Cro-Mags
August 27, 2010 by urbn
Filed under Bands, Hardcore Artists, Metal Artists
- Cro-Mags
Cro-Mags are a hardcore punk turned crossover thrash band from New York City! The band, which had a strong cult following. Their first two considered the most influential. They were among the first bands to fuse hardcore punk with thrash metal and were associated with the birth of a tougher attitude within the hardcore scene in the late 1980s. They were also one of the first hardcore punk bands associated with the Hare Krishna movement.
Bhopal Stiffs
August 27, 2010 by urbn
Filed under Bands, Hardcore Artists
Read more: http://www.myspace.com/bhopalstiffs#ixzz0xrsO4ib2
The Casualties
July 22, 2009 by Bijhan
Filed under Bands, Hardcore Artists, Punk Artists
The Casualties
One of the hardest punk bands of the late 90s, the Casualties for many came to embody the image of street punks for many. Though their popularity never hit the mainstream, their large and passionate fan base has kept the band touring and releasing extensively for over twelve years. Because of their no-compromise all-American style of punk rock, they have been seminal for a whole new generation of hardcore street punks. Since their 2006 release of “Under Attack” SideOneDummy Records the band has not stopped touring. I don’t know what the world record for touring continuously is, but I’m sure three years is a competitor. Their latest album, recorded on the road, is called “We Are All We Have”, also released on SideOneDummy and hit shelves in August 2009.
To read about the release of “We Are All We Have” check out the news article: The Casualties “We Are All We Have” out Aug. 25th
Interview Dillinger Escape Plan
May 25, 2009 by Steve_Tauschke
Filed under Hardcore Bands, Interviews
In February of 2009 Steve had a chance to interview “The Dillinger Escape Plan”. The band had big plans for this year and even with nearly half the year over with the band is moving strong through the months. TDEP plan to release a new album this year and tour heavily.
| By Steve Tauschke – February 2009Credited with a degree in psychology, Ben Weinman believes his decade as a touring musician has been a true lesson in the workings of the human psyche.“I can say that playing in a band is a huge psychological experiment,” reasons the 33-year-old founding guitarist with New Jersey-based math-rock quintet Dillinger Escape Plan. “Dealing with five individuals and living that closely to them all the time where every decision you make affects more than just you is an understanding of restraint. “It’s really like being married to four or five other people. I don’t know if that’s why I’m the only one still in the band today, ha, but it’s certainly an interesting sociological situation to be in.” Weinman is no control freak however – far from it. The band’s singer Greg Puciato, bassist Liam Wilson and recently retired (due to injury) drummer Chris Pennie have been by his side since the late 90s, shortly after he formed the group in high school armed with a “crappy guitar and a drummer who played on pots and pans”. “It’s crazy, it seems like it was just yesterday when we started,” he says. “But I think the common thread beside myself is just the ethic and the intent behind everything. It’s great to know that ten or 12 years ago I had a vision and I got together to make something special. And to this day I’m able to continue to fulfil that need to make music that’s stimulating and exciting because I’ve found great people to help me to do.” So has that vision been fully realised yet? “I think so,” he says. “At the moment we’re working on a DVD on the early years of the band and looking back it makes you think a lot about what your purpose was and why you’re doing what you’re doing and how you’ve changed. And the reality is I haven’t changed a whole lot. “I think what differentiates us from some of the newer bands is that there was no Myspace and You Tube when we started, none of this information constantly flooding peoples’ brains. Back then, our goal was just to make music that we loved in front of a few people and maybe make it to the other coast of America and play California – then we’ve made it. “All of us were working or going to school, we had no intention of doing this for a living. We started with just the intention of making an impact in the small subculture in which we were playing and to this day we still look at the crowd as individuals, we don’t look at them as one giant entity or market. We like to bring as much intimacy to the shows as possible.” The said DVD features some interesting footage, says Weinman. “It will give people an idea of what it was like when we first started with our old singer and what it was like back then,” he says. ‘We have a number of interviews with a tonne of people, some of which are still involved in the music scene today and were around back then. “There’s really cool interviews with people like Davey from AFI who was good