#386

http://coub.com/view/72kcp

One of the rules of this column is whatever music I receive from a punk band I will write about it. Luckily I got the Mystic Inane Ode To Joy test press from their singer Jonah. What a nice person! Surprise, surprise - It’s an amazing record from the folded paper cover – it’s a test press – that pictures drawn, naked, middle aged men who are playing volleyball in front of a mansion; until the music itself that is again, manages to combine all sort of sounds, paces, ideas and charms of sub-genres of punk and hardcore within one and a half minute songs. The title song starts out with dynamic, robust minimal beat pounded by the drums and in parallel with the guitars distinguishable credo, manifested with spilling out its bucketful of worm-like little notes, all around the surface of the rhythm a terrific disharmony happens. Then these two components merge and without giving up their own characteristics, together Mystic Inane succeeds where average punk tends to fall into mediocrity. This is what great in Mystic Inane, they play for the punks who are bored of those other punks who have forgotten how great punk is. They play for themselves since there is a detectable will in between the notes to distill the fundamental punk idea and toss it into the form of punk songs. It’s no deconstruction of anything that is bad because even though their alienated after taste Mystic Inane’s music is a reflection on genre slaved hardcore punk, those types where the form dictates the songs. That is boring, when nothing is sticking out among the leveled lines and unwritten codes.
Punk is great because within it’s environment everyone is gifted with the opportunity to succeed and it’s other subcultures failure thanks to their arrogance that they are unable to create such infrastructure within their scenes where anyone could achieve what they want. What we want is free! But it’s a very fragile position to base everything you do either on talent or luck or both and nothing else. I’m always bummed when I ask bands about their predated visions before their first ever practice and probably out of being shy they always reply as if anything that is great in their band is thanked to their mutual unconsciousness because after all they only wanted to play music and thought nothing special about it. But for fuck sake even bands who have no idea how to play their instruments have the idea to play music and most of the times they have a way to solve their lack of musical education for what they use tactics to sound original, fun, frightening and not just a bad sketch of something. The lack of educational knowledge could be balanced with enthusiasm thus great punk is smart and brave. It’s smart enough to know it’s limits and brave enough to do even though the known handicaps. So it could limit itself and it will be great because the inner force of the band will spread-eagle those limits or it could be totally mad and laugh on any limits. But punk needs limits because it’s a counter culture as much as every culture is that is not serving an order but being confused by the confusion of the world. It is also great when you know a lot more than what you seem to do because then you put this knowledge in between the panels of your creation. After all this is what differentiates art from being fucking dumb and hard-working. If you are talented you can be lucky even without knowledge of what you do. If you are talented and have knowledge you will be great. If you have knowledge you might not need talent. If you are not talented and have no knowledge and still doing it at one point you will be really sad. Read a fucking book, listen to something new, burn a cop car.

Anyways here is an interview I did with Shiva about Deformity and things:

Why and how did Deformity form?

Same reason any ol’ punk band forms man. We were all high school kids from different places and few other friends who’d hang out all the time, we needed something to do when we realized we didn’t have enough beer an’ weed to blow our minds out, so we made loud music to do it. We got a little more productive later, but never much more, so we broke up at the end of last year. Now it’s Kaleidoscope.

Of what are you the Deformity?

I got bug eyes and my hands sweat.

Your sound bears the idea that you, the players are deeply in love with a lot of music. It sounds like you listen to more music than what could be captured in your actual songs. Among the influences for there is the libido of rock and roll. That hard to describable charm which is the core force of your music. What is that you are looking for hearing in great music? What is that grabs your attention in others music and what is that component in music that you want to communicate through Deformity?

Hell yeah man, music’s my first and closest love. I like melodic hooks that get stuck in your head and seem like they could be infinitely expanded, I like the sound of voices or instruments straining to convey the most outta one little note or phrase, I like music that takes a fantasy or a nightmare and puts on a show with it, owns it, makes it completely palpable that comes out of anything, so I’ll listen to anything. This might be a non-answer, but I just look for soul, for maximum feeling outta music, and that’s what I wanted to communicate in the band. I wanted to paint my face with the dread I was feeling and show it to people to see if they felt similar.

Really unique music like yours tend to come from distant and disconnected places. Where there is no given form, sound of the scene/city. Where people are left to be whatever they want to be. It’s like they are not hearing the actual music but hearing of the music and they play it how they imagined it. But Deformity hails from New York which is the center of the world. Do you have to lock yourself in to be free in that environment? Is it harder to be original and stand out from such a vivid scene?

Well two of us are from an hour outside of NYC proper, and throughout the time Deformity was writing music, we were based out of there. That was its own form of isolation. That and being a few or more years younger than most of the people involved with punk in the city.  I’d go out to these shows and be inspired by these bands who were just DOING it, letting loose, going wild. When we really started getting going it was us doing the same with our own experiences. The three of us have been best friends growing up for years, we had our own chemistry between us and our own thing to express. I don’t think you gotta lock yourself in to be free, I think you just gotta feed off the people you’re involved with, reciprocate, and let it be your outlet. Otherwise its useless, to you and to anybody who happens to come across it.

Do you think there is still a need for progressive originality in punk? Should bands try to invent new sounds or is it established enough that originality appears in reconstructing already existing ideas and sounds? I ask that because in a way Deformity is a unique band but if I break it down and think it through you sound like Japanese hardcore mixed with mutant American hardcore through garage sound from a collapsing basement.

I like all those things, but I don’t think any of us were thinking about any of that when we were playing. I think its cool that it hits your mind that way though. I don’t think there’s a “need” for anything in punk, punk is a pretty mixed bag man. People do what they like and take pleasure in what others do as they please. The word “progressive” has a nasty ring to it though, I think the whole idea of setting out to push some abstract thing forward is pretty wrongheaded.

In the majorities head New York is the capital of hardcore. But all of the largely known bands hailing from their after all act as dads. Either the republican, catholic dad who tells you not to drink, be nice to your friends, don’t drink or the dead beat grown up jock dad who only tells tales about how powerful, better, stronger he is than everyone else and he teaches you how to fight people who are weaker than you or stab back people who disappoint you. But as these bands are tending to rather play for actual old folks a new scene is blooming in New York who tend to behave like kids left alone for a weekend, home alone style with more taste to do chaos. How do you relate to your cities musical scene, present and past?

I’m really into what’s currently been going on. You know the bands. I’m listening to the new Dawn of Humans LP as I type this, its great. Joe (Deformity bassist) and I just recorded a tape for Nandas, they’re my favorite new band. New York’s got a pretty rich musical history, I like a lot of it, if that’s what you mean by relate. Miles Davis was here a while, James Brown live at the Apollo (I’d say that’s *from* here), Velvet Underground, Suicide, mid-70’s proto/art/punk shit, the fuckin’ BAD BRAINS, Reagan Youth, Urban Waste, Cro-Mags Before the Quarrel, early 90’s rap, PERDITION….as far as that neo-conservative big-white-man side of things—“NYHC”—goes, I don’t care for it.

In the past two or three years you have only released two 7’s that had 3-3 songs. Is there something beyond this very filtered and selected way of releasing your music? I hate to wander to my turn table to always replay your 7’’ while some days it’s the only thing I want to listen to.

There’s other stuff out there, a peppering of mediocre tapes from 2009-2011, then a couple of botched recordings, and another demo tape that came out in 2013, which is probably the best representation of us. That is still floating around, we dubbed a bunch and then Toxic State pressed it as a pro-tape. It’s all floating around on the internet, and its 2015, so unless you got much bigger problems that’d prevent you from giving two shits about tracking down our music, I’m sure you can find it.

You have a fanzine for yourself. I didn't have the chance to read any of the issues – is there any relation between how you write music and how you write texts? Is The mindset you use for editing also used for forming a song? 

Nah not at all. I stopped writing a zine almost three years ago, and that was the time when I’ve made most of the music I’ve been proud of. So maybe there’s a negative relationship there? Nah, not that either.

Are you more of a music maker or listener? What do you think how is looked upon by the other the maker or the critique?

Both. Both help me make sense of the world. I’m not sure about the second part,  if you’re asking what I think of music critics, I like ones that write well, or at least with sincerity instead of pretentiousness.

What's the best way to make egg?

Over Easy—but that’s hard as hell and I always fuck it up, so I’ll say as an omelet, with mushrooms, green chilies, shallots, and cilantro. Hits the spot.

Gun Outfit interview

I have interviewed my favorite current band. It was a great experience.

Link here:

http://www.fvckthemedia.com/issue57/hard-coming-down

#385

If punk is dead now then when did it live? When did it has its hey days when everything that it was destined to fulfill was a living reality? When Malcom Mclaren was selling ugly cloths in Chelsea or when the Ramones wrote rock and roll songs about sniffing glue and horror movies? When Crass was walking around naked in a squatted garden using anarchy as an excuse not to do the dishes? When Tampax and Hitler SS played under a bridge on cartoon instruments and decided that they rather just hang at home? When Spions (the Hungarian Electric Eels) wrote songs in English because the communist regime was too stupid to understand foreign languages? Or when Los Saicos started playing mutant surf rock in Peru before anyone? When did it reach the wall from where everything started to sound not only boring but as much a redundant reproduction of the sound in question that it felt useless to play and probably listen to ever again? Already with Outsiders? Nasal Boys? Johnny Moped or what? Was it Less Than Jake? Nah, they are too cool. Sup, all my friends who are metal heads? Hardcore died when good bands started playing dad rock and everyone forgot to notice and keep in mind the Crucifucks, Deep Wound, Spike In Vain, United Mutation, Die Kreuzen, Outpatients, Really Red rather they realized baggy pants are more comfy and you can listen and play metal even with short hair. Everything else still lives, that Guns and Roses cover band just played for a packed house and the up rise of the western civilization part II is right at the corner.

Have you realized that people who tend to bury culture are always live in a plastic bag located hundred feet deep under the ground? If you can’t find something you really looking for then that could mean you are still not looking hard enough or at the right exact place. It also could mean that you have invented something that is waiting for you to actually create it or you expect things that never existed and you live with false definitions in your head. I hated it when everyone called everything punk. Fucking freakish, trashy drum and bass was called punk because it was loud and fast and noisy and was easier to listen to it under the influence of drugs and booze. But no, punk is a word used for punk things. It doesn’t define just anything that is vaguely awesome or the truest shit. It defines many things but not everything that is great. So stop calling jazz, British invasion, kraut rock, garage, surf, rock and roll, psych, metal bands punk and start calling yourself either illiterate or a punk who listens to other music. Don’t be an Eskimo standing in a desert wondering, how weird the snow is here.

I would puke those in the face who say fun begins outside your comfort zone because I really hate everything all the time when I’m not in my bed, eating pizza, listening to The Fall and receiving a back rub. Being lazy and boring is no comfort. To learn and while doing that also have fun takes time and work for sure but if you are not doing it inside your comfort zone why the fuck do you do it anyway? Ha?!

