Life In Your Way is a Hardcore/Christian band from Connecticut in the northeastern United States. They have two albums: The Sun Rises and the Sun Sets… and Still Our Time is Endless (2003) and Ignite and Rebuild (2005).

Interview by Carlo Gironi | carlo@staff.truepunk.com | with Joshua Kellam.

Hi! How are you doing?
Good, thanks for this opportunity.

Can you introduce the band’s members and a story of how you got together?
Sure. Dave and James on guitar, john on drums, my brother Jeremy on bass and for me its just the microphone. Jeremy and I started the band almost 6 years ago, along with some old members. About 2 years after the start we scrapped the metalcore sound that we had for a more melodic sound. Going through a few member (still my best friends) we’ve hit who we have now. Going through a few members has made us think about changing the name but the one thing we always came back to was that the vision for the group has always stayed the same.

Where do you come from? How is the indie/punk/rock scene in the place you come from?
We’re all spread out though the state of Connecticut. The scene really seems to go up and down. Overall the kids here are awesome, I wouldn’t trade them for anything. There are plenty of good shows here, whether we’re playing or not they are fun to go to. A lot of good bands, some new bands coming out of CT are amazing.

Do you consider yourself a hardcore or emo band at all? What do you think of the emo hardcore scene of nowadays?
We’ve definitely never called ourselves an emo band. When we’ve had to put ourselves in a category we usually say we’re melodic hardcore. if we really have to spell it out for someone we’d say we do have some “rocky” parts but still with a hardcore feel. I think kids get into bands a little too quickly sometimes. If you haven’t ever played out for people before then don’t rush it. Stay in your practice space as long as you need to, build your passion and vision for what you put into your songs. Don’t rush… I’ve seen a lot of bands pop up and not do well at all. I
don’t mean that you’ve got to sound perfect or any such thing like that. I mean you should know your songs in and out along with having fun. And with the kids who go to shows… the one thing I always like seeing is when kids stay and respect every band. I wish everyone could give a little more respect for bands or even the kid next to you, the scene would be doing so much better.

You released your new LP “Ignite And Rebuild” on Indianola Records; how did you get in touch with the guys at the label and what is your opinion on your record label? I think it has a great potential, with such great bands as you, Mercury Switch and more. That’s a funny story, we squeezed on a show last minute in Valdosta GA one summer. Not knowing at all that the guys who set up the show also ran Indianola Records. About a month or two home from that tour we got an email from them saying how much they had enjoyed watching us there. Indianola has been pretty good to us. The one thing that I’ve seen about them is they are always trying to grow as a label. In knowing this, it has been an easier time with them. The guys them selves are awesome. There are 3 guys involved, the one that’s gotten away from it a little, just be cause of school I would say is now one of my best friends. I would refer any band to this label especially a band that’s just starting out.

Have you released some other stuff before your new LP?
Oh yes. Back in the metal-core days we did a split with a band called Solace, after we put out a demo ep (witch helped us get signed) then our first full length on Inianola. The first one was a lot of fun, its exciting to it in stores.

Your new LP “Ignite And Rebuild” has just come out: how would you introduce it? Like, if you had to make something like an announcement or a radio commercial…
ok… “wuzz up? This is Joshua from LIYW! I want you to know that we’ve put out another, yes another full album!!! This sweet new CD has 10 sweet new songs on it. From awesome breakdowns to catchy singing parts…you’ll love! Pick it up today while supply’s last!” how was that?

The new songs are very fast, melodic and heavy … how is your composition process? How do you write songs and what did you want to gain with this new disc?
The music seems to come together with one idea first. It might be a good riff or a great lead. It really starts with the guiar work. Dave and James will come to us with at least a small part of what should be the beginning of a song. John will put a beat to it and Jer will throw down some bass. The beginnings of a song usually start out a little more simple that the finish product. Sometimes our songs will be totally written over and over before they become solid. 99% of the time I can’t put lyrics to a song without it being at least half way done, I like to see where it’s going before so can get an overall feel for it. One big question I we get is that do we write the lyrics fist then write the music to it or the other way around. The answer for us is that we write the music first then put the lyrics to that. I know bands do it all different ways but that is what how we find to be most efficient.

