The Counterforce - Interviews/Profiles

Interview with Ergot

2026-02-11T20:47:44.000-05:00

I caught up with Ergot recently to talk about punk and punk graffiti.

Slim: When did you start writing Ergot?

Ergot: Started writing Ergot in 2006 in Minneapolis. First crew was called BS (Black Sabbath), which was me and my friends' high school code for smoking weed, then later code for doing graffiti… PEB (Pigs Eye Boys), TKG (The Kind Gents), PTS (Philips Terror Squad/Paint The Streets), were all my original crews with my scummy punk/rocker friends in southside Minneapolis. A bunch of misfits who’d drink cheap beer and go to punk shows in basements and warehouses – a story that’s played out countless times across the world… I painted a lot on tour with my bands back in the day, doing spots in a bunch of cities in North America and Europe. And also traveled a bit in Europe/UK while staying in squats and all that, going to shows and painting. Once again – an archetypal story!

Wow love the weed smoking code. I feel like the graffiti story now is more be a skater. Is there a big scene of people touring, squatting and painting in the US? Who were the people that inspired you to join the graffiti movement?

Well yes definitely crews like KUK from the Bay Area or early KYT in Seattle/Minneapolis were more punk focused, maybe even political at times, playing in bands or adjacent to the music scenes there. Abhor KUK did the lettering in some DYSTOPIA records, for example. And if you can find the old KUK zines they’re clearly sorta bike crusties. Early 907 crew from NYC also – they were linked to the Black Label Bike Club and had a chapter in Copenhagen who would do Bike Kill at K-Town.

I would go to a DIY warehouse for shows in high school called the Mala in Minneapolis and see tags by OZE108 907, Nimz HM, REHAB HM, YOUTH RVS (another Mpls crew worth mentioning), and I was mystified. I felt like I had discovered these two underground worlds that I’d imagined were separate, but here they intersected and it made me feel very at home.

I later traveled around Europe and saw lots of Nimz stuff. I think he may have been in 907 too. He’s still got a spot partially riding on the highline in NYC.

Has the avenue you pushed stylistically always been accepted or have you had some battles?

Graffiti is interesting because you have so much personality wrapped into it if you’re able to decode it. What a person paints on, the colors they use, how it’s placed, the style of the letters themselves, all tell a story once you can read all the cues. I personally see lots of value in graffiti when I can see a full story in a single piece, like an individual screaming about their life and their interests. So being able to fuse some colorful, intricate piecing styles with a more raw punk bombing essence was a way for me to tell my story in a satisfying way.

There was always a little bit of funny commentary from either side, like I should cut back the drips on a piece, or I shouldn’t put bubbles in the street spot. But I think at the end of the day the attempted fusion was appreciated by both sides

I should also say that none of this was really conscious at the time. It’s only looking back years later that I can see that I was mixing this stuff together. Back then I was just trying to have fun with letters and keep things interesting for myself.

What’s your best moment from graffiti and what’s your worst moment?

Hard to pin down a single best or worst moment, but I guess in general best is whenever you get into a flow style-wise and with getting over. Climbing down from something and looking up and what you left there and feeling self actualized. Worst moments for me are when you’re caught in someone’s beef and you think they’re all silly, or losing friends to ego or social pressures.

I do have some getaway stories and getting caught stories too...

How’d you get into punk and what made you feel like it was your community ?

I sort of can’t remember, but initially I think i just vibed hard with music and then went down a rabbithole from NIRVANA and stuff towards heavier music, looking for something specific but not knowing what it was. Finding bands that had politics in the music really clicked with me. And it was like this crazy underground society (similar to graff) that seemed to have lots of meaning and feeling. The catharsis of the music itself and also meeting other kids who were sort of fucked up and damaged made me feel at home for sure.

I found out about bands like TOWER 7 and FLOWER through your illustration work. Not to mention the incredible cover you did for DESTRUCT’s record Cries The Mocking Mother Nature. When did you begin drawing flyers and doing illustrations for bands?

Thanks. I started drawing flyers and doing punk art in 2013 or so. I’d done some designs for my bands like collages and simple layouts but decided I should try to push myself a bit, and was inspired by some classic punk illustrators. Plus I started working with Shock at his screen printing studio and wanted to make posters and shirts for my friends. It was pretty chaotic for years, trying to do punk art, paint graffiti, do music stuff, and drinking a lot and all that. But I think I found a better focus at the end of the pandemic.

I did some logos and art for WATCHLIST, and some of the newer bands from NYC, and hope to keep it rockin.

Could you tell us a bit about ICBM (the most punk graff crew)?

Ok, about ICBM –

Started by zigzag and wombat pre-pandemic. AMEBIX reference. It was pretty important to be like a “real” graffiti writer but also actually down with DIY punk and active within that world to some degree. I remember when I met Cancer Carl he was wearing a NO SECURITY shirt. Pesoe sets up gigs. A lot of other members play in bands and stuff. There’s also a political bend to it all and importance on critical views of society. I suppose it’s just trying to keep an assembled group of people who are like actually down with the more underground forms of graffiti and music and on some anarchist/whatever-you-want-to-label-it political bend.

Could you tell us a crazy story?

Ok so one time, during the peak pandemic, I had this spot at Myrtle Broadway in Brooklyn on big boy while it was all shuttered up. I’d done a fill right on the corner there. And then it got dissed presumably by the business owners with “bitchass” and stuff like that. So on a Sunday at like 3pm I biked right up to it just to fix the fill quick. But I was suddenly apprehended from behind in a chokehold by a few people who live on the street there. Turns out some of them were sorta running security on the block, I think they got k2 as payment. It was like 4 or 5 guys holding me all crazy, and also this was peak pandemic so it felt pretty wild to be so close on top of the violent aspect. They dragged me into a smoke shop and locked the doors. And inside was like the kingpin guy all “well well well” gangster style. They took my glasses off my face and held my eyes open and acted like they were gonna spray paint my eyeballs. And they opened a door into the basement and said they were gonna throw me in. It was pretty hectic. Then a grandma from the block who’d seen it all started banging on the windows saying they needed to let me go. And they all got shook and also maybe respected the grandma so after a while they opened the door and threw me out. I thanked her and biked away. I biked past the same intersection a few weeks later and all the guys were still on the block and pointed and laughed at me. I sort of felt bad for them. I think graffiti takes you into places where you witness certain depths of suffering that aren't always easy to engage with.

K-Town Hardcore Fest

2026-01-12T09:40:14.000-05:00

I never traveled for punk fests like an early-2000s-style anti-globalization summit-hopper, but I have definitely been to my fair share. K-Town Hardcore Fest has always stood out for me. I've been twice: once in 2018 while driving GAZM and CELL on tour, and last year playing bass with TOTAL NADA. It's big, but not too big, with all the official shows happening at a single venue (the infamous Ungdomshuset), with an additional matinee or two happening off-site (including of course the BIKE WARS!). It's all extremely well organized, draws the most international crowd and lineup I've experienced, and (most importantly for me) has very clear DIY political consciousness.

So, in November last year I was extremely encouraged to see K-Town Hardcore Fest show up in my Mastodon feed with a shiny new Pixelfed account, announcing their intention to leave Meta platforms like Instagram and Facebook. Here at Counterforce HQ we were already in the stages of planning Fediverse Punk Month for January 2026. Getting off corporate social media really is in the air! So I reached out to the organizing collective, hoping I could get an interview done in time for January (and before they are completely overwhelmed with planning K-Town Hardcore Fest 2026!).

Thank you to Christina and Mathias for quickly getting these answers back to us!

First, I would like to give readers some context in case they are not familiar with K-Town Hardcore Fest. Can you give a brief history of the fest? How did it start, and how is it organized today? What makes it special among punk fests?

Christina: As I am the only member still in the group from back then, I’ll try to recap this one. The festival started out somehow by chance, in 2001. It was the same year as the EU summit in Gothenburg in Sweden. Back then, the EU summits were always a big draw internationally. We knew a lot of people would be traveling through Copenhagen to get there, so we decided to make two gigs we had already booked, into a mini festival “after the Gothenburg apocalypse” (or something like that!) and invite people traveling back from the protests to stay in Copenhagen for a few days. All the proceeds would be donated to the Anarchist Black Cross in the efforts needed to support expected prisoners after the riots which were more or less guaranteed to happen back then.

We spent the following months booking a handful of bands, organized a Reclaim The Streets protest and a Food Not Bombs event as part of the program and started spreading the word. We brought posters and flyers with us around Europe and to the protests that we were also attending ourselves and encouraged our friends to copy and distribute locally. It worked – and lots of people joined. I can’t tell you how it went through, cause I ended up in prison in Gothenburg and needed the assistance of ABC, haha.

I think that what makes K-Town special is that we are anchored in Ungdomshuset, and that it is 100% run by volunteers. That’s our main countercultural social center/venue in Copenhagen. This means that we are also anchored in politics and our way of organizing the festival reminds a lot of how we would organize a political event. We always had political workshops during the day, soup kitchens with cheap vegan food and often organized demonstrations in connection with the festival. For the first eight years we even offered accommodation in shared sleeping spaces for all the traveling people.

The festival was organized in the old Ungdomshuset from 2001-2006. In March 2007 the house was evicted, and the following two years were spent first on the streets, fighting for a new house and subsequently building our new space (the new Ungdomshuset). In 2007 and 2008, the festival was held in Christiania in The Grey Hall. Christiania is a “Free Town” in Copenhagen (do an internet search – it’s a long story). Those two years were a collective punch in the gut, and when 2008 was done, 90% of the collective were so burnt out that they quit. The festival attendance was extreme, and the interest in all Ungdomshuset-related events were massive.

We realized through those years, how important it is to have your own space on your own terms, where you are able to build something that the guests will also take ownership of. In Christiania we were “just” guests, and as a result people disrespected the place and, to some extent, us as a collective. It was nightmarish and the problems were endless. And because of that we “killed” the festival in 2009 and did a political workshop festival instead (we called it “DIY Festival”) with just two bands playing, if I remember correctly. In 2010 we restarted and have been going ever since, only taking a weird dive in the Covid era where we did a mini “seated festival” outdoors (with Covid restrictions) and a downscaled regular indoor Covid edition the year after, also with restrictions.

I'm in North America, where the dominant social media platform for DIY punks is Instagram, with some scenes still relying on Facebook events as well. What do you find are the main social media platforms used by punks in your local Copenhagen scene, and/or the broader international scene around K-Town Hardcore Fest?

Christina: When social media first started really getting used in the scene, Facebook was the main go-to. MySpace was also a thing, but it wasn’t until “events” could be made through Facebook that it really took off. These days I’d say that Instagram is the dominant platform. Facebook is slowly dying out, but still used by some. For a long time, gigs have been promoted on both those platforms in different ways, trying to maximize traction I guess.

We are lucky that we have always had our own platforms as well. We’ve had the ktownhardcorefest.org website for many years now, and Ungdomshuset.dk is a long running and well functioning website with a lot of traffic as well.

Mathias: Yeah it’s definitely Instagram. Facebook is being ‘kept alive’ by its event page functionality, but even that is dying out. It used to be like you could sort of trust the amount of attendees or guests listed on Facebook, but you can’t even do that any more…

K-Town Hardcore has been around since 2001, and platforms like Facebook and Instagram have only existed since 2004 and 2010, respectively. With such a deep history, I'm wondering if the collective's organizational memory remembers what organizing the fest was like before Meta's platforms came to dominance in punk, and if you have any thoughts or insight on how we got to where we are now?

Christina: When we started the fest back in 2001, we hardly had any digital platforms to rely on. The group back then was composed of extremely active people who played in bands, ran labels, booked gigs and tours and traveled a lot for both music and politics. The festival was a natural continuation of all that. We started promotion early, with “pre-posters” to spread the word about dates, and another round of posters and flyers as soon as the lineup and program was set. Flyposting was mandatory and we would bring posters and flyers with us everywhere. All touring bands coming through Ungdomshuset got a stack and were asked to put them up along their tour route. We also sent packages with posters and flyers by mail to all the main squats and venues around Europe that we worked with. We relied on people wanting to help us out and I think it contributed to the sense of being part of something, when you were helping your “sister festival” advertising beforehand. I still see those posters on the walls of squats and venues across Europe, even though less people bring them around these days. I miss the connections we made back then. The sense of community and networking that was so much more concrete, and longer lasting than it is today – maybe because it came along with commitment and human interaction?

I think that convenience plays a big part in why we are where we are today. We started using social media to gain access to a different arena, but I think a lot of people forgot how valuable the arena they left behind really was. I remember how everyone was raving about how cool it was with Facebook, and how you could invite everyone interested “personally” to a gig. I think a part of the reason why we haven’t spent all these years developing our own platforms, is that the most skeptical people tend to lean toward a less digital community and instead of embracing the digital opportunities, they’re shunned or ignored instead of captured and reshaped to fit our political goals and values. I think I belong in that category myself, to be honest.

