INTERVIEW
SEASICK
by Christer Davidsson, October 2007

Hey! How are you dudes doing?

Matt - Pretty good. How are you dooooing?
Nick – Okay I guess, but this is an odd interview question.
Mark – I guess im doin pretty good? Really varies day to day.

For how long have Seasick been a band and how did you guys get started in the first place?

Matt – We’ve had a lot of line-up changes. But, the first incarnation started in 2005, which Nick and I would probably like to forget. We could never find a stable drummer, and then we met Mark, who isn’t a drummer, but agreed to play anyway. We struggled along with Mark on drums for about a year, releasing a demo and a split 7 inch, until Mark decided to make the switch to guitar and our friend Gore took over on drums.
Nick – Seasick has been a band for two years with a rotating cast of characters. We started as a four piece, then we added a guitarist and now we’re back to four. This iteration of the band has been playing together for less than four months it’s better now than it ever was. Seasick has always been plagued by internal conflict.
Mark – There was one demo before I joined, although I had no idea how to play drums they still let me do it. I think that was about two years ago. I briefly played drums in a thrash band called “ThroatXPunch” with some friends and for some reason thought being in seasick would be a good idea, even though I didn’t know Nick or Matt and pretty much thought they were total weirdmen.

I got your 10" "Awakenings" on the turntable as we speak. I've been spinning it quite a bit since I got it. How has it been recieved?

Matt - All the reviews have been really positive, so I guess people are digging it. No one has said they didn’t like it yet, so I’ll be happy until the day when someone finally tells Seasick the truth.
Nick – Critically? Favorably. Generally? The jury is still out on that one. As Matt mentioned, we have yet to hear much in the way of criticism yet. You won’t hear much about Seasick in the general public discourse by virtue of the type of band we are.
Mark – Yea the reviews seem to be saying good things but I don’t really know those people. Our friends seem to like it and that’s what matters most to me.

"Awakenings" is your first release, am I right?

Matt – No, we released a couple of demos and a split 7inch, which came out last summer. But, this is our first official solo release.
Nick – We have a split 7” with NJ’s now defunct Don’t Wake Up. Matt hates the record, but I still like it, though there’s certainly a departure from the split 7” on Awakenings. It might as well be, and kind of is, a different band. See question two.
Mark – not the first, but clearly the best thing we have done so far, but I think our next records (split with ANS from texas and solo seven inch) are going to be much better.

Ok, I had no idea, where can people get a hold of the old split?

Nick – Check out the Braindrain Records webstore. We also have a few copies left at our shows.
Matt- Good answer, Nick.
Mark – Braindrain records needs all the money they can get to support Jay’s plans to build a life sized robot/slave in the likeness of Perry from Lighten Up.

"Awakenings" is out on Brain Drain Records, what made you put it out on that particular label?

Matt – We sent the thing pretty much everywhere, but BrainDrain was the only one who seemed super excited to do it, and things couldn’t have gone better. Jay, who runs the label, is probably the best dude on the planet. He puts ketchup on pizza, also making him the weirdest.
Nick – Necessity. We were broke and Jay was willing. I couldn’t be happier with the relationship. I’m still surprised Jay decided to put it out, considering the first time he met us in Philly we must have seemed like a fucking wreck.
Mark – Because Jay Braindrain is a beautiful man and he runs a solid label. He is way on top of his shit too.

Most of the lyrics on the record are pretty political. What topics get's you going in terms of song-writing?

Matt - When I write the lyrics they are usually about movies or comic books I don’t like. Like, I wrote a very thought provoking song, detailing the fall of western culture in conjunction with the release of the film Leprechaun 4: Leprechaun in Space. But, alas, they are usually rejected for Nick’s discourse on moral philosophy. I think my lyrics would reach a broader fan base, but everyone else wants this band to “stand” for something.
Nick – Generally, I look at my lyrics as stylized forms of formal arguments. I rarely write about “personal” topics like relationships or what have you. I don’t think I have much to contribute in that department. I try to relate what I see as problems within the diy punk community to the concerns of contemporary analytic philosophy. For instance, look at “Understanding Sentience.” Veganism has been a polemical topic in the scene for decades now, but most discussion surrounding it is rather elementary. I get it, you think meat tastes good, but taste isn’t a morally relevant consideration so shut the fuck up. “Cog in the CAUSAL (not ‘casual’ as everyone miswrites) Machinery” has several components, but the central claim is that many religious views are committed (implicitly) to a dangerous and egoistic view of free will and morality. In other words, as people let god, or allah, or the great pumpkin, “take care of things” they’re letting the world go to shit so that they might fuck 70 virgins in heaven or see their dead dog or something. So those are more or less examples of the lyrical process. A lot of people see my writing as pretentious because of the language. If I was really interested in an intellectual pissing contest do you think I’d be singing in a punk band?
Mark – Nick writes most of the lyrics, if not all. We all usually go over the ideas and the words he has written to make sure we like them or agree with them. My writing is less straightforward, more abstract and usually doesn’t clearly define a point, which is the exact opposite of what Nick is doing so we just leave it to him. Plus I really like the way he writes.

How important would you say that a band's political statement is? Do you think it's different in different scenes/styles of punk and hardcore?

