Capital Punishment: Edinburgh's Underground Music Scene - Feature: Kaddish Interview, October 2009

Kaddish Interview, October 2009 by Kingmob

Kaddish
Kaddish have been a well kept secret on the Scottish Underground scene for some years now. Over the last couple though, a Euro tour and their first vinyl release have brought them attention from beyond Scottish borders. With the long, long awaited lp finally on the horizon, now seemed as good a time as any to speak to them:

So. The lp is nearly upon us. Took your fucking time didn't you? How many years in the making has this been?

Yes we did take our fucking time! Too long, no doubt, but more on that in a minute…. As it stands, we’ve been a band for around eight years now (John joined in 2001, but Chris, Mark and I had been playing together for a bit before that). We all know one another from school, and we’d played music together even before John became a confirmed member.

When we began, we were working on the basis of a shared appreciation for metal and hardcore music. One of the defining moments in our development as a band, however, came when we attended a gig in Dundee to see Kneejerk and Abjure, two bands from London that Paul, from local band Engage, had managed to put on. I can still remember being absolutely astounded by what those guys played that night, and I know the others in the band feel the same way. It’s a bit unfortunate, I suppose, that Kneejerk’s vocalist and bassist that evening, a certain Frank Turner, has subsequently gone on to decry the noisy approach in favour of his by now very successful brand of acoustic noodling, but I still feel real fidelity to the inspiration I took from that evening: quite simply, that there are a great many ways to be creative within heavy music…. From there on in, our heads were turned in the direction of a whole slew of amazing bands that came out of North America in the late 90s, and that’s why the Abjure sticker I got that night has not left my guitar since!

I don’t know whether it’s because there wasn’t an obvious place for us to play between the various indie, metal and hardcore scenes active in Scotland in the early 2000s, but the tendency was to play most of our shows with bands towards the metalcore /grindcore end of the spectrum (Co-Exist and Madman is Absolute, for example). To be fair, our sound at that point was ‘heavy’ in a more obvious way than it is now, but we always felt that we could win people over from the other scenes, if given the chance. Happily, this is something I think we’ve managed to do with relative success over the years, but it was no doubt made easier for us by the willingness of collectives like Cold Dead Hands and This is Our Battlefield to put on gigs that tended to collapse hard and fast divisions between the genres, so thanks to all involved for that!

Aside from a few demos that do the rounds on various websites, our only proper release is the split 7” with Battle of Wolf that came out last year on React with Protest and Parade of Spectres. By the time we recorded it in the middle of this year, the album had therefore become quite a monkey on our collective back; something we’d wanted to do for a long time, and something we felt that we owed to both ourselves and all the friends we’ve made through the years. Happily, the consensus among us is that we’re all very proud of the LP. Now we just have to hope that it lives up to what other people want to hear!

Now that you’ve given us cause to reflect on it, eight years is obviously a very long time to play in a band, especially in terms of the average longevity of bands in and around hardcore. Judging by our meagre output, moreover, it must seem that we’ve been very inactive in that time! I don’t think that there are too many regrets about not trying harder to ‘get noticed’, however. The general ethos underpinning Kaddish, if I were to try to summarise it, turns on the thought that there are basically two good reasons for playing in a band. First, simply to stay together as friends, and to make new friends; second, the thought that a band is a worthwhile pursuit when the sum of its influences still leaves something to be desired, an absence that it becomes the purpose of the band to try to fill. For me, Kaddish has fulfilled both conditions: it has given structure and creative purpose to our friendship, and it has allowed us to try to fill the expressive gap we were hearing in the bands that inspired us. That’s reward enough as I see it, because anything else is a bonus, whether it be plaudits, the opportunity to see new parts of the world, or the chance to put out a record.

Do you mind being called a screamo band? Particularly with what passes for that these days?

I suppose this depends on how our most immediate influences when we formed the band should be classified. For the most part, they’re the late 90s bands I mentioned that tend to fall under the ‘proper’ or ‘true’ screamo tag on sites like Last.fm these days; bands like Orchid, Jerome’s Dream, Shotmaker, Saetia, (early) Engine Down, Twelve Hour Turn etc. We could obviously spend a long time deliberating whether these bands are more straightforwardly ‘hardcore’, ‘emo’ or whatever, but there’s a real sense in which, if they’re ‘screamo’, then we’re ‘screamo’, because we’d be in bad faith to deny them as very important influences.

