Jacob Bannon: We experiment on every record. Every release that we’ve done since 1998 or 1999 has had some sort of stylistic departure, some sort of instrumentation that isn’t traditional band instrumentation in some way and this is an expansion on that idea. It’s not like we’re reinventing the wheel at all, we’re just refining our experimental approach. Heavy music and aggressive music doesn’t always have to be raging and thrashing. There needs to be a dynamic to give these things power. If you just race forward with a billion beats per minute, it’s going to sound like white noise after a while. So it’s nice to be able to allow an album to breath, to create an organic environment to it. Those kinds of songs are the way we’ve always done that. I don’t think we’d ever want to come out with an album that is all that. We just like to have diversity in each record to show versatility.

full interview at scenepointblank.com

Ballou: I think it’s better now than it was in the 90s. I think in the 90s that’s when hardcore went suburban and the metal influence came in a lot. Obviously there was a metallic influence in the late 80s with Cro-Mags, and Slapshot and Judge and Leeway and all these crossover bands such as Suicidal Tendencies. I think the suburban kids such as ourselves, we had that kind of hardcore influence from going to shows, but we were also the first generation that had MTV and Headbangers Ball. So we’d go to see Slapshot on the weekend or Bad Brains or whoever and come home and watch Headbangers Ball and see Slayer and Metallica. I think the 90s there was a lot of early attempts at fusing those things and a lot of it was really cheesy. A lot of that moshcore stuff that came out of the 90s was really bad. There’s always going to be bad music, there’s a lot of god awful terrible music now, there’s a lot of god awful terrible music from the 80s, but I think with time a lot of the bad stuff gets forgotten about and the good stuff gets remembered so I think certain time periods get revered more than others.

Then in the 90s you also had these hardcore kids from suburbia…. like in the Black Flag era there were a lot kids who had no other choice but to be hardcore kids. They’re urban kids, they’re runaways, they’re from broken homes, they’re people that are suffering and desperately needed an outlet. It had nothing to do with fashion or anything like that. There’s definitely some posturing going on, but it wasn’t a fashionable thing, it was dangerous and it’s just what these people were coming to do. That’s not to say affluence precludes any kind of suffering, but it’s a different kind of suffering that happens among suburban and upper middle class kids which is where hardcore starts to move in the 90s. So you have this new thing that starts to happen in the 90s called emocore, which is driven by people that don’t have such a dangerous life. It’s the classic suburban depression, kids who otherwise would have been into The Smiths or The Cure or even The Red House Painters and then started to form this more tempered music. When that term was coined, they were referring more to the D.C. scene, which is more like the intellectual side. There are a lot of politics in D.C. so you have a lot of politicians, lobbyists and other businesses in the area so you have a lot of intelligent people in the area who are having intelligent kids. So these kids are thinking more outwardly and more politically. So you have the Revolution Summer and the birth of Rites of Spring and later Fugazi and Moss Icon and these other kind of bands. All that stuff gets filtered of this kid who knows about hardcore and the metal they’re playing on MTV and the result is the 90s screamo, sweater vest, horn rimmed glasses sort of scene and so little of that stuff was any good. And between that stuff sucking really bad and that early metallic stuff sucking really bad I think it took a really long time to flush itself out and become it’s own thing than being a poorly played derivation of a lot of other things. Now that I think that evolution has happened it’s refined and it’s a higher caliber than it was in the 90s.

Another big difference in how the music has changed since when we started is the business. There’s this constant access to music that we didn’t have back then. It’s not really better or worse, it’s just different. We used to buy 7 inches and we used to take it and send it to your friend or your pen pal and you’d have to recycle your postage because there’s no email yet or downloading so local scenes would develop a lot stronger. Bands from Boston tended to sound like each other because bands wouldn’t go on tour very frequently so you’d end up playing with the same bands a lot and influencing each other more than bands across the country. So there’s this Boston sound, this L.A. sound, this New York sound. But then downloading and MySpace starts coming up and it dilutes the local scene identity and it makes music a lot more competitive in all genres of music. There’s so much out there and there’s so much access to it so only the music that requires the shortest attention span that people will pay attention to. So if something doesn’t have a great recording or a hook right away it’s really easy to dismiss it and move on to something else. It used to be like I would go to the record store and buy a few CDs or records or tapes and even if I don’t like it that much, I don’t have that much music in my collection so I spend a lot of time with each record and getting to know it and it might rub off on me and I get to understand it. That kind of thing doesn’t really happen anymore so it’s a really different environment. Touring has become the same way as the scene has grown and people are able to make money touring. Everything has become a lot more lowest common denominator with regards to the tours that you do and the music that you write because people are thinking about their careers more than about expressing themselves. The fans support that mentality through their buying practices.

full interview at punknews.org

The first is the blog B-Sides ‘R’ Us which contains downloads of a ton of music that you can’t buy.  Live bootlegs, leaked tracks, demos, out of print stuff and a ton of other rarities.  I recommend the sections for Thrice, Thursday, and The Mars Volta.

