by Matt Dixon
I'm in the process of interviewing Ottawa hc/punk mainstay Buried Inside. I first fell in love with the band during a show at the legendary House of Rock in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island back in 2001. I remember being lost in the crowd as the house turned red and orange with the power of the music and the fire of the ideas that were being expressed within it. It seemed like the walls would come crashing down at any moment as the vocalist (who had previously been striking a massive gong in the middle of the room) ascended piles of amps and delivered his sermon of ethically conscious screams to a wild audience. The band has a new record out; a follow up to the 2005 epic "Chronoclast" entitled "Spoils of Failure". This is part one. The full interview will appear on my webzine JUNNNKTANK.com later this month.
You're poised to released your third full length album, The Spoils of Failure. Could you explain the evolution of the band from where you began to the point you have reached now?
Spoils Of Failure is actually our fourth record. I suppose you could put In And Of The Self under the 'demo' category, but yeah... fourth recording anyway.
That's a harder question to answer than it seems I think. We've definitely evolved as musicians and people. I'd like to think our records have become more focused and structurally stronger, and obviously we've worked with different people to record both Chronoclast and Spoils of Failure, so the records sound much better.
But the essence of the band has always been to write music that challenges us creatively and that is honest and from our hearts. I feel like we wear our emotions on our collectice sleeves musically, and that's maybe what sets us apart at times. Our records tend to be very emotionally driven and each one seems to have an overall mood to it, whether intentional or not. For Spoils of Failure people keep asking why it's such a sad record for example, whereas Chronoclast was more triumphant.
Your 2005 album "Chronoclast" has been characterized as a concept album; can you put into words the focus of the new album, Spoils of Failure? What can we expect thematically from your latest work?
When we wrote Chronoclast, we knew in advance what we wanted to accomplish. We wanted to abandon the typical structures and rules of pop music and sort of follow the more classical structures, along the lines of a movie score. We wanted to make one long piece with re-occurring themes and ideas, both muscially and lyrically.
For Spoils Of Failure, we didn't want to write the same record again, so our intent was almost the opposite. We wanted to write a collection of pieces that could really stand on their own... we wanted each one to be as powerful and as moving as the one before it.
Lyrically there's always been an underlying theme in this band that dates back to our first record, which is simply the use and abuse of power, whether over a person or an entire people. While Chronoclast dealt with a very specific topic under this broad theme, the new record covers several different elements of it.
You've been going strong for over ten years now. I would like to know your thoughts on the current state of the Ottawa hc/punk community. What have your experiences been in Ottawa, both good and bad, and what do you think is the biggest challenge facing the music community?
When this band started out we were all really involved in the Punk community. Nick and Matias were putting on shows, some of us were running record distros, Steve and Matias were doing radio shows, I was recording a lot of Ottawa bands' records back then... It was a pretty tight nit group of music lovers back then. I'm not sure that that's changed, but as we got older and especially once we started touring pretty heavily, we weren't around as much and other people began to take over those things. So in a sense we're not as involved to the same extent, but I think it's as strong as ever in Ottawa. There are a lot of really good bands coming out of Ottawa and bands of all different genres.
The biggest challenge in the underground music community to me is the popularity of some of the commercial "punk" bands. Some of them are of the most transparent and void music I've heard in my life. Business oriented people presenting themselves as bands, labels, etc., expoiting a pretty sacred culture and making it into some sort of marketing machine for Hot Topic or whatever. Next we're gonna see some of these bands persuing legal action against kids that download their music. Honestly, I think the Backstreet Boys are more genuine than a lot of those bands.
You mentioned that you have toured quite extensively in the past. With this in mind is it difficult to take time off and seemingly put life on hold to go on tour? How are you able to handle it monetarily, emotionally, and do you still bring that big gong with you?
It can definitely be hard to get everything in order to go out and tour over the course of several months. On the last record, 3 of us were living at home, I was forced to quit my job where I had been for several years. It's not an easy lifestyle and I think many people think it's a breeze. We'd be home for 3 weeks or so at a time between long tours and I was doing some pretty shitty jobs here and there, washing dishes and working at a paper factory. But at the same time, it's such a great experience to be able to travel the world and play your music for people who love it.
This time around we're older and have more committments that make it a little tougher, so as a result we're very picky about which tours we're willing to do.
And unfortunately, the gong has seen it's last days.
Matt Dixon has left Charlottetown for the wilds of Korea. He runs a webzine called JUNNNKTANK.com
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