One Last Round

Old school hardcore music is not that famous in Greece, but we are lucky to have a couple of dedicated hardcore bands, with One Last Round being among them. Their new album is going to be released sooner or later and it’s definitely a banger. Check out the interview & watch out for them!

www.facebook.com/onelastroundgr onelastround.bandcamp.com

Hey! One Last Round is not a new band but it seems you took everything more serious since last year. Am I right? Give us some info about the band; you all played or still play in other bands as far as I know.

One Last Round rose from the ashes of Soberphobia, our previous band, which was abruptly stopped when our brother and bass player Dima passed away. We decided to continue under a different name and so One Last Round was born with ¾ members of Soberphobia. Our lineup is and will be Pan on vocals, Pavlito on guitars, Fotinos on thunderous bass and Jorge on drums. We started rehearsing and writing music as O.L.R. in 2011 but the band took the back seat for some time due to personal problems and the fact that all of us were playing in other bands that were more active. We decided to get things going again and this time more intensively because we missed it pretty much and realized we needed it more than ever. Pan and Pavlito both played in Ten Beers After, a punk rock/οi! band that is no more active, Fotinos plays in the ska outfit The Smoking Barrels, Jorge plays in Hat Trick, a skinhead rock ‘n’ roll band, and more recently Pan started a new band called Nomos 4000, a punk rock juggernaut, look out for them.

Your first 7” was one piece of amazing NY/ Boston hardcore record with lots of oi! influences. How do you manage to combine these 2 different music styles?

It’s not a conscious decision, it’s not like we write a song and say “let’s oi-fy it a bit”. It’s the music we’ve listened to for the bigger part of our lives and it just comes natural. Without punk rock/oi!, there would definitely be no hardcore music anyway, so these styles are not that different after all, it’s just a different take on

loud, aggressive, primitive, fucked up music for fucked up people. We all also listen to different styles of music that sometimes find their way in our songs but, as a band, we all collectively enjoy playing hardcore and oi! music, simple, raw and to the point.

There’s also a huge hardcore/oi! revival in the worldwide scene. What are your favorite bands / records of the new era of hardcore/ oi!?

There’s a ton of good bands out now playing different “styles” of hardcore, punk and oi! music, too many to mention, and everybody is doing their own thing and putting their own twist to it which keeps things fresh and interesting. Some of our favourite recent bands in that style in particular (active or not) are: Battle Ruins, The Flex, Cold Stare, Violent Future, Rival Mob, Night Prowler, Rixe, Shrapnel, Vacant State, Out Crowd, Violent Reaction and the list goes on and on, it’s a great time for our style of music right now.

You all live in Athens, Greece. How’s life in the middle of the crisis and how hard is for a hardcore band to survive into this storm?

We live in Piraeus actually (laughs). Well, it’s not that our sales dropped or anything, we didn’t have any to begin with, so it’s pretty much business as usual as far as playing music and being in a hardcore band goes. Life sucks and the many years of fake prosperity and absolutely no planning came back to bite us in the ass. People are still preoccupied with mindless things, they still think they are entitled to things they never fought for and take everything for granted. Corporations, banks, and the media keep milking what’s left of the country, more and more people work for ridiculously low wages or don’t get paid at all, social security is a bad joke, we ‘re caught in a web of bureaucracy that doesn’t work, people in need get no help at all, unemployment is through the roof, politicians keep accommodating their voters and their corporate buddies, the Church has turned completely jingoistic and spits poison even worse than before, and so on. Obviously that’s the case with many other countries but the shit hit the fan here since we got the I.M.F. and the EU involved, who do nothing positive to solve the so called crisis but lend us money that we obviously can’t repay.

The only good thing to come out of all this chaos is inspiration, so we have something working in our favor and the constant effort to rely on ourselves and ourselves only.

Greece has a shitload of good hardcore/ punk bands that rarely tour abroad. As a consequence most people are not aware of greek bands. Why does this happen? Is it only a money problem or something deeper? Any bands from Greece that our readers should definitely check?