I deleted everything from my mp3 player because I felt awful wasting my time with listening to the three same albums when I have two hundred other records on my player’s memory beside them. Most of them I have now on actual record that stands on my shelf and I decided to divide my music listening into three different environments. At home, at work and while travelling. At home I spin my records. I tend to pile them up at the beginning of the weekend and listen my way through them. Also because I have my laptop and wifi at home that’s where I search for new music. At work I like to listen to long albums that not just take more time to hear but the whole record blends into a structure of songs not only one tune after another. While travelling I used to reach for my feel good acts but life is not a movie since we take films more serious than actual reality, thus I abandoned the concept of me listening to soundtrack-esque hits which is mostly MF Doom, for an eastern European white guy in dad cloths. I want to discover bands even while I sneak around the streets of Budapest so my rule was not putting anything on my mp3 player that is too easy to listen to. And now I have 200 albums that have the same chance to be digitally spanned by me. And I love it because this is my comfort zone that now has been expanded to the streets too where I listen to new music or already known ones with a different set of mind. This is music I have to work for a little bit, that needs my attention, music I don’t already know even when I don’t listen to it. Just today I went out to buy Club Mate and cherry juice while listening to Barcelona’s Extremo Nihilismo En Barcelona, Confuse’ Stupid Life and H.H.H.’s Intellectual Punks and Contrazione ‘s Cineocchio! Storia E Memoria. It was also such a joyful trip when I was taking a bus a bit tipsy and blasted Räjäyttäjät’s Rock 'n' Roll Painajainen or some other time when I was nerding out on Warum Joe’s Toccare La Verita. Is that fuckwave?
So if a comfort zone is where you can be lazy and boring then I want to exist outside of that but if it means where you have fun on your own rules than fuck society and the outside world and I want to eat my mind pizza in MY NEW HOUSE, MY NEW HOUSE.

Probably what always calms down the tension to a boring state of calling the scene where you consume culture a comfort zone is the rise of mediocrity among its doers, which I have nothing against. That’s great when almost everything is at least average and not either super amazing or really bad. In punk only two things are bad. When people try to play shitty music in a shitty way or when they play shitty music in a really good way. But going out to a show seeing a band perform a solid set that you forgot while travelling home and listening to Flipper is not a bad night at all.

Nowadays sometimes it also feels like everybody is doing everything so the focus is switched from those who produce to those who are judging the creative out-puts. Truth being said I had more sex over my fanzines than I did for my bands. While I write as a lazy and stupid school paper press gang goof but dance on stage as Prince on acid.

But it’s terrible right? This world is obscene when people whose work I adore write me e-mails that they liked what and how I have written about them. It should be the other way around.
I reached a point during the write up for the YETT where I realized since everything is so instant nowadays bands are forming to play a genre that is on the spotlight rather than just stepping out from the shadow into the spotlight that is focused on their style of sound. These bands lack the main motivation what is the real reason of why I really love to listen to music: Hearing people play whatever they think is cool. But these protocol bands are playing what is in other people’s favor which even if executed in a real decent way is super dumb because these bands couldn’t exists without anyone’s attention and this is why I skip them because I don’t have to hear it to know what they play. It’s not only dark, gothic post-punk/death rock that I always kick around in my column along with oi influenced hardcore but generic KDB hardcore punk and well bed room noise hardcore too drowning me with their uncountable amount of demos, eps, break ups and last shows. I accept it, these are sub-genres with their own rules that might differ from mine. The music is only bad when the listener is bad.
I like it better when there is more to discover than what I hear for the first time or when there is nothing else but that indescribable quality, luck, charm of music writing that creates awkward feelings that make you hostile so you give in to fall into Stockholm Syndrome and embrace the sounds. Interesting music not only could mean chaos as no idea noise but also exact separable parts organized in a way that is shocking. I want ideas. Not intelligence but people with a will that reeks from unstoppable innocence. The more fucked up their ideas are the more interesting to music will be for me. Let it be Buck Biloxi and the Fucks, Deformity or the new Rákosi recordings. I need to hear that force which made the music happen. I love how under certain circumstances guitars can end up as an inconceivable buzz that leaves space for imagination not only for what the player’s intention was with using such mutual code to transmit information but I feel welcomed to guess after all what the fuck is happening.

It doesn’t mean I only listen to the most unique bands who live outside the box. If I were in a band whose sound I couldn’t describe in any way maybe I would succeed as a musician who I don’t want to be and fail as a listener and by this my music would be just shit. Because after all I want to make music I want to hear and selfishly it would be great if other people would think the same and produce more music I want to hear. 

#384

I want to write as the Gonz skates. Or better I want to live how he skates, I want the world to be familiar to his style of thrasin’ because it’s far from what reality is and if I could write like that then when it gets printed out on paper this utopist vision will be a bit closer to reality. I was thinking about the rhythm of life and walking with a groove and ended up at the similarities of skateboarding and punk.

Both hobbies are very concerned about self-documentation. Tribes hidden from civilization thought a camera could steal your soul. Modern man thinks only those things exist that are documented. This set of mentality leads into the challenge to film something that really worth to be filmed and all of a sudden the whole skate industry hyped itself into a constant stunt act in which skaters only go out to jump down from neck breaking heights and the actual thrashin’ lost it’s representation and in the rare moments when it appears on screen it feels so heartwarming. To use an allegory here professional skate world seems as if in music progrock won. But kids filming kids skateboarding is very familiar to everyday punk struggles, if a part of a skater equals a song and the whole movie as an album. And just as the best punk albums, good skateboarding movies too, do make you want to go out and participate in the same fun. This eagerness of self-documentation, that probably made the bed for selfies and the whole web 2.0 society, brought every skate rat crew a camera, just as how all the punk crews have a band with a demo. I started to think about what is a stunt in punk. Writing the tightest, coolest songs in Switzerland? Trashing spoons at neck breaking speed in Finland? Dorks, assholes, maniax hitting back the terrorize the society that has melted in the fear of a nuclear war in the shittier parts of the US? Art school drop outs trying to paint shit pictures with their guitars? Mexico holding satanic rituals that is crushing? French people being French but it actually sounds pretty amazing?  

In punk the documentation is focused on the falling not on a controlled and successful landing. The risky minutes when anything can happen. Could everything happen? Everywhere, all the time. I watched a Suicide interview where they said they wanted to make something new and as a listener I could state that they still sound fresh. They created modernism. But are the limits of sonic creativity really border-less? Is it even punks duty to out-do and reinvent themselves? It’s supposed to save the society, bring anarchy and kill cops but it’s not destined to figure out new song structures and produce another sonic dimension. It has to be itself and people who love punk music aka punx have to be themselves as well. I try to accept that when I want something new I don’t always have to look among punk bands. My own social problem is that I always want something new because for me the unknown is what’s interesting so whenever I name drop a band here, I feel as the most boring person ever, because I know that band and for me their greatness is obvious while I wanna be surprised. I want the uncontrolled falling in my head to grab me with it’s weight so we can offer ourselves to gravity and so it be. So I started listening.

I was re-amazed by the awesome noise of Shellac, had a brain crush on Steve Albini and hammered my worn out-work-wise mind with Jesus Lizard’s Goat. When factory workers take ecstasy and I hear it behind all my desks. Fell in love with the finnish Nolla Nolla Nolla and their ep from ’81 what a great reproduction of chilling gloom, no new romanticism but guitars. Mauna Kea’s transcendental noise is amazing, they are probably close to Rakta. Deformity continuing being themselves and why the fuck is short music short, kill shuffle mode and put that in repeat, discovered Piece War, who are such dreamy, cool folk, I wanna watch people draw to their music, Doc Dart’s Patricia is just as exhaustively interesting as his profile piece written by that Born Again dude, and if I were there than I listened to Crucifucks stayed close to the sound and spent hours at work to put Spike In Vain and the Landlords on repeat, death to false historians for forcing interesting bands into the shadow of all that boring shit. Why is it too logical that the majority loves crap? Chrome’s alien disco is mathematical language for free thinkers, too many ideas, Shitlickers swinging their boots so we can like them while Rattus makes me amazed by their too much guitar in my room, Roy Montgomery write songs from different rainy nights soundtrack for the stopped cameras, PERVERS ET TRUANDS bringing heaviness like a river bringing you thrown out trash making a whole city ugly when running through it, Les Vandales writing hymnal hate songs, Barcelona who are the most destructive beautiful band.

These bands are painting a much better picture of the world than what it is actually. That is basically stupid people staring on themselves. If you browse through the holiday photo album of your parents and your friends the main difference will probably be that your parents made pictures of scenes and views when they were happy. If they had enough ego they stood in the left corner of a huge cathedral being happy, smiling. They captured moments. On the other hand your post-modern friends’ digital photo album will be nothing but close ups of their faces with something amazing landmark hidden in the background that is not covered by a pair of pursing lips. They capture their face. You think it’s fucked. But punx helped to arrive here. Some of your friends are probably already this fucked. Most of the shitty bands are just selfies of boring people standing in front of formalities.

Have you read it? New Yorker being tldr over Age of Quarell and United Blood! That was a terrific article. It could have proved that none of us is qualified enough to write as good as it would fit into the New Yorker and at the same time understands hardcore. But it’s not true because punk has so many great minds who can use the language in a really entertaining way when they have to express how good Saccharine Trust is and why do they love Tampere SS. But that article demonstrated the true style of those funny/dumb bands. Hardcore when it is bad takes only one thing serious. The codes of being hardcore. While punx who play hardcore take themselves serious, their circumstances, the world around them and it’s not a terrifyingly awkward ego trip of proving yourself to very stupid people. I agree that hardcore is music played by punx who are more punk than regular punx. But again it’s mostly just fast, angry, heavy, noisy music with some ideas that you can dumpster dive even in a fucking library. When HARLEY FLANAGAN WANTS TO KILL THE BAND MEMBERS OF FVK he is not out punking the punx he is showing how fucking sad, shallow and empty his life is when he is still frustrated over some band beef that happened decades ago. Also only American hardcore is American. Do your fucking homework and open a map then imagine guitars are sold even outside the USA and people can play as fast on them as they want to.

Just take Hungary and my weekend that was ruled by Rákosi, Önkiírtás, Gross Out, Berosszulás. Best hardcore bands of 2015.

#383

Reading books on reading books, knife cut noodles, proto-techno, repetitive manic rock and roll, shows, german post-modern, the Czech crust scene, losing my edge.

I’m losing my edge to the kids, to myself, to laziness, to being dumb or rather just feeling dumb and above all being paralyzed by the terrifying mixture of the previously mentioned components. I’m tired and the work hasn’t even begun. I'm not afraid of work, I’m not afraid of failure. I have failed. It’s unpleasant but useful. A good reminder of bad memories – Don’t be sorry, be different. I don’t even want success but to be able to be successful, to be good at what I really like to do. That’s enough. What am I good at? That’s probably listening and this was an intro.
 
