Interview with Stephen Wisniewski from braidedveins

While I am mostly unfamiliar with their members previous bands (I saw Spit at one of my first shows back in the day, and my friend Chris put out a record for Kid Brother Collective once), I immediately was intrigued when I heard about the formation of braidedveins, a Flint post-hardcore band who also feature ex-members of The Swellers and Empty Orchestra. So about 6 months ago when I was hooking up a distro trade with Save Your Generations Records, I knew I needed to get my hands on a copy of their debut album "Future/Forever".

I was instantly impressed by the song-writing, you could tell these guys had all been around the block a time or two, and those 7 songs have been in pretty consistent rotation ever since. With a sound that's akin to At The Drive In if they placed a little more emphasis on power rather than swagger, the guys in BV definitely have something special going on.

Over the weekend I decided to touch base with them, and was really stoked when singer/lyricist Stephen Wisniewski promptly got back with me and said he was happy to provide some insight into the band. Their brand new self-titled LP will be out in the next month or so, and I have a feeling you'll be hearing a lot more about them in the months and years to come.

Probably my favorite thing about doing interviews is hearing about people's backgrounds, especially how they got into underground music. So with that said, talk a little bit about your childhood/adolescence, and how you stumbled upon punk/indie rock/hardcore/whatever.

Well, I know that everyone in braidedveins has a pretty radically different story about this -- we range in age from 27 to 38, and even though we all come from the Flint area, I know we have a real variety of musical experiences growing up. Jonathan played in The Swellers since he was literally a kid, and I first met Brandon 20 years ago when he was playing in a straight-edge hardcore band.

For me, I grew up with a dad who immigrated from Poland when he was a kid, and so even though he was definitely Americanized, he also had a very peculiar sense of how he consumed popular culture, especially when it came to music. So on long car rides with my family as a kid, I never got the typical experience of pop radio or classic rock or whatever -- it would literally be a polka followed by show tunes, followed by Motown, followed by Dolly Parton. So I think early on, I had the sense that anything could go together, and nothing was "weird."

So I think my own path to punk came through that sensibility, and it actually came first through hip hop. I went to Catholic elementary school, and then switched to public school for sixth grade, and a couple of my first friends there would give me dubbed cassettes of hip hop albums that were coming out at the time -- Public Enemy's "It Takes a Nation of Millions...;" Ice Cube's first album; The DOC's "No One Can Do it Better;" stuff like that. So that was the first time that I was emotionally connecting to music on my own, and kind of choosing what I was going to like -- and I’m still a huge hip hop fan, and that definitely influences my writing in BV. But it was still based on music that I felt was oppositional in some way -- aesthetically, politically, whatever. and that was an easy transition to being interested in punk and indie music over the next several years.

When Nirvana and the whole "punk moment" of 1991 hit, I was actually part of a group of people who were in early high school, but who had been skateboarding and listening to non-mainstream music for a while already, and who got made fun of and beat up because of it, so it was a weird time. Because we liked a lot of the bands that were getting popular, but at the same time, it felt really fucked up to see jocks that hated us going to see Rage Against the Machine or whatever. So while those were formative years in terms of hearing new music, it also drove me to find the edges of underground music and search out more unusual stuff and ultimately really broaden what it meant to be "punk." I liked Minor Threat fine, but I was really into Tom Waits and Billy Bragg and PJ Harvey. They were REALLY punk to me.

I know your collective resume is fairly deep, how did you personally go from being a fan/listener to picking up your instrument and starting to create? What were some of your early musical projects, and what were some of the key lessons you learned early on?

I think we all jumped into making music pretty early in our lives -- we all probably started or joined bands at 14 or 15 years old, just because it seemed so possible. We were excited about stuff we were listening to, and we had a small group of weirdo friends somewhere who were too, so we just did it. And by the time we could get a ride or drive ourselves, we were lucky enough to have a place where shows were actually happening in Flint (whether at the Local 432 or elsewhere), and shows we could actually PLAY. So a lot of our musical development happened in basements or on stage, actually playing in bands.

I had bands in middle and high school that were obviously a mess, just trying to figure out how to play songs and make things work. My first "real" band was called May/June, and we were a weird folk/punk/singer-songwriter-y band that played a lot in Michigan, and we were mostly just the band that didn't seem to fit on any show. We had an accordion and a lap steel guitar. Then I was in a band called Lingua Franca that was very minimalist art-punk -- lots of atmospheric performance-based stuff, like Nick Cave doing musical theater.

My main band after that was Empty Orchestra, which was country-tinged singer-songwriter-y indie rock. We did a lot of touring nationally and released a couple albums. We’re still technically together, but on hiatus right now.

I think some of the key lessons that I learned early on were that you shouldn't be afraid to be weird or different -- almost all of my previous bands were completely out of place on any show we played, but that can be a huge advantage, and get you remembered. There are obvious consequences too, but almost any band I’ve ever really loved has been trying to do something new or unusual, even if it's with familiar elements.

