Take responsibility and act! Don’t just sit, but get engaged and try to engage in your closest environment and believe its gonna happen! Such encouragement is often inspiring, but most of the times, also in the hardcore punks scenes of all kinds, it’s also wrong-headed. Little members of mostly younger bands who scream their lungs out about politics, social related stuff and injustices of this world, are getting involved in real life activities, and it sucks. BULL CULT, the newest thrashin’ hardcore punk pack from Illinois, are trying to change that and get more young people off of their asses and get them involved! How? Well, the lyrics and our interview below says it all. Go!
BULL CULT comes crashing out the gates with a 6-song love-letter to 90’s Cleveland hardcore punk. By lifers, for lifers. “So what? I got a real job. So what? I got two kids. We might be over the hill and buried in bills, but we still love this shit.” Recorded by Nicholas Ischer at The Swanky Manor, mastered for vinyl by Carl Saff. This record will be pressed onto transparent purple vinyl and will feature a screen printed B side. Limited to 100 copies, available now via Dropping Bombs label HERE.
Answers by Kyle and Andy of BULL CULT.
Who are you?
We’re Bull Cult. A bunch of old dudes who are 30+ playing in a new hardcore band because we’re old and stubborn and don’t know what else to do with our free time. Kyle sings, Chris plays guitar, Aaron is on bass and Andy is on drums.
Where are you coming from?
Three band members live in Galesburg, IL USA which is a small city in the rural part of Western Illinois. One member lives in the thriving metropolis of Peoria, Illinois. Galesburg has about 32.000 residents.
Why Bull Cult?
We’re named after a song by the Michigan fastcore band Threatener. If you don’t know who Threatener was, stop reading right here and go check out their discography, because they rule.
But our name actually has a deeper meaning. A lot of our lyrical content is about how the youngest generations in the USA need to seize power and take responsibility for this world we live in. We’ve been given a raw deal having to clean up the mess of the baby boomer generation and to do so, our generation is sacrificing normal human milestones like owning houses, having kids & saving for retirements. The ancient near-eastern bull cults all shared a common ritual of child sacrifice. In times of turmoil or hardship, the adults in ancient pagan societies would sacrifice healthy children to the bull deity in exchange for continued prosperity. In the USA today, we see the younger generation being sacrificed financially to prop up lopsided retirement schemes and social safety nets for old people, when those same safety nets will not be available to us when we get older. The bull cult child sacrifices are just an ancient expression of kicking the can – pushing problems off on the future – taken to its most extreme extent.
How’s your local scene?
The scene across downstate Illinois (basically the giant area south of Chicago, approximately 1/2 the size of Germany) has a bunch of good/interesting bands. Locally, Galesburg has a couple of different venues that do shows. Kyle runs Glory Days Barbershop and he lets bands play there after hours. It’s rad. There is a married couple in Galesburg that jointly run a HC/grind label called Reality is a Cult Records. Galesburg is awesome despite being such a small community. More people need to check out our town. There are a ton of old lifer punks everywhere and some of us are in positions of leadership in the community.
What local bands you’re impressed with?
ROAD SODA rules. They’re from the Quad Cities, just a bit north of Galesburg.
What inspires your lyrics?
Our lyrics come from the intense shame we feel for being in our 30s and 40s and still living in a political system that primarily caters to the interests of our parents’ generation. But rather than pointing fingers at old people and blaming them for the situation, we take our own age group to task for allowing this to happen. As a band, we’re not here to lodge grievances. We see no point in complaining, since complaining in itself doesn’t actually solve issues. What we’re trying to do is get more young people off of their asses and to get them involved. Go lead something. Go run for office. Go volunteer to serve on a non-profit board. Show up to things. If you really want to change the world around you, get some friends together and run a candidate for your local city council or school board. Go knock on some doors. Our generation has been dealt a bad hand of cards, but solving the issues that plague our country is our responsibility and will be our generation’s legacy. So let’s get to it.
What’s the cover of the EP supposed to portray?
The cover image for our record is a 19th century illustration of a cult sacrifice to Molech, the ancient Phoenician bull deity. It depicts a child being placed into the hands of a giant metal bull god statue. The statue is being heated by a wood fire underneath so that the hands of the god are boiling hot when the infant is placed there. The adults of the community have come to attend the sacrifice and there are musicians playing instruments and making noise to drown out the screams of the child as it burns to death. There is all kinds of symbolism in the image but the primary reason why we chose it is because its metal as fuck.
What shows do you have booked for the coming months?
We’re playing a handful of shows around downstate Illinois in the next few months. Coordinating shows among four middle-aged guys with families and jobs and shit is extremely difficult. So if you see Bull Cult on the flyer, you had better show up because we don’t play out very often.
What are your next steps with the band?
Our plan for the immediate future is to spend more time listening to the Cro-Mags.
What are you final words?
Take ownership for the world around you. Listen to the ‘Mags.