friends with us back then and started playing music around the same time, and Andy from Every Time I Die talks about how all the guys met at a Dillinger show. So there’s a lot of cool stuff in there. It’ll be hard to narrow it all down.” In the interim, the band is in the final stages of the promotion cycle for 2007’s Steve Evetts-produced Ire Works, an album that drew rich praise from critics and peers alike for its unorthodox grooves and eccentric musicianship. “I think the most important thing in keeping culture and art moving is to try to create a paradigm shift within your genre but to also maintain the ethics and the attitude that made that genre or subculture great to begin with,” offers Weinman. “So for us it was always about coming into the punk scene and incorporating all these things that influenced us growing up, from listening to show tunes with my parents or listening to metal or getting into fusion acts like King Crimson.” Currently training up a new drummer and writing new material for Ire Works’ successor, Weinman expects many of those elements to seep into the next album, slated for release later this year. “So far the songs are sounding just really uncomfortable and there’s a lot of tension,” he says. “It’s very different and I think it’s definitely time to make people uncomfortable again. As of right now I’m getting migraines working on it so I’m sure it’ll piss off a few people as usual!” Resting up before hitting the road this month, Weinman reveals he’s carrying some old injuries, most of which have settled down and ought not bother him on stage. “I had a broken foot and a fractured bone in my neck which isn’t too enjoyable,” he says. “And I tore my rotator cuff, I had surgery on that shoulder where the guitar strap sits. I tore it almost all the way around, almost completely ripped my arm out!” Wear and tear aside, Weinman says he’s mostly just happy to have had a loyal confidant in punk rock sustain him through the years. “At the end of the day music is always there for you,” he says. “Friends come and go, girlfriends come and go but music will always be there. It’s such a gift to be able to have a form of expression and pick up a guitar or get on a drum stool and use music and be a part of something that you’re a fan of for so long. Growing up, music was the soundtrack to my life and so to participate and make a living doing it is unbelievable.” |
Converge
January 20, 2008 by urbn
Filed under Hardcore Bands, Interviews, Punk bands
Ask Kurt Ballou from veteran Massachusetts bruisers Converge about the band’s early days and you can almost feel the wince of embarrassment down the phone line. Forming the group as a teenager in the early 90s with vocalist Jake Bannon, they performed Minor Threat and Suicidal Tendencies covers before eventually mustering enough gumption to pen their own material, songs perhaps better left unwritten, according to Ballou.
“We started writing our own songs which were God-awful,” laughs the guitarist-producer, convalescing at his home in Salem having just completed a US amphitheatre tour with The Bronx. “We went through a lot of different styles and if anyone out there ever gets hold of our first 7″, it’s the worst piece of shit ever made! Haha!
“We spent a long time trying find ourselves and we went through a lot of different members. There wasn’t really much of a sense of purpose to the band back then other than just beating the crap out of our instruments after school. We were angry at stuff but we weren’t sure what, haha, so it was born out of a lot of teen angst.
“I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that the first 7 or 8 years of the band we were God-awful. I wasn’t really proud of our records until Jane Doe in 2001. I think there were some good songs and ideas prior to that but it was the one record I’m totally proud of. Having the new drummer helped a lot in giving the band some focus and there are other factors as well.”
In the days before metal-core became a buzz word for today’s disaffected youth, Converge’s pioneering hardcore on indie label Equal Vision carved itself a lasting niche now revered by the band’s cult fan base and beyond. Not a bad effort for a bunch of mid-teen misfits who never could quite perfect those Slayer riffs.
“We’ve kind of always done everything by ourselves and figured out everything on our own which is great because we’ve developed our own identity,” says Ballou on behalf of Bannon, bassist Nate Newton and drummer Ben Koller. “But everything takes a lot longer that way and you don’t benefit from learning from the mistakes of others, you just make all those mistakes yourself.”
“I think we developed pretty independently. Even the other bands that do influence us, I think it’s hard to get a direct influence from them because I’ve always been really bad at mimicking things. Like when we do covers, I’m bad at nailing the vibe of a cover. I sort of have to do my own thing, which is a blessing.”