Matt – It isn’t the only thing that matters, but it is nice to think that other people care about things.
Nick – I’m not sure how I exactly feel about this, but I’ll make a proposal. “Being political” (we’ll call this P) is a necessary condition for a band to be considered punk. Though it obviously isn’t sufficient, because I wouldn’t consider U2 (who is arguably political) punk, or for that matter, any band who might be politically conservative. I know on the face of it that sounds like a controversial claim, because there are obviously a ton of bands that aren’t explicitly political that most people, including myself, consider punk. But actually, I don’t think what I just said is all that outrageous because a band doesn’t have to be explicitly political, for instance lyrically, to satisfy P. Tons of bands are political by virtue of their adherence to diy principles, aesthetics, and the like.
Mark – The way I look at hardcore is this; 50% music, 50% ideas. If the ideas don’t matter then why the fuck are you in punk anyway?

What other bands have had an impact on your music?

Matt – Bad Brains, Ramones, Black Flag. I guess those are like standard answers at this point.
Nick – If I had it my way, we’d be a perfect blend of Infest, Bad Brains, and Lungfish; ripping off equal parts from each.
Mark – I guess everyone says this but when I was much younger I heard Bad Brains self titled and it changed my life. Fast, tight, and musically awesome. Got me hooked on the punk rock.

What got you into hardcore to start with?

Matt – I guess the skate videos I started watching in my early teens got me into it. Those old Zero and Toy Machine videos had some awesome bands on the sound tracks. I sound like a commercial.
Nick – I think the first hardcore record I consciously bought knowing that they were distinctly considered ‘hardcore’ is Bane’s “Holding this Moment.” We listened to this record for the first time in like three years while driving at 6am in Colorado this past tour and I don’t know what the hell I was thinking. That record had a huge influence on me and now I can barely get through it.
Mark – My hometown had a huge hardcore punk scene going in my early teens so it was unavoidable. Pretty much every kid I was friends with was into punk.

I love the artwok of the 10". Who's the man behind it?

Matt – The woman behind it is named Alex Snelgrove. She did an amazing job with it, and I think more people are into the cover art then the actual record.
Nick – I’d like to add that Alex PAINTED that album cover. She’s incredible. This reminds me, we still need to pay her for that!
Mark – I think its interesting that you would assume it was a man. Hardcore’s got a long way to go. Everyone actually in seasick is male (to the best of my knowledge) so in a way we aren’t really that different from the norm, but its important to question and challenge gendered stereotypes when you find them.

I see what you mean. To me it seems like there are more and more women in punk rock and hardcore bands nowadays which is really cool. Do you agree with that?

Nick – If there are in fact more women playing in bands, then yeah I think that’s cool. I’m just not sure there’s been much of an influx over the 7 or so years I’ve been going to shows. Most shows we play are still brodeos.
Matt -- I would agree with you to an extent, but I don’t really think that there has been a lot more. Then again, a lot of the bands in New Brunswick right now have girls in them. Side note, apparently, Nick thinks that we play shows where people are robed and hog-tied. Very strange.
Mark – I would say that like most things, new brunswick is a bit of an anomaly being that women here are much more involved in punk rock than the surrounding areas (from my narrow observation). And its not just being in bands but women play a prominent role in putting on shows, doing zines and other “supporting the scene” type things. We can just hope that this expands throughout new jersey and beyond but like nick said, at this point its really “bro” dominated.

How important is the layout of a release? Is it important at all?

Matt – It’s pretty important, I know we had a bunch of meetings to decide on the layout of both the CD and the 10”. I wasn’t invited to any of them, but I know they happened.
Nick – I think there’s value in representing visually what we express sonically. Alex and Lauren (who did the layout and plays in our neighborhood favorites The Measure) put a lot of time into capturing the underlying concepts of the record.
Mark – If a record rocks, then it fuckin rocks and it doesn’t matter all that much what it looks like. But if a record looks really cool or has an awesome layout sometimes it just shows that someone put a lot of work into their record and that’s really respectable in my opinion.

So, tell me a little bit about the upcoming recordings you mentioned.

Nick – We have a split 7” with ANS coming out on Give Praise/Braindrain before January, then a solo 7” on Soul Rebel around late March/February, then hopefully a split 7” with Killin’ It on Matty T Records for the summer, and then finally our first LP for next January.
Matt – We are also going to be appearing on the soundtrack to a remake of “Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo”. I’m putting it out, and it features footage of Mark dancing in front of a mirror in his bathrobe.
Mark – Most people don’t know this but I am very very sexy in my “after evening” garments and I am also a very skilled dancer well trained in both breakin’ and krumping. Also, we will be appearing on what has been described as the “right to assemble 2” nj punk rock compilation which will also be on Soul Rebel.

Are you guys playing a lot of shows?

Matt - We’re probably playing like once or twice a month, but nevertheless we have the next 6 months or so pretty much booked up, what with tour and recording.
Nick – While we play pretty often, we won’t play every show we’re offered. We straddle a very fine line between two vastly different scenes. Don’t get me wrong, there is no theoretical difference between punk and hardcore. They’re one and the same. But practically, there’s a world of difference between most “punk” and “hardcore” kids and there are aspects of both that we hate.
Mark – Im really excited to go on the road again, we have a tour coming up this winter with our friends Static Radio which should be a fucking blast.

Static Radio are really cool and I'm sure you'll have a great tour with them. Good luck with everything and thanks a lot for doing this interview! Is there anything else you'd like to add?

Nick – There’s a lot of bands playing right now in the greater New Brunswick, NJ area that everyone should check out. Killin’ It, Zhenia Golov, Screaming Females, Hunchback, Hellhole, Sea Creature, The Measure (SA), Full of Fancy and a bunch more that I’m forgetting.
Matt – For the record, I’m Spina.
Mark – I just want to give props out to Dead Tired for keepin it real at the jersey shore. That band is the definition of traz.

Links:

Seasick | http://www.imnotafraidofyouoldman.com

BrainDrain Records | http://braindrain.myshopify.com