HXR20YR RETROSPECTIVE: HXR028- TAXA, "Ressurection Year" 7"

I still (as of this writing) have never met any of the people in TAXA.  I took a random chance on them.  I was at a lull with the label as some of the bands I had released records for had split up and I wasn’t sure how certain I felt about continuing to put out records.  I did a simple, limited CD release for the band Black Throat Wind (as chronicled in a previous entry), and that was about it for over a year.  I just really was unsure of what to pursue next, if anything at all.

And while randomly scanning that dumping ground of hardcore, the Bridge 9 board, I noticed someone posting about their band TAXA and how it was reminiscent of Shotmaker.  First off, I didn’t really expect anyone to post on that forum about Shotmaker, let alone figure that anyone even knew who they were anymore.  So, naturally, I was curious.  I checked out the music and found it to be pretty engaging.  The band was looking to have someone release it.  I got in touch saying I was interested.  And that was about that.  I knew nothing about this group, their background, where they were from, what kind of people they were, nothing.  That was highly unlike me, as I had always been mindful to get to know people in bands before I started working with them.

But like I said, I was in a lull and maybe I just needed to try something different, or a new approach, to operating this label.  It turns out TAXA call Vancouver, British Columbia home.  Members of the band had previously played in a group called Damages that did a couple records with React Records, and the sound was a bit similar.  And we knew a few of the same people in the Pacific Northwest.  And just like that, the bands two-song 7” was a reality we made happen.

Then there was the issue of getting the dang thing made.  It had been a couple years since I had dealt with any record pressing places and I needed to re-familiarize myself with that process.  The place I had been using was going out of business and I searched high and low for new pressing plants, many of whom had become extremely booked up because suddenly vinyl was a hot commodity again.  I settled on a press in New York called Brooklyn Phono, a smaller company that didn’t seem to have the backlog issues some other places were experiencing and they were a pretty down-to-earth operation.  They were also able to press in smaller quantities that I was hoping for (since I had no clue as to how trying to sell a 7” for an unknown band in 2014 was going to go).  Overall, things went well and it was a relatively easy process once I had the pieces in place.  I even ended up having to do a second pressing of the record, which I would have never thought would happen.

So that all being said, TAXA, who are kind of the Revelation Slipknot of Hex Records- a mysterious group that not many people seem to know about- continue to exist.  I caught up with Andrew Morrison, who has been my primary contact for the band since they began, and he was kind enough to give some time to discuss the group.  Fun fact:  this is actually the first time we had ever talked directly!  All other occasions have been through e-mail, or social media.  Here’s a couple of other facts- the band still exists, even though Andrew has like 500 side bands that operate concurrently.  TAXA has never toured the U.S. (though they have a bit in their home of Canada).  However, they have toured Cuba, of all places, on two separate occasions. Also, their re-press was printed incorrectly and had to be re-re-pressed.  For a band that only has a 7” and a split to their name after several years they have some interesting stories. Read on and find out more!

So how did TAXA start?

It started right around 2009 originally.  In that time we came up with the name and the general idea of the band, as well as a handful of songs.  We started because we had a good friend who played drums and we were looking for a good reason to do something with him, so we started that band with him, and shortly after it started he ended up having a baby and moving away for some time.  There was the promise, though, that he would shortly come back.  Six months turned into a year, turned into two years, until we gave up, eventually, on him ever coming back and just revived the band, proper, in 2013 or 14.

So that’s where we got it what it is now, with our current drummer.

It’s not a very romantic answer.  We had a buddy who played drums to a certain ability and we thought, ‘hey, maybe we should try to rip off Unwound, that would work for everybody for what we can do.’

Have you toured Canada, or the U.S. in TAXA or any of your other bands?

We haven’t toured the U.S. with Taxa, but we toured Canada with Taxa.  We went to Cuba with Taxa twice.  My old band Damages toured in the states.

So this is rather strange.  Taxa has been sort of relegated to Canada, however you’ve toured Cuba, of all places, twice.  How did that work?

Well, there’s an organization that used to be up here called Solidarity Rock.  And what their goal was, was to try and find musicians that were willing to go to places could benefit from  having some live band experience, and have bands not from there come in.  But also bands that were willing to do it for a not-for-profit venture.  So the way they do it is they raise as much money as they possibly can and so when we went we got a bunch of sponsorships through musical organizations that would donate gear to us so we would be able to bring a couple thousand dollars worth of gear with us that we could donate to the community down there.

So the first one we did went really well and it was a really positive experience.  We made a bunch of friends down there and just decided that we definitely wanted to do it again.  So we went through the motions and contacted the same people, gathered a bunch of gear that we could donate, and took it down.

How did it work in regards to the donations?  Did you bring your own gear, in addition to donated stuff?  Or did you just bring the stuff for donation, play the shows with it, and then leave it behind when the tour was over?

