HXR20YR RETROSPECTIVE: HXR016- ACHILLES, "Hospice"

By 2006 Achilles was on a tear.  They had toured quite a bit, become a point of pride within the Rochester community, and all things seemed to be going well for them.  They were getting ready to record their next full length, and had been writing music for it.  But a number of factors were coming into play that would signal that the active days of the band were coming to a close.  However, they did not know, going into the recording of the album, that this would be the end of a chapter.  That was communicated to me later on, but I had enough faith in the guys that not touring on the record would not affect my decision of whether to put it out or not.  I knew it would be good.

The varying factors that became major obstacles for the band to remain as active came for three of the members.  First off, guitarist Rob Antonucci was starting a family.  The guy knows his priorities and knew band stuff would have to become far less in the foreground with a kid on the way.  To date, he is probably the coolest dad I can think of.  Secondly, drummer Chris Browne was becoming way more active with his side band Polar Bear Club, who he played guitar for.  They were getting considerable recognition and in demand.  They began touring pretty heavily, partially based on the decision to put Achilles on the back burner.  And, eventually, Polar Bear Club became a full time band, touring constantly, opening up for Bad Religion, Face To Face, and doing several Warped tours during their time.  Finally, vocalist Rory Van Grol moved out to Providence, Rhode Island and ended up joining hardcore rockers Soul Control, who also became a full time touring band for a few years.  So there was a lot that got in the way of Achilles doing a whole lot after this record was released.

But I distinctly recall the guys getting in touch when they were down in Pennsylvania recording “Hospice” and informing me of how well they felt things were going and how pleased they were with the results.  Once they were finished the guys drove up to my house before heading back to Rochester to play the record.  They were so excited about it and wanted me to check out every song.  I remember as things closed with “The Cold Floor” and how emotional of a song it was, a perfect ending for a record and closing a chapter on things.  I still get goosebumps when I think of that song and I know there’s been more than a few times where they played it live and I got a bit weepy-eyed.  Oh, did I mention multiple shows seeing them play songs from this record?  Well, yeah.  The band didn’t split up.  They still aren’t split up.  They continued to play when possible, even if that meant just a weekend every year, or a show once every few years.  There’s even been some new material written since “Hospice” came out in 2007, even though it has not been recorded (yet).

When I think of ‘successful’ records that have been released by this label there are those that did so in the commercial sense by selling through their pressing(s), or bands that toured extensively and gained notoriety far and wide.  I often come across people who state that “Hospice” is one of their favorite records of all time.  Like, it had a major impact upon their life.  It’s one of those releases that has done fine for me insofar as selling a decent amount.  But to hear people regularly refer to this as a life-changing record, well, that’s big.  That goes above and beyond any commercial success a record may have.  And I’m inclined to agree that it is one of the ‘best’ records I’ve had the pleasure of releasing.

These days the band is still spread out.  Bassist Josh Dillon lives in Portland, drummer Chris Browne lives in LA.  Rob is still in the Rochester region with his family, and vocalist Rory Van Grol moved back to Rochester after Soul Control stopped playing, started a family of his own, and owns a great coffee business called Ugly Duck (which I encourage you all to check out if you’re in the area).  I’ve known Rory now for well over 20 years and he remains one of my favorite people around due to his kind demeanor, thoughtful presence, and his ability to naturally bring happiness to those around him.  He’s a busy guy and we found some time to catch up and discuss “Hospice”, particularly because of its’ lyrical weight even all these years later.

So, going into recording “Hospice” you all knew the band was going to be slowing down, right?

That came afterwards.  There was never any intention of us going in and recording, and then slowing down afterwards at all.  The way we wrote this record was so natural for all of us.  We were practicing, at minimum, two or three nights a week.  It was like we wrote this record naturally, it just came out of us.  It was very natural in the way we put this together, and it felt like kind of a quick turnaround from “Dark Horse”.  It felt very fluid.  And then once that record came out it got kind of weird because Chris (Browne, drums) stated that he had this opportunity to go to school in Boston.  He was like, “I think I got to do it.”  And I thought, “fuck, this is crazy, what are we going to do?”  So we all started having these really great conversations about the identity of the band.

We named the record “Hospice”, but it wasn’t because of a slow down, or a death, or anything.  We knew the band couldn’t last the way it was forever, but we were also like, ‘why would we break up?  Why put a total stop to something that we love?’ And that wasn’t just with playing songs, but hanging out together as friends.  For us, it’s just another way to hang out and enjoy each other’s company.

Of all the bands I’ve ever been in, Achilles, and particular this record, is the proudest record that I have been a part of. And it feels like the most complete record of any record I’ve been on, having played a role in it.  It just has an energy that we all put into it that was so natural.

So there was never any intent for us to walk away from this and say, “ok, that was it.”

And I remember you all made it clear to me as well that you weren’t breaking up, just slowing down.  But maybe it’s the passage of time that makes the timeline of events blur in my mind because there’s a number of songs on that record that make allusions to death, endings, and saying goodbyes, and I didn’t know if that was the point of the record to make a statement about slowing the band down.  But you’re stating that all came afterwards.  So maybe I’m associating what happened with the band after the record came out with subject matter within the songs.

Yeah, I get that.  That definitely was not the theme of the record, and I’ve never been a theme writer, or devote a record to a single subject.  That’s just not how I write.  But there was definitely, at that time in my life, personally, a lot of that going on.  I was coming out of a gnarly relationship that finally ended.  That was cathartic.  Another aspect was my grandparents passed away, and people close to us passed away, and others moved away.  Having attachment to those people, and feeling and exploring those things for me, in my mid-to-late 20’s, made me think, ‘well, what the fuck am I doing? Am I going to be doing this forever?  I have no idea.’  I think there was a lot of internal stuff that I was going through during that.  For me I wasn’t putting it on the band to say I’m writing about this stuff and this is the idea that I think is going to relevant for all of us.

Specifically the song “In These Stark Halls” is a good example.  My grandfather had passed away and I thought later about how I had missed so many things that I could have learned.  I took him for granted.  He had so many stories and I wish I had interacted with him more about that.  And it made me think about my life and what am I going to do next?  Am I just going to play in bands and work in grocery stores?  There’s no career path for me in that!

So what you’re saying is it was more of a coincidence, more or less, that some of these songs had to do with loss, but it paralleled what was going to be occurring with the band shortly after it came out.  It just worked out that way.

Totally.  It totally coalesced together in a natural way without intention.

So besides Chris going to Boston around that time, other stuff started occurring.  And again, I’m blurring the exact timeline, but Rob (Antonucci, guitarist) started a family and you moved to Providence, correct?