Reading books on reading books is like writing columns about not writing columns, which is a very frequent topic in punk writing. If punk writing is reduced to MRR’s columnist reality. In a better world this column should be about being busy on being punk. Wait, there is no should in punk (and this is already the better world, with poorly selected words, still printed out, left right next to your toilet bowl). Generally in punk there is punk music and its fans who are the punx. Listeners. I’m a punk thus I recommend myself to write about music but I won’t because the music I listen to nowadays are non-review-able here. Proto-techno which basically is manic, repetitive rock and roll (and some that will be discussed later). System error, a person who is a fan of punk music becomes a punk and then doesn’t exclusively listens to punk rock. Theoretical question how could a punk listen to non-punk music? Is there a pause in this being? Now I thank my younger mind for getting the word (e.g.: punk) tattooed on my tight. I’m safe.

Ideas.
The core feature of punk music is similar to porn’s: you can’t define it but you know when you see it. Wittgenstein said what could be shown can’t be said and I guess laying judgement on videotaped sex depends on your vision just as much as noise is a sonic experience best lived through your hearing. Words fall on both. But playing with your zipper could satisfy each interest. Eco tried his best and said in porn time is spent as generously as it is in real life. Which means everything is boringly real until we don’t fuck.  Punk music is probably when due to hearing played out sounds, finally you are not bored but feeling as if you were having some very pleasant, consensual sex. Culturally I prefer orgies. In reality: Anna, my heart is all only yours.

Sex and punk. The subject of satisfaction depends on the input of participants very similar to how this magazine’s content is formed; namely it could be anything what people make it to be.
News from the outside world: It’s a gentle act that there is shitty punk being produced because some people love crap and still they can call themselves punks which self-proclamation makes them happy. For me it’s a rational realization. I’m a punk for the same reasons as I’m a Hungarian: it just happened this way and I can’t do anything against it. For the majority my favorite bands are closer to human feces just as for the majority of Hungarians I’m a godless traitor. So be it. Punk has no rules, but damn my punk has so many. It’s not political it’s personal but to be a person among people is always political. Who, why, where, what? It’s more of a hunt for quality. Yes, there is a huge amount of punk bands who I love for their ideas and strict attitude. Mostly because they are able to transform these features into sounds and it ends up crushingly great. But it’s my taste. I have a sweet tooth for this. For what? For the terrifying groove of Missing Foundation. The artistic sadism that never falls from consciousness, so it knows what it does. It does everything. A distorted mist wrapping around everything and keeping it together in a claustrophobic space. Everything happens at the same time and it’s fun to wander around and focus always on something else. Their sound is so fundamental it’s hard to pin it to other bands. It’s heavy, slow, noisy, chanting. But not chaotic since it sounds pre-planned. Like a fucked up opera written for some fucked up reason. Sound terror, that others call industrial music? Whatever it is, it’s frightening, disgusting and really good. Without text book knowledge I see their fingerprints on many bands and without the text book knowledge it’s an interesting space where everybody is influencing each other. The whole musical and cultural scene with bands locking themselves into a sound laboratory to experience. Sonically not ideologically. Musicians play music thus they should care about rhythm and sounds. Or care about how to not care about the previous two. If they are good everything will come along. Sound experiences.I spent a great amount of time listening my way through some Pop Group records. Their echoing, distant dance records, post-punk, proto-disco, wait a minute it’s not New York, un-danceable hysteria music that is constantly arguing with itself. Parallel, inverted sounds within a band. I love to dance but I’m too comfortable to go out dancing and this sound makes me feel good because I know there is no place where people dance to this so I belong home.
Then there is the guitar sound of Henry Flynt. Deep repetition. It’s all traditional.
Does it mean I’m down with listening to punk music and you can buy my Die Kreuzen lp on Discogs? No. But I do listen to Die Kreuzen now with a different ear and I realize, pay attention and understand other aspects of their music. And by this everything gets better. New sounds are not punker than simple primitive notes of strict hardcore bands. It’s called post, proto, new wave whatever. Not better.
One final music experience from work that is too good to exclude from here. I was listening to the Peel Session of Crass and it is amazing. It doesn’t really sound just as an idea but it is actual and powerful music. Tape collages all over the session, the structure of the whole set is so hectic, the instant changes raise the idea of the missing parts were censored by the authorities. What do we want, what do we want? Disco!  Also Tyvek, also the compilation La voix des gnomes. Also Pale Grey Suits from Good Throb. What a mellow atmosphere, lazy punk weekends, waking up to coffee sips, wondering through your records and fanzines. Music makes me happy.  
It’s funny but by funny I ironically mean sad that ageless people are proud and willfully requesting respect for still being punk or representing the other end of this crying game and mistaking a collection of teenage-radicalism ideology with music, dividing idea from sound as if there was the capital idea and not only their own belief that match sounds and then they abandon punk for picking lint out of their belly button. That says one thing that they just give up on listening quality music. Give up to care about quality which pretty much translates to having fun. This is why nostalgia tastes so awfully bitter, because mostly it’s a re-consumption of something that is bad but once we thought it’s good. Reliving fun we are lazy to have now. But my punk is about glorifying mistakes and not stupidity, because a mistake is not what a stupid person does but something a smart person recognizes and my punk is about staying young not about dropping crocodile tears while reminiscing such hey days.
Mann said “A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people”. Sometimes I think a listener is someone for whom listening is more difficult than it is for other people. Most of the times I think that I’m someone for whom it is more difficult then it is for other people. What is? That.
But I’m a listener and I’m a good listener so I know that you have to work for listening and suffer through shitty bands, times when everything seems boring, when you can’t find what you really wish to hear, when you feel there is not enough time to hear everything that is great and recently have fallen into your lap. You have to be hungry but in this case to be hungry could be fun. Because it’s not about starving it’s about the desire for consuming eternal culture. I’m fat and okay with it but I’m terribly unlettered and that is not such a sexy feeling when you face it. I blame myself for the delusion of once I was full. Books not midnight food.
Don’t fall for fake listeners. The ones who slackishly state there are only two types of music, good and bad. That means they have to decide what is good and what is bad, they have to make universal decisions and it leads to objectify their lives by objectifying everything else around them. It’s the fear of everything. Overproduced bro-core means nothing to me but probably that genre has its top performers since it has it’s own habits, rituals, ideas which could be eminently performed or reconstructed and reinvented. I let it be but I won’t be around it. While in another universe Firmeza 10 is a perfect hardcore band. This other universe is the space between my two ears, You can obey objectivity by sacrificing your subjectivity but at the same time you can’t hope for pizza when you go into a Korean place.

Is it a title to be a listener? It’s a great hobby and nothing else. Not a prestige, not anything but time being spent with standing next to music. Still I’m losing my edge and crying like a baby when others borrow my beloved micro-subculture’s essence to prove their relevance. They wear it, not live it. But to live listening is a bizarre act and probably not something that should be impeachable on anyone. Although I live among people and it feels like shit when someone reduce my obsession into a replication of a look or act. It’s childish but I’m desperate because I’m losing my edge.

YETT 2014

I live in Hungary where I spend most of my time with listening to music that has not been released in the current year thus my whole November and December for three years for now are filled with rushing to listen through the whole year, feeling sorry for not including more NON-american/spanish/Scandinavian/japanese, women identified bands in every micro-sub genre I like. But this is just fun, to pile up records that are great and probably in ten years from now I will have better answers to what was the greatest speed punk, freak core whatever gender band from Bolivia or Turkey or Malaysia in 2014. After all this is not a fucking talent show, the important thing is to listen to music for your whole life and well feeling fucking great while you do that.

You have heard these records these are not reviews but the reasons why I love them.

LP

White Wards - Cigarette Burns ( Iron Lung Records )

Already told it last year that this is the hardcore record of 2014 as I know it (then &) now. This connects everything I like in fast music. It’s pure rage used for creativity, million deconstructed pieces put together and blended perfectly. It’s based on the mid-west craziness but at the same time so futuristic it doesn’t feel like only as a reproduction of something that has once worked, there is risk, there are no wave vibes, noise noise noise, grooves, violence, primitivism, desperation, angst, joy, everything. This is a brilliant record.

Total Control - Typical System ( Iron Lung Records )

It’s a great thing when there is more in a piece of creation than what has been put into it. Total Control used to put everything into their music but with Typical System they have restricted all their ideas to the bare minimum of necessarily for plain and pure perfection. It’s the noise of being quite about everything. I say everything because Total Control’s music is still everything: It’s the love of music and the method of expressing yourself via sounds and the fact that they are capable of giving this without a full blown palette of different sounds tells how great they are. Still it’s fun, has grooves, sometimes it’s poetic, other times it’s dumb as fuck, it’s adultish and adolescent at the same time. They turned an easy listening, elevator music song as deep as a fucking opera they are capable of everything. 

Big Crux – Ponchito (Not Normal Tapes, B

I’m not the biggest fan of Minutemen so even for me it’s a mystery why do I dig a band that is a total worship-core of them. I not only like them but through their music I appreciate Minutemen even better. I appreciate the whole fundamental idea of the west coast sound due to Big Crux. This is what’s so great about them, they have enthusiasm to recreate something and not as much as it is executed in Japan but during this process they create their own voice. Twitchy, sharp guitars are sweating the heat and fight against border control. Skate for fun, watch other people do coke, hate the cops. It’s a smart dance party in dust filled small town. Bodega beats. This is awesome.

Good Throb - Fuck Off ( White Denim, SuperFi Records, Sabermetric )

Good Throb’s idea could be a simple one but because they are a brightly amateurish group of musicians with a perfect punk plan this makes their music sound as it’s pieced together from more than it actually is. This feeling makes me appreciate every of their parts a lot more than if it were played properly. If something is done perfectly then it says everything about a profession but nothing about the professionals. Good Throb is great in causing mistakes that leads to wonderful trouble. This year the greatest records were made by people who are rather fans of listening to music than actual musicians and Good Throb is another terrific example of this. They are professional punx. The confident rage of Crass-ish radicalism wonder to the guitars from the vocals but it’s just the confidence and no Rimbaud vibe and what happens in the chorus riff of Acid House is punk perfection.

Ivy - S/T (Katorga Works )

They already had me with their demo and what was great there aka the irresistible punk quality of their songs are present here as well; even though the soundscape got clearer. I love how the guitars are distorted into the sounds of cartoon cables buzzing, it makes the thing evil, as the scene for IVY would be NY under Mysterio’s attack. This is gutter core, and overall IVY carries a bunker feelings with cool kids locked together to figure out something better than reality. They also bring into memory some vicious feelings of an evil conspiracy: helicopters flying around, black mass-corrupt priest capes, nihilism, drugs, bad pizza. Ivy’s sound is so rich some of my better days were spent with them on constant rotation. The filth of New York is back with them and this is no cheap shot but amazing punk.

