it to me—and it really kind of opened things up for me, so these songs kind of fell out really fast,” he says.

So fast, in fact, that Two Cow Garage just put out a record in late fall of 2016 and Schnabel is already set to release another LP under his own name, Your New Norman Rockwell, on May 27 via Last Chance Records. “Once we had enough songs for Two Cow Garage, I knew I was going to make a new solo record. We started recording almost simultaneously,” he says.

The new record is his best solo outing in years, if not ever. Lyrically, he’s at his strongest, with enough compelling characters to make Springsteen jealous.

He owes that to a new songwriting strategy. “When I wrote the song ‘Let the Boys Be Girls’ for the last Two Cow record, I wrote the lyrics first, and I’d never done that before,” he explains. “I’d always written the music first and tried to fit the lyrics to the music. Once I fell

IGORRR The music of Gautier Serre is a chemical explosion of intricacy, love, and chaos. Most know him by the stage name Igorrr. For the past decade, he has released outrageous experimental material in various styles including Balkan, classical, baroque, breakbeat, death metal, black metal, and Indian music. For those unaware of Serre’s talents, this may sound like a lot going on, but his longtime fans understand his genius when it comes to writing and composing. June 16 marks the release of his latest studio album and Metal Blade Records debut, Savage Sinusoid.

Igorrr is an endless blueprint of imagination. “From a young age, I wanted to listen to music with no boundaries,” Serre shares, “to find a band which had no limits. I never found that band, so I decided to make that music myself.” Starting with electronic material due to a lack of money, Serre was eventually able to experiment with all the genres he loves. The acts that inspire his art

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into the new writing style—and I’ve been there about a year and a half now—I just feel so much more comfortable with myself.”

“I’d always sacrificed the story for a rhyme, whereas with this stuff, it was all written words-first,” he continues. “I kind of wanted it to be able to stand on its own, just as a written piece. Once you add music to it, that adds another dimension to it. That forces the delivery style to be different, because it’s not as syncopated.

It’s more kind of scattershot.”

There is also a consistent thread that ties together most of the songs on Your New Norman Rockwell. “There is this kind of underlying theme about coming to terms with your parents being human beings, seeing the mistakes they made and trying to sidestep those same mistakes and kind of falling into them no matter how hard you try,” Schnabel says.

“The song ‘Your New Norman Rockwell’ kind of comes from growing up in rural America and watching its downfall, watching these people vote for their own downfall and the things that come with that.”

Along with the new record, Schnabel also put out a new book of poetry, “Chronicles From That Awful Winter Donald Trump Became President,” one of several new projects he’s working on.

“Fortunately, I don’t work a day job. I

INTERVIEW BY JOHN B. MOORE wake up every day, and I go to work: I sit at my table in the kitchen and I write and I read and play guitar,” he says. “Some of the things that come out aren’t songs, and they start gathering up, and I hate that they have no place to go. So, I started printing up these little mini-books of short stories and poems. It’s just nice to have an outlet for them and not have them just sitting around.”

Schnabel won’t be seeing much of that

kitchen table this summer, as he heads out to promote both Two Cow Garage and his solo effort. “It just kind of goes back and forth,” he says. “In June, Two Cow has a short run with Lucero in the Midwest, and then I’ll kick off an East Coast tour on June 14, and then Two Cow is touring in July, and then I’ll go out solo in August.”

range from Meshuggah to Bach to Cannibal Corpse to Chopin to Aphex Twin. Starting with his 2006 debut, Poisson Soluble, each record creates a sense of frantic energy guided by technicality. Taking this “controlled chaos,” he creates work that is both wildly energetic, yet possible to analyze.

Savage Sinusoid is just that: an emotional rollercoaster of rapid time signature shifts, whirlwind musical styles, and a storm of elegance and anger. A beautiful piano piece will open a track, only to give way to a blistering drum section. This may include a thrashing guitar—or maybe a flute—but eventually, the song jumps into something new. The next song may have operatic vocals over accordion, then suddenly drop into maddening drumming and screams.

There is one driving factor that always remains: “I have to like it very much,” Serre says. “The rest is secondary—style, sound, colors, etc.”

To Serre, Igorrr is a pure form of passion and love for art. “The way I’m composing the tracks in Igorrr is purely what I want to hear,” he shares. “It’s like my personal ideal music, and that’s the only motivation I have.” This is a love that Serre can explore endlessly. By marrying his

INTERVIEW WITH GAUTIER SERRE BY MICHAEL PEMENTEL multiple styles, he is not only able to create something grand for himself, but also, something unique for others.

But in a world where originality is scarce, what exactly is he trying to create—beyond just having fun? Is it even possible to label Serre’s art with simple words? “How I would describe my own work?” he muses.

“I try to create new bridges to link all those universes to make a kind of ‘everything music.’”

Savage Sinusoid is a masterful blend of Hell and Heaven, of delight and rage. It is the emotional energy of one person’s yearning to create and making enjoyment the core of their process. Igorrr is a project that gets people to scratch their heads, to

mosh, and to think. What Savage Sinusoid promises the listener— much like the rest of Serre’s work—is that from the moment a song starts, they won’t know where it will go.

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THE ISOTOPES

Evan October’s earliest memories of baseball are good ones. “The first memory was of my dad taking me and my brother out to the parking lot next our house when we were kids—6 or 7 years old,” he says. “We would just hit fly ball after fly ball until it was dark. Every day until dark, I’d just play baseball with my dad.

Great memories.”

Little did he know that those days would lead him to where he is now: being the lead vocalist of Vancouver, British Columbia’s Isotopes Punk Rock Baseball Club—sometimes known as just The Isotopes—the world’s first, and possibly only, baseball punk rock band.

October is calling from a stop in Edmonton on a tour with The Real McKenzies.

So far, it’s been pretty tame. “Nothing crazy has happened yet,” he says. “We’re right at the beginning of a pretty long one, so I imagine things will unravel at some point.” The tour is the beginning of a long line of Canadian and European dates in support of their newest album, 1994 World Series Champions, released April 14 on Stomp Records.

It’s clear that the singer feels lucky. “I don’t want to do something half-assed,”

JUNIOR ASTRONOMERS North Carolina’s Junior Astronomers waited close to four years to follow up their last studio record with another full-length. “It wasn’t really about time,” vocalist Terrence Richard says. “It was more about not having enough songs we wanted to put on an LP. We loved the ones we put out on 7”s, but they didn’t fit the vibe we were trying to build for an LP.”

he says about touring. “We’re lucky enough to be in a band that people come out to see, and we love doing it. It just seems like the right thing to do to honor that—to take it seriously and play our asses off. I think a lot of bands would kill to go on tour with the McKenzies or go to Europe. So, to say no to those things would just be an insult to the band [and] to the music.”

“It’s what I put my heart and soul into,” he adds.

The Isotopes started in 2007 with October looking for a creative shift from other bands he was in at the time. “I didn’t want to write songs about girls or life or politics. I wanted it to be something that would be recognized as distinct and unique,” he recalls. “So, I’ve played baseball every year since I was 3 years old— that was my first love—and then, coming into my teens, I discovered punk rock.

So, when it came to starting the band, I wanted to do something that wasn’t really done before. It was important to do something original and something interesting to me.”

Frankly, he didn’t think the band would be around this long. “It was for fun. I didn’t really expect that there would such a good response to it,” he continues. “I didn’t think we’d still be doing it 10 years later.

We just wanted to put out a 7”, and we had no ambitions of touring whatsoever.”

INTERVIEW WITH VOCALIST EVAN OCTOBER BY GEN HANDLEY When it came to title for the new album, October says he thought about it for a while. 1994 World Series Champions is an inside joke for the band and baseball fans. “That was the strike year for baseball, so there was no World Series,” he laughs. “It’s a joke, and I thought it was funny. It gives people the appreciation of being among those who get it—it’s an inclusive thing.”

PHOTOS: NICK ROHLOFF

slowly working toward that follow-up. “[Bassist] Colin [Watts] got married, and we all got houses pretty much,” Richard says. “Musically, I think we’ve grown and sort of refined the idea of Junior Astronomers.”

The new record, Body Language, comes out June 9 on Refresh Records.

They’ve also changed the way they write as a band. When they first started working together, Richard and guitarist Philip Wheeler would write out the songs, then bring in the other members to help flesh them out. “It’s definitely more of a group effort now,” Richard says. “Now, we all come together and bring ideas to the table. I think it helps you connect more musically if you’re a part of the writing process.”

Not a lot has changed with the band in the interim. They continued to play shows and put out a couple of 7”s,

Their hometown of Charlotte also plays a significant role in the new record. “Body Language is about our

INTERVIEW WITH VOCALIST TERRENCE RICHARD BY JOHN B. MOORE relationship with the city we all grew up in,” Richard explains. “The longer you’re in love with something, the body language in the relationship starts to shift. At some points, it didn’t feel right to stay here; at some points, it felt like it wasn’t a home anymore and we were just holding on to something that’s gone, and at some points, it’s the only place we wanted to be. The album flows through those emotions from our youth to now.”

Keeping things local, they also brought in their friend Mike Pepe, another Charlotte resident, to produce the album. Pepe’s resume includes work with Taking Back Sunday and Modern Chemistry, among others. “We heard his work and really felt he could help us make something we’ve never made,”

20 NEW NOISE

Speaking of humor, the singer says there’s a lot of it on the new record, retaining the signature narrative of the stories in baseball, delivered in the accessible format of pop punk. “I hope people find it funny, but if not, we’ll just look like a bunch of dickheads,” October says, then pauses.

“Which is also kind of fun too,” he laughs.

Richard says. “His energy in the studio definitely helped us make the best record we could.”

Junior Astronomers—who have a history of opening for a pretty diverse collection of bands, from Modest Mouse to Manchester Orchestra to Piebald— are set to get back out on the road to support Body Language. When asked if they ever get put in front of a crowd that’s not much of a fit for their music, Richard is quick to answer, “No, not really. It’s been pretty cool, actually. I think this generation doesn’t care as much about genres and more about how much fun the show is. Maybe that’s just me being optimistic.”

GHOST BATH When Ghost Bath exploded onto the scene in 2015 with their second album, Moonlover, they were steeped in mystery—like any good black metal band should be. Their debut, 2014’s Funeral, had been released on a Chinese label, and it was widely reported that the band were from China themselves. But as media scrutiny increased, it was discovered that Ghost Bath actually come from Minot, North Dakota.

When asked why they never set the record straight, the band’s vocalist said it was all about privacy and a desire to connect with all of humanity.

If anything, the latest album from Ghost Bath—Starmourner, released April 21 via Nuclear Blast—only serves to deepen their mystery. Not because they’ve duped the media again or because of their attempts to remain anonymous—it’s easy to find that their nameless vocalist does, in fact, have a name, and it’s Dennis Mikula—but because Starmourner is not what you’d expect from a black metal album.

For one thing, there’s something almost joyous and hopeful about many of the tracks—right from the start, no less, as opener, “Astral,” consists almost entirely of a pretty, sparse piano part before the first

FIRE IN THE RADIO In times of personal and existential turmoil, finely crafted stories always serve as solace from the outside world. That’s the spark that spawned Fire In The Radio’s astoundingly, achingly good sophomore record.

New Air—due out via Wednesday Records on May 5—feels exactly like a breath of creative fresh air. The group’s brand of brutally honest heartland-rock-fueled indie punk is somewhat similar to that of fellow Philly natives, The Menzingers, but New Air is inflected with a broader palate: grunge, shoegaze, new wave, and a generally more wistful air. It’s a record that tells a breathtakingly heavy dose of truth through various narratives.

The band say that using stories to hint at greater meanings was their intention all along. “We wanted to

22 NEW NOISE

hint of metal kicks in with the second track, “Seraphic.” According to their vocalist, that’s all part of Ghost Bath’s grand design, as Starmourner is the second part of a trilogy. “It explores different aspects of basic human emotions—namely ecstasy,” he says. “It also uses the surreal and vast expanse of the heavens [and] space. It contains a lot more melody and joyous-sounding passages, but that does not mean it is any less sorrowful to me. In fact, certain ‘happy’ sounding parts are some of the most sad in my mind.”

There is something decidedly melancholy about the album, even when it’s at its most ecstatic, befitting a state of mourning for the stars high above, shining down from the depths of outer space. “The title both signifies the visual and conceptual elements of the album,” the vocalist explains. “It also leaves room for sorrow, as all three albums in the trilogy will explore.”

Each track on Starmourner is accompanied by a painting and a story based on Jewish angelology, the bible, and other religious texts.

Luciana Nedelea did most of the paintings, while Briana McLaren and Murder Ink Art each produced a piece as well. “I am very interested in religious teachings and wanted to look into free will for heavenly beings,” the vocalist says. “I believe the songs explore these themes by having a more surreal and epic feeling to them.” The stories are written in

PHOTO: AUSTIN SCHERZBERG

INTERVIEW WITH NAMELESS VOCALIST BY MIKE GAWORECKI parable form, mimicking a religious text. “They explore free will in a surreal, cosmos-like presentation of Heaven,” he explains. “I believe they are all fairly depressing—at least in my eyes—but I like people to interpret them how they like.”

along with the music was natural to me,” the vocalist concludes. “The stories are just another layer for those who wish to explore them. I’ve been getting into writing prose for a while now, and it felt fitting to use parables with such a release.”

The CD version of Starmourner comes with a 28-page booklet that includes these paintings and stories.

They are also available to view on the band’s website. However, one needn’t pore over the artwork and prose to fully “get” the album.

There’s so much music here—12 songs that collectively clock in at over an hour, ranging from black metal to dark ambient to post-rock and back again—that the record alone is a lot to unpack. Starmourner has many layers to dig through, just like the public persona of the band who created it. “I have always enjoyed presenting art in multiple ways, so creating visual art to go

PHOTO: ZACH WALLACE

tackle [different topics], but through the lens of interpersonal relationships,” they explain. “To us, this keeps it more relatable. Thus, New Air was written in response to the current political climate in our country, but told from the view of two people struggling to find a way forward in an untenable relationship. ‘Drug Life’ and ‘Adeline’ deal with issues of mental health and addiction, but again, through personal stories and experiences.” “‘Lionel Hampton Was Right’ highlights the struggle of interracial relationships and music’s ability to break down those barriers,” they continue.

“The evolution of jazz starting in the 1930s was instrumental to first challenging how people felt about segregation. Lionel Hampton was one of the pioneers in that regard.

As we were writing this record, we were reminded how race issues have, again, sadly come to a head. Talking about that in the context of two people struggling to find each other and

INTERVIEW BY NICHOLAS SENIOR get past these external perceptions seemed appropriate—plus, Lionel was a badass balladeer, so we had to title a song after him.”

All this depth and meaning would be for naught if these songs weren’t musically solid, but they all boast hummable lines, belt-out-the-melody hooks, and the type of alternative rock that recalls the past three decades of punk at its best. Fire In The

Radio have released an incredible record that speaks to the listener’s soul, with a blunt call to be a better version of the person they see in the mirror. It’s difficult to understate how powerful a punch New Air packs.

The band have found their voice, and they are using it effectively.

T

he pop-punk duo Diet Cig first met when vocalist and guitarist Alex Luciano interrupted New York band Earl Boykin’s set in a sweaty SUNY New Paltz basement. At the time, Luciano didn’t know that their drummer, Noah Bowman, would become somebody integral to her life—rather than just the person who handed her a bottle of wine when she asked for a cigarette lighter. Their relationship sparked in an instant, and the very next day, Bowman left a stick-and-poke daisy tattoo on his now-bandmate’s foot as a ceremonial badge of friendship.

From house gigs in college towns to sold-out shows across the country, Diet Cig rose to the spotlight overnight—an impressive feat considering Luciano had never been in a band and only knew a handful of guitar chords when she and Bowman decided to make music together. The duo’s presence is infectious, with Luciano singing her diary-like anthems to rooms full of people, often jumping off of Bowman’s bass drum.

The irresistible and contagious charm that made the world fall in love with Diet Cig is present more than ever on their debut full-length, Swear I’m Good At This, out now via Frenchkiss Records.

The band recorded at Salvation Recording Co., located in the college town where Diet Cig began. Luciano and Bowman recorded their 2015 debut EP, Over Easy, with owner Christopher Daly, who has also worked with PWR BTTM and Porches. Luciano says she and Bowman gained a true sense of the direction they wanted to move in musically while recording with Daly this time around. “It felt really good to come back to this familiar place,” she says. “We spent more time on [this record], taking a full month to record. I think we learned a lot about what we want our band to sound and feel like thanks to Chris and the time we spent at Salvation.”

Swear I’m Good At This is a socially conscious record, one that addresses universal themes of sexism and feminism while still remaining personal to Luciano. The community of musicians that the singer surrounds herself with have encouraged her to never sacrifice her true identity and beliefs. “I’m so inspired by other women and femmes in music who do things on their own terms completely unapologetically,” Luciano says. “It’s really cool to know this group of compassionate and talented artists all working together to make their art while also creating space for each other in this dumpster fire world. We’re so inspired by our peers, and I think it pushes us to be the best band we can be.”

