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HardLore
Dwid Hellion (Integrity)
02:59:33
HardLore is finally joined by one of the most influential vocalists and artists in the history of hardcore/punk: Dwid Hellion of Integrity. This 3-hour sprawling epic starts at his childhood in Louisville, KY accidentally making harsh noise in his backyard, all the way to becoming a permanent staple of the Cleveland Hardcore Mt. Rushmore. Integrity's rise in the 90s with records like "Those Who Fear Tomorrow", "Humanity is the Devil" and "Systems Overload" would go on to help define the sound and atmosphere of the entire decade, with their music and message causing a dark sea change in hardcore. Now we hear about the records that caused such a drastic, longtime shift and Dwid's thorough recollection of the golden age of 90's hardcore. Thank you Dwid for joining us, enjoy. Join the HARDLORE PATREON to watch every single weekly episode early and ad-free, alongside exclusive monthly episodes: https://patreon.com/hardlorepod Join the HARDLORE DISCORD: https://discord.gg/jA9rppggef ...
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- [00:00]
A
We did the incontrastive sin 7 inch that I talked about earlier with Victory. If you've ever seen the record, there's like a blue cross of a crucified witch. That's the COVID artwork. And then all of a sudden there's these records. And according to Victory, we didn't sell any records. Nobody liked us and that nobody would buy it. And then we start seeing in stores our record on a different color vinyl with a green cross.
- [00:25]
B
Well, that's strange, cuz you designed it.
- [00:28]
A
So we called him up. We're like, what's up with that? Oh, no, no, that's the same record. You guys were mistaken. We're like, no, you repressed them, dude. You know he was stealing from the. From the get.
- [00:57]
B
Hello, welcome. It's hard Lore time. How you doing, Bo?
- [01:01]
C
I'm doing so well, Colin. How are you today?
- [01:04]
B
I don't know that. I don't know that I could be better. I'll be honest with you. It's a big day. It's another. We've got it. We've had an incredible month on the show. Perhaps the most stacked month in history.
- [01:14]
C
I'd say so.
- [01:15]
B
And we are capping it off with a. With a legendary episode. We've got an incredible guest. Who do we got today? We have the man that killed Youth crew, a pioneer of metallic hardcore, the iconic frontman and founder of the band Integrity. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome, live from Belgium, Mr. Dwid Hellion. How are you, sir?
- [01:45]
A
I'm doing great, thanks.
- [01:47]
B
Thank you so much for being here.
- [01:48]
A
It's my pleasure.
- [01:50]
B
It's a long time coming. We're psyched. This is a beautiful day we've had. We've got questions here. We've what we've been waiting to ask for, you know, 20 years here. So let's just get to it. I want to start with something. Something interesting.
- [02:05]
A
Okay.
- [02:06]
B
I want to start with the origin of the name dwid. I've got a visual representation here of the story I've heard.
- [02:13]
C
Oh.
- [02:14]
B
And you tell me whether or not this is true.
- [02:18]
A
I think I know what you're gonna say and it's not true.
- [02:20]
B
Do you? Tell me this.
- [02:22]
A
I can tell you that story. That's a strange one. Yeah, but that's so.
- [02:28]
B
That's not why.
- [02:31]
A
No.
- [02:32]
B
Wow.
- [02:32]
A
So there was a guy from Cleveland, Ohio named Jason Popson. He was for a while the singer for the band In Cold Blood with Aaron and Lenny and as well as Mushroom Head, eventually and Mushroom Head simultaneously with Mushroom Head, actually at the time. So it's an awkward conversation. I'm. I'm not sure how to say it, so I'll just say it. Back in those days, you would talk on a phone that would be either a cordless phone or stuck to a wall. This is ancient times. And sometimes people would doodle on paper while they were talking. They didn't have FaceTime like this. For your younger viewers, they're going to think this is mind blowing. But. So, yeah, so I'm talking to him and then he says, has this eureka moment. He says, I figured it out. And I said, figured out what? We were talking about something totally unrelated. And he said, your name, your name. It's Pimp upside down. And I said, what are you talking about, dude? He's like, yeah, I'm doodling your name while I'm talking to you on the phone. And I said, okay, that's fucking awkward. I don't know how to respond. And then he explained it to me. I wrote your name in all lower caps and spun it around and I said, yeah, that's. That's not where it came from.
- [03:49]
B
Oh my God. This is. This is both heartbreaking and incredible information. Yeah, so J man, J man from Mushroom Head discovered the DWID pimp connection.
- [04:00]
A
He. He perpetuated the conspiracy, I guess, but it's not true. So the truth is, I. I grew up. I did not grow up in Cleveland. I grew up in Indiana. And then when I turned, I think about 12 to 13 years old, I moved to Louisville, Kentucky with my father. And that's where I discovered punk and underground music. Before that, I lived on like a farm and they didn't have anything like that. And in the Louisville scene, they had a lot of music, a lot of bands. It was sort of like. You ever see the movie? Suburbia was a bit like that with like young kids having mohawks and everything. And I think a lot of it had to do with people who saw Suburbia and they emulated it myself.
- [04:46]
B
Interesting.
- [04:47]
C
Sure.
- [04:48]
A
And there was a place that was called Charlie's Pizzeria. And it was a pizza shop, just a pizza shop. And it had a really old guy who, who owned the place. And he just. I don't think he had a lot of customers. And he just sort of took on the role of adopting the punk and hardcore scene as his, as his lost children, misfits, toys, children. And he would let bands play there too.
- [05:13]
C
Oh, cool.
- [05:14]
A
And I would go there as a 13 year old kid and for a couple of bucks I could buy a pitcher of beer at 13.
- [05:23]
B
And how, how 13 did you look?
- [05:26]
A
Oh, I look beyond 13, but I had like a terrible Mohawk kind of haircut that I had done myself to my parents. Yeah, to their chagrin. But so I, I ended up drinking most of the. The picture myself. And there was an older boy. And at this time, you know, he was just a couple years older, but it seemed like he was like, you know, my age now, but he was just 16. His name is Rat and he was the singer at the time for the band Maurice and later for the band King Horse. And he's a friend of mine. But at the time he was more like an older guy that you admire. You know, he's also like a really, he's a tough guy, you know, like senpai.
- [06:11]
B
You know, he was Rat senpai at the time. Now he's Rat san.
- [06:15]
A
He never, he never took any crap. So he was like, he was just, you know, a guy like that. So I was like a young kid and so I wanted to be cool with the older boys and they had a band, their, their band even toured with Sam Hain, some of the guys. Jamori split off into the band Slant, which had a lot of success. And so this would have been 1984. And so I tried to be cool and say, hey dudes, something cool, whatever it would be, you know, but because I'm 13 and I drank a whole pitcher of beer, it came out hey, Dwids. So Rat was like, ah, dwit. Now, keeping in mind his name was Rat because he had a rat. There were kids named Spike because their hair was spiky, et cetera. And so I was lucky enough to. At the time I wasn't really happy about it, but I was lucky enough to have a unique name where there's probably a lot of people named Spike and so forth. Or if you had a colored hair, they call you by the color. Yeah, you know, that kind of a thing. So that's it. It's not really exciting at all. It's not as over the years people think it's some kind of a cult thing and it's some kind of like Aleister Crowley kind of lore to it.
- [07:24]
B
But instead it was just 13 year old drunken slurring wor. Yes, beautiful.
- [07:30]
A
Trying to say Helion is a troublemaker.
- [07:33]
B
Ah, there you go. So like a lot of people would.
- [07:36]
A
Associate me with causing trouble over the years.
- [07:39]
B
Controversial figure for sure. How common were people and just, just guys around town having full first and last nicknames.
- [07:49]
A
I don't know, like these Characters, you know, it wasn't really thought out. But the whole idea, I guess, was that we were counterculture and we were like. Well, I think mostly, you know, it's like there was Glenn Danzig, you know, this kind of a thing. So, you know, and Rat Scabies, you know, this kind of.
- [08:07]
B
So 1984 can, Louisville Dwid.
- [08:10]
A
What do you.
- [08:11]
B
What are you into? You know, like, what. What are the punk bands that. That really draw you in? I know you're a big Misfits guy.
- [08:17]
A
Yeah, definitely.
- [08:18]
B
Was that it?
- [08:19]
A
But. But I heard Sam Hain before I heard Misfits. Misfits had already broken up by that time.
- [08:23]
C
Right.
- [08:23]
A
And I heard of Sam Haynes only because the local kids were on tour with them. It wasn't a means to, like, find out this kind of stuff. It wasn't really like. There definitely wasn't an Internet or anything. So I. I just would find out from friends. They would make tape dubs, you know, like mixtapes, and share them with each other. Everybody would do that. You would save up your allowance, buy one record. If it was good, then you could copy it for friends. And they would copy their thing, whatever records they had. That was how we got that stuff. Musically. What I listened to, definitely Sam Hain, Septic Death. There was a record that I bought early on when I moved there. I wanted to buy Franken Christ from the Dead Kennedys because it had just come out, but the police had come in and they had taken. Taken the records because there was a poster inside that HR Giger had designed, and the idea of it was to promote safe sex. So I went to buy the. The Dead Kennedys Franken Christ. Or I went there and I saw that the cops were taking the Dead Kennedys Franken Christ apart. I can't really remember. This is like fucking 47.
- [09:35]
B
So did Geiger design this poster for them specifically?
- [09:39]
A
I believe so, yeah.
- [09:41]
B
That's. That's impressive because he just stopped doing original art for bands by what was, I think heart work was like the last right piece of art he ever made for a band other than the Corn Mic stand.
- [09:52]
A
Maybe Tom G. Warrior hooked him up with Dead Kennedy's. I'm not sure.
- [09:57]
B
Cool.
- [09:58]
C
Yeah. Did the. The Darkness of Sam Hain and eventually the Misfits and what you would see. Did that immediately appeal to you as someone who is often, you know, associated with a darker brand of music? Darker brand, absolutely.
- [10:13]
A
Yeah. When I was a kid, my favorite thing was watching Friday Night. We would get one horror movie. And you're from Chicago, right?
- [10:22]
C
Yes, sir.
- [10:23]
A
So you might. You're not old enough to know it, but you might have heard of, like, the horror host that. That would take place in the 70s. You know what that is?
- [10:32]
C
It sounds very familiar.
- [10:35]
A
So maybe your. Your parents would have. Would have heard of this. There was different horror hosts. And what they were is basically like, instead of just playing a horror movie, they would have, like, this character from the. From the local town. And he would be on. He'd usually be some kind of somebody in the broadcast world within their. Their network. And you'd only have, like, four channels back then, by the way. So they'd have a guy who maybe, like, normally just did the weather, you know, had the cue cards, and they'd be, hey, put a mask on that guy. Throw him out. And we had a guy from Indiana, where I live, which is pretty close to Chicago. I lived in La Fountain, Indiana.
- [11:12]
C
Okay.
- [11:14]
A
We would pick up on channel 55 a show that was called Sammy Terry's Nightmare Theater. And Spooky.
- [11:23]
C
Yeah.
- [11:24]
A
So I would watch those. And I lived. There was nothing where I lived. So one of the toys I had to play with was a small cassette deck, the kind that you might see at, like, an old library or something. And I would take that, and there were VCRs, didn't exist yet. So I would take this cassette deck, audio cassette deck, and put it right next to this big TV that was like more like furniture than tv, and I would record as much as I could onto the tape of the sound of the horror movie, whichever one it would be. And then throughout the week, I'd listen back to it and try to draw what I was, what I would remember from the audio, because that was the only way you could, like, capture visual.
- [12:04]
B
Wow. So visual art. Visual art came before making music for you?
- [12:10]
A
Yeah, it came. It came maybe simultaneously, because at the same time, while I was recording those. Those tapes, I would experiment with the tapes. But, you know, I have to say, say this cautiously, because at no point in my childhood did I think that this was making music. And I will add, for the people who are about to finish this before I can, the music that I make now probably also falls under that jurisdiction before you think that you're fucking witty out there. But at the time, I was just making. Making sounds, and I thought it sounded cool, and I thought it was just, you know, like a toy, I guess. You know, like playing with something. And at the same time, like, we used to have, like, the electric electricity used to come in off of these, like, large, like, poles, like Wooden poles that would be down the, down the, down the street and then they would come to your house. So they just keep connecting and they come to your house. And then to ground them off of our garage, they had this tight pole, that metal. Metal pole that was tied. Tied to the. To the ground in case of like a lightning strike or something. And I used to take like a baseball bat or a broken tree limb or something and just pound on that because it was connected to my garage. My garage acted as resonator or like a guitar. And I would just like make music. So sort of I would just do this. Making a racket. That's a better way of saying you.
- [13:40]
B
Just wanted to hear some cool.
- [13:41]
A
Yeah, I just wanted to like kind of make these sounds that I thought would be. Would be fun to listen to. It wasn't like I thought that records could be made of it or touring it, but you were just.
- [13:52]
C
You're doing harsh noise in LA Fountain, Indiana.
- [13:56]
B
Doing solo sets in the backyard.
- [13:58]
A
Yeah, solo sets that nobody wanted to hear. That's awesome. But also I. I could like take apart the tapes. After a while, getting bored of listening to the same tapes, I noticed that there were like four screws in the corners. And I would like open it up and I accidentally made like loop tapes and different things like that that I would find. Oh, wow, it'll just keep playing that weird sound. It was badly done. It would have a big piece of tape that would be like dead space. Yeah, something like that. And then I would. At some point, somebody gave. Someone from my family gave me a second cassette player so that I could like. Again, this is not the way I'm going to describe it, is not exactly the way that I thought of it. I was kind of mixing things, but it wasn't thought that I was mixing things. I just thought, oh, wow, I can make more sounds and put it onto this thing and make it sound even more fucked up. Or make it sound.
- [14:49]
B
The only intention is just having fun, making fun of cool sounds. You're not like, this is. This is going to be the next 40 years of my life.
- [14:56]
A
I. I had no idea that I'd be on this path.
- [14:59]
B
I think about.
- [15:00]
C
Think about the. The Talk Boy in Home Alone. I had one of those. It's the same. I would like scream into the A Yak Back or the Talk Boy and then like, you know, I totally understand that.
- [15:10]
B
Very true.
- [15:11]
A
It was like that. And so at some point around the same time as moving to Louisville, but a little shortly after I got this record, I Would order records from Placebo Records. I don't know if you know who they were. They did jfa, Mighty Sphincter, Sun City, I don't know. They did a whole bunch of different things, mostly punk based, but they did this one record, I thought it was going to be punk. And it was called the Dry Lungs Compilation. And you would just buy stuff because the COVID or because it had a lot of songs, things like that. And I got this record, it had Mers bow on it and it had Control, Bleeding and some other noise bands that I'm not sure if your. Your listeners would know who they were. But I listened to that and I thought, wait, how. How were they able to fucking make records of this? This is just stupid shit kids make. And I also thought all kids did it. So I don't know if all kids did it or not, but I thought all kids did it. So I was like, why are they making records of what kids do? This is fucking weird. And I listen to it more and I was like, oh, this is cool. Some of it was cool, some of it I didn't like. And it sort of opened my eyes that, that, that was a possibility. Very cool at the time. Like, I thought that people who played guitarists and things like that, that. That was like special people touched by like, you know, talent and God and circumstance that could be able to do it. Only until a little bit later did.
- [16:33]
B
I realize that the noise stuff is maybe the people touched by something, you know.
- [16:39]
A
Yeah. So not by God, but the other guy.
- [16:43]
B
Exactly.
- [16:44]
C
Were you making music while in Louisville? Like in that, in that span of time, when, when did, when did doing music officially, like, not even just around. When did that kind of appear to you?
- [16:55]
A
Not counting the playing around as a child? I didn't do that when I was 13. I kind of thought I grew out of that or something. But I would dub tapes and I. Eventually I moved to Cleveland with my parents. Moved to Cleveland, I went with them. And I got sent to a bad boy school. And my friend, I made a friend there and he lived in the. In the dorm room next to mine. His name is, is Bill Gill. And we decided that we were going to make a punk band, but we didn't have any instruments. And so I talked to him about like the toys that I played with as a kid. And he was like, oh yeah, you know what I would do? And he, he would take a headphone, like, but it'd be more like The Sony Walkman, 1980s style, you know, he had like a headphone and you plug that into the. Into the input jack, and then it would work as a microphone. If you yelled into the. Into the speaker, it reverses and it becomes a microphone. So we were like, oh, we have a microphone. Then we just would be like, oh, who's going to sing? And whatever. Then we made loop tapes of, like, nonsense and feeding back from the speakers. And this is all through his stereo, by the way. Sorry, I missed that part. So it was through his, like, little home stereo that he got for Christmas. And we sort of rigged it up so that we could, like, have this ridiculous concert. And his dorm room happened to open up to a courtyard, and he had a window. So we opened the window up and we just bombarded people with this. Yelling insults, making everyone mad, picking specific people.
- [18:28]
B
You have to.
- [18:30]
A
Yeah, so that's what we did. Then we got in trouble for it, and we like that. But we called that act. I wouldn't call it a band, but it was called Eerie Wax. So it was, like, eerie, like scary, but also like ear wax.
- [18:44]
B
We thought triple entendre. Cleveland became this. This wealth of incredible hardcore music and, like, one of the. One of the best scenes in the country. Just pound for pound in terms of output.
- [18:58]
C
Output, yeah.
- [18:59]
B
How did that happen? Who were the kind of key figures leading the charge? Tell me about the early days of Cleveland hardcore.
- [19:06]
A
Well, there's two ways to talk about it, and I guess I'll start with what you. How you introduced me, which I don't. I hope isn't true, but. Youth group. So the youth crew, they would come through town, predominantly youth today, and we became friends with them, and they. They kind of showed everyone, like, hey, you can do this. You can play this. And, like, also they came in, like, in a van with, like, six or seven people, like, their roadies. Civ was a roadie, for example, you know, and then their roadies would also, like, switch. And then they would play in the band too, you know. Or, like, Purcell would sing for Project X, where he was a guitar player and Youth Today. And so they had this, like, crazy thing where, like, they would, like, switch and, like. But they could go on tour. It was like this, like, full tour, but it'd be, like seven guys, you know.
- [20:02]
B
Yeah. Inspirational.
- [20:03]
A
Amazing. Yeah, and inspirational. And then they weren't, like, gatekeepers or, you know, if you know them. They're super nice. All those guys are super nice. And they were like, yeah, this is what we do. And, you know, gave you, like, little clues, as we were at the time. I was 15, I think, so and.
- [20:21]
B
The reason I say Integrity killed Youth Crew is this is not, this isn't. These are not my words. Yeah, these are. Quote, anybody we've interviewed from that time says that the rise of Integrity coincided with the fall of Youth Crew. That tonally, whether or not you're aware of it.
- [20:37]
C
Yeah, tonally, like, aesthetically, there was a shift at that time.
- [20:41]
A
I don't know if I'm aware of that. I think that what I would see is, like, Purcell and Ray went on to do Shelter, which is a different style, and Walter went on to do Quicksand. So I, I thought that was more maybe with Salmon Shelter too. I don't know.
- [20:59]
C
I, I, I'm sure he played with them.
- [21:02]
B
And then you got Judge, who's always doing something.
- [21:04]
C
Yeah.
- [21:05]
A
And Judge it. Judge it. Judge had broken up around the time of Shelter, too.
- [21:10]
B
Right.
- [21:11]
A
Shortly there within. You know, I don't know. I don't remember how it worked out, but there was, like, a window where all that, Everything changed.
- [21:19]
C
Yeah. And it just happened to be where Integrity could.
- [21:22]
A
Yeah, yeah. I think it was just a coincidence, but, I mean, it was definitely not planned out or anything.
- [21:27]
C
Yeah. Right.
- [21:28]
B
Now, Dwight, I've read a lot about you calling into radio shows in your youth.
