NEW DAY RISING helped to start an Emocore explosion in the mid 90s. They created a unique sound unlike any other band of the time, which spurred many record labels to approach them for releases. Memoirs Of Cynicism, the band’s only full length, sees them going beyond their original early 90’s emo and melodic hardcore roots to embrace a darker direction.
Fueled by a growing lyrical pessimism alongside the musical rise of a more metallic delivery, MOC stands out as a documentation of the band’s growing song-writing power. Mixing a gutteral assault with elements of vocal beauty, New Day Rising showed that they would not be held down by the limitations of genre.
This milestone album is finally making it’s debut onto vinyl for it’s 25th Anniversary, the long-awaited, 1st time on vinyl, re-mastered (by James Plotkin), with new art (by Dave Buschemeyer). The new releases dropped on December 9th 2022 via Zegema Beach Records, Protagonist and Moment Of Collapse Records.
“Truly ahead of their time, the band elected 8 spectacular, chuggy, screamy, emotional hardcore songs to represent the album that holds up to this day, and with this prodigious remasters it sounds as intense and crisp as ever.” – comments Dave from Zegema Beach Records.
“Mixing the raw brutality of Converge and Carol with emotional sensibilities of The Assistant, this album will appease fans of hardcore, metal, metallic hardcore, screamo, etc. as it’s adjacent to such a broad spectrum of heavy music.”
We sat down with Dave Buschemeyer to talk about NEW DAY RISING, their other projects, Memoirs Of Cynicism 25th anniversary vinyl release, and more!
‘Memoirs Of Cynicism’ originally came out on Eulogy Records back in 1997 and I’d say it’s one of the essential listens for fans of 90s epic metalcore! Tell us a bit about how you remember that era, writing for this album and your early days as a band.
This album came on the heels of the band coming back from tour feeling a bit dejected, feeling like there was little support for what we were doing. We had massive support from our lovely friend Shaun Langdon, who drove us around like a crazy madman, and we thank him immensely for making that happen, but in general, we felt like the risk:reward of going on tour when there was little help by way of supporting resources to help push and advertise, was a bit lacking. This is no slight on the label we were on. They were doing what underground labels with little resources do, which is survive. And in fact, they went out of their way to press a tour copy of both of our split 7”s on one record, which is really amazing.
We appreciate all of the people and organizations that were running along side us at that time. I think we were running into some limitations of the DIY philosophy that hurt the pocket book so deeply and we were feeling a bit jaded as a result.
So Memoirs Of Cynicism is a dark turn that reflects the vibe of that. There was this desire to push the intensity of things as well as a desire to not be pigeon-holed into ideas of genre.
So, we retained some of the emo and melodic elements of our previous sound while pushing for a decidedly more metallic delivery. This change in musical direction really happened when there was a shakeup in the band, some member changes, that didn’t end up working out, and an eventual resolution where we reconvened.
Lyrically, it was an all out war on so many of the elements that we were having trouble with in our lives… relationships, expectations from our cultural surroundings etc. The lyrics got dark and pissed off in a way that really was unusual for Chris. I believe he was exploring what it meant to be the head of this band with a remarkable yet cynical gravitas. He’s always been way ahead of the curve on what is expected of him. And that shows in his masterful vocal delivery, and angry lyrical content on Memoirs Of Cynicism.
What made the band tick and then part their ways so quickly?
At the heart of New Day Rising was an underlying question, “Given that we know we want to play hardcore, but don’t want to necessarily sound like the standard hardcore band, how can we turn that on it’s head?” We had this drive to write compelling music but did not want to sound anything like our contemporaries.
The 90’s were such a creative time. We felt swept up in that freedom and there were other like-minded people around as well. Our scene had no one particular sound. The bands all sounded so different, and that was truly amazing. In that way, we were at home.
We got together as a band exploring more emotional territory in 1994 (when we wrote our demo material) and we broke up in 1998 after Memoirs came out.