While Luciano is influenced by her positive and progressive scene, she is also helping to inspire young musicians. Diet Cig just embarked on a tour in which they asked affiliate bands from Girls Rock Camp—a nonprofit music and mentoring program dedicated to the empowerment of girls and women—to join them onstage. “I think it’s super important for us to share our stage and general platform with artists and causes we believe in,” Luciano shares. “Supporting other women and femmes in music is something we are about, and we’re stoked on programs that help girls build confidence and music skills. We want to help them in any way we can, and having them on our shows is a great way to raise funds and spread awareness.”

PHOTO: ELENA DE SOTO

24 NEW NOISE

NEW NOISE 25

E

nglish singer-songwriter Marika Hackman’s dreamy upcoming record, I’m Not Your Man—out June 2 on Sub Pop Records— was recorded with the instrumental support of indie rockers The Big Moon and produced by Charlie Andrew, best known for his work with alt-J. Hackman and alt-J go way back, as she sang on “Warm Foothills” from the band’s 2014 sophomore album, This Is All Yours.

One of her earlier projects was a collaboration with someone far more unexpected: model and actress Cara Delevingne.

But to be fair, Hackman says it was “just a school thing.”

“You know that classic thing when you’re at school and everyone wants to start a band?”

she asks. “We had a cool little studio space at school with a drum kit. I think I was playing the drums and [Delevingne] was singing and playing guitar.

But we’d kind of swap around. […] I think that was the first time I performed in front of any people, which was really scary because it was all my friends at school.”

Hackman tries to recall some of the songs the duo played, recounting, “I wrote a couple songs on the bass around that time. I think it had something to do with pancakes. It was some trippy song about sweets and stuff coming alive.”

Naturally, her songwriting has matured since then. I’m Not Your Man, Hackman says, is predominantly about relationships. “Particularly relationships between women. I’m kind of a hopeless romantic, but in quite a cynical way,” she laughs. “That’s an oxymoron, but it makes sense in my head.

[There are] lots of themes about love and sex and the arc of a relationship: those beginning intense emotions, then falling apart and not being able to let go, and then finally letting go.”

Hackman goes into more detail about how the album came to

be. “I’d just left my management and my label, so I was this unchained, free thing, exploring new styles and getting out a lot of feelings, laying my heart bare in a bit more of a frank way,” she shares. “That was a really liberating time. I was having a lot of fun with the writing, and I think that translates through.”

Hackman’s main focus for the foreseeable future is touring.

“I’m in the process of getting a band together, because, obviously, The Big Moon are busy ladies, and they’ve got their own album coming out very soon,” she says. “We’ve got rehearsals, and then we’re just gonna get out on the road as much as possible, which I’m really excited about. I can’t wait to just tour relentlessly for a few years.”

PHOTO: STEVE GULLICK

26 NEW NOISE

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A

ll That Remains have been around for the better part of two decades, proving that they’re pretty adept at songwriting. But now, almost 20 years into their career, the Massachusetts metal band decided to switch up their tried and true methods. “We wanted to take it from a songwriting perspective more than a guitar perspective,” says frontman Philip Labonte of the band’s stylistic changeover. “We had the riffs being written in response to the lyrics, as opposed to lyrics being written in response to riffs.”

To face this challenge head-on, the band left New England—where they have recorded most their discography—and ventured to California to work with producer Howard Benson. Thus, Madness was born, a vocal-heavy record released April 28 on Razor & Tie. “For me to write compelling things, I feel like I have to write about personal experiences,” Labonte goes on. “There’s always a thing that

28 NEW NOISE

happened in my life and real stories in All That Remains’ lyrics.”

While many of Labonte’s lyrics are about personal trials and tribulations, he is hesitant to disclose the exact source material behind some of his newer songs. “I just want [fans] to hear the songs, and I want it to mean something to them,” Labonte insists. “I’m not the guy to say you’re wrong—or at least I don’t think that artists should say you’re wrong. You can tell someone what you were thinking [when you wrote a song], but I think the person listening to the art or viewing the art makes the final decision, because if they like it, then there’s something that connects with them. I don’t want to take that away.”

This ideology can be seen in the record’s aggressive title track, as it draws introspectively from the turmoil of modern day times. “It was the lyrics for that song that inspired the title,” Labonte says. “It’s probably a response to how crazy people are politically. As we were

talking about it, it really is a much bigger topic than what is going on politically now. People constantly get stuck in a rut doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. You see it with bad relationships, drug abuse, you see it in society as a whole with bad ideas sticking their heads up again as if they are good ideas. It’s crazy, but I think it’s part of the human condition.”

While “Madness” embodies the high-energy side of the record, All That Remains decided to tone things down a little for what Labonte reveals is his favorite new track. “‘If I’m Honest’ is more of an electric sound,” he explains of the radio friendly rock song. “I think that it makes for a modern-sounding record. […] We’ve always been a band that has a bunch of different stuff that we do, so we kind of want to get as much stuff out early as we can, so people can see the evolution of All That Remains. We’re still pushing the boundaries. We’re still trying new things, and we’re still the same band.”

That said, Labonte looks at All That Remains releases as separate entities tied together solely by the band rather than a sonic progression. “I don’t think any record has to hold onto similar elements,” he explains. “I don’t think that you have to have a record that sounds like your last record or that there has to be elements from your last record that are on your current record. Music and art is about writing what you’re feeling at that time.”

“Because you’ve got the same primary writers, you can’t help but sound like All That Remains,” he admits, “[but] I think that change is part of what makes All That Remains All That Remains. I think pushing the boundary is part of who we are.”

All That Remains are on the road through spring and summer, playing various venues and festivals to show off Madness.

PHOTO: RAQUEL GARCIA

T

he clouds are an infinite reach—omnipresent and distinct—in Spanish dark metal wizards FOSCOR’s newest gem, Les Irreals Visions—out June 9 via Season Of Mist. The record is an ethereal dip into a sea of complexity. It has a lusciousness that is both tactile and airy—a dreamer’s quality reverberates with each flexing breath of air. The record exhibits a unique sense of space, something deeper and yet still precisely mapped. It’s conceptual in both spirit and mind.

and generated. It’s a sort of soundboard and amplifier of the myth we face daily— which is life.”

“There is the idea of using one’s memory as an extension to experience the world we live in,” vocalist and bassist Fiar notes, “and memory’s also the tool to understand this world. From that, a city can work as the stage or space that surrounds us: it’s our daily universe and where we live, and where all is experienced

“At a certain point, what could be limited to an urban landscape only serves to set the social level of humans and their different emotions,” Fiar adds. “Once the frame is opened to the whole life challenge, the city would work as a net or labyrinth composed of places, ways, wefts, and edges, and would work as a met-

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If you follow, Fiar is talking about something like a simulacrum and how, perhaps, this grand illusion could light the way back to the core reality that we’ve abandoned.

The metaphorical depth is positioned nicely, juxtaposed with FOSCOR’s magical and weathered groove. The band’s music offers the space and humanity to work out this seemingly complex system.

aphor of the social behavior on Earth and the emotional dimension of nature.”

If that’s confusing—“Surely, it sounds more coherent in my mind than it would in yours,” Fiar laughs—not to worry.

Les Irreals Visions is such a moving musical experience that the words, symbols, philosophy, and extensions it contains all add up to one effective, infinite push—something you can experience on your own. FOSCOR have grown twentyfold since their raw black metal birth in the late ‘90s. They’ve achieved the gift of transference, allowing sacred passage to the other world.

“We’ve finally have found a language we feel is our very own,” Fiar explains. “We’re now able to speak in a magical way to the audience. With the new album, we were trying to synthesize our language, try-

ing to find our philosopher’s stone. I think that drawing a line from our origins to the moment where we were after our previous album—[2014’s] Those Horrors Wither—has been a great success. The new sound is far from the pure black metal aggression we started with, but it’s way more intense than anything in the past.”

Les Irreals Visions is an original dream—all hazy and spiritual, dark and refined. It’s a measure of a band who have broken through the waves, believed in themselves, and followed a true path. “As in all of life’s parcels, I deeply believe everybody must try to find their own way to express the most precious and unique side of themselves,” Fiar waxes, “with no limits and always with honesty.”

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T

he great thing was, we knew what to expect this time around,” Galley Beggar guitarist Mat Fowler begins. Their April 28 release, Heathen Hymns, is the band’s second album for Lee Dorrian’s Rise Above Records. “When working on the first Rise Above album, [2015’s] Silence & Tears, we had no idea how things were done or what was expected of us, both in terms of our schedule and recording the music. We also learned a lot from [producer] Liam Watson, who has been fantastic in guiding us on the finer details, musically.”

Whereas some artists and bands passionately obsess over minutiae within the writing and recording process, many others passionately embrace improvisation and making changes to original ideas—sometimes leaving the end result sounding nothing like the initial seedling.

Galley Beggar search for a happy medium.

32 NEW NOISE

“I’d say [we’re] somewhere in between,” the guitarist agrees.

“The songs are written fairly independently of each other, then we look at the body of work and decide if it fits together or if something doesn’t quite sit right. If something is jarring in the set, we’ll go back to the drawing board to replace or improve it. We’ve learned to be ruthless with ourselves and each other in order for songs to pass through our filters.

Pretty much all of them sound completely different to how they were originally conceived, and I love that. For example, I think we went through about five different versions of the verse section for ‘My Return’ before settling on the ethereal three-part close vocal choir that was recorded.”

A pleasant surprise for fans of early British psych-folk is the band’s heavier take on “Let No Man Steal Your Thyme,” a song popularized by Pentangle in 1968, here featuring Celia Drummond—

née Humphris—of the legendary band, Trees. To lay down a version of such a classic and identifiable track had to present its own challenges. “Pentangle’s version is the definitive one, and we wanted to honor it, but make it our own,” Fowler says. “The process was similar with ‘Geordie’ from Silence & Tears. Hearing Martin Carthy sing it, we wanted to contribute to it and, in general, the tradition of folk songs. It’s really satisfying for us, and it’s what that genre is all about.”

“Having said all that, we’re not really interested in straight covering what’s been done,” he continues.

“We’re more interested in the progression of the genre. We might mess about a bit live, but would be reluctant to record anything like that properly.” On working with Drummond, Fowler adds, “We had dreamed of one day working with her, [as] we’re all massive Trees fans. The public demand to hear her sing on such an icon-

ic traditional song will, I’m sure, be huge in the folk revival circles.

Celia was lovely and very willing to collaborate with us. I think we brought back some memories for her.”

Being based in the U.K.—and given the resurgence of psych-folk within the festival community— one must wonder if Galley Beggar still feel like the “odd band out” on most bills. “Oh, definitely!” Fowler confirms. “Previously, we’ve not really known how to sell ourselves, or more importantly, who to sell ourselves to in terms of listeners.

We’d have never thought that we’d go down well supporting Lucifer or Beastmaker, but surprisingly, we did. Being on Rise Above has opened our eyes to other audiences and given us confidence that we can play with much heavier bands, but still be relevant to them. On the other side, folk clubs don’t want to [book us], because we’re too loud!”

T

wenty years ago, one might never have guessed that the hardcore scene was going to blow up with the metal-infused kängpunk created by Wolfbrigade. The innovative style, dubbed “lycanthrope punk,” all began in the small community of Mariestad, Sweden, a city of about 15,000 people. Wolfbrigade—then called Wolfpack—filled a small niche in the kängpunk scene, a particular variant of hardcore music native to Sweden, which emphasizes explosive mid-tempo riffs emulative of Discharge and metallic melodies comparable to the Swedish death metal scene.

Over the last decade, more than a dozen bands such as Trap Them, Tragedy, Black Breath, and Disfear have made careers for themselves with the influences left behind by Wolfbrigade, and since signing with Southern Lord, the innovators of lycanthrope punk have only become stronger. “After the Comalive album [in 2008], we felt that we were

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treading water,” guitarist and founding member Erik Norberg says. “The album didn’t sound the way we wanted at all, and we needed to make some real changes. We signed to Southern Lord and decided to put some real effort into making a more thorough album—something we felt we had not done since the early days.”

Bassist Johan Erkenvåg adds that part of the success of that first Southern Lord release, 2012’s Damned, was made possible by contributions from the label and a studio completely customized by their second guitar player, Jocke Rydbjer. “Southern Lord gave us the budget to create the sound we were after,” Erkenvåg says.

Wolfbrigade are one of those bands who drop albums once in a blue moon. Five years after the release of Damned, they devastated once again with their April 28 release, Run with the Hunted. Having persevered mostly on their own plateau

with very little help for much of their career, the album’s title is certainly a fitting illustration of what Wolfbrigade are all about. “We try not to repeat ourselves, and after Damned, we didn’t know what direction we wanted to head in,” Norberg says. “More complex or more straightforward? But when Tommy [Storback] joined the band last year, his brutal drumming brought a whole new intensity to us and made the choice easy.”

were written while in the recording studio, and you more or less heard the final result when the vinyl arrived. We also recorded the foundation of the songs on Damned live, which was a first for us.”

According to Erkenvåg, Run with the Hunted was done in much the same way.

For a band like Wolfbrigade, their pummeling style needs to come off as fresh and ferocious without seeming contrived. The lycanthrope sound has an authentic essence to it that distinguishes their music from other bands, and that’s exactly what they willed to capture on Run with the Hunted. “We learned a lot through the whole process of writing Damned. To have our own studio where we can make demos and really listen back to the songs [helped],” Erkenvåg says. “A lot of the prior albums

The spirit of Wolfbrigade has certainly been an unstoppable force. Many other bands with less than genial spirits toward the status quo might have burned out in their first few years, but the pack have been running on pure will for an entire generation. Now, Norberg thinks they’re stronger than ever. “I feel that the circle has closed, and we’ve regained the same spirit as when we started,” he says. “Which means that we do what we want, and if someone doesn’t like it, we don’t fucking care.”

“It was an intense period, and we could not be happier,” Norberg says of the creative process. “It felt like a comeback of being a band again.”

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T

he amazing variance of Mexico’s avant-garde art punkers, Descartes A Kant, is a thing of deep and intricate love. The band are as musically perpetual as their individualistic, feminist, and propulsive drive.

This is a group with a profound realization of occurrence. There’s philosophy, ideology, and a drafty backdoor of anger shimmering through each track on their U.S. debut, Victims of Love Propaganda, out May 12 on Cleopatra Records.

“There’s some dark shit in there,” vocalist and guitarist Sandrushka Petrova admits. “It’s emotional porn. The record basically saved me from going crazy.

It’s essentially a heartbreak album—10 tracks tackling philosophical matters of love and how it all just might be a product of our society.”

The record is beautiful in a way all its own. The totally impressive technical chops are noteworthy, as are the manic musical idioms the band run through.

“I think we’ve always been a band that

38 NEW NOISE

feels comfortable defying genre,” Petrova notes. “Honestly, it takes the pressure off, and we’re free to explore and create things purely as ourselves.”

But the story—the sense of imagination and the way the band connect the ethereal with the blunt, crushing reality of existence—is the record’s deepest charm. Using surrealism and a sort of dark humor, Descartes A Kant manage to create an emotional distance. They can pursue the shadows strongly, yet never completely destroy their barriers.

The music—despite being so insanely tight—never completely steals the show.

This is some high art.

“That’s the fun part,” Petrova says. “The goal is not to just show range, but open up a whole spectrum of emotions. We’re all really into the stuff we play, but we all believe in the totality of the statement as well. Translating complex inner feelings is a tall order, but it’s a crucial element to the band. I think all albums are personal.

There’s something very autobiographi-

cal about a set of songs all packaged together. It’s the highest level of creation in many ways.”

While their earlier albums showcased the same intensity and artfully executed vision, Victims of Love Propaganda is easily the most clear—assisting the fluidity of the group’s grand statements.

The album’s opener, “You Assfucked My Heart,” is a dense and wicked stunner.

It’s metaphorical and still very tactile.

It lays the groundwork for the band’s unique musical and ideological dialogue.

“From song to song, our music goes for a sort of circular philosophy,” Petrova explains. “The human mind is always present in this band—the music is sort of a window into the chaotic nature of modern man. The music is meant to shift tempos to sort of reflect that chaos.”

Victims of Love Propaganda is the first record the band didn’t produce themselves. Chicago noise rock legend, Steve Albini, recorded and produced it, and the band took serious advantage of the

opportunity. They’ve earned it. Crushing and bewildering crowds since the mid 2000s, they’ve positioned themselves as an original and dynamic force, an entity greater than the sum of its parts. “It was a deeply meaningful and important record to create,” bassist and synth player Memo Ibarra explains. “It was made as a record should be, with a proper production process and arrangement. Working with Steve—wow, what an honor. We’ve been huge fans for a long time.”

Descartes A Kant are a special band—a collective who completely indulge every intricate thought that rolls off their brow. And has there ever been group with a cooler name? “It’s funny, we get a lot of questions about the name,” Petrova says. “First of all, I was very young when I figured it out. I wanted a name that didn’t sound like a name for a band. I was reading a chapter in a philosophy book that started with René Descartes and ended with Immanuel Kant. I thought the periods and varying levels of philosophy sort of related to the band’s musical and overall sensibilities, and the name was different, so I thought it’d work.”

Philosophy, art, love, danger, and technical musical righteousness: Descartes A Kant have it all. They are a band with a heart as a big as their aspirations.

I

t has been over a decade since Tigers Jaw—the dynamic punk band from Scranton, Pennsylvania—formed.

