ALL OUT WAR

There are bands you love, bands you hate, bands you like or bands you just don’t give a fuck about. Here’s the question…how many bands do you respect? I have a handful, but not many, believe me. All Out War is a band I respect. They’ve always been All Out War no matter what the musical climate was, no matter what was selling and no matter what people told them to be. They’ve been themselves and have never strayed from the course. The latest album, ‘Assassins In The House Of God’ is probably my second favorite release from their nearly 20 year history. That say’s a lot! I caught up with founder/vocalist Mike Score whom I last spoke with in 2003 and here’s what he had to say.

Midwest Metal: You know Mike, I don’t even know where to begin with you. I thought 2003’s ‘Condemned To Suffer’ came out of nowhere, ‘Assassins In The House Of God’ makes ‘Condemned’ look like a top 10 Billboard album, I mean I didn’t even know you guys were a band still. It’s hard to keep up with guys.

Mike Score: I find it hard to keep up with us (laughs)!

Yeah, so get me up to date, was there a re-grouping, was it something different? Like I said to the outside world it’s cemetery quiet in All Out War-ville but then an amazing record comes out of it.

You know, I had absolutely no intentions of ever playing again. A while back Jamey was doing his ‘10 year Anniversary of Hatebreed’ show in Connecticut and their drummer Matt, whom I hang out with all the time and he got the feeling I wanted to play again, right? So Jamey called and asked if we wanted to play the show and I told him I’d do it, but it had to be with some original guys, not just me and a bunch of new guys. So word got back to Erik and Jim that I said that and Jim called, he said he’d been jamming with a drummer so if I really wanted to do this show let’s get Erik and do it. So we did the show and like an addiction it was there, so we decided to write some songs. While we’re writing songs word got out that we were together so the offers started coming in to do more shows, we got flown to Europe, we played CBGB’s, we played Boston…

One last time at CB’s, huh?

Yeah, exactly, how could we not, right? But we did all those shows and right now we play few and far between, if we know everyone who’s playing we’ll do it, we’ll play with Madball and Merauder, we did the Superbowl of Hardcore we also did Pressure Fest in Germany with Sick Of It All and Converge. But back to the addiction…but this thing has changed so much too, I mean we really don’t give a shit about the scene…I mean this is not the scene we grew up in. And whatever the fuck this metal-core shit is, there’s no core about it. It’s watered down bad Metal not even remotely thrash.

I agree, to use the word “core” is just fucking disrespectful to the pioneers who paved the way for these fashion disasters.

There’s even bands out there that you think they would know better, there was a band I heard the other day, I can’t remember who they were but we started laughing as it was like bubblegum Metal! I mean if this was 1986 everyone, I mean everyone would laugh in their faces. Don’t even get me going on the fashion! That blows my mind, this flock of seagulls hair but they think they’re a “thrash” band. To me, and this is an outside opinion but it seem s like a l these bands are in it to just get popular, it has little to do with music and the message, it’s how can we get a video on the new Headbanger’s Ball. These bands are the bastard children of glam metal, it’s connected to glam nothing else.

It’s crazy Mike, some of these bands are selling a LOT of records, they’re the ones paying the bills via music and while I can’t say “god bless em”, I can’t stay up at night letting it eat me away either.

Oh I hear ya Tom, I have no problems with anyone making money off this shit, but when the money and the fame are the sole, motivating factors by being involved in this music you’ve got to check your priorities. Don’t claim it’s about the music either, it’s not. Clearly it’s not. Going back to the use of the word “core”, where’s the Cro-Mags, where’s Agnostic Front? Where’s the sound or the influence?

Agreed. It’s nowhere to be found. But let’s get back to All Out War and the writing

We got back into writing right away and I mean we were set to record and then we ran into all sorts of problems with Victory. We didn’t want to still be on Victory we wanted them to drop us, let us go whatever it’s called. So this new record comes out and it’s the same old story, no advertising here’s a record see what it does with no support. We have a whole new set of songs for the next album all ready to go, we do owe Victory one more record, but hopefully they’ll decide they don’t want to put it out.

So when you call Victory are they excited to talk to you? I mean you aren’t exactly one of the team you know?