Your sound is basically metallic, and it has also some hardcore influences according to me; where do you get your inspiration from?
Other bands, music, books, movies, life … Well, music of course. I think whether it’s the favorite CD of the week or even a good friends band it can inspire you in many ways. The main thing that drives our music inspiration is how we grew in music itself. Jeremy and I have been into hardcore for 10 years now. Writing punchy lines for a chorus type part I think comes from all the bands I’ve been into. Things like that come from my own growth in music. Dave and James grew up listening to a lot of rock, whether it was indie or U2. So that should help them in where they are. John has been into hardcore and lots of other music for a long time. Just before he joined the band he finished his associates degree in music theory up in St. Paul Minnesota. He is able to put a lot of different techniques in his drumming. He’s been doing an awesome job. I couldn’t be more happy with everyone in the group right now.

How would you describe LIFE IN YOUR WAY to a person that have never heard of you?
Hardcore with singing, but I’ve had to say different things for different people. For people who know hardcore is all about then I’d say melodic and progressive. There are a few things we tend to do in our songs, one is that we rarely return to the same part. Keeping the parts in the songs rolling is hard to do some times. We’ve got to keep the songs interesting and flowing without losing excitement. So I might say to someone we’re fast pace, progressive and full of melody.

What are some of the bands that you guys in the band regularly listen to?
A few bands I know we all listen are Copeland, Underoath, Misery Signals, Further Seems Forever, As Cities Burn, He Is Legend, Mercury Switch, With Honor, Pedro The Lion, StrongArm, Jimmy Eat World, Coldplay, As I Lay Dying, One Dead Three Wounded, August Burns Red and of course many more.

Have you got some plans of touring to support your new album? If so, where and with whom?
Well we did a short tour with some friends in Mercury Switch the week before “Ignite and Rebuild” came out. We were able to sell the new disc before the release date. We did a tour to a festival in Illinois called cornerstone after it came out and now we’re waiting for the next one to happen. We’re excited to hit up a tour with some friends bands such as As Cities Burn, With Honor and our good friends in August Burns Red. All these will hopefully happen but you know how it goes. We’ve started to plan a tour in Europe for this winter. The tour would start in Germany and head around as much as 3 weeks would get us, we’re not sure who we’d be touring with but we can’t wait for that. Anyway, we will be touring as much as we can.

Do you think it is difficult for a young band to get hooked with a good and interested label? I ask you this, because in the last year I witnessed a lot of unknown and untalented bands getting signed by major labels and all…how do you relate to this thing? Are you willing to get signed to some major or you just do not care?
I think there has been a boom in the underground music scene. Along with the boom there has been a lot of good things and I think some poor things too. It seems almost any band can get “big” quick and maybe loose a lot of passion just for music and everything else a band should always remember. One thing in the past hardcore had always had the “we got to work hard for what we get” mentality. Indie music now has gotten so popular, a band can do well even in their first year. Anyway, I think any new band can get hooked up with a label, there are so many out there… looking for bands. I would just say to kids, keep your head on strait when going through all these things. As far as the major label thing, we would do what is good for this band. One of our goals is to simply play for as many people as possible without losing our passion and our goals.

Any final comments?
Sure, first of all thanks for this opportunity to share and I hope that the readers were able to find something they can relate with. I would ask all the readers to check out a song online and let us know what you think. So, peace and thanks so much.

INTERVIEW WITH ANTI FLAG Pennsylvanian politico-punks Anti-Flag have, in various guises, been rallying against the system since 1988 and their most recent album The Terror State continues to fly the flag for the down-trodden and deprived. Frontman Justin Sane kicks against the pricks with Truepunk.

Interview by Steve Tauschke | steve@staff.truepunk.com | with Justin Sane of Anti Flag.

