Trustkill’s second chance: a conversation with Josh Grabelle

Yes, Trustkill is back. You might have noticed they’ve started posting on social media again and have been involved in a bunch of re-presses, re-releases, and reunions from bands who were on their roster at its peak. With acts like Poison The Well, Eighteen Visions, Throwdown, Bleeding Through, Walls of Jericho, and more all showing signs of life, I wanted to learn more. 

In an ice cream shop located in the basement of Rutherford, New Jersey’s Williams Center, just before Bayway’s release show, I had a lengthy chat with NJ native and Trustkill founder Josh Grabelle to get some answers. We discussed the past 30+ years of New Jersey hardcore, second chances, violent dancing, young kids making old fashioned music, Billie Eilish posting It Dies Today, how he stays so active in the scene, and a lot of other things.

Responses have been edited for clarity.

Lambgoat has a history with Josh going back to our first interview in 2000. We have spoken with him a few times since then, and it was fun to look back on how much has changed since. To start, I wanted to re-ask him one of our first queries back in 2000:

What have you been listening to lately?  

I have been listening to the new Bayway. The new Gridiron, that's a good song. The new Simulakra. I have my Core playlist on Spotify, which is basically just all my favorite new hardcore songs. The new No Cure is awesome. The new Mouth for War. That new E-Town Concrete song was great. New Balmora. Missing Link. I love Contention. I think that album is one of my favorite records of the year.

That 90s edge metal kind of vibe.

So, so good, dude, love it.  What else? Crush Your Soul. That EP is fantastic. Can't get enough of them. What else, man? I'm into, you know, just like the heavy new stuff.  So, the new Inclination, the new Guilt Trip, Pain of Truth, all that.

You seem pretty tapped in. I mean, you have better knowledge of the new stuff than most of my friends.  I'm like showing them Balmora and they're just like, “What is this? I've never heard this before.” Have you always been keeping up or is this more like you're just getting back into it?

No, I mean, I'm old, right?

You said it, not me. [laughter]

I've been going to hardcore shows since 1987.

What was your first hardcore show?

My first hardcore show was in the Jersey Shore in Belmar. I saw Underdog and that blew my mind. And then from there I just needed to see every hardcore show that I possibly could, and that has taken me to 2024. So it's just been nonstop. But you know, you get older, you get married, you have kids, you get busy. It's hard. I've been through decades of hardcore where it went from fanzines and radio to the internet, to social media, so it's like following all these things and knowing how to stay tapped in is difficult, but I think hardcore was never supposed to be easy. When I first got into hardcore, I was riding my bike two towns over to go to a record store to buy a Misfits album so I could hear the Misfits. That was the only way I could do that. I've always been tapped in, always trying to support New Jersey hardcore, be at every show, as much as I can, within reason. 

Even if it's late at night in New Brunswick in a parking lot in the freezing cold, I'm still there because if Bayway and Crush Your Soul and 25 Ta Life are playing, I'm going to be there. It's important for me to just have a grip on what's happening in the scene.I don't want to be that dude that a lineup gets announced for some fest and I don't know any of the bands at the bottom of the bill. If that ever happens just take me out and shoot me right now. I want to know, I need to know why every band is on that fest, who they are, what they're doing next, and what their plans are. That's just what I'm about and how I am able to know what's going on and be able to sign the right band at the right time and put out the right record.
That takes time, but it also takes knowledge of what's happening. I don't have to love every new hardcore band,  but I have to respect and appreciate who is taking care of hardcore and who's repping it. It's like if you're from New Jersey and maybe you don't love Bayway, but you should know who they are.

They’re doing New Jersey stuff.

They're doing New Jersey stuff and they're playing tonight, headlining an 800-cap room. That's pretty impressive.

You talked a little bit about how the scene’s changed so much and I don't wanna say the exact amount of years, but you know, it's been a while. What's one thing from back then that you thought was done better and one thing today that you think is being done better?

Hardcore dancing, I think, has changed the way that you can build a hardcore show. I used to have shows in my basement. I would put Earth Crisis and Hatebreed or whoever with like, Sense Field and Weston. I would put heavy, screamy, tough hardcore bands with like, emo, screamo kind of stuff, even though we didn't use those words back then, those bands that were in the hardcore scene, but sounded different. Like tonight's show [Bayway album release with support from 25 Ta Life, Years Spent Cold, Shattered Realm, Death Before Dishonor, Blackest Dawn, and Human Blister] for example: all the bands are heavy and scary and moshy.

