Rockezine.com interview with Strife on Jul 13, 2002

with Chad Peterson on Jul 13, 2002

This interview was held Saturday afternoon in Haarlem, where freshly showered Strife bassist Chad and I sat outside the club where they had just played to get some fresh air and talk.
		So how are you? Is it good to be back on tour? I’m doing great. Outstanding. It’s absolutely great to be back in Europe. And it’s very nice to be back together as a band, you know.
		Who’s in the band right now? Because I think you went through some lineup changes? Yeah, we did have a few. The band right now consists of myself, Rick and Andrew as the original members of the band; and we have from Shelter Franklin Reed and Aaron Rossi who are playing guitar and drums for us at the moment.
		Are they the new members in the band or are you still looking for new guys? We’re pretty solid right now. You never know what’s going to happen, I could leave the band tomorrow. But as far as us talking and how happy we are right now, we feel pretty solid about the lineup that we have.
		OK. And the tour went all right? That’s what I heard when I talked to some of the other guys in the band. Absolutely. The tour has been great, there have been good shows and bad shows, but the good outweigh the bad; and the thing about Strife as a band is, even if it is what is considered a bad show, things are different from country to country, no matter where you go. So what you have to do is come out and play your hardest for every single show and feel that you’re giving it all that you got. That way, if it’s in the reception from the crowd or anything like that, you know it’s not your fault.
		Talking about crowd reaction, what’s this shit I read on the Internet about this festival in Austria? So you read that?
So, mid-set, this kid walks out on stage with his girlfriend during one of the songs and the singer from Cake kicks him square in the back, off the stage.		Yeah. I have been looking for dirt on you on the net, so... The crowd reaction on that was great. The crowd gave us a lot of support. We played the Forestglade festival in Austria a few weeks ago and Cake was playing. This kid walked out on stage because he was supposed to introduce the band and the band had said it was OK and then they turned around and said ‘No, we’re not going to do it’. So, mid-set, this kid walks out on stage with his girlfriend during one of the songs and the singer from Cake kicks him square in the back, off the stage. The kid lands in the barricade and gets a compound fracture in his leg and had to be sent to the hospital, so the crowd starts throwing things at the band. Well, they split, needless to say. They put down their instruments and left the stage. Josh, the guy that does our sounds, walked out on stage, trying to get the crowd back in to it by saying ‘One more song, one more song!’, to be supportive and he got rushed by security. So we had a little fight with the security. And I think we won (Laughter from Jasper).
		You quit doing the band a couple of years ago, what were the main reasons for that? Basically, it just started to become too much. We were constantly touring and constantly working and we lost sight of what it really was what we wanted as a band. And unfortunately, it took the time off, as the breakup, to regain that. Even though we did split the band, I wouldn’t necessarily call it a breakup because we did form a new project out of it called Angermeans. And Angermeans was a revolving door with members of the band for about two years. What finally brought us back together as a band was the death of one of our close friends and crewmembers. We did a benefit in Hollywood to try to raise a little bit of money for his family for the funeral and we decided ‘You know what, we could better benefit the family if we did it as Strife than Angermeans’. More people would come out and they would have helped the family more and really make us feel good about helping our friend. When we actually played that show, we felt so good about playing back together as Strife that we just kept it that way.
		And you didn’t consider doing Angermeans anymore. Angermeans is a constant project. There may be something from Angermeans in the future, but right now the focus is Strife. And even if something does come out with Angermeans, it’s not going to be that Strife has broken up.
		Did you write songs specifically for Angermeans or are they also on the new Strife album? All the songs that were written for Angermeans are on the new Strife album.
		How is the scene in California at the moment? The scene in California is great. It’s pumping. There are so many people who come out to shows now it’s insane. Venues are being sold out with over a thousand people, just for hardcore bands.
		When I look at the bands from California, I think it’s mostly punk. There are a lot of punk bands in the California hardcore scene like Good Riddance and Death By Stereo, but when a band like Throwdown comes out and plays they’ll sell out a really good-sized venue. So hardcore is definitely thriving with the heavy stuff, not just the punk stuff.
		So there’s no segregation between the punk scene and the hardcore scene? Not at all. That’s something that we’ve always tried to accomplish as a band by doing tours with bands with diverse backgrounds. We’ve toured with Sepultura, AFI, The Business, all bands from different scenes of music. I think straightedge kids are starting to look past the fact that people aren’t straightedge. They’re starting to appreciate people for people, and that’s what we want.
