IE: What's up Rich and Matt.  I want to get right into the new 23-song 70 plus minute album you guys just put out: “Optimism Is Self-Deception: Vols. 1 & 2...” This looks to have been a huge undertaking with the recording having started in 2008 and ran through 2010, and here we are in late 2014 with it just having come out. What was the thinking behind making such an involved and lengthy double album after such a long time away from being a full time band?

Rich: The thinking was that we'd record it all in a weekend or two and mix in a few days, haha.

Matt: We spent 2 days recording power tools!

IE: That weekend or two turned into almost 6 years from start to finish, what were the biggest obstacles with getting everything done? 

Rich: When all was said and done, we actually did the music super-quick. A lot of it was written right on the spot so we moved through all the songs kind of like an assembly line, haha.

Delays were when I took a year break for the birth of my youngest in '09, and then vocals were done intermittently as I took time to write lyrics for the new songs. Whatever vocals got finished first, those songs were mixed, and became “Optimism...: Vols. 1 & 2.”

There were challenges actually booking time because at that point I was just going in for 4-5 hour night sessions every couple of weeks and if, say, Aerosmith blocked 2 months straight... I hadda wait it out!

Eventually my credit cards were all blown and we were just getting super-busy with life. Matt got married and had another kid after me... So we basically sat on a mix we weren't happy with for a year before we got around to doing the final mix we ultimately signed off on. Mastering was another year later. Then just gathering all the credits, proofing the lyrics... All that bullshit takes time with a project as extensive as this. 

Matt: Even though it took a long time to create and finish, it’s a complete unified project from beginning to end. Every song and every part was conceived and created to co-exist with every other song on the record regardless if we had the songs already or made them up as we went along. I tried for a balance of different key signatures, and we both tried for different tones and dynamics. There was no preconceived notion about what genre the music should be. We both like similar music, so it all fell together fairly naturally.

IE: Were there points during the making of this where you just wanted to put a bullet in your head...? I mean it seems like it was a really long process all done by yourselves with your own money and there had to be points of frustration considering how long everything took.

Rich: Nah. Things taking forever is almost a way of life for us, haha.

Matt: At times it was frustrating; especially after most of the actual instrument tracking was done. Waiting for the vocals to be totally written, recorded and wrapped was my biggest anxiety during this project, but it was worth it. Working on and finishing the artwork frequently made me want to jump off a cliff.

IE: I have listened to it now about 5 times and I still find it hard to wrap my head around everything with the different sounds you guys are putting out.

Rich: There's a lot of subtleties in there. Headphones help. So do particular substances - that as a responsible parent I cannot condone! But it's just what I've been told...

Matt: We put a few things farther back in the mix that aren’t really heard unless you have headphones on. There’s more going on than it may seem upon first listen.

IE: There are some songs like “My Path Of Least Resistance” that are more punk jams and others like “Vacant Sense Eruption” where you go for more of a metal sound especially with your vocals. You have some straight up acoustic parts in there as well and you also used congas, a violin and power tools to make this album.

Rich: Yeah, the variety was intentional. For so many years we only had one style: Hellhammer Core. And one pace: Midtempo, slow, heavy. Repeat. Great for misanthropic anti-social grave-robbers, but I got tired of watching sleepwalkers in the pit.

Matt: I’m into all different styles of music and I try to bring a little something from everywhere into the band. Old 70’s guitar based metal, classic rock, punk of course and hardcore all somehow find its way into our music. What’s most important is that me and Rich understand what fits and what doesn’t, so even though we’re injecting different influences, we always make sure it’s right for the music.

Rich: Me and Matt talked about this a bunch before we even started recording, and decided we needed more energy in the set and more FAST and crazy shit overall. So we wrote a bunch like that. Our roots go way back into ALL of it, so nothing needed to be forced. It was usually as simple as me playing a bunch of unplanned beats and Matt trying to be spontaneous and fit with it. Sometimes I suggested ideas when we overdubbed and sometimes he just did whatever came to mind until it clicked.

Matt: Coming up with stuff on the spot was a lot easier than I thought. I didn’t even envision at the time how the made up stuff would really mature over time and become real songs.

Rich: As for vocals, there have to be at least a half dozen "voices" on there: angry hardcore barks, thrash metal screams, black metal howls, death metal grunts, some spoken shit. I even hit a few melodies along the way. One day, when we’re thinking about our 4th album, I’ll totally entertain the idea of working with a “producer”. But to set this shit off properly, we needed to get primal and produce ourselves.

