Name

One of the hardest things to do is honestly look inside of yourself to see if the things that happen in your life are products of you or your surroundings. When things happen to you, whether good or bad, one of the first reactions can be “no one can possibly understand.” When in reality, most people have felt, dealt with or been through something very similar and know exactly how you are feeling. So we search and search for answers, for something to make sense. We often put the blame on others before we put it on ourselves.

It is easy to hold onto everything that makes us proud. The things we hold so high. The things we want to scream at the top of our lungs so everyone knows. Whether it is love, accomplishments, or just self worth, we tend to hold onto those so easily. However, it’s the bad decisions, the mistakes, the things we are ashamed of that really make us who we are. The things we wish never happened or the “what was I thinking” that we learn from. Don’t look down on yourself for these things. Learn from them, grow from them, accept them.

Running a venue has been an eye opening experience. I get to see kids grow, learn, make good and bad decisions. I see them lost like I was at their age. It keeps things in perspective. I learn more from them than I do people my own age. They are making the mistakes I did and experiencing things for the first time. It’s hard to see at times. To watch them fall apart. The first initial response is to reach out and help, but I’ve learned that sometimes you have to let people fall and pick themselves back up. This song is one of eleven off of our full length. Each song goes under a similar theme but about very different topics. Each one about out running, out thinking, growing and learning from what we see around us. We tend to become attached to things. Ideas and thoughts and emotions are things we hold onto. Often times those things can blind us from everything else. When we are happy, we tend to not see the sadness in other things. When we are sad, we can’t believe in happiness. We need to learn to take a step back sometimes, whether we are in good or bad places. We usually are surrounded by what we want and need but let the emotions blind us.

A friend that is graduating this year asked me this question for her class, “As the time grows near for me to leave home what is the most important message or belief that you hope I will take with me and remember through my entire life?”

I answered with this.

“There is no such thing as normal. Never stop learning and growing. Find love and hold onto it, in yourself, your surroundings, and the people you hold close. Because things will go wrong, and without that love we are our mistakes and our tragedies. Not our accomplishments and successes.”

http://cowardice.bandcamp.com/

Name: 

Walls Closing In
Haven’t had a place that felt like home in at least four years
Drifting from place to place never connecting with my peers.

Chained to this world, feeding the flames.
Suffer forever, then see what remains.
Vulture above me, wait for my flesh.
Wish will be granted, if there’s anything left.
Searching for light in this world of darkness
Sometimes I feel like I can’t be a part of this

Will I ever find a place where I belong?
A place where I’d never have to write this song?
I just want somewhere I can feel at ease.
A constant home no one will ever make me leave.

I’ve started thinking that there is no hope. THERE IS NO HOPE
There is nothing I can do. Nothing will change. NOTHING WILL CHANGE
Wherever I go, I don’t’ feel at peace. DON’T FEEL AT PEACE
All I know is unrest and anxiety.  ANXIETY

This place is killing me
Longer I stay the more I can’t break free.
Every second’s ticking down to my death.
Getting so close, that I can’t take a breath
Walls closing in, pushing me to the unknown
A wave of fear chilling me to the bone.
These walls seem so confining
I can’t get out and it’s driving me mad

I came up with the idea for this song when reading Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Pit and the Pendulum.”  For those who don’t know, the story is of a man who awakens in a prison cell in complete darkness.  He is then strapped to a table and a razor sharp pendulum is slowly descending over his heart.  Rats begin to chew through his restraints, and he is able to escape just as the blade is cutting through his shirt.  Once he is free, the walls begin closing in around a well in the floor.

I wrote the last verse first based on this story.  The lines “every second’s ticking down to my death/ getting so close that I can’t take a breath” are a reference to the slow descent of the blade.  If he were to take a deep breath, the blade would surely have killed him.  The following lines, “Walls closing in, pushing me to the unknown, a wave of fear chilling me to the bone” are based around the end of the story.

“Death,” I said “any death but that of the pit!” Fool! might I not have known that INTO THE PIT it was the object of the burning iron to urge me? Could I resist its glow? or if even that, could I withstand its pressure ? And now, flatter and flatter grew the lozenge, with a rapidity that left me no time for contempla- tion. Its centre, and of course, its greatest width, came just over the yawning gulf. I shrank back — but the closing walls pressed me resistlessly onward . At length for my seared and writhing body there was no longer an inch of foothold on the firm floor of the prison. I struggled no more, but the agony of my soul found vent in one loud, long, and final scream of despair.

The overall theme of the song of there not being any hope and anxiety leading to madness is also from “The Pit and the Pendulum.”

Yet what business had I with hope? It was, as I say, a half-formed thought– man has many such, which are never completed. I felt that it was of joy — of hope; but I felt also that it had perished in its formation. In vain I struggled to perfect — to regain it. Long suffering had nearly annihilated all my ordinary powers of mind. I was an imbecile — an idiot.

After I had the idea of the lyrics for that verse, I had to word it in a way that it would also relate to my present state of mind.  I wrote it in my dorm room at Drexel University where the pressure of succeeding was mounting.  The song is about how I feel about my time spent at school.  Because of school, I have had to move every six months for the past four years and never have been at any one place long enough to really feel at home.  I can’t relate to anyone around me and have never made any friends because it seems everyone’s concept of fun in college is limited to partying on the weekends.  It is my opinion that Drexel is slowly killing me and draining me.  Every additional year spent in school makes it harder to just leave because of the large investment of time and money.  Every day it gets harder to deal with everything around me and it’s like the walls are closing in.  Except instead of pushing me towards the ledge of a pit, it is pushing me towards an uncertain future where I’ll likely be sitting in front of a computer in an office somewhere, and the idea of that terrifies me.

