From MOFO Magazine (Spain - 2007):

  1. Hi Martin. Congratulations, i think “Attempted Suicide” is your best recording, and a lot of peole think the same. What’s your opinion about your last recording? What about the recording process?

    Thanks! It does feel a bit contrived to say that I agree with you that it’s our best release, because every band seems to think their latest record is their best ...but I don’t know what else to tell you, haha.  We’ve never spent more time writing, recording and producing a record before and we couldn’t be happier with how it turned out. 
    I usually have a pretty hard time listening to our records right after we’ve just come out of the studio, because all I can listen for are the mistakes and things that I wish we’d done differently… in this case though, I honestly wouldn’t change a thing. 
    One of the biggest factors in making this recording sound the way it did was our “guest” drummer, Brandon Farrell.  Brandon’s been a friend of ours for years, he’s even played second guitar for CS at a few shows and he of course also drums in Government Warning and was the original drummer in Municipal Waste.  I can’t think of person more perfectly suited to play this style of music, who gets it the way he does… he really brought so much to this record and I think we owe him a lot of credit for how well it turned out.

  2. Before this amazing lp you recorded another 12” “Invisible Eyes”. What can you tell about this recording?

    Though it didn’t take nearly as long as Attempted Suicide (6 months), Invisible Eyes was a not an easy record.  Days before we went into the studio our drummer at the time got so sick that he was stuck in the hospital for weeks to come—his diet of coke, cigarettes and beef jerky finally caught up with him and his body started eating itself or something like that.  Anyway, left without a drummer and studio time already booked we need to revert to an old tactic that we used to record one of our earlier EP’s (the Signals 45, Slasher/Even Worse/Way Back When records) and have Jonah, our guitarist, actually play all the drum parts in advance of any of the music.  Afterwards he laid down all the guitar tracks over his own recorded drumming. Those aren’t easy songs to play even as a band, but Jonah somehow made it look pretty effortless to play every instrument himself, and you’d never be able to tell just by listening to it.

    (Note: before Invisible Eyes, which was just a 12” EP, we had another LP recorded, which was our first ever recording, originally released on Ugly Pop records in 2004 then re-issued in 2006 by Parts Unknown records)
  3. “Attempted Suicide” is one of the best hc records I listen to in a long time. But I think it’s not exclusively a hardcore record. I listen to a lot of punk rock too. I described like “Group Sex” played by Deep Wound. Do you agree?

    I think the line between what is punk and what is hardcore is really thin… a good rule of thumb for me has always been, ‘if it’s not punk, it’s not hardcore’ …metallic, emo, whatever “hardcore” is something all it’s own that I don’t really have any association or interest in at all.  To me anything that’s worthy of being called Hardcore is rooted in punk already.  For us, though we play faster than the Saints or the Ramones (and that may make us a  “hardcore band”), but our tastes and inspirations are still rooted in that same music.
  4. When I played “Attempted Suicide” the first tome it was like, what? it’s finished?. Let’s play it again!!! I think is one of the hooks of the record and the songs, play the record and suddenly is over but listener has enjoy a lot.

    We put a lot of effort into writing these songs… we didn’t really see the point of adding useless sections of feedback or noodling.  The songs are all short and to the point, without any extra fluff. So if you haven’t heard enough, then just keep flipping the record over again.
  5. I know you’ve got a big music background, because you are interested in 60’s garage rock and other musical styles. In which way influences in your sound? (my fanzine is not an strictly hardcore/punk fanzine I include from DMZ to Career Suicide!!!)

    We are all big fans of music, not just “punk”, so we listen to a lot of different stuff and that all inspires our own music.  Even the bands that you might list that inspired the style of music that we play didn’t just dream this music out of thin air, they had their own influences that gave them the idea to play the way they did.
    Generally speaking our main interest and biggest influence lies in rock and roll, and primarily of course in punk, but I don’t think you can really be a fan of the style and not to be able to at least appreciate early rocknroll, 60’s garage and psyche, proto punk, and far beyond.
  6. I think in hardcore scene, there are a lot of people only interested in hardcore sound!!! What do you think about this?