People are gonna be dancing hard and that's fucking cool and I love that shit but you couldn't really have today's show and throw on Koyo. Koyo would be a standout band. Or No Pressure. Or any one of those other kinds of bands. They're from the hardcore scene, they're hardcore dudes, but they're not really playing that style of music.That's not anyone's fault. Hard style hardcore dancing is a thing, and it's done at certain shows.

You try and mix a show, it may work out, it may not work out. I saw a lot more of that in the 90s. Those mixed kind of shows. Now you have this kind of show, like a heavy mosh kind of show, and then you can go to your other pop punk kind of show or whatever it might be.

Why do you think that there's been almost a splintering in the scene?

I think dancing just got harder. That's just the bottom line. I remember in the early to mid nineties, the hardest style was basically me and my friends trying to push the pit open to get some space to dance, and that was really just throwing some arms and legs and opening up the pit. The 2000s came along and bands got heavier, then the 2010s and now we're here with crazy heavy bands, Sunami and all these bands that are just like breakdown after breakdown. That's what kids want. Kids love to dance hard and I love it. I love to see it. I don't know, maybe it's not a good idea to mix them anymore.  

[Clips of said hard dancing at the Bayway show. Credits to Josh Grabelle]: 

Yeah, I've noticed that. Back then you used to have some hard bands, but then they’ve got singing involved sometimes, and there's weird melodic bits. Nowadays it's all just heavy, heavy, light. There's more of that separation.

Of course, there's Foreign Hands and there's Dying Wish. There's bands like that, they're trying to be heavy, but also write a hook or have a singy part. Some bands can pull it off and still be considered a hardcore band and some bands, it's more difficult. They fall more in metalcore or sell out. Whatever they might be.

Speaking of hardcore vs metalcore, do you remember the first record that you listened to where you were like, “this is not hardcore anymore, this is metalcore?”

I guess I'd have to say Throwdown. I signed Throwdown when Keith Barney was still singing  and then Keith and Dave [Peters] switched vocals and guitar. So then, Dave became the singer and they recorded Haymaker for me, which is one of the greatest hardcore albums of all time, in my opinion.
Then the next record, Vendetta, was definitely more metal. They were a hardcore band, but they were basically playing metal at that point. So, I would consider that to be a pinnacle change of a band. Where they went from like hardcore to metalcore. They were still, they're still hardcore kids. They're still sometimes playing hardcore shows for hardcore promoters and hardcore venues, but then they're also playing Download Fest with Iron Maiden. It was a different sound and vibe.

I was reading a bunch of the Lambgoat interviews with you in the past. From your 2002 interview, you mentioned hardcore becoming a “farm league” for major labels to pick from, I think this was because Poison the Well got scooped up by Atlantic for You Come Before You, and you had some thoughts on that, which I thought were funny in hindsight, looking back at where the genre went five years later. Right now, I feel like we're in kind of a weird time where Knocked Loose just played Jimmy Kimmel, Scowl are getting huge endorsements, you mentioned Sunami, Kublai Khan, all these huge bands getting even bigger. They're getting Grammy nominations and stuff.

Sneaker deals.

Do you think that bands can be hardcore and still get all that kind of acclaim and play Coachella and get up there?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, again, we can argue all day about what makes a hardcore band, but if you're playing hardcore music or if it's even close, hardcore adjacent, if you're doing it for the right reasons, and you're playing with hardcore bands for hardcore promoters at hardcore venues, you're a hardcore band. It doesn't matter if you go and you play Jimmy Kimmel one night, you're still a hardcore band, right? You came home and you're going to go out on a tour and you're going to play hardcore songs. Can you get a shoe endorsement? Can you get a Taco Bell endorsement? I think so as long as you maintain your ethics and your values and your overall core. Some bands lose sight of that.I guess the question is at what point is a hardcore band considered not a hardcore band? I don't know. I mean, who would that be?  

I'm not gonna name any names. I'll let you do that.

[laughter]

I mean, like, what do you have to do to not be considered hardcore, right? People thought that I wasn't hardcore because I sold a million copies of a record or I signed a band. No, I'm just a hardcore kid. I've never even had an office. I've worked in my basement my whole life. I'm just a dude who loved hardcore, who happened to sign a couple bands that sold a lot of records. That doesn't change the fact that I'm still a hardcore kid.

Yeah, just putting out bands you like.

