NEWS

So he're we are again with some update!
We're working pretty hard on MiniWAR (paperzine) for the moment. What? Well WolvesAndRats but Mini :-) and cheap!

We also support Hello Bastards! Off course...

And there's the shop

Aaight! More to follow soon!
WAR!

Interview with Touché Amoré

Thomas and I had an interview with Jeremy Bolm, the singer of Touche Amoré. This interview is about the deal with Deathwish, writing, future plans and their next album.

For pictures, check out: http://wolvesandrats.blogspot.com/2010/11/pictures-touche-amore-in-essen.html

• How did you guys end up signing with Deathwish? (their signing was announced officially the day of the interview)

We met Tre from Deathwish at Sound And Fury in 2009. He approached us right after the show and asked how he could get our records to sell them through their webstore. Since then we became friends and e-mailed a lot and one day he asked us about our plans for the future. The whole signing has been a progress of over a year, trying to figure out what we really wanted to do and today is the day it was announced.

• Who came up with the idea to work with La Dispute and to switch vocals on the split 7inch?

Jordan (of La Dispute) and I had discussed doing a split 7” early  on in our friendship. When we were on tour together we played a house show in Chicago and we were just chatting on the front porch and going over some ideas. We decided we should do really collaborative artwork. Our guitarplayer Nick does all our artwork and La Dispute’s bass player Adam does their artwork so the two of them got together and worked on the packaging of the 7inch. And then we thought about doing it musically collaborative too so we decided to sing on each other’s songs to make it as ‘brotherly’ as possible.

• What other bands do you want to work with on a split 7inch?

We already talked about doing a split with Pianos Become The Teeth from Baltimore after our next record. We ‘ve talked about doing a split with Defeater, Trash Talk,… So any of those things could maybe happen. Nothing is sure yet but probably the Pianos split will happen. I know both of us nerd out on each other’s bands a lot and we saw them for a couple of days and talked about how we should really do it. I’m sure it will happen somewhere in 2011. They will tour Europe for the first time in March with Suis La Lune.

• Did you get a lot of reactions on the WeHateFredPhelps.com song?

I’m pretty sure they’re not really aware of us. I follow Megan Phelps, the granddaughter of Fred Phelps, on twitter. I tweet to her a lot and talk a lot of shit to her. I challenge a lot of the things she says and I’ve gone to a lot of their protests and talked to her in person a couple of times. There’s no way to win any argument with them but it’s entertaining. If you ask them a question they’re not going to answer from the heart but they will just throw scripture at you. They just quote the bible. When the song was first written it was just me being so outraged just seeing what they were doing. But as I got to understand more what they are about I started thinking it’s all just a hoax. Because a lot of them are involved in the legal system and are lawyers and if you try to have a conversation with them one of the people in the group will immediately start filming it. So if I were to spit on one of them or punch one of them they would take me to court. That’s how their ‘cult’ makes money. Always looking for a way to sue other people.

• What are your thoughts on American politics? Did you vote during the last elections?

This year we’ve been on tour for nine and a half months so we haven’t really been home to be able to vote. Every band member is a registered voter but we missed out on every recent elections because we were on tour. We are not a political band but we’re all on the same page about what’s right and wrong. We’re obviously not a republican band, we’re very pro gay-marriage and all that stuff.

• How do you work on lyrics? Are you one of those writers that is always writing or do you wait until a song is finished?

I wish I could say that I was always writing. I sometimes get inspired or think of something and then write it down but I’m not one of those writers who’s buried in a notebook. When we start writing songs we write all of the music together, all of us know how to play guitar and different instruments so we’re all very involved with the music writing process. As soon as the song is written I record it on my digital camera, take it home and then I write my lyrics. But I’m actually the worst at writing and re-writing. I write and re-write and throw it away and hate it and then love it and hate it again. For every song on the record I wrote the lyrics about twelve times at least. I have like seven or eight different versions of ‘Honest Sleep’ in a notebook. The day we recorded vocals for the demo I read the lyrics before going in to record it and I had a panic attack and didn’t want to do it. So I went to the parking lot and started over and wrote everything in like two minutes. I went inside, said “fuck it!” and just did it. It’s hard for me to truly be happy with something until I really know it is what I want to say.

