5 minute read
Strife
Strife was and probably still is one of my fav & most influential bands to me. I did this interview with them in early 2013, around the same period as the Terror interview, since it was for the aforementioned -never released- fanzine. Check it out! Photos taken from the world wide web.
11 years passed since your last album. Welcome back. Where did you find the urge to continue releasing records? Do you think that today’s scene lack of some quality hardcore?
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We have been off and on over the years… Mostly playing one or two local shows every year. Back in 2010 we got offered to play the Paris Extreme Hardcore Fest with Agnostic Front and Skarhead… This prompted a lot more offers and we played California’s premier HC fest, Sound & Fury, that year followed up by and East Coast tour with Death Before Dishonor. 2011 brought us to Japan, South America, Europe and Mexico. We played some of the best festivals in Europe as well as This Is Hardcore Fest in Philadelphia. We all got very inspired by the live shows, and we thought that if we were going to continue to play that we should write some new material… Songs that are more true
to the band where we are in our lives now, and new songs that we would be excited about playing. I actually think there are a lot of great current bands these days. Bands like Terror, Down To Nothing, Rotting Out, Alpha Omega, Cruel Hand, Xibalba, Incendiary, Suburban Scum, Backtrack, Take Offense, and many more. If you think hardcore is dead in 2013, you are looking in the wrong place!
What differences can you cite between the early Victory years and hardcore 2013? I want you to be honest... Are you still passionate about hardcore and what represents? Is thatflame still burning inside you?
Hardcore will always have it’s ups and downs. The main difference is the internet, and how easy it is to access, spread, and get information and music. This can do wonders for the HC scene, and it can do great harm. As a kid, I would need to find a ride to the nearest record store (Zed records in Long Beach) that was over and hour a way to buy record and zines… I would study every release I bought and read every zine over and over… Now everything is accessible at your finger tips… Kids buy into the hype and it is really hard for that hype to last and that is in every genre, not just hardcore. If we weren’t passionate about hardcore, the music, or the message, we would not be here today.
NOBODY in a hardcore band is getting rich… We do this because we love it, and because we have a message that we want to get out, and because it is who we are!
I don’t even care whether you are or you are not straight edge and I hate all this buzz about you breaking the edge and selling out your ideas. But how easy or difficult is it for you to sing some die-hard straight edge lyrics you wrote in the past?
is something that we made clear back in 2002 when we released Angermeans. We aren’t trying to pretend that we are something that we are not, and we are up front and honest about our personal choices. The straight edge movement is something that we still all support and respect… But we also feel that militant views turn a positive personal choice into something negative. We started this band 20 years ago… We have inspired many and we continue to spread our positive message. At the same time, we felt that it was very important for us to get back into the studio and write some new songs that reflect
who we are as a band in 2013. I think the lyrics on the new album are some of the most honest and sincere lyrics that we have ever wrote.
You chose to co-operate with underground labels for the release of ‘Witness A Rebirth’. Was it something like a statement that hardcore should stay out of big business as Raybeez said? Or it just happened?
We wanted to work with labels that were excited to work with us, and labels that we felt were making positive contributions to hardcore. 6131 has worked with some of the best HC bands around today including Rotting Out, Alpha Omega, Suburban Scum, Touche Amore, and others. We felt like they were a good fit for Witness A Rebirth.
Igor Cavalera is your new drummer and due to this I was expecting a more metal affiliated record, but you returned with a hardcore dynamite, more into your 90s stuff than ‘Angermeans’. What influenced you to write such an album?
Witness a Rebirth is definitely a lot more focused that our past releases. We all knew exactly what type of album we wanted to write, what we wanted the production to sound like, and I really feel that we were successful in achieving that. Witness A Rebirth is a fast, straight forward, and powerful, in your face hardcore album! It doesn’t stray from the path or our traditional hardcore formula, and is exactly the album that we wanted to write.
What’s your opinion about all this re-union hype. It seems that every hardcore band from the 80s and 90s is reuniting. Only Minor Threat are out of this...
I think that it is great. As long as the bands are doing it right, and really putting an effort into making sure that their current incarnation stays as true to the original as possible. It is allowing kids all over the world to see some of their favorite bands, and it is definitely putting a smile on many people’s faces. Some recent stand out reunions for me have been: Chain of Strength, Unbroken, Texas is the Reason, Gorilla Biscuits, and Quicksand. We are playing with Judge at BNB Bowl in NY in May, and I couldn’t be more excited for that.
I guess you all have families right now. How hard is to be in a hardcore band when you grow old? What pays your bills at the end of the day?
We all have other responsibilities. At the end of the day, we do this band because we love it.
