HardLore - Jonah Jenkins (Only Living Witness)

Episode Date: November 7, 2024

This week we have a very special guest and VERY important musician when it comes to the DNA of our show and one of our bands in particular... We are joined by the incomparable Only Living Witness vocalist Jonah Jenkins. The short lived, but ahead of their time and impactful band existed for only 6 years, managing to release 2 iconic LPs in that time that would become cult classics and contribute to changing the landscape of hardcore music forever. These are personal favorites for the show (and inspired the sound AND name of Twitching Tongues) and we are confident you will walk away from this episode with a new perspective on a band you love, or are new appreciation for one you're just now discovering. Being on the forefront of integrating clean vocals and hardcore, their mark on aggressive music is present to this day. With their debut LP "Prone Mortal Form" just passing it's 30th anniversary, it's finally getting a proper standalone re-release via Man Alive records, as well as their follow up "Innocents" on vinyl for the very first time. Get 15% off MADD VINTAGE with code HARDLORE15! https://maddvintage.com/ This episode is brought to you by ATHLETIC GREENS! Try AG1 at athleticgreens.com/HARDLORE to receive a free 1-year supply of vitamin D and 5 travel packs of AG1. HardLore Official Website/HardLore Records store: https://hardlorepod.com Get 20% OFF @manscaped + Free Shipping with promo code HARDLORE at MANSCAPED.com! #ad #manscapedpod FOLLOW HARDLORE: INSTAGRAM | https://www.instagram.com/hardlorepod/ TWITTER | https://twitter.com/hardlorepod SPOTIFY | https://spoti.fi/3J1GIrp APPLE | https://apple.co/3IKBss2 FOLLOW COLIN: INSTAGRAM | https://www.instagram.com/colinyovng/ TWITTER | https://www.twitter.com/ColinYovng FOLLOW BO: INSTAGRAM | https://www.instagram.com/bosxe/ TWITTER | https://www.twitter.com/bosxe 00:00:00 - Start 00:01:07 - Introduction 00:04:24 - Finding Hardcore 00:08:29 - First Instrument 00:10:18 - First Band 00:13:41 - Befriending Eric and Kevin 00:21:08 - Contemporaries 00:24:30 - Complex Man 00:28:11 - Writing Styles 00:31:50 - Signing To Century Media 00:34:02 - Creation of Prone Mortal Form 00:43:06 - Darkly 00:46:05 - December 00:46:42 - Touring on the record and Century Media's reaction 00:50:53 - Tour Stories from Leeway tour 00:53:44 - Innocents 00:59:07 - Eric's passing 01:00:06 - Century Media's impresseion of Innocents 01:01:52 - Hank Crane 01:04:28 - Reflecting back now and wishing for more 01:08:16 - Bands after Only Living Witness 01:13:43 - Band most fond of years later 01:16:47 - History of Raw Radar War 01:17:47 - Inspiration by new bands to create music 01:18:58 - Marker 33 01:21:50 - Food Guy 01:24:18 - Fast Food 01:27:27 - Top 4 Hardcore Records 01:28:59 - Singing on a 36 Crazy Fists song 01:29:47 - The Last Boston Hardcore show attended 01:32:35 - What Jonah is listening to these days   HardLore: A Knotfest Series, Fueled by Monster Energy Edited by Steven Grise • Title sequence by Nicholas Marzluf Join the HARDLORE PATREON to watch every single weekly episode early and ad-free, alongside exclusive monthly episodes. Join the HARDLORE DISCORD for community discussions and to participate in our future Q&A episodes. FOLLOW HARDLORE: INSTAGRAM, TWITTER, SPOTIFY, APPLE FOLLOW COLIN: INSTAGRAM FOLLOW BO: INSTAGRAM, TWITTER   For sponsorship opportunities, email us! [e-mail] Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Subscribe to the all-new Hardlore Patreon now for early ad-free access to every episode and an exclusive episode every month. 15 years after Only Living Witness breaks up, you get a message from a kid on MySpace saying, hey, I just started a band called Twishing Tungs. I hope you enjoy it. How did the band receive that? Was there a group chat talking about how much we sucked? Not at all, no, no. Okay. I mean, I was like, I wouldn't have picked that song, but okay.

So the original lyric was Twitch in tongues, like I said speak in tongues. Yeah. And then twitching tongues was just like, oh, I'll just call the song, Matt. And I was like, oh, I guess somebody else understood what I was trying to do there, maybe? I don't know. I don't know. I don't want to overthink it. Hello, welcome.

It's Hardlord Time. How are you, Bo? I'm feeling so good. How are you? Outstanding. I don't know if I could be better, really. It's a very special day on the show. And I'll tell you why.

This is amongst the fullest circles that have ever rounded. I don't know how else to put it. We've got a very special guest today. And, you know, he's a man with a voice of buttery gold. He is, to me, and this is objective. This is objective truth. One of the most influential vocalists and musicians to ever live. He's the man that gave me and us the namesake for twitching tongues.

Please everyone welcome only living witness vocalist Jonah Jenkins. Woo! I appreciate that intro. Well deserved. Jonah, how are you? Doing great, thank you. This is the first time we're ever speaking while looking at each other, which is pretty crazy. I know.

Pretty bizarre to think about. Where are you at in the world, Jonah? I'm in Cambridge, Mass. Beautiful. Yeah, been here for a long time. Beautiful fucking Cambridge Mass. Yeah. Big fans.

Jonah, you are currently in the midst of re-releasing both pro-mortal form and Innocence, which is on vinyl for the first time, which is really cool, with Man Alive, creative, our new friend Tom, who has the fastest internet connection in the world. How has that experience been? And how has it been just revisiting those records for you? That's been great. Tom is a pleasure to work with. He's a total professional. And I didn't realize how many similar circles we had already been connected through already.

So when he started talking about his experiences at record labels and things like that, plus all the friends he's had over the years and then him working on the Quicksand record, like just very, very cool to have all those layers of connections. and as a result, it was pretty easy to just kind of let him, you know, run the project, ask me for things. I sent him a huge box full of all these things I've been saving over the years. And even that was a small portion of what I've actually got in my closet, you know? Wow. And then he just kind of picked through it and figured out what would work for the layout.

I didn't take you for a saver, Jonah. I didn't take you. I mean, you break up in 1995. That doesn't strike me as a band that you keep all the stuff. You got everything? Pretty much everything. Everything I ever, ever got. I still have every letter that everyone ever wrote to us.

Oh, wow. That's really special. Sentimental. I mean, you know, I worked in libraries for a long time. And when you work in libraries, you kind of see how special things can be over time. So, yeah, I, I'm not the best archivist. It's not in the best order, but, you know, it's there. But it is archive nonetheless.

Yeah, totally. Let's go back in time. Please, Jonah. there's so many eggs to crack here so many nets to crack a lot of cracking um how how does one jonah jenkins find hardcore music and what were kind of the landmark boston or greater area bands that really reeled you in i mean i can go all the way back to the very beginning of sitting there like late at night one night listening to music and watching music and watching watching TV and Erga Music War came on on, you know, table.

And we're watching, you know, Gang of Four and police and like all these bands and all of a sudden Dead Kennedys comes on. We're like, what the heck is this? The guitars are pretty awesome. I don't know what those vocals, but, you know. And then finally I love those too. But, you know, when I first heard it, I was like, okay, I like the aggression. I like that. Which is a thing that you and I can relate to, a sentiment you and I can relate to having gone through, huh?

know it. You know it. Everybody wants the brutal vocals. They hear clean vocals. They're like, what? I don't know about that, but I like everything else.

Yeah. So, so yeah, long story short, talking to friends, you know, people that skateboard and I started skateboarding,

you know, trading records to people. First time I really, like, truly connected with a single record was definitely Boston, not L.A. Ah,

beautiful. Boston, not L.A., when I first put that on, because I, you know, I could get these fast blasts of things. and I'd never heard music so fast.

I mean, and geographically, you're like, I know these cross streets that these guys are talking about. But the thing about that record, too, is that it was, although the guys in SSD perceived it as like this commercial venture because it was sponsored by a local record store, comic shop, which was started by people at MIT, even though those guys didn't want to be on it, they should have been on it. And as a result, we got a bunch of other bands that were also awesome.

you know when I first heard the freeze on there and the and the freeze you have to realize at that time we're playing every single day at least every hour on TV because they were the commercial for Newbury comics wow you dance the same dress the same he won't feel like you are the same you look to him you act the same there's nothing new and you're to blame this is Boston not LA you'll never forget it fuck no wow that's really cool and that because that's the compilation it's like okay then you get you get all these styles like there's bands on that comp that sound like They're influenced by just germs. Yeah.

I didn't even really hardcore. It's just kind of like cranky, weird fucked up music. And I was like, okay, I can understand this. And it came fortunately with a bunch of other records that my friend had borrowed from another friend. And, you know, it was like black flag, freeze. I mean, tons of dead Kennedys in there. Right.

G. Allen. So what you're describing, you're describing, you're leaning way more punk than I would expect. right off the bat. Oh, that's how I started. Yeah, yeah. I was like, I, I consider myself to be punk rock before I ever consider myself to be metal. But I grew up, you know, like, all right, there's a heavy song on the radio. Okay, I would actually take like my Twisted Sister record and put it on 45 because I wanted to be faster, you know, like it's and then it's not heaviness, you know. Yeah. Wow. But like, you know, I would always record everything off the radio. The closest radio station we got where I lived in southern New Hampshire was University of Lowell. And so, I mean, I remember hearing big black characters. scene for the first time on that station. Yeah. And we were just like, what, what is that?

That's a face, you know? And, and then, yeah, we found out they're playing at the rat in Boston. We were way too young to get into that show. Right. Like, so, and like, around that same time, you know, Cromag's came to channel with Motorhead. Again, I was too young. I was, I had to babysit my little brother.

We couldn't even go into the city because I didn't be. But you were aware of it. Yeah. Oh, fuck you. Yeah. And like, uh, I know that that was one of, um, Ben from San Black church. That was one of his first shows ever. So I would have met him if I went to that show.

