Cursed interview

I don't know the man, so it's just a last name.

They aren't there. I get sick of people asking me the same shit about straightedge or veganism or wait, wait..."the state of subculture?" What the fuck is that? Holy fuck. I don't know. Figure it out for yourself. Don't listen to smartasses in bands, they sound smart but they don't know any more about life than you. And don't do lifestyle things to impress or identify with other people. It rips you off.

I'm sure there's angrier people playing less conspicuous music, where they don't throw shit at your head, per se. But yeah, I get that for sure. Ironically, I'm way more mellow when I'm not on tour. It's not like I walk around eating people's babies, and when I do I can only ever eat a half of one. But am I a pissed off person? Sure. As much as ever. The things I've been pissed off at all my life aren't going anywhere fast. As far as that translates into music, I think this is how I know this music. Maybe because I started playing it as a teenager, when you just blast out directly at the things you hate in a total Us Vs Them mindset. I'm 32, and it only ever gets clearer to me that all those paranoid teenaged aggressions were as valid as anything that would come out of me in my adult life. But hardcore is therapeutic, the language and rhetoric of this music bring out the cynical, paranoid, hostile things in my head. Sex, violence, all the ugliest skeletons in the closet. It's a healthy vent. Maybe the chip on my shoulder is a bit bigger than some, but being able to channel the worst, most negative, nihilistic or desperate thoughts into this is the single most thing that's kept me from greater self-harm throughout my life. And maybe why I hold on to it so hard.

When we started (Winter 01/02) it was me and Radwan in Montreal, Christian and Mike in Ontario. Radwan moved back to Lebanon for some family reasons, I moved back to Toronto, our friend Tom picked up on bass. This is the "I" lineup. Radwan came back in late 2003 and played 2nd guitar. We toured that way, with 2 guitars, a lot, so a lot of people saw us on tour as a 5-piece. And this is the lineup on "II". But Radwan's been an engineer for years, and he left to open a recording studio in Montreal, which he'd wanted to do for a long time. So we went back to 4-piece, and then we replaced Tom with Dan Dunham on bass, as of late 2004. That's been our lineup since, and the lineup on the new EP recording. And then the CHUDs came. And we fought them. And won.

It's a 3-song EP, a 7" and not an LP, but a pretty good taste of what Cursed III will sound like. We're stoked on it, we recorded it in the building we practice in, with Donny Cooper who did the Hell Comes Home EP. We took our time, and mixed and mixed it till we were happy. It's the first we recorded with Dan, and that comes through a lot on the fuzzed-out, low end bass. Alan Douches did a rad mastering job of it. It's cleaner than any previous recordings, but still with deep guitar loudness.

"Blah blah blah, freemasons are taking over the world. I hate work. Life sucks."

Know what? They can go hang. We got Ian Blurton to do II because he's our Billy Gibbons, he gets what we're doing and knew how to get it in analog. It's mixed pretty abstractly from a guitar-overload standpoint, and I'll admit the drums get lost in some of it, but it's made so it's most clear when totally cranked. It wasn't meant to be radio-friendly.

You're not dense, sweetheart. But it's not true. It's a lie, I straight up made that up and now I guess everyone really took it seriously. You got PUNK'D!!!! The b-side cover is actually "Hawaii" by a defunct and incredible Canadian band called Kittens (I believe we listened to them in your car in the Triple Rock parking lot in mid-fireworks war). Dan had played with the Kittens guys and produced their records, and his band Shallow toured with them all through the nineties. They are a hidden gem of Canadian loud music and sorely unknown but intensely loved by nerds like us. Besides, if we covered Bryan Adams it would clearly be "Cuts Like A Knife" - an amusing if obscure anecdote which I'm sure really hits home with the average Lambgoat reader. Good one, CC.

True. The LP's already been out a while. Radwan recorded it all live, and the video is pretty off the hook. I have absolutely nothing to do with it, don't even have a copy of it. But I've seen the video and its pretty fun, so many kids from so many places doing so many stagedives. Considering that in 1996, most of our shows were for twenty people in a basement, it was a pretty ridiculous night.

Apparently it says that on Wikipedia. Me and Mike had started Ruination together before all that (1999/2000), and he left RN after the Don Fury 7" and too much stress and touring. But after that, back in T.O. we were jamming (me on drums and him on guitar) and wrote a bunch of songs that I guess became or evolved into FU songs. I was still playing in Ruination at the time and then moved away to Montreal, so I really didn't leave it, there was no "it" yet. But I'm glad Mike stuck to his vision for it, it's a great band and they'll have a lot to show for it after the fact.

