First Breath of Life: Spiritkiller discuss debut LP

Albany, NY’s Spiritkiller have been tearing up clubs and DIY spaces throughout the northeast for the past two years. With their Two Thousand Twenty Three demo and Kaleidoscope b/w Headcleaner EP, the four-piece have drawn comparisons to 90s hardcore juggernauts like Snapcase, 108 and The Hope Conspiracy, but on their self-titled debut full-length, due out this month, the group have expanded their sound, dialing in a bit more on their own identity.

With a lineup that includes current and former members of bands like Hundreds of AU, You and I, The Assistant, and Endicott amongst many others, it makes perfect sense as to why Spiritkiller displays a strong sense of creativity and attention-to-detail songwriting. Focusing on melody and groove over sheer brutality, the songs feel both nostalgic and fresh, finding their place amongst the current mix of hardcore as well as with those that influenced them.

In anticipation of Spiritkiller’s debut album being released via Immigrant Sun Records and Protagonist Music, vocalist Charles Cure and drummer Mike Putz took the time to speak to us on the history of the band, the creation of the record, and what’s still to come.

(PHOTO: WILL BATES)

Let's start by running through the history of the band.

Mike: It was about two years ago, and I was in a band with Byron [Wheeler, bass] that was going through some member losses and trying to figure out if we were going to keep playing, and we ended up not playing together. Byron was looking to do something still with this guy Tom [Schlatter, guitar], they had been in bands together before and he described it to me as some 90s hardcore band. At the time, that was the only band I was doing, I was just getting back into playing after taking like ten years off, so I had to say yes [laughs]; I had no other option unless I wanted to not play anymore.

It worked out well, Tom came over and he had a song written and it sounded pretty 90s hardcore to me, and we just played it and it really came together well. We had to find a singer and I was like, "Let's call Charles." Tom knew who Charles was, but didn't think I was going to be able to get him to write back [laughs]. I was like, "I had been in a band with Charles, I'm pretty sure he can do this."

Charles: [laughs] We've known each other for 25 years.

Mike: He said maybe pretty quick.

Charles: I said no initially, and then you guys sent me a song.

Mike: I didn't take it as a no.

Charles: I was definitely like, "I don't have time for this." I was in two other bands and was trying to scale down, and they sent me that song and I listened to it once and I was like, "I don't know, I still don't think I have time for this," and then later in the day it popped back into my head and I was like, "That's catchy, for sure," and I started listening to it on my way home from work and by the time I went to bed I had finished it completely.

What song was it?

Charles: It was "The Spiral." The opening riff of it—there's some feedback and then Byron starts playing the riff on bass, but when it first comes in, it just has this heavy groove to it. I really liked that and the more I listened to it the more I was like, "This hits exactly the way I want a hardcore song to hit." I really love super ignorant hardcore that has a lot of mosh in it, but that's not what I like to play in a hardcore band. For me personally, the way that I want to write music and perform, I like something that's a little more energetic and that has some melody in it, and this struck a really good balance. So the more I listened to it the more I realized all these positive attributes that it had, and so I was already engaging with it. I couldn't be like, "Now I'm not going to try."

You mentioned the groove, which I think is a huge part of the sound of Spiritkiller. It gives it that 90s hardcore feel, but also is the backbone of what makes these songs what they are.

Mike: I'll give a lot of credit to our bassist Byron who's always looking over to me talking about "the bounce," it's gotta have "the bounce." But also it's really refreshing to be in a band with a rhythm section. I've always played in more metal bands with a lot of basslines following the guitar lines and double bass just following all of that, where here we can have sections. Tom's pretty helpful with the orchestration of it, but I really like having a rhythm section because then we can just do the groove.

Charles: I feel like the groove is what happens when Mike and Byron lock in on a riff and the construction of the band itself makes that possible.

Early on was there a discussion on the direction or sound you guys wanted to take this band?

Mike: We never talked about defining a rhythm section but it was early on in the writing process that I noticed it naturally happening and Tom being like, "I'm going to play this part, here's a cool bass line" and then Byron and I would talk about it and lock in on what we were going to do, but we never defined it originally.

Charles: I think the way that we did talk about it in some respects, at least early on, was we would be like, "Here's a part; we wanted it to kind of sound like 'x' band." Like, this is maybe an Indecision-type part, this is maybe a Snapcase-type part, this is maybe an Unbroken-sounding kind of vibe. Because we are all conversant with this cluster of 90s hardcore bands we could talk about it in that way, so it controlled the vibe of it and kept it in this small circle.