- [21:35]
A
Well, there was a thing that kids could call into radio shows, and we had radio shows like how, how modern people have podcasts. One of the things you could do, like, there'd be different shows. It'd be college radio. One of the things you could do is call in on your phone and they would have, like, an experimental program where they would just put on, like, echo and reverb and all kinds of weird effects, and then you could just yell stuff, and until you started yelling cuss words, then they would shut you, kick you off, and the next guy could come on, and we would just, like, turn on our cassette decks and record the radio channel, and then we would yell stuff and make our own noise tapes like that. So maybe that's what you mean, or.
- [22:18]
B
Yeah. And then you, on one of these radio shows, you called in claiming to represent the dark side of straight itch. You recall this.
- [22:26]
A
Okay, so, so Confront was interviewed on, On, I want to say, csp Cleveland State University, or maybe John Carroll University. There was like three, three different schools, and they all had a punk channel, an underground channel.
- [22:41]
C
Yeah.
- [22:42]
A
And one of them had had confront on there. And so as friends do, we called to prank them and, like, take trouble and, like, haze them and things like that. So, like that, that's what that was. But can I Jump back to the beginning.
- [22:55]
B
Let's go back.
- [22:56]
A
Was. So there's two, there's two parts of it, the Youth Crew thing where those guys took us under their wing and, and helped. And they did that through throughout the whole country. Yeah, they did that to all those scenes. I mean, without those guys, they were sit. Sort of like going around like, planting seeds throughout all of America. And then all these bands came out because of that Ranta Applesauce and. Yeah, yeah, and. And also, you know, like, the Break down the Walls tour that they did. We followed them around like how some people would follow Grateful Dead. We followed them around. I went to, like, the east coast and went to, like, the Anthrax. We saw them play and Confront was on that tour too. And they, they played and, and we saw, like, Side by Side and Bold and Youth of today, of course.
- [23:45]
B
So your upbringing in hardcore is very much youth crew oriented.
- [23:50]
A
Yeah. I mean, at the same time, though, I also like Black Flag and Septic Death and Gizm and those bands, so. But I, I, I didn't know it was. It wasn't okay to, like, all that. Other kids cried about it, but I didn't really give a. And I just liked what I liked. So.
- [24:09]
B
Yeah, speaking of gizm, you are. You got them signed a relapse for those reissues.
- [24:18]
A
Yeah, yeah, but I got that. I also helped Zao get on Relapse too. And Cherry's an awesome guy.
- [24:24]
B
That's hard lore.
- [24:25]
A
So there, there was that, There was that direction. Yeah, with, with the Youth Crew guys. But then there was another side of it where we were simultaneously skater kids and there. You might know of. Of Steve Cavallaro. Do you know who he is? He's pro skater, of course. So he had a band called the Faction.
- [24:47]
C
Yep.
- [24:48]
A
And it was kind of like surfy rock kind of stuff. Punk. Punk. Surfy rock stuff. Kind of skatery music, I guess. And a friend of ours, Charlie Griga, he was a really fantastic skateboarder, and he got a guitar. And all of our friends were like, dude, there's no way you're gonna know how to play guitar. What are you. Are you crazy? And then somehow he could play guitar. We were like, what the dude?
- [25:13]
B
He's Touched by God renaissance.
- [25:15]
A
Yeah, yeah. We were like, wow, you're one of those guys. And then he was like, no, dumbass. It's like this. You put your hand and you guys move it around. And then we moved our hands around like, holy. We're making songs. We couldn't believe it. And so. So Charlie kind of started a lot of it for us. And at the same time. And this again, none of this stuff was like planned out. It was just like fucking around that accidentally informed us about this stuff. One of the things, I don't know if it was Charlie or Derek Green or Frank Kavanaugh. I don't know who it was that had this idea, but we would go to this place. You know what open mic night is like, where people have a mic and then they read poetry. Sometimes playing on acoustic guitar. In Cleveland, they had a different kind of setup where they had instruments and a micro.
- [26:06]
C
Oh, wow.
- [26:07]
A
So you could go to this place. And the idea was really like, you go there, you're good at it or talented, and you get to play with other talented people. But that's not how we play. So we would show up there and we would play. You know, we're mean spirited kids. So we would be like, all right, whatever seat isn't taken. The next guy in line that we don't sit, the next dumbass in line has to take that instrument, has to play whatever fucking they do. And so when you get up on stage, like, I might have to be the drummer, for example, I'm not good at drums, especially back then. So I would have to take the drums. They'd be like, you better do it. And I. So I'd have to get up and take the drums. And there would be people who are really good, and they would be fucking pissed, you know, because I'm ruining it for them. And my friends are ruining it too. I'm not the only terrible player. But then the audience would be able to shout out, play a. A country western song, play a reggae song. And all my friends are complete assholes. So they would pick something that would be the most difficult or the least likely that any of us could pull off.
- [27:15]
B
Sure.
- [27:16]
A
So we would yell that out and have to improvise.
- [27:18]
C
Yeah.
- [27:19]
A
And even if we did good, our friends would boo us and say that we were terrible. So the point of the story was this was our, like, trial by fire. So we would get up there and all the guys that did it ended up being guys who still to this day make music professionally. Like, Derek is a singer of Sepultura. Charlie is in Judge and Gorilla Biscuits. Frank, he was in Integrity. And then he quit Integrity because he got an opportunity to be in a band called Filter. And then they blew up. They were on mtv. They were more of a rock band. They weren't like. But he was our second guitar player up until he got that call, and then he. He moved. He jumped ship. But we were happy for him. It wasn't the first.
- [28:03]
B
The first Frank.
- [28:04]
C
Yeah.
- [28:06]
B
First of many, yeah. That's awesome.
- [28:09]
A
The other Frank was too young to go to those at the time. He's. He's a few years younger than us.
- [28:13]
B
That makes sense.
- [28:14]
C
Okay.
- [28:15]
B
A cherubic young man who would grow to be a monster.
- [28:21]
A
I saw a picture, Rubik, a couple of weeks ago. I sent it to him, and he had to be, like, 15 or 16 years old. I almost didn't recognize that he was so. Had a baby face.
- [28:33]
B
He asked me to ask you a question, dude.
- [28:35]
A
Oh, God.
- [28:36]
B
He asked me to ask you the story behind Y U B. AGG Okay.
- [28:45]
A
So Frank and James, the human furnace, and I are good friends, and especially when they were younger, we would hang around all the time. And we had this idea, like, there was this other kind of scene that was like these other skater guys, and we called them the GGs because they love Gigi Allen. Whenever Gigi would come into town, they would go. And then they would, like, do all kinds of disgusting things like putting garden hoses up their ass and just having these, like, crazy typical enemies that would shoot water out of their ass and distance. And they were kind of like the skaters that would wear, like, jeans, jean vests, you know, this, like, Lucero kind of black label stuff. Yeah, yeah, sure. And so, like, Frank and James and I sort of like, were in between. Just, like, with the music. I was. I was into all. Whatever I was into because I liked it. And I also was part of the Gigi thing. Not with the shit stuff, though, unfortunately. And neither with the. Neither was Frank or James, unfortunately, as well. But we would also. We would do some dumb shit, you know?
- [29:50]
C
Yeah.
- [29:51]
A
And we would have jeans vests, and so we would prank each other. And we had this device that was called a speak and spelled like children use it, like it's toy and you could type letters on it.
- [30:03]
C
Yeah.
- [30:03]
A
So we would call each other at, like, three in the morning and then be like, why you. B, A, G, G, R, U, A, G, G. Then the other one would pick up his speak and spell and respond back. And it was. Yeah, that's what we did as kids.
- [30:22]
B
Beautiful. That's awesome.
- [30:25]
A
It's not demonic or anything. It's not.
- [30:29]
B
You never know.
- [30:30]
A
It could have summoned. It could have summoned demons. It could have. Yeah.
- [30:33]
B
Before we get into Integrity and Die Hard, which came before Integrity, do you remember the first piece of, like, published visual art that you ever made? Because I. You did you know that you did two layouts for me before I turned 18?
- [30:49]
A
Yeah, I remember. That's how I met you.
- [30:51]
B
Yeah, pretty cool.
- [30:52]
A
But that was. That was years later, though. But, yeah, definitely.
- [30:57]
B
What was. For what was the first published visual art piece you ever made.
- [31:02]
A
Publish? You mean like on a record or something?
- [31:04]
B
Yes, I made it. And you saw it in person, and you got to have that experience.
- [31:10]
A
When I was. When I was a kid in high school, there was a problem with our. There was. There was a problem with the guy who was teaching graphic arts. The school didn't like him, and they pushed him out. And it's a longer story, but it doesn't really have that much significance. Sure, but he. He got let go. And they didn't have anyone else that they. Either they didn't have the funds to do it or they didn't have. Didn't know how to catch somebody to do the teaching or fill in the. Do a substitute for that. I was the only person that knew how to do it. And I was like 16 years old. So they came to me and they said, look, if you teach the class, you don't have to go to other classes. You don't have to go to math and other shit I didn't want to go to. All you have to do is sit in this room and print shirts and, like, make stickers and stuff. And then I'm like, oh, I don't know if I want to do that. You know, being, you know, trying to fuck with them. And I'm like, can I get paid? And they were like, no, you can't get paid. Are you crazy? But if you do this, you don't have to take and you get credit. And I'm like, can I use.
- [32:16]
B
In high school.
- [32:17]
A
In high school, and Men are High school, it was called.
- [32:20]
B
So they tell you, you don't have to keep doing high school, teach this class.
- [32:24]
A
But I was in high school. I mean, I was. I was. I didn't. I didn't get to go home or something, but.
- [32:30]
C
Right.
- [32:30]
B
But you got. I mean, you just have to be there. You don't have to take any other classes. Sir, we need you to teach. Your only hope. You're like a wonderkind not.
- [32:39]
A
I mean, it wasn't like I was teaching anything amazing. I showed them how to make screens. I showed that. And then how to print. It wasn't like I was. I wasn't teaching them history or anything, so. Or math.
- [32:51]
C
He said, we heard. We heard the demo tape from the courtyard. We Got to get you in this classroom.
- [32:57]
B
No more math for you. Just make sure, please.
- [32:59]
A
Okay. I got kicked out. I got kicked out of the bad boy school and then I had to go to public school. This was the public school. The other one was Gotcha.
- [33:06]
C
Gotcha.
- [33:07]
A
So, yeah, this was just private, private school in. In a suburb of Cleveland called Mentor, Ohio. So at that doing that, I would print stickers for my friends, bands for my band, which didn't exist yet, and other things, and I just make stickers and, like, give them out and put them on everything. So maybe that was the first thing I did. I'd also make Integrity shirts, even though I didn't have any songs at the time yet.
- [33:33]
C
Wow.
- [33:34]
B
Yeah. So you had the name very early.
- [33:36]
C
Interesting.
- [33:37]
A
Yeah.
- [33:37]
B
I read a story of you, again, you calling into another radio show and saying that Integrity was like a violent straight edge band before a single song was written, probably.
- [33:48]
A
I mean, like, we would call up and like, Tom. Tom from Confront is a good friend of mine. And he also played on it on the Integrity demo and the seven inch. He was the bass player. So Aaron and I would, like, prank him. So, you know, he would call up and say, like, hey, Tom, why do you have shiny rubbery cheeks or butter cheeks? You know, and like, stupid. Like, we were kids, teenagers, so we would call up and haze our buddies who were on. On the show. And then they would be getting interviewed and, like, the guy would be asking him stupid and that. We would call in and like, oh, we have a call. We have an interview. We have someone who wants to call in and ask you a question, guys, what do you have to say? And then we would say something stupid and make them either laugh or be mad at us.
- [34:34]
B
I. I had a similar pastime of calling into 104.1 and 106.9 and requesting my brother's band's songs, which nobody had heard, nobody should have heard. They were terrible. Sorry, Taylor. And they yelled at me every time. They were like, don't tell us what to play, man. Dog. If it's not on our radar, it sucks. So again, they would let you.
- [35:00]
A
They would. They would take requests, they would play.
- [35:03]
B
Things they didn't want to feedback by. What was the band called? Breaking Perfection. They didn't want to play that one.
- [35:11]
A
And that's all right now they're kicking themselves. So.
- [35:14]
B
Yeah, you never know. Exactly.
- [35:17]
C
So the name existed, the concept for Integrity existed in your mind, at least. Like, what you want?
- [35:23]
A
In my mind, yeah.
- [35:25]
B
So how does it come together as a. As a Band and like, the Harder They Fall demos, the first thing, who is that OG lineup? How does it. How do you make that happen?
- [35:36]
A
So I met Aaron because Confront needed a couple roadies. And they were playing in. I think that they played in Buffalo with Warzone. And it was right when Warzone had that where's the War Zone Woman? Thing, you know?
- [35:52]
B
Yeah, of course.
- [35:54]
A
Yeah. It was pretty cool because I'd never seen Warzone before. And I had the seven inch and then. Then I had that record. And Ray was a really tall guy, especially for when we were all kids.
- [36:06]
B
We've seen his boots, man.
- [36:07]
C
His boots.
- [36:08]
A
I've seen his boots.
- [36:09]
B
Massive.
- [36:10]
A
So they were. They were on stage and they were just like kind of feeding back and, like, riffing and stuff, you know, like ringing out notes. And then he sat on stage and it was packed. It was in. In Buffalo, trying to think of the name of the Pipe Dragon, I think was the venue. And the guys on stage, like, got into the microphone and they were here. Where's Ray? You know, the whole skit. And then out of the back of the room, like, behind all the crowd, but almost like Rocky or something, he opens these two doors and it lights up like an angel or something. He comes running out with his fists up, and he had this, like, trucker hat that said War Zone on it. And he had. They all had these, like, kind of like rain jackets that you could screen print on that said War Zone. And he comes running upstage and then they start doing. Don't forget the struggle. Don't forget the streets. Everybody went crazy. So that's a side story. Sorry.
- [37:06]
B
I like that. That's cool to hear.
- [37:09]
A
But Aaron and I were roadies. Confronted, had played on that show, I think. Or maybe it was a different show and that's the memory that came to mind. But on the trip up there, I didn't know Aaron and Aaron didn't know me. And Tom said to Aaron or to me, you know, you guys should start a band together. You guys should become friends. And we were like, why? Because you both like shitty music. You like all this fucking stupid music. And all the. Tom, like, only would be like youth crew stuff only like, nothing else. And so if you like something else, you were like a freak, you know, so. And we liked being freaks. We didn't care. So we were like, oh, what do you like? And, you know, on that trip up there, we. We created a connection and we somehow liked a lot of the same stuff, like, almost identically. So that was pretty cool.
- [37:57]
B
I think that One of the craziest things about that demo. So this is. This is Die Hard starting you're talking about.
- [38:04]
A
Yeah, this would be Die Hard after. Right after that.
- [38:07]
B
So Die Hard integrity was born from the. The remains of Die Hard.
- [38:12]
A
Sort of. It's complicated. Isn't exactly like that. Sure, I was in Die Hard, but there's a record from Die Hard. It was an album of Die Hard called Looking out for Number One. And I'm not on that. Interesting that. That's a guy named Stork. Stork Schlocter. He's Paul Schlocter's younger brother. Paul is the singer for the band Inmates, which is also Aaron and Lenny playing in that band. And. And Chris Smith also. All three of those guys played on Blues Fear Tomorrow together.
- [38:48]
B
I think the crate. The wildest thing about integrity, to me, looking back and you don't. You know, we. We've had the. The luxury of time, but when you go back and listen to even the demo, the sound is so established right off the bat, like, the identity of integrity is there immediately. How long did you work on that demo? How. How quickly was. Was the band incepted and how was it received at the time?
- [39:17]
A
Well, everybody hated it pretty much. But I mean, the ideas were mainly like. Like, Live it down was me beatboxing to Aaron. I'm like, this is kind of what I think would be cool. And then he would be, oh, what if you did this? And. And we would just sort of beatbox back to each other. Like riffs. Like, as ridiculous as it looks. I know it looks ridiculous out there.
- [39:43]
B
But no, I do it every day. Dude, we do it. That's what we do.
- [39:46]
A
That's one of Aaron's things. It's like, he's really good at like this kind of beatboxing coaching thing when he's writing the song. So he'll like. He could do the drums with his mouth while he's playing the guitar. This is what I want. So he would like, direct the drummers and things like that too. And Aaron is a very special guy who can like, kind of see the whole picture before I could do that too. So we get along very well, you know. So it worked. It worked out well. But I mean, we just sort of reverse engineered things that we liked. We didn't know like, what we were doing at all. And Aaron was a bass player. He wasn't the guitar player in Die Hard, he was the bassist. And there's a lot of extra parts to the. To how Integrity came to be But I'll just go from that part, I guess, where the song started being made. So Aaron wanted to get a guitar. And there was a lot of these, like, really kismet moments in my life, and they continue to happen all the time. And this is one that was. Was really special. This is shortly after Christmas. And this girl that I knew, it was a very wealthy girl, she said, hey, I heard you have a band. I said, yeah, we're working on it. I got this guitar for Christmas from my stepdad. I don't want to play guitar. You want to have it? Like, all right. So she gives me this guitar. So Aaron calls me up and says, hey, man, I heard you have this band. And they kicked. Aaron had kicked me out of Die Hard that bad. And I'm just kidding. He did kick me out. I'm not kidding about that part. They. They all kicked me out. They said that I. My lyrics were too weird and they wanted, like, more straightforward.
- [41:33]
B
So when he was ready to get weird. You're the first guy he called.
- [41:36]
A
Yeah, I don't think that he was the main. The main guy thinking of that, but he. When he came to me, I already had a record deal, but I didn't have any songs. So he goes, I want to be in your band, dude. And. But I want to play guitar. I don't want to play bass. And I go, oh, really? And I had this guitar, I don't know, just, you know, the stars lined up. He goes, yeah, I'm going to sell my bass and I'm going to get it. I'm going to get a guitar. I'm going to save up a little bit extra money. I'm like, no, dude, I have a guitar. You can have it. And he was like, what? What the fuck? And I gave him the guitar. I have a. I have a similar guitar if you want.
- [42:13]
C
Yeah, I'd love to know.
- [42:15]
A
I didn't plan this. It just happened to be over here.
- [42:17]
C
So this Jackson isn't.
- [42:19]
A
Is. This is not the guitar that Aaron right. On all those records. But this is another one. And they sold these at Toys R Us.
- [42:28]
C
Okay.
- [42:28]
A
And so this is like. This is the. A guitar the same style, same color, everything is what Aaron has.
- [42:36]
B
So the integrity demo. Demo was written on a Toys R Us guitar.
- [42:40]
A
Yeah, it's called a JB player. And it's. It was made at. It was made. They. They had a. A pro line, but this was the Child. Child's line. And they're smaller, and Aaron is a little bit of a smaller guy, so for him, you know, he's. He. He plays, like, insane leads, and the guitar fretboard is smaller, so he was able to, like, do, like, stuff. What maybe he couldn't have done otherwise. I'm not sure. But, I mean, he's incredibly talented regardless. But I think that the size helped him, like, maneuver the fretboard a little Interesting. Easier than it would have been if he got, like, you know, Les Paul or something.
- [43:19]
B
Is it true that while he's doing those insane leads that you would write lyrics over them to piss him off?
- [43:25]
A
Not really to piss him off. I mean, we have a thing where, like, it works good together.
- [43:30]
B
It.
- [43:31]
A
It's like, maybe it would be like, hey, I'm trying to piss you off there. It could be that in some points, but it was more like, we knew that it worked. Right. We knew that it.
- [43:39]
B
Singing over the leads is a thing very few bands do.
- [43:43]
A
And nobody does that.
- [43:45]
B
I don't think nobody does it. But it became this iconic integrity thing, which is cool. If it started as a hazing thing, it ended as, like, a part of the identity, which is cool.
