Matt Smith with George.

Hey I'm with George from Blacklisted. So, how's tour been, overall?

It's been pretty good, I guess. Our record just came out, so it's taking time to sink in, I guess you could say. We don't really have expectations for it. So it's just whatever. It's been good.

Have you guys been getting pretty good responses to the new songs?

People watch us more now. They don't “go off” like in a hardcore sense. But it's not like they stare at us like were aliens, they just watch us more. It's like a different vibe, you know? Which is crazy to me because before I don't think we were playing with as much intensity or volatility as we play with now, but I think people watch us more in a sense maybe they like watching that more. I'm not really sure. It's been good. It's been cool, you know? It's been cool because we open with that song “Circuit Breaker,” which when we wrote we didn't ever expect to play live. And now it's like a staple opener, so it's kind of a trip to see how it turned out.

Yeah, it kind sets a really cool vibe, to me.

Oh it does. Today it was weird, people just stared and didn't know. But, I don't know. Maybe it was because they lights were down on us. I don't really like to have the lights on us. I just kind of like to play. But yeah. It sets a good vibe. The song speaks volumes if you read it lyrically. And it fits Blacklisted.

Definitely. What was the main motivation, musically and lyrically, behind “Heavier than Heaven?”

Musically, probably everything we didn't do previously. I don't know, like when you're in a band or as a musician, or as hardcore kid you don't want to step too far out of the box because – you know, when you find hardcore, there's so much in your personal life that you feel out of it, that when you're here you feel comforted and you sit in. So you don't necessarily want to be ostricized with the music you're making. Not that we took any great leaps or bounds. A lot of reviews said that we have, but I don't really feel that it was too out of the box from what we were. It's not too far out of our capabilities, you know, live. If anything, I think it comes across better live. So musically, I think it was really just playing.

When we were on tour with the Cro-Mags in Europe, we did like 10 days with them, we hung out with Mackey a lot. We asked him a lot of questions about hardcore, which is weird because he didn't really know that much about hardcore. He kind of grew up on R&B. We asked him what his main motivation is for playing like that, with the Bad Brains and the Cro-Mags. You'd think a dude like that, a guy that you'd consider – he's a pretty premier musician – even outside of hardcore, he's pretty known. But he was like, “Yo, when I want to play fast, I play fast. And when I want to play slow, I play slow.” That was when we took it to the next level. That was a big inspiration.

My mom was in a mall or something and she listened to the record on a headset at Hot Topic or something weird, whatever bullshit store it's in. She's like, “Your slow parts are so much slower, now.” It's crazy that a woman who has no idea what hardcore is took notice to it.

So that was what more of our inspiration came from. Our inspiration was the doctrine on how we go about it. Not as much as we're going to sound like “Band A” and “Band B.”

And lyrically, I don't really know. I just really wrote, you know? The other Blacklisted records I wrote the night of recording; I wrote in the studio. “The Beat Goes On” I wrote in one day, lyrically. Twelve songs. I just sat upstairs while they recorded and wrote as much as I could. I put stuff in and a lot of lines in some songs are parts of others. It wasn't a mess, but, I wanted to stay on the road with this record. You kno

w? With this record, I had already done the touring thing, I knew that was going to come. It wasn't necessarily, “If I don't have this record, I'm not going to tour.” But I just went about it in a different way. I wrote about stuff that hasn't even been apart of my life for a long time. I pretended to go back to different parts of my life. I just wrote from that. There's nothing that's written that – the record's about me, man. Thats the best way to describe it.

I've always dug you guys because you're a very personal band, to me, and I think your lyrics speak to lots of people. Also, I like that you guys have always been evolving. Every record has sounded different from the previous record – not too much, but you know.

Yeah. Well, it's crazy because every record has a bunch of different people on it, execpt for “Peace on Earth” and this. And Shawn played on “The Beat Goes On.” But otherwise, it's different people. ' And a lot of other people say that -- “Yeah, you've evolved -- but there's something about Blacklisted.” At first, I was like, “Fuck, I got to find out what that thing is, man.” But, I guess it's me. You know, I'm not a control freak when it comes to things, but – I'm kind of shy and stand-offish – but when it comes to getting a point across, I want to say I'm pretty adament. Not really aggressive adament, but they know me, so they know what I'm going to write.

