Alright. To
start off, could you tell us the names of your bandmates and what everyone
does?
Eric Gibson is our bassist. He actually started Die Young with me back in 2002. He was one of our guitarists then, because we started this band a sort of side project that would allow us to play different instruments than we played in our previous bands. But after the first tour we put Eric back on bass, because he’s way better at bass than he is on guitar. Our current guitarists are Jeff Williams, who lives in Birmingham, Alabama, and Chris Dawson, who is Eric’s old friend from high school who lives in Austin now. Jeff probably toured more with Die Young than any other guitarist back in our road warrior days. He took a semester off of college in 2006 to come out with us as a fill-in guitarist, but then he liked touring with Die Young so much that he quit school altogether and kept touring with Die Young until we broke up in 2009. Chris joined the band very recently when Hasp quit right after we recorded the new record and played our comeback show. Chris and Eric go way back, and they had played in bands together before, so Chris was actually one of about 2 people that came to mind to even consider asking to play for us. He’s a really good fit and we’re glad to have him. Our new drummer, Wendel, is really named Daniel, but everyone calls him by his nickname. He lives in Mexico City. He used to always ask me to reform Die Young to play a Mexico tour under the name ’Muere Joven’ just because he wanted the opportunity to say he played in Die Young. When I came up with the ideas for these new songs, he was first in line asking to play in the band. I figured if the dude wants to play in the band so badly that he will consistently come up from Mexico to record and play shows then he deserves a shot. So far, so good.
You guys went on a hiatus in 2009. What brought you back? Do you feel like the break helped you guys refocus/become stronger as a band?
When we broke up I was so burned out on writing this kind of hardcore. I ventured off into new projects doing Band of Mercy, and I also joined Will To Live to help them write a full-length. It was a nice change of pace. But you know, over time, when writing for those other bands, I would have obvious Die Young styled riffs come out of nowhere. By trying to write for other bands, I actually started developing material for Die Young again as an accident. For a good while I was really committed to the idea of not doing Die Young again, it just didn’t interest me for a couple years, but my attempts to start another band in a similar vein with the new material I was writing were fruitless. So when I moved back to Texas from Philadelphia late last year it just made sense to get the old dudes together and pick up where we left off. Everyone was excited to do it. And from there about 5 more songs wrote themselves in just a couple months. All that time off helped me realize that maintaining a band is often like maintaining a relationship. Sometimes things don’t go well, and rather than just calling everything off and walking away, you should just take some time apart to refocus and regroup. I do think we are in a position to come back stronger than ever. I think our new record is our best yet, and being that we won’t be touring all the time like we used, this band can actually be fun again. We know what our limits are now, and now things don’t have to be so frantic and obligatory like they were as a full-time band. At this point I want to focus more on playing quality shows versus a high quantity of shows, and the same goes for writing music—quality over quantity. I think we always grew with each release, but most of the writing was done by me, and overtime having only one songwriter starts to reveal its limitations. I think we can be much stronger now if we don’t have a crazy touring and recording schedule, and I can actually take the time to get everyone’s creative inputs for new material.
The band seems to be proud of their Texas roots. Any local bands that you like? What are you listening to now in general? Still living in Texas?
Yeh, I was living in Philly for most of 2013, and came back right before the end of the year. I mean, I enjoy being a Texan, but I am far from a Texan nationalist. There are a lot of funny things about stereotypical Texas character, but there’s a lot of embarrassing shit too—namely Texas politics. What I like most about Texas is that it’s decently cheap to live here and there is a lot of space to get away from other people. I don’t know how people live in the northeast. You come out of your apartment and there’s a crackhead on your stoop asking you for money. There’s no point in driving anywhere, because the freeways don’t have enough lanes, there are toll roads everywhere, and the sidewalks are just as crowded, so walking is miserable… and the weather fucking sucks. Seriously, it’s nice to visit up there, but no thanks to living there.