Joe Hardcore did the guest spot on this song.  He’s someone I’ve respected for a long time going to shows in Philadelphia, so it’s an honor for him to be part of this.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/AGITATOR/

Name:

Inhumane
She lived the kind of life where she was neglected, pushed around and kept down
Unspeakable cruelty only too familiar in the ways of mankind
How [the fuck] can we look them in the eye and leave them to die?
Living in a world where consumerism replaces empathy
Laziness, callousness, people treating their pets like disposable property
They live in fear, they live in pain
And we think we’re not to blame
We’ve got to have more compassion, we’ve got to change
All beings deserve our respect
We’ve got to have more compassion, we’ve got to change
It’s this ability that makes us human
So let’s be humane!

The inspiration for this song was my rescue dog Peggy Sue, a ten year old pug. She was seized by the police along with three other dogs from a life of squalor and neglect. They were caged all day in their own filth; so caked on they could no longer relieve themselves. One of the dogs had an eye so infected and rotten it had to be removed completely. Another dog couldn’t be saved at all.

Peggy had multiple infections and a mouth full of rotten teeth when I adopted her. She smelled so bad we had to drive home with the windows down as she rolled around in the back seat barking and kicking the air with joy. In the course of treating her infections and getting her spayed, the vet found that her internal organs had been carelessly sewn together. A simple procedure became a half day’s work trying to correct the damage that was done. She came through like the fighter that she is, and upon arriving back home proceeded to run for the first time, fast. Stitches be damned!

She is my best friend. How could someone look into those beautiful eyes and decide she wasn’t worth caring for? When I think of what she had to go through it breaks my heart. Not just for Peggy, but for the countless animals just like her being neglected, abandoned and needlessly killed every day.

It is difficult to get past the anger one feels when confronted with stories like this, but doing so is important if we’re going to make a real change. Feeling empathy makes us human. Our ability to show compassion is our greatest trait.

“If only we can overcome cruelty, to human and animal, with love and compassion we shall stand at the threshold of a new era in human moral and spiritual evolution – and realize, at last, our most unique quality: humanity.” ~ Jane Goodall

Last Excuse is a hardcore band from Montreal

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Last-Excuse/162751507113654

Name:

Do you think lyrics are important in hardcore? Why?
Certainly. If I think a band’s lyrics are uninteresting, or worse, offensive in some way, I’ll write them off immediately. Maybe it’s because I’m not a musician but I feel like we’ve heard every riff, or variation of a riff, and every drum beat that’s gonna get used well by a hardcore band. That’s not to say that you can’t make your music interesting and refreshing, but for me, that’s not enough. For me, hardcore is about an energy and an attitude that you don’t find in other heavy music. Part of that attitude comes from communicating your ideas, ideals, beliefs, and emotions to your audience, your peers. I think the best way to do that is through your lyrics, and the best way to do that and keep it interesting is through new, creative, unique expressions of those ideas. Personalize those ideas to make them relatable. There are limitless combinations of words and phrases and those are a lot of what make a band interesting to me.

FROM BIRTH
you’re fucked from birth, born of a hopeless world
you’re fucked from birth, just left to rot and die
worthless humans, they’re breeding diseased spawn
no life, no love, you just got left behind
born less than human
addicted, left for dead
taught to care only for themselves
careless actions thrive in a world gone wrong
taught that they have no fucking consequence
civil respect – abandoned and destroyed
brought up in a world that doesn’t care
born less than human
addicted, left for dead
taught to care only for themselves
how can you be blamed for how you were raised?
you never had a chance born to scumbags like that
so little hope left now when this is our future
dystopian outlook, where’s the flood when you need it?
“cuz Lord knows I was fucked from birth
Lord give me death, put me in the dirt
born less than a human, born into addiction
victims of God’s decisions, Lord undo your work”
no god would stand a world like this
we created this, it’s a human mess
i’ve got a vulgar faith in man
bring on the flood, this is your last chance

Freak The Mighty
I never got the chance to tell you exactly how I felt
how medication can’t raise a generation of youth
who’ve been sold out by a culture that won’t tell them the truth

That there’s something more, something pure,
something that can make them feel complete
cuz your pills could never satisfy that urge
by suppressing their desire inside so deep
as profit driven agendas rise
how can you sleep?
too numb to feel their cold fingers
slip around you as i pry them away from me

and your fake smile, through rotting teeth
your pulsing breath, festering
leaving stains on my history
has taught me more about myself
than i could ever hope to learn from anyone else
or these desks and halls
these chairs and walls
I burned your books and i learned your lesson well

I never got the chance to tell you how i felt
how i lashed out cuz i never found meaning in
living life for someone else

i never got the chance to tell you how i felt
how i spaced out so i could get away
and dream of something else

never got the chance

yes. I. know.
my enemies
they’re the teachers who taught me to fight me
compromise, conformity, submission
ignorance, hypocrisy, brutality, the elite, Americans dreams

So now I write this song to you,
to tell you I found something true,
to tell you I made it to the other side,
a place secure and safe from your lies.

