Interview with Andrew Neufeld of Comeback Kid

After some time away from the blog due to exams and such, I'm back with a new interview. This time Comeback Kid vocalist Andrew Neufeld chose to dedicate his time to answer a handful of questions I'd cooked up - mind that the interview questions were made before Victory launched pre-orders for Symptoms + Cures.

I asked Andrew some questions about the new record, his views on hardcore and what brought him to where he is music-wise. Here's his 2 cents...

So Andrew, how are things going with your new record - recording, artwork and such?

Everything is going good. We are now just coming to the end of some down-time (touring-wise). The new album is done. It's called Symptoms + Cures and it's coming out on August 31. We finally finished the artwork and getting packaging together. It's been a lot of work recording and post-recording but we have it ready and we're excited to get back on the road and play around the world.

How's the process been so far - had any problems or set-backs?

We had to push mixing back about a month or so because we couldn't get finished in time. We had a tour with Set Your Goals in the USA and couldn't get everything done in time, so we decided to come back and mix the album after the tour. I think it was a smart move because it allowed us more time to be prepared.

Can you unveil any details about the new record?

Symptoms + Cures is our 4th full-length. We recorded it in Toronto, Canada with Eric Ratz ad Kenny Luong. Our friends in Cancer Bats recommended them to us. We just kind of wanted a switch in studios, since our last two albums were with The Blasting Room in Colorado. It was cool for CBK to work with some fresh ears. 

If the vulnerability of comparison allows us: How do you see the new record compared to your previous releases? 

Musically, I feel like it's a bit of a throwback to our earlier material, but it's much more heavy and urgent vocals. More singalongs, and more of a punk twist to it. We wanted to have the album sound tight but raw, and have it screaming through the speakers as opposed to the clean sound you hear nowadays. 

Please elaborate on what you want to do with the record musically?

This is our take on the hardcore/punk we want to play. We wanted to do some new things and expand with our genre. We wanted to write an album that would mostly translate live. There are some fun beer-spilling-over-the-red-cups-singalong songs, and then there are some more in your face hardcore songs. 

Symptoms + Cures is being released through Victory Records just like your two previous records. A lot of bands have had their beef with Victory Records, but maybe that list of bands does not include you?

Every band/label that have been together for a few years have issues. It's a relationship like any other (business/personal), we have ups and downs. What I will say is that Victory has been so supportive of us as of late and really getting behind this record. They are really good to deal with and I'm in contact with them most days. We hope that they are as excited about our new album as we are. 

You guys have been touring a lot. I remember me and a friend went to Hamburg, Germany to see you with Defeater. We ended up lost there because apparently the venue used to be on another location. So we did not attend anything (as our plan B, Have Heart - playing in Hamburg the same day, ended an hour before we got there)... Are you guys gonna make up for this any time soon?

Yes, we will be in Germany for Area 4/Highfield Festival. It's crazy that we're playing alongside Blink 182/Queens Of The Stone Age/Etc. so it will be an experience. We are coming back for a full European tour with Parkway Drive, Bleeding Through, Your Demise, etc. (red. see tour-dates here)

 

How did you get into hardcore? What was the scene like when you were new, and which bands made an impression on you?

I got into hardcore through the local scene in Winnipeg. I grew up listening more to skate punk in the 90's. Propagandhi was probably my first punk band, and then I would listen to NOFX, Lagwagon, etc.  In the small city Winnipeg where we grew up, when I went to shows it was punk, oi, hardcore and metal bands all playing together. So there would be HC kids, punks, skins all circlepitting for all the different bands. Genres at shows weren't so separated then. So when I was about 14 after liking the Fat Wreck style stuff, I was introduced to Earth Crisis, Strife, Harvest (who were a new band in my area), Warzone, Lifetime, and Gorilla Biscuits. I was introduced to HC as a whole big diverse music scene, and that's why our influences are all over the place. We have a traditional HC base, but adding new elements to that.

How do you see the hardcore scene today? Is there anything that bugs you or fascinates you?

I love that HC is opening up in different parts of world, like SE Asia, South America, (we're actually touring South America with Sick Of It All in a few months - so excited!), and just a lot of places we've started to go to with strong local scenes, and now bands are able to tour these places. It blows my mind and we want to take advantage of these opportunities. 

Pick 1 band from the 80s era - Sick Of It All/U2 haha

Pick 1 band from the 90s era - Propagandhi/Madball/Nirvana

Pick 1 band from the 2000s era - Twilight Singers/Mew

Pick 1 current band - Alberta Cross is kicking my ass right now.

Pick 1 record you'd kill to own - I don't have a home so I'd have nowhere but my storage unit to put my vinyl haha. 

Pick 1 reunion show you'd kill to attend if it were to happen - Chain Of Strength!

Any last comments?

Thanks for the interview!

