Interview with JESUS BRUISER for Everlong fanzine - answers summer 2008
1) Firstly how did the band come about and why did you choose the name JESUS BRUISER?
Andy: JESUS BRUISER is the end result of a bunch of 'musicians' from respected local bands getting together, jamming and going nah mate...! Ultimatley though they weren't anywhere near good enough to be part of the dream team that J.B were destined to become. Members of ICONS OF FILTH, CHAOS U.K, THE SCAVENGERS, SPANNER, MALARCHY came and went. The lethal cocktail that was to degenerate into J.B started fermenting when Matty (at that time FRUIT OF THE DOOM's drummer) was persuaded that he needed a side project. A couple of months scavenging polystyrene sheets and judo mats (?!) while grooming Andy W led to a vaguely sound-proofed squat practice room and a lead guitarist. Badger, a smiling face from free parties, noticed because of his CRASS tattoo was volunteered for bass duties (on borrowed kit - cheers Ooch!) closely followed by a second guitar in the form of Myles. The name is a compromise that stuck and grew (taste the drink at your own peril...). Andy W left the band and J.B moved to SPANNER's practice room, found Talia and now practice on a regular basis (sometimes!).
Badger: I'd just moved to Bristol, Andy and Matt had been on about forming a band for a while and jammed with a few different people, so me and them and Andy W (now an ex-guitarist) started making horrible noises in the basement of his squat in winter 2005 (I think?), with Myles following shortly after. Massive thanks to Ooch for the long-term lend of the bass rig (I'm still the subsidized member of the band with no kit of my own...). The name is actually a cocktail (a creation of Andy W). We went round for band practice one day and he'd built a 'cocktail bar' in the basement out of leftover booze. So, a Jesus Bruiser is equal parts Special Brew, gin, and pineapple (or was it lime?) Bacardi Breezer (cheap out-of-date variety from local offie for preference). First it was a Special Breezer, then a Bacardi Bruiser, then the vision cleared through the alcoholic haze and we knew what we must do (or, a less melodramatic version of the story is we couldn't agree on a band moniker and ended up with a pissed joke name). I could add something about resistance to authoritarian, patriarchal religious metaphors but it would be a complete lie...
Myles: Andy had been trying to get something together for ages and had Matt on board. I think I was last to get drafted because they wanted a second guitarist, had tried everyone else and I was mates with Matt, not because I was any good at playing guitar. The name is from a drink, I hate it (the name) but the others won't let us change it.
2) I know Matt was in FRUIT OF THE DOOM who seemed like a band destined to split up as they seemed to encompass so many styles, what happened to the rest of F.O.T.D and ever regret painting the initials in the urinal in the Junction as it's hardly a fitting epitaph?
Matt: So many styles, yes. It was a struggle but good fun. We were all friends before starting the band and still are. Shawn, John and Rubin started KILKA SERCO, doing mashed-up sludge-step metal, but aren't doing that anymore. I think the initials in the urinal are a perfect epitome, sums up the direction we had! It is a shame we didn't do more with the band, as musically it was really coming together. It'd be great to get together again and do a good recording.
Badger: All I know is the one time I saw FRUIT OF THE DOOM they had a fist fight on stage...
3) Has any one else been in any bands that anyone has heard of other than THE MINGERS obviously?
Myles: Unlike the rest of them, I've been in nothing before this but I still write all the best songs so it shows how much good that did them.
Andy: I was in CONTRAMENATION, a mid-'90s German politico band and TWITCHER - Bristol's worst punk band ever! It's official, TWITCHER versus HACKSAW in the final and TWITCHER won (White Horse 2000ish - chocolate bribery may have beat the bogrolls...).
Badger: I'd been talentlessly thrashing at drumkits in punk bands since I was 13 before being recruited to bass, the only one anyone (in Bristol at least) is likely to have heard of/cared about was BLACKLISTED U.K from Gloucester.
4) May be I was drunk but I'm sure I was at a gig when you were fronted by a frog and a shark (New Years Eve maybe?). Is this true or do I have to dig out hundreds of photos just to prove I'm not imagining it all?
