Cave In: An Interview with Stephen Brodsky

These guys have impressed me with just about every release they’ve managed to push with all their label trouble.  Sure Antenna wasn’t my favorite but there were still some amazing songs and riffs on there. Bands like Thrice would still be playing the same songs without the influence of Cave In and the rest of the Hydrahead Records roster for that matter. I caught the last few measures of The Stephen Brodsky Quartet at the Hydrahead showcase at sxsw. It was meh…okay. I can appreciate it but goddammit every time I hear the opening to ‘Big Riff’ I pop like 16 boners (figuratively not literally). Mike Thomas and I worked out the questions for this one so I can’t take complete credit for it. But I wrote the intro so…yeah. Like, enjoy it okay?

_______________________________________________

In the Stream of Commerce

From playing in garages and recording on a four-track tape machine to signing to RCA, Cave In has seen quite a transformation over the past decade. Frontman/guitarist Stephen Brodsky has been the voice of this Boston-based quartet, which has always had a tough time fitting in. Maybe that’s because their rock-meets-hardcore-meets-metal-meets-something else sound has captivated and bewildered listeners and critics alike.

Call it what you will, but Cave In has become an underground staple these days; one of those bands that has seemingly been around forever. Brodsky was kind enough to take some time to answer a few questions about the band’s past, present and future.

Shane: Have you felt the impact personally of Hydra Head moving to L.A. and Isis changing its locale?
Brodsky: I know the Hydra Head fellows had felt as though they did all they could in Boston. I miss poking around their office and bothering Mark by wiping boogers on him while he works.

SR: Has it ever been a conscious decision as to how much screaming and singing you do in Cave In?
Brodsky: As soon as Caleb stepped up his role as a vocalist in the band, it pretty much sealed the deal for me to continue doing what I now do as a singer in the band.

SR: Could you ever have imagined your band or any of the other bands you’ve been part of having the type of impact you have had?
Brodsky: We’ve always been ambitious. I never wanted to be stuck in one place, geographically and musically speaking. If you make those kinds of feelings known, then people are bound to respond in one way or another.

SR: What kind of direction do you see Cave In going from here musically, if you can see that at all?
Brodsky: With Ben now playing drums, our musical spectrum for the future is broader than any of us could imagine. He has his own bag of tricks that we can now dig through and play with. Our record collections have grown since our last recordings too—stuff like Zappa, Sun Ra, Black Mountain, John Fahey… This always has an impact on what we want to do, as well.

SR: How do you view the immense popularity metal and metalcore has taken on in recent years?
Brodsky: I might try and get more into black metal. I’ve heard some cool stuff recently—it was far more melodic and listenable than I could imagine. And there’s a whole slew of people making black metal solo records, which kind of blows my mind.

SR: Did you feel a responsibility of sorts to take over vocals in the band when you did? Is it hard to have that responsibility to the band?
Brodsky: The four of us felt like we had a good chemistry going, and we weren’t up for attempting to find another member. It was better to have a smaller group of people—less heads to butt, so things could happen a bit quicker. I sang lead vocals in previous bands, so it wasn’t that big of a deal for me to do it in Cave In.

SR: What is your songwriting process like, musically and lyrically? How much does practice and just jamming play a role in your actual songs?
Brodsky: Writing tunes is a bit different now than it used to be. Everyone’s role as a musician in the band has become more refined, so that now there are ideas coming from multiple places and bouncing all around. Jamming is a good way to surprise yourself and the other guys in the room. They might hear something that you don’t necessarily feel grabbed by.

SR: What are you and your band mates’ relationships like outside of the band? How much time do you spend with each other?
Brodsky: Adam and I live in the same town and we’ll hit up Ana’s Taqueria for amazing burritos. Caleb has been living in L.A. for about a year. He’s visited on a few non-band related occasions and we always make time to kick back and listen to records.

SR: If you had to pick one genre of music and one band that has influenced Cave In the most, what and who would it be?
Brodsky: Converge is a band we have always admired, and it goes way, way back. Then there’s Sonic Youth, who never made the same record twice and have always been ahead of their own game musically.

SR: How much has Ben’s contribution as Cave In’s new drummer played in both songwriting and playing live?
Brodsky: He’s a musician in his own right, and we’re beginning to mold ourselves to what he is capable of doing. It’s a great means for us to enhance our own abilities as players. We can be blistering fast if we wanted to—he’s also not afraid to use a thunderstick.

SR: What was being part of the Major Label machine like for you as an artist and a business?
Brodsky: As an artist, it was like being a deer trapped in oncoming headlights. As a business, it was like taking a music industry course and skipping almost every class.

