HTML – Righteousness Endures Forever | Album Review & Interview

I’ve been thinking about death a lot lately. My own death, the death of my parents, the deaths of my friends and the people I love. When I really get thinking about it, the totality of death just feels so all-consuming. It's endless and inevitable. It’s a heavy thing to have on your mind, but sometimes sitting in those thoughts is the only way through. 

As long as I can remember, I’ve also always enjoyed albums about death; Carrie & Lowell, Psychopomp, Tunnel Blanket, Springtime and Blind, just to name a few. I think it’s fascinating to hear someone articulate their personal understanding of grief in such a public forum. 

There’s something beautiful in hearing an artist you admire grappling with their own version of the same things that are weighing heavy on your mind. There’s something comforting in hearing that journey and those learnings summarized in a condensed album-length format. There’s also a strange peace of mind in knowing that something so gorgeous as any of those records can come from the loss of a loved one.

I don’t want to romanticize death, but it is a fact of life. It’s something we all brush up against at some point, and it’s a topic that people shouldn’t shy away from. HTML’s Righteousness Endures Forever is the latest in a long line of death albums in which I have found refuge. Pitched by lead singer Travis Verbil as “a dad-rock record about my dead dad (but chill though),” the release is heavily inspired by 70s singer-songwriter fare but also acts as a clear continuation of the emotional indie rock sound found on 2018’s Topmost Grief.

Album opener “How to Grow Muscle” begins with far-off bird chirps and a Jeff Tweedy-indebted acoustic guitar riff. Much like the opener from last year’s Unmake Me, this song grounds the listener in the physical space where our narrator is about to lose their loved one. With a first line of “outside the room you died / there were gold sunbeams and gardens green,” HTML waste no time jumping straight into the topic, immediately letting the listener know what type of album this is. The song describes the horror of walking in on your father having collapsed on the floor and the frantic thoughts and actions that go into the following minutes. It’s harrowing and morbid but also beautiful. 

Knowing that Verbil has made it through this experience, processed it, and turned it into the beautiful piece of music you are now consuming gives a sense of relief that makes the recounting palatable. Rather than let this loss render him inconsolable, Verbil uses it to make a statement about impermanence–eventually arriving at the ironic conclusion that there’s a serene finality to be found in this kind of loss. 

After something as heavy as this opener, “Queens Blvd (Drunk Moonlight)” adds some unexpected (but much-needed) levity to the affair with a cocky instrumental fit for strutting around Queens wrapped in your favorite jean jacket. After some good-natured borough-on-borough shit talk, initially-innocuous lyrics like “I will never let your buds die” begin to shine through and take on a whole new death-tinted double-meaning upon repeat listens.

The album’s upbeat streak continues with both “Reservation Cigarettes” and ​​“Reapin’,” the former of which has a boppy acoustic groove and bouncy drum pattern while the latter bears the album’s most distorted guitar lick and catchiest chorus. Perfectly-placed bells give “Reapin’” a sun-soaked Sam’s Town-era Killers feel. Perhaps it’s more accurate to say Springsteen, but the two might as well be used interchangeably here. Evoking a religious-flavored viral tweet, Verbil outlines, “Reapin’ / I don’t like reapin’ / I much prefer sowing / So I sow” in one of the album's most singable moments. 

Throughout the final three songs, HTML flips back into a more somber and introspective tone as Verbil shifts perspective to focus on his relationship with his mother, his late father, and eventually himself. 

Album closer “Light Hypertrophy” ends the release on an overtly happy note as Verbil sings, “I’m glad I’m alive / Oh, I’m glad I never died / I’m glad, I’m glad I’m alive.” Hearing these words as the period mark on the end of an otherwise grief-filled album only reinforces that good can be pulled out of the depths, making the journey worth it. 

After reiterating this affirmation of life, Verbil shares a condensed version of the process that led him to this optimism in the wake of his loss. In his most heartfelt delivery, he sings, “Lately I’ve been thinking / The hole that you left / could be where the light comes back.” He then pauses for a beat, letting the sentiment soak into the air before adding, “into my life.” 

As these words wash over the listener, the release ends with more bird chirps, a lovely full-circle moment that acts as a reminder that life keeps moving. Much like those first chirps of birds in the morning, the record stands as a testament to beauty coming after darkness.

---

I sat down with HTML vocalist/guitarist Travis Verbil and lead guitarist Brian Mazeski to discuss their artistic process, death, and the creation of the band’s stellar sophomore record.

Photo by Hannah D’Arcy

SWIM: You describe the album as having a 70s-era singer-songwriter “dad rock” vibe first and foremost. What artists or albums most directly inspired this sound?

BRIAN MAZESKI: Travis had the idea to put together a sort of “inspiration” playlist while we were writing/ideating the album, and it was filled with both actual 70s music (Van Morrison, Dylan, Dr. John, Paul Simon) but also more modern singer-songwriter tunes. A lot of these artists and albums I had only heard in passing, but I started to listen to them more and more, just to have it all rolling around in my head while we were writing the album. I’m not sure any of that influence comes through explicitly on the album we actually wrote, but I do think that influence helped inform our decision-making, in sort of a “what kind of lead would Van Morrison want on this track” sense. And Travis would also use some of these influences for direction on certain instrumentation; if I were stuck writing a lead guitar part, he’d say, “think Van Morrison hazy seventh chords,” and somehow that would help. 

SWIM: Righteousness Endures Forever represents a bit of a genre pivot for HTML. How do you view this record in relation to your previous work?

BRIAN MAZESKI: I think a big aspect of the genre/tone shift for me is that I think about music and writing music much differently now than I did when we wrote our first album. Back then, I wanted our songs to stand out for their complexity and technicality (which I still admire in artists/music), whereas writing this new album, my sensibilities aligned much more with Travis’s, and we both sort of locked into this goal of writing a free-wheelin', groove-oriented album of songs that all hit the ground running and could be arranged/played a number of ways and all sound good. That being said, I think we have a certain style (guitar tone sensibility, for instance) that is common to both albums, which is really cool given how different both projects are.

TRAVIS VERBIL: Going into this record, both writing and recording, I was on a really sprawling Dylan kick and tried my best to divorce my thoughts on production and genre from songwriting. It was extremely freeing. We were able to tear down a lot of walls we built for ourselves. I think our best work comes when we tend to think of genre as window-dressing. 

SWIM: Given that the album is about your late father, the songs get into heavy topics and imagery. How do you go about writing and recounting things like this through your lyrics?

TRAVIS VERBIL: It didn’t feel particularly hard or uncomfortable to recall those moments to write; I already had gone through them a million times in my head. Between the living and the writing, the writing was certainly easier.

SWIM: You’ve tweeted before about being your own audience which is the creative philosophy I most respect at this point. How did you arrive here? Similarly, given that this record is so personal to you, who do you think this record is for?