What was it like for you growing up in Pittsburgh?
When I was very young Pittsburgh was a steel town and an industrial town and just as i started to grow up the steel mills started to close down. The heads of the factories decided that it was better to take their mills overseas and get labour cheaper so they pretty much broke all the contracts with the workers and in classic multi-national fashion, they turned their backs on the community that they supposedly cared about and who had pretty much provided a living for them and who had profited for so many years. So it was a very hard town to grow up there. It was a very depressed area with a lot of poor people. I grew up very poor and it was a real struggle but I think there are positives that come out of that and one of those things of course is that you do value what you have and you certainly value the people in your life that are good to you. So I think in that respect I think I learned a lot about life from that.<

Do you feel the curent political climate in the US is reminiscent of the 80’s?
I think we’ve almost gone back to those times in a lot of ways. Ronald Reagan was bad for labour. He pretty much broke the back of labor in the United States and then Bill Clinton came in and signed all these treaties with the World Trade Organization which made it possible for all these multi-national corporations to exploit people all over the world.
Now we have the Bush regime which is almost like Reagan in that they’re against any organized labour; workers rights and human rights. In that respect, it’s almost like we’ve gone back to that time. There are a lot of people now who are in need of assistance because there is no work. I think it’s a very telling time right now. We’re in a state of fear. George Bush was able to win this last presidential election with a campaign based on fear, you know really pushing the terrorism card really hard.

Do you recall the Dead Milkmen back in the 80s and their track Right Wing Pigeon about Ronnie Reagan?
Yeah, Reagan never acknowledged there was a problem with AIDS until almost the end of his second term but by that point AIDS was a crisis. That’s the other thing Bush was able to run his campaign on based on the fear - the idea of homophobia. They were trying to scare people within the Christian right to vote against John Kerry, that a vote for Kerry means that, ‘God forbid, gay people will be able to get married and get health care for their spouses and for the people they care about’. That’s certainly something the Bush campaign pushed very hard, which I think is despicable. They’re pushing the politics of fear and spreading hatred and for people who call themselves Christian it’s probably the most un-Christian thing anybody could do.

So like the Romans and all the great empires, do you think the American empire will come to an inglorious end?
I can see some similarities. The army of the United States is over-extended and is being sent out for the good of a corporate empire not the good of the people whether it be monopolizing natural gas in Afghanistan or oil in Iraq.

Your parents were both radical left-wing activists, vocal supporters of the environment and nuclear-free energy and fans of Howard Zinn. Did they encourage you to speak your mind?
It was a really exciting and interesting family to grow up in and it resonated with me very well. I have brothers and sisters who really didn’t take to politics as much but just growing up around the anti-nuclear movement and the environmental movement and women’s choice, i liked the idea that people should be treated well and fairly. Punk rock kind of made sense because at the time when I was younger it seemed like it was the only form of music about social and political issues so it kind of fit right into what I was doing.

Growing up poor was not this romanticized thing. I remember my parents arguing about which bills to pay and going to the food bank and that kind of thing. Many people don’t have health care or make a living wage here and of course we’re fighting two wars right now in Iraq and Afghanistan with over 2000 troops killed now and 10,000 wounded - not to mention 100,000 dead Iraqis

You’ve taken a swing at American mainstream media coverage of Asian tsunami victims versus the victims of the conflict in Iraq. Tell us about that?
Yeah, that was a post I put up on our web site. It talks about the news media’s willingness to show the carnage and bodies from the tsunami but in Iraq there’s almost no coverage whatsoever of dead Iraqis. The US press gets intimidated by the White House into not showing what’s going on over there. If a dead body of US soldier was shown on TV the government would call the news reporters un-American. Patriotism is used here to manipulate the press and we’re trying to point that out on our website.

What three albums moved you as teenager?
One of the things that always amazed me was that people went off to fight in wars for these tyrants, wars that never benefited them. And one of the bands who rocked hard but were also full of piss were the Exploited and their Let’s Start A War record. The first time I heard it I was like ‘holy crap’. I’d never heard anything like it and even though my brothers and sisters had been playing the Sex Pistols and The Ramones, The Expolited was a whole new level and I think you can hear a lot of influence in early Anti-Flag. As time went on there were different records that inspired me. I really liked The Avengers a whole lot, a band from Los Angeles because they talked about their struggle and just trying to get through life …We were very angry when we were young but as we’ve gotten older I think we’ve taken that anger and turned it into a philosophy and directed it into positive things.

