Tides denied

Ihad the chance to share the same van with Tides Denied for almost two weeks in early 2015 and I can assure you that they are some of the most dedicated people in the hardcore scene nowadays. They are based in a small town near Kassel, Germany, but they play lots of shows all around Europe every now & then. Their new split 12” with Soulground is out in the streets, grab it whenever you can.

www.facebook.com/TidesDenied

Hey guys! How is life going in the Tides Denied’s campus?

Hey! First of all we want to thank you for doing this interview with us. We’ve never done this before, so we really appreciate it. We just finished writing a new EP which will be recorded within the next days and still the pre-order for our split with Soulground is running! So we are doing quite well at the moment.

You just released a split 12” with Soulground via Backbite & Powertrip Records. How did it come to work with this band and label? This is your first official release after ‘Remedy’ 7”, right?

with Soulground. We recorded the songs back in September 2014 and wanted to release a split but the bands we planned to share the record with, unfortunately changed plans or split up before things got serious. So time passed by and we focused more on playing shows and tours. In early 2015 we thought it would be pretty cool to ask Soulground from Berlin if they could like to do a split record with us. We knew these guys from several shows we played together and became friends with them. They were just about to record some new songs and they liked the idea as well. For us things could not be more perfect, since we liked Soulgrounds’ music and the dudes behind it. ‘Remedy’, our latest record, was released back in 2014 on Backbite Records and Moritz was interested in releasing more of our stuff. Soulground became part of the Powertrip family last year and after both bands teamed up, the labels did as well.

I had the pleasure to tour with you in early 2015, since then lots of things have changed including your line up. Moreover, you’ve toured a lot since then. Give us some updates!

After the tour with your band, My Turn, Gregor unfortunately decided to leave the band. He set other priorities in life and couldn’t put as

much effort in the band as he wanted to. But we comprehend his decision and we are still good friends. After Gregor’s last show in Kassel we found substitute in Jonas pretty quickly. We knew him from some local shows and he played in different local HC bands before. So we hung out together and it was just a perfect fit. Since then we played some runs of shows with different bands. We toured France and Belgium with Almost Equal in April and we have been to Austria, Czech Republic and Poland with Seconds of Peace in November. Moreover we played loads of shows all over Germany, including a weekender with Giver last month. We already have been or became friends with these bands while being on tour. If you haven’t yet, check them out! They’re all good dudes!

What I like the most about your band is that your style is unique. Of course, you’re influenced by other bands, but you have that uniqueness that moves me. So, what are your main influences and what did you have in mind when you formed Tides Denied?

Thanks for the kind words! I guess when we formed Tides Denied we just wanted to play hardcore and as many shows as possible. We didn’t have any band in mind that we wanted to sound like, but of course we were influenced by the hardcore bands we listened to at that time like Terror, Madball, TUI and Backtrack. But our influences changed a bit when we played more and more shows, saw different bands and just dug deeper into the hardcore scene. Also we have different tastes in music and enjoy other genres as well. All in all we listen a lot to old school hardcore, (skate-) punk, but we are also into hip hop, indie and alternative rock. I guess all these influence our style of hardcore/punk.

The German hardcore scene is very focused on politics & activism. Tons of bands are supporting organisations like Hardcore Help Foundation for example, while some others openly talk about straight edge and vegetarianism/veganism. What’s your stance on all this? Why do you think those movements are mostly widespread in Germany and mainland Europe?

We believe that politics and activism are important parts of the hardcore scene all over the world. But sure it is a privilege to be part of a politicised scene here in Germany, whether we talk about anti-fascist locations, bands or promoters. A certain part of the European hardcore scene is directly linked to left-wing politics, but the bigger part doesn’t care that much. There are people trying to make use of an image just to expose themselves and on the other hand there are people that don’t care at all. So it’s not as political as it could be. None of us is edge, but we have a lot of respect for this. We think it is okay to drink or smoke as long as you don’t piss other people off. And it’s okay not to drink looking at it the other way around. It’s a choice you’ve made for yourself. Different from that is our stance towards nature and animals. We all live a vegetarian/vegan lifestyle and we think it’s important to reflect your habits. If you are concerned about the way humans treat animals as products or food, there is no single reasonable argument for eating meat.

What are the topics you deal with lyric-wise? You prefer straight to the point lyrics or hidden messages and a more poetic way of writing lyrics?

There are different topics I deal with when it comes to writing lyrics. I prefer writing about personal experiences and put them in a context with social issues in general rather than dealing with topics that does not affect me as a person. For most of the time I am not the one who writes about political topics specifically, but I think that everything we do (or do not) is kind of political.

My way of writing lyrics changed a bit with time. As we wrote our demo songs a few years ago I wasn’t really aware of what I was doing. I tried to put my feelings about several things into words, but to be honest it didn’t turn out with the meaning it supposed to have. On our newer releases I tried to get things more straight to the point and focus on our message.

Let’s go back to touring! What do you like the most and what do you hate during a tour? What’s an ideal tour for you? Any preferable bands and maybe any funny moments till now?

The cool thing about being on tour is waking up in a new city every morning and get to know so many different and inspiring people. You hang out with your best friends, do what you love for a couple of days and it broadens your mind. What sucks about being on tour are days off and not enough food ;) We all have bands in mind that we like a lot but we think it’s more important to be on tour with guys you are friends with. When you are cool with each other it is the most fun. We experience a lot of funny shit when we are together but do you remember the day Jonathan dropped his mobile phone in the toilet after our show in Linköping? That was funny, because while everyone was surfing on the internet he just could not do anything other than getting mad.

How did you enter the world of hardcore? There’s a motto stating ‘never trust a hardcore kid that has never listened to punk’, do you agree with this? Nowadays, younger kids aren’t even aware of the roots of hardcore and they blindly follow it as a trend, but there’s also tons of kids that got into hardcore via a different than punk path and are very dedicated and sincere. What’s your opinion about this?

Claudius, Jonathan and Gregor played in a punk band together, Justus played guitar in another one and Jonas played in a couple of hardcore bands before he joined Tides Denied. We were all into bands like NOFX, Bad Religion, Strike Anywhere or Wizo and somehow stumbled upon some bigger hardcore bands like the ones mentioned above. The guys in Gone to Waste used to set up some shows in Warburg, a small town next to our hometown, and we got in touch with more underground hardcore bands like Eisberg or Cornered. But different to this we think the style of music that you used to like is not

important. You cannot expect 16 year old kids nowadays to know bands like Minor Threat or Bad Brains. We think this is a process of growing into and not some kind of rules or a plan you are given. But for sure the mentality that you get to know by listening to punk music is defining the way you handle things. It helps you a lot but it’s not a requirement.

Any plans for the future? I guess you’ll tour your asses to support the split record with Soulground, hehe!

First of all we are going to record a new EP which will be released later this year, hopefully. We are going to play a bunch of shows in late May in order to release the split 12” with Soulground and after that we are going to tour Europe in June! See you there!

Thanks for the interview! Any last words, shoutouts or fuck-yous?

Support local hardcore shows, go veg(etari)an, don’t try to be cool – be yourself. And fuck AfD the racist scum.