TORCHE:
Stoner pop? Beach Boys-like doom? Whatever

COBALT:
I don't really consider us black metal in any sense of what black metal is.

DODSFERD:
Motivated by desolation,
despair, hate, irony, death,
loss, betrayal, etc

PYGMYLUSH:
Between the delicacy of
gorgeous acoustics & the
ugliness of noise rock.

TRACTOR SEX FATALITY:
The most active defunct garage band in Seattle answers our questions.

MERCILESS DEATH:
Thrash metal revivalists  
speak out against false metal

JONAH JENKINS:
The man behind the voice of some of the most underrated underground American bands. 

THE PAX CECILIA:
Giving their music away for free. And it's damn good too.  

WORLD COLLAPSE:
Hardcore has always been about self-expression and
that's exactly what we do. 

U.S. CHRISTMAS:
North Carolina psychedelic hard-rockers acquire
'band to watch' status..

INTRONAUT:
The best self-indulgent odd metered prog metal band around.   

GENTLE VEINCUT:
German angular punk rock/post-hardcore for lack of a better term. 

THE INTELLECTUALS:
Italian garage rock you must know. 

NACHTMYSTIUM:
Spearheading a new wave of  extreme American music.  

BARONESS:
Men of a few words. 

MOTHER TONGUE:
On their beginnings, their first record and their first demise. 

FLATTBUSH:
Extreme world music via San  Francisco.

TOTIMOSHI:
Six drummers & four records later the band unleashes its finest.

HOLY HEART FAILURE:
Shitty emo puss-pop bands & a short tale of Wild Turkey.

THE JONBENET:
Bar recordings and a meaningless moniker.

Milwaukee’s SINCE BY MAN has been tearing it up since 1999, moving from the basement to the stage, while making faithful trips back to said basement to blast people in the face with its brand of punk and hardcore. DIY ethics and three years of self-supported touring have established the band as one of the premier heavy music acts to catch. They have shared the stage with DILLINGER ESCAPE PLAN, ISIS, THE LOCUST and a ton of others.  SINCE BY MAN'S latest release, Pictures From the Hotel Apocalypse, has been out for a few weeks now. If you are not aware, then maybe you should just go ahead and slap yourself silly. We caught up with guitarist Brad Clifford and below he answers a few questions.

- When I think about SINCE BY MAN, I can only think of monkeys and orangutans. What does it mean? Who and how you guys came up with the name?

Monkeys are cool, but I think of seahorses and penguins, my man. SINCE BY MAN is what comes up when you have a show booked and don't have a name yet, and your friend says "SINCE BY MAN CAME DEATH’ from HANDEL'S 'MESSIAH' would be a cool name for a band," but you think SINE BY MAN CAME DEATH sounds too long and metal, so you cut it and go with SINCE BY MAN. Thus the baby that is us was born.

- Your new album is titled Pictures From the Hotel Apocalypse, and the booklet is filled with pictures showing the disturbing hotel inhabitants. What is SINCE BY MAN trying to convey?

It's a depiction of scenes that would play out mid- or post-apocalypse among people who are left. Ideas of death, rebirth, and love—both fake and real—unity, etc., etc. [are themes] that are all pretty involved when you look into them. We're all pretty happy with the photos. It was a huge feat of planning to make the shoots all go down how they did, and our man Mark [markphoto.net] did a sweet job of capturing it how we wanted.

- This release is definitely more adventurous—I don't want to say experimental because I am sick of that word—than your previous releases. What brought this change? Or should I say evolution? Or should I say development? Or should I say growth? Or should I say progress? Really, what should I say?

Let's go with “evolution” just to piss off baby Jesus. Yeah, we try to do things a little bit different from release to release just to keep things going. We don't want to be a stagnant swamp of a band that has nothing new to offer, and people listen to their new CD and think “Yeah, sounds just like the last one.” There are enough people out there doing the same thing over and over again, both what others have done before, and what they themselves have already done before. We're attempting to sidestep that, and hopefully we've succeeded to a certain degree.

- Producer Dave Gardner may have seemed like an odd option—why him? What did you hope to achieve by working with someone who was not so “hot on hardcore”?