Yup.  For me, I knew that Rob had this stuff going on, Chris was doing this thing, and I didn’t feel beholden to stick around because of a band.  My other band, How We Are, had just broken up and I thought that sucked, but it is what it is.  So Chris had just moved to Boston and my friend Brian told me he was moving to Rhode Island and asked if I wanted to come with him.  It was weird because I had never lived anywhere else other than Rochester.  So, why not?  In all honesty, I was starting to look at houses in Rochester and think about buying a house and just staying there.  But my thought about moving was, ‘if I don’t do this now I’ll never do it.’  And that sort of just catapulted my decision to move to Providence.  Everyone was doing their own thing and I felt comfortable enough to leave and not feel guilty about it.  We would have been holding each back from something if we all stayed put. 

So that was huge for me.  The guys in Achilles are family and that’s big for us.

I can’t recall, but did you do any touring at all for “Hospice”?

I don’t think we ever did.  We did some weekends.  We did a weekend with Like Wolves out to Boston, but we never toured on this record.  And that’s a bummer because I think this record is great!

Agreed.  It seems to be the record within the Achilles catalog that people tend to hold up the highest.

It’s weird because when I’ve been out on the road with other bands people would ask me regularly if I was in Achilles.  And then they always would talk about “Hospice”.  And it was always cool to me that people knew that existed because I don’t feel as if we gave it justice.  I think that if we toured on that record, at the time it came out, I feel like we would have been more well-received for that than we ever were when we toured on “Dark Horse”.

And I think “Hospice” is where we came into our own because our influences were coalescing, it was very fluid for us in how we wrote it, and it’s ‘us’, ya know?

It’s never too late to get in the van!

(laughs) If anyone wants to book us on a fest, get in touch!

Just give a 10-months heads up beforehand.

(laughs) It takes that long now just because we laid dormant for so long.  But if we were to play a show and then another one a couple months later, it wouldn’t take as much time to get back into the groove.  But since it usually is quite a long time between shows it takes longer get the gears turning.

        picture by David Beyerlein

I listened to another podcast that you were on recently and you had mentioned something in there that I thought was a bit weird.  It had to do with you stating that you thought people didn’t really care about the band too much when you were active, but once you began playing once every couple years people really latched on and it was a big deal.  However, I always felt that the band had a good response regardless of when it was.  It seemed like you always did pretty well.

Yeah, maybe it’s my own mental thing.  When we were a band, I feel like, before “Hospice” came out we played a lot.  We played a lot of shows.  And I think about some of the shows we did play that if that were to happen today it would be so much bigger.  Or, maybe it’s one of those things where I remember certain shows as not being as great as other people see it.  It’s probably my own personal attachment to it that I think processes it differently.

I also think that we were always a proficient band, we were always tight.  But something didn’t connect for me until “Hospice” came out where it all fit together for me.  It was more intense, and it was the ultimate space for my involvement.  Maybe I was a little distracted in the past with things.

Obviously, the more recent one off shows are more of an event, but I even think back to playing our record release show with Young Widows at a coffee shop, and how there was some energy there that we had never had before.

I remember that show.  It was a small space, but it was really cool.

Anyways, prior to recording the record what was the band up to?  Was there some touring leading up to it? 

We never had a sit-down, let’s write a record’ sort of thing.  It’s funny because Rob brought this up last time he and I were talking about this record.  He said that we started writing this record without really knowing that we were writing it.  We were on a European tour, and we were in the Tate Modern Gallery, and the idea for the song “Curtains” came up.  Chris and Rob were just humming parts, and that’s kind of how those guys worked.  They would just talk about parts, and eventually those pieces would just come together, and we just started writing songs when we got back from that tour.  It just evolved from there.

I also don’t remember about how we approached you about putting this out. I think we waited until we had at least half of the record written before letting you know we had a bunch of songs.  I don’t remember how that went.  But I do remember that, always as a band, we would say, ‘Ryan likes our shit, that’s all we care about.  He wants us to be a part of Hex Records.’  We always felt that was a label that best fits us as a band.  You have been honest and have trusted us to come up with stuff.  We really had no other goals as a band other than being on Hex. 

I also remember nothing about that conversation.  At that point I just assumed that I would release whatever came next.  I’d say Achilles had a good track record of releasing good records, being active, and being good people.

However, I thought there was an odd choice about where you all recorded.  And I mean that because the early stuff was recorded locally, which makes sense.  “Dark Horse” was done in Louisville, which also made sense because a lot of bands were going there at that time and you all had made a lot of friendships with bands from there.  But recording in PA with Vince Ratti left me wondering what the connection was with that guy?

I think Chris made that decision.  But I also think The Minor Times recorded there as well.

Oh yeah, they recorded their full length there.

Yeah, and we thought that stuff sounded fucking sick.  And for us, The Minor Times was just so awesome.  Their sound was angular, and in a similar way, and sonically kind of what we were going for.  We heard things on their recordings that was what we also wanted.  We wanted to go a bit cleaner because we had gone dirty.  We were doing some more spacey sorts of things that we wanted to sound cleaner.  Chris wanted to have some click-track for better timing.  So we searched Vince out and went down to where he was, outside of Philly.  We got there and I think he was recording in his parents garage.  It was kind of weird.  (laughs)

I remember I went down separately with Max (Quattroci, roadie, also drummer for Like Wolves and Coming Down).  Rob, Chris, and Josh went down before me to track.  I figured I wasn’t going to be any good just twiddling my thumbs.  There’s no point for me to be there.  They’re going to get the sounds they want.  I came down when vocals were ready to go.  And I showed up and thought it was funny that it was this kid’s garage.  I guess I thought it was going to be more professional.  Vince was rad.  But I just had to laugh a bit because it was inside this dudes parents’ garage.

It was an overall chill recording, Vince totally understood what we were going for, and the room sounded great.  I remember Chris and Rob going back and forth about a lot of different guitar parts.  I remember Josh was locking in a lot of really great vibe-y bass tones.  We highlighted a lot of that and played with his sound more.  I remember being really psyched on that.

And I’ve always had a hard time with recording vocals.  It’s not my favorite thing to do.  I listen to “Hospice” and I still hear things like “my vocals sound totally shredded here”, but it adds a layer to the record and overall, I think the record sounds great.

We stayed with this guy Bob, who was originally from Syracuse, but lived down there.  And there was, and I’m using this term, a ‘punk towel’.  By saying that most punks can probably understand what that is.  But yeah, someone had forgot to bring a towel and just used whatever was there.  So they had the grossest smelling, nastiest towel, and I don’t know how long it had been there.  But that was the ongoing joke for us was , ‘why would you use the punk towel?  Why would you even consider using that as an option?’  That was a fun experience, but I wasn’t around for the whole thing.