I pried your fingers away,
9 year ago to the day,
and my heart beat out of my chest,
now you’ll never harm me again,
you’ll never get the chance.

The American school system is teaching our youth
that they are sick, and the teachers and doctors who
we entrust to enrich these children’s lives let pharmaceutical
companies profit by prescribing pills to fix problems that
don’t really exist

You.Don’t.Own.Me

So I was supposed to do this forever ago, and I put it off while simultaneously reading enviously all the submissions that were being posted. I remember when the first two came in and I read them top to bottom a few times to see exactly what it was that I was supposed to write, reflect, or display. As I read the entries, both rich and beautiful; they were bursting with accurate and sometimes vague metaphors, grammatically perfect structure, and rich language with almost sarcastic tongue in cheek references to make the whole thing flow easier. I remember thinking “We’ll that’s not me, and I can’t do that” and I sat with a blank text file in front of me with nothing coming out. I thought to myself “What would Darby Crash do”, remembering he was always drugged out and illiterate, I shut my computer and that was that.

I was never one to be confident in my writing so I always avoided interviews, but I also always liked the challenge of being held accountable for my lyrics (Derek, Zack Del La Rocha, and myself wrote these lyrics) and what I put forth into the world. I feel like there’s always so much going on in the world that if I don’t keep up, I’m somehow falling behind and consequently I have too much time to think when I write it out, I’d rather shoot from the hip than fire steady and prone. Sometimes however you need every medium you can to vent, and lately that has been my life, so 8 months later I re-open my screen, I can’t eloquently tell you about the glory of condomless sex and sexual frustration or what my favorite drink is like, but I can say how I feel about growing up, medicine, life, and what that all means to me:

Growing up is hard, it’s confusing, scary, and if you were me downright awful. As a child you have this unfounded perception that “grown ups” are always right, you’re young and small and vulnerable and they are so big and strong and seem to have all the answers. I think elements of that remain in your life even as you transcend into adult hood. Children from abusive families generally wind up wondering what they did wrong to deserved such treatment, even if the answer is clearly, and always “nothing”, the people applying the abuse are seen to have so much more of the answers and CLEARLY don’t make mistakes that the guilt falls on the wrong shoulders. In short if you feel someone smarter than you is telling you something, you’re probably going to listen.

At the end of 18 I had been on my own for a year and a half and I remember the exact moment when I realized I was an adult, and it was one of the most beautiful and scary moments of my life. I went to the local grocery store looking for food, it was around dinner time and I was hungry. After scanning all the options I sat there looking at a roll of cookie dough for an abnormally long amount of time, with a grin on my face and an eagerness to for freedom I grabbed it and bought nothing else. I went home and crawled into my bed, normally I would put music on, or the television, but this was special this moment was just for me and the dough. You see growing up, cookie dough was always a “no no”, maybe I got a spoon full if I was lucky or a beater that you attack like a vulture, however those things are always set up in a way that makes it impossible for your tongue to reach all the important places, you’ll work at it for awhile and still not get much. To me the reality is the dough is better than the cookies, its almost granular, and extra sweet and abnormally addicting, but growing up for me meant having the cookies take a detour to my stomach before they rest in the oven was not happening. As I sat there savoring soft bite after soft bite it really did hit me that I was completely an adult, my choices were mine, I was in control, I was a “grownup”. Slowly the smile faded to tears, I realized than that I didn’t feel like I had any more of the answers now than I did when I was 15, I was just a human blindly trying his best to navigate life and survive. Another bite. This one I had to choke down, and my vision blurred, I thought to myself if adulthood means making mistakes and not knowing all the answers, if this, what I was in now was indeed adulthood, than maybe everything that happened to me in my family, the violence, the names, the lies, the pain and the hurt, maybe they weren’t my fault, maybe I was actually wronged. 18 years of blaming myself was really 18 years of blaming the wrong person.

And I couldn’t eat anymore, I put the dough of knowledge down feeling it at served it’s rights of passage duty and went to sleep.

Growing up wasn’t an easy task, it’s hard in life when you don’t have a place to feel safe. For so long my life was get on a bus, get picked on. Go to school, get in a fight. Go home, get into a fight. Wake up. Repeat. I left school when i was 16, rather I was ejected from school. I had been to every shrink that I could see, and they all had a different medicine for me, Wellbutrin, Depikote, Valuim, and many other fun blue, red, yellow, and even greenish gel pills. I felt like it was a game, up the dosage, lessen the dosage, time released, once a day, 3 times a day, insert anally (I think I might have actually taken them if I got this one, at least the process would have been more fun).

The only thing I got out of the experience was how to hide my feelings and lie, I knew that if I said I felt good than I didn’t have to go back and talk to someone else. It was easy; spit my pill out each morning and smile and people would ask less questions. I’m not going to tell you the pills made me feel numb, because I felt numb already, but every “professional” we saw suggested a new drug, nothing else but saviors in the forms of pills, and they weren’t helping me feel much more.

On Christmas when I was 16, I was sick of feeling numb, broken, tired, and lost. I went into the kitchen to get a drink, much like the cookie dough I found myself staring at the bottle of Depikote, I hadn’t taken any of it yet, so I took all of them at once and got my drink. I don’t remember much from the night, the ER room, the vomit, IV and heart meters, drinking charcoal. I remember the sun coming up, and sitting in the front of my mothers van, and her crying endlessly, than sleep. I slept for three days after that, dreamless.