We had Matt Bayles set to do the record, but then he had to go on tour and Dave Gardner came up as a suggestion from one of our friends. We listened to stuff he'd done, hung out with him, and we all decided he was the one. I think the record turned out pretty great. It's a fairly organic sounding record, not super computer-y and digital, which we like. I think a lot of the sounds on the record are interesting. It's not like “Oh yeah, this is what hardcore guitars should sound like.” They sound like their own thing and it doesn't come out sounding like every other band out there. Dave was more lenient than Kurt (Ballou) in some ways. Kurt was a little more strict and pushed us to get parts right, and Dave kind of worked with us to shape what we wanted instead of telling us. There are definitely high and low points to both of those, but they're equally great men.

- How do you think the musical climate, and specifically your scene, has changed since SINCE BY MAN first started?

See that's kind of hard to say. Shitty things exist now, and different shitty things existed then. It's just a lot of shit altogether. One thing I definitely think has changed, though, is the money aspect. Hard core is actually kind of marketable now. Hard-core bands can actually be big now. It's kind of strange. Some of the bands that have gotten huge are pretty good, and some of them are absolutely the most atrocious bands I've ever heard. I think a lot of young bands are getting into it for different reasons now. Instead of kids going to basement shows and getting swept up in the passion and energy of it all, I see a lot of bands getting swept up in record labels and magazine covers and free clothes and guitars. That's kind of lame. I mean yeah free shit is cool, but it's not cooler than being stoked on your band and totally satisfied with what you're doing regardless of whether or not you make the cover of AP.

- From the band's perspective, what sucks the most about touring and shows?

Fights. I hate fights, and they absolutely ruin shows for me. As far as moshing is concerned, moshing is cool and we love moshing, but not when it's assholes doing it. But yeah, I don't know, other than that it sucks when things break on stage all the time—we're really good at breaking things—and when the vibe in the room feels like a cold, lifeless body. Other than that, tour is pretty much great and I love it.

- About the lyrical content, you've said: "The issues and ideas range from artistic integrity, misguided sexual experiences, the destruction of mankind, cannibalism, love, murder, photography, violence. Shit ... I don't know, a lot of stuff." My question: Is there ever a "sunny" day in the life of SINCE BY MAN? If so, what's your favorite cereal?

Hey, come on, “love” is sunny! And there are plenty of sunny days in the life of SINCE BY MAN. We even have a very close and radical friend named Sunny that we get to hang out with and stay with when we're in LA and she's a lovely woman, so there, we have some Sunny. And my favorite cereal is Honey Bunches of Oats, with almonds. But no, really, we're happy, fun-loving dudes.

- After listening to Pictures From the Hotel Apocalypse, I instantly thought, THESE ARMS ARE SNAKES, whose latest album is really nifty. Are they peers or influence? Whose music do you consider to have affected you?

They're dudes. They're good friends and we've done a couple small tours with them and yes, their latest album is really nifty. Also, their singer Steve can drink a whole jar of jalapeno sauce, but then he pukes hard right after. It's hard to say if their music has affected us for sure, but I'm sure it has whether we're conscious of it or not. Every band we listen to seeps in between the musical cracks, and if they're part of that, then I'm actually glad because they're pretty fucking great.

- How has the European experience been so far?

Seriously, Europe is great. England is more like the U.S. in terms of hospitality and everything than mainland Europe. I'd venture to say some of the best, most fun shows we've ever had were in Germany, so we love that place with a passion. We also met a large handful of dudes—our roadie and drivers namely—who are some of my favorite people in the world. As far as differences, hospitality in mainland Europe (and a lot of places in the U.K.) is far above and beyond what we expected, and it's very strange to go to places that you've never been before, much less really ever heard of, and have a bunch of people there who know you and are down to have the most fun they can possibly have with you. We're going back in April, I can't wait.

- Tell us all, why is SINCE BY MAN a good band? What's unique about you? What's good about you?

We're not a good band, it's just that the rest of the world hasn't listened to enough BLACK SABBATH, Old METALLICA and LED ZEPPELIN to know that. But yeah, we do what we can, I suppose. One thing I really like about us is that we have the passion for what we do. We want to be different from everyone else, and we want to be different from what we were doing on the record before, and we want to have something to offer, and we want to do everything we can do to make someone feel alive if just for one second of their life.

-What are your hopes for the future of the band? What's in store?

The honeybee is that we're going to be on tour for a long time. A month and a half with THE BLED starting late February, then a month in Europe with BEAR VS SHARK directly after that. It should be epic as hell and we're all excited, and I've already promised that our new schtick is going to be to stick our fingers in people's mouths while we play, and we're going to tickle their throats until they vomit. Sounds sketchy.

OFFICIAL SITE

This interview originally appeared on TheMusicEdge.com back in 2005.