- [43:54]
A
Yeah, I. I don't think it started as a hazing thing. Although we would always with each other, but it wasn't like, we're gonna. I'm gonna ruin the song just because of this. I. I love his leads. There's some people who try to have this weird rumor that I don't like leads. All my records have leads, even the records that Aaron's not on. So that's not true. I love leads more. If it was up to me, I would have leads the whole song. But these guys are. And don't want to do enough leads, you know?
- [44:22]
B
There you go.
- [44:23]
A
Yeah.
- [44:24]
B
So the demo's out. You say people hate it.
- [44:29]
A
That would change. Our friends liked it, sure. But, you know, we had to. We had to make a demo to send to Victory, and Victory was a new label at the time. They had two records out before us, and we were the third band.
- [44:44]
B
And you said you had a record deal already.
- [44:46]
A
Yeah, we had a record deal.
- [44:48]
B
Was that with. Was that with Overkill?
- [44:52]
A
Oh, with Victory.
- [44:53]
B
With Victory. Okay. Really interesting.
- [44:56]
A
So Victory had two. Two records out. I think it was inside of Billingsgate, maybe.
- [45:02]
C
Yeah. Yeah.
- [45:04]
A
And then we were the third. The third record on the label. And what had happened was it goes back again to the youth crew guys. So I would print these shirts, you know, at school and in my basement and whatever, and then I would, like, print them on, like, the inside of, like, billabong shirts or Whatever. Like you. Or like underwear shirts because you couldn't get like comfort colors. Blanks.
- [45:28]
B
Sure, sure.
- [45:28]
A
Like that didn't exist. Even like band shirts kind of didn't exist. So it was difficult to get blanks. And I would like find shirts at a thrift store and tournaments that I would print on them, things like that. And Gorilla Biscuits came through town and I gave Walter and a couple other guys like, shirts because I don't know, they're my friends. And then because they A, are super cool and B, probably also super sweaty and their shirts smelled like they were like thanks for the shirt and put it on. You know, they don't give a. Probably didn't. I had no song, so there was no reason for them to put it on other than maybe they thought they'll help this little kid. Yeah. Then so they leave Cleveland and the next date they play Chicago. And this young guy comes up to Walter and says, hey man, I love your 7 inch. They didn't have the LP out yet, so he said, I love your 7 inch. And I have the small label, I have two records out, but both bands have already broken up. And I would like to like do something more serious. And I want to do an album and my idea is to do Gorilla Biscuits album. Would you guys be into that? And then Walter said something along the lines of like, thank you, it's really kind of you, but we already have a deal with our friend at Revelation and we've already recorded. It's going to be coming out pretty soon, but I don't want to leave you hanging. My friend Dwight has this amazing band. You should fucking sign him. So this is all unbeknownst to me. So I get. I was living in like what. What people call punk, a punk house, you know, where a lot of kids live in like a shitty house. So I came back to my house and from working somewhere, I don't know. And there was like a note next to the phone that said, hey, hey Dwind. A record company called for you. I guess you're signed now and here's the number. Haha. And so they thought that I went to a payphone and called and was like, hey, how are you doing? This is a record label. Because I would do like that.
- [47:35]
B
Yeah.
- [47:36]
A
And then I thought that they had done it or Aaron or someone had done it. I thought one of my friends had done this. So I didn't call right away back because long distance was expensive then too and I'd have to pay for it. So I sort of like struggled with Should I call this back? Is this a prank? These guys are going to make me call like some strippers or something. Of course, you know, some. Something stupid, you know, some kind of.
- [48:02]
B
A private B delivery.
- [48:03]
C
Yeah, yeah.
- [48:04]
A
Who knows what it would be, you know, some prostitute, you know, sex. They used to have this thing, sex calls before. Yeah, the Internet. So people would call that up or whatever. So I thought it maybe was something like that. Someone was playing a joke. And I called up and then the guy said that it was true and I still didn't believe it. I thought maybe it was a cousin of a friend of mine or something. So then I said, okay, well what do you want me to do about this? And he said, well, send me a demo. I said, I don't have a demo. Why not? 16 year old kid, man. I don't have any money. Demo. He's like, well, what if I sent you some money, could you record? I was like, yeah, I'm sure I can record, buddy. I don't believe it. So I give him my address back. Then you would like with a letter and a stamp mail things. And I received a check in there, in this letter, in this envelope with a letter. And then I thought, I still didn't believe it. I thought, okay, this is some bullshit. These guys are gonna get me in trouble. So I'm gonna put the check in the bank and wait for it to clear. Because back then, the out of state check, you had to wait a few days. So I put it in there and then it cleared. I was, what the fuck? This is real. And then at that point Aaron came and said, hey, I want to be too. You know. So.
- [49:20]
B
So this is another kismet thing. Targets dropped off. Yeah, you get this ghost check from Tony Rummel.
- [49:27]
A
Sorry, the guitar. The guitar is after. This is out of sequence.
- [49:30]
C
Okay, okay.
- [49:31]
B
That's even more insane.
- [49:32]
C
Yeah, that's crazy.
- [49:33]
B
It's crazy. So you put together this demo because you have to.
- [49:38]
A
Well, we wanted to, we wanted to, but I mean we were pretty fearless. We just thought, oh, I mean these guys are doing it, why can't we do it? Also like we had our friends went out face and confront and so like we knew people who could do. And we were in Die Hard. We had made a couple of Die Hard demos that were pretty awful, but we did them on like a four track, like a Tascam or fast four track. It sounds pretty awful, but.
- [50:05]
B
So who's the original lineup at this time?
- [50:08]
A
So this on base was Tom who was in confront and Aaron played guitar And Tom's dad, I don't know if Tom's dad was part of that whole. I never can remember the name of it. But you. Sometime in the 80s, these archaeologists found this old remains of the oldest human being at the time. And it's some kind of a name. Like I should remember this because I've told the story like 10 times and I. I never can remember the name of the. Was like Lola or. I don't know, there was some kind of a name for this. The remains of this mummified girl from the oldest living or the oldest human remains that were found at that time. And his dad, I think had something to do with that or his dad had something to do with some kind of big archeology discovery. And his dad got offered to work as some important person at an important museum in Washington D.C. so Tom and his family, they moved to D.C. and now we don't have a bass player. And then there was this bratty brother of Aaron. His name is Lenny Misha Melnick. And he was like 14, I think. And he is the most talented of all the Melaniex and all the Melons are incredibly talented. But this one. And he's a bastard too. I don't mean it literally, but I'm saying it to be funny. But he's like a guy who's so talented at everything he does, including jokes, including every. Anything and everything. You could just put this guy in front of anything and he's gonna know how to do it. It doesn't make sense. He's always been like that. When we first started skateboarding with him, I'd already been skateboarding for years. And he was like, I would like to try skateboarding. We're like, okay, here, try this. He was immediately doing kick flips. He was immediately still.
- [52:06]
B
How is he doing that?
- [52:07]
A
Yeah. Jesus. We were like, you're. You're full of. You had to be practicing like, yeah, your. Your friends or something. He's like, no, dude, you guys. And he's always a bastard like that. Always confrontational.
- [52:21]
B
Wow.
- [52:22]
A
But so Aaron goes, lenny, you know, why don't you play basis? I don't want to play in your stupid band. He said, come on, dude, we need a baseball. Fine, dude. And then he. All this and it's like, what the dude? It's always like that. So I. I secretly hate him because of his talents. Wow. But that's. That's how we got. We got Lenny.
- [52:48]
B
So the Mel are in the band together.
- [52:50]
C
Who's drumming?
- [52:52]
A
Yeah. I'd rather pass on that sure.
- [52:55]
B
Fair enough. So the first tour after the demo was with Judge, you told me, on the east coast and Midwest.
- [53:05]
C
Wow.
- [53:06]
A
Yeah, that's. That's true. We. We did a tour with Judge, but we had never played Cleveland, so we did a tour of Judge, and. And that was a little bit deliberate because everybody was mad at us, and they said, oh, you guys suck, and you guys are dicks. You have a record deal. And, like, there was this kind of thing like that. So we thought all these guys play locally all the time and, you know, like, Taco Tuesday kind of thing. So we were like, that we're just gonna immediately go on tour, and you guys can all off. So we immediately went on tour, and then when we came back, people were like, why don't you guys play at home? We're like, you guys. We don't want to play for you peasants. You know, we go on tour. Oh, it wasn't really this grandiose as that, but, you know, we. We try to play it up a little bit to be dick.
- [53:56]
B
Sure. And so how long did it take for you to play Cleveland?
- [54:00]
A
So we played Cleveland the next year on January 6, 1990, was the first show that we played in Cleveland, the Fantasy. And it was with Outface and False Hope, and. And we opened the show, and it was like a big. A big riot, and people were fighting. The GG guys were fighting, and.
- [54:22]
B
All right, that's what you want.
- [54:23]
A
They threw a guy through a. A window in the front of the. Of the venue.
- [54:28]
C
Good show is.
- [54:30]
A
And then the. The owner didn't want to pay any of the bands or the promoters, and they said that integrity hypnotized the audience into violence, which we love that. And then it got put. It got printed in the local newspaper that we hypnotized everyone into violence. So we're feeling pretty good.
- [54:48]
B
There's a shirt that's his.
- [54:49]
A
You know, they thought we would be upset. They thought that this was not. Not the direction we wanted.
- [54:55]
C
So. Sorry. Do you remember on that Judge tour how, like, how it went for you?
- [55:01]
A
Are you saying, like, where it went.
- [55:02]
B
Or how it went?
- [55:04]
C
I mean, that is a good point. I'm saying how it actually went, playing on these tours. Did people.
- [55:08]
B
Yeah. Were they fed up whenever you guys play?
- [55:11]
C
Did they hear you? Hear you?
- [55:13]
A
Yeah, it was well received.
- [55:17]
B
We play.
- [55:17]
A
We even played in Louisville, Kentucky, where I was. Where I had grown up.
- [55:22]
C
So Judge played Louisville, Kentucky?
- [55:25]
A
Yeah.
- [55:26]
B
It's crazy.
- [55:26]
C
It's one of the craziest things I've ever heard.
- [55:28]
B
Yeah.
- [55:29]
A
So why is that crazy.
- [55:32]
C
Now Louisville is a bastion.
- [55:33]
B
Huge booming scene.
- [55:35]
C
It's fantastic. But I. You know, late teens, early 20s. Louisville. Louisville was nothing. There was very little you might remember.
- [55:43]
A
Endpoint. Do you remember those guys? Yeah, they were. They were like the big popular band at the time for. For that. For the youth crew type thing. And then there was King Horse. They were popular. They were on Caroline Danzig, produced their album, did their artwork. They were on the COVID of, like, Kerrang and stuff. Like, they were like RIP Magazine on the COVID Like, all this stuff. They were.
- [56:05]
B
It's also just crazy to think about. Judge how much they got around, you know?
- [56:09]
C
Yeah.
- [56:10]
B
After going away for the longest time, they were like the band for a minute. So.
- [56:18]
A
Yeah. This is before they. This is before they disbanded.
- [56:21]
C
Yeah. Right.
- [56:22]
A
This is. This was like, right. Right after the album came out.
- [56:25]
B
Pardon this interruption. We've got to tell you about something very important. You will not sacrifice any personal integrity by going to maddvintage.com and picking up some unbelievable old, beautiful hardcore metal punk T shirts.
- [56:42]
C
What did you get recently from Mad Vintage?
- [56:44]
B
I got a typo shirt. I got a Dead stock Wolverine blue shirt.
- [56:49]
C
Dude. Excellent.
- [56:51]
B
Original owner of some Swede who never touched it.
- [56:54]
C
I got a Youth Today, Go Vegetarian shirt and a Allison Chains jar of fly shirt.
- [57:02]
B
And Lord knows I need it. Those are. Those are tough to find.
- [57:07]
C
Yes.
- [57:07]
B
And if it's tough to find and we talk about it on the show, he's probably got it. So go to madvintage.com, pick up something unique, pick up something that speaks to you, and use code HARDLORE15 to get 15 off your order. And this stuff adds up, man. 15 could end up being billions of.
- [57:26]
C
Dollars Luke is also looking to buy. If you have shirts that you're trying to offload that you got too many of, I'm gonna do it myself pretty soon. Get in contact with them.
- [57:38]
B
Yeah, The Bow Archive gonna be available on Mad Vintage soon. Maybe at ldb, because he'll be there coming up.
- [57:44]
C
LDB tied down. And what was the other one? He said another one.
- [57:48]
B
There's some secret ones. Ah, he'll be at Furnace Fest. Interesting. Okay. Those dusty old kooks will be able to get some of Luke's stuff. Mad Vintage, code HARD LORE15. This episode is also brought to you by Guilty Party, the number one menswear store in North America, co owned by Champ from Foundation. We are so honored to support this incredible store when we can on the show. It's our favorite menswear store in North America. Not for personal reasons. Not just because we love the owner and. And go way back with him, but they have all of our favorite brands. Ironheart, full count. 316. Stuff that is built to last your entire life.
- [58:30]
C
I look forward. I have a few pieces now from Guilty Party, and I look forward to incorporating them. You know what I mean? I know it. It looks good. I feel confident in them. I really, really enjoy so much of. Of what they have and so much of what Champ has suggested. You know, they're.
- [58:47]
B
Oh, yeah. So there's some days where I'll be like, just. Just. Just give me something. Yeah, tell me what. Tell me what I want. And I love that A lot of the Japanese denim rins make a thing. 35. 32.
- [58:55]
C
Oh, very nice.
- [58:56]
B
Which is like, I'm a. I guess I'm a 35.
- [58:59]
C
I'm a 33, which is common. You find it. But.
- [59:02]
B
But, yeah, 33 is out there. 35 is tough, man.
- [59:05]
C
Yeah, ab.
- [59:06]
B
But if you're a weird size, Guilty Party's got you covered because some Japanese guy thought of it and figured it out. Okay, go to guiltyparty co and use code hard lore to get 10% off. And if your order's over $300, which we're farming. Was gonna be. You're gonna get free shipping too.
- [59:22]
C
Boom.
- [59:22]
B
Change your life. Quit blowing out your crotch. Guilty Party.
- [59:26]
C
I have a couple questions before we move on. Too far. The shirts that you gave to Walter and the other girl. Biscuits. Guys, Was it like the, like. Do you remember the design that you were printing?
- [59:36]
A
Of course. It was like the cat. We call it the candy bar, which looks like Hershey's Candy Bar. That's why. Candy Bar. But it's not called Candy Bar because we think it's cool. If someone was like, that looks like a candy bar, you're a loser. It was more like that. It wasn't like. We thought that that was a cool catchphrase for it. Somebody was. This is how all of our friends operate.
- [59:55]
C
But it was the, like, iconic integrity. Thin type. Block. Block.
- [60:01]
A
Yeah.
- [60:01]
C
Very cool.
- [60:02]
B
And. And did you already have the skull logo at this time as well?
- [60:06]
A
Yeah, we had the skull on. Not on the shirts, though. On those shirts, they had a baseball cross. Baseball bats that I designed. And that would be on the back of those shirts. And they were white shirts. They were like underwear shirts. I don't know if, you know, like. If you go to, like, like, a.
- [60:21]
B
Hanes undershirt or something.
- [60:23]
A
Yeah, yeah. It would be under your work shirt, you'd have a white shirt. So that you sweat on that. That's what. You could buy like a three pack of those. And then I would print on those.
- [60:33]
C
Got you.
- [60:34]
A
It was really thin and really crappy.
- [60:38]
C
Did you have. When did you get the Judge Hammer tattoo?
- [60:42]
A
When did I get it?
- [60:43]
C
Yeah. How old were you?
- [60:44]
A
Probably shortly after that tour, I think.
- [60:47]
C
Incredible.
- [60:48]
B
So integrity is founded. By the time you're like, I love Judge. I gotta get this on me forever.
- [60:52]
A
Yeah, I love Judge. I still love Judge. I love Judge then as well. And I got the tattoo.
- [60:57]
B
Do you still represent the dark side of Straight Edge Dwin?
- [61:02]
A
I doubt it. I never really did. I. So I. I stopped being Straight Edge very shortly after. I think I stopped being straight. It's before the 7 inch even came out.
- [61:11]
B
Oh, okay. Interesting. So let's talk those who fear tomorrow.
- [61:16]
A
Okay, Tell.
- [61:17]
B
Tell me about recording with the late, great Bill Korecki. This is three weeks in a row we're talking about Bill, correct? On the show. Rightfully so.
- [61:27]
A
Oh, yeah.
- [61:27]
B
Any. Any anecdotes or stories about him?
- [61:30]
A
Yeah. Bill was a. I met Bill because he had a recording studio, and it was the only recording studio that would record us at the time in Cleveland. The only. Most of the studios would do R B and soul bands. And there was a studio called Right Track Studio. I actually lived in the building where that. That studio was. And the intern there was Trent Reznor, who later became Nine Inch Nails. And he interned there to learn the. Learn how to use the board and learn how to do all that stuff. So he would record, like, Heavy D and the Boys and Lavert and like, OJS and stuff. They would come in and he would, like, be the engineer for. For those jobs. And then he learned. Because you couldn't go to school to learn how to mix and make music, so he learned it that way. They also wouldn't record us. And so Bill Correcky's place. I don't. I don't want this to sound demeaning. Bill Correcky's place was like, they. They main. He mainly did glam rock bands.
- [62:37]
C
Okay.
- [62:37]
A
And a friend of ours had a band, a glam rock band called Fatal Charm. And there was something in between, like, Poison and Bon Jovi. And they're really good. And he said, you should go to this guy Bill. We record our demos there, and most of their demos would be them recording covers of the popular cockroach of the time. And then they might throw, like, one original on there. Then they'd sell the tapes to, like, girls that would come to See them. And then maybe they'd be like, oh, your power ballad that you. Your original power ballad. That's a great song. And then they would sing along to them or whatever. And so I went to Bill with Aaron, and we. We talked to him, and he didn't really want to record us. And he said, this isn't really the type of music I want to do. And I said, well, we have a record deal, you know? And he's like, you have a record deal? Really? I go, yeah, look, we have money stuff. He's like, how do you have a record deal if you want to make music that sounds like that? I said, that's. That's what we want to make, and we have a record deal. I don't know. You know, he said.
- [63:45]
B
So Bill was a hardcore punk guy?
- [63:48]
A
No, no, no, no, no.
- [63:49]
B
Not at all.
- [63:50]
A
Not even close. He was a lot older than us. He was probably, like, I want to say, like, in his 30s, early 30s when I met him, and we were teenagers, and he just thought we were complete idiots. She was right. But he. He would always say, like, you know, this is. This is popular right now throughout the years, because we worked with him for many years, and, like, whatever would be on the radio. Nirvana or, like, Red Hot Chili Peppers, whatever, these trends would pop up. He'd be, oh, you guys should go in that direction. Like, be funky and like, whatever, like Red Hot Chili Peppers, or be grungy like Nirvana, or he was just, like, rapping, like. Like Limp Bizkit or different. Whatever. Whatever. Whatever was the hot thing. He would be like, you guys should go that direction. And we were like, dude, we're not going that direction. You know?
- [64:40]
C
Sounds like my dad.
- [64:41]
A
That.
- [64:42]
C
That sounds like my dad.
- [64:44]
B
It's so interesting that a guy like that, with that mentality would go on to, like, help define the sound of hardcore for a decade. He threw your records and ring. That's crazy.
- [64:57]
A
He hated it, as far as I know. I don't know what Carl said, if he was receptive to Carl when he went or Scott or didn't really get into it.
- [65:07]
B
He didn't get into it much, I think. But, I mean, Firestorm sounds great, so.