K-Town has never been a standalone event. We’ve always been a big part of our community, active with booking gigs and the scene around Ungdomshuset. We’ve always had many talks about how to build communities and how to offer a way into activism, politics and music for newcomers. We’ve maintained a rule about analog advertisement to this day, because we recognize that only nourishing your echo chamber doesn’t build bigger and stronger scenes. We need to also catch the person finding something they didn’t know they were looking for until they found it – like so many of us did when we first started coming to gigs. You are obligated to make printed posters and flyers for your gigs when booking at Ungdomshuset. And a big part of that, is that we want to be visible to the people who are not like us, and to the potential new friends out there. We want to be a visible thorn in the eye of established society and a continuous reminder that we are here and not going anywhere. Visibility is a powerful political tool.

I think we realize the reach social media has given us, and that reach is most definitely something we will have a hard time getting by without. But then again …

Mathias: I am a bit younger than Christina, and while I do remember growing up in a time without omnipresent internet life or activity, I don’t remember organizing gigs or festivals before Meta’s platforms. When I first got involved in doing gigs, Facebook was big in Denmark, and when I got involved in K-Town many years later it was huge.

Back when I joined K-Town, it felt like a natural extension of our website to have a Facebook account and event page, and I am pretty sure that that would also show in the data. We had far more traffic on the Facebook posts and in the comments section on the event page than on our website, and that must have rewired our brains into thinking that ‘this is where we should focus our energy’. Incidentally that meant a lot more work, answering questions and DM’s and figuring out the best times to post stuff, managing debates, banning scam ticket sellers, etc. After a few years we tried to avoid interacting with DMs and comments and instead divert traffic back to our website and our FAQ section, but that didn’t really go as well as it could have.

Despite this, in a spur-of-the-moment decision, we made an Instagram account and that started to take off. In the last four years or so we have gotten quite insane reach and interactions on our posts etc – something I find both fascinating but also really weird, honestly.

Long story short we fell into a trap and were seduced by the magical numbers (data) and marketing lingo telling us that we should be where our audience is. Our journey was like this: Word of mouth > Internet/website > Facebook > Instagram > hopefully some new place that is less corporate and awful. Now we are ‘lucky’ to be in a position where a lot of people know what we are (about) and will willingly seek out information about the fest, no matter if it’s on our own website or a new platform like Pixelfed.

K-Town Hardcore Fest's statement on leaving Meta

Beyond what's in the statement, what was the motivation behind K-Town Hardcore Fest taking this position at this time? ("It was a long time coming...") Was it a matter of alternatives getting better/more awareness on your part of alternatives? Or Meta's platforms and dominance becoming intolerable? Was there a recent singular event or series of experiences (either positive or negative) that really drove the decision?

Mathias: We started talking about leaving Meta sometime in the early planning stages of K-Town Hardcore Fest 2025. We usually start planning the next edition of the fest by the end of a year, so that talk would have happened around November/December 2024 (maybe January 2025). The initial plan was to announce us leaving Meta, while at the same time using the same platforms to announce everything related to K-Town 2025. So one day we would announce some bands, and in the next post we would encourage everyone to leave with us to Pixelfed, but things got in the way of our planning... I think there were several catalysts of why we wanted to leave, but the overall influence of the internet was one of the bigger trigger points.

Christina: I think we’ve all been sick of what social media has done to our community, for a long time. Sure, it’s been great for mobilizing and spreading awareness, but it’s also been a superb tool for division, miscommunication and slander. Being positioned on the political radical left, it’s almost unbearable to see the commercialization and capitalization of punk that the SoMe era has boosted. We’re far from the days of BYOFL (Book Your Own Fucking Life) where personal contact and networking were key elements of the international punk community. Now you are almost forced to use influencer tools, pay for boosts and use strategic communication to even be seen by some, because you’re fighting against corporate algorithm tricks. Urgh. I long back to a time where active participation was key. And it’s a sad truth that most punks are just consumers now.

What drove the decision was a mix of the new reality we all faced when the yellow baby was elected again and all the tech bros lined up behind him, and the general things Mathias is also mentioning. We saw people starting to make coordinated exits, some of us exited ourselves, and it led us to have a look in the mirror and ask the question: can you defend being the oxymoron it is to be a political DIY festival, doing your main promotion on big tech platforms??

Sometimes making big decisions as a large collective can be difficult. Without hashing out any internal conflicts, can you say if this was a contentious decision among the collective? Were there holdouts or people skeptical or opposed to the idea? If so, what eventually won them over?

Christina: I think it’s fair to say that we are all a bit nervous about the move. There’s not been grave opposition within the group, but for sure some people feel more energetic about it than others.

Mathias: I wasn’t super sold on the idea of leaving in the beginning, as I liked having a direct platform from which we could engage directly with our audience. I thought we were saying goodbye to too much, by leaving…

Christina: Yeah, I think it’s a delicate balance between choosing what’s right and what’s convenient. We have more than 11,400 followers on Instagram, for example. I don’t think anyone really disagrees with the fact that the big tech companies have way too much power over punk, and that the right thing to do is to abandon them and take back control. But how to do this is another question. We’re “just” a punk festival. We’re not a network of radical internet activists. And our main priorities lies in making our festival as good as possible, while being a positive example within our community, so that people will hopefully be inspired to stay or become radical themselves. But will we change or inspire, if no one's looking?

I think idealism won in the end. And it’s a gamble, if it will truly work. But we choose to believe that it will and that we are an “established” enough event, to survive the setback in reach we will eventually meet.

I have already really respected that K-Town Hardcore Fest has a comprehensive and useful website. That's somewhat of a rarity these days (at least in North America), although I am happy to see more fests returning to having a functional website instead of relying solely on Instagram. You say you plan to use your website a lot more in the future... What do you have planned?

Mathias: Just to use it more, hah! To have more overall and general information about the fest, bands and tickets and so on. I am the main admin for the site and have to admit that I did a terrible job at keeping it up to date last year. I also really want to give it a visual overhaul soon too.

With regards to Pixelfed/the Fediverse, what has your experience been like so far? Have you found any explanations, resources, or guides that are particularly helpful?

Mathias: It’s still very new, and we haven’t really posted anything yet (but will soon enough). I hope punks will join us on Pixelfed soon – the more we are, the funner it gets, I guess.

Christina: Agree. It’s all still so new, and we rarely post anything this time a year anyways. I guess it was a good time to quit, because it gave us some time to build content and think of ways of communicating, before diving into it. Honestly, we have mostly found the Counterforce guide to be helpful and very inspiring, and I don’t say that just to flatter you – but it’s the first guide I’ve found, directed at punks and DIY organizers. I dare say that you helped us believing we could do this! Thank you for that. In Denmark, the main people interested in this stuff are not punks.

Mathias: The Counterforce zine (manifesto) was pretty inspiring, heh!

Are there any other things you are doing to try and exit Meta this year that you want to expand upon?

Mathias: Not really Meta-related, but we have discussed leaving Google too. I think we should, and that’s gonna be less difficult, I imagine, in terms of whatever ‘feelings’ might be attached to their platforms and services. We are not really saying goodbye to an audience when getting a new email account, right? But we still need time to properly research alternatives, since we are using a lot more applications than just Gmail. We have plans of making a newsletter too. So you can get all news and deadlines regarding K-Town directly in your inbox.

Christina: We are going to let our Instagram page stay up for a while, so people can still find us and see where we went. But the Facebook page will be killed entirely at some point. We will probably use the Instagram page for purposes related to the exit. That way we are not just preaching to the choir, but to the people still on that platform, when talking about the exit. Spreading materials from the Punk Fediverse month is part of that.

Fun fact: We weren’t always on Google mail… our first email address was on Riseup, but at some point (around 2010 as I remember it) they were having loads of problems with their servers and we lost access to our account and weren’t able to recover it. That threw us into the hands of Evil.inc :(

Another thing I really respect about K-Town Hardcore Fest is how international it is, both in the lineup of bands and in the diversity of the attendees. We have to admit that Meta's slick and easy social media has allowed for greater international connections and solidarity than ever before. I think that in moving away from these platforms a major challenge will be maintaining strong international connections between scenes around the world. I wonder if you all have thoughts on this challenge going forward?

Mathias: I think you are right. It’s gonna be a real challenge. Instagram made it soooo convenient to stay in touch with your international friends, or ‘add’ all the new people you met at a festival.

Christina: K-Town has always been international. But in later years it became more than it was before. Like I talked about earlier, we built the first festival on international (mostly European) mobilization, so a lot of people who have been coming every year since the beginning, are international. It was somewhat a coincidence but it’s not one that we regret :)

I like to believe that we share a special connection with the bands, volunteers and guests at the festival. We take great care in making everyone feel welcome and part of the fest. We strive to make people feel equally seen and included, no matter if you scrub toilets or play guitar in the evening closer band. I sincerely hope we succeed in that … Many people choose to come back after having played, as guests the following year, and we have many of the same volunteers coming in from all over the world every year, to participate in the annual family event. This cannot be attributed to social media platforms, but to connections and friendships between people, the feeling of being part of something valuable and important – and having a great fucking time while doing it obviously!

Booking for the 2026 fest has started. What has the experience been like so far with this change? What has the reception been like to your new position?

Christina: With three weeks left before the application window ends, we have 370 bands on our list, so I’d say nothing has changed there, haha. Generally, we have gotten a lot of positive feedback from people. No negative so far, except a bit of “whataboutism” here and there, which is hardly a criticism worth taking in.

On Instagram, we have turned off comments, because we don’t want to interact with the platform any longer, but our posts about the exit have been shared more than usual. We have a feeling that’s not a negative thing.

Mathias: 370 band requests is more than we usually get. For the past years the average has been ~300, so so far so good I guess.

Do you have any other advice for other DIY festivals or other punk projects who want to follow your lead?

Christina: Have good talks about why you want to leave. What does it cost your integrity to stay vs what do you gain by staying? Be brave and risk it. But stop being lazy. Organizing is hard work and we’d be lying if we said it was easy.

Get a website or a blog or use an existing platform, from your local political network, the squat/houseproject/venue you’re hosting at or whatever digital resource you have available. Make posters and flyers and think of ways to spread them so the people interested in coming will see them ahead of time. Who are your international friends? Who are your friends, locally? Reach out and use your network of friends!

Mathias: Yeah, start by moving away from Meta’s platforms. Pixelfed is almost a 1:1 copy of Instagram, so there’s no real learning curve. You can even import all of your content from Instagram to Pixelfed, so you keep all of your memories, even if you nuke your Instagram profile. Other than that, I agree with what Christina is saying here – and let’s all ditch Google too, ok?

Finally, please hype up the fest! Where can people go to get more into if they want to attend, play, or volunteer? Is there anything else you want to shout out or add?

Christina: Yes! Please find us here:

ktownhardcorefest.org

pixelfed.social/ktownhardcorefest
(to follow from your own account on Pixelfed/Mastodon/the Fediverse, search @ktownhardcorefest@pixelfed.social)

ungdomshuset.dk

Subscribe to our newsletter for direct mail about lineup, tickets and practical info – we promise we won’t be spamming you.

K-town Hardcore Fest 2026 will be taking place June 19-24, 2026. See you there!

Interview with Listen

2025-09-05T12:41:25.000-04:00

Years ago I meet a stranger in a dark bar in Montreal's Pointe-Saint-Charles neighbourhood. Six years later, after many lessons, sprays and a wild chase, I am interviewing my friend and legend Listen.

He started us off:

Listen: I want to see everybody’s graffiti, you wanna talk about anarchism that’s the spirit of the medium. It’s pretty diluted these days, you can look on YouTube for tutorials or whatever.

If you have a can and a surface, anything that you and I see in the public realm, even it’s defined private property, it’s still public space.

I wish there was a more public conversation. Not we’ve decreed this a legal wall. More like those who want to paint in the public eye can have access to the space.

Slim: Is that why you do the bird?

I guess so. You know when you do something for so long that it morphs into this habitual thing? Imagine you’re cooking for yourself and you like cooking macaroni and cheese or vegan sushi. You get into the routine and because you do it enough, you put enough time in, you get really good at doing that one thing. It’s out of habit, not the intention of mastery.

You’re pushing multiple directions, there’s one that becomes easier so you continue that way because there’s less obstacles and it gets reduced to "now I’m drawing a fucking bird on shit."

It’s a disarming image. I remember sitting in a park in St Henri next to the railroad tracks. This 6 year old is running around and points to a box I painted and is like “hey Dad it’s the bird guy again.”

This is why, THIS IS WHY.

Unintentionally, because I pushed this image, I made things more simplistic in terms of a street throw up. I can pull it off in a few minutes, which is nice for major cities. To hear a child be stoked on it, that’s pretty encouraging.

What’s the largest bird you’ve painted?

If this one wasn’t the biggest it was top 5 for sure. This photo is from a while after it was painted, the ground was full of debris and rubble when I painted it. But yeah, this building burned down on the corner and the location and texture of the wall was too good to not paint. I only had a few days in town, and I was obsessed with the spot. I asked around to see if anyone would lend me an extension ladder since I didn’t travel with my own, lol. No one would lend me one so I had to get my hands on one somehow. At the time the Home Depot had a garden centre with an area with a lower fence around the skids full of soil and fertilizer. I had put several baskets of paint there before and come back after a few hours to scoop em. So I had two nights left in town, I thought I would grab this ladder and leave it by the soil and lower-fenced zone. However when I got to that area it was fully closed off. Maybe too late in the day or whatever…

So I was thinking maybe I could just walk out with it or something but then it hit me I could use the ladder to get out. I fully extended the ladder out of view of cameras. I was expecting a worker to come assist me but it was a ghost town in there. So I leaned the ladder against the third level of bricks. No one came so I pulled up the ladder and put it on the other side of the fence. That same evening I painted the wall. My good friend Barfo was down and he and his dog kept six across the street. I stopped for every car that drove by which was a workout, I was in better shape back then. Not sure if it’s legible from the photo but I quoted a FUGAZI song because I’m a huge dork.