Well, I got some Sam Black Church stuff in here later. We'll get into that, for sure. Now, let me, let me, I'm sorry. I was just going to ask, like, along this time, like, because a lot, for a lot of us, when you're getting into punk rock or getting into whatever as kid, you're finding your thing, you're picking up an instrument, like, immediately. Were you, had, did you always have a voice? Did you know you had a voice?

When I was literally saying in church, that was pretty much it, you know, like and then when I didn't have to go to church anymore it was great and my parents always had records they were always playing music my mom was a professional vocalist she did like a tour as a soloist across the herb when I was you know 14 or something like that and um it was just like always there and because my mom had been in like bands when she was a teenager she was in a all-girl band called the girls G-Y-R-R-L-S incredible name they did like a basically a bunch of Beatles covers you know. Yeah. But, you know, like, and, and she met my dad because he was the son of the pharmacist, and she was in a band. So, of course, in the late 60s, that's, that's a match baby.

You get that good shit. Exactly. Genius. What a fucking racket. My God. Yeah, right. So. Your parents did what? So church is where you found the voice, and you grew up in a musical household. Yeah, my grandparents always singing, my mom always singing. Interesting. You know, it's different when you got a mom that's playing the cars and they're playing Black Sabbath and they're playing Skinner and whatever.

Like on the 8-track player in our van driving around the hills of New Hampshire. You know, my mom was an artist. We would go to art shows and they're constantly music playing, whether it's, you know, Abba, because that's what they want to hear. Incredible, man. You know, whatever. It's just like it was always musical. It was always catchy. It wasn't just like if I had kids when I was their age, I would have been playing Napalm death and they would have been like, dad, please shut it off.

or make it faster so blind surgeon comes before only living witness was anything before that was that your first band well we like the same dude i'm talking about that's guy dame onigan we we heard um big black together and we were already listened to like libeauk and early early industrial stuff with friends just anything that was off the beaten path you know i had gone to a couple shows, but they were like this band called PDA, Public Display of Affection, and they played with this terrible, like, didn't find out too much later, but a white

power skinhead band called BFW, which stood for very fucking white. But that's what you got in New Hampshire, you know? And then the same show was a band called Five Balls of Power. The guitar player for that band went on to go and be in Scissor Fight, but I'm talking like 1985, 1906. Wow, early. Yeah. So, you know,

that kid and I, we hooked up with other friends and played a much of stuff on 4 track, and it was kind of like borderline industrial, not quite big black, you know, and we called it a graphic eulogy. We did a demo tape. It's terrible. It's atrocious. But, you know, you got to start somewhere, right? Got to start somewhere. Everything comes from somewhere. Yeah, and we never, we never, like, released it or anything like that. But we did record it, and, you know, it was fun for ourselves. But then, yeah, fast forward to, what, 88, and I hadn't been gone to show us for a long time at that point, but music had evolved also, you know,

And I happened to be working at record store. I used to go into the record store that, you know, was near, it's like downtown Nashville, basically. I was bored, just started asking all kinds of questions to the guy there. He's like, you want to work here, man? Because your home is in here. So I became the indie buyer there because I was doing a fanzine at the time too called Looking at. And, yeah. So like at that time, when EREC put out record, the very first EREC records came unwrapped.

and the tapes came unwrapped. So I could easily pull out, you know, bolt thrower, carcass, the upon death, whatever, and just throw it on the tape player for people. And every time I did that, I sold one. So, you know, it was instant scene in that area. High Fidelity is a biography about you,

but they erased all the earache shit. And a year before that, or a couple years before that, I had bought the Formicide demo at another local record store called Rocket Records. There we go. The Rocket Records down in Saga's where Al Quint worked, you know, spread of voice. The Nashville version was like, that's where we went for demos.

That's where I first, I was like, oh, hey, I like the misfits. What else should I get? He's like, oh, you've got to get this naked Reagan record. Okay. That's some wotos on there. All right, I'm down with some woes. I like, you know, the FUs. I like the wotos and the misfits.

So you bought the formicide demo. I bought two copies of the form of side demo. Interesting. Because I didn't want to wear. I knew I was going to wear it out and I was like, these won't be available. And I had initially gone in there looking for something that sounded like SOD. So what the fuck sounds like SOD? I don't want anthrax.

I don't want those kind of vocals. And that being local, does that drive your inspiration to buy that anymore? Do you hear that? And you're like, oh, shit, these guys are nearby. That's awesome. That too, because we knew we could go see them. Right. But it was like, oh, yeah, this is heavy.

And the vocals on form of side, I wouldn't say he's operatic, but he's more like a D-O-type type singer, just kind of screaming and stuff like that. But it wasn't like Joey Belladonna, and I was kind of like, okay, that's good, that's better, you know? So how do you go from buying the formicide demo to befriending Eric and Kevin Stevenson? Well, so, you know, you have all this music in your house.

You've got to go see shows. One of the bands that played up in that area was Blind Surgeon, and Blind Surgeon was more of like an almost like a death metal band. They weren't quite death metal, but like no melodic vocals at all, you know, very heavy riffs. It's closer to like Beast of my back Crumb Suckers meets Metallica

or something like that but that's cool You know That makes complex man Already make a little bit more sense To me just hearing that So the blind surgeon guys are like You know

We're gonna We want to get a different vocalist And we see you like Fucking loser to that at our shows Because I just want to go to every show And dance and you know Throne are you telling me Hang on

Hold on Hold on Are you just proved one of the points I make on here every single week is that the best moshers are the best frontmen. I don't know if I was the best, but I had fun, you know, and I studied

martial arts, so I was just out there just doing anything I could do to survive because I weighed maybe a buck 40 sopping wet, you know? It brings a tear to the eye, John. And anyway, so they're like, yeah, yeah, so we want to change it up a little bit. Can you just come down and

like scream on some songs? So I did. Worked out. We did a demo that we never released because we up breaking up because I didn't want to be in a band called blind surgeon but because of abelism concerns or I mean he's better for reconcruc said at best he's like I know you guys have a tattoo in your arms but like you know a blind surgeon can't do their job right and yeah like yeah don't want to be in that band I was like that broke it for you that we had we saw no I was just like I don't want to be in this bed they're like fine we'll get we'll get a different vocalist I was like okay cool Oh, okay.

Cool. Okay. So, and then they changed your style and stuff like that. They split up. But long story short, like, we made this tape and it came out okay. It was decent enough that when Kevin, Eric, and Roy were at a friend's barbecue, a buddy Dave Iverson, who was a man called Hearing Impaired at the time, brought the blind surgeon tape to that barbecue, and he played it for them.

And they're like, they're like, we're looking for a new singer. We want to change our style a little bit. And they heard that, and they were like, okay, yeah, that'll work. And then I came over and met with them and they were like, all right, yeah. I thought I was playing on the tape for the first time. I didn't realize they heard it before. Oh, I see. They were just, they were just ribbing you.

Yeah, we know. We got it. And Kevin had seen me played. We only played two shows with Blind Surgeon and me singing. Kevin had seen one of those shows. And he said, you know, this guy, he's got a lot of energy or whatever. So that, and that day, only living witness is born. Yeah.

And Eric and I talked a lot on the phone before that, talked about Holy Terror, Dark Angel. etrope I tried to sell him on leeway he was like well I'll give him a chance you know I try to sell him on cromags he's like I like a couple riffs here and there you know yeah

and that I mean that he he's the guy right like he's the the sculptor of the band's sound is he and his brother Kevin because they were so I mean they played everything together from as soon as they picked up

instruments right right and and Kevin was always like more of like an anthemic writer. We had this one song that's only in the demo, but it's called Corruption of Power. Of course. C-O.P. Corruption of power. In our society. It's like, it was too simplistic for us. We're like, we're going to do something else, right? So it didn't make it on the 7-inch, and then they ended up splitting up over that. Kevin went and did another band with some friends of theirs and mine eventually. And then we continue with Only the Witness. And then- So Kevin left the band because C-O-P didn't make it on to Compa's Man?

No, that's not why he left. But they were. were just arguing over over work we're kind of like that's not the direction we want to go and you have to you have to realize cop was like something he just like wrote every lyric to play everything on the demo and brought it to us as a whole song so and he was like this is it trust me yeah we're like what do you mean yeah well no it was that was the first song we ever had that was the first okay and then eric was like well i i write music too so let's just kind of collaborate a little bit and they because they're brothers they're inevitably going to fight over that kind of stuff right of cool and also

just taste and all that stuff you know but they they drove the band together gotcha so Eric Kevin Jonah and Roy and Roy is a base player he was incredible too just a total technician incredible bass player and you can tell

the complex man songs let's let's talk about them for a minute because from the first time I heard them I think what the fuck what are they how what are they going for here yeah right right how are they going for here. Who wrote

this? Like the zero tolerance from Buffalo is kind of the only band I can even closely, remotely compare to this. I say, interesting. Nothing sounds like this. And I mean this completely complimentary. Because I'm obsessed with it

to this day. It even sat like even though it, obviously the production is nowhere near Promortal form, but it sounds good. And like, there's a fundamental understanding of The guitar's sounding hard in the right way. The vocal blend.

You're already doing a lot of the melodic stuff, but like blending it in a way where it's driving and aggressive. How the fuck did you figure this out? It's just formicide with me on there. And we did a formicide song. Complex man, dying system, bad blood as a whole, I mean. Dying system was a formicide song. Oh, wow, straight up.

Completely. And I just sang a couple different words. I didn't enjoy it in the first version. Hard pit. Oh, Bad Blood. That's Bad Blood. Yeah. When Bad Blood was, that was supposed to call on the compilation, the BHC compilation. And it didn't come out for like five years.

And we're like, oh, yeah, it's never going to see the light of day. And so by the time they came out, we were pretty much broken up at the time. Perfect. Yeah. And we even, back in that very, We actually did a version of Slug, and it just sucked because it wasn't. Oh, really? It wasn't tuned down enough.

It was too samey the whole way through. There weren't enough changes and stuff. I couldn't sing at all. Was only the witness always C-sharp? No. Before that, in the old days, they just did straight up tuning. They would do some D, you know, tune down to D, and that's kind of it. But most of it was just straight tuning with drop D.

