Compared to 90s/00s fast, melodic hardcore punk acts Count Me Out,ย Carry On, and Go It Alone, St. Louis basedย pack TIME & PRESSURE have teamed up with San Diego’sย Safe Inside Recordsย to re-release their newly released debut demo and the effect is electrifying. The EP is front-loaded with sheer power and melodies that make for a nice balance. We have asked the band’s vocalist Drew to go through each song in detail regarding his lyrical approach and here’s what we’ve got.
Formed only a few short months ago, we’ve hit the ground running with this demo. Safe Inside Records out of San Diego, California will be releasing it. We wanted to create a band that sounded like our favorite era of hardcore collectively – the early 2000s. We take a lot of cues from bands like Count Me Out, Carry On, and Go It Alone. The goal is to play fast, hard, and energetic songs that’ll not only move people live, but hopefully resonate sonically and lyrically through our recordings.
Crimson Pig
This, like many of the songs Iโve written, is about a specific person. However, it differs in the fact that I wanted to direct the lyrics at them, to attack them with such precise language that thereโs no way they could not know I was screaming at them.
The opening lines invoke the hammer and sickle, obvious nods to the symbols of Communism. The person in question touts themself as a radical leftist but is nothing more than a privileged rich kid whose smugness and holier-than-thou attitude has become a plague on our local music scene. I deliberately dropped in references to red to symbolize Communism–the first of these being the mention of rust, which dulls the sharpness of a blade and makes it ineffective over time. I want the person I wrote this song about to know that I am calling them stupid. (And for the record, I myself am pretty damn left wing politically, and this song isnโt an attack on any political ideology. Itโs an attack on one singular person, but I needed these traits to identify them.)
The bridge verse centers around animals. First, a pig, because the person attempts to โpoliceโ our scene in a way that is reminiscent of dishonest cops but on a smaller scale, and I know that the comparison to a cop would be most offensive to them; then a sheep, attempting to appear harmless. The mention of โcrying wolf,โ should be easy to figure out, but I really wanted to highlight the personโs cowardice, so their tail stays firmly between their legs. Finally, I drew comparisons to a snake because, in literature, snakes are vindictive, sneaky and vile. Thereโs an old myth that snakes only die after sundown, but this is, obviously, untrue. They can still die in the sunlight, which I highlight in the song before, once again, questioning the authenticity of this personโs devotion to Communism and not to themself.
Love + Trash
First and foremost, the title is a stylistic reference to Last Lightsโ song โLove + Rent,โ which is one of my favorite hardcore songs of all time. Everyone should know that band. Go listen to it immediately.
This song is my reflection on a past relationship that ended poorly, as most of them do. I sing the first half in the second person, giving my perspective on a condensed version of the relationship. She had issues with substances, specifically alcohol, that I would become more and more familiar with as the relationship progressed. We met in the winter, as the song says, which I wanted to highlight because movies and stories so often show people falling in love in Spring and Summer, and I sort of thought that was a sign of just how doomed we were right from the beginning.
When the fast part comes back in, the lyrics shift to first person–this time itโs me talking about myself. I thought the change in perspective would indicate a passage of time. Iโm not sure if itโs effective. However, this picks up after that relationship has dissolved, and while I spent much of the first half complaining about her vices, now Iโm confessing to my own. While she was โkissing empty bottles,โ Iโm โkissing empty people,โ but the end goal is the same: somehow, we think maybe weโll find something thatโs missing despite all evidence to the contrary.
At the Climax
I write a lot about sex. I read a lot of postmodern American literature in college, and the honesty about sexual encounters resonated with me in a way that a lot of work pre-1940s just doesnโt. This is a song about the residual feelings left when you donโt exactly have a regular relationship with someone, but you canโt deny that you also have real, genuinely strong emotions about them. When I was seeing the young woman whoโd become the subject of this song, she was also with someone else, and sheโd complain to me about him in an almost bragging tone; she wanted me to know that I was being strung along. At the same time, though, I was stringing her along because I wanted her around but was never confident enough in myself to have a partner. Instead, weโd meet in the backseat of her car and pretend thatโs all it was.
Annihilation
This is a song I used to really hate. The lyrics were written in much more of a โstream of consciousnessโ sort of method than Iโm used to. I normally like to treat lyrics like a story, with a clear beginning, middle, and end. This song doesnโt have that. Instead, itโs mostly just word vomit. The initial idea was to write a song about wanting to find a romantic partner whoโd be supportive of my music despite how much it hurts to perform. And it really does hurt, by the way. At the end of a set, I have a massive headache, Iโm worn out, and Iโve conjured up these negative feelings that Iโm really trying to expel for the sake of catharsis. Thatโs sort of the direction the song took on its own, though: catharsis. The idea that, in order to feel better, you have to feel worse first. This is exactly why Iโve been performing music for the last 15 years.
I titled the song โAnnihilationโ after the novel and film adaptation from earlier this year. The main theme of both is self-destruction. I initially wrote the lyrics two or three years back, and I never had a title for it. When it came time to actually put it to music with this band, I noticed the similar themes and it just stuck. Itโs helped me come to really enjoy playing it, and I donโt mind the jumbled structure so much anymore.
This is Not an Exit
The title to this one is a reference to American Psycho, which in itself is a reference to Jean-Paul Sartreโs play No Exit, a story about people waiting in the afterlife. Again, this is a song about a specific relationship ending. I drew from two main sources of imagery: religion and body fluids. Throughout the entirety of the song, I mention both of them, sometimes directly next to each other, like the line that describes a baptism in urine. I think that, as people, we tend to romanticize, well, romance and love. If we scrutinize sex and love, if we really look at it, itโs kind of gross at times. Kissing is trading spit, sex is an exchange of fluids from our crotches–it can be kind of repulsive if you really get into it. So, to me, exploring these from the perspective of my own failed relationship gave me a chance to view it from a more honest position. And if that specific relationship was anything, it was honest.
I think everything culminates in the breakdown, when I say that God is love and love is dead. The next line, โMaybe Hell is beautiful people,โ brings back the Sartre reference, a spin on No Exitโs famous line, โHell is other people.โ Finally, โThe devilโs in the ugly details,โ is sort of my commentary on the song itself–meaning, if youโre looking hard enough at anything, youโll find something unpleasant.
The last verse begins the same as the first. I have a weird obsession with trying to make things cyclical, especially in writing, but I also think it gives the song a feeling of coming back to where I first started to make these observations: as the relationship ended, I started to contemplate how weโd gotten to this point. I wrote the first part in my head as I was walking out her door. Through hangups and insecurities, I sometimes feel like I never left that mental state. Hence, โThis is not an exit.โ
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