NINE ELEVEN interviewed by Todo Punk

NINE ELEVEN were recently interview by “Todo Punk”, a Spanish hardcore punk webzine. Here’s the translation of the interview issued by the band.

Go here to see the original Spanish version of the interview.

We’ve made an interview with Sergio from “Todo punk” (Spanish webzine) some days ago you can find (in spanish) at this link : http://www.todopunk.com/contenido/entrevistas/85/nine-eleven-22-08-2012.htmlWe branded a real new great connection with this guy who made it really interesting. He asked us to give it in english. So that a largest number of people can reach it. Then, we promised to do it and to make it available in here :

1.- Hello there. We are Todopunk.com, a Spanish webzine. How are you doing, guys ?

Hello mate. We’re now touring in Europe for 15 shows (from the 6th to the 21st of July) with our friends of AUSSITOT MORT. Then everything runs in the good way for us and we’re spending amazing times with them.

2.- For those who, maybe, don’t know you, how can you describe yourselves and what kind of band you are ? What’s your main style on music ?

We’re just a French 5 pieces DIY Hardcore Punk band. We’re running Nine Eleven since 6 years now, played between 400 & 500 shows all over 3 continents and something like more than 30 countries.
We’ve released 1e.p. and 3 albums. We released the last one, called “Le Rêve De Cassandre”, in February 2012.
This band is just about the way (something like a medium) we’ve chosen for getting the life as we ever wish to live it.
As for musical references, there’s a lot of stuff we’re really into and a lot of that we hate much too haha. We like some stuff from Crust music (Catharsis, Remains of The Day, etc.), 90’ New School, 80’ HxC punk, first punk rock melodic bands, and many ones from French hip-hop, trip-hop, soul, indie… There’s no good or bad styles, but good and bad bands only ☺

3.- Last May you did a mini-tour here in Spain. Have you ever been in our country before? How was the experience ? What do you like the most from our country ?

We played some shows in Spain in February and April 2K11 (the last time we came there before was in 2K7). And we’re fuckin’ lucky to meet our lovely friends from RAPTURES during this trip (Cobe & Gonzalo helped us out a lot for booking some of these shows).
Then, we were really excited to get this spanish tour with them last May!
We enjoyed this trip a lot, some of these shows were fuckin’ sick, and we met awesome people there. And that was something we really like much: getting the most part of the Spanish crowd is political concerned and involved into social movements and actions. They’re into a real praxis of the Hardcore punk where ideas – ideals and behaviors – attitudes meet.

4.- You were here playing some shows promoting your new LP, “Le Rêve de Cassandre”, which seems that has been really well received by fans and press. Tell us a little about the story that is told on the album. It is a huge metaphor.

Through “Le Rêve de Cassandre” story, we’re questioning terror – terrorism concepts defined in our culture, and the way the political and militaries structures of the capitalist empire use it, all over the 20th century, to caution its world’s conquest.
That questions the medias guard hounds role too, and the way they work to define terror and terrorism as something else (and especially its opposite) when it’s used like the principal empire’s weapon. Referring straight to the tale, it stands into the Tampa’s story, which happened some days before the 09/11/2001.
It’s about more than 400 afghan refugees, lost in the Indian Ocean, that Australian authorities refused the right to get a political asylum, in opposition with the international law (1951’s Geneva convention, article. 33).
In the same time, it tells about the three 20th century’s “Nine Eleven” (there may be more) then history reminds one only. So, both principal questions set up into “Le Rêve de Cassandre” are:

– How does a political event turn itself into a symbol?

– How do work’s medias make the social – historical time and space / world the symbol’s property?

5.- What are your sources of inspiration ? Can you mention some musical ones and what kinds of things inspire your lyrics ?

About our musical references, we could mention Catharsis and Remains Of The Day as we did above, Section 8, Intensity, Another Breath, first screamo stuff (Anomie, Orchid, Amanda Woodward, Saetia, Yaphet Kotto, etc.), earlies 80’ HxC (Minor Threat, Adolescents, Descendents, Youth Of Today, Reagan Youth, Bad Brains, Black Flag, etc.), RZL DZL, some old stoner bands, Nirvana, Radiohead, Lunatic and Medine (French hip-hop and a lot of other ones from this scene), Wax Tailor, Portishead, and too many ones else for telling about them all ☺
As for the others things we’re getting inspiration from we could tell about: our hate of working’s ideology domination and capitalist’s social violence (under of all of its structural forms) which is running “democracy”, common people in occident who’re not dying of hunger anymore but who’re dying of boredom, the way our common fellows spend their life “to wait for nothing”, the way it’s not use in loving a thing which condemned itself to hatred.

6.- Your band name suggests a lot of things on the first impression. Nine Eleven it’s a really big and complex concept, you know… What are you exactly pointing with your band name ?