What always angered me about the situation was I didn’t want to die, I just wanted to be okay, to be happy, to not have the only emotion that I feel, when I feel, be pain. It seemed like if those pills were the answer than let’s cut to the chase, I was tired of waiting. I can’t tell you how many specialists I saw, all with different wording of the same solution. Why is it that not one suggested to me to learn an instrument, and embrace music as a positive vent? To start going on runs and working out, to get involved with positive things that would not only make me more attached to the world and my community and help me feel better about myself, but also let me vent the demons that were literally clawing their way through my skin?

If that had been the case maybe it would have been a guitar I grabbed that night instead of the pills, maybe I would have written poetry or had something in the future to look forward to more than a three times a day reminder that I am indeed, not alright.

Because of all this I wanted my life and my experiences to actually mean something. For the last 5 1/2 years I have been working with non-profits that focus solely with teens, and in particular “at-risk” teens. It’s interesting to look at that time period now from the outside, half these kids seem to have way more of the answers than I do, they just don’t know how to look out for the traps life throws in your way, and consequently fall head first into all of them. I don’t present myself as someone who has all or any of the answers just a satellite able to relay their vision to hopefully expose areas they felt unavailable to them.

Through this five plus years there’s been a common thread among the teens that get’s harder and harder to escape. This is my opinion but I feel my opinion here is well founded. We as human beings, and especially as children and teens, to an extent we are like sponges, we take in bits of our surroundings here and there and apply it to our being and our lives. We absorb culture, music, pressures, what we perceive as “cool” and “not cool” and we take little bits here and there and that helps us design ourselves. I see it every day, how people change how they act/talk/walk/interact as they pull in more and more.

Currently if you are “depressed” it’s because you have an unverified dopamine deficiency, if you’re at a party with lots of people and don’t know exactly how to socialize and feel nervous, you have an anxiety problem, and if you’re in school learning lessons that you don’t have any emotional investment or interest in and go to a mental place more prevalent and comforting, you have a attention disorder. Even saying that makes me laugh “attention disorder”, Anytime I ever saw Kill Your Idols they had 100% of my focus through song and speech, I didn’t need a pill for that I just had to care about what I was focusing on.

So are we really all sick? Is our only salvation to be found in a small bottle of $59.99 hope? Well this might not be popular but I don’t think most, if any of us are “sick”. We are sponges absorbing consciously and subconsciously, we are living in the sickness every day, and it seeps into our pores and inflates us. In short, we are living in the sickness and reflecting the symptoms upon itself. We have to try to find ways to wring ourselves clean and no pill will do that. It will take time, and work, and something positive to attached ourselves to, and even than it might not be possible, but at least you’re feeling something.

As I write this I find myself at one of my lowest points in life ever. My personal life is absolutely shambles and my family is so fucked and perverse that I disassociate myself with them as much as possible, and I can’t seem to currently find anything in my life I feel I am good at. But I still reject pills for the same reason that I am straight edge. Right now my life proves how crazy and profound it can be, from the highest peaks of euphoria, to the lowest ghettos of near suicide depression, you will be taken through it all and back again, sometimes year to year and sometimes day to day. When I feel something, anything, I want to be sure it’s me feeling it, there are lessons to be learned even on the worst days and I want to be sure I’m listening. My self medication will be music, and skate boarding, and I guess on rare occasions, writing. Taking any substance wont teach me how to get past a hurdle, but instead how to step, slowly and dependently around them. When I fall on my face I want to feel the impact, I want to see the blood, and feel the pain, which will be swift and sharp. Whether it takes 1 day, 1 year, or 26 years, I want to crawl, scream, kick and claw from that hole, and know that when I escape and I’m free that I did it myself, I want to walk hard and fast as I feel the wounds heal and not look back. With a new stride in my step I want to move forth with the confidence that whatever time period it was, whatever issue it was, whatever trap I feel in, it will never lay another finger on me again, that I am walking away and moving on and it will forever be left there in my past. That this world will never swallow me whole and that I will always be strong enough to keep that from happening.

Everyone knows if you let it life will chew you up, most people get bit and survive and many more slip between the teeth and consider themselves lucky. That will never be an option to me, and rather, I want to stick to the teeth, to the damage that is grinding me down, I want to break my way through and hold myself there until I’m the cavity that hurts with every bite, I want to break into the nerve of what tries to end me and take if for my own, til there is no more “between the teeth” and the only way that I exit is to be extracted, so that on my way out I know that I am in control, and I did it on my own terms, and I took back what was mine. My rights, my wrongs, my pain, my sorrow, and most importantly, to me, my childhood.

http://www.myspace.com/unrestrainedvt

Freak the Mighty is off Unrestrained self titled album.

Name:

Dividing Lines
What divides the man from the peaceful embrace of his fellow man?
Is it a naturally instilled burden or the desire to acquire
The land, the sea, the things that are in between
His home, his god, are these worth staying at odds?
Open your eyes to the beauty of this world and not the dividing lines
That we use as the guidelines
Lines divide
They’ll make you pick a side.
They’ll fight and fight
For nothing more than selfish pride.
And when they come for you
Are you going to pick a side or pick what’s right?
Because living life shouldn’t be a day to day fight.
Open your eyes and live.