At least I told them when I wrote “Peace on Earth,” I said, “Look, I'm gonna write really personal and intense, and I think the music has to match that.” Because after Tim had the heart attack, we were going to break up. And I was ready to be done, I didn't want to play in a band. A lot of people say that no one starts a band to not be known. That was not my intention. But when Tim was gone, he was a really close friend of mine, and I was done – playing it. I would have still bought reccords and went to shows, but as far as being in a band and being on stage – I just never felt like that was my thing. I don't necessarily feel like performing is what I should be doing, you know? I'd rather do something else. But playing live I feel like there's a sense of urgency for me to do it. It's really confusing for me to be 25 and be like, “I don't want to do this, but I have to do this. But I don't know why I have to do this.” So, after the thing, when we were writing “Peace on Earth,” I said I'll do it if it's done with the right potency that I want it to be -- the right urgency that I feel we're playing this music for. I want it to be really minimal. I don't want a lot of chunky guitars. That was a big problem with “The Beat Goes On,” -- I don't care about “heavy.” Because me, as a person, is heavy enough -- like on a different level. So I don't think you need [guitar chugging] to get your point across.

That was a big thing. And dudes understood me. They tend to understand me on how I react to things. I don't have to speak much because I'm so up and down and weird that they're really aware of how I am. So, that was a big part of it. Like I said, Blacklisted's like my band and I accept it. With that I tend to give more than someone else because I feel it's necessary. Like when you're being put in the position of being the staple of “here's me.” It's like a reaction, almost of, “Yeah, but here's also me. So deal with that.” It's like a defense mechanism, you know? It makes sense in my head, but it's hard to explain.

You seem like a very personal guy. I know you put a lot of personal stuff from your life and experience into it, so --

I am. You know what? I do. Because you know what? Nothing present concerns me. Because the present is now, but eventually it becomes the past. And eventually I'll write about it. I guess I'm like a – I don't know...

Historian, maybe?

On my life, yeah. Like a stenographer, I go with whats going on. It just so happens that what I get to put out and generate doesn't come so often that a year from now, when I write a record, I'll probably write about something that happened three days ago. I think it keeps Blacklisted fresh. There's no agenda, necessarily with Blacklisted. At least there never has been with me. I say this a lot on stage when I play some songs, I started this band when I was 20. A lot of crazy shit was going on, and I had met some people, and they were like, “Hey, lets start this band.” I said alright. I was doing a band before that, playing basements or whatever, and I thought Blacklisted was destined for the same thing.

We're gonna play basements and maybe we'll play Posi Fest, because I know the guy who runs Posi Fest. And then we put out some records and a couple people were like, “Why don't you do a tour?” And I was like, “Alright. Whatever” And it was good. Whats cool about Blacklisted, I think, personally, is – you know how you see a band start and go on tour and they're huge right away – Blacklisted has had to work for everything. We've never done a big tour. The biggest tour we ever did, we went to Europe with Terror and we did 10 days with Converge and Some Girls. Other than that, we've done everything alone. I think it kind of puts a stigma around us, but it's not real. It's not like we don't want to tour with people, or we're dicks, or we think we're better than everybody – there's so many bands that we love and try to help. We toured with Shipwreck and Ceremony. As far as Shipwreck with J.D., he's really close to us. And Ceremony we just get along well, we have a lot of the same ideas about things.

I don't know if that's ever held Blacklisted back, not doing it, but I've been offered bigger things and I always turn it down. Like I said, it's akward playing a big show and you don't feel like you're a band that deserves it. So, we just go for it, on our own.

If it's worth anything, that's something I always admired about you guys. You did your own tours, you did your own shows.

You know what? We have Andy Rice, who wound up working up at Deathwish. He helps us out, but we pretty much do everything on our own. Up to the music and design of our cover.

It's really rare to me to find a hard working hardcore band. A lot of people got stuff handed to them.

But what sucks sometimes is that none of us are artists as far as art, so when it comes to merch, we're like, “Fuck man.” We can't draw or anything. It's hard sometimes. But it's rewarding. I guess the thing with Blacklisted is really, it's rewarded, but it's really 50/50. Sometimes it's down and sometimes its up. This is our bass player, Dave.

I'm actually selfish, I'm not Dave.

You and Dave Heck have similair facial hair at the moment.

No. I had it first!

I complimented him when they played here. I'm complimenting you...

[George laughing]

I had it first.

Alright, two final qestions, top five alt rock bands.

I don't know. It's not really like a top five. As, collectively, we like Nirvana, obviously. People are always gonna cite that for us, now. We like Dinosaur Jr., Sonic Youth, Pavement...

