Jennifer: When did you first get involved in hardcore, and how?
Dom: I was into music for as long as I can remember. My earliest memories involve dragging my mom into the Music World at the mall or Towers and begging her to buy me records and tapes instead of toys. I started getting into metal because of this show called “Toronto Rocks” that would come on TV, and they would always play stuff like Helix and Van Halen. I loved Van Halen. So, one day, my mom comes home from the store and was like (in her Italian mom accent), “I got-a you this-a record you like-a.” And I got so excited thinking it was gonna be 1984, right? She ended up giving me Lionel Richie - Can’t Slow Down. The one where he’s like, doing the splits on a pole in the gatefold. I was pretty bummed. In hindsight, I don’t fault her decision too much, though. That record is pretty sweet. Anyways, growing up, fascination with hard rock became obsession with metal. This is going back to like, being in elementary school. I met my best friend Jay in sixth grade, and together, we just got into every band we could get our hands on. Old school metal bands, hair metal bands, and then thrash/crossover bands that led us to bands like Suicidal, DRI, SOD, Dayglos… Stuff like that. But as far as a “formal introduction” to hardcore as we know it today, it was probably like… 1994 or something? I can’t remember specifically what came first—it may have been a show an old band played at a club called Asbury Alley in Buffalo with a band called Against All Hope. They were an amazing fast melodic hardcore band. It was either that, or it was Madball on their Set It Off tour. It was a free show on a Monday night with Dog Eat Dog and Downset.
J: Solid beginning.
D: And then, you know, from there, the trick was—you’d buy an album and scour the thanks list to see what bands they thanked. This was before downloading, so you would just hope that the record store had it, or even better, you’d find some used. Record shopping was a lot of fun back then. You had a lot of great stores like Record Peddler, Rotate This, Vortex, Neurotica--I actually discovered Ringworm’s The Promise CD at Neurotica back then… I still have it, too!
J: As well you should.
D: Thinking about that time in life reminds me of a game we used to play at the time called “Metal from the Heavens.” We used walk the upstairs level of the mall looking down to the lower level to find metalheads that would be hanging out. From there, we’d take whatever token metal record we had that day, it was definitely Kill ‘Em All at least one time. We’d punch a hole in it, tie a string through it, and gently lower it from above so that it would be floating beside an unsuspecting, lone metalhead. Once it had his attention, we’d try to pull it up real quick as if it was never there. [J laughs] We were always doing dumb things like that. Our friend, Goatlord, who sang for XCoalition Against ShaneX, would always try to trade in his awful rap tapes at these second hand shops so he could get new records. At the end of the day he’d end up with a sack of tapes no one wanted, so we used to drive out to coffee shops in Woodbridge where all the guidos would hang out and rev up their Mustangs… You know what I mean? Dudes with slammed Corsicas that had little fire extinguishers inside. [J laughs] So yeah, we used to creep up drive-by style and pelt them with all the rap tapes no one in the world wanted. Imagine how odd it would be if you’re hanging out with your dudes, boasting to some girl about your car… And then, all of a sudden, you’re all caught in a storm of projectiles in the form of MC Hammer, Vanilla Ice, Heavy D and the Boys, and PM Dawn’s recorded legacy. It was wild.
J: How did you start getting involved with playing in bands? Was that something kind of immediate, or was it later on?
D: No, no, I’ve been playing with bands since like… 6th grade was the first band I was ever in. We were called the Sex Toys. We weren’t very good. [J: That’s pretty mature for 6th grade.] It was pretty sweet. [D and J laugh] We wanted to sound like the Ramones. It was me and my best friend, Jay (aka Motor), who went on to play in Day of Mourning with me and then moved to the West Coast and played in Blue Monday and Champion, Circles, and all of those Northwest bands. But yeah, he and I have been playing in bands together ever since we were little kids. It wasn’t always punk or hardcore, though. We had all kinds of bands and styles we were trying out. We had a band that sounded like Jane’s Addiction called Creed. [J: You were in Creed?!] This was in the early 90s. Like 1991 or ‘92. I remember being kids and wanting to play this venue called the Concert Hall so badly. We’d go see shows there with Pantera, White Zombie, Melvins, Sacred Reich. Tons of great shows. So yeah, it was about that time we started to get into bands like Life of Agony, Biohazard, Sepultura, all the stuff that was on Roadrunner. We decided to break up Creed and start a band called Dirge with our friend Fawad who we loved because he could sing like Max Cavalera. We weren’t very good at the time, but were definitely starting to head in the right direction. It was like a hybrid of the Roadrunner bands mixed with White Zombie and Pantera. Dirge was a lot of fun, though. When we started out, none of us had a driver’s license, so we would hump all our gear, drums, guitar, cabinets and all onto the bus and subway train into the city to play ridiculously bad shows at clubs like the Opera House or the Gasworks. Which you may or may not remember from the movie Wayne’s World. [J: Of course.] It was far less glamorous than the movie portrayed it to be. It was a real hole in the wall with a leaky sewer main above the drumset. Kinda like a weird prophecy for the United Blood Flood that would happen years later. To make it worse, these shows would go down on like a Tuesday night, when someone would call us to play a few hours before the show to open up for washed up hair metal. Which kinda ruled, because I always loved hair metal, but that’s another story for another day. There was also a club called The Generator, which was on the west side of town across from a mental asylum. Crazies would totally wander in from across the street in gowns--it was crazy. I saw Dayglo Abortions play there once and it was the scariest show I’ve ever been to. The singer kept throwing glass bottles at the ceiling and it was just raining glass the whole time. It wasn’t Cretin, though, it was the second guy they had singing. From there, we started touring the Northeast and got to play cool shows with bands like Indecision, Overcast, Dissolve—It was like taking the final lessons to becoming the band we wanted to be. Then, we had a van wreck that cost Jay one of his fingers, which messed our whole world up. It was pretty gruesome. We took some time off to figure out what to do. Me and Goatlord had a joke band called XCoalition Against ShaneX that did a couple demos and a split CD with the metal god THOR—we loved THOR—while Jay went to therapy and got his hand back to the point where he could play drums again. It took less than a year before he was back in playing form and we decided to start a new band called Day of Mourning.
J: Did you like Day of Mourning?