I chose the song “Dividing Lines,” because, in part, I believe it to be our best song. I feel it blends the Bad Brains and Cro Mags influence, that so dominate Sacred Love’s sound, very well. I can’t say the lyrics are the best I’ve ever written; however, I can say they most likely have the most to say. They relate to issues relating to hardcore, but also to issues beyond it.

When I first wrote it, the subject was very laced in hardcore, specifically my local scenes in Baltimore and DC. We have this problem here where the people in each respected scene find the need to argue over which one is better, and in the process, do not help or support each other’s scene. Now, there was definitely a time where I was on a side of this particular argument; however, I grew up. What’s everyone else’s excuse? We live barely an hour away, yet we still find reason to brand and separate ourselves from our brothers and sisters? Why? We’re like minded people. Why does one scene have to be better than the other? Why do I have to make a decision on if I like Baltimore or DC more? They’re both awesome cities and have awesome scenes. It just reminds me of some stupid high school jock rivalries between two neighboringl teams (although I’ll dance away from this sports subject since, in all honesty, I do like watching and playing sports). We’re all on the same level of equality. There is no way anyone can seriously think of themselves elitely at a show in a fucking basement. I can’t see any good that comes from elitist thinking. It’s stupid and usually done by people who probably stopped giving a shit about hardcore five years ago. I don’t get why I need to make a decision on Baltimore or DC. I don’t get why I have to make a decision on Boston or LA, or the East Coast scene or West Coast. Can’t I just like hardcore music? Is that seriously not enough anymore? There’s a line from a Wallace Stevens poem “The Motive for Metaphor” that really describes hardcore as it should be. I am very enamored, you can even say obsessed, with this stanza and find it of great relevance in my life:

The obscure moon lighting an obscure world
Of things that would never be quite expressed,
Where you yourself were never quite yourself
And did not want nor have to be.

The first line in particular is what interest me so much. “The obscure moon lighting an obscure world,” is the perfect definition of hardcore. Something of great mystery bringing complete strangers into familiarity. Something mysterious turning strangers into memory and recognition of another person. That’s what hardcore is for me. The joining of like minded people who feel like outcasts. They feel like strangers everyone else until they find a hardcore show. Again, this line and poem are up for interpretation – Wallace Stevens in general wrote very mysterious and imaginative poetry that are hard to give straight forward interpretations of – but I feel a great sense of relevance from this line. When I first read it and had this interpretation, I texted many of my friends and asked them to give me their interpretation of the same line. It’s a line I wish I could of came up with alone; but I didn’t and that’s why I’m in a hardcore band. I’m not a poet. Even the term artist, I could argue, would be a stretch. I’m just in a hardcore band. I feel when people get to the point where they think of themselves as not a hardcore singer, but a poet, or not a guitarist in a hardcore band, but an artist, they sequentially are not part of a hardcore band, but a douchebag. I’m an English major, so the majority of my time is taken by writing and reading, and usually writing for Sacred Love is an escape from the formality of formal writing. I just want to write what I feel without any boundaries, guidelines, or high expectations. If there is a form or rhetoric or other literary devices, it’s because it was on the top of my head. I’m not trying to impress anyone, or make anyone think that I’m very intelligent or a great writer or any of that unimportant shit. The only feeling I want people to have when they read over my lyrics is a feeling of belief – an acknowledgment that these lyrics are real, at least to me, and that I’m not trying to fit in with any trends or trying to be a big shot on the internet boards; this is really just me.

Anyway, I got kind of side tracked. I was discussing my disinterest in elitist thinking in hardcore; but, the song was written for my distaste in elitist thinking in general. We (Americans that is) are part of an elitist culture. It is everywhere. We have a great amount of pride in things we didn’t work for or deserve. We are so elitist, that it hinders our intelligence. We don’t ask questions. We don’t try to understand the other side of the argument. We believe what we are told because America is a great modern country, and no one that we think we’ve elected would try to take advantage of us. Political corruption is so passe. Retro week was last month, Phil, we have a black president now.

Lastly, there is one last connection that made me write this song, and that is the connection between hardcore and the real world. As we grow older, we have to make decisions. There is a give and take, and as our skin ages, we usually sacrifice more and more from hardcore to give to the real world. This could happen because of school, work, marriage, children, etc; more often or not, it will happen with everyone. You can give and give and give; however, there is no doubt there is a humongous dividing line between hardcore and the real world. You can do all you can, break edge, eat meat, trade in Gorilla Biscuits, Youth of Today, and Bad Brains for Lil’ Wayne and Lady Gaga; but, will that make you happy? Is social acceptance really the key to happiness? Will you take the side of normality, even though the side is wrong? I understand that hardcore and DIY is not sustainable to live a life, for most cases, and I’m not saying that you have to live a very poor life in order to not sell out, but turning your personality towards the hedonistic and narcissistic standards that labels someone as normal, or at least not a threat, leaves me scratching my head every time. I’ve heard plenty of people say hardcore ruined their lives; but you know, I lose more friends to the grey of society than the obscureness of the hardcore scene.

Sacred Love on Facebook

Rafael is on the left.