		Did you get a lot of shit for that? Because Strife has always been an outspoken straightedge band. Absolutely. We heard a lot of stuff, but you know how the Internet is. One person can drum up a whole lot of pain from a matter. But, as you can tell, it really hasn’t swayed us one bit. We’re still out, we’re still touring, we’re still touring under the name of Strife and we’re not going to stop. The thing with people saying their piece about whether or not we’re straightedge… We were a straightedge band for over ten years; we influenced a lot of people. If you’re a better person for listening to our music, straightedge or not, then that’s fantastic. I still feel good about the fact that people are changed by what we do, even though we’re not a straightedge band anymore. People are still gonna be changed by what we do, because we’re focusing on a larger audience now, not just straightedge kids. We’re focusing on people from all backgrounds in music. And that way a message that we carry can reach more people and we have chance to help out more people.
		Do you think it’s important to have a message in music? Not specifically for Strife, but for bands in general? I appreciate both sides. I appreciate bands that get up there and just don’t give a fuck, they just want to play music and love music, but at the same time you’re on such a podium. You’re able to get up there and tell people really what’s going on. It may just be a personal opinion, but it really starts to get people thinking. And that’s why I can appreciate both sides. Sometimes we have a message; sometimes our message has to do with personal things going on in our lives. But that personal thing going on in OUR life can be a personal thing going on in YOUR life. And that can definitely help you.
When they sit down to write a song they’re not just going to say ‘The leaves are green and the clouds are gray’.		Is it dangerous to have lyrics with a message because it discourages people to make an opinion for themselves? If that were the case our band would be instrumental. Because everyone’s got to talk about what they talk about. I was reading this thing about the singer for Dramarama, after he stopped doing Dramarama he did a project and our publisher was telling this story about how he sat in his hotel room one night and wrote about his drug addiction and his heartbreak, and just his life, and put it all to song over one CD. And people are going to write about their lives, regardless. They’re going to write about world events, they’re going to look at the TV and say ‘That’s fucked up’. When they sit down to write a song they’re not just going to say ‘The leaves are green and the clouds are gray’. That doesn’t make anything. That’s just going to start and end right there. What keeps music flowing is emotion. And it’s not only in lyrics; it’s in music too. You can tell by heavy music that it thrives with emotion. It thrives with anger, it thrives with energy. I don’t think it’s dangerous for people to have an opinion.
		When you play with Strife you usually play clubs with up to a thousand people. You also did a European tour with Sepultura a few years ago, where you played all the big arenas. Would you do that again if you had the chance? Sure, why the hell not? It was a great opportunity for us in the first place. They are friends of us, they called us up and we left two days later, we got paid nothing to do that tour. Actually, we had to pay to be on that tour and it was still great because we got to play before audiences of 7000 or 15000 every night. Where’s the harm in that? Like I said before, if you want to talk to a bigger audience and bring a message that’s positive out to more people, what’s a better opportunity than that? We’re always going to do clubs, this is how we are.
		Wasn’t there an unusual distance between you and the crowd then? There wasn’t a distance between us and the audience. There were barricades and we found ourselves over the barricades every night. We would go out and hang out with the crowd while we played. Rick would go down to the front and hang out with the kids and shake their hands while he was singing. If you saw the show tonight, that’s what we do. We go down in the audience while we play.
		And you weren’t bothered by 7000 people who just wanted to see Sepultura? It was very interesting, because before we started playing they would chant ‘Sepultura, Sepultura!’ and then when we came out they were like ‘Who the hell is this?’ because we had no promotion on that tour. There was no marketing, no one knew that Strife was on the tour, it just circulated as rumors. So we would have 50 to 100 kids there to support us out of the thousands there to see Sepultura and once we started playing, by about our third or fourth song, they would clap and they were into it, you could tell they were into it. And when the band came on after us they would get booed off stage almost every night. And then Sepultura came out and kicked everyone’s ass.
		Right. When you came back as a band, could you start off at about the same point where you left? It took work. It’s still taking work to get out there and rebuild who we were. The scene has changed since we have broken up and got back together. A lot of the same kids aren’t there anymore. We go out and we’ll play a show and there will be hundreds of kids there and we’ll say ‘OK, who’s first time is this to see us?’ and almost everyone reacts. Everyone’s just recycled out. New kids are coming into the scene all the time.
		Do you think that’s a good thing? I think it’s great. It goes to show that where 500 or 800 kids have left, 500 or 800 kids are there to take their place. And I would love to see those kids build up, but it just shows that it’s not diminishing.