I don't know. We grew up in the 90's you know, so it's a big --

I grew up in the 80's.

This is our other guitar player, Dave. So we tended to – that's another thing about the record. We generated back to more things that we know. “We're gonna sound like the Cro-Mags and whatever,” [sarcastically] we tended to write what we knew. The songs we learned how to play were off “Nevermind.”

It's a great thing to do. I'm a huge fan of 90's alternative and alternative in general. Actually, the last question is Dinosaur Jr. or Sonic Youth?

Uh... I don't know. I think that Dinosaur Jr. is Dinosaur Jr., you know? And some of their records have a similair feel. But with Sonic Youth, you have a sense of volatility in their music to where they could go anywhere. Sometimes when you're listening to a Sonic Youth song, you don't know where it's going to go. It could turn into some noise, or it could turn into some melodic thing. Or it could be Thurston or Kim. There's a lot of different variations where with Dinosaur Jr., it was Lou Barlow and J Mascis. But Mascis was the figurehead.

It's hard but, I would say, Dinosaur Jr., personally. But Sonic Youth is way more influential, on music period. But Dinosaur Jr. has emotional attatchment to it that Sonic Youth doesn't necessarily carry.

Who are you and what do you do for Trash Talk?
I'm Lee and I sing for Trash Talk.

You guys are always on the road – how long has this trip been so far?
We left March 12, drove a few days. We recorded our LP in Chicago. Then we drove to Philadelphia and hung out for a little while, went to a few shows. Then we started tour at United Blood festival on March 28. So we left March 12, we'll be home May 28 then we leave in June to tour the rest of the summer.

So how's road life been so far for the life of the band?
It's good. We have our ups and downs. We argue. We fight. Just like every other band would, but everywhere's been pretty good. We've gotten pretty good sets everywhere. Like, kids have been getting into it and everything's been pretty good for the most part.

[Interruption by Tony the fill-in for Trapped Under Ice] YEEEEAAAAAAAAH! TRAPPED UNDER ICE!

Uh, so... You guys are gonna be gone for over two months then you come home and go out again for the rest of the summer. How do you guys afford to do all this?
We don't really. I just sold everything I basically owned and I don't really live anywhere. I live in the van. I sold every single t-shirt, record, fucking everything I own to do whatever the fuck we gotta do. We just decided to put out our own record, so it's like a million things on top of each other. It's just bill after bill after bill and we're just tryin to make it work. Seems to be goin pretty good for the most part.

Tell me about putting our your own record. What spawned that decision?
There's just a lot of things that go on. If you're doing -- like we've been doing a lot of work ourselves – a lot of label work ourselves. If we're gonna do the record label work, why not just be the record label ourselves? We're at the point where, I feel, we can do it ourselves and be okay. We don't really need a higher – whatever-the-fuck you want to call it – empire, monopoly, whatever the fuck holding us down. It's not really what we need and it's not really what we're looking for. For a long time, we've wanted to put out a record, so it just kind of worked out – at the time – to do it ourselves.
You played two new songs tonight. Is that a taste of the whole new record or do you have something new?
Every fast part is faster, every slow part is slower. There's instrumentals, there's longer parts without me singing. There's a four minute song down to a ten second song. Everything that we want to do in one record.

Nobody's brain bled tonight, but some dude got his head busted open. Is that just like every Trash Talk show?
Uh, lately... Yeah. Our roadie who's with us now, his name's Nickfit, he filled in for the Mongoloids last time we played here. We were playing and he did a stagedive and some kid swept his hand from under him and he fell straight on his head and went into a coma for four days. He had brain hemorrhaging and we didn't know if he was gonna be alive.

Whoa.
He's here now, he's our roadie. He was just a fill-in for the Mongoloids. We played our record release – fuckin three broken arms, two broken legs, hospitals and ambulances coming to the show. When we played Rivalry Fest, security got on the stage after we played and were like, “No more stage dives.” There were like eight broken noses. Shit's been real wild lately and people have just been getting hurt.

I didn't mean any offense by all that – I didn't know he was in a coma and all that.
No, it's al good. He was a little bit – he didn't know what to do. He came here tonight on thin ice and just kind of weirded out.

Whats the difference between East Coast versus West Coast?
Circle pits. I feel like kids from the East Coast – they know what they like. As far as kids from the West Coast, they're just open to hear what they hear. If you come to the show and you play a good gig, they'll watch you. I feel like when you come here, they know you or they don't know you, or they know to check you out. It's just two different vibes. They're both cool. It's just two different vibes.