(laughing) Well the only one there I talk to is Clint, he’s a great guy, love the guy. Everyone else there I don’t know what they’re about and I could care less about them and them about me. So it works out pretty well.

Could you do it on your own?

Well the budget they give us is decent and of course the distribution is nice, but there’s little else. Me, personally I think signing with Victory was a mistake for All Out War in the first place. I mean when signed with them there was Hatebreed there was Blood For Blood there were all these bands we were friends with, Buried Alive, so it made sense. But at the same time even back then we weren’t like any of those bands either, we were like a Thrash band on the label and they had no roots in this music and they never knew what to do with us.

Looking back do you think it also added confusion to the mix. Here’s All Out War, A Metal band raised in the old-school NY scene where real Metal and real Hardcore knew no boundaries. But you sign to a predominately Hardcore label and people who never even heard a note had you pegged as a band you weren’t.

Yeah, totally. We got pigeonholed with a bunch of bands who weren’t anything like us. We came from a scene that was like Carnivore/Leeway/Cro-Mags/Crumbsuckers you know, that whole deal. Yeah we were a MetalCore band, but not by modern day standards and there is a huge difference. I think it’s really hard for people these days to understand exactly where we came from. Put it this way on Saturday we lived at L’Amour’s for the Metal bands and on Sunday lived at CBGB’s for the Hardcore bands. If there was a band back then that summed it all up, well there’s two and they are Nuclear Assault and Carnivore, they played both scenes all the time. I mean those bands would play one weekend with Killing Time and Sheer Terror and then the next with Overkill. So to me that was the be all, end all. Those were the shows I loved. But I know All Out War will never appeal to the kids out there now and that doesn’t bother me one bit. I like writing heavy music, I like getting together with my friends and playing a show here or there and that’s my motivation for doing this.

Has All Out War ever officially broke up?

Well this last time, it wasn’t official it just wasn’t working…but you know now that you put it that was we’ve never actually ever said “we’re not going to be a band anymore”. We just stopped playing shows, but that could be technically seen as breaking up…

To me, sounds cheesy, but if it’s in the press that you’ve broke up and people constantly refer to you in the past tense then it’s a break up. But with All Out War there’s always been this mysterious kind of “unknown” to the status of the band.

That makes sense. I have to say though we’ve had some bad luck that just adds to the situation too, we’ve had equipment stolen from us on tour, in Chicago…Victory…you know that’s when we knew right then this whole Victory records deal wasn’t for us.

When the van got broken into?

Yeah, we had other labels help us out more than our own label. All of our merch was stolen as well so Equal Vision fronted us merch to sell so we could afford to eat. Steve from Equal Vision really looked out for us, he didn’t have to do that we weren’t on his label, you know? They came out and helped us and told us pay us when you can.

True or false, Hatebreed are the Metallica of underground Metal/Hardcore. I mean love them or hate em each time Jamey puts a tour together there’s a Agnostic Front, a Exodus, a Napalm Death, Murphy’s Law..Jamey looks out for those who paved the way for him.

Hatebreed is the only band who didn’t use this whole Hardcore thing a s a stepping stone. Think about it, all the bands that played so-called Hardcore shows back in the day or even in the mid 90’s, how many of those bands do you see looking out for smaller bands? You always see Hatebreed looking out for bands, be it hardcore legends like A.F. or a young band like Full Blown Chaos or Sub Zero…even us. Do you ever see a band like Killswitch Engage getting smaller up and coming bands on their tours or shows, no. Killswitch was happy to be playing those smaller shows when they were starting out but them and other bands like them never gave back. As soon as bands got interested in the Soundscans, that’s when everything went downhill for the real diehards.

Is there even an underground anymore?

I think there’s a pseudo underground but the problem with some of those who are involved in it are looking to use it as a stepping stone to get to the next big thing. At the same time there are bands in it for the right reason, both musically and lyrically it’s just up to us to find them again. I do think the Thrash scene, the whole Metal scene is way more underground than ever before, there’s very few genuine Hardcore bands.

Have you heard of a band called All That Remains? The guy whose name is Phil used to apparently sing for Shadow’s Fall and while I’ve never heard a note of this band their current record has sold over 100,000 copies in the US alone. What the fuck!? I mean there’s no Death Metal band pulling these kinds of numbers, you know what I mean?