Lumpy and the Dumpers – Collection (Erste Theke Tonträger )

For some reasons that are beyond my understand people are obsessed with shit. Literally, they hail poo. The greatest thing in Lumpy and the Dumpers is that they could stand still and it would make you feel like you are in a diarrhea storm. With their music they can create a nasty, slimy, noisy puke party that is fun to attend and you don’t have to burn your cloths the next day. And of course that fucking saxophone solo. Their primitive optimism or neo-nihilism, whatever I haven’t studied their philosophy to the fullest because I was too busy dancing. Let’s say it’s a cartoonish absurdity transformed into punk songs. It’s funny, ugly and probably smarter than it seems to be. They also have a record label so probably they do care which fact for me makes their record better. 

The Lowest Form - Negative Ecstasy ( Iron Lung Records )

Most menacing record of 2014. Constant and confident brutalism. The punk I like is more fragile as it gives space for failure that bring along humanity but The Lowest Form is mercilessly forcing me with their inhuman goodness to love them and I can’t resist. I can’t find any reference points where to connect their sound, it’s so oval it stand by itself. It reaches beyond scenes, eras, sounds. It’s pure fucking destruction, it really is like a chemical substance making you the exact opposite of ecstasy, let it be anything.

Orden Mundial - Obediencia Debida (La Vida Es Un Mus )

Spanish punk is great. Was, is and probably will be as well. Orden Mundial is a great example why, because they come through. Their idea of playing punk succeeds in their music as I don’t have to dig in deep for reasons why I like it, I don’t have to do any extra work for saying this is great, it’s simply the punk music in the way I like it. It dares to be what it wants to be: Fucking noisy, vicious punk attack. With clueless guitars playing out, they let their riffs loose to discover whatever territories it could wonder to and with this they are expanding the landscape of their music and the names of band that I love.

Exhaustion – Biker (Aarght! Records )

This could be labeled as post punk but much of this record resonates with a tribal vibe which makes the over sound pre-communication, proto-music. There are even hints of free jazz on this record if I got it right and frightening chaotic music that seems to make a bit of sense means free jazz. What I love about this record is it’s a full album, an experience, not just songs thrown together and let’s hope for the best. It’s a journey into the deepest fields of humans. The vocals are pretty indolent, the guitars are levitating, there is actual piano sounds not keyboards and by this all hail to analogism, feedbacks, repetitive drums. Sometimes this record sounds like as if Exhaustion would completely abandoned music as we know it and restarted building it up with writing this record. Could you ask for more as a creator of music?

7”

Mystic Inane - Deep Creep (Negative Jazz )

Can’t remember how but Mystaic Inane’s demo landed on my laptop a year ago. I was shocked by how great it sounded. It was a mystery because I had no memory of downloading that and with their approach of putting together some of the best but to each other distant ideas of punk by their sound I felt like I’m dreaming. This is reality and they continue to expand ideas of punk sound with their recent 7”. Three songs in nine minutes gathering almost everything I love the best in the best punk. Mutants worshipping ufo’s, taking bad drugs, necromancing the heydays of Saccharine Trust and lead those wild, worming sometimes tangling guitars into careless golden era American Hardcore rage. They sound as a band who has both the idea and control over what they are doing. 2015, I wish for a Mystic Inane lp.  

Doomtown boys – st (SISTER POLYGON RECORDS )

It’s really funny that the way I see progression in punk is always leading it into barbaric chaos. Doomtown Boys is chaotic but not in a raging, noisy way although they are angry and they make noise. I used to hate saxophones here I love them. I used to prefer to separate art from punk and here I love it. Many interesting things are happening here which are kind of new to my appreciation but I do appreciate them. This vaudeville-core cabaret punk is winning me over as much as I wrote everything above based on their lp not knowing it came out two years ago but luckily they have put out a 7” in 2014 and it’s just as good. Be a freak! 

Zyanose - Putrid Sick Society (Brain Solvent Propaganda )

This record has a song called Posers Must Die. I use metal zone for my bass sound thus I guess I’ll survive.

Una Bestia Incontrolable - Nou Món ( iron lung records )

First Una Bestia Incontroable wrote an amazing lp that is a masterpiece in the spanish wall of distorted sound robust hardcore genre. Then they conquered the world. Then they dropped the idea in which they have mastered and went to a whole different direction with this 7”. And it worked. It is still carrying the flag of hardcore and punk, wearing the filth of squats, the sweat stains of basement shows, the creativity of art school dropouts, the manic frustration of the Catalans. But if we are lucky this is only the earthquake before the volcano bursts again.

Oily Boys – Majesty ( Disinfect Records )

I love it when in music the already existing best parts from different places are put together. Oily Boys from Australia sound as a group of bored and angry kids who loved United Mutation and Wipers and treated Kids Of The Black Hole as their anthem and they thought let’s play that all together within one song. And why the fuck would it not work? It’s not only working but it’s fucking great, brutal, funny, raging, fresh, smart. Total punk fandom for the melted minds, as a surf gang doing psychedelic drugs and playing with knives. Soo good!

In school - Praxis of Hate ( Kill Test )

Some months ago I read an article about punk still being lead by white males. My first thought was that punk is MRR and that is run by women, so how could this be true? One of the reasons I can say this is thanked to a person who plays in In School. This warrants the quality of this band that is a vibrant mix uniquely smart lyrics and top notch song writing that worships the early era of Touch & Go hardcore. When punk was played too punk it has become hardcore. Praxis of Hate showers on me, wakes me up with it’s energy, it crushes the common beliefs that there is no variety in hardcore/punk. There is and this is standard greatness.

La Misma – S/T  ( Toxic State Records )

As I watch videos of NYC punk shows I see freaks everywhere. They look weird as up to them I’m a fucking norm and their whole choreography is too perfect I feel disconnected. It’s cool because they live so fucking far away from me. And then here is La Misma from that city, singing in a language I can’t understand, screaming in a way I can relate to. Filth soaked, chasing pace punk, singing faster than the riff would let you punk, really real punk that it’s already hardcore. La Misma catches the inner rage that mutant feeling when you brain is melting in insecure chaos, still you go out and yell fuck the bullshit.

Frau – Punk Is My Boyfriend (Static Shock Records )

When you really love something at one point this anything will be a part of you. You won’t treat it as the biggest thing in the world it will be a part of your personality and that’s really big. Like breathing air, if it weren’t around you would be dead. This is captured on this record. That Frau is so punk they can do whatever they want. So they fabricate some wonderful mess of collapsing bedroom chaos. Punk is our lover!

Life Stinks – Portraits (Total Punk)

The exhibition-core continues. The sound of Life Stinks is cartoonish. Like a dark comic book, a monochrome linoleum cut where strangers loose themselves in the meaninglessness of life while they are searching for someone else. Smoking cigarettes in the morning waking up to the rain and drinking still beer that has been warmed up pin your palm. Although Life Stinks is fun, it’s vibrating, it moves towards you. It’s sharp and groovy at the same time. Lazy house party theme for coach potatoes. The conflict is really comical, it’s them trying to successfully put together a song, with a stoned mind trying to put everything in order but before they could come up with any result the record is over and another two brilliant songs are written again.

Tapes

Gun Outfit – Time Slips Away ( Perennial Death )

Even though culture is a constant battle where I don’t hold any sealed respect in myself towards anyone although Gun Outfit is not a group I judge from time to time but I unconditionally enjoy always. This new release is just as beautiful as everything they have done so far. Their music is like wine that gets better and better and these three new tracks sound as a new crossroad in Gun Outfit’s life where they took a new interesting direction. How does the movement of sun sounds? Some might be capable to synthesize the sounds but Gun Outfit rather raises and sets the sun with their music. One of the most elevating things that happened to me in 2014 was interviewing them and I still could state they are my favorite current band.

PIG DNA - DOM

I love all kinds of music but especially those that forget about the whole existence of the musical history of punk and from scratch they redo the sound but keep the fundamental ideas. Pig DNA is faithful to the bay area idea that all freaks can be themselves and do whatever that will bring joy and beauty to this world, let it be transforming everyday terror into disgustingly good punk songs. Pig DNA is dangerously creative they sound as they don’t tend to give a fuck about the risk of failing with all these ideas thrown together. It’s threatening, interesting, dangerous, vicious, amazing.

Karak - tape 2014

Young brutalists hailing from the moldy basement land of the Budapest power violence, ufo grind scene. Vicious, freaky, rainbow puke, home made synthetic drug overdose. Is this hardcore? Yes, this is hardcore.

