That guttural howl is unmistakable. Daniel Kubinski, the voice of Die Kreuzen, returns with the latest iteration of his newest band, The Crosses. They have another disc on the way, Outlier, ready for release on Record Store Day (April 18).
Opening the six-song EP, “Nails” explodes with the sonic impact of a cluster bomb. Kubinski’s voice is front and forward, throaty and aggressive as ever, occasionally sustaining high notes as if fronting a heavy metal band—which he almost is.
“We are metallic and angular, but punk in attitude and punk in theory,” Kubinski says. Define punk: “We are who we are and do what we want to do.”
Die Kreuzen were the most influential hardcore punk band to emerge from ‘80s Milwaukee, building an international following from relentless touring. Their four albums (and several singles) stretched hardcore’s boundaries without snapping the bonds entirely. “At Die Kreuzen, and The Crosses gigs, people would come up to us and say, ‘You guys are different. You don’t sound monotonous or narrow minded.’ We were never about pounding out one formula for 45 minutes.”
After Die Kreuzen disbanded in the early ‘90s, Kubinski played in several bands, including Decapitado. Die Kreuzen regrouped in 2012 for the Lest We Forget punk festival at Turner Hall and played a few shows with Couch Flambeau’s Jay Tiller sitting in for Brian Egeness on guirar. Any future plans for Die Kreuzen? “No,” Kubisnki insists, describing any future reunion as “a monumental task,” especially given drummer Erik Tunison’s move to Amsterdam.
Decapitado morphed into The Crosses, whose name references Die Kreuzen’s misunderstood pseudo-German moniker. They thought it meant The Crosses, but “We were chastised by German folks when we toured there” for its grammatical incorrectness, Kubinski recalls.
Honoring Legacy
The Crosses honor Die Kreuzen’s legacy by performing their old songs, and more importantly, following DK’s example by molding new songs from the noise and adrenaline of rehearsals. According to Kubinski, guitarist Jim Potter brought Outlier’s opener, “Nails,” to rehearsal almost fully written. “Even then, we altered it, wrote our own parts.” Often, Kubinski continues, he’ll punch on an MP3 recorder during rehearsals to catch the spontaneous jams, which become raw material for songs in a collaborative process of back and forth.
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“The lyrics are always in a state of flux,” Kubinski says. “I’ll find a better line, a better word.” The band often “lets a song age before we record it,” ideally playing it out for several months to hone its edge.
Hard and Agile
Potter’s guitar solos must have sheared the paint from the rafters during Outlier’s recording. Tempos shift and switch like rapids in a river broken by sharp boulders thanks to a rhythm section hard and agile, drummer Jesse Sieren and bassist Joe Sanfillipo (replaced since the recording by another local veteran, Christopher Ortiz). Outlier is released by a triplicate of hometown labels: Kubinski’s Spectrogram, Triple Eye Industries (home of Guerilla Ghost) and Rushmor, the Bayview record shop-meeting place for musicians and music fans. The cover’s goth-organic-mechanical imagery was designed by Milwaukee’s Francisco Ramirez.
Earlier versions of The Crosses performed around the Midwest and beyond, reconnecting with Die Kreuzen fans and finding younger audiences. “One of our first gigs was in Seattle,” Kubinski recalls. “An entire family came—mom, dad and their 12-year-old son, who told me about how his parents saw Die Kreuzen back in the day. The kid pulled out our first album and said, ‘Mister, thanks so much for playing this music! To me, that was the thumbs up—making people smile, making them happy.”
Last year saw the publication by Ferral House of Don’t Say Please: The Oral History of Die Kreuzen, a book that disappointed Kubinski for avoiding “the blood and sweat and tears of being in a rock and roll band.” However, the band bio can only have stirred renewed attention. Some of Die Kreuzen’s old fans have graduated to booking and management and are working with The Crosses to set up an October tour, anchored by a Florida punk festival and continuing up the East Coast and back across the Midwest to Milwaukee. With families and jobs (Kubinski owns a roofing company), The Crosses need to plan ahead if they hope to stay on the road past a weekend tour of neighboring cities.
Deadfinger Solo
Kubinski has been busy outside of The Crosses with a solo act called Deadfinger. He’s been making Deadfinger cassettes at home—acoustic guitar, bass and vocals with occasional electronic enhancements. Later this year, he plans to bring the tapes for mastering to Howl Street, the site of Outlier’s recording, for mastering and release as an album. “I don’t want to clean the tracks up. I want to keep the dirt and grit of an 8-track recording on cassettes,” he says.
Kubinski also co-hosts a show on WMSE with Chris Twining, 9 p.m.-midnight on the first Friday each month, spinning diverse favorites from his record collection.
About his voice: how has he managed to maintain that angry, snarling howl after all these years? “I wasn’t quite able to naturally reach that high screechinesss anymore,” he explains. “I had to figure out a new way to do that,” including voice lessons with another veteran of the ‘80s Milwaukee scene, Julie Brandenberg. “I’d never learned how to breath properly, to warm up properly. The lessons were super helpful. I can sound the way I used to, but it takes warming up to get there.”
The Crosses will perform at WMSE’s Local Live, April 7 at Anodyne Coffee Roasters, 224 W. Bruce St.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source shepherdexpress.com ’