SR: What are some common misconceptions about the relationship between an independent band moving onto a major label and how did you deal with the transition?
Brodsky: Total freedom is a funny thing. They tell you not to worry—you’ll have it they promise! But you never really are totally free. We were never free of a constant barrage of opinions from people who actually understood little to nothing of our history as a band. Dumb s**t like the placement of our band name on the front cover of Antenna—that managed to produce a number of weird phone calls being made back and forth. Certain people felt it necessary to argue over having the band’s logo placed in the top left corner, as a selling point so that record buyers will have an easier time finding our album in stores. It’s one example of what these people get paid to do, and in most cases it’s way more money than the artists will ever see.
SR: What is the most gratifying experience you’ve ever had while playing or
writing music?
Brodsky: Anytime the fretboard trips me out in an unexpected way. I’ve been playing
guitar since I was 12 years old, so at this point, those little moments are always welcome to come around, though it’s never a certain thing. Sometimes they grace me often, other times they shack up somewhere far away where I can’t access the sounds of ’em too easily.

SR: Are you currently writing and recording any more solo material?
Brodsky: Yeah, I just finished a new album. Well, the tracking is finished but it won’t be mixed until April. And I’ve already written about two more albums’ worth of new stuff since the writing for this recent one has been finished. Mucho brain activity.

SR: What is the status of Virgin, the Converge/Cave In collaboration?
Brodsky: Too many cooks in the kitchen. Certain ones complain about using classic-metal tasting spices, and others want it to be free, loose and weirder. Who knows when that thing will ever see the light of day. I truly hope it will, but I also haven’t been saving my appetite for it.

SR: We’re a non-profit youth initiative and the majority of our readers are young aspiring musicians. If you had some words of advice, what would they be—in two different contexts, one being advice for a fledgling band and another for the person who is just starting out on an instrument?
Brodsky: Relax your hands. It should never feel painful. And I know of bands whose
members will scream, yell and fistfight each other, and that has always struck me as being a bit bizarre. I’d recommend avoiding those situations.

SR: When can we expect the next Cave In record?
Brodsky: I’d like to say it’ll be recorded in summer 2006.

Irons: J Bannon, Dwid, S Kasner

Jake Bannon is an amazing artist and visionary. His design work with Converge adds to their aesthetic and Deathwish Inc. respectively. He brings his unique perspective to bare on each of his endeavors. Plus he’s got the best voice in underground music since…Dwid from Integrity. Dwid, not unlike Jake, has inspired countless ‘vocalists’ in the hardcore music scene. But, like Converge and Integrity as bands, there can be only one (and like highlander too!). So these dudes formed a band called Irons. Then there’s artist Stephen Kanser. His apocalyptic images are beautiful and thought provoking. This collaboration is going to be amazing. Maybe they’ll make an animated short to accompany the music.

Here’s some info:

J. Bannon, Dwid Hellion, and Stephen Kasner are “Irons”.

“Irons” are a collaborative effort of these three artistic visionaries. A collective effort to create apocalyptic, non-linear music from a primal fine art based mindset.

Idiom(s):
Nautical.
Lying head to the wind and unable to turn either way.

Idiom(s):
Irons in the fire.
An undertaking or project in progress: has many irons in the fire this year.

The blade of a carpenter’s plane.
Slang; a pistol.
A harpoon.

“Irons” are currently writing/recording/collaborating for a future 2008 release on Deathwish.

Members are also currently working on their own material:
J. Bannon: Currently recording his “Wear Your Wounds” album and other releases.
Dwid Hellion: Currently working on future Roses Never Fade and Integrity releases.
Stephen Kasner: Currently mixing his Blood Fountains debut solo release.

More information regarding “Irons” will be released soon.

Check em out at myspace 

Situation of Noise: An interview with Justin Pearson of The Locust

____________________________________________________________________
In our Starbucks coffee driven fast food and reality based short attention span world, certain challenges arise to the creative minds of our generations. Sometimes these challenges are met with variant modes of creative outlet and of recent years it seems to be occurring in music. The base for era spanning communication has always had a home in that many of societal problems coexist in the ethereal world of sonic composition and creation of ART. Art is merely a means to an end. It can take many forms, painting, poetry, architecture, and most importantly for the purpose of this feature, music.

The Locust are in the trenches of their self-described “noise terrorism” war on contemporary and conventional thought. Formed in 1995 from the ashes of San Diego based noise core bands, Swing Kids, Struggle, Crimson Curse and about a dozen other notable bands, they have seen their fair share of current trends rise and fall with the fickle youth of America. Themusicedge.com had an opportunity to speak with Justin Pearson; the bass player of The Locust and his musical background is about as peppered as the bands laundry list of line up names.