BRIAN MAZESKI: One of the things I love about being in a duo with Travis is that we have a kind of litmus test method between the two of us such that, if we’re playing around with a song or an idea, if we both love it then we love it and the seal of approval ends there, and if one of us is lukewarm on it, we can usually play around with it more until we fix it or scrap it. But at the end of the day, we both want to make music we love, and we rarely make decisions based on how we think something is going to be perceived (I've definitely been guilty of that in the past, though). Nowadays, I think we both share the view that if you make art for and from yourself, you’ll find your tribe out there who dig it. 

TRAVIS VERBIL: It’s been a long road, but I’m glad we arrived here. I feel like people get in your head at a young age and will try to be the arbiters, the proprietors of capital-c Cool or capital-s Style. Brian and I have been playing in bands together, playing a lot of different genres, since we were literal children. And in that time, the only times I have ever felt fulfilled or spiritually nourished, whatever you might call it, is when I feel like we’ve been true to ourselves and our shared sensibilities. In that vein, I feel like this record is for anyone that enjoys it, hopefully as much as we do. 

SWIM: I love the cover art and feel like it perfectly captures the feeling of the record. Who took this photo, and why did it feel right to use it as the cover?

TRAVIS VERBIL: Thank you! I took the photo— it’s actually the view from my childhood bedroom window. And before you ask, yes, I grew up in front of a cemetery; that’s an extremely Queens thing. This photo was taken in 2017, I would guess. It’s the spot where my dad began planting a vegetable garden just weeks before he died.

SWIM: Between the title of the album and Reapin’, you evoke quite a bit of religious language throughout this record. What's your background with religion, and how does it factor into this collection of songs?

TRAVIS VERBIL: I had a Catholic upbringing, and a lot of that stuff just lingers in my head— especially when I think about death. There’s no real rhyme or reason to it. It’s always there, though.

SWIM: Sonically, it feels like the record has two modes: quiet, subdued folk tunes and explosive full-band bombast. Was this a conscious decision or just a byproduct of your songwriting process?

BRIAN MAZESKI: That’s a really good question, and I think you nailed it with the second bit about the songwriting process. Every track on the album came directly from an initial rough demo Travis sent via voice note, usually just him playing an acoustic guitar. For some of those tunes, we knew that “the song,” meaning the essence of what made it good or unique, was that it was loud and distorted and driving and quick, whereas for other tunes, we felt that “the song” was just Travis and the guitar, with maybe some ambient piano, and nothing else was needed. For the more subdued songs, I think we took our cue from classic songs we loved that are relatively minimal (either overall or maybe in the sense that they are drumless or more open rhythmically) and tried to be conscious of realizing/acknowledging what makes a song complete and what it actually needs versus what we can pile on in the studio. 

Photo by Hannah D’Arcy

SWIM: I love the little ways you chose to round some of these songs out (the bells on Reapin’, the harmonica on NY Cowboy, even the bird chirps that appear throughout). I’d love to hear about the decisions that went into these little flourishes that appear across the album.

BRIAN MAZESKI: I am so glad to hear you dig those little details! I think we’ve always been interested in auxiliary percussion/instrumentation, dating way back to the first album Travis and I made years ago (we used bells and a ukulele and even some of Travis’s theater group members as a backing choir), but for whatever reason, I personally felt inspired to explore auxiliary percussion much more for this album. I really wanted these songs to groove and for people to feel the groove and bop their heads. I found myself thinking about being back in the high school percussion ensemble, playing all these shakers and guiros and bongos, and thinking about how so much of the music I love (both older and modern) takes full advantage of these tools (“Do It Again” by Steely Dan, for example, or the congas on “Patience” by Tame Impala) and that we should do the same if we want to make music that really grooves and makes people feel the rhythm. 

As for the bird sounds, I was inspired by Travis’s vision for the album and wanted to go all-in on it; when we would talk about the sequence of songs on the album, he said the first track, “How to Grow Muscle,” is like the sun rising on the first day of summer, everything is lush and growing, and so I decided to throw some bird sounds at the beginning of one of the later demos and fortunately, we both liked it and decided to keep it for the final mix. Many of the songs on the album (as I understand them, and what I admire about them) are about a specific moment and feeling, and I felt like a small detail like bird sounds would go a long way toward transporting a listener (I hope!). There are dark moments and aspects to some of the songs and the album in general, but at the beginning of “How to Grow Muscle,” we want the listener to feel like they’re listening to the beginning of a new summer day. 

SWIM: You haven’t released any music since 2018’s Topmost Grief, and death isn’t exactly something you can plan for in advance. When were these songs written, and how did this album come together?

TRAVIS VERBIL:  It all came together very organically. In December 2020, just about six months after the Father’s Day when I discovered my father had passed away in the night, I broke three different bones in my foot in a freak accident. I ended up going on worker’s comp, and my boss (​​a songwriter himself) called me and told me to write an album to pass the time. I ended up staying with my sister for a few weeks since my apartment was a walk-up, and I started messing around with her acoustic guitar–the same one I taught myself on when we were kids. 

I started writing one song a day and sending them to Brian. I started on New Year’s Day; I think that’s when I recorded the first demo for “How to Grow Muscle,” and by the end of the month all of the songs were written. Brian created arrangements for all the songs on the GarageBand app on his phone in the Winter, and he would send them to me, and we would talk about leads, drum parts, you name it. 

There was an issue though— we had, essentially, already written most of the follow-up to Topmost Grief, an album we were calling Heaven II. We had to make a creative decision based on the moment, and, for a lot of different reasons, we decided to shelve Heaven II and go full-speed ahead with Righteousness. 

It was the right call. We were in the studio that spring, started recording on weekends, and were finished by late July. We decided to sit on the record because we both envisioned it coming out at the beginning of the summer and decided that a Spring 2022 release date was best.

SWIM: Twenty minutes is pretty lightweight for an LP, but Righteousness feels like it has enough time to tell a complete story. How was it to assemble this collection of songs? I’m curious if there was any whittling down on your part, or did these seven songs just make sense?

TRAVIS VERBIL: We had some songs that didn’t make the cut for us. There were songs called stuff like “Rosemary,” “My Cup Runneth Over With Junk,” “Death House,” one called “The Last of the Coffee Grounds,” and a handful more that didn’t do it for us. Some of them we really liked and some of them we liked less. Brian and I came to the consensus we’d rather have a very tight set of seven than release a record with songs we didn’t think were our absolute best. I was also very inspired by summer 2018 when Kanye put out a new seven-track record he produced every Friday. I really dug some of those records, mostly Pusha T’s DAYTONA, and thought that we could similarly get away with a seven-song tracklist.