Matt: That was technically 'JUDAS BREEZER' that night. I was keen to play New Years Eve at the Junction and Andy W (former guitarist/cocktail waiter) were the only ones about. So we were jointed by Gavin (shark) and Johnny Danger (frog) on vocals, also Ben G on bass (horned beast), Andy W was a mulleted beer monster, I was a bumble bee. A strange cocktail ensued. Art-thrash-rock gone wrong. I have the video somewhere.
Myles: Yeah, it happened, it was just Matt and other Andy, the old guitarist, because the rest of us weren't around.
Badger: Ah yes, the one-night-only appearance as JUDAS BREEZER! Ten points for J.B history trivia, yes that was a New Year's Eve gig. I was in Barcelona and Andy in France I think, but this couldn't stand in the way of Matt's ambition of playing in a band every Junction New Year, and yes I believe the photos confirm that JUDAS BREEZER were a costume-orientated band. Myles maintained a policy of non-involvement.
5) How would you describe your sound and what bands are your major influences?
Badger: A mixture of stripped-down hardcore, melody-driven crust and filthy d-beat with some more modern anarcho tendencies thrown in, sometimes all in the same song... which confuses the fuck out of us let alone anyone else! Fuck it, we're a heavy punk band OK? For influences I can only speak for myself but I recon crossover anarcho-punk/crust stuff like DETESTATION and SUBSTANDARD definitely finds its way into our noise - elements of TO WHAT END?/AMBULANCE and all that new Scandi-sound stuff too. I'm also listening to epic crust like FALL OF EFRAFA, U.S experimentalists ZEGOTA, Polish melodic hardcore in the vein of POST REGIMENT and BIALA GORACZKA, HEVN/CROSS STITCHED EYES-style creepy twisted stuff, SEDITION's tribal thrash, drunken Euro-punk like HIATUS and FLEAS & LICE - and plain old d-beat punk rock (hail PISSCHRIST!). Oh and LOS CRUDOS all the way!!! And that's just the H.C/punky stuff...
Myles: I don't know what we sound like because it's hard to tell from where I'm stood on stage. I really like intense hardcore with more interesting little bits in, stuff like AMBULANCE or SILENCE or FROM ASHES RISE, but I don't think we're as heavy as them unfortunately. Lyrically though, bands like that aren't always explicitly political which we try to be, so we're a bit more anarcho that way. Now we've got Talia singing that changes the sound a bit, I'd like it if we sounded a bit like EASPA MEASA but I feel like a total wanker writing that because they're fucking amazing.
6) How did you end with Talia of THE MINGERS in the band, were you fans of THE MINGERS and have they definitely split for good?
Talia: Yes, THE MINGERS have definitely split up. Pretty soon after it was decided, I set out to try and get another band together. Nothing really seemed to gel. Then, in April, JESUS BRUISER asked me to drive them on their euro-tour, which I was well up for! 2nd gig in, they taught me a song in sound check and I sang it with them that night. It felt so good to play with them. Loved the music, and they're alright people... I suppose ;P They ended up teaching me a new song each night, and on the day off in Amsterdam, they got drunk and proposed to me (though they'll tell you I got them drunk and proposed to them. Either way, J.B gained an extra member that night!) By the end of tour we were playing the whole set together, and two weeks after the tour ended, I moved down to Bristol to be with them proper like. Wahey!
Myles: I always liked seeing THE MINGERS live and still have a badge of theirs on my shirt so I was a fan like that. She ended up joining because she was driving us round Europe. Except for Andy, we'd never even spoken to her before but still secretly thought it'd be cool if we could get her to sing some songs whilst we were on tour. Turns out she'd had the same idea although she hadn't even properly seen us before. We had a very sweet (and pissed for our part) chat in Amsterdam when she popped the question about joining the band and we were saying 'do you want to? Because we really like you but didn't think you liked us' 'no, I like you I just wasn't sure you'd want me' like a bunch of bashful teenagers at a party.
Badger: I went to see THE MINGERS last gig in Leeds in May after Talia joined the band but that was the first time I'd seen them - they were ace though! She'd seen us 'play' (in the loosest definition of the word) in Bristol with WOLFBRIGADE when she was driving their tour back in the bad old days early in J.B's existence, but amazingly escaped without scars, coming back for more.
7) Would you say that you were a similar band to THE MINGERS if you took out the slower instrumental bits? (Talia always looks a bit lost for things to do when you play the instrumental bits live when Andy does his pretend swimming or skips with the mike lead)
Badger: No. THE MINGERS were a straight-ahead HC band, whereas we wallow in our own self-indulgence and faff about more before getting to the point (sorry, 'breakdowns' and 'intros'). As for Talia's response to Andy's behaviour, she just hasn't acclimatized yet, whereas we're used to him...
Talia: We are nowt like THE MINGERS. Well, there's drums and electric guitars if that counts, with yelling over the top of them, but otherwise... Sorry, I will do a little dance for you next time shall I?
Myles: I'd never really thought of us as like THE MINGERS because they weren't someone I'd really listen to, apart from if they were playing Bristol, but, no, I don't think we're like them. I hadn't noticed Talia looking lost because I'm too busy struggling to play the instrumental bits to look up from my guitar. The reason Andy does stupid things is because singers are used to being the centre of attention all the time and don't know what to do when the focus is off them, now we've got two they can keep each other company so they won't feel so exposed.
8) Who came up with the cocktails on the web site and which do you recommend, did you ask Talia to contribute one and would any of the rest of the band drink it? How does she fit in with a band that seems to be fuelled by rough cider and Speckled Hen?
Myles: Andy the old guitarist came up with the cocktails. Badger's got the edge now so that must be Talia's pernicious influence. I drink on stage because otherwise I'd feel a bit of a prick screaming and moshing to a load of songs that are usually barely in time if I was sober, whereas, with the aid of booze, I think it's a fucking ace laugh.
Talia: They haven't asked me to contribute a cocktail yet, but i gladly would. It'd probably contain some sort of 'hippy tea'. Or chocolate. Matt's straight-edge isn't he?
Badger: The cocktail page is Andy W (our ex-guitarist)'s doing - nice one for that and kick-starting the band by providing a space mate. Talia missed the era of the band that still drank Jesus Bruisers at our first gigs, although sources inform me that in a previous life she had a fondness for Buckfast and rum (although not to our knowledge in the same vessel)! And as for her compatibility with Bristol's finest, let just say she's very patient bless her.
9) 'No Gods No Managers No Myspace' tee shirts; is this a protest at Fox and are you surprised how many politically aware bands sign up to Myspace?
Myles: Yeah, that's it exactly. It's not that hard to survive as a band without Myspace - we've been to Germany, Holland, Belgium and Scotland with barely a demo, never mind a Myspace, just the D.I.Y network and Badger's 'if you don't ask, you don't get' attitude. I don't understand why people who wouldn't touch a major label will have a Myspace, at least a major label would pay you, with Myspace you give them your stuff for free. Now I know all these bands are thinking they're so tiny they get more from Myspace than they give or they say bad things about it on their page or promote their politics, but that's exactly how it works; they give it credibility because they do that. If it only had GREEN DAY and FALLOUT BOY on it, if it censored what you said or charged you, then people would think it was this lame corporate entity and avoid it. That's the way capitalist 'democracies' work: you can say or do whatever you want just as long as the rich elite get rich off it and you're happy because you feel that you got to have your say even though you didn't actually change anything. Myspace is the perfect example of this: Murdoch is one of the dodgiest examples of an unelected, global oligarch who pushes his own right-wing agenda through his media empire (the Sun and the Times for a start) and meetings with politicians who are shit-scared of upsetting him (Blair and Brown are at the front of that queue). And he will make money off Myspace (or change it until he does), he's not running a fucking charity, he's got access to markets - teenagers and/or music fans - that are very lucrative, because they are defined by their consumption but are notoriously difficult to reach, because they're sceptical about the mainstream media and like to socialise and be actively involved rather than simply administered to. See how perfect Myspace is for this? The internet is an amazing resource for the D.I.Y scene, why let the corporations profit from what we do? A website can do whatever Myspace can, just means that you have a links page rather than 'friends' and have to send shitty pointless messages through email rather than on the site for everyone to read.