Then there is Issues Oriented.  A podcast by Ronen Kauffman that features interviews and a little bit of music ranging from punk to hardcore to indie to metal and beyond.  Make sure to give this podcast a listen.  Highlights are episodes 6 and 18 featuring the lovely Joanna Angel, as well as 19 with Efrem from Death By Stereo and 22 with Geoff Rickly from Thursday.

Finally, there is the fairly new blog Robotic Obscurites.  It’s run by the awesome people at Robotic Empire and features demos, b-sides and rarities from the bands they do releases for.  Never heard of Robotic Empire?  Go check them out here.  They sell countless amazing cds and record.  The best vinyl I find online I get from these guys.  Isis box set anyone?

That’s it for now.  I’ve got new songs of the week in progress as well as a very exciting interview.  Keep your eyes peeled.

Oh, and one last thing.  Anyone else get the aTelecine EP aVigillant Carpark?  Thoughts on this strange art piece?

“(We Are)” by American Nightmare, later known as Give Up the Ghost, is one of the most amazing pieces of music I have discovered in the last two years. I started listening to American Nightmare in 2008, long after their 2004 breakup, but despite my late arrival, I am certainly glad I eventually made it to their party .

I won’t bore you with the details of my descent into their music, but I will say that the first times I heard Year One and Background Music I could not believe the musical gems I was unearthing. I got that feeling I get every time I discover music that will truly stick with me. My eyes get wide, I turn to whoever is next to me and I ask, “How the hell didn’t we already know about this?” The same thing happened the first time I heard Red Sparowes’s At the Soundless Dawn.

American Nightmare’s singer Wes Eisold sets the tone of this lonesome anthem about having given up and being absolutely set upon that decision with the first line of the song, “This is the soundtrack to saying goodbye.”

I’ve shown the lyrics of (We Are) to a lot of my friends who don’t listen to aggressive music. In general they’ve liked the lyrics, but have almost universally commented that these words are some of the most depressing writing they have ever read. I certainly cannot deny this, because Wes writes using very bleak imagery, but I believe my friends all miss something I feel in these words. What my friends miss, I hear in the delivery of the lyrics juxtaposed with the aggressive tone of the music. While the words alone sound tragic, when I hear this song, I am always filled with hope.

Something I love about American Nightmare is how their music creates this space where, for the moment, it is completely okay to say, “Fuck everything, I give up. The world sucks, life sucks, I’m drowning in emotional torment and everything is going to hell. I am angrier than I’ve ever been and it’s not going to get better.” While this attitude will get you nowhere, many of us have moments where we feel this way, though we know life is really not that bad. Just because we know it won’t get us anywhere does not mean we can simply push those feelings aside. You have to accept these emotions and work through them. and I find American Nightmare’s music to be one of the best places to work through these feelings, one of the best places to purge them.

“we are dropping coins/into dead payphones/to hear the sound of our voice/just to know we’re alone”

This is the soundtrack
To saying goodbye
We are making out
With desperate days
So turn the volume up high
(You love it)
God bless repeat – play nights
Heartbreaks and fights
And all the pretty kids
With the tired tired eyes
Sitting out parties
To be with your headphones
Reciting your last words
And writing your last notes

This is the soundtrack
To saying goodbye
For feeling cold like December
In the middle of July (so fuck it)
We are dead flowers
And pocket change – me
Forcing smiles – so tragic baby
We are the depressed
Future heartbreakers
And this is how we sound

Sometimes I just want to fade away
With no goodbyes – or anything
I slept right through the yesterdays
‘Cause everybody was in my way

