New Noise Magazine - Issue #13

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AINT IT FUN with CHEETAH CHROME

“America is not a young land: it is old and dirty and evil. Before the settlers, before the Indians… the evil was there… waiting.” – William S. Burroughs Not to mince words with Old Bull Lee – a fool’s errand for a smart man, just plain suicide for a hack like me – but the other Immortal Bard only saw the pre 9/11 America, the one that still had idealism, even its seamier side, before the cynicism had set in permanently. I know he saw the big picture, and knew evil for what it is, but I think even he underestimated the scope of how much of it had already come to pass. The land that America was BUILT on was old and dirty and evil – endless fertilized fields waiting for new life to nurture, and indeed waiting patiently – but the actual United States of America is very much a young COUNTRY, and we certainly have made evil’s wait worth the trouble. We are a mere puppy to countries like Italy, Iraq, Israel, Iran, Afghanistan, Russia… Hell, all of them are thousands of years old. AMERICA IS ONLY 238 YEARS OLD, and yet we are arrogantly calling ourselves the world’s leader, and telling these ancient societies how it’s done. We are a puppy in the big scheme of things. A puppy with sharp teeth, but a puppy nonetheless.

And we act like a puppy, glad to be part of everything, running around pissing where we shouldn’t, pulling on pant legs wherever we think we can get away with it, barking at everyone we don’t like and getting into fights with other dogs regardless of age, some of which we’ve won, most of which we haven’t. We act like a rogue, orphaned puppy without guidance from older dogs because, face it, we ran away from home because we thought we knew better, and have turned down most help and guidance when it was offered, choosing instead to bark and show our teeth or laugh it off.

My point being that maybe we should learn something from our older neighbors, respect the advice they have to give us, learn from their mistakes.

Everything that is dragging the U.S. down right now has happened elsewhere; history is full of examples. Because we helped to win WWII (though you would think we did it singlehandedly), we are convinced that we are invincible, that America is “exceptional,” and so now we proceed to boldly go where other countries have gone before, had less than perfect results, would never go to again and have warned us not to.

Usually you hear the term “American Exceptionalism” thrown around by Right Wing talk show hosts, as it’s an easy way to stir up the base in righteous anger against common imagined enemies and common sense in general. There was

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a time when the term had merit and a measure of pride attached, but now Frank Luntz may as well have coined the term (actually Alexis De Tocqueville did) and it’s joined “boots on the ground,” “Gitmo,” “robust,” and “Benghazi” as favorite buzzwords of the Right.

What’s really exceptional about America is how low we rank in things that count, like health care, education, taking care of our poor and our seniors, and of each other in general. We have become exceptionally selfish, closed minded, and gullible, no argument from me on that.

And willfully ignorant: a lot of our elected officials regularly talk out of their asses, make up facts, and boldly lie, knowing full well that their target base is either dumb enough to buy it, just plain doesn’t understand it, or is greedy enough to want a piece of it.

I think if you look at the world situation today, we all agree that America’s stature on the world stage has been diminished in the past two decades. We are seen as weak, not the world leader we once were. And a lot of it can be blamed on whichever President is in power, but for once, I’m not going to argue either side of that.

And I’m not going to go after either side of Congress either, although the fact that neither side could accomplish anything of real substance in over a decade certainly doesn’t make us look strong or even competent to other societies in the world that used to see us as a role model.

“Guns for hire” VINYL Out 11.4.2014

Nope. They see America as a once-cool, friendly puppy who has grown into an arrogant, conceited teenager who is overly impressed with itself and a bit of a bully. Owned and fed by corporations, but thinking we are free because they haven’t built a fence to keep us in yet. And they compare it to other puppy nations they’ve known over the millennia, most of whom got taught hard lessons by older puppies, or just aren’t around anymore.

If we want to start being that “Exceptional” America, to actually earn the bragging rights to it, then we need to take off our blinders, walk to the nearest mirror, look ourselves straight in the eyes and admit to ourselves that we are to blame, and we need to face it and change it, and be exceptional. All of us.

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PHOTOGRAPHY BY DAWN LAUREEN

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Hadad’s Lake – the iconic Richmond, Va. water park – was the site of the Fifth Annual GWAR-B-Q, where the weekend of Aug. 15 and 16 was devoted entirely to GWAR, BBQ, GWAR Beer, and some intense metal. With over 5,000 people in attendance – breaking previous years’ records – GWAR-B-Q carried on the tradition, despite the loss of GWAR’s only remaining founding member, vocalist Dave Brockie – the beloved Oderus Urungus – who passed away in March of this year.

Grief became celebration as headliners The Meatmen, Hatebreed, Body Count, and The Misfits honored Brockie’s memory, voicing their support and love for his friends, fans, and the extreme mightiness that is GWAR. Iron Reagan, Occultist, Noisen, and Loincloth were amongst the second stage bands, flawlessly alternating sets with the headliners, leaving only seconds between aggressions. Prior

to the festival, the GWAR community came together on Friday night to memorialize Brockie’s life and music.

Oderus Urungus was given a true Viking funeral, with Urungus’s body – Brockie’s costume – being placed on a small boat and set ablaze by an archer’s flaming arrow, where it burned and sank into Hadad’s Lake.

Lamb of God vocalist Randy Blythe, creator of the FEARnet show “Holliston” Adam Green, and “punk rock loudmouth” – as GWAR phrased it – Jello Biafra were among those who spoke at the public memorial.

On Instagram, Blythe made the statement: “Tonight we sent Oderus home in a fitting manner at the public memorial for Dave Brockie. A blazing Viking ship with Oderus laid out in it, the cuttlefish pointing proudly straight up. Watching my friend Dave’s costume go up in flames in front of a thousand fans was so much more intense for me

than the private memorial for friends and family we had on April Fool’s Day. I spoke at both, as GWAR asked me to, and both times as I spoke I was sad. But watching his alter-ego burn tore me up way more than the first memorial, maybe because there was Dave the human who was my friend who just “left us” – I never saw his body – and then there was Oderus, who was something entirely else. To watch his stage gear burn was like watching part of my life literally go up in flames. I was sobbing my eyes out as I took this photo. It was just a super-intense moment. Very beautiful, but overwhelming. Fly free, Oderus – you are missed.”

Adam Green – whose show “Holliston” Oderus regularly appeared on – told the crowd that Brockie “was also a guy who appreciated you, his fans, more than you will ever, ever, ever know. What Dave the tattooed heavily metal badass probably wouldn’t want you to know is that he was such a sweet guy that he never missed an opportunity to tell you that he loved you.” Green then played a voicemail Brockie left two weeks before his death, sending his love to Green, as well as his friends and family.

For the GWAR that will carry on, GWAR-B-Q was the band’s first show minus Oderus, bringing forth the unveiling of Blothar – known to fans as the original “Beefcake The Mighty” – who will assume the job of vocalist.

On the future of GWAR, Pustulus

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Maximus growled loudly: “GWAR is carrying on because we’ve got nothing better to do! We have habits to support.

Shit ain’t cheap!”

And what was Pustulus’s view on this year’s festival? “It’s been very disturbing.

It’s a very disturbing reaction. It fills me with great grievance and sadness that people are smiling and hugging and enjoying themselves and banding together for some unknown reason. I don’t understand it; it makes me fuckin’ sick. I don’t want anybody to be fucking happy. They should all feel like I feel, just miserable and disobedient and stoical. In life, there’s nothing but death and darkness and the fact there’s any joy left in this world is deplorable!”

Despite the aliens’ view of the humans and their reaction, GWAR themselves summed it up in writing on their virtual connection with our world, declaring: “Hail Oderus! Hail Flattus!

Hail GWAR!!!”

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I N T E RV I E W W I T H D R U M M E R J E S S E S H R E I B M A N , G U I TA R I S T J O R D A N S C H N E I D E R , B A S S I S T D E R E K W E G E N E R , A N D G U I TA R I S T JEROME SOSA, WHO ALL CONTRIBUTE VOCALS BY MIKE HEX time to answer some of my silly questions.

Even though Murmurs only formed in 2012, they’ve made the most of their two years.

They’ve been bringing their mix of punk, grunge, and hardcore to audiences all over the country. With their new full-length Bound coming out later this year on Dead Broke Rekerds, the boys of Murmurs – drummer Jesse Shreibman, guitarist Jordan Schneider, bassist Derek Wegener, and guitarist Jerome Sosa, who all contribute vocals – are quite busy. Lucky for us, they are willing to take the It’s hard enough to put out your first record, but having to change the very identity of your band – your name – right beforehand? That must suck. That’s exactly what happened to the Springfield, Mo. based band now known as Dream Ritual. Thankfully, everything worked out fine, and the hardworking “heavy rock band” will see their self-titled LP come out October 28.

What was the writing process like for Bound?

Jesse: We wrote this album very quickly and smoothly, it came together faster than any album I’ve been a part of. The recording process was also incredibly enjoyable. Short, sweet, and a little drunk.

Derek: For me, I feel Fly With the Unkindness was kinda cut and pasted together from old starts and new beginnings, whereas Bound had a more solid base with a much more eclectic approach.

Jerome: Bound was a lot of deep digging and looking for feelings that didn’t burp out wrong for me.

How does a song come into existence with you guys?

Derek: For me, it’s a general idea that I can’t

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wait to have everyone help rebuild and make into a real jammer.

Jerome: Pops in[to] one of our heads, then out through our band.

Jordan: Yeah, starts with a skeleton that we all bring a bit of ourselves to.

Does living in the Pacific Northwest affect your creative process? Is it true we’re all just depressed?

Jesse: There are a lot of cool bands and people up here. It’s also some of the most beautiful nature I’ve ever seen. After living in Chico, CA, for five years, living in Seattle feels like nothing short of a vacation.

Derek: Spending 23 years growing up in Denver with nonstop sunshine, and then moving to constant grey skies I feel has actually honed in my creative process. I’m also constantly bummed, that plays a part I’d assume.

didn’t have any merch printed or anything like that.

Did you just change your name really recently?

Jason: Yeah, we signed with 6131 and everything was great. We were about to send the records off to the plant and we learned of another band with the same name, and they stylized it the same way. They were getting some good press, so to avoid a headache, we changed our name in about a week’s time.

And as you can see, the change still hasn’t gone through on our Facebook page. But it happened really quickly.

6131 didn’t have to change any artwork or anything?

Jason: We had the artwork done, but we just had to swap out the logo and that was basically it. So it wasn’t too big of a deal, thankfully. We

Why did you choose to put out “Fade” and “Hamptons” first?

Ethan: I think we felt “Fade” was short, catchy; I think it was just the most “single-able” song.

It got our name out quick.

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Jason: We have a couple of songs that are longer and we wanted to release the more accessible ones first.

You describe yourselves on Facebook as “a band from nowhere.” Is it really that bad over there?

Jason: No. When you tell someone you’re from Springfield, Mo., they say, “Where the fuck is that? Is that where The Simpsons are from?”

“Yeah.” We’re in the smack dab of the middle of the country. It’s not like a Chicago or New York, not even St. Louis. But it’s not completely dead. There’s a little bit of culture.

Everyone always describes you the same way: ‘90s grunge. What do you think about that?

Jason: I think it’s fair.

Ethan: It’s fitting, but we don’t wanna be thrown into that category with everyone else.

Jason: I don’t wanna be written off. I don’t want people to think we sound like every other contemporary band that’s doing that.

Ethan: We definitely have that vibe, but I feel

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What are Murmurs’ plans for moving forward with Bound?

Jesse: Lots of tours, and hopefully some badass jammers. We’d love to tour Japan and Europe at some point!

Derek: TOUR FOREVER, and then some.

Jerome: Holding hands with Mike [Bruno] from Dead Broke, while Jesse and Derek shotgun beers, as we listen to Jordan do standup while sitting down. That’s my immediate plan after touring forever.

INTERVIEW WITH VOCALIST JASON AND GUITARIST ETHAN BY JANELLE JONES

You had to have a reason to call yourselves Wish. Was it hard to choose another name?

Jason: We were super bummed about it because we had months to come up with Wish, so we were all obviously stuck on that name.

We only had about a week to come up with the new name, because like I said, we had a deadline with the record plant and if we didn’t get the new art to them we would’ve had to push back the release date, which none of us wanted to happen. So we had to suck it up and sit around every day and think of band names.

It was pretty comical, but we came up with Dream Ritual and I feel like we’ll grow into it.

Is your sound getting slower and heavier? What new elements does the album offer?

I don’t think it has necessarily become slower, but we have spent a lot of time with the sound

Jerome: No, the record is called Bound, not Bummed.

Murmurs play pretty energetic live shows. Is it a “get everything out on the stage” situation?

Jesse: Yeah, we usually try and go for it. Our motto has always been to try and bring the party, no matter how bad the show might be.

Derek: I hold a lot of my frustration, anger, and general discontent for the world in… So, yep, I feel that playing a show with my best buds is an excellent time for a release.

Jerome: They don’t call it a dead show.

as we wanted it to be as close to our live sound as possible. At the time, we were really happy with the sound of our second album White Hoarhound, but in comparison, Awakening the Forest is a lot heavier, so yeah, I suppose it has become heavier. Rather than writ[ing] lots of songs and scrapping lots for the album, we spent a lot of time working and reworking songs to get them exactly as we wanted them.

With that in mind, I feel that our songwriting has stepped up massively. We also have a new bassist on this album [in] Dan [Burchmore]; he’s brought an entirely new sound and feel to Alunah.

It means a hell of a lot to us. They have opened us up to a whole new audience, and we’ve met some great people because of them. We have always been a DIY band, and in some respects we still are. Between us, we work in marketing, printing, and design, so we like to do a lot of things ourselves. We got to the point as a band where we felt we’d gone so far ourselves and needed that extra push. When Napalm sent us an offer to release White Hoarhound on vinyl, it was an amazing time, and then for them to offer us the album deal was incredible. Some of our idols are on the label, so we’re in great company!

What does it mean to jump onto Napalm Records?

What is the concept or theme of Awakening the Forest?

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like we’re different than what’s coming out.

Jason: Our intention is not to rip off ‘90s bands. We’re influenced by things other than that. ‘90s grunge bands are a big influence on all of us, but that’s not exclusively what influences the band.

Well, I wrote the lyrics at a time when I’d just lost, or was losing my dad, nan, and grandad, so [it was] a pretty bleak time for me. I thought a lot about death, but didn’t want the lyrical theme to be depressing. I was reading about the subject of life cycles, how pagans deal with death, and also believe in making a difference while we’re here so that your life means something. When my dad died, the concept of The Summerland – [a contemporary pagan view of the afterlife] – helped me massively, so that’s a recurring theme. I’m also inspired by nature every time I look out of my window or walk my dog, so that is a huge part of the album. There’s also some old English stories weaving their way throughout the album, and it’d be really nice for people to discover them for themselves.

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Cradle of Filth frontman Daniel “Filth” Davey has assembled a black mass of musicians for a brand new project. This new band is called Devilment and The Great and Secret Show is their inceptive effort set for release this Halloween on Nuclear Blast. “We are trying to create this other realm that you can escape to,” discloses Davey about the album. “Peer behind the curtain to the land of the dead; a fantastic walk through this occult world behind the real world.”

Davey further explains just what The Great and Secret Show is all about. “There are a lot of tracks that are gilded poetically. Like the song “Girl From Mystery Island” – with all its great decadent flights of fancy, it’s actually just about an infatuation with a strange, exotic woman who appears to be coming from somewhere mysterious like Skull Island where [King] Kong lived. [In the song], there’s references to Ann Darrow [the woman Kong falls in love with in the film].”

Davey continues, “With Cradle of Filth, it’s more classical mythology, the occult, and the classic poets, while Devilment is more Roald Dahl, Sylvia Plath, and Clive Barker.” Take for example, the song “Staring at the Werewolf Corps.” “The track uses the werewolf as a metaphorical entity,” Davey elaborates.

D E V I L M E N T I N T E RV I E W W I T H V O C A L I S T D A N I “ F I LT H ” D AV E Y B Y C H A D H E N S L E Y “The werewolf corps is literally the very last line of defense in war torn Berlin [during WWII] when the Russians attacked. It was Hitler’s last line of defense. It meant women and children throwing things at advancing soldiers. The song is implying that I’m literally the last line of defense before you get to the prize.”

The Great and Secret Show is filled with metaphors and allegories in addition to songs about relationships gone wrong, while the lyrics are literally wrapped in the framework of a monster. “The song ‘Sanity Hits a (Perfect] Zero’ is about a relationship that goes tits up; a bit sour and about encroaching madness because of it,” says Davey. “Being pushed to the limits and turning a little murderous with it. So is [the song] ‘Living with the Fungous’ – it uses links with H.P. Lovecraft, so you can read it on two levels.

[First], you can read it as if someone is living with this really strange monstrosity that they are keeping secret in an attic. But again, it’s also about living with a relationship that is dead and decaying. The song ‘The Stake in

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My Heart’ mentions mistress [Wilhelmina] Mina [Murray] from ‘Dracula.’ You can read it on a number of levels, one being an infatuation that uses the [vampire] analogy and a link between Dracula and Wilhelmina Murray. An eternal love that is so profound that it is actually painful.”

Davey is quick to point out that Devilment and Cradle of Filth are completely different bands, though both share the metal genre.

“The difference between Cradle of Filth and Devilment is like chalk and cheese,” explains Davey. “[Cradle] is very ornate and fast and symphonic. The guitar playing is very Iron Maiden-esque. Lots of harmonies and fast runs, whereas Devilment is all about the groove and a beat that you might hear in a night club. The riffs are very Pantera inspired really, almost Rammstein-ish. But it’s mixed up in a way where we’ve added this eclectic mix with strange John Carpenter-style keyboards accompanied with my vocals. It’s got a very psychotic slant to it.”

“With Devilment, I met the guitarist Daniel

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INTERVIEW WITH VOCALIST AND GUITARIST MATT BERRY BY ALEX PETRALIA

PHOTO: JOE CALIXTO

If you haven’t heard of Happy Diving, don’t feel bad. Not many other people have either.

California – even just Oakland and San Francisco alone – is completely oversaturated with a typical assortment of punk bands, and it’s hard for any one band to stand out amongst the dreary regurgitations. Happy Diving should not struggle with this. Their songs are uniquely catchy and poppy, while maintaining a noisy, heavy presence, like if Though 2014 has seen some fantastic metal releases, few are quite as mighty and ferocious as Ecdysis by up-and-coming death metal superstars Horrendous. Their mix of frightening old school death metal and a uniquely catchy style makes it one of the most fascinating metal records of the year. These guys are luminaries in the making.

When did you begin writing Ecdysis, and what was the band’s mindset during the process?

The writing process technically began before The Chills was even released, although the majority of the writing took place after and stretched from early 2012 through summer 2013. Most of these sessions were long weekends spaced three or four months apart from each other. The Chills took an incredibly long time to record and produce, so I think we were excited to get started on new material as soon as possible. On those long weekends, we played as long as we possibly could. I remember days where I basically drummed for 12 hours, and I’m not in good enough shape to do

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Rivers Cuomo grew up listening to Dinosaur Jr. instead of oldies and KISS. This band formed only a year ago, but everything so far has worked out swimmingly for them. From an almost immediate pick-up of their debut self-titled EP by Father/Daughter Records to playing SXSW and headlining the 2014 Bay Area Record Fair, there are innumerable reasons why you should be paying attention.

Vocalist and guitarist Matt Berry delves into their recent West Coast tour and upcoming full-length release, Big World.

How long were you a band before the first EP came out? It seemed quick…

We recorded in October, and it came out in January. A lot of [the tracks] were songs and riffs that I had been sitting on for a while that I didn’t really know what to do with, and I had some recording time coming up

Finch and, during a bout of drinking, he suggested working on some music,” continues Davey. “I had some downtime with Cradle and it grew from there and absorbed people from the local music scene; it’s an eclectic brew. And, though the members are in other bands, they’re quite naïve, fresh, and new to this whole concept of touring. It’s quite cool and exciting.” Look for Devilment to hit the States sometime next year.

after my [old] band broke up. So, we basically just started up Happy Diving to use that time with Jack Shirley [at the Atomic Garden Recording Studio]. We only had about three practices before that session. For Big World, I had a much better idea of how I wanted everything to sound, and for the whole vision of the band as well.

You also recently went on your first West Coast tour, accompanied by Bay Area hardcore band Stressors. How far and how long did you venture?

It was about 12 days. The farthest place we went north was Seattle. We couldn’t play Canada this time, because not everyone could get passports. But yeah, it was a lot of fun in Seattle.

on the tour? Your best show?

Oh man, that’s a good question. I love Olympia and Seattle. Those were my favorite cities we went to, but as far as a favorite show…

I don’t know, there were a lot of cool ones!

Corona was really good, Seattle too. All the people we met in Seattle were really cool. We went on tour with Stressors, and were pretty much playing exclusively punk and hardcore shows. A lot of the places we went, there was just a [bunch of] punks who really weren’t into what we were doing – it was “too poppy” or whatever – but in Seattle, it felt like we were more appreciated there. Although, at the other shows, there was always one or two kids there who were into Hüsker Dü or something, and ended up really liking it.

That’s all that really matters.

Where was your favorite place you hit up

H O R R E N D O U S INTERVIEW WITH GUITARIST /VOCALIST DAMIAN HERRING BY BRANDON RINGO that [laughs]. We didn’t really have a concrete mindset going into this [record], and we didn’t feel like we had anything to prove with the next album. We were just very excited to create more music. We knew we wanted to keep improving our sound and to make a record that was even bigger and more engrossing than The Chills. And we really felt good about the album as it slowly developed throughout the process.

The record seems to be a big evolutionary step from your last release. How did your approach to the songwriting for Ecdysis differ from The Chills?

I don’t think our approach itself was that different. For each album, we really have taken our ideas and tried to craft the best possible songs we could with them. I suppose we knew from the beginning that we wanted to expand on our strengths and let our sound evolve naturally. And we had no interest in trying to artificially recapture the exact sound we had

on The Chills, because we see no point of releasing the same album twice, especially if it is forced. We are keen on letting our ideas flow freely, and letting the songs take us wherever they seem to be going. This really has always been our approach, and we will continue it as we go on. All that being said, I do think the step from The Chills to Ecdysis is a bigger one compared to the step from Sweet Blasphemies to The Chills. This has several causes: I think we have become more versatile songwriters with time, and more influences have crept into our sound. Ecdysis has a more ambitious feel than The Chills, not because we chose to hold ourselves back in the past, but because we were at a different stage as musicians and composers. Furthermore, there was a larger gap in time between the writing of our two albums than there was between the demo and debut.

Perhaps that is a contributor.

How did you choose Ecdysis as your title,

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and does it tie into any lyrical themes on the record?

Ecdysis is a process of shedding and growing, and it was chosen because it relates to the lyrics and album art. Throughout the album, there are overarching themes of transcendence and transformation. Songs are about maturing and growing past detrimental ideas, institutions, structures, etc. in an effort to experience a more complete, authentic existence. I like to think the album art depicts the process of transformation, and it will probably mean different things to different people.

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Philadelphia’s Ladder Devils play a combustible take on noise rock that is tightly wound and goes for the throat. Formed from the ashes of local hardcore heroes The Minor Times, Ladder Devils features bassist and vocalist Matt Leo; his brother, guitarist Tim Leo; guitarist and vocalist Eric Haag; and drummer Michael Howard, who all came together with the pure intent to continue making music without any expectations.

“In 2009 or so, we all found ourselves in a position where we were all around and interested in doing something. So, we did it,” Haag says.

“I don’t think our motivations have changed much since we started it, we just like having something to do. We haven’t gotten carried away with it, haven’t developed any grand aspirations, we’ve just steadily worked on it here and there, and that’s how we like it.”

In 2011, Ladder Devils released Nowhere Plans, which was a collection of two EPs onto one 12” from Brutal Panda Records. They re-

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INTERVIEW WITH GUITARIST ERIC HAAG AND BASSIST MATT LEO BY THOMAS PIZZOLA leased a split 7” with Helms Alee last year, as well as a three-way split with Kowloon Walled City and Fight Amp. The band will release their full-length debut, Clean Hands, through Brutal Panda on November 4. “We spent about two years on this one if we go back to when we started writing the songs,” Haag explains, “which, in our world, isn’t that bad. We spent about six months on the recording, and that’s because of having to fit it into our lives. None of us are in a position to take time off work for the band, so we just chip away at it a little bit at a time, on nights and weekends. Towards the end, it can feel like you’ve been working on it forever and you just want it to be finished, but I’m not sure we’d have been able to do it any other way. The benefit is that we get plenty of time to second guess ourselves,” he laughs.

Not only is Clean Hands the band’s first full-

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length, it’s also their first collection of songs that were all written at the same time and recorded by all the same members. While Nowhere Plans combined two EPs that were done several years apart and featured different drummers, this new release presents a more consistent and hard hitting mood.

Haag elaborates, “I think recording-wise, it’s way better. We did a lot less of it ourselves this time around, and that paid off. The songwriting is hopefully a little more developed and interesting. Just in general, I think it’s the same type of thing, but we’re a little better at it this time around. That’s the goal: incremental upgrades.”

In addition, the band is part of a burgeoning noise rock scene – not only in Philly, but on a national level – as all types of bands are discovering the joys of turning up the volume,

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Khold is a band like no other. Hailing from Oslo, Norway, their combination of apocalyptic black metal with the raw intuition of old school rock ‘n’ roll creates a new sound that will paint a unique legacy onto the dark canvas of black metal. Sarke – drummer, and one of the There’s a new player in the frostbitten world of Scandinavian black metal and her name is Myrkur. This mysterious, young Danish lass has a rollicking new EP out on Relapse Records this fall, and it’s a doozy. Myrkur’s self-titled release is a haunting dose of atmospheric and desolate black metal. Think Ulver and Agalloch-inspired splendor, with crazy Deathspell, Omega-ish drum programming, and otherworldly choral vocals thrown in for maximum goose bumps.

“I have been writing and recording for ages, which I think you can maybe hear,” Myrkur says of her new record. “I was not planning to release this music or even play it for anyone, so there was never a deadline or any pressure.

I wrote, recorded, and mixed it alone at my house in Denmark.” Of her creative process, she explains, “I write in quite a detailed way, where I hear something in my head and then try to translate it to a layered guitar riff or choral vocals.”

As a one-woman show, Myrkur had the dubious task of writing and recording all the music on this EP herself. Individual and solo black metal projects have been around for decades

After six long years, what made you guys get back together to create Til Endes?

We just felt the urge for a new album. We did some gigs and started making new songs. Got in contact with Peaceville [Records], and then it was a short way to release a new Khold album.

And I will say we are very pleased with the new album.

There aren’t a lot of black metal bands today with the specific “Black ‘n’ Roll” sound Khold is known for. What inspired you guys to write music in this hybrid style?

As you say, there [are] a lot of similar black

metal bands our there with fast playing and a thin, primitive sound. We want our music to be cold, dark, and heavy. Along with a raw heavy sound, we also want it groovy and floating. We record the album with no trigging, copying riffs, and so on. It’s pure playing – and often, first takes – to get the spontaneous playing.

You cover “Troops of Doom” (“Dommens Arme” in Norwegian) by Sepultura. Why did you choose such an unlikely cover?

We used to play that song 20 years ago, so we just brought it back in Khold. We did not want to play a cover song from another black metal band. We think this song was a good song that fits us great. First, we wanted a cover song to play live, but we agreed to also have it on the album. Cool for us, and I hope other people

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[Hi, Varg!], but there has never been anything quite like Myrkur. She may not be reinventing the wheel, but multi-instrumentalist female choral singers are few and far between in the extreme metal realm.

She may be musically self-sufficient, but she’s no isolationist. “I got help with drumming from my Swedish friend Rex Myrnur,” she explains, “but yes, the other things I do myself.”

After one listen, it’s obvious that her metal chops and ear for melody are 100 percent on point. Chalk this up to Myrkur’s love of second wave Norwegian black metal, as well as a rich musical upbringing. “I grew up playing classical music, violin and piano mostly,” she reveals. “I have always sung and had an undying love for choir music, the Danish National Girls’ Choir, and the Norwegian Choir as well.

They make arrangements of old Scandinavian music, folk songs and seasonal songs.” She credits the emotive atmosphere on her self-titled EP to classic Scandinavian composers such as Carl Nielsen and Edvard Grieg, as well

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before returning Stateside to tour in late October with Issues, I Killed the Prom Queen, and others. Vocalist Becca Macintyre teaches us about all things Marmozets, and their experience on Warped.

PHOTO: NATHAN KATSIAFICAS

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also find it interesting to hear Khold do a Sepultura song.

The title track “Til Endes” is a great example of your unique sound. It captures guitar grooves that are almost non-existent in black metal, while retaining the darkness and menace. Where does this rock ‘n’ roll influence come from?

Of course we listen to other types of music, not only black metal. I think that’s usual for most people who play music. [Vocalist and guitarist] Gard is very into ‘70s music. [Bassist] Crowbel is into old prog bands like Rush, and so on.

[Guitarist] Rinn likes a lot of different kinds of music. I like bands like Slayer, Obituary, Motörhead, Candlemass, and, of course, we all like several black and death metal bands.

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as the corpsepainted sons of the North.

But who is this enigmatic metal priestess?

Relapse’s promotional YouTube short implies that she materialized out of the ether, conjured by the Nordic winds themselves.

Unsurprisingly, a cloud of speculative rumors has already begun swirling on the Interwebs.

Though it’s hard to believe Relapse stumbled across her while wandering though a misty forest, Myrkur just laughs, “Oh really, you don’t believe that? You should believe everything you read on the Internet!”

That being said, her talent is undeniable and her interest in Norse mythology is genuine.

“Norse Mythology is an inspiration for me.

I grew up learning it in history class and my favorite cartoon was the ‘Valhalla’ film, which I watched with my brother over and over,” Myrkur explains. “I was fascinated with Icelandic sagas like Aseguder and Asetro from an early age. It’s funny how if you feel a connection to the pagan mythology that is rooted

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You spent almost a full month on Warped Tour this year. Any highlights?

We were blessed to be on such an amazing tour for our first time touring in the U.S. We didn’t feel like we saw much of America, but we certainly did see a lot of car parks, tour busses, and bands. We received so much encouragement, love, and support from the Kevin Says stage crew and all the friends we made on Warped Tour. Shout out to: Saves the Day, Plague Vendor, Every Time I Die, K Flay, Rob Lynch, and Issues. They all have special places in our hearts for different reasons. The whole of Warped Tour was one big highlight for the three and a half weeks we were on it.

It was a whole new challenge and a step-up in

in nature, you are considered crazy, but if you believe in a man who could walk on water or aliens, that is normal.”

Whoever the elusive Myrkur really is, it’s clear that she not only knows her black metal and Nordic mythology, she also has both feet planted firmly on the ground.

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INTERVIEW WITH VOCALIST BECCA MACINTYRE BY NATHAN KATSIAFICAS

With an onstage energy that is reminiscent of high-octane punk band letlive, and boasting a frontwoman with versatile pipes that might make Paramore’s Hayley Williams jealous, Marmozets are set to take the U.S. by storm.

Fresh from a one month stint on this summer’s Vans Warped Tour and multiple European festival dates, they are set to release their full-length debut The Weird and the Wonderful

and getting aggro and weird. In fact, local noise proponent Chris X from Reptilian Records will be doing a series of 7” records to chronicle all things loud and noisy in the City of Brotherly Love.

Marmozets’ career.

The Weird and the Wonderful seems to oscillate from more angry and aggressive songs, like “Vibetech” to more hopeful or wishful-sounding songs like “Captivate You.” What sort of mindset were you in when you were writing the record?

Our mindset and emotions were all over the place. It’s our first album and all I could think about was making everyone proud with my vocals. It just needed to be right! It was definitely tough recording, but overall an exciting and eventful journey. We all want this to be more than just a record; we want people to relate to each song as if they were on the journey with us. We believe music can be such a beautiful thing that can take you places just like any other element. It plays such a huge part in everyone’s world, and we hope our album can make a difference and be part of people’s stories.