I remember the drive home from recording was awful.  It was in January when we recorded that.  Me and Max drove home super late on a Sunday.  This is how stupid I was when I was younger, though I’m probably on the same level, just in a different way:  I wanted to get back because I felt like I had to be at work the next day, like 5 or 6 in the morning or something.  So it’s like midnight and I said to Max ‘we gotta go!’

So we get on the road and there’s this terrible snowstorm.  It’s a total white out, white-knuckling it, going 20 miles an hour.  Just brutal.  And we’re just trucking.  We kept switching because we were both like nodding off in this whiteout.  It was so terrible.  It’s like every reason you moved to the West Coast.

Yup.

We were seeing big rigs off the side of the road, shit like that.  (laughs) It’s like we’re driving home from recording this record we’re calling “Hospice” and I’m wondering if we’re even going to make it home!

So we get back, Max drops me off at work, I worked my shitty shift, and then went to bed. So those were the big memories for me in regards to recording that record.

Almost dying on the way home from it.

Totally almost died.  I remember too that Boston weekend we did those guys also spun out on the road and almost ate it.  I think Ben from Like Wolves was in the van.  I was living in Providence at the time so I wasn’t with them.  But I remember getting woken up in the middle of the night to a crazy phone call about the guys almost getting killed on the road.  Thankfully everyone was OK.

I know Rob is the art guy, but there had to be some group discussion around why the record just had photos of buildings and decay as opposed to art.  Any insight into that?

Totally.  Rob and I are very much spin things off of one another, moreso than Chris and Josh do.  They tend to hear our ideas and just say, ‘yeah, cool’, or ‘I like this and I don’t like this.’  But Rob and I say ‘what about this’ and go from there.  So this guy Shawn Carney took all the photos for the record.  We just saw the photos he had and thought they looked amazing.  So we asked him if he would want to have his photos for the record and he said that would be great and sent a bunch over.  Those photos just spoke to us, and I think they spoke to the record.  We wanted them to be a contrast.  We didn’t want it to be crazy, we wanted it to be inviting.  We wanted the art to say, ‘we want you to come into this’, rather than everything all at once.  We wanted to bring people in a little bit more.  We were trying to communicate that as a band to have these photos because we thought they were rad.  Plus, the cover is a picture of a building in Providence, Rhode Island!

What a weird premonition!

It was not planned!  I didn’t know I would eventually be living there later.  But Shawn had also lived there, so it made sense.

But we thought it was just a cool layout idea.  Rob wanted to lay out lyrics more than do the design of everything.  We like people to connect to our band.  I remember sending those directions to Shawn and giving him the artistic creativity to do what he wanted.  I liked that collaborative aspect.

So there wasn’t an aspect of ‘look at this decaying city’, it was just more about having good photos.

It was definitely artistic.  But at the time the record came out there was all the crazy flooding happening in New Orleans that sort of connected to that a little.  The song “Sea Level” was named after when New Orleans was just getting devastated, and you never think about all the people that was affecting.  And how do you even relate to that?  That doesn’t happen here.  We get ice storms and shit.  But we’ve never lived through crazy flooding or anything like that.

How have you made the band continue to work all these years later with busy schedules and being spread across the country?

I think it’s just because we care about each other.  We care about where we’re all at with things happening in each others lives.  We check in.  The friendships are the lynchpin of this band.  It’s why this band still exists.  It’s another reason to get together and be a part of each others lives and create something that is still relevant.

I’m so excited whenever I talk to someone in this band.  It gives me life. Our communication is more than just verbal, there’s a feeling there where we think, ‘How could we just walk away?  How could we throw away something that is so intuitive to all of us.’

I think as long as we’re all friends we’re still going to be a band, even if it’s playing one show every four years.  We don’t care.  We’re just psyched to get together and jam, hang out, and be in each others presence.  I care about Josh, and Rob, and Chris and whether we’re just talking about football or basketball, or kids and weddings and shit it doesn’t matter.  We just deeply care about one another.

Is it a little different now because while you guys are all the same, the audience has changed.  A lot of the people you used to expect to see have lives of their own, or moved away, typical things that happen to people after 10 or 12 years.  Does that give you a weird perspective?

Yes and no.  I think for all of us and the people who show up and are psyched to be there that are from the days past is great.  That’s always great.  But there’s also this younger energy that comes out and may not have seen us in any other era other than now.  And that’s amazing.  I mean, this record came out in 2007?  That was 12 years ago!

A literal lifetime for hardcore kids.

Right!  For that record to still connect with others is great.  We always loved these songs, but for them to still be well received in a way that surprises us is amazing.  The last time we played Rochester in 2016 it was wild, it was packed.    It’s interesting to see a totally different wave of kids, a totally different crop of kids, be into this.
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I love catching up with Rory and anyone else from this band really.  You ought to do the same in the form of listening to this awesome record.  Oh, you don't have it?  Well, now you can get the CD HERE for $4 for the next week.  If you do the digital go HERE and score it for $3.  Win-win.

HXR20YR RETROSPECTIVE: HXR015- NO IDOLS, "Low (Swing the Pyramid Hands)"

The year was 2003.  My band The Funeral was in the process of writing and recording our final record, and preparing to play our final string of shows before we split up.  Simultaneously, up in Rochester, a band we were all pretty close with- The Disaster- were wrapping up their time as a band as well.

Their bass player John Twentyfive was already thinking of his next move.  He had played in many bands in Rochester and booked most of the punk/hardcore shows in town.  He got wind that The Funeral was splitting up and asked if once both our bands were finished if I would like to get another band started.  I immediately agreed and started thinking of other people who could round out the lineup, as well as how we would figure out logistics of getting together in either Syracuse or Rochester for rehearsing.

                   Halloween show in Rochester on our first tour

2004 rolled around and just as conversations about this band started John had some events in his life that put the idea of a new band on hold for several months.  Once the air cleared and we were able to revisit the conversation I had already been talking to some guys who were making noise up in the North Country.  I’ve alluded before to the thriving scene happening just north of Syracuse in the Fulton and Oswego wastelands where, despite there being nothing around, things were really happening.  A band that was going up there at the time- Marrakesh- already had some Syracuse connections as their singer was my friend Shaun Luu, so I was in tune with what was going on with them.  Shaun had asked if I wanted to do some back up vocals on a recording they were doing since I had nothing happening band-wise.  From that I got to know a couple of the other guys in the band- namely their drummer Mike Russell and bassist Ted Niccoli.  We all hit it off pretty well and stayed in touch.