We brought it with us, used it, and then we left it.  That was a little nicer too, because it spares us from having to lug things onto the plane in both directions.

That is very cool and strange.  I take it Canada does not have any strained international relations with Cuba like the U.S. has had?

No, that’s the difference.  It often surprises our U.S. friends when we say we have toured Cuba for that reason because it seems less successful.  But that’s not really the case.  It’s a fairly, straightforward thing for us to go.

Is there a punk scene in Cuba?

Oh yeah.  Huge punk scene.  There’s very interesting stories there.  It would be easier for you to just google it, but their history when it comes to punk rock is very intense.  In the early 90’s when the AIDS epidemic first came to Cuba the overall conditions for living were so poor for punks they would actually inject themselves with HIV so that they would be put into these government-run sanitariums.  The belief being that there was going to be a cure for HIV shortly.  So, there was this community of punk people that were all forced into these government sanitariums, but they did it because they were then safe from assault by police.  They had food and clean water access daily.  They also had access to creative spaces.  The sanitariums also had music rooms.  And, of course,  the cure for HIV didn’t come within a couple of years.

That’s crazy.

Like I said, I don’t want to slaughter the facts of it all trying to explain it, but it’s definitely worth looking up because it’s pretty intense.  But that was sort of the jumping-off point for the punk scene in Cuba and what has informed what’s happened there since with their music scene.

What a wild difference.

It’s really funny because you and I are probably of an age where the sort of wild times of punk came and went before we got too deeply into it.  So you read those stories from afar about people ‘living the life’ and whatnot.  It’s kind of surreal to go to Cuba and see these people in our modern times still living those sorts of things.  They’re really adhering to the idea of what they perceive punk rock to be, and living it as a lifestyle, in the face of adversity and violence.

That’s pretty tough for me to wrap my head around, especially with the circumstances they went through.

Yeah!  That’s why you ought to just come with us some time!

(laughs)  Oh yeah.  Wait, didn’t you invite me on one of those tours?

Yes!  That’s why you ought to come!

I remember now.  I recall thinking, ‘I’m American, I don’t think I’m allowed to go to Cuba!’

Well, related to places being far away, does it feel as if Vancouver is cut off from the rest of Canada, making it tougher to tour elsewhere?

Yeah, that is kind of true of Canada everywhere though.  There’s no real easy amount of major touring between major cities in Canada the way there is in the U.S.  But that’s definitely the case with Vancouver to some degree because not only is it a simple amount of miles between here and the next major city going east, which would be Calgary.  But there’s also the mountains.  That’s quite a barrier.

So that has likely put a damper on being able to tour much, period.

Well, the only damper that that causes us, really, is a time meter.  So when we tour in Canada, because of the drive between some shows, that means you probably aren’t able to play as many shows.  Where a tour in the states may be able to be nine shows, that could just be seven up here.

 The first and second pressing on pretty colors

Are there unrecorded TAXA songs?  It’s been several years, I imagine you have some more material somewhere.

Yeah!  We took a break for a little bit to actually try and write an LP, or finish it.  I think we have a dozen songs at this point.  We’re just sitting on them until we can find a time, or a reason, to record them.

It’s nice to know that you’re all still a band because we don’t hear too much about the band.  And I know you have a million other projects going on.

The thing for us that we tend to do is rather than run out of steam by putting all our eggs in one basket we try to do as many types of bands that we can in order to allow us to play with as many of our friends and people that we respect musically, that we can.  And also, it takes some of the pressure off of those periods where a band, for whatever reason, can’t be super active.  And that has been the issue with Taxa.  Taxa came to a bit of a halt at one point because our then guitar player went to school, so she needed to take some time off to do that. And then she eventually decided to go back to school again so she bowed out of the band at that point because she was holding things back for a period of time.  So then we got a new guitar player, and right now we’re taking it a bit easy because he’s doing really well with his wrestling gig.

 ads for things, including this Taxa record

So, to be clear, the other bands that you have been a part of since forming Taxa- Black Pills and Silver Chains- is just you, or is it other members of Taxa as well participating in these bands and projects?

Well, Silver Chains is everyone from Taxa except for the guitar player who wrestles, and another friend of ours does vocals.  But all of these bands have always been myself and Heig, who is the vocalist and guitar player in Taxa.  He and I have been music partners for many, many years at this point.  So every band always includes the two of us, and then there’s some overlap.  So everyone in Taxa is also in the band Griefwalker.  Heig are both in Black Pills, which is now called Teeth To Your Throat.

Taxa guitarist by day, wrestler by night, Daniel Makabe

So for a band that has a very small discography, and has been this band that has not had a huge history as part of this label I have to say there are an abundance of unique stories and circumstances surrounding your group from touring Cuba, to being involved in numerous other projects together, to having a wrestler in your ranks.

One other unique story that comes to mind, and I don’t know how much you know of it, but are you familiar with the circumstances surrounding the re-press of the 7” I released for you?