Throughout the years, they have seen several iterations of their lineup come and go and a handful of different labels have backed their music. Their upcoming record, spin—due out May 19—is the inaugural release for producer Will Yip’s new Atlantic Records imprint, Black Cement, and bandmates Ben Walsh and Brianna Collins seem to be simultaneously wading in unfamiliar waters and getting back to the foundations they were built upon.

just so cool to work with people who know exactly what you want to do and can help you see your vision through all the way.”

after Collins and Walsh connected with Atlantic and realized that they could continue to do everything that they loved.

With help from her bandmate, Collins created three tracks that she owns proudly. While this experience was entirely new for her—and, at times, difficult—she also had the support of friend and producer, Yip, who encouraged her along the way. The seasoned engineer is well-known in the punk community and has worked with Tigers Jaw in the past, including on their last full-length, Charmer, in 2014.

“[Atlantic] believes in what we’re doing, and they want us to keep doing that, but they have a team and resources that we didn’t have before,” Collins shares. “The people that we’re working with really care about our band and want us to do well, but not in a way that compromises any of our ideals or ethics.”

The entire album was written and recorded by Tigers Jaw’s two core members. For the first time in the band’s history, Collins contributed to the songwriting process, with June,” “Brass Ring,” and “Same Stone” featuring her on lead. In the past, the keyboardist and vocalist could be heard harmonizing with Walsh, but until now, she has never stepped into the spotlight.

“The studio feels like a second home,” Collins says. “Will is just one of those people who can pull things out of you and encourage you to try things you wouldn’t necessarily think of doing—but he never puts pressure on you to go with that if it isn’t what you want in the end.”

“I’ve never been a primary writer in Tigers Jaw, and I’ve never really sat down and tried to write songs before,” Collins admits. “For this record, I was like, ‘You know what, I want to try it —if it works, it works, and if it doesn’t, I know that whatever Ben writes will be amazing.’ I had trust in that. It’s

PHOTO: ELENA DE SOTO

40 NEW NOISE

With the strong bond between Yip and Tigers Jaw having been in place for years, it only made sense for spin to be the band’s major label debut if Yip himself put it out. While many musicians in the DIY scene struggle with the idea of trading their small, intimate world for one that is much grander, Tigers Jaw welcomed the change fully. The decision seemed obvious

Tigers Jaw will hit the road with Saintseneca and Smidley on May 19, the same day as spin’s release.

While Collins admits that she enjoys the comforts of home, she is excited to get back in the van with her bandmates—she and Walsh will be joined by bassist Luke Schwartz, drummer Teddy Roberts, and guitarist Pat Benson—and show the world their hard work.

“We haven’t been on the road in a year,” she shares. “I’m someone who loves being home. I love where I live, but I also miss being on the road so badly—getting to hang out with the band and see different places. I think I’m just getting into the mindset of knowing I’ll be gone for a couple of weeks, but I’ll be back and everything I love will still be here.”

PHOTOS: BRITTANY ISAACSON

42 NEW NOISE

J

osh Scogin of The Chariot, A Rose, By Any Other Name, and formerly of Norma Jean can best be described as “the renaissance man of hardcore music.” There is not a single artistic space in which Scogin would feel out of place. There are plenty of wild experimentations across the frontman’s career, ranging from various instruments and different genres to expressive closings and an overall grace that, to this day, remains unmatched. Now, with ‘68, Scogin maintains the idea that rock ‘n’ roll needs to be gut instinct and will soon birth Two Parts Viper, the duo’s second record, out June 2 via Cooking Vinyl America.

impulsive and spontaneous,” Scogin comments. “I don’t think rock ‘n’ roll was ever supposed to be well-thought-out and formulaic.”

Even without a specific formula, ‘68’s foundation is maintained through the virulent energy sparked in every song. “I write songs and I have the structure in place, but while I am recording, if I think of an idea that is better, then I just start heading down that path,” Scogin explains. This freedom unleashes the duo’s psyche, challenging them to head into parts unknown, such

Every second of Two Parts Viper is charged with a vivacious spirit, and Scogin makes it known that he is aware of his creative identity. On “No Apologies,” there is a spoken/sung section on which Scogin explains that people have been warned about the wolf, but not the sheep. “I am nervous about kids not being warned of the one percent and the power they have,” he says. “As far as where I see myself as an artist, we would have to solidify multiple definitions before I could answer that question. I want to do good; I want to leave this world better than how I found it.”

What makes ‘68 such an emotional and fire-breathing project is the vitality of expression laced into every part. There’s not a single song that can describe ’68.

Instead, Two Parts Viper is the band’s next collection of songs that embrace music as an outlet for wellness, artistry, and freedom. “There are times in my past where I would really try to avoid depression and the deeper parts of the valley, because it surely seemed like that is what I was supposed to do,” Scogin reflects.

“If I am able to just let nature take her course and enjoy the deepness of the valley and don’t

as on “Life Has Its Design,” an experimental track with frantic patterns pounding throughout.

“The whole idea for that song started as a challenge to myself,” he notes. “Since ‘68 is predominantly riffy guitar rock, I wondered if I could make a song that didn’t even have a guitar in it. So, I grabbed a keyboard and started messing around. As the eighth track, it feels great! It is a breath of fresh air having heard seven tracks prior with guitar-driven songs, and this one pops in with zero guitar at all.”

In the song “Whether Terrified or Unafraid,” a cry of purpose is howled: “I could have been anyone from anywhere / But I chose to be me from right here.” The vocalist reflects on the lyric that spawned from being isolated on death’s doorstep, admitting, “In the moment, it was easy to dream of being someone else, but I knew if I had the opportunity to do it all over, I still would have chosen to be me.” It’s a touching embrace, showcasing the layers of emotions wrapped into the poeticism of the lyrics.

force it out, then in a few days, I always find myself being super inspired and, mentally, I can take on the world!”

The name Two Parts Viper came to Scogin in a dream, in which a man in a fancy suit explained to Scogin that he “needed to be two parts viper to make it in this life.”

The singer offers, “The short version of the dream is that I got very upset and started yelling that he was wrong, because I was thinking two parts out of three.

So, it seemed very negative, like I needed to be crooked in some way to make life work. Then, he corrected me and said, ‘Life is far more complicated than merely ‘three parts of a pie—it is much closer to infinity.’ He went on to simplify it even more, claiming that even 100 parts of a pie would be a better representation of life, and now, having only two parts being ‘viper’ doesn’t seem so unhealthy. Maybe it represents just being sharp or wise, or at least giving some sort of balance.”

That balance is found across Two Parts Viper. With Michael McClellan manning the drums, the band found the footing to create yet another high-octane release full of the same chaos and experimentation they’ve been emanating since their formation. Right away, “Eventually We All Win” builds from a quiet, soothing cry to an explosion of ferocious vocals and bombastic drums.

Across the record’s crushing sonic presence, there are howls and expressions of impassioned joy, which is exactly what the band personify. “It needs to stay

This inspiration brought to the easel a soundscape that challenges both the listener and the band, showcasing ‘68 as the ever-evolving entity that they are.

NEW NOISE 43

PHOTO: JOHNNY FABRIZIO

W

hen Chicago’s Ratboys set out to record their 2015 debut full-length, AOID, the process spread out over nearly half a year. “We were only able to record on weekends, because Dave [Sagan], our guitarist, was in his final year of college living in South Bend,” says vocalist and guitarist Julia Steiner.

“We stretched out the recording and mixing process—which ended up taking around five months—because we knew we wouldn’t be able to properly tour until after Dave’s graduation anyway. Also, at the time, we couldn’t find a label that wanted to put it out, so we were in no real rush. Of course, Topshelf swooped in right in the nick of time and helped us immensely.”

A lot has changed since the band signed to Topshelf Records. They toured the U.S. and Europe several times, and then, started work on their sophomore record, GN. Prior to recording AOID, Ratboys had barely practiced the songs

44 NEW NOISE

that would make it on to the record, doing only two quick runthroughs the day they started laying down tracks. “The pacing with GN was totally different,” Steiner says. “We rehearsed the songs for six weeks leading up to recording, and then, we tracked and mixed at Atlas Studios in Chicago over the course of 14 days. We definitely didn’t feel rushed, but on the contrary, it was nice having a deadline and really pushing ourselves to do our best on every take.”

Topshelf are set to release GN on June 9. The record is 10 tracks of solid indie rock—with nods to early ‘90s and current emo and even hints of folk—and adds a slew of new instruments like pedal steel, accordion, cello, and violin to an already solid set of guitar rock anthems.

Despite being a stellar electric guitar player, Steiner strictly played acoustic before the band decided to record. “I actually only purchased my electric guitar and

amp about two weeks before we started recording [AOID],” she says. “So, I wasn’t really used to playing it all that much. I didn’t have any real preference or ear for what kind of tone I was going for or anything like that. I was just figuring it out as I went along—and that kind of goes for the record as a whole. Now that I’ve been performing with an electric guitar for a couple years and touring with it playing hundreds of shows, it feels quite natural, and I’ve found certain sounds I like a lot.”

She certainly found her confidence on GN. The songs go way beyond standard lyrical themes and boast some impressive character sketches. “I think a theme that touches a lot of the songs on GN is that of finding your way home,” Steiner says. “Life as a traveling musician can often feel pretty transitory and unstable— waking up in a different place and space each day definitely takes some getting used to. It’s

important, though, and it keeps me grounded to find a sense of ‘home’ in each city we play, in our car, and—really, when it comes down to it—anywhere I am with my bandmates.”

As for the cryptic title, Ratboys often bookend their days on the road by wishing each other “GM” and “GN,” good morning and good night. “It has become a sort of mantra and routine,” Steiner explains, “and I like to view those sayings as a symbol for the ways that we embrace all of our impermanent homes along the way.”

The band’s members will be delivering plenty of bookended salutations over the next few months.

They’ll be touring with Pet Symmetry in late May and doing a few dates with PWR BTTM in late July. They are also hoping to sort out more tours between those two. “We love the routine of playing music every night,” Steiner concludes.

T

hirty-two-year hardcore scene veteran and current Fuck You Pay Me vocalist Tony Erba is not unlike any other typical Midwestern guy. He’s the grandson of Sicilian immigrants from Cleveland’s east side, his father enlisted and spent time in Cambodia and Laos during the conflict in Vietnam, and he is a proud union member.

In his spare time, he enjoys pleasures that are typical of many men in their late 40s. “I love camping, boating, hiking,” Erba admits. “I love to be out in the backyard listening to an Indians game, getting some sun. I love reading a lot, that’s a big thing for me too. We squeeze as much out of the short summers as we can here in the Midwest.”

But Erba also happens to be an underground hardcore icon who has done time with Face Value, h100s,

Gordon Solie Motherfuckers, and 9 Shocks Terror. To say he doesn’t mince words is an understatement, as is evident on his band’s LP, Dumbed Down. Released via Tankcrimes on March 24, the album takes aim at the stupid, the gun nuts, the racists, and countless others—and the venom exposed on the record doesn’t wane when a one-on-one conversation with Erba turns to the current political climate. “[Trump] has no clue what he is doing, which is the gripe,” Erba rants.

“Healthcare is huge, and I’m happy to see [the Affordable Care Act replacement plan] shelved. It was a piece of shit bill. They tried to polish a turd in the first place. I voted for Obama twice and hoped that we were going to get true, socialized, single-payer healthcare. [The ACA] did help a lot of people—it helped the poorest of the poor—but at the end of the day, it was a catastrophe.

It did away with preexisting condi-

tions. I’ve been denied healthcare in the past through UniCare and a few others because of my diabetes, before I had a heart attack. So, the health thing is huge.”

“The job thing is huge too,” he continues. “Outsourcing. Coal is never coming back, big manufacturing has probably left the building to a large extent, but that has been going on for 40 years now, since the early ‘70s. That’s been collusion between all these cocksuckers and centrists that we’ve had in office.

Trump is not going to help it. He’s a sham. He’s as crony as can be. It will be great for bankers and people like Goldman Sachs. They’ll do away with everything that can protect a guy that’s making $15, $18, $20 an hour. It is crushing what they’ll do.”

“I can’t pinpoint [ just] one thing about Trump,” he says. “I just named two, and I didn’t even get started on his scummy dealings with Russia and whatever else.”

Exhibiting the same honesty with which he approaches day-to-day discourse, Erba and Fuck You Pay Me barrel through their chaotic,

classic-hardcore-inspired anthems. Captured by John Delzoppo at Negative Space in Cleveland, Fuck You Pay Me road-tested the songs during a West Coast jaunt with D.S.-13 in April. Despite Erba’s longstanding reputation as a forerunner in the genre, large capacity clubs probably aren’t in the band’s future.

“We played a [larger venue in Ohio], and it looked sweet, but what a clusterfuck that turned out to be,” Erba recalls. “In that case, playing a basement with ragers going fucking crazy, hitting pipes made with asbestos at a far less ‘professional’ operation would have been more advantageous and a lot more fun than playing a giant stage through a 50,000-watt PA and not even getting a firm handshake for your payment.”

“Typically, the place that makes everyone happy is a dumpy club,” he shares, “where you can still go there and have a beer and sit at the bar, and maybe it has a room off to the side—some people don’t like to be bombarded every second they are in the venue. That’s the best place for me.”

PHOTO: KEVIN MCCANN

NEW NOISE 45

C

oming off a huge tour with bands that were major influences, Full Of Hell will continue to tear up 2017.

The band supported former Sepultura members, Max and Iggor Cavalera, and Immolation on the “Return to Roots” tour, a month-long celebration for the 20-year anniversary of 1996 release, The Roots of Sepultura. “When it came up, it was like, ‘Holy shit,’ not even believing it was real until it was announced,” vocalist Dylan Walker exclaims. “Every night, I felt like 90 percent of the people had never seen us or had no idea who we were. It was a challenge.”

With that milestone accomplishment behind them, Full Of Hell set their sights on releasing Trumpeting Ecstasy, the band’s first solo full-length since 2013’s Rudiments of Mutilation. The band has released two LPs since then, Full Of Hell & Merzbow with Japanese noise artist Merzbow in 2014 and One Day You Will Ache Like I Ache with metal outfit The Body in 2016. Taking part in these collaborations was an appreciat-

ed diversion from what Full Of Hell are “supposed” to do.

“Doing the collabs was a really nice way for us to kind of step out of the shoes that were made for us and just wander around a bit,” Walker reflects.

Their new 11-song album— set for release on May 5 via Profound Lore Records—is a “pretty grinding record,” according to Walker. At this point, the band are more death-centric and are sonically pulling away from the punk genre. “We just had years to play together, and I feel like we’ve gotten to a level where we can actually play the kind of music we wanted to play since the beginning. We’re just a little more proficient,” Walker asserts. “And the lyrics—I’m just in a different place now. I’d say they’re a little more eloquent than before and angrier. It’s a different kind of record. I feel really good about it.”

Full Of Hell enlisted Kurt Ballou of Converge as their producer and wrangled killer featured guests including Aaron Turner of Isis and Hydra Head Records, Nate Newton

of Converge, Lee Buford of The Body, and several others.

Remixes of the title track— which Walker says is more industrial in sound—will be included on the Japanese version as bonus tracks, and will also be available to stream on Full Of Hell’s Bandcamp page.

The remixes were done by Iggor Cavalera, Andrew Nolan of Intensive Care, and others the band are working to finalize.

Walker explains that the album has an overarching theme of human violence and is “pretty intensely heavy throughout.” The first single off Trumpeting Ecstasy, “Deluminate,” suggests as much, running less than a minute of brutality. Walker says that, while he loves the song, Trumpeting Ecstasy varies a lot from it. That single is a tease, a little taste of what’s still left to come.

“For me, having been there to make it and getting to post this little 52-second song, it drives me kind of crazy,” he admits. “There’s definitely a lot of different shit going on with the record that I would just love to put out and just

show everyone. A lot of my friends are like, ‘It’s awesome, man,’ and I’m like, ‘Just wait.

There’s this other shit that’s so much cooler.’”

After the band unleash their new album, they’re slated to embark on tours around the globe, hitting up Mexico, Europe, the U.K., South Korea, and Japan before returning to the United States for a two-week September headliner across the Midwest and East Coast—all before Walker gets married in October—and that’s not including the other tour they will probably do with The Body. The two bands have been sitting on another collaboration that’s almost ready to be released in 2018.

“We don’t really work on that stupid-ass industry album cycle idea, because we’re always kind of putting out stuff,” Walker concludes. “We don’t really fuck with that. It would be nice, once, to put out a record and tour right on it, first week—but it doesn’t really matter, because we’re always gonna tour.”

PHOTO: JACKI VITETTA

46 NEW NOISE

S

ome people believe in bad luck, while others say things are just unfortunate coincidences, but the melodic hardcore group Gideon felt they had it much worse: in their eyes, they were cursed.

so it just kind of worked out that he could be on a song that was inspired by events that he actually witnessed.”

As time has passed, many of Gideon’s tribulations seem to have turned to blessings, such as grabbing guest vocals on the track “Freedom” from one of their biggest influences: Hatebreed’s Jamey Jasta. “That was kind of a dream come true having him be on the record,” Riley notes. “We tried last record to get him on it, […] but there was some confusion I guess, and he didn’t make the deadline for [2015’s Calloused].