I feel like everyone talks about how St. Henri [neighbourhood in Montréal] has changed a lot. Care to weigh in on the change you saw during your long term residence in that neighbourhood?

I haven’t been there in a few years but it feels to me like a typical trajectory of gentrification.

Working class neighbourhood with cheap rent. Outsiders move in for affordability (myself included). Real estate speculators buy the buildings. While new businesses pop up to cater to new residents. Then the new (and sometimes older) landlords jack up the rent across the board. Business associations up their fees to fund the smoother flow of capital. The city increases taxes to pay for new promenades that lubricate the flow of capital. All of this pushes people out of the neighbourhood.

It’s a clear reflection of the values of those in power. Whatever is good for business is good.

No concern for quality of life, the inner workings of a neighbourhood, the history, the people who built the neighbourhood.

When the cycle is complete the majority of the people there have no clue what came before. They are there for the facade, the shell of the former lively community, to cosplay in an idea they have that is transposed onto the place itself.

In Montreal the process is slowed down by tenants rights organizations and co-ops, activities that make it uncomfortable for the movement of capital. Sometimes in Quebec this comes down to language. Businesses don’t want to operate in Quebec because of language laws.

Short answer is: way she goes.

In your time writing graffiti have you experienced much of an attitude shift in the subculture?

I think I started early 2000s, first thing I painted was when I was like 8yrs old or something. It was with a chrome fan cap on the concrete outdoor stairwell of my childhood home. I wrote “secret hideout” with an arrow pointing toward the spider-ridden woodpile under the back deck. I got in shit when my dad found this but he also laughed at the irony of pointing an arrow towards a “secret hideout.”

Attitudes towards graffiti have shifted drastically. I used to rack books from Chapters and sell them at a used bookstore a block away from the Chapters. Make $100 selling art books or whatever.

At the time I was doing that there was maybe one or two books about graffiti on the shelf at Chapters. A few years later half of the art section was “graffiti and street art.” I wanna say by mid to late 2000s, there was a bit of a bandwagon publishing books about graffiti.

What’s the best moment you’ve had with graffiti and what’s the worst moment you’ve had with graffiti?

Every time I paint becomes the best moment I’ve had painting. I like to try new things when painting and I’m building on what I’ve done before, so the moment that I’m painting is a culmination of a lifetime of work.

The worst times I’ve had is getting caught up in someone else’s bad decisions. There’s a tendency when a group of writers get together to compete to do the most impulsive audacious act. It’s annoying at best and has landed me in some shitty scenarios by proximity.

Do you have a goal or finish line? Or do you believe in the unwinnable race?

Great question. There is no race, no goal, I’m not competing. There is a physicality to painting, but it’s not a sport.

My attitude has definitely changed in the past 20 or so years. Initially, I think my intention was to communicate to people. That something else was possible, to break the cycle of capitalism in a way that I was good at. After getting attention from stuff I had painted and seeing the public discussion, I shifted into a more destructive direction. Eventually I settled into realizing the act itself was enough and I can’t control how it’s interpreted. It became a fun way to interact with my surroundings. While still showing that laws for property are unimportant, hopefully make people laugh, or change the way they see their surroundings.

I guess to boil it down, my intent is to be an anti-capitalist force. Up until very recently I stole all of my supplies, would only sell my art for anarchist fundraisers, etc.

I think it’s cool that you buy cans now, you put in infinite hours over so many years. There has to be a time when comfort is a goal.

For sure, I still would rather rack paint. The store credit thing is much more difficult now though.

I’m not sure how much paint I’ve acquired for free, but for a couple decades I didn’t pay for coffee beans. I would get quality beans averaging $15 a pound. I’d go through 3 lbs a month maybe? So over 240 months that’s $10,000 worth of coffee. One pound at a time.

I think it’s important to note that was never a goal or milestone. It is just a result of daily push-back.

It’s funny trying to transition things that you do obsessively into activities you do when you are feelin' it.

Definitely, there’s an effect that generations of manufactured scarcity has on an individual. The behaviour is kind of like, if I don’t do everything and anything right now, it will be gone tomorrow.

Then if there’s a surplus, no one wants to do anything. It’s interesting how these systems can effect an individual’s behaviour

One real example: where I work, our break room has some basic supplies like coffee, hot chocolate, milk, cream, Gatorade in the summer, etc.

So when we first received the packets of hot chocolate, there was one box of them. It was gone in a day, people hoarded them. Then more boxes were ordered, and more, and more. Then there was a whole closet full of hot chocolate, like 20 boxes. Then no one was interested anymore. We have universal access and a surplus so there’s no hoarding.

The tragedy of the commons will only happen when there’s a perceived scarcity. This can be applied to other parts of life too, like if you have a bit of spare time there pressure to make it productive. Or a pressure to be the best or to be competitive in whichever activity. That sort of perspective is insatiable.

I guess I’m confused by our existence. We could all be comfortable and have more than enough but instead five multi-billionaires have super yachts and the rest of us are supposed to “hustle” or have three jobs . Or like this Air Canada CEO makes 12 million a year and a striking flight attendant makes 35k a year. Also only gets paid for time in the air.

Something fundamental has to change. I started adding “???” To everything I paint now because things have gone so sideways.

Sorta fucks with our collective imagination as well.

Most systems we live under are broken yet most people see them as a given. When it’s all a human invention and we can undo it as well.

Speaking of which I gotta go to work soon!

I heard one summer you did a rooftop campaign. I love walking on Parc/St Joseph tryna' catch a peek of the roof with Jaroe.

Yeah I wanted to paint spots that hadn’t been painted before, so I tried to paint a bunch of stuff like that. Not sure how many I did but it was fun.

Who are some writers that you don’t know personally who’ve influenced you? And who are the writers that you know personally that have influenced you?

There was someone who wrote phrases and signed it -🔲boy, most small town elaborate graffiti something an alienated weirdo metal head would paint. Random SLAYER tags as well and in terms of actual technique I can say seeing ribity throw ups got me to move more in that direction.

I guess anyone I’ve spent enough time painting with has rubbed off. Kind of a long list at this point but yeah anyone who has been a consistent painting partner. There’s a level of trust involved when someone is keeping six for you and a dynamic that has to work.

Did you ever think you’d do graffiti long term? Have you ever thought of quitting?

I never considered stopping, at the same time I never thought I would be doing it this infrequently either.

Interview with Cruel Noise

2025-09-05T15:11:48.000-04:00

Cruel Noise is a weekly punk radio show that is released as a podcast. Produced by John Villegas (who also currently plays in extremely sick Pittsburgh hardcore punk bands DE RODILLAS and PEACE TALKS), each episode consists of sets of new and old hardcore punk and other underground music interspersed with light banter. Though I've only been listening to Cruel Noise for a fraction of it's 361-episode (at time of publishing) run, it's quickly become a highlight of my week AND one of the main ways I learn about and sample new or new-to-me bands that I want to listen to more, tell my friends about, or try to catch live.

Fresh off the chaos of Pittsburgh's notorious Skull Fest, John was kind enough to take the time to answer my questions about the evolution and making of Cruel Noise, finding new music, DIY punk and wanting only the best for our human and animal friends. Queue up a sick record, pour yourself a big glass of water and enjoy The Counterforce's interview with John Villegas.

First of all, how was Skull Fest 2025? Any highlights / favourite bands you saw that people should check out?

Skull Fest was a success, people had fun, bands played, little to no blood was spilled. The majority of my time was spent running around and working but I did get to see some great bands! The stand out sets were LA PREGUNTA, IDEATION, STRESS POSITIONS, THE DARK, FLOWER, and ZORN. A lot of other bands that I saw were as good or better, but I had never seen those particular bands before so they had a greater impact in my human brain. Honorable mention to COMMITMENT from Philly.

How and why did you start making Cruel Noise and what forms has it taken over the years? I’ve heard you mention that it was an on-air radio show at some point, and that there may be some early episodes lost to the sands of time and internet platform decay... how did you land on the podcast format?

Some friends and I did a pirate radio station for a few years until the FCC shut it down. We simulcasted it online near the end, and when the feds told us "no-no" I decided I was going to figure out how to keep doing it. The first 30-60 episodes were on SoundCloud, and at some point Sony bought SC and deleted a bunch of accounts of people who were playing copyrighted music. It was a minor blow to little old me, but I know there were some bigger DJs who lost a lot of mixes they had on there.

At that point I emailed someone from a podcast I listened to called "Rock and/or Roll" and asked him how he got away with playing music he did not have the rights to on Apple Podcasts and he told me that despite their rules and regulations saying "you cannot play other people's music" they actually don't care. So I found a third party website that uploaded the RSS to all the places that I knew distributed podcasts and never looked back. I considered trying to get on one of the local college stations here in Pittsburgh, but at that time of my life I was drunk, reckless and unreliable and knew I would not (and could not) conform to their collegiate values of what radio should be. Plus I am painfully DIY, probably to my own detriment.

Do you have a process for picking music for or making the show? How is the Cruel veggie-sausage made?

I play a lot of my friends' bands, bands I see on tour, and bands whose tours are coming through town as the starting point. I always try to focus on what is new as the bedrock.

BUT, I am also obsessed with compilations of the first waves of punk and hardcore. "Killed By Death," "Bloodstains," old regional comps like "Are We Too Late For The Trend" & "Cleveland Confidential" that are a snapshot of a time and place and often have a band's only recorded song. You will find other themes in there as well, songs whose titles all share a single word and most often songs all released in the same year often times a 10-, 20-, 30-, 40-year anniversary type scenario.

Part of the goal of The Counterforce is to push back on the algorithmically-driven flattening of punk and hardcore (e.g. the shaping of music to be more conducive to success on platforms like Spotify or YouTube) by encouraging human curation – radio shows being a perfect example of that. I’m wondering if this is something you think or care about, or if it’s even part of the motivation for continuing to make the show?

Yes of course! My life was forged by mixtapes and mix CDs. I love the glimpse into someone else's world, a sample of their music taste boiled down into the confines of a media limited by time and/or space. Try as it might, the algorithm does not understand me and cannot predict what it is I want to hear. I know that I cannot do that either, but I hope that out of all the things I throw at the musical wall something sticks and you, the listener, find a new band or bands that you love.

I am obsessed with finding new sounds – tapping my fingers on objects to the annoyance of others, playing my guitar as loud as possible hoping to discover some tone new to me and, most relevant to this, music I have never heard before that piques my interest. That is where my love of digging for the old music really comes in. I mourn the loss of kbdrecords.com which was a seemingly endless resource for great old bands that were mostly forgotten to time. Once I find some great old punk song, I get excited to share it with people. I never liked gatekeeping, mostly because I was the loser who would be on the other end of the situation. It doesn't make sense to bully people because I was bullied, I believe people should be sharing music and art with each other with as little judgement as possible.

I don't use Spotify but have a love/hate relationship with YouTube. I am happy to be some sort of low-level alternative to the corporate music model.

Other than that, what else keeps you motivated to keep making the show?

I really, really love punk, I want everyone else to have a chance to listen to the music that I think is great. Through playing in bands and touring I have seen so many great bands and met a lot of good people and I want to share their music as far and wide as I possibly can. Also doing the podcast helps keep me motivated to listen to newly-released music. I am a nerd who is obsessed with music and I just want to share it with people. There is so much out there that flies under the radar and I hope by cosigning a band, song, label, etc., that you will give them a chance.

When I started listening to the show regularly, the thing that sold me on it was not just the music selection, but also your encouragement to “support the bands by going to see them live, buying their records and telling your friends about them,” which is something you say pretty much every episode. It's a breath of fresh air to hear this, in a time when we are more often prompted to follow or stream bands on various hostile corporate apps to support them. Why do you feel like its important to emphasize that every episode? Has this always been a directive/pseudo-tagline of the show, or did it develop somewhere along the way?

I do not remember when I started saying that but it is in the same spirit as "Now go start your own band!", something that is seemingly salient but also impactful. It probably has something to do with me being old and coming up in a time before the corporate structures got their hands on my version of DIY punk. I legitimately want the best for the bands I play because I think they deserve it and going to see them live, buying their records and telling your friends about them is the most direct, unfuckwithable way I can think of to do that. Cut out the middleman, go straight to the source.

On a recent episode, you played a block of songs about not eating animals and talked a bit about being vegan, wondering why it's not as common of a thing as when you were coming up in punk. I found the way you folded it in with your typical light banter about your life, pets, bands, etc, to be pretty chill and non-judgemental but still impactful. As a person with a platform, how do you relate to talking about what's going on in the world or encouraging making choices that line up with ones ethics or politics? And do you see these choices as an integral part of DIY/punk alongside the music?