SWIM: Were there any other albums or pieces of media (about death or otherwise) that helped you through your personal experience with loss?

TRAVIS VERBIL: I kept going back to “Real Death” by Mount Eerie. I have this very funny memory of making my girlfriend and sister listen to it in a hotel room before going out on the town in South Beach, Miami. Talk about a pre-game!

SWIM: Queens, NY plays a central part in the identity of this record and your band. How do you see that physical space coming through in these songs, and why is that important?

TRAVIS VERBIL: I feel like I spent some of my earlier years wishing I had a Brooklyn demeanor, Brooklyn sensibilities, all that. I wasn’t being true to myself. I’m a Queens guy;  I’m a 7 Train guy, a chicken-over-rice guy, a white sauce and hot sauce guy, a Let’s Go Mets guy. We wrote these songs during the one year of my life I lived in Brooklyn, and as much fun as I was having, I definitely missed Queens. And the more I wrote about my dad, the more I missed Queens. Just like the genre stuff I said earlier, I really felt like making this album so unapologetically Queens was fundamentally important in Brian and I being true to ourselves.

SWIM: The final song speaks for itself and ends the album on a bright, optimistic note. What’s one thing you hope people take away from this album as a whole?

TRAVIS VERBIL: The response to this record from our friends and contemporaries has been unreal. All I could hope is that people are excited for what’s next. 

A Message to The Haters: Raven, The Acid Bath Princess of the Darkness on Being Emo, Growing Up Online, and What To Do When Nobody Gets the Joke

Originally published in Emo Trash, March 2021 

We have a New Years’ Eve tradition on the internet. Every December- sometimes in May, or August, or October, any time we need a laugh- a 5-second clip makes its way around social media. It’s a video of two girls wishing us a happy new year, decked out in period-appropriate ‘00s goth makeup and lamenting about how much they just don’t care about the holiday.

It’s 2008, almost 2009, and they announce it with little enthusiasm. In the short clip that’s usually shared, there’s a moment of doubt about just how much of the video is a joke. After all, we were like that once, adamant that wearing liquid black eyeliner on our lower lash lines was a good idea and that Tim Burton’s art was just really really cool, okay? 

The video, A Shout Out From Tara and Raven, is a parody that feels close to home. After making it clear that 2009 means nothing to them, they go on to address their “haters”, list off their likes (being goth, Edward Cullen, MCR and AFI) and dislikes (preps, jocks, and of course- haters), to wish us a “crappy new year” as MCR’s “Disenchanted” plays in the background. They remind us that they are Raven, the Acid Bath Princess of The Darkness, and Tara, before signing off. 

It’s the third upload on their channel, xXblo0dyxkissxX, and would have remained lost to the internet had it not gone viral in recent years (It’s worth mentioning that the video currently has 66k likes and 6k dislikes.) Before the two went out with an unintentional bang, they uploaded more videos, including one titled A Message To The Haters, where the two of them blink silently at the camera for four minutes while Ashley Tisdale’s cover of “Never Gonna Give You Up” plays on a loop. 

Behind xXblo0dyxkissxX was a girl named Sarah, who recently admitted to making the videos with her sister as a joke. Now 31 and a professional dominatrix, she’s spent the new year dealing with surprisingly positive reactions to a misunderstood YouTube persona, and figuring out what to do next. Her Twitter bio proudly reads “Fake emo turned adult emo;” we talked about how she ended up there.

---

How did you get into emo music when you were younger, and how or why did you revisit it as an adult? I feel like a lot of people have really funny stories about the moment they were like, oh my god- this music is scary, but I'm into it. 
When I was emo as a kid I never wanted to call myself emo- I was goth. At the time, this was around 2002, nobody really wanted to be “emo”, I guess. Goths were tough and emos were whiny and angsty and stuff, and I was angsty. I lived in a small town in east Texas, and I think that if I were open about, you know, being emo, people would have just called me goth anyway, there wasn’t that much difference in subcultures there. 

I did grow up in a home where my media was heavily censored, so I wasn’t really allowed to listen to my own music. If I wanted to listen to something, it had to be like, screened through my dad. One time, for example: Linkin Park was a somewhat safe band, for some reason, and one time my dad had printed out some of the lyrics, one of the lines was talking about “walking on eggshells” or something, and my dad sat me down and he was like, “Do you really feel like this?” and it sucked, it really sucked, because I wanted to listen to all of this stuff, and I couldn’t really do it. I was already this kid who, like, wasn’t allowed to watch pg-13 movies….it was very over-protective. I don’t really remember what got me started on the music, but I did have friends with more normal parents and a more normal access to music, and they would share things with me. 

I do remember that in 5th grade I went to this science based summer camp, one of the counselors wore a Dead Kennedys shirt. I didn’t know what Dead Kennedys were, but I just remember thinking, “holy shit, this guy is so fucking cool.” After that summer camp I did start wanting to explore a little more, explore that side of myself. I do know that because everything I ingested was so censored and so limited I didn’t have as wide of a range of exposure as I do now. There is a little part of it that makes it more exciting, in a way.

You get a chance to do it over again!
Yeah, yeah! So, how I got back into it: Tara is my sister. We made the videos to make fun of ourselves for our own emo phases. The videos were my idea, I convinced her to play along. After my emo phase from 12-14 I started getting more into punk. After I got into AFI, I started going back and listening to their older [heavier] albums, but to go from Sing the Sorrow to like, the Casualties and Rancid, especially when you’re fifteen...it’s embarrassing. You start to become a little embarrassed at what you used to be like. 

So, I wanted some sort of career in comedy, YouTube was new, I’d spent some time on 4Chan, I was familiar with trolling. I wanted to troll people, so I convinced Tara to create these characters that made fun of our former selves. At the time, even though we weren’t emo, we still had our fair share of mental health problems; I’ve been depressed and anxious for as long as I can remember. 

After Tara and I stopped filming together, we went off to college, we started doing these rock-outs in the car. We only go to see each other once a year, and it started out as a joke, like, remember those videos we used to make, wanna scream along to Good Charlotte together? So that started out as a joke, and it became one of those things that I started doing on my own as a form of comfort, just putting on the music and listening to it. 

I got started again through Good Charlotte’s first two albums. Those were like a security blanket for me, and I recognized that it was so weird that I was going back to something that I had once been so ashamed of. When I was 21, 22, I had this car that only had a cassette player, and I scoured Ebay until I found those Good Charlotte albums on cassette; I needed them SO badly. So I had my Good Charlotte cassettes mixed in with my Dead Kennedys, I had some Henry Rollins spoken word stuff...it was something I started listening to whenever I was anxious to calm myself down, and it was really comforting. 

That gave way to me exploring other things I liked at the time, and it gradually progressed into an acceptance of “emo.” I started jokingly referring to myself as an adult emo around 2016, and it wasn’t until 2018 that I started to embrace it. I guess the simplest way to explain it would be that I went through an emo phase, was super embarrassed about it, made fun of it, returned to cheesy pop-punk, and slowly grew into an adult emo. I think a lot of that just came with personal growth, just this personal acceptance that I am a very emotional person, and this is the music that I relate to. 

“Emo” used to be kind of an insult.
Oh, yeah!

It’s funny now, but we all took it super seriously back then! I was definitely emo in high school, but if anybody called me that, I’d get really offended. Kids used to get really hung up on social stereotyping, but you don’t really hear people using that language anymore. 
Yeah. 

I remember one time, this must have been 2007, my friend told me, “Robin, you’re skinny so you could be a prep, but you’re just too weird.” and I was like...what does that mean? I know you’ve said your emo phase was more when you were younger, did you notice or take part in any of that stuff, or were the rest of high school pretty normal for you socially? 
Oh, no. I was always the weird one, hands down. To give some examples: In third grade I didn’t have any friends to hang out with during recess, so I just hung out and talked with the teachers….I wanted to be a Herpetologist when I was a kid, I had a glow in the dark Albert Einstein shirt, I was bringing snakes to show and tell. I was never cool, I was never the one that people wanted to hang out with. I’d come to school on Monday and realize that like, all of the girls in class had a sleepover that weekend except for me. I just wasn’t cool, ever. I think that my emo phase, my goth phase was sort of an attempt at protecting myself- but even then, I was the first mall goth at my middle school, so I got made fun of for that. 

Even when I was out of my emo phase, I turned into a weird theater kid. I spent most of my time in high school just writing, writing sketches, writing stories, doing dumb funny shit with Tara, filming videos with my friends. I didn’t have a very normal teenage experience in that I didn’t date, I didn’t go to parties, I spent a lot of time just being creative and being weird and just enjoying all of it. There was a time in college where I fell into a group of nerdy friends, and they were all cooler than me, they dressed better than me, and I thought things would be different if I shopped at Express. So, I shopped at Express, and it didn’t change anything!

Do you think that you and your sister would have received a more positive response if you were making those videos today? TikTok is popular, we have more people, more young women doing front-facing camera comedy. 
Without a doubt, for so many reasons. I think that culturally, things have changed considerably. This also ties into a point about emo: Culturally, a lot of things have changed. I think that younger people are a lot more empathetic, young people are a lot more progressive. They know that you can’t make fun of someone for being gay, they know that you can’t make fun of someone for, you know, being autistic. There’s just so much more basic human decency there. 

Social media as a whole was still pretty new, and especially on YouTube, it was a lot easier to hide behind this separate account and you’d get away with it, but now, youtube is owned by Google, you use Google to sign into everything, it’s a lot harder to get away with that stuff, because your account is tied to so many things. With my generation anyway, we grew up with the internet but it wasn't always there, whereas younger generations grew up with the internet and social media always being there. They were all really new and really exciting when I was a teenager, but because they’ve grown up with these things, they’ve been taught that you don’t get to be a dick to people on the internet. 

Something that I’ve noticed, for example: Azer, a brief costar in our videos, uses they/them pronouns. In the comments section of Instagram or wherever, someone will say something about Azer and use the wrong pronouns, but someone else will reply to that comment and go “hey, just an FYI, they use they/them pronouns!” and then the other person is gonna reply and go “Shit, I didn't know, I’m so sorry!” We would not have done that on youtube in 2007. 

As a whole, mental health has become less taboo to talk about. If people aren’t comfortable talking to their friends in person about their anxiety or their depression or whatever, they can still talk about it online, and I think because people talk about it online more, it normalizes it; it’s okay to have feelings, it’s okay to be an emotional person. So, that brings me back to my point, about emo being cool again. 

Did your online presence extend elsewhere during that time, or was there more of a safe distance between you and others? Did you ever become close with anyone that way when you were younger? 
Yeah, totally. As a not very popular child, all of a sudden being able to meet people online, that was great. I made a friend on Xanga when I was fifteen, we’re still friends, we still talk to each other every now and then….I had multiple MySpaces, I was a pretty early Facebook user. “Raven” was my only real attempt at having a channel. 

Youtube was a lot different back then; you had your flash animations going around like Salad Fingers, you had people uploading their own little skits. Did you have any favorites, as someone making your own content? 
I remember YouTube in 2005, I discovered that there were old music videos there. I didn’t have cable growing up, my media was really censored. When I was fifteen or so I found music videos on there, and that was what really stuck out to me as being like, the most magical thing. There was a period of my life in 2005 where I would watch the music video for the Smashing Pumpkins song “Today,” every day before school. 

That’s a good start, that’s a good one. 
Yeah, yeah! I had like, the lyrics printed out and on my wall. I was talking to one of my friends about this, she was mentioning how YouTube was such a different place back then. The few sketches we could think of were all produced by men. A question she asked me was, “Who was the first woman you saw on youtube being genuinely funny?” We noticed that in those early days, if women were on youtube, they were being laughed at, not laughed with. 

Videos that went viral at the time, they were reinforcing that stereotype that women are emotional, and this is why it’s so funny. An example that we thought of was the Cara Cunningham “leave Britney alone” video. We realized that it got so much traction because here was a person being emotional, and also queer, and not being straight was a bigger thing then, too. So we talked a lot about how homophobia and misogyny led to “leave britney alone.” 

I was looking back through some of those comments, and I know you’ve probably talked about this a lot- but people were really concerned with you being “cringe”. It seems like most of the people who left nasty comments were also the ones who didn’t get the joke, and even then, they were weirdly angry about the idea of a couple of goth kids goofing off in front of the camera. What is so bad about being cringe? Is there anything else embarrassing you did as a teenager outside of youtube? 
I don’t consider my youtube channel embarrassing. I was doing it as a joke, I was doing it to troll people. I think the cringe comments came a little bit later. The initial comments we got were a lot more aggressive. Do I think things would be different today? Yes, I do. I think that some people really didn’t...there were definitely some people who got the joke. We got a number of comments from people who were like, oh my god, you guys are hilarious, this is comedy...The comments that I remember, though, before that, there were a lot that were unnecessarily violent. There were a ton of comments telling us to kill ourselves, that we should have been aborted, Azer was subjected to so much homophobia. I think that because we were young people- and I looked considerably younger than I was- there was also ageism coming into play. Kids aren’t really given an opportunity to be funny unless they’re being funny for other kids. 

I think a lot of that has changed, but back then, people saw those videos, I’ve got a natural intensity, so they assumed. I knew what to do and say to piss people off, and it worked! I was expecting comments more along the lines of, oh my god, ya’ll are posers, you call yourselves goth but you listen to Simple Plan. Instead, people saw young women...at the time, emo kids, alt kids, mall goths, they were everyone’s punchline. You combine all of these things, and it elicited something really vile and hateful from so many people. It was one of the reasons why Tara and I wanted to keep everything a secret for as long as possible. 