#382

Nowadays literature is taking over my life. Not if I have a deep knowledge of it or I could move as familiarly within as I do in punk, but I spend more time reading through the Paris Review interviews than I do hunt around on blogs to discover new sounds in punk rock. While there are obviously always so many to learn about. It’s a different kind of obsession but what’s good is that there is obsession in both. Music is instant, it lives up as much of my time as long a song is. While the same amount of words could take different amount of time for me to read. It’s all about the pacing of the text. And I have to read through books to know them, so now my bed is surrounded with unread books accompanied by a to-read list that exists in my head which will probably take me one and a half year to get done. But I’m already being enthusiastic in advance when I browse through the covers. As in books and music the core of the creation is self expression I look different on music than I did before I have become a book worm.
Also do you remember me holding a grudge against jazz? At work I do nothing but listening to Pharoah Sanders, Eric Dolphy, Derek Baily, Albert Ayler and an enormous amount of Kraut rock, sometimes music that is close to techno, monotonous, repetitive music produced by sad and dirty computers. It’s not about growing up because when I get home and put on a Wretched or Electric Eels lp I can appreciate the rear layers of their music where the visceral meets the thoughtful chaos. But as I have expanded my spectrum in music that I find interesting, I also was in hurry to get through last years music as I was preparing my YETT in parallel I have realized that I stopped appreciating the relaxing mediocrity of the majority of punk bands as much as I love bands who just go for being themselves aka individually good.
I also realized that time is not as bad of an invention as I used to think about it. Yes, it blocks our mind more than anything and silently controls everything that we do but it also reveals truth. Places answers next to questions. Such big words but I’m no longer afraid of not including the exact best bands of a year in my YETT list because using time and the kindness of the coordinators I knew whatever I will leave out from the list I can include here because I negotiated a later deadline for my column or I can talk about the leftovers in two years from now. It’s not the news as someone always has to be the first and smartest although I do desire both but desire works best when not satisfied. I can wait and until then dig up everything that was great in the ‘90s since obviously everything was perfect in the ‘80s and magical in the ‘70s. Couple days ago I started listening to the Eucharist lp and felt so stupid when looking back how I thought the ‘90s were super boring and nothing happened then. I have a medicine after taste, awkwardly bad feeling by how now in Europe everybody is fucking wanna go back and re-live those lazy days that were lit by fading neon lights and cheap drug nights. I mostly see my stupidity in giving too much relevance to decades as they would mark anything. Take Aspirin Feast, they sound like a systematic skull fuck that could happened whenever. Discovery of the week was Balance of Terror. A band that sounds as hardcore kinda should sound. Fast and ferocious punk music that takes itself as seriously as it’s still threatening for the buy-in-culture but doesn’t stink as a let’s-sit-in-a-basement-and-think-about-utopia bullshit. Oh yeah with them I skipped into another decade, but the early ‘00s still feel as very shady times, yet there was light too. Another new hobby of mine is buying records by instinct. I was browsing through records when Banque Allemande came across and I was amazed by their cover art in which well shaped naked bodies put together in a collage and I was convinced by SS Records who put this record out, so I gave them a quick listen online – yes, I was buying records on Discogs – and few days later I found this record glued to my turn table. They are an amazing german post-punk, kinda noise rock band. The heavy, modestly distorted bass and drums are making a solid base for the guitars to fuck around while the singer chants with bitter tone of a voice. They grab me down into a vortex of awesome guitar noise. The guitar sound (is it really a guitar?)  is swinging between the noise of things falling down from a shelf or someone cruelly rubbing rubber. Alas it’s not such experimental sonic journey. I can dance to it, I can jump around to it I can be happy around their music, it’s such perfect company.
It compensates my loss in how I failed to be quick enough to buy the Tampax / Hitler SS split 7” at the Rakta show. For expiation I went through both bands discography and now I want that fucking split 7” even more. All hail to freak scene, mutant punx.
There is a feature in every good music that makes music good. Although I believe in genres but I seem to find this essential component mutual in all the music I found great. The ones I can relate to not just understand its qualities. Common sense is something I want to leave behind. Umberto Eco discusses the difference between the empirical and the model readers. He says a model reader could place himself into the book, accept even the fictional rules of the book and decide who exactly tells the story, meaning who is the model author. The model reader is keen to understand every detail of a book while still enjoy it with all its heart. Still there is place for judgment because the model author creates the model reader as the author sets up the environment and rules within the reader should exists and following this there are millions of genres I don’t wanna look around not even for a miserable second. But what is great in great literature is similar to what is great in great punk music and this makes me feel sometimes that everybody all together is just writing one great tune. From Sex Vid to Sun Ra I have to move backwards in time but it’s not a waltz, I twerk around culture. I cross Skull Kontrol, Raincoats, Die Kreuzen, Execute, Organisation, Warum Joe, Born Against, The Fix, Kizárt Dolog, Skullflower, 45F1, Stigmathe, High Rise, Totalitär, Biztonsági Tanács, Venom P Stinger, The Slits.

Luckily as it turns out from my YETT this collective noise was done also in 2014. I already hate myself because I missed out Tercer Mundo’s agonizing brain destruction. Just like the contemporary mexico sound they also use a very rusty approach to tell the everyday frustration of that sinking country’s reality. It’s hardcore punk with sharp nails sticking out from it all around. Some of the songs have a weird groove in them which makes the whole atmosphere of the record more dangerous, since someone found time to dance in a battle field.
Right at the finish line I was introduced to Heavy Makeup from Gothenburg. Their demo looks like it’s gonna be another band mixing japanese craziness with the mangel sound filtering it through no wave noise. Rather they stick to the golden era Touch & Go sound and summon acts as Scratch Acid or Killdozer. Constant cynical headache. The repetitive minimalism hits me as a neighbor driller that wakes me up from an amphetamine hangover. Although this band wears it’s influences proudly it avoids the accusation of being a reproduction of something that happened decades ago. They have reminded me to МРАЗЬ who are hailing from Russia. Although МРАЗЬ’s sound is bigger as in Russia everyone takes whatever they do more serious than people do everywhere else. Their sound catches me as how a tidal wave wraps around your helpless body. Here are more guitars and manic obsession to play around with sounds. Still its charm is carried in its simplicity but simplicity that works is always real close to perfection. I can hear the effort they have put into their song just as Bulgakov worked on his masterpiece for decades. Their aggro strength stops before it’s being threatening to everyone, meaning there is no serial killer vibe just the pure power that is present in great music. Anyone who thinks this is just a russian black market bootleg of Pissed Jeans is stupid as fuck because they reach beyond Pissed Jeans cool but washed clean presentation of true filth. Pissed Jeans reminds me to music, while МРАЗЬ reminds me to how fucked up humanity is. Not if МРАЗЬ is rather bending towards to Brainbombs, Drunk with Guns mind hammering brutalism but it feels they went into searching for something and luckily found their true self.   
Going back to Sweden I recently received an e-mail from Två Krig saying: Fuck it we want to be heard - and they truly should be. I’m nauseatingly filled with the dark wave, neo-romantic sound and no longer interested to decide is it a new trend or someone just opened the door for million bands who were waiting in their dark and miserable rooms, spending days in valium daze with cutting out the eyes of poster stars. Två Krig doesn’t pity themselves, I have the luxury to not understand swedish thus I think they focus more on paranoid, block of flat reality rather than failed romance tragedy. They gather the Wipers’ Doom Town sound to flavor the swedish traditional melodies and it works really well. Lost in the Ikea. The only thing I had to do to became their model listener is to sink down to find the people within the music, the fragility, the risk and danger. There they sound more scared than sad and this picks them out from the line of all those post punk, neo wave bands. Deep down lay so many ideas and layers of these thoughts yet there is a disturbing sterility of their sound that is probably their frustration that needs to be transmitted.

What else? I liked the Mosoco Demo, Life Form’s Creepy Crawly, Sperm Demo, Status Null Demo, Gutter Gods’ Innersense. But this is not that much to miss out. 2014 see you in ten years when i know more about you. It was a great year but i always hope for a better.

PS.: There are two more Hysterics songs left behind, coming out soon both tracks are killer jams.

Hysterics interview for MRR

Hysteric vs was a hardcore band and they were damn cool. They were cool because they knew that hardcore is not for the cool and this is what made them important and, well, being important is kinda cool.

I fell for them forever when I saw a footage of them playing in an east coast basement. As the groovy bass paved the way, the offbeat drums blended together with the feedback-filled guitar noise in a chaotic intro, and Stephanie, their singer, burst into an awkward rage, wildly running in zig zag, losing control over her body while her enthusiasm took over her limbs, making such non-threatening, still absolutely violent moves, summing up her inner rage in a simple act of articulating that, for them, this is fun. I often come back to this video to remind myself what is the personal greatness in this community, sub- and counterculture. It’s about going against the grain and feeling alright even when nothing really allows you to. Because to live is to be lost and confused and when you know you are lost and confused then you begin to start finding yourself. This is punk; to be abandoned and to cope with this dumbness, to transform it into whatever you want with whatever you have. This is the point of living and gosh, Hysterics could live!

Now they are gone, their existence reminds us how easy it is to remake hardcore again into a platform for the misfits, where all the young folks can save their lives from boredom and bullshit.

With a demo and two 7”s as a discography Hysterics were also band you had to see live. Their records’ basic sound carried the visceral message: We have no idea how to play but we are sure as hell what to play. They played for their own sake, there was will, they were ready to die on stage, they made us want every band to be as enthusiastic for punk as they were. They gave everything they had and they got back everything they wanted. Let it be a joy of performing your angst, putting out your music, travelling through your noise or having the chance to simply say: “Well, fuck you.”

This conversation took place on their European tour in May. Follow-up questions were answered over email in December 2014.

Stephie: Vocals

Jessica: Bass

Adriana: Guitar

Matt: Drums

MRR: What were the first bands you were into? Were there any shitty bands? Because when I started listening to punk I listened to a lot of ska punk, and then I grew into...

Stephie: Wait, are you saying ska is shitty? [Laughs]

Adriana: I was into a lot of shitty ska when I was growing up. I think Operation Ivy was the gateway and then I just went from there, getting more into bands with lyrics that I liked and related to that were angry and political, I guess? That's what started me getting into punk, as opposed to ska.

Jessica: I listened to nu metal, because I lived in the middle of the country and that was what was available to me. Then I downloaded Kazaa and started randomly downloading things like Agnostic Front when I was fourteen and that changed the whole game. My only regret of my early hardcore choices was that my first Cro-Mags record was Alpha and Omega! And of course I loved it!

MRR: What made you dig into this and leave nu metal?

Jessica: It's always in my heart! Punk's more accessible and has politics that I agree with, and nu metal doesn't really have that at all. I grew up very ignorant, with a lot of ignorant people around me, and when I was seventeen I started being more introspective, listening to bands that talked about things I felt the same about. It was a transition out.

Stephie: I got into Nirvana when I was twelve or thirteen. I had pretty much just listened to Top 40 and rap before that. I had always felt like a freak at school and had hated being a freak, so getting into guitar music made me suddenly feel good for being a freak, gave me a reason to be like that.

Matt: I was listening to NOFX via my brother and then I was in an after-school program for those who needed help studying. My tutor was like, “Oh, you listen to NOFX?” and gave me a Minor Threat CD. And then it was over.

Stephie: Yeah, somebody in my seventh grade class burned me that CD.

Matt: And then from that, I just got more into things that were happening around my town in Philadelphia, went to a Global Threat show and became a street punk.

Stephie: It took me a while to realize there were still bands playing that kind of music...

Matt: Street punks?

Stephie: No, like punk and hardcore in general. I just assumed it was over because all the bands I was listening to were old. So the idea that there was a local scene happening a couple years after I had started listening to this music just never occurred to me, that it would still exist. So that was cool!

Adriana: I grew up in Chicago so I knew there were punk shows but there was such a range of things going on that it was overwhelming. I remember getting a Minor Threat CD and a Sick Of It All CD and “A Fistful of Hardcore: An East Coast Compilation,” with stuff like Fury of Five on it? [Laughs] I was just listening to them simultaneously going like, what?! One of these bands is just straight metal! I was really confused. It was a kind of similar experience sampling the different niches of hardcore and punk in a live setting; I was just like, “Whoa! What is this? What is this crazy mosh metal?” And then I was like, “This stuff is more punk and I like this…” I'm also older than a lot of people in the band so metalcore was really popular, which was a really interesting experience.

MRR: You know, when I ask people that question, they always say that when they first got into punk it was funny to them because the music is kinda weird, it's so fast and simple, and everybody's singing “fuck the government!” But eventually it grows on you and you're like “Yeah, all right, I agree with that.”  How was that process for you? How did you end up with the definition of punk you have right now?

Adriana: Once I started listening to bands that did have lyrics that were more serious and critiquing society and the government and whatnot, that's when I actually felt more attached to the music and that's when I wanted to listen to punk. Before that, I didn't really understand what it was about but it was those lyrics that attracted me to it in the first place. Over time, that made me start going to shows, and that funneled me into where I am now, however many years later.