D: In hindsight, it had some cool things going on. I liked the music a lot. I thought the music was cool. For being a kid and writing it, it was pretty heavy. The recordings we did at Mars still sound heavy when I go back and listen to them now, almost 15 years later. They don’t really sound dated in comparison to what’s out now. This was around the time my obsession with Cleveland hardcore was at its peak. I had seen Ringworm a bunch of times, but Integrity was in the 2000 phase and not really doing much show-wise. This was when I met Dwid for the first time. He was really cool to me and agreed to come and do guest vocals—I remember before he came up, Bill Korecky was all excited because he was wearing a shirt he knew was gonna piss Dwid off. When Dwid showed up, he was wearing a shirt intended to piss Korecky off. Dwid was actually kind of mean. [D and J laugh] He didn’t really listen to the song or read the lyrics. And I asked him if he wanted to go over anything, and he says in his evil Dwid rasp, “Ahhhhh, I’ve been in a studio before,” and just went in and ripped it. He brought a theramin in and was doing all this crazy stuff. It was awesome. Whenever people say this and that about him, I always remember how cool he was back then to just come in and record with a bunch of kids that loved his band. That session spawned one of the most interesting and favorite relationships I’ve endured with another person for so many years. He’s an A+ dude. Furnacio came in and sang on a track as well, and killed it. He has a great voice. This was around the time Ringworm was just starting to play shows again and were touting the Madness of War tape. The original mix CD-R of Day of Mourning’s sessions we burned at Mars that day actually has the Madness of War demo on it. Day of Mourning was the first band that did any sort of extensive touring. We did all of Canada and most of the East Coast a few times. Released a few albums, but it’s like anything else: You’d change a few things if you could, but overall, I’m not embarrassed about it at all. I think it’s pretty cool. There are demos for the last LP that managed to get out that I really enjoyed listening to years later. If that record ended up being recorded, I think it would have been really cool. We broke up a week before we were supposed to do our first full US tour with Association Area, this weird band the guys who did Doom Hauled fanzine were in. Our last show was in Montreal, and it was a banger.
J: As far as your past bands go, what was your favorite one that you’ve played in?
D: Um… I don’t know, I like them all for different reasons, but Pulling Teeth is definitely my favorite, if I had to pick. Pulling Teeth has perfect chemistry between all the members, never any in-fighting, and everything, the entire musical output, is totally solid. And everyone’s on the same page with, like—whether we were touring all the time, or now, when we’re not touring at all. There’s no delusions or ridiculous expectations. Everyone’s just happy to hang out and do whatever, you know?
J: How did Pulling Teeth come about?
D: It came about from wanting to start a band that kind of picked up with leftover Day of Mourning stuff. I was doing Slumlords for some of those years in between, and Slumlords was cool and a lot of fun, but totally different for me as far songwriting style goes. I wanted to do a band that ripped off my two favorite hardcore bands equally: Part Integrity, part Left For Dead. At that point, I kind of knew everyone in the city and what they were about and who I’d want to play with. So I tried to construct this Voltron-like supergroup. The original lineup was supposed to be Alex, Mike Riley, Dougie Fresh, and Alex D. from Government Warning. That lineup minus DiMatessa recorded the demo and played the first couple of shows. TheXBeast (Alex) moved to Iowa right after we recorded the demo and was off tattooing. So we had a huge smorgasbord of members come and go. We had dudes from Ruiner: Joe Red from their 7” took over on drums, and Smeal would fill in all the time on bass. We would never tell him about shows—we never knew who was gonna play the shows, so we would say yes to shows before we figured out who’s gonna play. So we’d call him up the day of and be like, “Hey, dude, can you play a show?” And he’d get mad but would always play. We added Kuhns on bass and Gus from Never Enough on second guitar. Kuhns was this annoying kid who would always say stuff like, “Heyyyyyy dude, how was your daayyy?” At first everyone thought he was a snarky little kid but soon realized that’s just the way he is.
J: So you enjoyed being in bands with these people.
D: Gus is hands down the funniest dude I have ever been in a band with in my entire life. One time, we were in the middle of a long van ride and made up this band called Benchpress from New Jersey. We decided our “boyz” from New Jersey should be playing all our shows that weekend. So Gus would call all the promoters as “Gym” (Jim) from Benchpress and not only invite themselves onto the bill, but negotiate a guarantee and a place to park the van that was already outside the venue. Benchpress were hard dudes. They took no prisoners. He called Bob Mac trying to invite themselves onto Posi Numbers fest. Bob Mac, Sr. picked up the phone, and he ended up selling Bob Mac’s dad on getting the band on the fest:
“Bob Sr.: Bob’s not here, this is his dad.
Gus: Well, tell me this much: You like Biohazard, right?
Bob Sr.: Uhhh…
Gus: Yo, we make them look like infants. Yo, come on, tell your son to put Benchpress on his fest.”
He’d just go on and on. He was amazing. As much fun as these dudes were to hang out with, musically it wasn’t happening without Alex in the band. I was ready to pack it up when all of a sudden, TheXBeast moved back into town. We were both at a 25 ta Life show, of all places. [J: Where magic happens.] Exactly. You know what? None of this would have happened if it wasn’t for Rick ta Life, in one way or another. So yeah, we decided to treat this band more seriously than anything we’d done up that point. Alex came back and we replaced Gus with Tony Hare, who was more in tune with the metal direction we were leaning towards. If there was anyone in the city I wanted to be in a two-guitar band with, it was him: The weird kid that looked like Skeletor. Everything just fell into place.
J: When was that, that this all started?
D: That was—Pulling Teeth started in 2005, and by 2006, we recorded the 10” (Vicious Skin) and everything was in place. On our first trip overseas, we played this fest in London called Ninjafest. Kuhn’s co-workers at his law firm gave him a going away gift for tour… a package of disposable underwear. Kinda thoughtful, kinda practical, right? It was like part paper towel and something that looked like Tyvek. Every day I’d try to give him wedgies and rip his underwear, and on the last day I took it even further and pulled them up for a totally sick wedgie and then pulled out a lighter and set them on fire. I was imagining his underwear bursting into flames, but instead they melted onto my hand, instantly forming this plastic semi-glove which I had to peel off, leaving a scar. [J laughs] His behind is forever burned into my hand. He’s my dude forever. That time and era of the band was just a lot of fun. It was when we were really hungry, and we’d play like three—two or three shows a night if we could, and just play anywhere that we could, and were just hellbent on getting out there. Whereas now, it’s just… We play when we want, you know? It’s changed a lot.
J: You guys obviously have played places like Yesterday’s, where there’s five people, and This Is Hardcore, where there’s thousands of people. What’s that like? Do you prefer one over the other?