So, this time around, we were like, ‘You’ve got to get on the record!’ […] He’s kind of a legend in our eyes, so it’s great.”

It’s a Monday evening and Gideon guitarist Tyler Riley has just finished shooting a music video for a single off their newest record, Cold, out on May 12 through Equal Vision Records. “It’s called ‘Cursed,’” Riley says. “We had some things go down last year—getting robbed, someone totaling our van.

We’re all really close to each other, and we couldn’t shake this weird feeling that we were cursed for some reason, so we ended up writing Gideon spent about a year a song about it once we got working on Cold, with ideas off the tour.” springing out of their heads right after wrapping up their The track features guest 2015 record. “Trying to find vocals from Knocked Loose a balance between pleasvocalist Bryan Garris, who ing your fans and pleasing had the chance to observe yourself, like doing what you many of these unfortunate do and doing what the fans events alongside his hard- want you to do—you’ve got core peers. “Knocked Loose to find this happy medium,” was on that tour,” Riley says. Riley says. “I think that was “We already knew as soon as the biggest challenge, but we met them that we wanted once we overcame it, it was [Garris] to be on the record, like riding a bike.”

48 NEW NOISE

Having formed in 2008, the Alabama-based outfit had a lot of material to live up to.

“We kind of dipped back into the records before Calloused to round everything out,” Riley explains. “It’s more like a culmination of old style versus new style, what we thought was the best way to follow up that record.”

“We’ve evolved a lot: this band started before the original members were even out of high school, so a lot has changed for us personally,” Riley continues. “I think that we, as a group, are very appreciative of everything that we get to do.

We try to learn every time we go somewhere and every time we meet a different kind of person. It’s definitely evolved us into more reasonable people, and it’s been good for us inside the band.”

Cold has a rather striking album cover featuring a blindfolded boy with his hand over his heart—an image that could easily be mistaken for a typical rock or metal cliché. However, from artwork to lyrics, Cold represents the growth Gideon have experienced throughout their entire career. The lines “Feeling your way

through the dark / Set up to fail / Hand over heart” echo the imagery on the single, “Champions.” “It’s basically about blindly following everything you learn growing up without really knowing the facts behind it,” Riley explains. “It just kind of applied to a lot of things that we’ve realized about ourselves in the last few years, so we thought the imagery on the album cover would be a very mysterious and intriguing visual that we could add along with this album. I mean, we called the album Cold because it’s about feeling like you’ve hardened, basically, going through your life—feeling cold and numb through a lot of things.”

Riley has a positive outlook going forward, hoping to play bigger shows for more people and continue expanding Gideon’s music. With the release of Cold steadily approaching, it seems that Gideon may have finally escaped their dreaded curse. “We think it’s the best record that we’ve ever written,” Riley affirms. “Definitely performance-wise, for us, we felt like it turned out best, hands down.”

PHOTO: BRITTANY ISAACSON

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PHOTO: TOMMY CALDERON

F

or Maxwell Stern—who is probably best known as the vocalist and guitarist for Cleveland, Ohio’s Signals Midwest—a change in scenery, specifically the move from Cleveland to Philadelphia after 24 years of residence, launched a domino effect. The relocation left him dealing with loneliness and discomfort he’d not regularly experienced before, and a couple of heavy family issues only complicated those feelings of detachment. As such things tend to go, when the chaos of staying the same is more painful than the growing pains of making a transition, people tend to transition.

That’s when Stern decided it was time to “get his house in order.”

“Matt Arbogast from The Gunshy is one of my closest friends, and he’d been bugging me to record some solo stuff for a long while,” Stern recalls. “I wanted to mark a transition, to record and release something as a resident of a new city and start establishing myself here. I’ve spent a ton of time in album-cycle purgatory, where you finish a record and then wait six months or a year for it to come out, so I very consciously didn’t want to do that.

This record took maybe 30 days from tracking until release, so it still feels really immediate. Maybe we’ll get around to doing a physical release eventually, but it was nice to have the process be so quick.”

The record, There’s a Time for Everything, was produced, engineered, and mastered by Eric Muth over the course of a single month— from Feb. 21 to March 22—and released via Bandcamp just two days later. “Eric and I have known each other for probably over a decade,” Stern says. “We met on the Streetlight Manifesto message board in high school and would intermittently talk on AIM. We’ve stayed in

50 NEW NOISE

touch over the years and would see each other on tour or whenever we were in each other’s respective city.

When I got out here, it made sense to do it with him, because he’s seen me evolve as a musician over the last decade and has a very good understanding of my writing style and what I want to accomplish. That, and he’s just super talented. It was the lowest-stress recording environment I could have imagined.” “[So], it was just me and my friend Eric in a practice space in West Philly,” he continues. “My friend Shannen Moser came in and sang on two songs. She just put out a record called Oh, My Heart that Eric also engineered, and I completely fell in love with it. And my friend Fred Thomas did some synth stuff on a song. He just had a record come out on Polyvinyl called Changer, and it’s really great. And there’s a field recording that my friend Matt [Cohen] did while a few of us were on a hike in Maryland one day.”

The six-song effort delivers the confessional, stream-of-consciousness narratives Stern is best known for as it traverses the stories of his family dogs, family members, best friends, and an imaginary couple.

That said, the subtext of There’s a Time for Everything is clear: above all, this is the story of a talented 27-year-old songwriter getting his shit together and conjuring the confidence to strike out on his own, to walk his own straight line.

“For now, I’m just playing local shows in Philly and up and down the East Coast when I can,” Stern concludes. “I’m enjoying doing the solo thing more and more, so hopefully I can find some time for it as the year progresses. I just want to keep releasing music and doing what feels good. Sometimes that’s going on tour, sometimes it’s exploring a new zone, and sometimes it just means putting your head down, working, and getting your shit together. There was a line in that New Yorker profile of Leonard Cohen towards the end of last year where he says, ‘Putting your house in order, if you can do it, is one of the most comforting activities, and the benefits of it are incalculable.’ I’ve been trying to keep that in mind.”

IGGY POP

Now is the time to see Iggy Pop. Much like a grandfather sitting the youngest grandkid on his knee for a serious talk, Iggy Pop has intimated that he will not be here forever—despite our subconscious beliefs otherwise.

During the 2016 Grey’s Music Seminar, he obliquely remarked, “The less I can do, the better off I am.” More directly, he said to Beats 1 that same year while supporting his Post Pop Depression album, “I feel like I’m closin’ up after this. To really make an album, you really have to put everything into it. The energy’s more limited now.”

Despite his claim of limited energy, Iggy 2017 doesn’t show any signs of his 70 years. In The Stooges, Iggy—along with the Asheton brothers—hailed and destroyed rock at the same time in a combination of heavy, lashing riffs, tribal drums, and of course, Iggy’s bluesman-on-speed howl. He is still that berserk, intelligent maniac who has been setting the standard for almost 50 years—but who knows when that timer will run out? The Ashetons and Bowie are certainly on our minds. Iggy has had many, many ups and downs, but how many rotations can possibly be left in this unprecedented cycle? Iggy may be waving goodbye, even if neither he nor we know it. DO. NOT. MISS. THIS.

CHARLES BRADLEY

When Charles Bradley was announced as a featured act for Punk Rock Bowling, punks across North America went, “Whaaa—?”

That’s OK. For every long-running punk titan at PRB, there must be an opportunity for adventure and education. Charles Bradley is that opportunity. You see, Bradley is soul music incarnate. After seeing James Brown in the ‘60s, he formed a band, but after a mere six or seven shows, his bandmates were drafted into the Vietnam War. For the next 30 years, Bradley worked menial jobs and performed for small audiences in tiny clubs. He has been homeless. He has been estranged from his mother. He has been stranded on the highway in the rain. The man knows loss. The man knows desperation.

The man knows pain.

After a chance encounter with Gabriel Roth of Daptone Records, Bradley was introduced to Menahan Street Band.

This collaboration culminated with 2016’s Changes, on which Bradley covers the famed Black Sabbath ballad of the same name and shows that the core elements of all music spring from the same well of human essence. When you see Bradley live, wedged between hardcore moshers, pop punkers, and Two-tone skankers, you will see this and you will be moved.

MOBINA GALORE

“We are feeling very determined right now,” Mobina Galore drummer Marcia Hanson says. Along with guitarist Jenna Priestner, the duo have been tearing it up across the globe. They’re currently supporting their second LP, Feeling Disconnected—released Feb. 24 via Cooking Vinyl—blasting across Germany at unsafe speeds in a cramped, smelly van and having the time of their lives.

“The beer here is the best,” Hanson says. “So, the hardest thing about life these days is not getting drunk every night. I got 10 hours of sleep last night, and I have had some coffee, so I am feeling optimistic.”

It’s no wonder the duo are on a high. Feeling Disconnected is exactly what a second full-length should be—a little harder, a little edgier, and a little wilder. The result has been both their best received album to date, as well as a supporting slot for Against Me! and offers to tour internationally. Hanson continues, “We’ve been touring pretty consistently for the past couple years and have struggled with the feeling of always missing something. When you’re on the road, you’re tired and you miss your friends and family and the comforts of home—but when you’re home, you’re restless and bored and feeling like you should be on the road. Like I said, I’m feeling optimistic. Tomorrow, this may change, but this is the life we chose.”

FIDLAR

The members of FIDLAR have lived on the edge. Before getting clean in 2015, vocalist Zac Carper was a heavy-duty user, hooked on heroin, methamphetamines, you name it. In one unfortunate month, he overdosed no less than three separate times.

In part, this behavior was accelerated by the band’s hard rocking, hard partying reputation. Their 2013 self-titled LP featured the perfect combination of skate punk, garage rock, and good vibes that came together to make the ultimate party soundtrack.

But, like all parties, the FIDLAR rampage had to come to an end. The band went on hiatus as Carper checked into rehab for the umpteenth time. After a surprise call from Billie Joe Armstrong convinced Carper to give the going-clean thing a try, the band resumed recording their second and latest LP, Too. Anchored by the monster single “40oz. on Repeat”—which deals with the fallout of getting clean—the album paradoxically partied hardier than its predecessor, but also featured much darker themes. There’s something to be said for a band who trudged through mile after mile of shit toward the light, and who then, after finding out that the light was an optical illusion, still decided to party it up.

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PHOTO: ALAN SNODGRASS

“A lot of people try to wear the coat, but without having done the work, if you follow me,” Cock Sparrer vocalist Colin McFaull says.

The singer is pondering one of the most important focal points of the band’s new album, Forever, their first in 10 years, released April 21 via Pirates Press. Of all things to consider when recording an album—the engineer, the studio, the budget, the time, the rehearsals—McFaull wants to make sure that the band’s return represents who they are as people and not some put-on affectation. “All of our songs are based on facts, either about us directly or on people we know,” he continues. “If you look at the song ‘Working,’ ‘I’ve been working all day for me mate’—that’s what we were doing. That’s what we are, and that’s what we represent.”

Formed in 1972—before the concept of punk was born—Cock Sparrer have made it their mission to represent the everyman who toils at the nine to five, because, as McFaull is quick to point out, they are the everyman.

Born in the East End of London, McFaull’s parents came from the daily grind. His father was a truck driver who would often cover 200 miles across a span of 10 hours in a bumpy, jumpy, busted-out truck just make a few pounds. Meanwhile, his mother worked as a cleaner in the local nursing home, cleaning the kind of things most people don’t want to be cleaning.

Similarly, the band’s cofounders, guitarist Mick Beaufoy, bassist Steve Burgess, and drummer Steve Bruce—all of whom are still in the band—came from nearly identical backgrounds. McFaull is quick to point out that the band’s manager and McFaull’s best friend, Will Murray, has also been with the Cock Sparrer since their inception. It seems inevitable that they would form a band while in secondary school in the early ‘70s—“mainly as a way to get girls,” McFaull adds.

Heavily influenced by Small Faces—especially since guitarist Steve Marriott lived down the street—the

earliest incarnation of Cock Sparrer featured the band doing their favorite pub rock and R&B covers. But, when the group stumbled across the energy and power of the earliest punk rockers, they modified their approach.

Keeping the melody and soul of the pub scene, they added the speed and raw power of the bands causing the British media to fly into a tizzy.

However, in stark contrast to the “I hate everyone and want to destroy everything” themes heard from their contemporaries, Cock Sparrer made it a point to stress working class unity, not division. It’s easy to connect the dots from Cock Sparrer’s invention to the creation of Oi! itself, but McFaull is quick to dismiss the claim that he is an architect of both punk and Oi! through a series of sheepish “nah, nah, nah”s. Despite his modesty, it’s clear that McFaull feels a duty to maintain the integrity of the Cock Sparrer name. “For the new album, we wanted something properly recorded,” he says. “We wanted something that sounded instantly like Cock Sparrer.”

The album’s debut single, “One

By One,” serves to summarize this frame of mind. Over a soaring riff that can only be described as Cock Sparrer-esque, McFaull calls out in his East London burr, “With mates like these, we’ll take ‘em all!” As with their earliest releases, the band stress cooperation, not conflict.

“We want you to hear it and recognize that it’s Cock Sparrer right away,” the singer says. “But that’s why we were having trouble with a title. We needed something to summarize the band as a whole. Some ideas were dismissed right away. We were on tour, sitting in an airport in Canada, and Ricky from our label, Pirates Press, said, ‘Just call it Forever, because Cock Sparrer will go on forever—even when you stop playing, you’ll still go on forever.’

Somebody said, ‘Yeah, but it’s already been done by the Spice Girls and Batman.’ Then, we all looked at each other and said, ‘That’s not bad company to be keeping!’”

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“It was like being on acid, but without having taken acid,” Spike Slawson says.

The year was 2006. His band, Me First And The Gimme Gimmes—including fellow punk veterans, bassist Fat Mike of NOFX, guitarist Joey Cape and drummer Dave Raun of Lagwagon, and guitarist Chris Shiflett of No Use For A Name and Foo Fighters—had been hired by the Pittsburg Pirates to help ring in the team’s annual post-game fireworks show. That particular year, the Pirates had been taking a beating, so the baseball fan base was especially charged about the hometown win that night.

The Gimme Gimmes walked out to the center of the field, took a gander at the 32,000 expectant fans, and did that thing they do. Unfortunately for them, the thing that the Gimme Gimmes do is take classic—and not-so-classic—AM and album rock hits, chop ‘em up, and kick out punkified versions in an effort to polish turds. They’ve ground up Paula Abdul, Billy Joel, John Denver, Kenny Loggins, and dozens of others.

Depending on whom you ask, they’re either performing a public service or committing sacrilege.

The Pittsburgh crowd was decidedly in the latter category.

As the band launched into a broken-down, punkedup version of “Stairway to Heaven,” there was no 32,000-person applause or cheer. There was dead silence.

And then boos. And then howls a school with ‘hunkies’—that’s a of rage. And then people started slang term, it might be Slavic in throwing things. origin—and they were the kids of the steel workers. Because of “People were pissed,” Slawson the economic circumstances, says. “I was glad we were they got a real lesson in what out of throwing range. I was their lives were worth, if you surrounded by a panorama will, and they took it out on me.” of my hometown. Deafening fireworks were going off above us like bombs. People from the suburbs came in to have a nice time for once, because the Pirates were doing so shitty, and they got us. They were not having it.” He pauses before adding, “We actually had to wait in the locker room for, like, two or three hours afterwards for our safety.”

The gruesome part of it all was that the performance was supposed to be a homecoming for Slawson, as he had grown up in that very city. Though, for him, butting heads with Pittsburgh was par for the course. “I wanted everyone to die when I was growing up,” Slawson says. “My parents were part of ‘new’ Pittsburgh that was supplanting ‘old’ Pittsburgh.

They were academics—my father was the music chair for [University of Pittsburgh], actually. The older, blue-collar generation saw people like my parents and myself supplanting them.”

“We actually had to wait in the locker room for, like, two or three hours afterwards for our safety.”

Raised on The Beatles and Stones via his mom’s car radio, Slawson fell into the punk crowd. His friend Louis— recently from El Salvador— “I was a weirdo,” the vocalist introduced Slawson to the continues. “The kids bullied me famed venue, The Electric and wanted me to fight, because Banana. His first show: Slip It that’s how things were settled. In-era Black Flag. “That was But I was not a fighter. At first, I a revelation to me,” Slawson went to a school that was mostly explains. “You were judged Italian and Black, which was by a set of standards, but by OK. But then, I started going to a different set of standards.

Punk, to me—or whatever you quantify it as—was a network of people who were making the things that they wanted to exist.”

Eventually, Slawson moved to California and—true story— while working in the Fat Wreck Chords mailroom, he would sing Stevie Wonder and Alice Cooper hits. Fat Wreck head honcho Fat Mike heard Slawson singing and asked him to join his new cover band on the spot. And so, for the last 20 years, the band have been mocking Radio Gold. Their new retrospective, Rake It In— which includes their biggest “hits” and some rarities, and was released April 7 via Fat Wreck—looks back at two decades of giving gold records the middle finger. “It’s about taking the piss out of punk selfseriousness,” Slawson says.

“Stop trying to be a less colorful deadhead and getting caught up in your 20-year-old ‘youth movement.’”

