If you’ve already attended this year’s Warped Tour, you’re unlikely to forget one of the most intriguing sights and sounds there: a quartet donning stunningly colored Mohawks and delivering delivers the tour’s closest taste of true punk rock. For over a decade, these four men known as The Casualties have been spreading their blend of hardcore punk to fans in need of something much edgier than what’s been played on the radio.
Although the New York-based band has seen its share of changing band members, the current lineup appears to be a strong one. Now with vocalist Jorge (who is the only member from the original 1990 lineup), guitarist Jake, bassist Rick, and drummer Meggers, The Casualties have been keeping busy with this summer’s Warped Tour and are about to release the album Under Attack this fall. Jake sat down with the Ultimate Guitar to talk about the new record, the summer tour, and the band’s visit to a place not too dissimilar from Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome.
Ultimate Guitar: The Casualties definitely stand out at the Warped Tour for being much more of a straightforward punk band. What is the general reaction from crowds?
Jake: I think that kids that already know us, they get into it. But I think the general point of the Warped Tour is to get those kids that are just like blown away, who don’t know what to think of it. Then they’ll maybe go and get an album and be like, “I’m kind of into this.” Because it sounds different than what’s going on now. There are not a lot of bands doing the style that we do.
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| "There are not a lot of bands doing the style that we do." |
You are one of the harder bands on the tour. What is your opinion of the other bands that are appearing this year?
I think it’s a summer festival that contains some punk bands. I don’t think it’s full-on punk, but I wouldn’t put it down. It’s like we’re part of it. So I can’t play that card, “Oh, we’re not into it” when we’re out here with it. We back it, but I think there’s a lot of bands that are not necessarily that punk. There are a lot of cool bands like Against Me! and Valient Thorr, who aren’t like the same kind of thing that’s going on in Warped Tour now. But for Warped Tour to pull in those numbers, it’s got to have mass appeal. So they’re going to have bands that aren’t totally punk.
How many Warped Tours have you done now?
This will be our third one. Well technically, this will be our fourth one, but the first one we did in 2001, we only did 10 shows. That’s when we were testing the waters to see what we thought about it, and we liked it. Ever since then, we’ve done it every other year kind of like a biannual thing. If we’re gonna do Warped, we want to do all the dates. We don’t want to pick and choose what dates we can’t do. And then beggars can’t be choosers anyway!
Let’s talk about the new CD, Under Attack, which you recorded with Bill Stevenson (who has also produced Rise Against, NoFx). Was there anything different about the recording process this time around?
Yeah, we took a lot longer time recording it. This time we took about three weeks to record, which is like very rare for us. The album is a lot more aggressive. It’s still Casualties, but it’s different for The Casualties. It’s not another verse-chorus, verse-chorus album. It’s totally different from stuff that we’ve done in the past, but still maintains the whole punk rock thing. We just tried to be like, “Okay, let’s make a record that’s a little more interesting than the last couple.” We want to keep the fans interested. It’s a lot more aggression and I would say there’s a little more metal in there. Whereas a lot of bands want to try and get on the radio now, we’re going the other way. We kind of believe radio is dead anyway. We’re trying to do more than write songs for the radio, which we’ve never done anyway. We just do what we want to do and if the radio plays us, cool. If not, who cares?
Have you ever encountered any pressure from your label to make radio-friendly songs?
Absolutely not. With Side One Dummy, they’re like, “Just hand in what you guys want.” They’re pretty content with anything because they know it’s going to be what we are. We take a long time to write records, so I feel like we’re never handing in something we’re disappointed with or the label’s disappointed with. They never pressure us to write any kind of song. And we wouldn’t really go for that anyway.
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| "If we're gonna do Warped, we want to do all the dates." |
Is there a typical way that the band writes a song?
Me and Rick will write guitar and bass licks, put them together, and then Meggers will put drums. And then the vocals and backing vocals come last. That’s usually how it goes about 90 percent of the time.
Do you write any of the lyrics?
Mainly Jorge does. He writes his own lyrics. We might come up with an idea, maybe a subject to try and think about. Everybody has their job and that’s usually goes on his end.
It seems like on the last album On The Front Line and the upcoming Under Attack that the lyrics have become a bit more political in nature.
A little bit. We’re growing up a little bit. We don’t want to be a political band, but it’s like we’ve covered the drinking beer and partying in our last couple of albums. On this album, there are a lot more different subject matters. We have opinions about things and we want the kids and our fans to hear about them. Then they can make their own decisions, but we definitely don’t want to be a political band that shoves stuff down your throat. We still love just playing punk rock and having a good time at the shows because that’s like your good time away from outside society. When you go to a show, you just want to let loose, have a good time. Everybody’s different, but I feel like the shows shouldn’t be violent and it should be just fun. That’s what we want. We don’t anyone to go to our show and have a lousy time. That’s why we don’t want to shove politics down anybody’s throat.
Your song “Stand and Fight” on the new album is an instrumental. When you started writing it, did you initially intend for it to be instrumental?