Nothing ever changed. That's it. I'm still me. I'm still at hardcore shows. People might say Terror is not a hardcore band because they're playing huge festivals and their, you know, big guarantees and they're on this label but they're still a hardcore band.

They're like one of the most hardcore.

They're like the most hardcore. Exactly. But people will argue and they'll say, “yeah, you took this endorsement deal or you did that.” I mean, when Terror were on some big tour in 2004 or 2005, I got Jägermeister to pay to make like a hundred thousand CD samplers and we passed them out on whatever big summer tour they were on. It was like, is that not hardcore? Maybe, but I'm just a hardcore kid who got a hold of Jägermeister and hooked it all up, and convinced them to spend their money on a hardcore band. 
I know people argue about that all the time. All the time. What is hardcore? I think if you turn your back on the bands, the labels, the promoters, the venues, if you turn your back on all of that and you just don't look back, then sure, I think you've lost sight. Look at a band like Hatebreed. They've been at it for 25 years. 30 years, holy shit. They'll do a big tour with Iron Maiden, but then they'll come right back and do a headline tour and bring out hardcore bands. That tells me that they're still a hardcore band. They're giving back.

Let's talk a little bit about Trustkill. Correct me if I'm wrong, but rights reverted back to you in 2022 and since then you've been putting out pressings and been more active. Tell me a little bit about that, how did that come about? How has it been for you in these past two years?

It's been awesome, man. Literally the coolest shit ever I could have imagined. So yeah, Trustkill ended in 2010. I started Bullet Tooth, which was really kind of doing the same thing I was doing, just with a different name, maybe being a little more experimental, like hardcore bands, metalcore bands, whatever. 

Trustkill was in the past, dead and gone. Universal Music foreclosed on the assets, which was like my catalogue of records, and they had no plans of doing anything with the catalogue. They took a big hit from all the losses and all the returns when music retailers like Best Buy, Walmart, Kmart, Hot Topic basically returned CDs in the 2010s.
They don't have CD sections anymore. They just returned all those. The distributors had to credit those stores. Hundreds of thousands of Trustkill CDs came back from the big chains that we had shipped out in the 2000s. When I walked away, the catalogue was millions of dollars in debt, and it just became worse.

Keep in mind, there was no streaming back then. 2010 to 2015, everything was just a mess. CD sales were falling off a cliff. People were just downloading records, but not paying to download them. Then Spotify came around and finally broke out in the US. It took a couple years, but somewhere around 2017 or 2018, I started to realize, if they're now making a little bit of money off this whole catalog,  maybe I can go back to them with some kind of pitch and say, “hey, give me my company back that you don't give a shit about.”

All these bands, all these records are just line items on their books. No one at Universal knew who First Blood was, or Most Precious Blood, or Hopesfall. These are just names on a spreadsheet. So, I went to them with a pitch and I was like, “listen, give me the company back. These are like my children. Every one of these records means a lot to me and they mean a lot to a lot of people and they're just sitting with you doing nothing. You don't give a shit. Let's figure out a way to give everything back to me and I will do what I do and add value to all these records, and make everyone money.” That was a pretty lofty pitch.

Yeah. A little bit. [laughter]

That took about two or three years to get done. COVID happened, which put a big speed bump in it. But eventually, by 2021, I knew that this was going to happen. Like, I'm going to get this back. I'm going to strike deals with all the bands, make everything right, and just start doing all the shit that I've been wanting to do for years: box sets, remixes, remasters, reissues. The digital assets for the whole catalogue were a disaster because in the 2000s, I licensed every album that mattered. I licensed to Roadrunner or like someone overseas in Europe, Japan, Australia, South America, South Africa, and then all those licensed deals expired. All those companies went bankrupt. Albums were missing from various streaming sites. 

Every album I put out in the 2000s, we would put b sides, bonus songs on all the international releases. That's how things were done back then. Like, if you wanted your record out in Japan, you had to have a bonus song. Otherwise, Japan was like, we're not putting this out. So, you could do that and then, The booking agents and the promoters would bring the bands to Japan and tour and all that shit. So all these songs that I was including on all these records for It Dies Today and Hopesfall and Bleeding Through and all these bands were missing. 

There were close to a hundred tracks throughout the catalogue that were just gone. The first six to twelve months I spent fixing all these records. There were typos, the artwork was bad, everything was fucked up. Album covers that were submitted in like 2005 to iTunes were 72 by 72 pixels. I fixed the whole catalog we've been doing.  opened up the archives. I have all the master recordings for all these bands I've been sitting on in filing cabinets. So like, that’s how the Hopesfall Satellite Years remix happened. I'm doing a bunch of other shit like that.