I think that by the time we were finished with the album, we were probably asking ourselves if we could see a future for the band. It was difficult to realize that because we never had our collective shit together. We never had a working and reliable touring vehicle and that went a long way to feeling like we couldn’t sustain doing what we were doing. Couple that with the fact that we really were 5 different people coming together to make this sense of magic, and (after the fact) it truly is remarkable that we were even able to put together as many releases as we did.
What other projects have you been working on between 1997 and 2022?
In some way or another the members of NDR have always had their hands in music across the years.
Chris went on to form many bands. He started Montgomery 21 with other members of NDR. He started The China White, which I later joined on bass. I loved that band so much. We were like a post-hardcore band with massive British rock/ Brit pop vibes. A really unique band.
Chris also started Zyon and then eventually started the Victory records band The Black Maria that went on to tour widely with their several releases. He’s a remarkable singer and has always been a creative and skilled front person.
Ollie, Adam and Trev from NDR along with Connor from Boys Night Out started Pale Drone, a crushing metal band that were really too short lived.
I’ve been in a bunch of bands since then as well. As I mentioned, I was in The China White, I helped start the grind band Acrid, then went on to form Spread The Disease with Trevor of NDR and then The Abandoned Hearts Club with STD members.
After I made my move to Philadelphia in the mid 2000’s I started an incredible Space Rock band, The Formless Form- another unique addition to my canon. I also started a black metal crossover with Chris from Chokehold called Die In the Light that I put so much energy into.
Over the years, I have done sound design for ballets, noise art for an Audio Visual group for live performance and have been making electronic music under the Thought Wave name for years.
Recently I started Omen Astra with members of New Day Rising.
This is perhaps the heaviest project I’ve ever been a part of. And I believe it is Chris’ most compelling vocal performance to date. Keep an eye out for this band. Our full length is slated to be released on vinyl in spring/ summer of 2023!
What made you decide to come back as NEW DAY RISING after so many years?
Somewhere in the middle to end of the lockdowns for the pandemic, I posted a photo of 4 of us in NDR jamming from a few years earlier when we were talking about a possible reunion. At the time, Chris wasn’t into the idea and so it never really happened. But, Chris saw the post I made and commented on it saying, “It’s better with a singer. Let’s jam.”
Of course, we were very surprised at this turn of events and jumped in both feet first. It felt great to write music with these dudes again. In fact, we wrote and recorded 5 awesome new songs. The release details for that are, at this point, unknown, but expect to see the vinyl drop in 2023!
What’s the story of this reissue?
Previously, I had been working on getting a vinyl release for Spread The Disease “We Bleed From Many Wounds”, (Hypaethral Records/ Moment Of Collapse/ Listen To Aylin). I had been keen on working towards getting vinyl releases for all of my music that had only come out on CD back in the 90’s. As well as the STD record, I managed to find labels to release the NDR demo on vinyl as well (Moment Of Collapse/ Wrecking Crew/ State Of Mind/ Ugly And Proud).
When I was approached by a label to do a 25th Anniversary vinyl release for Memoirs, I was eager and happy to say yes to that. I always felt it should have gotten a vinyl release back then. Thats how it got started. Along the way there were some pretty big differences between the thinking of the label and myself, so that fell apart. I decided to keep looking for interested parties and that’s how we landed this vinyl release on Protagonist Records/ Moment Of Collapse/ Zegema Beach Records. VINYL PREORDER FRIDAY DECEMBER 9TH 2022!
Packaging and artwork wise, what can we find inside the sleeve?
One of the main elements we felt needed to be changed was the layout and art work for Memoirs. The previous layout seemed old and tired to us and really said nothing about where we were coming from.
This time around we decided to use my fine art combined with some of my printmaking to create a truly unique layout that speaks to the more creative place the band was in while writing this album. Layout was done by our drummer Ollie, who is a fantastic visual artist, graphic designer and art director.
What are your plans for the coming months?
The band exists as a very part time phenomenon. I have decided to go back to University and so have moved to Montreal. The rest of the band resides in Southern Ontario.
The goal for us is to play some opening slots for bigger bands and to get our new music released. We’re super proud of this musical return to form.