Not long after Marrakesh stopped playing together, partially because Shaun got sick and, a year later, passed away after succumbing to cancer,  I asked if Mike wanted to play in this new band I was working on with John up in Rochester.  He agreed.  I wasn’t sure what to do about a guitarist though.  But Ted had made it known that bass was not his primary instrument and he preferred guitar.  So that settled it.  We had the band put together.  John already had a name picked out, a reference to a Juliana Hatfield song “I Got No Idols”.  So No Idols it was.

There was a bit of a stumbling block starting right off the bat- Mike was a self-taught drummer and had a really weird way of playing that revolved around playing to the vocals, and playing strange, technical metal-type beats.  We were intending to be a pretty straightforward, but rocking, hardcore band and had to whip Mike into dumbing down beats and keeping them 4/4.  It made for a few weird initial practices.

 Ted Niccoli on the guit-box

We also had some complications with getting together to jam.  We initially tried working it out to practice out around Oswego, since it was about a 45 minute drive for me, a little longer for John, and home base for the guys with the most gear and no cars of their own.  But John had a pretty solid practice space up in Rochester that he insisted we use because he didn’t want to lose it.  So we compromised and would jam up in Rochester most of the time and do Oswego every once in awhile when schedules worked out.  However, this meant that I had to drive up to Oswego, pick up Mike and Ted, and then drive out to Rochester to meet John and we would just spend the whole day and night jamming to make it worth our while of all the driving.

Eventually we had enough material to start playing shows and we cut a rough three song demo at the brand new Jock Jams Studio, which eventually became Moresound Studio.  At the time though Jocko had just moved in and was in the process of gutting the building to remodel into the studio.

                                    No Idols first show

I set up our first show in Fulton, which we had the demos for, and we bullshitted our way through.  In retrospect we probably were not quite ready to play out since we had only been jamming for a few months at that point and were getting used to playing with each other.

Things soon got a little more comfortable and John began setting up a bunch of shows for us all over the place.  He had a van and was good at using his contacts to set up weekends and shows with other bands throughout the Northeast.  I came up with all the artwork and logos for the band.  I was heavily into stenciling at the time and would use all that to create designs and petty vandalism for the band.  Pretty soon John got us hooked up to record a 7” record for Grave Mistake Records so we went back to Jock Jams (now Indie Audio) to record some new songs, as well as re-record a couple songs from the demo.  One of the songs ended up on the Assault City compilation, the first release from Reaper Records, and the rest went to our 7”, which Grave Mistake released soon after.  John set up a tour for us and Ruiner, who had also just started playing out.  We did a pretty successful run that went from Long Island down to Virginia.

But not too long after that tour John decided he wanted to bow out as it wasn’t quite the direction he had envisioned for the band.  The rest of us were getting pretty excited with what we were doing.  We decided to press on with John’s blessing, since it was his original idea to start the group.

 Somewhere in Los Angeles on tour 2006

This freed Ted up to really begin pushing the sound he envisioned which was still in a rocking hardcore vein, but with some heavier, sludgier twists.  Mike was coming into his own as a drummer and we worked on him quite a bit to foster his inclination to try out weird and unique beats, but simple enough to keep the songs moving along.  It was always a process.  Also, for whatever reason, we would always jam super late, like from 1AM to 3 in the morning, which really threw us all for a loop.  In the interim our friend Derek Revella stepped in on bass temporarily to play a couple shows we already had set up with Melt Banana, before we got our pal Jay Trovato to be our permanent bass player.  Jay had played in a bunch of punk bands around town, but never did much in the way of writing music.  He was just along for the ride.  However, he was an incredibly fun person to be around and had a great attitude, so I was more than happy to have him playing with us.  Ted also wanted to add a second guitarist to fill out the sound and complete some ideas he had that he couldn’t do on his own.  I was a little hesitant as I liked to keep things simple.  But he asked Aaron Moon to be our second guitarist and, again, I was hesitant once I saw this swoop-haired, skinny-jean wearing guy.  But man, Aaron could play.  That dude could play circles around any of us, and he picked up really quick what kind of sound we were aiming for and he totally nailed it.  Judging books by covers and all that.

We were back at it and once again in our zone.  The band ended up going through a couple more lineup changes during it’s existence, but this is where the most activity for the band occurred and where we wrote, recorded, and toured on what became our only full length, “Low (Swing the Pyramid Hands)”.  It was a crazy writing process that came together very quick, and recorded fast.  I released the CD version of it, while our friend Jonah in Boston released the vinyl version of it on his label Teenage Disco Bloodbath.

Of note, the artwork was a very particular challenge as I had a specific idea in mind.  The inspiration came from the cover image of Pussy Galore’s record “Dial M For Motherfucker”, a record way different than we sounded, but a crazy awesome image nonetheless.  I needed someone with a gun to be in the picture and my friend Jimi owned a lot of guns.  Next, I had to find a space that I could literally set on fire.  I knew of some abandoned buildings just off of the Syracuse University campus that weren’t near anything and generally used for graffiti.  Next, I got my pal Tim to take some pictures.  I wanted a person with weapons ready to blast an intruder in a burning building.  That was the cover idea.  So I covered up in a shady hoodie, coming around a corner with a lead pipe, and Jimi was waiting on the other side with a shotgun after I had set the doorway on fire.  Getting the picture quick enough was tough as I used lighter fluid to set the fire and it didn’t stay lit for too long.  As for the rest of the record we didn’t want to show typical band photos so we took pictures of the members just below our faces and set them against lots of pictures of general vandalism, riots, revolutionaries, and other assorted chaos.  I thought it represented the band well.

We toured the whole US together, and did a couple follow up Northeast tours before things started to crumble.  People kind of came and went, but it always remained myself, Ted and Mike.  Throughout the history of the band, though, there was always some tension between the group and what Mike was able to commit to, or what he allowed himself to do, and what we wanted to do.  The final straw came when we had been writing and playing out some way heavier new material with a couple new members and had been offered a two week tour with End Of a Year and a couple weeks before we set out Mike said he couldn’t do it and we basically just called it quits.

I ended up doing a much more mellow band afterwards with Bob, who was our final bass player, called Mistletoe.  Ted started a crust band called Black Mast before joining Oak and Bone on bass who recorded two records for Hex Records.  As circumstances would have it, John, our original bassist and co-founder, moved out to Seattle.  Not long after Oak and Bone stopped playing Ted moved to Portland.  And in 2017 I also moved to Portland.  So now ¾ of the original No Idols lineup resides in the Pacific Northwest.  This gave me the perfect opportunity to catch up with the man who speaks softly but carries a big stick (whether that be a guitar or a wrench)- my man Ted Niccoli, who wrote the bulk of No Idols stuff, to talk about that one loud-ass record we did back in 2006.  And our nascent criminality.  And how weird it is to talk about my own band.