Name: Rafael Madeira
Bands past and present:Pointing Finger, Time X, New Winds, The Defense and Common Cause (Past). Pressure and Critical Point (Present).
One book everyone should read: Lord of the Flies.
Veg, Vegan or Carnivore: Veggie
Favorite lyricist: Ian McKaye

BROKEN
YOU RUN YOUR MOUTH
YOUR TALK IS SO CHEAP
INTEGRITY IS SOMETHING
YOU KNOW YOU CAN’T KEEP

FED UP!
WITH THE SHIT THAT YOU SAY
YOU BETTER WISE UP
‘CAUSE I WON’T LOOK THE OTHER WAY

DO YOU REMEMBER
WHEN THIS STILL MEANT
THE WORLD TO YOU?
NOW YOU TURNED YOUR BACK
AND THERE’S NOTHING MORE I CAN DO

BUST!

YOU STOOD SO STRONG
AND YOU SCREAMED SO LOUD
NOW THAT THE YEARS HAVE PASSED
YOU’RE NOWHERE TO BE FOUND
I NEVER THOUGHT IT WOULD BE
SO EASY FOR YOU
TO CHANGE SO MUCH MAN
YOU DIDN’T COME THROUGH

I STILL BELIEVE SO MUCH
IN THE VALUES WE’VE SHARED
I WANT TO BELIEVE IN MY HEART
THAT PART OF YOU REALLY CARED

This seems to be yet another cliché SXE Youth Crew song. That’s true, it sounds like another stupid song from a bunch of 18 years old kids preaching the values of Hardcore and being committed for life. But the true meaning of these lyrics is another thing. We are all around 30’s years old in the band, still SXE, still veggie, still active in the scene. One of the things that I hate most is when a guy that used to go to shows with me, that used to be super fanatic about hardcore and always preaching about it, starts to ask you if you are still doing that “teenage” silly music thing?!? This is something that we really hate because we really care about some important issues that this community has taught about.

Hardcore for me was always an escape from “real” life and all it’s problems. Hardcore is a place where we could share and trade some social-political ideas about the shitty world around us. A place where everyone has the power to grab the mic and release all the anger and frustration from the daily life problems. Being a dedicated hardcore kid and 30 years old sometimes gets complicated. Your friends that used to be dedicated hardcore kids now are all married, with kids, a big house, a good car and basically living to work. All these old friends look at you in a superior way thinking, “Look at those guys, still doing that silly thing that only made sense when we were teenagers” and it’s really frustrating. Your family thinks the same way and we don’t have credibility to be ourself.

Sometimes it’s very depressing feeling that everyone around you at work, your family and your old friends thinks that you are living a stupid and non-sensical life! In the band we all have girlfriends, normal jobs and stuff like that, but we still believe that being underground, having our own ideas and being active helping to change a little bit the world around us makes a difference. There are so many problems around us and living this life still makes sense to me in order to help us live in a better world, being able to talk about all the social problems and share all this ideas as well as Vegetarianism and Veganism. The hardcore scene is a magical place that changes a person that gets involved. Then you have all the people that used to be really dedicated underground hardcore kids, that shared the same ideas and fought for the same things as you, but that nowadays are always criticizing you. Most of them have all their “adult” lives and look at us like if we are some kind of morons and I hate that. Even worst is when some of them started their freak show noisy arty bands with complex lyrics and huge musical productions and are always joking with all the DIY underground HC kids. This song talks about how can someone change to fast and throw away the values we once shared. Being DIY, being SXE and being Vegetarian still makes sense in the fucked up world where I live and it makes a difference.

“I STILL BELIEVE SO MUCH IN THE VALUES WE’VE SHARE AND I WANT TO BELIEVE IN MY HEART THAT PART OF YOU REALLY CARED!!!”

Critical Point is a hardcore band from Portugal.

http://criticalxpoint.bandcamp.com/

Editors note:

Rafa included this in the email he sent me, and I thought it was a good expression of both his feelings, and why I do Linebreaker. Now, I just hope he doesn’t mind me posting it.

“Danielle, I choose this song because this is something I m constantly living all the time. The lyrics of the songs might sound a bit harsh and cliché, but it s a very important issue for me. And according with the lyrics and the feelings I have about this, I just released all my way of thinking building a history, a concept about the reason why we sing about it. And it’s interesting to see how such a dumb cliché lyric can have a strong meaning.

When someone read a lyric, it’s important to know the true meanings of it, and that s what I tried to show!”

Name:

Surrender
We try to decipher the truth from the lie.
There were bolder lines in those analog times.
Station after station, a catalog of capitulations.
“Abort mission”? This is no fucking solution.
Digging tunnels under Babylon is not sufficient.
And I think I know what you’re wishing, so I’m renewing my vows:
No more giving up, no more giving in.
No more shame for what’s underneath my skin.
No more nostalgia for the face I wore when I was young.
No more violence with my eyes, no more violence with my tongue.
You want to talk about skin? Let’s talk about skin.

Like a lot of our lyrics, this song started as a single line that just sat by itself in my notebook for months. “We try to decipher the truth from the lie,” came from a general frustration with trying to understand the genesis of the current economic collapse and the seeming impossibility of getting any two economists or historians to agree with one another, as well as my overall fatigue with the constant PR spin about the twin wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. On its own, this first line ran the risk of being just another generic punk juxtaposition of honesty and deception, another boring example of the punk rock protagonist as modern-day Diogenes. Of course the problem with this whole line of inquiry is that the distinction between fact and fiction is usually unclear, and far from simple, even when all the information is available. I’m not talking about simple dichotomous questions like, “was the light red or green when you drove through the intersection?” I’m interested in more complicated questions like, “What are we hoping to accomplish in Iraq?” or “How politically motivated are the Vatican’s proclamations of church policy?” or “How do we locate and challenge the bigotry that lives inside all of us?” So there are a lot of reasons that first line sat on its own for so long.