Lately, I listen to pretty much what I have always been listening to: Bad Religion, Earth Crisis, Hot Water Music, Chuck Ragan, Crowbar, Propagandhi, Amon Amarth, Pantera, Integrity and In Cold Blood, Ringworm, Disfear, Motorhead, Cro-Mags, Ghost.
As far as Texas goes right now, I think the younger bands that I like the most are Vulgar Display and Snakeway, and there’s a lot of newer bands doing cool, interesting things: Concrete, Stymie, Afflictive Nature, Eightfifteen, Ivy League, and really a ton more than I can think of right now.
The reviewer’s copy of “Chosen Path” that I received didn’t come with lyrics. What is the lyrical content on this album like? What place do your lyrics come from?
The lyrics for this record are a bit different than our previous material because I am primarily focusing inward rather than outward. I’m not offering a lot of social critique on Chosen Path. Instead I am talking a lot about personal choices and accountability, facing your future with regard to your past, and what it takes to emotionally maintain one’s self in a crazy, indifferent universe. I remember when we decided to make plans to break up after the Loss EP came out in 2008 I just didn’t know how I could write another record where I was condemning the outside world. You know, a person can only look around and point their finger so much. But that was Die Young’s thing—to be critical of society. In my defense, I was young and still figuring a lot of things out that I felt I needed to lash out about. It was all sincere and it was all honest, but I’m 31 now, and I have learned I wasn’t right about everything. I have learned that my decisions to spite society were bound to catch up with me, and now I am paying the price for a lot of my decisions back then. When I was 20 I thought I knew everything, and no one could tell me otherwise, but now I’m living like an adult and I am a bit more open to what the world has to teach me…just so I can live in it and try to lead a good and happy life. Reading Joseph Campbell and Erich Fromm, as well as getting into powerlifting, really helped me put a lot of my feelings and experiences into perspective, and those influences all shine through in the concepts presented on Chosen Path. I promise you there’s nothing about straight edge on this record, nor has there ever been anything about being straight edge on any Die Young record haha. Not what you’d expect from a metallic hardcore band with a record called Chosen Path, I know!
You guys toured like MONSTERS back in the day (I actually caught you at the gilman). Are you going to be touring as rigorously? Do you find that touring is as rewarding as it was when you were younger?
I don’t have any desire to tour at length ever again. When the day comes, I’ll maybe agree to do 2 weeks, tops. Touring fucks up my eating schedule, my sleeping schedule, and it makes me weaker in the gym, which makes me weaker at just about everything. Touring, for me at this point, is no way to live at length, and I paid my dues with it. Thank you, I agree that we toured like MONSTERS back in the day, and I am very proud of that. That kind of show schedule may not be in the cards coming up for us, but I do enjoy playing shows more now. I enjoy simply practice songs with my friends more now. It’s good to get together and work on this vision of music that we have, and I really love that. I really need it in my life. One aspect of living in Philly that sucked for me was that I didn’t have the musical connection with anyone up there that I have with my friends in Die Young, Will To Live, or Band of Mercy. Those are connections and sense of understanding that we’ve developed for years now, and that makes them hard to replace.
Most hardcore bands, especially in this day and age, record a demo, an EP, some splits, and then implode into a million side-projects and short lived labels. You guys have stuck around and have quite a discography. What’s the source to longevity?