There’s a difference between “your jokes aren’t funny” and “oh my god, you are everything that’s wrong with society, go kill yourself you fat, ugly bitch,” and we were getting those comments every single day. What started out as something funny at first, over the course of ten to twelve years, if you’re exposed to that, it starts to become more personal. 

A large part of why we didn’t want to come forward was because we stopped reading the comments a long time ago. We didn’t pay attention because we didn’t want to see that shit again. I only came out in the first place because people had begun to link Raven to my dominatrix persona, Petra. Over the past few years, people would approach me and ask me if I was her, but because I made my character so much younger than I was, it was easy for me to deny it.

That’s got to be complicated, that makes sense. 
Yeah, so for the past twelve years or so, I was under the impression that we had created something that I personally thought was hilarious, but nobody thought was funny at all. Because the comments were so negative, I just assumed that if anyone linked the two, it would be like 2008 youtube all over again, that my work accounts would be spammed with all of this shit. Why would I allow any of that to permeate this persona that I’ve crafted for work- a persona that’s supposed to be this, like, all-powerful woman? 

I assumed that coming forward would be really bad for business. I was expecting to have to lock down social media until everything blew over. Towards the end of December 2020, there had been this sort of mystery surrounding Tara and Raven, this sort of internet manhunt trying to find out who we were. I was worried that if I didn’t out myself, that somebody would dox me in ways that were really damaging to me, but they wouldn’t have known what they were doing, because they were so caught up in that excitement and wanted to get that pat on the back. So, I came out as a preventative measure. I had no idea that I would be this well received, I had no idea that people liked the videos, that they thought I was funny. 

For the past twelve years I thought I’d created something that I thought was really funny, but nobody else thought was funny, and they hated it so much that they thought I should kill myself because of it! To be met with all of this positivity and interest and be told that people have liked my videos for years and they’ve thought I was funny for years, that’s such a weird mindfuck.

I think what’s so endearing- I hadn’t seen the other videos before, what always got me about the New Years’ video- you almost can’t tell if it’s a joke or not, and I’ve always enjoyed it because we were like that. We were all like that at one point, and then we started to get embarrassed. I’m glad they’re still up, they’re nice to look back on.
That’s really good to hear, I never thought that people found them so relatable. It’s been really cool to hear stuff about this, and to hear that people really related to my characters who were based on me, and who I used to be. It’s comforting.

In a lot of those videos you two address those people in character when you refer to “the haters.” Did it help the two of you navigate it, was it helpful to laugh at it, or was it just part of the script? 
Truthfully, we were doing it because I was trying to incite some sort of flame war. I was trying to troll these people back! I wanted the videos to go viral, I even put them on 4Chan and I was like, “Hey, get a load of these guys, how embarrassing! Look at these nerds, trying to pretend that they’re goth!” The people who we addressed [in the videos] were real people. This was before the comments started to leave the damage that they did, I’d see them and I’d go “Tara, we gotta reply, we gotta make them even more mad, this is what we gotta say…” 

One of my favorites is the rickroll video, you really can’t get more 2008 than that. Whose idea was it to make that video?
4Chan was very upset about the Ashley Tisdale cover. 4Chan was super pissed about the Ashley Tisdale cover. I went to Tara and I said, “Look, this is a big deal on the internet right now, we gotta do it, just trust me,” and so we did. I definitely don’t understand how people saw that and still thought our videos were real. 

What’s a trend from the 2000s that you love and would want to come back? 
This is what I want: I want the original hot topic back. I want Hot Topic to be scary again, I want the old font, I want it to look like a cave when you enter, the old Hot Topic smell. I want parents to still be afraid of Hot Topic. Did you ever write on your jeans in Sharpie, or was that just me?

I wrote on my shoes in Sharpie a lot. 
I wrote on my shoes and my jeans in sharpie, but- truthfully, I want the old Hot Topic back. 

True or false: Have you ever written fan fiction?
No, I have never written fan fiction. 

Damn. 
That was something that I just...I never did. 

You know, that’s probably...that’s good. Good for you. 

You can keep this one PG-13, but: What’s the funniest or strangest thing someone has said to you within the context of work?
I’m so desensitized to my job that I forget that a lot of things are shocking to people. With the video I made at the beginning of the month, I just ended it with “Yeah, I’m a professional dominatrix” because they’d flooded my work accounts already, it was old news. I forgot that it’s a very exciting thing to a lot of people. I got so many comments after releasing that like, “What the fuck did she just say in the last second of the video?!” I thought they were excited about the old footage I was going to release, but they were really excited about my work….I forget that things that are funny to me are super shocking to other people. 

Someone I have an arrangement with, he’s this punk dude, and I know that punks and people who are really into music are very proud of their tastes in music, they’re very proud of the fact that they have a good taste in music, and I know these things because I am one of those people. I once wrote in candle wax, “I <3 KID ROCK” on his back. It took up his whole back, and I took a bunch of pictures, and he died, it was so fucking funny. He was like, “How could you?!” 

See, that’s funny! That sort of leads into my next question: Do you think there’s any connection between who you were as a young person making those videos and the work you do now, in terms of creativity and being able to laugh at yourself? 
Yes and no. There are similarities, that mostly stem from having a psychological understanding of people, and being able to improvise. The New Years’ Eve video was probably the one that was the least improvised. For the most part, things were improvised, and we knew we could do really ridiculous shit and not break character. 

Because of the trolling, there was the psychology of knowing how to get under people’s skin. With being a dominatrix, for example: everything is so individualized, you have to be good at honing in on those things really quickly, you have to get inside their head. Like with trolling people, you have to pick up really quickly on where they’re coming from, and even if you think you know, you might not actually know. You just have to have that awareness of other people and where other people’s thoughts come from. There’s definitely some crossover between the two personas. I definitely love laughing at people and cracking dumb jokes. Using comedy to mindfuck people is great. 

You mentioned on Instagram that you want to do more comedy writing. What are some of your ideas? Do you want to make more videos, or try something different? Do you even know? 
I really don’t know at this point, because again, this whole reception has been so unexpected. I came out two weeks ago, and I really wasn’t expecting any of this at all! I was going into it with the expectation of things going poorly, I would retreat into my online hermit cave and wait for it to blow over. For so long, I’ve subconsciously not given myself permission to explore these interests. The YouTube comments definitely had a lot to do with it, but as I got older, the stigma that came with being a sex worker got in the way. 