“But any deeper thought into why we do what we do would be in hindsight,” he continues.

“How our versions resonate is by accident. If you got up your ass about it, it would ring hollow. Look at us. We’re a Las Vegas review band at this point, but we were always a Las Vegas review band. This year, we’re wearing trashy German Schlager music costumes. We want to be colorful human beings. We have no shame. We never had shame. Shame is not something we know.”

PHOTO: ALAN SNODGRASS

56 NEW NOISE

J

ared Swilley—vocalist and bassist for longrunning garage rock hellions, Black Lips— has an interesting theory concerning the appeal of the type of gritty garage rock his band have dealt in for the entirety of their 18year existence. “It never goes away,” he says. “It’s the classic sound of teenage rebellion. In a way, it’s like punk, because it’s primal, passionate, and raw. And anybody can play it—even losers.”

them, but it works well as one big, coherent statement. Swilley assures that they haven’t started playing “prog-garage rock,” though.

He notes that the little pieces of music were the result of the band being able to take their time and go into studio whenever they wanted to. They could experiment a little bit, but they weren’t going full concept album, because—he says in a self-deprecating way—they have ADD.

Though they might be a bunch “losers,” Black Lips—who also feature Swilley’s longtime partner in crime, vocalist and guitarist Cole Alexander, along with returning guitarist Jack Hines and new members, saxophonist Zumi Rosow and drummer Oakley Munson— definitely know what they are doing. The band just dropped their ninth album, Satan’s Graffiti or God’s Art?, through Vice Records, and Swilley is quite proud of it. “Usually, when I finish an album, I second-guess myself way too much, and I don’t want to show it to my friends,” he says, “but with this one, I do. After we were done, I was like, ‘Good job, us!’”

The band are very pleased with the results.

Swilley even has a favorite song in “Crystal Night.” He shares, “It’s like one of those oldfashioned tearjerkers, where it sounds nice, but it’s really dark. Kind of like ‘Leader of the Pack’ [by The Shangri-Las]. That’s what I was going for. I’m super proud of this one.”

In the past, Black Lips have gone with highprofile producers like Mark Ronson, Patrick Carney, and John Reis. This time was no different, as they enlisted the aid of Sean Lennon, recording the album at his studio in Upstate New York. Swilley says they found out about his studio in a very organic way. Alexander went up there to record an album with Fat White Family and liked it so much, he suggested they use it for their next record. It was a different experience for the band, but a good one. They lived up there while recording the album, so the sessions were a lot more relaxed.

Though the atmosphere was more relaxing, they still put pressure on themselves. They needed to put out a killer record. “We’ve always had something to prove,” Swilley admits. “We had a new lineup. It was time to go hard or go home.”

Satan’s Graffiti or God’s Art? is a searing return to form for Black Lips. It harks back to their earlier rawer recordings, while expanding their palette. Along with the proper songs, it features several interludes, overtures, and even a finale.

It may seem a little strange for band such as

It’s true that the album is really dark. While working on it, the band were dealing with the deaths of several loved ones. Swilley admits that it’s Black Lips’ least “pop” album, even though it has elements of pop on it. In addition, Yoko Ono makes an appearance. According to Swilley, her involvement was a bit surreal but exciting. She knew exactly what she wanted to do and did it, as befits somebody with her talents.

Despite their long tenure, Swilley isn’t surprised that Black Lips still exist. He admits he sometimes wonders if the band should have stopped years ago—though it took them a few years to get their footing—but he believes that if you love doing something, you stick with it.

Even without their success, he would still find a way to make music. He looks at it as a calling.

“I always knew I would be doing this forever,” he says.

Believe it or not, he got his attitude from growing up in the Church, listening to gospel music. He saw the energy and passion people brought to gospel and asserts that if rock ‘n’ roll can capture a quarter of that energy and passion, it’s doing its job. “It’s a state of mind,” he explains. “It’s about being really honest.

Some people got it, some don’t.”

Judging from Black Lips’ lengthy career and killer new album, they’ve definitely got it.

RECOMMENDED LISTENING: SAINT PÉ

Black Lips aren’t the only garage rock veterans releasing a new album this year. Their former guitarist, Ian Saint Pé— who played in the band from 2004 to 2014—just put out an album under the name Saint Pé. Fixed Focus came out via Ernest Jenning Record Co. on April 7.

According to the guitarist, it was time for a change, so he relocated to Nashville and moved into a log cabin formerly owned by country legend Roy Acuff. He turned it into a studio and recorded the new album with the help of some cohorts in the Atlanta music scene.

Fixed Focus finds Saint Pé still playing with pop hooks and sensibilities, but also succumbing to the musical history of his new home. It’s not a complete change of pace, but more of a reclamation of his roots, while pushing his music in new directions. There are tasty garage rock nuggets such as “Street Lights” and “Kiss It Goodbye,” along with some more Southern Gothic-sounding songs in “Carbon Maker” and “Burning Bright.” The album is cohesive and fully formed.

Saint Pé plans to take to the road for the foreseeable future.

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57

MIKE HILL OF TOMBS

“In certain occult practices, there is an ‘uncrossing ritual,’ which is used to remove blockages in your life. Though I do not believe in ‘pulling rabbits out of hats,’ I do believe that meditating on something with intention will yield tangible results. I’m not suggesting that you just burn a few candles and leave it to the mysterious forces of the universe to change your life, but rituals help us focus our intention. The work is internal and will generate action. Sometimes, it takes an external process to drive our minds into a new direction. Sometimes, during these rituals, you can see a direction that may have been obscured by years of distraction.”

“Silence, for me, is what helps me cleanse my mind. Your mind races with ideas, thoughts, regrets, and/or possibilities bouncing around with no direction. Most of the time, it is difficult to set them aside, so what I do is just let them flow until ease of mind comes.

Once you reach that point, believe me, it is quite gratifying. I start by blocking out all the sounds that surround me by singling out each sound. Where does it come from? What is its source? Why does it sound that way? Why does it last that long? Tiny exercises that keep me sane and, at the same time, help me capture the madness around.”

ISAIAH RADKE OF RADKEY

RODO IBARRA OF SILENT

“When you start a band, you should probably be a ‘band.’ Work out a 25-minute set of original music, and throw in an interesting cover to take your set up to about 28 minutes so that you’ll have that extra bit of time to clear off stage and let venues know that you’re super cool about set times so that they will hopefully book you for tighter shows that require more trust. It’s also pretty important when starting out to have a decent-sounding demo disc of your best two songs to give out for free or ‘whatever you want to pay for it.’ It’s all about the music. And, as an opening band, consider every live set a 30-minute chance to blow minds and show the world (room) what you’re all about. Start strong and end with your best song. The biggest part of winning people over as new band is keeping them wanting more.”

“Be nice! The music community is a small one and everyone is— generally!—working toward having a great show, tour, event, etc.

Being polite and nice to staff and crew working at events can go a long way, and what goes around might eventually come around.

Tour karma! I think it’s important when you’re on tour to remember to take some time for yourself. Usually, for me, that would entail exploring the city we’re in, but often, on tour, there is very little time for exploring other than the area right around the venue. But still, taking that short walk to a nearby record store or park can really clear your head and give everyone in your touring party a little space!”

JASAMINE WHITE-GLUZ OF NO JOY

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61

RYAN YOUNG OF OFF WITH THEIR HEADS

“I think, of all the million different things you can speak about on touring, there is one major thing that you need to understand before you get in that van: touring isn’t for everyone. It takes a certain kind of crazy to be able to operate long-term on the road. So, if your bandmate or best friend that you are doing this with decides that it isn’t for them, it never will be. Just cut them loose on good terms and move on. I only say that from my craziness—I’ve kicked people out of my band for chewing with their mouths open. That is fucking insane behavior. If you are an adult and can’t have some fucking common sense and close your halitosis-ridden mouth, get out. See what I mean? It’s crazy of me to even think like that.

Hence finding the right people that mesh with your craziness.”

TUK SMITH OF BITERS

KACEY JOHANSING

CARLEY WOLF OF THE GHOST WOLVES

“Because our society is currently so dependent on social media outlets, it is all too easy to compare oneself to the successes of others. We forget that our purpose as artists is to remain true to ourselves and, hopefully, bring more beauty into the world.

I think, as long as you are excited about what you are doing, it doesn’t matter how many ‘like’s or followers you get. I think it’s important to learn how to remain curious and confident as a musician and to create what you love, not what is cool or trending.”

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“I keep a tour notebook with all the numbers: mileage, gas costs, food costs, lodging costs, other costs, pay, cash merch, card merch. It’s important to me to know what the numbers are. I also keep and file all of the receipts in a little plastic file folder that has labeled tabs for different items. You will make most of your money on merch if you do it right. Put time into your merch table. Set it up before the show, shine a light on it, go to it after your set. Talk to people. Have interesting stuff for sale. Have a Square reader so you can accept cards. Make bundle deals for the super fans.

Have an email signup sheet to stay in touch with people. All that stuff makes a difference to your bottom line, and fans appreciate it too.”

“Change your fucking socks and wash your feet. No one wants to smell that shit. Yuck.”

FOOTBALL, ETC. Out From The Darkness And Into The Light

“A lot of my lyrics are about my dealing with depression and anxiety, or at least serve as a platform for it,” Lindsay Minton—vocalist and guitarist for Texas-based trio, football, etc.—comments on their new record, Corner. “I can’t say it brings any sort of catharsis, but it makes it tangible and, at the same time, something outside of myself and my head.”

That palpable sensation of having some kind of grip on wellness rides through the somber yet textural dynamics on the new LP, out May 26 via Community Records. football, etc. don’t kick and scream to release their inner demons, instead focusing on bringing out quiet-loud dynamics that struck more than a chord with the band—more like a feeling of ecstasy. Bassist

GOD DETHRONED Persevering Through Breakups, Loss, And The End Of The World

Fans may have thought God Dethroned were finally done after their second breakup in 2012. After all, the Dutch melodic death metal band had a good run over 20-plus years and seven albums—but they weren’t dead yet.

The band return on May 5 with The World Ablaze—the third and final installment of their World War I concept trilogy—released by their longtime label, Metal Blade Records. God Dethroned will no doubt look forward to conquering European festivals and playing a few release shows.

Founding member Henri Sattler says the band are rejuvenated since reforming with a new lineup in 2015.

“The three-year break has served us well,” the vocalist and guitarist admits. “[Our] batteries are recharged, and fans come to our shows with renewed interest in the band. The new guys are a good addition to the band, both musically and personally.”

It took the death of an old friend, Metal Blade Europe label manager Michael Trengert, in late 2013 to resurrect God Dethroned. “It was at Michael’s funeral that I realized how

Mercy Harper echoes, “As far as the recording, [producer] J. Robbins is a wizard empath who made me sound like I do in my dreams.”

Despite being only a three-piece, the band bring a sense of urgency into their minimalist approach, evidenced by Harper’s roaring basslines throughout Corner.

Furthermore, J. Robbins challenged football, etc. to be comfortable and in control of themselves.

“The true magic of J. is that he is able to somehow summon the best performances possible without making you feel stressed or nervous about it,” drummer Daniel Hawkins says. This rather poetically reflects how the trio present their songs: letting the moods and tempos find themselves without forcing things to sound different.

In return, their soundscape is expansive, with atmospheric guitar lines weaving through a rhythm that thrums gracefully thanks to steady kit work from Hawkins.

Alongside the stellar instrumentals, there are plenty of feelings to unearth across Corner. The solemn

much I missed it, and decided that I needed to continue playing,” Sattler recalls. “That day, I met many people from the industry and, of course, many bands, such as the guys of Amon Amarth. People I’ve known and toured with for years. They are my family, and it opened my eyes.

Metal Blade has always been very supportive towards us all through the years. So, when I asked them if they were interested in releasing another album, they said yes, and here we are.”

Here we are, indeed: Earth 2017, on the brink of World War III. Sattler— an admitted “history freak”—drew on the past to reflect the present, following up 2009’s Passiondale and 2012’s Under the Sign of the Iron Cross. “I’m pretty sure that we are the only metal band in the world who ever did a concept trilogy about World War I,” Sattler asserts. “It’s a war not many people know about, since World War II has been so well-documented in film compared to WWI. When I learned about WWI myself, I was really intrigued by it and decided to dig into its history. I couldn’t have imagined that the response would be so good, and that’s why we decided to continue on this path.”

“Although the songs deal about WWI only, the title, The World Ablaze, refers to our present day situation as

INTERVIEW WITH LINDSAY MINTON, MERCY HARPER, AND DANIEL HAWKINS BY SEAN GONZALEZ pace of opener, “Save,” identifies the helplessness of life. “You think of someone lost out at sea, seeing a ship as a beacon of hope,” Minton reflects, “yet, in this song, it creates a drowning undertow.”

This darkness is later contrasted by the track “U20,” a love song that bridges the gap of crossing the threshold into marriage. Minton and Harper were recently married, solidifying a nurturing relationship that has been flowering for a decade. Harper cried as soon as the

ceremony began. All three members used the thunder from the ceremony, the excitement of making music together—despite being split between two cities—and the honest expression of passion to create the beautiful closer that is “U20.” Corner opens like an anxious wreck, but ends with a serene reminder that love can conquer.

INTERVIEW WITH VOCALIST/GUITARIST HENRI SAT TLER BY NICK HARRAH well,” he adds. “I can’t wait for our fans to hear the album.”

With help from producer Dan Swanö, the band sought to more seamlessly merge the blackened and brutal with the melodic on the final chapter of their trilogy. “We wanted to write an album that’s more dynamic and varied than ...Iron Cross, because that one was only fast and aggressive,” Sattler explains. “Nothing wrong with that, but more difficult in a live situation. After a while, our audience would be out of breath completely, because there’s no pause to breathe in those songs. No part to just bang your head on, so just too exhausting to follow through in a live set.”

“Much more suitable to play at a live show. Dan Swanö’s production is just awesome, and it was easy to work with him, as we both had the same views on our music.”

Throughout all the turmoil—from the personal to the political—Sattler says it’s all about one thing: the love of the fans and playing music. “We value our fans very much,” he says.

“They made us who we are today.”

And on God Dethroned’s impressive strength to endure? Sattler says he knows where it comes from: “Playing live is good for the soul, and I enjoy every minute of it! We’re not planning on quitting anytime soon.”

“The new album, however, has lots of tempo changes and parts where you can bang your head to,” he assures.

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THE WINTER PASSING

Overcoming Mental Anguish Through Openness and Connectivity The Winter Passing never wanted to settle for being simply a punk rock band. The Dublin-based four-piece have found themselves inspired in a myriad of ways, and while their music often fits neatly into the pop punk category, putting The Winter Passing into a box has never been on the table.

“We wanted to write something that was less in the wing of traditional, generic pop punk songs,” guitarist and vocalist Rob Flynn says.

While the band have clear pop punk and punk rock influences, Rob says they’ve also been moved by other facets of indie and alternative rock. “We wanted to combine a whole bunch of different ideas to sonically make up the sound of The Winter Passing,” he explains.

HIRAM-MAXIM Outrunning The Reaper And Keeping The Ghosts At Bay

Ghost stories are often most effective when they delve deep into the psyche, honing in on what really haunts us. GHOSTS, the sophomore album from Cleveland’s HIRAM-MAXIM, is a harrowing whirlwind of sounds that would befit a horror film: punishing and piercing noise, propulsive beats, dark textures and atmosphere, bleak visions, and more than a few howls of pain. However, this excellent record—due out via Aqualamb Records on April 21—is much more than an aimless wall of noise; it’s an exploration of personal, societal, and existential darkness, and it wants to illuminate that gloom. After all, in horror stories, ignoring the darkness only makes it stronger.

This passion is fueled by a medical tragedy and being lucky in the lottery. Drummer John Panza is a cancer survivor with only one lung, but you wouldn’t guess that by listening to HIRAM-MAXIM. The band started out as four strangers brought together by the Cleveland music Lottery League, and despite disparate influences, their shared vision has allowed them to focus on crafting music that is equally haunting and meditative.

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Throughout 2016, the band honed in on their musical aspirations and raw lyrical content. Rob and his sister, Kate Flynn—who also provides vocals for the project—worked together to channel their personal inner demons: anxiety and depression. “I’ve always been into music, and I feel that it’s really become a tool for me,” Kate describes. “I feel like I’m emptying these thoughts I may have had.”

Rob says the feeling is mutual. “It’s a way of digesting your feelings,” he shares, “putting them into a new place and putting a stamp of satisfaction that you’ve moved past a bad feeling in your life.”

For the Flynns, this “tool” played a big role in the creation of their upcoming EP, Double Exposure, released in the U.S. via 6131 Records on April 21. Through the new music, the siblings were able to communicate each other’s complex feelings and channel them into something bigger. “I wrote the lyrics to the first song and showed them to Kate,” Rob says. “Kate was

PHOTO: ELENA DE SOTO

INTERVIEW WITH ROB AND KATE FLYNN BY ANNETTE HANSEN like, ‘I have so many similar feelings and ideas that I’ve been writing.’ We came together and realized that everything that was there intersected very well over each other. It was a simple, organic thing.”