Stephie: I didn't really understand a lot of the political side at first. I connected with the unrest, the restlessness, and the sense of feeling like something was vaguely messed up? But I didn't, for example, at fourteen, really understand what capitalism was or anarchism was or anything. It challenged me to wanna learn more about that stuff because I identified with the fundamental restlessness and feeling apart, being apart from what was around me. It planted the idea in my head to ask a lot of questions and challenge what the norm was, which sort of led me down a path of being able to form my own politics, my sense of myself in the world.

Jessica: I was just young and really angry and didn't know why. I listened to a lot of punk and heavier music because I identified with the way it sounded. Once I actually started growing up, which can be somewhat difficult in a small town, it takes a really long time to work out what your politics are and feel things, and probably didn't understand what I wanted out of life until I was like eighteen and moved away to the coast and started interacting with people that weren't from Oklahoma. I think my anger really just kept me going. I had a lot of things to be angry about and punk helped me raise my voice about what I was angry about and figure out where I was and where I stood in the world before I could form my own thoughts about these things.

Stephie: It definitely triggered a lot of thinking, both on the level of society at large, and also about myself and whatever semblance of community I had. You could make critiques of a wider system, but the same process of questioning and defying the norm could translate to ideas like DIY or putting out your own record or booking your own show or starting your own band. Kind of what got the wheels turning on a lot of different possibilities.

Matt: The turning point for me was like, firstly listening to this music and at some point there it's still disconnected from your reality. But then you go to shows and the people are playing the music and you're like “that's the same,” but then between songs they talk about what's happening in the world, and maybe it's a band from your area and it relates it back to some personal level where they're talking to you about something in their life and it's real and affecting and not just through music. It's actual experience, and there's these things going on and it's making me think about it more than just the musical form. Going to shows and interacting with people and bands on a larger scale, starting conversations on a more personal level really changed what punk meant to me.

Adriana: That's a really good point, that it's disconnected at a certain point, or it was for me when I got into it. Through a process of going to shows and showing up and interacting with people, getting involved in different projects, it became more of a visceral experience. You are so provoked sometimes when you go to a show and someone talks about something that's very real, and you peel back a layer keeping you from reality because, you know, you're an angry kid trying to figure out what’s really going on in the world. I liked the music because I thought, “Wow, this is real and these people are real and talking about real things, and it’s affecting me..” It's not just like being in school and all the kids around me are just zoned out and fake, watching TV and drinking.

MRR: Can you remember if there was a specific point when you felt when you wanted to start this band?

Stephie: This band?

MRR: Yeah, or like any other band—the first time you formed a band and felt “I can do this better”? Or did you go to a show and it got you so inspired that you started something? Or was it natural because in punk everybody has a band?

Stephie: For Hysterics, seeing Adriana sing in Outlook was a big turning point for me because it was the first time I had seen a female-identified person sing in a hardcore band and just command all the respect in the room. I just assumed that people wouldn't take me seriously if I sang in a band because of gender stuff, and so being able to see that was possible was definitely a moment that ignited some thought in wanting to do something like that.

Jessica: Being in Olympia too, it's really easy and super cheap to live, so people just form bands. So many bands!

Stephie: Everybody and their mom is in a band.

Jessica: Everybody.

Stephie: For better, for worse!

Jessica: It's funny, I kinda lived there for three and a half months and joined a band, and I had never been in a band before. It was the right environment to be able to do that in many ways like how Stephie was saying.

MRR: Were you playing music before, or did you start playing bass for this band.

Jessica: Yeah. I played music in middle school but had never played in a band before. I'd never even really thought about it honestly, because, I don't know, a lot to do with not really seeing females in bands? So it was cool to move to Olympia where there's lots of non-males in bands. It feels like it can be more of a reality if you really want that to happen.

Adriana: I just remember at a certain point where I'd been going to and booking shows for awhile and there came a time where there was a shortage of people in Olympia and someone needed someone to play something and I was like, “I'm not very good, but at the same time this is punk and I might as well just do it.” That attitude is what made me be in bands. I might not be the best person at XYZ, because there's always a lot of self-worth stuff, right, that keeps you from doing whatever you wanna do so at a certain point I just said “fuck it.”

Stephie: Also, the kind of simplicity of the style of music made it more acceptable maybe than the idea of playing in like, more complicated styles of music? In a similar way to what Adriana said, if a band needed a position filled you started thinking, “well, I don't really do this but maybe I could learn how to do this?” There was a band I was in when I was sixteen that needed a drummer and I had played a little bit of drums but I listened to a Minor Threat CD-R in my headphones and played along to it as long and fast as possible until I got tired, and I did that every day until I could play the whole record. And then it would be like, “cool, I can be in a band!” There's just this accessibility about it in how simple it is, 'it can't be that hard!' There are bands with this kind of music who are literally children, like, fucking Teen Idles or Stimulators. They were literally children on stage playing punk!

Matt: For me it was like similar but completely different. I started my first band when I was fourteen or fifteen. Someone had given me a drum set and everyone was like “oh, you're gonna play drums, then?” I think about fucked up that is because it really is simple and accessible, but a lot of that has to do with gender dynamics and feeling empowered as a fourteen-year-old male to do whatever you want to do. It just feels really unfair. In a lot of ways I was thankful that I felt that way but at the same time I feel, “wow, that really sucks that not everyone feels that way,” and when talking to different people who say how they didn't feel empowered to start bands until they moved to a place that's been set up to make people feel included, and not just Anywhere, USA.

Jessica: It's funny because that's what I was thinking while the question was being asked about growing up in Oklahoma and realizing that if I still lived there I would not be into punk. I would be doing something completely different. That environment of going to hardcore shows just wasn't available to me; I forced my way in there but never felt like I belonged, and it's funny that none of the people in that shitty scene are into hardcore anymore, but I'm still doing it!

MRR: What were the steps in forming this band? Were you friends before?

Stephie: I remember talking to Adriana about it and there was someone else who was gonna sing, and I was going to play bass and we didn't know who was going to be the drummer for a while. When it became clear that that arrangement wasn't going to work out, I started entertaining the idea of singing, and we knew Jess and thought she was cool.

MRR: Who had the original idea of getting the band together?

Adriana: It was actually someone who isn't in the band anymore, but I remember her talking to me about how it'd be sick to have an all-girl hardcore band and I was like, “Yes, I really wanna do that.” Stephie and I had seen each other around but didn't really talk to each other...

Stephie: I was new in town; it was 2008. I had just moved.

Adriana: I approached her about it, we talked about it for a long time. Stephie and I became friends, then Jess moved to town and became friends with us and so there was a sort of back-and-forth until we actually got together and started writing a song. And then, everything changed, Stephie started to do vocals, and it was awesome.

MRR: When you practiced, did you start by jamming or playing covers?

Adriana: We were jamming, but Stephie and I had gotten together and workshopped a few riffs prior, even like a year before starting the band.

Stephie: Yeah, it was a while.

Adriana: It was a kinda chaotic meeting of four people.

Stephie: Definitely. Everyone was, for want of a better term, fucking their way through it. We were all new to the instruments we were playing.

Adriana: I had never played guitar.

Stephie: It was really chaotic but it was cool, we were having a good time and I was just enthralled with what at the time seemed like a radical idea because even though there's totally been hardcore bands that were only comprised of women or trans* or queers, I felt like we were the only one at the beginning! I wasn't aware of a lot of that history in hardcore because that history's been erased or is more inaccessible than it should be. Now it feels less so, and obviously since we've been touring I've seen all kinds of bands that make me realize how much great stuff is happening. But at the time I was like, “I've never heard of another hardcore punk band without guys in it, this is crazy, let's do this crazy banner with tampons on it and see how many people we can piss off!” There was a lot of excitement at the beginning and the more we kept playing the more serious and the more real it all fel. It went beyond the kitsch and whatever novelty factors people might have perceived in the beginning. We fought to be taken seriously with subversive humor and aggression and brains, and we broke through. It really grew in its own way.

Adriana: The novelty factor is interesting I remember not wanting to do the tampons at first because it was just four people playing hardcore who happen to be women and trans* people or whatever, right? It was interesting adopting that logo because it was like well, people are going to talk shit regardless or people are going to notice that we're not all dudes playing hardcore, so why not just rub it in their face? You could perceive it as kind of a joke.  It's facetious almost—four tampons arranged in a Black Flag logo.

MRR: People were freaking out over it?

Adriana: Yeah. I just thought it was funny but then it seemed to chafe against people's ideas and proved how there is so much resistance in this patriarchal hardcore scene with guys coming up and saying, “That logo is akin to me having a shirt logo of toilet paper with poop on it!”

MRR: And yet everyone's making a fucking legend of GG Allin shitting himself! Maybe it's just...body fluids in a polite way?

Stephie: Body Fluids In A Polite Way, that's going to be our next album.

Adriana: It's weird how you can put something that's gendered on a shirt and it seems more shocking as opposed to shock imagery, like a dead person, which is actually more upsetting and people think that's fine. You put a tampon on a shirt or something to do with menstruation which half the population at least deals with once a month and people freak out.

MRR: It's not even offensive, it's just what nature does.

Stephie: Yeah. I never really felt feminine in the conventional sense but I liked the idea of defining femininity for myself and embodying that and presenting it in a really aggressive way because that's what I like about punk and hardcore, that it's aggressive. I wanna use that aggression and wanna use the way I feel about gender and shove it in people's faces a little bit, because it's like, why is a guy allowed to be confrontational with all the trappings of conventional masculinity, but I'm not allowed to have some fun and be aggressive with my gender?

Adriana: Like you said before, why would we be serious by default?  Why can't we have fun with things as well, know what I mean? We can be a serious band and get angry and sing about serious things and not take ourselves totally seriously.

Stephie: Basically, like self-definition. It's very easy to fall into an idea of what, under this gaze, of what somebody wants you to be to please them, in a certain way. Just trying to subvert that, I guess.

MRR: The punk scene always seems to be preaching about one thing and acting in a different way, making a huge thing about stuff that should be normal.

Stephie: Well, punks have been splitting hairs over dumb shit since the beginning. It's kind of appalling sometimes when you do meet a misinformed person who likes to run their mouth, but there are also a lot of people who are cool. It's not that hard for me to just forget about whatever idiot is saying something stupid because I know there are people who are down. We've got a lot of support. I definitely found that playing music with people who identified as women or as trans* people or whatever, it was like a really new feeling, like you've created an environment that just felt like it changed the feeling in the room. That was empowering to me, to be able to have that experience. I've played in bands that were all men before and it was really fun but this was a different kind of feeling. A freer feeling. In a certain way, I identify as a female sort of out of convenience but the societal shit that's stacked against people who aren't men gets so intense that I want to defend it even more vehemently. It's like a back and forth between how I feel and what society is showing me, and that tension. It's kind of crazy.

MRR: Do you think your music would be different if it were four guys?

Stephie: I think we maybe have different stuff to say.

MRR: How about musically, is there like a femininity?