You’re still pissed off enough to hang US flag upside down at your shows though.
Don’t get me wrong, we’re still pissed. Haha! I really don’t subscribe to any nationalism or any nationality. I think patriotism is totally stupid and it’s incredible to me that people would buy into the whole idea of patriotism. I mean a multi-national corporation doesn’t pledge allegiance to any flag. They’ll go to where they can exploit the labour cheapest. I’m sure the Nazis thought it was agreat thing to be proud of being German. The idea that you should automatically and blindly follow a leader and a flag simply because you’re born under under it doesn’t really make a lot of sense. It’s very important for people to question what are the messages that their leaders are putting out there and are those messages just and humane? For that reason we’re certainly willing to hang the flag upside down.

Has the band experienced a backlash because of it?
Of course there’s going to be people who aren’t very pleased with us and certainly at different shows in the US we’ve had people come along not to hear our music or try to have any kind of dialogue but simply to kick our heads in. But we’re certainly not going to be intimidated by anybody. There are times when we feel nervous and are a little concerned whether somebody out there wants to take a stab at you but it’s important for us to speak our mind and keep freedom of speech intact an for reason we’ll certainly continue to do what we’ve always done.

Maybe if you’re record sales dry up you can hang a cross upsidedown instead of a flag?
Hahaha! That sounds like something.

How was your stint on last year’s Warped tour?
What’s great about the Warped tour is the hundreds of bands throughout the summer that join it and leave it and some are on it for the entire thing and we were lucky enough to be one of those bands. It’s like a big punk rock summer camp. You break out your tent and you set up your merch and you play to these huge crowds and you’re with your friends for the entire summer. It’s fun to watch people sit around and play high stakes poker.

A Wilhelm Scream is back with their sophomore Nitro Records release,
entitled “Ruiner”. We sat down with Jon talking about how
the band grew up, music business, new bands wearing mascara and most
important, the band’s new songs, which are totally awesome. If you
want to read something interesting, here it goes.

Interview by Carlo Gironi | carlo@staff.truepunk.com | with bass player and singer Jon.

Hi there Jon! How are you doing?

Hey, I’m drinking some beers, so I’m fine.

Can you introduce
the members of A Wilhelm Scream right now? Didn’t you have some line
up changes recently?
Trevor plays guitar and sings. Nick plays drums. Nuno sings. Chris
plays guitar. Curtiss plays bass and sings. I am Jon. Trevor and I
started the band a long time ago. I recently stepped down from playing
bass and singing. I recorded “Ruiner”, but I didn’t enjoy
touring, so I’m back at home going to school and trying to keep involved
with AWS one way or another. Curtiss is the new guy and he seems to
be doing well.

You were once
called Smackin’ Isaiah. Then you changed your name to A Wilhelm Scream.
You like odd names, don’t you? Would you be so nice to explain both
band names?
Smackin’ Isaiah has to do with masturbation, I’m sure. It was funny
in high school. A Wilhelm Scream has to do with a sound clip from
movies, originally used for a scene where a guy was dragged underwater
by an alligator. Much better than jerking off…

Your new album
“Ruiner” is about to come out and I think it is your material
so far under either incarnation of the band: why did you decide to
name the disc the new album “Ruiner”?
I’m not sure how to answer this question. I think the answer lies
somewhere in Trevor’s crazy lyrics. I stopped asking him what his
songs meant a long time ago. I suppose album titles fall under that
category too.

Like I said,
I’ve listened to the new disc quite a lot and I do think it is very
good. I noticed a lot of songs are short but you also had a better
production than older discs as “Benefits Of Thinking Out Loud”.
Can you tell us more about the production process and how you decided
to keep songs shorter?
I think the songs being short just goes along with the A.D.D. style
of writing songs that we’ve always had. Maybe it’s because we want
the listener to want more. It’s funny that you mentioned this, only
because on “Ruiner” we specifically worked on trying to
give our album more “space”, especially in between songs
and stuff like that. As far as the sounds on the record…that’s Bill,
Jason, Andrew and Brian at the Blasting Room. They fucking rock!!