Not surprisingly, a hallmark of Converge’s latest album No Heroes, the quartet’s second release for Californian label Epitaph, is an original blend of high-adrenalin metal and pre-dawn hardcore.
“When I set out to make a record I don’t set out to achieve anything in particular other than something that satisfies me musically and artistically,” says Ballou, who produced the album at his own God City studios using a mix of Pro Tools and an old school desk console. “On this record I was just trying to continue the path of writing songs that are both aggressive and innovative and trying to keep it within the confines of Converge. I wanted it to sound like a Converge record but it also needed to be new and exciting and that’s really what I’m in music for – to be excited.”
“We recorded it pretty quickly in a professional recording studio and there wasn’t much of a differentiation between the writing of the songs and the recording of them. We didn’t really practice them, we just wrote them and recorded them. There was no extended period of time of getting to know the songs or play them out. We just went for it and that’s what we’ve always aspired to be – a raw honest band.”
Shai Hulud
July 27, 2006 by urbn
Filed under Interviews
Interview by Steve Tauschke | steve@staff.truepunk.com | with Shai Hulud’s Matt Fox.
As a 14-year-old, Shai Hulud’s Matt Fox remembers spending long hours in a bedroom whose walls often shuddered to the thunder of metal kings Slayer.
“My mother could never understand how during the day I could scream the lyrics of Angel of Death and then at two o’clock in the morning crawl up next to her, having an anxiety attack, terrified I was going to die,” laughs Fox, guitarist with NY metal-hardcore hybrid Shai Hulud.
While Mrs. Fox doesn’t count herself as one of Shai Hulud’s obsessive fans – “she’ll tell you it’s far too angry” – the band certainly has plenty, many of whom are no doubt saddened by the recent decision to wind up the band by the year’s end (Note: This has changed, as the worm has not been slain just yet).
“We’re going to be continuing with another singer and writing music in the same fashion as we always have, just under a different name with a different vocalist,” explains Fox, who began Shai Hulud (pronounced ‘shy halood’) with fellow Floridian guitarist Matt Fletcher in the mid-90s before moving to Poughkeepsie, New York.
In the wake of the group’s third vocalist Geert Van De Velde’s recent departure after four years at the helm, the group recently embarked on a series of farewell tours in the US and Japan on the back of various attic-clearing re-issues, including 2005′s early rarities set A Comprehensive Retrospective.
“I’ll tell you right now, when we first got Geert in the band in 1999, I knew right off the bat – and I think he’ll agree with me – that we were definitely going to be at odds with each other. I can say he’s a very, very decent person, he got a heart of gold, but as with any married couple or band there’s always inner tensions. We kept them together as best we could but we finally got to a point where something just had to give.”
While those inner tensions never truly served to improve Shai Hulud’s creative output, it is with some degree of irony that Fox announces Van De Velde’s participation in the group’s upcoming tours.
“I’m sorry that it couldn’t have worked out with him,” he says, “but it’s good to know that we’re all still on good terms and can do this tour … at least we can close this chapter of our lives, shake hands and know there are no hard feelings.”
Following a brief and final re-grouping, Fox and the remainder of the band will continue on as The Warmth of Red Blood, dropping the long-held Shai Hulud moniker as they search for a new singer, new material and a new beginning.
“We’re writing, we’re demoing, we’re talking to labels, doing all the preliminary band stuff,” says Fox. “The main difference between the bands is the singer. We’ve always had fairly inter-changeable members.”
What won’t change believes Fox, is his penchant for lyrical honesty, a common thread linking much of the back catalogue.
“I write a majority of the lyrics and I write about one of two things,” he says, “things that piss me off or things that move me. Definitely our style of music is aggressive but to compare our music to say, Embrace Today, it’s clear to me that they sound a lot more aggressive than Shai Hulud does. We focus a little bit more on melody and those guys are just a brutal attack.
“Our playing is aggressive by nature and lyrically, most of the songs are fairly aggressive but what I like to think of as having a focused anger with a positive outcome. A blind random rage about something doesn’t do anybody any good. We stem from the hardcore scene and that’s what separates us from your typical metal band, that is to turn a negative into a positive result.”