- [65:11]
A
Yeah, it sounds great. Holds up. Bill was a genius. And if we just went to, like, a hardcore person, then they would have probably miked it in, like, the way that, like, a hardcore guy would have. Would have done things. But what he would do is, like, he wanted everything he did. Like, the reason he didn't. I need to clarify because, you know, I joke Around a lot about, about people that I like and then people I don't like, I try to avoid. So I like Bill. But Bill and I also had a. A volatile relationship because he wanted us to become more commercial and I wanted to like, make more trouble. And one of the great things that he, he did for us, as he taught me and Aaron early on, he said, you know, when you're recording your guitar tracks, you want to double them. And instead of just doubling them with all the same setup, we're going to put a different head, a different cabinet, and then you're going to double. So it's as if you had another guy doing it. And we were like, wow, that's fucking mind blowing. Like, we didn't. We had no idea stuff. So those were like little things he would show us and like little bits of panning, little small things like that that we had no idea how to record other than like playing with toys, playing with tape checks, playing with like little four tracks and things. And he really taught us a lot of things that he didn't have to do. But he was a gruff guy, as am I and all of our friends. So like, you know, he was a sarcastic guy too. So there was a lot of that. And, and ultimately, I mean, he did not want to do that kind of music. It would have been great for him to do, like to be known for doing Nirvana or be. Be known for doing. Sure. Something like.
- [66:51]
B
I mean, but he became, yeah, he became really good at it and made a lot of classic records.
- [66:59]
A
Those who Fear Tomorrow because he put, he, he. He worked in a way as if he would have worked with Black Sabbath or Led Zeppelin or, you know, like a real hard rock or heavy metal band. He set everything up in that type of way, which really helped us big time. You can hear ideas, our ideas he did not like. But he would. Sometimes he would even. There's, even there's a song called Heaven Inside youe Hell. And he does a solo on that song. Oh, cool. Because we like egged him on. We'll come on do one dude. And he did and it was really good. But he had a lot of great ideas and he helped us a lot. And we had no real idea how it worked. And we somehow really quickly like understood what he, he taught us. He was really great at teaching how to record. And also we would record on, on big reels. So we also would like. We were inquisitive kids. So Aaron and I would like ask like, how does that work and why does it work? And then we would like. I would think, like, how can I do it weirder? So I'm like, what if we, like, flip? Can we flip it? Make it go, like, record it backwards? Like, we would do, like, backwards recording things and other weird stuff. And he was like, well, I guess it's possible you're going to ruin my equipment. And we would, like, beg him and then. Then he would, like, do it but be mad at us. And then it would turn out cool sometimes.
- [68:25]
B
Yeah, of course.
- [68:26]
A
And then so those. We would, like, touch the reels as they were going when Aaron would do solos to warp them, and he would be like, super pissed, but it turned out cool.
- [68:34]
C
That's awesome.
- [68:35]
A
I thought it sounded cool.
- [68:37]
B
Those who Fear Tomorrow, your debut lp. Again, I think emerging as this.
- [68:43]
A
That was overkill that you asked about.
- [68:45]
B
Okay, Right.
- [68:46]
C
Interesting couple tracks.
- [68:49]
B
Many, many tracks. Again, it's this. This fully established vision of like, what integrity would kind of always be. Any. Any anecdotes or stories come to mind from this session or writing these songs?
- [69:05]
A
Yeah. So writing the songs earlier I mentioned that I lived in this, like, building. It was called the film building. And now it's abandoned. And on the fourth floor is where. Right Track Studios was where Trent was the intern and I. I had a part of the sixth floor, which was a full building, was a warehouse. So I. I went to art school part time. And so I was able to prove to the landlord that I did. And I needed a art studio, I said. And then I just lived there. We made music and did lots and lots of LSD there and the dark side of lsd. Yeah. Aaron and I and Lenny did a lot of LSD at that time. And we had a friend that we would buy it from, and his name is Rich Patrick. And Rich is the guy who at the time, he was the guitar player for Nine Inch Nails. And then later he became the main guy behind Filter.
- [70:03]
B
Wow.
- [70:04]
A
And a side thing, his brother is Robert Patrick. And his brother is the dude who was in Terminator. He was the cop that turns into, like, liquid. Oh, of course, his brother. Wow. He was also, like, on X Files. He was on X Files after David Duchovny left and he was on, like, one of those vampire shows. I can't remember which one it was, but there was like a series that was like sexy vampires and stuff. Dad.
- [70:33]
C
Or, I don't know, unforgettable cameo. In Wayne's World. Of course.
- [70:37]
B
In Wayne's World. Yeah.
- [70:38]
A
Yeah.
- [70:39]
B
So those who Fear Tomorrow, you're. You're high as on lsd You're. You're in this art. Art building, putting together these songs. They're. They're still ahead of their time. What were you guys pulling from to. To write music like this?
- [70:58]
A
Well, the main thing when we did the seven inch and when we did the demo, our idea was we want to make it sound like this. But we didn't have like a lot of. We couldn't see too far. We just thought, okay, we want it sound like this. And everything was really caveman, like, Don, oh. You know, this kind of thing. Which I liked it though. But then Aaron got really good at guitar. And then we did a lot of lsd. But we also listened again to even more weirder and weirder music. And then we. When we. When we made the seven, when we made the demo, we made songs that we wanted to hear and we made songs that we thought, okay, well, we like this and this and this from these bands. But what if it had like a different kind of vocal? What if it had a different kind of guitar? What if it had solos? What. Whatever. Questions. And when we did the album, then we were like, okay, what we did with the 7 inch was okay, but we can really go even further. We can go like, be the most berserk version of like Led Zeppelin, but in hell, you know, wow. And. And on acid. So, like, those are directions we wanted to take and just like impress ourselves. And we did not give a fuck if anyone liked it because we anticipated that no one would like it. And often people didn't like it. A lot of people didn't like it. Still don't. Like.
- [72:23]
C
Let me ask you. You did it because we liked it on this record. I don't remember if it's on the demo, but there is a, like the. The judgment in Judgment Day and the. The build up as you're. As it's going into the first verse, there's a low altered voice vocal track which is pretty.
- [72:43]
A
That's a harmonizer.
- [72:44]
C
It's pretty synonymous with integrity and kind of ringworm too. That became like kind of this iconic thing of what I. What I take from my two favorite bands.
- [72:56]
A
So Bill had this even tied harmonizer.
- [72:59]
C
Yeah.
- [72:59]
A
And I don't know what happened where we got to it, but we, you know, like with messing with his reels, with messing with things. We would fuck around with how the mics were placed because he taught us how we're supposed to do it. And then once we knew how we're supposed to do it, then we said, okay, we're going to do it. Wrong to do this or we're going to do that just because we wanted different results.
- [73:19]
B
Yeah.
- [73:19]
A
And so he was like, I don't know if he suggested, hey, I have this fucking thing. And it does like monster voice if you yell through it. Or if we said, do you have something that could make the voice sound even more evil? Like Freddy Krueger, I think would have been. Maybe that's what it was. Maybe one of us said, sure, we make towards voice sound like Freddy Krueger. And they probably said, because he sucks singing. And he was like, yeah, I have this thing, this eventide harmonizer. And then he turned it on and then we were like talking into it. We're like, whoa, this is fucking sick. And then we were like, let's hide it under this. And like, yeah, not. Not do it in the front, but do it in the back.
- [73:59]
C
Very cool.
- [74:00]
A
You kind of like gospel backing singers. Yeah, but from hell.
- [74:05]
C
Right?
- [74:05]
B
So. So Victory signs you for the demo, puts out the demo, and then is like, we don't want the Alpena.
- [74:13]
A
No, they didn't put out the demo. They didn't put out the demo. They wanted a demo to see if we. If we had any songs worth putting out anything.
- [74:23]
B
So when you didn't want it.
- [74:25]
A
No, he did. We put out a seven inch called incontrastive sin.
- [74:29]
B
Okay, right.
- [74:31]
A
That was third victory vro390.
- [74:35]
B
Is that 1990?
- [74:37]
A
By the time it came out, it was 1990, yeah.
- [74:40]
B
Okay, okay, that makes sense.
- [74:41]
A
It was pressed at United in Nashville. They used to do all the records back then, and they made the 7 inch there.
- [74:50]
B
We gotta get the plants back in America, man.
- [74:52]
C
Yeah. Tell you what I'm looking at.
- [74:54]
A
That plant still exists. I think Jack White owns it.
- [74:56]
C
Oh, that's the one.
- [74:57]
A
Yeah.
- [74:57]
C
Yeah, that makes sense.
- [74:58]
A
That's the one that sold his test presses on ebay.
- [75:01]
C
Yeah. I'm looking at the. At the track listing for those who Fear Tomorrow. And there's staples that I know you still play to this day. Is. Is Misha. I'm. I just learned about 30 minutes ago. Is that about Lenny?
- [75:17]
A
No, it's not about him. You know, like in. In side by side, when they yell Alex.
- [75:22]
C
Yeah, of course.
- [75:22]
A
And how.
- [75:23]
C
And how amazing you're telling him. Start the song. Cool. Okay.
- [75:27]
A
Yeah, it was sort of like an idea like that, you know, when Alex Brown comes in, you're like, oh, this is coming.
- [75:34]
C
Yeah.
- [75:35]
B
I never put it together that you're just calling for him to start the song.
- [75:39]
C
Never.
- [75:39]
A
But in our way, it's like, hey, play, dick. It was more like that than celebrating him. So, like, when. That's when that came together. So I yelled his name. And then. But before that, it had this, like, serial killer Henry Lee Lucas, talking about destroying humanity. And I had made tape edits from these. I had these two cassette tapes of interviews with Henry Lee Lucas. And then I had him paused, so. Because you couldn't edit things, right? So I have these two. Two tapes, and I had them queued because there was a chunk of other conversation in the middle that I didn't like. So I, like, played it a little bit. Like an instrument. Yeah. Like, I paused one and then unpause the other. Then it just, like. You can hear a little bit of a click in there where I did it, because it was. It was before you had computers to do that. And then I liked. There's a noise band, a power electronics band called White House from England, and they have a lot of, like, infrasonic bass. It's like, like, low, low, low bass that would, like, vibrate. And I wanted to do that, but I didn't have any kind of synthesizer at the time. So I took the back of Lenny's bass and just beat on it so it would reverberate. And that's what that sound initially, that. That vibrating sound at the beginning is. And then you have my victims. Never knew was gonna happen. Wow. That speech going over that. That's from the cassette tape.
- [77:07]
C
This is cool. This is learning about things that I thought were, meaning no disrespect, much more thought out and articulated, but come to find, yeah, we're doing it the best we had at the time with what we had available.
- [77:21]
A
I mean, I. I thought that I wanted to have a serial killer announcing that we were going to destroy the world. That was thought out. And I'd like to say thanks to my friend Susie, who worked at a newsstand, and they had made this Henry Lee Lucas book, and it came with a cassette. And she, like, let me steal two of them. And then I used the tape to. To make the thing. Without that, we wouldn't have had the intro. So thanks to Susie Tucker.
- [77:49]
B
Beautiful.
- [77:50]
A
Her contribution to the hosing fair tomorrow. But, yeah, I mean, it was thought out what we would do, but a lot of things were improvised because we didn't know how to do, you know, I love that.
- [78:02]
B
Totally.
- [78:02]
A
Yeah.
- [78:03]
B
So from 91 now to 95, what is touring like for? Integrity. The record's out.
- [78:11]
C
What.
- [78:11]
A
What are.
- [78:11]
B
What are people thinking of it? What are the shows like, one of.
- [78:14]
A
My friends had a band called Starvation army and they had gone to Europe with a new. With not a new band, but a band that was about to become really popular by the name of Green Day. And they were not popular yet. And they both went to Europe together and they, and they toured. And when he got back, he stayed at my house for a while, my friend from Starvation Army. And then I talked to him, I was like, how did you get, how did you go to Europe? And he was like, oh yeah, I talked to this guy and like we said a fax. What's a fax? And then he explained what that was and your listeners don't know what it is either. But I sent a fax to the guy and said we have an album and you know, can we, can we go on tour? Because we got your number from these guys. And Green Day was getting popular. So that Gassy must have thought that we were like, like that. I, I didn't allude that we were like that. I said I can send you some CDs and, and you can check it out. And so I did. And, and he agreed to do the tour and it would be UK and Europe. And so we worked and saved up our money and bought flights and then we flew over to England and he hadn't set it up right. And we also didn't have paperwork, so they were mad at us and wouldn't let us in the country. And then eventually they'd let us in on the condition play.
- [79:46]
B
Right?
- [79:47]
A
We couldn't play music because that would be stealing money from them or something. And so we didn't play. And for some reason we were terrified to actually play. I mean, we could have done it. Nobody would have fucking probably known. But unless, like, unless the venue got in trouble and the cops came in. But for some reason that was one of the rare times where we were behaved and listened to what we were supposed to do.
- [80:12]
B
Non controversial figures. Integrity, temporary.
- [80:15]
A
We were deported and I, I did the drummer, Chuck. He and I spent a night in jail and then they deported us and they deported us to Belgium, actually. Belgium. And there was a guy who was going to drive us and his name was is Ollie Dorner and he's a German guy. So we called him somehow on a phone and then he happened to be home or I don't know. And then he told us how to get to his house, which I don't know how the we did that, but somehow we ended up getting to his house and then we stayed at his house for like what seemed to Be like weeks, you know. It was horrible. It was freezing cold. It was a winter time. And we had. We just would, like, freeze to death and like, all sleep kind of really close together up in the attic of his house.
- [81:02]
C
Oh, my God.
- [81:02]
B
So you didn't play any shows on the mainland either?
- [81:06]
A
Not yet. Not yet. So what he did was he. I think he called up Mad and said, look, I have this American band that, like, their tour fell through. Do you, like, have anything you could do for them? And then they said, sure, we could try something. We have this. This band called Neurosis that are on tour. Maybe they can open up for them. So they. They put us on with Neurosis. And Neurosis at the time was signed to Alternative Tentacles, which is the Kennedy's label. They were not yet on Relapse. This was okay before. And then they. We toured with them and we became friends with them. And we would play a Joy Division cover each night and they would play a joint edition cover each night. And this is before every kid had the shirt in the mall. In fact, if you like Joy Division, then everybody hated you in. In the underground scene, especially with the distorted guitars. And they would. They would. They would be kind of very critical of you.
- [82:07]
B
So interesting. So first European tour is. Is supporting Neurosis. The last. The last second.
- [82:13]
A
Yeah. So we were touring with Neurosis and then Neurosis. And during that tour, all these labels were, like, courting them because they knew they had announced that they were looking for a new label. So all these European labels would come there and be like, here's a bunch of fucking acid and mushrooms and alcohol. And then they were like, they didn't do as much of that, so they would give it to me and Aaron and Nice Eat it all and Lenny. And so we had a great time. And then that tour ended because we were only on, like, the last leg of it. And then earlier, Diehard had toured in America with Underdog and Into Another was on tour. And it just kind of like. As the Neurosis ended Into Another started. So we jumped on the. Into Another tour, opening up for those guys. And, you know, we knew them from. From. From Underdog and from Bold. Because we had flights to go home. That's the only reason we just kept going.
- [83:16]
C
Do you happen to remember by any chance what. What flights cost at the time?
- [83:20]
A
I think it was. Maybe. I could tell some cool stories about flights, though. I think it was like 100 bucks, 200 bucks. It wasn't much, you know, but it was a lot to us then inflation was, has, has a play in it. Well, I'll tell you some interesting things because you're, you're younger. You're not going to believe this. Sometimes you're on flights and you're like, you know what's weird? There's an ashtray on this thing. But nobody's ever been able to smoke. But we were able to smoke back then. We were at the end of the era where you could smoke and we would smoke on the plane. But here, this was the kicker.
- [83:51]
B
Sounds horrible.
- [83:53]
A
On the plane in the back, they reserved the last two rows of the airplane and nobody could buy those seats. All of the stewardesses were young at that time and, and they're still working on the airlines, but now they're my age, whatever. So. But back then there were young, young girls who were just like, wow, this is fun. And they would just serve you drinks for free the whole time. And it was like a bar in the back and people were smoking, yelling, fighting, drinking was totally crazy. And we had a really phenomenal time doing it those first couple of tours. And then they changed the law and you couldn't smoke. And so like one of our friends snuck into, snuck into the lavatory to smoke and he got busted and they were gonna like do whatever they do to the people that that smoke, which I don't really know what they do, but they yelled at him and they said they're gonna do that.
- [84:50]
B
That. Yeah, he didn't want to go.
- [84:53]
A
He didn't want to go. Go for it. So we never figured out what that was.
- [84:58]
B
But what were the next few years of touring in the States like? Post those who Fear Tomorrow. How is, how is hardcore receiving this record? What are the shows like?
- [85:07]
A
We didn't do any tours with other bands really. We did like small things sometimes with, with bands that we would like link up with for a few dates or something like that. Like damnation Ad. We did a few dates with them at some point, but mostly we would just like play like one offs or like we played a weekend, that kind of a thing. We didn't do like full tours.
- [85:33]
B
But are people receiving the record? Well, like, are the shows good?
- [85:39]
A
Yeah, the shows, it was a mixed bag. I mean the shows would be pretty packed but at the same time people would be like not liking it too.
- [85:48]
C
Wow, you.
- [85:50]
A
It's complicated.
- [85:51]
C
Something that I noticed about you specifically, whether it's promo pictures or videos that I've been able to find from way back, are, are you changing your style often? And this is something that like, we've had had stories of where sometimes you were like varsity jacket Nikes, sometimes you were leather jacket bandana. Sometimes, you know, like you were continually changing.
- [86:20]
B
Evolving.
- [86:20]
C
Evolving.
- [86:22]
A
Yeah. But at the same time, this is. I've been doing music for like 40 years, so. Yeah. You know, like when you were a kid, like, you wore different things and then like you tore different things later and stuff. So there's that.
- [86:36]
B
But also your journey is just much more well documented.
- [86:39]
C
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [86:40]
A
Also. Yeah, I was documented minute. But I mean, I don't want to just keep doing. I don't want to A, do what everyone else is doing, and B, I don't want to do what people expect and see. I'm just going to do what I want to do. As far as those varsity things, I mean, a lot of this stuff also comes down. Not really coincidence exactly, but just like, we had no money. So like, if we found stuff, like there was a Champion outlet in Buffalo, we would go there. And then there was a time we went there and they had these like, kind of all blue corduroy, navy blue Champion jackets that had the C on the. On the sleeve. And they were like, like really thick and amazing. And they were like two bucks each. And they had like five of them or something. So my friends and I, we all bought them and then we like embroider. We had this embroidery place put like integrity on it, and we wore those.
- [87:31]
C
Yeah.
- [87:31]
A
And so the whole thing ended up costing like maybe five or ten bucks. But if you were to buy the real jacket, probably would have been expensive, but it was like, maybe there's a hole in it or color wasn't right and stuff. So like, a lot of it comes down to like, like the whole thing. Like, there's a lot of photos of us all wearing basketball jerseys that had no names on them. I don't know if you ever saw those photos. And people are always like, ah, you guys are really into basketball. I mean, the Mellows are into basketball and good at basketball, but we don't really give a about that. We could buy those for like 50 cents at the champion outlet. So we bought them. That was all. It wasn't like there was no special agenda. It was just like, this was inexpensive. And then we were poor. We bought it.
- [88:14]
B
Okay, so when does Lenny Melnick leave the band? When does Misha leave you leave?
- [88:20]
A
Aaron and Lenny both left after seasons in the size of days.
- [88:25]
B
In 95, you're joined by one Frank Novaneck, aka Frank three grand, three gun, aka Florida. Frank, tell Me about getting Frank in the band. He was Ringworm. Ringworm recorded an incredible record in what, 90, 91. And then didn't make. Seemingly didn't make music again for 10 years. What was Frank doing at this time when you. When you recruited him into Integrity?