IE: It definitely has more fast and crazy shit overall.... In particular the list of instruments used on the making of this album included congas, a violin and power tools if I am not mistaken? Can you tell us about how each of these came into play and who played these? It sounds like a schizophrenic mix of sounds that may raise questions about the overall mental health of your band.

Rich: Hahaha, definitely! The insanity of the music attempting to match the inner turmoil of its creators…There are a few songs in particular where we just went off – didn't give a fuck – just went for... whatever! Cause we had no specific audience we needed to please and we just wanted to see how it would come out. For YEARS we were always tagged as the hardcore band at metal shows and as the metal band by hardcore purists, so who even gives a fuck anymore? We already knew how to combine the genres… But what would it sound like if we did full-on metal songs and full-on punk songs – on the same album? Now we’ve got the answer, haha

There were also sessions booked where all we did was fuck with pianos and record fucked up noise with power tools. It all got blended together to make a cacophony of craziness. Dean and Shawn, our engineers, definitely had reservations about how any of this was ever going to make sense, haha! 

Matt: They usually just hit record, ignore what we were doing and tweak the EQ or adjust outboard gear. We added a lot of unconventional instrumentation which added dynamics to the songs and noise portions. Rich brought in the power tools and gardening implements, which are sonically abrasive. I used an old PAIA Gnome synthesizer for some stuff, and we even recorded from my iPhone with some interesting audio apps. Rich did a piece with an old autoharp I had in the basement with the keys removed and tuned randomly. We did that one track in my kitchen! I did some guitar noise with a variety of different pieces of metal including a giant steel bottle opener. I also laid down a couple of leads and melodies with a Ron Sword 23 fret/octave microtonal guitar but those tracks didn’t make it to this CD, so they'll be on the next one.

IE: For someone reading this not knowing what to expect how do you describe the whole thing because to me it's a unique piece of work that I have never come across before in this music scene.

Rich: I can't quite find the words to describe what we did. I just tell people it's crazy and warn them to hit the skip button if something drives them up the wall as I'm sure you did a couple of times as well, haha. There's plenty of crushing metal, hardcore, and punk to go around. A lot of the weird stuff is tastefully blended in the mix, like Matt pointed out before, so maybe it creeps up on ya on the 3rd listen and shit.

IE: A bunch of songs on this album start off with these loud bursts of noise where at first you think there might be something wrong with your CD player. Are those the power tools at work?

Rich: Hahaha!!  Nah, that's just us being obnoxious. Power electronics, noise... Matt got me into Merzbow, Masonna and shit like that 20 plus years ago. Some of those we took off old cassettes when we used to get together and jam on all his insane equipment. Sometimes he'd go to bed, leave a pile of trees out, and he'd come out at 7am – the trees would be gone – and I’d still be awake with 90-minute tapes stacked up on the table next to me of all the bizarre shit I did. Some of it found its way onto this album!

Matt: I’m extremely stoked that we’ve brought a grittier element to the band over time. It just makes everything more sonically destructive. 

IE: Where did you find someone to play congas and how did you incorporate that sound into your tracks? Did they come and rehearse with you beforehand or did they come right to the recording? Are you happy with how they came out?

Matt: Rich was interested in putting percussion on the record and wanted someone who was really good. Bopa King Carre, happened to be a friend of mine for a long time and I knew immediately he'd be able to do anything we wanted. I gave him a call and he was down. He's also happens to be a killer drummer as well as an incredible percussionist. His full time project is a live dance music group called Equanimous Minds.

Rich: Yeah, I was just looking for a couple of cool conga parts and asking around. Matt ends up having his friend comes down – a professional Latin drummer! He shows up with piles of road cases filled with drums! He had a whole timbale set, cowbells, set of congas, some bongos. He did the couple things I asked for and then spent a couple of hours mostly improvising on the spot. We ended up using a lot more than we planned because it was all so killer! I think it will surprise people just how good these songs sound with that added in. And Bopa is old school metal also.

IE: What about the violin?