No one likes being preached to about the things they do or do not do. Through much trial, tribulation and loss I have found that I cannot fix the things I perceive to be problems in others but can only fix the problems in myself and hope that leading by example can show people another possibility. I quit eating meat when I was 15 or 16, I LOVE animals so much and seeing how they suffered on their way to the plate hurt me so bad that it was a no-brainer to become a vegetarian. Veganism seemed to be the logical next step on my journey. The title of the FLUX OF PINK INDIANS album "Strive To Survive Causing the Least Amount of Suffering Possible" really resonates with me and I think about it often.

A theory I have toyed with as to why punks don't care about veganism or animal rights so much anymore is that:

1. "Karens" have taken veganism and made it "cringe"

2. Western culture and social media have pushed the agenda of "ME," making everyone the star of their own show to the detriment of others.

This is a very broad strokes version of unfinished, probably unprovable idea(s).

I don't want to be preachy. I don't want to be judgmental of people. These are things that I have been trying to tamp down in myself in a more concerted effort since becoming sober in 2019. It is hard to not be an asshole about things you really believe in when you are faced with people who have opposing views. I struggle with it all the time. Personally I think punk, ethics and politics are all inextricably linked BUT I know that it is not reasonable for me to expect everyone else to think the same. To some people it is just a party. I want to be mad at them for not doing what I perceive to be "THE RIGHT THING" but I know I have done the wrong thing a lot and hope they can find their way to it sooner than later.

At the end of the day the podcast is about music, the talking is secondary. I am happy to share my opinion(s), no matter how incomplete or misinformed with anyone who asks for it, but I don't see it as my place to force it down anyone's throat.

Do you have any tips for people who might want to start making a radio show?

I think if someone feels compelled to do a radio show or podcast they should absolutely do it. It is easy and you can do it for cheap or free. There are hundreds of guides on how to do it online, and if there are questions I could answer you can email me.

You can subscribe to Cruel Noise on your podcast app or RSS reader of choice, or visit cruelnoiserecords.com for links to everything.

Interview with Stunk about Graffiti and Punk in St. John's, NL

2025-05-13T20:53:05.000-04:00

Contributed by Slim

Graffiti has been alive in well in St. John's, Newfoundland for over 30 years. It's always been a mix of civilian tags, hip hop murals, punk tags and regular graffiti. Waves of writers come and go, and in the last few years it's gotten grimey and destructive. During trips to the island I started to notice what looked like Bart Simpson's head dissociating, then the crazy punk throw ups joined it, and I met my new friend Stunk. While there's always been people painting streets, this guy has brought a new energy and a new dedication to getting even with the city. I caught up with him over Signal.

Slim: Introduce yourself to The Counterforce

Stunk: I'm Stunk from Hesh mother fuckers or heshers, that's what you see.

What are some things that influence your style?

My influences are punk, hardcore, hardcorepunk, heavy metal, horror movies, death, having to die, mortality, living in a society that is hurling out of control, losing control, impulses to destroy, impulses to self destruct.

How did you discover graffiti? Do you have any early memories?

I had moved to a new house when I was 7. It was a new area for me and near the house there was a big wall. In black spray paint it said "turkey bones and mid sized homes don't trap yourself gotta have a clean sweep." I was baffled by it. I would see it at the playground everyday and it stuck in my head. It's still stuck in my head. In the same area there was a tag in blue spray paint on a pole that said "cool."

As I got into punk, it seemed to me the thing to do was spray paint walls and do bad things. There was a lot of painting of band names around town at the time, we really made a point to do this. I regret spraying on some houses and cars.

I remember later on as a teen seeing Remio up in downtown. I knew Odie, Dr.West, Sois, McTrash they were into graffiti but that was more their thing, they had bags of paint and were into climbing and I thought that was stupid and too much of a risk. Me and my friends fucking hated where we lived, we were in these shit co-op houses near this strip mall. We loved to bother the businesses and they opened this spot Smitties.

Me and some of my buddies sprayed "shitties" on it as the manager drove by. He called the cops and we all ran away. I ran behind a church to avoid the cops and I remember it was covered in tags, I wish I remembered the names. That would have been 2002. I'd say another key influence was the CRASS stencil campaigns, just the idea of such in-your-face radical stuff in this world of advertising culture. I try and walk this line where graffiti is very political and is in me and is important to me.

Would you say graffiti in St.John's has always been linked to punk?

At a certain point in St John's punk everyone went to shows, it's what young people did. We went to the Riverdale Tennis Club or Kaleo's. There were lots of people just looking for a place to drink too. I imagine some graffiti writers of the time attending shows at that time. I didn't really start thinking of graffiti being closely linked to punk.

Do you remember much about the city wide hunt for Dr. West?

I do remember. I knew him, it's a small town and you already know anyone into anything "alternative." At one point I was sleeping on a couch of a house, he lived next door.

I remember when he got raided, it was a really sad thing. That was a different time for graffiti in St. John's. I didn't pay a lot of attention it was more of a thing for some of the people around me.

I've always been around people doing graffiti but I didn't pay attention till more recently.

Tell us a recent tale from rolling around St. John's

Recently a whole block on Livingstone St. had burned down and they built a huge wood fence around the row. I could see five windows on the back of the houses, five perfect boards. I wanted my name on the panels. I pull up to the spot at 1pm. There was already a hole in the perimeter so I went in with a 20ft pole that allows you to attach a spray can to the end. It's got a string you pull that activates the valve. I go in the enclosure and I already see two kids breaking shit. I probably should've taken this as more of a sign the cops would be coming. I say "what's up" and ask "if they've seen any cops" before I start spraying. I'm standing on a dehumidifier and I'm doing my letters real high. In that moment I see the cops roll up. I disassemble my rig and hide my gear. I run but I'm trapped in this perimeter. The fences are 10 feet high and I'm not built to hop that.

But I try and climb the fence, I fall in the dirt and keep falling as I try and hop over. There was a good 5 minutes where anyone across the street would've seen me, half a body draped over the fence. I get my knee up and my bag breaks, my cans go everywhere.

I run across the street where I see this random guy from the neighborhood who raps, I tell him I don't have time to talk cause I'm running from the cops. He's like "oh man come with me" and reveals some trails behind houses that the locals use to walk secretly through the neighborhood.

I go to wait for a ride at Choice's For Youth and buy a large bag of buenos from another guy who's getting some people hyped on Easter with big bags of cheap candy.

My dad sent me a pic of a sick hollow you did at Rawlins cross. Do regular people know about Stunk?

I think some prole know about Stunk. I try not to think about that much, I've got to do what I've got to do. Some pages for concerned citizens pop up online and I see it mentioned but never with anything serious attached.

Someone said they felt bad for me because that's what I call myself. They said "what's the deal with all these names I see on things, I feel bad for stunk that's such a sad name"

What gives you energy. Is there an ideology behind your action?

NAS has a song, "Second Childhood," I've always loved that song. I believed what he was saying in the song for a while. Now I'm a middle-aged person and the song is a banger, but I see the problems in it. There is no path that we have to follow, there's an assumption that we will 'arrive' and if we go back we're in our second childhood and that's some winner loser capitalist bullshit. Quoting punk as a pressure release valve, like someone crying and they keep thinking about something more sad and they cry longer till they feel a change in state, I'm looking for that change in state because it's unbearable to be in my mind sometimes, not that I'm really special in any way, that's just how it is for me.

I needed to stop drinking, so I went all out. I was living rent free which was a blessing but by the end I had no running water. Drinking a lot and doing pills, living in a dark state.

I had an old van I got from my mom's deceased boyfriend, I started hitting the highways and racking. I was mad at the world and it made me feel good to put a mark on it. I don't like that we don't have a say in advertising, some fucking ad on a bus stop, no one asked me about that! I've had people attack me for painting. This one lady ran up on me and started kicking me in the ass!! I try and stay safe in this horrible world. I think graffiti is bad for me and can bring out the worst in me sometimes. It's not all skulls, bones, fun and games. I don't know why I do it but there's always days I need to go do it. I guess I'm in my second childhood.

I see nothing but bad changes in St John's. Rent is unaffordable. A house would be $800, now those places are split into 2-3 places and good luck getting one of those for $800. There's a lot of visible desperation like anywhere else. A lot of people using hard drugs, which wasn't a reality when I lived here back in the 2010's. I feel really strongly about harm reduction as someone who's recovered from addiction. I've experienced those lows. I feel strongly about people being judged for an addiction, or having no place to live.

I'm more comfortable around people who've had struggles. A lot of my day is smoking weed on a bench and I realized how many people needed a pipe, push stick, new needle. I started carrying all that, passing out kits regularly. Meeting lots of solid people in a bad spot, hearing dehumanizing terms, people being called "it" or "things," those people just fear for their property. I want people to feel seen and I hope I've helped them in some small way.

I don't know where the city is going. They're gonna push the poor further and further out. Living in downtown has turned into some kind of Montreal Old Port. It makes me want to paint harder. The tourists need to know it's not puffins and jelly bean houses, there's some real shit going on.

I do count myself lucky. Since coming back to the city I've found myself surrounded by more like-minded people, but the truth is there is an isolation we all feel living here.

Any shout outs or final thoughts?

Thank you Mom, Pepa, Phil, Kyle, Katie, the crew, Cirel, Croe, Nelson, Joyce, all heshers of the future. Shout out to everyone here holding it down here, we got power don't forget it. I've been doing lots of BLACK SABBATH lines on my shit, I'm happy Ozzy's still alive. Fuck community policing and fuck prisons. I love you sweet leaf.

Interview with Dajjeh (Beirut)

2025-04-17T20:52:13.000-04:00

Ghas Attack: Tell us about Dajjeh. First off what does ضجة mean? What was the inspiration behind its conception?

Dajjeh is a collective of seven people putting on punk and hardcore shows in Beirut for a little over a year. ‘Dajjeh’ means loud noise, and usually carries a negative connotation of something disturbing. It started in February 2024 in response to a feeling that there weren’t spaces for us to come together, scream along to the music we love, and release our frustration together. If there aren’t punk shows around you, you gotta make your own, whether they’re good or bad and whether people come or not. So we took the plunge and, thankfully, they’ve been pretty good, too. We hope everyone reading this, in Lebanon, in the rest of the Arab world, and around the globe, starts organizing the shows they wanna see.

GA: Talk to us about the punk scene in Beirut / Lebanon and how it fits into the underground movements there.

A punk scene formed in Beirut in 2005, growing and peaking around 2012 or 2014 or so. The scene got quieter for a while as a result of economic crises, revolts, musicians going other directions, etc. Since we’ve been doing Dajjeh, some of the older bands are coming back and there’s a new crop of exciting bands of all ages. We always remember our debt to the pioneers who came before us, and play their music at our shows. Some people from the original scene are playing at Dajjeh and we hope more and more of them do.

In general, in terms of the underground scene as a whole in Lebanon, punk was always smaller than metal, rap, and noise, and that’s definitely still true. There’s some solidarity across the underground scenes, as all of them are pretty marginal compared to pop and Arabic music. And we love our friends in metal and noise; and are hoping to build more bridges with rap as time goes on.

GA:  What does the future hold for Dajjeh? Tell us more about what you have planned for 2025 and beyond.

As a collective, our hope for the future is to keep doing this, doing it better and better, and learning as we go. We also wanna see the punk scene grow in as many directions as it can. Dajjeh is not the punk scene, it’s just one event organized by one group of people. We wanna see everyone starting their own bands, writing their own songs, and playing them all the time, everywhere, with us and without us. That’s the dream, and it's happening.

If we ever got to a point where we could host touring acts from outside Lebanon, that would be incredible, as there are so many amazing punk bands that would find a great crowd here. A lot of them even sing in Arabic, which is a plus. But we’re keeping things non-commercial and airfare isn’t getting any cheaper so we’ll see.

GA:  What are some of the challenges you face as a collective and how do you plan on surpassing them?

Obviously, there was a massive war and that made us stop for several months. The war isn’t really over, but we’re putting on shows again. Other than that, the biggest problem in Lebanon, and not just for us, is that gear and space is expensive. You wouldn’t believe how much drum kits, bass amps, etc. cost here, whether in the brand new expensive import market, or in the really small second-hand market. Because most bands don’t have their own gear, we’re building a backline for our collective. It’s slow going, piece by piece, and we benefit enormously from the generosity and solidarity of people in our community, but it’s been a challenge. Next up is space—most folks can’t practice in their apartments and rehearsal spaces and venues are expensive. We’re working on finding alternative spaces where bands can practice without getting in trouble with the neighbors but Beirut’s a crowded city—there are few truly isolated spaces, and we don’t have a budget to rent them. But we’ve made it this far—we’re gonna keep going.

A list of bands booked by Dajjeh (so far):

AS_FELT
CHRONIC TENSION
GIDDEEE
JOWAN TOHANNI
KARAM SAAD
MOISTY BISCUITS AND THE BROKEN BISCUIT
OPEN ROAD
RED TERROR
SPLIT SUBJECT
TA2REEBAN
YABA JUICE

DUREX Interview

2025-03-17T19:47:00.000-04:00

Montreal's DUREX is Alex (vocals), Kelly (drums), Hannah (bass) and Felix (guitar). They just released their second tape "SHAME". Interview contributed by DJ Buckingham Palace.