In doing these things I’m realizing how many people associated with the label come from the middle of nowhere, north of Syracuse.  How did you fit into all this, such as bands that influenced you locally, people and bands you played with, and how you came to play guitar?

I don’t know.  I know I started listening to heavier music, even in elementary school.  My dad introduced me to that.  Stuff like Alice In Chains.  But that naturally evolved into listening to, and veering towards, that kind of heavy sound.

I was also introduced through a friend and his older brother to more bubblegum punk, or pop-punk, at the time, like Fat Wreck Chords shit.

I find that very surprising.  That doesn’t seem like your thing at all.

I was like 12 or 13 though!  It was very juvenile.

And I think listening to music, very early on, I always wanted to play guitar.  I always wanted to play music, but mostly play guitar.  And my family was gracious enough to buy me a guitar when I was 13 or 14, and it just evolved from there.

What were the first bands you were playing in?

I started playing some bubblegum type punk, like NOFX type stuff, when I was young.  And then, almost immediately after I started playing guitar, someone showed me a One King Down record and I was like ‘this is way different!  I want to play this!’

(laughs) Also something I find to be out of your wheelhouse!

It was that and Buried Alive.  Those were the first hardcore records that someone showed me.

As far as meeting other musicians it was a mixture of Mike Russell, because he was going out to shows that were at the VFW in the middle of nowhere- in Scriba.  There were always metal, or hardcore-type bands playing there.  The Scriba VFW.  So I met Mike and then I met Ryan (Gorham, from Engineer and Blood Sun Circle) shortly thereafter.

I can’t remember exactly how I discovered Deadguy, but it was shortly around that timeframe, very early on, and that was a big one for me too.

                      Mike Russell on the dang drums

How did you and Mike Russell start playing together?

He was kind of like the bad kid who was into metal and hardcore.  But he was also vegan and straightedge, and super political.  He had a very political mindset.  That sort of drew me into playing some stuff like that.  Obviously, I think how I grew up played a lot in how I thought about society and politics and stuff like that.  It’s all good stuff I think.  But Mike was way deeper into stuff like that.  He introduced me to Crimethinc literature.  To me, that meant a lot.  When you read that stuff when you’re like 14 or 15 it means a lot.

The original idea of No Idols was pretty outside what you had been playing, and a lot of the early direction came from John.  How did you accommodate your playing style to that, and after he left, what were you looking to in terms of influence when writing material for “Low”?

Well, I really liked bands like As the Sun Sets, but I also really liked The Nerve Agents.  And Deadguy.  I wasn’t too versed in straight up hardcore.  I mean, we grew up around Syracuse, so there was Earth Crisis and all that stuff.  But there wasn’t bands like Bane or Youth Of Today out there.  I was into hardcore and metal, but also punk ya know?  Being into a mixture of those things, and trying to incorporate both, I guess, and doing the best I could with it.

But I think once John left I got into more effects pedals, and being noisier, which were new to me at the time.  I was just into lots of distortion.  I also really liked what Cave-In were doing.  They were one of the biggest proponents of experimenting with delays and all that.  That’s what sort of drew me into that sound.  Cave-In was big for me.  I was also listening to a lot of Pg. 99 and Majority Rule.  I also really liked how Grant Johnson (The Funeral, Spark Lights the Friction, Night Owls) played, as far as local guys go.

I recall we always practiced super late at night.  Why did we do that?

I think that was a Mike Russell thing.  I’m surprised you didn’t call him up.

I wouldn’t even know how to get in touch with him these days!  I don’t know where he is or what he does with himself.

I don’t either.  I hope he’s doing OK.  But I think we  practiced late because that was his schedule, like where he worked, or whatever the fuck that he did which made things always go late.

Yeah, I don’t think he worked.  Like ever.

He scammed!

Yeah, we were not a terribly law-abiding band.  We kind of got away with a lot of things we shouldn’t have.

I recall being in LA and going to an Albertsons and trying scheme groceries off of that.  You don’t remember that?

I remember doing that in Baltimore. Aaron walked out with an entire hand cart of groceries.  But I don’t remember LA.

Yeah, that happened.  I think I might have been a little more reserved with stuff like that on the road because I had already been in trouble when I was a kid, like 15 or 16.

What did you do?

Well, after a night of spray painting a bunch of pentagrams and upside down crosses on churches out in the country Mike Russell let me drive his car.  I was underage and we were out smashing mailboxes.  So we got in trouble because I was swerving all over the road.  It was in the paper and shit.

Were you part of the stoop crew (a number of other north country area musician types and hardcore kids who literally stole stairs off the front of people’s houses)?

I don’t think so.  I knew about it, but I didn’t get too involved with that.  I understand the vandalism aspect of that.  It didn’t make a statement.  I was friends with all those guys, but I didn’t think it was meaningful.  I kind of felt bad for the people whose stoop went missing!  But a church?  I don’t give a fuck about a church.

Recording “Low” was kind of on a crunch, as we had the US tour coming together and wanted to get everything recorded and pressed before that happened.  Did you feel pressure to complete some material, and do you think some of those songs could have been developed more before hitting the studio?

I think most of the record was written before we went into the studio.  I didn’t feel rushed.  I’m glad we were there and had enough time to add some things that we hadn’t even talked about until we were there.  I don’t think I’d change it, or mess around with it.  Obviously when I listen back to it it’s crazy because I was 18 years old at the time and it sounds a little juvenile, but not in the sense that it’s totally misdirected as far as the sound goes.  It’s not all over the place.  It had a pretty cohesive sort of sound.

You definitely tended to lead the musical direction of the band, and I tended to manage the artistic and business end of the group.  Where did you want to see the band go, if we had kept at it?

I wish we had recorded the songs that we wrote after “Low”.  They were pretty good, and a bit different.  I think about that a lot.  Regardless of personal band politics with Mike and all that I wish we continued writing and recording songs like those last ones and doing another record at least.  And I wanted to tour more because I loved touring.  Touring was fun.

What was your favorite part of No Idols, and what was your least favorite part?

I think when we started I was a little enamored with being in a band with you and John because you guys were older.  My least favorite thing was the lack of commitment with some of us.  I don’t want to talk shit.

Yeah, but it’s been like 10 years so whatever.

Well, everyone besides you and John were pretty young, and didn’t know how to work with band stuff really.