- [88:51]
A
So they. They started out. They had. They were called something else at the beginning. I'm trying to remember what it was called. And then James wore, like, clown makeup and they had a. They had a song on a. A comp called From Conversion Records. I can't remember what it's called.
- [89:13]
B
The Clown. James and the Clown.
- [89:15]
A
There's a picture of him wearing the clown makeup. Like it's them live and like Frank is playing guitar and James has the. The makeup on. There's a picture in the. In the liner notes of this. This comp. And I can't remember what it's called, but it's on a label called Conversion Records from California. And Integrity has a song on it too, and a few other bands, I think, from Cleveland and then bands from California predominantly. I'm trying to remember what it's called. I can't remember, but I can't. I can't even remember what their band was called. They only had the one song and then they did a demo and then they did the Promise.
- [89:52]
B
Promise.
- [89:52]
C
I sure did.
- [89:53]
B
The hardest record ever in East Standard. So tell me about recruiting Frank. How did that. How did that go about.
- [90:02]
A
Well, like I said earlier, like, I was. I was friends with those guys and they would come to Integrity shows and ask questions like, how do you guys. How do you guys have a band and what do we do to start a band and. And things like that. And so we sort of like, showed them what we knew and helped them when we could. And we made those for tomorrow. I don't think they had anything out yet. And so at the. In the liner notes, it said, you were fools forever believing in us. We hate you all. The only band that we like from Cleveland is Ringworm off or something like that. And like, people were like. Some people were delighted and some people were furious that we didn't.
- [90:42]
B
Thank you. You were no stranger to controversy at that time, huh? You were. You're just. You're a bad boy making trouble.
- [90:49]
A
This was, you know, punk and. And. And everything was like society, everyone. So this was the kind of the mentality now. Things became different over the years and people want to be, sure, more civil and things. But back then, so, like, what hardcore means is punk and metal together. So sometimes you have these posers that don't know what hardcore really means. Like, oh, this is too metal, man. Or this is too punk. Those people are clueless because that's what hardcore is. It's half punk, half metal together, and those two components make it hardcore. Without either of those components, it doesn't work right.
- [91:30]
B
So beautiful.
- [91:31]
A
That's a. That's something that people often don't understand. That's how it started out.
- [91:37]
C
Now, Colin, you are a systems man.
- [91:40]
B
I'm a big systems man, so. Systems overload. 95. Tell me about putting this record together. Is Frank writing at this point?
- [91:50]
A
Yeah. That's a funny thing is, like, Frank joined and we were like. But he joined as we were in the studio, like, in the same week. And we were like, just play something, dude. He's like, I'm not gonna play on it. We're like, just play something. You know, whatever. He just refused to play on it.
- [92:09]
B
He just wouldn't do it.
- [92:11]
A
He wouldn't do it. But he. It might have been because he had just joined the band and then we're in the studio and, like, he didn't know the songs or anything, and we just made up the songs. So there could have been a lot to do with that too, you know, or it could have just been that he wanted to. He didn't want to play on it if he didn't write it. Maybe that was it. I'm not really sure. We didn't really push him about it. We were like, okay, whatever, then. Don't do it, dumbass. And, like, then he'd be like, you. And, you know, just jokes.
- [92:37]
B
Sure. So tell me about. So four years between records, before now, before. Between LPs. I mean, any. Any anecdotes come to mind in writing this? The response to the record and how you felt when it was finished. At the time.
- [92:51]
A
Yeah.
- [92:51]
C
Was Victory happy?
- [92:53]
A
We had done seven inches, so. So, like, there's a lot of extra parts to it. Like, we did. We did the incontrastive sense 7 inch that I talked about earlier with Victory. And then Victory was. If you've ever seen the record, there's like a blue cross of a crucified witch. That's the COVID artwork that I designed. And that was the COVID And the guy. There was a guy who was friends with Tony, who would. Who worked at a printing press, and he could do. He could do offset printing and he would do the covers. And so the first press of our record has the blue cross. And then all of a sudden there's these records. And according to Victory, we Didn't sell any records, nobody liked us and that nobody would buy it. And then we start seeing in stores our record on a different color vinyl with a green cross. Well, that's strange because you designed. I don't think that they just like more offended, you know, after some time the blue turns into green, you know. So we called him up. We're like, what's up with that? Oh no, no, that's the same record. You guys were mistaken. We're like, like, no, you repress them, dude. It's clearly a new pressing and we had some animosity with him for that and so he ended up.
- [94:11]
B
So it begins, it begins early.
- [94:13]
A
Yeah, he, he, he, you know, he was stealing from the, from the get go, so. And he and Integrity parted ways, but he continued to make bootleg shirts and things like that and keep the money. And then, and then we did those for tomorrow with Overkill.
- [94:31]
C
Yep.
- [94:32]
A
And that came out. And then Ron Guardepi, who owned Overkill. Ron was the singer of the band Brotherhood and Seattle. Ron had a pnd, a production and distribution deal with Dutch East India, which is a distribution company out of New York. And they would help him put out his records financially and put them in the malls and in the stores. Back then, being in the mall was a big thing. If you had a barcode, you could be in the mall and then other than normal kids could, could catch it. Instead of like guys who really know about punk, you'd go to the, go to the mom and pop store, but like regular people could get it. And then it could maybe like be heard by more people. And so he was able to do that. And then at some point Dutch East India said they wanted to buy him out. So they bought him out. And then they called me and said, yeah, we bought out, bought out Overkill Records. Do you guys want to continue to work with us? And then I said, well, what does it mean? Because I, I don't know, I'm. I'm still a teenager. And they said, well, we did this pnd. They explained it to me. And then they said, if you want, you know, we could do that for you. I was like, okay. And I had done a label called Dark Empire Records at the time and I had done a 7 inch for my friends Confront. But I wasn't a good, I wasn't good at having a label. I just like to make things. I, I get bored. I get bored. And maybe that's part of the whole thing. You said like some years I wear different clothing, so I get bored Easily, you know, So I did a label. I did. And also nobody was putting out the Confront record. So I was like, I'll figure out how to do it. And figured it out, and I did it. And then when Dutchie said, hey, would you like to have a PND with us? I said, okay. And then we. They arranged to, like, make records that we had that we would. We would write and record. So they did a lot of things like that.
- [96:31]
B
So in 1990, you. You think you're like, okay, Victory's stealing from us because this isn't selling. But then you go back and we didn't think it.
- [96:41]
A
It was true.
- [96:42]
B
It was. It was provable that they had stolen from you. But then you go back long term.
- [96:46]
A
If they would have made it with the Blue Cross and kept the same colorway, we would have never known.
- [96:51]
B
Yeah, but. But then you. You go back and. And they. Systems is with them, Humanities with them.
- [96:59]
A
Yeah. So what happened was we got promised that it was not going to be that way, that now at this point they had gotten bigger and that they were going to change their. Their methods and be more on. Be more straightforward with everything. But.
- [97:17]
B
And is that what you thought you experienced?
- [97:19]
A
We thought that that was going to happen, but it did not happen. And so we did Systems. And then we were told nobody bought it, but we would go to tour in Europe and everybody knew the words. This is four years before the MP3 was invented, so there's no way that people would have all known the fucking words, you know, and all these stories, you know, I don't want to turn Systems. I don't want to turn it into this, but.
- [97:41]
C
Yeah, no, no, we don't. We know.
- [97:43]
B
Yeah. I want to focus on the positive positivity here of Systems Overload. Was. Was it a smash hit at the time?
- [97:50]
A
I don't think so. No. There's a thing that you have to also understand is, like, right now in 2025, everyone has a band. Everyone in the audience has a band, and their brother has a band and their sister also has a band. And the guy who. Who is the janitor at the venue, he's got five bands. Everyone has a band. Back then, nobody had a band. So we were like. We were the only band of any of the guys from Cleveland that ever had gone to Europe. And they were like, wow, did you guys go? We didn't go very easily, but we did go. And so, like, we just did weird stuff because we didn't give a fuck. And then we got lucky, I guess, with some Things, but because there wasn't a lot of bands and people, you know, we did these stores with these great bands. So some of the people that went to see Neurosis or in Into Another or Judge might have said, that band's not too bad. And they would buy. They would buy the records or if they saw them, maybe. I don't know.
- [98:52]
B
How about. How about the reaction in the States to Once after Systems Overload came out?
- [98:57]
A
There's a part of it like, oh, so when we made those for Tomorrow, which is a different type of mindset, similar to Mike Lowe's as we spoke before. So it's a different identity, it's a different Persona. It's in the same universe as Integrity. But there's a lot of differences to it from Systems Overload, which is a different record too. They both have experimental components, they both have solos. They both have the same kind of vocals and things. But there's a difference to the way that it works out. So what had happened was when those For Tomorrow came out, it was definitely not initially, like, well received and most people were upset. People even went so far as to making zines that would say, like, don't buy this record. These guys have solos and lyrics that we don't like or understand. It wasn't that they didn't like what we. The lyrics were about because they were controversial. They didn't like what the lyrics were about because they weren't following the recipe of other bands. Sure. And it had. The lyrics would have words that they didn't. That might have. You know, there were Abraxas. Yeah. Hard to pronounce words. And sometimes lyrics that made you have to think about it a little longer than, like, you know, something about betrayal or whatever.
- [100:23]
B
But you're saying this while we hear bands at that time being like, Integrity was the. And this is what everybody wanted to be.
- [100:31]
A
Yeah. I don't know. I mean, I. What I think when I hear those stories, I think that the people who are from bands that are saying that were maybe like people who were young, who were starting a band and they were thinking that. And so that maybe that's where it came from. I don't know. I mean, there was. Hopefully.
- [100:48]
B
That's a comfort to you, right?
- [100:49]
A
Yeah, it's. It's okay. But there were some. There were people who liked it, but there were a lot of people who didn't like it too. I mean. Yeah, we wouldn't be able to tour if no one liked it, of course. So we had. We had. But there were Always people who were like really like against having solos like that for some reason was like really a deal breaker for a lot of.
- [101:11]
C
And you have to this day. Yeah.
- [101:13]
A
So to this day I have people crying about that. And it's funny. I'm glad you have.
- [101:17]
C
You have the Armenian genocide, which is.
- [101:19]
A
Yeah.
- [101:21]
C
Excuse me, Armenian persecution about the Armenian genocide. That.
- [101:25]
A
Yeah.
- [101:25]
C
Is a solo over almost the entire song.
- [101:28]
A
Yeah. Now that, I mean that intro's super epic.
- [101:32]
B
It's incredible.
- [101:33]
C
It's awesome.
- [101:33]
B
The guitar being plugged in and all that.
- [101:35]
C
Yeah.
- [101:36]
A
This guy, he just, he, he. That whole thing came in his head. You know, Aaron is a genius. He's a crazy guy. And he looks like. I told him that I was gonna say he looks like Rick James. You know, I have to have to be be honest now.
- [101:51]
C
If Colin is a systems guy, I am a humanity is the devil guy. That's. That was when I first discovered and for sure got an MP3 of integrity. And this is where I went.
- [102:04]
B
Oh, because that's a year later.
- [102:07]
C
Yeah. I'm looking at the timeline right now and it is crazy how. And then even the next record is a year later. It's wild.
- [102:13]
A
You, you got it when it came out. Is that what you mean? The year it came out or you got it when you were younger?
- [102:17]
C
Yeah, 96. I was nine. So I probably wouldn't have gotten it for another five or six years. So it was okay once Napster and all the. Are, you know, the, the four.
- [102:30]
B
There's a big four year gap. Yeah, big four year gap between first and second lp. One year later, you're following up hard with a, with a, with an all time clip. Classic Humanity is the Devil.
- [102:40]
A
We did a lot of seven inches in between there.
- [102:42]
B
You've done a lot of seven inches in general. It's. It, it is hard to keep that. You got a big discography, big discography.
- [102:49]
A
So if we, if we come up with a couple songs that are really good, we don't have anything else, then we do a 7 inch. Or we would come up with some songs and we were working on an album and then someone would be, hey, do you want to do a split? Like that's like the curse of the Is like people, oh, let's do a split. Like, dude, I'm trying to collect these songs for an album.
- [103:07]
B
Do you have a favorite split you've ever done?
- [103:10]
A
Yeah, it would be the split with Mayday. Those songs are the most, the most evil songs that, that Aaron ever wrote were on that split. It wasn't it wasn't on an album, so probably a lot of people don't know that.
- [103:21]
B
That's, that's, that's. That's how it goes, man. The album is. God, it's. It's the. The splits and seven inches are for. For like the, the super fans.
- [103:30]
A
It's also down tuned, so it has a different. Totally different sound.
- [103:33]
C
Oh, damn. Okay, very cool. Find that.
- [103:36]
A
The song called Kingdom of Heaven and a song called Rebirth, those are the two that stand out. And then there was a song called 18 Wheels. And then, then we also did a negative approach cover in that session.
- [103:49]
C
Humanity is the Devil opens with another iconic song that I know you have to play every time you guys play opens with vocals.
- [103:57]
A
Those were the hardest lyrics I ever had to write, of course, but.
- [104:01]
C
And obviously that song kind of defined intro for me as. As like a young songwriter myself. It was like, oh, this is. This is.
- [104:09]
B
Oh, you can do that.
- [104:10]
C
You can do that. That's awesome. But then goes into one of my favorite songs of all time featuring James, the Human Furnace, which is hollow. Is this the first time James collabed? And is the. The voice under his part, is that you or is that him doing the talking thing? Is that the vocoder? What is that? No, no, that's Charles Manson under his part.
- [104:35]
A
Yeah.
- [104:36]
C
Whoa.
- [104:37]
A
The mass murder of Charles Manson, of course.
- [104:39]
C
So it's a. It's a sample being played on mine.
- [104:45]
A
Our lore has been burnt as far as. Is that the first time that James ever collaborated with me or with anyone with you?
- [104:54]
C
YouTube. I mean, I would say you two are kind of the two iconic frontman of your.
- [104:58]
A
That was the first time that he, he collaborated with Integrity. He was our friend and he. They hadn't done anything for a long time and like, we sort of egged him on. He was, I think at the studio, we're like, why don't you do something too, you dick? You know, can't just sit on the couch and drink and make jokes. Get to work.
- [105:18]
B
Agreed, man. Birth is pain. Should have been a lot earlier, but, you know, I'm glad we got it eventually. And you had original artwork by Puss Head on this record?
- [105:27]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [105:29]
B
How was that experience?
- [105:31]
A
I was in the. In the, in the Possead fan club as a kid. I used to write pen pal letters to him and fan letters to him and send him like, drawings and. And little dolls. I would make like little evil, evil dolls and things, and he would send me back these beautifully penned letters and often with a free record or a 7 inch or still got him. No, I don't have any of that stuff. I don't. I don't keep things. I don't.
- [106:00]
C
Oh, really?
- [106:01]
A
And at one point in the 90s, like, somebody firebombed my house and burned it to the ground. So, like a lot of stuff got lost then. And then I got divorced about 10 years after that and I lost a lot of things in there and then I moved to Europe.
- [106:15]
B
Yeah, those are long gone.
- [106:17]
A
They were probably in the records that I. My. My old records of. Of those Septic Death records and stuff and Passmore records. And then whoever ended up taking my records, they probably have them. Someone out there probably has it. Maybe it's going to go on ebay.
- [106:33]
B
Or if you've got them, let us know.
- [106:36]
A
We'll.
- [106:37]
B
We'll pay you whatever you want. I just.
- [106:38]
C
I want to talk about one more track on this record, please. It's my favorite song is right after Hollow is Psychological Warfare. That I think is the coolest integrity song to me. I love the way it starts with the feedback to the double time part. It's just like one of my favorites. I'm just curious.
- [107:00]
A
There's like a Tesla coil in there too.
- [107:02]
C
Oh, really? Like, that's awesome kind of noise.
- [107:05]
A
You can hear it like frying. Yeah.
- [107:09]
C
Wow. So I. I did a tour with. With Hate Breed at the end of last year and I was punishing Frank a lot about this stuff, but he's.
- [107:18]
A
Frank is on that record.
- [107:19]
C
Right. So I was asking about this stuff and he was telling me that. That for some songs pulling from 70s classic rock, from a lot of Kiss that. He showed me a KISS live thing and I was just curious if you. We asked the question last night or on our last episode if there was anything specific that you pulled from that someone might not expect, like an influence, a riff. You are probably full of influences and stuff that people might not expect. I'm just curious if there's anything specifically that comes to mind on this record.
- [107:52]
A
I think that the most. The most interesting one would be the song incarnate 365 that has. But that's not on. That's not on that record. But right. The beginning. The beginning of a Joy Division song starts off where Peter Hook is just goofing around and then he accidentally plays what became the incarnate365 riff, but then goes right into the song he was playing. He just plays it just for a second. Just sort of like getting his sound, getting his levels. And then Aaron was like, hey, that's sick. What if I just made that the whole song?
- [108:29]
B
Wow, that's very cool.
- [108:31]
A
There's that. So as far as that record is something that would be in. Be a recognizable influence.
- [108:40]
C
I don't know.
- [108:41]
A
Like the. The incarnate one is the most obvious.
- [108:44]
C
That's a great.
- [108:45]
B
That's very cool.
- [108:46]
A
Yeah.
- [108:46]
C
I have here a weird victory. I have a weird 10 inch. Colin, your favorite victory one. Number 539 of 1419.
- [108:57]
B
539.
- [108:59]
C
Yeah. Of. Of the black vinyl is 1340. I'm sure these numbers have to mean something to it. 1340 plus 6 plus 73.
- [109:08]
A
We weren't consulted about that release and didn't receive anything for it. So we had nothing to do with it. So those numbers are just someone else did those.
- [109:16]
B
Speaking of which. And we'll. We're jump. We're jumping ahead here. We'll get back. Do you remember when To Die for came out? I sent you a message on MySpace TWID about the vinyl track listing having two tracks mixed up.
- [109:34]
A
Yeah.
- [109:35]
B
You remember me messaging you? I was probably.
- [109:37]
A
It wasn't vinyl. It would have been. We didn't have vinyl on it.
- [109:40]
B
Or was it a CD or something?
- [109:41]
A
Yeah, yeah.
- [109:43]
B
CDs. Tracks were. Were mixed up.
- [109:46]
A
Yeah.
- [109:46]
B
And DWID said if only Death Wish had had your keen eye. And I was 13 that like. Damn, man. He thinks my eyes keen. That's crazy.
- [109:54]
A
Yeah. I mean a lot of people would ask like, why is it wrong? And it was. It was a clerical error.
- [110:00]
B
Wow, There it is. All right, let's go back 96. Humanity is the Devil. Frank's writing for integrity now. He's credited. He's on there. Tell me about putting that record together. Memories from that time and the response to it soon after.
- [110:17]
A
The record is themed around an end of the world cult called the Process Church, which is where the title came from. Humanity is the Devil. And the concept of the album is based off of. Yeah. Humanity is the Devil. And the different elements of the. Each song represents a different part of how that would come to be. You know, so. Vocal test. While to some people it might seem kind of like a comical thing or a trolling thing, it's actually a primal scream, you know.
- [110:53]
B
Yeah.
- [110:53]
A
So of course, when things are so intense that words don't even. Don't even compare to how you feel the rage that you feel inside. It's kind of the. The essence of what it is and in psychological warfare is using sound or using pamphlets or any. Any type of way to. With people's Thinking, I mean now you see it all the time. Psychological warfare used in social media and in politics and things like that to manipulate people into like, you know, like people who work really hard into thinking that a billionaire gives a about them. You know, like stuff like that. So I've been in favor of it, but that's kind of where the direction.
- [111:36]
B
But it's happening whether we like it or not.
- [111:38]
A
Yeah, yeah.
- [111:40]
C
When did the. The infamous. Not even infamous, just famous Warp tour show? When. When was that?