“There were bolder lines in those analog times.” At some point I was thinking about how frustrating it can be to try to distinguish fact from fiction when tracking down information on the internet, how easy it is to create a credible-looking “news” or “science” site, and what a poor job our schools are doing teaching people to differentiate between reliable sources and total bullshit. I was also in a constant state of stunned disbelief at Philadelphia’s difficulty finding the money to keep its libraries open year after year, and speculating about the connection between that and our over-reliance on the internet as a source of information. That’s how the second line came about, and how nine words started to grow into a complete song. “Those analog times,” is also an articulation of nostalgia and alienation, as I grew up in the years before the existence of the internet, and I’m constantly struggling with the idea that we’re making music/art or whatever that’s largely listened to by people for whom the internet has always been a given. My experience of the internet as a tool is fraught with this whole before/after dynamic, which sometimes makes it hard to really understand the present-day underground culture. The anonymity and ease of communication that the internet affords sometimes seems to me not to be an improvement, but that’s a difficult conversation to have with someone 10 years younger than me.

At this point the song shifts and becomes a response to a good friend of mine who was very vocally disassociating himself from punk, a reaction, I think, to being largely disappointed with how many of our peers lacked a real commitment to their personal politics, and how ineffective punk has been as a vehicle for social change. I was just letting him know that I understand his perspective, and I certainly understand the seductiveness of cynicism, but that quitting doesn’t really seem to be a more viable option, and that I’m aware that screaming politically-fueled outrage in the relative ghetto of hardcore punk is hardly an adequate response to that outrage. I think we were both feeling nostalgic for the days when Ebullition and Profane Existence ruled the roost, and it seems like everyone we knew was an activist of some sort, or doing a label or zine.

Here’s where it gets personal. We shift from talking about sociopolitical matters, to a conversation with a friend, and finally to a conversation with myself. The rhyme pattern changes here as well, from rhyming within the line to rhyming between lines. When talking about external matters, there’s more of a focus on alliteration and internal rhyme schemes, but when the focus is internal, it drops back to a blunt, traditional pattern, which also parallels the statement of traditional punk values that I’m talking about in the second part of the song. “No more giving up, no more giving in,” is a re-affirmation of everything that punk’s meant to me and taught me in the last 20 years, a lot of which is so much more complicated with a career and a family, but also that much more important because of those signifiers of adult life. Resisting mainstream American values, the ones that teach us to value material wealth over love and joy and loyalty, to value “god and country” over the universal things that bind all humans together, and to be suspicious of people who are unlike us, is a crucial battle that’s fought every day. Because no matter how tightly we seal our hearts and minds against them, those corrupt values surround us, and they’ll seep in around the edges if we’re not vigilant. That line also a pretty direct reference to Embrace, the first band that really did a good job of blending the personal and the political for me. Even though some of those lyrics seem painfully earnest all these years later, it’s still such an essential album. “No more shame for what’s underneath my skin.” One of the most important lessons of my early days listening to punk, before I ever participated in any meaningful way. Staring down my own insecurities, which were pretty devastating when I was younger, and developing faith in self. A lesson I still need to remind myself of from time to time. “No more nostalgia for the face I wore when I was young.” Can’t get away with pretending I’m a kid anymore, that’s how I end up hurting myself physically and procrastinating until I make myself crazy with self-reproach. Can’t worry about whether I’m to old to be making this kind of music anymore. I write what I write, and as long as it’s still fast and aggressive, that’s what I’ll be playing. Nostalgia keeps us stuck in the past, keeps us stuck period. Also, nostalgia helps older people justify their cynicism, as in “things were so much more exciting and creative back in the day.” Bullshit. If you can’t relate to the music being made now, start a band and make the kind of music that you want to hear. “No more violence with my eyes, no more violence with my tongue.” An admission that I get lazy with my personal politics sometimes, and a commitment to resist objectification, and struggle against cruelty in my own speech, the lessons of 90’s DIY hardcore punk. The last line is another shift, and I wrote it to fit what became the musical outro to the song. We struggled for months to figure out how this song would end, and when Andy came up with the idea for the ending I knew the vocals had to get repetitive and unhinged. “You want to talk about skin? Let’s talk about skin,” is basically me picking a fight with the bigots. It’s basically saying, “Oh, you want to talk shit? You want to diminish people to nothing more than what their bodies look like and what color their skin is? Well let’s have a real conversation about gender and race, the conversations that americans don’t want to have because it’s too uncomfortable to look in a mirror. It’s a statement of purpose. A battle cry.

“Surrender” is off the 7″ Surrender

http://www.paintitblack.org/

Name:

Tongue Blood
Bite Down. Until it bleeds. You know not of what you speak. Your idle hands and the trash in your mind contribute nothing but a cycle of shit. All you gave was a sour attitude, trying to keep us chained to you. If you really cared you would open your eyes. Instead of throwing away what gave you life. Purged of your existence, but still soiled by your remains.