I heard a rumor that you guys lived on the East Coast from anywhere between like two weeks and month between tours. How did that work?
We were on tour with Modern Life is War in September and we were meeting up with Cruel Hand and Mongoloids in December. Our tour with Modern Life is war ended at the end of September and our friend Robby Redcheeks mother passed away and he had a benefit show for his mother – it was the Floorpunch reunion in Philadelphia. He asked us if we wanted to play. Our tour ended in Pittsburg so we just decided to stay there. We played the show and our tour with the Mongoloids started like three weeks later. So we basically just lived on the East Coast for like a month and a half. We just played shows up and down the coast. War Hungry helped us out alot, Blacklisted, a bunch of bands helped us a lot and got us a bunch of gigs. We just hung out, I don't know. We just kind of lived there for two months. It was wild.

[Interruption by Rusty]
You're not gonna type that long!
Fuck you, Rusty.
Yeah, fuck you, Rusty. Fuck you.

So when you guys are on the road, is there any particular spot you guys just have to stop and eat at?
Yeah, I don't really give a fuck. I'm down to eat whatever that costs 99 cents because I'm broke as fuck. But our drummer and our guitar player are both vegan so we gotta go everywhere. From Gavinda's vegan cheesteaks in Philadelphia, to like, I don't even fucking know. Red Bamboo in New York. Every-fucking-where that's vegan. It's stupid and I don't give a fuck. I just wanna eat double cheesburgers – I don't give a fuck.

Photo Credit: Chris Corrado

Yo, you guys just played, you have fun?

Oh yeah. It was a lot – everywhere we play, is fucking awesome fun. Even if it's not fun at the time, like people not paying attention, the next time you play there, you see the fire you started and every time you play it just gets better and better, you know? But definitely was fun.. first time we played in Atlanta.
I was with Foundation for a couple, well basically the past week and I saw you guys play in Maine and that was some of the craziest shit I've ever seen. Kids jumping off of kids, stagediving off of nothing. Is that the normal thing in Maine?
In Maine, it's all about having fun. Like, no one cares about how they look when they're doing shit. It's all about losing their mind and never about hurting anyone else, it's just about risking your own life. Like you'll never see anyone jumping off a cab feet-first, you know what I'm saying? My friend Gabe says Maine is like 20 years behind everything. So being out there, hardcore - just the essence of what it was 20 years ago is happening in Maine – I dont know. It's a different way of looking at it I guess, but it's fun. The group of kids out there are awesome. We're all friends and it's a real tight scene, a couple hundred kids.

I heard you broke your jaw - that's what you said in Main...

Yeah.

How the hell did that happen?

I broke it in Mass at a show, being a hippy and just having my eyes closed in the middle of the pit. I got hit. It was in Haverhill – at a real dark show, and all that. It sucked.

Hows the tour been so far?

The tour's been awesome, you know? You can't ask for more going out with good bands and people – you get to play to people every night. You know when you go out by yourself, there might be ten people at a show. It's still fun, but it's just awesome to play to more people. There's just more potential for your shit to get out there more.

My buddy (Jeb) told me you guys played Augusta a bunch, how many times have you played Atlanta?

Atlanta? We've never played – we've never played Georgia before. I actually thought you meant Augusta, Maine. It's the capital, and we've never played their either. (Laughter) Nah, this is our first time here – it's awesome. You guys have a cool scene. How long have you guys been playing? Overdose and Foundation? You guys started about the same time?

Yeah we've been playing about two years. You know, it has it's ups and it's downs, but it's definitely fun regardless.
It looks like you guys might be on the gaining side.

Yeah, finally. It feels good.

I bet.

Any particular shows that stick out in your mind this week?

This week? The South Paris (Maine) one. I mean, Amherst is awesome – there was a shitload of kids there. Pat going off and having mono and almost dying. Ripping it. I had goosebumps during that whole performance. Long Island getting a surprise with the kids reactions – in Daytona, too. They're all fun. Highlights are destroying Daytona last night. (Laughter)

Dude, that drive from Virginia to Daytona was awful. Have you guys had any van problems or anything so far?

Our gas tank, we just found out, is leaking. We have to pump really slow. We did a bunch of test pumps to see what we could do to make it better. We figured out just pumping super slow works. We were putting in like $15 at a time just to keep it from going too much. We just found pumping way slow is better.
I don't know where I was, but you told me a story about some sketchy bar in New York, could you repeat that story?