I think if you listen to the demo and the two-song EP, then you listen to the full-length there's a bit of a coming-into-your-own-sound evolution. There are still some nods and references, but it sounds more like you guys finding your own voice.

Mike: I think that's probably the natural progression of a lot of bands. I thought about my stuff differently the second round, different fills and whatever—not necessarily from 90s hardcore bands.

Charles: I think once we wrote "Kaleidoscope" that changed things a little bit for us, because that song, to me, sounds different from everything that's on the demo, and it starts to lean us in the direction of a groovey-Snapcase-occasionally-Quicksand-and-Refused-vibe that we hadn't really been totally encompassing before. I think that we let it go and let ourselves embrace whatever personality the band seemed like it was going to take on, and it took on what it sounds like on this record.

How does this material come together?

Mike: A lot times it's Tom coming with a song fully recorded with drums and then we'll go off of that, but there's definitely other times where Byron will come up with a bassline to start something, maybe to start a song or one of the parts, and then we'll build off that.

Charles: These songs are divided up between that. There's a couple that Tom brought basically totally done and there's a few that we worked out together. And even when Tom brings something basically completely done we tweak it a little bit. We usually change an arrangement or two, or maybe shift a couple parts and try to see how we can make it come together. That's how they've been happening lately. Tom writes an outrageous amount of music. He's in three bands, two of which he writes the majority of the material at this point, and that's insane to me, the amount of stuff that he's capable of doing.

I think it's interesting that Spiritkiller has never put out there that it's comprised of people who have been involved in a lot of bands. There's never an "ex-members of" tag or anything like that, all of that has been done by writers.

Charles: It's not really my style to lead with past projects when I'm doing a new one. If it gets mentioned somehow I'm not going to stop it, but I don't usually try to push this like, "I'm the guy from Endicott." To me it's not that important. I think Tom is also like that, in my experience. I don't want to speak for him, but he doesn't usually lead with, "I'm the guy from You And I and The Assistant." I think we just figured that we would just let it stand on its own merits instead of trying be like, "Hey, we're these dudes from the scene, remember us?" I would rather have people just like it.

You said it's only been two years, and there's been a lot of progress in two years. Are these songs just flowing out at this point?

Mike: Yes, but in a good way. I really like being able to move through the writing process and come up with core parts and core songs and then take the time to figure out the rest of it, but I like having more and more chances to do that. For me it just helps grow musically, so I really like it. I've been in one other band called Heartbreaker that was kind of like that where we wrote a record pretty fast, and that was a fun experience.

Charles: I have never been in a band that writes music this quickly, and all of us seem to just get it done quickly. We did the demo and then that other little two-song thing, and now this record that's about to come out will have been in the can for like a year by the time it comes out, and we have another five-song EP written already. We're going to probably record that in the Spring at some point, we're doing demos of that stuff now.

Charles, you have always written very insightful, introspective lyrics. What was your mindset for the lyrics of this album?

Charles: I think the group of songs on this record are really interesting because I wrote them when I was coming out of a period of time where I was just feeling really weighed down and I like I was getting in my own way as a person.

When Spiritkiller started, the first song I wrote was "The Spiral" and what that song is about is you trying to escape your own self-sabotaging behavior and recognizing it for what it is and trying to change the way that you are. So starting with that song in the beginning of this band, I had been trying to focus myself as a person on a mindset of self-awareness, self-reflection, attempting to move in a positive direction and make changes to my life that I wanted to make that were specifically centered on the way that I see the world around me, and choosing a lot of times to see it negatively instead of seeing it positively. I have a lot of tension inside myself about that.

So this whole record is just a set of songs about this personal arc where I have been trying to become a more complete person, a better version of myself. So they kind of trend along those lines of being about a problem you have, or a mindset that you have, or a situation you find yourself in, or an emotional state, and trying to work through it and come out of it—not get stuck in it, not get bogged down or stagnated. There's not a conscious theme where I was like, "Here's a concept and I'm going to flesh that out," it's just that's kind of what I was living at the time and trying to move myself in a positive direction.

Mike: I like the message. I like how it's not super-posi, where it's like everything is great, but it talks about real life, and life on life's terms, basically. Bad things are going to happen, but you've got to be able to look within yourself and pull through it, and you're better if you do it the right way. I think it's got a good message and I'm proud of him for how well he writes them.

What song on the record stands out to you and why?

Mike: I like "Animal Resistance" because it has a little bit of a jazzy beginning. It's a little bit different than any other way that we start our songs. I like where it goes into with the vocals, the pattern when we go into it.

