Against
Photo courtesy of http://www.myspace.com/againsthc
Where’s The Revolution Gone?
“Hardcore gave me the chance to be who I want to be. It taught me not to conform and that anyone can be anything,” AGAINST front man GREG APPLEBY talks honestly with B about their new album and the hardcore scene.
When we last talked you were telling me about the new album. You used the words ‘pure hatred’ to describe it. Can you elaborate on that?
I guess most of the drive for the songs is some form of hate: hatred for the bands around me, hatred for the people in the scene, hatred for the way hardcore gets watered down, hatred for chumps in shit bands acting like they are special and above everybody else. These sort of things are what drive Against lyrically and musically. These things don’t keep us up at night but I like to let people know how we feel. Andy (guitarist) is probably the angriest person I have ever met and you can tell the way he writes all the music. That guy is an evil genius!
To be in a band and not stand for anything is pathetic. We have a lot of fun in this band and thats the main reason we tour and play but if you’ve got nothing to say then you ain’t a hardcore band and you don’t need to exist.
Your new album is called Loyalty and Betrayal, what does ‘loyalty’ mean to you?
Loyalty to me means being true to a cause whether its what you believe as a person, the music you write or just about anything that makes a person. The title, Loyalty and Betrayal refers to us as a band being honest with what we do and how we won’t change or dumb anything down to get famous or well known. In this day and age we are surrounded by mediocre metal-core bands and hardcore bands copying sounds with no knowledge of the history and feeling behind it. It feels good to never regret anything we have ever done as a band
Punk/hc legend Roger Miret guests on Kill Or Be Killed. How did that hook up come about? What did it mean to you having Roger on the album? I know you’re a big Agnostic Front fan.
On the Agnostic Front tour Roger asked if we had anything new coming out. I showed the guys the preproduction. They all liked it and Roger said that if we had got in contact with him he would have done some vocals on it. When we got to Melbourne I asked the crew at the Art House if we could do some vocals up stairs in the studio. There were a few lines I left off the song because they didn’t work when I did ‘em. Roger did ‘em and it came out awesome! To have someone like that sing on your record is a pretty amazing feeling.
A lot of the lyrics on the album seem to paint a pretty bleak picture of the world. When writing for the album did you stop to think, ‘what can I do to try to contribute to making the world a better place?’
No not at all. As far as I’m concerned the world is a pretty shitty place. If I’m going to contribute anything to anyone through Against – musically or lyrically – I hope that we can make people stronger to deal with the world. No one can change the world and to think they they can is naive. We just gotta get in shape for the battle ahead.
In the album liner notes you say ‘fuck all you dead shit c*nts that use hardcore as a stepping stone for your shit gay bands to get rich and famous’ what was it that prompted you to write that?
That one is pretty self explanatory. People see all these bands like Fall Out Boy getting big and everyone thinks they can do it. They figure ‘our sound isn’t that different’ so they change themselves and use the hardcore scene for that first leg up knowing that the majority of hardcore kids are morons and are spoon fed more garbage that the idiots out there listening to Triple M.
Over the years Against have gained many admirers and also critics, what do you have to say to the haters?
Ahh fuck ya! We are unbreakable, so hate away!