D: I mean, everyone likes playing shows where there are more people at and things are crazier. Anyone who tells you otherwise is a liar, especially if his name is Mike Riley. But what rules about PT is that no matter what or how many people there were there, we’d find a way to make it fun. Wheeling was a lot of fun. I remember this girl and her boyfriend were getting totally inappropriate in the parking lot. [J: I do recall that, yes.] And, uh… I don’t know how to put it without being vulgar, but… Orally inappropriate. [J laughs] We’ll call it orally inappropriate. And we were just like, “Ah, man! That’s gross!” Because right after the deed was done, she came up and was like, “Hey, guys!” Talking to us and stuff. And I was like, “It’s Alex’s birthday, give him a kiss!” Alex didn’t know. Everyone was like, “Yeah, give Alex a kiss!” And TheXBeast was all like, “Gawd damn it, I don’t want to kiss this girl! What’s going on!”
J: Did she kiss him?
D: No! [J: For the record, no.] It was really foul. [D and J laugh] But yeah, it doesn’t matter. At the end of the—I mean, now it’s different, with a family. As much as I would love to say yes to every kid that likes PT and play their basement for free, it’s just not feasible. I’ve gotta go to a job every day, and then I run the label when I get home until I fall asleep. Ugh. Nowadays, whenever a show comes up, whether I’m playing or attending, I have to weigh out what I’m going to wish I did years from now, and that always equates to hanging with my wife watching our daughter crawl around over seeing AF for the hundredth time. So… the days of Wheeling are behind us. That won’t be happening again anytime soon. Thankfully.
J: What’s it like, playing the bigger fests?
D: It’s a lot of fun, I love it. It’s still mind blowing to us that so many kids like this band. It’s just cool. I feel like it’s not your fly-by-night—I mean, every band has your fly-by-night kids that like whatever’s hot on the B9 board that week, and then next week, they like something else, but Pulling Teeth’s always managed to keep the same people around and just add to them. Just like any other band, you’ve got the people who fall off or lose interest or whatever, but the general core of people just kind of stick around, and watch the band grow up,
J: Can you talk a little about Pulling Teeth’s progression? From how they started out, to where they are now, to where you’re kind of going?
D: Well, when we started, the whole idea was to start a band that sounded—that ripped off Integrity and Left for Dead. That’s what we did on the demo. I love hardcore, but I’ve never been a stereotypical, 100% “hardcore dude.” That’s just never been me. I’ve always had a broad interest in different kinds of music, and that started to seep in as we made more records. More Black Sabbath would start to come in, and more Slayer, and before you knew it, it was just full blown--all kinds of stuff was going on. Doom stuff on the last record on the ambient side, with Paranoid Delusions/Paradise Illusions. And the new record’s even crazier. It’s a two-record set, it’s called Funerary. One side’s all fast, like, Slayer songs, like old Pulling Teeth, and the other record is like… Four songs take up the second record, and they’re all six- to eight-minute songs. It goes from Neurosis to Black Sabbath to Slint to Joy Division. I think people are gonna be stoked. It’s got enough to keep people that like the band for what it was interested, but kind of offers something new and progressive at the same time. I think if we do another record, it’ll most likely be even more devoid of hardcore elements and just keep going further away from it.
J: What’s been your favorite Pulling Teeth album so far?
D: So far, Paranoid Delusions is my favorite from start to finish. I think—it was just a unique time and place. All the songs just came together; it was kind of magical how it all happened. Just everything, everything about that record, from the hologram cover, it was just perfect. But I think the new record will surpass it. It has a lot more emotional investment with so much going on in our lives outside of the record. Mike’s dad and my dad passed away, we both got married. Not to each other. My daughter was born. So, yeah, once Funerary comes out, I think it will be the best one. But I like them all, for different reasons. They’re all cool.
J: When is the new one coming out?
D: March 2011. We finished recording it, we recorded all year, and we just finished. So it’s just getting mastered and we’ve got to put the layout together. Beckman just gave me the artwork. But with Christmas coming, I didn’t want to deal with it, so I’ll start right after Christmas.
I’ve got KISS Monopoly to play and Soy Nog to drink.
J: Can you talk a little about the record label? How did that get started?
D: It’s called A389 Records, and it started in like 2004 or 2005? I can’t remember exactly. I know I have the anniversary show every year and always have to double check. I still swear that the years are wrong every time. It’s been the “6th Anniversary” three times or whatever. But if my calculations are correct, we’re about to enter our 7th year of existence. I always get everything all—I’m really bad with numbers and remembering stuff. That’s why I rarely put pressing info out, because I’m just bad at keeping track of that kind of stuff. I’ve tried to crank out as much as I can in the shortest amount of time possible. That’s how I approach things, I like being prolific. So I don’t pay attention to small details like that all the time. But I’d say about 2004, if I had to guess. That was when Slumlords were really popular and doing our thing. I started to help bands from my area. I did this band, Bring It On, in hopes that people that liked Slumlords would check them out. And it did, it worked, I’d be like, “Hey, check this record out if you like Slumlords.” A lot of people bought that record and liked it. It’s still one of my favorites that came out on the label. It’s kind of like a Raw Deal/Breakdown/Sheer Terror kind of record. But from there, I went on helping friends’ bands, some better than others, until it hit its stride right around when I did the Gut Instinct 7” and Holy Ghost 12”, which is Human Furnace from Ringworm’s side project. Jake and Tre at Deathwish gave me that record to put out and it totally set the tone as to what direction the label was going to go in. From there, it was kind of like… once the Pulling Teeth record came out, it was just like, the same mentality I adapted with the Slumlords was transferred over to Pulling Teeth, where it was like, “Alright, I’m in a band that’s this style, I can put out bands that are this style.” That I could open a door that would get a whole bunch of other bands that I think are cool playing a similar style to this audience. And it’s been awesome. When I see people talking about bands like Love Below or Caulfield or Seraphim and stuff, I get really happy about it, it’s cool.
J: Let's talk about the anniversary show coming up in January.
D: Yeah. Integrity, as always. They’re my favorite hardcore band ever. Always have been, that’s never going to change, so they’re playing again this year, headlining. And then I got Haymaker to play, as a makeup for canceling the 2007 show. Jeff was down here, Jeff sang a part on the new Pulling Teeth record, and I just brought it up and he was totally down. They had some lineup issues in the past that got resolved, and they’re gonna be playing. And then I got Drop Dead, who I love but have never seen. All my friends that have been around before I moved to Baltimore were like, “Dude, they haven’t played Baltimore in forever! This is awesome!” Those are the big bands that are gonna provide leverage for people to check out some of the newer bands, like Seven Sisters of Sleep, who are from California; The Love Below, who are also from California; Pharaoh from New Jersey; and Pale Creation from Cleveland, who have been around creating art forever, but don’t really get out there much. They just kind of stay in Cleveland. A hidden treasure in the gallery. A hidden gem! The kind of gem that can make it to tape. [D and J laugh] And stay there.