- [111:47]
A
I thought that was before because the pictures on the back of.
- [111:50]
B
Yeah.
- [111:51]
A
And which also is, you know, psychological warfare from our side is with people. So like if you look at the back of the record, you're like, wow, this must be like Break down the Walls part two.
- [112:03]
B
Yeah.
- [112:03]
A
If you turn the other side, it's like this is like some kind of death metal record. So like that was. That was funny in our minds. We were like, yeah, let's do that.
- [112:12]
C
Wow.
- [112:12]
A
And you know, we were one of the greatest hardcore photos and, and Frank and Aaron and I, we could jump like we should have been on the Chicago Bulls, you know.
- [112:24]
C
Yeah. And you're all, you all got shoes. Oh yeah, yeah.
- [112:33]
A
I mean, you know, we would just like get together and like somebody would buy bleach and be like, maybe Frank was a gallons. Do our hair blonde. So we would do it and then if it didn't look good, we would just cut it off. Right. And then, then it would grow and then whatever. I mean it was just. We were bored, you know, there's no, there's no real rhyme or reason to any of it. I'm sorry.
- [112:54]
B
Good, good. No, that's good.
- [112:56]
A
It's bored and around, you know. So how was the funny story about Frank?
- [113:00]
B
Oh, go ahead, please, please tell me a funny story about Frank.
- [113:03]
A
When Frank was really young, he was a teen and I was a bit older than him and it was winter time and he really wanted a. What we called a GG vest, which is a gene vest. And he didn't have any, any money. So we went to this thrift store on Lorraine called Unique Thrift. And I talked to one of the ladies that worked there and I said, oh, you know my friend, he's really. He doesn't have any money and it's cold outside. He really needs a jacket. Could you like change the price because the jeans, Jack? Maybe 10 bucks. And so she changed it to one buck. So he got this jacket. Then we cut the sleeves off and put leopard skin and all kinds of patches and wrote shit on There and then he walked around doing his GG dance.
- [113:44]
B
Beautiful. So how. What is. What is touring like between humanity and seasons? Are you really seeing a sea change in. In. In America of like, oh, wow, this is. This band is really working in people. People know these songs. Victory's definitely selling some records that we don't know about.
- [114:02]
A
Yeah, we had a lot of people that would be at shows. You also asked about the Warp tour and I didn't answer it. Should I answer that?
- [114:08]
C
Just, you know, I. Just curious when it happened. If you have any memories, feel free to share, but if not, it's all good. I like that. This is one thing.
- [114:16]
A
I don't know how we got on it. I don't know how that came to be. It just accidentally happened. But we only played the one show and then.
- [114:23]
C
Right.
- [114:23]
A
The bouncers were. Were the security people were beating up the kids because kids were dancing. And so I jumped off stage to. To fight the bouncers and then the kids and, and. And the band against the bouncers. And then like they told us to get the out and we were thrown out. There's a video of it on. On YouTube somewhere, I think.
- [114:47]
C
Is there? Awesome.
- [114:48]
A
Yeah. Also that photo that's on the back, you can like kind of like almost pause it and see that same. There's something in the comments. I saw it once and someone's like, if you pause it at this time, that's where you're jumping. It's from a different angle, but you can tell it's.
- [115:02]
B
That's cool.
- [115:03]
C
Love it.
- [115:04]
B
97 rolls around. It's. It's somehow you do it again. You follow up one year later again with what I think may be the hardest integrity record start to finish. I think Frank would agree. I heard him get in a screaming match with Wayne over it. Seasons versus Systems.
- [115:24]
A
Frank did a lot. Frank did a lot of the writing. So that might be why Frank is also.
- [115:28]
B
That's understandable. I think Orbital Teleplastic Emanation has the single hardest integrity riff in it. So if you're watching this, pause this, go listen to that song welcome Back. Wasn't that riff incredible?
- [115:43]
A
And that title. That title proved what I said earlier, that some people just didn't like that kind of lyrics.
- [115:50]
B
You don't. You don't think a song called Orbital Teleplastic Emanation is going to have this insanely hard breakdown in it, but you. You would be wrong, I promise.
- [115:57]
A
Yeah.
- [115:58]
B
Tell me about this record. You said. You said Frank did a lot of the writings.
- [116:01]
A
You know, when you have when you. When you're possessed by a ghost and it's coming out in like, a plasma, like, way from your mouth and, you know you gotta have a breakdown.
- [116:09]
B
Oh, of course. I'm from Connecticut. I know all about hauntings and plasma and all that, you know, we got that. So this is the last record with. With Aaron and Lenny.
- [116:20]
A
And Frank.
- [116:21]
B
And Frank. Wow. So how. What. What happened there?
- [116:25]
A
Why Went off to go and do. He might try and tear right up.
- [116:28]
C
Yeah, I think so.
- [116:31]
B
Yeah. That would have been 2000.
- [116:33]
A
Or he went back to Ringworm and then he went to Ter.
- [116:35]
C
That sounds right.
- [116:35]
B
Yeah, That's.
- [116:37]
A
I'm not sure. We broke up. All of us were.
- [116:41]
B
Oh, just straight up.
- [116:43]
A
Yeah.
- [116:44]
B
Integrity ended after this record. Okay.
- [116:46]
A
Yeah. And then I was doing. I was gonna do another record with other people, and then Victory was like, oh, we'll put it out, and it was gonna have a different name. And then they were like, oh, no, we should call it Integrity then I didn't want to call it that. And then we did ended up calling it Integrity 2000, which was like a. A different kind of branding thing.
- [117:06]
B
Yeah. It's a cult favorite now.
- [117:09]
C
I would say it's a mark of the.
- [117:10]
A
I hear that a lot. I'm not sure if people are trolling or not.
- [117:13]
B
I don't think they are. I mean, I think. What. What was it like writing without Aaron for the first time for that?
- [117:19]
A
Well, there's not. That's an album that doesn't have six solos, so that's. I think that that's the. The component that ruined the record. Right.
- [117:29]
B
No soldiers, no solos.
- [117:31]
C
Wow.
- [117:31]
A
Yeah.
- [117:32]
B
Which people got their wish.
- [117:33]
A
Yeah, that could be the reason. Yeah, they got their wish. But I think the solo, the solos are crucial, you know?
- [117:40]
B
Yeah. And then you did the project. I mean, I. Do you have anything to. To. To say about Seasons before we move on? Because it is such a great, insanely hard record. Anything come. Anything come to mind from. From that session or its reception or. Or just the process of putting it together?
- [117:59]
A
A friend of mine gave me a tape that he had gotten from a guy who worked at the FBI, and it was Jim Jones's last sermon. And he gave that to me. That's. At the end of the album. And then I added some percussion. Percussive, voodoo percussion underneath it and tried to, like, drive people crazy with that.
- [118:23]
B
Beautiful.
- [118:24]
A
How.
- [118:24]
B
Was. What was the response like to the record?
- [118:28]
A
People hated that track. But people. People. There was a couple things to it, like, I'm not going to keep. Keep complaining and being a downer, so I'm not gonna say. But basically we didn't have a lot of money for the budget, so we had to like cut everything short. And we didn't have the ability to really mix it the way we wanted to so that it became a duller record. I don't know, you said that you like that record, but I love that record. Did you ever hear the. The record. The version of the record that Arthur remixed?
- [118:59]
B
Yeah.
- [118:59]
A
It's on Relapse. So that's. You can hear everything on that one. The other one is. Is a bit muddy because the mixing. We ran out of money and the label.
- [119:10]
B
I like Dirt and Mud. I'm a fan.
- [119:12]
A
It just seemed like it wasn't finished.
- [119:15]
C
Okay, I see.
- [119:16]
A
And we felt like it wasn't finished because we had it. We wanted it to sound differently in our heads and because we didn't have the budget and we had to just turn it in as it was. And so that's what we did. Yeah, it would have been nicer to have to. To have done it the way we wanted to. But I think that pretty close to that is. Is what the. The Relapse version is. And you can listen to both and you can enjoy the other version if that's what you like. Whatever.
- [119:41]
B
You know, if you like Dirt and Mud like me, you can go back to the. The other OG and if you like, you know, clean and polished and you want to hear the band's true vision, you can hear the Arthur version. It's all out there. And then those who Fear Tomorrow got got re recorded with the Igor on drums.
- [119:56]
A
Yeah.
- [119:57]
B
Crazy. So that's out there. You can listen to that.
- [120:00]
A
Yeah.
- [120:01]
B
A lot of integrity.
- [120:02]
C
A lot. Yeah.
- [120:03]
B
Part of this interruption once again, we've got a few quick messages for you. Bo. How you feeling today?
- [120:09]
C
I'm feeling great. You want to know why?
- [120:10]
B
I really do.
- [120:12]
C
I manscaped this morning.
- [120:15]
B
Really?
- [120:15]
C
I went straight into the shower. Cuz I woke up about an hour before we were supposed to record.
- [120:19]
B
Perfect. At 11:00am well, no. 1:00pm wow. You're sick in the head.
- [120:25]
C
Straight into the shower. I use the body scrubber, the body wash, the preserver afterwards. I'm feeling great. I'm feeling clean.
- [120:34]
B
It's a beautiful day with a beautiful dick and balls. Thank God for manscaped. We're gonna use code Hard lore to get 20 off and free shipping site wide. It's incredible. It'll change your life. It'll change your. The scent of your hair on all the nether Regions, any region really. It's built to do whatever you need. Your full body can be scaped. It doesn't need to be. Some people don't like when it is head to toe.
- [121:03]
C
Toe.
- [121:03]
B
You can do whatever you want. Especially toe. Get them toes trimmed with the, with the lawnmower. 5.0. Okay. Trust me. Code harder. 20 off. Free shipping. This episode is lastly so importantly brought to you by AG1 Colin. It is such a vital part of our everyday routine. You know, you wake up before you grab a brush and put on a little makeup. You need to drink 12 to 16 ounces of water with one scoop of this delicious green powder and that's it.
- [121:34]
C
A couple drops of the vitamin K and D. I do.
- [121:36]
B
If you're feeling.
- [121:37]
C
Yeah.
- [121:37]
B
If you're feeling vampiric, if you're feeling like you're on the dark side of straight edge, much like dwid, you might need them. Them vitamin D K drops. Okay. It's very important. And if you go to drinkag1.com hardlore not only are you supporting the show, you're gonna get five free travel packs. There's always fests coming up. And you're also going to get those vitamins DNK drops. It's beautiful, man. It's a great deal. It's a life changing product. Get those greens in. You don't want scurvy. Okay.
- [122:05]
C
I don't want.
- [122:05]
B
You don't want it. I wouldn't know personally, but I assume I don't want it.
- [122:10]
C
Yeah. Doesn't it?
- [122:11]
B
And I don't. You know, I'm. I'll eat. I'm sick of broccoli. You know, I eat it every day. Just give me the IG one. All right.
- [122:20]
C
And you're good.
- [122:22]
B
Back to the episode. Integrity 2000 had a. Had a second record, the Project ReGenesis record with a bunch of wild covers on there. What was the source of that? Why two Donna Summer covers?
- [122:38]
A
There's a guy from Connecticut who had garbage bags filled with psychedelic mushrooms. And he said to me, I will give you two bags of these mushrooms if you record anything for me. And I at the time I had a Roland V drum kit and a Roland mixing board that recorded on this like big fucking hard cartridge thing. And so we just recorded a bunch of songs so that we could get the mushrooms. Wow.
- [123:13]
B
So you're trading Donna Summer covers for bags of drugs.
- [123:18]
A
Yeah. Pretty.
- [123:19]
B
Pretty good deal.
- [123:20]
A
Yeah, it was a good deal.
- [123:22]
B
Guess it. Yeah, well, see, this is incredible. I had no. I thought you were just like really into Donna Summer and Gary Newman.
- [123:28]
A
I, I'm into them too. I like them. I do like them.
- [123:34]
B
Closure is. You're back to the integrity name now. And this sounds like you were like, guys, I want to make it.
- [123:42]
A
That album was gonna, that band was gonna be called Angela de La Morte. But again, Victory was like, no. And at the last minute they, they convinced me to change it.
- [123:51]
B
This is a real Exorcist 3 situation where the studio insisted.
- [123:57]
C
That's good. Yeah, yeah.
- [123:58]
B
Interesting.
- [123:59]
A
Like that. Yeah.
- [124:00]
B
This is like your Misfits record there. It like, it feels like Earth ad there's all kinds of Danzig esque pinch harmonics.
- [124:09]
C
Interesting.
- [124:10]
B
All the woes.
- [124:12]
A
Yeah.
- [124:13]
B
Was, was, was this you being like, I've got. I gotta get my Glenn out of my system?
- [124:17]
A
I think it was just like a guy who played drums. His name is Brandon Abate and he had a recording studio in his basement and he, he's the guy who did the woes and, and the. They're good singing, the better.
- [124:32]
B
He sounds like David Havoc. It's crazy.
- [124:34]
A
He's. He's really a great singer and a great musician and, and on the drums, he would use like unconventional things to do percussion chains and, you know, spooky stuff. And he did a great job.
- [124:51]
B
It's around this time, shortly after this, you moved to Belgium?
- [124:56]
A
No, I, I moved a couple years. A couple years later, it would have been 2003 after to die For.
- [125:03]
B
So what made, what made you move to Belgium?
- [125:05]
A
Closure? Oh, a lot of things, but mainly like, it's. It's a weird and maybe stupid story, but because I lived in Cleveland and there isn't a lot of bands that, that make records from Cleveland and people started to like my records and I would be out celebrating all the time, like every night all the time. And I wouldn't get anything accomplished. And so that was part of the problem that I had with it. And I needed to work on things instead of just celebrating all the time.
- [125:44]
B
It's gotcha.
- [125:45]
A
Ridiculous. So that was. Most people would go the opposite way and be happy to be able to celebrate all the time. Sure. But I, I was going the other direction. I thought that I was wasting my time. And I also thought that some of the records I was making were sub. Were beneath me and not as good. So I wanted to do better. That was part of it too.
- [126:06]
B
Well, To Die for was a great one to go out on before. Before heading to Belgium. So that, that's a big achievement.
- [126:13]
A
Some of the songs are good.
- [126:14]
B
Yeah, I agree. I was so Passionate about it. I messaged you about the track list when I was 12 years old.
- [126:20]
C
How did you land on. On ghent?
- [126:22]
A
Was it MySpace or Friendster?
- [126:24]
B
I think it was MySpace for sure. I never had. I was in a friend Sir Guy. I had a Zanga blog. Then I went to straight to MySpace.
- [126:34]
A
How did I get to Ghent? Yeah, I, I originally I went to court track and in Court Trek, I had a friend. I have a friend named Hans Verbiki and he is the singer of the band Liar. You might know who they are.
- [126:46]
C
Okay.
- [126:47]
A
And one of the. On the tour that I did for To Die for early in the tour, he said, hey, I just bought this big house and I live alone and there's like five bedrooms in there. And if you want, after the tour, between tours, you could like stay there as long as you want, man. And I was like, very cool. Wow. I never thought about that before. Like, every time I would tour, I just go back home and. And not never see anything except for what I'd see on tours. You know, like, you go on tour, you don't see. See the things you want to see.
- [127:22]
C
Of course.
- [127:22]
A
Go to the next show, you drive past the things you want to see.
- [127:25]
B
And they're like, especially in Europe.
- [127:27]
A
Yeah, yeah, especially in Europe. They're like, you cannot see it. Not possible.
- [127:31]
B
And then this is not possible.
- [127:35]
A
That's. That's the number one. The number one response of all Europe. It is not possible. Yeah, I. I heard it. I heard it like 25 times this morning alone. So it's like that.
- [127:46]
B
Is it true that you make skate ramps for la local kids in Belgium?
- [127:50]
A
I made skate ramps. There's skate ramps around my house. Yeah.
- [127:54]
C
Yeah. That's awesome.
- [127:55]
B
Gotta keep the kids skating.
- [127:57]
A
You know, during the COVID time everybody was inside and the kids in the neighborhood were all just glued to like, devices and gaming and stuff. And at the time, my youngest son was, I think like seven or eight. And he had never climbed a tree, he had never fell on his. He'd never fallen off anything and got hurt. And I thought that was a shame. So I made him get hurt. And I said, well, we're going to build a ramp. And so we just. We built a ramp and then we built another ramp and then we built a few other ramps and just let's scatter them around the neighborhood. And we also bought a couple basketball hoops because there. There wasn't anything that. There is still not anything in the neighborhood to do for the kids. So I just sort of contributed that. But it's all.
- [128:55]
B
You created an American utopia in. In Belgium, in Kent, Little Cleveland.
- [129:00]
A
Did he get hurt and this. No, I ended up getting hurt. I broke my elbow.
- [129:06]
C
Oh, no.
- [129:07]
B
All right.
- [129:07]
C
Jesus. That sounds.
- [129:08]
B
That's a tough one.
- [129:09]
A
Yeah.
- [129:10]
B
To Die for had an interesting lineup on it. We don't have to get into specifics if you don't want, but it. It turned. It made for a really great record. I see people saying this is. This. This is people's favorite integrity record. Some. I think there's a dis. Like people who go into integrity without the context of each lineup individually. People love this one. Can. Are there any. Any fond memories of putting this together? After doing integrity 2000 and closure, we.
- [129:45]
A
Recorded it at Spider Studios, which is a small studio that was owned by a member of the band Camara. You know who they are?
- [129:54]
B
Yeah, of course.
- [129:55]
A
And he started the studio and he also recorded the Chimera Records there. And it was like. It was the first time we ever recorded digital before. We had always recorded reel to real up until then. And Closure was also. Closure was ADAT. But 2000 and all. Everything before was all done on big reel. Yeah. So you. This was recorded on a computer, so you could, like, move things around and you could, like, like, use trigger drums. And he had this, like, Dave Lombardo CD or something where it sounded like Dave's kit, and he could just, like, with midi, like, program in the drums and just made it work when it wasn't working and turned out really good for what it was like. There's a lot of. There's a lot of parts where I'm like, this thought ended abruptly where it could have continued on, but that's like my. My side of the. Oh. Listening to it, you know, there's always little things you, like, wish could have been done differently. Well, sometimes some records turned out great without any change, but.
- [131:08]
B
So the Blackest Curse is the first record eventually with the. Your kind of new ensemble. Is this. Is this still in some capacity, the ensemble you've got now?
- [131:19]
A
No. Two of those guys were on To Die for as well, right? Mike Jocko and. And Steve Rockhurst. Steve was the bass player on To Die for as well, and he's this. He's the current singer of Mushroom Head, actually.
- [131:32]
B
Oh, cool.
- [131:33]
A
The high voice.
- [131:35]
C
We shared a trailer with them last year.
- [131:38]
A
Oh, yeah. Did you meet Steve?
- [131:40]
C
I, I. To be honest with you, they were in wardrobe. I have no idea who I met.
- [131:45]
A
Okay.
- [131:46]
C
To be honest, I don't know what.
- [131:47]
A
He looks like when he wears that makeup, so I Don't know which character. Character he would be, but he's the guy who sings. Sings, you know, like the higher voice.
- [131:54]
B
God damn, man. That guy.
- [131:57]
A
Yeah.
- [131:58]
B
Convicted, man. Couple tracks, man. It was a couple tracks.
- [132:03]
A
He was the bass player on. On my records.
- [132:06]
B
Okay, that's awesome.
- [132:06]
C
Very cool.
- [132:07]
A
And he owns. He owns the Mars mixer and all the whole studio and it's in his basement. Whoa.
- [132:13]
B
Wow.
- [132:14]
C
Okay.
- [132:14]
A
Yeah.
- [132:15]
C
That's pretty sick.
- [132:16]
B
Good to know it's still an option. Do you have a personal favorite Integrity record? Looking back, I think that either those.
- [132:26]
A
Fear Tomorrow or Humanity is the Devil. Probably humanity because every. It's shorter and like everything is turned out. Right.