The 09/11/2001 turned into something like the origin’s myth of the new face – period of the capitalist domination. Just before happening, the power missed its diabolical double’s face with the communism’s downfall – the end of the cold war; and with this situation, It lost its historical enemy.
Some things – events started to disturb the new order just straight after:
– The Iraq’s war, Muslim’s integrism (set up and fed by occidental policies during the cold war for fighting Russia and Arab’s Marxist powers) and the political and economical conflicts Occident got with in the 90’, O.T.A.N’.s “Balkan’s war regulation”, American electoral frauds in 2000, important social reactions against the G8 reunions everywhere they set up, some radical and political movements organized everywhere in occident like “Reclaim The Streets”, the way USA and Israel refused some days before the 09/11 to sign up the treaty prescribing slavery like a crime against humanity; and the same happened when it was asked for getting the same about the people’s right to fight against foreign invasions (and not considering it like terrorism).
It seems the “Nine Eleven” allowed the capitalist power to stand against a new enemy (It fuckin’ needed for regenerating and rising up again), that the face and the form, with the terrorist’s figure, have never been so perfect before. Beside, regarding the terrorism definition from the European consul (the 13th of June 2002), it’s about everyone – everything who’s into destroying fundamental political, economical and social structures of a country or a national organization.
Then, terror – terrorism now defined by the power after the Nine Eleven concerns violence forms from the outside only and could concern everyone or every movement who wish running out of step. That meets straight the “permanent ghost threat” concept initiated some times ago by Georges Orwell and well developed by Georges Lucas some years after.
That means the violence’s definition is definitively the power’s property.
The 09/11/1973 has never been recognized like a terrorist act in this way.
Anyway, 90% international political decisions are taken now regarding the Nine Eleven 2K1. And since more than 10 years now, both Nine Eleven’s brand – concept & wars against terrorism have invaded the world ‘s space.

7.- We know that you’re no really ‘friendly’ of the mass media… what’s your thoughts about mass media nowadays and what kind of relationship do you think they have with events like 9/11, international terrorism and stuff like that ?

But who would be able in here to say one’s in love with Mass Media today ? Haha
Anyway, virtual medias are something like the tongue’s power and as it has been told above, it serves the realities definition, using material processes, codes and symbols (we’re conditioned with from the day one), that none could verify.
In fact, everything’s separated well in the world of the separation. 80 % of people at least got medias as reality’s (realities?) referent only, cause the most part of people in Occident are parked in their daily life – routine (working, consuming, sleeping) and more they “get success” in their professional’s (citizen) life and less they have the time to get relations with the outside.
Then “In the society of the spectacle, everything which is good appears and everything which appears is good” (Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle), and that’s the only way for common one to get the outside’s reality. And when everything works out in the “good way”, that could mean the social guard hounds did their homework well eheh.
And about their work on the terrorism’s faces and realities making (off), It seems the ones behind these reality shows turn the yesterday’s friends into the new common enemies. And that’s always the way in the power history, cause one hates and one’s afraid of something or someone one knows fuckin’ well only. And capitalism needs this fear and the way it uses it to canalize and for healing its own violence’s symptoms. It’s something like a permanent virtual sacrificial crisis if you get what I mean.
The “other” is the black sheep we need to calm down our own permanent social and human failures. And the irony of this process (or not) is the scapegoat (as the witness of its structural nature: Violence, violence, violence) always represents the system’s domination (at a specific time from the past tense) somewhere on earth. That serves the way Capitalism regenerates itself for rising better than ever:
– It uses its own violence and the way it spreads it up everywhere on earth like its next scapegoat. Doesn’t everyone knows about the way Talibans stand up against Soviet Union in the 80’ and the links Ben Laden fed with occidental power after? ☺

8.- We are living really weird times. Those kinds of things that have been remaining on the ‘underground’ all this years, they seem to be surfacing really fast on this year, 2012, and boosting on the events. What are your thoughts about this global system meltdown ?

“Between us, who can believe this world is worthy of love? What is the use in loving a thing which condemned itself to hatred? God acts so that this world always comes down to this. And till the end, he’ll enjoy letting hell thrives on each side.”

9.- Seeing what’s happening in countries like Greece, Spain, Ireland, Italy or Portugal (amongst others), what do you think about the relationship between humanity and money just in this days ?

We might better wonder about “the way money mediates the relationship between humans in this social system and the way it mediates the relation that social human gets – feeds to the capitalist social structures and then to the world drawn by the system itself and for itself.
Money expresses the physical (material) domination of the power’s messiahs on the masses. It serves, in a way, the citizen’s definition into the modern social nomenclature. And we know much about it.
But, if money turns into a crisis’s symbol somewhere in the world, It means the work’s (and then the security’s) capitalist ideology is in a structural crisis too. We just have to give a look on the Argentina’s history and December 2K1’s events, when people kicked out political leaders from the governments, took back the control of life’s places and self-getting autonomy in their daily life through local autonomous comities managing school, hospitals, food making and others stuff; and that for many months after “the corralito” and more than 40 years of political corruption feeding by FMI and occidental banks there.
Even, if we’re living the darkest days ever known, it seems (regarding history) more the money’s question turns into a crisis question, less the relationship between humans is mediated by money and less people accept the domination from the ones who use it like the best social control’s weapon ever. That’s why it’s up to everyone to not define the social fight as a fight for getting money more, but for going over there and standing this one as a fight against the whole capitalist ideology, that money expresses, materially, the domination.

10.- What are your plans for the middle future? Are you coming to Spain again soon ? Have you written any new song ? More touring ?…

We’d like to get Portugal and Spain (once again) for big weekends, during the first half of 2K13. We’d like getting others places too but nothing’s planed yet. At the end of 2K12 we’ll have played around 120 shows from February 2K12. We’d like to release a new stuff at the half of 2K13. Some songs are already written. We have now to set them up together. So we should touring less regarding the 2K12’s schedule, for releasing something new.

11.- Well, that’s all, guys. Thanks a million for taking your time to answer our questions. We really appreciate it. You have one last chance to say whatever you want. No censorship here. See you !

Thanks a lot for your interest and support dude. Indie – DIY Spanish scene is rising and spreading fuckin’ good feelings in the way music, politic and autonomous life meet. Big up to our friends from Leon (Cobe, Gonzalo, the Raptures crew) and all people we met the last times we came over there, who set up shows for us, gave us a place for sleeping, food and smiles. Thank you!