• Do you sometimes write something else besides lyrics? Would you participate in something like the HRVST book project (different artists and musicians write about one topic, f.e. ‘death’ in the first HRVST book)?

I would definately participate in something like that. We started our own label, well it’s not really a label but something we want to use for anything we want to put out. It’s called ‘Condolences’. The first thing we did was a live 7inch. One of the things we have been working one is a book called ‘Condolences’ and it will have all of the things I’ve written and a European tour diary. The original idea behind the book was me doing all the writing for the first issue and Nick doing all the artwork. The second issue will have different singers I admire and am friends with like Jordan from La Dispute, Jeff from Thursday, Juan from Comadre,… Just different people that have something interesting to say. These are big  ideas but let’s hope it will happen. We’ll probably print like 200 copies and sell them through our web store.

• Who are your favorite writers? Are you interested in literature?

I’m actually a bigger fan of songwriters than authors. One of my biggest writing influences is Leonard Cohen. The stuff he writes is absolutely insane. He can be so direct and honest in such little amount of space, which is what I kind of try to do in Touché Amoré. We obviously don’t have very long songs. The entire point of our band has always been getting to the point.

• When I start listening to the record I can’t stop in the middle, I always have to listen it to the end. Was that the meaning?

When we put the songs together it was very important for us to have all the songs have a very smooth transition. It’s like when you’re making a mix tape for a girl. You don’t want to go from something very quiet to something very loud. Everything has to have a smooth transition. So sometimes when you’re listening it’s hard to know when a certain song ends and another one starts.

• What do you think of the show tonight? (the first Belgian Touché Amoré show)

Tonight was amazing, aside from the technical problems with the bass. It was great. I already said it on stage but this is something I never thought I would experience. It’s still crazy for us when we play two states away from California and kids go crazy and sing along. And right now I’m in Belgium! None of us come from rich families so the fact that screaming in a microphone for fifteen minutes got us to Belgium is amazing. I mean we’re in Belgium, what the hell! I never in my wildest dreams would have thought that I would ever get here. So this really is a dream for all of us.  We’re all very excited.

• Do you have anything else to add?

It’s not yet announced on the Deathwish site or anything but the tentative title (but I’ll probably freak out over it and change it later (laughs)) of the new record  is ‘Parting the sea between brightness and me’ and we have about four and a half songs ready. We’re going to record it with Ed Rose (who did a lot of The Get Up Kids records, Coalesce records,…). He did a record with The Caskett Lottery and I think it’s the best recording ever. It’s super heavy but it has a really clean and pure sound. We all love the sound of that record and wanted to work with him and Deathwish agreed.

• I’m sure a lot of people are excited about the new record.

It’s going to be a very hectic process to write the rest of the record. We have three new people playing on the album. We have a new drummer, Nick plays guitar instead of bass and we have a new bassplayer. So it’s a big difference from the first record. So far the new songs are a lot more mature. They are very melodic and very smart but they’re still under two minutes long. But we need to get home and write the other half of the record and make it really pissed so people don’t think we got too nice (laughs).
The record is supposed to come out in april unless we have another panic attack because of the pressure (laughs). In punk and hardcore it’s really different than in other genres. In rap or R&B for example you can put out a record that everybody loves and then put out three records nobody cares about and then put out a new record with some crazy beat that everybody loves. Usher can put out a record that everyone loves, then go away for seven years, come back with a new song and everyone loves Usher again. But in punk and hardcore you are the ‘hype band’, everyone likes  you and expects a lot of you. As you become more popular certain people like to turn on you and dislike the band. And when your next record comes out and if it’s not what people want it to be or not what people were hoping for, then no one is going to care and people will be over it and on to the next thing. So this is a very scary and nervous time. We were very nervous about putting out those two splits with La Dispute and Make Do And Mend. Thankfully the response to those new songs has been really cool but the new record is what will truly matter in our “career” as a hardcoreband. But we’ll just try to keep our heads straight and do what we want to do for us. And hope that what we want to do is what other people will appreciate.