In our previous incarnation, up til 2009, the source of longevity was me running the band like a dictatorship. You don’t want to to tour anymore? Okay, see ya. Oh you’re not having fun anymore and can’t deal with me? Okay, see ya. Can’t manage your own finances to keep touring? Okay, see ya. I’m kind of an asshole, but maybe that’s why I am able to get shit done. You know, in the end the result is the same: members argue and burnout and feel like the band isn’t fun anymore whether somebody is an asshole or not, because touring typically offers you no real future, no money, and little prestige. Touring in a hardcore band generally doesn’t offer you women, so that’s one fault to it for most dudes. For most of us it was a way to escape the real world and responsibility at a pivotal time in our lives. Sometimes there are hard feelings, but usually there weren’t. Most all of us are still friends or at least on good terms. I tried to make everything as feasible for everyone as I could, and some guys would definitely have more complaints about me than others, but I had a vision I had to see through. I kept it going until I lost sight of my vision. I wish it could have been more of a collective vision, but when I quit school and jobs to tour in a band, I just couldn’t wait around for the original guys to get in gear with me. Some of them didn’t even have an interest in touring, so our lineup was bound to change a lot, for better or for worse. There were definitely some occasional tours that I felt we just weren’t as tight as we should be. So now the focus is quality over quality. I don’t want to compromise our quality to keep playing shows ever again.
Ex-members of Die Young went on to form “Band of Mercy”, a very, very outspoken vegan band. Are any of you guys vegan? Straightedge? Do you feel that those ideas are still relevant in hardcore?
Three of us in the current Die Young lineup are vegan and straight edge, and those are the three of us who play in Band of Mercy. I think we’re all old enough to the point that being straight edge is almost irrelevant to us as far as the label goes. We are sober guys, but we don’t talk about straight edge much. To me, being straight edge without being vegan, or at least vegetarian, is a purely nerdy thing to go around claiming because it has no logical basis in regard to the idea of “self-preservation.” More people die of heart disease and cancer each year from diets rich in animal based foods than all the different types of drug-related deaths combined. If you’re straight edge, but you eat meat, dairy, and eggs, you ought to reconsider the consistency of your moral platform. Meat and dairy are just vices that are culturally ingrained. I don’t know if you mean to imply that vegan or animal rights related issues are no longer relevant in hardcore, but even if they were irrelevant to most kids in the scene, I seek to keep them relevant. If people in hardcore don’t want to confront issues about the modern food system, or basic social justice issues, then they need a kick in the nuts. I get that it’s not the 90s anymore, but fuck it, I am going to have fun talking shit in my vegan band because it’s what I am passionate about.
Headfirst! Records, to me anyway, is a fantastic label for dark metallic hardcore. What is your relationship with Headfirst! Do they sign bands or are they more of a distributor?
I first got to know John and Caroline from Headfirst when they approached me about doing some tapes for Band of Mercy in early 2010. John said Die Young was always one of his favorite bands, so he wanted to work on anything new we were up to. From there the relationship began, and when it came time to do Die Young again, he and Caroline were excited to tackle the project. As far as their label goes, they do everything on a friendly level. There are no contracts or anything. It’s pretty DIY, but they work hard at it and invest a lot of time, money, and effort into it, so it is a good fit for Die Young.
Who did the cover art for Chosen Path? It gives me a real BURZUM type vibe.
Funny, I did the cover. I think Burzum is terrible. Can’t say I know what any of their particular album covers look like. I was just going for a visual vibe that captured the atmosphere of the music and some of the lyrical concepts on our record. I generally don’t like Scandinavian bedwetter music.
Are you involved in any side projects?
Just Band of Mercy and Will To Live, which aren’t really meant to be side projects, but they’ve taken a backseat lately.
Finally, could you clue us in on any upcoming projects with Die Young? Splits, shows, records?
Well, the Chosen Path record is streaming online now (http://toxicbreedsfunhouse.blogspot.com/2014/02/die-young-chosen-path-exclusive-stream.html). That record and the split with Confronto are coming out on April 1st. We’ve got some Spring and Summer shows planned to support those records, which will include various fest appearances. Sell Your Soul Records in Germany will also be releasing a DVD/CD collection of our early works plus the high quality footage of our “final” show in Houston back in 2009. Other than that, there is much yet to be planned and written. I’d like to do another full length in the next couple years, but for now we are going to push these new releases and get in people’s faces as often as we can.
Thanks so much for the interview, Daniel! You can find more information about DIE YOUNG and buy the record at the links below.