J: Part one of this question is, what was Toronto like, as far as hardcore goes? And then we’ll talk about Baltimore.
D: When I started going to shows, it was like the mid-90s. Like I said, hot on the heels of the Madball show. I started discovering as many bands and going to as many shows as I could. It was small at the time, but there were awesome shows that would happen, and there was the same 20-50 people, if you were lucky. The shows that made the biggest impression on me were booked by this guy we used to call Warzone Jay. He would always be wearing Warzone shirts and rock-lock you for hours. You know what a “rock-lock” is, right?
J: Please elaborate for the uninformed.
D: It’s when you get trapped in a conversation about music. Locked in a conversation about rock. Rock-lock... Get it? PT taught that term to Ceremony on tour once, and Toast gave us “rock-ognized,” which is when someone recognizes you from your band. Anyways, Warzone Jay used to book shows at this club called the 360 and would bring all these great bands that we’d read about in fanzines up to play. He booked Warzone (and they didn’t show up) with Left for Dead, which was totally sick. Then he went on to do shows for demo-era Blood for Blood, All Out War, Mushmouth, Fury (who also never showed). All the tougher bands that were popular in the Back Ta Basics circle in the mid 1990s. One time, Blood for Blood and Stigmata played a Tuesday matinee to like five people. I remember because I was going to college in the city and ran to see the show afterwards, and there were like five people there. Funnily enough, there was a Promise Ring show after, and it was hundreds of people. Years later, everyone’s like, “Yeah, I remember that Stigmata show.” And I’m like, “Yeah? Because you were in line to go see the Promise Ring. You weren’t at that show, liar!” [D laughs] There was also this guy named Ewan that brought bigger bands to town like Sick of It All, et cetera. He’s still around doing stuff, he actually booked PT with Negative Approach last time we were up that way. He’s like 100 years old now but still looks 20. He might be a vampire.
J: Burning Time Vampire Outing Exclusive.
D: He’s like the Dick Clark of hardcore. There was also a guy named Hoibak that did cool shows in Oakville. By the time Day of Mourning was a band, I started doing shows, too, and would bring around bands I loved like Ringworm, Red Sky, 100 Demons… heavier bands. In Baltimore, we have a DIY venue called the Charm City Art Space, and Toronto back then had a similar thing called Who’s Emma. It was like a bookstore/record store/show space. It was all volunteer-run, and I used to volunteer there. Mike from Fucked Up was a really active member from what I can remember. He had this really weird sweater… Anyways, during this time, a crop of new and really enthusiastic kids popped up. They were all young 14-year-old kids and all their friends surrounding a band called As We Once Were. They eventually went on to form bands like No Warning and Fucked Up. That era of shows in Toronto was really fun for me. Shows were becoming really fun and turnouts started getting better. You knew everybody. Awesome bands like The Swarm, Hardtime, Legion, Countdown to Oblivion started to surface. Bands like Haymaker and No Warning came along. It was sick. Haymaker shows were really wild. I booked them once with Ringworm, and every chair and table in the venue was destroyed while Beckman was throwing fire extinguishers at the audience. Another time, I saw them at the JCC and before the intro was over, all the ceiling lights were ripped out and the coat racks were going out the window.
J: What was Baltimore like when you first moved here?
D: Sketchy.
J: And when was that?
D: Towards the end of Day of Mourning—we were set to do our first full US tour, and we literally broke up like the day before the tour. I had just had enough. I had all these goals I wanted to do with the band: This was like 1998ish, ’99? Yeah, around 1999. I wanted a band that was gonna go to Europe and tour a lot and it just wasn’t happening. Everyone was all over the place, living in different cities, different priorities. I got frustrated, so I just quit doing music all together and I just worked for a couple years for the Department of Public Works, which was a really sweet job.
J: Yeah? Good times there?
D: At the time, I was really obsessed with people that looked like other people. We had a guy that looked like John Holmes, a guy that looked like Vincent Price… all older guys. I used to sneak into work early and replace their pictures on the staff wall with pictures of said celebrities and see how long until people noticed. I got in trouble for the John Holmes one because even though it was a safe picture to hang up, you could still tell what was going on. He was obviously mounting something or someone in the picture. [J laughs] That job ruled. I used to bring this little boom box to work with me, and when we were in line to punch out at the end of the day, I’d play a theme song whenever someone punched out. Like the John Holmes guy would get some sweet 70’s funk—I think it was The Brothers Johnson, actually! There was a guy that looked like Benny Hill that would get Yakety Sax. We had this one dude everyone hated. Real arrogant dude that would always mouth off and then hide behind the one dude who could barely stand him. He would get the theme song for The Bodyguard… You know—the Whitney Houston song? “And IIIIIII will always love you…” At the stroke of 3:59 PM into 4, he would punch out and walk out the door to the dude’s car right as the song was playing. It was pretty great. I like to think I made working there fun for a lot of people. But before you knew it, I started to get the itch to play again, and Rick ta Life was the one to scratch me. [J laughs] Comin’ Correct needed a fill-in for a European tour. And I was like, whoa, I haven’t been to Europe—it’ll be cool. So, I came over with no intention of really staying. I was just gonna do the tour and see what happened. I had known Rick for years from trading records and we got along great. It was a lot of fun to do nothing except travel and play music every day, even though all I had to eat every day was a can of Spaghetti-Os. First day, I took the bus to Baltimore, and Rick forgot to come get me. That totally set the tone for that era. I lived on Rick’s couch. Alex Henderson from Pulling Teeth was in that band, so it was… [J: Fortuitous.] Awesome. Dougie Fresh was in that band, too! From Slumlords.
J: What was that tour like?