On your music
career, you changed a lot of record labels: from Tank to Jump Start
and now Nitro. Why do you move so fast? No seriously, how did you
decide Nitro was the right one for you?
We moved quickly from label to label because we never signed contracts.
Nitro was our first real contract where we didn’t own the recordings.
We decided that Nitro was right for us because they are a very artist-friendly
label. They moved in quickly to sign us and get the record out. We
really liked the people we talked to and met at the label. We were
just on the same level from the start. We saw them as a label looking
to build a solid roster and we wanted to be a part of it.

I personally
adore your first disc “The Way To A Girl’s Heart…”, there
are some very original ideas on it, as songs like “1957″
and “September 9th”. Do you ever think you could re-record
or re-mix some of your older songs, as the ones on “Benefits
Of Thinking Out Loud”, which were bad recorded, I guess?
Um…probably. I think we’re actually planning a retrospective release,
which will include a bunch of stuff that we’ve done previous to Benefits.
So I guess a lot of that will be redone a bit. I mean, we always thought
each of our albums sounded better than the last, and that’s thanks
to Joe Reilly for always upgrading his studio and teaching us about
recorded music. A lot of it is because we’ve gotten better as musicians.
But we thought it sounded really good at the time we put it out. It
was always the best sounding stuff we had done up to that point. I
don’t see a major reason to change that.

You recorded
at least two songs , “Butterflies Are Ugly Up Close” e “Fuck
You I Run Hollywood” that never got on your full albums: are
you ever going to use them in any official way? I’d really love to
see them on your discs.
Watch for that retrospective disc I was talking about earlier. I’m
sure they’ll be some unreleased shit on that. It’ll be a good time.
It’ll be better, so our fans won’t have to buy our whole back catalog.
We’ll just put everything on one release.

Lyrically,
you deal a lot about personal issues, and I think Trevor songwriting
has improved a lot and he deals with thinks in a very ironic way.
What is the way he thinks of lyrics, and what is your favorite lines
on the new disc?
Trevor is an amazing lyricist. And I can attest to the fact that he
only got that good because of practice. He has interesting views of
the events of his life and creates fictional metaphors for them. But
it takes a lot of practice to be able to express them in the right
way through words. I think my favorite line is “The ones who
resurrect sex and death bought the copyright. They ate shit on the
record, did you get the mix right?”. That song, “The Kids
Can Eat A Bag Of Dicks” is probably my favorite on the record.

Do you consider
yourself a punk or hardcore band at all? What do you think of the
music scene of nowadays?
I see it and I think it really sucks. No bands who have the fucking
guts to do something new, original, or against the grain. We’ve never
considered ourselves a part of any genre. If you saw how we dressed,
you’d probably just think we were Red Sox fans. It’s interesting how
fashion has become such a huge part of independent music. A haircut,
a shirt, makeup, all have nothing to do with music. But it sure seems
to now. I think what happened is a whole bunch of money started pouring
into the independent scene and people started seeing more dollar signs
and hearing less music. The music seems so watered down, not because
there aren’t enough original bands, but because there are so many
goddamn bands. With low recording costs and a shit load of bands trying
to get a chance, these labels are more likely to sign bands and take
a chance on them with all that money they made off last year’s hit
release and hope that they’re this year’s hit release. We got a chance
this year to tour with some awesome bands like Rise Against, Strung
Out, Only Crime and Strike Anywhere. These guys have all been doing
this shit for a long time too. Every one of these guys is doing it
for the music. If you met them on the street, you would have no idea
that they are in band. In other words, their press photos are press
photos, not glamour shots. The business has changed so much from when
we started 11 years ago, but we really do things pretty much the same
as we always have. When I see bands with that same approach, it makes
me want to listen to what they have to say in their music. I could
go on an on. When we started making music, we had to go looking for
it. It wasn’t on MTV and in record stores. We had to send away for
catalogs. The internet was a fucking rumor for Christ sake. Now everything
is handed out on a big fat fucking billboard. The bands coming out
now have completely different influences. They started bands for completely
different reasons. I’m not saying that we’re better because of who
we are and how we got to where we are….I’m saying that we’ve become
the people who we are because how we got here….and I’m proud of
that.