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Die-Young/156120297792080
http://headfirstrecords.limitedrun.com/categories/die-young-tx
Eric Gibson is our bassist. He actually started Die Young with me back in 2002. He was one of our guitarists then, because we started this band a sort of side project that would allow us to play different instruments than we played in our previous bands. But after the first tour we put Eric back on bass, because he’s way better at bass than he is on guitar. Our current guitarists are Jeff Williams, who lives in Birmingham, Alabama, and Chris Dawson, who is Eric’s old friend from high school who lives in Austin now. Jeff probably toured more with Die Young than any other guitarist back in our road warrior days. He took a semester off of college in 2006 to come out with us as a fill-in guitarist, but then he liked touring with Die Young so much that he quit school altogether and kept touring with Die Young until we broke up in 2009. Chris joined the band very recently when Hasp quit right after we recorded the new record and played our comeback show. Chris and Eric go way back, and they had played in bands together before, so Chris was actually one of about 2 people that came to mind to even consider asking to play for us. He’s a really good fit and we’re glad to have him. Our new drummer, Wendel, is really named Daniel, but everyone calls him by his nickname. He lives in Mexico City. He used to always ask me to reform Die Young to play a Mexico tour under the name ’Muere Joven’ just because he wanted the opportunity to say he played in Die Young. When I came up with the ideas for these new songs, he was first in line asking to play in the band. I figured if the dude wants to play in the band so badly that he will consistently come up from Mexico to record and play shows then he deserves a shot. So far, so good.
You guys went on a hiatus in 2009. What brought you back? Do you feel like the break helped you guys refocus/become stronger as a band?
When we broke up I was so burned out on writing this kind of hardcore. I ventured off into new projects doing Band of Mercy, and I also joined Will To Live to help them write a full-length. It was a nice change of pace. But you know, over time, when writing for those other bands, I would have obvious Die Young styled riffs come out of nowhere. By trying to write for other bands, I actually started developing material for Die Young again as an accident. For a good while I was really committed to the idea of not doing Die Young again, it just didn’t interest me for a couple years, but my attempts to start another band in a similar vein with the new material I was writing were fruitless. So when I moved back to Texas from Philadelphia late last year it just made sense to get the old dudes together and pick up where we left off. Everyone was excited to do it. And from there about 5 more songs wrote themselves in just a couple months. All that time off helped me realize that maintaining a band is often like maintaining a relationship. Sometimes things don’t go well, and rather than just calling everything off and walking away, you should just take some time apart to refocus and regroup. I do think we are in a position to come back stronger than ever. I think our new record is our best yet, and being that we won’t be touring all the time like we used, this band can actually be fun again. We know what our limits are now, and now things don’t have to be so frantic and obligatory like they were as a full-time band. At this point I want to focus more on playing quality shows versus a high quantity of shows, and the same goes for writing music—quality over quantity. I think we always grew with each release, but most of the writing was done by me, and overtime having only one songwriter starts to reveal its limitations. I think we can be much stronger now if we don’t have a crazy touring and recording schedule, and I can actually take the time to get everyone’s creative inputs for new material.
The band seems to be proud of their Texas roots. Any local bands that you like? What are you listening to now in general? Still living in Texas?
Yeh, I was living in Philly for most of 2013, and came back right before the end of the year. I mean, I enjoy being a Texan, but I am far from a Texan nationalist. There are a lot of funny things about stereotypical Texas character, but there’s a lot of embarrassing shit too—namely Texas politics. What I like most about Texas is that it’s decently cheap to live here and there is a lot of space to get away from other people. I don’t know how people live in the northeast. You come out of your apartment and there’s a crackhead on your stoop asking you for money. There’s no point in driving anywhere, because the freeways don’t have enough lanes, there are toll roads everywhere, and the sidewalks are just as crowded, so walking is miserable… and the weather fucking sucks. Seriously, it’s nice to visit up there, but no thanks to living there.