Money, actually the lack of it, is obviously the main factor that greek bands don’t tour as much as their european counterparts. Taking time off work simultaneously for the x number of people in a band is almost a dream and on top of that we are somehow geographically isolated as a country which obviously makes it harder to tour, e.g. a Dutch band can play 4 different countries, all in a few hours’ distance. Greek bands to look out for: Against All Odds, My Turn, Corpses, Molisma, Kamikazi, Gutter, too many to mention actually… you better find out for yourselves you lazy bastards!

You seem to worship old school Slapshot, Warzone, early Agnostic Front & the likes. What was the main reason that made those bands legendary? Is it something that today’s scene lacks of?

For one thing they were first obviously and

they defined what hardcore means, both music and lyricwise, they were innovators. Each of the early/older bands had their own distinctive style, background and attitude and that made them unique. In the eighties, a definitive decade for hardcore, you had DYS and the Cro-Mags, Breakdown and Immoral Discipline, Suicidal Tendencies and Underdog, Negative Approach and Murphy’s Law, all different styles, and these are just some of the “well known” bands from the USA only, dozens of bands from around the world put out a 7” or a cassette demo and then disappeared during that era, but the common thing they all shared was originality. Even if you’ve never heard of, let’s say the 4-Skins, you are sure to have listened to them filtered through a newer band that they influenced. Today’s scene or scenes are more segregated, too many subdivisions, too many subgenres, each sticks to his / her own thing, so while there’s a lot of variety in our music all around, it’s only the “big” bands that actually draw different kinds of people under the same roof.

I heard that your new songs will be sung in greek language. Why did you decide that? When should we expect a new release? Will you continue working with Lone wolf Records? By the way, how did you end up working with a label from Czech Republic?

Well, that’s half the truth literally haha... we just finished recording our first LP which will have 10 new songs, half of them in greek and half in english. We needed to express ourselves more directly and obviously screaming in your own language makes things easier in that respect, plus it puts our own mark on the music we play and helps us sound a little different from the norm. Our new release is pretty close, hopefully before June, but nothing is definite yet. Lonewolf Records was one of the labels that received our first demo plus it had released the Soberphobia CD some time ago. We got a positive response for a 7’’ so we were more than happy to collaborate again.

Lyricwise, you seem very angry & frustrated, what are the things that bother you the most, both in society and the hardcore scene?

Every person with some common sense should be either angry or depressed or both. The whole world is in the toilet and we’re waiting for

someone to finally flush it down and get it over with. People prey on people, stupid mindless conformed clones decide our fate, corruption is deeper than ever, people lose their jobs and their houses to foreclosures, idiots get in debt for things they never needed in the first place, senseless materialism, constant war, religious hate, people buying their identities and obsessing with their image, worshipping celebrities as earthly gods etc. etc. There’s always a reason to be mad, you just need to look around and observe what’s going on. Music is our way of actually having a say and be heard through all the bullshit. As far as the hardcore “scene” goes, there was never actually a scene to speak of here, just individuals doing things for the love of it, people going to shows, hanging out with their friends and that’s it. It always was kind of cliquey, the idiotic lifelong question being “who is DIY” and who is not, as if greek bands ever had a choice of not doing things themselves. Things are watered down, people want to act tough because they saw it on a YouTube video and just copy what they see and the whole thing for a lot of people is superficial, something to be occupied with until the next thing comes. We ‘d rather play for 10 people that get our stupid sense of humour and can relate to what we are saying than a 1000 spoiled little assholes who are just there for showing off. While we’re at it, the next person wearing an Asking Alexandria t-shirt or something shitty like that and claims to listen to or “be” hardcore, will get punched in the teeth, haha.

How’s ‘Athens by night’? This is a song title of yours but I guess lots of people are curious about this! Thanks for the interview!

Athens is just like any other big city actually, whatever you’re looking for you’re gonna find it, and then some. Dirty things are going on all the time, people from all walks of life, retarded violent corrupted cops, junkies, dealers, poverty stricken and homeless people, thieves, muggers, and on the other hand trendy assholes who want to party like they just don’t care and get down in da club, people living in complete ignorance of what’s really going on, safe in their remote high class neighbourhoods, and at times, complete and utter chaos on the streets. Sounds familiar? Thanks for your interest and the interview. Check us out and send us hate mail at the links stated above!