I signed up for improv classes in 2016 and dropped out because all of these questions came up. what happens if someone recognizes me....it raised all of these weird questions that I didn’t have an answer for. People still lose their jobs for this stuff, you know? “It doesn’t matter how funny I am because I’m not presentable.” I never gave myself permission, but now I’m realizing that maybe I can make this work. 

All of that has been very liberating, and I’m very privileged that I can say that, because most of the time, that is not the case for sex workers. People would ask me what I would do instead, and now all of a sudden I’m getting permission from all of these people that I can do that now. I want to try everything! I’ve got so many things that I want to explore now. 

I feel like nowadays people are more receptive to the weird. Eric Andre gets naked every single time he performs. He gets naked, and that’s his thing, that’s what he does. 
Yeah! Yeah, and that’s really exciting. 

Do you think that, between navigating youtube and your work, is there sort of a spot for girls to be weird online? Are there any positives at all? 
Yeah, and like I said earlier, there will always be people who are going to be dicks. I’m very protective of young people, it does bother me that young women, young people period can still be subjected to so much cruelty. I think that things are changing- even if there is still that cruelty, women and nonbinary, queer folks, people who aren’t straight, white cis males, will be subjected to much more scrutiny online, but I think that things have changed a lot since 2007, and that there is more of a place for people to be weird. 

---

At 27 years old, Robin Green is still emo, wants to know if her Meez are doing okay, and may or may not have pictures of Gerard Way saved on her phone. You can find her in Bellingham, Washington, and on Twitter at robinelizabth. 

Returning to Completion - An Interview With Coaltar of the Deepers

When is a work of art finished? Rembrandt spoke to this question when he said, “A work of art is complete when in it the artist has realized his intention.” It’s a question that I keep coming back to as I listen to Revenge of the Visitors, the new(ish) album from Japanese shoegazers Coaltar of the Deepers. The album is a re-imagined spin on the band’s 1994 debut, The Visitors From Deepspace, featuring the original members. So, after twenty-seven years, why has Coaltar of the Deepers felt compelled to rework the album? 

The Visitors From Deepspace was, and still is, a triumph of shoegaze. It helped set the foundations of the heavy shoegaze popularized by bands such as Hum and Deftones by incorporating elements of death and thrash metal as well as the anthemic hooks of alternative rock with shoegaze’s ethereal textures. Traditionally, artists reissue an older album with a remastered mix and add some bonus cuts or commission other artists to remix the songs in their own image. Coaltar of the Deepers eschew this path in favor of tinkering with an old work in the hopes of making something new. Segments of songs have been altered through both addition and subtraction. Sometimes the edits are slight and require a keen ear to notice, but a select few are striking in difference from the 1994 versions. It’s a risk to attempt something like this. By altering the past, the band could easily take away from the infectious energy of The Visitors From Deepspace, but I am here to tell you that Revenge of the Visitors is a resounding success. 

Within seconds of hitting play on Revenge of the Visitors, the difference between the two albums is clear. As you would expect from twenty-seven years of technological advancements and artistic development, the most noticeable change is heard in the album’s sound. The drums benefit the most from this improvement as each hit rings, distinctly amplifying the frenetic pace that is kept throughout the album. The original vocals are often straightforward and struggle to stand out from the loud guitars, whereas the new renditions are elegantly layered, resulting in a fuller sound. Revenge of the Visitors finds the band leaning into their love of metal. 

In regards to production, the changes between the two albums range from subtle to sweeping. Their thunderous death metal cover of The Cure’s “Killing An Arab” is punchier, and the new distorted growls of lead singer NARASAKI bring to mind the gurgling bellow of Mortician’s Will Rahmer. “Earth Thing” and “Summer Days (Revenge)” each replace clean vocals for harsh shrieks giving the songs sick yet pleasurable twists that keep them fresh. The most prominent omission is the decision to remove the ska horns from “Blink (Revenge).” It’s a wise choice as the brass sound feels dated and out of place from the rest of the album. The closing track “The Visitors (Revenge)” is the furthest departure from its counterpart, ditching what was once an abrasive hardcore song for haunting psychedelic ambiance.

Revenge of the Visitors is an improvement on The Visitors From Deepspace in many different ways, but it’s also a new experience. The band understands that the energy and passion in the performances is what makes their debut great, and they have heightened these strengths through thoughtful and precise edits. It takes courage for an artist to trust their vision and alter a work that many believe to be complete and magnificent. Coaltar of the Deepers are teaching us a lesson in trust, and Revenge of the Visitors is a 27-year-old reminder that a work of art may never be as complete as its audience sees it.

I sat down with NARASAKI, lead singer and guitarist of Coaltar of the Deepers, to discuss recreating songs, getting the band back together, and diverging from artistic expectations. 

---

More often than not, bands decide to just reissue an album with a new mix to the sound, but you have gone in a different direction. What led you to revisit and re-imagine your debut album, The Visitors From Deepspace, as Revenge of the Visitors? 
First of all, regarding this release, it is important to have early members do live gigs now, and since a new album was needed for the overseas tour, those members re-recorded the first album. We had a hard time because I thought it was impossible to make a retake that exceeds the original.

Following up on the previous question, some of the songs feature significant changes from their 1994 versions. For example, “The Visitors (Revenge)” is a haunting ambient track where the original is an intense hardcore song. How did you decide which parts of songs would be altered?
There is no doubt that this song was, and still is, an improvisation that everyone records as a jam. Both the 1994 version and the 2021 version are about 20 minutes in total, but it is an excerpt from that part. This time, the same theme as last time was included, but it was never used. This sound is used to signal that the VISITORS have already invaded.

One of the most exciting things about your music is how you incorporate different genres and sounds to create something truly unique. Regarding your songwriting process, are you making a conscious effort to blend genres, or is it something that just happens naturally?
I wasn't messing around naturally; I was trying to do something strange. Because at that time, I thought that uniqueness was the identity of the band. Music around the early ‘90s had a genre called crossover, and this album was influenced by it.

I sometimes feel that shoegaze bands can be overly somber and serious but, your music is very anthemic and whimsical. Do you feel that this is a fair assessment of your sound?
Yes, I do. I'm familiar with shoegaze as a genre, but I was originally a hardcore punk band, so it's better to do an aggressive live performance. Isn’t it funny doing that shoegaze sound with a deformed guitar with a sharp head in the first place?

It’s clear that your sound is inspired by alternative rock and shoegaze, but some of my favorite moments on Revenge of the Visitors are the flashes of death and thrash metal. Who are your influences when it comes to the harder metal side of your sound?
I like fast and heavy metal sounds. At that time, a grindcore band called Terrorizer was a favorite. On the contrary, I have hardly heard heavy metal that is light and has a melody in the song.