When I’m at home, I don’t really do a lot. I work, I visit my family, hang out with all my roomies at the 1108 house and I attend local shows. My life revolves around going to hardcore/punk shows. I love it, I wouldn’t change it. All my money goes to getting into shows, buying merch, music and going on tour. I love this lifestyle, and I wouldn’t change it for anything in the world. And I have had the privilege of meeting a lot of people all over this country who feel the same way as I do. People that tour in bands, book shows, write zines, or just attend shows like crazy. All these things give back and help the scene to grow and keep it here for the younger kids who will take the same things that we have taken from it. But this song, is obviously not about the people that give and give. It’s about the kids that have dropped out or attend a show once a year and still claim to be involved. Its about people who bad mouth hardcore at every chance they get, usually around kids that are involved. It’s also about people that give back, but do it for all the wrong reasons. Reasons like for recognition or popularity.

I definitely get when kids drop out. It’s not a crime. But it is such a weird idea to me that someone can put so much into a lifestyle and then just stop doing that. Its so weird to me that somebody could just wake up one morning and decide to stop caring about the thing that mostly defined them. and every time that I notice a kid that would come around isn’t anymore, it breaks my heart. Because obviously the kid is looking for something if they are in a stinky, hot, and cramped basement standing on their tip toes trying to see the band play. I am of the idea that everything you need to know or find in life, you can do so with hardcore. So to know that somebody doesn’t think they can find what they want there it makes me a little discouraged. It really does create a “cycle of shit” if people don’t stick around, then how is there going to be any forward progression? There wouldn’t be any new bands, any new ideas and everything would just stay how it is until it dies out. And I think that sucks. Around here it seems to be the case. There is never any new kids coming to shows. Majority of the time its the same people. Its not a bad thing, it just sucks to know that there are kids that could do something with this but don’t.

People that used to come around but don’t anymore and only have bad things to say is like one of the top three things in the world that pisses me off to no end. Everyone knows somebody like this. Usually its an olderish dude who’s band didn’t get as big as they wanted because they didn’t know how much work it actually is to make good music and to get people to hear it. Or its a person who jumped on the hipster train or are older guys that still like the bands that they liked when they were young and hate everything new. First off, when people say negative shit about hardcore to hardcore kids, they are just wanting an argument for argument sake. And its always the same, and it doesn’t matter. If you are pissed with the direction things are going, start a band and change it. Or start booking shows that you want to see. That way you don’t have to complain that all the shows are not up to your standards. So to all you naysaying assholes, next time you have something negative to say, bite your tongue and ask yourself “is there any way that I can make a change?” Chances are nowadays you wont change shit, since the internet is a big thing with people liking what they like. But you can let people know what you think should be going on with music that you make or shows that you book. Thats exactly what Agress is. We all love whats hot and happening right now, but we all see things that we feel are wrong with whats going on. So we keep this band going.

The last group of people that this song is about is the people that give back, but not with pure intentions. You see it a lot. Dudes that are in bands to get recognition. If you want to have that shit, go join Disturbed. At every fest or almost every show you will see them. The guys in band that all crowd around the stage while the band is playing and thats where they watch from. On stage. It just wasn’t enough for them to play and have all eyes on them for 20 minutes, they now need everyone to see them standing on the stage watching the bands they like. And you will hear people saying “did you see so and so from this and that? He likes that band” first off, maybe they should just watch the band, but thats exactly what they want the kids to do, notice them. Its bullshit. If you wanna watch the band, go on the floor, or don’t stand behind their equipment like you see at so many local shows. No one is better than anyone in this scene. Everyone is the same. Way to go you are in a band or something, get the fuck over yourself.

Everyone with half a brain in the scene knows that hardcore and punk isn’t just music, its a lifestyle. And the ones that take from the music and lyrics, and actually apply it to their life are the true hardcore kids. So if I wasn’t clear enough about what these lyrics are about, here it is in a nutshell; If you are unsupportive, if you are going to bad mouth, if you don’t really give a shit about the scene, here is the door. but We can never truly be rid of the people that drag the scene down.

“Touch Blood” is of s/t 7″

http://www.myspace.com/agresshc

Name: Philippe Arama

The Stranger
A child in his bed cannot fall asleep wondering incessantly about falling in the deep. He’s the stranger.
What’s unknown scares him. He just can’t understand and soon begins to realize he won’t when he’s a man. He’s the stranger.
At last came the time and those fears exit his mind, accepting death and life with no faith in disguise. He’s the stranger.
Morally detached from what the masses impose and how they act. The system brands him “the stranger” for the presence of god that he lacks.
His beliefs in nothing except what he has lived and felt do not make this man a rebel, just authentic to himself. He’s the stranger.
All that he knows for sure is the fall into the obscure and you can’t fight nature’s indifference to human life.

This song is named and inspired by Mersault, the protagonist of Albert Camus’ novel “The Stranger”. The lyrics take a further direction into the idea of religion/fear of death through my personal experience, which is overcome through an agnostic and existentialist vision. This particular lyrical structure is chronologically progressive; it starts off with the individual as a young boy afraid and culminates with him ageing and feeling indifference towards the subject, which is seen as something odd by the moral majority. I tend to always write with rhythm and rhyme.

Remission: http://www.myspace.com/remissionhc
Order the “Winds Of Promise” 7” featuring The Stranger from:
http://www.itstimetoreact.com/store