I've been writing a serial about The Wave for some time (though I haven't posted any of it yet), and one of the things I noticed was that all 5 bands are about due for new records this year.
Defeater's been in the studio for a minute now, and today Bridge 9 released a bulletin announcing the title and tracklist for their new Double LP. I want to talk about how excited I am to have some new Defeater in my life, but I am only capable of understating the fact.
Defeater's new record is a dual LP called :
Bands come and go, a lot of times they come up as people who just love music. You'll hear them say that they love what they do; either the touring or the time in the studio or just being able into concerts for free. Bands do music because it's fun. In my experience, I find that a lot of my favorite bands are either young or broken up or are doing things nobody else is. I love bands like Champion and United Nations.
In 2006, Champion broke up after 7 years. Their reasoning goes as follows "With all the pressure to do another record and to tour, it wasn't what we "wanted" to do anymore; it was what we "had" to do. So before making any commitments that we would be bound to, we decided to end it now, while everyone in the band was still friends and still loved everything we did as a band together. NO ONE SOLD OUT."

Photo Credit: Bill Shouldis
It doesn’t have to be perfect.
I had a teacher who told us that the answer to every question he asked in his class would be “create an emotional connection.” At first, I thought it was a joke, but as the class developed, he made it clear that it really is the only thing that really matters. If you can connect with the audience, all you have to do afterwards is provide them with things to buy. I think that it’s the imperfections that create that connection. As long as it’s real.
It doesn’t have to be complicated.
I won’t lie, I am a fan of complex music. My favorite band is The Dillinger Escape Plan, and they are quite complex in the songs they write and play. I dig that, but sometimes it’s best to have something simple. Back in the 80s, some of the best bands around didn’t do anything complicated, like Black Flag and Minor Threat. The 90s with Blink 182 and No Doubt (though ranking them alongside Minor Threat and Black Flag is borderline blasphemy). Today, people are trying to make complicated songs with a whole lot of different things going on in them, and while it works for some, it doesn’t work for others. Often, bands add in “parts” solely for effect, “let’s add a mosh part here, a dance part there, a melodic part there.” After a while, people see through that and notice formulaic bands. If you’re worried that people will lose interest, write better material or cut the song short, sometimes it doesn't help the song to add a mosh part for good measure.
I came across this YouTube video made by this guy, Ronald Jenkees and even though I don’t talk about much other than aggressive music, I can appreciate a sick beat, and this guy, makes some of the coolest free-flowing songs I’ve ever heard; stand-alone beats that I can vibe to for hours. Jenkees plays keyboards much like Joe Satriani plays guitar, and the video I saw was for a song called “Throwing Fire,” and while he has another album out, Disorganized Fun which I am pretty stoked about, this song is noteworthy because, towards the end of the jam, Jenkees stops soloing and the screen cuts to black, whereupon he posts 4 lines that I think are the wisest things I have ever heard on the internet. I would like to address them one-by-one over the coming days. The first piece of Jenkees’ wisdom is:
Take your time with your music!!
The state of the union in music today is disheartening, to say the least. There was a day when there was camaraderie in the underground scene, but that has really gone now. Underground music all over the country is dying out and what little there is, sounds shamelessly like other musicians' work. I've been told that it's like everything is the same song, just with different words. Underground bands compete with one another to get record label recognition and in this competition, they all forgo the very elements that make them sound original because labels only want the things that are “proven to sell.”