Gotcha. Fascinating. that slug became drop D and then eventually they got down to like C Sharp and stuff Oh yeah Oh yeah you did And at that point I was like

Well why not just go all the way to bolt thrower guys Because I prefer Realm of Chaos I want to do that and they were like That's a little ridiculous I mean that just would change your whole job You know? Yeah Because you fit on C Sharp so well

Sure yeah And the proof is in the motherfucking pudding So with complex man you're now, this is your, this is your big debut, you're saying, hey, this is a band, we play shows, this is who we are, tell me about, tell me about your contemporaries at this time. Because obviously, like, when you hear Only Living Witness, San Black Church is almost always synonymous. It's like, pro-moral form and their self-title were the same year. Tell me about them, kind of coming up with them, and who you consider your contemporary

bands at the time. So when we first started out, it was bands like Subjugator Atomicost. Who else? Cardinal Sin, they practiced right next door to us. They were temporary insanity, good friends of ours. Like all these bands, good friends of ours, like awesome bands and just kind of thrash. It was, it would just call it thrash or whatever or, you know, aggressive music. It wasn't one thing. So in your mind were you, you didn't put a hardcore label on the band?

It was just, you were just rocking. Yeah. And to be truthful, Eric was Eric just didn't really like that label either at all. You know, I think Craig was more comfortable with it because he had been going to like, you know, see Agnostic Front and stuff like that in New York. And I mean, he didn't look hardcore back then at all. So everyone was like, what are you talking about, you know? And then eventually things, you know, changed. And now he's in Ignostic Front.

Yeah, exactly. That's what I'm saying. Yeah. And they used to like yell at each other about it, you know. He'd call Craig Hardcore Harry and he'd be like, you know, fuck you, you middle prick, whatever. you know. And I was together. Yeah.

And when I first was in that band, I had a crew cut. You know, I pretty much had like, you know, a whiffle or whatever. And then eventually my hair grew out and then I looked like Jesus and shit. That's right. But yeah, those days were very fluid. Like the fanzine I did was called Look Again because it was kind of like, we knew we all like different kinds of music and we wanted to bring it together. And the whole idea of Look Again was it doesn't suck. You just don't like it.

So we tried to be very. very open-minded. We'd bring a lot of stuff together. That's, you know, and we'd have, you know, just the most crushing doom on our playlist next to Shadeh or whatever, or talk talk. You're, this is the horror ethos, Joni. Yeah, this is, that's exactly, exactly what we try to put out every single week. It doesn't suck. You just don't like it. That's just don't like it. Yeah. And yeah, there's lots of things that I would rather not listen to, but, you know, someone wants to listen to it. Otherwise, they never would have recorded it in the first place. Absolutely. It's, music is subjective. Most of as bad, but not to everyone.

Yeah. And I think I care more when I know that it was made just as a product as opposed to because people love the way it sounds and they love the way it feels and they had to get it out of them, you know? Right. Yeah. Totally agree. But back to what we're talking about, the, the, the, um, the, um, contemporaries at the time, you know, I mean, we were playing at the same time as, as a whole bunch of Boston hardcore bands that were on that hardcore comp, you know, the sucker punch dudes, uh, yeah, crossface. I wasn't a huge fan, but John Regan put on the fucking shows, man. He was awesome. And he really

like, he pulled that comp together. Eventually Curtis got involved, but it was originally just going to be John, I think. And like, I met Sean McNally, who ended up becoming Sam Black Church's manager because he booked us because we played with the band called Seika. And Seika was like a

awesome, like I would say proto-thrash. You know, they loved early Metallica, so they kind of sounded like that meets Motorhead with a little bit more melodic vocals and they had to change their name because they got sued by the porn star Sega I'll do it

well sure I'll do it every time did you tour much on complex man if at all? No we played a few shows like I mean the first show that Sean booked for us I think we we literally drew 12 people so we made $12 yeah and and I gave him the San Black Church demo I was like you gotta check these guys out because we got it for a zine

so um you know like that it was all just like kind of low key whatever you could do. We play with our friends, and we never really got to play with Recing Crew, I don't think. I for an I was around back then. And because we're all going to the same shows,

like you've become friends, even if they don't necessarily want to see your band. Like, they weren't like big witness fans, most of those guys. That's still the way it is now. Yeah, of course, of course. And so, but I was there. I did a zine. I interviewed a lot of these guys for the zine.

I reviewed their stuff and other bands like said and done. who else? I mean Overcast was sort of the end of that I think right but they were definitely doing stuff and they love you guys right

oh man they're like they like the later witness they didn't really like the earlier witness interesting yeah Mike B had some stuff in the in the liner notes about that it's interesting but um

it's so interesting I'm sorry to interrupt it's so interesting to me because I knew I knew the only living witness was like adjacent to obviously but I had no idea, like, I didn't know

Jonah the singer was in pits. Like, I didn't know that. You know what I mean? That's entirely, and like actively going to shows and involved in hardcore in that way, like in such a hands-on way. It's fascinating. I had no idea.

Yeah, first time I remember even throwing a kick in a pit. I was so small and no one even really noticed, but I just, like I said, doing it out of survival. and it was in a pit it was Super Touch in Worcester with ski kicking a super touch with ski

from soccer punch and he was just kind of doing like this throw his boot over the top of his head like in a like a like an axe kick go more like a goose step not even axe kick

just goose stepping around that'll do it and I was like fuck that I can actually throw a kick what are you doing you know And then as I, you know, it became so much self-like preservation because there were just big dudes in Boston that would just crush you down, especially like the skinheads. And the first show I ever went to was, first show I ever went to in Boston was actually in Waltham, and that was Circle Jerks. And Slapshot played. It was Slapshot moving targets in Circle Jerks. That was 86, I believe, possibly 87.

and the same year I saw Sycovidol Absolution record crew at Green Street Station. I remember I bought the Sykavidall demo then but I couldn't wait for Absolution to do something and then they came out of a new breed compilation. So anyway, I'm kind of getting off track. You've been in it.

You've been there. Yeah, yeah. You know, it's like it was just a really great time for new music especially. I felt like things were changing really quickly when I was working the record store and things shifted from like, napalm death scum to napalm death mentally murdered all of a sudden it was just a different world like all of a sudden i was

like how can it possibly be any heavier you know i mean and we saw a morbid angel we're like this is fucking boring i want mentally murder wow wow wow yeah he Bennett was like this is either going to be absolutely incredible or be really boring and it was latter and is this off altars yeah altars yeah let me let me ask you this speaking of of new music at the time yeah when you're writing music for only living witness, whether on the original, you know, the first thing you did or the follow-up, are you writing with Pitts in mind? Like, is that

an aspect that was happening during? We knew we wanted to write aggressive music, and when you write aggressive music, like you want to, I mean, you want to get amped up, you want it to be fast, you want to have maybe, I guess you called it a dance part or whatever, you want to have a breakdown. But we weren't specifically just writing

like chug-mosh, you know, that was, that came that thing. It's in there. Yeah, I mean, it happened, right? And people took it And they were like, you know, cut out all the other bullshit, especially those melodic vocals and just chug, chug, chug. Yeah. You know, and then just, you know, just low gutter roll. And all of a sudden, we're, you know, we're in slam.

Sure. A lot of people make a good living that way. Yeah, that's right? I'm not, I can't take it away from them, right? And then we definitely weren't shooting for that. I remember doing interviews and people are like so like, you know, like, what are you really like madball and stuff like that? I'm like, no, not at all.

Like, I was a huge killing, uh, Killing Time fan, Rod Deal fan, one of our first shows and Worcesters with Killing Time. But when it changed over to like the Madvolve style, I was kind of like, I'm checking out. Interesting. Interesting. And that kind of matches up timeline-wise with witness as a whole. Does Complex Man get you signed to Central Media? No.

So we did, like I said, the recording there. We did another tape after that was a live-to-two-track tape. I put it up on YouTube, but it never got mixed properly because they might. the wrong cabinet, which happened to be broken at the time. And it was supposed to be a second, second seven-inch. Couldn't go back in to fix it. So whatever, you know, there was no YouTube back then. So what's on that?

A song called Liarsden. It's one called Meantime. This is 19, I think. What was the other one? Liar's Den Meantime and Oblivion. And oblivion was our slowest, heaviest one. I think we recorded Slug for that too and it just didn't work out

but the the style was defined and then the band broke up soon after that basically Kevin and Eric were fighting with each other so Kevin left and then Roy left and we got Chris and Craig to replace

and at that point you know Eric with Slug in mind and the beginnings of pro-mortal form was like okay this is our new direction Wow yeah and Craig was totally into it Slug was his favorite witness song at the time. So he's like, I can, I can appreciate that. And so we did a demo.

We did the promo form demo, which is actually on, it's on the vinyl. Yeah, it's, it's those, those are well documented to this point. I love the, the demo version of Twitch and Tongues, ironically, is maybe the one I prefer the most. Maybe the only one I prefer. We actually did two versions of it. There's one, there's one on the East Coast of Salt, and that has one intro. and then the one that's on the other demo, the Promo Deform demo is different.

The East Coast Salt one is the one where the chorus is on the high hat instead of the crash. I don't know. I could. I could. Dan, Dan, Dan, Dan, Dan, Dan, Dan, Dan, Dan, Dan, G. I love that. I could be the one, yeah.

So, yeah. And that's not that I wish to come out on vinyl, but I think there's a couple of snafoo is there. But anyway, so that the, yeah, the demo, the promo form demo is actually what, the folks at Central Media heard and they want to sign us because of that one. Good call on their part, I would say.

Yeah, I would agree. So you signed the Central Media. Is it already clarified that it's a two-album deal? Oh, it's a six-album deal. Perfect. And it was, you know, a major label locked tight. Yeah. Gotcha.

They were like, you're not getting out of this no matter what. And I remember going on. Only one thing's getting you out of it. Yeah, exactly. I remember going in to sign the contract, and it was basically like, are you sure you want to do this? Like,

we just sold 500 copies of our tape, and when I pressed another 500, and those are going to sell, like, right away. Like, that's like a thousand days. That's, why do we need to sign a record deal? And our drummer at the time was 24, and he was like, guys, I'm 24. I'm getting old.

We better sign something. Do you go? So what I love about pro-mortal form in particular is it has, it has the Century Media Van Nuys office address on it. Yeah. It just started to deal with the L.A. Yeah. Van Nuys, John.