NEW NOISE MAGAZINE

Who inspired you to pursue music when you were younger?

My parents inspired me to be the artist I am today. I grew up listening to them playing piano and singing around the house. I never turned to music for idols or went out of my way to buy music. It was like songs and melodies were in all the Macintyres’ blood, and we needed to write our own music. After starting to write our own music, I woke up [and] realized there’s a world full of music, but still to this day, I don’t have an idol. I just found a love for music.

Do you have any goals as a band for the remainder of 2014?

Just to keep working hard! Touring nonstop, writing, and having as much fun as possible in the process. We are doers. We just want to grab life by the balls and never regret anything.

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Occultation is a three piece from Brooklyn, N.Y., and their sophomore effort Silence in the Ancestral House on Profound Lore Records is an evocative, mystical journey through sonic dreamscapes woven in dark metal. The result is an eerie, haunting, and atmospheric sound steeped in metallic riffs, oozing with ‘60s psychedelia. The album combines early Black Sabbath bass with Mercyful Fate guitars swirling around lead singer Viveca Butler’s spectral voice. “Yes, the music itself is heavily influenced by these two bands,” admits guitarist Edward Miller, the only male member of the band. “However, the lyrics are not influenced by any bands at all.”

“Both Pink Floyd and The Doors definitely gave us inspiration,” says Miller. “Viveca [Butler] – our drummer and lead vocalist – also listens to

O C C U L T A T I O N I N T E R V I E W W I T H G U I TA R I S T E D WA R D M I L L E R B Y C H A D H E N S L E Y Jefferson Airplane, Cream, and The Kinks as well, and I, myself, am a fan of Arthur Brown and the first Coven record.”

While Occultation is clearly interested in the occult, they prefer to let their music speak for them rather than explain their personal beliefs.

However, Miller doesn’t mind talking about the band’s literary influences. “[We’re into] reading 18th Century Gothic literature,” he says, “and, of course, I love the classics like Edgar Allen Poe, H.P. Lovecraft, and Charles Maturin, as well as more contemporary writers like William Peter Blatty [“The Exorcist”] and Umberto Eco [“The Name of the Rose”]. Viveca writes most of the lyrics, as she’s interested in the Romantic poets

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William Blake, John Keats, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, as well as W.B. Yeats and Lord Alfred Tennyson.”

Based on Butler’s literary inspirations, it should come as no surprise that the songs on Silence in the Ancestral House reveal an obsession with death, dreams, and otherworldly places. “Yes, all of these subjects and more,” expounds Miller. “The title of the album was inspired by a line from the “I Ching” [one of the oldest Chinese texts] that said something along the lines of ‘The king is returning to his ancestral house.’”

Occultation’s mixture of literary influences is just

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INTERVIEW WITH VOCALIST BEN FLANAGAN (BF) AND GUITARIST MARK ENGLES (ME) BY BRANDON RINGO projects with a healthy dose of massive riffs from surprisingly heavy influences.

PHOTO: JEN CASH

When describing San Francisco natives Black Map, it’s difficult not to use the term “supergroup.” Featuring vocalist and guitarist Ben Flanagan of Trophy Fire, guitarist Mark Engles of dredg, and drummer Chris Robyn of Far, the band has its fair share of incredible talent.

What sets Black Map apart is the way they mix the beautiful melodies of their other You guys are pretty enigmatic and your website is equally so. The videos you put on there are like a mini-Internet-wormhole. It’s especially appropriate that the first video is of a magician explaining how magic tricks work.

Our drummer, Evan Burroughs, made that website and he’s a very thoughtful guy. We wanted to create a site that would convey what little information we needed to convey and have everything else be much more expressive.

It’s cool to get an Internet wormhole that is a positive one, where you’re actually being sucked into something that is fascinating in a way that is different from typical click-oriented social media. The Internet is unavoidable, but our website is designed to let people know that instead of looking for us online, they should just see us live, or listen to the record.

The label that you’re on is the Drag City imprint, God?. Drag City has this iconic history involving Royal Trux, Will Oldham, The Silver Jews, and many others. Was signing with them

What were the circumstances leading up to the formation of Black Map? BF: We wanted to do something that felt ambitious for us musically. I think we wanted something that ultimately would be really cathartic in terms of playing a style of music that felt like a different form of release than what we had done with our other projects. Chris Robyn was truly one of my favorite drummers growing up. I would drive around suburban North Carolina as a teenager air drumming to [Far’s] Water and Solutions, and I just really admired his heavy hitting and style. When we thought about who we would want to be behind the kit, it was essentially a no-brainer. We called up Chris and all got in a room the

following week. I think we started just jamming on some riffs from other bands – some Helmet, Sepultura, Failure, etc. – and then started working on some stuff that Mark and I had both written. By the end of the night, it was pretty clear to us that this was something that we wanted to pursue.

How different was your approach on …

And We Explode compared to your other projects?

ME: I know for me, there’s a lot less analysis writing Black Map material. We told each other to just go with the gut.

It’s been very refreshing in that manner.

Who did you draw inspiration from for the heavier parts of the album?

ME: I definitely went back to a lot of early and mid ‘90s metal for some inspiration.

a no-brainer?

Absolutely, Drag City rules! And the way that they run their business is very kosher. It’s very solid, they do everything in-house and all of their distribution is independent. They made their thing work by keeping things small and amongst friends. The roster is insane, even their one-off roster is crazy, like Scott Walker and Stereolab. It was definitely great to work with them.

Your earlier stuff was a little noisier and the new stuff has been described as “psychedelic,” but the song structures are reminiscent of early Brit-pop. What were you trying to channel when you made the album?

We come from all different backgrounds.

[Bassist] Lee [Landey]’s got a crossover metal band, [drummer] Evan [Burrows]’s got a

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like up to this point?

We’re from Dana Point, Calif. Albert Navarro and Nathan Najera play guitar, Cody Andrews plays drums, Ian Hodges plays bass, and I sing.

In 2010, we recorded a demo, started playing shows almost every week for six months, and it hasn’t really slowed down since. So far, we have recorded the two full-lengths, a split, started our own label, played with some of our favorite bands, and toured. Everything has been unexpected and pretty rad overall.

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Is there a lyrical theme throughout the album? Where did your lyrical inspiration come from?

BF: I tap into some different subject matter, but within every song, I look at human reactions to different situations.

“Ropes,” “Head for the Hills,” and “Melee” are all, in some way, about how different people operate around chaos and discord.

“Chinaski” is about someone who grinds every day on a meaningless vocation and feels lost, while “I’m Just the Driver” is about a man who is constantly immersed in terrible things, but can’t speak up or change his situation. It’s not all dismal though; on the other side “And We Explode (1 & 2)” and “Eyes on the Prize” are essentially about reacting to the chaos and making the most of it, while we get to be here and be alive.

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Seizures formed in 2009 and you just rereleased your second full-length. What has the road been

Entombed, Pantera, Sepultura, etc. played a big part in my childhood, [and] shaping my playing.

INTERVIEW WITH VOCALIST CORY THOMAS HANSON BY STEPHEN SIGL more traditional hardcore band that’s become increasingly weird, and [guitarist] Daniel [Martens]’s band is a really heavy, sludgy punk band. But we found records that we all like, like the first Faust record, Gary Numan’s The Pleasure Principle, and Amon Duul II. Also, Wire was a huge influence too.

“Growing Up Boys” is a great song, and it’s very different from the rest of the tracks on the album; it’s almost a straight-up indie song…

It felt important to have a slower, more conventional song on the album, but to approach it in a different, more violent way.

So, musically there’s nothing that’s out of bounds for you guys?

Definitely not. We talk about making all kinds of records, in all kinds of formats. Pretty

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Seizures are a blazing hardcore unit out of Southern California. Their cathartically abrasive sound is jam packed with enough manic energy and extreme music goodness to induce maximum head banging, limb flailing, and yes, even seizures. If you’re keen on math, hardcore, grind, and spacey prog melodies, you’ll probably love their newly re-mastered album, The Sanity Universal.

as unique and unusual as their music.

The process of writing this record must have been grueling. You’d need NASA to be able to calculate the hours’ worth of riffs and time signatures you’ve crammed in here…

After we got back from our Northwest tour in 2012, Albert would send me texts from 3 to 6 a.m. almost every day telling me he had a new song or an idea. He stayed up all night playing guitar for a few months, and by February [2013], he had 10 new songs. Nathan had four new songs that were ready, and that’s when

we booked the studio time. If NASA could do anything for us right now, I would ask them to sponsor us, and buy us a new van.

Who came up with the album art? It’s simple, but insanely effective.

I designed it while we were still recording last year. I used space as a metaphor for the mind. All the stars represent memories, and the center with the title is a black hole, which represents all the dark places of the mind.

The Sanity Universal is in the center to show where these lyrics – which are personal stories – belong. I designed it just to get the artwork going and the other guys liked it enough to use it.

“The Extra-Dimensional Collection Agency” recalls the sprawling metalcore titles of winters past. How does it feel to be garnering comparisons to spazz metal icons like Coalesce, Botch, and Converge?

That’s quite a compliment, thank

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PHOTO: JUSTIN TENNY

much anytime we’re home, we’re writing and recording. Even on the road, we’re always putting things together and trying to keep the process fresh and new. you. It’s exciting to hear that, those are some of my favorite bands.

What did you guys expect out of this new remaster, both sonically and professionally?

Associating with a rising label like Melotov brings a new level of exposure.

Our friend Juan [Hernandez-Cruz, the guitarist] from Colombian Necktie, told us his friend Chris wanted to re-master it. After we found out it was [producer] Chris Common [ex-drummer for These Arms Are Snakes], we obviously had to do it before putting it on vinyl. We liked the original master, but we all felt like an analog re-master from a guy who worked on records as dynamic as ours would make a big difference. The re-master brings the volume up on a lot of underlying material we recorded that was tough to hear in the original. [Melotov Records owner] Melanie [Voltz] has been a good friend to Seizures for a while now, and we’re honored to be associated with her label. I feel like this is our first proper physical release and she made it happen. The bands on her roster have become friends of ours. She’s created an awesome community and catalog.

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I N T E R V I E W W I T H G U I T A R I S T C O U N T L . F. B Y B R A N D O N R I N G O and it definitely works. Their self-titled debut has all of the jacket wear and resin stains of a New Wave of British Heavy Metal record from the ‘70s. It’s hard to believe these guys didn’t appear in a time machine.

In the current landscape of heavy metal, the trend seems to be “throwback” bands. For some, it works, and for others, it doesn’t.

Finnish upstarts Mausoleum Gate evoke early Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, and Cirith Ungol, Choir Vandals may be a fairly young band, but for the second time in as many years, they’re putting out a new EP and spending every day they can on tour. Freshly singed to 6131 Records, the St. Louis band will turn in At Night at the end of October, about the same time they will be covering the West Coast tour alongside labelmates Dads and Tiny Moving Parts. Drummer Wil McCarthy talks about the new record, going from a trio to a four piece, and the fractured nature of the St. Louis music scene.

How did the band first get together?

[Bassist] Josh [Cameron], [vocalist and guitarist] Austin [McCutchen], and [guitarist] Micah [Kelleher] are all from the same town, so they knew each other from school. We all played in bands in the same scene, too. That’s how I met everyone.

When Josh and Austin’s old band disbanded, Austin hit me up about starting something new. We had great chemistry when it came to writing songs.

The three of us bounced ideas around and came up with several songs in just a few weeks.

You initially started out as a trio. Why did you decide

that old school sound of the album as far as mixing and recording goes. We also wanted to have a kind of “live-feel” to this, so that you could hear the band like it would play in your living room [laughs]. We were aiming for that certain kind of “raw” sound. The album should sound like real players playing real instruments. Intensity and feeling were important things when we were catching good takes.

Also, improvisation plays an important role in our sound and playing. For example, solos don’t have to be played in a same way every time, and their duration may vary when we play live. There was also not so much gain on the guitars, and not so many effects.

Your record has that bong water drenched, old school sound. How did you develop it?

Well, quite simple as far as instruments and amplifiers are concerned: simple Laney and Marshall Valve amps, which in my case means a Laney GH50L head. Then drums and keys are also real vintage instruments, like Mellotron M400 for example. After that, [bassist] Wicked Ischanius used his magic to create

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to add another guitar player?

Writing as a three piece was practical to start, because we were able to get things off the ground.

We actually tried jamming with a few different guitar players before we got Micah on board. He actually joined up the week before we recorded our first EP. He fit in very well, and was one of Austin’s best friends growing up. The leads they came up with for Darker Things helped make the songs sound fuller.

How did you first connect with 6131 Records?

I met Joey [Cahill], who owns the label, a few years ago while on tour with a band called Focused Minds, who are also on 6131. We kept in touch, and I would share whatever projects I was working on with him. When I sent him the first Choir Vandals stuff, he seemed really into it. Then when I sent him the demos for our new EP At Night, he shit his pants out of excitement. At least, that’s how I like to picture it. But in reality, we actually came to an agreement while we were in the studio recording At

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Night. They put some faith in us, and we couldn’t be happier with how things are working out.

You put out an EP last year, and have another foursong record coming out. Do you have plans to focus on a full-length?

I feel like we are still a new band to so many people.

These days, it’s not very practical for new bands to throw 12 songs at someone and expect them to enjoy every second of it. That’s not to say we don’t have plans for a full-length. Choir Vandals is still a young band, and we have a lot planned for the future.

What is the St. Louis music scene like?

The St. Louis scene is super segregated. Not many hardcore kids go to pop punk shows. Not many DIY kids go to metal shows. It’s tough being a band that doesn’t fit in with any specific scene. But we are super humbled when we play in St. Louis, and we see people who we don’t recognize at our shows. It makes us proud to be from St. Louis.

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featured Chamberlain singing, Chamberlain, Bowman, and Jack Burns playing guitar, Josh McLin on bass, and Chris Kamrada drumming, with everyone but Kamrada sharing keyboard duties.

Sleepwave is a rock band from St. Petersberg, Fla. that evolved from the couch jam sessions of Spencer Chamberlain – former vocalist of Underoath – and Stephen Bowman.

Chamberlain is Sleepwave’s vocalist, and both he and Bowman contribute guitar, bass, keyboard, and programming. While the two are the only official recording members of the band, they have a full band for touring.

Their last tour – which ended in September – Xerath’s III is quite unlike anything you’ve heard before. Its mix of melody, death metal, groove, orchestration, atmospheres, and overall experimentation; there’s something truly unique to be found within. Vocalist Richard Thomson discusses his love for all things sci-fi and Devin Townsend, as well as the band’s tour of China, and the possibility of humanity being conquered by an Insectoid race. It could happen!

What surprises await fans and newcomers on III? What I hope will please fans the most is that we truly believe we have stepped up the songwriting a huge amount. The songs are slightly more to the point and more memorable as a result. But that doesn’t mean we’ve simplified things by any means! Also, we used a real string quartet, which we’ve never had the chance to do before, so this makes a huge difference sonically to the orchestral parts. We also have a lot more lead guitar playing on this album for the guitar nerds out

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Does the record have a holistic concept?

Well, not really, but you can find these demonic, sci-fi, and occult themes in it which kind of chain the album together lyric-wise. We wanted to capture some strange, maybe apocalyptic atmosphere that, for example, [Black] Sabbath had in their days. Tragic and melancholy.

INTERVIEW WITH DRUMMER WIL MCCARTHY BY JOHN B. MOORE

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INTERVIEW WITH VOCALIST SPENCER CHAMBERLAIN AND G U I TA R I S T S T E P H E N B O W M A N B Y K E V I N W E L L S

PHOTO: ALAN SNODGRASS

When was the material on this record created?

The material in this album has been developed during these years, beginning from the very start of the band back in 2008. Many songs have developed a lot during the years; our title song comes first to my mind. On the other hand, there is newer material also included. I think we can say that songs have come out in different sessions too.

Chamberlain describes Sleepwave’s sound as, “dark aggression, but not aggression just because you’re screaming and there is double bass. To me, that doesn’t even sound aggressive anymore. Aggression, to me, is more like a movement and a dark riff, a dark melody.” Bowman adds, “It’s heavy in the depth of it, not the surface layer. It’s more of a feeling than it is a sound.”

In order to get Chamberlain out of his contract with Underoath and get Sleepwave going, he and Bowman spent everything they had and were broke for two years. Money got so tight at one point, that Chamberlain was homeless for four months.

Sleepwave’s first record, Broken Compass, was recorded with producer David Bendeth who has worked with artists such as Paramore, Of Mice and Men, and Bring Me the Horizon.

Bowman calls their sessions, “very brutal” and “intense.” He elaborates, “David Bendeth is – and I celebrate this when I say it – an old school producer in the sense that his route to the bullseye is to basically get in your head, break it in half, take you back to the psychological state you were in when the content of that song arrived in your life, and then hit record. Once you’re crying or pissed or screaming or freaking out, then he hits record.” The results are clearly positive, as Bowman continues, “I love him for that, as taxing as it is, especially on [Chamberlain] as a lyricist. It made us better musicians by miles. I think the record really – sonically and emotionally – showcases that effort.”

Chamberlain adds, “We did a lot of demoing

What’s next for the band?

We are opening up for Dads and Tiny Moving Parts this fall on a full U.S. tour. We are on the second half of the tour, so we hit the whole western half of the country. On top of that, we have our 6131 debut At Night coming out on October 28. between the two of us, but once we got into the studio with the crack of the whip and the ‘It’s now or never. It’s gonna be this way forever, so let’s make it count” atmosphere, it made it easier, in a strange way, to get to that goal because we give a shit. It’s not just a passing thing for us. I think that intensity comes through on the album.”

The lyrics on the album were pulled directly from Chamberlain’s own life experiences, which occurred between the 2013 disbandment of Underoath and the recording of this record. “It’s all real and it’s all on there,” says Chamberlain. “To me, that’s important because people who have been through any sort of struggle can relate to it. And it’s honest.

Bendeth pulls it out of you.”

Sleepwave chose to release Broken Compass on Epitaph Records after listening to various labels’ pitches. The choice essentially made instantly, as the band was moved by “the guy talking about charts and money, and the guy talking about believing in art and music and the movement… Where would you want your family to be?”

X E R A T H I N T E R V I E W W I T H V O C A L I S T R I C H A R D T H O M S O N B Y E R I C M AY there! We had to celebrate the recruitment of our new guitarist Conor McGouran somehow!

This new record reminds me a bit of metal icon Devin Townsend (Strapping Young Lad). Is he one of your influences?

Oh yes, Devin Townsend is certainly a huge influence on Xerath. We’re the biggest fans of his early work with Steve Vai on the album Sex and Religion, which people are making the connection with so far. His ‘90s work is quite underrated too. Albums like Ocean Machine and Terria are masterpieces. His recent success isn’t really due to these albums in particular, but we’re glad he’s doing so well these days! Would it kill him to give us a support slot? Jeez!

For those with no lyric booklet in their hands, what is the concept behind III? For this release, we actually didn’t have an

overall concept in mind. I’m a huge sci-fi nerd so I was interested in bringing some of author Arthur C. Clarke’s ideas to my songs.

“I Hold Dominion,” “Sentinels,” “Passenger,” and “Witness” are all derived from the “Space Odyssey” books, amongst a few others. [Drummer] Mike [Pitman]’s lyrics tend to focus on issues such as corrupt tyrants and the always bubbling threat of planetary annihilation, “Demigod Doctrine” and “2053” respectively. It was cool to keep each song as an individual concept and story rather than have an entire overarching narrative to the entire album, though I’m sure this will change when we come to IV! What unique experiences have you had while on the road?

I think one of our best experiences was getting to tour in China. We were there for three weeks and could not believe the reaction

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we received from the Chinese metal fans. One show we played in front of 10,000 people on the filthiest beach you’ve ever seen. The day after, we played to a crowd of about 150 who were so hungry for live music that we had to stop the show several times just to make sure that no one got hurt!

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INTERVIEW WITH VOCALIST/GUITARIST JUSTIN CORY BY BRAD LAMBERT they settle into a new partnership with Relapse Records for the next album. The band is picking up steam at every turn.

The recent tour was in support of their latest release through Halo of Flies Records, a split 7” with Ruins that saw the band grow into a darker and more focused version of itself. After a couple years together, the members have formed a cohesive unit that churns out thick, oppressive riffs suited for true metalheads.

Portland doom bringers Usnea just finished tearing up the West Coast highways on tour, but are already looking ahead to the next song, the next record, and the next tour. The effort continues to pay off for this hardworking band as the ranks of their loyal following swell and Puig Destroyer’s name is the punny lovechild of Los Angeles Dodger outfielder Yasiel Puig and grindcore legends Pig Destroyer. They are a grindcore band who write songs about baseball. It all began when drummer Riley Breckenridge (of Thrice) and bassist Ian Miller (of Kowloon Walled City) – while recording an episode of their baseball and punk themed podcast Productive Outs – stumbled across the play on words after Puig made his Major League debut. After the show, Miller suggested that he and Breckenridge should make their joke band a reality.

“I hopped into a program called Superior Drummer and programmed the beat for our first song and sent it to him that night,” Breckenridge explains. “The next day, Ian put bass to it. And that kind of fueled the fire to start writing. I guess we ended up writing six songs or so, maybe five for that first EP. Eight days after we mentioned it on the podcast, we had an EP up on Bandcamp.” Two weeks later, one of their songs was played for Puig while he was visiting the MLB Fan Cave.

The crazy part is not that the band was conceived and the songs were written, recorded, mixed, and released online in just

“I think we’ve gotten tighter as a band, and also that we’ve kind of solidified our intentions and what we are going for with our sound, much more so than on the first record,” Cory says.

“We are all happy with the evolution of our

P U I G

Although Conner spent a great amount of attention creating an aural environment of desoHow did you choose your band’s name?

The name came about after reading several separate things that then seemed to tie together in a weird [conspiracy theorist] James Shelby Downard kind of way. Stuff like Rick Strassman’s “DMT: The Spirit Molecule,” Daniel Pinchbeck’s “Breaking Open the Head.” David Icke’s Reptilian theories, books and ideas about ancient astronauts, and whatnot. Top that off with some stuff from Carl Sagan talking about the R-Complex, and the fledgling photos of the Krokodil epidemic sweeping through Russia’s junkie community, and the name kind of set up camp.

The cover art for Nachash evokes some pretty epic drug-laced dreams. What is the significance of the piece?

I wanted to make a cast of characters, each one representing and embodying a different hexagram from [Chinese classic text] the “I-Ching.”

The ones across the album art actually make

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Don’t expect Usnea to rest on any laurels. After a brief two- week break, they are already crafting new music and making plans for the next assault.

“We just reconvened practice, and at the very first post-tour practice I had a new set of riffs to show the rest of the band,” Cory explains.

“We got pretty far crafting a new song at that practice. So the tour and the subsequent break probably led to a nice breath of fresh air and creativity.”

D E S T R O Y E R

INTERVIEW WITH DRUMMER RILEY BRECKENRIDGE BY KEVIN WELLS one week. The crazy part is that the band has never even practiced together. Breckenridge lives in Orange County, Calif., while Miller and guitarist Jon Howell (also of Kowloon Walled City) live in the Bay Area, and singer Mike Minnick (of Curl Up and Die) lives in Chicago.

“The four of us have never been in the same room at the same time,” says Breckenridge.

Usually, either Breckenridge will start with a drum idea or Miller will start a song with a bass idea, then the two will send files back and forth to build the rhythm section of the song. From there, they book studio time in their respective cities. Once Howell and Miller get the guitar and bass tracks recorded on the West Coast, they send the song to Chicago where Minnick records vocals. Then it’s back to sunny Oakland, where Scott Evans mixes everything at Antisleep Audio.

“It’s weird,” Breckenridge admits. “That’s totally the point. Let’s make something absurd. Let’s not worry about playing shows with this stuff. Let’s just make it as ridiculous

N O C T U R N A L

Scott Conner – who for the last 18 years has been the sole force behind Xasthur – was one of the pioneers of what is conveniently called “one-man black metal.” He and other artists – such as Leviathan, Nortt, and Vinterriket – picked up the thread that began with Burzum’s self-titled debut – long torturous songs focusing on isolation and despair – and brought it deep into the American underground.

sound; the new record is a testament to that.

The songs are much more dynamic, spacious, and there are a lot of death-y brutal parts in the songs that feel very cathartic to play.”

While on tour this summer, the band teamed up with Boston’s sludgy doom heavyweights Fórn for the Northwest dates and Oakland’s crack grind outfit Augurs for the California leg. Usnea’s comfort on the road make them sought-after road dogs.

“This was definitely the most fun tour we’ve done yet,” says Cory. “It was mostly familiar territory being that we have traversed the West Coast before in this band – as well as in other bands previously – so it was a lot of reuniting with old friends and fans, and a lot of ridiculous partying. We went swimming at a bunch of different beaches all up and down the California coast – even a nude beach, our first time getting buck naked as a band – consumed an unbelievable quantity of burritos, day drank in cemeteries, and took advantage of California’s cheaper Tecate, and tequila and whiskey selection.”

INTERVIEW WITH SCOTT C lation and hopelessness with Xasthur’s albums and splits, above all, he valued originality and the freedom to follow his own muse, regardless of the consequences. The result is his latest project Nocturnal Poisoning, whose latest album Doomgrass is a total 180-degree shift from everything he’s done so far. It is essentially a folk album, yet in many ways, it retains the spirit and atmosphere of black metal. According to Conner, this is somewhat unintentional: “While not very much of it is ‘happy,’ I’m not trying to make something that’s more miserable than the next guy. I have a lot more to say that way. I’ve got more music and less genre to work with. If you read or listen to the words, I think it’s something that couldn’t possibly be written in a black metal song. It’s more in the ‘singer/songwriter’ style, but with an ‘anything goes’ attitude.”

The black metal community is notorious for being aggressively stringent in its demands from artists. When asked about the reception his new material is getting, Conner is surprisingly upbeat: “It’s not bad at all. I’m glad that some people have adjusted pretty well to it. I

as possible. Let’s make it something we can do when we have time, when we are motivated, from home.” Puig Destroyer released two EPs online in 2013, which received a moderate amount of attention from both grindcore and baseball fans. In August 2014, the band released “Mike Trout” – the first song off their eponymous debut full-length – and the national media took notice, including an article in Sports Illustrated. The album – which was released in September on No Sleep Records – features 20 original songs with titles such as “Wild Horse” – which is what Dodger’s announcer Vin Scully called Puig when he came up – “Trumbomb” after Mark Trumbo of the Arizona Diamondbacks, “No Hitter,” “Batflip,” and “Three True Outcomes,” which refers to the only three defense-independent events in baseball: the home run, the strike out, and the walk.

You can buy the record, but do not expect to see them live any time soon. A band that has never practiced together, that records in separate studios, with members who live

P O I S O N I N G

ONNER BY STEPHEN SIGL figured that the audience I used to have must be looking for something else by now, and I think they’re getting it for sure, or at least getting used to it. I think it’s very predictable to go from black metal into something minimalist, or shoegaze, or whatever, but I also think there’s definitely been some disappointment in my not taking that safe route. So it’s been a nice change for some listeners, while some others don’t know what the hell I’m doing.”

The instrumentation for Nocturnal Poisoning is traditional and Conner adheres to a conventional approach to the genre while mixing in his own musical eccentricities, which now include fingerpicking and folky arrangements.

“I always insist on trying my best not to take too much of an influence from others and create a sound of my own, doing things my way, how I hear it in my head and how I interpret it. For the past four or five years, on and off, I’ve tried to learn whatever I can from some players like Merle Watson, Doc Watson, Jerry Garcia, Tony Rice, plus a lot of ‘60s and ‘70s music, but then I start playing a lot of things that I learn all wrong.” For Conner, musical

in different states is not a band that tours, at least not yet. Breckenridge says, “If at some point, we decide we want to pick a few songs and play a show, we might try to do that, but it’s really not in anyone’s plans right now. It’s more important for us to have fun with this and make it be as low stress and as little effort as possible.”

influences are just guideposts to “picking and seeing possibilities.”

Despite having been a one-man project, Xasthur had outside contributors, and Malefic – Conner’s pseudonym – appeared on albums by other artists, most notably with Sunn O))) and black metal supergroup Twilight. Though his new musical direction suggest a more traditional collaborative approach, Conner is reticent to consider it: “Collaborating isn’t going to turn what I do into a fully operational, real band. I’d rather make a flier that says, ‘Guitarist Wanted’ than one that says, ‘Collaborator Wanted.’ I’ve been satisfied and enjoyed working with the vocalist I’ve got [Robert N.] on a handful of tracks when he’s available, which isn’t exactly collaborating, as I’ve known him about half my life. I’m not too into collaborations in music, period. A lot of collaborations I got involved with went bad, weren’t what they were supposed to be, or left something to be desired. I believe in working hard and building your own music without attaching a bigger name to it. People should make their own music [so] outrageous or of a high enough quality that it becomes a stepping stone, and of course, so should I.”

K R O K O D I L I N T E RV I E W W I T H G U I TA R I S T D A N I E L P. C A RT E R B Y N I C H O L A S S E N I O R up the Fibonacci sequence as far as the I-Ching would allow, which is up to 55. Each painting is actually a palimpsest: two separate paintings on top of each other. The first is a quick rough sketch in watercolor and ink to lay down all the ideas I want the painting to contain – lyrics, references, etc. – and then I paint the final image over the top, so that everything is there within the layers, just beneath the surface. It might not be visible, but it’s there in essence. The final images contain characters and references to cultures from all over the world, from Berber women to Russian prison gangs.

What inspired you to name the record after the Hebrew word for “serpent”?

It all stems from the stuff I’ve mentioned above.

The title was actually part of a chapter heading in

a book called “Inner Paths to Outer Space.” As far as those ideas making it into the songs, we have a track called “Reptilia Familiar” which references it via a tenuous nod to David Bowie’s “Gene Genie.” The track “Sobek” references the Egyptian crocodile god, and also Apophis, the Egyptian snake in the constant battle with Ra, which is a battle between light and darkness.

Is Krokodil a side project, or more of a full time gig?

This all came about through a drunken conversation amongst friends. We wrote some songs and became a band. Each and every one of us has other bands and commitments. That means we can’t always function like a regular band starting out would, but then we are also lucky that we are all experienced and have paid our dues. We

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don’t feel the need to prove that to anyone. We are fortunate enough to be able to choose [to do] things that might not be an option for a brand new band with people who haven’t been around the track once or twice already.

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15

HAMMERHEAD

done has always been far removed from the mainstream. That hasn’t changed.

We are back in the same city. So, the band gets more focus. That’s leading to new songs. But it has very little to do with any scene.”

I N T E R V I E W W I T H V O C A L I S T / G U I TA R I S T PA U L S A N D E R S B Y H U T C H

Hammerhead was spawned from the desolation of Fargo, N.D. Besides the obvious Coen Brothers reference, it’s hard to think of anything related to North Dakota. Hammerhead – despite their seemingly culturally barren birthplace – has developed an invigorating,

unique brand of heavy punk.

The Contortionist has traded their technical deathcore roots for the progressive metal route, but they have managed to retain their loyal fan base.

On the eve of releasing their new album Language, vocalist Mike Lessard shares his experience joining the band and writing the album.

I don’t think it’s a conscious effort as much as a natural progression. We’re all still fairly young, so we are still evolving as musicians; that influence[s] the music we produce. As an artist – or even a person who looks to grow – you have to step outside your comfort zone and adventure into new spaces.

Why did you to join The Contortionist despite being in another excellently received band, Last Chance to Reason?

It was a series of fortunate and unfortunate events that led me to join The Contortionist. I was filling in for the band for a short period of time. During that time, due to multiple reasons, Last Chance to Reason became incapable of being a full-time project. It all fell into place after that.

How was collaborating with longtime Between the Buried and Me producer Jamie King? How did he influence the record?