Stephie: Fundamentally, to like the way we play a chord? I don't know! [Everyone laughs]

Jessica: That's just bringing back that idea that punk music is male, that because the music is aggressive it has to be male-identified. Music is just music unless you want to pull it in that one direction. We like hardcore, we play hardcore, it has nothing to do with what's going on in our bodies, you know? I don't think it focuses or changes the music at all. Whether people want to like us because we have females in the band, that's their prerogative if that's what they into but we can't really speak for why people like us.

Stephie: I think some people relate to the feminism and the lyrics that are maybe different and are drawn into it for that reason. I think that's totally valid, also.

Jessica: But the chords alone, no. “There's so much testosterone in these chords!” [Laughs]

Matt: As someone who hasn't always been in the band and has been able to see it from an outside perspective, as well as interacting with the gender thing on a different level obviously, for me seeing Hysterics was really cool and empowering, and not in a “good for those women!” way, but good for me because it's breaking this idea that masculinity belongs to males or that there's this idea of masculinity in the first place.

Stephie: Or aggression?

Matt: Yeah. Or just like this idea of socialization that men are like this and women are like this, punk is like this and if you're a guy you have to act like this. To see women take something that has been claimed and dominated by men and take that means that I don't have to do that any more either, because it's breaking the binary two ways, you know? It's really cool.

MRR: The first time I fell in love with your band was when I was watching this video of you playing some basement in Boston, and the way you moved and the faces you made felt so free, like you didn't give a fuck, and you're doing it however you wanted to do it, and it seemed like you're losing your shit because you're enjoying the music that much. When you're on stage, what goes on your mind, do you have insecurities onstage or offstage connected to this band?

Stephie: I guess I just figure like, go hard or go home. Put everything you have into that show or just don't do it. I just think that people can sort of smell a fake a mile away, and it's always impossible for me to half-ass a show. It's why I always lose my voice right away. People will tell me how to sing with moderation and breathing properly, but the second I start I just forget because I have to just be like, going. It's impenetrable in a way: what can someone say to you if you put everything you had into something? Like, “oh, it sucked”? Well, fuck you! Know what I mean? Nobody can say it's bullshit, really. That’s why I’m not insecure. I grew up on early ’80s hardcore and stuff and a lot of the expressiveness got lost as hardcore progressed over the years, which meant that so many bands between the mid-’80s and now were just so predictable. I really appreciate bands who were expressive in a way that wasn't just sticking to a code of how you were supposed to act or move or whatever. It keeps things interesting.

MRR: The rest of you, how do you feel on stage?

Adriana: I guess I'm just trying to play guitar,  and sometimes I get nervous. When I was singing for a band it was actually easier; you were just going all in, and it's just you, but when you're playing an instrument you're just trying not to fuck up what you're doing. It feels like I'm doing something instead of being out there performing, you know what I mean? If I think too much about how people are watching me play my instrument that makes me kind of freeze up, so I just try not to think about it:  just do my job, get it done!

Jessica: I've always had short hair my whole life and since I've grown my hair out long it's really cool to cover my face when we play. I feel a lot better. [Laughs] Insecurities are weird, we all have different ones and I don't know whether you being on stage or just interacting with someone is that different an environment. I'm just happy I hide behind an instrument and have something to focus on.

MRR: Speaking of the freedom of punk: did you really play a trumpet solo in the middle of a Cro-Mags song?

[Everyone laughs]

Adriana: Instagrammed, worldwide!

Stephie: Solo is a kind term. I found a fucked up trumpet, and I played it. It sounded exactly how I wanted it to, which was disastrously out of tune.

Jessica: It was also accidentally on April Fool's Day.

Stephie: Yeah.

MRR: What's your attitude towards playing punk music?

Stephie: In general? Just try to be free. Make a space that's free and don't follow the codes too much. Don't feel you have to.

Jessica: Freak what you feel.

Stephie: Yeah. There's a long period of time where punk or hardcore wasn't for the freaks any more. In the beginning it really was for those who felt marginalized or those who just wanted to do whatever they wanted, and along the line it morphed into this uniformed, heavily coded, boring prescribed way of being and it wasn't for the freaks anymore. And that just isn't really interesting to me. I like the idea of putting a damaged trumpet solo in the middle of a Cro-Mags song and they're such a masculine, tough guy band. That I love, but with a grain of salt.

Adriana: A grain of salt, that's perfect.

Stephie: I like surprising people. Who wants to see the same thing over and over again?

Adriana: I think especially in punk when you start, from when you're fourteen, you're always asking yourself if you're looking right, talking right, knowing all the right bands. If you’re conforming to the non-conformity. And that persists for way longer than it should and there's a certain point when you're playing music and you just decide, “I don't even fucking care if I play this right, or what people say.” It's fun to stop caring so much—if we're going to put a trumpet solo or a weird part in a song or play something wrong I don't even care. You have to loosen up, not take it so seriously.

MRR: Nowadays it seems normal hat bands have lyrics that don’t say anything—the vocals are an instrument as well, that they could just be part of the music but don't matter that much. It seems like you wanna write lyrics that mean things to you, so is it harder? Do you have many topics to write about?

Stephie: I got topics. Damn, I got topics! [Laughs] The way this band has operated with fits and starts and long periods of activity and non-activity, I've realized that the lyrics have followed suit in a similar way. At one time I'll have a lot to say and get five songs written down at once, and then not write anything for months. To me that's probably one of the most fun things in the band, lyric writing. I really like the process of it. The idea of having a song that's a minute and a half long and trying to condense as much as possible to say in that amount of time in the way I want to say it is always enjoyable. Sometimes I feel like I've got nothing to write about, but inevitably there's always something that comes up and inspires me again.

Adriana: One thing I like about being in this band is Stephie's lyrics. I was reading the lyric sheet to our EP, Can't I Live, and I was like, “Man, this is getting me so pumped!” And then I thought, “Man, I get to play in this band and help to further these lyrics and put them out into the world” and I think that's really cool. Because for me, getting into punk, while it's not like all the bands I've ever listened to have had impeccable lyrics that are thought-provoking and well written, my favorite bands, and the music that I love and get inspired by, always have lyrics that are good and reach me. I've really appreciated Stephie's lyrics.

MRR: How did you feel when Pitchfork wrote about you, did you get anything out of that?

Stephie: We didn't get shit. The Pitchfork thing is deceptive because people would assume you're like a big band because that happens but we're not really. People don't offer us money to do things, really.

Adriana: I'm going broke as it is!

Stephie: And just because the major indie world might be interested in some bands that play punk or hardcore because it's trendy right now doesn't really affect us that much, we're still doing our thing. If they wanna write something about it, then whatever, but we're not a band to please those people. They can do whatever they want, we don't change what we do because of them.

Adriana: They're not offering us a tour bus, we're not playing Coachella. It is something I can tell my relatives though, and they can get impressed!

Stephie: And what you do is valid for a minute.

Adriana: “Oh! Well then!”

Jessica: My boss told me about the Pitchfork thing, printed it and put it on the wall.

Stephie: It's weird how being recognized by certain sources causes certain people outside punk and people to suddenly decide that what you do is semi-valid for a few minutes. “I get it, a corporate publication kind of cares about you, maybe you are doing something with your life!” How backwards is that? It's just so strange. I'm doing the same thing whether you recognize it or not and how valuable, does it actually matter? Just the fact that realistically a lot of those publications are just dabbling in the punk and hardcore world, it's not that they'll change the ethics of what they're doing because of this subculture, they just want to write about something trendy that will lend some credibility to their publication, to say they've got their ear to the ground. It's so funny how that manifests though. Take a band like Perfect Pussy, they're getting a lot of press right now, and they're friends of friends of ours I think, and they seem like intelligent people. And yet, as soon as all the Rolling Stone shit ran, a bunch of white 50 year old men were coming into my work asking for Perfect Pussy records! It was really bizarre and sort of like, what happens when you join those two worlds together, what are people really looking for?  

Adriana: There's that gross feeling isn't there? Ugh!

All: Ugh! Yeuch!

MRR: Is this tour gonna affect you in a way? Does playing your songs for a month every day, inspire you to write more songs or agendas?

Stephie: I don't know about the agenda thing, but it's definitely been inspiring to see what people are doing in other places. I've personally been blown away by the squat stuff going on in Europe, it's so different from the States. You'll have these squats that have been going for decades.

Matt: There's some that have been sponsored by governments, like in Germany.

Jessica: Yeah, the place we played in Offenburg is sponsored by the government.

Matt: There're different kinds of squats. In Barcelona we played a place that is gonna get evicted in the next two months and then in Zarautz there was another illegal squat that maybe is going to be evicted in the next couple of years. There're ones like the one we played in Zagreb which started out as illegal squats and then became community centers in a way that was legal. None of that shit exists in the US in the same way and it's really inspiring to see that happen, claiming space, keeping it for long periods of time.

MRR: Is it harder to be a punk in America, without that infrastructure?

Stephie: We definitely don't get money from the government for the arts, which seems to happen in a couple of places here. People go broke trying to facilitate shows in America.

Matt: Yeah, and physical space is hard in the US. Squat shows don't really exist and finding venues is often difficult in many cities.

MRR: But it's harder to play a house show in Europe, because of the neighbors and, like in Hungary everybody buys a flat and aren't renting it, so they're not thinking “we're here for a month and I don't give a fuck about my neighbors!”

Stephie: A lot of times the house shows happen out of necessity, and yeah the neighbors do get mad, the police do get called and people do get evicted! That's why it's so hard to keep it going. There's this constant threat of eviction, rent hikes, crazy building codes that cost thousands of dollars to legally meet...you just never know at a given day when it's going to be gone. When people put shows in houses it's often because there's nothing more you can do. You don't have a bunch of money to rent out a proper venue, what happens if not enough people come? What happens if the touring band, you can't pay them anything? A lot of people just end up paying out of pocket and there's a fleeting feeling to a lot of the venues out there, a feeling you have to cling to what you have because it might be gone tomorrow.

Adriana: I know that there are different places that have opened up around the US, like youth-orientated music venues which sometimes get grants and maybe some government funding or private money to operate and run their projects that help to support young people in the arts. We've played those places a couple of times but they're not really centers of hardcore or punk, it seems. I guess it's harder to make it happen, but it still seems like the same factors exist over in Europe: the whole space thing and funding is just different.

MRR: There's some people in Europe who are like “Oh, these American bands have it so easy!”, but it turns out that if you're a squatter in Germany and have a dog you get extra money from the government to feed your dog. I just met a guy in Denmark who's doing community service for throwing a brick into a cop's face, and Marty was telling us that if that happened in Chicago...

Stephie: You'd be in fucking jail.

Adriana: Or dead.

Jessica: I mean, there are different worlds, we deal with different struggles being in punk and doing punk things in the area that you're in but they're all valid and real. And like, whether your squat gets assistance from the government or not, you're still doing what you want to do in the space you created for it, and that's cool in itself.