I think that coming from the Flint scene, another lesson that everyone in BV relates to is a really fierce independence and loyalty. Flint isn't "cool" to most people -- we might seem scary or sad or deserted or whatever to the outside world, but we all grew up in probably the most supportive and unique music scenes I’ve ever heard of. And that sense of literally doing it ourselves has really shaped how we approach our music.

I know the Flint Local 432 has been probably the centerpiece of Flint's DIY scene for quite some time, and it has undergone many changes in terms of location and such....what are some of your fondest memories from playing/attending shows there, and what would you say makes the Local stand out from other venues across the state/country?

I think the first time I ever met BV guitarist Brandon was at the first or second show ever put on at the original 432 location -- he was playing in a straight-edge hardcore band called Spit. My high school band played on of those first few weekends at the original location as well.

I guess I don't have specific "fondest memories" of the Local, but rather I just have a cumulative sense of what it's meant to me and a lot of my friends. Basically anyone that I’m close to today comes from connecting through music at the Local….all of my bandmates in BV. Our great friend and amazing record engineer Marc Hudson, who did our new full-length (as well as records for Against Me, Saves the Day, and on and on) was in one of the first bands I saw at the Local, and I’m still star struck by him. It was this amazing environment for fusing together people who had similar interests and passions. You got to be in a place where you could see people you liked on a regular basis, and do important things together.  I think that's the story with young music scenes anywhere, but the Local was a place that put really diverse bands on stage together and didn't just shut down after three months -- it's something that's multi-generational and that's huge. That makes it REALLY unique in the context of all-ages spaces anywhere. everybody in the Flint scene has stories about people slightly older than they were that turned them on to important music and taught them something new about how to book a show or make a flyer or just how to be in a band.

You’re right; it's definitely changed in lots of ways over the years. It's way more "legit" now, and is part of a really fast-changing downtown, but I hope that it's still serving those same kinds of purposes for young kids now as it did for me.

I did a little poking around and read that BV actually started as a release for you while in the midst of completing your PHD work. I'm curious what took you down the path of academia and to what extent your art connects with the writing and research you've done over the years.

Yeah, that's true -- when we started BV, it was really self-consciously a side project for everyone. Jonathan was still doing The Swellers, I was still doing Empty Orchestra, plus I was in the last year of writing and defending my doctoral dissertation. So we had the idea to do this band, but I just said, "I don't want any real responsibility, all I want to do is write words and scream them", which was a pretty big change for me, since I've never really screamed in a band before, and I've always played a guitar and sung.  So having the freedom to just approach the music as a relative outsider and just be concerned with the words and vocals was a great way to challenge myself as well as to get out all the pent-up energy of sitting at a computer writing for 10-12 hours a day. It was also really weird at first.  Our first few shows, I didn't know what to do with my hands, and I still was figuring out how to use my voice.  It's really fun now, though, being able to perform and inhabit space in a completely different way than I ever have in a band before.

The origin story of getting my PhD is actually pretty boring -- I was in a position where my GRE scores (graduate school qualification exams) that I had taken years before were going to expire, and I knew I never wanted to take that test again, so I just applied to a few programs that I was interested in, and the University of Michigan ended up recruiting and funding me.

I wasn't even really interested in being a professional academic, I just knew I was interested in the experience. It's a really, really intense amount of work, and I was also doing Empty Orchestra basically full-time and touring whenever I could, so you can see how I might have wanted an outlet by the time BV started.

But to answer your question specifically, I think that my art is completely inextricable from my academic interests.  My doctorate is in American Culture, and that includes a really extensive background in history, cultural and political theory, etc. -- all of that has absolutely made its way into my thinking about my own cultural production.  How could it not?  And to be honest, I think that playing in bands for so long has made me a better academic.  It has allowed me to think in unconventional ways, and intellectually improvise, and it's definitely made me a more interesting writer.  So I see both of those pursuits as complementary.   

 

So in terms of what you're doing now outside of being a musician; are you teaching, writing, doing research?

I did a lot of teaching in graduate school, but it was never something that I was interested in doing long-term. Honestly, I've been lazier than I want to be with continuing my academic writing -- a dissertation is basically a full-length book that you write under really intense pressure and scrutiny, and then literally have to defend, so I wanted to step outside of that for a while after I finished.  I'm finally working on doing a couple publishable articles, and then hopefully turning my dissertation project into an actual book.  I'm also trying to do shorter-form blogging on stuff related to my research, but in a more immediate way, related to current events.  But I'm terrible at blogging, so we'll see.

The lyrical focus of both records center around various critiques of capitalism and it's ugly consequences. I'm wondering if you could elaborate a bit more on those lyrical themes.....you mentioned being drawn early on to all things "oppositional" which is obviously pretty natural for most punk kids, but also coming from Flint I'm sure you've seen a lot of first-hand economic devastation.   

I think that my lyrics in any band I've been in have always been "political" to some extent, even if it's not super overt.  With BV though, there was a moment when we were writing our first batch of songs that really defined an aesthetic direction -- I had found a few records at the thrift store that were basically motivational seminars for businessmen in the early 1960s. They were all explaining to these businessmen how they could mold themselves into better salesmen, managers, whatever. But the language and tone of these things were amazing -- they were evangelical; describing in almost spiritual terms how they could purify their souls to be better servants to American capitalism.