The new EP is The Winter Passing’s sophomore release, following their 2015 debut full-length, A Different Space of Mind, and the band used the last year of touring and writing to grow as musicians and artists. With

Double Exposure, The Winter Passing are putting forth their most self-assured work yet. “I think we were just a lot more confident with the material we were writing,” Rob explains. “We felt like they were better songs. They were catchier melodies. We felt really confident about what we were going to record, and I feel like we captured it.”

GHOSTS is a cathartic, venomous listen. Vocalist Fred Gunn explains, “Lyrically, GHOSTS is a very angry record. The songs explore themes of social and political injustices haunting our world. Over the last year or so, there has been so much garbage that has caused me a lot of outrage. From the passing of HB2 in North Carolina [which limits transgender rights] to the murder of 12-year-old Tamir Rice by the Police Department right here in Cleveland—not to mention the string of police murders of Black men across the country before and after—to the empowerment of hate groups brought on by the Trump campaign. [These are] events that I view as regression in society, things that I thought were behind us. ‘Ghosts,’ if you will, come back to haunt us.”

So, how do HIRAM-MAXIM keep their personal ghosts at bay? “I do too much,” Panza admits. “My wife, my bandmates, and my friends remind me to slow down all of the time. But constant movement is, for me, the elixir of life. Stasis equals death. My daily turmoil centers on my 2012 cancer diagnosis and the physical and emotional issues that arrived with the diagnosis, treatment, and knowledge of the incurable nature of my cancer. I’m a father, a husband. I don’t sleep much or all that well. My wellness routine includes playing with my daughter, playing drums, and—metaphorically speaking—playing opossum with Death.”

INTERVIEW WITH DRUMMER JOHN PANZA AND VOCALIST FRED GUNN BY NICHOLAS SENIOR Gunn has another solution: “Other than unloading a lot of my frustration on this record, what I have been doing to keep myself sane: every week I have been doing a ‘No Politics Monday’ in an attempt to give myself one day a week where I’m not outraged, disgusted, and confounded.”

Panza also struggles to stay focused and sane with all these societal ghosts haunting him. “Despite being a severe rationalist, I’m neither focused nor sane,” he laments, “but my craziness is nothing compared to the crazy shit going on in Washington and around the U.S. That stuff is just

nuts. Luckily, when I’m behind the drums, I forget that there is a sociopathic toddler with his tiny finger on the button. To give myself a feeling of sanity, I play drums. To get exercise, I play drums. To unwind, I play drums.”

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ooking to the past for inspiration is nothing new, but it takes on a substantially greater meaning for Sacramento-based prog rockers, A Lot Like Birds. DIVISI—due out via Equal Vision on May 5—is the band’s strongest and most emotionally resonant output yet. They embrace the album as a canvas on which to create dynamics throughout its runtime, instead of merely within each song. By album’s end, A Lot Like Birds’ masterful songwriting shines through, with a very high goosebump-per-second ratio. DIVISI gets deep, dark, and is a delightful listen.

“When we recorded No Place with Kris Crummett [in 2013], he mentioned something after it was finished: he feels like each of our albums tend to go back to that idea of album-oriented rock, which was not a term I’d heard before,” vocalist Cory Lockwood laughs, “but it was big in the ‘70s. The more I thought about it, it always has been that way—I feel like to our disadvantage. It’s harder for us to capture people with singles. We always advocate that people listen to our records in their entirety; that’s the best way to digest them, though that’s hard to ask people to do.”

DIVISI is a much more refined and restrained record than the band’s back catalog, with technicality taking a backseat to haunting hooks and atmosphere. “I think it was a little bizarre,” Lockwood shares about this sonic shift. “We’ve always taken a year off to not write, which has always felt right. It allows you to grow and not just completely get back into it and end up writing sequels to your prior album. […] We decided to go with what felt natural, which meant embracing a lot of change. It meant singing more. If I had tried screaming on a song like ‘For Shelley,’ it wouldn’t have made any sense at all, so we figured, if we were going to do this, we’re going to have to go 100 percent. We have to be willing to experiment, which is exciting and extremely nerve-racking.”

Early on, Lockwood experienced every writer’s worst fear.

“It was one of those things I’d come to terms with,” he begins, “this idea that writer’s block isn’t the idea that you can’t come up with anything, it’s more the idea there are too many things, and as soon as you hone in on one you want to talk about, you’ve just eliminated everything else. There’s this

claustrophobic feeling that this record has too much potential to be any specific thing, and as soon as I started writing something, I’ve narrowed it down and made it into something more defined. It scared me a lot in the beginning.” “‘For Shelley’ was the only song that had to come out the way it did, and I had to write it for myself,” Lockwood adds. The track’s creative catalyst was the death of his mother, and Lockwood wasn’t comfortable putting it out in the open. “It was something that I had to get out of me, and I wasn’t even sure that we were going to use it,” he continues. “At the time, my mom was still in the hospital, and [I thought], ‘I don’t ever want to release this and have her hear this and know how hurt I’ve been during this time.’ So, we put this song on the back burner and moved on, experimenting with more imagery-based lyrical content and painting a picture.”

“After my mom passed, the album took a turn after we wrote the last four or five songs, and there’s a lot revolving around mortality and the idea of the afterlife,” he explains. “A big thing for me, after my mom

had passed, so many people had told me that she was in a better place, and that sparked something in me. What a strange thing that we tell people, because we don’t know that to be true and we think it’s comforting. It spawned the questions I ask throughout the record.”

After writing that song, A Lot Like Birds went on their first tour with their new lineup. “My mom passed during that tour, and we played a show in San Antonio that night, and there was a question about whether we were going to play the show,” Lockwood recalls. “I felt like it would be insane not to, because then I’d just have to sit with my thoughts. We played the show, and—I hate saying this because it sounds cliché, but literally, onstage, I had a moment of realization that my mother was proud of me doing this, and I couldn’t think of any other place that I’d want to be during such an awful situation than out on tour with these people that I consider so close. It was a strange validation of what I was doing. After coming back from that tour, writing seemed to flow a lot more easily. It just sort of naturally came together.”

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sking fans for money isn’t easy for someone who’s scraped and clawed through the DIY punk underground for everything he has. That said, Ted Leo didn’t run directly to Kickstarter; that relationship took years to come to fruition.

“There was this idea that this kind of [crowdfunding] model was sort of enabling hobbyists,” Leo says. “It’s like you don’t have to put any skin in the game, whereas, coming up, it was all skin—you put all your skin in the game.”

Fast forward years later, and Leo is embracing the model he once so adamantly rejected.

Seven years after the release of his last record with The Pharmacists, The Brutalist Bricks, Leo has 30 self-recorded, self-produced songs he is readying for release on the back of a successful Kickstarter campaign.

For all the time he spent second-guessing Kickstarter, the campaign paid immediate dividends. Within hours of its Feb. 22 launch, Leo not only met, but exceeded his $85,000 fundraising goal. By campaign’s end, he raised more than $164,000 with the help of 3,187 supporters. “There’s this constant thing in your mind that’s always concerned about recouping, bottom lines, all of these things,” Leo says. “In that moment, I realized, ‘Oh my God, I don’t have to worry about any of that. The only thing I have to worry about is making the best record I can make.’”

Leo first began considering crowdfunding in earnest following his split from Matador

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Records in the summer of 2016.

He weighed signing with other labels—including SuperEgo Records, the imprint run by his friend and Both collaborator, Aimee Mann—but ultimately, his curiosity about working outside of the label paradigm got the best of him. “I think a totally new model, to me, has felt really creative,” he says. “This whole part of it has felt interesting and creative and interactive.”

Little more than samples of the new tracks have been released, but those samples reveal some musical growth on Leo’s part.

His new material still has the spirit and power of the indie punk that’s long been his calling card, but there are strings, pianos, and other arrangements to augment the traditional rock setup. “It’s not a conscious decision to take it someplace else,” he says. “Since I’ve been working at home and gradually building a studio little by little, I have the freedom to try things.”

Leo plans to release his new songs on either the yet-to-be titled LP or as outtakes that will appear on a series of 7”s.

The goal is to have a new record out in September, with digital copies out to financial backers sooner. “I took a real risk to do this,” he says of the campaign, “but I started to understand that all of these preconceptions that I initially had about the model were just the most negative version of things. If you think a little more creatively, you can make different connections about what this is actually doing.”

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he past few years have been an emotional rollercoaster for the members of Daisyhead. Following the release of 2015’s The Smallest Light, the band faced a mountain of internal struggle that almost led to their breakup—but they persevered. They may have lost some members along the way, but Daisyhead have resurfaced with a refreshed intensity. Their second full-length, In Case You Missed It—released April 28 via No Sleep Records—showcases a new, confident swagger in Daisyhead’s sound, one that chronicles their triumph over uncertainty and anxiety.

At the time of their formation in 2012, Daisyhead were simply a side project for several Nashville musicians. Within months of their debut EP’s release, the band were fielding offers from labels, eventually deciding to join forces with

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No Sleep Records. Despite how quickly Daisyhead turned heads, they chose to tread lightly, giving themselves time to grow before recklessly diving into the world of touring. Nevertheless, in the end, the band found themselves tangled in a web of adversity.

Following the release of The Smallest Light, Daisyhead saw different members come and go and struggled to secure their place on bigger tours. Vocalist and guitarist Michael Roe—the only original member remaining—confesses his embarrassment over how many members the band went through at this time. “It got to the point to where I thought the band was a joke,” he admits. To Roe, this constant flux of membership was nothing more than poor timing. There was no massive falling-out that caused members to drift, but rather, a lack of

dedication due to other commitments.

With members missing from the lineup, Roe took on the responsibility of writing additional guitar and drum parts.

never expected to feel this confident about it. Bottom line is that they’re great, and they definitely saved the band from not being a band anymore.”

Coping with this partial lineup slowed down the writing process, but the band ignored their instincts and remained patient. “I’ve definitely learned that everything isn’t the end of the world,” Roe reflects. “I put a lot of pressure on myself, and it really kind of irks me when there isn’t a constant forward motion. I’ve learned that if I’m just patient, things will work themselves out.”

Daisyhead have muscled their way through a slew of treacherous trials that blocked their path, emerging as stronger musicians and people. “It seems like there’s been a lot of setbacks, but honestly, there’s been a ton of forward motion that I’d like to give credit to at this point,” Roe says. Together, this new iteration of Daisyhead poured their hearts into what would soon become In Case You Missed It, an 11-track album teeming with raw emotion and searing guitar tones. With a brand new record and full U.S. tour planned through late May, Daisyhead are aiming to shatter the boundaries that have defined them and ready to take on whatever the universe has in store for them.

Today, Daisyhead are whole again, with a complete lineup that truly feels right to Roe. “The main compliment I get is from people who have seen us before saying that this new lineup is just perfect,” he says. “It just really, really clicks, and I

PHOTO: ELENA DE SOTO

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don’t have too much bad to say about any label we’ve ever worked with, but finally doing our last record, getting done with our contract—it was an awesome thing to be free,” Terror vocalist Scott Vogel exhales with a chuckle. Released April 28, the band’s new EP, The Walls Will Fall, exhibits a rejuvenated band with hunger and anticipation. Now signed with Pure Noise Records, Terror are ready to continue defending their status as hardcore kings with a renewed energy.

Terror have released six full-lengths on three different labels and a plethora of 7”s, splits, and live albums.

Their two most recent records, 2013’s Live By the Code and 2015’s The 25th Hour, were for Victory Records. “We signed a deal with Century Media for four records a long time ago,” Vogel explains, but two records in, there was friction. “We pushed Century Media to license us to another label. [Victory founder] Tony [Brummel] had heard the record and liked it.” Two more records later, Terror were once again unfettered.

The band connected with Pure Noise founder Jake Round, whom they befriended after a tour with The Story So Far. “Pure Noise was the right fit for Terror,” Vogel says. “It is the label we wanted to be on. Bridge 9 was the only other label we saw as a good fit.

Pure Noise was a perfect fit.” After so many releases, finally finding a comfortable home was important.

“I’m realistic,” he continues. “Terror isn’t the biggest band. It is harder and harder for labels to sell albums. I feel totally blessed. We get to tour all over the world. We have been doing this for 15 years. But underground music is in an industry mindset, and we don’t sell a ton of records. I don’t expect labels to get us on the cover of Rolling Stone.”

Triple B Records out of Boston will release the vinyl version of The Walls Will Fall in the summer. Vogel’s intent is always to work with small hardcore labels. “As long as I can remember, back to when we did

the deal with Century Media—‘It’s that real shit, how you signed to a label / Vinyl kept independent and made the CD, major,’” he says, quoting a line from “Things You Do” by Evidence of Dilated Peoples on his solo LP, The Weatherman. “That line stuck in my head, how cool that is,” Vogel explains.

Even in Terror’s Century Media contract, Vogel demanded a stipulation requiring that the vinyl releases of each album would be on small hardcore labels. This was an easy sell, because “no majors cared about vinyl; hardcore kids cared about vinyl,” he says. “One of the few points that was important to me [for The Walls Will Fall] was to do the vinyl on a smaller hardcore label. Jake at Pure Noise was cool. There was some pushing and pulling though, as now, labels care about vinyl because CDs don’t sell.”

For the past decade, Vogel’s best friend Patrick Kitzel at Reaper Records handled these releases, putting out vinyl versions of the major label LPs and intermediate 7” EPs. For The Walls Will Fall, Vogel wanted to move in a different direction, explaining to Kitzel, “‘We didn’t want to leave you, but the 11th Terror release on Reaper isn’t exciting.’”

Triple B will press the EP in three different colors—ice blue, orange, or blue splatter—two of which are already sold out at the time of writing.

The Walls Will Fall is a solid continuation of the stellar—albeit short— The 25th Hour, a brutal, slightly thrashy record: short and pissed and negative. The Walls Will Fall is five more tracks of this, including “Kill ‘Em Off” and a Madball cover, “Step to You.” Vogel says, “We got done with the [Victory] contract and just wanted to do an EP. We weren’t even thinking about a label. We are a hardcore band. We think like a hardcore band. We went into [drummer] Nick’s [Jett]’s studio and said, ‘Let’s get this stuff out.’ It will be a nice setup for the album. It will give us time.

For better or worse, we think like a hardcore band.”

“It’s a lot easier to make an EP,” Vogel adds. “It’s rather fucking hard to make an album with 12 to 14 songs that keep people’s attention span— especially when you have your sound dialed in and you’re trying to stay true to who you are. It’s easy when there is no pressure to just rip a couple of things. I think it came out really cool.”

On March 23, Terror released the video for “Kill ‘Em Off,” whetting the appetite of hardcore fans. The track is 70 seconds long, set to a furious barrage of clashing images. “I had the idea—remember the beginning from the old ‘Headbangers Ball?’”

Vogel asks. “Two trains smashing into each other. It clicked in my brain to get some images like that and flash quickly with live stuff.

It complements the impact of the song.” The images reflect the tension and conflict in society, but Vogel asserts, “We didn’t want to do political images [that were] straight to the point, [but] with the world we live in now, you got to have that stuff not in the back of your mind, but the front of your mind. Terror is not a political band. But the title of the EP and the song ‘The Walls Will Fall’ is 100 percent a political song.”

This influence comes from a direct source: due to a spinal injury in May of 2016, Vogel wound up confined to his living room, fixated on the news. “The second half of 2016, I had my eyes glued to CNN constantly, watching this election unfold,” he says. “Seeing that, in 2016, there is talk from a lot of people about building a physical wall to build borders up. I thought it was such a crazy thing that that’s where we are in 2016, now 2017: talking about building this wall with people cheering for it, instead of looking at what the real issues are. I am hoping—it’s hard to have hope sometimes, [but] you got to hope that people start looking at things differently, that they look into solving real problems instead of putting up barriers with ‘us against them,’ instead of shutting others out.”

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elf-care and mental health have always carried an unreasonably ugly stigma. It wasn’t a topic to be discussed openly, rather kept private and hidden from others. Now is the time to be noisy and lose the disfigurement of mental health. I believe that vulnerability is positive self-care. And I believe that it is a conversation that we must continually have with ourselves and with those around us.

Throw in all that Orange Cheetos dust and add social media, and you’ve got yourself a mental health trash fire. I feel like a mental health trash fire. I have been a mental health trash fire. How do we navigate that trash fire in a reasonable and relatable way?

Hello. My name is Vanessa Jean Speckman. I am a 33-year-old self-employed nomadic artist navigating a cloudy space of anxiety and depression that, lately, has been especially heightened.

Anxiety and depression look different for everybody. Mine most recently looked like waking up in the middle of the night having an anxiety attack.

Usually, it’s because I think that everyone I love dearly is dying or dead and/

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or [I’m thinking about] all the ways I am a horrible human being. I subsequently puke from the physicality of the attack, crying uncontrollably, not getting out of bed for days, shutting down and cutting off communication—with myself, my partner, my family and friends—loss in appetite, and an overall IDGAF about anything or anyone.

And I most definitely don’t care about myself, and that sure as shit means I am not making art or doing the business side of the work. Which is my “job.”

I checked out. I didn’t have to phone “Carol in H.R.” and make up a story to get out of work. I just didn’t show up. I wasn’t creating new art, I wasn’t keeping up with orders and maintaining work. I let commissions sit in my inbox.