Rich: Same deal… I had one or two songs I decided would rule with some violin layered under the guitar, but we couldn't get anyone reliable to commit. One night, we had a session booked just for violin, and got a sudden cancelation. I was annoyed, but what are you gonna do, right? So I go down to the subway and what do I see? This guy with a violin playing WEIRD FUCKIN' SHIT right there on the platform! He'd play a song then out of nowhere do these twisted horror soundtrack stabs and squeals. The people standing around seemed perplexed by some of that, but I was like "ohhhh shit!" Kinda transfixed for a minute, haha

When he took a break and everyone kind of scattered, I went up and basically just told him I'm in a metal/hardcore band, we've got a session booked TONIGHT at an awesome studio and are suddenly in need! He named his price, I said "cool". We both took the train up to Astoria, he drank a bunch of my Ballantines, went off for a couple of hours, and we ended up with tons of usable stuff. Sometimes shit just works out better than you even could have hoped.

IE: So what was the guys asking price to play violin?

Rich: He just asked for $100. I was already paying $50 or $60 an hour for the studio, so it was totally reasonable to me. He put in a couple hours of work and we’ve got sick violin shit on like 6 songs. All good!

IE: I know you listen to a lot of metal from back in the day but do you also listen to other kinds of music that have congas and other instruments that might not usually be included on a hardcore or metal album?

Rich: Well, Santana immediately comes to mind...  But yeah, we're mostly metal and hardcore-punk rooted but also super into world music, classic rock, soul, blues, jazz... Tons of shit. That's what makes us sound like no one else!

Matt: I listen to mostly dub reggae, progressive rock, jazz and classical but I also love extreme music: power violence, grindcore and every so often, hardcore techno and splittercore. All of it influences our music. When we’re writing there’s no way a typical generic song is coming out of us. We do this mostly of ourselves. If other people happen to like it also, that’s pure luck.

Rich: Obviously we are aware that the band has a long history and association with hardcore and old fans want to hear us play heavy shit. Plus I personally HATE when bands change so drastically they may as well be using a new name, so any progression will be in increments. We’re not one of these bands that pretends we never put out the demos.

IE: Satan Wears Suspenders is your DIY label and you took a page right out of the DIY handbook packaging up all your mail orders which I think you said we're in the hundreds. How long did that process take and was it all you or did the rest of the band or your family/friends help out? How long did it take to do it all?

Rich: Well the whole pre-order delay is where I first started thinking about bullets to the head! There were some layout delays that were outside of my control, and I had thousands of dollars sitting in my PayPal for months that I wasn't supposed to touch -- but of course DID!  Then emails every other day from people asking what's up? I started to unravel a bit... Lesson learned: no mutherfucking pre-order until the goddamned record is AT THE PLANT!

But once we got the first shipment delivered, there were a series of full days sorting and packing all of it and printing shipping labels. Then trips to the post office in Springfield Gardens while people lined up, waiting and getting mad, as a few hundred packs got scanned... That was something for a YouTube skit! Haha.

Matt: You’d be surprised how much you can alienate postal workers and people standing in line when they see you roll up with a giant plastic transport bin filled to the top with CD mailers and boxes.

Rich: Everything is smooth now. People are ordering; we're mailing out packs twice a week. I’m always tossing in packs for my friends outside New York. People behind us on line at the post office still aren't happy, but we mostly go off-peak. The funniest are when people notice pentagrams and inverted crosses randomly drawn on the back of envelopes!

Matt: It’s actually pretty amazing how much we got done between work, family, rehearsal and life. We spent late nights and early morning hours with strong coffee getting these CDs out! We even ran out of packing supplies a couple of times and had to stop and hit Staples. Now that we’re all caught up, we started saving boxes from Costco trips that can fit bulk orders.

Rich: A Kellogg’s Eggo Waffles box holds 50 CDs wrapped in bubble wrap like nobody’s business!

IE: What about the cover artwork? Where did you get it and is there any reason behind using it?

Rich: Well originally, we were gonna go with an iconic photo of me holding the mic out while some herbs gather around it yelling and pointing their fingers. Matt would be next to me jumping 5 feet in the air. We scheduled a photo shoot and by the end of the day, we never got our shot and Matt’s heel spurs started acting up so…hahaha.

Nah, for some reason I like using really old art – 200 and 300 year old paintings, lithographs… I found the cover image in an old Abnormal Psychology book from the mid-'70s. You know, before everything became politically correct; so there’s tons of photos of patients all fucked up, lying in wards, getting electroshock therapy… Chapters dedicated to “diseases” that would piss a lot of people off today, etc.

