Southern California punk
band Unwritten Law will
smoke your weed, drink your
beer and, if you're lucky,
might even skate your ramp
before taking off for the
next town...
I understand that the band
has skated for years.
Lead vocalist, Scott Russo:
I'm a big skateboard fan. I
have a ramp in my backyard
and have been skating for
fourteen years. I used to live
with Matt Hensley who is one
of my best friends. We used
to be in a ska band seven
years ago called Spy Kids.
when I was fourteen, and
Unwritten Law branched off
from that band.
HALF
EMPTY
How do you judge a crowd
the second you get on stage?
Religiously we've opened
up with "CPK," which stands
for Crazy Poway Kids, for
four years. Poway, CA, is
where we're from, and if the
crowd doesn't go off with the
first song, which they usually
do, then we just go off hard-
er until they start. That's a
trick just like in skating: if
you're not doing it, you've
got to just do it again and
again until you get it right.
How is the crowd reaction
from town to town?
All the kids in each town.
are great. In Australia there
was a kid who was super
ignite
With ex-members of hardcore luminaries No For Ant
Answer, Uniform Choice, and Unity, it would be easy to
pigeonhole Orange County's Ignite as another more-righ-
teous-than-thou straight-edge band. Sure, lead singer Zoli
Teglas is involved with a handful of take-charge environ-
mental organizations, but the band is not your typical
hardcore band. Where so many groups grind it out with
slow, rehashed metal, Ignite lets it fly, OC style, with their
new EP, Past Our Means, on Revelation Records. We
spoke with Zoli regarding the future of hardcore:
You guys sound and look like a straight-edge band, but
you are not straight-edge. Does that ever lead to prob-
lems with your fans?
We came from straight-edge backgrounds and our
record company in Germany, Lost & Found, kept push-
ing us as a straight-edge band even though they knew that
we weren't one. So, kids would come to us thinking that
we were straight-edge, they'd totally get into our music,
then they'd get bummed out when they see us having a
stoked, he was like freaking
out, so he took us to his
house where he'd just har-
vested some bud and
popped in this video of his
band playing to a pretty
good sized crowd. Then
they broke into "Obsession,"
and we were like, "Holy
fuck! There's a band all the
way in Australia covering
one of our songs." That
makes it all worth while.
Rumor has it that some of
your shows have turned vio-
lent. What are the details
regarding getting arrested at
a show in Detroit, MI?
One of the kids in the
crowd tried to get on stage
and dive off-and the stage
was actually pretty high,
like six feet-and two of the
security guards who were in
the pit area between the
stage and the barricades
grabbed him by the neck
and threw him down to the
ground on his back. So I
went and grabbed the
bouncers, then Wade, our
drummer, thought I was get-
ting into a fight with them,
so he jumped up from his
drum-set and ran over and
started beating on them.
He's kind of spacy like
that. Anyway, we ended up
making a whole lot of
friends in Michigan. They
were going to try and file
assault and battery charges
Neurosis
No band has succeeded as spectacularly as
Neurosis at warping the conventions of "metal" while
using the best it has to offer: the emotional power of
aggressive guitar and metal's sense of mystery and
awe. There are ominous metallic riffs, screaming
vocals, and deftly chosen samples of sounds, voices
and transmissions that blend masterfully into their
heart-wrenching tapestry, making a science out of
chaos. Old friends from the same hometown of
Oakland, CA, Neurosis-Scott Kelly and Steve Von Till,
guitars, vocals and percussion; Dave Edwardson, bass
and vocals; Jason Roeder, drums and percussion;
Noah Landis, samples; Pete Inc, filmmaker/videog-
rapher/projectionist-are expanding as composers and
refining their execution as performers.
Who are your favorite classical music composers?
Scott: Wagner. He's my favorite by far.
Steve: Arvo Pärt, the Estonian composer. I like
beer after the show. But at the shows nowa
days, we don't really drink in front of the
kids and push it in their faces. I respect those
kids because I was straight-edge for a long
time. It was a conscious decision to be
straight-edge and a conscious decision not
to be one.
Why aren't you straight-edge anymore?
My family has a winery in Hungary and I
really enjoy wine. My brother is a wildlife vet-
erinarian, but on the side he makes really
good beer.
Yet, like a lot of other hardcore bands, you are
an active environmentalist. Talk a little bit
about the groups you're involved with and why
you chose environmentalism.
Where a group like Greenpeace have a
huge following, groups like Sea Sheperd go
out and ram boats and live a hardcore
lifestyle. If there is a hardcore ideology, then
Sea Sheperd's got it. They go out and risk
their lives in the middle of fucking nowhere,
ramming whaling boats and drift netting
boats. They go to jail, they get beat up. The
people in Earth First! go up into trees and
stay there for months at a time. They are not
against us, but that
didn't happen, which
was cool because if
about setting up rallies that cost $50 K but
make only $25 K.
