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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H2O will be playing the following UK dates in August:
