TLOBF Interview // Trash Talk

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Throughout their five years together, Trash Talk have spent the majority of this time on the road. Still managing to squeeze out a surprising number of DIY releases along the way, the Californian hardcore crew have just released their second full-length together, Eyes & Nines, on their own Trash Talk Collective label.

Recorded during a sporadic break from touring by Joby J Ford (The Bronx), the album merges slow, sludgy beatdowns with incredible bursts of raw speed and slashing distortion. At a brisk 17 minutes long, it’s a potent snap shot of a band conditioned by their relentless work ethic and now consistently battle-ready. Raw, snarling and immediate, the record is an essential listen for lovers of great hardcore, though it will never be able to fully capture the band’s rampaging live presence – an unpredictable experience so steeped in notoriety that they have been dubbed “the world’s most violent band”.

With a great year for the band already well under way then and plenty of miles left to clock, TLOBF managed to grab a quick word with guitarist Garrett Stevenson on a rare break from the van:

Can you tell me a bit about how the band first came together?

The band started around late 2005. We were just group of dudes from California who’d been going to punk and hardcore shows and we all just got together after being friends for a while . We’ve had a few different cats in the band but it’s been pretty much me and Lee (Spielman, Vocals) the whole time. We kinda just ended up with the other guys when other members didn’t work out or whatever so we just kinda grabbed the best of the best of the dudes that were friends with us and were playing in bands. Then after that we pretty much just played a bunch of local shows. And after no one cared when we played the local shows, we said “fuck it, we’ll just take it to the road”. We’ve pretty much been on tour ever since then.

How did you first start playing/”get into” music yourself?

As far I remember I’ve always wanted to make music. I grew up with a lot of Soul, Jazz and Blues stuff that was played in my house, and a lot of R n B, Motown and old Stax type records. That always appealed to me. I remember being like the age of five, beatboxing and stuff. I’ve always had an interest in music; it’s just kind of evolved over the years into different styles. My knowledge of Punk and Hardcore is very minimal, i think, in comparison to a lot of other people doing it.

You must’ve picked up quite a lot of it being in California though?

Yeah, I think it’s the best place to be for it. California’s always had a thriving scene, especially in the North. There are a lot of great bands out here, a lot of great friends of ours.

There’s a lot of fairly sludgy, slower sounds present in your material too, what kind of bands (if any) have influenced or inspired that?

I kind of hear it like Hip-hop or something, y’know, i hear everything kind of at the same tempo. I don’t really take influence from anything, but sometimes i take influence from stuff like that, like breaks or weird funk stuff. I don’t really think about it being fast or super slow though, i just play whatever comes out. Of course we’re influenced by bands like Black Flag, Circle Jerks, Infest and shit like that but that’s just the basis.

Eyes And Nines is your second proper full length together were there any differences in the way this one came together or the writing process? Do you have a writing process?

We’re on tour for the majority for the year, and a lot of our writing just happens in the van. A lot of it’s heavily influenced just by what everyone’s listening to. We all, for the most part, hate each other’s music but it ends up growing on us because of how many times it’s played in the van. So we just come up with stuff while we’re on the road, and once we had a few weeks off we just headed straight to the studio.

It was a bit of a different recording process working with Joby (J. Ford, The Bronx) because he’s a really good friend of ours. We’ve done tours with them, and I hang with that dude every time I’m home, so it was like working with a good friend of yours as opposed to working with some producer or engineer or something. It was super laid back, so we got a chance to do a week or two’s worth of recording as opposed to going through and knocking everything out in a day, which is what we typically do. So we got to actually kinda sit and listen to things and do things a little differently, and maybe even do things for a second time.

Can you tell me a bit about Trash Talk Collective? Was this created as a result of necessity or because of your admiration for the whole DIY ethos?

It was just kinda ‘cause we had to. At the end of the day you kinda realise that you do the majority of the shit anyway, y’know? (Laughs) So, to make sure that you don’t run into any bumps along the way and so you don’t have anyone else to blame, we were just like, let’s just take it upon ourselves so we can see the process from A to Z and we can feel a lot better about it. And it’ll be for the right reasons.

I just got an Eyes & Nines vinyl in the mail, from the pressing plant, and I’m just like fuck, this is awesome! I’ve seen this through from the designing of the artwork to putting it to the pressing plant to sending it to distribution. Everything comes through this door y’know. That shit’s just pretty dope. This is our seventh release now, and everyone has just been a fucking milestone for me, it’s been awesome. It’s been a learning process on how to put out better records and how to do things different ways. I’m enjoying it, it’s rad. I wouldn’t change it for the world right now.

The press over here have certainly taken a shine to you – NME in particular, who named you the world’s most violent band. Would you agree with that at all?

I think it’s kind of epic to say! We’re all super chilled dudes. When we get on stage, that’s kinda what the whole day has been leading up to. We’ve got twenty minutes or so, if we even play that long, to get the days’ worth of shit out, so sometimes it comes out in different ways. Whether it’s jumping up and down, or punching something, or jumping off shit, that’s just how it comes out, y’know? I wouldn’t consider it violent, or dangerous, it’s just us having a good time.

When I saw you earlier this year, you ended up on the speakers, with your bass player, Spencer (Pollard) kicking bottles into the crowd – obviously there’s got to be some kind of premeditation before doing something like that, but I imagine it’s just a split second decision?

Yeah it’s probably like “alright, great, it’s the last part of the song, what are we gonna do right now?” If there’s shit to climb let’s climb it, cause it’s fun!

I know you’ve had a bunch of shows shut down but have you had any real trouble, even with actually getting shows?

Nah, we can always play shows, cause we’ll play anything from a shitty club to somebody’s bedroom, so there’s always somewhere to play, that’s the good thing. We haven’t had a problem getting shows but there’s a ton of places we can’t play sometimes so we’ve gotta drop off some dates but for the most part it’s all good.

Are you used to getting shut down?

Yeah, it’s weird. We’ve just been home for like two weeks, and we had our record release yesterday. We can play at a venue or we can do something cool, or something different so I’m like ‘alright, we’re gonna play this record store’. We got maybe a quarter through our set and people were diving off DVD racks and shit, knocking over everything, and then the owner runs in, starts turning my shit off. It was almost a really bad situation but it was cool. They turned off all the power so we played a song with just drums. Everyone banged along so it was alright!

Beyond that, have there been any particularly surreal shows so far?

On our last trip we played Cologne, Germany and that was super crazy. That was the first time we’d ever been there and it was one of the funnest shows I’ve ever played. We met some random dude and wound up having him play guitar at the end, and he had no idea how to play guitar but he was having the best time of his life! It was rad.