I have worked with Jamie in the past and knew it’d be beneficial to work with him on this record. He just has such a great ear for where everything needs to be. I honestly can’t say enough good things about Jamie. He’s a brilliant producer, engineer, and person.

Language is drastically different from your past releases. What drives the band to constantly evolve?

The sequencing of songs can make or break an album. Did you plan to have these songs in this order?

It started with us writing without any

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“When we started playing in Fargo, there was no scene,” vocalist and guitarist Paul Sanders explains. “The music we created was inspired by movies, TV shows, art, and records. What we’ve

Regardless of geography, their sound fit in with the miscreant bands on Minneapolis label Amphetamine Reptile where Hammerhead eventually moved.

The label nurtured bands such as Helmet, Melvins, Cosmic Psychos, Cows, and Boss Hogg, and became notorious for their Dope Guns ‘n Fucking vinyl series. Hammerhead released two fulllengths and a bevy of 7”s through the label – and various releases through other labels – between 1990 and 1996.

As they return 18 years later with Global Depression, the noise rock champs are still emitting enormous sound with

a lo-fi approach. Though there is also a thread of melody.

“I’ve heard that people say our songs are melodic and they seem surprised,” Sanders says. “I think, ‘Well, of course they are.’ We grew up listening to all kinds of stuff, like The Who, Miles Davis, Hüsker Dü, Flipper, and Kraftwerk.

We didn’t just put on a Black Flag record one day and stop there.”

Point taken. Hammerhead was also infamous for their live show. Sanders explains, “When we play shows, there are some times when it feels like the band is turning into an animal, and then it starts hunting, and then it finds its prey, chases it down and kills it. Then it eats it. That feeling is still there. When that feeling leaves, we promise to stop playing. But it might take a while.”

THE CONTORTIONIST PHOTOGRAPHY BY NATHAN KATSIAFICAS

INTERVIEW WITH VOCALIST MIKE LESSARD BY RIDGE BRIEL

preconceived order to things. As the process continued and I developed [a] lyrical concept, we started to piece the puzzle together. I think the biggest factor in it flowing as well as it does was everyone’s ability to adapt throughout.

What are your thoughts on the ever-

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changing face of metal? Does it mirror the future of The Contortionist?

I don’t view the constant change as a bad thing. It breathes new life into the scene.

As for our future, I’m unsure of what the future holds, but hopefully it’s filled with us sharing music with people who enjoy it.

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NIGHTBRINGER PHOTOGRAPHY BY JOLEE BURGESS

INTERVIEW VOCALIST/GUITARIST/BASSIST NAAS ALCAMETH BY JAMES ALVAREZ

Nightbringer – the acclaimed Colorado based occultists and black metal philosophes – have a new album out this fall via Season of Mist. The record, Ego Dominus Tuus, is less an album than a flat out metaphysical assault on the senses.

Whirlwind tremolo guitars, pummeling double bass drums, mind altering atmospheric passages coupled with harrowing vocal performances and epic song arrangements. The album’s title – which translates from Latin to “I am your Lord” – is more than fitting. I don’t know which ancient Babylonian deity would blast this album during ritualistic sacrifices, but I’m pretty sure it’s a gnarly one.

“The title – at the surface level – represents a decree from worshiped to worshiper,” vocalist, guitarist, and bassist Naas Alcameth says, “it also becomes a self-revelation. The dynamic between

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worshiped and worshiper, and the vast distance between these poles, resolves.

The album title was inspired by a poem

by Yeats [“Per Amica Silentia Lunae”] and is based on his conception of one’s daimon or higher self – one’s ‘otherness’ – a concept which is central to this path of ‘self-becoming.’” W.B. Yeats’ séance-induced writings of the early 20th Century urged readers to lower society’s superficial “masks,” and embrace the hidden extremities of our nature he described as a spiritual opposite, in order to find our superior selves.

“The entire album is based on a hierarchical trinity that represents the classic Western Hermetic process known as the Great Work [aka ‘magnum opus’].

Each aspect of this triune is represented cabalistically by letter; each comprises a part of a certain divine name, which

sums up the totality of the process in a singular cipher. The triune resolves to a ‘monad.’” This Magnum opus – or life’s goal of alchemists – yearns to not only transform base metals into gold, but usher in a spiritual transmutation between humans and the monad – which is Greek for “divine” – as well. Uniting the distant poles between worshipped and worshipper. PHEW. That’s heavy, Doc. Aside from the album’s weighty philosophical themes, it’s also a sonic tour de force. Mr. Alcameth provides some insight into the music on their new album: What was the writing process like for this record? Did the two split EPs you’ve released since your last fulllength help you focus on Ego…?

It was exhausting, yet very rewarding.

Yes, we each composed our respective tracks individually, but with the overall concepts and visions in mind. At this point, we all understand what Nightbringer is almost innately, so we have implicit trust in one another regarding these things. However, [guitarist and drummer] VJS and I have begun collaborating on tracks, and so far it is coming together beautifully. For me personally, I would say the splits did indeed help me to get focused. I wrote all the material for both splits and recorded and played everything myself, sans drums of course.

I really try to push myself musically, and I feel this really helped to sharpen my skills both on the technical end and in regards to composition for Ego. How important are the synth and orchestral elements to Nightbringer’s sound? “Salvation is the Son of Levi-

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athan” is the least “metal” song of the album, but stands out.

It is just as integral as any other musical element. Approaching synth elements can be very tricky. You walk a fine line between what sounds natural and tasteful and what quickly becomes overly theatrical and “plastic,” as you find with a lot of the “symphonic black metal” acts. We have never seen ourselves as a symphonic band, as we do not feel this element is predominant over the other elements.

“Salvation…” was a very special and personal track for me as it is a memento to our fallen brother and Nightbringer compatriot Alabas [RIP, 2013]. I composed and recorded this track to be as such and, naturally, much emotion was poured into its creation, so I am glad to see it is also evocative for others.

Nightbringer is regarded as well-read, drawing inspiration from occult, philosophical, and literary sources. Do you ever take inspiration from world events?

We are mostly ambivalent towards the modern political world at large. We do not, for the most part, feel Nightbringer is the appropriate vehicle for these thoughts and emotions as they are too “chained to the earth.” However, we will indeed touch upon a few very specific things that do relate to the more immediate situation of the “man of tradition” and his displacement in this Dark Age, [and] the Kali-Yuga, in the future [Kali-Yuga, the dark/vice age of Hindu scriptures that ends in a fiery apocalypse that cleanses the Earth].

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GIDEON

A BY S M A L D AW N

INTERVIEW WITH VOCALIST/GUITARIST CHARLES ELLIOTT BY JULIA NEUMAN

I N T E R V I E W W I T H D R U M M E R J A K E S M E L L E Y B Y M O R G A N Y. E VA N S

Blending technical musicianship with massive groove, Obsolescence is Abysmal Dawn’s most captivating album to date.

The Los Angeles quartet’s frontman and primary songwriter Charles Elliott gave us the word on their creative process, and the story behind their blistering cover of Dissection’s “Night’s Blood.”

Münzner for his guest solo on “Perfecting Slavery”?

It was awesome! Christian is a great guy and player, and I’ve been wanting him to play on something of ours for a while. I basically told him what key it was in and what scale he’d probably like to use, and he sent me back a shredding solo in no time!

Maybe it’s the rule of three. But three years after the release of their last album Gideon is back with Calloused, their third for Facedown Records.

Holed up for a month, they produced a technical dark masterpiece that’s not afraid of failure and struggle. In fact, it fueled it.

Obsolescence sounds much more expansive than your previous records, both in production and songwriting. Some parts are almost anthemic, such as the melodic middle passage in “Human Obsolescence.” What brought about this shift?

I think maybe the songs are slightly more thought out since there was so much demoing involved this time. Literally every song was demoed completely before it was finally recorded. I think that allowed us to really take a step back and to see where we wanted to go with the album. We even had the track order finished before we went in to record everything. We got to play around with the production of the record a bit more too, since we had more time in the studio this time around. John Haddad did a great job mixing the album and I think it may even be his best work.

I’m not sure what really brought about the shift in our sound, but the goal is always to do something a bit different. None of our albums are the same, and each one is a step forward for us. I feel like that’s the point of making a record and if you can’t do that, you might as well not put out anything.

Do you have any funny stories from the recording sessions?

I don’t know if anything funny happened.

Overall, it was a very painstaking process, since we recorded off and on over the span of 11 months, basically. I guess I did have a breakdown towards the beginning of the session, and I see the humor in it slightly now. There’s always at least one of those every album, it seems. I basically was having a shit day and decided to have a few beers while tracking guitars. Those few beers turned into more, until I just couldn’t record anymore. That only happened once, but I needed that.

You’re releasing your third album soon. How does this release represent who you are today?

It’s hard to believe we’re on number three already. I think the new album shows that we’ve all grown and matured as musicians, and also as individuals through these past years. We’ve applied more dynamics and some new styles of playing, while preserving the roots of our original sound. We’ve also shared personal struggles and how we pushed through them to find that going through struggle makes us stronger in the long run. We’re all very excited to bring everyone a record that hits harder musically [and] lyrically, and at the same time, bring some new things to the table.

What factors led to the greater vocal range on this record? You really switch things up quite a bit, creating a lot of different textures.

Thank you. It’s a couple of things, really. I tried learning some different vocal techniques that helped greatly with my screams. I also tried to sing slightly higher overall, so I had more places to go with my vocals too. In the past, I sang mostly in a lower register and the only place to go from there was up. On this one, I’m in the medium-low range for the most part, so I can bounce between super low and high.

I thought there was a bit more urgency and aggressiveness in doing it that way. I sang like that on the Death II All tour and liked it. I thought I’d give it a try for this album. Using a condenser microphone as opposed to a dynamic mic helped capture the overtones in my vocals better. There are whispers, speaking parts, and actual vocal melodies on this one. I just wanted to expand on my vocals and push myself, and I did what I set out to do.

How was it working with Christian

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You’ve always included lyrical themes of non-existence. To what extent do Abysmal Dawn’s lyrics reflect your own views, and have these views changed over time?

My lyrics very much reflect my own views on the world, people, and my life experiences. I wouldn’t say I’m a miserable person, but I am very cynical. How I think has changed over time, but it basically stays the same. I believe humanity is capable of great things, but we mostly just tear each other apart. Unfortunately, I see more evil and hypocrisy in the world than beauty most of the time.

It’s a bold move to cover Dissection, especially “Night’s Blood.” How much time did it take and how did you add your own flair?

The funny thing is that it was an extremely last minute decision. We wanted to do a cover song and [drummer] Scott [Fuller] suggested we do that one. I actually wanted to do “Unhallowed,” but we both agreed that “Night’s Blood” could fit our style a bit more. I think we stayed pretty faithful to the original for the most part. We tried to make it a bit faster, and we tune down of course. Some of the vocals still have the black metal vibe, but I do about half of them with my death metal growl. Some of the timing on the vocals was sort of hard to pick out on the original. In the end, I just did what I thought sounded best. The original is a bit loose in timing in general, which I didn’t really realize until I tried to replicate it. As raw as that album is, it’s still one of my favorites of all time.

What was the band’s headspace going into Calloused?

We wanted to write a more creative album that really pushed us mentally and physically. A lot of the lyrics came from ideas that trigger my brain to push myself harder in life. Whether that be using painfully hard times as mental fuel or just reminding yourself that if you really believe and you work hard enough at a goal, it is achievable. You can’t be afraid of failure. There is a lot of struggle mentioned on the record, and how you can use that struggle to strengthen yourself. The only limits in life are the ones we put there ourselves.

So follow your dreams.

Do you feel you are hitting your stride as a live band?

We love the relationship we have with our fans, and we are very hungry to get back out there. There is always room for improvement as musicians [and] performers, and we will continue to bring it with everything we have. We genuinely love what we do and we are so grateful to have people who love to lose their minds with us every night.

You identify as a Christian band, but have fans who are both believers and non-believers. Why does Gideon have appeal across the divide of faiths?

We have always been very big on having relationships with people rather

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than trying to force-feed our beliefs to them. Music is a great way to express who you are, so we write about a lot of our personal thoughts and issues. I feel like that’s what makes us diverse as a “Christian” band. We talk about whatever we are going through in our lives. We have songs about overcoming mental battles, family issues, missing our hometown, following our dreams, pushing yourself through struggle, spiritual battles we’ve gone through, growing up, etc. A lot of people can relate to our songs, and I think that makes it easy to connect with them on a personal level.

How did Will Putney’s production add to the power and focus of this release?

My favorite part about the studio was preproduction during the first week.

Will went through every song and put his twist on things. Will and Randy [LeBoeuf from The Machine Shop] definitely pushed me to be a better musician and opened my mind to a lot of new ideas. Love those guys!

“Prison Eyes” has some dark lyrics and that neck-snap groove in the opening riff. What inspired that song?

“Prison Eyes” was written about a hard time I was going through. The last three years were very tough. A series of unfortunate events that led to the darkest time in my life. A lot of the pain hit really close to home and it really affected my father. My father is my hero and my best friend, so watching him hurt was very hard on me. Not to mention being on tour away from home through most of this time. Those three years changed me. So many growing pains that hardened me, and it felt like they hit all at once. I have a tendency to overthink things, and that made it harder. I was looking in the mirror one day and I imagined myself as a stranger. I remember asking myself, “Is this who or where you thought you would be five years ago?” At that point, I questioned if I could trust the man in the mirror looking back at me. I felt like I was losing it. That’s where “Prison Eyes” came from. So yes, it’s a very dark song, but completely honest and personal. If anyone has ever felt the weight of depression, just know that there is a God bigger than any of your dark thoughts and problems. That’s where I found hope, and I chose to use that time in my life to strengthen me.

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the new album featuring Sabbath Hex, The Devil’s Whip & Mystical Knives

ORANGE GOBLIN

Back from the Abyss “They've cranked on the volume, gritted up the rhythms, soaked the riffs in acid” - Metal Hammer

available on cd, limited digipak, & double vinyl

Transient

The Divination of Antiquity

WINTERFYLLETH

XERATH

“Krieg is all about mood. And that mood is suffocating and bleak.”

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Eight vitriolic new anthems!

“Winterfylleth's take on black metal is as cold as any Norwegian son.” - Pitchfork

“Xerath gets the balance right in mashing symphonic arrangements and metal into seamless songs.”.” - Terrorizer

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B R A N T B J O R K & T H E L OW D E S E R T P U N K BA N D

INTERVIEW WITH VOCALIST/GUITARIST BRANT BJORK CHAD HENSLEY

Brant Bjork is a desert stoner rock luminary. In 1987, at the age of 14 – while attending high school in Palm Desert, CA – he formed the band Kyuss with Josh Homme and John Garcia. Bjork was the drummer and a significant innovational force for Kyuss until his departure from the band in 1994. During this same year, Bjork produced Fu Manchu’s debut album No One Riders for Free and joined the band as their drummer, where he remained until 2001. During this period of time, he

started a record label where he continued developing his skills as a producer.

In addition to producing, Bjork began playing both electric guitar and bass, as well as recording solo albums. Spring forward to the fall of 2014 and Bjork is ready to unload his latest project Brant Bjork and the Low Desert Punk Band’s new album Black Power Flower on Napalm Records.

About to release their seventh studio album entitled Coma Witch, The Acacia Strain are ready to pummel fans once again, this time with a beefcake new lineup that includes guitarists Devin Shidaker (ex-Oceano) and Richard Gomez (ex-Molotov Solution).

disorders. I spent a lot of time forcing myself to stay awake to write lyrics, or forcing myself awake in the middle of the night to write lyrics from a sort of “perspective.” The mind is its most creative when it is tired, especially right before you are about to fall asleep.

Writing was great. We got a taste of what Richie and Devin could bring to the table in writing [the] Above/Below [EP]. It was an extremely creative process where everyone had equal input; something we haven’t felt in a long time.

Despite your publicized rivalry with Emmure, you two will be touring the U.S. this winter on the aptly named Eternal Enemies tour. Has the hatchet been buried?

Has it been publicized? Was there ever a rivalry? I don’t pay attention to that type of shit. If there was ever a hatchet to be buried, it got buried years ago.

A lot of Internet sites need to update their info. Did I answer most of this question with questions? Are you going to answer this question back?

What inspired your lyrical aggression when writing Coma Witch? How was working with newcomers Devin and Richard on this album?

The record is about sleep and sleep

“On this record, I play guitar and I sing,” Bjork elaborates. “Musically speaking,

Where does the name Coma Witch come from? How does the album art correlate with the title?

It is about dreams, night terrors, sleep paralysis, insomnia, and everything in between. It’s about what happens to a human being when he has all of these problems and is forced into a coma; trapped inside his own nightmares, unable to just wake up to escape. Being haunted eternally by the “witch,” if you will. As far as the artwork is concerned, we went about it the same way

W I L WA G N E R

this is a solo record in the sense that I wrote and arranged all the songs. But, as a recorded performance, it is very much a band effort. Being a multi-instrumentalist, I don’t have a favorite instrument to play but, right now, I’m very excited to be back on the guitar and singing.

[However], I did produce this recording and it was recorded at my Jalamanta Studios in Joshua Tree, Calif.”

my sound, and my spirit.” A sand-laden spirit fused with hot tarmac and desert plains. “Growing up in the desert let me completely pursue my interests, which were simply skateboarding and music,” continues Bjork. “There is a duality of energy in the desert that I haven’t experienced anywhere else. It’s extreme.

It’s surreal and simultaneously sobering and intoxicating.”

Black Power Flower is a potent, funky fusion of fuzzed out guitars, bass-heavy grooves, and bits of retro acid rock woven together with Bjork’s belting vocals in his Cheech (from Cheech and Chong, that is) Marin style voice.

Somewhere in the sweltering, sandy trenches of desert heaviness, Black Power Flower melts together the best grains of early Kyuss and Fu Manchu to create something fresh, metallic, and melodic sure to enthrall even the most hardened stoner rock heads with its special strain of low desert punk.

Bjork points out that “Low Desert Punk represents many things, all directly and indirectly relating to my style,

When asked to expound on why desert stoner rock continues to endure and evolve almost 30 years after its conception, Bjork says it is “because its roots are deep and firmly planted. It’s like a child who had good parenting, grew up, and can take care of himself. Although someone thought to call it desert stoner rock, it doesn’t change the fact that it was and still is [the result of] musicians and bands who were influenced by the sound and spirit of the great rock bands of the ‘60s and ‘70s combined with ‘80s punk rock DIY approach to maintaining their ‘effort.’ In short, it is people keeping rock music alive. If it lives, it evolves.”

TH E AC AC IA STR AI N

INTERVIEW WITH VOCALIST VINCENT BENNETT BY RIDGE BRIEL

we normally do. I gave Justin [Kamerer; Angryblue] the lyrics and concept, and he took it from there. Leaving it open to interpretation is my favorite way to come about artwork. So, I guess you would have to ask him.

What inspired the creation of the 28- minute long “Observer” on the album’s second disc?

We wanted to write a song that complimented the first person perspective of seeing Chris [Cowburn] smacking drums while we’re playing though; it picks my energy up pretty quick!

PHOTOGRAPHY BY ANDY JOHNSON

Do you write separately for your two projects?

Most of the time, yes. A lot of songs have riffs and rhythms to them that kind of demand a band straight away, while others might just be a couple of chords and some words. If I’m ever not sure, then we always learn the song, but I do try to think of Smith Street and me solo as two different things.

I N T E R V I E W W I T H W I L WA G N E R B Y D A N E J A C K S O N

When he’s not busy fronting The Smith Street Band, vocalist Wil Wagner is an accomplished singer/ songwriter who weaves his thoughts and stories into intricately composed acoustic songs. His solo offerings are stripped down, trading the frenzied intensity of Smith Street for something more personal.

How did you evolve from a solo artist to a lead singer?

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We started the band as a backing band for me solo basically, then it quickly became a more collaborative thing.

I guess as the band plays more and more, my solo songs and the Smith Street songs become different things and it gives me another outlet. I think I’m still learning to be a lead singer.

I’m almost more comfortable with an acoustic, as I can just play in time with myself and improvise stuff a bit more. I do love turning around and

Is it easier to tell complex and personal stories – such as the song “Laika” – with an acoustic guitar than with a full band?

For songs like [“Laika”], definitely. It’s pretty basic and keeps a steady pace, and is far more about the words than the chords, so that was always going to be an acoustic song. And playing it live, I can drop down and pick up where I want to rather than going along with the band, so I can try to add more feeling to the song that way. But there are other songs that are equally wordy that need a band behind them; it’s just what works for

NEW NOISE MAGAZINE

the record with a third person perspective. That’s why it is on a completely separate disk, it is Coma Witch as seen [by] an outsider.

Any updates for those who don’t follow you on Twitter or Instagram?

When I am home from tour, all I do is post “Monday Night RAW” live tweets on my Twitter, and pictures of my dogs on my Instagram. each song I guess!

What was that one moment you knew you had to be a musician?

I played “Anywhere I Lay My Head”

by Tom Waits to my music class when I was about 13. I was so nervous and my hands were shaking so much that I couldn’t play guitar for the first half of the song, so I did it a cappella.

But when I first started strumming the guitar halfway through, felt that dynamic shift, and started singing louder, something clicked in me and I knew that I wasn’t gonna be a footy player anymore!

Do you plan to do more solo projects, or is Smith Street your main focus?

While Smith Street is my main focus, I still write a lot of solo songs and am on a solo tour at the moment!

I recorded a new acoustic EP with Jeff [Rosenstock] in New York after we finished mixing the new record.

That’ll pop up online soon, I’m sure!

I’ll just squeeze things in when I have time, but I’d love to play some solo shows overseas and try and get some stuff released internationally! Who knows?!

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THE COLOR & SOUND Peace Of Mind 12” EP

REVELATION

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Follow up to their Spring Tour EP and Black NumBErs debut Peace Of Mind.

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OR ANGE GOBLIN

O B I T UA RY

I N T E R V I E W W I T H V O C A L I S T B E N WA R D B Y J U L I A N E U M A N

The British metallers in Orange Goblin have spanned quite a bit of genre territory over the years, and have been labeled stoner rock, heavy blues, biker rock, and more. Singer Ben Ward has set the record straight: Orange Goblin is a heavy metal band, and that’s it. Their newest record Back from the Abyss is convincing evidence.

How does Back from the Abyss fit into the band’s trajectory?

I’d say it’s just the next logical step.

It’s not a million miles from the last album, but I think the songs are stronger and better written, and I believe the production is better as well. We’ve managed to capture everything that was great on Eulogy and add to it so it’s a bigger, fiercer beast. If anything, I’d say that these songs have a harder edge to them. Eulogy had a few softer moments, but this one is right in your face from the start, and I think every song will be a barnstormer to play live!

Has the writing process changed since the beginning? Is it more comfortable now?

You’d think so, but in true Orange Goblin style, we left everything until the last minute again. We seem to work better under pressure, so despite having every intention of writing material on the road last year as we were touring for nine months, we didn’t do anything until January this year and then booked the studio to record in April. The music all came together in the last week of rehearsals and the lyrics were written as we recorded, but it always works out better for us that way. I often find that the best melodies and lyrics are the first things that come to me, as they are the most natural.

What new life experiences influenced Back from the Abyss?

The whole “doing the band as a job” thing is still quite huge for us. This meant that last year, we were away from our wives and children for a very long time. That was tough, but we appreciate that to do a job like this, you have to be prepared to make sacrifices.

I’m not sure if any of the new experiences went directly into the writing of the new material, but the album title is certainly a reference to us doing something new. It’s like a statement that we’ve been into the unknown – the abyss – and here we are, ready to do it all again!

What have you done differently now

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I N T E RV I E W W I T H V O C A L I S T J O H N TA R D Y B Y H U T C H

that Orange Goblin is a full time band?

Toured the album! We got to tour all over the world to support A Eulogy for the Damned. We toured with bands like Down, Clutch, and Airbourne, and we learned so much from all of them. To see how they operate on a daily basis was inspiring and definitely showed us how to be more professional. We went to Australia and played the Soundwave Festival, which was an incredible experience. We spent three months touring Europe, where we had a few problems, but from that we learned that the band is also very resilient. We have to treat the band as our business now rather than our hobby, because we want it to grow and become successful.

For someone who started a band that scared me when I first heard them, John Tardy is one laid back dude. Tardy is the founder – with his brother drummer Don Tardy, and guitarist Trevor Peres – of death metal titans Obituary. Regarded as the first band to use the now nearly ubiquitous guttural vocal style, Obituary was at the forefront of the Florida death metal scene. 30 years later, they still sound like steel through flesh. Obituary remains tight despite a hiatus, rotating members, and two big label changes.

It feels like a big event to get a new album, but Tardy plays it down. “We have never been a band that feels we have to do an album every year or on any schedule. It depends on when we feel like writing songs.”

Orange Goblin’s genre has always been a point of contention. What genre are you guys?

We don’t worry about stuff like that anymore. We’ve been called stoner rock, biker rock, doom, heavy blues, desert rock, metal, and God knows what else. We are just a heavy metal band and that’s it.

But they must get anxious and boiling with new ideas. “We do,” he admits.

“We started this album three years ago. We got busy, did some shows, got off track.” His casual approach is admirable and belies the fevered chaos of making and selling an album. Yet, Tardy views this prolonged process as an asset to the dynamic of Inked in Blood. “We got together a year ago and wrote this album. Some of these songs are three years old, two years old. I think it’s cool to add variety to the album. We just do things when we want to do them.”

Your band just celebrated your 20th anniversary. Do you think it’s a rougher climate for bands starting out now?

Well, it’s certainly a long, hard road, and you have to be prepared to work hard and stick at it. You need a thick skin and to stay focused on what you want to achieve. Personally, I think it’s easier to get successful today, as there are so many means to spread your music worldwide so quickly. When we started, it was all done by word of mouth and good old fashioned tape trading. (Kids, tapes were old cassettes with recorded music on them!) The flip side of that is that there is no money to be earned in record sales any more, as they barely exist compared to the old days. Bands have to be prepared to go out on tour, play live, and sell merch if they want to make money!

How do you listen to music these days?

The best way for me is to listen to CDs driving in the car. That’s when I can be alone, turn it right up, and really get into an album. This year has been a really good year for music, and I’ve had the chance to listen to a load of great new stuff!

Who Obituary is has just been elevated. Besides long time tech Kenny Andrews stepping into lead guitarist shoes, Obituary also now boasts bassist Terry Butler as full time member.

Butler started Massacre, and played in Six Feet Under, and on two of Death’s classic LPs, Spiritual Healing and Leprosy. Tardy relishes in this lineup, enthusing, “We are as happy as we have ever been. We started in 1984, in high school, as Executioner. We had a lot of good luck fall our way.” But Butler joining is beyond lucky. The Tardy brothers and Peres have been good friends with Butler since their high school days. Tardy notes, “It feels like he has been here all along; same with Kenny: he has tech’d and filled in on bass for festival runs. He has been around, but [since joining], he has gone the extra mile. He hits our sound perfectly. He plays old solos as close as he can with a little manipulation. Kenny is the perfect mixture of technical and style.”

was overthought,” Tardy explains, regarding the incorporation of the two new members. “Trevor has ideas. Don plays along. I give my ideas. We just plow through it. We like to get 80 percent of a song within minutes.” The speed of creativity matches the music, and the straightforward approach is reflected in the recording of Inked in Blood. The band did all of the album’s production at Tardy’s house, and he lists each instrument and how native it is to the recording, then adds, “You’d be surprised to open up the ProTools sessions and see how little we did. We turned the equipment on and just played. Nothing special done, no sound replacement. We sound like our practices. We like it.”

Despite his history of spawning inaudible lyrics, these days it’s easier to understand Tardy’s words. He concedes the choice of a guttural vocal style was a relic of that time, and laughs, “Listening back to those records, it’s like if I showed up at your parents’ house and your mom pulled out pictures of you in grade school.”

He smirks and recalls, “I wouldn’t write complete sets of lyrics. I could make it up or just scream.”

Obituary could not happier to be working with Relapse. After Roadrunner and Candlelight, Obituary considered releasing the album on their own, even acquiring $60,000 through Kickstarter. Tardy would have been happy to continue down the DIY path. “We thought long and hard [about] how to release this. We wanted to do it on our own, our own label. But when you factor in worldwide [distribution] and marketing and currencies and language barriers… It becomes mind boggling.”

“We got introduced to the Relapse guys. I was blown away,” he continues.

“They were so cool. They were open to do anything. I invited them to our studio, and five guys showed up at my house that week. They are excited and willing to work with us. We use their engine and [distribution]; we own the music. We couldn’t be happier. They know what they are doing [and give] professional answers to questions within minutes. They sat in the studio cranking the album, grinning ear to ear. You can’t fake the passion or emotions they showed.”

“It’s still three of us writing; nothing

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MILKING THE STARS: A RE-IMAGINING OF LAST PATROL

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Featuring 4 new songs + expanded and exclusive live versions of “Last Patrol” and “Three Kingfishers”!

New sounds, new vocals, different instruments and arrangements make for a weird 1960’s vibe totally apart from “Last Patrol”!

NOV 18 !

Available as LTD Digipak CD, LTD colored Vinyl, CD and Download!

A MUST HAVE for all Monster Magnet fans!

Low Desert Punk

A perfect blend of Stoner, Rock, Punk and Funk!

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NPR_NewNoise_Sep14.indd 1

Available as LTD Digipak CD, LTD Vinyl and Download!

For fans of NIGHTWISH & WITHIN TEMPTATION!

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The exceptional Brant Bjork (Ex-KYUSS, Vista Chino) has once again pushed us out of the traditional Rock box with paramount creativity.

The finest piece of music art from the exceptional Liv Kristine (Leaves’ Eyes, Theatre Of Tragedy)!

Feat. DORO PESCH on the track “Stronghold of Angels”!

NOV 4 !

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19:54

THE DIRTY NIL

I N T E R V I E W W I T H B A S S I S T D AV E N A R D I B Y J O H N B . M O O R E

You guys formed years ago in high school. When did you decide to put more focus on the band?

We’ve been a band for about eight years, but I think the real decision to take things a bit more seriously came about three years ago. We were readying the Fuckin’ Up Young 7” and it felt like the first real record we had. I think when people kind of latched onto it we knew we had something worth taking seri-

ously.

What was your sound like back then?

Any embarrassing covers you will admit to playing when you started out?

There haven’t really been any instant dramatic changes over the years. I think we progressively got more interested in playing faster and louder music as the band got tighter and we became more proficient on our instruments. As for covers, when a band starts out, they

The time is absolutely right for Texas in July. The band is from the ever-fertile metalcore breeding ground of Lancaster, Pa., and is comprised of five very talented musicians who have produced three releases thus far. The last piece of the puzzle was bringing in vocalist JT Cavey.

His impassioned vocals and intelligent lyrics give the band a versatile frontman who takes Texas in July to the next level.

The band’s fourth release, Bloodwork, is a fantastic showcase of how impressive metalcore can and should be.

the band, and the passion just came with time. Finally performing content that I was a part of [creating] has made all of this much easier.

What’s behind the album’s title? What themes are explored on the record?

Bloodwork represents the literal blood that has been shed as a result of the success of this band, and the physical pain we sometimes endure. Bloodwork can also be seen as the undeniable life force that needs to remain vibrant if you want to succeed in anything. You’ll find themes of these trials and tribulations all throughout Bloodwork, with each song leaving you with something different to take away. The artwork shows imagery of life and death, because we all experience different obstacles at different stages in life.

What inspired the passionate track “Sweetest Poison”?

This track stands for the purge of anything we attempt to rid ourselves of. This could be a lifestyle, addiction, poisonous actions, etc. The idea is almost like an epiphany and a desire for self-improvement, hence the chorus: “I’m letting go,

Has the transition to being the band’s full time vocalist been rocky?

It was definitely weird at the start!