(Laughter) Everywehre we go, pretty much, we just look for adventure. Safe shit is boring, you know. Everywher we go, we're looking, if we have the energy, we're looking for something interesting to have an experience you never would have had. We went to Brooklyn for our first time and we stayed there – we got there at 2:30 AM. We headed out on foot just to find adventure. Saw some old dude walking and said “Lets go talk to this guy.” He was wearing gold sweatpants – all saggy – and a 90's baret, you know one of those hats that looked cool in the 90's and said “This dude looks interesting.” We just talked to him for a while and shot the shit with him. I guess he thought we were cool, I think because we're not Jewish and it was a really Jewish neighborhood. He was like “You guys aren't Jewish! That's weird... but you're white!” So he brought us to this underground bar – we had no idea what it was gonna be like. When we got there it was a bunch of thugs gambling, sellign crack and coke and shit. Got a blunt or two smoked it up and hung out til sunrise. There were two transvesittes – like 6'4”, huge. The dude was like – his name was Muarry – he was the type that talks like this far from your ear, right in your face. He was like “I don't wanna get you too drunk, you might make the same mistake I did and bring one of these things home.” As soon as he said that one of these huge Rupaul dudes walked by.

That shit is ridiculous.

It's hard sometimes not to prejudge people and situations. You wanna make sure that whatever you do you don't regret it, but, I mean, you just gotta take risks. Because without taking risks you don't get any rewards. Even though all I got out of it was a crazy story. (Laughter)

Yo – your record. When did it come out and how can people get ahold of it?

It came out a while ago and we've gone through some changes in the band – we lost a guitar player – it was a while to find a new one. We just found Darryl, who's the man. You can find our record, I think, through Think Fast! Records, live shows, any live show you can get it from us, download it online. I'm not opposed to people getting it for free, I love that shit. Learn the songs, see if you like it or not -- buy it. Anyway you can find it and get it, find it and get it. “Burn it off the internet and bump it outside,” Immortal Technique...

But yeah, we're working on a new record now that we got a solid guitar player. We're just working on a direction and a message.

Awesome. When do you think that'll come out?

We're trying not to do any plans. Our goal is to have it recorded at the end of summer and have it out hopefully next winter. We're gonna take a break from touring and all that until then. But still do fun things like this here and there. Can't turn a week or two weeks down with our friends.

Well that's pretty much it. Anything else you wanna say?

Shout outs to Foundation, Overdose, and Atlanta, and everyone that saw us on tour and continue to see us on tour. Come see us again. Thanks to everyone.

That pretty much concluded the interview, but while we were shooting the shit outside the show, Aaron comes out with this solid gold story that is too good not to get on tape and in print:

Yo, alright, Daytona. The 30th, December 30th. DTN, Wake Up Call, raging. It starts off at a KFC drive-thru with the DTN roadie running up to our van and asking if we wanna go break into the go-kart track and race some go-karts. I said fuck yeah. So Segar, their roadie and I started up the go-karts and were racing them when Zack, our roadie, all of a sudden was like “The cops are coming.” So we fucking ran and jumped like three fences. One of the fences was a spiked and the spike went through their roadie's sneaker and foot and he was bleeding. So we jumped in their van. So we got seperated. I gave our drummer my weed and told him to bounce. So he ran with my weed so they fuckign drove off. Zach got cuffed – everyone in my band got fucked with but they said they didn't know me. Long story shot, all of our phones are dead, our drummers missing, we found our van and they ended up saying they were gonna pick him up. So we went to the strip club and fuckign wild out. I ended up getting kind of drunk. And I jumped off a three story building into the pool. We broke all the furniture, umbrellas, all that shit. All the stuff I want to do, but am too afraid of getting anyone else in trouble for my shit – it just happened that eveyone else was down so...

Later on, we found our van, but we didn't know what room they were in. We found them and they told me they threw my weed in a ditch. They were like, “We threw it in a creek.” I was like, “WHY?!” They said the cops were after them, so I just said I'd be right back. I went outside and just started smashing everything in sight and they came running out yelling “Yo we were just kidding!” They had my weed the whole time and I almost fuckign cried. So then I sat in the dirt parking lot by the van, so happy, smoking weed, and listening to the Bad Brains and fucking Cro Mags the whole time. Just sitting in the dirt. Fuck yeah. That was my night.