Last October when I did this interview with Thursday, Geoff Rickly talked up Touche Amore and claimed that they were one of the best hardcore bands in LA. So the other night while I was watching “Blossom” reruns and getting drunk on Four Loko, I randomly thought of what Mr. Rickly said and decided to invite the Touche dudes over to find out what they’re all about.
I have a pet peeve with the term “music journalist”. I guess technically what I do for Ryan’s Rock Show is a form of journalism, but sadly my image of a music journalist is no longer Lester Bangs. To me, the term “music journalist” has taken on such a pussified connotation within the past few years; I blame blonde 17-year-old screamo girls that do interviews with Bring Me The Horizon cookie cutter bands for dating purposes. In my opinion, a “journalist” is much cooler and more respectable than a “music journalist”. Music journalists are lame like Poison.
Back in the prehistoric days when neanderthals like Geocities and MP3.com walked the net, Korn was the baddest band in the world. When I was in the 7th grade, I would go to my Catholic grade school non-uniform days strictly in Korn attire, and would scream “Faget” lyrics during recess at the cool kids playing with Nerf footballs. I’d also go to middle school dances with over-sized JNCO Jeans knockoffs, a Korn beanie, and those lame-looking ball chain chokers that hot girls were never really that into. Oh, how the times have changed.
You gotta wonder about the fate of some of these younger bands. Will majority of them just put out an album or two and vanish, or will some groups actually have the lasting power to stand the test of time? The “test of time” meaning that they’ll have a career 10 years down the road.
Look at 36 Crazyfists — they’re a band that formed in ’94, got their major label breakthrough at the declining peak of nu metal in 2002, and somehow managed to keep up and running for a total of 16 years. Now in 2010, the band is set to unleash their fifth studio album, “Collisions and Castaways”, on July 27. So how did they manage to keep their head above water in an ever-changing scene of heavy music?
Months leading up to the death of Michael Jackson I went through this crazed MJ obsession where I couldn’t stop listening to “Dirty Diana”. Literally, I was smoking that song in my iPod for at least 60 days straight. So one day after his passing I was somberly searching for another variation of the track on YouTube, and I came across I Am Abomination’s interpretation of Jacko’s 1988 hit. Now I’m generally not big on bands that do covers like that, but this group’s rendition was pretty fucking sick. All they need is a music video with a wrestling ring and a skinny white kid breakdancing — we could have us another smooth criminal.