I think my favorite thing about the band was Mike Russell and my least favorite thing was Mike Russell.  He was incredibly entertaining to be around and he could be really fun, but his back and forth about things all the time drove me nuts.

It drove me nuts too.  The lack of commitment.  That still drives me nuts with bands.  Just anybody with a lack of commitment about something that seems so simple.  It’s not hard to be in a band that does stuff.  You just have to say you want to do this.  You’re going to go through bad shit, and experience dumb shit being in a band, but there’s a lot of good.  But I don’t think it’s that hard.

                                       guitarist Aaron Moon

                                             Bassist Jay Trovato

When I think of the band, and compare it to other bands I’ve been in, it was the most chaotic.  Like, it was chaotic in how we made the band function.  However, because of some of that chaos I have some of the best memories of ridiculous shit we did.

Somehow it worked.  Somehow we all liked each other enough to make a record and tour.  And I miss those guys.  I was bummed when Aaron left the band.  Jay is a good person.  I don’t think we connected musically, but I think he’s a really good person.  I miss those kinds of things.  I think if we stuck it out, and committed to our sound we would have done a lot more.

The band is no more, but it doesn't mean you can't enjoy the music.  For the next week you can get the CD for $4 HERE.  Or you can get a copy of the LP for just $5 HERE.  And if you just go digital only, that's a whopping $3 HERE.  Get that shit ya cheap-o.

HXR20YR RETROSPECTIVE: HXR014- ENGINEER, "Reproach"

Some people feel like this is the heaviest record ever released on this label.  I think that’s completely subjective.  But there’s no doubt that Engineer came out for their debut full length on a tear and pretty much leveled the central New York scene.  Vibrations were heard from their home up in the North country, all the way down to Syracuse, and beyond.  A lot of bands grow into a sound and develop along the way.  And while that is certainly true for Engineer, as they expanded their sound throughout their time as a band, it felt as if with this debut full length they came out fully formed.  Sure, they had an EP and a split to work off of before this came out.  But things moved fast for this band.  All those releases came very close together and “Reproach” was just this massive record that sounded so huge, so determined, and so intense, and it showed tenfold when they played live.

The idea was for Hex to release an LP right off the bat for them.  But instead things were eased into by doing the split with Achilles first, whom Engineer ended up doing a considerable amount of touring with as well.  And like Achilles and Ed Gein around the same time, Engineer found themselves down at Chris Owens’ studio in Louisville to record this record.  Keeping it strongly connected to others associated with the label Minor Times guitarist and graphic designer Tim Leo did the artwork for this release, based on ideas and direction from the band.

Once finished they did not hesitate to get on road, and brought their sonically devastating sound to anywhere that would have them.  Engineer truly excelled at a do it yourself mentality while around, which only increased as they went on.  Founded by brothers Ryan, Bob, and Brad Gorham, and rounded out by animalistic drummer Mike Auclair they remained very active while “Reproach” was coming out.

They went on to do two more records through Black Market Activities after this and more touring.  During that time vocalist Bob Gorham became much more involved with the artistic aspects of the group and began doing much of the band’s design work.  Bassist Brad Gorham took on a keen interest in recording and began logging studio time to learn the in’s and out’s of audio engineering, eventually landing a position at Syracuse institution Moresound Studio for awhile and doing live sound as well at a couple venues.  Guitarist Ryan Gorham developed skills in fixing guitars, amps, cabinets, as well as learning the process of building them.  Once the band slowed down the three brothers found themselves becoming partners in opening up their store- Gorham Brothers Music- which specializes in selling gear, fixing gear, serving as the occasional venue for shows, and showcasing their in-store brand of guitar cabinets, Old Soul.  The three brothers also play together in Blood Sun Circle (who released their first LP through Hex, and have since released a second record- and hopefully soon, a third- through their own label Drops Of Us), an extension of Engineer in the loud and intense department, but in a different sort of way. They truly embody the spirit of taking their passions and becoming experts in controlling all aspects of them.  “Reproach” was an early example of that latent talent, and even then they sounded like masters of their craft.

I caught up with guitarist Ryan Gorham on a rare day off from the shop recently to discuss the time of Engineer around when “Reproach” was coming together to see what he remembered.

You all came from a very separate, but tight-knit, area north of Syracuse that was its own scene, but you guys were in Parrish, which was even more removed from places like Fulton and Oswego, where shows up there happened.  How did you find other like-minded people to play with, or share similar interests in music?

I think it was just because those outlying areas like Fulton, and even Mexico, New York at that time when I was getting out of high school and going into college, playing in bands with Mike Russell and Ted Niccoli (both later of No Idols), those small towns had little scenes and bands of their own.  I think it just happened to be a more far-reaching network back then that doesn’t really exist today.  Playing in some of those bands, and just getting started, obviously the most shows were in Syracuse, and the outside areas would get excited and make their own bands so we could travel and play Syracuse.  And that’s how we met other people.

Who among the brothers got into punk and hardcore music first and how did it spread to all of you?  It’s rare to have this many family members have a shared interest in the same kind of music and want to play together.

When we were growing up we all started playing guitar, well, me and Bobby playing guitar and Brad playing bass, literally at the same time.  We all got instruments for Christmas one year.  We all skateboarded and played guitar, and that was all there was to do in Parrish.  We just traveled to different towns and met some kids that way, and found out about different kinds of music.  We would travel down to Central Square and skateboard, or go to the Everson (Museum) and skate in Syracuse.  And I think skateboarding and music went together, like for me it was listening to the Deftones.  That was a big influence on me.  We got into other bands like Pennywise, and Brad was into some other kinds of bands, punk bands, and Bobby was too.  And Bobby was the oldest of us and we eventually went to college and would bring back different kinds of music.

But we all sort of got into it at the same time and it was all through skateboarding and playing guitar in general sort of fostered that.

We would also go see random shows in Syracuse and in outlying areas and just learn about bands that way.

I think one of the first shows I went to was at Westcott Community Center and that band Kill the Slavemaster played. (laughs)  I don’t know if you remember that band?  It was them and maybe If Hope Dies, and some other band.  I just remember seeing them and thinking ‘holy fuck, this band is fucking crazy!’

They were pretty much a straight up metal band.

Yeah, it was super dark metal.  The live performance was crazy and I remember the singer doing some wild shit.  He was almost naked by the end of the set.  It was weird, but, ya know, that was it.

But between that scene and meeting other kids that’s how it happened.  I remember auditioning for The Far and Away, which was Mike Russell (drummer of No Idols), Mike Morrisette, and Eric Smith, and practicing in their garage.  That’s how I met all those kids.  I don’t remember how that came about because they all lived in Mexico (NY) or something.  That’s how I got in with them.