- [132:34]
B
Okay, that's very cool.
- [132:36]
A
But I like the dynamic and the versatility and the variety of those for Tomorrow.
- [132:41]
B
It's huge. It's massive. And dude, it's so early. You were so young and just figured it out right away.
- [132:48]
C
Yeah.
- [132:49]
A
And so like the way that that record was structured and how it was all. There was a lot of intricacies to it. Once. Once people started to like it, then we made systems to be a you to them. So we made it more simple, more like Japanese hardcore and. And a little bit in a way, like, you know, the 7 inch was where it's more caveman or something, you know, like this kind of not as nuanced as those for Tomorrow would have.
- [133:19]
C
Interesting.
- [133:20]
B
You said, okay, this is working. Time to change it.
- [133:23]
C
You.
- [133:24]
B
Because you. That's awesome. Respect. I read a quote from you one time that said when you want new music to listen to you write a new Integrity record.
- [133:34]
A
Yeah. So are they all kind of record.
- [133:37]
B
Are they all a window into your mind?
- [133:40]
A
Yeah, but I mean, I also listen to other records too. Like, I just mean like people took it out of context and some people cried and said, how dare you like your records? Oh, you're an asshole.
- [133:51]
B
No, I get it. I understood right away.
- [133:53]
A
Why would anybody. But that's always been a thorn in a lot of people's side. Is that I like the records that I make because if I didn't like them, why the would I make them? Yeah, of course there's some morons out there who think that you're not supposed to like your. Your creations. But if I didn't like it, then it'd probably be really terrible.
- [134:17]
B
And sometimes you get two big bags of mushrooms. So who cares if you like it?
- [134:21]
A
That record I don't really like, but I like the mushrooms.
- [134:25]
B
Okay, understood, Dwit. I have a. I have an important question for you. I think.
- [134:31]
C
Sure.
- [134:31]
B
I bet as. As once the primary representative for the dark side of Straight Edge, now as a primary representative for the dark side of all things. Do you believe in ghosts?
- [134:47]
A
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I believe natural things. I've had experiences like that and.
- [134:55]
B
Tell me. Tell me more. Tell me about an experience with a spectre.
- [134:59]
C
Anything.
- [134:59]
A
I can tell you a couple. Yeah, yeah, I can tell you a couple. I'll tell you one that isn't as great as. And then I'll tell you a better one. So we used to do this. Navinic and Aaron and Lenny and I, we used to break into this old police building that used to be across from that. That building I was telling you about before, the film building. And it was in a rundown at that time, a rundown part of Cleveland. And they had an old police building that after Eliot Ness got Al Capone, he was. Eliot Ness was from Cleveland. He returned back to Cleveland, this heroic guy. And Cleveland had a serial killer or serial killers that were called the Torso Killer. And he came back to Cleveland, this hero who had. Who had caught Al Capone. And they all thought, he's gonna. He's gonna solve this serial killer thing. He never solved it. And every time he would get evidence, it would disappear from his desk. And there was a lot. The theory is that the police were in on it. It was sort of like a thing where it was a lot like how our records play out, where it's like, trying to exterminate humanity. That was kind of the concept, I believe, of what the Torso Killer was doing. But the. The building where his office was was across the street from where I lived, and it was abandoned. And we would break in there and wander around all the time. And his office was still there. And his office still had files that had his signature on things and, like, all these documents that were his and, like, things like that. You would just, like, pick it up and it happens. His. The signature and different things. And we. We got a kick out of that. The goal of going into the building was to get on the roof. That was the goal. And for an entire summer, almost every night, we would go in there, often on lsd and try to get. Get to the roof. And so eventually we fucking figured it out. And we finally got to the top and I had a. I had a small gun with me, and I was in the back because there's a lot of homeless people and crazy people. There's a lot of stories that I could tell you about that. Like, one thing, for example, if you ever do exploration and Things like that. When you walk into a room where you feel a sense of someone being in there, it's an important thing to do is to take a very big smell. And if you smell the sweet, sugary, candy smell of shit, there's a good chance that there's a human in there and they're shitting somewhere because they're in there and they're not going to have a flowing toilet. So that's a sign that, you know there's a human there. So you can be aware that, you know, things could go south.
- [137:52]
C
Yeah.
- [137:53]
B
So poop. You smell poop. Get out of there.
- [137:54]
C
Get out of there.
- [137:55]
A
Not just poop, because it could be animals. Sweet, sweet, sweet with sugar in it, because that's. Animals don't eat sugar. You know, I'm gonna.
- [138:03]
B
I'll do some research.
- [138:04]
A
Yeah.
- [138:05]
B
Personal reason.
- [138:05]
A
I mean, maybe some animals eat sugar, but, you know, so. So we get to the top and, yeah, we smelled this, and there was a guy who came out, and it's like tighty whities and nothing else on. And he walked up to us. He's like a big, like, Lenny from Of Mice and Men type guy, if anybody hits that reference, of course. And he came up to us like a. Like, kind of a lurking guy. And he said, I wouldn't go in that room. And then he walked away. And so Mark Canopka, who was the drummer on. On Systems, and he was in Alphas, he was like, I'm gonna go in there anyways. I don't care. So he bursts in the room and he goes in, and that's where the guy was. So he said, don't go in there because I shit in there, dude. So his feet are covered in shit now. And we had a good laugh. So we ended up getting on the. Getting into this guy's kind of chamber. We continued walking around and. And we were at this. We found this room and we opened the door, and my friends went in first. And I stood in the back because I had this gun. And I wasn't sure what that guy was going to do because maybe he was going to attack us. I don't know. And plus, we're on acid, by the way. So my friends go in and they climb up this, like, ladder, and they're cheering. They had all gotten up there. And so I'm like, okay, now I'm gonna go up there. So I go into the room and I look across and I see this doorway across this dark, dark room. And I think, oh, I'm gonna go into that and see what that door is. Because I knew my friends were up and I could see that they were up and do it. I could see this door. So I'm like walk through the door. And I take a step. This isn't, this isn't a shit store. This is crazier. So I put my. Extend my foot out to take the next step up. And I hear this voice that says stop. As loud as like anything. Like echoingly loud. And it wasn't my friends, it was in my head. So I stopped, I froze and I looked down and I was above the elevator shaft and it would just drop all the way down. And I was like, holy. And I leaned back and I was like, I almost fell down the thing. So I climb up the stairs and tell those guys, they're okay, you're a dumbass. And we hung out up there and then it was kind of, you know, that was the end of the whole thing. We didn't have any real reason to go in there again. So we never really went in anymore.
- [140:35]
C
Mission accomplished.
- [140:36]
A
And we went back down. So then that, that's maybe an apparition, maybe a ghost or maybe just like something my senses were waking me up. Survival type thing, I don't know. But it was a loud like deep voice that told me to stop. And I did. So then a few years later I. I was married to my first wife and I was staying. It was Christmas time and I was staying at my in laws house and I hadn't really, I don't think I'd ever stayed there before. I'd been there before, but I hadn't stayed there before. And because it was Christmas, everyone's gonna stay together and open Christmas presents and things like that.
- [141:21]
B
Beautiful.
- [141:21]
A
And. And I had either played a show or I was at rehearsal or I don't know what I was doing. So I drove there and everybody else was asleep. I drove there later in the evening, everyone was asleep, including the in laws. So I went up to the guest room and got ready to go to sleep, got into bed. And at the time, my daughter Sydney was a baby, my oldest daughter. And she was in her crib. And I went to sleep. And then I was, I was woken up, I heard something. So I opened my eyes and there's an older woman standing over the crib looking at the baby, saying, you know, things that you say to babies. And I saw the woman, I knew that she wasn't a threat. You know, there was no sense of like, oh, this is, you know, someone to be afraid of. I Went to sleep again. I had no bad feelings about this, this person. I had no bad intuition about this person. And then I woke up in the morning and had breakfast with my in laws. And I said, you know, as I was eating, I was like, yeah, who, who was that lady that was in the room looking at the baby last night? And my father in law, his name was, was Bill, but we called him Snake Dick. And Snake Dick said, what lady? What are you talking about? And I said, yeah, there's an older lady. And she was looking at the baby like I was asleep. And she woke me up a little bit because I could hear her saying something. And I looked and I saw her, you know, looking in the crib and like doing coochie coochie coo or whatever that people do to babies. I couldn't tell what she was doing, but she was just, you know, looking at the baby. And then his face turned totally white and lost expression. And he said, what do you mean?
- [143:17]
C
Who, Who?
- [143:18]
A
There was nobody here. Nobody's here. I said, yeah, it must be some aunt who came here or something, you know, like, yeah, yeah, yeah. I assume that somebody came in for the holidays and showed up. Maybe their flight was late, I don't know. And he said, hold on a minute. He goes out of the kitchen and he goes into the living room and he gets a photograph off of his mantle and he comes and he brings me the photo and he says, is this the lady that you saw? I said, yeah, who is she? What are you. Because he, he was a pranker, so I thought he was with me.
- [143:45]
B
I mean, I would think so.
- [143:47]
C
Snake.
- [143:48]
A
Snake Dick.
- [143:48]
C
Snake.
- [143:49]
B
Snake Dick.
- [143:50]
A
Snake Dick. Yeah, Snake Dick is more complimentary.
- [143:53]
B
Yeah. 100.
- [143:55]
A
So he, he was like, that's my mother. And my mother died in that room, you know, a few years ago. Are you sure it was her? I go, yeah, but are you sure she's dead? This is some pranking shit, you know. And he was like, no, it's, it's totally real. So I kind of regret telling him because. But I told him out of. Just because that's what it had. It happened. It wasn't, it wasn't a prank, but unfortunately he, he was, he missed his mother very badly. And he spent like the next couple of months like every night sleeping in that room, like hoping that she would come and visit him. And he never saw her. But. Yeah, that's, that's one of, one of the good ghost stories I have.
- [144:45]
B
Yeah, that's a good, that's fantastic. That's crushing so that's irrefutable proof, just so, you know, surreal.
- [144:52]
C
I'm the skeptic on the show. Colin is the.
- [144:54]
A
Oh, you're a skeptic. Okay.
- [144:55]
C
Yeah, I've not had any experience.
- [144:57]
A
That's what it was like. I mean, I don't know if I dreamed it, but I didn't. I don't know how I would dream that ladies, because I never met her, I never met this lady before. So I don't know how any of.
- [145:09]
B
That could have come to irrefutable can't be refuted.
- [145:14]
A
A couple things, the thing is about things like that, it's like the same thing as being an artist. And you know, the reason like most people are not artists isn't because they don't have creative talent or creative intuition. It's because they killed their inner child. They killed that boy, that girl that like to play in the woods, that like to imagine things that like to play with the tape recorders or put glue on their grandparents records and then wait to glue to try peel it off and play that on the record player and be like wow, this is cool school. This is stuff I did as a kid. I would play in the woods, I would imagine things, I would do all this stuff and I never stopped being that. I mean obviously you could see me in, in high definition and I do not look like a young boy anymore, but inside I still have that young boy inside of me who's curious about things, who's curious about how that's going to sound if you do it this way or run it through that or you know, do it wrong. It might sound amazing or it might be just fun for me and everyone else. I don't give a what they think. So that's the essence of being an artist. And at the same time I think that that is the essence of being able to be open to things that are a little more supernatural or things that you can't really explain so easily logically anymore.
- [146:39]
B
I could see beautiful explanation.
- [146:40]
C
I could see that.
- [146:41]
A
But like, like we talked about serendipity and, and things like that. Sometimes I think that the reason that I have a lot of those but some people would just call luck is because I'm receptive to it more than other people are. It isn't that I'm like wishing it or manifesting it, it's just that I'm open to it. And so I think that there's sort of, you know, like if you're not trying too hard, things just come to you like that that's at least, that's the way it works for me. And I think that that has a component to the supernatural thing. I, I think, I don't know. I don't really have, have just like we talked about my outfits over the years. I don't have one religion, I don't have one philosophy. I have a lot of different ones that I always am shuffling around and seeing what fits.
- [147:34]
C
Yeah.
- [147:34]
A
And so, you know, whatever works at the time and it might change from, from today to tomorrow. But I think that to essentially like there's a lot of energy that exists. Quantum physics can prove that if you wanted to have something that was irrefutable. Quantum physics can prove that prayer works. Not because of it being prayer, but because of the way intention works. Prayer and religion in itself is essentially just quantum physics intention, that's all. And Christianity deliberately decided to teach everybody how to pray wrong. So that they would have power over the people and not be able to achieve a better greatness to, to this flesh prison that we exist in. And so what that means is, for example, this is Gnosticism. So if you're, if you have a. If you have a sick person in your family that's in the hospital right now, your first intention is to say, I, I pray or I hope. I wish whatever words you would use that that person is no longer sick. I want them to not be sick. By saying that, you're reinforcing the fact that they're sick. What you have to do is you have to imagine them healthy. You have to imagine them, them in their most healthy state. And then if more and more people do it, there isn't. There is an opportunity. It's not 100, but there is an opportunity that our bodies are designed in a special way that our minds can heal ourselves. By not PMA exactly, but by, by imagining, by, by manifesting this. By thinking healthy thoughts, you know, beautiful. And you see a lot of people who do that. I think that this is a component of creativity as well. I think all this stuff coincides whether I think that there are people who are like, for example, Snake Dick's mother being trapped on this plane in her form. I don't think it's like that. I think, I don't think that there's like, like Poltergeist or something films. I don't think it's necessarily like that. But I think that there's an energy that we have that I, I know that I have and energy. And I've been able to do remote viewing type things I've been able to do out of body experience type things. Not always on acid, in case that's where you're gonna take it.
- [150:04]
B
But I just assumed.
- [150:06]
A
Yeah, yeah, just assume. Yeah. And also, well on acid, probably. But, but, but you know, you have these. We're more than this flesh prison, you know, so that's.
- [150:18]
B
The mind is powerful.
- [150:20]
C
Yeah.
- [150:20]
A
And your energy is gonna still. It takes a while for that energy to disperse correctly. And maybe there's just something that this woman, her entire existence while she was alive was her family. Maybe she really was hoping to see that first grandkid and just that was her thing. And she waited for that and then went into like becoming everything else in the universe. Beautiful. So I like, yes.
- [150:50]
B
I like, yes, I, I believe you. I'm with you.
- [150:53]
A
I mean, if none of that is true, then this is a very, A very boring existence.
- [150:59]
B
Yeah.
- [151:01]
A
Just to be a meat sack going around arguing with everybody and trying to say that your ideas are better than their ideas. That's. That's not much of an existence, you know.
- [151:12]
B
Agreed. So before we get to. We have some rapid fire questions from our Patreon, but I want to, I want to hear your. I want to hear before we get to those. Your personal first, your Cleveland Mount Rushmore. And then I want to hear your top four hardcore records of all time.
- [151:32]
A
Okay. For Cleveland, the Dead Boys, it doesn't have to be hardcore. Can it be anything? There's not a lot of hardcore fans from there. Dead Boys for sure. Screaming Jay Hawkins. Oh, I put a spell on you.
- [151:51]
C
Yeah.
- [151:52]
A
Cleveland and I, you know, I'll say, I can't say my band, so I'll say Ringworm and I'll say Midnight. Oh, cool. I love Jamie, although he has a different name. I don't know what it is. Yeah, I'm not one to talk. I also have a.
- [152:12]
B
It's a good name, but.
- [152:14]
A
Yeah, but you know, I could also have gone like James Gang or OJ's or Aaron's band, the inmates or Filter and Nine Inch Nails. I mean, Nine Inch Nails did a hell of a lot of things, you know, big time. It changed a lot of. Lot of a lot of things in music, whether people like it like them or not. They did a lot of amazing things.
- [152:35]
B
Yeah. The new Lady Gaga is all half the gimmick is like. I was listening to Nine Inch Nails a lot, so pretty cool.
- [152:43]
A
I didn't know that. Yeah. Yeah.
- [152:44]
C
So what would your top like, your Mount Rushmore top four hardcore records all time be hardcore?
- [152:53]
A
I probably already Leaked most of this earlier, but. Geese of Detestation. Is that considered hardcore? I don't know. Some people would say not. Yeah, you know. Oh, yeah, Depends.
- [153:05]
B
So you're talking to me, baby. That's that you said today.
- [153:09]
A
Break down the Walls Wishing well pressing. I love that mix. But, you know, and like how you said To Die for is a special record for you because that was a period for you of a certain time in your life. And it might have been that time in your life where that was your best summer before you became an adult and you had this amazing summer, and that was a song that. That was a record that maybe was, you know, played a lot around your friends. This is how I sort of came to terms with this type of stuff over the years, touring. And I'd always see someone, you know, this is my record. This is the one for me from Integrity. And I'd always notice I could just. Like a tree, I could like, you know, find where that ring is. Okay. You were. You were 17 that year, weren't you? And you were about to go to college and good year. You. You met your. Your girlfriend or your boyfriend, and that was. That was your summer of 69, you know, like. Yeah, like Bryan Adams. I don't mean it to be crude with 69.
- [154:08]
B
No, I understand.
- [154:10]
A
Justin Ethan would.
- [154:11]
B
Hopefully we all have our own summer of 69 in some way. You know, mine happened to be with Systems Overload.
- [154:18]
C
Yeah, right.
- [154:18]
A
It seems to be like that. It seems like when certain records come out, like, some people associate those in a nostalgic way with those time frames.
- [154:26]
C
Yeah.
- [154:26]
A
And for me, you said today Break down the Walls is a very special record. Not just because it's. It's. It's an incredible, energetic record, but also because. And not just because Bo is wearing the shirt either, you know?
- [154:41]
B
I believe you. What's number three and four?
- [154:45]
A
Going on the tour was a special time for me. It showed me a lot of things about music, and I would say negative approach, tied down. That's a very incredible record. And just raw. I. I could say raw power too, you know? So, like, you get a little more Detroit in there with Stooges Set to Death. Need so much attention. That's. My whole back is tattooed with the artwork of that special record. For me, those would be my. My top four, what I call hardcore. I don't know if everybody else would call it hardcore, but I can also do 7 inches, and my 7 inches are probably more in the. The wheelhouse of the. Of the youth crew stuff. I would I would. My top would be Project X Straight Edge Revenge.
- [155:32]
B
Wow.
- [155:33]
A
That I. I bought that when it came out and I was. It was so simple, but so brutal and so true and passionate. And it really. It really inspired me as a kid when it came out. A friend of mine, Tyler Davis, who owns a label called Anya Offensive, he had a. A distro in his basement and I went to visit my mother in Indiana and I went over to his house and he said, hey, man, you know, I got some. Some. Some records to sell. You got some Christmas money. You want to buy some? And he was like, you can get this 7 inch and it comes with a zine. It's a good deal. And so I bought that and I was. And then I brought it back to Cleveland. Nobody had had heard that yet. And so, like, everybody was excited about it. And then the next summer, they were playing multiple times in Cleveland, including across the street from my house. Wow. My friend Kelly Oryx, Pool party. They played there for. With all those bands. Awesome. And beyond. It played as well. They only had the demo out of the time.
- [156:38]
C
Wow.
- [156:39]
A
Another 7 inch that I love is New York crew from Judge. Obviously you can hear that in our first seven. It's a lot of Judge, big time Judge inspiration. We talked about it earlier, but side by side. You're only young once, you know, Alex Brown and that guitar sound is just unmatchable. Just the frenzy of it, you know. And yeah, I love that. I love. I love that record a lot.
- [157:06]
C
And Jules, very briefly in Florida in January because of Frank who was there.
- [157:11]
A
Oh.
- [157:12]
C
He was like, bo, I want you to meet my. My friend Jules. And I like, immediately realized who it was and kind of went, oh, hey, good to meet you. It's cool. Cool thing.