Anyway, the art I chose is an old French painting by Tony Robert-Fleury when Dr. Pinel instituted more humane conditions at the infamous Salpêtrière Asylum. We held a séance one night and Tony's ghost said it was totally cool if we use it.

IE: You also busted out the congas on stage during BNB. How did that come about and do you think you pulled it off well? What did your friends say afterwards?

Rich: I play congas at every rehearsal. Just trying to recreate the shit from the record. I'm no Tito Puente but I do a decent job pulling it off.

After our set I had some people coming up surprised to see that and a few who immediately assumed I was just doing it to be funny. It's all good. It may not look "tough" enough for some bands, but I don't need to worry about that. Musicianship always trumped image as far as we're concerned. It's not being treated like a gimmick.

Matt: We’re gonna have Bopa with us at our upcoming record release show on February 22. He’s going to play percussion on all the songs he did on the record. It’ll be pretty massive. Since the Black N’ Blue Bowl, we’ve been working on playing more parts off the new record live and recreating some of the percussion parts as well as parts of the noise and samples. We’re going to conjure up some pretty ripping live audio for people to enjoy.

Rich: If your splittercore doesn’t send them running for the exits!

IE: The new album starts off with the track "Kill All The New Jacks". After reading the lyrics, I don't think I have to ask it, but for those who don't have the new album or lyric sheet: what's your take on hardcore in 2015?

Rich: A common misconception would be that I "hate" new kids or new bands, but that's just not the case. I love hearing new shit that blows me away. It doesn’t happen as often as I’d like, but hey…

The title is tongue-in-cheek, but there are valid points raised in the lyrics. Essentially, it is a manifesto against young kids or bands who want to claim a music identity but lack the essential awareness and are ignorant of the bands that paved the way for them to exist. There's this weird hierarchy that has sprung up where you have pioneering hardcore bands playing fests, and they're in like the 3rd row on the flyer. I can't be upset with the promoters; they have to determine who's gonna keep the crowd, etc... But I CAN blame the fuckin’ kids, can’t I? Hahaha.

Look, I hope it pisses someone off enough to go listen to some of the old A7 bands. No hard feelings, ok? I just want you young'uns to think The Abused and Ultra Violence fuckin' rule!

Matt: I love old school hardcore like Warzone, AF, Murphy’s Law, Kraut: that’s the shit I’ve listened to forever, but there’s also a lot of new school bands like Backtrack and Incendiary that are cool. It’s great that the tradition and style continues in new ways. Hardcore will never die; it keeps getting better and more intense. 

IE: Was there any one instance that made you write “…New Jacks” or is it more of just observing stuff from going to shows?

Rich: I came up with the title sometime in the mid-90s. It's less of an issue now than it was back then, I must say. In the 90's, so many new bands ridiculously copied current bands and were generally so clueless. Hardcore kids today do love old shit. Some of 'em know the songs better than the original guys who wrote ’em, HA.

IE: What about “Tossing Tomatoes At Your Hardcore Heroes”?

Rich: “Tossing Tomatoes…” was another piss-take; just me being a dick. I made fun of some situations that have happened. Like where a band starts out hardcore, tries to go commercial, flops maybe, and finds themselves back again. While everybody is jocking them, I’ll be the one offside going “well… what about that record? Oh, you don’t want to talk about it?” Haha.

Some of the old bands doing reunion shows, are playing for big money, and performing all the songs they did decades ago. Now hey, I ain't mad at ya... Sometimes I like a nostalgia fix myself... But is that ALL you’re gonna do? Let's see what you got now – write a new album! Who cares about your old demo. Hey, maybe it will annoy someone enough to get back in the studio and create something new. Or is it gonna be like Cher, doing her “final tour” and it just continues forever!

Matt: We have songs about almost everything relevant to your life on this record, some serious and some less serious, but we’re not CNN. We don’t need to write long winded political commentary; there’s enough punk bands doing that. There’s a song about social drinking, a song about  just  having a good time, there’s a few that make commentary on the state of the hardcore music scene…we have all sorts of things to expound on.

Rich: Yeah, there's a handful of songs that reference hardcore-related topics in a humorous way, but most of my lyrics are about much deeper topics. A lot of mental shit. “A Mockery In My Eyes…” and “Cognitive Capability Overload” aren’t the kind of lyrics well-adjusted people write…

IE: You guys are now a 4 piece although most of the photos on the CD show just 3 of you.