We all stood around and listened to these after practice one day, and just decided that we needed to use these as samples on the record we were writing.  But then we ended up creating this whole concept and narrative around the feel of these records -- we imagined that there was a corporation that rewarded capitalist success with new medical technology that could extend human life indefinitely, but it was only for those rich enough to afford it.  And so we just ran with that idea, and it gave us a conceptual focus that we needed to really dig into the stuff we were writing.  Not in a strict, "follow the concept of the album, song-by-song" kind of way, but in kind of a flexible, point-of-view sense.  I ended up writing most of the lyrics of the first EP around the idea of someone left out of that process, forced to feel their body dying and watching things collapse around them.  The new album is an extension of that, writing around the next phases -- labor and resource shortages, medical catastrophe, cannibalism, etc.

So all of these things I'm writing about lyrically are just thought experiments about the existing logics of capitalism, and on a physical and emotional level, how capitalism FEELS. The ideas of who has value, who deserves to live or die, and how we understand our own lives and bodies are already embedded within the logics of capitalism, and my project in BV so far has been to try to put some poetry to that. That's probably another useful combination of playing in bands for years and also having an academic background in Marxist theory.

Some of it may have to do with being from Flint -- my dissertation actually focuses on the cultural politics of the Rust Belt -- but I like to think that it's not so specific as that.  I'm interested in larger systems, and how they interact with human experience and cultural expression.

 

So Nick Diener recorded the first record and this time you went with Marc. What did he add to the process, and how was it a different experience this time around?

Yeah the first EP was recorded by Nick Diener at his studio and mixed by our good friend Mark Michalik in Chicago. We did that basically because obviously we were close to Nick through Jonathan, and Nick had just set up his studio by that point and wanted a project to break the space and equipment in. We were all really pleased with how that went -- Nick and Mark both did a great job and helped us kind of craft a sound that we still didn't really completely understand ourselves.

For the full-length, we were interested in working with Marc first because he's such a great friend of ours. Like I've said, I've known him for almost 20 years, and he's always been someone that I've respected and looked up to.  I know that's a similar story for Brandon and Marc as well, and Jonathan had recently gotten close with Marc through doing the final Swellers record together. Marc and I also worked together on the last Empty Orchestra record, as well as tons of previous recording projects.

Mostly though, he's just such a fucking amazing producer. We are all so completely comfortable putting ourselves in his hands and trusting that the final product will be exactly what we want.  And by the time we were ready to record a full-length, we actually knew what we wanted to do, for the most part.  We had spent time actually demoing all of the songs beforehand, and we had a sense of what the arc of the album would be.  We had probably a year of playing live and actually focusing on writing this collection of songs as an experience, so we were excited to have Marc's help in actually articulating it.

Also related to the release, the first record was released on Save Your Generation, whereas this time you guys are handling the release DIY. How'd you guys decide on that as opposed to shopping it around and having somebody else take it?

Doing the EP with Tony at Save Your Generation was just a lucky case of our timelines working together, and Tony being super supportive. We were a brand new band that basically no one had heard of yet, but Tony was ready to take on a project at the time, and he was really excited about the record, so it all just worked out.

With the LP, we actually did send it around for some people to hear, but "shopping" a record is a really weird process -- we got a great response from people, but money is always an issue; release timelines are always an issue; and so on and so on.

The bottom line is that we'd love to work with another label if it made sense for everyone, and hopefully we'll get the chance to with something later on.  Basically though, for this record, we were just really impatient to get it out and heard by people, and our DIY reflexes kicked in.  I think we're all really satisfied by having total control over everything about this record right now, because we all still kind of can't believe it exists at all, and we're all really proud of it.

You talked a little bit earlier about how your dad had a very particular way of filtering American culture; how has he (and the rest of your family) responded over the years, first to your life in music, and second as someone whose academic pursuits have been so focused on dissecting culture?

I've taken a lot of unusual and probably uncomfortable paths for them as I was growing up, but I think that even when my parents didn't understand what I was doing, they were always supportive and trusted me. That's probably not super punk, but I've always appreciated it.

Given that you mentioned your work in Marxist theory and the anti-capitalist tenor of your lyrics in BV, I feel like I'd be remiss if I didn't ask about your thoughts on Senator Sanders. Do you see his White House bid as a moment of particular significance for working people/the left/whatever, or do you see it eventually fizzling and becoming just another blip on the radar to be swallowed up by the status quo?

I'm actually kind of ambivalent about it right now. Like, I definitely support a lot of his positions as a practical matter, and I think that even if somebody can't present a perfect revolutionary answer, it's still important that a lot of what he's proposing would significantly improve and save the lives of a lot of disenfranchised people.  And it's incredible that we're having at least some discussions right now about capitalism -- actually NAMING it, and discussing issues in those terms.  I actually really like him as a politician, and I think the excitement on the left for him is totally justified.  And fuck "electable."