This is the soundtrack
To saying goodbye
We are dropping coins
Into dead payphones
To hear the sound of our voice
Just to know we’re alone
And it’s beyond me
Why people couldn’t see
We were the true meaning of beauty
Humming “love”
With stiches in our hands
So young, I broke a wall with my hand
That broke a heart with a pen
So young, I was singing
“Love” in my head
And if you know what I know
Then you know that love is dead

We were born just to fade away
With no goodbyes – or anything
We slept right through the yesterdays
‘Cause everybody was in our way
Goodbye my loves
You can have my heart
This is volume three of our tragedy

]]> http://thetestingground.wordpress.com/2009/02/16/song-of-the-week-we-are-by-american-nightmaregive-up-the-ghost/feed/ 1 sae http://thetestingground.wordpress.com/2009/02/08/brief-news/ http://thetestingground.wordpress.com/2009/02/08/brief-news/#comments Mon, 09 Feb 2009 05:37:54 +0000 sae http://thetestingground.wordpress.com/?p=98 ]]> So exciting news in the Isis world, as well as in the Pelican world

Isis has released the title, artwork and track listing of their new album.  You can read more about that here.  As well, if you head over to Aaron Turner’s blog you can see the artwork split into two different pieces, giving you a better understanding of how he composed it.

Pelican has signed to a new label, are working on a new EP (in my new home of Seattle) and have a string of new tour dates up.  Check that out here.

Check it out

Hello there ttg fans.  I know, it’s been a long time.  Life has been crazy.  I graduated college, left my life long home of the Bay Area and moved to Seattle.  It’s 2009 and it’s time to reaffirm life.  I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this site and about my need to write about music.  It’s time to make it happen more than ever before.  I’m going to start off with a song of the week column and see where it takes me.  I also noticed that the format of my site has for some reason reverted back to some very unappealing color schemes so I’ll have to work that out soon.  Anywho, I just wanted to check in.  Now I’m off to start writing.  Like Zach de la Rocha said

“it has to start somewhere
it has to start sometime
what better place than here
what better time than now
all hell can’t stop us now”

“We’ve been working hard on the new record. All five of us sweating away in a small windowless room in downtown Los Angeles. We’re making good progress and will have more (and more exciting) news about that to report soon!”

Who else is stoked?

And word is the Not in Rivers, But in Drops single will be out September 9th.

In other news, I discovered the most astoundingly beautiful music ever thanks to my favorite online vinyl supplier Robotic Empire.  More on that later.

In the midst of considering my metaphorical dental surgery, I did come across a thought or two invoked by Saturday’s experiences that I think are worth exploring. Before that though, a few short highlights of the show: Walls of Jericho amassed some huge circle pits, Machine Head played Hallowed be thy Name originally by Iron Maiden, Sid Wilson (#0) from Slipknot broke both his heels at the Seattle show so he’s playing in a wheelchair, and Slipknot played Prosthetics off of their self-titled album (my personal highlight of the show).

Now with the highlights out of the way, let’s move on to some real thinking which means we need to rewind back to the Machine Head set. My friends and I headed over to one of the second stages for their set a few minutes before it started so we could be there for the whole thing. Shortly after, the band came out on stage and things got going. Music was playing, the crowd was moving, and since this happened to be one of my friend’s first metal show ever, I wanted to make sure she got the full experience. I told her to follow me and not to worry; she’d be safe. We wormed our way through the crowd, pushing closer and closer to the center. Our destination was the edge of the circle pit; that way she could get a good view of all the chaos.

While weaseling our way into the center of the crowd, something unexpected happened. Two girls started clawing at each other’s faces and throwing punches, and then before I knew it, I was being shoved aside by one of the girls as I helped to pull them apart. Once or twice after the fight the girls tried to get back in each other’s faces, but someone would stop them.

The tranquility didn’t last long. Within about two minutes the fight erupted again, but now the brawl consisted of at least ten people. Within seconds one guy, probably around his early twenties, was being pinned down on the ground, while some fortyish tough guy biker started to kick his head – this all in midst of six or seven other people going at each other. My first reaction was to pull the long hair of the biker as hard as I possibly could. I was pretty sure he might kill the kid he was kicking since kicking someone in the head happens to be a good way to commit murder. It didn’t take long for me to reconsider my actions, as none of these people were my friends, this wasn’t my fight, and if I touched the biker there was no doubt in my mind I would leave the show with at least one broken bone. After two or three minutes a handful of those six-foot-god-knows-what, three-hundred-plus-pound guys broke it up.