Warped Tour 2013 was not only my first tour, but my seventh show ever as a musician. I was figuring out how to fill the shoes as the band’s new singer, and I was learning how to be a frontman in general. So [as] you can imagine, it was a little rocky for the first couple of months. The other thing I had to learn was making the songs my own. Singing someone else’s lyrics and being passionate is more difficult than I thought it would be. I eventually realized that now I am as much as a member as the rest of

THE COLOR AND SOUND

I N T E R V I E W W I T H G U I TA R I S T N I C K S T E WA R T B Y J O H N B . M O O R E

After the smoke cleared from the wreckage of two Boston-based bands, five of the former members decided to come together to work on the type of music they really wanted to play.

Steeped in everything from Arcade Fire to the Foo Fighters, The Color and Sound play a strong mix of hum-able indie rock that reminds you that music is allowed to be fun. The band, recently signed to Black Numbers, is about to release their second EP (Peace of Mind) and is putting their first effort (Spring

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Tour EP) out on vinyl for the first time.

Can you start off by talking about how the band first came together?

The band came together through the ending of two other bands we that we were divided amongst. Ally (Mahoney), Chris (LaRocque), Joe (Aylward) and Steve (Aliperta) decided after their band ended they wanted to focus on making music that was different than anything they’d tried before, and was more in the vein of music they’d grown to like over the years. I essentially weaseled my way

usually don’t shy away from playing things that might be a little too on the nose. Covering direct influences, things like that. We had our share of those: Weezer covers, Pixies covers, etc.

directly to ask about putting out a single. We happened to have a couple songs we were looking at releasing at the time, so it made sense for a one-off pairing.

You’ve been quite busy putting out 7”s and EPs. Have you been working on these songs for a while or are they all relatively new?

It’s been a mix of both, really. Primarily, it’s new stuff. Typically, we’ll record a record once we’ve got a handful of songs, and then release them in whatever format makes sense. Smite was all pretty much brand new songs. Cinnamon – our latest 7” – is kind of an outlier. It’s an older song that we brought back, and paired with a brand new b-side to make a 7”.

Did you guys listen to any Fat Wreck bands growing up?

That definitely wasn’t our world when we were growing up. I remember hearing “Stickin’ in My Eye” by NOFX on the “Tony Hawk” soundtrack and thinking it was a cool song. But I think we all grew up pretty classic rock leaning for a long time.

How did you first connect with Fat Wreck Chords?

We had a mutual friend with Fat Mike who passed along a couple of our records to him, and he contacted us

Have you thought about putting out a full-length?

A full-length is definitely in our thoughts. It’s not something we’ve ever strived for, but it’s a goal for the future.

We’re always writing and working on new things, so when there’s a batch of songs that make sense, a full-length will come.

T E X A S I N J U LY PHOTOGRAPHY BY NATHAN KATSIAFICAS

I N T E R V I E W W I T H V O C A L I S T J T C AV E Y B Y N I C H O L A S S E N I O R

I’m starting over.”

You have a tour lined up with After the Burial, Reflections, and I Declare War. Have you toured with any of them previously?

I have not, nor has the rest of the band.

I am especially excited for this tour because I am a fan of all of these bands, and they are all heavy and technical, a general sound we have maintained since the beginning of the band. I think this tour is pretty stacked and should do well for all of us.

into the band, having been in the other band that ended because I knew they needed a second guitar player.

Peace of Mind is coming out and you are finally releasing the Spring Tour EP out on vinyl. Of the two, have you noticed a big change in the band’s sound from one release to the next?

To us, the songs sound a bit more together and the sound feels a bit more honed in on. With the first EP, we really didn’t know what we were doing and it’s very much a hodgepodge of all the different styles of music we were interested making. We sort of just tried everything. With the new EP, we’d been writing and demoing out songs since Spring Tour came out and took all the qualities of it that we’d thought really worked in those songs, and ran with those ideas until we felt like we had a more focused version of our band.

Who did you record Peace of Mind with?

Chris and Steve recorded both EP’s at the studio they’ve been running for a few years called Kennedy Studios.

Any parting words of wisdom?

Conan O’Brien finished out the last episode of “The Tonight Show” with a line that has been pulsing through my core since I heard it. I think it’s a good representation of who I am as a person, as well as what I plan to be as a musician in this scene: “…please don’t be cynical. I hate cynicism: it’s my least favorite quality and it doesn’t lead anywhere. Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get. But if you work really hard and you’re kind, amazing things will happen.”

We’ve talked about it a little and are just sort of in the beginning phases of working out new songs. Sending demos to each other, jamming a little, demoing out songs together, really just getting back into the swing of writing and trying to get some rough skeletons together.

Coming from different bands, when it comes to writing, was it decided early on what roles people would take or did that just sort of evolve?

It’s sort of evolved, and honestly is still evolving. When we started out we were jamming mostly on songs that Steve had brought in that he’d been working on for a few months prior to the band starting that we all really loved, but with the new record there was a pretty even balance between songs that Steve brought in versus songs that Chris brought in. I even brought in a rough arrangement of a song that Steve and Chris then wrote lyrics over. Moving forward we’re looking into trying all sorts of new ways to write and get inspired.

Have you started thinking about doing a full- length yet?

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AS BLOOD RUNS BLACK I N T E RV I EW WI T H GUI TAR I ST DA N SU G A RMA N B Y B RA N DON RING O

As Blood Runs Black is one of the first bands to be considered deathcore.

Alongside genre pioneers like Despised Icon, Animosity, and All Shall Perish, the band helped attach a truly brutal face to the genre with the 2006 release of their debut album Allegiance. Since then, the genre has exploded – and evolved quite a bit – but As Blood Runs Black is still around and just as violent as ever.

What have you guys been up to since the release of your last album Instinct?

We did a lot of international touring on this album cycle, which was a really cool experience for all of us, even after we moved on from our previous label, management, and booking agency. We still somehow managed to overcome that obstacle and have the most exciting tour cycle we’ve ever had. We also acquired Chris Bartholomew on vocals a little over two years ago, after Sonik [Garcia] parted ways with us. To be totally real with you, we’ve never been more confident in the band and its members; it’s definitely a breath of fresh air to

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go onstage every night knowing your boys have your back when nothing else seems to be working. We also got robbed during the recording of our new album Ground Zero for basically everything we own, and we still somehow manage to keep moving forward. Looking back, it really amazes me how many struggles we’ve overcome and how many obstacles have been thrown in our face. Somehow, we’re alive and kicking.

After all that tumult, what was the band’s mindset going into this record?

We were all going through a hell of a lot of emotional turmoil, personally and even within the band. I think that the most potent music comes out of these types of issues though, and Ground Zero is no exception. When we started writing this record, I wanted to be sure that the end result gave us everything that we put into it, and exuded the feeling of everything that was taken away from us with a hint of hope. In the face of losing everything while doing what you love most, you realize a lot about yourself. I

think that the dynamics in this record – the peaks and valleys, the colors and textures – all really work together to bring you along on this journey with us that we’ve all been living the last five years.

This album is more raw and less djenty than a lot of modern deathcore.

How did you accomplish this kind of production?

Thank you, we take that as a huge compliment considering the direction that our genre and industry seems to be moving toward. That was definitely a call that we made before going into the recording process of Ground Zero, and it’s absolutely something that developed organically through the years and years of playing with each other.

Raw aggression has kind of always been the mainstay of As Blood Runs Black’s sound, and we plan on keeping it that way. This effort was self-produced with the almighty Zack Ohren at the helm. Zack has engineered, mixed, and mastered all three of our albums at this point, so you can kind of consider him the sixth member of As Blood Runs

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Black. He’s a damn genius at what he does, and we love the process and end result with him, so why fix what ain’t broken?

Does the growth of the deathcore genre make it feel more competitive?

I really think a big part of what makes As Blood Runs Black work – or even be successful in some people’s eyes – is the fact that we don’t go with the grain.

Since day one, this has really been about having fun and playing the music we want to play. To this day, that still applies. The stuff that we’re playing today is merely a representation of exactly who we are right now. And our back catalog is a reflection of who we once were.

Every time you come to a show and see us, you get to relive who we were and discover who we are. Looking at what other bands are doing has never really been something we have done. I don’t think any stress levels have risen for anyone because of outside influence.

The only stress we have comes from our own desires to push the boundaries of who we are, and redefine what we can do physically and as a band.

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THE AMERICAN SCENE INTERVIEW WITH VOCALIST/ BASSIST MATTHEW VINCENT AND DRUMMER CHARLES VINCENT BY BRITTANY MOSELEY

Upon first listening to The American Scene’s new album Haze, you might find yourself doing a double take to ensure you are indeed listening to The American Scene. This scenario isn’t lost on the band. “I’ve definitely heard that it sounds quite different from a lot of friends who I’ve talked to,” says vocalist and bassist Matthew Vincent. “But it always seems to be a positive response. I think the people who really know us weren’t too surprised by the direction of this album, because they’re pretty aware that we, as a group, have some eclectic tastes.”

The American Scene’s last album – 2012’s Safe for Now – toed the line between alt-rock and early 2000s emo, taking cues from Hey Mercedes and The Jealous Sound. On Haze, they’ve changed their sound in a big way: the vocals are smoother and the melodies are poppier. Some songs – notably the title track and “4th and Broadway” – see the band reaching even further outside their comfort zone, infusing their music with some dance beats.

Yes… Dance beats.

The only thing more surprising than The American Scene’s new sound is how well they pull it off. Haze is a bold statement, but it works because it’s a cohesive statement. No song feels out of place, each contributing to the overall theme and sound of the album. That cohesiveness was at the front of the band’s mind from the beginning when they decided to write the music together as a group for the first time.

“We wanted to put in more of a combined effort from everybody and just settle in all together,” explains Matthew’s brother and The American Scene’s drummer, Charles. The connection between their combined writing effort and new sound isn’t lost on Charles, who describes the process as “the [smoothest] our writing has gone to date. I think there were a lot more ideas floating around when we were writing. A lot of times, maybe Matt or I would come up with a drum or bass groove and then [guitarist] Jeff [Wright] would come up with the part over it, or [guitarist] Chris

[Purtill] would come up with a part, and it would just kind of end up with different sounds.”

“I think we all had the unspoken goal going into this record to try to define a sound that was uniquely ‘The American Scene,’” adds Matthew. “More than anything, we wanted to step out of our comfort zones and produce a record that was just us, as opposed to an accumulation of influences or references. We wanted to do what came naturally, and that’s exactly what we did.”

The music behind the words may have changed, but it’s clear that brooding, thoughtful lyrics still come naturally to Matthew, the band’s lyricist. His words are balanced by the upbeat pop structures, taking some of the heaviness out but none of the impact. Whether he’s contemplating his existence over mellowed out melodies – “No I wasn’t permanent/I was made for this end,” he sings on “Dark Creak” – or taking stock of a relationship’s dissolution over quick-tempo’d dance beats – “Nails of Love,” “What I

Could Gather” – Matthew seamlessly joins the two. “The American Scene have a long history of marrying heavy themes with lighter more pop-sounding melodies,” he says. “I love sad songs, and I love killer pop melodies, so that’s what I naturally gravitate toward. I think it provides a satisfying bit of subtle irony and keeps our albums from getting too heavy for casual listening.” Charles adds, “Matt isn’t one for whimsical lyrics. He’s usually got something to say.”

For all its achievements, Haze is still an album that takes time to really sink in. But the Vincent brothers are okay with that. “If I really sit down and think about it, my favorite albums are usually ones that took some time to grow and settle in,” Matthew says.

“There’s something really satisfying to me about listening to a great album over and over and finding new little intricacies that make it even more enjoyable each time. I would be very proud of what we’ve done if Haze could be a record like that for someone else.”

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PHOTOGRAPHY BY JOE CALIXTO

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that life is very fragile and you need to appreciate every person and experience on a daily basis. I think these things affect you in ways that you might not be aware of until many years after, and sometimes a very bad situation forces you to take stock of what you have.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY MIKE O’SHEA

Do you think longtime fans may hear drastic differences between the LP and older material?

I guess maybe the ones who are only into Better Off Without Air will think ATE is quite different, but I think fans of The Medicine and our older albums will dig this one.

Do you expect a pushback from diehard fans of The Jazz June circa ‘00s?

It is funny to think about getting pushback. When we first started out in ’95, we got pushback from hardcore fans who hated the new indie/emo thing happening in the punk scene. So it is funny to think that emo fans would hate us for being too indie, or whatever. I think people who are into this kind of music are pretty open minded and probably listen to all the bands that we like and listen to as well, so they will get what we are doing.

THE JAZZ JUNE INTERVIEW WITH VOCALIST/GUITARIST ANDREW LOW BY TIM ANDERL

During their initial seven year tenure, five-piece emo/indie outfit The Jazz June emerged during a period when A&R reps were banging down the doors of ‘90s era emo bands hoping to make them the “next big thing.” Although the Jazz June flew mostly below the radar, a strong and voracious fanbase held out hope that the band might return someday. Their forthcoming LP After the Earthquake was recorded and produced by Evan Weiss (Into It. Over It.) at Gradwell House this past spring, with Steve Poponi (Young Statues) engineering and mixing, and Dave Downham (Dowsing; Into It. Over It.) mastering.

With the exception of their contribution to last spring’s split with Dikembe, the new album marks their first new studio material in over 12 years.

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Vocalist and guitarist Andrew Low discusses the new record, growth, and making the best of a shitty situation.

Do you believe After the Earthquake ushers in an older, wiser, more mature The Jazz June?

Perhaps in our approach to songwriting. I spent a lot of time – like days and weeks – working on the structure of the songs, matching vocals with chord progressions trying to match to the next. [Guitarist] Bryan Gassler and I worked on a few of the songs together for months, knocking ideas back and forth. This was even before [bassist] Dan O’Neill and [drummer] Justin Max heard them, which brought on another round of revisions and changes. And then we brought them to Evan Weiss in the studio, and he made further sug-

gestions for arrangements and changes.

Working from four different places in the world gave us the time to analyze the songs in a different way. Back in the old days, we just used to jam things out, loudly, in a practice room, which doesn’t give you the opportunity to really labor over the finer details of songs, because it is just too noisy. Lyrically, I also tried to be more honest and upfront about what I am talking about, whereas I used to hide behind flowery language.

“After the Earthquake” begs the question, what are some of the biggest personal disasters that you’ve walked away from?

Well, without getting too personal, I will say that I have had a few things happen that really woke me up to the reality

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Who are your predominant musical influences on the new record?

For me, things changed a bit when I started listening to Big Star and Teenage Fanclub. I came to them kind of late, but immediately loved the sounds and songs structures. I have always been a big fan of Superchunk, Built to Spill, and Archers of Loaf, and I can hear that in the new album, in my head at least.

Which songs on the record are the most autobiographical? What are they about?

Except for “Edge of Space” – which is loosely based on the story of [Austrian Skydiver] Fearless Felix – they are all autobiographical. “Short Changed” is about the London riots, “Over Underground” is about getting older and feeling distance from old friends. “It Came Back” is about getting back together with my girlfriend and the band around the same time. “Ain’t It Strange” is about how we seem to be under constant surveillance. There are something like 400,000 CCTV cameras in London, which is just fucking mental and scary.

On “Nothing to See Here” you say that “Radio days came and went and left us behind.” Do you begrudge this fact?

No, not at all. I am actually very proud of the trajectory that we have taken with the band, up to the present day. And I couldn’t be happier that TopShelf is releasing the new record, because those guys are exactly the type of people we want to be working with. They just get it, just like Andy Rich from Initial and

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ALL PHOTOGRAPHY BY GREG RAMAR

DECAPITATED

INTERVIEW WITH GUITARIST WACŁAW “VOGG” KIEŁTYKA BY BRANDON RINGO

In the seven years since a fatal bus accident claimed the life of Decapitated drummer Witold “Vitek” Kiełtyka, the band has been in a state of flux with a revolving door lineup. Fortunately for fans, the band’s guitarist and founding member Wacław “Vogg” Kiełtyka has kept the Polish death metal flag flying high and mighty.

Armed with two new members and a semi-new approach, the band is set to release Blood Mantra, which teems with energy and violence and should please fans, both old and new.

When did you begin writing Blood Mantra? What was your mindset going into that process?

I started to record some of the first riffs on my computer a couple months after Carnival is Forever was released.

I just started to think that it’s time to do a new album. It’s great to have new songs you can add to your set list, always great to have fresh meat on the table. It’s always hard to start and I always have these kinds of questions in my head: “What will I do this time? What kind of music should I make?” I know that I have millions of riffs going on in my head, but how to get started? Those questions are always there when I start with new songs, but then there is always only one solution to this situation: start to play. So I jam for hours by myself in my home studio and if suddenly “this” riff is “here,” then I know, “Well, this is a good riff and I need to record it.”

I have to add that I’m the only com-

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poser in the band and 100 percent of the music on Blood Mantra is my work, so going into the writing process was my natural decision to prove that Decapitated is ready to kill again!

What led you to change the rhythm section? Why did you choose bassist Paweł Pasek and drummer Michał Łysejko?

Well, it was a long journey to finally find good people for Decapitated. I mean, in the last four years, we’ve changed lineups so many times… Which started to make me sick! I hate changing the lineup. Looking for new members the last few years, I just started getting used to it. [Laughs] It’s really hard to find the right musicians for the band.

People need to fit musically and personally. So we changed lineups because me and the other members just didn’t fit each other. They usually had different ambitions and different expectations for being in Decapitated than my own. Right now, I have the line-up of dreams: Pawel has been in Decapitated for two years now, and he is just an awesome dude and a great bass player.

He is an awesome guitar player, too.

You can check his guitar work on the new album of the Polish thrash metal band Virgin Snatch. And Michal is the same: totally fucking awesome dude and awesome drummer. What I can say? I hope to have those mates for a long time in Decapitated. I feel that this time, this lineup will stay for a looong time, and we can do so many good things together in the future.

Were you aiming for a groovier sound, or did it develop organically?

Yes, this album is definitely the most groovy Decapitated album ever. We added a couple of new fresh ideas with drums, especially. Also, the Blood Mantra song titles are sooo groovy.

They’re like death-and-roll songs with thrashy, classic Slayer influences ending them. We have so many groovy parts that I cannot wait to play them live. These songs are meant for playing live! We are playing a kind of death-power groove metal with some ambient elements going on, too. The song “Blindness” has this mantric and atmospheric riffing based on only one riff going on and on and on. When I’m writing new riffs, I don’t think about anything. I just fly with the music and try to make the best possible riffs I can.

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The album art is so striking.

Does it have any thematic relationship to the record’s lyrics?

The cover of Blood Mantra is the work of Polish artist Łukasz Jaszak. He also did a great job with the layout. Every song got its own design, which looks just awesome. The cover is very connected with the album’s concept and lyrics. All the artwork for this album corresponds directly with the lyrics of each song. As you can see, the album’s main theme is humanity in its worst form – the most self-destructive, possessive, and lethal being on this planet with primitive instincts and sick aspirations – so that’s why we wanted to make it as simple as possible.

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PHOTOGRAPHY BY DYLON SCHROEDER

I N T E R V I E W W I T H G U I T A R I S T G A R Y H O L T B Y J A M E S A L VA R E Z

Legendary Bay Area thrashers Exodus are back with a new album, a new-old singer, and a thousand and one tricks up their sleeve. Since the beginning, Exodus has been firmly entrenched in the thrash metal underworld. Aside from releasing a slew of classic albums and tunes themselves, Exodus’s ties with other players in the metal realm has always kept their name on the tips of buddying thrashers’ tongues, even during the band’s extended hiatus in the mid 1990s. While their legacy and influence has remained constant over the years, the same can’t be said of their ever-changing lineup. The band has had more than its fair share of singers and drummers, with a new guitarist and bassist here and there. Each member swap – or tragic loss in the case of their iconic singer Paul Baloff’s passing in 2002 – has only emboldened the band to press on. Exodus’s new album Blood In, Blood Out speaks to the hard willed ethos the band subscribes to.

“It’s a gang terminology,” Exodus figurehead and main axe slinger Gary Holt explains. “To join, you get beaten, and to leave, you get beaten. You bleed in and you bleed out.” Totally fitting, especially since this new record is a veritable sonic beatdown itself. “Maybe I was watching too many episodes of Gangland…”

Holt laughs. Though maybe there’s some real truth to that statement, as it’s fairly indicative of Exodus and their newly revamped roster.

“Going into this album, there was never any intention of a lineup change,” Holt reveals. Blood In, Blood Out marks the

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beginning of yet another chapter of the Exodus saga: the return of acclaimed vocalist Steve “Zetro” Souza, and the departure of longtime frontman Rob Dukes. Exodus emerged from their late ‘90s slumber ready to rip the new millennium a new one. Zetro was onboard for the release of their much anticipated comeback album, 2004’s Tempo of the Damned, replacing their fallen singer Baloff as he had done previously in the mid ‘80s. But shortly after Tempo’s release, Zetro exited the band in fiery fashion and was replaced by newcomer Dukes, who would go on to front Exodus for the next decade, up until the Blood In, Blood Out sessions.

“As we were tracking the album, things became a little more difficult,” Holt says of their recent split. “We weren’t seeing eye to eye. The four of us felt that there had to be a change.” Holt clarifies that “Rob wasn’t let go strictly for Steve, but Steve’s name was on the table,” and dispels any notion that the band fired Dukes to jump on some retro, nostalgia cash grab with Zetro. “I stand behind everything Rob has done with this band,” he adds, “he’s a powerhouse you know?” That being said, it was time for the band to move forward and they turned to the voice of Exodus past.

Regarding Souza’s return to the band, Holt states that “We let him audition basically, and he was more than willing to do it. We gave him a song from the album, something he’d never heard before. He had the lyrics for a few hours, then he came in and sang it like it had been in his repertoire for 10 years. It

sounded right, it sounded like Exodus.”

Boy does it ever. Blood In, Blood Out continues the ripping streak Exodus has blazed since their return to the scene in the early 2000s. This album maintains the hyper aggressive tendencies of the modern Dukes era, but with one of Zetro’s best performances to date. This album feels like vintage Exodus on steroids.

After a chilling industrial tinged instrumental intro courtesy of legendary production wizard Dan the Automator – one of several gnarly collaborations on the record – things quickly launch into attack mode.

Whirlwind thrashers like “Collateral Damage” and “Honor Killings” feel like they were conceived in a circle pit.

“Body Harvest” and “My Last Nerve” slow things down a notch, swapping breakneck speed for headbanging heaviness. For the guitar nerds out there, Blood In, Blood Out features some of the most frenzied riffs and high octane solos of the band’s career.

Surely this was a welcomed side effect of Holt’s other gig in Slayer, replacing fallen riff master Jeff Hanneman.

Playing leads in two of thrash metal’s nastiest exports all year long found the guitarist’s shredding skills at an alltime high. “It kept my chops up,” he says. Holt and Lee Altus trade solos like mad, while drummer Tom Hunting and bassist Jack Gibson’s rhythm section bludgeons with ease. This brings us to Zetro and his highly infectious and totally impassioned vocal performance.

“Steve continued where he was with

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Tempo,” Holt declares. “Classic Zetro, but darker and more in your face. He just took it to another level on this one.”

Brilliantly executed songs? Check.

Revamped and totally ripping lineup?

Check. What else could you want from this record? How about some rad collaborations with members of Testament and a little band called Metallica? Testament frontman Chuck Billy and Metallica lead guitarist Kirk Hammett guest on the songs “BTK” and “Salt the Wound” respectively. Billy’s death metal inspired bellow contrasts Zetro’s piercing vocals perfectly. “He rocked that in one take,” Holt gushes.

“The roar that comes out of that guy’s mouth… It’s phenomenal.”

As for Hammett’s guest spot, trading leads with Holt like it was 1982 all over again, that was something else entirely. “Kirk, he was really jacked to play on the record,” he says. Before Hammett was subjugating puppets in Metallica, he was the primary shredder in Exodus. “He played on the original Exodus demo. He was a founding member of this band, you know. He taught me the basics of guitar playing,” Holt reveals. “Over the last four years, Kirk and I have reconnected. I’ve done so many shows with Metallica while I was touring with Slayer. I think it’s coming full circle for him.”

Full circle for him and everything else with this album. After just one spin, it’s apparent that Blood In, Blood Out is classic Exodus, bringing new lessons in violence to the masses.

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PHOTOGRAPHY BY REBECCA REED

Rise Against is a band that has defied the odds of rock popularity. Since 1999, the band has managed to stay relevant and leave a lasting impression on the global punk community.

On July 15, the band released their seventh full-length album entitled The Black Market, and they will be hitting the road in the U.S. with Touché Amoré and Radkey this fall.

By November, the band will be heading to Europe with Pennywise and Emily’s Army.

What aspect of The Black Market are you most proud of?

Simply that it’s our seventh record. To be around this long, I mean, bands aren’t supposed to be around for seven records are they? [Laughs] We’re not supposed to endure and survive for this long. That, in and of itself, was such an accomplishment. To kind of look back on this with the other three guys and say, “Holy shit, it’s 15 years later, and all of the bands we started with in 1999, and all of the scenes and trends that we’ve kind of weathered, and we’re still here.” Someone is still loving us. [We made] a record with the drummer of Black Flag in 2014.

That’s my proudest accomplishment right there.

You’ve mentioned the “cost of writing lyrics.” Are you always thinking about the impression your lyrics are going to make on the listener?

I think I would cave under that pressure if I thought about it too much.

It’s a hard thing to even process when somebody walks up to me and tells me what the lyrics and a song mean to them. It’s so heavy, and I’m illequipped to deal with the weight of that. I write it how I feel, and when people identify with it, it’s an incredible gift. To be given that by someone in the audience, and to have the lyrics not just be understood but to help someone in some way, it’s always kind of shocked me. I’m just happy, because I know that if people are identifying with us and relating […] they’re just feeling less alone. Maybe you’ve read something or heard a song and you’re like, “That lyric sums up how I’m feeling.” It kind of distills your emotions. There is so much good in that. I think there’s nothing worse than feeling something and feeling like you’re the only person who feels like that. That’s the core of punk rock, looking at things together.

IN TER VIE W WI TH VO CA LIS T TIM MC ILR AT H BY DE RE K SC AN CA RE LLI

The new video for “I Don’t Want to be Here Anymore” highlights violence from all around the world.

How hard was it to condense all of your concerns into 4:24?

You don’t want to overwhelm the viewer. We definitely excel at NOT making feel good music videos [laughs]. We’re majoring in bumming people out.

That song was about the fatigue that

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one feels when you’re confronted with the daily headlines and the evening news, and what that feels like, what it does to people. It was sort of a way to let people know that if you feel that kind of fatigue, you’re not crazy for feeling like that because we’re all feeling like this. Especially [people] like us, who have been constantly engaged in the ills of society for 15 years now.

There’s a song on the record that talks about that called “Awake Too Long,” it’s talking about the whole idea that ignorance is bliss. And what it means to have your eyes held open.

It sucks that we live in a world where people dismiss watching the news simply because all of the negativity we see. I know plenty of people who’d prefer to just not get upset and stay out of the loop altogether.

Actually, there’s a song on the record about that called “A Beautiful Indifference.” What this hipster generation has brought us is this culture of indifference, and almost this ritual of dismissal. Our generation just does a collective eye-roll across the world. They see protest and activism are cheesy.

It’s such a dangerous thing when you can compartmentalize protest and activism as something that was cool or not cool. Because there is something so much more important happening than whether something is trendy

or not. There is something in us as humans that, when you see someone on the side of the street holding up a sign, protesting, your immediate reaction is to dismiss, like, “What the fuck is that guy’s problem?” or “Why isn’t he at work?”

A lot of the footage from that music video showcases Chicago, your hometown. Was it important for you to take a local stance on the issue?

It was. A lot of people should know that a lot of the problems we talk about aren’t just global and worldly and somewhere far away in a country you’ll never be, with people you’ll never meet, they’re happening right here. More people are dying in Chicago every day than people are dying in Iraq. There is so much violence and so many things happening right here at home. It affects all of us; we’re all connected.

Do you strive to promote awareness or to provoke action?

An action is, obviously, at some point, our goal. That would be the fruition of all of your effort, but to be that person is such a delicate thing. We are a band that is constantly walking the fine line between turning you on to new ideas and standing on a soapbox preaching to you about how we feel. I’m not saying that we’re doing it successfully all

the time. There will be times where I’m on a stage feeling particularly riled up about something, and I’ll lose the crowd in my own temper. It’s a learning experience. I need to find the best way to be the best communicator for problems that are so much more important than me. I need to get out of the way of these problems and let them be communicated. That is something that you’re constantly going back and forth [about]. When we were in the punk world, when I was a singer playing just for 50 kids a night in the scene somewhere, and I’d say I’m against the war, it’s like, “Big fucking surprise! The singer of Rise Against is against the war! Tell me something I don’t know.” But when you go out and play these big radio festivals, people are like, “What the fuck is that guy talking about? I came here to have a good time…” All of a sudden, you’re putting yourself in a different position. But it’s an exciting place to be; I don’t want to just preach to the converted. I want to challenge someone’s idea of what their entertainment is on a Friday night. Sometimes there are bigger things that put us on that stage than being concerned with album or ticket sales.

How do you feel about the entire notion of “Hashtag Activism”?

I think that there is an element of

“Armchair Activism” in that, where people’s appetites are too easily satisfied by making it a part of their social media as their piece of flare that they’re wearing that day. But I do think it’s a nice foot in the door for what can be completely important things that are happening in the world. And if social media is our next big vehicle, then obviously we should be harnessing that. I’m admittedly social media ignorant. I’ve never had a Facebook or Twitter account. That kind of makes me a weird hermit in 2014, [laughs], but as I see what it means to people and how important it is in their lives, it should be something that we harness. But they have to follow through. We shouldn’t be patting ourselves on the back just because we hashtag “Bring Our Girls Home.”

My favorite track on the record is definitely “People Live Here.” What does that song mean to you?

I think that song was another part of that “fatigue.” I needed to write something that kind of got it out. It didn’t so much have a purpose or a trajectory; it was more of a musical exasperated sigh. I think that’s something we all kind of feel sometimes when we wake up in the morning.

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Pop punk is an incredibly tight knit community. While in other genres a sense of competition underlies most tours or album releases, pop punk has always been more about the brotherhood and connection than who’s currently number one. We’ve seen some pretty stacked pop punk tours in the past years like the “Pop Punk’s Not Dead” or “Gig Life” packages, but this is the first time in about a decade where all of the bands have shared a home. Drive Thru Records were the last ones to do it, and it’s not far reaching in the least to view Pure Noise as the second coming. Handguns, State Champs, Forever Came Calling, Heart To Heart, Front Porch Step, Brigades, I talked to everyone plus PNR label founder and good friend of the magazine, Jacob Round. This is a can’t miss tour, see you there. - BRENDAN MCBRAYER

HANDGUNS

STATE CHAMPS

PHOTOGRAPHY BY REBECCA REED

PHOTOGRAPHY BY REBECCA REED

INTERVIEW WITH VOCALIST TAYLOR EBY

Handguns has been around for a while now, just a little bit longer than your label in fact, when you guys were writing songs in the early days, did you ever dream it would get you as far as it has?

When we first started writing for the Anywhere But Home EP, we were on our first full us tour. We were broke, tired and hungry. At that point the future kind of seemed bleak and we didn’t know what was going to happen. It’s a truly humbling experience to be where we are right now and I think the future is always something left undetermined.

A couple of months ago you dropped the Life Lessons LP and really locked down your sound. I don’t think anyone could argue that “Heart Vs. Head” isn’t going to be to you guys what “Mutiny” was to Set Your Goals. The album delivers in a big way, was their ever any fear of a sophomore slump?

I think with writing a follow up record, there is always a sense of pressure to top the previous release. Having basically a whole new line up was a little nerve wracking at times. We definitely knew that people weren’t going to like it, which is fine and without sounding like a conceded, pompous ass, we also knew that people were going to like it.

