There’s a band-breakup story Music is the Enemy keep coming back to. A gig in Arizona, nobody watching, multiple hours of driving to get there, and at some point during the set the band just fell apart in real time. They’ve cosplayed that moment a few times themselves — faked their own breakup, tried on the implosion, written from inside it.
“We have faked the break-up and self-implosion of our band several times now. We like to cosplay the things that scare us and try on the feelings that hurt us. That’s how I write and that is how we present ourselves. It’s messy and disjointed but hopefully genuine, in a trying too hard to be in on the joke kind of way.”
The Albuquerque chaotic hardcore / metalcore band is releasing their fourth EP, “Sansational,” on May 1st — eight years after their last one, “Gold Malaise,” dropped in September 2016. Long gap, and they’ve faked the breakup of the band a few times in between.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=videoseries
“We have faked the break-up and self-implosion of our band several times now. We like to cosplay the things that scare us and try on the feelings that hurt us. That’s how I write and that is how we present ourselves. It’s messy and disjointed but hopefully genuine, in a trying too hard to be in on the joke kind of way.”
Their stance on the profession is unforgiving: “A musician is truly one of the most useless outcomes a life can take. They provide nothing useful or tangible to the world. It’s an utterly selfish idea that others should toil away to make the world run while you travel around and whinge about your big feelings on stage, clocking in for less than an hour. The narcissism, that your musings are so important that strangers should stop everything to listen, and when you are done, you leave. A fully one-sided transaction. A gift you are willing to give as long as someone is paying.”
The five members — Miles, Alex, Michael, Timmy and Kyle — built the EP around cycles of abuse, complicity in corrupt systems, inconvenient self-reflection, and the struggles of being creative. Their central position: “celebrity is a drug that we are all collectively too strung out and dependent on to rationalize.” Or, more directly: “Music didn’t save anyone. It is actively killing us.”
“Sansational” was tracked and mixed by Augustine Ortiz at The Deciebel Foundry in Santa Fe and mastered by Brad Boatright at Audio Siege in Portland.
Lead single “No Pangea, No Heaven” hits streaming April 15th alongside a music video, with guest vocals from Alex Denbaars of Self Neglect. The track sits in the middle of the record — cowardice, complicity, hiding in basements — and runs the line: “if you can’t bury bodies to the rhythm / then how are we supposed to dance.”
Vocal cameos on the EP come from members of Albuquerque locals All Thicc and Supreme Verdict. Release show is May 30th at Ren’s Den, 900 4th ST SW, all ages, with Self Neglect, All Thicc and Supreme Verdict all playing, plus Luke Lorenzen — formerly of The Ill Motion.
A lot of the worldview behind the project comes from watching it up close.
Miles’ father is a jazz and rock pianist who got close to breaking through several times but never did. “He spent his life struggling in his art, as most of us will. He loves it, and I know he would never have taken a different path, but it is painful. There’s little to no money. Often, there is little to no one who actually wants to watch or listen. There are vices everywhere; there’s no stability; there’s the Peter Pan syndrome; there’s consistently having your ego fed through shallow relationships; and there is watching your friends die because they got too caught up in one or more of these things.”
The band doesn’t position themselves above any of it. “We’re no better. We’re part of the problem but we’re in too deep. We’re just hoping we can save one person and convince them to get the fuck out of the music scene.”
“It’s probably not the best way to cope or to understand the world around us, but we are all gathered around the same gutter.”
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