Q1: To start, I’d like to give some props to Kelly who came through with an excellent engineering and mix-job from behind the drum kit on this new tape! It would seem that you guys are well capable of handling pretty much any and all band things internally from recording, to artwork, to merch, and all the rest. However, I can’t help but notice one unfamiliar name in the SHAME credits! Who is Papa Boom Bam Sam and how did your working relationship form? Should we attribute DUREX’s masterful balance of cutting clarity and searing noise to the audio mastering of Mr. Papa?

Alex: Kelly's daddio.

Kelly: Papa of boom bam sam obviously.

Hannah: Father of kellington.

Q2: You guys started back in 2023, right? How did the band come together?

K: I don’t remember the brunch maybe I wasn’t there – but Felix asked me outside of a show if I wanted to drum in a new project a little after they moved here. Originally it was me, Felix and two other people it didn’t work out with for scheduling reasons. We flailed for a bit but got Alex on bass, then Hannah on vocals. I didn’t really know Hannah yet which is probably why I wasn’t invited to brunch.

Felix: I approached Kelly first cuz I needed a drummer, this would’ve been like, spring / summer 2022? I had moved to Montreal at the end of 2021 and hadn’t been doing much rocking in Ottawa previously cuz of Covid. I was anxious to start playing in bands again ASAP. I think Kelly was at this brunch – some spot in the old port I think – but I also remember telling Hannah they would be good at doing vocals in a hardcore band before that.

H: They asked me to join over brunch, it was very posh. They told me their name was Durex and I was like "LOL okay."

Q3: Are there any specific bands or styles that inspired you guys in the beginning and have there been new additions and/or crossed out names on that list?

A: KISS and THE BEATLES

F: Originally I really wanted to imitate fast European-style hardcore with a good mix of d-beat and tupa tupa parts like RIISTETYT, KAAOS, WRETCHED, etc. All mostly have relatively clean / not totally blown out guitars too, which I dig. Of course all the Swedish stuff and the bands that rip that off are big for me. KREMLIN and ASILE are two Canadian bands who had really excellent takes on that style and I go to a lot when I’m writing tunes. I think we’ve just dialed into the style I mentioned more as time has gone on.

Q4: Your “press” photo on bandcamp shows the four of you with the lonesome remains of Prince Edward Island’s defunct Science & Adventure theme park almost 40 kilometers from town. I gather that the group doesn’t mind making a detour for the sake of recreation between road shows. What makes for an ideal sightseeing destination when there’s time to kill on tour? Any favourites from the past?

A: I can’t remember if we saw it from the road and had to stop by or if we found it on google maps but the groundskeepers did not like us exploring the space shuttle … I have a general knack for seeing oversized or miniature objects – however, my favourite stop we’ve done on tour as a band was going to Niagara Falls and chilling on Clifton Hill… although, we did not hit the upside down house – another personal favourite. Notably, Biff took us on an EPIC tour of Buffalo and exploring the abandoned train station was awesome as well.

K: We were definitely just driving and saw the shuttle and were like "what the fuck is that." As the resident party pooper/schedule keeper I’m often shutting down detours and stops in favour of being on time and not missing soundcheck. It’s a balance.

F: Buffalo central terminal ruled. Waterfronts are a must – PEI ruled for that.

H: I love an abandoned building or somewhere very high up. Hard to go wrong with that.

Q5: On the topic of exploration on tour; what are your tips on uncovering the best / oddest / rarest geographic gems on the road? How often does the band stumble upon something cool by accident?

A: I mean we are two drivers in the band and we don’t like to drive for long amounts of time, so scheduling in time to stop is important. Doing your research or just asking people can help with finding fun stops.

F: Just walking in a random direction away from the venue between soundcheck and doors can be fruitful.

H: Asking people who live in the area for tips on where to stop has been hands down the most guaranteed good time.

Q6: On the flip, what are some niche activities you would suggest to an out-of-town band in your hometown of Montréal?

K: Sending people up the mountain is always a good bet. If it's a longer visit, I’d bring people to the estacade. Historically I’d always want to bring people to Fattal because it’s an important experience.

F: Always suggest good restaurants – ideally that buddies are working at.

Q7: Is it better to have a bad set at home or on the road? Or do you guys prefer not to perform poorly at all?

K: We had a rough set in Toronto last weekend but Felix made up for it by tackling Alex to the ground and that’s mostly what the people remember. And I think there’s a good lesson there? I think?

Q8: SHAME is the kind of record title that’s so immediately effective it could function as a single-word summary. Does that title indicate a through-line? Is SHAME a noun or a verb or both in the case of this project?

A: Both. This is music for perverts.

Q9: In contrast, SHAME also bears a handful of pretty benign song titles in its track listing with oddball headscratchers like "cow/boy," "jack offman," "coldplay," and "boymode." At least a couple of these feel like they could have derived from inside jokes. How far does the humour extend from titles to lyricism if at all?

A: I think "jack offman" might be the only funny song lyrically but it’s also like about some guy jacking off, which sometimes is deeply unfunny (see Louis C.K.). "Chemical 2.0" was also a funny one about goblins and piss but we never re recorded and the song has hit the graveyard.

K: I’m pretty sure half the titles happen before the lyrics are written. Maybe we’ve gotten away from that somewhat but maybe all the songs on the first demo were “named” before the lyrics existed. But I’m not a lyrics guy.

H: I'd say on average the titles are often more playful than the actual songs… Some of the titles have nothing to do with the actual lyrics, we just like the way the word sounds.

Q10: I guess this is a bit of a leading question, but are the jokey or not-so-serious titles a way to make songs with heavier lyrics more approachable on the surface?

A: Yeah: most of the songs (at least the ones I’ve written) are coming from a pretty painful place. I would hope people are not trying to make sense of what I’m saying. Maybe I'll get more cryptic and feel comfortable releasing them but for now just silly titles.

Q11: It’s good to be well-humoured as a band. Do you guys like to laugh and smile?

A: :0)

F: I like to laugh – I like to have fun too.

H: We love to laugh, live and love 👉🏽👈🏽

Q12: I understand that Hannah was the original singer of the band before swapping roles with former bassman and current vocalist Alex. What caused the switch up and how did that period of transition / adjustment play out?

K: The first show where Hannah realized they probably couldn’t do vocals was SOTO Fest two years ago, we were supposed to be playing the park show. And rather than not play, or play without a vocalist (boring), we decided to karaoke our songs. Which, because no one really knew our songs anyway, meant a bunch of our friends ad-libbed lyrics. It was extremely fun and cute. Highly recommend if you ever find yourself in this situation, especially if that situation is also in the park.

H: I broke my voice from improper yelling technique and working at a call centre at the same time. I got something called muscle tension dysphonia. It hurt to talk for about 8 months so I barely talked. Anyways no one knew how long it would go on for and we had tours and shows planned so we had to come up with a solution fast. I didn't want to be the reason we cancel everything so originally Alex being the vocalist was a temporary solution. But as time went on and my voice still wasn't 100% we decided it’d be best to make it a permanent switch, for consistency.

Q13: Does Hannah reserve any involvement in lyric writing as the OG wordsmith? Are the words something you guys talk about as a group?

A: I kinda write the songs on the spot at jam and then doctor them to be better. I generally just ask everyone if it sounds OK but I don’t think they can really hear me. Anyone could chime in if they wanted to.

H: For lyrics we kind of reserve all the word power to the vocalist, so that's all Alex now. For titles to EPs and demos we all brainstorm together.

Q14: Who’s going to take over the role of vocalist next?

F: You – The Reader of The Counterforce.

Q15: Would you / have you considered incorporating the actual Durex brand logo on your merch or would that be some kind of sin? I think it’d be funny.

A: I have tried to suggest it. We have joked about including their slogans “love your way." Personally I think “Love. Sex. Durex” is kind of unhinged.

K: I refuse to dress up as a condom.

H: I think we should all dress up like condoms. We should also give away Durex condoms at shows. I think it'd be awesome

Q16: I’m pretty into the innocuous band name trend in punk right now. Shit like LYSOL and KLEENER. I not only count DUREX in this class of bands, but I also think it’s like, the best band name I’ve ever heard. I recall Felix mentioning something about the name being a point of heated disagreement early on. What was up with that?

A: I thought it was really good because it’s hard and sexy.

K: When Felix first suggested the name, it was before Alex and Hannah joined, and the members then were NOT enthusiastic. As I remember, Alex was down right away though.

F: I had been saving it for a while. I thought it sounded kind of like that band MATRIX – not that the tunes ended up being like that, but it made me laugh and it just sounded like a dumb hardcore band.

Q17: What’s everyone’s favourite riff or musical moment on SHAME?

F: I think Knife is my favourite track.

H: The breakdown in diver is my fav.

Q18: What are your least favourite DUREX songs and why?

A: Lasso and we don’t play it anymore.

K: There are a few on the demo that fall flat for me now, we were still figuring out what the vibe was though so that makes sense. We’ve been pushing faster and meaner.

Q19: If you could organize a dream show consisting of two Montréal locals, two Ontario bands (since I know three fourths of you are from Ford Nation) and one out-of-town band from anywhere on the planet, what would that be and at which venue would it go down?

A: SIYAHKAL, Us?, FAZE and bring FERAL back from the grave (5 bands is too many)

F: Are we one of the Montreal bands? Let’s say us, BRAN VAN 3000, any band from Ontario that Emily Hohenadel plays in right now, BARROW WIGHT (Tolkien themed black metal from Ottawa) and IRON MAIDEN.

Q20: Are there any trends in punk right now that you love, hate, or hate to love?

K: I’ve been really here for fast, a couple tasteful breakdowns if you want. But the releases that have really grabbed me recently are silly breakneck fast hardcore punk.

F: I’m hoping to see more fake British accents – HOMEFRONT sort of does this. And a return of drunk punx.

H: I love a gimmick. Costumes. Maybe an unpopular opinion…

Q21: Any future plans?

A: West coast? North East US? Asia 2026……………………………. ?

K: We’re playing Lawnya Vanya in Newfoundland in June and I’m excited to either see icebergs or whales.

F: Full length release in the works.

Listen to DUREX's newest tape SHAME here: https://durex.bandcamp.com/album/shame-2

SHAME, by DUREX

8 track album

DUREXDUREX

PORTAL TOMB Interview

2025-03-12T21:36:33.000-04:00

If you follow what's new in contemprary crust, you will have heard of Montreal's PORTAL TOMB and their Last Frost Demo released on Sore Mind last year. I started a Signal group with Aíne and Ava to chat about the band.

Photos by Slim.

Martin Force: Who is in PORTAL TOMB and what were everyone's previous bands?

Aíne: PORTAL TOMB is: Aíne (guitar, vocals), Ava (Bass), Camil (Guitar), and Alys (Drums).

Alys (drums) has played in MOTORWOLF, SPORUS, MANDRAGORA, SHIBBOLETH, DISPHORIA, MST, DOMESTICATED, MORIBUND, VEIN SPLITTER, NIL CVLT DEATH GANG to give the shortlist. I've played previously in SPORUS, INFANTILE DISSENTION, NOTACOST, THERMOKARST, KNACKER'S YARD, and ATTRITION – maybe that's it? My memory is failing as I descend into my twilight years... I played in THE FACTORY SMOKE to name another Trad folk band. I've done some work with Vancouver's NORILLAG, although I'm not a member.

For Ava and Camil (guitar), this is their first fully fleshed out project, though I believe Ava is working on a few things behind the scenes.

MF: How did the band start? You and Alys both played together in SPORUS and moved here? Were you already planning to start something?

Aíne: Alys and I have known each other for years, both of us coming from Victoria, BC. We played together for years in SPORUS (now based in Vancouver). Ava and Camil come from Brooklyn, NY and Sofia, Bulgaria respectively. PORTAL TOMB was initially something I had planned as a recording project for many years, but came to fruition instead as a full band after I met Ava here in Montreal and started plotting a Stenchcore/Crust project together. I knew Alys was the one to play drums when things started coming together in the writing process, largely because she's a way better drummer than me haha. It's rare to find someone with both her technical skill and the energy and style for punk on the drums. I met Camil through work, and they learned everything we had worked on for almost a year in about 30 minutes, so the choice for second guitar was obvious.

Ava: Aíne wanted to do PORTAL TOMB as a solo project but I was like if you need help let me know hehe and then Aíne taught me the riffs and we went from there. Aíne took me under their wing / a leap of faith with me cause I had only really been playing bass in my room for a couple years and never saw myself playing in a band for some reason. But we had really similar music tastes and they took a chance on me and now we are besties and have awesome band with Alys and Camil.

MF: How did you find Camil?

Aíne: Camil was my metalhead coworker who recognized all my band shirts until I was like "I bet you play the guitar. I bet you play the guitar better than me, you should join my Crust band." And convinced them by saying it'll be "kind of like BOLT THROWER" (lying). Also a leftist metalhead. Hired.

MF: Is it true that you made Camil wear a bullet belt?

Ava: Yes.
Aíne: Debatable.
Ava: And told him no more vans. It's true.
Aíne: Yeah that definitely happened.

MF: How you define PORTAL TOMB? Just pure stenchcore?

Aíne: I think of PORTAL TOMB as Stenchcore/Crust. I'm sure the details are irrelevant, but to say Stenchcore to me distinguishes it somewhat from the more limited genre that Crust has in some ways become. When I think of Stenchcore I think of a more experimental, raw, and extreme sound that shows more of it's Anarcho-Punk, Metal, and Post-Punk roots. It's all Crust in the end.