    I think in any scene you will find a lot of people who are interested for a lot of reasons that have very little to do with the music.  Not to say that they don’t appreciate it at all, but they are probably not going to be sticking around too long –and they aren’t really going to have too broad a taste in what they listen to.
    It only makes sense that a lot of the people we encounter in the hardcore  scene would count punk/hardcore as their favorite kind of music, but  in my experience many of them that are actual fans of the music (more than the fashion) do eventually find their way to other styles sooner or later.
    And let’s not forget what music we’re talking about here… punk/hardcore is ruled by younger people, it’s not some circle of 50 year old jazz enthusiasts that have had their whole life to sit around listening to every record on the planet… So, I think it takes time for some people to start appreciating other music that doesn’t affect them maybe as directly as punk.  I know when I was 16, while I liked other music too, there was NOTHING that was as powerful as some ripping 1-2 minutes punk song.

You’ve came out with Deranged two CDs too… Why have you came out those two anthologies? Maybe because people are paying so much for your first recordings?

Our latest LP, Attempted Suicide, was the first time that we released both a CD and vinyl version of one of our releases.  In the past it’s strictly been vinyl only for every single and full-length.  So every two years we collected all the songs we’d recorded and made them available on CD.  Some of our records are now out of print and a bit harder to find, so having the Anthologies makes it easier to find everything if someone is new to CS.

What do you think about people recording a lot of 7” with a lot of different artworks or vinyl colors? People are paying a lot of money for a lot of punk/hardcore records… I think is a bit contradictory with punk culture… what do you think about this phenomenon?

To tell you the truth, I really don’t think about it very much, haha. My personal view is that I buy a record because of the music; I prefer to own my music on vinyl because of the larger packaging, the specific sound, etc; but otherwise I couldn’t really care less whether it’s the special tour press or the 4th colour pressing of the album.  I’d be lying if I didn’t say I preferred to own an original pressing of a record, but that’s really where the “collector scum”-ism ends with me.
The one thing I find really laughable though are the type of collectors who purchase a record simply for its collectibility and don’t really bother to listen to it.  If you look through my record collection you’ll find a handful of original classic records that are fetching hundreds of dollars behind the counters of record stores, but I play them and treat them just the same as I do some new EP that I bought for five dollars –I guess I am just not as OCD as some people.  I’ve seen some hilarious collectors though that keep all their records in sealable plastic sleeves and basically won’t handle their records without a glove; it just makes me laugh.

For example, I knows a friend here in San Sebastian where Red Dons were playing, and he told that he tried to buy all the recordings of Fucked Up… you know what I mean using ebay a lot… he told me: “Julen, it was impossible to me to get all the recordings!!!!”

I agree that some of those records are hard to come by, but at least there is a bit more thought to them than, “let’s release 18 versions of the same record for the sake getting some attention and getting more money.”  They’ve at least put out some rare records and made it a bit fun for collectors to try and track them all down. I guess it might be frustrating, but that’s just the style of the band: to fuck with their audience.

I think the band was formed in 2001. What changed from that time to here? I think nowadays you are on of the most famous hc bands in the world? You have toured a lot in Japan too…

One of the coolest things about playing Career Suicide is that we seem to appeal to people who are into a lot of different styles of punk; which I think is pretty rare, considering how stubborn a lot of people’s tastes are.  At a usual Career Suicide show you will find all kinds of people that normally wouldn’t attend each other’s shows.  I guess relatively speaking we’ve gotten some success in that we’ve been able to travel around the world (twice to Japan, twice to Europe, all over North America many times), but the band has always been a hobby for us –a very  big and time consuming one, but still just a hobby.  We tour just for the sake of getting to play shows and get to see the world outside of our own hometown, we’ve never made any money out of going anywhere, it’s just been a real privilege to get to see the world, simply because people actually want to see us play live …it still surprises me!

And what about Canada you got a lot of good bands like Brutal Knights, Deranged Records, how is Canada musically and socially? I love Canadians bands like Scat Rag Booster, Deadly Snakes, etc… are interested in those kind of bands?