But at the same time, I think that meaningful structural change can't possibly come from one person in the position he's aiming for.  And I don't just mean because of the fights he's bound to get from legislators, but because I think that real change will come from a mass of people not only considering that universal health care might be a great idea (which IT IS), but from a broader questioning of some of the basic assumptions of how we think and live. Like I said about the lyrical themes, capitalism isn't only about breaking up the biggest banks -- it has literally structured our understanding of value and merit; how we understand our own bodies and those around us; how we organize ourselves into communities; how we imagine the limits of what is possible and impossible.  But in the realm of electoral politics right now, I think that even if we're having discussions in terms of capitalism, it mostly comes down to how we might administer capitalism in slightly less deadly and vicious ways. Which is a great start, but again, I’m ultimately more interested in how to think about and affect broader structural change.

Lastly, what's next after the record drops? Are you guys in a position to be able to do any extensive touring, or will it be mostly some weekend warrior type runs here and there?

We have several members that have actual jobs and stuff, so we probably won't be doing an extensive tour any time soon.  But we knew that from the beginning, and this project wasn't really built for that. Jonathan and I are really the only people in BV that are interested in full-time touring, and we're going to do other things in addition to BV that will satisfy that part of our musical lives.  I hate the "weekend warrior" term though, because I think it implies that something isn't "serious."  We're deadly serious. And I've done a LOT of extensive touring myself, and anyone else who has knows that it doesn't always make sense or pay off anyway.

So I think the best answer is that we're going to do as much as we can possibly do, and we're going to try to make the shows we can play really count.  We'll be doing a few short regional runs of shows to support the vinyl release, and we'll try to pick and choose stuff that seems cool and exciting to us -- support slots, festivals, basements, whatever. We're always open to offers and ideas, and would love to travel if it makes sense for us.

One of the cool things about this band is that I think that the fact that we can't play live shows every night for months on end is that when we DO play, it's always exciting for us, and I think that sense of a live show being a "special" thing rather than a routine comes through on stage. The way our live show is structured, I don't think we'd survive a really long tour anyway -- we start playing; we have zero breaks in the set; we play as hard and fast as we can for 18-24 minutes, and then we stop playing and collapse.

                                       

BV HQ: http://www.braidedveinsmi.tumblr.com/

Pre-Order the New LP: http://braidedveins.storenvy.com/

Stream Future/Forever: https://saveyourgenerationrecords.bandcamp.com/album/future-forever-syg-010 

Interview with AJ Worrell (Sincerity Fest, Path to Misery, Vegan Metal-Core Bible, First Blood)

The first time I heard anything about AJ Worrell was when my good friend Steve was filling in on bass for Shai Hulud back in 2010 and he told me about a show they played in Pittsburgh. He was like “Dude, we played with this crazy-ass band called Path to Misery who was so sick, their singer AJ was straight up smashing tables in the middle of their set!”. Holy shit, I figured this was somebody I should be paying attention to, haha.

Fast forward a little bit and I came to find out that AJ is the organizer behind Sincerity Fest, a long-running event in the Pittsburgh area that typically features an awesome line-up that is completely free, as well as the archivist behind the vegan metal-core bible, a literal gold mine of all things chugga chugga.

Anyway, I wanted to check in with AJ about the fest, and all his other various activities and contributions.

Sincerity Fest is tomorrow in Pittsburgh and features a very sick line-up this year including  Down In It, Eternal Sleep, Shai Hulud, and many more.

I'm always super interested in hearing about people's background and their introduction to hardcore and punk, so that said, talk a little bit about your family, your upbringing, and the path that led you to underground music.

First off, thanks for the interview. I typically give abbreviated answers for interviews because I assume no one really wants to hear what I have to say (or the interview is just pointless) but I've been to your site before and see that you put a lot of time into your questions so I don't want to undersell them. I'm just going to try really hard to remind myself that if anyone is by chance reading this as opposed to scrolling on by; they must care about me for some reason. I digress.

I had an overall great childhood. There was a lot of time and love put into me by my family as a whole, and especially my mother and grandparents. I could go on for hours about all of the great things they did for me but that would not lead us to the answer as to how I got involved in hardcore.

My biological father was a physically abusive drug addict/alcoholic (one in the same) who did things that I don't care to speak about in a public forum. Fortunately my mother spent every ounce of energy in her soul to ensure he never had any type of custody rights for me, but I still had to grow up with the constant threat of him abducting me or harming her or my grandparents.

Obviously situations like this carve a bit of hatred into your heart. I remember being like 10 or whatever age it is that you start to conceptualize things like revenge and realizing that my purpose in life was to grow up and kill this guy for some of the things he did to my family and I.

Unfortunately he took care of himself before I got old enough to carry out my plans. In his death, however, my hatred for him transitioned to a hatred for all of the things he embodied. I saw it in some of the police officers in my town ... the church members ... and unfortunately, even some of my friends at the time.  As a 12/13 year old this translated to engulfing myself in Metallica and Slayer records and being mischievous around the neighborhood. While I am eternally grateful to have found those things at that point in my life, it never left me feeling truly fulfilled. That hatred I was speaking of earlier was still burning me up.