But growing up, Bobby, Brad, and I all learned to play music at the same time.  But I never really envisioned playing in a band with them.  We had similar interests, but they were just different enough where we didn’t play the exact same music, and I could never picture being in a band with them.  So we all started separate bands at the time.  I was doing what I was doing, Brad went off to college and I think he had a band out there in Plattsburgh (northern NY).  And it didn’t all come together until Brad and Bobby were playing together with (Mike)Auclair (drummer, Engineer) in that band Forever Yours.

I didn’t realize Mike was in that band!

Yup.  He played drums and that’s how they met him up around the Oswego way.  And then the guitarist left for whatever reason, and they had a couple shows booked they still were committed to play, so they sat me down and showed me the songs, and I finished out the shows for them, and that’s how Engineer started.  We had never all played together until that point.

We just decided after that to start over as a new band and that’s how Engineer formed.

That was going to be my next question!  You all were involved in a few bands around he region that played within the area, but I didn’t realize that most of Engineer was in Forever Yours, and at the end, all of Engineer was Forever Yours.

I think that was the era where I was going to college in Oswego and Brad and Bobby and Auclair all lived in an apartment in Oswego, so I could just go over there and learn the songs.  And once I left college I just moved in there, and we all lived in the same apartment in Oswego.

I see.  And you played in Marrakesh too, right?

Yeah.  It was sort of an overlapping time where I was still in that band doing that.  There were a couple shows where both bands played together and I had to do two sets.  That’s not fun.

I think at that Majority Rule show you booked I played in both bands, and did both sets.

That was a fun show! 

Seeing that show was definitely was one of my favorite shows I ever remember seeing at the Westcott Community Center.

How did Engineer make some of their first connections with other bands outside of town that led to you to tour with them?

I did pretty much all the booking for the band, and the routing for the tours.  And I used this messageboard, I forget the name of it, and it doesn’t exist anymore, but it was a website that was just dedicated to DIY booking.

Was it Book Your Own Fucking Life?

No, that was one of them.  This was a different one.  It was basically just a list of states and cities, and contacts within those cities.  I would just blindly e-mail them.  I would blast out tons of e-mails to see what I could get back and who would book us.  And I would book tours that way.  I think between that and our first tour, which we did with Ed Gein, we just asked hometown friends who had toured before if they knew anybody in X, Y, or Z city and tried getting a hold of them.

There was a handful of bands that we knew that we would try to play with, like The Minor Times, when we would go down to Philly.  Or we would be covered in Rochester with Achilles.  But as far as playing out of state we would just blindly e-mail people and see what we could string together.

What held back bands you did before Engineer from touring and playing out more than you did?  Because once Engineer started you all just really went for it.

I think just between being pretty young and just getting the hang of how you even get booked for a show, or putting that stuff together.  None of us had the money to get a van to go on tour with, much less and responsibility to get one.

The first tour that Engineer did with Ed Gein we just put all our gear in their trailer, because they had one.  And we just drove in Bobby’s Honda Civic.  We slept in the Honda Civic for that whole tour and it wasn’t until after that when we said, ‘alright, we need to get a van and a trailer to put our gear in because we never want to tour in a car ever again.’ (laughs)

But I think we just went for it.  We had enough drive to want to make it happen.  So we just did what we needed to do to make it happen.  But we would just blindly show up to some of those cities and not know the promoter and have no idea of how the show was going to be, and sometimes it was good, but a lot of times it was terrible.  At least we could check it off our list of saying, ‘we’re going to come back here, but not play this place.’

I feel like between the first EP, the split, and then “Reproach” it was a pretty quick process.  What was writing and preparing for those releases like?

Yeah it did.  It was crazy!  It was pretty much non-stop.  All we pretty much did was live that band and practiced as much as we could, and pretty much not do anything else except write music non-stop.  We wrote as much as we could, and played a bunch of shows, and it felt like an era where our work and jobs were secondary, and all we wanted to do was write music and go on tour.  For awhile we were putting out a record every year.  There was the split with Achilles, and then we did a 7” on Mike Hill’s (Tombs) label Black Box with a band from Germany, and then “Reproach” came out right after that.  We just strung it all together and I felt like we were just on a roll of putting out a record every year.

Once “Reproach” came around you decided to record with Chris Owens in Louisville, which Achilles and Ed Gein also recorded at.  Why did you decide to go there and what was that experience like?

It was pretty crazy how quick it happened because I think we were there for only two days.  We slept in the studio because we only had two days to record, so we drove straight there, spent the night there, spent the whole next day recording, slept in the studio and then spent most of the next day probably doing vocals and mixing, and then drove straight back to Syracuse.  We did the whole record in two days.

Oh my god.  Why didn’t you give yourselves more time?

I don’t remember.  But I think that was either all we could afford to do, or maybe it was only time that was available.  It happened super fast.

I hope it didn’t have anything to do with a penny-pinching crappy record label!

(laughs)

Because I remember Chris Owens being pretty cheap back then!

(laughs)  I don’t remember why it had to happen so fast, but it did.  And it made it interesting at the same time.  But, ya know, all we did was practice back then, so going into the studio we were really well rehearsed, and knew everything we were going to do and tracked everything pretty much straight-forward.

I think one of the songs, “Shiner”, was written right before we went into the studio.  We were looking for what might be missing as far as song structure, and feel for the record, and we wrote that maybe a week or two before we went into the studio.  And I think the very last song on the record, at the end of the ninth track where it’s just some instrumental guitar.  Bobby had the idea for that one and I did some second guitar over the top of it the morning of the second day of recording.  We were just sitting on the studio floor just writing with two guitars and decided right there that we needed to record it and pt it on the record.

So taking two days was more just out of efficiency and proficiency.

Yeah, we had our shit down, and Chris knew what he was doing and could dial in everything really quick.  We just went for it.

Given that it was a really quick session do you look back on it with satisfaction, or do you hear things that you would want to change?

No, I think with every record we have done I look at it as it is, and when we record a record I look at it as more of snapshot of the time.  No matter how many days we have to record, or whatever the budget, or how it ends up coming out, to me it’s sort of like taking a picture.  Whatever was happening at that moment.  It is what it is and I try not to look back.  I’m happy with  how it sounds for sure because in that time Owens captured the rawness of the band at that era.  It’s not as clean or polished as some of the other records we did later.  But the band wasn’t like that I general.  In that era it was all raw and intense and I think the recording captures that feel.

When the record came out you guys toured quite a bit.  How far out did you go and who did you find yourself going on the road with? What were some of the highlights of those tours?