D: Well, by the time that tour reared its head, we already had different guys in the band. It was a constant revolving lineup of people. But that tour was a lot of fun. People were still into them at the time, the shows were really well attended. There were no real clunkers on that tour. It’s probably my favorite tour, in hindsight, because it was my first time over there, and it was the most extensive, and just an awesome tour. At the time, there was this weird law that you couldn’t enter Poland if you didn’t have a US—if you were a Canadian citizen, you needed a special visa. Just Poland—it was before everything was just straight Euro across the board. So, we took the ferry across, and Rick had spent all this time and money to get us over there, and we took off for the mainland and went to Poland—was it the mainland? I don’t know. Part of my geography is very off. But we got there and Rick is chatting up the border guy talking about the band and giving him shirts, CDs, all that. Well, they ran our passports and pointed to me and said, “Yeah, this guy can’t get in.” Rick said, “What do you mean?” They said, “Well, Canadians need a special visa to get into the country.” And Rick’s like, “Yo, we’re this band, we’re just trying to play this show, can you at least—” And the guy’s like, “I’m sorry, there’s nothing I can do.” You know, he tried his best. Rick was always good about that. He would always fight to death to try to get something to happen. As we’re leaving, he stops and he’s like, “Yo, give me back them CDs!” [J laughs] And took back all the stuff he gave to the border dude. We ended up having to take the day off.
J: Sounds like a lively tour.
D: Yeah, that tour was awesome. Another great story from that tour was, we were in Austria, stopping at a rest stop and just goofing off. It was wintertime, so they had portable bathroom stalls, porta potties or whatever, and they had no roofs. So I would get big glaciers, pieces of snow. Rick would be in there, and I would throw snow on him. All in good fun, it was cool. We’re goofing off and just play fighting or whatever, and this van just pulls over, like tears out of Dukes of Hazzard. This dude comes out, he looks like Austin Powers, he has these weird buck teeth, and he’s like, “Ve are de Bavarian Police. UH OH!” You know, we should have been the ones who were like, “Oh no!” But he said it for us! He was like, “UH OH!” So… And we’re all ugly dudes, except for the drummer who was this dude who people used to call Gay Matt. He was very fashionable, to say the least. So he’s looking around the van, and none of us are very good looking dudes, except for Matt. He’s like, “I need to see your passports.” We give him our passports and he’s like, “Your passports all look ok.” And we’re like, whew! Then he was like, “Ve vill now begin ze inspection.” [J: What?!] And he pulls out a rubber glove on his hand, I swear, it’s like out of a movie. He snaps the rubber glove on his fingers, you know, like proctology exams, looks at Matt and is like, “Ve vill start vith him.” SNAP! And snaps the finger. Matt’s like, “Aw, man!” They take him to this van and we’re like, oh no, this is gonna be horrible, we’re gonna get cavity searched, this is gonna suck. We’re all scared and freaking out. We look out the window to see what happens. Their van is parked directly next to us, it’s one of those conversion vans. So they pull him in there, and the last thing you see is the Austin Powers dude look out the window at us, WHIP, and the curtain just shuts! [J laughs] I guess they needed privacy, you know? So, a good few minutes go by. Matt comes back to the van, and then Austin Powers looks around at the rest of the van and is like, “Ok, you can go.” We were like, phew! We’re drilling him, we’re like, “Dude, what happened?!” He was like, “I don’t want to talk about it! I don’t want to talk about it, man!” They uh… They totally checked him out! There’s actually a lot of graffiti around Europe from that tour, I’ve gone on several tours since then and saw it, and you’d see the glove. I’d draw the glove, I’d write stuff like, “Ve vill start vith him!” and “Comin’ Correct” and stuff. Those tags are still around, I see them sometimes. It’s good to go back year after year and still see some of that stuff.
J: Great memories for you, at least.
D: You know what? It was a lot of fun, and I know people have been crazy about Rick and his behavior, but I still love the guy. He’s given me some of the best and most fun times of my life. I still wish him the best, I still love the dude, even though he’s definitely going through some stuff. His rap song rules.
J: So after that tour, you just ended up kind of sticking around in Baltimore?
D: Well, I was contemplating moving to Connecticut to play with 100 Demons, but decided to stick around in Baltimore. I was actually trying to poke Next Step Up to be a band again with me in the band. I was trying to find something that wasn’t gonna tour a lot, so I started bugging JR, like “Dude, you should do Next Step Up.” He said, “No, that’s not gonna happen. But this other band I’m doing, Wake Up Cold, needs a guitar player. Do you wanna play with us?” So I said sure, why not. Something local. I liked all of those dudes, too. We played a few shows and before you knew it, we ended up going to Europe, too. That tour was a lot of fun. We had this obsession with cutting pictures of dudes from any sketchy Euro porno magazine we could find, and then planting them in the van we were borrowing from this guy Pete. In the registration, under the visors, in the ashtray, in the tape deck—everywhere. It was always funny to see the driver get stopped and have to get the registration out, only to find pics of dudes in the nude falling out all over the place. It was a lot of pictures. I would get emails months later from Pete all mad being like, “My father vas in ze van and found gay pictures! USA, YOU are Gay!” That tour was a lot of fun. But unfortunately, I’m not a dude who can be in another person’s band for too long. Not that I have control issues—well, I kind of have control issues. [J laughs] Not gonna lie. I like writing the songs and being in control of what the records sound like and look like. That’s just how it is. We started writing new material, and by that point, I already had the seeds for Slumlords in my head. So, Wake Up Cold ended up playing the last Superbowl that happened in DC, which was an awesome show for us, and then we parted ways, I had to quit. I just wasn’t into it anymore, I needed to start my own band. So I ended up getting together with my boss at the time, Spidey, and Scotty that plays in Stout. We all worked for an eviction company at the time and thought the Slumlords would be a clever name. We were sitting at a bar and those dudes were trying to pick a name off the bottles, and I kept chiming in with Mount Gay until they just ignored me. It was Josh Hart who actually came up with the name. [Editor’s Note: Josh Hart also invented music.] We jammed a couple times and managed to persuade Perlin to sing for our band. Breakdown is probably my favorite NYHC band of all time, and I was pretty geeked out over it. Slumlords kind of took off right away and picked up a lot of steam really fast and played a lot of shows. We never toured, but we were always in a position that we were able to fly out to play a lot of places. Slumlords went to Europe, as well.
J: Yeah? How was that?
D: It was a lot of fun. It was one of the most fun tours I’ve been on. Dougie actually didn’t go on that tour. Best dude, best musician, but sometimes a hard dude to keep in line, like when you’re in the army... My army. [D and J laugh] I can be pretty demanding, and as the years have gone by, I’ve mellowed out a bit and thankfully it hasn’t affected our friendship at all, I just get hellbent on getting things done. So, Tad from Set to Explode ended up coming with us, and that was a blast. That was one of the funnest tours. It was just pure comedy the whole tour.
J: Can you remember any stories from that tour?