It wasn't until I stumbled upon Earth Crisis and Hatebreed (and their live shows) that I felt a genuine connection to anything musically. Like I said, the metal I had been jamming was sonically fulfilling to me but, at the end of the day, they were still just glorifying a lot of the shit I despised about people and society. So, to hear other people speaking out against the same injustices they either experienced firsthand or saw around them was very enticing to me.

Pittsburgh is always thought of as a really gritty, working class city...how would you say coming up in Pittsburgh has shaped your social and political consciousness, as well as how you relate to music and art?

The area definitely has a very “Fuck Yinz” attitude which (as with most things in life) is both a blessing and a curse. It's kinda hard to explain if you're not familiar with the area but the general mentality in this area is being proud of who you are and what you do for work and essentially giving the absolute slightest shit about what anyone has to think or say about you. You will very rarely find a person in this city who is looking to impress anyone. If you do I can almost guarantee you that they moved here in the past two years and will be gone as soon as a new city is deemed to be "the next Portland".

You'd never know it but the literal meanest and heaviest and most legitimate bands are from Pittsburgh. The reason I say you'd never know it is because the vast majority of bands from Pittsburgh don't care enough to bother promoting themselves. You could ask most prominent musicians in this city if they have a band and the majority of them would tell you, "no". I'm sure it sounds insane to most tourists but there is a sense of pride in shooting yourself in the foot around here. I can speak first hand on the subject. I love knowing how sick Path To Misery (and almost every heavy band from Pittsburgh) is and that only genuine music fans like yourself take the time to both find out and appreciate it. I suppose it’s how we weed out the invertebrates.

The downside to all of this is obviously the fact that all bands break up before their peak and never fully realize their potential because that same pride that kept us from promoting ourselves also forced us to choose our manual labor jobs over pursuing the bands anything further than a weekend tour or EP.

Some of the new generation of bands like Code Orange and Eternal Sleep are obviously making some waves right now and presumably that is going to change the way younger bands from the area perceive "how to do it" in this area. It will be interesting to see where things go from here. I will forever be a fan of "the Pittsburgh way" personally.

It goes deeper than just the music though. A lot of people settle for mediocrity in their lives as a whole around here. THAT is something I try to avoid. While Pittsburgh will always be my home I am always trying to experience other parts of the world and avoiding the complacency that infiltrates this region. Hardcore has been extremely vital in this.

Talk a little bit more about some of those aforementioned Pittsburgh bands. Who are some of the gems from your city that outsiders should know about or investigate?

I always try to avoid making lists because it is inevitable that I will miss at least half of the bands I wanted to mention. I'll give it a shot though because I'm sitting on an airplane with my iPod in front of me which has a "Pittsburgh" playlist/cheat sheet on it.

The song I currently have on is from a band called Kamikabe. They've been around since 2003 and have more self-released demos and EPs than I can count. They started off sounding very comparable to their metal core peers at the time (The Year Of Our Lord, Nehemiah, Endthisday, etc.) but made a very natural progression over the past decade into an extremely technical death metal band that did a well-received full length on Unique Leader a few years ago.

While they are technically from the next county over we tend to view everyone from southwestern Pennsylvania as part of the same scene. Pittsburgh is surrounded by backwoods in all directions for several hours so everyone tends to fly the same banner.

While I'm on the subject of backwoods I should suggest another band from that area by the name of Egality. Also playing together for a decade these guys have really hit their stride over the past year or so. With their earlier material sounding like a direct descendent of Creation Is Crucifixion (another pivotal band from this area), Egality has turned towards a very black metal style that still possesses the aggression of a hardcore band at its core.

The area I'm speaking of is Westmoreland County: the home of Zao. While I fully understand their newer material potentially going over most people's heads (including my own at times) NO ONE can deny the impact that they had on aggressive music during their heyday. While I'm sure (or at least hope) that anyone reading this is familiar with Zao, the recognition they received is so unbelievably disproportionate to what is deserved.

The irony of it all is that if you talk to any of those guys or watch their DVD (which is great, by the way) any credit thrown their way for revolutionizing heavy music simply gets deflected to other obscure bands from the area like Passover.

I'm already seven paragraphs in and haven't mentioned a single band actually from the city of Pittsburgh. I could legitimately go on for hours but most bands I feel very passionately about have write-ups on my blog (pathtomisery.blogspot.com) along with download links so you don't have to just take my word on how sick they are.

I should mention before moving on, however, that a guy named Massa who runs a label called To The Point Records recently released a compilation called Pittsburgh Murda Style which is a pretty relevant snapshot of the state of the scene as it currently stands. The compilation leans more so towards the beatdown side of things but so does this city. The comp is unique because the guy who put it out doesn't even live here; he's just a fan of the area's style. In my experience that's actually a very common occurrence and validates my outlook of preferring a quality of appreciation over any quantity of it.

Give some background on Sincerity Fest.....I've always been impressed by the fact that despite running it as a free event you've been able to consistently put together pretty incredible line-ups every time. How'd that ball get rolling and how has it evolved over time?