MRR: Do you have thoughts about why most of us listen to American bands? Like, even the European bands are singing in English, but that's changing now because of the internet, which might be because you can download shitloads of punk and not have the time to pore over the lyrics like before.

Stephie: It's instantly accessible now. It's funny, I still don't listen to music that way, I don't listen through the internet. I might check it out and then buy the record if I like it, but maybe I'm old fashioned or something.

Jessica: I don't even have a working computer or a record player, so the internet's been good for that, pulling up Bandcamp on my stupid smartphone and listening to the same band about twenty times in a month. That's how I get into music. The internet has made it accessible and easier for me but I understand how the turnover can be super high, everything comes and goes so fast. The thing about American bands being so popular I'm sure is because of the media and how everything American is everywhere.

Stephie: Americans don't do a very good job of paying attention to things outside of America a lot of the time. There's a lot of reasons for that, some of it coming from a certain political and imperialistic attitude that assumes that America can provide for itself with everything it ever needs and that leaks into a lot of people's lifestyles, where it's just this sense of an enclosed space. Kinda sucks.

Jessica: That was the most exciting thing about coming over here. I had never left the United States before, all I knew about Europe was what my parents experienced from being in the Air Force, you know, and what kind of traveling is that? It was really cool to be excited about something you had no idea what to expect and seeing bands that were singing in their own language. Like when we saw Las Otras in Barcelona. I had no idea what she was saying between the songs, but it was cool to be there.

Matt: You couldn't understand it but you could feel it.

Jessica: Definitely! You could stand there and feel it and even not speaking the same language with someone but trying to communicate with them in a different way is really cool.

Matt: It also feels like for American bands, it's kind of easier to come to Europe than it is for European bands to come to America. There's this support network in Europe that exists and it's relatively easy to get all your shows booked, get the right equipment, get a van, get a driver, and everywhere you go people are cooking you dinner and you're getting paid and people are coming to your show. The promoters are putting in a lot of work, cleaning the place, putting a lot of work in the venue. In the US, those things don't exist. Who's got a van that anyone can borrow? Nobody, you know? It's just hard.

Stephie: Like, if you had a van would you let them borrow it?

Matt: And who's got a backline to rent? I don't know! Who's got their own shit? I don't even know.

Jessica: And the strangeness of us going to all these completely different countries that speak their own language and how many speak English, how if it was reversed it'd be completely different and that's wild to me, like how many people can speak to me in English.

Matt: Some crazy hegemony.

All: Yeah.

Stephie: A lot of it is luck, having the right band at the right time, having the right support to be able to have a tour that's semi-successful. I know people who work a lot harder than I do who have never had the opportunity to do a European tour like we've had, so I feel super fortunate.

MRR: Have you ever had hard moments where you feel you should just quit all this?

Jessica: Yeah, but I think there were personal reasons rather than outside factors.

Adriana: In one year I did two full US tours and it nearly broke my spirit. It is pretty exhausting and you have to love what you do and care about your band to do that. And you need resources. I was lucky—well, not lucky, I got in a car accident—and got a settlement from that so I was able to not work that much that year, and scrape by on going on tour, but you do have to care about what you're doing, otherwise there's no point. I know bands who are kind of successful and who go on tour all the time, they're always touring, it just seems like they have the resources and the drive and the passion somewhere in there. I'm not in a hurry to do a full US tour to be honest!

Jessica: There are quite a few bands who have toured the US who aren't from there that have just broken up.

Adriana: People break up in Europe too. Or on any long tour.

Jessica: It's just different, like exactly what I said before: similar yet different struggles on different continents.

Stephie: Sometimes it is nice to only have one meal at a gas station a day as opposed to three. Like on a US tour where it's chips for breakfast, chips for lunch, soda for dinner!

Jessica: Showing up somewhere and seeing someone has made you food as opposed to telling you the gas station's around the corner or there's this vegan restaurant down the street that costs a lot of money.

Adriana: “Oh, but it's closed!”

Stephie: “Maybe tomorrow.”

Jessica: And so that's completely different.

Adriana: The fact you cooked two meals for us was really good.

Stephie: Amazing.

Jessica: Mindblowing.

Matt: I wouldn't do that for you at home. [Laughs]

Stephie: I think it's also hard in America because everyone works too much, and there's not a whole lot of energy to go around to put into music. There're so many bands and everywhere we go we meet people who are super kind and willing to put us up for the night or whatever, but there's also this kind of pressure in America because people are just spread really thin for a number of reasons, and being in a band or the arts is this luxury they can't really afford.

Jessica: I was fucking miserable. I don't have a job anymore but I fucking hated working at my job, I was working late all the time, couldn't even find the energy to go to shows. I was perpetually broke. It wears you down.

Matt: But Viktor works 40 hours a week and has two hour commutes every day and puts on shows, puts up bands. There is a lot of people in the US that are overworked, but people here are too and they're still doing a lot of cool shit.

Adriana: It depends on how stoked you are too. There was a time where I was working 60 hours a week and still playing in bands and going to shows.  

Jessica: It can happen, it does happen everywhere. And there are waves of it too, like what Adriana said about touring so much, you have to love it and it's cool. I could talk all day about how I hate my job but I quit it to be here, I love it enough to...

Stephie: “I quit my job for this!”

Jessica: Yeah, I quit my job for this. And that's great in itself, being willing to sacrifice shit to make things happen and experience things and it's fucking cool. Being here, sitting here in Budapest with Viktor. I quit my job for this and I couldn't be happier. When I get really dark, just bring that up!

MRR: Do you worry about getting drained out playing hardcore?

Adriana: The thing with hardcore bands is they don't have that long of a life expectancy, and it kind of takes it out of you and is sometimes a pain in the butt to do things yourself. It's not gonna last forever, we are going to get sick of it and then we'll break up.

Jessica: It's the cycle, you know?

Adriana: But it's also like, we've been here a long time, as a band we could keep going...

Jessica: We could go for thirty years.

Adriana: Just wait for the reunion.

Stephie: I think there was a time where I felt really restricted by hardcore and punk, but I don't feel...

Matt: You've got a trumpet!

Stephie: I've got a trumpet.

Jessica: And now your mind has changed!

Stephie: Now I feel we can do whatever we want, and right now it's still hardcore punk but our blues album is coming out soon...

Adriana: Oh my god!

Stephie: It just feels right to play right now. I mean, I have outlets to do other bands and other stuff too, but I come back to hardcore because it's hardcore and punk and not because it's something else. I like it for what it is.

Adriana: I take back the negative vibe of what I said first but what I was getting at was what Stephie said, you do it for however long you do it, and then you just don't anymore. It's not worth planning out, and if you get bored there's always other outlets for you musically.

Stephie: There is something inherently short-term about hardcore and punk because it's so much energy condensed, it's no wonder bands burn out or get weird in a shitty way.

Jessica: The flame burns brighter for shorter.

Stephie: Just the natural order of things.

Matt: Like, how many records can Hoax put out?

Stephie: I heard they broke up kinda for that reason. They'd done all they could do.

Jessica: Before we left I was in a pretty dark place and was thinking, what is there you can do after Europe? There's nothing to be done after Europe, but now I'm here it's like what Stephie said, you can do whatever you want, you know?

Stephie: I wanna do a record!

Jessica: That's the beauty of punk, you don't know what's going to happen, and that's fucking cool.

MRR: Closing question: what will happen with Hysterics?

Jessica: Blues album. 2015.

Stephie: Blue eyed soul.

Jessica: Front of Rolling Stone.

Adrianna: Double LP.

Stephie: I would love to do an LP, we've never done one but I think it's possible. This band, we've been around for four years and it always felt like we were on the verge of breaking up constantly.

Adrianna: Pretty much all the time.

Stephie: And yet, somehow that has added this fuel to the fire that's kept it all continuing. So, I have no idea but we could probably eke a record out.

Jessica: I mean, fuck, we wrote a song on tour!

Stephie: We've got some ideas going around, it'll be cool.

Jessica: Things will happen, or they won't. We can do what we want.

Stephie: You just gotta chill, dude. Fuckin' chill.

Hysterics played their last shows on October 10th and 11th in Olympia and Seattle, Washington. They answered the remaining questions via email.

MRR: What were you feeling during the rehearsals surrounding the last gig? Adriana: I was feeling pretty depleted. I had been firing on a single cylinder for some time and was realizing that I was completely burned out (on the band, punk, life under capitalism, etc.).  I was a little curmudgeonly during our (two) rehearsals. However our shows were really fun and life affirming. I was kind of on a high after witnessing/being a part of them and seeing all the people who were touched by this band in some way.  It was great fun. Jessica: oh man that is really tough. adriana and i got into a long discussion and talked about feelings so it was kind of rough but really good. it's hard being in a band with your friends sometimes. we dont really practice except for recording or playing a show so it felt odd because we hadnt played these songs in a while and i kept reminding myself it was for the last show. it felt surreal.  MRR: Is there anything that you wished to do with Hysterics and you were not able to do? Adriana: I did everything I wanted to do with Hysterics. I realized this during our last Olympia show, when Stephie asked everyone who identified as cis-gendered, white, straight, and male to step back and everyone else come forward. The crowd complied, and as I looked at all my friends (and strangers) who have experienced alienation and marginalization their entire lives surging forward and enjoying themselves in their own zone, I felt so touched and awe-struck. The only thing I really ever wanted to do in this band was create an alternative to the shitty, alienating atmosphere of shows of my youth.  Though it surely was far from perfect, and there is so much work to be done, I realized watching the crowd that at that place and time, at least for a moment, a special space existed where people felt more empowered and free to be themselves as themselves and I had had a hand in creating it.  I'm very thankful for that opportunity.  It made me entirely grateful for all of my life's experiences. I realized at that moment that whatever we did as a band didn't matter—we could totally play like garbage, we could walk off the stage and it wouldn't matter because what we had wanted to shift had shifted. And it was beautiful. Jessica: i did everything i could have ever imagined to do with a band. shit we toured europe that is crazy enough, especially after not breaking up after a full US tour haha. i felt the end coming in early winter of 2013 then knew that europe would be the last thing we did together after february. it was kind of bitter sweet everything was working out and we were definitely going to europe but i think we all felt the same without really talking about it.  MRR: Do you plan to replace the space in your life that once belonged to Hysterics? Not practically with another band but with something that satisfies the same needs, brings the same feelings? Adriana: Meeting one's own needs is an ongoing and dynamic process.  My needs and wants have changed over time and since Hysterics began. I have been bringing tools, people, situations into my life that are supportive and enhance my well-being and I plan on continuing to do this. I trust that when it is time to meet another need or release some feelings the right situation will show up. Jessica: I dont think anything will ever be like hysterics. MRR: Who are the new blood we have to pay attention to? Adriana: Please go see my friends Vexx, Bricklayer, Mysterious Skin, and Trrash. MRR: What was Hysterics? Jessica: a whirlwind full of emotions. Adriana: Hysterics was a punk band.