Ava: We like da British stuffs.

MF: Is Portal Tomb a queer band? A band with queers in it? How do you bring your respective queer identities to playing crust?

Aíne: CRUST IS GAY WHAT CAN WE DO.

Ava: We gay.

MF: What was the process like for writing and recording the Last Frost Demo?

Aíne: Excruciating.

Some riffs I had for years, or had many variations of for years, and some were written more recently to build context for the songs. Ava and I poured over arrangements for many months while we worked out the general direction of things, and then we started putting things together with me swapping between guitar and drums.

When Alys joined the band, she took the drums to a place I couldn't have personally and I got to focus on guitar and we tweaked the arrangements for a while together, and when Camil came in we had the opportunity to add some harmonies and play the tracks endlessly until they felt right. For recording, it was all DIY at Ham space using odds and ends I packed here from the West coast and whatever we could find. The drums were recorded in 4 tracks, no tom mics, and a mono tape recorder in the room buried in the mix somewhere.

The mix took a lifetime with pretty limited gear and some pretty sloppy recording work on my part. In the end I think we more or less captured the sound we were aiming for, and Cody Baresich at Circle A Studios did a perfect job translating that with mastering for the tape/digital release. I would never finish anything without his help, let alone know how to hold a microphone in the first place. Long live Cody.

MF: There's a new recording coming out soon. Was the process for that smoother? How will it be released?

Aíne: At the moment we're finishing editing our next release to send to Circle A Studios for mixing and mastering. I think I can speak for everyone in saying this recording was significantly more excruciating. Endless technical difficulties and broken gear, a dead computer, and more suffering in general. It's DIY once again, but I think in the end we pushed through to a stronger recording – and one that's more representative of where the band is at now. The track/tracks are for a short and nasty split with our dear friends, Vancouver's EXTENSIVE SLAUGHTER to be released as a 7" on Archaic Records and tape on Montreal's Sore Mind.

MF: Beyond the new release, what are upcoming live shows or tour plans you all are excited about?

Aíne: We'll be playing SCORCHED EARTH in Vancouver with DEVIATED INSTINCT, STORMCROW, and East coast crust legends CONTAGIUM in June, among many other insane crust acts, and a day before that in Victoria with HEDONIST and STREET GLOVES. We'll also be at A Varning From Montreal again in the fall. Not much for tour plans, but we'll be playing some sneaky dates in the eastern states this summer. Boston/New York/Philly.

Ava: I wanna play Mexico with PORTAL TOMB.

MF: What other current or in-the-works side projects you want to tell us about?

Ava: I’m working on vocals with a project. That’s all I can disclose because it’s still sort of up in air if we will release anything – depends how bad I suck.

Aíne: I play a fair bit of traditional Celtic folk music when I have the time, but no other bands at the moment. As for Alys, as far as I know she's a current member of MOTORWOLF, MANDRAGORA, and NIL CVLT.

MF: Is crust back? Did it ever leave? What are some current bands you think are doing crust right or that get you excited about crust?

Aíne: I think Crust tends to persist regardless of who's paying attention. It does seem like interest comes and goes, and as far as listenership/a general scene I think we're seeing another wave of revival – a resurgence in interest around the old school sound. My uneducated opinion is that as things get stale in the punk trends, people find renewed inspiration by looking back to the classic bands who approached things with a different ethos and paved the way. Bands that didn't have to navigate the type of commodification we see in what looks now more like a market relationship with "punk characteristics."

Some current bands I find inspiring off the top of my head are FATUM, CANCER SPREADING, LIFE, INSTINCT OF SURVIVAL. Lots of good stuff out of New York at the moment like FLOWER, LOVE AND COMPASSION, MMI, the short lived WITNESS. Vancouver's EXTENSIVE SLAUGHTER, some solid US acts like ALEMENT, AXEFEAR, SAVAGE PLEASURE. There are many more, and classics who won't quit like DEVIATED INSTINCT, and dear Jesus CONTAGIUM is back baby!! BLACK DOG is incredible and although they're no longer playing, ZYGOME is a massive influence for me. I swear I'm not trying to steal their riffs... Locally, WARKRUSHER and A.T.E.R. are keeping it very real.

Ava: My list is: LOVE AND COMPASSION, WITNESS (RIP), ALEMENT, SAVAGE PLEASURE, SPORUS, TERMINAL FILTH. I’m not as big of a fan of the war-metal leaning crust cause I think it gets stale and sort of misses the point: the somber or nihilistic atmosphere a lot of great old crust captures. CONTAGIUM is incredible one of the best crust projects of late I’ve heard – Aíne put me onto them cause I had no idea about them.

MF: What do you all think about the current state of punk in general? Is there too much Instagram and Spotify? I feel like this is less of a problem in the crust sub-genre but there are still crust Instagram accounts and all that. How bad is it and what can we do?

Ava: Prioritize bands that don’t feed into it. It’s tricky because there’s striking a balance as people who put a lot of time into their music need to find ways to feed themselves but good punk music is antithetical to money making and forms of capitalization . Spotify doesn’t make you any money/is exploitative which is part of the issue but it can help find listeners who aren’t tapped into DIY... but I personally don’t want to put PORTAL TOMB on Spotify. I’m not sure if YouTube is necessarily better (because Google) but I think accounts that serve as like digital distros sort of like reposting punk stuff they like for more people to see is good? But I don’t know how to understand the matrix. Bandcamp seems like the most ethical way to digitally access stuff to me.

Aíne: Spotify can lick my asshole and Instagram is an ideological hellworld. Those things have nothing to do with punk in my opinion, and while I understand their utility in promotion, fuck all of that. There's no ethical consumption under capitalism, but the problem with these technologies not only in their effect on art, but their role in the military industrial complex cannot be understated. I think the current state of punk is rife with contradiction. In some ways punk appears more alive than it has been in a long time, in other ways it can feel more empty and disingenuous than ever. I think it's probably what we make of it. I think if punk really needs Spotify or Instagram to survive, it's already dead.

Ava: There’s a lot of interest in crust from my age group but a lot of it seems fashion focused / crust pants-centric as opposed to putting most energy into creating interesting music. Seems like a lot of copy / paste with the aesthetics and run of the mill musical regurgitation.

But it’s great that the “scene” is more active and so many people come support. I think people my age can get caught up in this punk Instagram clout and conforming to what they think is cool on the internet. Maybe they put too much focus on things like fashion or self presentation above making music and embodying the values behind the aesthetic. I think it’s because we are all so young and many of us former misfits and having crust is a way to “fit in” and find others like us when we are all trying to decide who/how/what we want to be.

Tons of kids my age are also learning their instruments to be in bands which is great. I just got lucky to be taken under Aíne’s wing otherwise I’d probably just be writing stuff in voice memos in my room. I'm really happy to see more people my age interested and committed to it but I think a lot of the focus on aesthetics, self fashioning and presentation over social media is corny. Not to say I don’t think about my crust pants a lot. But it’s not all about studding and acquiring every bootleg tee under the sun.

Regarding Spotify and Instagram, they don’t need those things. But coming from my perspective as Gen Z they have, for better or for worse, gotten a lot more people to “tune in” so they can “tune out.” My demographic grew up in a totally digital age. And a lot of the crust resurgence does ultimately stem from social media. And then the real ones focus on showing up to shows and making shit. It was a gateway.

For me it was all through YouTube. I watched Decline of Western Civilization when I was 11 (it was free on YouTube) and then everything went from there. I had already been listening to goth/post punk because I had a childhood friend who’s dad was really into it and he showed me stuff.

And then I just started finding more shit through the algorithm. Getting into punk has made me focus on connecting IRL but it my path into it came from the digital realm. My demographic has a lot of toxic individualism perpetuated through social media and a consequence of how capitalism has progressed which has lead to social isolation and deprivation of real life experiences. Punk saved me from that and made me be active in my own life outside of a screen and my bedroom

MF: What makes good crust pants?

Ava: Time

Aíne: There's a (Japanese?) zine on how to make crust pants, and it's a 10/10 read. Extremely funny and everything you need to know

MF: Anything I missed that you want to shout out?

Aíne: The State and Capital are a social relationship and must be rooted out firstly from our minds. THERE'S NO AUTHORITY BUT YOURSELF, OBJECT, REFUSE, AND REJECT ABUSE!

Listen to the Last Frost Demo here: https://portaltomb.bandcamp.com/album/last-frost-demo

First press on Sore Mind and second press on Filth Holocaust are sold out!

LAST FROST (Demo), by Portal Tomb

3 track album

Portal TombPortal Tomb

Contact PORTAL TOMB by e-mail: portaltomb @ gmail.com

INTERVIEW with Wargasm Records (Istanbul)

2025-02-04T11:22:31.000-05:00

Ghas of A World Divided bring us this interview with Charged Can, founder of Wargasm Records/Fest based in Istanbul.

Ghas: Hey Can! Tell us about your current projects, I know you’ve been busy!

Charged Can: Hi Ghas, DIE IN VAIN and REASON WHY, my two sibling bands! Happy to involve with those bands because we're doing our favorite two era of punk rock.

DIE IN VAIN live

G: I saw that you have been touring across Europe in the last few weeks. Can you tell us about that?

CC: Yes! We were on tour with DIE IN VAIN, we had total blast. It was covering Novi Sad, Berlin, Lübeck, Copenhagen and Goteburg. We played at To Be Punk Fest in Novi Sad and it was the original idea to start touring. All the hospitality was second to none.

G: Ive been to a few Wargasm fests and loved it. Let’s talk about the Istanbul punk scene and and the importance of having such a yearly festival?

CC: İstanbul punk scene could be the most non-reliable one on the whole planet. Always have big up and downs, dramas and such a horrible people around. We're always grateful to work with decent bands and people. That's why we're motivated somehow. Putting a festival like this, is a important part of it to gather all the punks, skins and weirdos at least once a year to catch their favorite acts.

G: What are some of the challenging aspects of being a punk in Istanbul vs Europe?

CC: Dealing with the people is the biggest challenge. It's hard to count on everyone even they want to participate to the scene. We expect solidarity and we don't want abusers, greedy people who don't really understand what's going on. Rising of the social media effects some around in a bad way. Some want fame, money, want to be on the screen. We've a thick red line that divide the bands that we don't want to deal with. That's why it's always challenging when we expect from others to be in DIY aspect

G: Tell us about what is coming up in 2025 in Istanbul in terms of shows or other projects

CC: The next Wargasm Fest will take a place at Karga as usual and it will be on November 7th-8th 2025. We have only one confirmed band for now, working for the rest. And we've couple of more shows on the first half of the new year.

Wargasm Records

𝐃𝐈𝐘 𝐓𝐮𝐫𝐤𝐢𝐬𝐡 𝐏𝐮𝐧𝐤 𝐁𝐨𝐨𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐂𝐨𝐥𝐥𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞 & 𝐋𝐚𝐛𝐞𝐥 𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝟐𝟎𝟎𝟖 𝐔𝐩𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐒𝐡𝐨𝐰𝐬: Wargasm Fest 2025, 7-8 Nov. @KargART

Wargasm Records

JETSAM Interview

2025-01-11T16:20:10.000-05:00

JETSAM are a drum + bass + vocals powerviolence three-piece from Montreal. In the few short years they've been active, JETSAM have played shows in nearly every corner of the local scene. Recently, they went on their first small tours out of the Toronto-Montreal-Quebec City corridor, and if you haven't heard of them already I expect you will soon. Jack (vocals, they/them) and Neon (bass, she/her) answered my questions by e-mail in January 2025.

Martin Force: What is the story of JETSAM? How did the band start? What was the goal? What is the mission statement of the band? Where did the name JETSAM come from?

Jack: Neon and I were both taking drum lessons from a friend and whenever we were on our way to lessons, we'd trade music back and forth that we liked the drums in. At some point I played her a CLOUD RAT song and we started talking about how we wanted to start a powerviolence band. Maybe a week or so later, we were picking up some drums from Neon's friend Wawa (who works at a place that picks up and repurposes garbage) and Neon mentioned this idea to him, and he was like "rad wanna jam right now?" So we went to our jam space and within the next hour, we'd written our first song (trigger discipline), and then over the next three weeks, we wrote three more songs (excoriate, sine spe recuperandi, and clayborne). At that point all that was left was to start playing shows.

Neon: I just wanted to be able to play in a band and not be the vocalist. I wanted to play really heavy and fast bass without a guitar in sight. High frequencies and treble sounds have always really upset my ears / brain, even as a kid before I could identify the cause of the discomfort. I'm just glad the sound I wanted for myself also ended up resonating with others! Our drum teacher, Sarah, was the drummer in one of my previous bands. She was going to drum in this new idea for a project but ended up having to move out of town. Wawa appeared back into my life out of nowhere and we immediately bonded as a trio.

J: If there was ever a goal for the project, it was just for us to play in a band together, and for me to get to actually play in a band—I'd dabbled in a couple other projects but nothing that really felt like 'mine.' I guess the other goals were to release a full-length record (because Neon had never done that before) and go on tour in Europe, both of which are still in the works.