Badger: 'No Gods No Masters No Myspace' actually, and yes I see no compatibility between D.I.Y culture and Rupert Murdoch-owned capitalist 'social-networking' market-research driven enterprises threatening to monopolize online communication and music sharing. Not to slag off mates of ours who use Myspace in their projects, but I see no place for it in JESUS BRUISER, and if that costs us a few 'friends'/links/gigs then so be it, we'll have to do it the old-fashioned way and communicate through other methods. I see it dangerously developing as the only way to interact, for instance booking our tour in April, everyone now uses Myspace and nothing else so if you're not 'in' the network you are excluded. Bands now list only Myspace contact rather than email or postal addresses. You must sign in to download music. You must give your details to their archive to make an account, and yes of course you can just lie but it is part of a new wave of the standardisation of giving this information, kids at the community centre I use the internet at think nothing of tapping their details into the web. At the end of the day I fail to see what Myspace provides that other websites do not. Free music? Links? Photo albums? Guestbooks? Gig dates? Although the web is indeed tangled and there are no pure and righteous internet politics at the end of the day, it just seems like a wholly unnecessary compromise to me. We have recently joined the music page of "digital anarchy resource" www.3monkeyz.net, a forming project that links punk/hardcore bands across the world and seems like a pretty sound alternative, check it out. To be honest, I'd never heard of Myspace a couple of years ago before Myles wrote a song 'It's Not Your Space' about it, which just goes to show you don't need Myspace to 'get heard', I was still hearing about gigs across the country, still getting into new bands, meeting people face to face. International D.I.Y punk has spent 25 years building excellent communication, links, and independent (or interdependent) grassroots media worldwide, so are we really a music community that needs 'enhancing' by our enemies?! Though fuck it, in a world of militarised borders, environmental collapse and ever-expanding corporate globalisation there are bigger issues...
10) How did you end up with your sticker on the fridge in Shameless and are there any other TV programs you're trying to infiltrate?
Myles: I've got a friend who does art direction on the show and she said she'd put some of our stickers up, I never thought they'd be quite so blatant. She's used some of our posters on there as well so apparently we've played their local pub with BORN/DEAD or someone. We now go to play places we've never been to before and they'll say 'oh, you're in JESUS BRUISER, how the fuck did you get those stickers on Shameless?'.
Badger: Who knows what series we may choose to terrorize next (although I've still yet to see Shameless!), we are everywhere... Or at least the stickers are.
Talia: We're gonna stick one on Rosy and Jim's canal boat next.
11) How did the European tour go early this year?
Badger: Surprisingly we all survived the April '08 Alcoholocaust (although some of us not without headwounds by the time we hit Belgium on Day One), all the work paid off and many friends old and new, beautiful venues, incredible food (Germany definitely coming out tops!) and great bands - such as SANGRE, CHICKEN'S CALL (made the hairs stand up on the back of my neck!), THE USUAL SUSPECTS, POWER IS POISON - topped off with gaining Talia made it unforgettable. Massive thanks to all the promoters, cooks, squatters and bands who helped us out.
Myles: It was amazing, just ridiculous how well people treated us considering most had no idea who we were. Fed us lovely food, gave us loads of booze, nice places to stay and then paid us.
12) Best gig so far/favourite bands to play with.
Talia: Best gig for me so far, I think, was the squat (Little Poland!) we played in Rotterdam. So much fun and lunacy that night!
Myles: Whenever we've played with THREAT MANIFESTO from Wales they've been really good and the whole tour with DISKELMA was brilliant: they were really cool people and a fucking amazing band. I've really enjoyed pretty much every gig since this New Year because it's felt like we had a decent set that we could play without sucking, whereas for the first 18 months we were playing shit songs badly.