Matt: We played for a while as a 3 piece after our drummer left. We didn’t really feel like teaching someone else all the drums at that point and wanted to continue playing. Rich plays drums and pretty good so we decided to just do a power trio thing for a bit. It was good, but having Rich up front is important for us. He still plays percussion when we play live. We actually came up with a bunch of cool song ideas and riffs as a 3 piece that we have recorded from rehearsals that we’re gonna use at some point in the future.

Rich: Our original drummer Joe played drums on a bunch of songs on the album. He did the '07 and '08 "reunion" shows with us, but left after recording his parts. On bass was Také, who played with me in Everyday Dollars. He's dope – like a hardcore Roger Glover (Deep Purple)! Initially, he was gonna fill-in for some shows and we were having a good time so he stuck around and did the recording too.

When we took band pics in 2011, we had been a 3-piece for a while by then, and we thought we might just continue that way. Mark used to come down and do backups when we played live so I could pull off all the fills and shit.

IE: Who are the rest of the members in Darkside NYC these days and how did you all come together?

Rich: When Také decided to move back to Japan, Mark already knew all our songs inside and out, and had been secretly eyeing the gig for a few years, so that was his chance to pounce!

Matt: Mark’s been a fan of the band for a long time, and a friend as well, so he was kinda the obvious choice when it came to getting a bass player. He knew all the old songs already and was a pretty quick learner when it came to getting the newer songs down.

Rich: Matt's still on guitar. He's still insane. I first met him from doing shows with his old band Disassociate. He’s been playing with us ever since Alan Blake retired, which is 20 years at this point. And as much as I like playing drums, it was soon time for me to hand that off. Now we've got Rick; neighborhood guy. Real chill. We played in a band for a brief stint 25 years ago with Mike Inhuman on bass... Did Negative Approach, Cro-Mags, Breakdown and Close Call (Brooklyn) covers! He's into a lot of jazz and stoner rock so this is definitely the illest thing he's done!

Matt: It was great getting Rick because he knows hardcore but also can do really groovy beats and is steady like a motherfucker. A frontman however, is necessary for our live show. We needed that sense of danger coming off the stage, haha.

IE: Right now the new album is only on CD and you’re calling it a double album even though it's just one CD. You have plans to press this on vinyl and will that be double vinyl if that happens?

Rich: Well it'd have to be 2 separate LPs. It's way too expensive to do vinyl these days for a band like us to sell a "double-LP". How much could I charge for an LPx2 and not lose my shirt? $30? Would anyone actually pay that? Not sure, but people would definitely pay $15 or $18 for one!

And we’ll run into the exact same situation when we put out "Optimism...: Vols. 3 & 4". So there’ll be 2 CD's and 4 LP's when all is said and done. But before we bother with any of that, we’re totally planning 8-track and cassette!

Matt: We’re already in discussions with a friend of mine who specializes in 8 track tape creation so that will be out eventually as a limited edition version of the record. We’re also doing an ultra-rare edition of the record on wax cylinder. I recently went to an Audio Engineering Society open session to learn about cylinder recording so we have the knowledge now. There’s a great resource in New Jersey – the Thomas Edison Center at Menlo Park that displays a bunch of Edison’s phonographic inventions if anyone is interested in learning about the real old school.

IE: You have told me that you guys are already deep into the follow up. How far along are you with that and when would you guess it would come out considering this one too about 6 years to do from start to finish. 

Rich: “Optimism Is Self-Deception: Vols. 3 & 4” is made up of all the songs we didn't mix yet. All the music is done, everything's been "pre-mixed" and about half have final vocals. Our studio moved to New Hampshire, and we found ourselves super-busy trying to get the first CD out. I'm going to look into getting back into a studio to lay tracks this year. The assistant engineer who worked with us does sound at a really cool metal club. I may either do vocals there, or at a studio location he has access to. It won't be another six years; I'm shooting for 2015.

Matt: I’m really anxious to finish up the next record. There’s a ton of killer songs on there that are almost finished that rule hard… I can’t wait to get them out. I’ve also gotten more into making crazy sounds and bug-outs over the years since we made this new record and want to record some of it for the next one.

CLICK DARKSIDE NYC LOGO BELOW TO HEAR "KILL ALL THE NEW JACKS" OFF OF THEIR NEW LP