Mike drums with some guys from the Deadly Snakes now, here in T.O., long stoner jams. Christian plays bass for Crux of Aux, Dan's other thrash band, who rule. Christian still plays in Haymaker. I'll probably do ten different things some time soon. As for Cursed, we've all been playing together a long time, me and Christian at least, since 1992. Through LFD, the Swarm and all Cursed. At this point, I think we just want to see each other engaged in good things, and we do our thing where and to the extent that it feels right. We're not beating anyone over the head with it, we're gonna finish Cursed III and go from there.

Hah! Money from music, that's a good one. When I really need money I just go suck off Japanese tourists in the underground parking lot of the CN Tower. That's what everyone here does for quick cash. No, I work a few jobs for real-life money and do some art and photography on the side. I went back to university this year to finish, so I have even less of it (money) than ever. I went to my bank and they had closed my account because I hadn't used it in years except to pay student loans, and then not even that. So, if we're in Cursed for the money then we're fucking something up...large. Anti-hero sperm for sale, anyone? Vincent Gallo-style? Except all my sperm are dead. Ha!

I'm writing about five books right now.

For once in a long time, I really can't say.

A marathon man, you mean? Yeah, it's true. Some people do one thing for a really long time and some do lots of things in that same time, the "body of work" if you think of it like that, is scattered but large. I think punk bands aren't meant to live forever, any one theme/group of people. You have to be ready to let something go no matter how much of yourself you've poured into it, to keep it intact. Especially if it has a political or lifestyle theme, you can't speak for anyone but yourself and when you try to, you can't do it for very long without getting too dogmatically fixed on the idea of your own credibility. So you let it go and start again, and again and again.

Yeah, I served Christina Ricci with a subpoena that she has to bone me. Lots. Yarrrr.

Is it a Gibb? I like Crowbar, I'd like to hear them do "How Deep Is Your Love" with four guitar players.

Like there is still hope...less...ness.

I realize that, probably pretty pasty, with a weirdbeard, and I say "rape on, screen name, rape on." We recorded that thing in a great studio but Kyle thought it'd be a quaint idea to do thirteen whirring guitar tracks on it all night long until it sounded like the inside of Danzig's blender while he's making his morning power shake, or perhaps a fruit smoothie. Hence the wall-of-noise sound. Remaster? Don't hold your breath for it. But, is there gonna be a final CD of all the post-Parasitic Skies stuff that was only on vinyl with some footage of our last US show at Michigan Fest? Yes, someday soon there is.

It's feasible, I can walk pretty good in heels. Most likely I would dress up like that and just skip the show and go hit the town. When I was 17, I came home drunk once in a green velvet dress, in a wheelbarrow, covered in barf. My mom was like "Seriously, what the shit?! You're a fag too?" Well, no but, thing about it was, I looked pretty good.

I'm not that much of a poser (just like, 35%). Like most music, there's not a lot of loud modern metal that strikes me. Technical music, HC & metal got like skateboarding got in the nineties. That's to say, so hung up in technicalities that it lost it's soul. Follow me, here. Watching triple backside heelflips got old really fast, right, even though you had to admit it was technically good, but just watching someone do a one-eighty down two flights of stairs, with balls, still makes the hair on the back of my head stand up. Music got like that. All tech, no balls. If I need a calculator to tell me something is good music, then fuck it. Just give me something with balls, that grooves and has a soul. My all-time faves are always there, but my favorite loud record of the last few years, hands down, has been Satyricon "Now, Diabolical". I can't wear it out. The last two Napalm records, that new Deicide and the last Cattle Decapitation. The Terrorizer record that finally came out eighteen years later and then Jesse Pintado died that week...whoa. It smokes. But these are exceptions to the rule. Beyond that, keep your Triple Rectifier Radio Shack drama queen metal and give me Roy Orbison, Doc Watson, Hendrix, Otis Rush, something real. Really I'll listen to whatever moves me, it might be Pissed Jeans, it might be MF Doom. It might be Witchery. No, wait, it definitely is Witchery.

1. Crime 2. Harry Dean Stanton 3. Ian Stuart's head. 4. Did I say Witchery?

Don't listen to Chris Colohan.