D: We had played somewhere in Holland, I can’t remember where it was. This guy named Onno Cro-Mag came out, you may have heard of him. He’s a well known music journalist in the hardcore scene over there--loves all things that are old-school and/or from the streets. [J: Oh yeah, I have heard of him.] You’ve probably read his interviews. We brought him onstage to sing a song with us, and he was being a humble guy and being like, “No, no! I don’t wanna do it!” And Jeff’s like, “Come on! Sing this Clash cover with us!” and he’s like, “Alright, alright.” So he gets up onstage, and Jeff’s like, “Ladies and gentleman, we’ve got a special guest in the audience tonight! Are you ready… For Onno Cro-Mag!” And that’s just like saying in Baltimore, “We’ve got a really special guest… Tony Hare!” Everyone else is used to the dude being there, no one’s gonna really make that big of a fuss. So Jeff’s like, “What?! I can’t believe you guys aren’t excited! Come on!” So he starts to chant: “Onno! Onno! On-no! Oh no! Oh no! Oh nooooo!” And we’re all yelling, “Oh, no! Oh, no!” over and over again. Onno’s just kind of in the wings, not knowing what to do, and everyone is yelling, “Ohhh noooooo!” It was pretty funny. Perlin was the master of creating hilariously awkward situations. We played this one show in New York with Killing Time, and these two rough and tough skinhead dudes were moshing real hard and doing their thing. Jeff would bring them up and was like, “Yeah, you guys come up front here! What are your names? Someone get these dudes Tic Tacs! Your breath is kicking.” Or this one time we played with Terror, he just said something like, “Give it up for Terror!” and let out this long, bizarre-sounding eagle scream that left everyone staring at him. It was a good time.
J: He seems like he would be a fun person to be in a band with.
D: Him and I worked really well together and always played off each other comically. I miss it. It’s definitely had its time and its place, though. We played a couple shows again this year, and it wasn’t the same. The last Slumlords show, the Final Eviction, was like the apex. But him and I have often talked about this other band we wanted to start, it’s called Night Tigers. Actually, the whole idea was, we were gonna try to get a label to release a third Slumlords album. Sell them on it, get the advance, and drop this record that was so next level that it—[J laughs] it was guaranteed to tank, but to me and Jeff, it was the most brilliant idea ever. It was going to be a band called Night Tigers that Slumlords discovered while on tour in Europe. It’s hard to wrap your head around this. It’s a pretty massive concept. It’s like… The band is Night Tigers, but it’s really Slumlords as Night Tigers, and it’s a band that we supposedly discovered in Europe. So it’s a whole fake album of 80s German metal. Performed by the Slumlords, but as the Night Tigers. That was gonna be the third record. It was supposed to be like a concept record about “The Streets.” All the songs were about the streets, like “Living in the Streets in a Dangerous Time,” “Smoking in the Streets.” [J laughs] Every song had “Streets” in the title. I have a practice tape somewhere of one of the songs. Nothing, unfortunately, ever came of it. [J: Wow. I’m shocked that it’s not a roaring success.] It would have been amazing. I still—we’ll text each other once in awhile and be like, “Dude, we really need to do this.” But everyone in that band’s relationships are in such various states of disrepair that it would never happen. It would have to be me and Jeff and a bunch of new dudes to really make it happen. You never know, though.
J: Fingers crossed, though. Because that sounds pretty mind blowing. I don’t know if the music scene in general is ready, but…
D: I can play you the demo later on. It’s pretty mind blowing. It sounds like Scorpions and Accept. It’s pretty wild.
J: In going with tour stories still, what about Pulling Teeth? You didn’t really talk about any Pulling Teeth tour stories.
D: Pulling Teeth stories were the best.
J: What was your favorite Pulling Teeth tour?
D: All of them. The full US tour with Frightener in 2007. It was like a month and a half—no, no, that was about a month. Giving those dudes a taste of America was awesome. Because usually, you hear about bands going to Europe, and you rarely ever hear about bands coming over here. Except for your occasional Bridge 9 and Deathwish bands, which is cool for them, but it’s seldom that they will come over here or that anyone would care. So… that’s when Pulling Teeth was picking up steam and getting pretty popular, so we brought Frightener over to do this whole tour with us. And like I said, first taste of America. Those dudes maybe visited—some of them visited New York or whatever. We had played Tulsa, Oklahoma… I’m trying to filter this story through my head ahead of time to make sure it’s appropriate to share. [D and J laugh] But uh, I can share some of it. So, we stayed with this dude who was hell bent on having us at his house. Booked the show, seemed really cool, would call me all the time. I was trying to be cool, whatever. Some people just don’t have a mental filter, just like, constant overload. So we get there, we had just played this ridiculous show the night before in Missouri. We played with some band that was like “dun dun dun, dun, dun dun dun dun… Come on, you faggots! Mosh!” [J laughs] Me and Riley were so embarrassed to even be there. So we’re kind of downtrodden that day, like, “Oh man, that show sucked. I hope the next day is gonna be better.” So we drove all night, just to get the hell out of there. This dude meets us in the parking lot and takes us back to his house. He’s like, “Yeah, my wife is real excited to meet you guys!” We’re like, oh, this dude’s got a family, clean house, probably gonna be a chill day. It’ll be awesome… [D checks his phone] Sorry, my thing—I forgot I put those Integrity preorders up. My phone is just blowing up with new orders all day. But uh—
J: Ah, a day in the life of Dom. [D and J laugh]
D: Yeah, it’s wild! But… So, yes. We’re in Tulsa, we end up going back to this guy’s house. As soon as we get there, we’re just like, “Oh my god.” His house is just insane.
J: What was it like?
D: Piles of clothes everywhere. You know what, fuck it. I’m just gonna share it, because this dude still calls me all the time, and I never answer the phone. Maybe he’ll take the hint. You’ll find out why when this story is over. But uh… Piles of clothes everywhere, weird methheads hanging outside of his house. Heart’s in the right place… I guess. Maybe? I don’t even know. His wife was like, “Are you guys hungry? You’re vegetarian, you can eat bacon, right?” We were just like… trying to be cool. That’s why everyone in this band gets along so well, and why Tony Hare was only in the band for a few months. Everyone else like, doesn’t cause an uproar, usually real chill.
J: Taming the Hare.