I have a ton of cool shit coming out. I also have new records for Trustkill legacy bands coming out. You could probably guess who those might be. A couple, but like at least three or four bands coming out with new music. Then, I'm going to have new bands. I've just been kind of taking my time with that.  One, because I've been so busy with the catalogue and all this other stuff. But two, because I'm being more selective with my catalog. 

In the 2000s, I had a staff of people and a pretty big overhead. I had to put out 10, 12, 15 albums a year to basically keep all the plates spinning and pay all the overhead and pay my staff. Now, it's just me. I don't have anyone doing anything. I do everything. I design everything, do all social media, all the legal work, everything. I don't have to cover some crazy overhead. I can just put out what I want, when I want. You know, if there's six months going by and I don't see a new band that I love, that I really want to invest my time and money in, then I just won't.

I have a huge catalogue of over 200 albums that are all desperately needing represses and reissues and box sets. I mean, I put out like six Walls of Jericho records that have not been repressed since the 2000s. I still have like four more It Dies Today records to like, to go through.
It's been fun. It's been awesome. Being me is kind of weird because I'm so close to Trustkill and everything that I've done. Every band, every album, sometimes it's hard for me to look at the big picture and see how other people think about all this.

Also, like 12 years went by where I didn't really talk about Trustkill, and then I kind of brought it back full swing in 2022. I started to realize like, Oh shit, a lot of these records and the shit I was doing really changed people's lives. When I think about just any label that I love, if I think about Revelation or just like one album that I love and I think changed my life and I see what people say about The Caitiff Choir, or The Opposite of December, or Until the Ink Runs Out. People are like, that record changed my life. That's fucking crazy. it's not like I didn't realize, but It's cool to come back, especially with social media. There was a little social media in the 2000s, but it wasn't like it is now. I definitely wasn't using it the same. I wasn't communicating with hardcore kids or fans of my bands as I am now. All of the bands are excited. The bands are psyched. It's awesome.  

It's amazing that bands are kind of getting a, I don't want to say a second chance, but they're getting an extension in a way.

That's kind of what it is. That's how I envisioned it. Back to like 2018 when I had this idea, I'm like, man, these records can't just sit there, they’re too good. We need to give them a second life, and that's what I really wanted to do. Part of my pitch to Universal was like, I have records that sold a hundred thousand copies that we never even put on vinyl. 

Like Bullet For My Valentine, right? I put that record out in 2006. It went gold by 2007. So close to a million copies by now just in the States and two million worldwide. It was not pressed on vinyl in the U. S., I never pressed it. It only came out in the U. K. and it was like 500 copies or something, and I just put that re-press out yesterday. It's crazy to be able to do that kind of shit. The Poison, like, I can say with a straight face, that could be the biggest metalcore album of all time.

It's up there.  

I mean if you go to Spotify's Metalcore Classics, it's the number one song. It's “Tears Don't Fall,” "The Poison," and then like Killswitch Engage, Avenged Sevenfold. The fact that I can come back, get these bands psyched, do a remaster, and release an album like that, then they're gonna kick off an 18 month worldwide tour supporting that album that I put out. That's fucking crazy. It's wild. They're playing a rooftop in Brooklyn, 3500 capacity on this tour, which is huge. And like, are they a hardcore band? No, but like,  they came from an adjacent scene, and I signed them and I put them on tour with It Dies Today in the U.S.. That was their very first tour here. And then their next tour, they went out with Walls of Jericho and one of my other bands. They definitely broke some barriers. I have like a shit ton of stuff planned. I'm excited to get into new, young bands, see what I can do.

That was my next question actually. So, you’re gonna be signing some newer bands too?

I mean, that definitely is it. I'm being more selective. Also, hardcore is a family, right? So, it's like Trustkill was gone for a while, and now there's Triple B and Daze and Flatspot. I don't want to be that guy to steal bands. I gotta find my own bands and the next new ones and the next new ones.
So yeah, we'll see. Going back to my Spotify playlist, the core playlist,  If I fuck with the band, I like them, they're gonna be on that playlist. If they're not on that playlist, you gotta ask yourself why not. There's only a hundred tracks. It's basically my top 100 newly released songs that fit the core brand, which you know what that means. It's hardcore or stuff that, you know, is close. So, Dying Wish, Kublai Khan, Better Lovers, there's reasons why all those bands fit. Mouth for War, Counterparts, a lot of bands like that. They came from the hardcore scene. They, you know, they tier metalcore, but they still play hardcore shows with hardcore bands for hardcore promoters.

They've got hardcore dancers.

Hardcore dancers, exactly. That being said when I announce the band, they'll probably be on that playlist. There's a ton of unsigned bands on there, a bunch of sign bands and who knows? I mean, you know, there's bands I'm talking to right now that you would know from a certain label, but maybe they finished their contract, or maybe they didn't have a contract. A lot of handshake deals in hardcore. Not every band that was on Trustkill had a contract.  Some of them were just handshake deals, just favors, just hardcore style.  

That sounds really good logistically and legally afterwards. [laughter]

Yeah. I mean, everyone knows I'm a lawyer, so they know I'm going to be fair.

We've spoken a bit about second chances in a way. Bands from the past coming back, getting that new lease on life. Are there any bands that you worked with back then that haven’t gotten that yet, and you’re maybe looking forward to getting their second chance?

We're in a cool spot for music right now because bands can kind of write their own rules. In the 2000s, I think a lot of bands felt like you couldn't just dip your toe into it, you either had to go at it full force and try to make it your career, or if that didn't work out, you had to just quit and go sell real estate, or go do tattoos, or go be a barista. But now, I think bands realized that they can play by their own rules and tour when they want to. 

Just an example, Earth Crisis, right? They've been at it for a long time. They broke up for a while in 2000 or 2001, because again, they were at it full force. They were on a major label. They toured the world and it kind of started slowing down. They’re like, “alright, dudes are having kids, getting married, let's stop the band.”  But then they brought it back and now they're like, we can just play festivals and do a weekend here, do a quick little stint there and we can all kind of keep our jobs. That's pretty awesome. But some bands aren't as lucky because maybe a certain critical member is not available or bands aren't jiving. There's a couple Trustkill bands. I can't, I don't want to name them, but I wish were doing all these fests and reissues and all this cool shit. They just can't get together and agree on anything or members hate each other, members have come and gone. The key member is long gone. It's a lot of stuff like that. But bands have kind of come back and are really seeing that second wind, like you said. Bleeding Through, Walls of Jericho, It Dies Today, Eighteen Visions, Throwdown, all these bands. Then you got pre-Throwdown, Beyond Repair, playing shows, which is pretty cool. So now it's like whichever version of Throwdown you liked, if you'd like the more metal version or you like the early hardcore stuff, now Throwdown is playing Furnace Fest and Mayhem, but then Beyond Repair is playing For The Children, and This Is Hardcore and Indecision Fest. It's cool for bands to be able to do that. If it was up to me, I wish all my bands could. I would love that shit. 

Even like the hardcore adjacent stuff that I had, right? I'll call it Warped-core. Roses are Red, Bedlight for Blue Eyes, Crash Romeo. Roses are Red just put out a new song. We did a vinyl release for their album that came out in 2004 through SmartPunk, it had never been released on vinyl. They did a reunion show in September that sold 500 tickets, headlining, which is pretty wild.
We did Bedlight for Blue Eyes through SmartPunk, I got a couple more records coming out next year, and the year after. I feel like if I do what I'm good at, adding value to these albums, digging in the archives, releasing videos, doing all this kind of cool shit.

It allows these bands to kind of just come back. Promoters are like, Oh shit, like Furnace Fest, they'll be like, “Oh, that band is back and maybe available and let's see if they want to play a show.”

Seems like reviving old sounds, reunions, that's kind of been in right now in general. Even newer bands like Foreign Hands, which you mentioned, they're basically just doing every old Trustkill band mixed together. It's amazing.

Yeah, it's cool, but there's also gonna be people who just want a new sound right? Yeah, a band That's just like Scarab right now. Young dudes playing fast, pissed hardcore. That's fucking cool. That's a band I love and see every chance I can.

Looking forward in this scene,  what do you think is gonna be popping up in the next five years?

I don't know, man. You know what hasn't come around yet? The whole Floorpunch, Ten Yard Fight, Mouthpiece, Youth of today vibe. Some of those bands can still play now for old, dusty, hardcore dudes, but young bands aren’t really playing that style. Some bands are, but also, the young bands that are playing that youth crew revival thing–

None of those bands have really broken out.  

They haven't.

we're too big into the beatdown mosh.