It's so different. Yeah, I know. Did you come out here to sign that or do they come to you? I don't know. We signed in like, you know, some suburban lawyers. They faxed you some shit? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, okay.

And I went over for two-week press tour to Germany. And that was really cool, actually. One of them favorite times of my life because two weeks in Germany with like a person driving me around and seeing the country side. That was a thing at that time? Right?

Yeah, I was I was like blown away. You know, I remember we flew KLM. I flew KLM and it was like best flight to ever have ever had my life. But it was like just a cool thing. And you know, people at the Central Media Office in Dortmund were amazing. Just like really good people.

They really worked really hard for us. But essentially we didn't sign over our merch in the U.S., and they were really mad about that. Well, Robert and Oliver were mad about that. So they were like, we're not going to support you. They're not even going to put any ads out in the U.S. for your record. And then the New York people were like, no, no, no, we got to do something with this record. And they really worked hard to promote it.

They actually got it into foundations and, like, did a Don Kay interview and all. Like, they were just really, they worked really hard, especially Paula. Let's talk about the creation of this masterpiece. It's 1993. Yeah. It's the same year as River Runs Red, same year as Sam Black, self-titled. Years before many other kind of hardcore bands with clean singing. How did you do this, Jonah?

Who do you think you are? It's just like there's still nothing that really sounds like this. And I think in large part it's because of just how unique the songs are. Partly, I think just because of how. skilled the band was and like how flawless these performances are. What were your influences going into this? You said you were kind of locked in to who your identity after that demo. You know, like I have, I have you guys to guide me in this direction.

Who did you have at this time? Who were, like, how did you get here? I mean, we, like I said, I loved Leeway, Chrome eggs, obviously Sabbath. Eric was a huge Zeppelin fan, whatever. You know, like, we had all these influences from our youth, and then we had our contemporary influences. And when you take something like Holy Terror and slow it down,

it actually sounds a lot like what Witness was doing. Like, we loved, you know, merciful fate, even though obviously falsetto all the time gets a little bit irritating, right? So, you know, I mean, that's, it's Jonah and King for me. But you know what I'm saying? Like, there, we took. took what we liked from the various bands that were that were that always appealed to us. I was I was always a huge Death Angel fan like I said, a little dark angel.

Obviously early Metallica too. I mean, it stopped with justice for me. I remember going to see two shows in a row. And I was like, oh, that's the exact same show, two nights in a row like an arena. That's weird. Okay, maybe that's not my thing anymore, you know? Wow. And then I would be like, okay, but there's other music.

There's always like other melodic and still heavy music to listen to. So even when I listen to something like Crumb Suckers' Life of Dreams, the first one, that's still really melodic to me. Even though his vocals are like John Brennan, they're brutal, it's awesome. I was a huge negative approach fan. But guitar work is doing all the melodic heavy metal thing. Yeah, totally. Exactly. That's right.

That's, we knew that we could combine all these influences into something that worked for us and that if I listened to back to that first record, I still think that there's a lot of like, we're missing some cohesion on certain parts. you know, and we hadn't quite agreed that we weren't going to have solos. So there's two solos on the record. Like, by the time we got the second record, we all agreed, we don't want any solos. There's no reason to have solos. So you wouldn't have wanted any. Yeah, we actually didn't want any. But we were like, well, these two songs have them and they work.

So who insisted on them? Nobody insisted on. They were already part of the demos, right? And we weren't going to just like rip them out. Gotcha. We were just like, it works. So, you know, I think Craig, Craig kind of did. didn't really want to do solos.

Like, he's like, I'm not a solo guy. I really rather not. I don't want to speak for him, but I remember him saying that. I think he did an amazing job. Don't get me wrong. But, like, we were all kind of like, it's not necessary.

We don't need it. Or if you're going to do it, make it a melodic piece that pulls a song together. Like, Eric loved middle eights. He would always talk about middle eights. Make it a cool middle eight with like a, you know, another melody. Middle eight is hilarious.

Yeah. Sabat and Beatles. How proficient of a guitar player is Eric? if he's doing the majority of the writing. I mean, he was really good. Again, he wasn't going to get up there and do solos, but he was just incredible. Like, he could pick up the guitar and play exactly what he wanted to play.

And he could play, you know, whole songs if he really wanted to, but he preferred to play drums and he was better at drums. Sounds like a guy, I know. He played bass really well, too, you know? Chris, though, Chris was a machine, Greg was the machine. And Eric was a machine behind the drums. So they just... So he knew he was like, you guys take him, I'll do my thing.

back here. So then this begs the question, who is putting these melodies into Jonah's head? Yeah, it just came from, I mean, I was listening to a lot of bad brains. I was listening to a lot of, you know, melodic FUs, do we really want hurt you? Like I said, misfits. It didn't come from nowhere. There's all this stuff, you know, rattling around from when I'm younger listening to just totally melodic stuff anyway, like I said, the cars or whatever. Yeah. And simplistic stuff. And, like, I wanted to keep it simple. I could only do what I could do anyway. So why not? have it work with the song and if I'm going to yell some things that that helps with the aggression but I don't I don't want to only yell either sure who engineered and mixed this

thing yeah so Tim O'Hare Tim O'Hare did an amazing job he's yeah a badass and he did it reluctantly like he was not really into our our stuff like I mean I'm not saying he we didn't like he wasn't under duress right but but he was he was like oh who's this band with a terrible name only one witness what is that he like he like different music you know but he really I mean, he made it work. By the end of this session, I had to imagine he was your biggest fan. He was the studio, too. True.

How long and intensive was this session? Ten days. Wow. Including mixing. 10 fucking days. Including mixing. So. Oh, including mixing.

That's not a long. Yeah. For the listeners. That was like, you know, 10, it was 10 grand. So it's $1,000 a day. Right. Which in 93? That's a $100,000 record now probably.

And I remember Choke came to the session because they had recorded there recently and he's like, who's this guy with the long hair? You know, it's not the 70s anymore, you hippie, you know? Yes, sir, I know. Yes, sir, thank you, Joe. Well, thanks, man. Jonah, do you have any idea?

It's probably out there on the internet, but I always like to get it from like the horse's mouth, so to speak. Do you have any idea the guitar head used for the main guitars? I think it was a PV. Beautiful. I want to say it was a PV. I don't know exactly which one.

I mean, he can tell you no problem. I know I have a picture of it somewhere. Here it is. Thank you, Jonah, for sending that, for emailing that to me later. I will look through my boxes. Beautiful. Or my boxes of stuff. Good.

I would, I have on record classified this as a, top four sounding guitar album in history. Nice. I'm going to have to agree with you. When somebody asks me, like, favorite guitar tones, this is always up there. From the very first gag and gunk and immediately. See sharp. Up your ass.

Yeah. The way God intended. Are you, so this is, this is, is there any memories you have of Eric? presenting a song or a riff in particular for this that you just couldn't believe? Yeah, I mean, when I first heard that one, I was like, what? Because, I mean, that I can trace to two songs that initially I was just like, you know, that's two songs that you already know, right? And he's like, what are you talking about?

And, you know, he wasn't denying it, but I was like, okay, except balls to the wall. and Romag's Seekers of the Truth That Oh, I mean that makes a lot of sense That makes sense If you mix those two riffs You have pretty much have promuliform form

Wow Now that It's like this tangential like peripheral Interpretation of it He wasn't like strictly ripping it off at all But these things somehow got stuck in his head I think and it worked And most people

That's another thing I preach on here Is to just play your favorite song backwards And then you've got a brand new original amazing song. Yeah, like VoIPI play in the hemispheres. Exactly. Whose idea was the Vibor Slap on the breakdown for Voice of Disrepair?

Because let me tell you. Definitely Eric. Okay. Eric, God rest your soul, you changed me with that one. Yeah, that's another cool thing about that studio session. Tim also brought out a bunch of cool toys, Ebo, you know, like woodblocks. He brought out the 1933 telefunkel.

and tube mic, which we were not allowed to touch, but we did. You used it? What'd you use that on? Vocals on prone, slow. I think Nineveh. At least three songs, if not four songs. Wow. Do you happen to remember how big the ride symbol was that Eric used on Nineveh?

I don't remember that, no. Okay. We're going to go with 36. 36. Yeah. It's a big guy. The dark, so darkly, I know you and I have spoken privately about how all the like Western kind of stuff was was all Eric. Oh yeah. That shit, like that's part of what defines witness for me, especially with the song we'll talk about in a minute.

But the darkly December transition. How was that feeling in the studio hearing that finally back to back together for the first time? Well, yeah, and that didn't come together actually until we got it mastered, right? So I heard them separately in the studio. And I think, you know, when the string players came in, when we weren't sure how long it was going to take them, I think I went and got a sandwich, you know. So I came back and heard the recording. And we knew it was going to sound really cool. And it sounded, I thought it sounded absolutely beautiful.

And the people that did it, they did it like, I don't know, 45 minutes or something like that. Yeah, they were super fast. Yeah. And when they finally put it together as a transition on the record, like we wanted these pallet cleansers in there. We wanted something that was going to lead you into that intro for December. And I feel like it was a good way to finish the record. Yeah, I mean, that's all time album. Recorded transitions.

That's history. How intensive was the session on you vocally? Because I mean, 10 days to do music and this much melodic singing is not ideal. It was, you know, I wasn't a trained vocalist ever. So I didn't know how to breathe right and I got tons of headaches and probably a couple of bloody noses. Not as bad as when I was in, you know, my first band. Just screaming nonstop for three hours, not realizing how I'm going to damage my body. And I literally got bloody noses and passed out all the time, you know.

But by witness, I had a little bit better idea of what I was doing. Wow. So you just got in the booth and you were like, no, let's give this a whirl. And then that is what happens. Jesus Christ. It was, I mean, it was a pretty thoroughly demoed album, though. Like you guys were really ready when this time came. Yeah, I think we took a lot longer to do the demo because we didn't know what we're doing.