Badger: Hmm I think either Edinburgh (where we played with the mighty AFTERBIRTH and Deek OI POLLOI's Finnish band with a long name...) on both the gig quality and the food (easy way to my heart), or our eviction festival we held March '07 at the Brigstock Road squats in St Pauls. Or maybe the two gigs on ANTIMASTER (from Mexico)'s tour last year, whose raging d-beat blew all our faces off. Favourite bands to play with? Fellow Bristolian anarcho-skapunk militants SPANNER are always fucking excellent and top folk, international London-based fast-core band HELLO BASTARDS, THREAT MANIFESTO (the Rhondda Valleys best-kept secret, although shockingly the drummer has chosen to join the military), anything with Martin Einon in cos he's luurvley.
Andy: POWER IS POISON and CHICKEN'S CALL (they were amazing and they knew it - in a non-arrogant way) in a Dutch-Irish pub in Groningen (pictures of Republican hunger strikers on the wall - proper H.C), SPANNER cos they is luverly!!
13) Are you planning to re-record any stuff with Talia, has adding her to the band changed how you write songs, any new ones we should be looking out for in the set?
Badger: Definitely, it would be great to record the stuff with Talia because before she joined all we had was a shit demo of us giving each other the 'flu in a studio (the sound engineer was off work for a week afterwards, sorry!). It hasn't really changed how we write stuff in my opinion. Yep there's a few new ones in the set/the works, including 'Death By 1,000 Cuts' (about compromise and selling out ideas over time), 'Palestine' (three guesses...) and 'Gone Too Far' (about food miles). Keep an eye on www.jesusbruiser.co.uk for lyrics and MP3s.
Talia: I hope so, because I really like some of the songs that they recorded before I joined. We haven't really done a lot of new stuff since I joined, but I can't imagine my joining will really affect song-writing that much. I mean, those guys are constantly evolving with their musical writing. And the only change that i hope will be brought about by my joining is that I can contribute to lyrics for the new stuff.
Myles: We're always planning to record stuff we just never do, partly because we play loads of gigs. This also slows us down with learning new stuff because we tend to focus on the current set. We've got loads of ideas we should start playing live soon, we've had the same set for a while now. To be honest, having Talia hasn't really had any impact on the stuff we've done since she joined, we always planned for the songs to have 2 or 3 vocalists. It will be interesting if she writes some lyrics to see how they work out.
14) Any plans for an album?
Badger: During our tour with Finland's outstanding d-beat fanatics DISKELMA this June there was drunken talk of a split LP, which Active Rebellion have expressed interest in putting out. I'd love to do a string of split 7 records with different bands, it seems to sum up the punk ethos of co-operation and mutual aid pretty well, then maybe we could chuck it all on one CD in the future for those brave (or foolish) enough...
15) Who or what is the Bastard Squad?
Badger: The Bastard Squad Collective is a group of Bath/Bristol folk putting on benefit events for anarchist projects, ecological defence and anti-capitalist struggle. Originally we had a Bastard Squad sound-system in the Forest of Dean, but after the previous owner stole it back the idea imploded and I carried the shards to Bristol to start afresh. We do touring bands, half-dayers, a wide range of musical styles, hot vegan food and infostalls at gigs. Check us out at www.geocities.com/bastardsquadcollective for more info, links to worthwhile causes or if you're after dates in area.
16) At any point have you been worried that you might lose your bass player on a government holiday as a result of direct action?
Talia: Nah. He's a very well behaved citizen he is. Keeps schtum, does as he is told, etc...
Myles: No, Talia can play bass.
Badger: No comment.
17) You must be one of the few bands to actually try to cycle to gigs, is this important to the band and has this lead to any problems?
Myles: Although cycling is important to all of us for the obvious ecological reasons, cycling to gigs is because we're usually playing the Junction which is close to where we live and because some of us tend to be so pissed by the end of the night it's the best way to get home. We drive the kit to gigs (although there have been gigs closer to home where we've walked the kit there).
Badger: Yes (although we still use vans to move kit when it's us playing!), it's the most practical, ecological and cheapest way of getting about the city. Matt's involved with community bike repair/maintenance workshops, for example at Kebele social centre at 14 Robertson Road in the Easton district (a great place to visit and get involved in if you're about Bristol - autonomous space promoting social change, see www.kebelecoop.org). Check out Critical Mass events in the city centre (6pm last Friday of the month meeting at the fountains), protesting marginalization of cyclists by taking over main roads as blocks of bikes. So yeah, Vive le Velo-Punk Revolucion!