According to J.P., “I’ve always liked music since I was a little kid, when I was 5 or so I was going to go see KISS but my mom said I was too young. We used to always pretend with tennis rackets and stuff. Then when I was ten or eleven my mom’s cousin let me borrow his guitar then eventually I picked up a bass.”

J.P. adds his history on lessons by saying, “I taught myself. When I first moved out to San Diego I took lessons from this guy and all he would do was show me how to play rock songs, so he’d show me this riff. But I never really learned how to play. I only took like three or four lessons from the guy and I thought it was a waste of time so I ended up messing around with other people. My friends and I that also didn’t know how to play, we didn’t know together so we figured things out that way.”

The Locust not only manage to destroy conventional thinking about how music should be arranged but they also have a tendency to create from that chaos some pretty technically proficient song structures. Their sound is somewhere between chaos and harmony, with an emphasis on controlled chaos. When seeing them live recently at their record release show (the new record is called Plague Soundscapes, its on Epitaph/Anti Records) at San Diego’s, Off The Record, playing to a packed house, it was noticeable to most in attendance that it was really hard to see them if you happened to get there one second late, like I unfortunately did.

Their sound is brutal and not for the faint of heart but one cannot deny the musician ship it takes to create such music. Not only does The Locust have an amazing zeal for creating music, but also most of their cleverness comes in the way they merchandize. Instead of your typical T-shirt, hooded sweatshirt fare, most Locust items consist of Skateboards, compacts with “The Locust” logo on the mirror and the standard aforementioned products.

J.P.’s musical tastes are as eclectic as his music, although he retracts his former fascination with KISS, “I think they are so lame. I hate KISS a lot now and I’m not into how misogynistic they are, but when I was a little kid I like the way they looked.”

Adding, “I really was into Styx and Boston when I was really, really little. Then I got into break dancing and early rap like Run DMC and Beastie Boys. It’s weird though because I grew up in Phoenix Arizona, it’s a total hesher state and everyone is into heavy metal. So I got into metal, I ended up living a couple blocks away from some of the guys in Slayer and that really intrigued me. The whole metal punk tie and I ended up getting into punk. The first band that got me really interested in music was the Sex Pistols. I stumbled upon some of the really early skate punk tapes that Thrasher (magazine) used to put out like Septic Death, but I didn’t want to limit myself musically so I take from everything.”

J.P. has played in some of the early GSL Records-style noise-core bands, like his first band which he states, “I got into my first band when I was about fifteen years old called Struggle, that was the first band I was in that was a real band. I was in a band called Swing Kids and The Crimson Curse and I’m also kind of still in this band called Holy Molar, it’s a weird project band. The Drummer lives in Portland and the singer lives in New York. I started The Locust about seven or eight years ago.”

The Locust has for all intensive purposes, felt their share of success. What could be construed as more successful than being used in a John Waters film (Cecil Be Demented)? And with their recent sign to punk rock powerhouse Epitaph and its subsidiary, Anti, The Locust have no choice but to prove that you can be aggressive in your approach when playing music without being predictable. And it’s unpredictability that separates The Locust from other bands. “A lot of people, especially drummers play the same beat, they obviously aren’t being creative. Whatever makes that band works is their deal,” says J.P.

As far as the writing process goes, J.P. says that its group oriented, “It kind of mutates over time and we all kind of write equal parts it just depends, someone will come to practice and they’ll have a couple parts to work with and we’ll build off of them. For instance Joey (Keyboards) will have these parts that are virtually impossible to translate onto guitar and base so it will force Bobby (guitar) and I to write around it and work with what he’s doing but not be playing the same exact riff which is good because it adds some great dynamics. Also Gabe (Drums) writes some insanely complicated beats on drums and we’ll work around those parts and Bobby and I will add some riffs that we add. And after we have a basic skeleton we’ll dissect it and take it apart and make time signatures weird and slow certain parts down and speed certain parts up. Make it a little bit confusing a little bit more creative and over time over a period of a week or two we’ll butcher it some more, then the last step is adding vocals to it and we’ll all decide what parts to sing.”