I wasn’t sharing what I was working on—which was nothing but being paralyzingly depressed. And all of that really fucked me up in a lot of ways. Not just in the obvious financial department, but it’s emotionally exhausting to be depressed, and to sit down and try to create such intimate extensions of myself that I feel absolutely nothing for is really unsettling. My art is me, and I am my work—and I didn’t like either, especially at that time.

It’s a horrible fucking feeling. It debilitates you. You are frozen beneath a dark blanket of what feels completely hopeless. We have to create the space and language to talk about mental health vulnerably, because self-care right now is something that everyone needs to tend to softly. Especially in the current state of affairs and with the often-overwhelming immediacy of everything and anything because of technology.

Self-care looks different for everyone, but these are some of my go-tos. They are still sometimes the hardest thing for me when I can’t see the light, so I am saying it as a selfish reminder, and maybe—hopefully—someone can find something in it that helps them in their own ways. † Make a list the night before for what you want to accomplish the next day.

Make it as detailed or “big picture” as you want, but to see your goals in one place and to physically mark them off is a victory. † Move your body. Put on your headphones and go for a walk. I dig yoga big time. I found it late in life, and I am nothing special at it, but afterwards, I always feel good, even if I was mentally

and physically half-assing it. I’m a broke artist and can’t afford a gym or studio and was introduced to “Yoga with Adriene” on YouTube and love her practice. And you can do it wherever you’re at, no matter how good you are at it. † Take a bath. I swear by it. It’s the most loving and tender time out from everything. There’s clarity and quiet in a bathtub.

† Say it out loud. Write it down. Tell a friend. Tell a family member. Tell a therapist. Call 1-800-273-TALK. Bringing your monsters into the light and naming them makes them very real— because they are very real. Knowing that you are not alone and that these things exist and are very much affecting you is important to acknowledge.

Again, that is a victory. † Put down your phone. Pick up a book. That’s a nice place to be. † You are so not alone. Please know that. † Stay soft. Stay brave.

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magine you’re at a dance party. The music is blaring, everyone around you spent hours getting ready—doing their hair just right, picking out the perfect outfit, having just the right amount of drinks—and the room is electric.

What do you feel?

For a large majority of us, a night like this can be a great source of anxiety and insecurity. Comedian Kate Wolff decided to turn this scenario right-side up by creating Break Free, a conscious dance party event tailor-made to inspire the release and rejection of those seemingly built-in notions.

“Our truest nature is to move freely,” she explains. “We are meant to express our truest vibration or soul song.” These events provide a safe, nonjudgmental space in which participants can practice mindfulness through uninhibited movement.

Though conscious dance parties have existed for some time, Wolff wanted to cultivate a specific type of event, with music she felt to be more in tune with her mantra of “break free.” “Most of the conscious dance parties played EDM [and] house music, and I prefer to dance to hip hop [and] pop,” she says.

“There are still some other styles mixed in there, but I like for it to be hip hop-based.

There’s something about the drum and bass that really allows people to go deep inside themselves and get to that raw place that lives within all of us. There’s so much soul in that kind of music.”

Music, comedy, performance, and the arts have always played a large part in mental health. Actors may cope with personal struggles by inhabiting the body of another, musicians can often express themselves better through song than conversation, and comedians are known for adding levity to the heavy and dark. “To be truly alive means to be in relationship with our suffering, which is what most of us avoid,” Wolff asserts. Though suffering and strife are, in large part, integral to a comic’s life, Wolff ’s outlook is a unique balance.

The worlds of comedy and self-help may not seem like compatible bedfellows, but Wolff draws a compelling parallel between the two pursuits. “It’s about flexibility,” she says. “I am constantly changing, so a joke that might feel good to me one week might feel dark the next. And if that’s what happens, I try my hardest to roll with it and let it go if it no longer suits my soul. I continue to surrender as best I can and release anything that no longer serves me.”

Wolff somehow balances her life as a comic, single mom, podcaster, and self-help ad-

vocate—the latter being an especially difficult road, both personally and professionally. Despite being an increasingly talked about issue, in certain communities, mental health care still feels foreign or far too sensitive to bring to the mainstream conversation. Though Wolff is lighthearted and hilarious, she’s well aware of the challenges facing mental health awareness. “We are so good at pointing the finger and calling other people crazy without realizing it starts with us and going within,” she notes. “We look to the external world for both fulfillment and blame when the true answer is to look at the areas in yourself that are not in relationship to each other.”

Speaking with Wolff is energizing. Her son, Shane, is a constant presence on her social media and is actively helping his mom launch her rap career—seriously, check out her Instagram. It’s another experiment, not necessarily meant for long-term achievement, but for the sake of trying new things and not limiting herself from pursuing avenues that seem out of her reach. Her comedy is full-blown honesty while her podcast, “Invasion of Privacy,” is bound to make you laugh, cry, and, at times, feel insanely uncomfortable. Wolff is proving that no pursuit is without nobility and that the fear of failure is only substantiated by our own desires. After all, she is a self-proclaimed dragon sorceress.

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i.e. musicians who don’t like having their photo taken—being polite is the best way to get them to stick around for the shoot.

STAY HYDRATED It seems so simple, yet so often, photographers are running themselves ragged and literally forget to eat or drink water until it is too late. A long day at a festival is like running a marathon. In order to make it to the finish line, you must pace yourself and stay hydrated! Same goes for working on the computer all day. It seems so simple, but often, creatives have to be reminded to do these things. Nobody wants to see you crash and burn. And if you want to avoid tinnitus: wear earplugs when working around amplified sound, like when you’re in front of the speakers or onstage near a drum kit.

BE DIRECT WHEN COMMUNICATING No one can read your mind and being passive-aggressive just doesn’t work, so don’t bother. Be direct and to the point—but never rude—when communicating with your subjects, clients, geez, anyone really!

WORK WITH WHAT YOU HAVE You don’t need fancy, expensive gear to be a photographer—you need an eye for composition. You have a cellphone with a camera?

A disposable camera from the pharmacy? Your grandparents old Canon? BAM! You have what you need to be a photographer.

PHOTO: EMILIO MARTINEZ

Being a full-time photographer is not as glamorous as one might imagine. But here are some helpful hints to stay on top of your life.

Most of the best advice I have ever gotten has zero to do with my craft; the best advice can always be applied to daily life.

KEEP YOUR FILES ORGANIZED It would be impossible to remember where all your files are. Keep your projects labeled and clearly marked. As soon as you download your photos onto your hard drive, make sure to put the name, date, and location of the project. My preference is a chronological filing system with subfolders that are alphabetical—but everyone has their own favorite way of doing things, so find one that works for you. Once you amass a large quantity of hard drives, it is advisable to keep them in a cool, dry place when not using them. Dust and water will destroy your treasured archive.

BE POLITE Not everyone in this world is polite, but if you want to get the best out of your subjects, being polite and respectful is probably the best word of advice. That rule applies to writing emails to P.R. and managers too. Rude photographers are probably not photographers for too long. When dealing with a difficult subject—

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BE YOURSELF Nothing is more transparent than someone who is trying to be someone they are not.

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reativity is a gift. At any point, one can pick up a pen or instrument and begin to pluck away until ideas give birth to passion. For some, however, the creative spark doesn’t come right off the bat. While many sit in the dead of night, their quill and notebook illuminated by candlelight, the creative muse just doesn’t seem to appear. In their frustration, they may trap themselves into a narrow sense of thinking, but author Jesse Cannon looks into every path to unlock creativity.

“When I was 12, I wanted to be cop, then I heard Guns N’ Roses’ ‘It’s So Easy’ and found someone who was as angry as me and felt the way I felt,” Cannon says on how he first discovered his love for the art. “Ever since then, every job I have had has been in music.” Among his various jobs within the industry, he is the author of the new book, “Processing Creativity: The Tools, Practices and Habits Used to Make Music You’re Happy With.” Within its pages, he dives into the well of ideas and methods that can introduce artists to their own creativity. Cannon says he has been working on “Processing Creativity” for the past 19 years. His work producing records, along with immense research, create a text featuring ideas that don’t stress the mind, but rather, lead the artist by the hand.

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Cannon also tackles harmful myths that can derail one’s vision when creating art.

Discussing the myth he finds the most harmful, he states, “Music that imitates or just smashes two ideas together makes the songs we’ve all heard, that—if you analyzed them—you would feel like you should like them, but when you hear them, they don’t compel you to listen again.” Throughout the book, Cannon directly confronts a variety of other toxic myths just like this and aids in setting the artist on the correct path.

From front to back, “Processing Creativity” is packed with wisdom that is informative and emotional while remaining casual and friendly. What Cannon stresses the most by the book’s end is the need to be authentic to what you enjoy and who you are. He says the key to success is “being happy with [your art] yourself. You can’t control how the world will react to your music,” he asserts. “What makes success in a song is when you tweak it and all you want to do is listen to your own song.”

I

f you want something done well, the old idiom says to do it yourself. Cayetana are doing just that.

It’s not that a label couldn’t do a good job releasing the band’s new full-length, New Kind of Normal, which drops May 5. In fact, the band have had great experiences working with Tiny Engines and Asian Man Records. They just wanted more involvement in releasing their LP and realized they could do it themselves. “Honestly, it feels really good,” bassist Allegra Anka says. “And not only that, but we wanted to show people that you don’t have to wait for other people to tell you you’re good enough or for people to give you opportunities. You can make opportunities on your own.”

The Philadelphia-based indie pop punk band sought more control with the release rather than “handing over” it over to a label. They wanted to do things on their own time and in their own way.

Anka and vocalist and guitarist Augusta Koch spent two weeks writing the majority of New Kind of Normal in Koch’s family home—which is being converted into a studio—in the Poconos in eastern Pennsylvania. They fine-tuned the album from April to June, then recorded it at Miner Street Recordings in Philly. When it was done, they waited. And waited.

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And waited. A couple months passed, and the band decided to take matters into their own hands. “The process started to feel more and more out of our hands as we were waiting to hear from people about whether they wanted to work with us. Eventually, the focus of the band became so much on things outside of our control that we started to get discouraged and it didn’t feel good,” Anka explains.

“We wanted to bring not only the creative control but the trajectory of our band back to us.

We thought, from the options that we see right now, as far as what we can do with this record, it just makes sense to do it ourselves.”

The trio did some research and figured out what resources they would need to self-release New Kind of Normal. From that, the band created Plum Records, a label they hope to eventually use to release and showcase bands from the Philly music scene and elsewhere. “We’d love to work with bands from wherever,” Anka confirms. “We’d love to extend that to other artists who would want to work with us. That’s definitely something we are thinking about now, and as we move forward, we’re gonna try to figure out how to make that happen.”

On Plum Records first and Cayetana’s latest release, the band show a more complete version of themselves, giving fans of 2014’s Nervous Like Me both up-

beat and fast-paced songs—like the single, “Mesa”—and some darker, slower tracks, offering both a change in mood and tempo. “I think the record, sonically, is more of a showcase of all of the different range of sound and all the different music that we write together,” Anka suggests.

If New Kind of Normal sounds different, it’s just a part of the band’s creative evolution. Cayetana aren’t trying to be a certain band or sound like someone or something else. “We’ve never thought proactively about ‘Hey, let’s write this kind of song,’ or ‘Let’s make this song sound this way,” Anka explains. “This record is kind of our next step, I guess, in all of the growth that we’ve had together.”

What was purposeful on the record was the creation of its theme, emphasizing the importance of and advocating for mental health. Anka relates that sharing the important creative endeavor of being in a band is difficult, as you have to interact and work with other people who don’t always necessarily share the same point of view.

And that, in general, mental health is so stigmatized. “We personally deal with mental health issues,” Anka comments.

“For Augusta, she’s pretty open about talking about that and the anxiety she deals with and the importance of taking care of your mental health. Music is a sort of therapy for that. […] It’s something that we’re continu-

ously learning. The more time that goes on, we’re learning that we don’t have answers for it.”

Anka and the band stress that dealing with issues related to depression, anxiety, or other mental health issues is about constantly learning and being honest about how you’re doing and how you’re feeling. She says they’re committed to “spreading the awareness to other people that everybody struggles with certain things and, if you are dealing with significant mental health issues, it’s important to put yourself around people who bring you up and to get the help that you need.”

With the release of their new album, Cayetana will set their sights on international touring.

They’ve never been to Europe and would love to play the continent by year’s end. They have been to Australia, but would love to return before 2018. “A lot of goals are touring related with the new album, but we’ll also try to figure out some projects for Plum Records as well.

We like to stay busy. I’m sure we will find new things to do,” Anka assures.

PHOTO: JACKI VITETTA

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PHOTO: ALAN SNODGRASS

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C

reating your own planet may seem odd, but for the goofy, affable, and seriously good Rozwell Kid, it just makes sense. The West Virginia-based indie punk group love sharp hooks about much as they love nostalgia and quirky references, and their upcoming SideOneDummy Records debut, Precious Art, is the pinnacle of what makes them so endearing. The record—due out June 23—is a great introduction to the band’s unique charms, with 12 doses of lethally catchy guitar pop.

Vocalist and guitarist Jordan Hudkins acknowledges that, while the album’s title is a bit tongue in cheek, they do feel some earnest affection for their creation. “I think it’s funny for a rock band to call anything they do ‘precious art,’” he says, “just because of the nature of rock ‘n’ roll: three-chord music, the

whole aesthetic and idea behind rock. It’s funny to be precious about anything, especially in the age that we live in with such disposable content. But at the same time, there is a shred of truth to it; it’s something that we worked really hard on. That’s why we gravitated toward that album title, because we straddled both sides of that line.”

The album feels like a throwback to the records of yesteryear, unified yet diverse. The only constant is how damn captivating Precious Art is throughout. Hudkins states that they wanted to write a record, not just a collection of tunes. “We knew we had more time than we’ve ever had before to make the record, so we wanted to leave a few things open-ended,” he explains. “We wanted to experiment a little bit— we didn’t get weird or anything, we didn’t spend, like, an entire day just

turning knobs on a delay pedal or anything,” he laughs. “We wanted it to be cohesive and move our sound forward just a little bit. Even if it’s just a baby step forward, I hope people think we took that little step forward.”

Keaton or a song like ‘Total Mess,’ which is pretty straight-up just a bummer of a song—there’s no goofy hook, there’s no pop culture reference. I make an effort to have everything be rooted in a relatable emotion or idea.”

It’s apparent that the band have expanded their sound, but their evolution on Precious Art doesn’t feel forced. Hudkins admits, “That makes me feel good, because I don’t want it to sound forced or sound like we’re trying too hard to achieve a goal that we just came shy of. I want it to be organic and make sense with what we do and have done. We’re just creating our own little Rozwell Kid Planet, and I want everything to have its place—but everything can’t be the same, because then, that planet gets boring really fast. So, it’s cool to have the contrasts and the different themes of the songs.”

As noted, the live-action Batman of the late ‘80s and early ‘90s lives on this planet too. “The song, ‘Michael Keaton,’ came from a screenplay idea I had,” Hudkins explains, “but I don’t know how to write a screenplay—but I do know how to write a song,” he laughs. “The whole idea came from me literally trying to find his phone number in the phonebook as a kid—like, my small West Virginia county phonebook.

I tried to look him up, because I literally wanted to call him up and tell him I really liked ‘Batman’ and he did a great job. When I

The band’s planet sure does have its oddities, like the gang of barking dudes on “Wish Man.” Hudkins laughs, “Nobody expects barking, I guess. I’m glad we did it. I like that song because it tells a story in 50 seconds. I thought about doing a second verse, but I realized I said all I wanted to say with that song. Let’s embrace this as a small tale.”

Rozwell Kid Planet is also littered with humorous references and nostalgia, but Hudkins says there’s a reason for that. “I feel like I’ve been pretty upfront from the beginning that my main concern is melody,” he states. “When the lyrical content comes in, yeah, some people will find it silly or goofy or whatever, but I always make a concerted effort to inject real emotion into everything. I want everything to be thematically real and come from a genuine place, whether I’m singing about Michael

couldn’t find his number, I couldn’t understand why. I think I learned in preschool how a phonebook works, so I looked up ‘Michael Keaton’ [to just] give him a call, let him know ‘Batman’ was great, and to keep up the good work. From this 5-yearold in West Virginia…”

Where does the mixture of uplift and sadness come from? Who are the co-architects of this planet? “I realized recently that Reel Big Fish may have been my biggest influence when it comes to that juxtaposition of, like, buoyant melodies and self-deprecating lyrics,” Hudkins shares. “I also think they’re a big influence on my vocal harmonies. I don’t know that it translates in the music, but I’m learning to embrace it—not that the next record will be a ska record or anything,” he laughs.

life seems overwhelming. “For me, sitting down at my laptop or a 4-track—or whatever it is—and creating something out of thin air is an escape from the world around me,” he confirms. “If things don’t feel like they’re going well, if I feel anxious, or if I feel overwhelmed, I can always pick up an instrument and just make something. Like I said about creating our own little Rozwell Kid Planet with this band, you’re just shaping your own little universe—even if it’s just for those three minutes.”

“The same thing can go for any art form,” he continues. “It feels like a healthy escape: take a step back, focus on yourself, look inside, and think about what makes you happy.

At the end, you’re left with this thing that wasn’t there when you started.

It’s a feeling of accomplishment.