Sincerity Fest started in 2007. Whenever Hell Fest shit the bed in 2005 that was kind of the end of the first generation of fests in hardcore. In 2006 This Is Hardcore came to fruition along with Summer Of Hate not long after. Both fests are great and I've been in attendance for my fair share of both but I started Sincerity Fest because I wanted something with a very small-scale, tight knit vibe to it.

I got what I was after because the first year had less than 100 people in attendance haha. I don't want to call it a failure considering what it morphed into today but my wallet would tell you otherwise. I was going to leave it as a one-time event considering it didn't have quite the reception I was expecting but when the next year rolled around I got hit up by almost all of the bands from the first year (almost all out of town bands) encouraging me to book it again and to bring them back.

It definitely took me by surprise as I was under the impression that it was a waste of everyone's time (Turmoil agreed) and, if anything, I was a bit embarrassed by it. To my surprise though I was getting showered with both support and encouragement from mostly everyone involved wanting to see it continue.

I decided to give it another shot and it's gotten better every year since then. In the grand scheme of the fest world it is quite negligible as it only draws about 500 kids (which is impressive by Pittsburgh standards) but I think you can ask anyone who's been involved over the years if they felt as though it has a unique vibe to it that is rare to come by post-2004.

Up until this upcoming year I ran it at a local fire hall and made a conscious effort to keep a very DIY and community-oriented feel to the fest. For better or worse I had to move this year's fest to the larger concert venue in the city (Altar Bar) due to the higher than usual interest expressed from it being booked as a benefit show for a kid who got done wrong recently at a show. We will see how things go on the larger scale.

The thing that prompted me to ask you to do this interview is the statement you posted about the violence that occurred in Philly at TIHC and how that inspired you to re-launch the Fest. Go a little deeper into what you saw, what it says or doesn't say about the current state of hardcore, and how something like Sincerity Fest can serve to impact where we are as a community right now.

We have been doing this interview in segments and you sent me this question before I left for a tour of Japan and China with a band I fill in for. Two days after I got over there I was flooded with emails about a bunch of drama concerning the fest that essentially made me want to cancel it all initially.

The last thing I care to do at this point is talk anymore about that aspect of the fest. All I want to convey at this point is the fact that everyone's opinions who are involved were taken into consideration and a compromise was sorted out which was agreeable upon by everyone involved at the end of the day. That is something I am proud of and something that I think speaks a lot about what can be accomplished within certain circles of hardcore.

Obviously you like/support every band on the bill or you would not have booked them, but what bands are you particularly excited for this year, either because they're an old favorite, a band that's returning to the fest, or perhaps someone you've never had before?

Yeah I mean you already said it. If I can't get behind a band, I can't put them on my fest. Every band playing I am super appreciative of and have a great respect for. This year that sentiment rings especially true considering they are all playing as a benefit.  Malice At The Palace is traveling the longest distance and were the main band who took me by surprise at this year's TIHC Fest so I am super excited to see them. I think you're going to be hearing a lot about this band in the next year or two. I'm excited that so many bands from the other side of the state are finally getting involved. I've also always viewed North Carolina as a distant neighbor to the PAHC scene as I see so many similarities between the people and bands so it's great to have so many bands from that area coming up as well. Everyone is sick, basically.

Aside from the change in venue, what other changes can people expect at the fest this year? I know for me I try to make small little improvements and changes from one show that I book to the next, I imagine with a fest there's even more stuff to tweak.

Moving things to Altar Bar is a big step up. While I always enjoyed keeping the fest in a fire hall type environment as a sort of homage to whenever I first started getting involved with shows; it was actually a massive amount of work to pull off a show of this caliber in a setting like that.

I always felt sort of obligated to keep the fest in the area where I grew up and ran my own music venue when I was younger. The area can be a weird, depressing place when you are growing up so I always wanted to give the kids in that area something to do at least once a year to hopefully inspire them to stay distance from a lot of the temptations that come along with small town environments. Unfortunately it seems as though the interest has waned over the past few years from that area so I felt better about moving into the heart of downtown Pittsburgh finally. With so many people traveling for the first time to the fest this year I'm hoping it's the right decision.

Altar Bar is a legit venue that has very graciously donated their facilities for the night to the fest and what it stands for. It is where bands like Hatebreed or whoever would play when they roll through town so it's going to be cool to see it being inhabited by a bunch of hardcore kids for the day.

I of course have to ask about the vegan metal-core bible. When I first discovered it I almost shit myself, haha. What prompted you to start such a massive undertaking, and how did you go about compiling all that material? I noticed it was recently updated with an Abnegation cover....do you update it regularly with newer bands who follow a similar style/ethic, or is it pretty much as is aside from periodic additions?

A few years ago the blog scene was great. Everyone had one. You could find the most obscure shit imaginable by typing it into Google with "mediafire" at the end. It was great. My music collection might be the best in the world of its kind (second maybe to Edwin's) and even I managed to find recordings and bands that were new to me.

My blog is one of the few left, however, so I felt the need to pick up the slack and put all of this obscure garbage in one big pile. That should be the headline for my blog now that I typed it out.

