Durham Live Lounge has only been made into a swanky looking music venue in the past couple of months, and it’s already attracting some pretty big names down its way. Maybe it’ll start to split the attention from the Academy over in the Tyne, who knows? Tonight, (for free to the first 25 people, may I add) the live show comes from the recently reformed Laconia, and they’ve got a support with them who’ve been a bit quiet as of late…
Live Review: Laconia – Durham Live Lounge, August 28th 2010
August 29, 2010
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Beyond The Grave, Laconia, Live, Reviews, The Casino Brawl | 
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Posted by changetherecord
Interview: Cruel Hand
August 20, 2010
Nearing the end of their summer in Europe, Faye was able to chat with Chris Linkovich, vocalist of Cruel Hand, about the release of Lock & Key and their new direction, living in a hardcore bubble, mosh injuries, and lots more, before their headline show in London.
Faye: You’ve been over in Europe for a few weeks now playing a bunch of shows and fests, how’s that been?
Chris: It’s running smooth, I can’t complain. We started off with Fluff Fest, which was pretty fucking big and we ended up headlining the whole thing, it was unreal. Then Into The Pit in Italy, Fredericia Fest in Denmark and then we have Ieperfest in Belgium coming up. It’s been cool, we’ve had to miss a bunch of stuff to come to Europe, like the fucking amazing weather we’re having in Maine, we could be at the beach, but no, we’re here in the rain, but it’s all good.
Faye: I last interviewed you at Have Heart’s second last show, then you played their final show the following day, what are your memories of that show?
Chris: It was awesome, I felt like that was probably our best show. It was the perfect show for us reaction-wise, it sucked that everything was kind of running late, we didn’t really play a full set, but it was Have Heart’s last show, so they had to do their thing too.
Faye: Since then, a couple of other Bridge Nine bands have announced that they’re calling it a day, like Ruiner and Crime in Stereo, what’s happening?
Chris: I don’t know, but someone informed us the other day that they read online that we had got into a fight on stage with each other and we broke up. Apparently, I got into an argument with Cam and then we got into a fight and broke up.
Seger [bass]: We’ve found out a lot of rumours about us on this tour, like someone said Nate was married and is now divorced, and someone else said we all had girlfriends – only one of us has a girlfriend. People are just starting rumours about us.
Chris: People will talk, they can say what they want. It’s funny, though. [laughs] People are out to get us, I guess.
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Interview: Agnostic Front
August 19, 2010
Ahead of their recent headline show in London, Faye sat down with Roger Miret, frontman of New York hardcore kings Agnostic Front, where they talked about misconceptions about the band, trends in the hardcore scene, the secret behind their longevity, and so much more!
Faye: How are you today? Do you know that Cruel Hand are playing down the road?
Roger: I’m doing good, thank you, and no, I didn’t know that. Why would they do that? That’s retarded. I’m not worried, though, we’ve still got about 350 pre-sales, that’s pretty damn good. It’s a shame there’s two shows at the same time, though.
Faye: There’s so many misconceptions about Agnostic Front, I’ve read a lot of accusations on the Internet relating you to racism, is it frustrating that people still try to associate you with that?
Roger: Tell them to dig up some new news, it’s just retarded. It’s nothing we’ve ever been about, if you read the lyrics from all our albums it’s self-explanatory – some people don’t want to, they just want to be ignorant. It probably comes from the fact that we were a working class band when we first started, which we still are working class. We all shaved our heads, we were American skinheads and everybody wants to judge a book by its cover. I mean, is every skinhead you know racist?
Faye: I read that Agnostic Front released a split with a band called White Power back in 1980, what’s the story behind that?
Roger: Somebody did this bootleg split – I actually have a copy of it – but we never did that. It’s people doing bootlegs, why would we do that? It does exist, but we didn’t have anything to do it. We have no control over bootlegs.
Faye: How do you feel about the macho, tough guy image you and fellow New York hardcore bands have?
Roger: Hardcore’s an aggressive thing, it’s a very masculine, very aggressive, sweaty style of music and most of the people who live this lifestyle are kind of edgier. We were the first bands doing all the tattoos and grungier look, so I guess it just stuck to it. It’s not pretty music, it never was pretty guys doing it. It was always harder guys doing it. It got prettier later. [laughs]
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Interview: 7Seconds
August 18, 2010
Sitting on a path outside Trillians, Faye caught up with frontman Kevin Seconds of the legendary 7Seconds, following their show in Newcastle. They got talking about still going at it 30-years later, his issues with the hardcore scene, going acoustic, and a lot more!
Faye: How did you find the show tonight?
Kevin: The show was wonderful. I think it’s our third show here and they’ve always been really fun. I just love Newcastle, I love the city and have friends here, so it was great. I’m not feeling that great though, so I was really struggling to try find the energy, but it was great. We ate some weird pasta stuff and it was really spicy, I think it just hit me the wrong way, and the travelling, sleeping up in the van, I think it all just caught up today, it surprised me.
Faye: How come 7Seconds is playing these shows and fests this summer? Is it a 30th anniversary thing?