Afterward, you still have to face the world, but you can always look back at that art you created and realize you have an avenue to escape and create. It’s not necessarily about tuning out the world around you, but if you feel like things are ugly, at least you have an avenue to create something that you think is beautiful—a glimpse of your own planet.”

It’s clear from Precious Art that Rozwell Kid are onto something special: their mix of serious and silly is potent and poignant and always melodic. Everyone needs a bit of an escape and a reason to sit back and smile sometimes.

Traveling to Rozwell Kid Planet— or creating yoru own!—sounds like a fantastic solution.

Perhaps this planet serves as a bit of a sanctuary for Hudkins as well, a place he can escape to when

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PHOTO: JONATHAN MINTO

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ost punk bands don’t make it over a decade with no member changes. Then again, most punk bands aren’t like The Flatliners. Comprised of vocalist and guitarist Chris Cresswell, guitarist Scott Brigham, bassist Jon Darbey, and drummer Paul Ramirez, the Toronto-based four-piece are now approaching 15 years together.

In that time, they’ve grown up on record, navigating their way from ska-inflected roots to skate punk-influenced melodic hardcore.

19, often 10 to 11 months out random hotels. However, inof the year. stead of slowing them down, it gave them more urgency It was time for a mental and to keep pushing forward. physical break.

Practicing on paid time may have even worked to the While they may have slowed band’s advantage. It forced down for a short time, they them to be economical with didn’t completely stop be- their time, spending every ing productive. Tours still minute being productive happened, although they and avoiding getting in the were less frequent. They way of the next band booked also spent plenty of time after them—a lesson they creating music, committing learned the hard way.

Inviting Light to tape. “The common misconception That didn’t leave much time about this part of the story for discussion during pracis that we didn’t really write tice, though. They had to at all then,” Cresswell says. move their conversations “That was when we did all of elsewhere, leading the band this writing. We were very to set aside time to talk busy behind the scenes.” about ideas they wanted to try on the new record. The writing process became more thought-out in ways it never had been before.

Previously, they’d jam on ideas and stick with what felt good. Now, they were spending more time working those ideas out ahead of time and seeing if they could pull them off.

Never a band to fear change, 2017 could be their biggest year yet, full of landmark achievements. For starters, they’re all turning 30, with no apparent desire to stop playing together—or kill each other. They’re also hot on the heels of their fifth studio album, Inviting Light, which dropped April 7. It’s their first record for Rise Records, co-released by Dine Alone Records in Canada. Refreshed and ready to bring it to the world, their future has never looked brighter. “We’re in a really sentimental place,” Cresswell says, “because this is our 15th year as a band, and we have these personal milestones coming up in our lives with the age we’re coming to. It really does just make you realize how lucky you are.”

The writing process for Inviting Light wasn’t without If there’s one word that sum- struggle. During this time, marizes Cresswell’s current the band lost their practice outlook, it’s gratitude. Part space in a west Toronto proof that could come from duce warehouse. For over a having taken time to reflect. decade, it gave them a place After hitting a wall touring to hang out while avoiding on 2013’s Dead Language, the high cost of renting reThe Flatliners realized it hearsal studios. Cresswell was time to reconnect with says it felt like moving out life at home. They had been of the house they grew up touring hard since they were in and bouncing between

“THERE ARE SOME REALLY DARK SONGS LYRICALLY THAT MIGHT SURPRISE SOME PEOPLE JUST BECAUSE THEY’RE PARTNERED UP WITH A HAPPY SOUNDING [MELODY].”

The end result is a record that showcases The Flatliners venturing into new territory. Cresswell’s lyricism hasn’t lost its edge, but he says he’s a little more optimistic this time around. Themes of navigating social media and the real world crop up—as hinted at on 2016’s Nerves EP—but if there’s any consistent theme behind the title, it’s chasing the light at the end of the tunnel. “This record— arguably, compared to our other ones—is a brighter record with more of a major key, more positive outlook, although it does have that darkness to the lyrics,” Cresswell says. “There are some really dark songs lyrically that might surprise

some people just because they’re partnered up with a happy sounding [melody].”

Perhaps the biggest changeup could be the band’s label.

After 10 years on Fat Wreck Chords, they’re now on Rise and Dine Alone. Cresswell is quick to clarify there’s no bad blood between the band and Fat Mike. After so long together, he says they’ll “always be a Fat band.” Yet, the time had come to branch out and try something new.

Since they had released a split with Make Do And Mend on Rise in 2013, it was a natural fit. Their hope is to continue growing as a band while joining a roster with veteran punks like Hot Water Music, The Bouncing Souls, and Dave Hause. “It isn’t like going from an indie to a fucking major,” Cresswell says. “It’s not scary like that. It’s just a new crew of people who also love your band [and] who want to help you.”

If The Flatliners have hit their peak, it doesn’t show.

Avoiding complacency and burnout as adults in punk is a feat, as is doing it all on their own terms. That dedication to integrity, each other, and their craft is about to pay off too. With initial tour dates for Inviting Light including a run with Weezer and The Menzingers, the stage is set for big things to come.

“This has been the narrative of this band since the beginning,” Cresswell says, “to just be like, ‘Fuck, man, we’re super lucky.”

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teve Von Till—best known for his work as a vocalist and guitarist for Neurosis—is set to release his third album under the moniker Harvestman, Music for Megaliths, on May 19 via Neurot Recordings.

Between Neurosis, their side project Tribes Of Neurot, their label Neurot Recordings, and four solo records under his own name, Von Till could be regarded as a pretty damn prolific musician by any conceivable measure. He’s also an elementary school teacher. So, why does he need another outlet like Harvestman?

“I believe that once you tap into the spirit of sound, the inspiration becomes infinite,” Von Till says.

“There are so many potential pieces of music or sound-art floating around out there in the ether, it just requires finding the time and energy to allow it to flow through you. At least that is what we have discovered with Neurosis. The doors we have opened together have revealed a myriad of projects seeking some sort of release.”

"ONCE YOU TAP INTO THE SPIRIT OF SOUND, THE INSPIRATION BECOMES INFINITE…" Von Till adds that he has always kept some sort of recording studio in his house and that he loves “experimenting with psych home recordings” as the impetus behind the project. “Harvestman allows me to explore improvisation with guitars, synths, and electronics while meditating on things which speak to me,” he says. “It is the place where my interests in prehistory, shamanism, ancient stones, nature, folk music, and home-recorded psychedelia all merge into something that makes some sort of sense.”

With a solo album, A Life Unto Itself, out in 2015 and, of course, the latest offering from Neurosis, Fires Within Fires, which came out in 2016 and was followed by a massive

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tour, one has to wonder how Von Till found the time to write Music for Megaliths. He plays an impressive number of instruments on the album, from electric and acoustic guitar to bass, vocals, synths, hurdy-gurdy, effects, and more. In fact, Von Till played everything on Music for Megaliths, with the exception of an additional drum track on the fifth track, “Levitation,” provided by Neurosis drummer Jason Roeder. He also recorded and mixed the album by himself at his own studio, The Crow’s Nest in Northern Idaho, where he lives with his wife and kids.

According to Von Till, he found the time because “Harvestman pieces aren’t actually written.”

Instead, he explains, “they evolve over time. The origin of these pieces range in time from one to seven years. I usually just begin with a simple drone of some sort and start improvising on top of it with different instruments, then set it aside for a while. Over time, I revisit ideas that I find interesting and morph them into something new with processing and overdubbing additional instruments.”

When he feels he’s amassed an album’s worth of material, Von Till focuses on the pieces that speak to him and reimagines them one last time. “I tend to use dub style techniques,” he shares, “not in terms of musical style, but by borrowing the concept of using the studio as an instrument, and the tracks are really just colors to use.

Nothing is sacred and everything is available to be elevated, destroyed, manipulated, or erased.”

As for why the album is called Music for Megaliths: “It just sounded right,” Von Till says. “I’m obsessed with ancient stone sites, especially those in Europe.” He certainly has conjured the mystery and wonder of those esoteric sites into aural form.

PHOTO: NIELA VON TILL

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REISSUES CARSICKNESS: 1979–1982: GET HIP RECORDINGS

On April 21, Get Hip Recordings expose this saucy collection of 17 tracks of atmospheric, impulsive rants from Pittsburgh’s Carsickness. The tunes are catchy and melodic, premonitions of much to come, while channeling odd aspects of Bowie, early Stones, Troggs, or DMZ. Saxophones dueling and Ginger Baker drums combine to defy any other band’s template. It is punk and psych and garage all fused together to create truly original sounds. 1979 could not have defined this, and even 2017’s genre hyphens still scratch their head. Carsickness are rough and pulsating. Dig it.

DESCENDENTS: EVERYTHING SUCKS DELUXE EDITION: EPITAPH RECORDS

Obviously, the Descendents were legends by 1996. They weaved magic that founded a nerdy, quirky band who were hardcore while concurrently pop punk. They hadn’t made an album in nine years and were left for lifeless. Everything Sucks was a “comeback” album. Could they maintain their legend? With this revamped ALL lineup? Bill Stevenson, hulking drummer, pounded raucous rhythms. Milo Aukerman spewed acrimonious judgments balanced with romantic longings. On May 5, Epitaph reissues this release on 180-gram vinyl for its 20th anniversary, plus a bonus 7” with two unreleased tracks. Punk perfection.

STIFF LITTLE FINGERS: NO GOING BACK: EARMUSIC

Stiff Little Fingers are punk royalty. The Belfast icons’ first three LPs rival—and surpass, for some—their London counterparts from 1977 through the early ‘80s. SLF continued in the ‘90s with some classics as well. In 2014, they made rebellious noise with No Going Back. Well, earMUSIC grabbed the opportunity to reissue this recent gem on April 21. While punk may have originated as abrasive noise, Burns and company could not hide their musical ability. As they grew into certified songwriters, SLF maintained a rep as emotive, skilled musicians. Their storytelling ability maintains gravity.

HELIUM: THE DIRT OF LUCK, THE MAGIC CITY / NO GUITARS EP, AND ENDS WITH AND: MATADOR RECORDS

Welcome the reissues from Helium on Matador Records! This Boston trio went through some initial changes before securing a stable lineup for their debut, The Dirt of Luck. Darlings of ‘90s college radio, Helium could wrangle feedback and droning rhythms as well as melodies and charming vocals. Matador now gives their audience The Dirt of Luck and combine two releases from 1997, The Magic City LP and No Guitars EP, on a double LP. Ends with And is a double LP collection of rarities, singles, EPs, and demos. Coming May 19, colors include blue and yellow.

DYING FETUS: REIGN SUPREME, DESCEND INTO DEPRAVITY, WAR OF ATTRITION, STOP AT NOTHING, AND DESTROY THE OPPOSITION: RELAPSE RECORDS As if you couldn’t tell by their abysmally negative moniker, Dying Fetus are an ugly, death-grind band, but they do not dwell solely in horror or gory subjects. Dying Fetus serve disgust and repulsion in terms of the political quagmire in which we live. Relapse Records—their home since 2000—decided to tease the band’s impending 2017 release with five reissues on March 24, including the stunning 2012 release, Reign Supreme. Check the sexy options. Variety is the spice of life—and the spice of death, apparently. Each record is available on black or clear with blood red splatter.

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EPs DEAD TIRED: VOL. II: NEW DAMAGE RECORDS

This minty green vinyl looks calming—but the abrasive fury on this wax belies that notion. Dead Tired supply feral hardcore with savage lyrics. “Here Comes the Fall” is a pummeling five-minute slow-burn of foreboding misery. This songwriting reflects some Hidden Life from Fucked Up, which fits as Damian Abraham provides guest vocals. “Complicated Pleasures” spews like a fireworks finale. “Hedonic Adaptations” rolls through with this feel again, burning and crushing. Think Tear It Up or Violent Minds.

But there is a tone and attitude that keeps Dead Tired original.

SPLITS THE QUEERS / BASSAMP AND DANO: THE QUEERS REGRET MAKING A RECORD WITH BASSAMP AND DANO: FAILURE RECORDS & TAPES

Back in February, Failure Records & Tapes kicked off their “Split Hits the Fans” series with The Queers, who have technically existed since 1982. Strapped with unabashed Ramones adoration, they inject their brand of punk with ‘60s pop rock sounds. Joe Queer and the boys split the vinyl with Bassamp And Dano on a limited 500 pieces of purple swirl. The Queers provide two tracks from Back to the Basement, “I’m Pissed” and “Pull Me out of It.” St Louis, Missouri’s Bassamp And Dano fit perfectly as they blast street punk with flare. “Ready for Action” is an ode to the party, while “Lemme See Dem Titties” is about… well, boobs.

DVDs BETWEEN THE BURIED AND ME: COMA ECLIPTIC: LIVE: METAL BLADE RECORDS / GOOD FIGHT ENTERTAINMENT

BTBAM’s most recent album, 2015’s Coma Ecliptic, showed the band leaping further into their progrock trajectory. Playing meta-metal riffs with the approach of a Queen or Yes on daring concept albums has ushered this band into cult status. This live album of the band performing the record in its entirety was also released digitally and on CD, but they urge fans to buy the DVD or Blu-ray. Bassist Dan Briggs says, “The genesis of the Coma Ecliptic filming was based around capturing the look and feel of the show our lighting director Chris Hill produced for the full album set.” April 28 gives the fans a chance to enjoy this show at home.

FATES WARNING: AWAKEN THE GUARDIAN LIVE: METAL BLADE RECORDS In 1986, Connecticut’s Fates Warning hit the billboard charts with their final album with singer John Arch. The switch would lead to a shift in styles from power metal into a progressive metal movement. Thirty years later, Fates Warning recorded two sets of this album performed live.

Awaken the Guardian shows the beginnings of these prog leanings, while still harnessing the band’s power in playing passionate, ripping metal. The live album is available on CD, DVD, Blu-ray, and double-gatefold vinyl via Metal Blade on April 28

AMERICAN CLAY: SKY HOOKS AND CODIST: PORCELAIN BOY: 6131 RECORDS

BY THOMAS PIZZOLA Through a partnership with LP Records in Glasgow, Scotland, 6131 Records present a couple of EPs from two of the city’s finest musical exports: American Clay and Codist. Though both bands owe a debt to Teenage Fanclub, they assert themselves with their own distinct sounds. American Clay plays shoegazepop that can go from languid to feedback-driven and driving at the drop of the hat. Even when the fuzz hits, it is still very warm and inviting. Codist also base their sound in pop, but it’s a fuzzy, distorted kind reminiscent of Dinosaur Jr. It’s catchy, but has a distorted edge to it, and includes some cool guitar solos.

Anybody looking to pick up some fuzzy indie-pop for their collection should get these EPs as soon as possible!These are just a cherry on top of the sundae. I guess it’s time I replace that cassette.

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VAPOUR: VIOLENT PRIMITIVE FORCE: ME SACO UN OTJO

CIORAN: BESTIALE BATTITO DIVINO: CALIGARI RECORDS

Finland thrash-punkers, Vapour, locate the truth with grueling urgency on their first recording in nearly four years, Violent Primitive Force. Four utterly blinding speed metal tracks destroy each and every invisible plane of glass on this latest offering. Shattering, pure, grating, and addictive, each song showcases the band in all their beautifully violent honesty. There’s realness in every subsequent chorus and lightning guitar solo. If you’re working the late shift and need that extra little ideological bent from hell, this is your jam. So fast, so pure, and so lean, you’ll be grinding the air with jaunts of righteous insanity. The night is eternal: existence like a sharp blade.

atmospheric

black

metal

sculptors, K.L.L.K., are deep, dark, and sort of classical. There’s a haunting and geometrically organic invisibility to each song they craft. The darkness is like bread and water for this crew.

On their latest behemoth, Le Brasier des Mondes, the band delve into the waters of Hades: all sulking, swampy, and brutally harsh. The sound is ugly in a beautiful way, creating a vast network of ambiance and horror. There’s a primitive angle to the band, and this is their allure. There’s no compromise, only deep and everlasting shadows. Get lost in the trance from the bowels of infinity on this thing.

88 NEW NOISE

black metal never sounded so punk. The band forge linear aggression with a truly devilish tempo to write some of the wickedest riff-based pummelage you’ll ever endure. The sort of black metal this quartet whips up on their latest rocker, Bestiale Battito Divino, is hardcore as hell: all flying, loose and unpretentious.

They just go for it—and never look back.

Six tracks go by in a blind fury: extreme, angular, catchy, and evil. This might be the realest music I’ve heard all year.

There’s high art to this insanity. You dream in shadows and swirl.

ICHTYOR TIDES: EN-BRUNSIA: ALREADY DEAD TAPES AND RECORDS

K.L.L.K.: LE BRASIER DES MONDES: CALIGARI RECORDS French

With Italy’s Cioran, devastatingly real

The subsystems of memory and twine are twisted nine-fold on French atmospheric gulpers Ichtyor Tides’ newest cassette, En-Brunsia.

A collection of nine translucent compositions breathes fourthdimensional stardust into one’s perpetual lung—ever simmering and always abundant. There’s sphere crackling, orbital distancing, and a very spatial calling to one’s former life. Ichtyor Tides manage to subtly enter the void of impression, and with each subsequent track, a deeper layer is peeled. You’re nothing but a pure Alex Grey “Energy System” painting by the tape’s end. This is amazing stuff.