With me, the Death Metal and Grind Core stuff these days, to me is refreshing. Vital Remains, the new Kreator record is fucking amazing! So there’s so much good Metal going on but it’s the cheesy infiltration from the Metal-Core…it’s overshadowing the great stuff. Misery Index and Napalm Death are putting out killer records, but it’s just getting passed on by this younger generation, they’re the ones putting up these numbers.

Oh yeah, you guys put out a new record (laughing)!! Every time we talk we sound like two bitter old guys talking about the scene!!! But let’s get back on track. Where does the title ‘Assassins In The House Of God’ come from?

The title comes from the people who use religion to manipulate the masses. So if you look at the US there’s the religious right, they manipulate all the masses into following the conservative ideals…I don’t care where you stand politically, but it’s when you start embracing this whole religious right. The war on terror is one thing but the religious aspect infiltrates that and they ride the wave to push their own agenda. Israel is obviously controlled by religion then there’s the Muslims where certain clerics advocate terrorism obviously, there’s these three major world religions all trying to prove their point. All three of them, at their foundation, there’s nothing wrong with them. However all the people that lead these flocks, most of them are the most corrupt people on the planet and they’re using it for their agenda in keeping the people down. That’s where ‘Assassins in the House of God’ comes from.

Was there a song written in your early sessions that set you on the right course for this album?

“Beyond Redemption” was a song Jim had from way back and so that was the first song we sort of ran with. The very first song was actually a song Chris, who was the original guitarist from Merauder, it was a song he wrote with us and that’s going to be on our next album. The reason we left it off was we wanted Chris to record it with us in the studio as well as Minus (original Merauder vocalist) come in to sing on it too, but too many schedules and it didn’t work out. We’re looking forward to getting the next album out, it’s going to be as brutal as ‘Assassins..’ because most of the songs for both were written at the same time, most are already done.

If you had a chance to play two songs for a potential record buyer, what would they be?

Um, definitely the first song on the album “Curtain Call for the Crucified” and, let’s see…the title track “Assassins In the House of God”. There’s more, but those two really capture All Out War in 2007. I’m also proud that on track three, “Politics of Apathy” we got to get Richard O’Brien from Darkside NYC to sing on it.

I think the “biography” you wrote for your website was fucking great! I mean it tells the whole story of the band for those who want to know. I found it very entertaining.

Thank you. I just wrote what I felt, nothing more nothing less you know? I mean you have to let it fly, if we’re playing a show and I see some kid with the eye make-up and flock of seagulls hair cut I’m going to let him know I think he looks ridiculous! I’m sick of bands that just say how great things are all night, life’s not great! The bands that say that shit usually end up talking shit about the crowd backstage anyway. I don’t see the point in all of that. I mean where are the Pete Steele’s? Where’s the Paul Bearer’s?

The Paul Baloff’s!

Exactly, The people who just didn’t give a fuck about anything other than the music. Even the touring people, I know what it’s like and everyday is not beautiful!

So you’ve mentioned the new record is pretty set in stone, anything else on the horizon?

Yeah, the full length is set, if victory drag their feet we’ll see what happens. We could always do a self released EP which we’re allowed to do outside of Victory, can’t do a full length, but an EP is a possibility. If that happens we’d like to include the first ever All Out War demo and maybe a few covers or something. We’ve got a plan for a history of the band DVD which will cover from 1991 to the present so that will include some crazy shit on there for sure.

At this stage in the game is touring still an option?

We would tour with the right package and the right deal, yeah. That’s the thing it has to make sense to us, we won’t play or tour with bands I don’t know or like, there’s no point in doing that. We’re not looking for a new audience as it is what it is. One thing I can always hold my head about is my, our integrity has always been intact. We’ve always done what we wanted to do when we wanted to do it. Yeah it may have cost us, but I don’t feel like we ever put ourselves in a position where we had to kiss someone’s ass. All Out War, if you like it - great thanks a lot, seriously. If you don’t, fuck you there’s plenty of other bands who will meet you standards.

http://www.myspace.com/alloutwarny