Your most recent addition Brandon Pagano had some pretty big shoes to fill replacing ex- guitarist Jake Langley.

How big of a role did Brandon play in

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the Life Lessons writing sessions?

Brandon is a great lyricist and great songwriter. He had been playing with us since our first headliner right after the release of “Angst.” His musical taste is all over the board and brought something a little bit different to the table, which was awesome. I think everyone involved played a huge role in the writing process because it was important to show people that we could still push on with a whole new lineup.

I don’t know if anyone remembers this, but back on the inaugural run of the now defunct Taste Of Chaos tour, co-headliners My Chemical Romance and The Used would close the show with a joint cover of “Under Pressure.”

If you had your choice of songs for a joint cover, what would you choose and why?

“Bring Back the Bomb” by GWARbecause RIP David Brockie/Oderus Urungus.

Not to play favorites, but if you could add any other PNR band to this already talent stacked tour, who would you make the 7th band?

I can’t even keep up with how many bands Jake (Round) has on his label these days (laughs). If I had any say in it, I would probably say My Iron Lung.

Relief is a sick record and they are all around good people and a lot of fun to tour with.

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INTERVIEW WITH VOCALIST DEREK DISCANIO

It seems like just yesterday you were opening for With The Punches and Hit The Lights, and here you are now drawing huge Warped crowds and headlining arguably one of the biggest pop punk tours of the year. You’ve definitely earned it with work and talent, but is it a little easier to breath now?

Well, I’m not sure if I would say easier to breath, but it feels amazing. We’ve had the opportunity to support so many awesome bands and be a part of so many sick tours the past three years, but I think we’re finally ready to step up to the plate and show everyone a real State Champs show. I’m excited, nervous, anxious, and overall just ready to get out on the road for our first headline tour.

Winter is coming, and with it, a new acoustic EP from you dudes to enjoy the hoodie weather with. How did the EP come together and what was it like translating the songs?

We really wanted to add some more acoustic songs to our discography.

We only had one acoustic song before the announcement of “The Acoustic Things.” This will show a new refreshing side of SC while still being “us.” We had fun translating the songs and giving them a mellow vibe, and it was also just cool to sing them again in a studio with a different approach and production process. There’s also 2 new acoustic songs, “Leave You In The Dark” which

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I wrote earlier this year and “If I’m Lucky” which is a re-worked version of the first song I ever wrote when I was 15 and had never recorded.

You have some pretty phenomenal guitar work on your PNR debut The Finer Things, if there is one thing I know about guitarists, they love to play guitar all of the time, which means they are never not writing new riffs. How close are we to a State Champs LP #2?

Tyler is the Riff Daddy. He always finds time on the road or when we’re home to just sit and work on riffs and ideas to jot down. We plan to spend the majority of November, December, and January to compile all of our ideas together and demo things out before heading in to the studio to start LP2 in early 2015.

Your label has been steadily growing into a scene juggernaut for five years now. How happy are you to be part of such a strong musical home?

It’s cool to see the impact Pure Noise has made through the years as it continues to make moves. I’m glad even though the roster keeps expanding; we still have an even closer relationship and friendship with Jake Round and the label as a whole. FYS, HTL, and Senses Fail are all bands that made me want to be in a band, so it’s pretty awesome to now have them as friends and do tours together.

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JACOB ROUND

of PURE NOISE RECORDS

You are 100% for sure running the best home for pop punk bands right.

Four Year Strong, The Story So Far, Hit The Lights, Handguns, State Champs, Forever Came Calling, I Call Fives, Brigades, Heart To Heart, Gnarwolves, and Seaway. Not to mention some working with Man Overboard and Transit in the early days.

What does it mean to you that some see you as the savior for the genre?

I would be lying if I said it wasn’t intentional. I definitely wanted to be a place where modern punk rock could grow. We really strive to have some variety within the genre and I hope people will think of Pure Noise as more of an “all things punk rock” label than just pop punk. That being said, I don’t mind genre labels, they help people sift through different bands. Whatever you want to call the music we put out is fine, I’m just happy people are listening.

So ten or twelve years ago it was the norm for labels to run showcase tours.

Victory did it, Drive Thru did it, and now you are doing it. Can you tell us a little about the work that goes into putting together one of these monstrously talented tours?

I think you kind of nailed it. I wanted to do a label tour much like my favorite labels did label tours. Pure Noise is really a family. I’m not saying that every single person involved are best friends but everyone does personally know me

PHOTOGRAPHY BY MATT VINCENT

and the staff and we communicate regularly. Brad Wiseman (booking agent for tour) and I have wanted to do this tour for a while and we did a smaller version of it a few years back. Now that we have several bands that can fill up clubs this is something we’re planning to do on a yearly basis. We went all out for this thing with marketing, cool giveaway stuff for the shows, etc. Some of the gigs are already selling out, it’s really exciting.

Let’s say some kid reading this in high school is forming their first band.

They’ve got a couple of songs that they think are going to change the world.

What advice do you have for him or her to become a part of the PNR family?

I would advise them not too worry about it too much. This is something that I am guilty of: I idolized the bands at Fat Wreck Chords and Epitaph. That’s great. It’s important to have influences and find inspiration, but it’s more important to find your own sound.

Be weird, do things different, don’t be afraid to stand out. The best bands are usually bands that don’t even listen to the kind of music they make. Four Year Strong was telling me recently that one of their best jams was based around an Bon Iver song and no one would ever know it. My best advice is to listen to everything, and create something that is all your own.

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THE SUPPORTING LINE UP FOREVER CAME CALLING

HEART TO HEART

These guys are next in line to be headlining this tour, and hopefully PNRT 2015 will have this best kept secret in pop punk get the big text on the bill. On the eve of releasing their 2nd LP What Matters Most, FCC will have a tremendous album to tour off of for the next couple of years, it’s fast, it’s catchy, it’s relatable, it’s an AOTY contender on so many levels. Do yourself a favor and familiarize yourself with their PNR debut Contender so you have something to sing back at the band when they give it their all each and every night.

The hardest hitting band on this tour, Heart To Heart deliver some material so much darker than their Pure Noise brothers, as well as huge choruses that would fit right at home on any other record you’d be able to buy at the merch tables. Their melodic hardcore is a welcome addition to this tour and brings some diversity to the lineup that is unabashedly pop punk heavy. It’s going to get loud and hectic when they take the stage so save up some energy and let loose every mean or angry feeling your work, personal life, or school schedule has forced into you.

What makes ‘em special: Charlie Jackson (Brigades): The first time I ever heard Forever Came Calling, I was instantly nostalgic and longing for Warped ‘03. They really take me back, and their new record is a wonderful progression.

Nick Zoppo (Heart To Heart): What can I say about FCC that I haven’t said before!? This band has been non- stop on the go. I had the chance to hear a lot of their new songs when we were in the studio and if you didn’t already know, FCC is on the rise and taking over. Best group of dudes who work harder than just about anyone else I know. It has been amazing watching them grow over the years and you can expect them to have a killer set every night, that’s for damn sure.

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What makes ‘em special: Jake Mcelfresh (Front Porch Step): With one of the most powerful frontmen in the game right now, Heart To Heart is just amazing to watch. They really just go out and play the shit out of every gig and you know that they believe in what they are doing. Nick’s rants against racism and other shitty things remind me of a younger Scott Vogel. The message they spread and the passion they put in to it is really amazing.

FRONT PORCH STEP Jake Mcelfresh channels every sad sappy tumblr quote into musical therapy for those rough nights after the fact.

He’s the Dashboard Confessional for the Spotify generation, but Front Porch Step is far more straightforward with

his lyrics and music than crooner Chris Carrabba. There’s no beating around the bush when it comes to his debut LP Aware, which has been gaining steam since its release last November, less poetic, but far more confrontational.

His quick little war songs about love and loss are highly applicable to most relationships. They pull the emtotions right out of the speakers and drop them in your lap. If you’re looking to watch a man crumble every night while continuously dragging his heart through the mud, then make sure you don’t miss his set.

What makes him special: Nick Zoppo (Heart To Heart): It’s amazing what one man can do with an axe.

Front Porch Step captivates a crowd all by himself. Not only did he slay the Vans Warped Tour, but he is about to do the same damn thing on the Pure Noise Records tour. Watch and you’ll see. You may just see me crying while he plays.

performs on wax, so go check them out as they open the tour and get the party started with what’s sure to be an outstanding kick off every night.

What makes ‘em special: Jake Mcelfresh (Front Porch Step): Never heard of them? Not gonna show up for the opener? You’re fucking up. This band has the potential and the talent to be BIG. Not only are the songs awesome, but Darrell’s voice is just angelic with a soft resemblance to Craig Owens. These dudes are humble, kind, and talented, and will be a force to be reckoned with in this industry.

Joe Candelaria (Forever Came Calling): Brigades are my personal favorite band on the label. They have a really great throwback sound and I love it. They also have some awesome lyrics.

BRIGADES The newest additions to the Pure Noise Records family, Brigades brand of pop punk mixes small shimmers of melodic hardcore and indie throughout their debut PNR EP, Crocodile Tears. The band’s heavy melodic influence meshes so well with the dual vocals supplied by vocalist Darren Young and guitarist Charlie Jackson. It’s scary how tight and how well thought out this young band

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ALL PHOTOGRAPHY BY ESTER SEGERRA

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meticulous process, you know,” explains Lindberg.

INTERVIEW WITH VOCALIST TOMAS “TOMPA” LINDBERG BY BRANDON RINGO

In order to properly tell the story of Swedish death metal titans At the Gates, one must start at the end.

Flashback to 1995: Tupac released an album while still alive, Alanis Morissette called out Dave Coulier in a smash hit single, and the “Dangerous Minds” soundtrack sold 3,000,000 copies worldwide on the strength of one Coolio song. That same year, At the Gates released their magnum opus Slaughter of the Soul and changed the course of heavy metal forever. Often hailed as the greatest death metal album ever, Slaughter of the Soul showcased a new style of catchy, raw, unrelentingly heavy melodic death metal that can still be heard in countless bands today.

Despite being catapulted to new heights of popularity, At the Gates broke up in 1996. After being apart for over a decade, the band got back together in 2007 and 2008 for a huge reunion tour only to call it quits again. In 2011, the band began their second reunion, one that has continued going strong and led to the release of At War With Reality, their first new material in almost two decades.

When it was announced that the band had begun writing, many fans were caught off guard due to numerous quotes from the first reunion stating they would never record a new album together. According to vocalist Tomas “Tompa” Lindberg however, the band has learned to never say never.

“We did the initial comeback in 2008. […] We had broken one of the promises, [to never reunite], so breaking the next promise [to never record] wasn’t so big,” Lindberg admits. “We were touring the world, having a great time, hanging out with pretty much just best mates,

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but there was one thing missing: being creative together. We were missing that part, and when [guitarist] Anders [Björler] had done his solo record, I would say that was probably his spark.

He did that and kind of got all of his other non-metal stuff out of his system for a bit, and the first riffs came right after that.”

Overthinking the songwriting process can be dangerous, especially when you have already cast a shadow as big as At the Gates’. “From the get-go, we were kind of weighing all the different stuff into the equation: people’s expectations, our expectations, us wanting to do the most total At the Gates record and all that,” admits Lindberg. Eventually, the band’s focus paid off and they found their comfort zone. “We started writing with that in mind, but after a few songs, we felt ‘this material is so far so strong that we can just continue writing what feels natural and we are safe,’ because everything goes through so many filters anyways. With five people being creative together, we don’t have to worry that much; we trust each other’s opinion.”

The product of the band’s immensely hard work is an album that holds its own in their discography. It is similar to Slaughter in that it is loud and fast, but it also has an impressive amount of depth that takes time to truly sink in. “It’s not the sort of record where it kind of hits you in the face and you can hum along to the songs the first time you hear it.

This is probably a record you would

When a band breaks up at the height of their success, the relationship is often irreparable. For At the Gates, a large dose of time, maturity, experience, and no regrets attitude comprised the formula for their return. “If you think about it, we were together for like five years initially, but it was during our more formative years. So, you grow up together between 19 and 24; that’s when you develop a lot musically and also as a person. Those five years we were together initially were pretty hardcore years,” concedes Lindberg. “We were gone for such a long time and then came back, but the reunion – if you count from 2008 until now – it’s almost as long as our initial period. Either way, what we are doing now, what we have achieved together is the fruit of all of these different periods. We’ve played more shows on the reunion tour than we did back in the day, so that has kind of strengthened us as a unit.”

spin a few times before you actually get it, because it has more levels. Both lyrically and musically, it has a wider palette. It’s got not only aggression, it also has melancholy and darker stuff to it,” Lindberg says. “But of course, as usual, the Internet is full of the trolls, so they will probably hear the first snippet and judge immediately from that.

[Laughs]” A lot has been made of the motivation behind the recent glut of reunions in extreme music, but there is no questioning why At the Gates has returned to the game. There was no way they would record again without the purest of artistic intentions. “There’s always gonna be these people who say the old stuff is better and I totally understand that, that’s no problem, but that’s why we didn’t want to do a record that would feel like we were trying to please someone. That’s why the record is moving forward, so we can step further instead of looking back and trying to make stuff that people will really like,” affirms Lindberg. “The only way to please anyone is to be honest to ourselves and try to please ourselves, you know. ‘What record would we want At the Gates to be recording?’ and that’s what we’ve been trying to do.”

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It’s difficult follow up a legendary album like Slaughter of the Soul, one reason why the band claimed they would never record again. However, with a ton of musical experience under their belts – and a renewed sense of friendship and collaboration – At War With Reality turned out to be a simple point of convergence. “I would say, the feeling of actually being in the studio was kind of like nothing had changed, because it was really us getting 100 percent into it and very, very focused. It was a very

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SANCTUARY

I N T E R V I E W W I T H V O C A L I S T WA R R E L D A N E B Y B R A N D O N R I N G O

Over the last few years, extreme metal has had its fair share of classic band reunions. One of the biggest surprises has been the reuniting of epic thrash warriors Sanctuary. Hailing from Seattle – the city that helped kill the ‘80s metal scene – they only released two albums before breaking up in 1992.

Despite their short time together, the band was able to make a huge impact with the epic mix of thrash and power metal on their legendary debut Refuge Denied and its follow up Into the Mirror Black.

After their break up, vocalist Warrel It seems impossible to create brutal extreme metal with just two guys and a drum machine, but that’s exactly how industrial metal icons Godflesh started out 25 years ago in Birmingham, England. From 1988 to 2001, guitarist and vocalist Justin Broadrick and bassist Arthur Green released a monstrous catalogue of legendary extreme metal.

The band reformed to play live shows in 2010, and Godflesh is finally back with new record A World Lit Only by Fire to seriously change the game once again.

“I think this record is probably the most riff-driven Godflesh album out of them all,” states Broadrick. “It’s all about the riff, innit?” Indeed, it is ALL about the riff. For the band’s seventh studio album – and first since 2001’s Hymns – Broadrick and Green came out swinging from the word go. “It’s like it was really important: every single song was about having the most driving, energized, very aggressive riffs. Really driving, pummeling riffs, that was really the bottom line for me,” he says.

Despite the band’s lengthy absence, when it came time to come up with new material, the songwriting process was a very familiar one. “Usually, I always start with being inspired by a certain type of guitar riff. Generally after that, I’ll build the beats for the riff, then I’ll lock that tight, and usually Ben will come along and add bass riffs. That’s pretty much how Godflesh always was, really. Apart from if we did some stuff that was like a sample,” explains Broadrick. “Sometimes some of the old Godflesh stuff would be based around

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Dane and bassist Jim Sheppard went on to form the prog-thrash band Nevermore with one-time Sanctuary guitarist/ virtuoso Jeff Loomis. In 2010, Sanctuary reunited and began playing live shows. Finally – 24 years after their last album Into the Mirror Black – they are set to release their monstrous new record The Year the Sun Died, perfectly befitting their legacy.

Sanctuary’s break up was pretty typical for the ‘90s, but feels like something you’d see in a movie. “That whole thing was kind of [due to] record company pressure,” states Dane. “Back then, we

were signed to Sony/Epic and there was one A&R guy there who was putting a little bit of pressure on us to go in a grunge direction. I remember telling this guy ‘You know, that wouldn’t be honest. People would know what it is, it would be a sellout.’” Being a band from Seattle in 1992 meant that you had to go grunge or go home, and Sanctuary chose the latter.

inspiration for the lyrics came in his sleep. “Really, if you want to know the truth, I was dreaming for a couple of days while I was writing the lyrics, and a lot of the time, lyrical stuff comes to me while I’m dreaming. That’s why the record Dreaming Neon Black with Nevermore happened. It was kind of the same thing. I find a lot of inspiration in dreams.”

The impetus for the band’s reunion came in 2009 thanks to actor Jack Black.

“One of the old Sanctuary songs ‘Battle Angels’ was used in a video game,” Dane explains. “We all got to talking to each other again because of that, to do the contractual shit that we had to do to license it to the video game. That kind of put the little foot in the door.

This game was called ‘Brutal Legend,’ and Jack Black did the characters for it.

We heard this rumor that maybe Jack Black picked that song, but we don’t know if that’s true or not, because the game designer guy is a metalhead too.

It would be really cool if Jack Black actually did that, because I know he likes metal too and I’m a big fan of his to begin with.”

One of the elements that set Sanctuary’s debut Refuge Denied apart as such a classic album is Dane’s amazingly high falsetto scream, specifically on “Battle Angels.” Thusly, one of the biggest points of contention regarding The Year the Sun Died will likely be its departure in vocal style. “I’ve done tons of interviews already and the only bad thing that I’ve heard is that some guy asked me why I don’t sing like a girl anymore,” chuckles Dane. “I knew that there’s gotta be some high-pitched screaming, so I made sure that was on there. But obviously the sound has to be modern too if we’re going to keep up with the kids today, and maybe we can show them a few things at the same time. I’m just having fun relearning the falsetto stuff, because I can still do it.

I’ve read some stuff online that said, ‘He doesn’t sing that way anymore because he can’t.’ Well hey, guess what, come out and see me sing ‘Battle Angels’ live, buddy!”

Both musically and conceptually, The Year the Sun Died is quite impressive.

Centered on the story of Lenore, a prophet from the future who predicts the death of the sun, the album takes the listener on a terrifying journey to the end of the world. Dane says the

GODFLESH

a sample, like it might be like a hip hop loop, or like a weird noise loop or something like that. Some old Godflesh stuff used to begin with a drum loop.

I used to come up with drum riffs that I would literally write a guitar riff that would be me speaking the drum machine riff.”

Sonically, A World Lit Only by Fire is the heaviest Godflesh album ever, and that’s no exaggeration. According to Broadrick, this is due in part to his use of an eight string guitar this time around. “I think probably the guitar takes up more sonic space. The eight string guitar, for me, was just more of an excuse to tune even fucking lower.” He expounds, “One of the funnest parts of writing this music is coming up with the riffs and then blending the drums into it. That’s when it really comes together.

To me, that’s when a riff speaks, when I lock in the drum machine with it and add a layer of bass.”

In addition to their menacing music, Godflesh’s lyrics have always been known to explore quite a wide range of negative emotions to perfectly accompany the music. “I mean, emotionally it’s pretty much the darkest part of my soul,” admits Broadrick.

“Which I always think is in everyone; we’re all good and we’re all evil. So, it’s often delving into the darkest part or the most primitive part of my responses, my emotional reactions to things and my responses to humanity and negativity.” After spending the majority of his post-Godflesh period in the less aggressive post-metal project

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INTERVIEW WITH GUITARIST/VOCALIST JUSTIN BROADRICK BY BRANDON RINGO

Jesu, the emotional release Godflesh offers is more than welcome for Broadrick. “That’s what I missed with Godflesh. When Godflesh didn’t exist, I really missed being able to externalize and express this set of emotions again, because Jesu is a very different thing.

Nearly everything I do seems to deal with fucking awful emotions; it’s a way of dealing with stuff I can’t deal with in everyday life.”

When Godflesh had their first go-round, one of the biggest issues they faced was record label trouble. Those issues are a thing of the past as Broadrick will be self-releasing the new record through his label Avalanche Recordings, as he

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did their Decline and Fall EP earlier this year. Though releasing the album himself means a huge increase in his workload, Broadrick wouldn’t have it any other way. “Back in the day, we used to have managers and tour managers and other record labels, and now I fulfill the role of nearly all this. It’s like a necessity, but also it’s better when you do it yourself,” he enthuses. “We always wanted to do it ourselves. Essentially, that’s what Godflesh is all about. We come from an old punk background, from the early ‘80s, so our ethics have always been DIY. It’s back full circle, really.”

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ALL PHOTOGRAPHY BY JOSE CARLOS SANTOS

INTERVIEW WITH VOCALIST/GUITARIST STEVE AUSTIN BY BRANDON RINGO

Led by guitarist, vocalist, and producer extraordinaire Steve Austin, Today is the Day has been waging war with the music industry for 22 violent, chaotic years. They have constantly pushed the envelope and challenged the definition of heavy music during their career, but never has this been more apparent, deliberate, or important than on their 10th album Animal Mother.

When Animal Mother was finally done and would soon be unleashed, a press release referred to it as the heaviest album of the band’s career. “I’ll admit that as an expression of how I feel, I wanted to make this album sound fucking heavier than anything we’ve ever made,” Austin confirms. “It was definitely made during a pretty heavy time in my life. There’s a lot of stuff on there that was pretty fucking tripped out to face and deal with, even putting it in an album. But that’s kind of what Today is the Day is all about: extreme reality.”

For Austin, reality had never been more extreme than it was a year ago when facing the death of his mother.

“To me, the words ‘death metal’… This is probably the most real album that deals with death that’s ever fuckin’ been made,” he explains. “My mother died about two months before we made the album, and when she died, it was a pretty horrific kind of thing. Down to me having to pull the plug, which

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made me feel almost responsible for her death, even though I wasn’t. And I saw something that I’d never seen before. I literally faced and watched death right before my eyes. So then, when we got ready to make this album, that was all still just circling around in my head and in my heart. [I was] trying to make sense of it.”

For Austin, facing his mother’s death caused him to reflect on his own mortality as well. “After it was over with, I started thinking about a lot of things, and it kind of made me realize about mortality… You can fucking die. You can die 10 minutes from now, you could die five hours from now, a month from now,” he reflects. One of the positive outcomes of these powerful emotions was a renewed focus on not taking life for granted. “When making this album, Animal Mother,” Austin continues, “I looked at it clearly like, ‘This could be the very last album you ever make in your fuckin’ life, so you better put your heart and soul [into it], and you better work on this harder than any other shit that you’ve ever worked on in your life, because if you want to die a good death, feeling like you did everything that you can do, then this will be the last thing that you did.’ So consequently, it was fuckin nuts.”

Due to this immense personal pressure weighing on Austin, the process was easily the most intense of his career.

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“I got up in the morning, I went right into the control room, I’d be in there tracking guitars and tracking vocals, later on editing and mixing, and it was not normal,” Austin admits. “I think if anybody would have watched what I was doing, I think a lot of people would have been like, ‘It’s almost like he’s possessed or something.’ There was a certain sense of urgency in trying to perfect an idea and get it exactly right, and I kept doing it and going at it so hard for so long, there were a couple of times where I walked out of the control room and I just started crying. My woman was like, ‘What the fuck are you doing?’ And I’m like, ‘It’s just so heavy.

This shit is just so heavy right now and so intense that I feel like it’s breaking me.’”

Despite all of the emotional pain Austin has experienced over the last year, it hasn’t all been negative. Not only has he released one of the best albums of his career, he has also gained a new lease on life. “It really opened my eyes up to a lot of different things, and it really brought it back to what the band is all about in the first place. ‘Today is the day.’ That doesn’t mean like tomorrow, next week; it’s like right the fuck now. This is you, right this minute, and this is who you are. Be everything that you can be. Be yourself. Take it as far as you can. So if there was any positive outcome, it’s [that] I feel a certain part of me was kind of reborn out of all of it.”

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IN ITS 13TH YEAR AND NOW SPANNING TWO CITIES AND NEARLY A WHOLE WEEK, THE FEST NEEDS NO INTRODUCTORY ADJECTIVES. THIS YEAR’S FESTIVITIES OFFICIALLY KICK OFF IN YBOR CITY (A DISTRICT IN TAMPA) WITH KAIJU BIG BATTEL- DESCRIBED AS ‘A TONGUE-IN-CHEEK HYBRID OF AMERICAN PRO-WRESTLING, JAPANESE-MONSTER-MOVIE MAYHEM, AND LOWBROW POP-CULTURE.’ PRESUMING THE GOOD GUYS WIN, IT’S GONNA BE A PARTY TIL THE WEEKEND IS OVER. THERE’S 365 BANDS, HALLOWEEN COVER SETS, TWO FULL DAYS OF COMEDY SHOWCASES, PLUS A SLEW OF MYSTERY SETS. THANKFULLY GOOD FOOD ON THE GO AND PBRS ARE PLENTIFUL, BUT IT’S STILL BEST TO PLAN YOUR DAY IN ADVANCE. HERE’S SOME THINGS WE’RE LOOKING FORWARD TO THIS YEAR...

Without a doubt, Philadelphia has the strongest presence at this year’s Fest.

You’ve got your obvious must-sees like Paint It Black, Restorations, The Menzingers, and Modern Baseball, but what about the countless other bands making the trek from Pennsylvania to Florida? Here are eight of our top picks of Philly’s finest: the up-and-coming bands from the city of Brotherly Love that you’ll want to take major note of before heading out to Gainesville this fall.

CAYETANA

EVERYO NE E V E RY W H E R E

PHOTOGRAPHY BY LORI GUTMAN

What can be said about Cayetana that anyone with a public platform and great taste in music hasn’t already said? Here are three friends who decided they wanted to form a band. It didn’t matter that they didn’t know much about their instruments. All that mattered was that they had the drive. With just four songs under their belt, Cayetana managed to get themselves on the sought after radars of labels, writers, and buzz bands like Waxahatchee and The Menzingers, who subsequently took huge risks by taking these newcomers out on the road.

Fast forward a bit and the word on these up-and-coming indie rockers contin-

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PHOTOGRAPHY BY JESSICA FLYNN

ued to spread, leading to their unforgettable debut full-length Nervous Like Me, released earlier this year on Tiny Engines. Raw and determined, the album is loaded with awkward moments, undeniably relatable to just about anyone who has ever stood alone in the corner of a party, nervously checking his or her phone until someone approached for a conversation. But more importantly, the album is, beginning-to-end, full of hits. From the jumpy sing along “Scott Get the Van, I’m Moving” to what longtime Cayetana fans can now call an oldie-but-goodie, “Hot Dad Calendar,” Nervous Like Me never slows down, even when it does. (JC)

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Regardless what side of the “emo revival” dividing line you find yourself on, there’s no denying that seeing talented, hardworking bands get credit for their music is pretty awesome. Everyone Everywhere have found themselves on every “emo renaissance” clickbait website and article, and their second self-titled album – their 2010 release was also self-titled – has found its way onto most emo must-have lists. Plus, they’ve managed to achieve all this without regularly touring.

They’re certainly formed from the same mold as American Football – the godfathers of the emo revival – but they fuse pop sensibilities with twinkly guitars and earnest lyrics. For fans outside of the Philadelphia area, The Fest is probably your best chance at seeing Everyone Everywhere live. They are a must see, emo or not. (MB)

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BEACH SLANG

THE HOLY MESS

PHOTOGRAPHY BY JESSICA FLYNN

They’re real. They’re honest. They’re gritty. They’re urgent. It’s one thing to say something impactful, but it’s another to make people believe it. Beach Slang is what The Goo Goo Dolls would have become in a world where “Iris” didn’t become every couple’s song in 1998. Sure, there’s a bit of The Replacements in their debut EP Who Would Ever Want Anything So Broken, but where Paul Westerberg dealt with anonymity and loneliness with animosity and snark, Beach Slang frontman James Snyder wears his heart on his sleeve. No frills. Just straight up rock ‘n’ roll and emotion. What you see is what you get.

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PHOTOGRAPHY BY JESSICA FLYNN

A drunken rage from beginning to end, tracks like “Positive Noise” and “Nervous Sister” will consistently remind you that these Philly scruff punks are here to stay.

Even when they lighten up on their unapologetic in-your-face signature style, The Holy Mess still know they’ve got a lock on that modern beer-guzzling sound that’s defined The Fest for so many years. Oh, and they’ve got a song called “Spencer Reid” on there, too, for all the Criminal Minds freaks out there. Is that what the song is actually about? I do not know. But does it even matter when the delivery is this good?! (JC)

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Bands like Ma Jolie populate The Fest

intelligence, a sense of importance, and

lineup every year: melodic punk bands

catchy-as-hell hooks. What comes out

who grew up with Hot Water Music’s

is an impressive concoction that resem-

No Division and Kid Dynamite’s Cheap

bles a Frankenstein’s monster of Bear vs.

Shots, Youth Anthems. But while most

Shark, Paint It Black, and At the Drive-

bands are content with wearing their

In. Ma Jolie aren’t new to The Fest, and

influences as badge of pride, Ma Jolie

they’re back again this year. If you’re

acknowledges them and moves on. The

looking for something that sounds

elements of melodic punk are there,

vaguely familiar, yet new and refresh-

but Ma Jolie takes the fast melodies

ing, don’t miss them. (MB)

MA JOLIE

With the move to Tiny Engines and forthcoming EP Cheap Thrills on a Dead End Street, Beach Slang will be one of the more talked about bands playing Gainesville Halloween weekend. See the band somewhere small before they explode. (MB)

If any one band on this list can be called a “Fest Vet,” it should be The Holy Mess. This year marks their fourth performance at Fest and it couldn’t come at a more perfect time, as the band self-released their new album Comfort in the Dischord this past summer.

and shouting-yet-singable vocals and throws them in a blender with a fierce

PHOTOGRAPHY BY JESSICA FLYNN

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PLACEHOLDER

Heads up, Philly purists: Placeholder is from Lancaster—GASP! But between their latest fulllength, I Don’t Need Forgiveness, and their upcoming split 7’’ with Denver band Sleeping Weather, they’re more than good enough to ignore the hour-and-a-half drive that separates them from their Philadelphia peers. Specializing in emotionally intense post-punk, Placeholder has long been a band that winds up on this type of list, but are poised to break through with their two newest singles “Weird Places” and “Mount Joy.” These songs highlight the band’s ability to balance upbeat, jangly riffs and raw, almost exasperated vocals with just the slightest hint of ‘90s grunge.

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THE HUNDRED ACRE WOODS

Pop punk and folk seem like they have no business coexisting. Which makes The Hundred Acre Woods all the more special. Are they pop punk kids playing folk music? Are they folk kids who like pop punk? Really, it doesn’t matter.

The only thing that matters is that they blend the two without it feeling forced or cheesy like a whiskey soaked pizza.

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THE WEAKS

Recently, vocalist Brandon Gepfer wrote an opinion piece for The Runout called “Your Local DIY Band Probably isn’t Ready to Tour Yet,” which partially explains why Placeholder hasn’t done much touring since forming in 2011. All the more reason to catch them at The Fest this year – their second time in Gainesville – where they’ll play a crazy-stacked show at 1982 loaded with a bunch of other bands you should absolutely be listening to more of. (JC) The Weaks are almost impossible to classify. That’s probably what makes them so infectious. They’re power-pop, but ferocious. They’re punk rock, but calculated. They’re Weezer meets The Ergs meets Thin Lizzy. Let that sink in…

Now, we’re not talking Saintseneca meets Modern Baseball here. What makes The Hundred Acre Woods truly unique is that they can play a sweaty basement or a bar that only serves drinks in mason glasses and belong in both. The Fest has folk acts and poppunk bands, but they only have one Hundred Acre Woods. (MB)

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The Weaks don’t seem to care what you classify them as. They just want to make the songs they want to make and release the albums they want to release, which was beautifully demonstrated earlier this year with their EP The World is a Terrible Place and I Hate Myself and Want to Die. As brilliant as that album title is, the album itself is the selling point. Listen to “How to Put an Audience to Sleep in Under Two Minutes,” then “Dunce Pageant,” and try to figure out how the same band wrote both songs. Catch The Weaks at The Fest and see if you can pin down their sound. You probably can’t, and you’ll appreciate it. (MB)

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SUNDIALS

INTERVIEW WITH BASSIST/VOCALIST CARL ATHEY BY JOE FITZPATRICK

Inspired by bands such as The Lemonheads and Alkaline Trio, guitarist and vocalist Harris Mendell, bassist and vocalist Carl Athey, and drummer Cory Chubb have been filling basements, clubs, and garages from coast to coast on their own terms. Since their inception in 2010, Sundials, from Richmond, Va., have been making a huge name for themselves in the DIY indie punk scene as one of the need-to-know bands in the genre. Very few bands embody the creative spirit of the city of Richmond

as much as this pop-rock three-piece.