D: You can’t. [D and J laugh] So we get there, and this dude already breaks out his Slumlords records and is ready to engage the rock-lock. We drove all night and were in a crappy mood from the show the night before, so I’m just trying my best to not be rude, but trying to insinuate that I’m really tired and want to go to bed. He’s like, “Hey, check this out! It’s this record on black! How rare is that?” I’m like, “Cool, man.” TheXBeast is just like (in his Southern voice), “Hay, mayan. Is that the light switch for this room?” And the guy goes, “Yeah, why?” And Alex just gets up and shuts the light off and everyone goes to bed. It was awesome. The best handling of a situation I’ve ever seen. So we wake up the next day. Huge dog, it’s like four pit bulls duct taped together into one pit bull. [J laughs]It’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever seen. Barrels through the door, and it’s like RRRROOOAAARR! Totally insane dog. The Frightener dudes were all just like, “What the fuck is going on? This dude’s crazy! Why is this dog trying to mount me?” We were like, “Ok, I think we’re gonna get up and start our day. Can we take showers?” We’re trying to get the hell out of there. Half the band’s outside, half the band’s in the house. Dude comes in and he goes, “Hold on. You guys don’t have any African-Americans with you, do you?” [J: What?!] And I’m like, “Uhhhhhhh, no, we’ve just got British-Americans. And a Canadian. What’s up?” He says, “I wanna show you something.” Goes to his kid’s room and pulls out this piece of PVC pipe that was maybe like—let’s call it five feet, PVC pipe, with the word—and censor it when you transcribe it, of course—“N***** Getter” written in red marker. I’m like, “What is that?” And he’s like, “It’s a potato gun.” So he goes, “Check this out!” All of Frightener is sitting outside, just waiting for us to get ready so we can leave. He says, “Honey, get me something to fire!” And he goes and gets one of his kid’s stuffed animals, and he shoves it in this potato gun and starts firing stuffed animals at the van! And Alex is like, “No, man! Stop!” Picture it, a Midwest suburb, meth head zombies walking by, and this dude firing stuffed animals out of a potato gun into the sky. [J: And he has children!] Oh my god, dude. It gets better. So we’re just like, we need to get the hell out of here now. We’re all freaking out and we’re like, “Look, dude, we’ve never seen Tulsa, we’re gonna go hang out in Tulsa to see the city. We’ve never been here, it sounds really cool. He says, “Hold on! I’ll come with you guys!” We’re like, god. There’s no escape. He turns around and looks at his car, and it’s all on cinder blocks, all the tires are gone. He’s like, “Oh….” [J laughs] Reality sunk in. He was like, “Can I ride with you guys?” We were like, “Sorry, dude, van’s full. VROOM.” Took off. Literally, the last word is hanging out the window as we drive off, right? And then we played the show, and the dude gave us like $20 to split with Frightener, the band from ENGLAND. He said, “I’m really sorry, man. I didn’t have time to promote the show, my grandmother’s been really sick…” and gave us some excuse. At this point, I just didn’t care. He was like, “I’ve got food stamps! Do you guys wanna go grocery shopping?” We were like, “No, we’re just gonna leave.”
J: How did Frightener react?
D: Frightener were just like… baffled. They’re like, [English accent] “Oh my god, is all of America like this?” [J: Yes.] No, just the middle part. [D and J laugh] Ruiner played that show too, but they went through a different dude who actually paid them. They split their money with us, and Frightener as well, we’re all really good friends. They took care of us and helped us get out of there. Later on—he named dropped Dave Heck a whole bunch. Do you know Dave Heck? Awesome human being. But this guy was like, “Me and Dave Heck are boys. Don’t worry. He’ll straighten you out next time you play in Philly, I promise! I’m really sorry this happened.” So, I told Dave Heck what happened, and he said, “Dude, he tells everybody this story. He does that same song and dance and pays them $20.” So we—this was when Dave was playing in Reign Supreme, and we played with them in Doylestown at that bookstore/record store place. I had this amazing idea. I said, “You know what, Dave? You’re gonna call this dude, and you’re gonna tell him that we rolled you guys for all of your equipment because—to settle the tab that this dude left with us.” He called this dude, freaking out, being like, “Hey! Pulling Teeth left with all of Reign Supreme’s equipment, this is messed up! They said I’ve gotta call you and talk about it?”
J: The seasoned criminals that Pulling Teeth are.
D: Oh, yeah! We had friends post it on the internet, “They beat up Reign Supreme!” We’re harmless dudes, we’ve never beaten up anybody in our lives. We’re all real chill. So, you know, it got real out of hand. This dude started calling his cell phone, his wife started calling my cell phone, freaking out. They kept calling Dave Heck’s cell phone, and Robby Redcheeks—it was the opening exhibit for Robby Redcheeks’s photography show, and Robby started answering the phone pretending to be Dave Heck’s dad, saying Dave Heck was in the emergency ward for trying to stop us from taking his equipment. We beat him so bad that he was in the hospital. It kept going, kept going. His wife was leaving me these voicemails crying, being like, “We’ll settle whatever debt it is! I’ll send you a money order right away from Western Union! We want to sever all ties! We don’t know you guys!” It climaxed with Robby Redcheeks finally being like, “Oh, Dave… Dave passed. If you know anything about these guys, I need contact info, any info I can give to the police.” [J laughs] I let them sit on that for a good two days before he found out it was a joke. That dude still calls me! I haven’t answered my phone since 2007, and he’ll still call me and leave messages, and be like, “Hey! It’s been awhile! What’s going on?”
J: Like, just calling to chat?!
D: Just to chat! So, if you are reading this, stop calling me, Tracy! I hope he doesn’t read this and remember that I exist. Good thing I threw my phone away.
J: Tell the Tony Hare leaving Pulling Teeth story.