And we were working at a thing I think it was a little bit cheaper. And that actually was really cool because it was one of the first time, it was actually literally the first time I'd ever worked in a studio that had any kind of digital capacity at all. Oh, wow. And that place had like a little, I don't know, like maybe 128K hard drive. and and there was thank God he had that because there was one thing that got flubbed and

Eric had to punch in on that that big fill on when you come back into Nineveh. Yeah. That next one where it goes like So he punched that in once. Guy was good.

Guy was good. We did plenty of takes, right? But he was a machine. sheet. My favorite song on this record is December. And I've always wanted to know where the melody of the verse

came from, I should say, in that song. Is there any particular inspiration? I don't think it was at all conscious, but again when I was being interviewed one time, I think for the Boston Phoenix by my friend James Parker, he asked me about that. And I said, I think it was probably

some peripheral interpretation of like a Zeppelin thing that I heard and, you know, insisted I was never going to like or use, you know, of course, in my conscious mind, right? But it just seeps in if it's good. Yeah, it works, man. We don't, we got, we can't help.

That's not how it works. It's just, you're powerless to. Yeah. How hard did you tour on this record? And how, what was Century Media's immediate reaction of when you turned in these masters? They seemed to be really happy and they wanted to put us on the road immediately. And like, they focus on Europe because they didn't want to put us on tour in the

US because they didn't have our merchandise rights. What a fucking insane. I was like so blown away by the two-week press store in Germany and now I think that that's gross. Whatever. You know, it's like they were like, I think we were like release number nine or something like that on Century Media, so they didn't have a ton of money. CM-0-09.

I think so. Something like that. Oh, my fuck. And they had the network, obviously, in Europe. So it was much easier for them to do much, you know, much more. reasonable from a travel perspective you could hit so many more spots they really did a great

job for us over there they hooked us up and the touring company was amazing Mosh was awesome I mean we just got he's our tour manager over there there's a Mosh there's a guy named Mosh in every country Japan has one for sure

Japan has the greatest one I would say nice shout out to Mosh hopefully also has gothic letters on his stomach that says Mosch? Possibly. No. Well, no. Probably. Not enough. Yeah, he's legally

not at tattoos yet, but we're getting out of. All right. I see. Is this when the leeway tour happened or was that much later? No, no, we did Chromeags and then we did leeway. It was actually Chromeag. The Crow Mag tour. Which one? Just John.

Oh. Yeah. Interesting. Because it was for the... I mean, I had AJ. AJ was awesome. You know. So this would be Alpha Omega. No, it was after Alpha Omega. No, the one after that, it was.

Near-death experience. New Death experience, yep. Brutal. How is that? I mean, I can tell you that we played a place called Panzerholla in Munich on the first day of October Fest. And the scorpions had filled this place two weeks before. And you couldn't even make one line of people across the front of it. There were more people giving out Prashadam than there were people who paid to come to see the show.

Jesus. They brought, you know, free. food for John. What was the, what was the, the reception of Crow Mag and Leeway fans? Well, so we, we lucked out. We got a lot of like really awesome shows in addition to that. That one just happened. I mean, it's, it's a couple of course. Yeah, of course. Yeah, never mind that one. But we've been here. We played incredible shows over there. Seriously. Like, I mean, some of my favorite shows that we ever played were Paris. I had been tape trading over there for a long time that the demos made it over there long before we got signed. And so when we played Paris, people knew our stuff.

And it was just, it was a place. So that was like you finally made it to Paris and then mine. Yeah, it was like I was really happy. They were really happy. The monitors were literally out of commission from people stomping on them within the first three songs. Like, it was a place called Arapaho. It was the first show they had at this club. And they oversold it.

It was just mind-blowingly good. Incredible. Yeah. Russell was incredible. I mean, all over. We went to Sweden. We went all over. So Europe was it was hot for you right away.

Yeah. Yep. Did it stay that way until the end? I mean, we only did two tours. So that stay that way till the end. Yeah. The second one was leeway and it was awesome. Wow.

And that was much more fun tour, I think, because we were a little bit more loose and stuff. We understood what we were getting ourselves into. It certainly was more fun to play with a band that was considering themselves an active band instead of like John with personnel, you know? Yeah. And I still loved seeing some of those songs because John was. I mean, they're the best. songs ever. Oh,

that is what it is. Yeah, and they could play them, they could play their asses off. So it was, it was still a good time. But like seeing leeway, and there was the,

the, um, adult crash tour. Um, so like, record. Yep. And, and they,

you know, still had all the energy that you wanted from all the songs you wanted. And it was like, it was just a really great time. So we had, um, a great Venn diagram of audiences,

let's just say. Yeah. That's kind, that seems like the perfect band for you to be doing stuff. Yeah. It was. Um, how much touring in the,

You got any stories from me from the leeway tour that are a podcast appropriate? I mean, I actually did a tour diary that I published in all that for that tour. And I kind of got in trouble for it because Eddie was kind of like, oh, I wish you say that, man. Because Eddie's sister was along with us. And she wasn't supposed to be. I didn't know that.

It was just like nothing really terrible. But it was like, oh, man, I wish she hadn't spilled the beach. Now she's in trouble. Oh, I see, I see. But it was cool. Like, we had a bunch of, you know, definitely podcast and appropriate details in there, but those were fun. Gotcha. And just, I don't have stories that you want to, that you want me to tell now, but I can just say it was a really great time.

And then. Well, if you can find those published stories, let me know. I probably can. I probably can. Yeah. And if the listeners find them, let me know and enjoy. Yeah. Yeah, it's, it's, it's in all that magazine from Philly.

So that's Met who put out the East Coast of Salt. Um, um, and it's probably sometime around 94, not, 94. And remembered. So, uh, did you do much touring in the States at the time? No, we never went south of Philly and we never went north of Montreal and we never went west of Albany. Wow. West to this day.

Albany. Right. Wow. That's fucking unbelievable. Yeah. No, you know, what's funny is, it's a miracle I found you. I, I, I've, you know, I'm a big YouTube guy when it comes to music specifically. I love looking up as much as I can about any given band during the prime, whatever. And there's a video of you guys playing at the Electric Factory in Philly.

Oh. And you're in a black, a volume four Sabbath shirt. Like I can, I like vivid. And I just remember thinking like, yeah, there's probably a bunch of these videos out there. No, probably. Nope, sure isn't. Wow. Wow.

There's footage from all over Massachusetts, but like definitely some Albany footage. We play with some great bands up there. Actually, so we did a mini tour with Brutal Truth, actually. That was pretty amazing. Those guys were so nice. That's an insane combo. How did Brutal Truth fans react to witness? I mean, you know, people are pretty open-minded, right?

And we played at Poupun Electric right in Montreal. In Montreal, right? Yeah, it was a packed club. You hit your head on that fucking thing on the way to the stage or what? No, but Kevin Sharp definitely threw up directly into someone's mouth off the stage. Perfect. That'll do it every time. He went to dirty dogs right around the corner.

So then Innocence rolls around just about a year after all this touring we're talking about. Well, the recording for it. Yeah, like the demo. We did demos and stuff. Yep. Yep. And that was a different mindset. Yeah.

And you can tell right off the bat when you put this on that like it's got a raw stripped down production. Was that intentional? Yeah. I remember Eric explicitly saying to Tim, who also produced it, look, we are not Megadeth. So you got to fucking tone it down with that bass sound. We don't want the clacky bass. Fuck that clacky bass shit. And, uh.

And, I mean, the drums are like, they sound like, they're like 70s drums. It's like bone dry. Everything's bone dry. Like the vocals literally have nothing on it, not even compression.

And I always wondered if that was like a thing you guys were bummed about. No, I mean, at the time, we really wanted to be different than the first one. I mean,

that's why the artwork was supposed to be all black and white. Like it was literally supposed to be the opposite, you know, feel and sound and the songs were supposed to be more organic. When we went on tour with leeway, I only had, so we were getting courted by a major label at the time, Collision Records, Derek Shulman. And the A&R guy came to see me right before I left, and he brought me the unreleased Sky Valley dub. And I had that copy of that.

I had a copy of Swerdriver, and then someone on the tour brought me some Tori Amos live tape. That's the only cassettes I had the whole tour. Banger. So those really shaped innocence for you? I think so, yeah. I mean, we were listening to tons of other stuff anyway, right? And, like, especially, like, the, the MREP stuff at the time was constant. I do think there's something to innocence that, I mean, there's, like, it gives me the same feeling as Primal Form now, in retrospect.

But it feels like a much more personal piece of music overall. Is that true? Yeah, you know how a lot of metal and hardcore or, let's see, to say aggressive music, you know, you're kind of putting something away. Yes, it's a motive and yes, it is personal, but, you know, people aren't just anger. There's a lot more to it than that. And so we wanted to express more, more range. And some of those songs are just as heavy, but we didn't want that same kind of metallic production. And we weren't sure if we would last pass that record anyway. I think we were already starting to feel some, you know, cracks and things were getting

weird in Boston at the time. So it was like, you know what? Let's just make the best record we can and let's make it as different as possible. And, you know, we're on a, we're stuck on this metal label. We expected to make this record for a major. And it didn't work out because Central Media demanded $250,000 for our contract. So the, the major was like, no, that's ridiculous. Come on. Yeah. And so we- They wanted five more. What are you going to do? Yeah, exactly. So, you know, the band split up before we even, released it. We had mixed it. Before it came out, you broke up.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Wow. We broke up, we broke up the night that basically broke up the night that we went and approved the artwork. Why? Because our drummer insulted the artist and I was pissed. Really? Yeah, he was just rude to the guy. And I was. But Eric, Eric, the mastermind. Well, he wasn't, he was not the visual mastermind at all. Ah. He never, he never really, um, wanted to be associated with. that too much except in very specific instances and i happened to work in a library that had access

to all this incredible you know content basically and and uh i i was like i brought all this up to the guys i was like let's let's use all this and they're like okay but it can't be black and white i'm like well but that's the whole point right and so we ended up just arguing about the artwork and it's like that and it just it didn't work out and then i think eric was just mad and and he had he had already had enough of it he didn't want to tour anymore he had a lot of health problems too and he just didn't want to deal with it anymore. He wanted to play other music, I think. All the shit that was happening in Boston

and sourd us significantly. And we're like, let's just, you know, go do something else. Gotcha. So an argument of much like the Misfits, an argument over a cheeseburger and some art ended both bands respectively.