But yeah, it's fun. My mentality is "someone's gotta do it". It's funny to be referenced all the time in magazines and articles as the authority on "90’s metal-core". Makes me feel like King Turd on Shit Island.

Maybe it will pay off one day somehow. Who would've ever guessed this sub-genre would have its second run/revitalization period in hardcore?

So you're currently on tour in Asia with First Blood! Is this just a temporary fill-in situation or have you been on the road with them before? How'd you hook up with those dudes and how have the shows been so far?

I've been filling in for First Blood randomly over the past few years. Sometimes on drums, sometimes on bass. They are one of the few active hardcore bands who I feel parallels a lot of my beliefs and reasoning for wanting to play music.

I grew up touring with various bands so I occasionally get the itch to get out on the road every now and again. Typically if I go out for two weeks once a year that seems to satisfy the urge. My band will probably never tour due to a combination of no one wanting to hear it and the members being mostly unable so I am extremely appreciative of First Blood to tolerate me enough to take me across the world with them multiple times.

Playing in Japan is something I've wanted to do for over a decade now as I've been in contact with multiple bands and people over there for years and am very aware of the awesome bands and scenes they have been running for quite a while now. China was kind of a mystery to everyone as only a handful of bands have ever toured over there. It was definitely an experience I wouldn't be able to summarize in a few paragraphs but the highlight was seeing people who have never experienced anything remotely close to hardcore being able to allow themselves to let loose for potentially the first times in their lives based off of some of the reactions I was seeing. Very fulfilling.

Path to Misery: http://pathtomisery.bandcamp.com/
Vegan Metal-Core Bible: http://pathtomisery.blogspot.com/2014/11/vegan-metalcore-bible-abnegation-cover.html

Sincerity Fest: https://www.facebook.com/events/814749855304855/

Interview with William Livesay from Blistered

Blistered is a 90's-inspired metallic hardcore band from South Florida that has been making waves the last couple years. While their debut 7" "Reject Their Shame" showed a good deal of promise, it was their follow-up e.p."Soul Erosion" that really seemed to put them on the map.

They just released a new LP called "The Poison of Self-Confinement" on 6131 Records which features a huge step up in the production department as well as a lot more metal influence with some serious nods to European metal-core greats such as Arkangel. In the past year or so the band has done a good bit of touring including appearances at Rain Fest and This is Hardcore, and are currently gearing up for an opening slot on this winter's Terror tour.

I've been keeping tabs on these guys for a while now, so it seemed like a good time to catch up with vocalist William Livesay. Read on.

So last summer Axis played here and I was talking to them about Florida hardcore and you guys came up. They mentioned that you've been doing bands forever and that your dad is actually a musician so you've always been able to tinker with recording gear and all that. So I'm curious what it was like as a kid coming up in that environment where it sounds like there was a lot of creativity going on and I imagine enthusiasm around your interest in music.

It was definitely the best possible environment to grow up in to foster any sort of interest in playing music. I started playing piano when I was 6, guitar a few years later, and then drums a few years after that. I've always had an insane amount of encouragement and support from my parents as far as playing music and touring which I know is really rare and I am so beyond lucky to have had that. I got my first recording equipment when I was 15 and so it's always been a situation where most of my friends who were bored on a Saturday afternoon would be playing video games or watching movies and I would be in my garage recording a demo of some song that I came up with for fun. It's definitely made me feel a lot more confident in my ability to play my instruments and write songs.

What planted the seeds for you to gravitate towards more aggressive music, and were your folks ever at all taken aback when your interests started moving more in that direction?

I was really into bands like Silverstein, As I Lay Dying, Atreyu, Every Time I Die, Hawthorne Heights, etc. I would buy CDs from those bands and some of them would come with Victory Records samplers where I heard a Comeback Kid song. Obviously I didn't know it was hardcore at the time or what hardcore was but I definitely thought it was really cool. From there I had a friend show me Bane, and then there was the proverbial falling down the rabbit hole where I just discovered more and more bands. My parents were never ever weird about or adverse to me getting into metal or hardcore, which was definitely very cool and different from a lot of my friends.

Alright so I know aside from Blistered you've done Losin' It, and I understand like a million other projects. What were some of your earliest bands, which ones are you still proud of, which ones do you wish could be erased from history?

My first hardcore band was Losin' It. Other than that I was in a pop-punk band that I started in middle school and was in throughout high school, and then a really shitty short-lived Lifetime rip-off band after that. Both of those bands were pretty bad but I don't wish I could go back and not do them because I learned a lot about being in a band from those bands....how to book shows, deal with band dynamics, all kinds of important stuff that I'd still be figuring out if it wasn't for those bands. I certainly wouldn't say I'm proud of those bands though!

Just from seeing things online it seems like Florida hardcore has gone completely bonkers the last few years. Every show seems to have like 8-10 bands playing, hundreds of kids showing up....what the hell are you guys doing down there, what's the secret?