The name "JETSAM" actually just came from a lyric in the song sine spe recuperandi ("where the waves give and take like so much flotsam and jetsam"), which is something I'd written a long time ago about an abusive relationship I experienced. We were casting around for a band name and Neon picked that out and it just stuck. We both felt like the idea that there are things you have to throw overboard so that the ship doesn't sink really worked for us.

N: There's a pretty obvious analogy with the trans experience there—whether the things left behind end up being family, friends, jobs, or anyone who refuses to give us the baseline dignity we all deserve.

MF: This summer you did some small touring in the USA which was the furthest the band has traveled so far. Where did you go, who did you play with and what were the shows like? What are your highlights of the past summer/year? How was the experience of touring for you all?

J: We played in Syracuse (at Lost Horizon with FED ASH, VOID EMPEROR, and AMOK) and Rochester (at Psychic Garden with FENTANYL TAP WATER) with our friends in SUNROT, and then in Buffalo with HIRS (at Amy's Place with HIRS, ALL MAINE POINTS, MUDDLE, FOREST FIRE). All of the shows were good but Psychic Garden was an extremely cool DIY venue with the raddest sound person in a big old warehouse with a wall of old TV screens behind us while we performed. And Amy's Place just all-around rules, plus that show was in the middle of Pride and it was packed with trans people, and there was a community org doing free 15-minute HIV testing outside the venue.

For me, those out-of-town shows were the highlight of my summer. I love going places and seeing things from a different perspective, and we met some incredibly rad people who are still our friends. It's such an honour to roll up to a city and have people be excited you're there, and it's also an honour to get introduced to new people in this way. We also had a very sweet time at this music gear store in Rochester where the person helping us gave us fudgesicles.

We love touring! We wanna do it more! It's just hard because it is not feasible for bands from so-called Canada to cross into the states—touring visas are incredibly expensive—and then going anywhere else requires flying, which is expensive. We are scheming some things though.

MF: OK, how many drummers have you been through so far? Four? Which drummer was your favorite (kidding)? Last I heard, you are without a permanent drummer after an amicable parting with Marcie. Without jinxing anything in the works, what are you hopes or plans for the drummer slot going forward?

J: We have had two full-time drummers and now three part-time drummers– Wawa who's now playing in OCIOSA, and then Ty from FEED and LEASH AGGRESSION was filling in for us for a bit, then Marcy, who is still killing it in TACHYON and as DJ W1K1L34K5, then Gab from BRUE and APRÈS L'ASPHALTE (who will still drum for us sometimes), and Evelyn from PINKSNAIL and BRUE. We would love for Gab or Evelyn to become our forever drummer but they are both in so many other rad projects. We love all our drummers equally!

N: The experience with all of them has been very sweet in different ways. I think the worry is always to not lose what made the band click in the first place. We always want to hang out in a way that feels like friendship and family, and to walk out of band practice smiling and excited about the next one.

MF: With the many drummers, there have already been many different iterations of JETSAM. Have all these lineup changes been frustrating? Or do you feel like it's allowed you to experience the band as more of a family/collective? You are also often joined by Kayla (and other friends) on stage to sing with you, so I am wondering if you ever toy with the idea of leaning more into the "expanded JETSAM family" in the future, or if you are craving more stability in the lineup.

J: We joke all the time that it's just the natural inclination of trans bands to wanna become collectives so that we can feature all our extremely cool and talented friends (à la HIRS). The lineup changes have been frustrating only insofar as we keep having to teach the same songs to new people instead of getting to write new songs, but every person we've worked with has been rad and has brought something special to the band, and I do think it's really cool to have these different personalities and visions pull us in different directions. If we are able to get a full-length out this year, we want it to feature friends from all different scenes—expect noise, rap, other instruments, etc.

Ideally someday we can get away with doing the Jenna thing where we just leave an extra mic on stage and anyone can get up and jump in on vocals. As much as Neon and I are the core of the band and are also a couple, we are not precious about our place in this project: we want it to belong to everyone who loves it.

N: The drawback has been the time spent teaching the song and how it has slowed progress, but sharing this music with super talented drummers from different backgrounds has also brought its good share of positive changes. Things are looking good now with Evelyn as our drummer and Gab as our back-up! Both of them also play together in BRUE and I have been helping with bass on APRÈS L'ASPHALTE so this is all a nice exchange that has already started to feel like a small collective in its own way.

JETSAM / GUMMO Assimilation is Death split

MF: Your last release was the Assimilation is Death split 10" with GUMMO from August 2023. Are you working on a new release? Do you feel like your sonic direction or influences have changed since you started? What's the plan for the next release/recording?

J: Absolutely yes we are working on a new release—two, in fact. One will be a split with Kayla's band OBJECT OF LOATHING, and the second will be a full-length. Our influences change constantly. We both listen to a really wide variety of music (which mostly fall outside of "punk") and most of our songs come out of one of us hearing a riff in something we think is cool and then excitedly bringing it to band practice. That said, I think a general goal we have is to write some more songs that are more like... traditional powerviolence. We've been listening to a lot of like INFEST and CROSSED OUT and MAN IS THE BASTARD (shoutout Eric!!).

N: We've had the songs for a new EP / Split mostly written for a while now, some of which we've been playing live already and a couple more still needing some work. This will be finalized and recorded as soon as we've solidified the current set with Evelyn. Not to jinx it, as you said, but the plan is to get on that right after our Québec to Trois Rivière to Montreal Madhouse little "tour" in a couple of weeks.

MF: After the tours this summer, what are your future tour ambitions? A big long tour? More smaller tours? Europe?

J: EUROPE. And yes, longer tours. Honestly, we'll go wherever will have us as long as we can get there.

N: Europe with GUMMO, absolutely!

MF: Fantasy question: you are booked on a huge North America tour and can bring any current band with you, who do you bring?

J: Hard question!!! And I feel like this could change by the day with me depending on what particular sound I'm into and also who I wanna hang out with for an extended period of time. So today, I say CELL DETH.

N: The easy answer would be OBJECT OF LOATHING. The more complex one would be all of them!

MF: Fantasy question 2: Time travel is possible and you can insert yourself into any package tour or festival of the past. What is it?

J: The package tour part is touching on "never meet your heroes" territory for me and big festivals seem exhausting and overstimulating but... any of the late 80s/early 90s NAPALM DEATH tours where they played with BOLT THROWER or SEPULTURA or FAITH NO MORE. I feel like anyone who knows me was expecting me to say Woodstock 94... but the actual real answer is that I would put us on stage with the KLF and EXTREME NOISE TERROR at the Brits in '92. The current festival that I want to play is Supersonic in Birmingham on any year that THE BUG plays it.

N: Festivals stress me out so much. Too much happening in too little time. You'll mostly find me with the smokers outside trying to feel included despite my sensory overload (too many guitars!). In a way, I'd say any tour where having us there would mean breaking the status quo of 4-5 dudes on stage. Sometime people tell us to chill-out. But we're not chill. We're angry.

MF: How do you feel about the band FLOTSAM AND JETSAM?

J: The thrash band? Call me out but honestly I've never listened to them. I'm glad they went with that instead of "Dredlox."

N: Watching the Wading Through The Darkness music video now and this is sick actually. Also the vocalist is super pretty! It's a bit slow for my taste but there's a time and place for that.

J: Okay, I just spent some time listening to them and while the vocals don't do it for me now, this is very much the kind of thrash I would've been into as a teenager. I do love that 80s and 90s thrash tended to have a lot of socially aware lyrics.

MF: JETSAM plays in Montreal a lot, and you've played a huge variety of shows. My impression is that you get asked to play/do a lot, and say "yes" as much as you can to get your message out there. But what's the strangest, dumbest, or worst offer you've turned down?

J: We do get asked to play a lot! And up until this year, we've said no as little as possible. At first it was because we just wanted to play shows and were kind of surprised that anyone would ask us, and then it was because we just kept getting asked to play cool shows. We've had some cringey requests where someone DMs us on Instagram to say they "really like our vibe" and can we play with their band and then it's just a bunch of shirtless dudes in what seems like a very apolitical punk band, but honestly if they seem fun and we're available, sometimes we'll say yes anyway.

N: We occasionally book shows in places we really want to go, or because we need a stop between two destinations in a tour. But for the very busy schedule we've maintained, it has mostly booked itself. We say yes because people ask us, and people show up, and because every show is new super talented friends we make. And yeah, we haven't had a lot of bad experiences! We politely say we're too busy if it feels too obvious of a diversity hire situation... But we also make a point of not just preaching to the choir. Taking space in a show full of shirtless dudes can feel more like work, but it's pretty important.

J: Hot take, but one of the only things we've consistently turned down is when we get asked by some local promotion company less than a week out from a show to "hop on" a bill with a big touring band, for $250. It isn't the money because that's obviously not the reason we're doing this, it's that these companies themselves are making bank on these big Ticketmaster-sponsored tours and it's frankly an insult to be asked to fill their opener hole as an afterthought, especially if it seems like we'd be the diversity hire on the bill, and ESPECIALLY if we wouldn't otherwise be able to afford to go to the show / if our friends can't afford to go.

MF: Besides your Bandcamp, you also have your music up on a simple faircamp-based website. Besides your Instagram, you also have a band account on Mastodon. [Disclosure for the reader: I operate both of those services!]. Your music isn't on Spotify, or other major streaming/distribution platforms. Can you talk about your politics or reasoning behind these decisions?

J: We are always trying to straddle the line between accessibility and propping up shit that is actively destroying DIY music. You were actually the person that pulled the wool off my eyes about Bandcamp: I remember you being like "I don't put my music there because someday they're gonna sell out or get shut down and then who's gonna own it" and that was way before they got bought out. Our music is on Bandcamp because IMO it is the place where music-minded people go to find stuff, especially independent stuff. But it is also really important for us to make sure it's in other places like faircamp so that it doesn't disappear if Songtradr or whoever decides to fuck us all.

We will not put it on Spotify because we refuse to have our music and the people who wanna listen to it being used to line the pockets of bigots and genocidaires who see music as nothing more than a market. And, I think the people who want to listen to us are not necessarily finding new music on streaming apps.

MF: Lit Corner! You have a song called "Clayborne" which, besides being a shoutout to the friends in CLAYBORNE, is your own Mars triology (by Kim Stanley Robinson)-based track. "New Colossus" opens with a lengthy quote from anarchist Voltairine de Cleyre. I also get a vibe from "Anéantir le Néant" that there is a text or writing referenced (my guess: maybe baedan?). What is the source or reference in that song? Any other references in your lyrics you want to draw attention to?

J: You basically nailed it. anéantir le néant is specifically from "Preliminary Notes on Modes of Reproduction" (2010) by gender mutiny, and both that and villain are heavily inspired by the various essays in What Is Gender Nihilism? (2019) from Contagion Press, especially "My Words to Victor Frankenstein Above the Village of Chamounix: Performing Transgender Rage" (1994) by Susan Stryker. Both songs are about how we see the very concept of gender as incompatible with a just/free world.

The intro to new colossus is Voltairine de Cleyre (quoted by Emma Goldman), and the lyrics draw a lot from Carceral Capitalism (2018) by Jackie Wang, as well as a story that I thought I read there (but maybe it was somewhere) else about an American doctor who saw the incarcerated men at Holmesburg prison in Philadelphia and said "All I saw before me were acres of skin. It was like a farmer seeing a field for the first time." He proceeded to run years of medical and cosmetic testing on them, some of which was horribly painful and disfiguring. The title "new colossus" is the name of the poem Emma Lazarus wrote about the statue of liberty. I guess there are a lot of literary references in our lyrics because I have a lit degree.

N: Music writing for us looks like the three of us sharing thoughts on riffs and vibes and a lyrical theme. Then Jack ends up sat down with 50 tabs open on their browser and 4 physical books opened in front of them, looking for inspiration and references and cheering us whenever the riffs feel good. They're a huge nerd.

MF: What are your favorite books or writers, fiction or non-fiction, that most heavily influence the band? Both in terms of lyrics directly, but also thematically. Writing that brings together for you the themes of queerness, resistance, rage, mental health and brutality?

J: Kim Stanley Robinson is obviously a big influence. There's a moment where his character Frank Chalmers is (IIRC) described as "prone to violence, prone to despair" and as much as he's not the character I wanna identify with, well...

Red Mars, where the character Frank Chalmers first appears

I'm not necessarily organized enough to have specific writers I look to for specific things; it's whatever I'm reading or have in my sight at a given moment. That said, I look to Diane di Prima's poems a lot when I'm trying to figure out how to write lyrics. I look at the lyrics of songs that make me feel something. And I look to whatever my smarter and more organized friends are reading.

N: When I was still a punk baby, I listened to a CRASS album. Now here we are! I'd say I draw more inspiration from my own life, my own grief, my friends, and my community than from any literature. But if I had to name one it would be Emma Goldman.

MF: On a lighter note what fiction are you reading lately?

J: I mostly read fiction! I don't have a great attention span. I've just finished all of the Murderbot books and I'm currently reading Blindsight by Peter Watts.

N: Not to expose myself too much as a big loser here, but most of my reading time is used up reading about and preparing for the next TTRPG session, usually in a context of personal, political, corporate, and/or space horror. I like reading about scary times in space and cyberpunk futures. MOTHERSHIP is the one that's been keeping my attention lately.