Lately I see
there are a lot of bands who leave major labels for indie labels:
you always worked on indie labels. Would you ever jump to a major
and what advice could you give to some new band who would love to
jump on a major label?
We’ve never really thought about that whole “keep it real”
issue that comes up in this genre. Who the fuck knows. I can tell
you this, we don’t know shit about major labels. But we do know about
independent ones. Stick to what you know or lose a small piece of
dignity for a large sum of cash and exposure? This is a debate that
could last pretty much an infinite amount of time. In the end, who
gives a shit. If you like the band, you’re buying the record.

You released
about four full albums, one EP, and took part in more that 20 compilations
if I have my facts correct. You have been around for almost a decade
by now: you’re a old school punk band by today’s standard! That’s
weird. How do you see the evolution of your band and how would you
describe it? Did you grow up in any way, musically?
We grew as musicians and songwriters and people. The influence is
still the same, but of course the music quality has changed. Basically,
I think we originally set out to make music a certain way, and each
album is just an attempt to try to perfect what we’ve always wanted
to do musically.

How is the
music scene in New Bedford, MA?
New Bedford is awesome!! So much talent in New Bedford. Immortal Alice
is probably one of the first local bands I got into, and they helped
us get some of our first gigs. They’re playing with the original line-up
again, which is exciting for me. Right now, NB has some hot bands.
Beyond The Embrace are a metal band that signed to Metal Blade a couple
years ago. The Casual Lean just signed up with Doghouse. Blues Bastard
are a cross between AC/DC and Led Zepplin, and put on an out-of-control
rock show. There’s also a cool band called The Thrift Syndicate that
do some very original stuff and just put out a record on Eric Rock
from Boston. Also, check out rap artist, Nick Bishop. It’s hot.

How would you
describe your new disc to a person that has never heard of you?
“Lots of guitars and harmonies…pretty fast and loud. You wouldn’t
like it.”

Can you sum
up what you sing about in general on the new record?
Monsters.

For “Ruiner”,
did you record some more songs than the 14 on the record? I mean,
do we have to expect some unreleased tune to come out on some compilation
or on the internet?
We recorded 15 tracks…so there is one unreleased track that will
come out at some point, I’m sure. It’s called “Bodies and Suitcases”,
and the guitars are insane on it!!

How was to
work with Bill Stevenson? I know you already worked with him on “Mute
Print.”
It’s great to work with Bill, if you like to smell what the shit inside
his colon smells like. He farts a lot. But seriously, what a nice
guy. We love Bill and Jason so much, we got drunk and hid about 200
little chocolate eggs all over the studio for them. They’ll be randomly
finding those for about 3 years. In all seriousness, they are very
honest, amazing, and very talented people. They work well together.

What is the
best band of today that you’d tour with?
I think the wish list looks something like this…….Bad Religion,
Iron Maiden, Propagandhi.

What are some
of the bands that you guys in the band regularly listen to? Or that
inspire you? I know you took some inspiration from Immortal Alice.
We mostly listen to bands that we’ve toured with. It’s nice to put
a face and a personality behind the music. We’ll also each branch
off and have our own sort of shit we’ll listen to. Nuno will listen
to some hip-hop and Bob Marley. Nick is really into Quicksand and
Stevie Wonder. Chris likes Botch. Trevor likes Morissey, Bob Mould
and the Afghan Whigs. I like Bruce Springsteeen and Dinosar Jr. It
works out. I’m sure Curtiss is bringing some new flavor to the mix
now, too.

Have you got
some plans of touring to support you new album? If so, where and with
whom?
August/ Beginning September with Catch 22. Then, in the fall, two
different tours…one with Pennywise and one with Strung Out. Should
be awesome!!

Any final comments?
…Go Red Sox!!!

Ruiner comes out on August 30th, 2005 on Nitro Records.