- [157:21]
A
Yeah, that's cool. Yeah, that's a great record. And a Chain of Strength. True till death. I love that record.
- [157:28]
B
So All Youth crew.
- [157:30]
C
All Youth crew, baby.
- [157:31]
A
Yeah. Probably my 7 inches would be All Youth Crew. Wow. I'll tell you what. I'll tell you what I find to be the most special component of. Of Chain of Strength is. Is the production. And the production is done in a way where the vocals are buried so much, maybe too much. And that added an intensity to the performance. I think if the vocals were mixed in the front, it would have lost a lot of that frustration that's bubbling up from the bottom. At least that's how I interpret it. You know, it seems that his voice is being pushed down because of the mix, and it makes it seem like it's More like a panther trying to break out of its cage.
- [158:14]
C
Yeah.
- [158:15]
A
If that makes sense.
- [158:16]
B
Those are great answers.
- [158:17]
A
And you weren't expecting me to go with like all these revelations. No, I had no idea.
- [158:22]
C
But I love it, so. Makes me happy.
- [158:24]
B
It makes. It makes the demo warfare.
- [158:27]
A
You never stop.
- [158:29]
B
You never stop. We've got just a few questions here. Let me rapid fire them through real quick. Who are some of your favorite visual artists that inspire you?
- [158:37]
A
Francis Bacon, Joel. Peter Witkin. My friend Steven Kasner. Rest in Peace Sakevi from Gizm. He was a phenomenal artist. Randy Uchida, he's the one who designed Detestation. I don't know if you knew that he did the artwork for that, but he was a fantastic guitar player and artist. I could go on all day. Max Ernst, I love Max Ernst. I love his collage work.
- [159:07]
B
What's. What's an up and coming band from Europe that you're excited about?
- [159:11]
A
Well, I could say a friend of mine has a. Has a band which is not very originally named Parasite, but he used to be in Dead Stop. Yeah. And his name is Lino and that's. He has a cool. He always has cool music. So I'm imagining his band is. Is good, but I haven't heard it yet. Yet. But I saw him the other day and he told me he has a new band. And he said it's called Parasite. And I said, wow, you just really. You got. You got a name nobody else has ever. You go on discounts. There's like 5,000 of those.
- [159:45]
B
Yeah, of course. Well, you get to be parasite number 5,000. That's pretty cool. That's a cool name.
- [159:49]
C
Parasite.
- [159:50]
A
I put out a band from Japan named Parasite about 15 years ago on my error. And I'm sure they weren't the first.
- [159:57]
B
To be there at all. The story behind the remixing and remastering of those who Fear. And what was the other one you did for Seasons or Humanity?
- [160:10]
A
All of the Victory ones.
- [160:11]
B
Is that. Is that to get. Get him off of Victory?
- [160:14]
A
No, I actually got all the records back from Concord. I could put them out. I could put them out in the original mix and I could have like saved money right by. By just doing that. But I didn't want to do that. I wanted to make it a new experience. I wanted to. I wanted to be able to experience something new myself. And I think Aaron did too. And I reworked the artwork as well because I wanted it to be something that was free, you know, re. Reimagined a little bit. It's still the same records, essentially, but. Yeah. And also, I wanted to add, like, we spoke earlier about. About Igor being on the record, which. He's a legendary legend drummer and one of my best friends. We used to be neighbors, in fact, in Belgium for a while. And also Brandon Gallagher played drums on the songs that. That Igor didn't play on. So I have two different. Two different guys doing the drums on that. And Brandon is in a band called Trace Amount from New York. Awesome. And I didn't. I didn't want to leave him out of. No, of course. Being meant. But of course, Igor Cavallara, you know, this guy. It's a.
- [161:25]
B
It's a big deal.
- [161:26]
C
Big deal.
- [161:26]
A
Born a legend, you know, so it's kind of. It's hard to not be in his shadow.
- [161:31]
B
Absolutely.
- [161:32]
A
Every time I hang out with him, people hand me cameras. Can you take a selfie with me and Igor? And Igor's like, sorry, dude. We were at a festival together. We were waiting to see Twisted Sister. And Twisted Sister, by the way, totally blew us off.
- [161:46]
C
And.
- [161:47]
A
And even Igor, they blew him up. And we were waiting like. Like complete fans. And these guys came up and they. They tapped me on the shoulder and said, hey, can you take a picture of us with Igor? And it was the guys from Korn, and they wanted pictures with Igor. Even Corn want pictures with Igor.
- [162:04]
B
That's awesome.
- [162:05]
A
This is how. This is the life of Igor, you know.
- [162:08]
B
Of course, not only a true legend.
- [162:10]
A
He has the best name as a horror fan is. Yeah, of course he has the best name. He's the. He's the best guy, too. Sorry, I took it off the rails. Took it off the rails with my. My love for Igor.
- [162:22]
B
What inspired the song Judgment Day and how did you feel about Dying Fetus covering it?
- [162:27]
A
So Judgment Day was the first song that I ever wrote with Aaron and Scott Stearns, and that was a Die Hard song. Then Die Hard recorded their album, and they used some of the music, but they had different lyrics because Judgment Day, the lyrics were my lyrics, and when they replaced me with. With Stork, he wrote his own lyrics. And then when we made those for tomorrow, we always loved that song because it has this sort of like, too Fast for Love, Motley Crue kind of vibe to it, but with Lemmy singing or whatever. And so we put that back into the. We put that into the. The. Into the album, and. But we still play it live. I mean, that's the one song I think that I've played more than anything ever. Then it was the first sign. So it's kind of crazy to be. I was like 15 or 16 years old when I helped write that song. So it's insane that I'm 54 now and I still play that song.
- [163:25]
C
Wow.
- [163:25]
B
You had it figured out, man, Right from the riff, I'm telling you.
- [163:28]
A
Yeah. Almost 40 years I've been singing that song. As far as Dying Fetus, it's cool. But they never credited. At credited the song as being us. They credited their own song, and the publishing is considered their song.
- [163:44]
B
Interesting. Maybe because they added the blast and the verse, they could get away with it.
- [163:49]
A
I don't know. I think that it wasn't malicious. I think it was just, you know. Yeah, well, you know, whatever. Someone just did it. But. But because of that, I have a lot of people say, oh, that's a sick dying fetus cover, man. But they do it better. No, I mean, I. I've had that a lot. But then I also have people say, oh, I like your version. Or they like both versions or whatever. It's not a contest. Yeah, I've got a lot of people say, like, yeah, that's a cool cover.
- [164:15]
C
That's hilarious.
- [164:16]
A
I laugh. It's fine.
- [164:18]
B
Unbelievable.
- [164:20]
A
And it's. It's. It's super flattering too, you know, I mean, it was because they're interrupted. Yeah. It was unexpected. And none of us knew about it until like, several years after it had already been out.
- [164:32]
B
Wow.
- [164:32]
A
And the only reason I knew was because someone said to me that we were doing a cover of the. Of Dying Fetus. That's how I found out.
- [164:39]
C
So funny.
- [164:40]
B
Wow. Wow. That's. That's. That's a good piece of info.
- [164:43]
A
And. And I saw you guys singing it in Florida.
- [164:46]
B
Yeah, that was awesome.
- [164:47]
A
Yeah, that was cool. I shared it on our.
- [164:49]
C
Aaron was there in the.
- [164:50]
B
I love that. Yeah, Aaron was there. That was funny.
- [164:52]
A
That was the question I had was, why didn't you ask Aaron to get up?
- [164:56]
C
Didn't know.
- [164:56]
B
They didn't think about it.
- [164:57]
A
I don't think the answer is Aaron doesn't look like Aaron. The Aaron that everybody thinks. The shaved head Aaron with like a weird mustache, looking like. Looking like Mario. Super Mario jumping, you know, but it's like a bald Super Mario. But now Aaron has this lush cherry curl and he looks younger.
- [165:16]
B
He looks 25. It's crazy.
- [165:18]
C
Yeah, he.
- [165:19]
A
Yeah, he's an Armenian vampire. I warned him that I was going to talk about his hair predominantly in this interview.
- [165:26]
B
It's beautiful hair. I couldn't believe it.
- [165:28]
A
Yeah, he. He's he's very vain and loves to. He puts a lot of Jerry curl in it and he.
- [165:34]
B
Good, good.
- [165:35]
A
He's got a lot of shine, you.
- [165:36]
C
Know, he's got it. Yeah.
- [165:39]
A
Hello, Is it me you're looking for? And, and what he did with Eddie Murphy, like, Eddie Murphy was just like a phenomenal comedian. But when Aaron helped produce Party all the Time, that was what a banger. Aaron is a brick house.
- [165:56]
B
You know, you got more. You're so. You're loaded. Is there a thing you miss the most about living in the U.S.
- [166:05]
A
Wendy'S Baconator.
- [166:08]
C
Great answer. Never.
- [166:12]
A
To be. To be fair, I go there all, all the time. I'm going there in a couple weeks. We have some shows. I guess the thing that I. I miss about America the most is that America does allow you to think outside the box more than Europe does. So if I was. If I had to go to the store and I have an idea of something I want to make that is out of my mind. I mean, yeah, it's out of my mind, but out of my imagination as well. Then if I go and I say, hey, do you have. Have this, this and this? They'll say, no, we don't have that. But they might have something that is exactly that, but just slightly different.
- [166:53]
C
Right.
- [166:54]
A
Completely work. They would never ever think to suggest that. And I asked, and I've asked people why that is, and they say that the way that the education system works in Europe is that they don't help. They teach the people not to sort of go off. Off the. Off the path a little bit, you know, Interesting. I don't think that it's necessarily as cold as I like to pretend that it is. Yeah. I think it's just simply that that was the way they were. They were taught. And it's maybe like essentially manners rather than it being rude or being. I. And I think that, you know, they think that offering or talking too much is rude or. Oh, no, I don't have it. I don't have that in blue. But you know what? I have it in. In green. Kind of looks like blue. You could paint it blue if you wanted to. Right, Whatever. They would never, ever say that.
- [167:50]
C
I asked a German guy one time if there was a bathroom, and he said, well, we don't have a bath, but the toilet's over there. Yeah. And it's a funny.
- [167:59]
B
You know what I mean?
- [168:00]
C
I understand the language. I know I said bathroom. I told. Totally get it. But it is to. To your point, it's kind of like no, we don't have this thing.
- [168:07]
B
Well, we don't rest in the damn restroom either. I'm fighting for my life in there. Come on, man.
- [168:14]
A
But I don't. I don't know. When I was younger, I used to think everyone is prick, and that's why they're saying it like that. But over the years, I just started to realize that maybe just. Just cultural. Yeah. I don't think that there's. There's the malicious intent that I've always been suspecting. I still suspect that it's there, but I think that it's starting to. The illusion is starting to fade, unfortunately.
- [168:37]
B
Do you have. There's some. Living in Europe, I'm sure you. You experience the. The German compliment quite often.
- [168:45]
A
Oh, yeah. You used to be much more handsome, this one.
- [168:49]
B
Oh, yeah, yeah.
- [168:49]
A
Last time. Last time, you played much better. Now look at you. You're all old. Maybe it is the judgment day for you. Yes.
- [169:00]
C
My God. Oh, my God.
- [169:04]
A
And this vocal test. There's no test anymore. You failed.
- [169:09]
C
All right.
- [169:10]
B
I was gonna ask you if you had some favorite ones, but you just. You just delivered.
- [169:13]
C
You nailed them.
- [169:14]
B
Several.
- [169:14]
A
I just. I just made those up. But I have had people. I have had people, like, say that I don't look 20 anymore. Anymore. And I said, well, you're very astute. I'm. I'm glad you don't need glasses. Yeah. You should be proud of yourself. And you're able to spot that. Wow.
- [169:34]
B
Yeah.
- [169:34]
A
About a guy who was born in 1971. You're.
- [169:38]
C
You're.
- [169:38]
A
You're quite a character. I mean, you might. You might be looking into, like, a new career.
- [169:43]
B
You could be like, absolutely.
- [169:45]
A
The guy who finds out where Waldo is, for example.
- [169:48]
B
Or I guess the inverse of what you missed about America. What. What's your favorite thing about living in Europe?
- [169:55]
A
Oh, my favorite thing about living in Europe. And I'm not overly political, but it's going to sound like I am, I guess, because some of the jokes I made earlier as well. But the government is not treating the people like they are employees that they're just desperate to fire, looking for any reason to fire them. Like these freeloaders again.
- [170:16]
C
Sure.
- [170:17]
A
How dare them want what Social Security that they paid into for their whole life, all this Amen. They don't do that here. Over here, they government. And there's flaws, too. Over here, the government looks at the citizens as if they are, for lack of a better parallel, the parents of the people. And so if you have a child and your child, like, I said earlier, falls down. You teach them to get up, but you, you know, you don't make them afraid to fall down and you get them back up on, on their way and you help them get on, get into, make things better, you know, help them get on, on track, help them get their life together and, and help them develop as, as people because that helps, that helps your country, that helps your society. If you have, if you, if you teach, teach the children how to do great things, they're going to take care of you when you're older as well. That's one thing that a lot of people don't see too.
- [171:21]
B
And that's, that's the culture in Belgium.
- [171:24]
A
And that's sort of the culture, although it isn't the exchange of expecting it from, to be taken care of when you're older as much. But that's a component. But they do, the government does look at a situation like where if you had started a business, say that hard Laura is doing, doing pretty well. But then everything falls, falls, a problem happens and you guys fall flat on your face. They might come in and say, hey, we can help you guys get back on your feet again. Or if you're a person who was a coal miner and they said, well, you know, this is a, this is a job that no longer is available, but we can, they would, this is a real thing. You could go to them and they would put you into school and they have a list of jobs that, that are in demand. Perhaps it would be plumber, perhaps it would be something in it or whatever it would be. We need nurses. If you, is that something that you'd be interested? And you just look at the list, you could say, you know, this is actually something I've always wanted to do. And then they would put you into the school, they would help you go to school. And school also doesn't cost very much because in Belgium and in, in most of Europe there's this, they, they don't have this thing called lobbying, which means bribery, which means that your tax dollars get given to these South African guys who are gonna like go in and just take care of all the social.
- [172:52]
B
Every good program ever made and give.
- [172:54]
A
Him $8 million a day to save $3 billion from, from Social Security or whatever. That's illegal in Europe. And if they even attempted that, they would go to jail and be taken out of office. They also can't. It's, it's illegal for them to do stock market tricks like the American government. You can see, you can look at their, their their portfolio and their bank accounts and just wonder how gosh lucky they are. They're just, they're just on the money with it. You know, they, they really have somebody for, for Wall Street. So that's not something that is legal here. And if they did, they would go to jail. So that's a good thing in the, in the sense of that. But, but I'm, I'm not going to just only praise it. The bad side of it is I see that when they do help a small business or someone who had something bad happen to them, say it was Covid, for example. Say you're a restaurant and Covid came and now you're, you're. They would help you get back on your feet. That's valid. But sometimes there's people who are like, hey, I'm gonna like half ass start this business. They half ass do it. And then because it doesn't work out, then they still help them try to get back on track with the new project. And while that's great and kind and caring of them and that's what the system is for, I think that in some cases they make it so easy for them to help you that people don't try hard enough. So like in America, this is an analogy that I often give to people who ask me better from here. They said, what's the difference? And so I'll say in America, if you look at it as a tightrope walk, you know, in the circus you walk on the rope. So in America, when you're walking across the tightrope, underneath you is a bunch of very hungry sharks, broken glass, lava, landmines, fire, everything that's going to just rip you to shreds. If your business fails, there is a 90 chance you're going to be homeless and you're never gonna recover. You're. So you don't fail. You do everything, everything you can to succeed. You find every, every possibility. You make it happen. Of course it doesn't always work that way, but, but I think that that's the, the spirit of it. But in Europe, oftentimes I think that they, with, they were walking on, on the tightrope. Underneath them is a very soft pillow with lots of feathers around it and you know, water beds and all kinds of soft springs that'll bounce you right back up. And you know, I'm not overall a.
- [175:46]
B
Positive right, but, but the drive maybe isn't the same.
- [175:51]
A
There's something at least how I'm built that I, I live from the paranoia of if everything falls apart I have to just give it a hundred thousand percent.
- [176:04]
B
Not a very American way of thinking.
- [176:06]
C
Yeah.
- [176:07]
A
Yeah, for sure. So that's kind of. That's kind of how I see it. I'm not necessarily saying that their way is wrong. And I. I know for a fact that they've helped a lot of people who did need the help. And the people, you know, they weren't taking advantage of the system, but there are some people who are just like dumbasses or lazy people who are like, not trying hard enough because they. They have a system that doesn't make it as desperate as it would be in America. Sure. The fact that it's desperate in America, do I think that that's great? I don't think that that's great, but that's just how I was. I was. I was born and wired. I got you from my. I grew up in the 70s. So that's different than a lot of your viewers are probably used to as well, because, you know, teachers could hit you and neighbors could hit you. Everybody could hit you. And it was applauded. It was applaud parents. It wasn't like, oh, how dare you touch my kid? It was like, you deserved it. You should hit him. I'm gonna hit him for making you hit him. You know, this is like a real legitimate, like, 70s and 80s upbringing. That's how it was. I don't know if it's bad or good. You know, I wouldn't change. I wouldn't change my upbringing, even though there's a lot of terrible things that happen, but that made me who I am so. And understood the misery fueled my work with my.
- [177:29]
B
They all led to. To the man we spoke to today. And we, We. We sincerely appreciate the time you spent with us today. It was a great episode. We covered. Covered a lot of ground.
- [177:40]
C
A lot.
- [177:41]
B
Three hours of ground. Beautiful. Historic. Before you go, can I ask one thing?
- [177:47]
A
Sure.
- [177:48]
B
Can we do the DWID pose all through?
- [177:51]
A
Yeah. I've never virtually done it, but yeah.
- [177:55]
B
Good. Beautiful. Perfect. All right. This was incredible. Dwight, thank you so much for joining us. Have the best time.
- [178:01]
C
Have a good evening. Good night.
- [178:03]
B
Oh, yeah, you gotta go to bed.
- [178:06]
A
It's after midnight now, so.
- [178:08]
C
All right.
- [178:08]
B
Beautiful.
- [178:09]
C
Well, thank you.
- [178:10]
B
We hope you've all enjoyed this incredible journey with DWID integrity. You can stream the whole damn discography. Most of it's remixed and remastered by Arthur right now. Now, what can we expect next from you?
- [178:24]
A
I have a split that came out or is coming out any day now with a guest that you just had on Carl from Earth Crisis.
- [178:32]
B
Right. Beautiful, beautiful.
- [178:33]
A
And love it. And. And we're making a new integrity album right now and with Aaron and. Oh, Julian and coming with Aaron.
- [178:45]
C
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [178:46]
A
Aaron's on the Cris thing too.
- [178:48]
C
Awesome. Very cool.
- [178:49]
B
Well, this is breaking news.
- [178:50]
C
Yeah. That's awesome.
- [178:51]
B
I can't wait to hear it. Yeah.
- [178:52]
A
If you listen to the Earth Crisis, you can hear some of Aaron.
- [178:55]
B
I did. Yeah.
- [178:57]
A
Solos.
- [178:58]
B
Cool and beautiful.
- [178:59]
A
There's a photo inside. Aaron insisted it in the. The insert would be a photo of us.
- [179:06]
C
Yeah.
- [179:06]
A
Just so he could show off how long and vivacious here and beautiful he is. You know, you gotta do.
- [179:16]
C
Yeah.
- [179:17]
A
He has this like fan blowing his hair and it's ridiculous.
- [179:22]
B
It's easy like Sunday morning here on Hard Lore. And we thank you. We thank you, DWID for joining us once again.
- [179:28]
A
My pleasure.
- [179:30]
B
We hope you all enjoyed and we will see you next week.
- [179:33]
A
Bye.