MF: PV Corner! Normally I like to ask people how they got into punk or hardcore, but since we are all are in powerviolence bands here, how did you all get into powerviolence? What was the first time you encountered it?

J: I blushingly admit that it was VILE INTENT [the interviewer's band] that introduced me to powerviolence and got it stuck in my mind as the home for music that is loud, angry, and unapologetically political—and that was in around 2011. Before that, I really was not into punk at all, never mind hardcore—those were the genres that the guys who picked on me listened to. I grew up listening to metal, mostly, made the jump from post-metal to screamo, and then to grindcore and powerviolence. G.L.O.S.S. was the first hardcore punk band that made me pay attention to the genre. I read this article once that described the difference between grindcore and powerviolence as something like: "grindcore is the sound of the apocalypse of late capitalism and powerviolence is the outcry of the people trying to survive that apocalypse" and I was like: yeah, that is the legacy within which I want to situate my band.

N: I've always listened to a lot of music genres, but with punk I started the the usual with anarcho stuff. Crust punk was an easy gateway toward powerviolence and grindcore. I always needed my music to be faster and with more blast beats, so I'd listen to a lot of black or death metal, but the scene itself was such a turn-off. Perhaps ironically, powerviolence ended up being my safe haven. CLOUD RAT was definitely one of my big eye openers!

MF: Speak about the politics of the band. How does JETSAM identify politically? How important is this identity to the band, and how you write music, perform, reproduce the band? Is JETSAM an anarchist band?

J: I am an anarchist, an anarchism specifically informed by feminism and transness, and that not just informs but is integral to the way I write music, perform, and interface with the world as part of the band. It isn't that the band is a vehicle for me/us to express our politics but just that like, my politics are the filter through which I experience the world. Personally I would say that we are an anarchist band, yes. That is something that has united every member of this band and I can't imagine that we would get along well enough with someone who isn't at least vaguely an anarchist to make music with them.

N: I've always admired bands who made very reactionary music in the sense of reacting to what's going on around them. Songs or even full albums as a response to an event in the world. We are anarchists and are an anarchist band by virtue of the way we navigate the world and the scene and the things we talk about. We will always be comfortable being read as such! We never set out to be a band by and for trans people, and never spoke about whether this was going to be a project about anarchism. It became those things because those things are who we are!

MF: Can you give a brief scene report of the milieu and context around JETSAM in Montreal? What scene or scenes do you feel a part of, and how would you describe them to an outsider? What bands and projects should people check out? What recent local happenings are most inspiring to you all?

J: The first scene to really embrace us here was the grind scene; our first show was as the last-minute seventh band thrown on a six-band grind bill at [the anarchist social centre] L'achoppe, and we've played a lot of big grind shows around Quebec since then. But we've also been accepted into what I'd characterize as the queer(core) screamo scenes (especially outside of Quebec because the screamo scene here is very francophone), the crustpunk scene via playing at Traxide, the SHARPs, the indie cool-guy heavy music scene via playing with bands like THE BODY, the plateau punk scene, and this rad scene that I don't have a name for that's mostly like 20-somethings making all kinds of freaky loud music, which is funny because we could be their parents... we're all over the place and we like it that way. We're set to play Montreal Madhouse at the end of this month (January, 2025) which will be our biggest foray into the hardcore scene.

By virtue of the fact that we also book shows, and specifically have been booking a series of free shows that feature trans bands of every genre, and the fact that we are trans—we have a big and thriving community of trans musicians around us.

A few local shows JETSAM has played/booked

I think it can be said of all these scenes that they can feel really insular and forbidding to newcomers or anyone who doesn't fit the specific hyper-regional aesthetic of the scene, but it turns out that almost everyone is a sweetheart. This has honestly even been true of the all-dude grind fests we've played where Neon and I were the only people on the bill who weren't cis men. We came outta the gate expecting to get so much hate for taking up that space and calling ourselves a powerviolence band and writing songs that often stray very far from the powerviolence/hardcore formula, and it just has never happened. Everyone, everywhere has been lovely to us, with very very few exceptions. Even more than that, a shocking number of people have seemed to really get what we do: they understand who our music is for and why we do it, and they make space for the freaks and queers.

It feels almost impossible to recommend bands because there are always SO many and they're SO good and did I mention my attention span. I'll always shout out our besties in OBJECT OF LOATHING, TYPEFACE, RATPISS and VVOMB. I love HRT and LOBOTOMITE and THE PUBES and DUREX and STREET GLOVES and MULCH. I think TRUCK VIOLENCE and NO WAVES and BIRDS OF PRRREY are local bands to keep eyes on.

I think the thing I'm personally most excited for is seeing the ways in which all the little microscenes are bleeding into each other. Montreal Madhouse booking bands that aren't strictly hardcore bands, unlikely bills, Turbo Haus kids going to Traxide (RIP) and vice versa, and bands that intentionally transgress the boundaries. That's the good stuff.

N: I think Jack said it all, so I'll just add some of our local crushes like CLAYBORNE, TONNES, BACKXWASH, TEMPETE, GUHN TWEI, MULCH, DUREX, and VERIFY <3

JETSAM on Bandcamp: https://jetsammtl.bandcamp.com

Jetsam

three-piece powerviolence band from so-called montreal. anarchiste, antifasciste, queer. trio punk de montréal. pas de guit’. pas de compromis. email us at jetsammtl@proton.me if you have questions if you cannot afford our music, email us and we will send you a download code.

Jetsam

JETSAM's faircamp site: https://jetsam.likeweeds.org

JETSAM on Mastodon: @jetsam@438punk.house

jetsam (@jetsam@438punk.house)

187 Posts, 130 Following, 100 Followers · 3-piece powerviolence band from so-called montreal

438 PUNK HOUSE

Intro to La Chaîne

2024-05-06T11:20:11.000-04:00

La Chaîne is a monthly-ish newsletter/infolettre that is printed and distributed in Montreal since 2022. It's been running steady for a year and a half now and has become a staple in every kitchen/bathroom in town. Printed on a single double-sided 8.5x14 sheet of paper, La Chaîne is big and colourful and hard to miss on the door table at a show. Here, Taylor (the mind behind La Chaîne), puts down some of her thoughts on starting and running the project for over a year.

The idea for La Chaîne

Around 2018-2019, Montreal DIY had asked me to design and print a few of their monthly physical show listing calendars. I’d always really appreciated that project making show listings available because if you’re not on Instagram or Facebook (which I’m not), you can’t really see events, stories, posts, etc, so it’s pretty hard to find info about shows. As someone who benefited from the listings being compiled, I was super happy to contribute to getting that show info out into the world. I was going through kind of a stressful period in my life and getting to do a really fun and low-stakes creative project was really nice.

Montreal DIY show calendars from 2018-2019

There was a period where I designed the show calendar a few months in a row, and I started kicking around the idea that it would be funny to do a punk broadsheet newsletter on the back, with scene news, reviews, classifieds, etc. When the pandemic hit, there obviously weren’t a lot of shows, so the degree to which subcultures like punk and hardcore (as well as people’s entire social lives) existed on social media really accelerated. I came out of that period with a lot of energy and a renewed urgency for doing something really tangible and DIY, that might help migrate some of the content of the scene and our lives back off of Instagram and other platforms and back into our own hands.

The First issue

I put out the first issue in October 2022 – it’s kind of silly, and looks really different from the subsequent issues. The period between when I decided it was “go time" for the project and when I put out the first issue was really short, just a few weeks. I didn’t want to overthink it, I knew if I tried to figure out too much stuff beforehand I would stall out and maybe it wouldn’t happen – I got the first issue out, and knew I would figure out the rest as I went.

Here’s the scrappy “manifesto” I wrote in the first issue

I called it “La Chaîne” because I wanted it to sound cool and be roughly bilingual. “Chaîne” also has multiple meanings in french – it’s not only a physical chain with links (like the meaning in english), but it can also mean channel (e.g., s’abonner à une chaîne YouTube = subscribe to a YouTube channel).

Design and Print

I’m a big nerd about typography and design and layout and I do graphic design work sometimes, but La Chaîne is not my job, it’s my fun punk project where I get to fuck off a bit. So I keep it really simple and mostly stick to a template – I never want a creative block to be the thing that stops me from getting an issue out, and getting enough content for an issue is already challenging enough. When I do have excess energy or inspiration during issue assembly, I can channel it into illustrations and custom lettering, or doing fun things with the colour layers.

On some recent issues I've done larger illustrations to take advantage of the medium

I’m really lucky to have access to a Risograph stencil duplicator, so that’s how I print La Chaîne. It’s really fast, the cost per impression is low, and it looks punk. I really love it.

I pay for the paper out of pocket, but it’s not that bad – maybe $10-15 per issue. If I didn’t have the means to do it this way I would probably just do what I did to print zines when I was more broke and figure out a good copy scam. Over the winter I organized a new band show that was a fundraiser for the project – five brand new bands played and I did a special La Chaîne t-shirts, buttons and posters. It was a huge success and also a lot of fun, and I was able to net a bit of money for the project. I’ll probably just try to do a benefit show like this once a year-ish to keep the project roughly sustainable, but even if I’m spending my own money to keep it going it feels worthwhile.

Content

The first few months were a bit irregular, but now I basically put out an issue around the end of every month, which includes upcoming shows and events for the following month. The deadline for submissions and release date usually fluctuates a bit, but I pretty much just pick what I think is gonna be the biggest gig around the end of the month and use that as my release for the issue. I’m currently working on issue #19.

Probably the biggest challenge is getting content. It’s taken over a year to start getting a slow trickle of submissions, and even then it’s still mostly my close friends and I still really have to hound people a lot. For anyone thinking about doing a submission-based project: don’t assume people are gonna be pounding down your door to submit content, be fully prepared to do basically everything yourself or with a small dedicated group of friends. Some of my favourite larger features have been interviews or tour journals of local bands, but often an issue is composed of several smaller pieces like show reviews, lists, etc.

Back and front of the May 2023 issue of La Chaîne

Montreal has a trilingual punk scene (English, French and Spanish), and La Chaîne is bilingual English/French. Most people here can read or speak French and English to at least some degree, so I encourage submissions in whatever language people feel comfortable writing in and rarely translate anything unless the author specifically requests it. The language mess is something I really love about Montreal, and I think having a chaotic, franglais newsletter makes the project feel super grounded here. Most submissions come in English, I think just because the people I feel close enough to to bug for submissions lean anglo these days. I would love more French submissions though, and I would probably print a submission in Spanish if I got one (although I’d have to get help reading/editing it).

Distribution

I distribute La Chaîne somewhat haphazardly. I usually have copies of the latest issue at every show I go to, and I always leave some copies at the door or at my zine table if I’m tabling that show. Sometimes I walk around and ask my friends or people I recognize if they want a copy, and it’s a nice excuse to make the rounds and say what’s up to everyone. Sometimes I hand out copies as people are leaving. It really depends on how social I’m feeling that day (often not very social). Sometimes my very kind partner offers to hand them out. I was hoping that at some point people would figure out to ask me for the latest issue and I wouldn’t have to have so much initiative, but it hasn’t really happened yet. People usually respond pretty enthusiastically when I pull them out though.

A few months ago, I repainted an old newspaper box and put it in a central and publicly-accessible location in town. I keep it stocked with the latest issue, but so far only a small handful disappear from there each month. I’m hoping it will get more traffic now that it’s about to be summer, and as people learn about it’s location.

I print roughly 100 copies of each issue – if I print more than that I usually end up with extras and if I print less I usually run out, so that seems to be the sorta sweet spot for the scene at this moment.

Issue #16 and Issue #3 of La Chaîne

Contact

The only web presence for La Chaîne is a publicly-viewable Mastodon account where I post little updates about when the next issue deadline is and where the new issue will be available. I upload the back issues to archive.org once they’re a few months out of date – the idea being that if you want the newest issue you have to find a physical copy.

For submissions and correspondence, I have an email address set up, as well as a VoIP hotline phone number set up where people can hypothetically call or text. I am always kind of disappointed that more punks don’t text or call the hotline – most of the voicemails I get are weird spam or wrong numbers. There used to be a show hotline phone number where you could call to get the weekly show listings, and I’ve thought about reviving that on the La Chaîne number, but haven’t gotten around to it!

Conclusion

I plan to keep making La Chaîne for the foreseeable future. Maybe this comes through in the tone of my writing, but sometimes I do feel a bit ambivalent about it. I try not to let those feelings freak me out, because I know that at least once per issue, usually when I’m assembling everything together, I’ll kinda step back and look at it and feel really proud of and excited about what I’m doing. That feeling is basically always worth pushing through any doubts.

In order to do something like this, you have to have a strong internal motivation – you really can’t expect other people to care about it. But when someone does care, or when you hand a copy to a someone and it kind of blows their mind – it feels really fucking good. Meeting other fellow weirdos who do punk scene newsletters like this and trading papers is also one of my favourite things in the whole world. I hope this project keeps picking up steam and becoming a place where people in my scene can hype their projects and stay up on what’s going on. And I hope that if someone in another place or time picks up a copy of La Chaîne, they'll be able to get a small taste of how cool and weird and special the DIY punk/hardcore scene in Montreal is right now.

Contact La Chaîne:

Do you do a local monthly newsletter/zine/show calendar? Thinking of starting one? Tell us about it!