Lately, I listen to pretty much what I have always been listening to: Bad Religion, Earth Crisis, Hot Water Music, Chuck Ragan, Crowbar, Propagandhi, Amon Amarth, Pantera, Integrity and In Cold Blood, Ringworm, Disfear, Motorhead, Cro-Mags, Ghost.
As far as Texas goes right now, I think the younger bands that I like the most are Vulgar Display and Snakeway, and there’s a lot of newer bands doing cool, interesting things: Concrete, Stymie, Afflictive Nature, Eightfifteen, Ivy League, and really a ton more than I can think of right now.
The reviewer’s copy of “Chosen Path” that I received didn’t come with lyrics. What is the lyrical content on this album like? What place do your lyrics come from?
The lyrics for this record are a bit different than our previous material because I am primarily focusing inward rather than outward. I’m not offering a lot of social critique on Chosen Path. Instead I am talking a lot about personal choices and accountability, facing your future with regard to your past, and what it takes to emotionally maintain one’s self in a crazy, indifferent universe. I remember when we decided to make plans to break up after the Loss EP came out in 2008 I just didn’t know how I could write another record where I was condemning the outside world. You know, a person can only look around and point their finger so much. But that was Die Young’s thing—to be critical of society. In my defense, I was young and still figuring a lot of things out that I felt I needed to lash out about. It was all sincere and it was all honest, but I’m 31 now, and I have learned I wasn’t right about everything. I have learned that my decisions to spite society were bound to catch up with me, and now I am paying the price for a lot of my decisions back then. When I was 20 I thought I knew everything, and no one could tell me otherwise, but now I’m living like an adult and I am a bit more open to what the world has to teach me…just so I can live in it and try to lead a good and happy life. Reading Joseph Campbell and Erich Fromm, as well as getting into powerlifting, really helped me put a lot of my feelings and experiences into perspective, and those influences all shine through in the concepts presented on Chosen Path. I promise you there’s nothing about straight edge on this record, nor has there ever been anything about being straight edge on any Die Young record haha. Not what you’d expect from a metallic hardcore band with a record called Chosen Path, I know!
You guys toured like MONSTERS back in the day (I actually caught you at the gilman). Are you going to be touring as rigorously? Do you find that touring is as rewarding as it was when you were younger?
I don’t have any desire to tour at length ever again. When the day comes, I’ll maybe agree to do 2 weeks, tops. Touring fucks up my eating schedule, my sleeping schedule, and it makes me weaker in the gym, which makes me weaker at just about everything. Touring, for me at this point, is no way to live at length, and I paid my dues with it. Thank you, I agree that we toured like MONSTERS back in the day, and I am very proud of that. That kind of show schedule may not be in the cards coming up for us, but I do enjoy playing shows more now. I enjoy simply practice songs with my friends more now. It’s good to get together and work on this vision of music that we have, and I really love that. I really need it in my life. One aspect of living in Philly that sucked for me was that I didn’t have the musical connection with anyone up there that I have with my friends in Die Young, Will To Live, or Band of Mercy. Those are connections and sense of understanding that we’ve developed for years now, and that makes them hard to replace.
Most hardcore bands, especially in this day and age, record a demo, an EP, some splits, and then implode into a million side-projects and short lived labels. You guys have stuck around and have quite a discography. What’s the source to longevity?
In our previous incarnation, up til 2009, the source of longevity was me running the band like a dictatorship. You don’t want to to tour anymore? Okay, see ya. Oh you’re not having fun anymore and can’t deal with me? Okay, see ya. Can’t manage your own finances to keep touring? Okay, see ya. I’m kind of an asshole, but maybe that’s why I am able to get shit done. You know, in the end the result is the same: members argue and burnout and feel like the band isn’t fun anymore whether somebody is an asshole or not, because touring typically offers you no real future, no money, and little prestige. Touring in a hardcore band generally doesn’t offer you women, so that’s one fault to it for most dudes. For most of us it was a way to escape the real world and responsibility at a pivotal time in our lives. Sometimes there are hard feelings, but usually there weren’t. Most all of us are still friends or at least on good terms. I tried to make everything as feasible for everyone as I could, and some guys would definitely have more complaints about me than others, but I had a vision I had to see through. I kept it going until I lost sight of my vision. I wish it could have been more of a collective vision, but when I quit school and jobs to tour in a band, I just couldn’t wait around for the original guys to get in gear with me. Some of them didn’t even have an interest in touring, so our lineup was bound to change a lot, for better or for worse. There were definitely some occasional tours that I felt we just weren’t as tight as we should be. So now the focus is quality over quality. I don’t want to compromise our quality to keep playing shows ever again.
