This interview was originally published in Plead Your Case Fanzine Issue #13, April 2015. Regular text is PYC, Bold text is Chris Colohan.
We'll start this off with a fairly obvious question: What was your first hardcore show? How did you get involved with hardcore and what was the scene like in your town when you first started attending shows?
In retrospect, it was small but felt huge and wild and new. My first show was in 1990 or 91, a mash up of bands from our high school, one of which was a really early Chokehold. It was like jumping into a wood chipper, and I haven't looked back yet.
When I listen to LFD, the lyrical content of so many of the songs feels so relevant and contemporary. Since a number of years have passed since those songs were written, do you still feel compelled by and passionate about the same issues you did back then?
For sure. There's not a lot I've written that I don't feel like I connect with still, even things I was too young to put into more tactful words. The drive behind them was/is always the frustrations about the hypocrisies of the world of people that you're born and socialized into and it's false sense of order - and fundamentally that doesn't really change, or at least my world looks pretty similar to what the cynical teenager saw, if not even more vindicated the older I get. I hated technology depersonalizing people, hated people defaulting to convenience or pleasures that someone/something else had to pay the price for, hated authority that didn't deserve it, didn't want to be zoned out by either literal or social drugs (from TV to religion), hated seeing useful ideas demonized and suppressed to keep the status quo, and was paranoid as fuck about being watched and catalogued. I don't think there's one thing on that list that isn't exactly what it still looked like or worse, or that I don't still see in everything and want to scream about in one way or another.
I've always thought that The Swarm A.K.A. Knee Deep In The Dead was a really interesting band name. Is there any particular reason or story behind why you went with the "A.K.A." part as opposed to just "The Swarm"?
No, we just had two and couldn't decide so we went with both.
You currently play in Burning Love. What's going on with that band? Also what other projects are you currently involved in, if any?
Two of the 4 of us are in school at the moment so the last year has settled down a lot in terms of tour, but we just got the new 7" Down So Long out on Deathwish, and we're going to write a 3rd LP this year for Southern Lord. Pat (guitar) plays in a few other bands, I've got a few side projects in the wings but with no set ETA's and I've been getting some writing done and published as I've been meaning to for years. I'm working on that a lot right now.
List 5 "essential" records that you would give to someone to help them fall in love with hardcore.
Jerry's Kids - Is This My World
Integrity - For Those Who Fear Tomorrow
Disrupt - Unrest
Void/Faith split (VOID SIDE)
Necros - Conquest For Death
Are there any newer or current hardcore bands that you find yourself particularly interested in?
I think because it's so easy post-internet for people to punch in the most tasteful coordinates of the moment (I think we're doing druggie shoegaze, 1987 performance art, or washy 1993 indy rock this year), and come out with exactly that rather than really going out on a creative limb of their own, I don't even look at newer hardcore by wether it's technically good but wether it's naturally occurring as music or art, I often get more out of a band of 17 year olds living in a vacuum in the middle of nowhere opening a show for one night that I'll never hear of again, than I do out of 90% of the buzzy hardcore out there. But that said, I like being pleasantly surprised and proved wrong about that when it happens.
It's rare for bands to have a particular "mascot" so to speak that is so synonymous with a band name the way the "goat man" is synonymous with Cursed. What is the story behind this character and how did he become so intertwined with Cursed's imagery.
It's a bit of a Wizard Of Oz thing. The He-Goat is the incarnation of the devil that appears on a hilltop for about 3 seconds in an occult ritual in an old british horror movie. It's a really arresting image and especially creepy because it's so obviously just a guy in a partial goat suit. So on a totally superficial level it's just a great iconic horror image (of way too many that I've ripped off for band art), but on an allegorical level it doubles for the way that music like ours is a partial mask you put on to vent your genuine worst thoughts, when you're not necessarily that person underneath.
3 things that annoy the shit out of you?
When people whistle but they aren't whistling anything, Dry sand in between my toes, John Leguizamo.
3 things that really make you happy?
Really busted or dead shopping malls or department stores, for some reason. Killing Joke - MMXII. Harry Dean Stanton.
Your favorite records to come out in 2014.
Only Lovers Left Alive OST.
Behemoth - The Satanist
Swans - To Be Kind
Timber Timbre - Hot Dreams
Protomartyr - Under Color of Official Right
Your top 5 films and your top 5 books.
Shit, that's a tall order. You could set off an ocd avalanche and a flow chart with that one, but off hte top of my head here are 5 of each that I think are great
Films:
The Pusher Trilogy (Refn)
The Spirit of the Beehive (Spain 1972)
Damnation (Bela Tarr 2006)
Rolling Thunder (1977)
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (1968)
Books:
Paul Bowles - Let It Come Down
Sartre - Erostratus (short story from The Wall)
Elizabeth Smart - By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept
Norman Mailer - An American Dream
Paul Auster - In The Country of Last Things
Thank you so much for taking the time to do this interview.
Thank you for asking. Answering questions like these makes me think about this stuff for myself.
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