Charles: Yeah, it has a moody intro kind of, which is cool. We don't do that usually, and it's like the mid-point in the record and it's sort of the perfect mid-point. It sort of sneaks in kind of quiet and jazzy and you're like, "What's going to happen with this thing," and then it blows up a little bit. I do love that song. That was the last song that we finished for the record. So it still feels like the new cool one. 

But for me, I feel like the standout song is the first song, "Prana." I just really like how that song came out. I don't have a better way to explain it, but when I listen to it I'm like, "This worked exactly the way I hoped it would," and I don't feel that way most of the time when I finish a song. It just went exactly where I wanted it to go and it did the thing that I wanted it to do. Usually I have to do a lot of wrangling to get something to that point, but this one came out fully formed, and it's a good start to the record.

How does this Immigrant Sun/Protagonist Music collaboration come about?

Charles: I remember Immigrant Sun from when I was first getting into hardcore in the 90s, always thought it was a cool label. I run the Spiritkiller Instagram and I saw that he had an Instagram, so I followed it and at one point a little bit after we had put out the demo he reached out to me about if we had plans to do any vinyl. So that sounded cool to me, and then Protagonist, we reached out to him because he's a good friend of Tom's specifically, but of all of us, and he did a good job with the demo and we liked working with him and wanted to do this with him as well, so he and Sean from Immigrant Sun worked together on a split release. We felt like we would be able to do something a little more creative with the layout. It was cool to have him be interested in it. I was flattered because that was a label I looked up to.

And this record is being pressed by a new local pressing plant?

Charles: Equal Vision bought what I believe is the Burlington pressing plant and transported it to Albany. Sean from Immigrant Sun works at Equal Vision and he floated the idea that we could have this thing pressed in Albany as the first Albany hardcore record to be pressed in Albany. We thought that was a really cool idea, and so it delays the release of the record maybe a month or two, but it's awesome to be able to do that, so we were pretty hyped on that.

There's this interesting connection with all things Albany which, as we've discussed before, has been going through a bit of a resurgence musically, and you guys took part in an Albany hardcore compilation that just came out as well. The area has a rich history of compilations and, correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe this is actually the first all-local compilation in quite a while.

Charles: It's definitely the first one that you can consider an official hardcore scene comp in a minute. I just want to point out that on the back cover of the CD, on the picture, Mike and I are in the middle of it holding hands. It was fun and cool to be a part of. Adam Merendino from Cold Kiss put that together—he runs the Albany Hardcore Instagram, he does a ton of shows now through the ALBHC moniker. It was his idea to do it and to pay an homage to the older Albany Style Hardcore comps that had come out in, I believe '88 and then '99. It's around 25 years after the last one. I was super excited to be asked to be a part of it and I think it's really good. I've listened to it a bunch of times and I think every band put their best foot forward on it.

The release show is January 18th at No Fun [in Troy, NY] and I think every band gets to play a short set. I think two of the bands that are on it actually already are not in existence anymore. RIP to them. But all the remaining bands are repping the show together, so it's going to be fun.

Mike: I was excited to be on that. I think it's really cool to do for the scene. For me, I remember learning how to play hardcore drums listening to the Common Ground compilation with End of Line and Straight Jacket. I was excited to be a part of it and I'm glad that stuff like this is still going on in the scene and coming back.

Charles: In the 90s, those comps influenced me in a big way, The Step Up Presents ones. Especially We The People and United We Stand. Me and Byron have regular discussions about these comps. And Common Ground for sure was a huge one, and the one that the dude who sang for Cutthroat put out, the Capital Punishment comp. That one was super sick, too.

I didn't have the OG Albany Style hardcore comp until I was in my 20s, but I got the '99 one when it came out and I thought it was cool, and also knew that it referenced something older than it and thought that was a cool way to document the scene. Nate Wilson [Monster X, Devoid of Faith, Gloom Records] put that one out. It's interesting to me because that's a whole different flavor of hardcore than what's on this comp, but it's cool, the thread is continuing.

What's next for Spiritkiller?

Charles: The first thing we're doing [this year] is the comp release show and then we'll have a record release show after that. Then we're looking to do a bunch of weekends, I think we're working on one with Sunflo'er and we're trying to put something together with this band Loss Becomes from Long Island that we're friends with. And we're going to record this EP.

Mike: I think we want to do some home recordings within a month, nail down at least the structure of everything. So that'll depend on the time of the actual recording. As far as what's next for us, I'll add I think we should go to Europe at some point. We've already been to Canada.

Charles: Yeah, we're an international band.

Purchase Spiritkiller here.