BLATO interview:
Does this "discography" on my blog have all that you've released?
No,
unfortunately not. We wrote one song after the first two songs of the
demo. I can’t remember the name of it but it had a heavier breakdown and
was my favorite song we wrote but unfortunately never got recorded.
Having an ” open chugged” (our guitarist Odin could probably explain it
better) was a little different from how we thought about screamo in
2006. Being that we thought of breakdowns as being for hardcore and
metalcore bands, not screamo (skramz started being used around 2007-8).
Did you, or any of the other band members play in any other bands after/before?
I
know Steve-o (this was peak Jackass days and Steve could actually skate
really well) played in a short-lived hardcore band that was trying to
do like a Terror-Hatebreed thing called All I Have.
I
did vocals for a couple of different bands: an old school hardcore punk
band (that was a drunken wreck) called Bad Cop Bad Cop. Tthen after
moving to Minneapolis I briefly did vocals for the band Cowards, which
featured members of Bear Garden and Corrosive Melody on guitar, bass,
and drums.
I
also did vocals for a brief project called Cannons (weirdly similar to
Cowards name-wise but totally different groups of people). Which was
members of Minneapolis tough-guy hardcore band Earn Your Stripes. We did
like Converge-Cursed sounding kinda dark hardcore band.
As
well as some guest vocals for Duluth metalcore band Count Backwards
from Ten; I was more into traditional hardcore then, so I tried
replicating the first vocalist of Comeback Kid style as well as the
vocalist for the band first After the Burial’s first album
I
don’t know if any of the guys are doing any active creative projects
nowadays. I myself have some non-music things I’ve done, some writing
I’ve had published in the magazine Apocalypse Confidential as well as
some podcast appearances on Programmed to Chill I’ll include some links
from my substack:
https://open.substack.com/pub/trashe5e/p/apocalypse-confidential?r=j3388&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
https://open.substack.com/pub/trashe5e/p/podcast-appearances?r=j3388&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Do you have any thoughts or words on the scene that you were part of (where were you from)?
We
were a total anomaly, a product of the first generation to have access
to highspeed internet. Being in Duluth, Minnesota (and the rest of the
Iron Range as well as Grand Rapids, MN (where A Corrosive Melody were
from)) we had no legacy of diy punk and hardcore. No real older scene
bands to help induct us, like they have on either coast or even the
bigger Midwest cities like Milwaukee and Chicago. The closest thing we
had to counter-culture music was the slo-core band Low (who I loved as a
teenager as well as now, but obviously weren’t playing hardcore).
Honestly
I learned about diy, screamo, and hardcore through going online and
getting dunked-on on messageboards, as well as the year or two older
guys who played in Bear Garden. So, being a precocious kid whose parents
had a rule that I always be reading a book outside of the book that my
Catholic elementary school had me reading (which was like a stipulation
of the curriculum), I got really into researching these scenes that made
music I loved instantly.
The second I heard Circle Takes the Square’s album As the Roots Undo and Neil Perry’s Lineage Situation I was obsessed. I thought this was the most interesting and emotionally compelling music I had ever heard.
Did you play any shows with interesting/noteworthy bands?
BLATO
only played two real shows: some random show in middle of nowhere N.
Wisconsin with some As I Lay Dying-type bands and then Bear Garden’s
2006 ep release show at Rice Lake Town Hall (which is a legendary show
for Duluth millennials in the know).
Bear
Garden was the biggest band lol. We were a brief flicker of a band.
Odin’s guitar playing was really phenomenal and he was the lynchpin:
locking in with Steve and Garrett (our bassist) and really orchestrating
the band.
Except
for my vocal parts which he pretty much just left for me to figure out.
For that, and to anyone trying to be a screamo or hardcore vocalist, it
was all about locking in with Steve’s drumming. Granted I paid
attention to what Odin was doing, as I’m a guitarist myself, but the
most important part, in my eyes, is for the vocalist to follow the beat
(being a big fan of rap helps).
admittedly
I overshot with the last song “I touched a shark” with the chant-gang
vocal part, but also I was 16 and just really wanted to have a cool
gang-vocal, chant part. I’d probably cut that these days (or spend more
time getting the timing right).
Also, when were you active from, and where exactly?
Pretty
much just the one year 2006. To be honest I had not the best childhood
and dealt with a lot of legal problems during that time. I was put on
probation shortly after we recorded the demo and spent a lot of time in
juvenile treatment centers as a teenager. So it was hard to keep a band
going when my parents didn’t support it and I had a probation officer
breathing down my back.
I was really passionate about it but my parents didn’t really care or support me. They didn’t really like me lol.
Any final thoughts to put on the post for my blog?
Just
that this is crazy that people are into this and found it independent
of any of us who were actually involved. I moved away from Duluth two
years later in 2008; becoming a bike messenger in Minneapolis and then
Chicago, becoming an upper-tier owner of Cut Cats Courier. I really
didn’t fit in with the Minneapolis punk scene as I was a working class
kid from “Up North”; I fit in much better with the messenger scene of
people who were based more around work, seeing as I didn’t come from
money and didn’t have a trustfund.
But
I always wished I had the freetime and ability to start a hardore band,
of whatever stripe. I love it all: Circle Takes the Square and Jeromes
Dream on down to Hatebreed and Terror as well as Spazz and From Ashes
Rise…all of it, hardcore fucking rules and it is my bread and butter.
And honestly it's a big part of why I’m still alive.
