INTERVIEW MED ANDREW NOLAN FRA THE ENDLESS BLOCKADE.
Could you introduce yourself and your projects:
2010 Line up is Bloomer, Carroll, Edgar, King, Nolan
Related Blockade projects:
Slaughter Strike
Brutal Knights
Sahkalin
Ride at Dawn
Piss Horn
Joshua Norton Cabal
Death Agonies
Windscale
Gack
Black Paintings
Probably some other noise projects that I've either forgotten about or don't know about.
How did the journey of the Endless Blockade begin and where is it taking the band now:
We formed in 2003, changed drummers in 2004 and added a fifth member for live purposes in 2010.
What were your intentions for the band to begin with, was there a concept, genre or something alike decided from the beginning:
To be honest any band that I'm the main song writer in is going to sound kind of like this band, I can't really play any other way for the most part.
To me there's a clear change in execution at the point when we recorded the Hatred Surge split when I changed my focus slightly, whether anyone else hears it or cares is debatable.
Are you still influenced by the same music you listened to when you started?
We're probably influenced by less music than when we first started, but nothing new.
Many hardcore listeners seem to have placed The Endless Blockade along with Hatred Surge and Iron Lung as the front men of the new wave of "true" powerviolence. Is this a position you can see yourself in?
I haven't heard us referred to as True Power Violence; it strikes me as faintly ridiculous. We're influenced by power violence, nothing more.
The noise incorporation in the music of Endless Blockade seems to me like a perfect choice for making the music more intense and brutal. Was it a choice from the beginning? And what are your thoughts on the two genres working together?
The noise was there on the first demo and the split LP with Warzone Womyn, it was just buried in the mix a lot more.
Noise is something natural for us and we don't spend that much time over thinking its role in Blockade; it's not something exotic or out of the ordinary for us.
I've been making noise recordings for around 20 years now and finally bothered to put my two musical currents together with this band having always had some degree of resistance in most of the bands I've played in before this point.
Everyone in Blockade has some noise related project on the go concurrently with our main focus.
What equipment and amplification do you use live and in the studio; is there a difference, and how important is it for the "blockade" sound?
It's important that we have half decent gear for volume and frequency response.
Noise wise the live setting is more stripped than in the studio, we travel light, Matthew will use a feedback loop, I'll use either a noise generator, a small synth of some contact mics and metal and an A/B switch into my amp.
We now have an extra member playing noise with us live so it can be integrated into the songs more now and not just used to fill the silence between blocks of songs or at the start and finish of our performance.
You played in Shank before the Endless Blockade. Shank were stationed in Glasgow which one probably can imagine is a lot different than Canada. How differs Europe from Canada in a musical perspective?
Well, it's hard for me to talk about Canada as it's pretty big and there's not much going on in most of the country.
But I think North Americans on the whole are more serious about their bands and Europeans are more serious about the cultural aspect of punk.
I think there's generally a better quality of bands over here (sorry but it's true), but the scene is very transient; there's barely anyone over the age of 21 involved and the infrastructures that are in place could all come crashing down at any moment.
And of course there are good and band bands everywhere in the world..
Songs like "Don't Voice Your Opinion" have what you could call an anti-punk message (say what you want to say seems to be a punk mantra). Could you explain the words behind the song?
It's less anti-punk and more anti-modernist I guess.
Society is over saturated with information and the seemingly meaningless exchange of that information. I think that telling people that everyone is a special individual and we should all be given equal attention is as damaging as constantly telling people they'll never amount to anything.
Quiet contemplating is apparently out of style. Almost everyone has an opinion on absolutely everything and by God they're going to tell you what they think whether you care or not and being unable to string together of coherent thought isn't going to be in anyone's way.
Most of us, and I certainly include myself here, are not nearly as smart, important and indispensable as we'd sometimes like to think we are.
Everywhere there's this incessant cultural noise and it's so tediously 'interactive'. Some people just seem to make as much noise as possible for fear that they'll disappear if they stop broadcasting their bullshit.
I'd like to hope that whilst others are shouting every half baked thought that enters their head that at the quiet periphery others are evolving into something better.