		Are you still signed to Victory records? Yes, we’re still signed to Victory. We still owed them another record. Now that we’ve released ‘Angermeans’ we don’t owe them any more and chances are they won’t be getting another. We need to find a label that supports us more and sticks with who they were. And supports the bands that actually helped them to where they are now; not when they sign a new pop-punk band, focus on that band a 110% and forget about the bands that brought them to where they are. We need to find someone that is going to give us attention as the band that we are and that we want to be; whereas right now, that doesn’t seem like Victory’s position.
		But when you signed to them ten years ago, they did treat you well? Definitely. We were a priority for that label. When we signed to Victory Records, Tony Brummel was doing it out of his closet, in his apartment. Now he’s got a four story building in downtown Chicago. And the bands that got him there; us, Snapcase, Earth Crisis and Hatebreed have all been pushed aside. And now he’s focusing on bands such as Thursday, Atreyu, Darkest Hour, all bands that even with the way music is going right now, are good for the moment, but they are not going to last. We were talking about this with the guys from Soulfly at the festival that we did yesterday, because they are being treated poorly by Roadrunner at the moment because they’re not Nickelback. And that’s not the way things go. We’re bands that have been together well in excess of twelve years. And we’ve been putting out records. And we have been selling records consistently. People come and see our shows. Bands that are big at the moment right now like Thursday, the bands that Victory has decided to push, that scene of music is going to change, and if they don’t change with it they’re going to be left behind. Whereas we’re consistent in the music that we write. If anything, we get heavier with each record. And it’s going to be that way and people are still going to come to our shows, they are still going to buy our records. And that’s the thing that Victory is losing sight of. We need a label that we are going to sit down with and they notice. We need a label that focuses more on heavy music and not just on what’s big at the moment.
We had to pay for our own plane tickets because Victory does not help us. What they did on the last tour, they paid for one quarter of our van for five months. That is a piece of shit.		But on tour, isn’t it better to be on a big label when you look at money and stuff like that? We don’t care. We don’t care about the big label or anything like that; we want a label that’s going to support us, that’s going to put ads in magazines. When ‘Angermeans’ came out: no ads. No one even knew our record was out when we did our U.S. tour. No one even knew we were on tour. The label gave us zero tour support. We are here touring Europe on our own money right now. We had to pay for our own plane tickets because Victory does not help us. What they did on the last tour, they paid for one quarter of our van for five months. That is a piece of shit. And we were doing a show with Darkest Hour the other day and they were telling me ‘Yeah, Victory just flew us to Iceland to play one show with Minus and then flew us to Europe to finish the rest of our tour, and they sent us records and loads of other stuff.’
		And they ride limo’s every day. Exactly. We have never seen a royalty check from Victory, we have never made money doing this band and when we’re at home, we all work regular jobs. We need a label behind us; I don’t care if it’s Stillborn, Century Media… If Universal said they wanted to do it and they were ready to give us a 110%, that would be fine with me. But like I said, it’s not the money. We would sign with the smallest label as long as they were amped to have us and made us a priority.
		I was curious about this, because Victory obviously gets a lot of shit on the Internet and in fanzines. Thursday just slammed them the other day. They posted a two and a half page letter on their website about how much the label sucks (Laughter from Jasper). You should go and read it. It’s all about that they didn’t get what they were promised, they didn’t get that, they didn’t get this, Tony is a piece of crap. And I don’t think Tony is a piece of crap at all, he started out as a friend of ours and he moved it into a business relationship. And I can’t be mad at him for that because he is a businessman. He has to do what he does. But the things that people don’t know and that his bands find out because someone decides to leak us the information is that he signed distribution deal over distribution deal with different countries, has gotten money from it and doesn’t put it back in the bands. He sold a quarter of his label to MCA records: no money back in the bands. And everyone was thinking ‘Wow, maybe we’ll get a little help for us now.’ We were thinking that, Snapcase was thinking that, River City Rebels was thinking that. And everyone is like ‘What are you going to do for us?’ And he says ‘I’ll put out your next record!’ and that’s it. That’s where it ends.
		When you stopped doing the band, was it hard to readjust to ‘normal life’? No, because when we’re at home, that is normal life. We were never a band that toured that much to begin with. It was hard not to have the band. But throughout the time that we weren’t doing the band, I did another band that kept me busy, Andrew did another band that kept him busy and all of a sudden we got back into doing Angermeans, so we were always playing music; that’s what we do. If I stopped doing the band today, I would be starting another band and hopefully be able to do the same thing that I’m doing right now. And hopefully people would like it.