Exactly. It's either gonna go moshy beatdown like Sunami and Speed or it's going to go a little more punk like Gel and Scowl. So yeah, I'm curious to see, like, I want to see a band that sounds like Chain Of Strength headlining a fest. Even like Flyover Fest, they have younger bands, but they’ve got Killing Time headlining. They're moshy, old New York hardcore style, but Ten Yard Fight aren't headlining a fest.  Right? Or if they are, it's not big. That would be interesting to see. I do love the vegan metal hardcore revival right now that's happening.

Yeah, all the edge metal type stuff.

Right, all the Ephyra Recordings bands. Senti from Balmora, he's really got his ear to the ground for that shit. A lot of cool shit happening with that whole world right now

I think that's like the first fully Gen Z backed movement.

Yeah, like a seven minute song that sounds like Day Of Suffering, cool.

Daze, Triple B, that's very like older Gen Z, Millennial. This one's all the internet kids and like weird and stuff.

Yeah, and the records purposely look like shit.

Yeah, it's so fun. Like my band, we did the exact same thing. It was just awful looking on purpose.

Yeah, just awful looking. It's so funny because like I was around when we originally did that shit. Green Rage was the early vegan straight edge Syracuse band with the awful looking record cover. It's awesome to see like, like the new breed of that kind of shit.

Yeah, bands nowadays are making it sound worse on purpose. You know, they're recording and mixing it like you would have 30 years ago.

It's kind of cool. It's kind of cool. I dig it.

It must be surreal for you to see that nowadays. Kids basically just making that kind of stuff and you're just like, “hey, it's a little familiar.”

It's cool. You know panic chords, right? Did Trustkill invent panic chords? I don't know. I mean, we didn't call it panic chords back then. I had my own word for it. When I first heard Disembodied, I called it alarm-clock-core, because, to me, it sounded like an alarm clock going off. If you even know what that sounds like, that's what alarm clocks used to sound like.

[Bunch of noises mimicking panic chords]

I don't remember when panic chords, like when that came in, but yeah, it's cool. That whole sound. Foreign hands do it well. Yeah, panic chords. Now I'm just thinking about Knocked Loose, obviously. They're absolutely enormous 'cause of it.

I feel like I said this in a podcast recently, but Knocked Loose sounds like Disembodied riffs with Mike Ski from Brother's Keeper singing, which is so funny because those two bands toured together in the 90s, and I put out a split with those two bands. We just combined them and that's Knocked Loose, which is pretty wild. Way bigger than either of those other bands.  

Sometimes I think about that, like Disembodied, and even Martyr AD, they kind of had a little revival in the 2010s, and then not much came out of it.

It was cool. I mean, they both played This is Hardcore and it was cool and they both did For the Children.

[Credits to hate5six. I come back to this video a lot, so damn heavy]: 

Why do you think that revivals are so big right now? Is it because of the internet? Is it because of just something else, you know?

I think it's young kids like you looking at old Hellfest videos and shit, and being like, “holy fuck.” There's something really genuine about  it. I'm holding on to all this video footage and here I was thinking “oh man this video clip it sounds kind of crappy and looks kind of crappy and like what am I going to do with it” but it's like people love that shit. They're like, “yo, 240 pixels or get the fuck out.”

They want the camcorders.

Right? Like, they want that style. Like I have a friend in Syracuse who goes to every show and she films exclusively on VHS. That's so sick. And like her whole YouTube channel is just hardcore shows filmed on VHS and it's so fucking badass. I think it's a lot of that. I think it's just that everything is readily available, like the Trustkill YouTube channel– hang on, one second.

[Video credits to @always_late_never_lost on youtube]:

You're good. No worries.

[Brief intermission where Josh and myself were both interviewed for a New Jersey Hardcore documentary that was being filmed at the show.]

Ok, so back to our interview. ​​I mean, since New Jersey Hardcore is on our mind, nice and fresh, how has the scene felt in the past 30 years? Like, has it changed at all? Is it as healthy as ever? Did it ever go through any dips or whatever? How's it been for you?

I mean, there's been a ton of dips, right? There's a dip every time we lose a good venue. I mean, we just lost Salty's. There's a little bit of a dip. And then they, those dudes tried to all get together and get a new venue and then we just lost that. It's like it came and went super fast. I've been around, you know, I saw CBGBs come and go. I saw City Gardens come and go, The Melody Bar, New Brunswick, all these places were like, you know, they become a staple and then they go away. You gotta figure out where else you can do a hardcore show. I think one of the biggest differences between now is that I would call myself third generation hardcore, right? If we're saying first generation is early 80s, second generation would be mid 80s. I got into hardcore in the late 80, so I'm third generation.