In general The Endless Blockade seems not to be a fifteen shows a month kind of band unlike a lot of "hardcore" bands. How do you feel about playing live?
Well, geography and age play a large role here.
If we were to play 15 shows a month we'd have to tour a lot more and touring regularly in Canada is largely a waste of time for a band that sounds like us so we need to go to the US (which is less distance for us to travel than to play pretty much anywhere else in Canada).
The problem with going to the US is that we have to sneak our equipment over the border which is always a stressful situation. Not to mention the fact that I'm not a Canadian citizen so there's always an added layer of bullshit for me to deal with.
I like playing shows occasionally, but not all the time. I find that I'm usually at least 15 years older than most of the people that come to our shows so it's often a little weird for me.
And let's not forget the financial cost is becoming more and more prohibitive for a lot of people to tour. Punk barely even breaks even these days.
The music of Endless Blockade seems to vary from release to release. You have recently released a split with noise/powerviolence mentors Bastard Noise where you contributed the fourteen minute long track Deuteronomy. Does this musical evolution come intentionally or is it a development on a more subconscious level?
I think our sound varies form release to release primarily because I write music for specific releases now. I haven't written a batch of songs with no purpose in mind since the earliest days now.
I find that if I set clear parameters at the start then I'm able to get a better end result and Deuteronomy was a clear example of this process.
The lyrics and imagery of The Endless Blockade often deal withe esoteric and occult themes on a profound basis. A line that stuck with me is "Man understands divinity / like a dog understands electricity". How is the occult an inspiration for your music?
I think of all the lines I've ever written that's one of the few that encapsulates exactly what I wanted to say succinctly and clearly.
Esoteric and occult ideas are an influence on The Endless Blockade in as much as they're an influence on my life and sometimes leak through.
I'm not setting about casting runes before I can make a move; I prefer to see esoteric traditions and ideas as being part of a living and permanently evolving worldview that adds another level of experience to this painfully meaningless existence that most of us lead.
There is a tendency in musical cultures to treat esoteric ideas as somehow naturally evil and blasphemous and in general this betrays a complete lack of understanding. I can appreciate the validity of playing the role of adversary but a lot of musical acts with occult images seem to be as confused as the drunkest of the drunk punk crusties.
In another interview, you described your approach to playing live as having the same elements as a magick ritual (as Crowley taught it). In my opinion, playing live is always some kind of ritual, be it social, psychological, or spiritual, and "errors" (like feedback) can never fully be controlled. Can you explain your view on this?
That sounds like the interview with Sleeping Shaman webzine where I likened aspects of the noise at the start and end of our sets being like a banishing ritual and helping me get in and out of the 'right' state when playing live.
Playing live can certainly be like some sort of ritual but sometimes people seem to confuse rituals with routines. Obviously it all boils down to intent and deliberately setting out to effect some form of change. Very few bands have those goals when performing live, I generally don't have those goals; mostly it's just about playing live with little greater importance than throwing yourself into the void for a short period of time.
Sometimes people who are really into ritual and ceremony just have a form of religious Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Lesser Banishing Rituals of the Pentagram get turned into psychic equivalents of washing your hands fifty eight times after touching a door knob...
How does 2010 look for The Endless Blockade
We played the other side of Canada a few weeks ago, our split with Bastard Noise just came, we're playing a week of shows with Hatred Surge in a few weeks, we're mixing our split LP with Unearthly Trance this month and then that's about it for a while I think.
In summary; busy at the start of the year, pretty low key for the rest.
Last but not least, what are you reading and listening to at the present time? Is there any underrated bands or books you want people to know about?
The best books I've read recently are Maldoror - Comte de Lautremont and Turning Back the Clock - Umberto Eco. Musically, well, this could last forever, but today I've listened to:
Ramleh - The Hand of Glory
Sockeye - Retards Hiss Past My Window
Witch Tomb - Crippled Messiah
Todd - Comes to Your House
Claws - Absorbed in the Nethervoid
Fall of Because - Life is Easy
Pink Turds in Space - discography
I've been listening to Geriatric Unit and Haters (UK not US) a lot lately.
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