D: He would just get insanely drunk and the craziest things would happen. We played with Body Count in Cleveland [J: I remember!], and he was sitting on the stage, and we were like, “You can’t hang out on the stage!” He was like, “Fuck security! They cannot tell me what to do!” and caused a huge uproar trying to fight everyone. That was the typical night with the Hare. We played in Mass once with this band, For the Worse. They were a pretty wild band. Their singer used to cut himself with razors, pee in his own mouth—whatever he felt like doing. We were supposed to stay with him after the show, and he walked out and Tony was in the middle of a fistfight with a parked van. He turns to me all bloody and says, “This dude is NOT coming to my house.”Another time, we were going to Florida to play This Is For You Fest, and he would always be traveling with anything from a six pack to a 24 pack just to himself. Sick rager. Best dude. We’re hanging out and our van broke down in some military town in South Carolina. We’re figuring out, man, we’re gonna have to cancel these shows. We were able to make the fest, but we had to cancel some shows on the way down. We were stuck in some weird ass military town with nothing to do except get wasted. So we’re hanging out, and he disappears with a case of beer in the woods. He was pooping in the woods or whatever. So we’re like, tow truck’s here, we gotta go, where’s Tony? We’re like, “Tony, where are you?” And all of a sudden, you hear, “AOOOOOOO!” You look over in the foliage and it’s him pooping in the woods with a case of beer next to him, just sitting there. He said, (in gruff Tony Hare voice) “Call me the Beer Wolf.” [J laughs] So, you know, we called him the Beer Wolf. That kind of became his name. It was when that movie Beowulf came out. So we’re driving to Florida, and he’s like, “Hey, look! They made a movie about me!” And I’m like, “No, they didn’t, dude. It’s called Beowulf!” He’s like, “No, it’s called… Beeeeorwolf.” He’s trying to stretch it. [D laughs] It wasn’t always roses, though. We were getting too busy touring all the time, and he had a really good job and didn’t want to leave it, so things were getting awkward and tense. We wanted to do more, he wanted to do less. Our last show with him was a weekend in New York and Philly. We missed Boston on the Friday because of traffic and ended up going to see Norbit in New Jersey. Mike was so mad at that movie he demanded his money back, but he’s crazy. That movie ruled! [J laughs] Anyways, we’re playing Johnson Street Loft in New York, and Hare was in the worst mood ever. Things just really came to a boil and he got mad at something dumb like having to carry full stacks up the stairs. [D and J laugh] He spit on some kid while we were playing, just being a total jerk. It was really awkward It was the first time ever that we weren’t talking. So we’re stuck in Philly all day with nothing to do except go out to bars. We all split up and would do our own thing, but he would just go wherever I would go and sit next to me not talking, just being omnipresent. We all decided after the show that it was time to part ways. He was also my roommate at the time, so as this all came to a head, things got really tense and he had to move out. I said, “Dude, you can’t live here anymore.” And then he lost my cat! [J: Which one?!] He lost Pigglet! Yeah! By accident, he was moving and left the door open and Wigglet escaped to freedom, so it was insult to injury. Even though we were really mad at each other, he was like, “…Your cat back yet?” Sending me texts. But, you know, that was really awkward. He ended up moving back in a few months later. My house was not a home without him. After that, Trapped Under Ice needed a guitarist for an early tour, and I recommended they get him to join. I said, “He’s an awesome guitar player and an amazing dude, just not the right dude for Pulling Teeth.” Conflict of personality, you know? Justice called me like a week into the tour and was like, “He’s been awake, drunk and mean for an entire week. How do you turn him off?!” I’m like, “You don’t turn him off. Don’t worry, dude.” He was at home on that tour, because those dudes would get into all kinds of mischief that was more up his alley. But yeah, that was the Tony Hare era in a nutshell.
J: The Tony Hare-a, if you will.
D: The Tony Hare-a, yeah! Totally. We replaced him with this dude, Danny P., for awhile. That was—weird, for being in a band with the dude for so many years, he was in the band for a good bulk of the heavy touring era. And we kind of just never saw him again. His guitar playing wasn’t progressing with where the band was going, so we needed to get somebody who could play a little better. That was the last we ever saw or heard from him. We’ve been friends with Mitch from all the times we played with Ruiner. He was always the misfit in that band and would often hang out with us, so he was a perfect fit. He’s really been the missing piece personality wise for the band and one of my favorite dudes. I remember one time, he got me a job at Guitar Center in between tours and it was my first day there. Everyone in the back roughhoused a lot and I was hellbent on making an impression. Walk hard, you know? Well, I thought of bringing a water balloon into the mix, but couldn’t find anything that would work… Until I saw a box of rubber gloves. Thinking if I filled it with hot water, it would burst like a balloon, I walked into work, gleefully looking for Mitch, who was doing something crazy like trying to push our boss into a dumpster. It was a seriously ridiculous place to work. I walked up to him and he made some crack that made everyone laugh and I pitched the water balloon glove thing at his head, expecting waterfalls to erupt. Instead, the glove just retained the shape of a hand and pretty much slapped him in the face like a ghost and knocked him into a wall. I watched in horror/amazement and was like, “Noooooooo!” all in slow motion. [D and J laugh] I looked over at my boss, who was mouthing the words, “What the fuuuuu—” and then, BAM! Slapped by the invisible hand. No one ever messed with me at work after that. Ok, I’m lying They totally did. But it made a pretty great first impression. Anyway, everyone in the band are like my brothers and cousins. Those dudes have been here almost every weekend, ever since Reagan [Dom’s daughter] has been born. It’s really sweet.
J: Do you like where Baltimore’s at right now?
D: I don’t know if anything could top Trapped Under Ice, really, as far as popularity goes. They’re awesome, one of my favorite bands let alone—period, not just in this city. It’s cool to see them get so popular, because they definitely worked really hard. They went from being a band—remember, they played with us in Pittsburgh? Chris Kuhn actually filled in on bass with the bass turned off. Justice Tripp was like, “Yo, we need a bass player!” Total Rick ta Life move from him. We did that in Comin’ Correct, as well. But Chris just moshed with the bass. He was like, “God, I’ve lived my dream!” From there, I remember—they had such a good thing with their demo. I told Justice, “Dude, if you take this band seriously, your band could do really great things.” And they went from that to practicing every day and got a solid lineup and blew everyone away. Band rules. But I don’t know, I kind of fell off the map with where Baltimore is right now. Right now, Baltimore to me is getting fat eating ice cream and walking around Fells Point with a Baby Bjorn on. There’s some new bands that are coming out that are really cool. I heard this—actually, this week, I heard a couple bands I really liked. There’s a band called Lapse, it’s a new band, has a demo out that’s really cool. There’s a band, Full of Hell, that’s from outer Maryland/PA that’s really good. You know, I love Triac. I love Oak. Magruder rules. I’m starting to get into bands that really were creative a little more on that level. I feel like with hardcore, it’s the same thing going on that was going on when I first started going to shows in Baltimore. It’s that circle again, you know? You either grow or you show everyone how good you are at 10th grade math for the 10th time, you know? It’s cool to meet and know like-minded people who are into progression and a whole bunch of different things, and just going from there. Luckily, there’s no shortage of that in Baltimore. There’s a lot of people that are inspired to do cool things. Even this year, I met some really life changing people that have totally slanted my views on a bunch of things and made—I like to think, made me a better person musically and personally. Alright, it’s time to take Reagan trick or treating.
J: The bat does appear ready to take flight. Thanks again for doing this!
D: Taste the beast.
It was Gym (Jim) from xBENCHxPRESSx.
ReplyDeleteLA Bowman forever.
Duly noted and corrected. Thank you!
ReplyDelete