Ex-members of Die Young went on to form “Band of Mercy”, a very, very outspoken vegan band. Are any of you guys vegan? Straightedge? Do you feel that those ideas are still relevant in hardcore?
Three of us in the current Die Young lineup are vegan and straight edge, and those are the three of us who play in Band of Mercy. I think we’re all old enough to the point that being straight edge is almost irrelevant to us as far as the label goes. We are sober guys, but we don’t talk about straight edge much. To me, being straight edge without being vegan, or at least vegetarian, is a purely nerdy thing to go around claiming because it has no logical basis in regard to the idea of “self-preservation.” More people die of heart disease and cancer each year from diets rich in animal based foods than all the different types of drug-related deaths combined. If you’re straight edge, but you eat meat, dairy, and eggs, you ought to reconsider the consistency of your moral platform. Meat and dairy are just vices that are culturally ingrained. I don’t know if you mean to imply that vegan or animal rights related issues are no longer relevant in hardcore, but even if they were irrelevant to most kids in the scene, I seek to keep them relevant. If people in hardcore don’t want to confront issues about the modern food system, or basic social justice issues, then they need a kick in the nuts. I get that it’s not the 90s anymore, but fuck it, I am going to have fun talking shit in my vegan band because it’s what I am passionate about.
Headfirst! Records, to me anyway, is a fantastic label for dark metallic hardcore. What is your relationship with Headfirst! Do they sign bands or are they more of a distributor?
I first got to know John and Caroline from Headfirst when they approached me about doing some tapes for Band of Mercy in early 2010. John said Die Young was always one of his favorite bands, so he wanted to work on anything new we were up to. From there the relationship began, and when it came time to do Die Young again, he and Caroline were excited to tackle the project. As far as their label goes, they do everything on a friendly level. There are no contracts or anything. It’s pretty DIY, but they work hard at it and invest a lot of time, money, and effort into it, so it is a good fit for Die Young.
Who did the cover art for Chosen Path? It gives me a real BURZUM type vibe.
Funny, I did the cover. I think Burzum is terrible. Can’t say I know what any of their particular album covers look like. I was just going for a visual vibe that captured the atmosphere of the music and some of the lyrical concepts on our record. I generally don’t like Scandinavian bedwetter music.
Are you involved in any side projects?
Just Band of Mercy and Will To Live, which aren’t really meant to be side projects, but they’ve taken a backseat lately.
Finally, could you clue us in on any upcoming projects with Die Young? Splits, shows, records?
Well, the Chosen Path record is streaming online now (http://toxicbreedsfunhouse.blogspot.com/2014/02/die-young-chosen-path-exclusive-stream.html). That record and the split with Confronto are coming out on April 1st. We’ve got some Spring and Summer shows planned to support those records, which will include various fest appearances. Sell Your Soul Records in Germany will also be releasing a DVD/CD collection of our early works plus the high quality footage of our “final” show in Houston back in 2009. Other than that, there is much yet to be planned and written. I’d like to do another full length in the next couple years, but for now we are going to push these new releases and get in people’s faces as often as we can.
Thanks so much for the interview, Daniel! You can find more information about DIE YOUNG and buy the record at the links below.
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Die-Young/156120297792080
http://headfirstrecords.limitedrun.com/categories/die-young-tx
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