The vast textures of the record help make it so powerful also. Like you’ve managed to make the seismic bass of ‘Dead Man Walking,’ the staggeringly jaggedness of ‘Killing Time’ and the sadly tragic ‘Truth (Thicker Than Water)’ all mesh together.
We always like to have a landscape and a spectrum, that’s important for all the records we have ever done. It was written over a long period of time. Like we started writing a little bit when we were in Europe and Japan, so a lot of time passed. As the record started to take shape we started writing more progressive songs. Like ‘Killing Time’ was one of the first songs that we started to write, and it managed to make it onto the record, which is pretty cool. We didn’t want to disappoint the fans of the first record [A Cruel World], you know, real Bloodsimple fans. We wrote a few of the songs really for them. Some straightforward Bloodsimple songs that were pretty much easy to digest. As we got deeper, we kind of made our own way.
You have had several drummer changes already. Who is drumming for you now?
We had Will Hunt [Skrape, Dark New Day], now we got another drummer. Will was on the record with us and on the Family Values tour. Now we’ve got Beven with us and he is pretty much sitting perfectly with us right now. This might be it, the drummer search might be over. Beven, he is a really great guy and a phenomenal drummer, so we are very, very happy with that.
You’re a veteran of the scene really. What are some of the changes that you have noticed from when you began?
Oh God, it’s not as scary as it used to be. It’s much safer now, I think New York hardcore was scary, uncontrolled, wild, almost a punk rock vibe. The one biggest thing that I have seen is no more hardcore on one side and metal on the other side, it’s all one big thing now. That is good and bad, and I am not going to get into the bad, because it doesn’t do any good. It is an enormous scene now, some of it is really, really good, and it’s awesome for the fans. There is so much more to digest and so much more to see. There was no internet, so it was either you were on tour or in the ’zines or maybe get a little radio play, but it was very unlikely. That was the only way you were getting out there. Maybe you get lucky and you could jump on Ozzfest and get in front of a couple of metalheads, and take off like VOD did. Now everybody could just jump on the net, and that’s a good thing for smaller bands, because they could really get the miles behind them without a fucking label. But that fucking scary, uncertain element is gone, and that’s a little disappointing. You used go to the Wetlands [NYC club whch closed] and be like, ‘Holy shit! This is fucking ridiculous!’ Even when you were playing onstage, you were like, ‘Holy fuck! This is ridiculous.’ It’s not like that anymore. For better or for worse, things change that’s just the way it is.
You used to drink a 40 out in the parking lot with your boys, you had the whole reentry thing and you made a whole day out of it. It’s just not like that anymore. Some friends of mine from Long Island came out to see VOD when we did that Superbowl of Hardcore like a year or two ago, and they got arrested by an undercover cop in a taxi. Yeah, you got to watch out for that. They got scooped right up, and I was wondering like what the fuck happened to them? They spent the better half of the night in jail.