What gen are we on now? Who the fuck knows?

I don't know. I figure there's like three a decade. That's kind of like early, mid, to late, right? And you can see as the years go on.

You see people come and go. Every couple of years the scene kind of switches ou  in a way. Um, But back then, I was doing shows in my basement in the early to mid 90s and it was just for me and my friends, really. And then other people would show up, and that was cool too. But we were all your age, right? I was 19 and all my friends were the same age and everyone that was there was basically the same age. We were all 15 to 24, 25. No one there was older than that. No one in any bands was older than that. And that's just how it was. Now, in the 2020s, there's like hardcore nepotism.

Like Beto from 25 to Life and Dmize; his kid is now in hardcore bands, singing for Discontent. And then, the singer for Without Peace, his dad was in hardcore bands also. So yeah, now you have the kids of New Jersey Hardcore bands in bands putting on shows, that's fucking awesome. Also, something I've noticed at the shows is that you can have young kids at a show, you can have older dudes like me at a show, and you also see little kids at a show.

At the Judge show last weekend, there's people in the pit with their ten year old daughter. That kind of shit would have never happened in the 90s. You would have never seen a ten year old person at a show. And you would have never seen anyone over the age of 30 at a show.
Because they didn't exist. Like, no one was into hardcore that was that old. But now, people like me that have just been around forever, and we're still going to shows, It's kind of wild. It's like you have this mix of young kids, really young kids, like the babies and children of band members.
Like you always see like some little girl and like someone's shoulders like, like the big headphones on, right? Like, that's the kind of shit you did not see at hardcore shows in the 90s because it just wasn't old. Um, so yeah, I think that's a big difference.

Yeah, just more diverse in terms of people.

More diverse in age. The crazy thing is like, you don't get weirded out seeing me at a hardcore show.

Yeah.  

That's just normal for you.

That's the target demographic in a lot of ways.

Yeah, for some of the shows. But if I saw someone my age back in the nineties, I'd be like, “what the fuck are you doing here? How did you find this? Well, who are you?” This doesn't make any sense. And now, it's just we're all here together.

We've talked a lot about the past and present. The internet and social media has almost democratized the way that people discover music. TikTok basically turns bands into sensations overnight. What role do labels have nowadays? Like, you know, they used to do a lot of press and tastemaking. Nowadays, an internet streamer or a YouTuber or Finn McKenty type comes along and he just can basically sway it, like HardLore, you know, the podcasts. They just change the scope of hardcore. What do you guys do with that?

Well, we do what we always do. We have to stay on top of shit. Like, how do I market my bands and my music to the audience of people that I'm trying to get to? So, if I'm trying to find hardcore kids, how do I find them? I don't know.

I find them through social media, most likely. You know, the 90s, the 2000s, the 2010s, it was about like which new way. We went from fanzines and magazines and websites and radio and all these different ways, CD samplers, to now it's a lot of social media, it's an influencer, TikTok, it's all that stuff. Billie Eilish posted last year that she was listening to It Dies Today and we saw actual, significant, bumps in streaming and everything. That's huge. But you can't, oh, I mean you can pay for that, right?

I'm sure you guys didn't DM her.

No, no, of course not. She just legit liked the song, and she just was like playing it in her story. And everyone like lost their fucking minds. In the 2000s, I would be setting up a new record with my distributor, whether it was Sony or Universal. Setting up the record six months before it's released, they wanna know, Which magazines are you putting ads in? Which radio stations are you gonna pay to play the song? Which street teams are you going to hire? It's like a laundry list of stuff, all the different ways to market bands and records. Now, we have way less ways. So now, when I'm putting out a new record, my distributor wants to know which TikTok influencer I'm gonna pay to play a song, cause that legitimately helps. I mean, if you have a million followers and you play a song, like if Kim Kardashian played a fuckin Speed song, that would be the end, they'd be the biggest hardcore band in the world.

Travis Barker seen at Speed show.

Yeah, exactly. It's important. Do I love it? No. The tastemakers have gone from the radio station DJ and the Hot Topic manager to now it's podcast people and TikTok guys and whoever else. That's just how people discover bands. They're discovering them on Spotify and on YouTube.
It's not better. It's not worse. Personally, I might think it's better. The way shit's done now. Back in the day, what was the point of reading a record review in a magazine? If Revolver Magazine or Alternative Press reviews an album and you're reading it, you're just going, “Okay, who the fuck is this person talking about this record? I don't know who this is. It's just some idiot working for some magazine.” Whereas now, we're all tastemakers. Everyone is an influencer. Whether you have three Twitter followers or two Instagram followers, if you talk about a band or you share a story of a new song, you're a tastemaker. So if there's someone out there who I trust their opinion, I follow them. If they talk about a new band or a new record, I wanna know about it.

