An interview with ADOLF BUTLER

Adolf Butler are a rowdy bunch of 'retarded darkdrug' noise punks from Holland. I actually put their latest record in my records of the year post. They are truly interesting and worthy of your attention. Here is a little interview I conducted with their maverick lead singer Boris:

Can you give us a short description about how Adolf Butler started? Was it easy to find the right people to make up the band?

Boris: We have known each other for years from hardcore / punk shows and drinking, in the fall of 2006 the other guys were thinking of starting a band in the vein of Jesus Lizard, King Snake Roost, Brainbombs, Clockcleaner et al, and still needed a singer. I had never been in a band before, but they knew my excellent taste in music, we started practicing and it worked out.

It seems to me that your Dutch identity plays a big part in the bands imagery and make-up, is that something you take seriously?

Our first release was a split LP with Dutch scumpunx The Rocco's and our side was called 'Africa', so when we were thinking of a new record we inmediately came up with 'Holland' and our guitar player Het Karakter had the concept for the cover art ready (Dutch Flag). I went on a vacation and spotted these nice beach shorts with the Dutch colours red, white and blue so thought it would be nice to wear those onstage and after that I also bought a big Dutch flag to use as a poncho. The Dutch imagery sure pisses off some people so that's cool.

Dutch music, and Dutch punk specifically, doesn't nearly get as much exposure as it deserves, so how would you describe the scene or scenes to an outsider?

I don't think there is a Dutch 'scene' right now... I mean.. there's some hardcore bands of course but I'm not into them, it's not bad... just nothing that stands out. My favourite Dutch band would be the Dutch black metal band 'Urfaust', our label boss has a new killer band called 'Santa Cruz,' and from Belgium I really like 'Vogue.' There aren't a lot of Dutch acts that grab me.

What was the recording process like for Holland? It seems like you guys had a fairly specific 'Clockcleaner' meets 'The Jesus Lizard' ambition. Was that always the intent?

It's been a little while ago but we first recorded some songs we had and then we were like...Oh shit, this is not enough for a complete LP so we wrote some more and recorded them. We are lucky that we are good buddies with our recording guy Iggy (Euro drummer for Madball.) He's the best. But yeah we just wanted to continue the way we started, but there's more variety in it I think, more uptempo and some more metal licks, especially live nowadays.

Seeing as the LP has been given cool reviews from the likes of YGR and others, do you have any plans to record further or perhaps to tour?

It's nice to see that more people than ourselves enjoy the lp for sure. We have another 2 song LP ready, it has one new song on it and one extended version of the song 'Holland' and it's completely destroyed with layers and layers of guitar solos by Het Karakter, Selim (The Devil's Blood), Oeds (The Devils' Blood) and Will Power (Vanderbuyst). Both songs clock around the 30 minutes. We are currently writing new songs, and want to release a 7" next year. We have a couple of cool shows lined up in and around Holland, I hope we can one day do a little Euro-tour.


More Adolf Butler info can be found over here. Also, Het Karakter and Futureback of Adolf Butler have their own radioshows at Red Light Radio, a radiostation broadcasting from the
Red Light District.

Karakter's show
Father Futureback's show

- Josh

The Men - UK performances

For the attention of our UK readership..

This writer's favourite band of the year, The Men, have announced two London dates set for this coming December. The Brooklyn noiseniks released their latest LP through Sacred Bones records a few months ago and quite frankly the forty minute document of slow burning Wipers led voguish noise that is 'Leave Home' holds a strong place within my top five records of the year so far. I could gush all day about this band but instead, here you go..

13 Dec - LONDON White Heat @ Madame Jojo’s
14 Dec - LONDON Shacklewell Arms

- Josh

Interview with Chris Eck of Shaved Women

 Shaved Women are a band of oiks from middle America currently kicking up a fuss with their stinging strain of hardcore. Their sound anchors itself to a whole host of footholds. The Black Flag vein of influence props up the overiding guitar cuts, which nod every now and then to the stylistic indulgence of noise rock, whilst the dry cured rasps and grumbles of their frontman Ben pool together Jack Kelly's sense of urgency with Judd from Sex Vid's overbearing lack of subtlty. The following is an interview we did with their guitarist Chris Eck.

Can you tell us a little bit about how Shaved Women came about?

Shaved Women started in the late summer of 09. It started with John (bass), Ben (vocals), our previous drummer Erik, and myself (guitar). The four of us were all looking to do something different. I think our original idea was something along the lines of mixing Swans and Black Flag, at least those are the bands I remember Erik and I mentioning when we were putting things together. Erik and I also used to switch off playing guitar and drums, which was a good idea at first until it was apparent that we were not really drummers. Last summer, our friend Tom replaced Erik on drums, which is the lineup we have now.

With your name being a reference to Crass, would it be fair to say that they influenced you a great deal?

Actually, our band name isn’t a reference to Crass. At least, not on purpose. The name was something we agreed on very early on and I thought of it as a reference to Nazi occupied France; when French women were suspected of helping the Nazis, they would have their heads shaved and would be taken through the town for people to yell insults and throw things at them. We really didn’t think about the Crass reference until other people mentioned it to us, since none of us, besides Ben, listen to Crass. As far as my musical inspirations, I would say late-era Black Flag, Drunks With Guns, and The Jesus Lizard are the big three. We all have pretty varied tastes too, which definitely keeps things fresh and interesting.

What was it like to record your self titled release?

We recorded with Jason Hutto here in St. Louis, who Ben had recorded with in another band and knew Jason would be great for Shaved Women to record with. None of us are really into the whole blown out, feedback coated recordings that seem to be popular now, so there was definitely a conscious effort to avoid that at all cost. Jason definitely got the best out of us and got our sound to come across perfectly on the record.


Personally I am always interested to know what other people listen to, so could you give us an insight into some of your favourite bands?

Some all time favorites of mine would be Black Flag, The Jesus Lizard, Siege, No Comment. Current favorites include Double Negative, Wiccans, Low Threat Profile, Pollution.

What does the future hold for Shaved Women, any plans to tour or get back in the studio?

Our immediate plans are to record again in late spring, we’ll probably have another six songs or so to record. No tours this summer but we do plan on playing out of town on weekends as much as possible. We have a live tape which will be coming out in the near future on Sacred Tapes.

Check Shaved Women out on last.fm here

- Josh