Talia: If you mean important in that we have and make use of 1 of 2 vans to get to gigs... then, yes.
18) You've got songs about G.M and climate change so you don't subscribe to the idea that if people keep increasing their energy use the only answer is in G.M, pesticides, scrap bio-fuels and use nuclear power if we are to keep enough of the land to retain natural systems and still feed the world?
Myles: G.M will fuck things up worse, as it already is doing in those countries who were forced to take it on. The fact that the Government came out the other day and said again that they were up for a national debate on the issue when they've already been told to fuck off shows how little they care what people want. Nuclear power? No fucking way. Replace one finite fossil fuel (oil) that produces harmful by-products for another fossil fuel (uranium) with harmful by-products? Yeah, that's a good idea. If these are the only solutions to business as usual then it's time for people to accept that we're going to have to cut back.
Badger: No, I don't buy the argument that genetic engineering, pesticides or nuclear power (or for that matter bio-fuels as a replacement) are in any way good things. Petro-chemical pesticides (which require fossil fuels by the way) are only needed when large tracts of land are used for single-crops only i.e industrial agriculture, is that retaining a natural system?! As for G.M, a huge question (aside from affecting precious biodiversity, and the fact we simply don't know what long-term effects they might have on our bodies and the land) is who will own the patents for the seeds (as if the concept of branding life forms wasn't frightening enough). We have already seen the Monsanto corporation sue an organic farmer in Canada (after he complained that GM seeds were blowing over and pollinating in organic fields) for theft! Plus self-destroying 'Terminator' seeds that cease to be fertile after a while (breeding dependence on the companies - thus their exportation to the Two-Thirds World is basically further colonisation after the 'Green Revolution' has already ravaged local traditional agriculture). G.M is another capitalist venture to 'own' the basic necessities of life, and should be fought as such. The industry was dealt a powerful blow by sabotage-ready radical environmentalists here in the U.K when they tried trialing G.M crops in the late '90s/early '00s, but now are pushing again. As for bio-fuels, this green-wash bullshit (primarily concerned with maintaining car culture, not sustainability) does not address the core fact that we (in the Global North) need to not only consume but PRODUCE vastly less energy on an industrial scale. The agro-fuel industry is responsible for 75% of the recent global rise in food prices as land and crops are turned over to bio-fuel production to 'keep us on the road', hence starvation in the Two-Thirds World (see the recent spate of food rioting; hopefully just the beginning), further tropical deforestation when tropical forest is our number one way of absorbing carbon, and all along someone is making money... Climate change is at the stage it is now due to industrialization, the markets mentality of 'endless economic growth at any cost', government's investment in fossil-fuel infastructure, and as such market-based solutions (such as carbon-rationing/carbon-trading etc) are incapable of saving us as they stem from (and are invested in) the problem itself. Capitalism (or indeed any centralized and authoritarian system) is incapable of responding to this crisis on anything but a superficial level, all they know how to do is turn a profit out of the disaster and laugh from their bunkers. To stay positive, hunt down the (slightly dated) documentary 'The Power of Community' about Cuban people's response to their own fuel crisis - turning over masses of land to organic food production, urban permaculture projects, localized resources. This in itself is not enough - we should not convince ourselves that strategies like this (if they are truly effective) will not at some point come into conflict with existing powers' vested interests in maintaining the status quo, and if we are not ready to fight them there we're in trouble - also we should be wary of government using climate panic as a vehicle for a 'green' police state or an excuse for further racist anti-immigration policy - but reminds how ordinary peoples resourcefulness is a powerful weapon. Also check out 'The Rocky Road to Real Transition' by the Trapese Collective (available online or as a booklet), 'Techno-Fixes' by Corporate Watch for why nuclear power (like other top-down solutions) is not an answer, and the international Rising Tide network taking direct action for climate justice.
19) Any final thoughts?
Myles: Cheers for the interview.
Badger: I've said enough already! Thanks for the platform for the rantings! Cheers to everyone who's helped and supported, you know who you are. Oh yeah and giz a gig!