There you go. How did you stay in touch with Eric from 2005 to 2008 when you first came back? Or 95. to 2008? We didn't talk for a little while. I think maybe a couple years,

but we definitely reconnected a couple years later. And I think, you know, after I went off and did Milligram and Miletown, you know, we both had time enough away from each other that we're like, let's try and do something. I never really turned into anything because it wasn't the same vibe anymore, you know?

Right. But we definitely had a deep respect for each other's music, I think, and creativity and stuff. And thankfully, we were friends. Yeah, I mean, you guys are creatively linked eternally. Yeah, that's the way I look at it too. Yeah, I mean, and his legacy through the music that he wrote for these records will obviously live forever. And, you know, he will be missed artistically.

Yeah, his vision. I mean, it's such a stupid question to ask, like, how was dealing with his passing. But, I mean, is that something you want to talk about? Yeah, I mean, it's really difficult because he died so young. He died at 43, right? So that's just, that's too young, man. Especially for someone with incredible talent. And, you know, he was really good to his son.

Like, I'm still in touch with his son. His son is a really good kid. He's awesome. He's beautiful. Just graduating high school. And like, he's, Eric was a really good dad. He really cared. And you can see it in his son.

So it's like, I want to celebrate everything that Eric did and not dwell in the past because he did a lot of other stuff too. And we're probably going to do something locally where we just celebrate his songwriting and like get together with all his friends, especially people who play with them on all of his different projects. And I have some stuff that will probably auction guitars that he played and stuff like that. I'll be on a plane. Let me know. Let's go back to Innocence for a second.

What was Central Media's reception to this? And I'm going to talk about Eric what I think is the best song he ever wrote. Nice. But let's talk about the reception first. Central media's reception, the audience reception. How was that received? It was difficult to gauge, right? Because we broke up before we even gave it to them.

You know, I mean, they knew, they knew that this was going to be ready, but we hadn't fully approved. So they're like, what's the fuck is this? Yeah. Yeah. How could you do this to us? Yeah. Okay.

And you didn't, like, you didn't necessarily care. Like, no. No, I mean, I had a career. I was at this point, I had to pay my bills, right? And I definitely wasn't paying the bills with that music. And I had, you know, I was taking classes. I just wanted to get on with my life and do something that I enjoyed. And I was able to keep playing music the whole time.

But I always, you know, worked and paid my rent and all that stuff. And I think everybody did in the band. Eric, Eric always had a, he worked in a clean room for most of his life in a microprocessor plant. So it's a clean room. A clean room means like you can't have any dust in there. You can't have any hair. Completely covered up in like a mesh suit, basically, like a white mesh suit. Micro processes.

And, you know, he was like exacting and everything he did anyway, so that was perfect. Like, it correlated exactly. I can tell, man. What a perfectionist he always was, you know? Interesting. And anyway, so, so, yeah, Craig ended up going on becoming a professional guitar player, which is radically different from the rest of us. That was awesome.

He's still killing it, man. I know, man. It's fucking awesome. Boston and New York. He really murders the tribes in an unthinkable way. That's right. It's unbelievable. Totally.

The song I wanted to talk about, Jonah, I'm sure you can guess, is Hank Crane. It brings tears from my eyes to this day, this thing. This is all Eric, musically? Yeah. Oh, yeah, completely. Fucking hell, man. I genuinely, like, this is amongst... Have we done a Best Bridges episode, Bo?

Nope. We've talked about it, and I think I already made my list. And this is, spoiler, this is way up there. Like in music, I'm talking Chikovsky to Genesis to now. This song is amongst the Immortals. Tell me about putting this song together and hearing it finished for the first time. Because how the fuck... If I wrote this song, Jonah, I'd be like, we're not breaking up.

We're going to be billionaires. This is going to be in the next Sergio Lone is coming back from the dead. This is going to be in his next movie. How did you do this? Tell me about putting it together. Tell me about your thoughts on it now. Are you proud of this in particular? Oh, yeah, very proud of it.

And it was at the time nice to have this reprieve from just playing heavy stuff. And most of it was instrumental. Otherwise, he did a lot of instrumental. So this was nice to actually have some vocals on there. And I was happy that he wanted to write. the lyrics too, and all the vocal lines. You know, it's completely his song. And the high stuff in the middle, I couldn't even sing it.

He's like, I guess I can do it. Okay. He did that? He did the high shit. Yeah, the highest, the highest harmonies. I don't think I just assumed it was used. No, check it out, man. The tone of his voice was unique.

Wow. That's why he went on and did a band called Hank Crane, like, because of that, you know? Right. I mean, I'm glad that he was as proud of this as I do revere it. You know? This is a legitimately perfect piece of music that even somebody like my mom, my mom is not a punk head. She's not a heavy music fan. I definitely showed this to her in high school and she was like, that's beautiful, buddy.

That's great. Yeah, I can see that. It's definitely the one song out of your collection that you showed a mom. I got to show mom, Hank Crane. The same thing happened to my girlfriend and her mom's in Russia. She showed him Hank Crane. She's like, hey, look, my boyfriend's a singer, mom. Yep.

She was like, oh my gut. But in Russian. I don't know whether it in Russian. To me, to me, in a sense, is the thinking man's record. Yeah. Thanks. That's great. I think it's the perfect bow on the discography.

Do you, you did plenty after creatively. Do you look back now wishing there was more? Yeah, I wish there was more witness, absolutely, because I was ready to keep writing songs. I had, when I was writing the lyrics to innocence, I was literally working interlibrary alone at Widener Library, which is the largest undergraduate library, research library in the world, over a million books. And I was working in a job where I had to run around and grab books all day long. Have you read them all?

Oh, yeah, right. I had to, you know, copy articles. I had to scan books. So I was dealing with rare stuff. I was dealing with articles out of magazines. So I could kind of see what all this research that was coming through this major institution from, from literally all over the world. And then I'd package it up, put it in a FedEx,

and send it off to some library around the world. Yeah. So I learned a lot about what people were studying. And then I went and did my own research. But I literally learned what it was cool. And I sat next to a philologist. So I'd ask him, like, a philologist is someone who understands the history of languages, like how they developed and things.

Interesting. And so there's a, there's a line. I'm very curious about that. Okay. I'm curious about words that are very similar, but aren't the same. Because it seems like one guy just being like, I don't like that one. I'm going to do my own thing. Across languages?

Yeah, like they just took it and they were like yours, that one kind of, just something about it kind of sucks. I'm going to say it my own way. I mean, I'm not a polyologist, but I can tell you that. Let's get him on the horn. I watch a lot of videos about that kind of thing because my girlfriend studied linguistics and she's pre-luent in a couple.

Let's get her on the horn. But it's really cool to see what experts have to say exactly what you were talking about. They have good explanations for it. I love it. But when I was writing downpour, I was like, should I say this or should I say that? And he was like, well, actually the book kind of work.

I was like, oh, shoo, thank you. So it literally is the thinking man's witness trick. Wow. written in a library. Fucking knew it, man. God damn. Right all along. And I had all these lyrics

like stored up. So that's how I ended up doing these other bands because I had just, you know, within six months of witness breaking up, we had an EP,

another EP by my next band, right? So it's like, I wasn't stopping. I wasn't gonna stop it. And I was kind of pissed too. I was like, fuck you guys.

I'm gonna keep going. Yeah. I mean, you were on the verge of your most successful band, which we will, or what could have been your most successful band.

right? We'll talk about that in a second. Fifteen years after Only Living Witness breaks up. Yep. You get a message from a kid on MySpace saying, hey, I just started a band called Twishing Tungs. Hope you enjoy it. Yeah. How did the band receive that?

Was there a group chat talking about how much we sucked? Not at all, no, no. Okay. I mean, I was like, I wouldn't have picked that song, but okay. I mean, just because it was like, so the original lyric was Twitch in tongues, like as in speak in tongues. And then twitching tongues was just like, oh, I'll just call the song that because I kind of sound. Yeah, I mean, the play on words was what I like about it so much. And I was like, oh, I guess I guess somebody else understood what I was trying to do there, maybe.

I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. No, you thought, you thought it just the right amount. Do you know how long it's been since then, Jonah? No. 15 years. Wow.

Really? Here we are. Wow. Beautiful stuff. So Milltown, Millogram, Raw Radar War. Those are your bands, kind of post-witness. We got to get into this unreleased Milltown record. Sure, sure.

People got to know. I was lucky enough to have. I've heard this through you directly. And to me, it's like this puzzle piece that's been missing that bridges everything I like. How does Milltown start? How do you get signed to Warner Brothers? And then how does this record just not happen? So I actually started Milogram first with Darrell Schofer.

Oh, really? Yeah. And we wrote a few songs, but we just couldn't find a drummer. We had like, I think maybe even four songs. Yeah. How is working with other drummers post Eric? It's got to be, it's got to feel fucked up.

It was difficult. And we couldn't find a steady drummer, right? So I, I, typical. We couldn't find a steady drummer. I was like, all right,

Darrell I'm going to go play with some other folks. We can write some other songs. I met Brian McTurton, formed Milltown. We were introduced by Jake from Castorne Hike. And Brian McTurman sang for. Battery. Battery.

Right. Oh, wow. And now he's in Be Well. Right. But yeah, He's like done a bunch of production obviously. And I met him in his studio one time. And he's like, oh, you're, I thought you'd be like, have a bunch of tattoos and stuff.

No, never had tattoos. And we were just, because we both just nerds, you know. And we had, we hit off. And then we had some friends. We kind of tried people out. Again, couldn't find a drummer, brought in this guy Rob Delaney. And he was there. He could play.

And we could, we could, you know, record it a full. demo. And I had been contacted by this guy from Revolution Records, which was formerly Giant Records, the Irving Azof's label. And Irving Azof wanted to throw this guy a bone because he was his real estate lawyer. So Larry Jacobson decided to have his... So Warner Bros. gave this guy a label. Not the whole label, but just he's like, you know, you can sign some bands.

You're pretty good at law. So. And you know what? His claim to fame was he, he, I don't think it was just him, but he was definitely, at least partially, if not, majorly responsible for the soundtrack for days to confused. Good soundtrack. Yeah, he brought a lot of that stuff together. So they trusted.