		What’s the worst place you’ve ever been to with the band? Kansas City. It’s a hellhole. It’s not a nice place. And not only that, but the scene there has a lot of skinheads. So it’s a very violent scene. It just wasn’t very nice; we didn’t even stay there that night. We played and bailed. We had to get out.
		I pretty often read that skinheads are fucking shit up in certain scenes. They are. And there’s a lot of people who consider themselves anti-nazi skinheads or straightedge skinheads or whatever, but it’s just not my thing. If it’s your lifestyle, and you want to keep it cool, fine. I know a lot of skins, like ska-skins, who are the coolest people I’ve ever met, but we had some straightedge skins that would come out to our shows and they just carried this completely fascist attitude that I don’t agree with. And I don’t agree with really imposing your ideas militantly on anybody. I’m not a violent person, regardless of what happened in Austria (More laughter from Jasper). It’s not a cool thing to do.
		So Rockezine is an Internetzine. I personally think that hardcore is thriving because of the Internet. Do you think that the Internet is more important for hardcore than, for instance, death metal? I think the Internet is important for any scene. It really helps people to connect, if you didn’t have the Internet you wouldn’t be able to chat up to some kid in Florida if you live in Seattle about who your favorite bands are and who you like. I’ve seen a lot of connections being made through the Internet, through people on messageboards and people that live all over the world. And I think that’s a great thing, it really helps getting people together. It can be a bad thing if you use it the wrong way, but I think it’s a terrific, positive tool that can really influence the scene. And it has.
		A few months ago, here in Holland a popular right-wing politician was shot dead by a vegan environmentalist, apparently because of political reasons. What do you think of this? I don’t think it’s right. No one is in the position to take matters into their own hands. That’s why I think there’s people that vote on things as a majority. I think that’s a terrific way to get things done; not if it’s handled like our last election, where all of our ballots where lost and which was obviously fixed, but everyone is going to have Romanesque points of view, where a single person is going to take matters into their own hands, and there are going to be people like that everywhere. Every time that someone decides to shoot one of our presidents or assassinate a political figure in another country or organize a committee and fly two planes into two popular landmarks, I don’t agree with these positions at all; I think if you really want your voice to be heard and you don’t agree with the politician’s point of view, start letters. Hand out newsletters. Start it on the Internet, like we were saying, it’s a terrific vehicle for that. I guarantee you, that person would hear that this person is doing it. If you’re really pissed off and you want to go out and shoot somebody, that’s the wrong attitude. People shoot people everyday in my city and it’s over the stupidest things I’ve ever heard of. Did him shooting that politician make a difference? Did it change anything?
But hardcore is always going to be an underground movement; it’s always going to be kids with ideals that just want to change the world.		Not really. Do you think that there’s still room for progress in hardcore? Absolutely. I think the bands are definitely bringing it up everyday. The hardcore scene is always going to be an underground scene, as long as bands start themselves up and start playing out in clubs, it’s going to keep it on a low level; but when bands like Hatebreed sign huge deals and get pushed right to the forefront of music, and they are a hardcore band with hardcore roots, and their first record on a major label sells 25,000 copies in it’s first week, they are going to get picked up and moved to the next level. But hardcore is always going to be an underground movement; it’s always going to be kids with ideals that just want to change the world. There’s always room for progress, there’s always room to better ourselves, there’s always room to make a difference. If you can keep an open mind and positive attitude about how you are going to make that difference, then that’s the way to handle it, if you keep a militant attitude and stay close-minded about it, and have this ‘my opinion is right, your opinion is wrong and if you’re not like me get out’, then you don’t belong to any scene that I want to be a part of. So I think progression in a good manner is a fantastic thing and a great way to deal with things.
		And musically? Absolutely. My first hardcore records were things like Chain Of Strength, Gorilla Biscuits, and if you listen to that and put on a band like Death By Stereo, that is considered a hardcore band, or Darkest Hour, you can see how much hardcore has changed in just the last ten years. What is considered hardcore now would have been metal, in some cases death metal, ten years ago or five years ago. Music has moved on, hardcore has moved on from three-chord guitars and sing-a-longs and moved into more intricate things. Kids really take what they do musically seriously. And they are not just trying to be hardcore bands, these kids don’t care about just staying in the underground, they want to be bands, they want to do music for a living.
		I think this is about it. Is there anything you still want to say? No, I think it’s always cool to sit down and talk to people about issues and things that they have on their mind and things that other people might want to hear, so I’m glad that I get the opportunity to do it, thanks.
		OK, and I want to thank you a lot for your time and for taking the trouble of sitting out here.
(Jasper Klein)