Beware of The Locust, their music will challenge and dare most people to rethink their concepts of what songs should sound like. Most importantly, The Locust are composing songs of the future and Plague Soundscapes is the vessel they are using to slowly bring in the fans from the conventional crowds.

the locust
____________________________________________________________________

Done in June of 2003, without having a home I figured I’d post here and as such I haven’t changed anything from the original, just added this little footnote. Justin Pearson was one of my very first interviews for themusicedge, which is hilarious considering how conservative the parent company of the site was and is and the kind of ‘obscene’ content The Locust always get lambasted about. At a later time some ‘concerned’ perpetual meddler wanted me to take down the article, luckily I stuck it out and provided a compelling argument to the suits that if our ultimate job was to inspire young people to create music then who are we to sensor what kind of music is created? I also thought it fitting for a first feature, especially after my dour interview with Taboo from The Black Eyed Peas who had, at the time, just added Fergie to the group. Justin is one of the few people, aside from Ben Koller (Converge, Cave In) who supported the basic tenants of that site from the beginning and has always made himself available for interview(s) and linked to whatever it was I happened to be working on at the time. He suffers from being incredibly likeable, maybe that’s why I think of him as an artist more than I think of him as a musician. Maybe I’m just full of shit too. He’s doing a post called “From the Graveyard of the Arousal Industry” for HYPEzine.com. Its a tour diary.

Thanks for subscribing! You must find something interesting about these words and for that I am grateful.

cabron in the studio…attempting to document sound

ah. punk rock. in all its facile glory. waiting and watching the dials turn. too much listening, not enough feeling or maybe too much feeling. whats the diff? and who fucking cares anyway. studio is so antiseptic. too clean. too nothing. not like the hot sweaty practice room, where your balls stick to your thighs and your face gets wet and smells like breath, cigarettes and beer. do that part again! oi! do that part again cabron! make that shit pop. this is all that matters in the time we take to eat sleep shit and fuck. just thirty minutes to feel like something is actually taking place instead of that endless wait. man that distortion is warm, feedback is so underrated i don’t know how U2 lives without it.

i don’t ever want to grow up.

Thanks for subscribing! You must find something interesting about these words and for that I am grateful.

Studio Time

Sunday, June 10, 2007
Worked on Mongos drums for about 2.5 hours, since he is the primadonna of the band (not really). Dan Maier, engineer extradordinaire, got some great tones but Marks new yamaha kick sounded a little flubby so we switched it out for the studio (Audio Design) DW kick. Sounded way better and more punchy. Then we traded out his snare cause it was a little reverby, even though it’s a killer live snare it wasn’t attacking as well on tape. Oh yeah, Dan had a reel of 2 inch he graciously donated to the Cabrones for our 7 song EP. Man, I forgot how amazing tape sounds from studio monitor speakers, like a wool blanket in a Denver blizzard with a raging fire and a cup of Irish Cocoa. Running through the Otari MTR 90 Tape Machine and a API 2488 Board. Fast forward a few hours and we set up the vintage Ampeg V4B (1973), pushing through a 68-69′ 8×10 cab, with a Fulltone Bass Drive for extra grit, I used my slightly moded Fender Jazz Bass. It was super gritty at first but I scaled back the drive cause we didn’t want it to sound like another guitar, which was a good thing. Bob ran through his classic set-up; a musicman 2×12, a 100 watt 80’s Marshall JMP and a Morely signal splitter, using a Gibson Faded SG for rhythm and a G&L ASAT Classic for lead(s). We started with “Learn” and ended with “Silencio” and in between we ran about 3 takes per song, with the exception of “Silencio,” yeah we nailed that in one. I punched in twice and so did Bob. Late in the night after a few beers and winding down we decided to dump the tape to digital so we could do more in post. Today it seems to be working a lot better but with all that room for mistakes we’re taking too much time redoing vocals. Leo sounds rad though. Nailed all the songs so far. We’ll have to come up with a different title for the current song. Its kind of obnoxious and doesn’t really work with the actual lyrics of the song. Hope Leandros voice holds out. more later…

So Leo was fucking blasted while trying to lay down vox for “The Searchers,” and his chorus sounded like Kurt Cobain on the nod. A Mexican Kurt Cobain on the nod. He’s got a good style though, sort of sloppy and pissed but good tone. I dig it at least. I did my vox for “The Letdown” and pulled the cajones out and blew out my chords pretty quick. I drank a lot of honey though and it seemed to get me through the rough spots. I tried to channel my inner rage and push it into the song as much as possible. We did the triple threat, “The Searchers,” “The Letdown” and “My Dear Colleagues.” Here are the lyrics I wrote in full, as Leo changed some of them to fit the songs and I’ll have to repost my revision to “The Letdown” but is on my new home computer since The Man is taking his computer back once I leave this cold cube on Friday;

The Searchers
We are the searchers.
Architects of semantic infrastructure
Coded in concrete
Not paper that’ll tear easy.
Men of our word
We commit to the betterment
Of society as a whole
Our subordinates write copy
Boilerplate mission statements
Distributed to all the right folks
And conflict resolution
Is our diplomatic mantra

Memorizing tag lines stepping deftly over razor wire
We communicate, oh we communicate
a message of fire
Shaking hands and kissing babies

My Dear Colleagues
Have you ever worked
a 60-hour week,
At a job you despise,
with every fiber of your being?
Do you ever stop to think
that you’re not alone?
Yeah, you’re not alone
We’re all crumbling
toward the same ending,
Thankless and dying

But you’re not alone man
Sister we’re with you
In the factories and fields,
toiling away
Just to get a sense
of something real

Carve out an existence
To stand tall amidst the giants
One voice to rattle the tyrants

You’re not alone
We’ll be waiting at the end
When the credits role and curtain closes
And the last whistle blows
We’ll be there
You’re not alone.

Thanks for subscribing! You must find something interesting about these words and for that I am grateful.

Buy These Records!

Another list of sweet ass records you should buy!
Like any self respecting aging hipster I call them “records” because while I’m too young to actually have used a ‘Record Player’ as my main mode of music playing while in high school [Tapes, yeah, member those – they used to mean something when you put a bunch of Sunny Day, Cadillac Blindside and Morcheeba/Portishead songs on one then gave it to your best girl or boy – whatevs’] I did catch mid wave of tape trading days and dove in head first to that dinosaur of music delivery called ‘CeeDeez.’ there used to be a joke that went with that but damn if 10 years of soda and pizza hasn’t wiped my memory clean as a jewel case. Its Halloween again, always a sad time of year because I realize I can’t eat a whole freaking pillowcase full of candy without getting some sort of blood clot or worse I’ll finally get diabetes.

enough blah blah blogging right? I see from our views of how many people actually read this stuff its pretty small. This myspace thing, once so vibrant and useful has really just become a way for uber shitty emo/screamo bands to get all the skankiest stripper/underage girl in a really obnoxious photo to post on their pages, or heck if their lucky one of them will go to their show with some other band with a poorly chosen name like Death In Autumn, Black Line Mouth Garden or something really stupid, I’m not that clever to think of one I guess. [Actually BLMG is a pretty cool name if you are into shrub eating trolls from Norway]

Couple of good records came out recently that I’ve had the pleasure of actually having to buy instead of wait for the F***ing retard publicity people to send me good music and stop sending me really bad music [hence the abhorrence towards anything with black mascara]

This is the best few for the past few weeks.

Converge – No Heroes: Just read the amazing interview/feature in the Dec. issue of Decibel, it explains it all. Then go out and buy the record, they are PUNK ROCK.

The Hold Steady – Boys and Girls in America: Yeah, that’s right, combine Elvis Costello, Cheap Trick and Thin Lizzy and you’ve got a juicy piece of American rock that makes the strokes look exactly like their namesake in motion

Trail Of Dead – So Divided: These Austinites [neh, austonians?] are back with their pissed off fist in the air Sgt. Pepper epic songs. It’s way better than their last record, of which I can’t even recall the name. Pick it up and check out “Wasted State of Mind”

I Love You But I’ve Chosen Darkness – Fear is on Our Side: another band of Austinites that make Interpol look like Coldplay. This is some moody stuff. Great for rain.

Planes Mistaken For Stars – Mercy: okay. I know I’m a huge PMFS fanboy nerd. My home town is Denver and at one time during a serious Jack Daniels Drinking party I used a vegetable bullion cube I thought was frozen coca-cola in an ice tray in my jack and coke when hanging with the bearded Denverites one summer eve a year ago, nevertheless, this band, with all its lineup changes (Guitarist Matt was replaced by Chuck, chuck was replaced by Neil from Red Cloud and its their third bassist) and subsequently horrible press representation and little coverage is one of the years Best! AGAIN. Up in Them Guts was their career high but Mercy ranks up there as well, being a consistent smash your face rock record (Produced by the skillful Matt Bayles no less). We’ll have them featured on the site soon.

Constants – The Murder Of Tom Fitzgerril: This is so freaking massive and amazing I can’t stop listening to it. Mostly instrumental, these dudes have been on the road for two years in a vegetable fueled school bus. I think I already ranted about this but their album is really remarkable.

Music Exists in the places we expect. At the mall, in the car next to you at the stop sign with the dudes in backwards baseball caps that have replaced Limp Bizkit with Atreyu and Avenged Sevenfold or even in the grocery store. The key is, look deeper, buy music from the record store where the clerks don’t wear uniforms and no one talks about MARKETS or BRANDING or ‘STREET CRED.” Case in point, look for music and don’t let someone serve it to you like a McSandwich. (That means don’t listen to me either)

Thanks for subscribing! You must find something interesting about these words and for that I am grateful.