So you can relate to the means?
Yeah. You need to pick your fights. I work
with a rehab center for pelicans, and we just
had a lot of pelicans die off because this
area they stay in had a big pesticide run off.
Out of 10,000 remaining brown pelicans on
the endangered species list, we lost 4,000
birds. The first week I put in 76 hours and the
second week 68 hours. I just worked my ass
off, which had an impact on those birds.
How does your new record differ from your
other stuff?
Call On My Brothers did really well and peo-
ple liked it because of the slow stuff. People
may not like the new record as much
because it's all fast and there are no sing
alongs. "Taken Away" is about this kid I met
in Hungary who was confined to a wheelchair
with Multiple Sclerosis when he was
16. When you're in a wheelchair
and you're in Hungary, it is a pretty
rough thing. It made me feel thank-
ful for what I have. And I finally got
to write a song about Earth First!
UNWRITTEN LAW
What does a typical day in the life
of Unwritten Law consist of?
it did, we wouldn't be allowed back to the hotel to watch the
back in Detroit.
same stupid Jenny Jones show
because that's all they get in the
hotel rooms, then go back to the
venue, and play a gig. Then you get
super drunk, then go back to the
hotel to sleep. Then you wake up
and do the whole thing all over
again the next day.
I'll let you know exactly what
the lifestyle is like being in a van.
You wake up at 8:00 am if it's an
eight-hour drive or noon if it's a
six-hour drive, and you get in your
van with all the same stinky dudes,
drive and sit in the same seat, play
the same Nintendo games over and
over again, listen to the same Korn
or Tool tapes, then finally get to
the venue, hungry as shit. Then
you have your soundcheck, and
since you don't know anyone in
town, you sit at the venue or go
What is an "Unwritten Law"?
It is do whatever the fuck you
want to do and pay the conse-
quences as in however it's going to
retract against yourself. Unwritten
Law is like if you fuck with us,
you are going to get fucked-maybe
not legally, but by our law.
-Jon Stain
hauntingly beautiful stuff written in dark ly creating the music, either. We
minor keys, like we do.
Read any political philosophy lately?
Scott: Noam Chomsky, he's incredible.
Have you read his latest, Year 501? It's basi-
cally the history of Western Imperialism and
how language is used to deceive the masses.
Scott: We're killing our home, it's as sim-
ple as that. And the problem isn't just poli-
tics, it's deeper than that. It's spiritual.
That's the level we're trying to put it on.
Basically we all need to transform spirituali-
ty in order to figure out what each of us indi
vidually can do.
You use tribal drumming a lot in your music.
Scott: It balances out all the technology
that we use. It makes the picture complete.
How does your material come about?
What's the creative process?
Scott: There's really no set way. We throw
different ideas out and kick them around.
Everyone contributes.
Steve: We don't really feel like we're total-
feel like sometimes what we're
really doing is just tapping into it.
It's taken a lot of work to develop
our instincts, and we rely heavily on them..
What about the words?
Scott: For me, concepts come constantly.
And when we're coming up with the music.
just hear these sounds in my head and
decipher them into words. I don't question
it too much.
like how you include Pete as a full-
fledged band member.
Scott: It takes all forms of art to communi-
cate what we're trying to express, and the pro-
jections and the samples are a big part of it..
Steve: The sampler blows the world right
open. People don't always realize it, but we
have samples going on all the time in our
music. Noah really uses the sampler as a
musical instrument.
Even though your music is dark, it's also full
of hope and inspiration.
called "In Defense." Those two songs are my
favorite. I wanted to sing more, but we decid-
ed to keep it hardcore. The next CD is going to
be half slower, more melodic stuff, the other
half faster. We're about to go tour Europe,
then start recording in early spring.
What is it like in Europe?
What is it like standing in front of 30,000
people in Bonn, Germany? It is insane. Like
every show is 1,000 kids going ape shit.
Are the kids different in Europe?
The kids there are still a little nostalgic
about the whole deal. It's kind of like how it
was in the '80s. Now that I'm older and a
little saltier, I know that musicians are not
people to look up to at all. They are only
musicians because they're dorks and they
can't do anything else.
-Joseph Epstein
Steve: The world seems pretty hopeless
and overwhelming, but we're shaking our
fists in its face and saying we're going to
survive it and not give in.
Is it emotionally draining sometimes to do
your show?
Scott: We just got off, it gets pretty.
intense, we're in this self-imposed vortex
playing music that tears us in half every
night. In fact, I had to spend a lot of time
thinking about just how to work it within
myself so it wouldn't eat me up so much like
it does.
Do you ever do encores?
Scott: No, absolutely not. We put every-
thing we have into the set, and we leave it
all right there, and that's that.
-Morgan Walker
86 Toms