What’s next? The fight just starts up again about ten feet to the left. Then it stops, moves left and starts again. This pattern happens over and over again. By the time the fighting ended, the fray had moved so far that even my friends across the pit had gotten a view.

Now, what is the point of all what I just wrote? Why am I recounting these scenes of violence? It’s simple. Because most people in the crowd and a lot of bands’ so-called fans just don’t get it. They have no idea what these bands stand for, what their politics are, or the fact that most of these bands wouldn’t appreciate idiotic jockish behavior like this at their shows. I was reading up on Machine Head earlier and noticed that much of the lyrical content on their new album The Blackening is political in nature. A Farwell to Arms attacks the war in Iraq and Halo attacks organized religion, as well as its excuses for violence. With lyrics like these, I doubt the band would condone violence at their shows. I would also bet good money that the people engaging in this violence might very well be pro-Iraq war (editors note: NOOOOOO! IT ISN’T A WAR. DON’T EVER CALL IT THAT. IT’S AN ILLEGAL OCCUPATION. THE WAR WAS ILLEGAL TOO, BUT THAT ENDED IN 2003. THERE IS NO WAR!!@&^!@), despite the fact that the band they are rocking out to has a hardline view in the opposite direction.

This same problem occurs with a lot of bands. Pennywise is a prime example of a band whose fans just don’t get it. All those drunk frat bros who show up to Pennywise shows and push me around, those are the exact people Jim is attacking when Pennywise performs Perfect People. Or what about Lamb of God? I know Lamb of God has a lot of ignorant conservative redneck fans. I remember telling a friend of mine that I was going to go see them play at the Catalyst in Santa Cruz. He warned me to watch out for all the racist klan-type folks who would descend upon the show from Felton. And to me, the fact that I will have to watch out for a bunch of white supremacists at a Lamb of God show is very odd – I’m pretty sure Randy Blythe would personally throw most of those people out of his show if he knew they were coming into his pit with a racist, hateful agenda. Lamb of God’s release Ashes of the Wake is a hyper political album (check out Hourglass, Now You’ve Got Something to Die For, or Ashes of the Wake) that clearly oppose the current state of politics and war. During their time touring for this album, Randy often wore a shirt with the image of George Bush’s face crossed out. Despite the bands outspoken views though, people still show up at their shows waving around confederate flags.

Regardless of all the hypocrisy contained within the fact that people attend shows where they would most likely not be welcomed by the bands, it is not very hard to see why it happens. Music similar to Lamb of God and Machine Head is loud and extremely aggressive. These musical qualities attract a lot of different people, from all different backgrounds, with a huge degree of varying political and personal ideologies. On top of the aggressive music, a lot of these bands are screaming their heads off making many of the lyrics nearly indecipherable without a lyric sheet, at least the first time around. People don’t pay attention to the lyrics – they are satisfied with the fact that they relate to all the aggression presented aurally with the music and probably really excited about shredding guitar solos. An old roommate of mine, who was into a lot of metal, said he never really paid attention to the lyrics; that just wasn’t his thing. On one hand I respect that. Music is often meant to be fun, and you should take from it what you want, and enjoy the parts you want to enjoy. However, I also don’t understand not wanting to know what a band is singing about. Yes, it takes time to read through lyric sheets and then digest what those words mean, but doing so gives you such a deeper understanding of the music. It also gives you insight into the band. I feel like this insight is important. I can’t speak for others, but even if I liked the music, if I found out a band had an extreme rightwing agenda housed within their lyrics, I would probably stop listening. I wouldn’t want to rock out to a song about how someone thinks we should be out slaughtering innocent people in Iraq, even if the lyrics were generally so inaudible that I couldn’t understand them.

With all of this said, what is there really to be done? Personally, I wouldn’t mind if bands stepped up their personal agendas a little bit more. If you are outspoken about something in your lyrics, then be outspoken about it when you are talking to the crowd. If you don’t want to discuss politics, that’s fine, but if they come up in your lyrics, bring them up to the crowd. Let people know what you think, and let that racist fuck in the crowd know that you, as the singer of the band, don’t appreciate his views, nor do you appreciate him being at your shows. If you listen to old Pennywise bootlegs, you’ll hear the band stop the show on occasion to break up fights in the crowd because they didn’t want that shit at their shows. I know, this is a lot of work, and it can’t always be done, especially with big crowds, but I always love and respect bands so much more when they get involved.