Pre-orders for Symptoms + Cures are up at the Victory Webstore now - go grab it!

That's it. Next interview will be posted in mid-August. 

Yours truely, 

//Rune

Two times the bay got me.

I'm in the middle of my winter-exams and frankly I'm a little, if not to say a lot behind on my reading. Therefore this post will be short, because right now I should be reading about sociology, welfare state and political ideologies.

The bay threw some great records at me a couple of weeks ago, here's the first one:

It's the last to complete my CBK (Victory part) collection; Comeback Kid - Wakte The Dead on solid baby-blue vinyl out of 330. Even though there are 330, this one is significantly harder to come by than it's limited equivalent debut full-length Turn It Around on red vinyl w/ red labels (out of 300). This one rarely sees the light of day on Ebay and are the hardest of all the CBK records on Victory Records to come by.

Next is a record I felt was needed in my collection for a long time. A record that to me is one of the brightest releases in 80s hc:

Insted - Bonds Of Friendship on black vinyl. This, along with Vision - In The Blink Of An Eye, is probably the best record to emerge from the 80s hc scene(s).

They're to be looked at, never played!

This "article" include several purchases, unlike the previous ones where I've tried to contain one purchase in each. My laziness prevented me from posting these purchases right away, so this is going to be a rather long post.
First I got the first full-length by Count Me Out from a dude on the deadformat.net trading board:

Count Me Out - 110 on solid yellow vinyl out of 331 on Indecision Records. I first got acquainted with CMO about a year ago when I first heard their second full-length entitled Permanent. Solid hardcore, and if I were to review Have Heart, I'd claim them to be in the vein of Count Me Out.

My order from Reflections Records arrived yesterday, I got this LP and an Outspoken shirt. Love this album:

I always tend to compare this release to Vision's "In The Blink Of An Eye" and don't really know why, they both just have something in the sound that I really like.

Next in line is a Sinking Ships 7" limited to just 8! SS collectors might ask, what the hell... I didn't know if this!?! It turns out that the guy from SS who runs Excursion Records found 8 extra of this Sinkings Ships 7". So he numbered them and gave people on the React board first shot at them. I was quick enough to get my hands on a copy:

Sinking Ships was put to rest way to early, but they released solid stuff in their time. This most definitely being one of them.

I went on a one-day trip to Esbjerg, only to pay Bogormen a visit, and here's what I brought home with me:

This is one of my two favourites by Tom Waits. The first track "Alice" is one of the most beautiful songs I have ever heard. This is very most like Blood Money, only a bit more diverse.

Original pressings of Sigur Rós records are quite expensive, so when they first reissued "Ágætis Byrjun" and "( )", I ordered those right away. I hoped for a reissue of "Takk...", since I missed that one when it first came out. It came about a couple of months ago and I picked it up in Esbjerg. It was relatively expensive, but considering what it contains, I guess there's no need to complain. 2 DMM Vinyls and a 10" etched b-side in a stunning thick cover. This is the last Sigur Rós I decided to buy, since I don't really like the newer stuff.

New AFI record is surprisingly good, compared to the last one, Decemberunderground. Even though the cover may indicate Duran Duran, the music is much more like Sing The Sorrow tha Decemberunderground, and I appreciate that. Track 3 entitled End Transmission is stunning in particular. The single from this album called "Medicate" is... average. I don't really understand why this is the single. It even came out on two different 7"s.

I had a great opportunity to stock up on some classics, which I have been meaning to get for some time, but never got around to buy. Now was the chance, so I picked up 4 great classics from two legendary hardcore bands, which everybody are familiar with, I presume.
There's really no reason to eloborate any words on YoT. Even though I haven't been listening to them for that long, I know through books and word of mouth that it's one of the most essential straight edge hardcore bands ever. These three records are probably the core of what I endure about the first wave of straight edge hardcore, along with 7 Seconds, Gorilla Biscuits, Bold and Uniform Choice. Speaking of 7 Seconds, I picked up The Crew - a record my good friend Benny introduced me to several years ago when we both lived in Esbjerg. It's muc more melodic, but make no mistake about that, it's still straight edge hardcore smeared all over your ears. Bogormen had like 4 copies of this...

And speaking of old goodies, here's some, to a lesser extent, classics I also got:

I haven't found Speak Out by Bold yet - not that it's hard to find, I just bought other stuff instead, but this MLP entitled Looking Back is really good as well. It's no Speak Out, but still good. I also wanted Value Driven by Better Than A Thousand, but I haven't found that one yet, so when this one was available for 80kr. (app. $16) I picked it up right away. Ray Cappo's BTAT is just m,y cup of tea, with the ribght amount of melodic rifss and the right amount of old school hardcore! Dag Nasty is a bit too melodic for me in comparisation.