Some people pick up an instrument because it was given to them as a gift.

Others might pick piano because their older sibling already played the guitar.

Then there are those who are fortunate enough to have musical parents and, thus, an assortment of instruments to experiment with until the perfect one reveals itself. Such was the case with Don Seraceno, drummer for the New Jersey based rock band The Moms.

Thanks to his father playing in various bands and a lot of equipment being left at his house, a young Seraceno had his choice of any instrument.

started writing songs. When Stolpe returned from school, the trio decided to hit the road and start playing shows.

As it turned out, he enjoyed the vintage Ludwig drums most. “I just found myself there more often than anywhere else,” says Seraceno. “It just kind of stuck. I was probably about 5 when it all started. I don’t even know that it was a conscious decision. It was just a thing I gravitated toward naturally, I guess.”

The first punk song Seraceno ever played on drums was Offspring’s cover of The Didgits’ “Killboy Powerhead.”

Years before The Moms ever formed, Seraceno met his future bandmates – vocalist and guitarist Joe Nester and vocalist and bassist Jon Stolpe – while the two were playing in another band.

Seraceno encountered their band while working as the sound guy for a production company in New Jersey. The band dissolved when two of the members, including Stolpe, left for college. During Stolpe’s final year of college, The Moms

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Now signed to Topshelf Records, the band is on the verge of releasing a new EP titled Kick, which the band recently recorded at Noisy Little Critter in West Chester, Pa., with producer Mike Bardzik, who also worked with the band on their last studio LP When I Couldn’t Breathe.

“We had met [Topshelf co-founder] Kevin [Duquette] at one of our shows

In 2011, The Moms recorded their first EP, Viva!, which was originally released on Panic State Records. After multiple friends told Paper + Plastick Records owner Vinnie Fiorello to check them out, he gave them a listen, liked what he heard, and offered them a deal. “Blow Me” – the first single off the new record – was released in February 2014 with the rest of the album, Buy American, following in September. The album consists of new material, as well as some of the songs the band wrote back in 2010 when they started.

in Boston a couple months back, probably last winter now,” recalls Athey. “We were doing a couple shows with Lemuria on that tour, and he came out to our show. We met and we got along, and until we did stuff with Asian Man Records, we had never released more than one record with a record label. We had done five 7”s and an LP. We put out a bunch of stuff, and we always kind of hopped around. We always like to mix things up, and Kevin seemed into it.”

Even though they have not released new music since September 2012, working with Bardzik came naturally to Sundials, and they were eager to get back into the familiar space to create something new yet substantial for their fans. Athey explains, “We knew a lot of the gear we were working with. We got in there and we stayed with him most of the time that we were there, which was what we did when we recorded When I Couldn’t Breathe. We stayed in his house, woke up in the morning, went into the studio, and got our days underway. It was pretty much the same thing this time around.”

What resulted from their time was a six song EP, about 18 minutes of music.

The official release date is Nov. 4, and the band hopes to have copies available at. In lieu of just doing a CD release show, they are planning on doing a three-show weekend in New York, Philadelphia, and Richmond to promote the

official release.

The band just finished a tour with Dowsing and The Sidekicks, during which they toured in a short school bus, which [guitarist] Mikey [Crotty] from Dowsing got from his father, a former employee of a St. Louis area school district. “They had a bunch of buses that they were getting rid of, like an old fleet.

He managed to get a hold of one, and it’s what they have been touring in for a while,” explains Athey.

DIY has been important to Sundials since they started the band, and it is even more important to this day. “We all grew up on punk rock, and DIY, and all ages,” says Athey. “I think it’s, in general, kinda the best way to make music, because it gives you the most control over your own art. The more you are doing yourself, the less you have to worry about other people trying to manipulate what you are doing. And whenever we can, we definitely like to play all-ages shows, at the very least, 18 and up. We don’t really like doing 21 and up for our gigs if we can avoid it. It gives everyone an opportunity to be involved.”

Sundials will be playing Fest 13 with fellow Richmond natives Brief Lives, Strike Anywhere, and Hold Tight! Be on the lookout for Sundials on tour this fall, and get Kick when it comes out in November.

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THE MOMS

INTERVIEW WITH DRUMMER DON SERACENO BY KEVIN WELLS

As far as the songwriting process goes, everybody in the band has the opportunity to contribute. “We try to keep it like an open forum where anyone can ask anyone else to try anything different that they had in mind. It’s a little messy, but eventually it all falls into place,” explains Seraceno. “You could say that Joey is the primary songwriter, but we all have our say. We try to produce ourselves while writing [in order] to skip those few days in the studio [that] one would call preproduction.”

In addition to the record itself, Nestor is also working on a comic book based on Buy American. “It visually tells a story and every song plays a role in it,” says Seraceno. “I hope he finishes it soon, because I want to see it.”

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NEW NOISE MAGAZINE

PHOTOGRAPHY BY NATHAN KATSIAFICAS

WWW.NEWNOISEMAGAZINE.COM

You guys describe your sound as “Gruff Pop Punk.” What do you mean by that?

I suppose it’s a bit more accessible than some of the heavier punk bands. The “gruff ” bit is like me basically, me and my vocals, and Thom has got more of a “singy” voice than me. That’s basically what it is. I’m the “gruff,” and Thom is the pop punk side.

You are buried in a pile of skate decks on the cover of your new self-titled album. How influential is skate culture on your songwriting?

It’s the biggest influence on our life, equally as much as music is, but it doesn’t help us write songs. We don’t write songs about skateboarding, but the culture has always been there for us like bands like Pennywise and Suicidal Tendencies, old skate punk bands. I’ve gotten into a lot of good punk music through skateboarding, and that link is there. Lyrically, [our music] is a lot deeper. But we do it every day; it’s our lives.

You often feature skateboarding, partying wolves on your albums. Where did this idea originate and who does the art?

The first two EPs… Actually CRU EP was a guy called Wolfmask. He had this zine that was given out for free at shows.

This was quite a long time ago, so that

DADS

was before people started ripping it off [laughs]. So he drew something up, and we just were like, “Yeah, I really like it.”

We got the wolf eating pizza, and at the time, none of us were really into that actual “pop punk” scene. We didn’t realize about the whole pizza thing until kids started going on about it, and we were like, “Right, okay?” I didn’t realize there was an item of food for genres these days.

This fall you will be joining The Wonder Years, The Story So Far, and Modern Baseball for a full U.S. tour. What are you most looking forward to?

The whole thing. I’ve never been to America, so the most exciting thing for me is looking at it and skating. The U.S. skate scene is insane, like so crazy, and it always has been. So I’m gonna skate in some weird ditches and stuff like that.

I’m also really excited to be hanging out with my friends again, The Story So Far guys. We toured with them last year in the U.K., and we have been so tight ever since. We talk to each other like every day, FaceTime and stuff. We’re sharing a bus together, and they are gonna kind of look after us. I’m really excited about eating out there, and eating some weird food and drinking some weird booze.

For better or worse, what is one of your

I N T E R V I E W W I T H D R U M M E R J O H N B R A D L E Y B Y M O R G A N Y. E VA N S

PHOTOGRAPHY BY JOE CALIXTO

Dads’ new record I’ll Be the Tornado – via California’s 6131 Records – is a must hear collection of poetic justice, rock momentum, and book smart howling.

It is a vital release from the New Jersey duo, who balance a great sense of humor with serious songs that matter.

Has your sense of humor and versatility been an asset so far?

Yeah, I like to think we could tour with a lot of different bands and it would be fine. We played this festival in Ithica, N.Y., and our old booking agent told us there would be indie bands, but it was kind of more metal. We hadn’t played

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Ithica so we really wanted to go there.

No other indie bands were on it. It was literally all metal bands and us. Besides this big metal band from Canada who headlined the whole thing, we were the only band who got the crowd moving!

[Laughs] We just did the tour with Touché Amoré. Reggie and the Full Effect. We like to play with as many different bands as we can.

Fans of underground rock are often more multifaceted than people give them credit for…

For sure, and I think that’s something that a lot of bands don’t really see. Since

GNARWOLVES

INTERVIEW WITH BASSIST AND VOCALIST CHARLIE PIPER BY JOE FITZPATRICK

most memorable tour experiences?

I’ve had some pretty weird, near-death experiences. We stayed in Vienna in Europe. They have this amazing venue that’s like three venues – all different sizes – and the bands always stay there.

All the ceilings have [stickers of] old hardcore bands that have played there, and they have the triple bunk bed styles.

I basically got really drunk and tried to front flip off the top bunk. I landed on my back on the sofa, but I didn’t think anything of it, so I carried on drinking.

The next day, I had a pain in my chest, the beginning of this band, I have always tried to become in touch with the people who like us. If you put the time and energy into my band, I’m going to try and take the time and energy to get to know you. Because of that, we’re working on this tour coming up and are working on different openers. I know we have fans who will like this indie band or this punk band, so it works out perfectly.

How does being a band with only two members change your approach?

I’ve never been in a band with more than three people, mostly a trio or a duo. When we started Dads, it wasn’t supposed to be a duo, but no one could keep up with us. We have such a strong chemistry going and it would be hard to throw someone in there. On the Touché tour, we brought a bassist out, and as long as he can tour, we will probably keep using him. The only problem is he lives in Memphis, [Tenn]. We’ve had some strong offers that were one-offs at colleges, and we are 10 hours away and have to find a flight for the dude from Memphis, which is no problem, it’s just a barrier to cross.

and I was like, “Whatever. I’m on tour.

I don’t really care that much.” I got up, and I passed straight out. So I played the set, and then I was rushed to this weird hospital in Austria. It turned out I had torn my whole [pectoral] muscle. I had to spend about 100 Euros on some pills, and I spent about three days tripping my bullocks off.

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that when you put it on iTunes, it would say: [“No, We’re Not Actually… Dads.”]

Since we put that out, iTunes changed their format. The song right before that is “Boat Rich,” so a lot of people [think it’s], “No, we’re not actually boat rich,” but some people still get it.

You want to be boat rich?

I would love to be.

Did you know you had something special with the new record?

I wanted it to be like we could do anything. With “The Romantic Ocean,” it was fun. We were really fascinated with Wilco and Death Cab [For Cutie]. We wanted to do a song like that, but at the end of the day, we still wrote a Dads song. I think it flows really nicely. Scott [Scharinger] is such a great guitar player and writes intricate and cool lines. A lot of industry bands are just putting out 15 tracks of pop hits. That’s not what we do. It seems like people actually care about this record.

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So… Are you dads?

No. The guy who runs 6131 just had a kid, and I am fascinated with his kid, but we actually just made a shirt that says, “We aren’t Dads.” The fourth track we put out on our last EP was called “No, We’re Not Actually…” in hopes

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PIANOS BECOME THE TEETH I N T E R V I E W W I T H G U I TA R I S T M I C H A E L Y O R K B Y N I C H O L A S S E N I O R PHOTOGRAPHY BY JOE CALIXTO

Baltimore’s Pianos Become the Teeth tackles emotional and musical maturity on album number three. Keep You finds the group improving on its signature craft, even if the results are unexpected.

Gone are the signature screams, and you won’t find anything resembling a breakdown here. Instead, expect numerous breakthroughs. Keep You represents the teeth in the band’s name, with beautiful post-rock build-ups and breathtakingly emotional lyrics. Pianos Become the Teeth is back and better than ever.

If you take away the vocals, Keep You doesn’t feel like that stark of a departure for your band. How do you feel about the new sound?

I feel like when we started writing the reIt’s been a pretty exhausting year for The Copyrights, with treks across the US, playing alongside the Lawrence Arms and 7 Seconds, putting out an EP (No Knocks) and a full- length (Report), and a tour of Europe. And the band still has plans to play the FEST this fall, as well as a hometown show in Chicago.

But despite some blank days on the calendar toward the end of the year, there is still a chance the band will be right back on the road if the right opportunity pops up.

Brett Hunter and Luke McNeill checked in from overseas recently to talk about the new music, haircuts and partying with the Belgians.

How is the European tour going so far?

Hunter: The European tour is going great! It’s such a trip to be able to come so far, play shows and have people singing along. This is my sixth tour in Europe and it still blows my mind. We are travelling with a French band, Not Scientists, and getting along a little too well, which makes for some boozy late nights, but the locals are always still partying long after we all crash. In Belgium, we staggered out of the club at about 4 a.m., and the Belgians were still raging, dancing naked to punk records, and riding tables down the stairs. Something in the water there I think... maybe it’s beer.

Once you return, are there plans for some more U.S. shows?

Hunter: We will be playing a record release show in Chicago, and gearing up for FEST. When did you write and record the songs off on No Knocks?

McNeill: I wrote all the songs on Report in 2012-2013, except the B-side of the No Knocks 7”, “Don’t Want In,” which is older. We actually recorded it for North Sentinel Island but it didn’t seem to fit anywhere on

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cord, we didn’t feel like it was super different for us. It didn’t feel like a total departure, because we were already in that realm. I feel like a lot of people picked up on that idea. If you have followed our band’s career, you can see how we got to where we are now.

Does the new sound allow you to play around more with dynamics?

Yes, I feel like when we were writing, a lot of it was more interesting when it comes to song structure. We’ve never been a “verse-chorus-verse-chorus” type band. With this record, it was a lot of fun to play around with stuff like that. The first song that we wrote for the record [that] kind of opened the door for us to something different was “Enamor Me.”

PHOTOGRAPHY BY PATRICK HOUDEK

We had already written “Say Nothing” at that point, but it had a very different vibe to it, and we were really excited about it not sounding all that different from what we’d done. It allowed [vocalist] Kyle [Durfey] an opportunity to see how it worked for us. He was really interested in singing on this record, and seeing how well it worked for us gave him much more of an opportunity to do it, rather than continuing with the other more chaotic or abrasive stuff.

You are releasing this record through Epitaph. How did they react to the sonic shift?

They were really supportive of it, actually. We sent them a couple demos initially, and they loved it. They’ve been fantastic and really supportive, and they saw it as an evolutionary change for us and saw why the record was going to sound the way that it did. It’s funny too, because from the outside, people will think you changed your sound because you signed to a new label. The album was pretty much written by the time we talked to anyone about putting the record out. We were the reason for the change.

What kind of process did you use to create such huge and complex musical arrangements?

One of the things I like most about the record is that it’s a pretty dense recording. Every time you listen to it, you can hear something new. It was actually happening to us when we were getting mixes back during the process. Small overdub parts really shined through. That’s one of my favorite parts of records, is when they have a lot of arrangement in them.

We were able to have strings and piano on Keep You. We spent more time in the studio on this record than we ever spent on anything before, so there was more time to build on ideas. Pretty much everything that we wanted to try, we were able to try, which was really cool. We were able to spend time really building the record from the ground up.

In the past, there was a sense of urgency, and I think that was captured very well with those recordings. On this record, we really wanted to spend as much time with it as we could, so the vision we had was completely realized before we moved on. All of the songs’ frameworks were pretty much done when we got to the studio.

It sounds like you really enjoyed your time in the studio.

It was a lot of fun putting the record together. We were able to do everything song by song, as opposed to how we did it in the past. Before, we would come in and track the drums, then record the bass, then the guitars. With this record, we did everything song by song, so every day we were leaving the studio with a skeleton of a song done, able to fully hear how it all was coming together. I think that was one of my favorite parts of the process. We were able to come back to the place we were staying and hear how a song was being put together.

It would give us an opportunity to think over ideas to improve a song or overdub something. It was just a much better workflow this time, and it kept everybody engaged, too. No one was sitting there for a month after spending a week tracking his part.

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THE COPYRIGHTS

INTERVIEW WITH GUITARIST BRETT HUNTER AND DRUMMER LUKE MCNEILL BY JOHN B. MOORE

that record - or on Report for that matter, which is why it’s a B-side!

What can you tell me about the fulllength?

McNeill: I like it! It’s 14 songs in 26 minutes or something. I think only three songs break the two-minute barrier. But, I feel like it’s some of our best songs, and I’m really happy with the sound of the record and how they ended up sounding after tracking them. Mike Kennerty engineered and produced, and I mixed it. Mike rules.

Hunter: It was my favorite recording experience to date. Mike was great to work with and an all-around awesome dude. He pushed us to make the best record we could, and I think it worked. I hope everyone likes it as much as we do.

This has been a busy year for the band.

Do you plan on taking some time off?

Hunter: It HAS been busy, and we are thankful to have gotten on some cool tours with bands we have always looked up to. Touring with Lawrence Arms, and later 7 Seconds was a mindfuck, to say the least. Time off is never really planned, and any time we attempt a break, another tour seems to come up. So keep your eyes peeled.

McNeill: The band IS my time off! I have a regular job-type job, so I can’t do all the tours the other guys get to do. The legendary Mikey Erg is filling in on drums right now, as he has on most the past tours this year. So yeah, when I get to do a tour it’s kinda my “vacation.”

What’s

next

for

NEW NOISE MAGAZINE

the

McNeill: We’re gonna play and write music ‘til it’s not fun anymore.

Hunter: We will probably enter our “cut off all of our long hair and start to make terrible music” phase. Or maybe our “we are artists now and are super serious” phase. Or our “fatter” phase, followed by our “looks great for their age” phase.

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band?

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THE SMITH STREET BAND INTERVIEW WITH VOCALIST WIL WAGNER AND PRODUCER JEFF ROSENSTOCK (OF BOMB THE MUSIC INDUSTRY!)

BY DANE JACKSON Gearing up for their third Fest appearance, Australia’s Smith Street Band is riding high and having one hell of a year. After playing support on Frank Turner’s fall 2013 North American Tour – an experience lead singer Wil Wagner calls “a really lifeaffirming thing to be a part of ” – Smith Street hooked up with Jeff Rosenstock of Bomb the Music Industry! fame to record their SideOneDummy debut, Throw Me in the River. The album is the third full-length from the band, and boasts some of their most inspired work to date.

“I think this is as personal and kind of brutal on myself as I’ve been on a record in a long time,” Wagner mentions while discussing the new album. “I try really hard to not censor myself, especially when I feel I’m revealing too much.”

This dedication to the craft of songwriting has resulted in the best album The Smith Street Band has put out thus far. It’s easy to see how the band has changed since No One Gets Lost Anymore. To write their music off as punk would be doing it a disservice.

The band uses music as a medium to paint the canvas of their lives. As they grow, the music gets more complex, the arrangements more intricate, and the lyrics more personal and honest. The music on Throw Me in the River forces you to pay attention and appreciate it for what it is: art. This is a product of the passion and talent of each member of Smith Street.

influences on what they do.

The guys in Smith Street weren’t the only ones learning something new during the making of the album. Rosenstock reflects on what Wagner and the gang taught him. “I think [they] definitely opened my eyes to how amazing it can be when four people are totally in synch musically with each other,” Rosenstock says. “The way they play off each other and make space for each other’s little bits is something I’ll try to take with me when I work with other bands.”

With the major distance separating Australia from North America, it’s easy to see why many great Australian bands never truly get their opportunity to shine Stateside. The fact that Smith Street is now about to promote their third album – and first on a major U.S. label – should be seen as a testament to how amazing they are. Still, they don’t see their success as meteoric, instead preferring to call it gradual, which has allowed them to stay grounded and feel “pretty comfortable with where [they] were at while writing this record.” Now all that’s left is Fest.

Luca Brasi, Milhouse, Harmony, The UV Race, Royal Headache, Apart From This, Postblue, Georgia Maq, and Grim Fandango.

The Smith Street Band bring their new labor of love to Fest 13 where they share the stage with the likes of Jeff Rosenstock, Dave Hause, and the two bands Wagner is most excited to see perform: Shinobu and Hard Girls.

For the uninitiated, Wagner describes a Smith Street show as “loud, sweaty, lots of people moving, if you fall down someone picks you up, people will spill beer on you, but they won’t be dicks about it!”

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BY DANE JACKSON

So what have you been up to since BtMI!’s last show?

Tons of stuff that I’m super stoked about. Me and my friend Chris Farren [of Fake Problems] started a band called Antarctigo Vespucci and made a record. We also started “Back to the Island,” a podcast about the TV show “LOST” where we watch it out of order. Then, in May, me and a couple of friends recorded a new record – my first “proper” solo record, [being released through SideOneDummy] – out in California with Jack Shirley, who I think is just the best guy recording records right now. After that, I went straight to Australia to produce the Smith Street Band record, came home for a few weeks, and then went to Korea and Japan to play some awesome shows with The Bruce Lee Band!

What is it about The Smith Street Band that made you want to produce for them?

Well, for starters, they asked me! Smith Street Band asked me while they were on tour in the States last winter, and going to a tiny remote town in the woods – Forrest, the best town ever – seemed like too much fun to turn down.

Fortunately, it forced to me to not get a real job at the beginning of 2014, which led me to making a lot more music.

We’re all really good friends though, which is how we ended up recording together. w Sara Crow is working on a Bomb documentary. How’s it progressing?

I honestly have no idea what this movie is going to be like. Even watching the trailer was kind of emotional for me, ‘cause I didn’t realize how crazy everything was in Bomb while it was happening. I know Sara is cool. Amy, the editor, is a close friend. So, I trust those folks, and I bet they’re gonna make a rad movie. We recently did unearth some SUPER SUPER old footage that, embarrassingly, will make it into the movie I think.

If you’re curious about other Australian bands to whet your appetite for the new album, Wagner suggests: The Bennies (who will be making their Fest debut!),

“I have to give credit for any musical complexity to the other band members,” Wagner says of the band’s songwriting process. “Normally, lyrics come first with a song. Most of the time, an idea hits me and I pour it into my phone and then come back to it as soon as I’ve got a guitar! But I love playing guitar and layering things with loop pedals in my bedroom, so I try to think about all those ideas while I’m writing songs.

Also having [bassist] Fitzy [Fitzgerald] and [guitarist] Lee [Hartney] – who are both also songwriters in the band – there’s always a lot of ideas going into songs.”

For Throw Me in the River, Smith Street also received help from their good friend Rosenstock, who Wagner grew close to on tour. When it came to record their SideOne debut, Wagner knew he wanted Rosenstock at the controls.

“He brought so much to the table,” Wagner recalls. “I think, more than any of us even expected. He wrote all of the orchestration on the record and worked with me on vocals and song structures a lot. Also just having someone who is outside of us four and has less of an emotional attachment to the songs helping out with ideas was incredibly valuable.”

Some of the aforementioned orchestration can be heard on songs like “Calgary Girls,” which effectively channels the E Street Band. While influenced by other bands and songwriters, Wagner mentioned that E Street Band’s ability to “create beautiful, chaotic, and dense soundscapes behind Bruce’s songs” is one of the big

CATCHING UP WITH SMITH STREET BAND PRODUCER JEFF ROSENSTOCK

What’s it like being in a band with Mike Park?

Being in a band with Mike Park is great.

He takes you on trips to Korea and Japan, and then he wakes up early and does yoga in your room, or sometimes just stands above you as you sleep wearing only a towel and poking you a lot.

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What other stuff are you working on these days?

The Japan/Korea tour just ended last night, and I’m gonna drive down the coast of California. Then I go home.

I have some artwork to do for a band and a movie to score, which will be mega fun. Then there’s an Antarctigo Vespucci tour in November, [I] might be producing a top secret awesome thing in December, and by the beginning of next year, my solo record will be out, so I guess it’ll be more traveling around and playing music. I’m a pretty lucky dude these days!

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CHUMPED INTERVIEW WITH VOCALIST/GUITARIST ANIKA PYLE

BY DAMIAN BURFORD Chumped have created the soundtrack to your future up all night sing-along drink-a-thons with your best friends.

The band have crafted simple, elegant and most importantly, catchy pop-punk songs about the ideals that we hold dear in our youth and yet will resonate with those of all ages: friendship, growing and loss.

How does it feel to have come from a small town Colorado, all the way to one of the largest cities in the world and to have found success, and more importantly do you view your current praise as success?

Wow. Success. How do you measure that? I’m really proud of what we’ve been able to accomplish as a musical unit. If you had asked me five years ago or two years ago if I would be making a record and doing what I love with my best friends and sharing a bill with bands that literally changed my life I would have laughed in your face. I think I measure these small but amazing things we do as success.

You guys came out of the gate and garnered a ton of praise for your self- titled debut. How does that early success effect the work you put into Teenage Retirement?

Teenage Retirement was a succession of beer drinking and Cheetos eating that began with the Chumped EP...a natural progression, if you will. No, I think we put out that EP with full intention of pressing it ourselves and giving it to our moms. Wwhen people other than us even paid attention to it it floored us and really inspired us to keep making more music. I think we were all truly shocked that anyone other than us gave a shit. We wrote a full- length record because we weren’t done writing songs, we had more things to say and more music to make, but it felt good to have one under our belt. Plus, there are way more Cheetos to be eaten.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY REBECCA REED

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It’s 2014 and we need to shed the idea of male or female songwriters and focus on just being songwriters. How do you work to continue to work to blend those lines? Do you have any interest in being a “role model” and does that title frighten you?

I’m a woman in a band. There are many others. Get over it. I’ve never really thought of myself as being important enough to be a role model and thinking that someone might look up to me is a

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little terrifying. However, I had a lot of people in my life who shaped who I am as a musician and a person. So I guess if I was that person for someone else I’d be humbled by it.

You guys are a band that is right at home in my basement, yet you opened up Riot Fest Chicago.

How was your experience being part of that gigantic machine?

Riot Fest was maybe one of the coolest things I’ve ever done. I think we definitely felt like a tiny blip in a giant universe, but getting to see so many of my favorite bands while getting turnt with my best friends? Anytime. We were totally honored and would do it again in a heartbeat.

With so many of your contemporaries playing more and more of these larger festivals, how much is playing Riot Fest Chicago a kind of “Ghost of Festivals to come” experience for you, and what do you learn playing these giant festivals?

We were totally blown away when we got asked to play Riot Fest. There were zero expectations. It was definitely the biggest stage we’ve ever played to a big crowd of people we’ve never met before and I think we learned a lot about our comfort levels. It was a really different experience, but honestly super inspiring. The biggest lessons we learned were “don’t be scared” “bring beer.” Our set time was so early that even the bars weren’t open.

This October you are returning to your proving grounds of the Fest, but with a lot more time, experience and fans under your belt. I imagine the band being like a bunch of kids going back to school after summer vacation.

What are you going to be most proud of to show or tell all your friends?

We are incredibly proud of Teenage Retirement and we’re stoked to be able to play some new songs in Gainesville.

Fest is a really magical weekend and I can’t wait to tell all my friends that- despite the fact that they’re all idiots- we love them.

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Hailed as one of the leaders of the emo resurgence, The World is a Beautiful Place and I am No Longer Afraid to Die is more commonly known as the shortened – and often abbreviated – The World is… They have a uniquely ambient sound featuring vaguely space rock elements, and they set themselves apart by incorporating spoken word into their live performances and upcoming EP Between Bodies.

Is your band name too long?

It’s definitely too long [laughs]. We thought it was funny a long time ago.

Were there any other names you seriously considered?

No, this was it. It was before the band ever became a “thing.” It was a joke my friend and I had about starting a band called that, sort of poking fun at post-rock song titles. When we started the band, we were like, “Oh, you know what we have to call it?”

And we ended up with this [laughs].

Are you consciously working to bring emo music back to its roots?

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I don’t know. Me and my friend Tom [Diaz] – who I started this band with – really liked the stuff we listened to growing up, and it was never our aim to try to sound particular like any specific band. It’s like the stuff we were into in high school, and then we got delay pedals and started making it weirder.

You just released your new EP Between Bodies. What inspired the spoken word element?

Our friend Chris Zizzamia – who we did the collaboration with – has been playing shows with us on and off for a couple years. He had always been writing poetry and stuff. I think [guitarist and vocalist] Greg [Horbal] initially had the idea, and he was like, “Hey, do you wanna see if Chris Z. would perform pieces during our ambient improv parts during our set?” So we did that for a while and talked about doing a record. It was originally just supposed to be a 7”, but once we started recording, we just got carried away.

What is the significance of the

album art- the coffin filled with wood logs?

When we asked Ben Sears to do art for us, it was originally just for a t-shirt design. He said he pulled the idea from a song from our first EP. The lyric is “The apple tree is an open casket.” When he sent it to us, I was like, “This should be the artwork for the record.” We hadn’t had anything yet, and I liked it a lot.

You also released a cassette tape featuring a song off of Between Bodies at one music store in each of 11 major U.S. cities…

We just thought it would be fun, like something weird and special people had to go find. The original plan was to [release] one tape [featuring] each song from the record and then send them places, but we ultimately decided against doing that. We also put a demo from our second record on the B-side, and it hasn’t made its way online at all. So I’m just assuming no one listened to the tape [laughs].

Someone found the one in Seattle and is trying to sell it for $200.

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That’s a friend of mine, Dylan [Hanwright] from the band I Kill Giants. I think he was just fucking with people [laughs]. But I was like, “You didn’t have to go grab the tape. I could have made you one.”

What are you most looking forward to about touring with The Hotelier, Rozwell Kid, and Posture & The Grizzly next month?

I think it’s going to be a lot of fun. The dudes in Rozwell Kid: my other band toured with them last summer, and [we] just had a great time. They are a lot of fun to be around. The Hotelier is one of my current favorite bands right now, and the dudes from Posture & The Grizzly are just, like, my best friends. So it should be nonstop good times, I guess. It’s probably going to be a sloppy, drunken mess for five weeks.

What other band do you play in?

I play in a band called One Hundred Year Ocean, which has been my solo project for like eight years. We don’t really release much. We’re about to start working on a full-length.

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THE TIM VERSION INTERVIEW WITH VOCALIST/GUITARIST RUSS VAN CLEAVE BY JANELLE JONES

You’re definitely very eclectic. Was having all these different sounds and styles something you’ve always tried to do?

We’re music fans. We’re record nerds.

[Drummer and vocalist] Shawn [Watkins] is a classically trained percussionist. We listen to everything.

The obvious stuff, anything you’d find in the pages of AMP or anything, but [guitarist and vocalist] Scott [Laval] and I were from college radio and you get exposed to a lot of stuff from working there. And I worked at a record store for a few years. Also, we’re older, so the loud, fast, break shit, smash-the-state, that’s great but I’m tired sometimes. I just wanna listen to Dwight Yoakam.

You gotta write stuff you wanna play, and you wanna hear.

You can’t bring anyone along for the ride if you don’t believe in what you’re doing. I’m not saying that’s how we started out, but we all kinda have that “Well, fuck those people. Who cares what those people think?” If we’re into it and we believe in it, that’s all that matters. I’m not saying we actively try to keep ourselves from getting heard, but you don’t wanna dumb it down.

Usually it comes across when people are genuine.

Yeah. I listen to a lot of folk music, mountain music, and bluegrass, and what’s great about country music and blues in the ‘30s is those people didn’t give two fucks about what they were doing because there was no music industry. They did that for themselves.

As far as they knew, they were gonna sing into some guy’s horn, and work in the field or coalmine the next day. That comes across as more genuine. You can hear it if you really pay attention to your bullshit detector that [Joe] Strummer talked about.

