BAD COP/BAD COP
KEN MODE
PHOTOGRAPHY BY ALAN SNODGRASS
INTERVIEW WITH GUITARIST JENNIE COTTERILL BY GABI CHEPURNY
L
os Angeles’ Bad Cop/Bad Cop got together because each member caught the others’ eyes.
Guitarist Jennie Cotterill explains, “We were all playing in different bands in L.A. and kind of noticed each other, because there was sort of a mutual admiration going on. I met [drummer] Myra [Gallarza] at our first band practice, but I remember seeing her before and being like, ‘Oh my God, who is that?’” After the band began playing together, they had more fun than they would have ever expected. Everyone quit all of their other bands, and, after switching bass players in 2012, the Bad Cop/Bad Cop lineup was solidified: Cotterill, Gallarza, guitarist Stacey Dee, and bassist Linh Le, all of whom contribute vocals. “There kind of isn’t a lead singer and I love an equal chance, it’s just so much more fun to hear from everybody,” Cotterill says. “I know Stacey’s got a longer and more visible history than the rest of us in the scene that we’re in right now, so a lot of people think she is the lead singer, but the reality is that everybody is singing.” Bad Cop/Bad Cop began their discography with a 7” titled Boss Lady on April Fools Day in 2014. The four song recording includes their very true to life anthem, “My Life,” the hilarious video for which you should go watch right now. While trying to move the band forward, Dee asked punk giant and NOFX frontman Fat Mike—whom she knew previously—to check out Bad Cop/Bad Cop. He did, and the rest will become history. Bad Cop/Bad Cop got signed to Fat Wreck Chords, and Fat Mike
produced the band’s first full-length, Not Sorry, which comes out June 16. Cotterill describes working with Fat Mike in the studio as quick but “surreal,” as the multitalented producer always has a lot on his plate, but knows his way around a recording studio. When writing Not Sorry, the four piece used a collaborative method that seems to permeate throughout all areas of their dynamic. “We tried to kind of change our writing from the original formula,” says Cotterill. “For this record, we wanted to work together and involve one another from an earlier point, and we were so thrilled at the way that made everything so much stronger and easier to play.” Cotterill focuses on the positive when writing, since there’s no shortage of misery in today’s music. While she says she receives a lot of eye-rolls from her bandmates during the process, she feels it’s important to remain upbeat. “As far as subject matter goes, we try to stay positive and encouraging, and honest at the same time,” she elaborates. “We really wanted it to be positive more than anything else, because there’s so much music that glorifies negativity and self-abuse. People can really use [music] to hate themselves, or feel shitty and abuse their bodies. I just wanted [our songs] to be encouraging. In real life, there’s enough reasons to be upset, and if we’re given this one chance, we’re gonna do something at least fun with it.” 2015 is shaping up to be a big year for Bad Cop/Bad Cop, who can be seen alongside NOFX, Lagwagon, and Masked Intruder on the Fat Wrecked for 25 Years tour this August.
.....
PHOTOGRAPHY BY BRENNA FARIS
I N T E R V I E W W I T H VO CA L I ST A N D G U I TA R I ST J E S S E M AT T H E WS O N BY B R A N D O N R I N G O Though Manitoba natives KEN mode have been putting out killer albums for over a decade, it wasn’t until 2013’s Entrench— their first Season Of Mist release—that the band seemed to create a major name for themselves. Since then, they have done an impressive amount of touring, with an equally impressive pedigree of bands, which is the definition of success for most extreme metal bands in this day and age. After the overwhelming success of and subsequent tour cycle for Entrench, the band immediately set their sights on their new album, aptly titled Success, available June 15 via Season Of Mist. “The writing process for this album was more involved than we’ve allowed ourselves time-wise on the last few,” states vocalist and guitarist Jesse Matthewson. “Entrench was written in a couple of concentrated bursts, while Success we spread out over several writing sessions from March to August 2014, both in Winnipeg and Saskatoon, where our new bassist Skot [Hamilton] lives.” While the band’s lineup underwent a change with the addition of Hamilton, the band’s sound was in a transitional phase as well. “The shift in sound was really an organic change, though we did have to discuss it beforehand,” explains Matthewson. “Skot joined the band at the end of our tour with Russian Circles, and we viewed the opportunity as a clean slate to begin writing our new album on. [Drummer] Shane [Matthewson] and I had already shifted gears in how we wanted to approach the new album, relatively fed up with being pigeonholed in a community where we were largely misunderstood. [We] had no material written yet, so Skot had to adjust his expectations as we started jamming things out. He literally flew into Winnipeg the weekend after we got back from that tour to rehearse and start working, so we were ready to hit the ground running.” Sonically, Success sticks out like a sore, noise rock-blistered thumb in the band’s discography. This is partially due to the band’s choice of producer, as well as their back to basics approach to the album’s creation. “Both writing, and recordingwise, we very much wanted to return to our roots, to the music that influenced
us and made us want to make music in the first place when we were teenagers,” explains Matthewson. “We wanted to write from a place back before we got into metal and hardcore, the scenes we’ve largely been shuffled into over the past few years, [while] never really fitting in. Personally, I wanted to conjure the feeling that I got listening to Nirvana and Kittens in my parents’ basement—that optimistic enthusiasm—while filtering it through a very different perspective of the world— as a 33 year old man—and see what came out.” “We knew with this outlook in mind, that Steve Albini was really the only way to go in terms of capturing the aesthetic we desired,” he continues. “Raw; live; real. He has his own legacy that we grew up listening to, and recording with him was one of the last real goals I’d ever set out to do with this band. It just made sense.” Another of Success’s more interesting facets is Matthewson’s tongue in cheek lyrics. “Inspiration for the album from a conceptual context stemmed from western views of ‘Success,’” he explains. “Relationships, business, sex, religion, power, money, one’s legacy… The relativity of it all. Additionally, we wanted to pay tribute to the Canadian prairies, in our own not so subtle way. This region is a very strange artistic melting pot, with some truly inspirational output that’s not always seen [or] appreciated by the rest of the world.” For Matthewson, a lot of lyrical inspiration for the album came from a love of standup comedy, which helped his lyrics cultivate a bit of buoyancy. “Throughout the past couple years, I’ve been making observations, writing down notes of funny word combinations, entertaining concepts and phrases we’ve come across, many of which are ones that my bandmates come up with, and it was from this source material that much of the meat of the lyrics was constructed out of,” he admits. “I was able to string together a multitude of ridiculous inside jokes to form thought out songs with coherent summaries. As a result, I feel it’s a much more fun and lighthearted album, while still maintaining a good deal of the bite we’ve become known for.”
.....
.
ISSUE 18 NEW NOISE
23