They were like, you got, you got one right. Yep, yep. Give me two. Yeah. And so he came to see us practice. He came to see us at the rat. And Brian actually was like, okay, that's nice. That's cute.

but we have other people that want to sign us too. So he went to, oh. Because you guys just fucking rocked immediately, huh? Well, and not really. There's a label war immediately. Yeah, yeah, right? Well, that's what Larry didn't want, right? So Larry was pissed that there was anybody else who might actually be involved.

And long story short, I wanted to show my loyalty to Larry. And I was like, let's just, let's just stick with this guy. I had already talked to the guys of Central Media and said, look, you can either take this small amount of money that they're offering or I'm never going to do anything again. And you get nothing. and Robert was like, okay, that's fine. Cool. Thanks for, thanks for talking. And so they let me,

they gave me my publishing back and everything. And, and went to basically Warner Brothers. And so we ended up going in studio in Longview Farm. We recorded with a producer who I'd rather not talk about. But we, but who did some, some shit that rocks. Yeah,

I mean, he, well, we don't need to get into it. No, but he told us, he told us that he was responsible. personally responsible for the bass drum sound on

injustice for all. Oh. I was like, oh, really? That, that like wax paper and a comb sound? I thought that was recorded in Denmark. He insisted that he was an engineer on there who came up with that. Wow. Okay. He could have been fucking with us. I don't know, but he

was not good for the project. And we found out later that it was, you know, like a plant by one of the people who didn't want Larry to have a career. Really? Whoa. Dirt. It's all bullshit. You know, the record industry bullshit, you know.

Yeah, yeah. You've also, privately to me, attributed Smashmouth as one of the reasons that this record did not get made. Well, after we made the record, I mean, we recorded, what, 16, 18 songs? What the label said was, I mean, guys, you got to remember, this is the age of Smashmouth. We just don't hear a hit. Like, okay. Well, then I guess I'm in the wrong business because I don't want to do this anymore. You didn't bid in here.

But, but, but, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba. It's out of the world And I just like, I don't know how to get it across to people without them hearing it how good this record is. How do we, how do we get it out there? How do we finish this thing? Tom B is putting it out next year. It's getting mixed right now by Brian. Wow.

Tom! What Brian's do? So it's all, this is a family affair. Yeah. Holy shit. Brian got digital copies of the math. He's mixing it, and it's going to be on Tom's label. So you're telling me I can't steal the chorus to that one song anymore?

I mean, I don't care, it doesn't matter. It's true. I'll call it part two. Matt, wow, unbelievable. Wow. That's huge. Is there a single creative project of yours that you kind of look back at most fondly? I like Milligram. This is Class War a lot, mainly because it was so fun to record. like we recorded with just, you know, really close friends in a really close-knit studio.

We practiced literally across the hall, and we made it as we wanted to make it. It was just really fun, and I love the way it sounds. It's thick and disgusting, and it was very satisfying. Beautiful. And, you know, like those, again, very different experience than Witness. Like you said, especially drummer. It's totally not, I wouldn't say the opposite, but very different than Eric, you know. Eric is just like

fucking untouchable but I love the looseness on Milligan I was like yeah of course I love the to have a different feel and be able to sing around things and you know like that that was a different approach

but you know I can't say that any one thing is my favorite I definitely have a lot of you know appreciate that's the way it should be Jonah how often are you and I have a point to this question how often are you asked to do guest spot on songs.

Less frequently. That's fine with me. I don't necessarily want to do a bunch of guest spots, but if I like a band and I appreciate what they're doing, that's cool with me. The reason I ask is because the one you did for Converge is one of my favorite, one of my favorite things that I've heard you on, but also like one of my favorite things were, you know,

a guest spot in general, or it's just like this different approach to a band like converge that we all know so well you know i i don't really know colin you'll probably know when that was no heroes it was that was no heroes yeah i mean i i i've always looked at this as like the unofficial ending of the the witness discography this is like this is like fan fiction that really got to wrap it up in a nice way uh and like you channeled a part of yourself like you it you it's It's like they said to you like, hey, can you do the witness voice? And you're like, all right, fine.

You channeled a part of yourself that you hadn't in a long time. How did that come about? Yeah, how do you look back at that? I love it. I'm really happy. Yeah, Jake was just like, hey, you want to try some guest vocals on that? He's like, I want to write the lyrics and I want to basically write the melodies. And then in the studio, I was like, okay, that's cool.

But can I just change this little bit and not there? And, you know, we had discussion about it. It worked out. And it really, I couldn't be happier with it. It's a great record. I feel like the way they did that. My favorite one. Those transitions on that song, especially, like the way they blend them to, blend them together.

And I was like, can I scream on the next song too? He's like, yeah, yeah, you can go ahead. Oh, sick. Oh, wow. Yeah, Raw Radar War makes a lot more sense to me now that you're talking Napalm Beth, realm of chaos, brutal truth and all that. Tell me a little bit about that band. You know what it's something I vividly remember about Raw Radar War, how good the packaging was.

that's cool who was in charge of that tell me a little bit about that band before we get before we kind of wind down here yeah that's my buddy guy weatherby on charge of that packaging he's just a brilliant designer and he's an hilarious band called four-way anal touch fight as well

one more time four-way anal touch fight yeah and it's butt to butt you know they're they pretend to be Danish except not really Danish It's all just a major mind-trap. But he's been a designer his whole life.

He's basically an architect without an architecture degree. So he does really beautiful design work, and he works, you know, he helps build buildings now. He architected the fuck out of this packaging. I like the way he did that, yeah. It folds in ways you never thought possible. You wouldn't believe it. Yeah, I was really happy how that came together. Do you find yourself now inspired at all?

by other bands, just to create more music? Yeah, I really, I mean, I did one more band after that called Northern Sculls, and I really was happy with how that came out. But we were actually supposed to record with Steele-Labini, but COVID happened. And then that got canceled because COVID happened, and then the band broke up and Steele Dini passed away. So that made me sad. Our second record would have been really good, too.

but, you know, so it's, everything's always going to be like, it's going to have been, doesn't matter. I'm just glad I have a good life and like, you know, I got, I can do all these cool things. Absolutely. And here we are still celebrating your collective works. Proudly. We got a couple of our kind of normal questions here.

But they didn't really tour. The one question is going to be real interesting. Yeah, it is. Do you, you know, it's, It's, it's, you're not, you want, the listeners, Halloween is coming gone. Yeah. To us, Halloween is tomorrow. Oh, it's about, yeah, I'm three hours away.

It's almost Halloween. So, Jonah, yeah. Do you believe in ghosts? No. Yeah. Slightly. Straight up, no. No way.

You live in a spooky place. A lot of stuff happened there. He lives in the most haunted. What is it? Dude, I mean, Massachusetts. Massachusetts. Well, yeah. It's a ghoul, it's a ghoul graveyard burial ground.

It's because there's been so much religion here for so long, and people just needed reasons to talk about shit. You know, they needed a reason to explain it away or to make excuse for, you know, getting pregnant. I mean, that's Mary's whole deal for sure. I swear to God it was that. Oh, it was a ghost. Dumbass. So not a ghost guy. All right.

So you never seen one. You never seen a specter. You never thought. No. All right. One time, the first time I ever smoked pot. it worked. I was listening to Earth AD and I closed my eyes and I saw them playing Earth AD in the purple and green of the album cover, like flying backwards through the clouds.

And it wasn't like I was tripping. I was just like, I just imagined this thing because my mind was creative because I was spoken some pot and listened to that record. That's what we does. Tyler, we got it. We got a, we got to smoke a lot. You're selling me, man. That's crazy. I mean, this was like the first time I ever tried it and I was like, you know what? That was pretty cool. I love this record anyway. So let's play that record again. Wow. Wow. That's pretty cool. If something can make Earth AD better, that's a pretty crazy.

Dude, you know what's crazy about Earth AD? This is real. This is real lore dropped on the show for the first time. It was recorded after a show. Yeah. Oh, wow. So they're shot. Glenn was sick. Incredible. Glenn was sick and asleep the whole time they did it. So this was probably supposed to be like

faster and more aggressive, but they were like, I'm fucking tired, man. No, no, no. it's in fact it was supposed to be much slower and they went faster Glenn was asleep and he was pissed at how fast things were the only thing he did at that session because they did vocals a little later was the mommy

because if you listen there's a couple voices doing it and it was just to get the timing down it's the talkback engineer exactly that's fucking awesome yeah such a great record that whole collection of recordings is just amazing and the way he put the feedback on there

I'm sorry guys. He did it right. Like the rest of the day when they weren't happy with that, that feedback sounds badass. Like the intro to Earth AD feedback? He put feedback over a lot of those songs. Oh, it's fucking awesome. It's magical. That's what it's all about. It's a perfect record. I would love to know, like,

I would love to hear Earth AD Glenn's version, you know? Like, how did he originally think of, like, as slower? Like, I just want to choose. Yeah, I mean, the live bootlegs are kind of the only way to know, like what they were supposed to be like. True. And those sound like absolute dog shit. So that's awesome.

Anyway. Are you a big food guy, Jonah? I absolutely am, yeah. Oh, there we go. I love to cook. Oh, what are we cooking? That's good. What's your poison?

Yeah. I mean, there are very few things that I've had in my life that I don't enjoy. I would say uni is difficult, but I can do it. Oon is tough. That's fair. And I feel the same about Oonnie. Yeah. But I love like bone marrow.

Yeah. I'll definitely eat sweetbreads. I've had brains. It's not my favorite thing. It's not good, right? Have you had a veal brain? Oh, yeah.

It's fucking weird, man. Yeah, not a big fan of that, but it's, I'll eat it, you know, and I'm sure spread on some perfect bread, it's even better, you know? Yeah. The thing is, but it's like you, can you bite into it expecting, like a meat? Yeah, but it's goo.

And it's just fucking, like, jello. It's like this one time we asked for an overeasy egg, and it wasn't even. I mean, it was the least old. It was the most over easy egg I've ever had. You touch it with the fork and it just turns back to raw. It was just over. It was just over.