That’s an era where so many of those tours blend together.  I believe we went on tour with Achilles twice.  And I believe we went on tour with Tides in that era twice as well.  I think in the year after “Reproach” came out and before “The Dregs” (their second LP) came out we toured four times in that year.  I think one of them was an Achilles tour, then we did a Minor Times tour.  In 2007 we toured with Coliseum and we did 10 days in Canada and then back down into the US.  And I think that was the most successful tour we ever did.  Touring Canada was amazing.  There were some of the biggest crowds, and some of the best promoters.  Everyone was super nice and we actually made some money, for the first time ever, while on that tour.  Touring with Coliseum was obviously awesome, but just playing shows in Canada was great.

Getting that whole situation figured with getting across the border, and fanangling that was fun to do.

How did you fanangle that?  You guys had a lot of equipment so I’m curious.

(laughs)  I think we ended up saying we were all one band.  I don’t remember if we combined our names, or just used one of them, but I think we said we were all one band.  So one guy was the lighting guy, and the other was the sound engineer, or some shit like that.  And we put all our gear in one trailer and we had the roster list of everyone under one band.  The shows were all lined up legit so we had to present all the paperwork and the merch.  So we didn’t hide that we were bands, but we did it in a way where we said we were all one band.  For whatever reason that worked and it got us through.

So all the t-shirts saying ‘Engineer’ you could pass off as band crew shirts of actually being engineers for the band.

I can’t remember if we mailed merch to somewhere ahead of time so we didn’t have to bring it through, or just had it printed up there and pick it up once we were there.  A lot of bands did that around that time.  Afterwards, we would just leave it and have someone mail it back to you later on.

the infamous wall of cabs that went everywhere the band went

OK, so I also heard you all would bring a coffee maker on tour. Why and how did that go for you all? Because I know it's funny.

Yeah, we used to bring one of those cigarette lighter converters on tour so we could plug a coffee maker in. It's not that coffee wasn't available on the road, there just wasn't always good coffee available. So we used to get a pound or two from Recess (Coffee shop in Syracuse, co-owned by Jesse Daino from Ed Gein) before we left.

Wasn't there an issue once where it drained the van battery, or it caught on fire or something?

Yeah, I think we killed the battery using it before. And we used to blow the vans fuse all the time (laughs)

At this point Engineer became a little less associated with the northern region and more of a Syracuse group.  When did you find yourselves moving down here, or did you remain split up between Syracuse and the Oswego area?

I think I left college in 2003 to just do the band full time.  I think that was around when we did that Ed Gein tour.  I just decided to leave college to do the band.  We all had an apartment together in the Oswego area.  I think I lived there for about a year.  The band was getting more active and serious and I wanted everyone to move down to Syracuse and just do the same thing, except closer to the scene in Syracuse.  Not everybody was on board with that and I think I was the only one who actually moved to Syracuse.  Plus, I think at that point, we were practicing behind that post office in North Syracuse.

Oh yeah, great space.

My thought was we could live closer to the practice space because half of us were driving from Oswego and the other half were coming from Syracuse, or other outlying areas at that time.

But we never all moved to Syracuse.  I think Auclair stayed in Oswego the whole time pretty much.

Never left.  He’s a lifer.

(laughs)  We all kind of moved around a little bit to different suburbs, but the main practice space was in North Syracuse so that’s where we all had to meet anyways.

That was a great space.  Everyone practiced in that place- Earth Crisis, Freya, a few of my bands did.

Yeah.  We shared the room with Ed Gein, and some other rotating bands throughout the years, but it was private enough, and no houses around, so we never got bothered.  It was generally clean.

                     A common problem in the practice space

I feel like after this record the band also began taking control of more aspects of the band, such as artwork, and then recording aspects, and nowadays you all record your own music, build some of your gear, do all your own art, and release your own music.  Was the point to always be as DIY as possible?  Do you all prefer to work on your own?

I don’t know if we always had that as a goal in mind.  We just had a strong work ethic and a DIY attitude for most of our stuff.  But when we were just getting started and when you released the split and “Reproach” we didn’t know how to do any of that stuff.  We were just completely honored to have you do it and be a part of that Hex family, and have it all done for us, which was amazing.  But we never set out with the idea that eventually we’re going to do it all ourselves.  I think it just sort of came about that way because we never stopped making music, and wanting to release records.  But eventually when we got older and started doing other bands after Engineer, and when we opened our store, we were like, ‘we’re not going to tour anymore, so how are you going to sell records?’  How is a label going to pay for recording and pressing when the band isn’t going to go on tour to support it?  That doesn’t make any sense for a label, so that’s when I decided to try to do more of it ourselves.  And it wasn’t so much as trying to be in control of more of it ourselves, but it didn’t make much sense for a label to put it out when the band isn’t going to go on tour and support it.

It was fun to work with other people, like when Tim Leo (Minor Times) did the artwork for “Reproach”.  We gave him some direction, but for the most part we just let him do what he wanted because we had liked what he had done in the past.  It came out pretty cool. 

Even though, for the most part, you all still interact every day through Blood Sun Circle and running the store with mostly the same guys, what was your favorite part of doing Engineer?  What was your least favorite part?

My favorite part was just going on tour and recording records.  That was a highlight, being able to go into the studio and record those ideas and songs we had.  That was one of the most fun parts.

Touring was super fun, going out on the road and all.  But it was also some of the worst times.  Some of the shows were awful, or the promoter skipped out on paying the bands, and we would try to scrap together whatever money we didn’t have jus to make it to the next show and hope that one turned out OK.  But I think the worst part, and more towards the end of the band, we would get lumped in with more mosh bands of whatever town we were in, like the promoter would think, ‘OK, who are the heaviest bands in town?’ and it was always some metalcore mosh band where kids wanted to fight each other.  We like heavy music, but we don’t like punching other people in the face while they play music.  We got lumped in with so much of that that it got taxing.  We would be like, ‘why are we playing this show?’  And when it would happen over and over we would think, ‘why are we playing any of these shows?’

But we always picked our own routing and once we went on tour a few times, and established enough contacts, and found out what worked, we sort of stuck to that.  We stayed mostly in the Northeast region, and driving shorter distances, instead of going through the Midwest where it was hard to string enough shows together and spend a ton of money and gas just to get to the West Coast.  We would do shorter, two-week runs, with closer cities, and just did it all ourselves, and it would just go much better that way.

So that CD is long gone, but if you're so inclined, you can get the digital version of this unwieldy assault upon all that is quiet and decent by heading over to the bandcamp page and plopping down 3 clams.  One week only.  No posers.