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| War Brides |
Theirs is the kind of music that combines hardcore with melody. They were kind enough to stop by the International Headquarters of Glacially Musical Bldg B in Kenosha, WI to give us some info on what's up.
Glacially Musical: Thank you for taking some time for us today!
War Brides: No problem man. Thanks for reaching out.
GM: Let's start at the beginning. Tell me about the name War Brides and where it came from.
WB: It was Justin's idea before he was even part of the band. It was fairly recent after Tristan joined the band, and we were in need.
I think he was in a history class and the topic of war brides from the first World War -- women who'd marry these guys that would get shipped out soon after, and sometimes not come back -- was discussed. Real captivating and tragic stuff.
GM: It's been a bit since your last album, Burden. What did you guys learn in the meantime?
WB: Pretty sure during that time we broke up and made up a few times. I had a bad biking accident that forced me to get a couple surgeries that really put things on the back burner for a real long time.
Some of us moved to and from Chicago. Richie quit his shitty day job to work at a bar. Just a lot of life, man. During that time, we wrote a lot and scrapped a lot of ideas that we eventually revisited and finished off. We're still going through the backlog now for writing new material.
Tristan also learned a new approach to his vocals which I think suits him and the band better than I could've imagined. Richie moved to Nashville, and we did a lot of remote writing, sending audio files & recordings back and forth. That was a new challenge, but it allowed us to approach songwriting and practices in a completely different way, and lets everyone in the band approach songs from a homework sense rather than banging away in a live practice sessions.
That sort of approach lets each one of us have the room to obsess over small details without having to wait for the other guy to stop dicking around.
GM: Cover art is something that always enthralls me. Oftentimes I'm finding things that aren't there. Tell me the story about the cover of Regrets.
WB: I think we just really wanted the artwork to be feminine, but twisted, mangled and just wrong. I think it works really well with a lot of the lyrical content. A fair amount of Regrets is focused on experiences from a failed engagement that Tristan had. On the execution side, the real kudos go to Francisco Ramirez who came up with the artwork.
GM: My finely tuned ear tells me you were fans of the Dazzling Killmen. Any chance I'm right? And if not, who were you fans of growing up?
WB: Haha, no, but that's awesome. They're an old Skin Graft band, right?
I feel most of my familiarity with Skin Graft was with Arab on Radar, and more recently with Shorty, which I'm surprised I hadn't heard previously. Back to your question, so I'd say that no, they're not an influence. Fans of growing up?
I grew up in central Nebraska, so I didn't really get into anything I'm into now until I hit college. A lot of the bands that really hit home for us, though, I think we all really dug into while in our 20s, and they stick with us today.
A lot of records from Touch & Go, Dischord & Hydrahead.
GM: What are your tour plans for this record?
WB: We're going to play PRF West out in San Francisco in late April, and play some dates around early summer.
Likely looking to get out of town late summer and hop in the Honda Element and do a solid week to two weeks on tour. We've mostly been around the Midwest.
We'd like to hit up mostly new places that're further than we've traveled before.
GM: There's a lot of colored vinyls in the world today and I'm a big fan, but how did you and Triple Eye Industries decide on the variant colors for this one?
WB: We wanted to have the artwork be special for each version of the record, so there's a color splatter that is paired with the vinyl it's for.
Triple Eye did something like that for a record they released last year, and it seemed like a good idea to continue the tradition. The colors are sort of chosen at random. Kinda just threw out ideas and went with them.
Clear with white splatter for TEI, and we're doing a solid camo green. And black, of course.
GM: How do you relax after playing your music?
WB: Drinking beer, grilling meats. Real midwestern-like of us.
GM: What are the five most important albums of all time?
WB: Man, these are always tough as hell. Most important records to me?
As a band, this list probably completely different between each of us. But for me, if push comes to shove and I have to pick some of my absolute favorite albums, I'd go with Joy Division - "Closer" and "Unknown Pleasures", Jesus Lizard - "Liar", Botch - "We are the Romans", and Hot Snakes - "Suicide Invoice". I'd likely change that list if asked again, and sometimes it's what I'm listening to this week, which would be Melvins - "Houdini", and Pissed Jeans new record, "The Bar is Low."
GM: What did I miss?
WB: We're working on new material. We're going to be contributing to an upcoming 'unPresidential' comp that a bunch of other bands are doing, so we're going to be putting out a new song for that, along with doing some more recording and looking to put out even more new music this year.
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