You couldn't even, like, it wasn't cooked at all except for just enough. But if you touched it with the fork, it would just turn gelat completely. Perfect. So what if, what if, okay, here's a question. If you are, you got guests over, you want to prepare something. You want to make something nice. You want to try to impress somebody. What are you cooking?

I mean, I've made. probably 12 turduckins in my lifetime what's what is that a turduck a turkey and a duck and a duck and a chicken bro yeah you get you get a you know basically deboned you get him boned yeah and uh except for um you know you want the you want the leg the legs in there so it looks like a turkey on the outside but yeah i've made like four different guys of stuffing for that you put some layer of stuffing you put it down you know humbird stuffing some mushroom stuffing that's regular you know And with all those layers, it's great the first time, but it's even better when you make sandwiches out of it. Yeah, of course.

Oh, my God. Of course. I'm starving. Yeah, I went to the gym before this. I have not eaten. I'm dying. The best thing about Chudan, though, is the gravy that comes out of that because it's a three-bird gravy with all the different juices from all the different stuffings as well. So that gravy is just like the greatest gravy you've ever had in your life.

I'm about to float out of the room. Yeah, it's just fucked up, dude. There better be a pie on my goddamn windowsill in the next 10 minutes. Hit it with the fast food question. Yeah, I'm curious, it's 1994. Sure. Witnesses in Europe. Coulinarily, I would imagine maybe not the best experience.

Right. What's touring like food-wise? In 94, we actually got really good home-cooked meals from a lot of the places that we played. See, there you go. Yeah. Yeah, like we, I mean, actually, that's an important story. We played at, you know, in Vienna, there's like a big sort of punk rock complex that has a arena. Arena. We played there. Kyle and I played there together.

There you go. So they made us vegan tortellian. We made it, they made us vegan tortellini. And I was like, oh, that sounds awesome, right? And Eric was like, oh, cool, I love pasta. Well, Eric had a fatal nut allergy. And we were all. about to put that tortellini right in their mouth.

I was like, hold on a second. What's in the tortellini? And they're like almonds. He almost killed himself. He almost like died because he put that tortellini in his mouth. You saved his life. I mean, that's not the point of the story. I'm just like, dude, you got to be careful, especially.

Holy shit. These fucking nostrils, man. So he didn't have a lot of cooking for himself either. So he wouldn't have known that. Wow. Oh, my God. Unbelievable. Yep. So other than the nut, uh, deadly tortuptune,

Cortolini. Which was delicious, by the way. Good. We actually had some pretty decent food. I mean, inevitably, you get all this, you know, butter and salami sandwiches you can possibly tolerate. So as somebody who has not toured the Western United States, fast food is so different to you. Because, like, we got kind of locked down over here.

Yeah. Right. Tour, like, the regional tours you did, if you guys were eaten late after a show, what was the spot of choice? Fucking Roy Rogers. If you could get to a White Castle, then that's it. You can't get better than White Castle. Wow. I think that might be a first, Colin.

That's the first time anyone's ever said can't get better than White Castle. I'm talking about after a show, you know, like. Right. What about before the show? What about like 3 p.m.? You got some time? Back then? Yeah.

If I could go to a good sub shop, I'd be happy. There you go. I mean, that's very, that's a good move. Especially East Coast. Yeah. Yeah. What about now? If you're not cooking of turduckin,

and you need something fast, what do you get? Well, you know, probably like shawarma, maybe you can get shawafel here. Oh, excuse me? Shawarma and falafel in the same sandwich. Oh, lovely. That sounds awesome. Is that Haram?

I don't know. I think it's... It would be halal. I think it's not, well, Haram would be, Haram would be like if you shouldn't eat it, right? Yeah. Yeah. It's perfectly fine to eat.

I don't know if it's halal, though, because halal would take some other efforts. But this is from a rocking place right near me that I usually get it from. But, yeah, if I can get a good shawarma or something like that, that's great. I love that. I love that. Yeah, it's a good answer. Before we get to, we have a couple of questions from listeners, but what are your top four hardcore records of all time? All right, I have to, it's a qualifier.

Can I include a compilation or not? Absolutely. Okay, yeah. So Boston, Not Alley is definitely number one. I love that answer. That's such a cool. A little fact. You know, I told you why.

Couldn't get that in that when I was growing up. Bad brains, roar tape, unfuck-withable. Absolutely beginning to end. Just perfect, I think. DeCroitsons, self-titled, first one. It changed my life when I heard it because it was just so noisy and weird and awesome. I've never heard somebody say it correctly. Croixen.

Yeah. Crichton. Yeah. Die cruising, man. Amen. And then the last one, like I want to say Earth AD because we already talked about it. I love it so much. It was absolutely one of my favorites.

But at the time, I probably preferred septic death now that I have your attention because I wanted everything fast. I wanted everything like blazingly fast and noisy and just I didn't want it to sound metal. Well, how do you feel now? Do you prefer Subject Death over Earth AD? No, I like Earth Eddie better, but I still love the Septic Death record. And, of course, the artwork was like perfect on both, right? Yeah.

Their own little world in each side of the record, you know? So, yeah, those are my four. Beautiful. Beautiful. Excellent answers. First Discord question here is you sang on a 36 Crazy Fist song? I did, yeah. How the fuck did that happen?

Really? So they just reached out to me. I think they reached out to me even before Converged did. Wow. And like they were huge witness fans. Wow. They did a cover that you can find it online.

They did a cover of a Milltown song. Wow. Yeah. They did a cover of predatory mail. That's insane. And it did it really fucking heavy. It's weird. I mean, they at the time, like they were just, I was, I appreciated they reached out.

I sang, you know, stuff that I wrote on there too. It's really melodic. It's not my typical style at all, obviously. But it's me singing. I mean, vocal style, yeah. Had no idea that ever took place. Yeah, neither. The last local Cambridge or Greater Boston hardcore show you went to.

Do you remember that? Is that recent? Local. Probably would have been the one that we played with Huming Mouth, Robbie Air War, who was the weekend right before, the weekend right before oh no no I mean not hardcore but cattle decapitation

actually that was uh that was less than a year ago all right he's out there sangu sandwich in a puck opened up too they were crazy yeah right that's awesome they were crushing

but you know what I loved about that caldecaptation show was it was so different from when I was growing up like you had every style of person that exists nowadays in that room not a single fucking problem nobody's throwing punches of people for no reason no one's you know using derogatory terms to refer to someone's gender um or lack thereof you know that it was just incredible so inclusive

just people so psyched to fucking see some music and the bands were absolutely fucking crushing so crushing and you know the sound was amazing like you didn't smell like smoke when you walked out of there you know no one's throwing your beer on you you know that's I mean that's kind of what it's like now. Yeah. It's so much better, man. I mean, I talked about that Morbin Angel show.

You know, there's no way I came out of that Morbin Angel show in whatever, 1990 and wasn't, you know, smelling like beer, and, and cigarettes, like, you know,

got to take showers. The big three. In your prime touring regular gig and days, what was your vocal warmup regimen like? Great question. Yeah, I would definitely

drink a lot of water throughout the day. made sure I got good sleep, warm up for at least half an hour. But what I would do... How? Well, what I would do is walk around the club and I'm low. Yeah. And get the blood flowing.

Yep. And usually hum along to the bands that were playing, so no one even knew what I was doing. And I usually had earplugs into, so you kind of do it quietly. And then as we got closer, you know, I would take a breather. I wouldn't just do it constantly, but take a break, do it a little bit more. As it got closer to when we're going to go on stage, I would go up back and warm up and do like higher register and AEIOU and all that?

I mean, I didn't have like coach designated warmups But Jacob's Volko Academy Five minute warmup Check it out. You're gonna love it. Yeah.

Just get the notes out that you have to get out. Make sure your body can do it that day And don't overdo it. And by the time you get on stage, you're warm enough, you know. I mean, hey, I'm taking notes here. Never gets fucking easier. I'll tell you what.

That's for sure. What are you listening to these days, John? Yeah. Tons of shit. I just got a reissue of the Six going on Seven record. I don't know if you know about that one, but they were close friends of ours from the Milltown Days. It's got a gun club reissue.

Whaling Ultimate. I listen to a lot of old music. I listen to a lot of jazz. I mean, I like a lot of really aggressive shit. The last, like, brutal shit that I really loved that I bought on record was probably tomb mold. Oh, wow. The new one?

That one before the new one. Great band. Yeah. Incredible. The show. Nice. I also love bands like institutes. Like, that shit is awesome to me.

Totally unique. Marbled eye. I was a big fan of Beast Milk. That one record. I wish they did another one. That's... Yes. He says that every damn week.

Anytime, Jonah, we have like a favorite this. or like underrated band. Like that climax record is one that comes up so much for me. It's so good. And it's one of my favorite Kurt Baloo recordings as well. Oh, yeah. It's so good. I like Aronzi Pizzu.

The new one's good, but I like the couple before that a little bit better. But, you know, that's a really good band. Yeah, I could keep going, but I don't want to. Yeah, you're a music. You kill it, dude. Yeah. Wow. Wow.

unbelievable. Jonah, I really can't thank you enough for taking your time to be with us today. It means a lot. Thank you. Again, big full circle thing here for me. Hard to put into words what the witness disgog means to me, but this show certainly probably wouldn't exist without it in many ways. So that's pretty unbelievable. And whenever you're ready, I'm obviously, no, obviously, no. If the day ever comes, nobody's replacing Eric, I'll be on the first plane. If you need some drums, I'm there. I got you covered.

If not, I hope I just get to see it someday. If you have any kind of closing remarks to leave the people with, I'm sure they would love to hear them. Nah, I mean, I could, I'm not going to point out of my ass, but I really appreciate you guys had me on here. and this conversation's been really pleasant and kind of, I'll tell you what, I just came out of a job interview right before this. So it's like, this is so much better than that. So much more enjoyable. I would fucking hope so. Well, beautiful.

Jonah, thank you so much. If you're listening, if you're watching, please pick up the reissues of pro-moral form and innocence out now. Two of my favorite records ever. You get to hear them on vinyl. one of them on vinyl for the first time the way God intended thank you so much again for being here thank you all for listening thank you for watching

Milltown LP is finally fucking coming baby good job Tom can't wait to hear that done for real Jonah thank you again thank you all for listening thank you all for watching bye thank you thank you all for watching