Here's just a little addition to my CBK collection. This version is still available everywhere, I just had to pick it up at some point. Didn't really know if I wanted to include the Victory releases in my CBK collection, since I can't stand that label, but I am only missing one of 'em now, so what the hell....

Here are some CBK records I won on Ebay in one lot - was missing to of them:

From left to right:
white, red w/ labels, gold, red/clear w/ labels. I've got two of the white and the red one now, but I had to have the two others. now there 7 CBK recs to go and it's complete!!

Package(s) 21.-22.08.09

It's been a bit of a dry-spell lately (well, not really, but it feels like it). I've had some stuff incoming for quite some time, and some of it came yesterday.
Seb of Just Another Day Records were to ship a complete Debaser collection to me (with the exception of the pre-order version), but he had to go on vacation which was fine, so yesterday a very distressed mailman knocked on my door and handed me a heavy little box. This box included:

That's the complete Debaser collection. It includes:

Neon Yellow /110
Blue /100
Orange /87
Lilac /84
Blue/Purple swirl /7
Clear/Red swirl /12
Light Blue /6
Dark Magenta /107
Test Press /20

Thanks a million to Seb for helping me with this.

Last night me and some friends went to see Rush'n Attack (NL), Cornered (NL) & Deal With It (UK). They played at a small venue here in Copenhagen. I recently became familiar with Cornered, as someone posted a link and praised them at the React! Board. They sounded great and I ordered their demo 7" right away from Crucial Attack Rec.
Anyway, they had their distro with them on this tour and I jumped over to the vinyl section right away. There was a lot of stuff I wanted to buy, including the Alert 7", Keep It Clear 7", Deal With It LP etc, etc, but due to my empty wallet, I only ended up buying a Cornered t-shirt (which is too small) and this:

As far as I know, this is sold out, so I had to pick this up over the Alert and Keep It Clear 7"s as they are still available. I talked to a guy from Cornered and he said that the Resolve LP is going to be amazing and that I should def. pick it up. Before that I'd already be talking to Seb (he's putting it out on Just Another Day Records) and he would hold a test press for me :D

Last, but certainly not least I got this today:

This is the black cover Picture LP version of Turn It Around on Best Times Records. Only 70 came with the black cover. Although this is numbered out of 100, only 70 had black covers. The first 30 had red covers:

This is numbered #064/100. Now there's 10 CBK recs left for me to collect...

Package 10.08.09 (CBK Edition)

Here's an excuse to tell the world about my Comeback Kid collection. As mentioned in an earlier thread I'd post a collage-photo of my entire collection. (bottom).

Today I received my "Turn It Around" Test Press /13 (This being #13). I was so psyched about this, I paid $170 + shipping for this piece and maybe I wanted my Nike Air Mogan as much, but there's tons of those, but only 13 of this one! ;)
At first I thought that the test press came with a regular cover, but I saw that I comes with a plain black cover and a slip-sleeve around it (see photos).

Here it is:

There's now 11 pieces to collect before I can call myself the only dude in the world who owns a COMPLETE Comeback Kid collection.

Here's a collage of the entire collection:

Package(s) 27.07.09

Today I got my first package since I decided to make their content accessible to the public with this blog. As a matter of fact I got two packages today, one of them which disappointed slightly. Well, be that as it may, I was stoked about getting these.

Content of package 1:

After surfing some vinyl boards late one night, I cam across the band Signs Of Hope, and I saw several people collection their records. Found them on myspace and a minute later I placed an order at Detonate Records. Signs Of Hope is an amazing hardcore band. Out of mere fear of misguiding somebody I've decided not to describe their music. "Choices Made" is the 2nd release from SoH, and it is available on white, clear, red, gold, green and blue vinyl. I've seen some other strictly limited colors of this release as well.
I was slightly disappointed with the cover of this release (it just has a "sleeve-slip" instead of an actual cover), but Detonate is a small label and it's okay. The first 7" from SoH can be ordered here.

The other 7" I got from Detonate Records this day was the Horizons debut 7" "Hostile Territory". A very solid debut and the vinyl can also be ordered in the same colors as the SoH 7".
Check Horizons out on myspace. Detonate have released two very solid 7"s here, be sure to pick them up.

Content of package 2:


Look at it! JUST LOOK AT IT!! It's amazing. You're looking at a picture of the "Turn It Around" Friends Press limited to 33. This is number 16. Comeback kid was probably the first band I started to collect after AFI. I've been after this piece for over a year and here it is (oh, and I'm out $140, but who cares...). I love this album and now I only need these to complet it:

Turn It Around Facedown Fest Press /43
Turn It Around Test Press GMS /13
Turn It Around Test Press (white vinyl)
Turn It Around clear/red blood w/ labels /218
Turn It Around gold /100
All the picture discs (hate these!!!)

hook me up. I got a lead on the Facedown Press and the clear/red blood w/ labels /218 press.

Someday I'll take a picture of the whole thing.