Heavy shoegaze has become very relevant the past few years, with newer bands like Greet Death and Narrow Head making strong albums as well as established veterans Hum making a fantastic comeback. Do you associate yourself alongside bands such as these? 
No, I don’t think so. But I like those bands, they all have great sound. I think we are not allowed to enter any frame. We are always trespassing LOL.

While Coaltar of the Deepers has been consistently active the past few years, this is the first full album since 2007. Do you have plans to release more music in the future?
I'm thinking of a new attempt, and I'm already recording it. I think it will be released once it is organized.

---

Connor lives in San Francisco with his partner and their cat, Toni. Connor has an MFA in creative writing and is working toward becoming a community college professor. When he isn’t listening to music or writing about killer riffs, Connor is obsessing over coffee and sandwiches.

Follow him on Twitter or Instagram.

Someone Once Told Me 001 – Nicole Boychuk (I Hate Sex, Illustrator)

In the first few bitter cold months of the past, wretched year I found myself chatting with a friend about how much we mutually disliked Midsommer (2019). After sharing a couple laughs over the half-baked plotline, we started to steer in to more vested conversation (the kind where one walks away learning something they will always keep with them) where I was first told something I would think about each day after: "Your friends are your future".

The above-mentioned friend-in-conversation is Nicole Boychuk. You may know her from past project: I Hate Sex, or her series of illustrations on Instagram, or on a much more personal level lucky enough to call her friend.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by nicole boychuk (@nic666le)

Whatever the connection may be, and for whatever reason you may be here reading this; let me be the first to welcome you to Someone Once Told Me. Short-form conversations with artists and creatives about the best advice they've ever received. 

---

Alex Couts: Let's start with some history. Who told you this advice and how do they fit in your life? Where were you when you received this advice?

Nicole Boychuk: The advice came from Nicolas Field, who I met through the community after seeing his band La Luna in 2013. La Luna was the first time I had ever seen someone who looked like me playing aggressive music and having that admiration and inspiration from Vanessa Fever (Vocals in La Luna) compelled me to do the same.

Over time, due to the remote nature of Alberta, IHS and La Luna formed a strong touring bond with one another, sharing each others' cities weekend after weekend and being perpetually inspired by the community they were experiencing and the art they were creating.

Eventually, La Luna moved their operation to Toronto and Nicolas and Vanessa became a part of the beloved New Friends Fest. In 2018, IHS was able to play their final show as NFF headliner. After flying in a couple days ahead of the rest of the band, Nicolas and I were on our way to the airport for them, discussing future endeavors and ambitions.

absorbing the luxury of the moment, Nicolas mentioned in passing "Your friends are your future" while talking about the insanity that we were even able to be there--doing music at such a complete level--entirely because of the steps we had taken in one another's lives.

That is what caused me to think more about what had happened entirely leading up to where I was in that moment. That there would never be any possibility of doing anything like this without the engagement of friends. Fully understanding the weight of the connections and people that you will meet, and how they will inform the steps you take to the different places in your life.

I need to mention this isn't networking or some business connection, this is about seeking the company you keep to be there to build you up and help you grow due to the love that they are there to show you. It's about finding the people in your life that will mean the most to you and working hard to keep them there.

A: Noting that IHS is much a past part of your life, how do you find yourself applying the advice forward in your life?

N: IHS is a closed chapter of my own life now, that has its own fondness and nostalgia, so the phrase takes on a new meaning for me than it did in that moment when I first heard it.

I think of it as a measure of mindfulness, returning to it most when watching the shallow performance of social media unfold in front of me most days. I see people engaging with others across platforms, with clear intentions of their statements and actions being only for personal gain.

There's a lot of concern coming from people to be strongly individualistic, and present that forward as much as they can through platforms. From my view, it would seem like we could all learn to be better to one another if there was effort to be less individualistic and focus on connecting with people in whole ways and be able to look back on things with sentiment.

This interview for example; I am not thinking about this as "Alex is going to write about me and my band and then so many people are going to read it and the art is going to be so much more popular," .. I am thinking about waking up tomorrow morning being happy that we got to spend this time together to talk about something meaningful and sentimental we share with one another and be that much closer because of it. There is a rather simplistic nature to it all, and the value of the moment in connection and what that adds to the foundation of our relationship is much more important to me than whatever may become of this piece.  

A: You drew the intentions of this series right out of me. The whole reason I started this was to create focused opportunities to have engaging and meaningful conversations with friends, strangers, and whoever else has something to share. I'm not here for personal gain, and the goal of putting better advice into the world is only secondary. Maybe it's selfish, but I mostly want to hear what my friends have to say about their life experiences. SOTM is just a catalyst to have that conversation.

A: Who needs to hear this advice? What kind of resolve do you imagine this bringing to someone hearing it for the first time?

N: I think people exploring new creative ventures, especially those with a method of exchange in some way, would benefit from hearing this the most. Especially after this past year, people will need this idea re-enforced after being so distant from one another, and not having as immediately apparent feelings of community and friends.

It hasn't been as easy to see the little red strings that connect us through everything this past year.

A: red strings?

N: Like a PI mapping out their investigation. Think about it this way: if one of us is at the top of the mountain, whatever accomplishment that is, everyone that was involved or we experienced in getting there are the stones that lead us up the path. I'm thinking a lot about Tim Richard right now, who was like IHS's secretary.

... the I Hate Sex-cretary..

A: nice.

N: We would spend eight or so hours a day together through classes in university, which is how we came to know one another and he came to be involved with the band. He was never an "official" member, but IHS would have never been what it was without his efforts. He put together promo materials, did merch, came to countless shows, helped us out with places to sleep. We would have never survived as a band if it weren't for the kindness and love that Tim showed us. If that relationship never existed, none of IHS would have been known for what it is.

A: Let's wrap everything here together with one last present, future outlook: how has this advice influenced how you live and interact with others?

N: I think the way the advice has impacted me is putting value in the connections and the little red strings that connect all of us, and create something bigger than any of our respective individuality.

Lately, I've been hard at work putting together a discography release and have learned that the process is leaning on those past relationships more now than ever. Feeling much as if there is no reason why anyone should be helping out with this, but finding that they are because of the cemented and personal natures of our relationships. There are so many people out there in the world, some I've never even met in person, that are willing to give parts of themselves to this effort.

It's been a gift to realize so fully that the people you surround yourself with, and have made it into your circle, are there for a reason. They are choosing to be there to share their kindness and love with you because of the love that you have shown them, and that beauty is so needing to be appreciated.
I made a tweet earlier this year (and then probably deleted it) during a rougher time that read something like: "there are people in your life who put up with your shitty existence for whatever reason, you need to thank them for that."

A: retweet.