Well, first of all, Florida is a humongous place. I live in South Florida, which is 4 hours from Tampa, 5 hours from Jacksonville, 8 hours from Tallahassee, and 10 hours from Pensacola, so while all those places have great bands and great hardcore scenes too, I can't really speak for anyplace besides South Florida. I think the reason things have been so great down here lately is because they sucked for so long. For a while FL was the butt of every joke when it comes to hardcore, and bands from here didn't get any respect, so kids said "fuck this" and got hungry to build something out of nothing.

Hardcore in South Florida from 2008-2011 was pretty shot, there were very few bands, and although we had people like my friend John who does Breakeven Booking busting his ass to book shows and keep things moving, it was definitely a rough patch. But as a result of that, I think kids down here realized that nothing is going to be handed to us and we're not going to have some historic reputation to coast on, and that we needed to build our hardcore scene off of just working hard to promote shows, start new bands, and keep getting new kids involved. Everyone down here has a great attitude about hardcore for the most part, and we have young kids starting bands/making zines/making flyers/coming out to shows and going off for bands. It's a really great time right now.

So how did Blistered come together? What were your initial goals, influences, etc.?

The story of Blistered coming together is pretty boring and run of the mill. We were friends, got together, wanted to do a style of hardcore that nobody was doing at the time in our area, and started doing it.

It seems like the band has really been picking up steam in the last year or so. What would you say have been the best experiences thus far, be it particular shows, writing/recording, or just being out on the road?

The whole experience of being in the band has been awesome. We never expected any of this to happen so we don't take it for granted. It's hard to pick a specific highlight but I would say Rainfest, UB, and This Is Hardcore were all really surreal moments for me personally.

I wanted to ask about the recording process for the new LP, because it certainly sounds monstrous. While some engineers seem to have carved out a particular niche, Kevin at Developing Nations really seems to work across quite a wide spectrum....he's done youth crew records, screamy stuff, crustier, dark hardcore bands, etc. How did you guys wind up deciding to go with Kevin, and how did this experience compare to the first record, or your previous studio sessions?

The recording process for the LP was super cool. Kevin is the man and he was really good at letting us know which of our crazy ideas were good and which ones were stupid. As far as the tones of everything, we showed him a record or two for reference of what we wanted and he got us those sounds super easily. I absolutely would love to do another record with him eventually.

The lyrics on "Soul Erosion", particularly "Life Does Not Satisfy" and "Coldest Blood" seem to revolve around suicide and some pretty horrific family history. As a lyricist, do you tend to approach things more from the angle of the need to get certain things off your chest or perhaps the hope that people going through similar experiences might be able to connect and take inspiration from what you're writing?

It's definitely a matter of getting things off my chest. If people can relate to it and if it can help them through something that's obviously great but at the end of the day, as far as the lyrical aspect of the band, it's 100% an act of catharsis for me first and foremost.

You guys are doing a solo run up to the Midwest and back, and then are doing a leg of that big Terror tour. While both will certainly be awesome, I'm curious what your personal preference is.....big room, big stage, hundreds of kids, or small room, small stage/possibly floor, more intimate vibes?

Obviously there are pros and cons to playing a big packed room and a small intimate space on a floor. I can't really say I like one better than the other, as both are really cool in their own way. I guess it just depends on the particular situation and what the vibe of that show is. I will say I am very, very excited to be on tour with Terror, Code Orange, Malfunction and Take Offense!

Aside from lots of touring, any plans for splits, comps, etc. or will the next thing likely be another larger release?

We had a split 7" with one of our favorite bands lined up but it fell through which is a huge bummer. Honesty I'm slightly relieved because their side would've made ours look like dog shit by comparison. Anyways, since that fell through and our LP just dropped it probably will be a bit before the next release, but it'll more than likely be a 7" as opposed to another LP.

Best thing about the core in 2015?

The best thing about the core in 2015 is the overwhelming amount of sick bands of all styles coming out lately.

Worst thing about the core in 2015?

Worst thing about the core in 2015 is how negative everyone can be a lot of the time. Obviously there are problems that need to be addressed and fixed but if you don't feel like the good things outweigh or at least measure up to the bad then why not go somewhere else?
 

Three bands that should be getting more love from people:

1. Day By Day - bleak, heavy, downtrodden hardcore not unlike Brethren or Cold As Life. Very sick band that just dropped a 12" EP on Eighty-Sixed records which is my favorite record of 2015.

2. Jukai - a very sick metallic HC band from New York that has been flying under the radar for a few years while other bands who try to do the same thing and fall heinously short of the mark that Jukai has set get lots of attention. They have a 7" coming out on Mass Movement soon so hopefully kids will take notice.

3. Truths Last Horizon - vegan straight edge riff masters from Birmingham, AL. They dropped a badass demo and have new material coming out that sounds like early Caliban with insane tortured vocals.

With so many good bands out it was hard to pick just 3, and if you'd have said top 5 I would've included SPM and Bind.

Blistered at Rain Fest: http://hate5six.com/player.php?album=3437659
The Poison of Self Confinement: http://decibelmagazine.com/blog/2015/8/6/blistered-swallow-and-spread-the-poison-of-self-confinement