That’s why you’re eclectic, it’s that you listen to more than just punk.

And that’s good. A lot of my favorite bands straddled that line. The Minutemen. If somebody played you Generation X and Crass and Black Flag and Dead Kennedys, and then said here’s a Minuteman record. Are they a punk band? They’d say no. That doesn’t sound anything like these bands.

Your first single is “A Dream About

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Dean’s Dream.” Why did you choose that one?

Somebody at No Idea [Records] said, “How about that one?” And we said, “Okay, that sounds good.” It’s catchy.

Your sixth song, “The Future of Humanity is Dogs,” hits the hardest.

Were you looking at it as an ending to the first side of the album?

Yeah. We arranged it idealistically.

This got into a big technical issue with the formats. The guy doing the vinyl mastering was like, “Well, you got this loud song as the last song on the first side, so…” A lot of these tricks people did in the ‘60s, ‘70s, ’80s are now coming back into the forefront, the technical mastering process. […]

I’m an album rocker; I like to listen to albums all the way through. That art form to me is awesome, and a lot of what I listen to. You obviously wanna make a good album that plays all the way through, front-to-back there’s no filler. You wanna set up all the songs in an order so it flows together. So we put that one there. The long and short of it is: we put it there for better or worse, it’s there now. [Laughs] “Deal with it.” [Laughs] We haven’t written or recorded any songs like that before, and that’s a kind of heavy song. We have songs that are heavy, but that one’s weird. A lot of it I came up with when I was on this big Neil Young bender. I started writing the song six years ago or something crazy like that, while I was on a trip for work and I was stuck in a hotel and had my guitar with me. But that was another one: how do you arrange it so it sounds good? Where do you put a bridge? How many times do you bring that bridge back? How much are you gonna build it up? How much are you gonna drop it out? All these nuances, the finesse that – as a group of guys playing together for 15 years – you’d hope you picked up at one point.

How did you know when you had it right?

You play it a few times and you make demos of it. You make a shitty practice room demo. It’s not even listenable.

And you just listen to those recordings and it’s like, “Is this cool? Yeah? No? What should we change? What should we take out?” Dare to compare yourself to your favorite songwriters: “How

does this sound compared to a Bob Dylan song? Does it sound anything close?” If you’re that audacious to admit to yourself that you are and you’re not delusional about it, then yeah, you might be onto something.

That’s important to be critical about it.

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success; it’s definitely not in our case.

But it’s how we feel. You’re in it for the songs, for the art.

When you’re the one who wrote it, is it hard to be critical? Do you step back for a little while?

Yes, absolutely. I’m so sick of these songs. I never wanna hear them again.

I constantly send it out, like, “Hey check out this song.” I got people who I seriously trust with that information.

They’re not gonna blow smoke up your ass. That’s how you get perspective on it. You have to be humble and critical.

I’m not saying this is a recipe for

I WAS PLAYING

BEFORE IT WAS COOL...

RUSS DISCUSSES THE FIRST YEAR OF FEST AND BEING AT ALL OF THEM SINCE..

How many times have you played The Fest?

All 13 of them. I think us, Tiltwheel, and Grabass [Charlestons] – now they changed their name to The Careeners – [have played them all]. I remember the first one we played too. It was 2002 or something, and it was basically just people we knew hanging out in Gainesville, playing at three or four different venues. Mike Pack [of] Future Virgins had a milkshake and poured it all over me. So I ended up buying a Fest shirt.

So I have the Fest 1 shirt. It has all the bands listed on the back. It’s pretty cool, especially now, because it’s become a pretty significant music festival. It’s amazing what Tony [Weinbender] and all those guys managed to put together.

of your favorite people. And you’re wondering, “Why is this only happening once a year? Why isn’t normal life like this?” It was cool to be running into folks and seeing bands. Then every year, it just got bigger and bigger. And now, it’s still fun, but when I go, I’ve given up on the idea of trying to keep up with any of it. Now I pick two or three bands: “No matter what happens, I’m gonna see these guys.”

How has it evolved over the years?

It’s crazy now. It started out Fest 1 was in May. It wasn’t till the next year when it was over Halloween weekend. When 2, 3, and 4 were going on, it turned into this thing where we’d get to see all these bands and people we knew. I remember walking down the street and you’re constantly hugging people you haven’t seen in a while. You’re surrounded by some

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ALL PHOTOGRAPHY BY ALAN SNODGRASS

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There really isn’t anything to say about PUP that hasn’t already been said.

These four gentlemen released a near flawless self-titled album back in April of this year that combines the best elements of too many genres to list. Since the release of their album, PUP has had a non-stop schedule of tours, festivals, and drinking. This October sees PUP embarking on their first headlining U.S. tour with a stop off at Fest.

Fresh off a performance at this year’s Riot Fest, lead singer and guitarist Stefan Babcock catches us up.

ers, Gnarwolves, Single Mothers, Cayetana, Lemuria, Beach Slang, Hard Girls, Chumped, The Flatliners, You Blew It! Is there a story behind the new single “Mabu” and its video?

“Mabu” is the name of my car, named after a little village in Eastern Canada. My mom bought her brand new in ‘96, and she passed it down to my sister, and my sister passed her down to me. My sister and I used to take her on weirdo Canadian road trips every summer. We’ve driven her everywhere.

I’ve made so many memories in Mabu growing up that she’s become so much more than just a car. She’s like a part of our family. Anyways, Mabu was getting old and pretty dangerous to drive. I didn’t want to just see her get towed off to the wrecker’s like some pile of shit metal. She deserves better than that. I wanted to see her go out in a blaze of glory, so I had the idea to drive her in a demolition derby. It was one of the most insane things I’ve ever done in my life. It was like getting into 60 super intense car crashes in 10 minutes. From the second the derby started, it was just like pure adrenaline; I’ve never felt anything like that.

She came in second place against all these, like, semi-pro guys who had been driving in derbies since they were kids. I was really proud of her. I feel like that’s exactly how she would’ve wanted to go out. And I feel like this thing, this car that was so important to me is now immortalized forever in this video. It makes me so happy.

Since the release of your self-titled album, your popularity has exploded.

How have you processed this amount of exposure?

It’s been pretty wild and a lot of fun.

We had such small expectations of this band. I mean, we’ve always worked hard and wanted to write the best songs we could, but we didn’t really expect anyone to give a shit. Watching it grow over the past year has been a really incredible and surreal experience. There’s nothing else in the world we’d rather be doing than touring and playing music with each other every day. We’ve been doing this for a year and it still doesn’t feel like real life.

When did you embark on writing that album?

That album was written over the course of maybe two years while we were all working full time. I’m not sure if many people pick up on it, but for us, it’s pretty obvious which of the songs on the record were written early on and which were written later. When the band first started, it was pretty much just me writing the songs, and everyone would just write their own parts. But as we moved forward, each song became a little more collaborative. We’re now at a point where [bassist and vocalist] Nestor [Chumak] or I will write a little shell of a song – maybe a riff and a chorus – and then as a band we will write and rewrite the whole song together. It’s a pretty excruciating process, because we’re four very opinionated dudes, and sometimes democracy is a pain in the ass. But collaborating with these guys is way more interesting than writing shitty punk songs alone in my bedroom, and the final product is always way better than what any one of us could have done alone.

How has your epic tour schedule over these last few months been?

Tiring. But also fun as hell. We’ve been on the road for almost a year solid.

And it’s been tough on our bodies and tough on our relationships back at home – girlfriends and family and pets and stuff – but holy shit, it’s fun. Getting to see the world in such a unique way, it’s an experience I don’t think any of us would trade up for anything. I get to get drunk and play music and go crowd surfing almost every night with my best friends. It’s the best. We’re all tired as fuck, but we’re all really happy, you know?

You’ve said in the past that touring needs be nonstop. Would you still say

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that’s accurate?

Yeah. I think the hard work and nonstop touring is the only reason we are where we are right now. We’re not really a radio band, or a “cool” band. We’re a live band. We’ve always been that way. I think it’s important for a band like us to constantly be in people’s faces and constantly be on the road.

Because that’s how we connect with people. And that’s also how we survive.

We’re not selling a million records or anything. Sorry, SideOne[Dummy Records].

Have there been any surreal experiences during your travels?

Yeah, a ton. We just got back from the U.K., and in London, we opened for one of our favorite bands, The Hives. Playing to 5,000 people in another continent is crazy enough. But the craziest thing was during our soundcheck I looked over and saw The Hives side stage rocking out to us. Man that was absurd. They’ve been one of our favorite bands forever and playing with them was a dream come true. And there was this one show in Southampton, a little town in the

U.K. that I’ll never forget. It was our first time over there, and it was before our record came out and the tour was pretty shit. I think that night we were maybe playing to 20 or 30 people max.

But everyone there was so enthusiastic that, in the middle of our set, they all formed a human pyramid and the people on top were high-fiving us on stage and stuff. That was a moment when I was like, “Holy shit… This fucking rules.” It’s stuff like that that make all this touring and being broke and not seeing your pet chameleon worthwhile.

How stoked are you for Fest this year?

Very stoked. We’ve never played Fest before. In fact, none of us have ever even been to Fest. But it seems that everywhere we go – the States, Canada, the U.K., Europe – people are talking about Fest and how awesome it is. So we’ve begun conditioning our livers in preparation of what is sure to be a total gong show.

Who are some of the other Fest bands you’re excited to catch?

Melvins, Descendents, The Menzing-

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Few band still make music videos, but PUP is about to release your fourth. Are videos important or are they just fun?

A bit of both. I like the idea of our videos giving people a different perspective on the band. We’re pretty goofy dudes, but our songs are pretty serious sounding, and videos are a cool opportunity to just be dorks and do stupid shit and sort of show everyone what kind of dudes we are. I want people to get to know us better by watching these videos, and I think it’s an important way to connect with people who like your music. At the same time, shooting these videos has been one of the best and most fun parts of playing in this band. We always shoot them with our friends, never with, like, hotshot directors we don’t know. And it gives us the chance to do all sorts of stupid shit, like be a city kid and drive in a hick demolition derby, or convince a beer company to give you a bunch of free kegs to do a “music video,” then invite all your friends over and get them totally shitfaced, roll a camera, and see what happens. I can’t believe doing stuff like this is part of our “job.”

What are PUP’s plans moving forward into 2015?

More touring. Probably Australia.

Maybe Japan. Back to Europe. Back to North America. And write the next record.

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SWINGIN’ UTTERS

INTERVIEW WITH VOCALIST JOHNNY BONNEL BY JANELLE JONES

With Swingin’ Utters latest album, Fistful of Hollow, coming out in November (after previously being pushed back to a 2015 release) I jumped at the chance to talk to the stalwart punk band. I guess because this record hit so hard, a lot of what I talked to frontman/songwriter Johnny Bonnel about ended up being about the underpinnings of some of the best songs on the record.

Do you feel you’re still progressing with every record?

I believe so. I always try to do a new style of writing or I’ll hook up with a new band member to write for each record. It was Jack [guitarist] for the first time on Fully Formed and now it’s Miles [Peck; bassist] for the first time [here]. I try to make things different. Of course if you’re going to collaborate with a different person you’re gonna get different-sounding songs so I figure that’s one way in which we’re growing. We’re able to write songs together as a band and each band member can team up. Now we know that. We can actually start writing them as four different brains.

When I get new records I just gravitate towards certain tracks at first and then it might change over time. This one it’s weird because I’m usually all about the fast and hard but some of my favorites were “Napalm South,” “Spanish,” “Tell Them Told You So,” “Tibetan Book of the Damned.”

Yeah, those are the ones I wrote with Miles. They definitely have a different quality than the rest of the songs.

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ken-word part.

Yeah, just from listening to other music I just pick up ideas here and there and try to cram them onto a song. It’s mainly just all my influences being put into a blender and scrambled up and then see how it tastes.

How do you know when it’s right?

Just from a long time writing, I just know to keep it simple and write how I like to hear a song. Like, “Oh yeah, I like how that sounds.” I’m gonna write a song that’s pleasing to my ears; it doesn’t make me cringe when I say a line or something like that. There are times when I’m writing and just that one line makes me cringe every single time so I gotta change that. It’s just gotten easier for me I guess to edit when I’m writing. And it had a lot to do from my wife because she always reminds me to keep it simple. A lot of times I’ll get too complicated with the song and get lost in it, and she’ll remind me to keep it simple and whip me back into a quick songwriting format. It’s been going really well for me. I really enjoy it also and I want people to hear that I enjoyed writing the songs.

So you wrote all the lyrics to them?

Yeah, I pretty much wrote the lyrics and the music but then brought a template to Miles and he added more instrumentation and different chords and his input to the songs musically.

About that song, what influenced the lyrics?

Doing the songwriting I was watching a lot of Mad Men and we have closed captioning on because my hearing’s not so good so I was seeing lines down below and saying, “Those look like cool lyrics.”

I just started going back and watching a lot of old Mad Men and writing down certain lines that popped out to me and integrated them into a song and made it a story. Sometimes it sounds kinda confusing to people but there is a story there. I try to make it sound like it makes sense. To me it does when I write it out.

Even just some of the songs, take “Napalm South,” I like what you do vocally, how it changes with the spo-

And “Tibetan Book of the Damned”…

That’s another one with a lot of lines from Mad Men. The Tibetan Book of

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the Dead is the real book but someone said about the Tibetan Book of the Damned. I just thought that was a great title for the song.

Do you wanna say anything else about that song, how it came together?

Like I was saying I was writing lines from that and then my own lines and making it have a little more cohesion and all these images popped in my head and thought it’s just bringing out what I’m seeing in life and my interpretation in that and just coming up with interesting lines to me is the fun of writing music and I thought for that song it was mainly just a bunch of cool lines I saw or came up with and I really like the way it goes through all this stuff and is kinda panicky and the end of the world. Oh it’s the end of the world, what are you gonna do? Just sing about it, I guess.

That’s one of the funnest songs. When I brought it to Miles, he had some really cool ideas of how to record it and stuff. I have to credit him too as well.

You have the song “Fistful of Hollow.”

What made you decide to use that as the title of the whole record?

I just like the way it sounds. I don’t even know what it means. I don’t bother asking [guitarist] Darius when he writes songs because he’s all for self-interpretation. But I just really liked the way that sounded and it sounds like that Smiths album. So we just stole the Smiths. And that’s just one of my favorite songs. Every time we’re going, “What do you wanna name the record?” They always ask me and I’m easy: It’s either gotta be a lyric from a song or a title of a song. And I thought “Fistful of Hollow” sounds like a cool record to me.

What I see in a fistful of hollow is just desperation. I thought of it in a bad way. It is hollow, a lot of the images in the world you see or hear on the news, it’s super-materialistic and rings hollow to me. I just thought that was a great title. And everyone else just went with

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it. We’re not the best when it comes to picking the title of a record. Everyone has a say but we all shrug our shoulders, “I don’t know!”

On that note, was it hard to decide the track-listing?

That was super-difficult. We had a few problems with it in the band. Certain band members didn’t want a punk song starting it. But everyone else picked that song, even Fat picked “Alice” to start it. I always think of albums starting off with a bang and I think that’s kind of an aggressive thing. I thought it was a good starter. I don’t even know how we came up with the order. I look at records I like and just try to figure out how they got their order and just try to copy it, I guess. Usually I’ll try to do a Darius song and then a my song and then a Jack song, try to keep it so every time it’s a different writer or a different type of song. But that doesn’t always work in the best way. I think the best way to do it is get a first and last song and then just listen to orders and see what ones pop out and sound good. A lot of it is what song sounds good after the song before it.

One more to get into if you will: “Spanish.”

That’s a song Darius wrote. He had a demo of it and he was like, “I’m not sure how it’s supposed to go,” he was really confused with it and not happy with it.

But when we he brought it in we were

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like, “That’s one of the best songs.” Then he was like, “Yeah, I guess so.” So we just worked on it and practiced it and got it down better and tighter. He was happy with the way it turned out. I think it turned out to be one of the craziest songs with the violins and stuff; it sounds like a symphony.

It’s cool you’re still trying different things. That’s what keeps it exciting.

That’s exactly what keeps us going and keeps it exciting. It’s just getting more difficult to find new ways to do it. But I think music is pretty infinite. There’s no way you can listen to all the music in the world. There’s just way too much of it so this infinite list of music is what we get to choose from. I’m just excited about exploring new territory on the next record and just keep doing it. It’s been a lot of fun.

Ready for the next one. Are you guys always writing?

I am. I know Darius is a machine. He can take out songs he wrote when he was a teenager and they sound just as good. He’s got a catalogue of stuff and then he writes new songs. He has a solo record coming out. He’s constantly writing and I am and then Jack and Miles. They’re constantly writing as well. It’s one way to keep busy and satisfy all your artistic needs I guess.

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I N T E RV I E W W I T H V O C A L I S T J O E B O Y N T O N B Y D E R E K S C A N C A R E L L I

In 2011, Transit restored hope in the hearts of music fans with their breakthrough record Listen and Forgive.

Three years later, vocalist Joe Boynton feels as though he’s successfully continued to reinvent the band with Joyride, the newest entry in their series.

Boynton’s process of construction and deconstruction has been an ever-evolving journey.

The roots of this system of creation can be traced to his childhood, where Legos and video games opened up a platform for expression. This escalated during adulthood when he studied drafting and design, later carrying onto Boston’s Wentworth Institute of Technology. In 2014, music is Joe’s full time job, and he’s taken an architectural approach to Joyride. Although his resources are no longer

AutoCad or Photoshop, passion and commitment are two far more effective tools of his trade.

Joyride comes out Oct. 21. Why are you excited to share it with the world?

With every record, you let go and you loosen up who you are, every time. The more that I’ve done, I’ve discovered more of who I am as a person through it. I’ve done design work for, like, 10 years and I’ve only done music for seven, but I’ve only really understood exactly or had a vision of what I’m doing for about half of that. So with the last few records that we’ve put out, I’ve discovered more of who I am as a human being. There are parts of the record that I’ve rewritten 40 times. There were a few songs that I spent an all-nighter on where I just sat up in my bed and wrote.

I really put so much heart and soul and energy into this. There’re a lot of people who go to the shows and sing these songs, and I want to make sure that I gave them 250 percent. v On your Twitter, you said you were excited to listen to the record in your car. Is that how you picture others listening to your music?

Dude, you know where music is meant to be listened to? Music is meant to be listened to – in my opinion – in a car, in a good set of headphones. I’ve listened to it in a bunch of different speaker systems, and I like it all across the board.

Everyone has a different tool that they use to hear your art. That tool might as well be an instrument on the record.

The most nerve-racking part with a record is trying it out on all the different devices. Does it still sound good? I can confidently say it still does.

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Young New England had its own unique sound.

Is Joyride just as distinct?

There’s no way you’re going to hear a song from Joyride and think that it belongs on Young New England. I always say this like a broken record, but there are bands that put out records that are the same. We look at every record like a new movie. It’s a different story, characters, plot. We change up the formula and give people something unique and new and fresh and honest.

I remember the first time I stood inside a studio and felt like I was on cloud nine. It

was like, “Here you go. Here’s your shot.

What you gonna make?” If you write the same record two times in a row to make people happy […] it doesn’t feel like art, it doesn’t feel like passion. It feels like you’re just showing up for the job. If I had to do that for music, man, I’d go back to school and get my degree.

You have a side project called Long Lost. Has it been hard juggling that band with putting out a new record with Transit?

It’s not easy. They have their full-time band, Aviator – which is on No Sleep Records – and they’re unbelievable.

That’s how I started jamming with them; I liked them so much. It’s a great group of guys, highly creative. It’s a different band than Transit. I hope to get to do more shows with them, but Transit is definitely my baby and my main priority.

Transit’s guitarist Tim Landers just left the band. Has that been a hurdle in releasing a new album? Are you upset?

All of us had different ideas about where the band wanted to go. It happens a lot, musical differences. Sometimes it builds up over time, people just want to go their separate ways. All of us wish him the best. We want people to go to his shows; we want people to listen to his music. I think that, personally, I’ve written over 200 or 300 songs with him, so it was a big “holy shit” moment for me and the rest of the band. I’m just looking at it, like, we have what we want to do.

Fair enough. Lastly, you recently posted a status on your Facebook taking a moment to appreciate all your fans and the people in your life. That was a nice thing to do.

You know what, no one has to like anything you do. You’re putting something out there, and people either respect it, respond to it, relate to it, or not. That’s it. No one is owed anything when it comes to art. And it’s been that way forever. I don’t think it matters if your band is stupid successful or not. I think it matters if you love it or not. Put your soul to sound. That’s the only reason to be in the studio: to put your personality, your life, your vision, or your soul to sound.

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MAN OVERBOARD I N T E R V I E W W I T H G U I TA R I S T J U S T I N C O L L I E R B Y J O E F I T Z PAT R I C K

Since releasing their latest full-length Heart Attack in 2013, Man Overboard have been touring relentlessly, and even made time to contribute songs to two compilations: “I Hate Her” on the first Off the Board compilation by Will Yip and a cover of The Kinks’ “Father Christmas” for Fearless Records’ annual Punk Goes Christmas album.

Man Overboard also has a few projects in the works for release in the fall and later next year.

You guys recently played the Made in America Music Festival in Philadelphia. How was it playing to such a diverse crowd?

It was cool. In America, the main festival we usually play is Warped Tour, and in Europe we’ll play a lot of festivals, but it’s usually just punk rock and metal bands. So to play a festival where the day before us was Kanye West, and our day was Kings of Leon and Pharrell [Williams], it’s kind of cool to play

for some new people. Naturally, when you’re at a festival that is all day like that, people are [more inclined to] check out “this band that I’ve never heard of.” […] We actually lucked out because it was supposed to rain [most] of the day, and it did not rain until right after we played. It didn’t work out so nicely for The Menzingers, who went on right after us.

This fall, you will be touring Europe and the U.K. with Front Porch Step, Hostage Calm, and Roam. What are you looking forward to about that tour?

Actually, funny that you mention that.

Our singer [and bassist] Nik [Bruzzese] just got emergency ACL surgery today, and he is still in the hospital right now. He tore his ACL by falling down the stairs at his house. So we are postponing that tour until April.

He has to stay in bed for four weeks with his leg elevated. Then he has to

be on crutches for two months, [and] do rehab.

Damn! Hope he gets well soon. What can you tell me about the new music you have been working on?

We have the new EP that’s coming out Oct. 28 on Lost Tape Collective.

We went back to Nik’s studio, which is where were recorded “Love Your Friends, Die Laughing,” [and] a lot of our early demos. We recorded The Noise from Upstairs EP there, the split with Transit, and it’s where we wrote all the other records and did the initial demos for them. So we bought some new gear for that studio [from] Will Yip and recorded there, and we gave the files back to Will to mix and master. I won’t say that it sounds like our older stuff, but it was at least recorded in a similar mindset and in the exact same place. We’re not really playing any shows this fall because of Nik’s ACL, but we kind of wanted to put something out to tide people over.

Next year, we are gonna put out a new

full-length, but we kind of have to put the brakes on for four weeks while Nik is recovering.

Are you recording the full-length at Nik’s studio?

We are not, but I can’t tell you where we are recording it yet [laughs]. But where we are recording is pretty cool.

It’s been five years since your split with Transit. Will Man Overboard ever do another split?

It’s also funny that you should ask that, because we are doing another split, but I also would get in trouble if I told you [with] whom. [Laughs] That will come out next year at some point too.

Your lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist Zac Eisenstein has started doing music lessons on Bandhappy. Do the other Man Overboard members have side projects too?

Nik has the studio. Most of our time is spent there, and we run Lost Tape [Collective]. And we run a web store.

Nik records other bands in his studio.

I work with some other bands, run a mail order company, and book some shows in New Jersey. Zac is doing the Bandhappy thing, and I think he is even doing a couple solo shows this fall. [Lead guitarist] Wayne [Wildrick] works at a venue in New York City, and Joe [Talarico], our drummer, none of us have any idea what he does. I moved for two months over the summer, and when I asked him what he did this summer, he told me that he quit smoking [laughs]. He did tell me that he wants to take jazz drumming lessons.

He is kind of a recluse. He’s a weird guy, but he’s a good drummer.

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LOST TAPE COLLECTIVE I N T E RV I E W W I T H J U S T I N C O L L I E R B Y J A M I E C O L E T TA

In today’s punk scene, most things are done DIY solely out of necessity.

Bands often self-release their albums before labels get involved and book their own tours before they get an agent. Most young bands create their own web store in the beginning, but as soon as things start to pick up, they pass that torch off to a manager or record label so they can focus on their music. But what if I told you that there was a band that had long-surpassed the DIY moniker yet still upheld the nuts and bolts of its core philosophy AND continuously released quality music? A band that could tour the world while simultaneously running their own web store?

Well that band exists and their name is Man Overboard. I caught up with guitarist Justin Collier to learn all about the Man Overboard & Lost Tape Collective store, which the band has run since 2009 and currently employs three full-time staffers in a tiny office in Williamstown, NJ. You’re one of the few bands who handles their own web store, from coming up with unique items to setting them up online and sending out newsletters highlighting all the latest additions. You guys even go as far as to handle all the fulfillment/ shipments, too. Do you think that this DIY, hands on approach has helped the band gain trust in fans

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over time and therefore contributed to the overall popularity?

People respect hard work. We work extremely hard and to keep our store looking good, stocked with new and interesting items and to give our customers a good experience while shopping online. It is the nature of e-commerce that sometimes (especially during the holidays) that some things get behind or back logged but we do our very best to stay on top of it, bring in extra help and have an open line of communication with our customers. That open line is usually our social networks but if we have an item that was meant to arrive by the 1st and by the 5th it hasn’t come, we will drop everyone who ordered it an email and let them know its delayed… very often we offer them a discount code or a free download in exchange for their extended wait. These customers are our lifeblood so we take their happiness quite seriously.

The “guns-crossed/DPP” logo has become so synonymous with Man Overboard that it’s become a recurring part of your merch line, updated with new colors/designs each time. Did you set out with that longevity in mind or has it really just taken on a life of its own?

The “Defend Pop Punk” t-shirt design was one of two original Man Overboard t-shirts. I made DPP on Photoshop7 on an office computer when I was working at an e nt e r t a i n m e nt company in Philadelphia.

We made it as a parody of the Most Precious Blood “Defend H a r d c o r e” shirt.

We printed fifty thinking they would last us a long time and they were gone pretty quickly so we printed some more. That processed has repeated itself ever since. People love that sign and have adapted it to mean something that we never intended.

As for the crossed heart and guns logo - that started with the album art for our debut LP, Real Talk. We loved the design and have kept using it ever

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since. I see so many bands trying to make a logo stick, trying to force something to become known as their own. We have two designs that are immediately associated with us so we stick with them.

What advice would you give to a band that wanted to start and run their own web store?

Don’t do it if you’re unorganized or unwilling learn and spend money. You have to be very disciplined with cash flow (buying merch, allocating money for shipping, paying your printer, etc).

If you don’t want to put in the time and give your store the TLC it needs, then go to MerchNow or one of those companies and give them the 15-25% royalty they will take and don’t worry about it. However if you want that extra money and more importantly, you want the control and the access to your customer, then stay on top of your store and always remember to put yourself behind the mouse of your customer.

Furthermore, we share the MO/LTC office with Two Ten Shipping, a fulfillment company run by Dom Varacallo and myself. We basically offer you to run your own store except we actually put the things in the mail for you since you’re probably busy on tour or can’t be bothered. Get in touch if you want more info on that. It still requires the TLC and detection but is beneficial for the DIY style bands and brands of this world.

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LABEL

SPOTLIGHT:

Leftist leanings, and I still do, but at some point I realized that the music should come before my own personal politics. Thankfully, most of the folks involved with Red Scare - and the punk scene, for that matter - have a lot of shared values, so we’ve never had to really compromise that original vision. Lastly, I think Dischord is cool for many reasons, but I like that their stated goal is to document a certain scene. I feel like these releases do a bit of that and tell a story about our little corner of the punk community.

What are your plans for celebrating the 10th anniversary?

A big, gross orgy of a show in ChicaINTERVIEW WITH LABEL FOUNDER TOBY JEG BY JOHN B. MOORE go with all the bands. Actually, I just Toby Jeg just might be the world’s best get their records out. Both Enemy got back from a little pre-party we had punk rock talent scout. For a decade You and The Falcon couldn’t really in New York with The Menzingers, now, through his label, Red Scare find a place to put out their music, Brendan Kelly, and Elway. After all Industries, Jeg has discovered and so I took the plunge. Ten years lat- the running around and preparation signed some of the genre’s most solid- er I guess we’re still doing the same was over and the music and drinking ly reliable bands- everyone from The thing: putting out our friends’ music. commenced, I was like, “Holy shit, this is great!” I expect that’s how the Menzingers and Teenage Bottlerocket to Masked Intruder and Cobra Skulls. Were there any other independent Chicago weekend will work out too, labels you looked to as inspiration but it’s been a lot of hard work. We The former Fat Wreck Chords em- when it came time start the label? also released a compilation called ployee, using Chicago as home base, Well, I worked at Fat Wreck Chords at Ten Years of Your Dumb Bullshit. It’s has hit a couple of bumps along the the time Red Scare started, so I guess pretty much the album of the year. way, but is capping his label’s 10-year that was an obvious influence. Despite do you look for anniversary with a massive hometown all the zany shit he pulls, (Fat) Mike What signing new bands? blowout, a fantastic comp CD and is a genuinely good and honest per- in more records on the way. son. He’s been great to the Red Scare Nice people with good songs. That’s family. I was originally very inspired the trick too. We know plenty of cool What made you de- by what the guys in Propagandhi were people that are in so-so bands, and we cide to first start the label? doing with their label, G7 Welcoming know some people who are in great I just wanted to help my friends Committee. I wanted the label to have bands who are also kinda difficult to

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work with. We want you on Red Scare if you are in the part of the Venn diagram where “good band” and “good people” intersect.

What other albums do you have coming out this fall and winter?

We did The Copyrights Report LP and the Red Scare 10-year comp with 17 new songs, and both of those are getting super, super great responses. Very stoked about that.

In December we will have a new record from Chicagoland’s weed kings, The Brokedowns, and we will also be doing the debut solo record from Derek Grant of Alkaline Trio. He is a super-talented freak of a musician and a real likable dude. It’s really different stuff, but I think people are gonna enjoy it as much as I do. I’m pretty stoked on 2014.

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THE PERFECTLY TIMED RETURN OF

... and JADE TREE’S NEWEST SIGNING

INTERVIEW WITH FOUNDERS TIM OWEN AND DARREN WALTERS BY RYAN BRAY

The Internet’s systematic dismantling of the music industry over the past decade is a David vs. Goliath story come to life. With the advent of online music streaming, there’s virtually no reason to physically buy music. Even the idea of throwing down the buck for a download is growing more tenuous by the minute. The days of money hungry music execs price gouging fans at the record store are gone.

money for the label to operate, but in addressing one problem, they essentially created another. The financial stress forced Walters and Owen in some instances to put business considerations ahead of their creative vision for the label.

Yay for us, but in taking down the major labels, music’s wholesale shift to the Internet has also shuttered countless indies, many of which were already hustling to sell records and stay afloat even when people were buying them.

Things in the industry eventually got so dire that even hugely influential and seemingly solvent labels were either going under or taking their foot off the gas. Jade Tree Records – home to such watershed bands as Jets to Brazil, The Promise Ring, and Milemarker, among others – was forced to make some concessions in order to keep their day to day operations running. After nearly 15 years of bringing the underground punk, hardcore, and then-burgeoning emo scenes to their knees with hit after fucking hit, the label’s founders – Tim Owen and Darren Walters – decided to slow things down in the mid ‘00s. Jade Tree continued to exist, but the label’s output of new material slowed to a crawl in favor of keeping its extensive back catalog up and running.