---

I Hate Sex was a screamo band from Edmonton, and Nicole Boychuk is the bleeding heart of meaningful connection that anchored the group's sound over the years. As written in the sacred scripture of skramz and needs to be remembered now more than ever: "skramz is for friends, but there is no happy here"

Someone Once Told Me is a collection of conversations with artists and creatives about the best life advice they have ever received. Our logo is by Nicole Boychuk and my name is Alex Couts and I'd love to hear what you have to say. Drop a line on Twitter @VirusesForFree or just shout profanities at me from a moving car. Both are equally effective. 

Finding Balance Amidst Chaos - An Interview with Portrayal of Guilt

Photo: Addrian Jafaritabar

Content Warning: This article discusses themes of self-harm and suicide.

It’s very easy to get hung up trying to describe the sound of Portrayal of Guilt. Is this hardcore? Perhaps it’s black metal? Could it even be screamo? Ultimately, these questions are merely distractions because all that really matters is that the music is straight-up brutal. The band is adept when it comes to infusing their caustic fury with elements of hardcore, black metal, harsh noise, even ambient, and their sophomore LP, We Are Always Alone, is a perfect distillation of this collage. 

“The Second Coming” kickstarts the album with dizzying riffs and thunderous blast beats that prop up Matt King’s throat-shredding snarls. In just thirty-three seconds, the song shifts to a refrain that is indebted to screamo before a coda of eerie ambient sounds wraps up the track. In just one minute and thirty-nine seconds, Portrayal of Guilt is able to deliver a thesis of who they are as a band; they make music that is intense, loud, challenging yet rewarding, and most importantly, downright evil. 

The album is a document displaying how Portrayal of Guilt has grown as a band. Let Pain Be Your Guide, the group’s debut album, drew the blueprint of what was to come; it’s a hardcore album that dabbles with foreign sonic textures. We Are Always Alone finds Portrayal of Guilt in a state of balance as its influences come in and out of focus, serving the songs with efficiency. 

It must also be noted that Matt King’s lyrics are incredibly sharp on We Are Always Alone. While at times challenging to decipher due to his visceral shrieks, King’s songwriting explores themes of despair, pain, and death. “My Immolation” tells the story of a person who is dissatisfied with their life and resorts to burning themself alive in their house. King examines this sorrow with unflinching clarity singing, “I’ve never felt so alive. / My vision fades away as I watch my skin and bones melt / away and turn to ash. / This is where I belong.” It’s a bleak and harrowing sentiment. While many of the songs could be seen as suicidal, King is in no way glorifying self-harm; rather, he is analyzing the emotional and mental anguish of a person struggling with such thoughts.

These lyrical motifs help to bolster the sonic menace created by the band, resulting in a listening experience that is taxing yet gratifying. Portrayal of Guilt brings a lot to the table; the lyrics are dour but sharp, and the instrumentation is abrasive and exhilarating, this allows listeners to view their work from myriad angles. Personally, I was introduced to the band from a metal perspective, and I found the genre tag to be fitting. It’s exciting when a band can be embraced and shared by fans of multiple scenes. While the group might not be a crossover act in the traditional sense, they are a band that moves between subgenres without alienating fans. No matter how you view them or what genre you ascribe to Portrayal of Guilt, all that matters is how hard We Are Always Alone rips.

To get a sense of where the band is coming from, we spoke with Portrayal of Guilt’s singer and guitarist, Matt King.

---

The band’s genre and sound always seems to be a hot topic when you are being talked about. With the release of We Are Always Alone, it’s easy to see why people are so interested in this discussion as the album features elements of black metal, hardcore, harsh noise, and ambient, yet you have previously stated that, to you, Portrayal of Guilt merely is punk. What does it mean to you to be punk and to make punk music?
Punk, in my opinion, means having complete artistic freedom, where no preconceived rules or ideas exist. Creating something out of nothing based solely on what you enjoy and completely ignoring any thoughts or opinions on the outside while holding nothing back. Just genuinely doing you. That's just my first thought. We're not trying to please anyone, we're just having fun and doing what we want to do, no exceptions.

As a follow-up, what do you think of fans’ discussion of your genre and sound? To me, it shows the band’s versatility and appeal.
I think it's funny as much as it is interesting to see what people think about what we're doing. None of it matters, though we appreciate anyone taking the time to listen to us and give their thoughtful opinion. Call it black metal, hardcore, whatever. None of it is taken into consideration.

Many of the songs on We Are Always Alone are longer than those on previous releases while also seemingly pulling from more genres than before. Was this a conscious effort on your part to go longer and diversify your sound, or was it more of a natural progression?
It was 100% natural progression. Personally, my attention span is so short I can't even get through longer songs as a listener, so the fact we were able to put together a 4+ minute song is pretty incredible.

Your lyrics are often bleak and brutal, featuring themes focused on depression, failure, pain, and suffering. When it comes to constructing a song, do you write lyrics to serve the sound of the music, or is the music meant to serve the anguish depicted in the lyrics?
The lyrics are written and then altered to cater to the music when it comes time to record, though those are two completely separate things.

Texas has a rich punk and metal history. Do you see yourselves as descendants of previous Texan bands and scenes? If so, do you draw inspiration from any of these bands, and is there a certain amount of pride in being known as a Texan band?
No, not really. I can't say we were ever embraced by the scene here, but that might be by choice. We have made a point to follow our own path, although we have massive respect for the Texan bands before us. We will always claim Texas, of course. That's where we're from.

We Are Always Alone was released by Closed Casket Activities, but you also operate your own label, Portrayal of Guilt Records. What made you want to start your own label? What can we expect from future releases?
It has been a goal since we started to operate as a band and as a label, where we're able to release our own records as well as records for our friends and affiliates. We're working on creating our own realm. I only started taking the label seriously as of a couple of months ago, but you can expect multiple cassette and vinyl releases down the line from those friends and affiliates. I'm looking forward to seeing how far we can take this idea.

The album was recorded during the pandemic, and the idea of the “pandemic album” seems to be discussed ad nauseam, yet it holds some merit as every person is affected by the pandemic. Is We Are Always Alone a response to the pandemic in any sort of way?
Not at all. We wrote this album months before the idea of an upcoming worldwide pandemic existed, although it was recorded at the beginning of the lockdown in our area. Perhaps that had an effect on the energy presented within.

With touring postponed for the foreseeable future, are you pivoting to other methods such as livestreams in order to promote the album?
I don't really like the idea of a livestream, personally. We recorded and edited a video of ourselves playing a few songs recently, but even then, it was nowhere near the same energy as a live show. We'd prefer just to wait it out. With no touring going on, it helps us focus on writing for more upcoming releases, which we have planned for the rest of the year.

---

Connor lives in San Francisco with his partner and their cat, Toni. Connor has an MFA in creative writing and is working toward becoming a community college professor. When he isn’t listening to music or writing about killer riffs, Connor is obsessing over coffee and sandwiches.

Follow him on Twitter or Instagram.