No, I don’t know!  I remember talking with you when you said it was close enough to being sold out that you were going to do a repress of it.  Was there some aspect of it being problematic that I don’t know about?

Yes.

Oh!  Well, then, no.  I don’t know.  Lay it on me.

So, the band I play in, Dialysis had a seven inch out as well.  And when it came time to repress the Taxa 7”, which is a two song record, I went through the pressing plant I was using at the time.  They ended up using the Dialysis plates to repress the Taxa 7”, which makes no sense because the Dialysis 7” is a 10-song record and it should be pretty easy to tell which is which just based on the spaces on the record between songs.  So they sent me 200 of the Dialysis records with the Taxa labels on them.  Our two bands really couldn’t be any more different.  So I contacted the pressing plant and let them know they sent me the wrong record.  And they apologized and said they would re-do it, and, to their credit, I’ve never seen a pressing plant do a turnaround so quickly.  Within a week they re-did the Taxa 7” correctly.  And then I asked them what they wanted me to do with the incorrect ones, did they want me to send them back?  And they just said, ‘eh, we’ll let you know.’  But they never got back to me about it.  So I’ve just been sitting on around 200 wrongly labeled Dialysis 7”s and sometimes I just give them away to people.  I re-did the Taxa cover to say ‘Dialysis’ instead.

Oh!  I remember us talking about that a little bit, but I thought maybe you had just gotten some incorrect test pressings or something.  I didn’t realize it was the record proper.

No, they didn’t bother with a second round of test pressings since the first press came out right.  They were just supposed to take the same plates and use them again for the next pressing since they are intended to last for a couple thousand records.  They just ended up grabbing the wrong plates and pressing a grind band onto what was supposed to be a completely other group.

I hope you can find something creative to do with them!  It would be fun to have one, for sure.

The mix-up 7", a true collector's curiosity

But in regards to the real 7” you released, which is mainly what this conversation is supposed to be about, is there anything you’re particularly fond of, or anything you regret about it?

Well, I would have changed the misspelling of the title on the cover.  That’s the first thing that comes to mind.

Is it spelled wrong?!

Yeah, there’s a misspelling. ‘Ressurection’ is spelled wrong on the cover.

I think that ever since the 90’s band Ressurection happened I’ve been spelling that word incorrectly.  They spelled it wrong, but I always thought that was the way you were supposed to spell it.

Yeah, I knew of that band but I didn’t know they spelled their name wrong.  The thing is, though, that every one of us missed it.  The guy who did the cover missed.  Every one in the band saw the cover before it was sent to you and we missed it.  The only way we found out it was wrong was one of the places you sent the record in for review mentioned it in their review.  We read the review and the first thing they said was ‘it’s unfortunate that they misspelled ‘ressurection’ on the cover of their record’. 

So the joke that we have been running ever since then is that that is how we spell it in Canada.  Which is, of course, not true.

(laughs) Yeah, that’s how you all do it, it’s fine.  Don’t worry.  Vancouver specifically.  It’s the Vancouver spelling.  It’s very regional.

Exactly!  But otherwise I’m very proud of it, it’s a great record.  Part of the thing with Taxa too is that because the music was not hardcore we wanted to use it as a vehicle for it’s difference.  As great as it is to still have contacts and have those people you can count on, it tends to get you stuck in a groove.  So after my band Damages broke up we didn’t want to just move on to the next thing and rely on all those same old contacts that we worked with from the past.  We wanted to do something different musically, which would potentially open us up to meeting new people and work with different labels, or promoters.  We didn’t want to miss a chance to meet a world of different people that we might not have were we to just continue on working with the same people that we did in the past.  We never gave ourselves that opportunity in the past.

That’s kind of the funny thing about how we connected because Taxa was not a band, style-wise, that I had any clue as to where to go with for contacts for labels and stuff.  When I initially messaged you about Taxa it was not with the expectation that you would have any interest in the band.  But it was more that you would know maybe who I should contact for things.

So, to date, what has been the best part of the band and what has been the worst?

I think the music is the best part of the band.  There has been a lot about the music of Taxa that I really like.  It’s great to have had some of the experiences that we have had because of it.

The worst thing is probably- because there have not been any big drama things with the band insofar as bad encounters- the drag of time that comes with not being able to keep everyone’s schedules on the same page all the time.  But I guess that’s really kind of part of every band to some degree.  But I think the difference is that Taxa could have done more than we have up to this point.  It seems like the kind of band that could have a little more legs under it were we to push it a little more.  But such is life I guess.

AND if you act now you can get that tasty 7" with it's pretty cover, for a mere $3 this week only.  And if you're a digital-only sort of person a solid buck will get you the tracks.  Encourage your inner cheap-o to capitalize on a deal.  Operators are standing by.  Not really.  We don't have those sorts of things.  Just order it on your own HERE.  or go through the bigcartel and get some other stuff while you're at it.