[laughter] I mean, considering I work for a publication and I do reviews and interviews and stuff, is there still a place for this, you think?

Absolutely. You just have to figure out “how do I get people to care?” Like, Lambgoat is its own thing.

We have our own niche.

You have your own niche. Exactly. We just have to do shit differently. Like, just reviewing an album, you could be doing more. There's more to do. Maybe in the 2000s that was our only choice. Band interview, album review. What else is there? You gotta buy the record, you wanna make sure. Yeah, now there's just more cool ways to do shit.

What advice do you have for people getting into hardcore and wanting to start bands and labels? The scope has changed so much, what do you think bands should be doing now?

Try to focus on the long term and not really the short term. The short term is, “oh, let's do what these other bands that I like are doing,” which is putting songs on Spotify, making t-shirts, posting goofy videos on Instagram or TikTok. But like, I think the long game is to be a fucking great band, and practice, go to every local show you can, become friends with the promoters and other bands, play as many shows as you can, put some songs on Bandcamp, and see if anyone gives a shit.
That's my best advice. From there, keep doing that. Keep trying to play every show you can, and if people care, then follow it up. And then make a t-shirt, then do these other things. People try to do too much too fast because things seem easier. It's like, if this band made a music video, we can do that. We have an iPhone. Well, maybe that's not the best way. Maybe just go to a hardcore show and try to pass out demo tapes. I guess just being more involved with the people that you actually want. Just get out there. The long game is to get involved in your own scene, in your own city. Don't worry about playing a festival in some other state, or doing what these other bands are doing. Focus on your own scene, in your own city. Go to every show you can. Make friends, and then doors will open. My advice would be, don't try to knock down doors before your time.

Yeah, gotta build the hometown shows.

Yeah, stop worrying about other shit that's going on. Worry about your own scene, talk to your own promoters, go to your own venues. And then, throw some songs on Bandcamp, see what happens, play some shows, if anyone cares, move on to phase two. Yeah, get that first, because otherwise it seems disingenuous.

You gotta move slow. Not to go back to the 90s and the 2000s, but like in the 90s, bands would just put a demo out and play shows on a three song demo for years. Like, Hatebreed put out a three song demo, or four songs, whatever it was, and they played on that demo for literal years until their album came out. Because they did it right. They did it slow, they put it out, they're like, let's see if people care.

Do you think that streaming services, and everything being so widely available, has made bands unable to let releases linger?

Kinda, yeah. Your window for keeping people excited about new music is way smaller. In the 2000s, I could put a new record out and spend $100,000 on marketing. I could give that album six to nine months of life at retail. It would be on the counter at Hot Topic for six months. Those days are gone. Now, you gotta trickle out some singles, your album drops, and then you're talking about the next record already. 

I feel like Drain's album on Epitaph kind of just came out, right? Earlier this year or something? This past year. They're already like, “we're working on the next album, we're not going to tour anymore.” The window is smaller. Going back to Hatebreed, it's like when Satisfaction is the Death of Desire came out, they toured on that album for five years until their next record came out. Satisfaction was '96 and Perseverance was like 2001 or something, 2002. Those days are gone. That's not going to happen ever again if you want to continue to tour, play fest. Unless you're a certain legacy band. Poison the Well, they don't have to put out new music, right? They don't have to. You'd love them to, but they don't have to. Because they don't need to. They play a great set, and they have three or more albums to choose from, doing various cool performances. But nowadays, if you're Kublai Khan, or if you're Drain, you're a new band, you gotta drop singles, you gotta do a little more, and it comes and goes a little quicker. Because people digest an album quicker. That's just the reality of where we are. Things just move really quick. Shit just moves quick.

Thank you for your time.

After roughly two hours of talking and general pre-show activities, we felt this was a good place to stop since doors were opening shortly. We had a great time at the Bayway show, and each band absolutely killed it. Shoutout to the local openers Human Blister, who just put out an amazing EP.

Check out future NJHC shows at the Williams center such as The Number Twelve Looks Like You with The Sleeping and Skycamefalling, and Trapped Under Ice with Gridiron and Fury of Five here.