Now almost 10 years later, Walters, Owen, and the rest of the Jade Tree staff are attempting in earnest to pick back up where they left off. Having relocated from Philly to a smaller space in nearby Delaware, the label is operating on a skeleton crew staff, with just enough employees to keep everything in motion. And while Walters says Jade Tree isn’t going to abandon the purebred, underground aesthetic its built its name on for years, the label is opening the door to other bands that might not have formerly fit its image.

“It’s always been about what Tim and I like,” Walters says of how the duo approaches signing bands. “Contrary to what anyone thinks, there is no formula or format. And if we had our way, there would be even more left-of-center releases, or at least what would appear that way to many fans.”

“As the times were changing, it felt right – to do justice to our employees, the catalog, the music, and ourselves – to step back in order to let the label live on,” says Walters, who started Jade Tree with Owen in Philadelphia in 1991.

The issues facing Jade Tree at the time were many, Walters says. First, the anemic state of the record industry forced the label to run much leaner.

Walters and Owen stopped paying themselves in order to free up more

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“Jade Tree was intended to be our jobs, but it was also meant as an outlet for our passions,” Walters says.

One of the newest bands signed to the reinvigorated Jade Tree certainly falls in line with Walters and Owen’s willingness to step outside the box a bit. October will see the release of Pure Reality, the debut offering from shoegaze punks Dark Blue, which enlists the services of members from Ceremony, Purling Hiss, and Clockcleaner. The label also promises a 7” from Orlando rockers You Blew It! and a number of 25th anniversary reissues in 2015. Beyond that, Walters says we’ll just have to wait and see where things go from there.

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“Everything else, I am sworn to secrecy on at the moment,” he says.

DARK BLUE

INTERVIEW WITH VOCALIST/GUITARIST JOHN SHARKEY III BY RYAN BRAY

As a songwriter, John Sharkey III is a guy who lurks on the darker side of life. Through his work in bands like Clockcleaner and Puerto Rican Flowers, Sharkey has found a way to make those gloomy-yet-wonderful sounds of 1980s Manchester even darker and more dispirited.

But if we’re to draw any conclusions from Dark Blue – his latest project with Ceremony bassist Andy Nelson and drummer Mike Sneeringer of Purling Hiss – it might be that a little bit of light seems to be breaking into his otherwise grey state of mind. “We’ve known each other for so long that it all happened very naturally,” Sharkey says of the band’s origins. “Like an arranged marriage.”

Dark Blue still has a taste of Joy Division, Bauhaus, and the Jesus and Mary Chain, among others, but Pure Reality – the Philadelphia trio’s debut outing – is a noticeably more up affair, if only slightly.

Maybe some of the credit goes to Sharkey channeling his inner punk. He says the band came together due to what it saw as a lack of “true street punk” in Philadelphia, citing bands like Blanks 77, State of Fear, the Promise Ring, and the Wretched Ones as sources of inspiration for the record.

“Just bands I adored in middle school,” he says of the sounds that filled his ears while writing Pure Reality. “I figured it was time to pay lips service to my youth.”

Sharkey still has his mind in the shadows lyrically, as evidenced by songs with titles such as “Sounds Like Hell on Earth” and “I Can’t Take Another Year,” but musically, Dark Blue has the kind of pop veneer that’s decidedly absent from its members other projects. All told, the band strikes a nice balancing act between its woefully bleak subject

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matter and a sound that – while often dark and menacing – is lightened by the record’s polish.

Dark Blue has the distinction of being one of the first bands signed to a rejuvenated Jade Tree Records, the legendary Delaware-rooted – now based out of Philadelphia – indie that has slowed its production down to a crawl in recent years. The band put out a 7” with the label – Just Another Night With the Boys – in May, which sowed the seeds for Pure Reality.

“It’s been great doing this record because these guys are pros and they know what they want, yet they also don’t give a fuck about much else other than the art,” Jade Tree co-founder Darren Walters says. “It’s refreshing. No attitude, just killer music. You want to go the extra mile for an artist like that because they hustle for their own shit.”

The label wasn’t shy about courting the band according to Sharkey, who admitted to not following Jade Tree closely prior to entering a relationship with the label.

“Andy and Mike had worked with Jade Tree in the past, and always spoke with great reverence about their dedication to the bands they work with,” he says.

“They also wouldn’t leave us the fuck alone. They followed us to Boston for a Tuesday night gig and it was like, ‘Enough already, we’ll sign!’”

The band is ready to tour for the new record, while Sharkey says the band is already eying studio time for a follow up. And from there? “Maybe a few TV appearances,” Sharkey says sardonically.

“Hopefully we make a load of money. I don’t like being poor. It makes me sad.”

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LABEL SPOTLIGHT:

What is your greatest success story to date?

BS: I’d say Flamingo 50. [It] was a record that I really wanted to release that we got to release.

JG: That was one of our favorite albums, and we found out it was never released on vinyl. A friend put us in touch with the woman from Flamingo 50 and she was stoked about us putting it out. We released the record with Drunken Sailor, who split the cost with us. And it became stressful for me because when the record was done, shipping him his copies of the record was going to cost as much as it did to press the record. So I still have his records and that stresses me out. The Slow Death record No Heaven was great. We were really excited to do that one. That was a big deal for me because I love Jesse [Thorson] and all the other guys in that band.

The songwriting on the Ex-Boyfriends record is great too. It is so good. The Masked Intruder/ Turkletons record was great. It was nice to have the orders come piling in for that one.

INTERVIEW WITH FOUNDERS JOSH GOLDMAN AND BRANDI SMITH BY TIM ANDERL

Rad Girlfriend Records – launched in 2011 by Josh Goldman and Brandi Smith – is a celebration of their shared passion for music. Music fans have benefited from their labor of love and passion in the form of incredible vinyl releases by Ex-Boyfriends, Masked Intruder, The Turkletons, The Slow Death, and many more. The label serves as the home for Goldman’s bands – Rad Company and The Raging Nathans – who have built an international following through tireless touring. Goldman is also known to sling guitars on tours with The Queers and Iron Chic, while Smith manages and coordinates label business in their home base of Dayton, Ohio.

Why did you start Rad Girlfriend together?

JG: I wanted to put out Rad Company records. No one else wanted to touch them, so I was like, “I’ll just do it.”

Brandi asked if I liked doing it. I said yes and asked her if she liked it, and she said she did. So we decided to do it. It was really kind of organic; it just happened.

Why were others unwilling to release those records?

JG: I think it was the quality of our output at the time. We were a fun live band, and we toured a ton and made a lot of friends. But I don’t think the recordings were always that good. A lot of putting out records has to do with who you know, and I don’t think we were plugged in with the right people or that anyone was willing to spend money to put our stuff out. I don’t blame anybody.

When did you realize that the endeav-

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or should also encompass other bands’ output?

BS: I think that came when our friends asked us if we’d be willing to put out their records. Then we realized we should probably focus on touring bands who would help us to sell the records.

JG: The first two of three Rad Girlfriend releases were re-presses. The first drummer for Rad Company was running a label called Team Human Records. He put out the first Rad Company split with Sok, and the Hooker Spit Windex/ Pizza Hi-Five split. So we decided to re-press those old records.

We did another Rad Company record in the middle. It was good training for us. We figured out how to get records pressed and get covers made and where to get bags. It is funny how the evolution of the label went from being all about Rad Company to what it is now.

For that first year, we just concentrated on building fans and building our catalog. Today, I just concentrate on developing a friendship with people we’re working with, and then just work my ass off not to screw it up.

Do you feel focusing on more popular releases is unethical, or is it just good business?

JG: If I hadn’t bought the first Masked Intruder 7” in all five colors, then maybe I’d feel bad. But I’m a record nerd too. We look on eBay and the purple records we pressed are going for $60.

We still have copies! We go online and tell people not to buy the shit on the Internet, to buy it from us for $5. You will never catch me going online and selling stuff like that. I don’t think as much about our successes as I do what I hope for in terms of success for the bands on our label. They’re friends of ours. That’s the cool part. Masked Intruder are blowing up and that’s huge, and The Slow Death just got back from Australia. If our label can help these bands at all, we want it to.

Has your business endeavor affected your romantic relationship?

BS: We’ve never had an argument over it, except for who was going to the post office, ‘cause that sucks. It has made us stronger partners and a stronger team.

JG: I can be a jerk sometimes and I’ll be like, “You didn’t pack up the orders yet?” Then I think to myself, “Mother-

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fucker, why didn’t you pack up the orders?” It is cool to have this in common though.

Have you found kinship with other females running labels in the scene?

BS: There aren’t a lot of women. The punk scene for women is weird. There are not many women I talk to about what I’m doing.

What would your advice be for a woman wanting to start her own label?

BS: It is a pretty male dominated thing.

People will say to me, “Have you asked Josh?” I don’t have to ask Josh. I will ask him, but we are in this together. That is a common misconception: that I’m his secretary or something. I don’t know what to say to girls. I’m just lucky to have found someone I like doing this with. I will say that I have a Bachelors degree in audio and video production.

This is what I always wanted to do. I ran sound at various venues until I got pregnant. That wasn’t a conducive lifestyle for having a young child, so I became a nurse. But music has always been my passion and is what makes me happy. Being able to get back into this was something I always wanted to do.

What has been your recipe for success?

BS: You are always going to have those records that you just shouldn’t have done. But in hindsight, “What did it hurt?”

What is your ultimate goal for the label?

JG: I’d like to work the label full-time.

I could sit here eight hours a day at the label, and it would only get better. We are taking it one release at a time.

BS: I entertain this thought all the time.

JG: We will be putting out records forever. That’s just the way it is.

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INTERVIEW WITH CO-AUTHOR BRIAN LEW BY ALAN SNODGRASS

At over an inch of hardcover, fullcolor goodness, “Murder in the Front Row” would look perfect perched on any metalhead’s coffee table.

Featuring never-beforeseen photos of metal titans such as Metallica, Exodus, Slayer, and Megadeth in their formative years, “Murder in the Front Row” is about the emergence of the Bay Area thrash metal scene, back when your favorite metal gods were pimply kids hopped up on cheap beer and testosterone. Featuring captioned photos, co-authors Brian Lew’s and Harald Oimoen’s personal stories, and written contributions from Robb Flynn of Machine Head, Alex Skolnick of Testament, Gary Holt of Exodus, and Ron Quintana of Metal Mania Magazine fame, the book reveals what it was like to be in that place at that time in that

scene. Co-author and photographer Brian Lew discusses how “Murder in the Front Row” was designed to be a “yearbook” for those who lived it.

You describe “Murder in the Front Row” as a time capsule. Did you know at the time that this scene would change the landscape of music forever?

Of course I had no idea what the future would bring. The thing to remember is that – at the time of those photos – we were all still kids,

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the fans and the bands. The majority of us were under 21 years old, so it was just a bunch of friends, some of whom happened to be in bands.

However, how could you even imagine those bands and that music being popular? No way. I remember the first time I saw an article about Metallica in a European metal magazine; I was blown away that people in Europe knew about them.

To be honest, I still get that feeling when I hear a song off Kill ‘Em All or Ride the Lightning on the radio.

I know this sounds selfish, but I wish I’d gotten a photo taken with Cliff Burton. I was around him so much, but back then, I didn’t think about things like that.

Now everyone has a camera in their phone and can take hundreds of snapshots and not think about it, but back then, one frame on a roll of film that you used on your friend outside the show meant one less frame you could take of the band onstage.

had the vibe of putting together a metal ‘zine. Bazillion was great because they helped focus the “story” of the book, so it flowed and it’s not just a random collection of photos. Early on, we agreed that the book should be like an old high school yearbook. We did not want it to be a “history book” where we told readers why this was important or that was important. Then Harald had the brilliant idea of trying to name everyone in the photos in the captions. I think that’s my favorite part of “Murder…” because it made the book personal for those people and old friends. In a simple way, it recreated the vibe of the old scene.

Why did you decide to put down the camera?

Shows were getting too big and the bands too popular. It was more fun to leave the camera at home and just hang out with friends.

How many photos did you go through, and how did you choose the ones that were used in the book?

I have no idea how many photos were gone through, but Ian Christie spent at least a solid week scanning our negatives in San Francisco.

Putting “Murder…” together really

If you could give 18- year old Brian Lew one piece of advice, what would it be?

That’s hard, because when you’re 18 years old, you don’t want to know about the real world and being responsible. You lived in the moment. Maybe I would tell him to get two copies of everything!

Posters, 7” singles, etc. because some of that shit will be worth a lot of money in the 21st Century.

Will there be a second volume?

If there is a second volume, it would be Harald’s story. My story is rooted in the earliest days of the Bay Area scene, so my story has already been told for the most part in “Murder…”

What do you miss most about that original Bay Area metal scene?

Well, the original vibe and sense of camaraderie still exists to some extent in the Bay Area, but what I miss is that sense of innocence and fun. Our only concern was metal.

When you look at the photos in

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“Murder…” you see that everyone is smiling or laughing in most of the offstage photos. We look happy. No one is flashing the horns or trying to look tough and “metal.” I am not a religious person, but metal is the closest thing to “religion” that I’ve embraced in my life; it gave me focus and friends when I had none.

It was a different time and world back then.

What’s the one picture you wish you had taken, but didn’t?

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lurking at the edges of perception, an intuitive grasp of concepts I’m only rediscovering as an adult in recent years. I started reading at quite an early age and fairytales, mythology, and folklore undoubtedly made up of the majority of my childhood library. This would later grow into a deep interest

signed to bridge the gap between the intellectual and the intuitive. Symbols and sigils are forms that seem to encode more information than the sum of their parts: complex ideas in a simple and intuitive form. Carl Jung’s concept of the “collective unconscious” has always made a lot of

in unexplained phenomena and other “esoteric” subjects over the years.

I think, as children we “know” certain things instinctively. There is an innate grasp of our own consciousness without feeling the need to analyze or articulate it presenting a distraction.

As we grow older, this innate understanding and empathy with our environment is gradually buried under language, social skills, etc. Raw intuition is replaced with a fixed material concept of “the real world,” which we, of course, need in order to survive.

sense to me; the idea that symbols and archetypes are an innate part of our consciousness from birth.

In terms of personal belief, I should stress I would lean towards describing myself as a “Fortean” – after Charles Fort who chronicled reports of anomalous events or “damned” data in the early 20th Century – rather than an “occultist” as such. Though I do believe that the act of artistic creation - irrespective of subject matter – functions in a way very much akin to “magick.”

There are definitely times when these definitions become blurred, however.

Folklore and myth arguably have various functions, but they do seem de-

How did you begin illustrating, and more importantly, illustrating pro-

ARTIST SPOTLIGHT

STAG & SERPENT INTERVIEW

WITH

GLYN

To quote Aleister Crowley, “One must find out for oneself, and make sure beyond doubt, who one is, what one is, why one is.” You are heavily influenced by folklore and Magick. Where did your interest in the occult and transmissible entities

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SMITH

BY

TYLER

GIBSON

begin? And is it fair to assume that symbology and semiotics play a role in your work?

There was definitely a fascination with what could be called the “otherworld” from a very early age. I certainly always had the sense that there was more

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fessionally? How does your earlier work contrast with what you produce now?

As a child, I was always drawing pictures and writing stories. When I was a teenager, my vague dream was to be a writer or illustrator, inspired primarily by fantasy [and] horror art, and British comics such as “2000 AD.” Although I had natural ability, I definitely lacked the focus to put it into practice back then, so by the time I was leaving school, I had no clear ambitions to be honest. Although I loved graphic art, I was unmoved by my own efforts and drawing gradually fell by the wayside. I still had a keen interest in visual art, but from the age of 17 up, this was informed more by a hardcore/punk aesthetic: collage work by artists such as Crass, Winston Smith, John Yates, amongst others. I also discovered the work of John Heartfield around this time, and I dabbled with this kind of stark, politicized protest art for personal use, bands, t-shirts, gig flyers, etc.

By the end of the ‘90s, I was starting to dabble with Photoshop and [Desktop Pulishing] software, and this replaced scissors and paste. This eventually led to a greater appreciation of design in general. I still drew every now and then – or was sometimes asked to paint a punk album sleeve on a leather jacket – but largely, I saw myself as a fledgling “graphic designer” rather than an illustrator as such.

Fast forward a few years and I found I was constantly being asked to do layouts, posters, [and] CD covers, and figured if other people could make money from it, I might as well give it a go. So in 2005, I took the plunge, registered as self employed, and started hustling local businesses.

I gradually became frustrated with the work I was getting however; little of it reflected my own personal interests and I wanted to find an outlet to cultivate my own aesthetic approach. I decided to start screen printing again, doing limited edition gigposters for bands I liked touring through Ireland.

This was the main turning point towards cultivating a more informed and personal approach to design; the images were still largely collage work around this time. As I gained a little confidence, I gradually started introducing more hand drawn elements, and I also made a point of looking more closely at other artists and illustrators, particularly those from the late 19th and early 20th Century. I think learning how to put myself into

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the artwork is the most important realization I’ve made in recent years.

Trusting gut instinct and committing to the work is essential. I’m still figuring this out…

How did you begin printmaking, and what is the process of creating a print?

I had dabbled with screen printing years previously in the mid ‘90s, largely making shirts for punk bands and a handful of my own designs. But I never really thought about making posters until a decade later, after I had started freelance work. Exposure to sites such as GigPosters.com opened my eyes to the level of craft other people were investing in show posters and the potential of screen printing.

The process of making a print varies depending on the nature of the work and also the process used. Up until very recently, I had only explored screen

prepare the plate before you put it onto the press can affect the tone of the print. An etched copper plate will hold ink differently than an aluminum one, for example. Random marks and textures can manifest in the final print, and you can always etch the plate by hand, or use acid to add texture and deepen the impression, as well as other techniques. I’m only starting out right now, but I’m finding it very exciting.

It’s forcing me to adapt my working processes, which is a good thing to avoid getting stuck in a rut, I think.

Is there anything you’ve wanted to try, but haven’t made the leap yet?

As lame as it sounds, I have to ask: what does the future hold for Stag & Serpent?

I would say my priority right now is finding time to pursue various self-initiated projects I’ve had on the backburner for the last few years. Whilst I love taking influence and inspiration from

cultures worldwide, I’ve been feeling compelled to create more work based on Irish lore and places I’ve grown up in. There’s a few very dark tales I’ve been researching the last while which I’m hoping will form the basis of an exhibition in the not too distant future. Developing these ideas in tandem with exploring various types of printmaking is at the forefront of

printi n g , but I’ve recently started learning different intaglio processes, which is an enjoyable change of pace.

With the screen prints, the reproduction process needs [to be] dialed in exactly in advance. Everything is hand drawn, and then organized in Photoshop for separations and final clean up. I used to scan work in or lightbox sketches on the drawing table for final linework, but I now use a Wacom Cintiq for most of my drawing and inking. Unless the print needs to be printed elsewhere – for a U.S. tour, for example – I prepare all my screens, mix my own inks, and print by hand at a local communal workshop.

With other types of printmaking – intaglio processes for example – there are different methods of preparation, and the process can lend itself to more nuanced or “organic” effects. With an etching, even the way you clean and

my agenda with “Stag & Serpent.”

In the meantime, I’m planning to launch a new webstore in October, and am currently busy with a number of interesting illustration projects that will see me through into 2015. When I’m not working on these, I’ll be in the workshop printing new work, so I’m envisioning a busy year ahead.

If anybody wants to follow what I’m doing, please visit: stagandser pent.com

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LABEL SPOTLIGHT:

I N T E R V I E W W I T H O W N E R M I K E PA R K B Y J A N E L L E J O N E S

M

ike Park has been an integral part of the punk scene for decades now, from playing in bands like Skankin’ Pickle and managing his well- known label Asian Man Records.

Recently, he’s been releasing kid-friendly tunes through Fun Fun Records, featuring familiar faces like Greg Attonito of The Bouncing Souls, Kepi Ghoulie of The Groovie Ghoulies, Jesse Wagner of The Aggrolites, and an upcoming release from Alkaline Trio’s Matt Skiba and Blink-182’s Mark Hoppus. Of his latest enterprise, Mike says, “I’m excited. It’s a fun thing. That’s what it’s all about. I feel, this way, these artists can just have some fun without worrying about what critics say or what their fans say. I don’t think your fans are gonna slam you for writing a song about unicorns or rainbows.”

Are Asian Man Records and your new label totally different entities?

I guess it is [a part of Asian Man] just because it’s hard to hide from the fact that it is me, and I purposely made the logo look like the Asian Man logo, but in a kid style. I definitely wanted people to know it’s me and it kinda goes hand-

in-hand with Asian Man too. [Laughs] So yeah, I think it’s all part of the family.

When did you get started and why?

It really stemmed from me having kids.

When my daughter – who’s going to be 8 in November – was born, I was just strumming the guitar and trying to soothe her when she was crying or make her laugh, just having fun with your kids. Then my son was born two years later. I did the same thing with him. And as they got older, just playing and making up improvisational songs, they would remember it. They’d say, “Play that song again!” I wouldn’t remember what I played. [Laughs] So that was the genesis of “Maybe I should try to write some songs and put out a kids’ album.” So, that’s how it started.

So you released Smile and started the label at the same time?

No. So after the thought of putting out a kids’ album, I was like, “Well, what about a children’s label?” I guess I was thinking more of my generation; I’m gonna be 45, so a lot of punks are having kids. I thought we could do something where we work with artists who have kids, and that was the start of

“We can do this cool label, and keep the punk ethics alive from Asian Man, but just do it for kids.”

As a punk-rock parent, you don’t wanna be listening to generic kids’ music, right?!

Exactly. If you’re a fan of a band… Like, we don’t have a huge roster – we only have five releases – but what we have is Greg [Attonito] from Bouncing Souls.

I feel like a lot of Bouncing Souls fans have kids now, so it would just be a good opportunity for him to express his different style of music to those fans, and etc. with all our artists. It’s definitely not something I’m well versed at. This is a whole new genre and it’s all a learning process.

Like you said, you have five releases, you have Kepi Ghoulie…

Myself, Greg and Shanti [Wintergate]’s band is called Play Date, we have Jesse Wagner from The Aggrolites and his project is called Happy Wags, and we have this dance duo from Minneapolis called Koo Koo Kanga Roo. Koo Koo Kanga Roo aren’t a side project of anything?

Exactly. They’re the only band that that’s their main thing. So with them, they’re very different because this is 100% their first gig and main job. They’re very involved in the punk scene in Minneapolis, and they play punk shows and kids’ shows. I just saw them for the first time on Saturday. They’re an interesting band because it’s all iPod backing music and it’s just high-energy dance-party music.

It just works. [Laughs] I saw them do a kids’ show yesterday, and on Saturday open for The Aquabats. And even though The Aquabats have a lot of kids at their shows, they still have a lot of older fans too. So it’s just interesting to see them interact. And I feel like they’re gonna be the flagship band, because they’ll be touring constantly, versus the other bands doing shows once in a while, if ever, in the kids market.

Did you approach everyone personally?

I always approach everybody, and there’s a long list of people I’ve approached. Everyone has always said yes, but the follow-up on it is what’s hard.

I’ve had people who’ve said yes when I started, but it never gets done. [Laughs] I’ll keep pursuing them… Anybody in

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the punk scene who has kids, I always approach them. When I see them in person I say, “Let’s do a children’s album.” They always say yes, but they just haven’t gotten it finished. What’s funny is that actually all the bands on our label, no one has kids! A big one we have coming out is Matt Skiba from Alkaline Trio and it’s called Matt Skiba and the Cereal Killers. When I talked to Matt about it, having “killers” in the name was probably not the best idea and I told him I don’t know if we can do that, but the more I thought about it, I’m like, “Well, who cares?” It’ll be available through Amazon and I think it’ll be a high-profile release. Actually also Mark Hoppus from Blink-182 will be in the band. It might really open up some doors for us. I’m thinking it’ll be released sometime next year.

Did you record Smile for your daughter?

Yeah, it was also for me. I was just trying to put out a fun record.

Did you play any shows for it?

I did. It was crazy. Last year in January, I got asked to do the entire Nickelodeon live show for Yo Gabba Gabba! I spent three months on the road playing the most beautiful theaters across America, theaters I’d never play otherwise. I actually only did one song a night. [Laughs] They had a little segment of the show where they had the “Super Music Friend” and that was me. It was a tour that stands out amongst many tours as one of the greatest experiences I’ve ever had. My whole life has been touring in vans, so that would be luxury for me. I had my own dressing room every night.

I was on a tour bus, “The Stars Bus,” so it was me, Biz Markie, DJ Lance Rock, and the tour manager; it was a very bizarre experience. Being on a tour bus alone is such a luxurious thing to have, but I got my own hotel room every day.

Very excessive spending on their part, but I was just soaking it up.

How did they find out about you?

I had done a one-off show. On previous tours, they’d try to get local talent in each market to be the Super Music Friend, [but] the producer of the show is the singer of The Aquabats, so I’ve known him for a while. He just asked me if I would do a one-off show. The main producer was at the show. He’s from Brooklyn, but he was out at the California show, and… trying to figure out ways to cut the budget. They thought if they could get someone to do the entire tour as the Super Music Friend, they could hire less crew, less props to make it work. So they asked me if I could pull it off as a full artist.

I said yeah.

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Welcome back! Let’s keep it short and sweet this month and just dive right in...

P R AW N - K I N G F I S H E R makes you remember why physical copies of things are important.

The albums content means just that much more when time, effort and considerable care go into the aesthetic, and this is one of those records you just kind of have to hold to understand. Go check out more work by Charlie Wa-

Even though Prawn’s “Kingfisher” album isn’t really anything special in terms of its exclusivity, it deserves a spot on this column for having some of the best art direction and vinyl color choices I’ve seen all year. Charlie Wagers did an amazing job designing this LP layout. From the dirty yet elegant elements that make up the foun-

Pulling it out of the shelf, you get that instant gratification that

-

D E L U X E

R E I S S U E

opaque pink version is available on the Deathwish website. The LP sleeves hold some sweet live pics of Coliseum, insightful liner notes about t h e a l b u m . It ’s w o r t h m e n tioning the album was rem i x e d b y J o e l G r i n d o f To x i c Holo caust fame. When all is

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dation of the artwork to the actual color palette itself, Topshelf and whoever they got to press the album, did a bang up job color matching here as the Clear Splatter and Aqua Blue versions are a perfect match with the cover art.

C O L I S E U M

Louisville chuggers C oliseum done got themselves a proper reissue for the 10th anniversar y of their self-titled release.

Deathwish and the band have teamed up and brought this fucking sweet-balls-ass-titties LP that got a sick foil stamp treatment on both the front a n d b a c k c o v e r. I f y o u ’v e b e e n following along with my colu m n , y o u k n o w I ’m a s u c k er for anything foil stamped.

E S P E C IA L LY i f i t ’s a p i g g o d

gers by Googling him (it’s 2014, I don’t need to explain how to find something on the internet at this point,) and go pick up a copy over at the Topshelf website. I promise you, at the very least, a tingle in the genitals if not a full- blown packaging and art inspired erection.

said and done, this album is a cool piece to add to your collection. The art direction and extra goodies are on point and just help solidif y Deathwish as one of the most aesthetically aware labels around.

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with some skull women drawn up by the genres go to illust r a t o r, J o h n B a i z l e y o f B a r o n e s s . T h e r e’s a h u g e a s s f o l d o u t poster of the cover design that comes with the LP innards that you can hang on your wall.

The pressing info for this r e l e a s e w a s n’t r e a d i l y a v a i l able, but what I do know is the white version I have is sold out, as is the clear with black smoke variant, but an

UNTIL NEXT TIME, HERE’S A PRO-TIP: Keep your turntable by your bed so you can flip that Funkadelic record over mid-coitus without losing momentum. Nobody likes an intermission, and you’ll get to put “artisan-like multitasking skills” on your resume. Double whammy.

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idiosyncratic and nihilistic approach

stallment of the Housecore Horror Fest

on their upcoming Earth Suck LP, the

in Austin, TX, running Oct. 24 through

follow-up to their previous Retrash full-

27. If there was ever a good reason to

length. Sometimes pounding hardcore,

visit Texas beyond the fest’s “Texas

other times blackened hate or sludge

Chain Saw Massacre” screenings, a Rig-

‘n’ filth, one constant remains: Oozing

or Mortis live set makes it damn near

Wound crush with a sound that’s as big

imperative!

as their disregard for catchy choruses and melodic leads.

On a more devilishly satisfying blackened speed kick, Obsessör sneakily vomited out their second full-length Assassins of the Pentagram way back in May via Deathstrike Records. Blitzkrieg fast, high-pitched wails and wretched vokills, it’s everything and more than you’d expect from European battle-jacket maniacs. Blink and you’ll be decapitated by the speed metal scythe. Another early summer release – this time from Undercover Records – is Witching

As I write this, I have just returned

Hordes of the Undead has been out since

from the remote Orkney Islands in

June – d’oh! – and is one of Razorback

Scotland, and I’m still reveling in all

Records’ two releases this year.

Hour’s MLP Where Pale Winds Take

In other news, Bostonian technical

Them High. Falling neatly in place with

wizards Revocation penned a deal with

the German blackened thrash tradition

Metal Blade Records, and their upcom-

à la Desaster, expect howling screams,

ing label debut Deathless is locked on

eerie hooks, and buzzsaw tremolos just

target for Oct. 14. Anthrax’s live DVD

fast enough to nearly split at the seams.

“Chile on Hell” is also set to be released

Yet, where would old school under-

in September, and captures the band

ground thrash be without Texas’s own

performing before a wild Santiago au-

speed metal oldboys Rigor Mortis? The

dience. Expect crowd pleasers, plus the

influential and tragedy-struck band ap-

added bonus of 5.1 Surround Sound. If

proach even closer to the Oct. 7 release

that makes a difference. Maybe it does?

of their fourth, final, and crowdfunded

I’ll settle for a battered copy of Fistful

full-length entitled Slaves to the Grave.

of Metal any day of the week, but hey,

They’ll even be making a more than

the world’s gonna keep thrashing some-

welcome appearance at the second in-

how…

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their ancient glory: Neolithic burial mounds, Norse runes, esoteric stone

Still rolling through the United King-

circles, and dramatic seascapes worthy

dom, Liverpudlian crossover masters

of Viking metal album art. It’s a pecu-

SSS have announced their fourth full-

liar backdrop unfitting for most thrash,

length and debut with Prosthetic Re-

but, aha! One contender has broken

cords, Limp.Gasp.Collapse. Drawing on

through the North Sea fog: Lurking

their ever-strong foundation of under-

Evil. Hailing from far-further South

ground hardcore, Limp… looks set to be

– Madrid, Spain – and without one

as mosh, skate, and thrash-tastic as SSS

hint of windswept cliffs and travelling

always have been, heightened by a guest

Norsemen, Lurking Evil offer their own

appearance from local bloke Jeff Walker

enduringly vital-yet-ancient relic in

of Carcass on the track “Dead Wood.”

the vein of Venom, Hellhammer, Sod-

The result? Think a hardcore-centric

om, and Kreator. Throw in some (un)

Ghoul, replacing guttural gurgles with

healthy references to the undead, plus

angry barks dueling against Walker’s

beer-soaked hedonism aplenty, and

growls. On the opposite side of the

we have a dirty, dingy, and relentlessly

coin, Chicago’s Oozing Wound execute

driven evil-thrash record. The Almighty

the thrash blueprint with a resolutely

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“If you think Sister Sin are just another female-fronted metal band, you’ve got another thing comin’. Spiked and leather-clad, these Swedes crank out music for fighting hard and partying harder.”

SWEDEN’S RAGINGLY INFECTIOUS HEAVY METAL HEROES ARE BACK WITH

BLACK LOTUS 10.28.2014

AVAILABLE ON

CD, Vinyl, and Digital

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DANCE OF ALSO AVAILABLE THE WICKED

NOW AND TRUE SOUND OF SWITCHBLADE FOREVER THE UNDERGROUND SERENADES

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