In connection with this, something that you (Graeme!) said on collective-zine recently made a great deal of sense: a lot of contemporary ‘screamo’ bands simply don’t seem angry or violent enough! With bands like Page 99 (your example) and Orchid, there was real vitriol, pathos. It’s something I’ve debated with the guys before, but perhaps part of the problem is that a lot of what passes for screamo these days lacks an immediate anchor in metal and punk, an anchor which late 90s bands rather paradoxically had, but which they seem to have convinced a great many of their contemporary inheritors to drop…. I suppose the key lies in how successful contemporary bands are in replacing this point of reference with something else (an ‘indie’, ‘math-rock’ or ‘post-rock’ aesthetic, most obviously), but I think that a lot of what tends to result from this can be incredibly insipid. What was great in finding a band like Jerome’s Dream, for me, was that they seemed to be going for something that was heavier than metal, more punk than punk, and I’m not sure what, if anything, is left over when you omit that, save something desiccated in the place of a project that still seems to have unrealised potential within it.

Having been around as long as you now have, you've out lived many of your contemporaries. How have things changed in the scene in the time you guys have been playing, and is it really any better or worse than it ever was?

We’ve played with a lot of great Scottish bands that are now, sadly, defunct. Most obviously: Santo Caserio, Mesa Verde, Crash Victim, Archives, Black Ark, Allergo, Eye, Friday Night Gun Fight, Jesus Elephant God, Forgotten Shipbuilders. If I’m honest, things in Scotland seemed a bit more integrated a few years ago, around the time of Santo. It seemed that there was real cause for optimism then, with each of the big cities offering something. In particular, it was great to see the emergence of a Glasgow scene (around Mesa) to complement that of Edinburgh, and there were some astounding gigs that we had the opportunity to either play at or attend back then (Circle Takes the Square, Stop it!, Daitro, Belle Epoque, the first La Quiete gig in Edinburgh etc…. Huge thanks to everyone that made those gigs possible!) That apart, we probably shouldn’t be too maudlin about the past, because there are plenty of reasons to be optimistic at present. There are certainly enough good bands around (Carson Wells, Year at Sea, Citizens, Take a Worm for a Walk Week, Black Channels etc.), and, in terms of scenes, Aberdeen seems to have something healthy going on in a way similar to what Dundee had a few years back. What’s more, I think we should take real encouragement from the fact that folk involved in the sharper, more self-reflexive sides of indie and metal should always be able to find something worthwhile in hardcore, irrespective of whether they filter it through Shellac or Tool, the Jesus Lizard or Emperor.

More widely, the UK scene seems fairly healthy, with both Battle of Wolf and Me and Goliath putting out really good records in the past few months. Hopefully we’ll be able to do a small tour of Southern England early next year, so perhaps I’ll be able to give you a more detailed assessment then! More widely still, the German scene seems as strong as ever (with bands like Alpinist etc.), a lot of very angry bands seem to be emerging from Russia at the moment, and the French scene, even if people close to it tell me otherwise, still seems vital, at least when you look at it from the outside in (Although it’s our collective opinion that French bands will struggle to replicate the perfection of the last Belle Epoque record! Not that the Hyacinth 10” doesn’t give it a damn good try, mind you….).

Another achievement you can tick off that many of our local Scottish bands can't is taking a trip to Europe. How was that?

We’ve had some amazing experiences over the years (the first Motionfest in Perth, and the gigs with Battle of Wolf in Edinburgh and Dundee on the first UK tour are three nights that immediately spring to mind), but the tour stands out as the single greatest set of experiences we’ve had as a band. We come from a fairly parochial corner of Scotland, and while this has brought certain benefits over the years (a general indifference to some of the more capricious elements of musical fashion, for example), it was a real eye opener to get across to Europe and play to entirely new crowds. We saw some incredible cities (Leipzig, Berlin, Copenhagen, Utrecht, Malmo, Munster) and we had some great laughs along the way (jumping into Copenhagen harbour with the guys from Battle; inventing strange and obscene languages on the German autobahn; strange falafels; haunted toilets; getting incredibly drunk, but remaining determined to see Comadre at Cry Me a River….)

Personally, the tour allowed me to make a strange kind of retrospective sense of why we’d being doing the band. By a strange paradox, it’s sometimes best not to ask yourself why you’re engaged in something that means a lot to you, but I remember having a real moment of epiphany somewhere in continental Europe, a moment of ‘Ah, so this is what we’ve been building towards!’

In response to your first question, I said that we formed the band largely to stay friends, and to make friends. The tour was a real crowning achievement in that respect. First off, it was very humbling simply to be asked to do it by Battle, and it was a great pleasure to spend more time with those guys. The fact is that we owe a great deal to them; if it wasn’t for Derek and Sam contacting us after a gig we played with Derek’s old band, Narwhal (a gig which Cold Dead Hands were responsible for!), there probably wouldn’t have been a split, a tour, or the LP. That’s what’s great about the hardcore scene, and it’s something that should never be taken for granted: the chance to meet proactive people, and to spend time in their company.

Real Life vs Band life, what a fucker. Do you think it makes what you do get time to do with the band more fulfilling?