Especially in the last few years Canada has produced some really good music.  I still find it really funny considering that Canadian “culture” is usually pretty sub-par compared to the many other parts of the world, at least when it comes to film, television, art, etc., but lately the music scene  has really picked up. Though the indie scene has been strong here for many years, it’s particularly cool that in the punk scene bands are starting to get out and play shows around the world.  Brutal Knights are in Europe right now on a month-long tour, Terminal State have started doing shows in the States, as have the Bayonettes, Fucked Up is supposed to go to Japan at the end of the year. 
I remember back in 2002 when we still only had a demo tape, we still played to audiences of 5 people and it never even occurred to us that someone 500Kms away (let alone 5000) would ever want to see us play in their town, until one day I got an email from a guy (Rob Burnet) in California asking when we are going to go on a tour.  I was so shocked, and I’m still flattered when we go to some new place and we find a room full of people who are singing along to our songs –sometimes they don’t even speak English and they are singing and going nuts, it’s really flattering.

Recently I write in basque a report about young bands in the world playing the old school USA hardcore sound. I don’t know if it’s a revival, but man, CS, Government Warning, Deep Sleep or Time to Scape, The Pedestrians or the Swedish and Danish bands reproducing that sound are amazing. It’s not only copying a playing sound or a recording sound. I think those bands got great songs. I’m 36 and I listen a lot of hardcore in High Scholl, but with time I left it, but suddenly I discovered all those bands and I feel young again. Do you think those band I mentioned, including CS, are part of a revival?

I guess it’s a revival in that not many bands were playing this style of punk after it’s heyday, but at least from the perspective of Career Suicide, it wasn’t just some fashionable idea to all of a sudden start rehashing early punk/hardcore… it’s simply the style of music that most appealed to us and it was just natural that we play like this.  The fact that we’ve been doing it now for 6 years I think is proof that there’s more than just a passing taste in rehashing something old. 

I talked to hardcore fans here in Spain about this amazing “revival” and they told that nowadays the hardcore scene is an endless revival. What do you about this? Maybe all the contemporary music styles could be a endless revival…

To my taste there’s no better style of hardcore than that of the early 80’s, so even if a lot of the bands look/sound similar, I’d still rather that than watch a bunch of tattooed muscle heads play heavy metal, or a bunch of tattooed girly-men cry on stage in fancy clothes.
You’ve got to be pretty obsessive to like every “early 80’s style” hardcore band that’s around today, but if you dig deep enough I think the really good ones stand on their own just as great bands –I think Government Warning is the perfect example of this.

Martin, will you come to Spain?

Julen, yes we would totally love to come to Spain.  I’ve heard that Spain has a totally amazing garage and punk scene and that the shows are completely out of control, so of course we would be all over a chance to play there.  One of my best friends moved over there last year too, so if we ever get the chance to come to Spain, I think I will even stay behind a while to visit Valencia.

Last one, who’s the guy jumping in the kitchen and listen to CS in the the youtube bideo you got it in your site too?

That would be an old friend of ours named is Mike Long.  It was a total coincidence that I was reading some blog about Toronto and they had an article with his name in the headline.  I hadn’t seen or heard from the guy in years and had no idea what he was up to until I saw a whole set of videos he’d recorded of himself dancing in public to music.  It was the most retarded thing I’d seen, so I quickly wrote him an email asking when he was going to do one of his videos for a Career Suicide song.  He seemed really excited about this and the next day I had a link to that video waiting for me.
Haha, he’s actually taken this “project” so far now that he’s been traveling all over Europe this summer just filming these videos in every city he visits.  I think he’s turning into one of these online celebrities.

What can we expect next from Career Suicide?

2006 was a REALLY crazy year for us 3 tours (Europe, USA, Japan), so we had to take it a bit easy in 2007.  This year we’ve played fewer shows, and taken a bit of a break from recording, but you can definitely expect things to pick up a bit in the near future.  We are currently working on our next EP, and tours of the UK and Australia have been long talked about, so with any luck we’ll find the time next year to make it all happen.  That, and a full tour of Spain!

 

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