No, we didn’t. But it just sort of turned out like that. We tried everything and it was like nothing was coming. And then we just thought, “Well, maybe it’s just supposed to be an instrumental.” When we thought about it being an instrumental, we were just like, “Wow!” We just trimmed the fat on some of it. We never did that before. Eventually it was like, nothing’s coming out otherwise lyrically. So we were like, “Maybe it’s just meant to be an instrumental.” It was like one of those things that went, “Instrumental?” – and then “Instrumental!” We wanted to keep it like an interesting little thing at the end.
Is there certain guitars, amps, and effects that you use in the live show?
Yeah. It’s the same as what I used on the record. It was the Crate Blue Voodoo. So the guitar has 300 watts. Ever since we’ve been endorsed by Crate and Ampeg, I can’t imagine playing anything else. I used to play with the JCM 900, which I used a little bit in the studio, too, because they have a great sound. But on the road, they just don’t last. They’re always breaking. Now that we’ve the Crate thing, it’s like awesome because I think now Ampeg is making Crate stuff instead of the old Crate making Crate stuff. So the equipment is much better. When we take it out on the road, it puts out the volume that we need. The recording was great and that was pretty much it. For in the studio, it’s the Crate, the Blue Voodoo 300 Watt. And then I would use the 900 for some rhythm tracks.
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| "Whereas a lot of bands want to try and get on the radio now, we're going the other way." |
Are Gibsons your guitar of choice?
I have a Gibson SG that I’ve had for well over 10 years. And it’s just like, once you get that guitar – Joe Strummer, he had that same one forever. I have a backup SG, too. But even that one doesn’t come close to this guitar. I went through a lot of pickups, and my favorite one now is the EMG 81. It’s just awesome.
You mentioned Joe Strummer of The Clash. Was he a big influence on you?
Totally. I don’t see how he couldn’t be. The Fender sound is a lot different because The Clash are a little more twangy, but of course. A lot of their albums, you could just get ideas, inspirational things to do from. As far as guitar sound, I would say that guitar-wise we’re a little more Metallica than The Clash.
Have you ever been approached by bigger metal bands to go out on tour with them?
No, because I think we’ll always do hardcore punk rock. It’s aggressive music, it’s just a different style. We haven’t really been approached by any bands like that, but I don’t know if I would see that happening. A lot of bands like that are bigger and there’s – there might be some payola that happens and stuff like that. And we’ve never backed pay to play. We’ve never been into that. I know that some bands do that with Ozzfest and stuff and those record labels can pay for that and then the band is in debt. I mean, it’s ridiculous. That’s the difference, I think, in the punk world. We just don’t believe in the pay to play thing.
In your DVD Can’t Stop Us, it goes behind-the-scenes during your tours of Japan and Mexico. In many scenes, you’re able to interact with people from each country. Do you think a band like The Casualties is able to connect on a more personal level than other bands?
I think so. I think in punk rock, you’re more accessible. We like to just be out there with people and talk to the kids that are out there. Rather than just go offstage right to the backstage. We like to maybe hang out at the merch a little bit, talk to people, and see what the kids are like. I think for us, we appreciate it a little bit more. And you always have the haters. People have been hating the band since just 10 people have been coming to our shows. So there will always be people that hate the band. But when you’re in this and you’re liked a lot, there’s gonna be people who don’t like you a lot. I mean, when you’re on the front lines, you’re gonna get hit with shrapnel. It’s just how it is. When we went down to Mexico, we didn’t really come back with money. We just went down there and covered our expenses – and we still are called capitalists. You get shot by both sides sometimes.
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| "I feel like the shows shouldn't be violent and it should be just fun." |
Did you always intend to have Mexico and Japan as the focus of your DVD?
After we did those tours we were like, “This is like yin and yang.” So we put it together, two countries on the exact opposite of the world, and just made it this thing that it’s a totally different scene. But at the same time, in the same punk rock community it’s kind of cool to see the different cultures and how it came together. It worked out great because we had started a DVD that was supposed to be like a history of the band kind of thing that wasn’t working out. The guy who was working on it, he basically fucked up. To make a long story short, we thought, “This is perfect.” It’s a documentary form, which is a lot better. It’s cool because now it goes behind the scenes and on and off the stage. It just worked out perfect. We needed a DVD to come out, and it was just there. As soon as we did those tours, we see how a lot of things happen – a lot of weird things happen. So it was like, this is perfect and we can put out the history of the band thing a little later.
Is there a distinct difference between the punk rockers in Japan and Mexico?
Yeah, I would say that down in Mexico it’s a little more chaos, a little more Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome kind of thing. And then I would say in Japan, it’s definitely a little more technical and respectful. Those are the words that come to mind.
Can you see yourself doing the Warped Tour five years down the line?
I would love to. I think some bands like Rancid and Bad Religion and stuff like that, those bands still do it. They’ve been going for a long time. Hopefully we can do that. Hopefully we won’t burn out by then.
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yo they are my favorit band i have all there cds.