Yip, this is definitely a question that hangs heavy these days! In the past year or so there’s no doubt that it has become steadily more difficult to devote the time we’d like to the band. Recently, Mark’s work has become very time consuming for him, and John has a baby girl now, so there’s no doubt it can seem harder to get together these days. That said; your question already pre-empts the flipside of the situation, because there’s no doubt that we’re committed to using the time we do get in the most constructive way possible. The fact is that none of us know how much more time we’ve got left as a band, but questions like that have always been secondary for us, because we’re first and foremost just a group of very good friends, trying to do something with our time…. Of course, that’s not to say that there aren’t goals still to be achieved, because we’d obviously like to do a tour in support of the LP, and we’ve also been writing some new songs since we finished recording, each of which I am personally very excited about, so there should be a few more releases at least.

We did a very brief interview with you for the pre-Cold Dead Hands DIY-fest at the Wheatsheaf in about 2003. If my memory serves correct I think you said a lot of the lyrical stuff at the time was adlibbed to some extent. Is that still the case, or has it become more solid over time? What do Kaddish scream about?

Vocally, we’ve always tried to have sections that are open to adlibbing when we play live. That’s not to say that the songs don’t have set lyrics, merely that we like to subvert them on occasion, and replace them with something a bit more impromptu. At bottom, the general idea is, I suppose, that it’s good to find a balance between vocal sections that are open to improvisation, and sections that are utterly rigid and repetitive. That balance has always been crucial for us, in order to keep things fresh, yet still have parts that are stable, and therefore a bit more amenable to folk participating at gigs.

In terms of delivery, Mark’s vocals on the LP range from black metal rancour to more nuanced emotive sections. There are lots of dual vocals, which tend to work really well, because Mark has a deeper register than I, so the voices tend to meld lyrically and diverge sonically, if that make sense…. Over the years we’ve experimented with everything from full-blown screaming to spoken-word, and there are also some sung sections on the album.

In terms of content, our lyrics concern themes that any reflective person should be able to relate to; themes of frustration, hope, loss, resistance to the general dumbing down of thought and experience…. My own lyrical tendency is towards abstraction, but a lot of our songs concern themes that are very personal (although hopefully no less universal and relatable for all that). Our song ‘The Great Apart’, for example, is about taking what can be salvaged from personal loss, about bridging that distance (that ‘apart’) through a creative and imaginative reaction, and not allowing grief to destroy you in the way it quite easily could.

On reflection, problems of communication are a big lyrical theme on the LP. Why is it, for example, that alienation and distance often seem to increase in our age of infinite digitised communication? Personally, I’m really interested in the possibility of using something so ostensibly lo-fi and ‘material’ as a record as a means for short-circuiting a problem like this; that is, as a way of offering direct communication to whoever is willing to take the time to listen (and yes, there will be a lyric sheet with the LP!)
Outside of music, what influences the band?
First and foremost, our friends and families, and the joys and sorrows we see them go through. Politically, we are very much a leftist band, and we’re always interested in contributing to the right kind of benefit gigs (for Palestine, most recently, for example). Personally, I’m motivated by a lot of themes I find in philosophy, literature and language, and this often gets reflected in our song titles (‘Combray’ is a reference to Marcel Proust, ‘A Certain Blindness’ is a reference to William James, and ‘Kaddish’ itself refers to Allen Ginsberg). We all share similar tastes in film, I suppose, and we all seem to have developed high dependencies on some of the new wave of HBO shows to have come out of America in the past few years (the Wire, the Sopranos etc.) Allied to that, there’s also something else which you (Graeme!) might not approve of: football! It’s fair to say that we’re all pretty much football fanatics. To be clear, we’re obviously not fans of the money and the stupidity attendant to the sport these days, but rather of the passion it can provoke, and its capacity to act as a focal point for conversation. To be sure, football can obviously be incredibly divisive, especially in Scotland, but it can also be a great catalyst for relating to people…

Finally. Plug your lp. Tell us how brilliant it is. Go on! (and anything else you feel like saying)

As I said before, we’re all really pleased with the LP. It’ll comprise 10 songs, working out at over 40 minutes of music. It features re-recorded versions of ‘The Great Apart’ and ‘Sans doute’ and 8 new songs, and it should be released on React with Protest/ Parade of Spectres/ Internationale by the end of this year (all things going well). Allied to that, we’ve also got material for a new 7” which we’ll start to play at gigs pretty soon, so watch this space in terms of other releases!

Not to turn things into too much of ‘party political broadcast’, but you did give me the opportunity to say ‘anything else I feel’ (!), and I’d like to seize that chance to recommend a book called ‘The Century’ by the contemporary French philosopher Alain Badiou; it offers a really prescient approach to the situation of thought, creativity and political action today, and it goes beyond the clichés of postmodernity and neo-liberalism that still seem evident in the utterances of a great many of Badiou’s contemporaries. A very refreshing read indeed, a great deal of which chimes very well with the general ethos of hardcore!

Thanks very much for the questions, and thanks to everyone who has supported us over the years!