Kevin: Yeah, this whole year we’ve been playing quite a bit because of the 30th anniversary thing, and we’ve got a few releases, which were scheduled to come out, but we’ve pushed them back just because we want to do more touring and not put anything out until we know we’re going to go out to play. We had hoped to come over sometime this summer and do as many shows as we can. The other guys have some kids and stuff, so it’s really hard for them to just take off and my brother, the bass player, Steve Youth, he’s doing a bunch of stuff with his family, so he couldn’t come and we couldn’t cancel, so we got our friend to fill in and he actually played with us in Europe with Sick of It All.
Faye: Do you listen to much hardcore nowadays?
Kevin: I find myself going back to a lot of the early records because I love the production of it and I’m all about what’s new and freshness, I’m not one of those old guys who are like, “Keep it old school, it’s got to sound like a crappy record!” There’s a lot of stuff that’s considered ‘hardcore’ now and it’s like, I don’t mind, call it whatever you want, but I think there has to be at least some connection to at least what it once was. If there’s not, then it’s sort of not genuine and it doesn’t feel right, and that’s just my take, I don’t think that everyone else should feel like that. I’m always looking out for new stuff and I get excited when I hear a new band that kicks my ass, that makes me happy, because that’s the way it’s supposed to be. Unfortunately, not many new bands kick my ass, but I do like hardcore. I didn’t like when people started bringing metal into it, it wasn’t my cup of tea, but at least it’s still aggressive and fun. Now everyone applies the word ‘core’ to everything and it doesn’t have any real meaning.
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Interview: Not Advised
August 18, 2010
Not Advised are currently undergoing their tour around the UK after releasing their new album After the Fight. Compared to the likes of Funeral For A Friend, they’re setting out to establish themselves amongst the big bands and hopefully it’ll be on this tour they manage to achieve their goals. Katie meets the quintet to discover how things are going so far.
Katie: So, you’ve just started your tour, how’s it going so far?
Andy [drums]: Amazing, we’ve done Bristol and Birmingham so far and we’ve never headlined in Bristol before, so that was really good to do and Birmingham last night was really good too. This is the first time we’ve done the major cities.
Jack [guitar]: When we started the band all we wanted to do was get out and play shows, so that’s what we’ve done and it’s going really well.
Katie: Which gig are you looking forward to playing the most?
Ash [guitar]: One of them was tonight, I’ve been really looking forward to playing here and I think tomorrow in Glasgow will be another good show.
Greg [bass]: I’m looking forward to all of them.
Jack: We’ve sound a lot of tickets tonight with out any support from local bands, so I’m really proud of tonight’s gig but I think we’re all excited to get out there and play all the shows.
Ash: You tend to get expectations before you leave and in the back of your mind you’re hoping it’s all going to be well good, but then like you don’t want to get your hopes up in case you get disappointed but we look forward to every gig and so far every gig we’ve done has lived up to our expectations.
Jack: Last night was pretty good, people had been waiting for us for hours.
Katie: On your new album, you’re putting tracks from your old album, why is that?
Jack: When we made our first EP we had like five tracks, and then LAB records came to us and said they wanted to put our CD out again and re-release it and add more tracks and do a video and make it the bigger release it should have been in the first place really, so we thought that was a cool idea. We’ve done it properly this time, we’re writing an album now which is all new, we’re not going to be a band which keeps putting out the same songs it just happened that way coincidentally.
Andy: We thought we didn’t release the first CD to it’s full potential.
Ash: We can do that now we’ve got the help of LAB records.
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Live Review: Big D and the Kids Table – The Underworld, Camden, London, August 13th 2010
August 17, 2010
Ska heavyweights Big D and the Kids Table hit up The Underworld, with some of the UK’s top talent in the form of Mouthwash and Dirty Revolution for an unforgettable night of skanking and stage invasions!
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Live Review: Cruel Hand – Purple Turtle, Camden, London, August 12th 2010
August 17, 2010
Five minutes down the road, following Agnostic Front’s full-blown assault at The Underworld, it’s the job of Maine’s Cruel Hand to continue the mosh.
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Live Review: Agnostic Front – The Underworld, Camden, London, August 12th 2010
August 17, 2010
Believe it or not, this is actually 2010, as tonight we see two of the longest-standing bands in hardcore, Agnostic Front and 7Seconds, come together in Camden – one of two hardcore shows happening within a 5-minute proximity of each other!
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Live Review: Not Advised – O2 Academy 2, Newcastle, August 4th 2010
August 12, 2010
Headlining their first UK tour, Not Advised didn’t let the illness preventing vocalist Jim Thomas hold them back. Ash Oliver stepped up and took centre stage for the band as they performed to a surprisingly young audience at Newcastle’s O2 Academy – at the age of nineteen I felt like an OAP.
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Review: My Extraordinary – Shattered Silence
August 6, 2010
Flying the flag for the North-East comes four-piece My Extraordinary. Since forming in 2008, they’ve slowly adopted and progressed into a much bigger, everlasting sound, and Shattered Silence is the finished product.
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